Category: Science

Over the past year, a considerable amount of recognition for machine learning (ML) has gone to researchers working in or alongside large technology firms, even as recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have been financed and built on corporate infrastructure. In 2024, the Nobel Foundation awarded the physics prize to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton…

Read More “What happens when public knowledge is created on private infrastructure?” »

Over the past year, a considerable amount of recognition for machine learning (ML) has gone to researchers working in or alongside large technology firms, even as recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have been financed and built on corporate infrastructure. In 2024, the Nobel Foundation awarded the physics prize to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton…

Read More “What happens when public knowledge is created on private infrastructure?” »

For well over a century, our understanding of the magnetic world had been neatly compartmentalised into two categories: ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism. Ferromagnetism, which is the familiar force that pins a souvenir magnet to a refrigerator door, arises because many small, atom-scale magnetic moments are aligned in parallel, creating a strong, external magnetic field. Antiferromagnetism, its…

Read More “Update textbooks? Altermagnetism emerges as a new class of magnetic order” »

V. Rajaraman | Photo Credit: V. Rajaraman Among the few sectors of science and technology in which India has done remarkably well is software programming and services. Computer programming that started in a small way in academic institutions in the 1960s developed into a formidable industry within a few decades. This became possible due to…

Read More “Remembering V. Rajaraman, a tireless evangelist of computer education” »

V. Rajaraman | Photo Credit: V. Rajaraman Among the few sectors of science and technology in which India has done remarkably well is software programming and services. Computer programming that started in a small way in academic institutions in the 1960s developed into a formidable industry within a few decades. This became possible due to…

Read More “Remembering V. Rajaraman, a tireless evangelist of computer education in India” »

A decade has passed since the member countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement — a milestone global pact that committed them to keeping the world’s average surface temperature from rising well under 2ºC and striving to limit it to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels. However, climate finance…

Read More “COP30: a beginner’s guide on what to expect from the climate summit” »