Book Review: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Pooja Kashyap

Catch 22 is an American post-war novel written by Joseph Heller. It is one of the interesting pieces of American literature juggling dark humor, war issues, bleakness, satire, silliness, wordplay and serious theme. Initially the book looks like a noose of loose strands but as the plot progresses, we find that very deftly, Heller has been able to surface the absurdity of war and the human condition itself. It is a world of madness, where each character fits in perfectly well with his personal streak of eccentricity.

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Interview: Robert Cheek, Head of Business Dev at UVify, San Jose, CA

Pooja Kashyap

Recently, we got the pleasure of having a virtual meet up with Drone and AI startup UVify’s, Head of Business Development, Robert Cheek. UVify’s new Draco drone was the main attraction at CES 2017. The startup has developed technologies that can provide drone racing to general public. For those who are interested, Draco is currently up for pre-order, at $499. Shipping is expected to start by the next quarter.

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Protective Protein Guarding DNA Makes Tardigrades Indestructible: An Offbeat Genetic Constitution

Neha Shukla

Tardigrades are water dwelling, eight legged microscopic organisms, also known as the water bears, are one of the most resilient organism (extremophile) known to survive in the most inhospitable conditions on earth and even in the space. They are found to thrive in extremely low temperature (as just above the absolute zero), in high temperatures (i.e above the boiling point of water), high pressure and can even withstand high radiation.

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Male Widow Spiders Inseminate Young Females And Avoid Being Cannibalized: Spidery Sex Life

Neha Shukla

Sexual cannibalism is very common in some species like the male coin spiders. Black widow and Redback female spiders are famous for slaying their partners soon after mating. The male widow spiders that are considerably smaller in size, are often seen voluntarily offering themselves to be eaten, with a hope that the female will give birth to his offspring. Sometimes, the males reaching out females are mistaken for prey and are killed even before copulation occurs.

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3D Bioprinting Would Help Bones Regenerate Without Using Grafts: Printing Prosthetics

Neha Shukla

Dublin based research team has successfully developed a procedure of 3D bioprinting to design new cartilage templates in the shape of missing bones. This bioprinted template will be implanted in the body to regenerate new bones to fix major injuries and bone defects. Traditionally, such injuries and bone defects require some form of bone grafts that are painful and invasive and often have complications of its own.

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Scottish Energy Tidal Turbine Power Company Supplies Electricity to the National Grid: Renewable Power (w/Video)

Neha Shukla

Technology advancement in harnessing renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind has reached a long way. However, tapping marine energy efficiently and reliably at the same time has always remained a challenging task.

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Polarized Vision does not Beat Camouflage: Marine Visual Detection Model

Neha Shukla

Animal camouflage is a very common technique. And when it comes to an open sea, things ought to look slightly difficult. However, for fishes like herring, mackerel, and sardines this is not the case. These fishes have a smart camouflage technique, the shimmering silver scales, that can even beat the super sight.

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Muscles Powered Biohybrid Devices: Robotics with Tissue Engineering

Pooja Kashyap

Let’s picture the word, “Robot”, immediately, we get a glimpse of self operating machines, with nuts-and-bolts as building blocks. These machines are permeating all sections of our society. Machine human relationship has crossed the realms of science fiction. In fact, machine learning has become one of the most interesting and sought-after science, sprouting artificial intelligence (AI).

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