My Perspective

My friend Sooraj Kumar and I have developed an android app for guided meditation and mindfulness http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wistler.dhyaan Our app is titled "Dhyaan" which stands for meditation in Sanskrit language. It consists of three sessions guided by an experienced Buddhist chaplain: first is the Body scan, followed by focus on Breath, finally Loving Kindness. For some folks silence can be distracting during meditation. So our app allows playing a background sound like sound of calm ocean waves, or a soothing rain, a lazy stream or even a soft meditative music. Hope you find our app useful. Please review the app and share widely.

To understand whether Polio vaccine can cause polio, we need to understand the different types of virus and the vaccines. Wild Polio exists in 3 types with type 2 being most efficient. So vaccines need to target all 3 types. There are two types of Polio vaccines which differ in their cost, efficiency, and mode of administration. 

Hindi is the most widely spoken language in the Indian subcontinent. So it is understandable that many people wrongly assume it to be the national language. In fact Hindi is just one of the many official languages recognised by the Republic and there is no "national language" as per the Indian constitution. Yet there are concerted efforts to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speakers by the Hindi belt speakers. But do these Hindi proponents know the real origins of modern Hindi? The birthplace of modern Hindi - one of the youngest Indian languages - is in 

More than half the world's population above the age of 75 years develop age-related hearing loss. They report difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments which is a critical everyday task, like when listening to someone speak in a noisy cafe. But the ability to understand speech amidst background noise varies widely among people. Question : Why do some people struggle with speech perception in noise despite having clinically defined normal hearing?

To demonstrate how will power can enable one to overcome their limitations, I am briefly discussing stories of triumph over tragedy from world of sports. Károly Takacs was an ace shooter from Hungary who dreamed of

The casual indifference of undergraduate (UG) engineering students towards their academics is well known to all - not just students and their parents, even faculty and employers as well. This is not just limited to non-elite engineering colleges but rampant even in prestigious institutes like IITs as well [1-2]. Since the engineering education is heavily subsidised in all national or state owned or government-aided institutes, our country needs a better return on investment in the education sector. There are a number of factors that affect student motivation like the role of teacher to inspire the students through engaging lectures, assessments that are not testing the memorisation potential of the student. But in this article I limit my discussion to those factors that are solely dependent on the students themselves. I conclude with my suggestions on how to address these. The reason for this attitude stems right from the time of admission

It is clear to me that adopting a purely plant based diet is essential to reduce carbon footprint [1] of our species. However, given the popularity of food from animal sources like dairy, poultry, meat and fish, it is hard to think of a way to bring about this large scale societal change. Here is my idea. Many centuries ago, contrary to popular belief, Hindu brahmins were

Any medicine has two ways in which it can bring about therapeutic effect - these are pharmacological means and psychological means. Let us analyse how homeopathic medicine acts. Pharmacological means refers to the biological action of the active

I was unaware of the amorphous nature of pre-colonial caste system and the extent of colonial influence through creation of caste-based hierarchies of convenience!

I attended a few sessions on Tree Identification during different seasons organised by Natural History Society of Northumbria ( NHSN ). These were guided walks lasting a couple of hours led by tree experts. These were amazing sessions where the enthusiasm of the guides were matched by us inquisitive participants. We covered basic aspects of tree identification, their ecological niche, interconnections in the ecosystem, utility to humans over time. Here are the visual guides to tree identification for summer and

There are two variants of pneumonia vaccination - Pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV or PPSV) and Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV). There are some key differences between them in terms of effectiveness, number of strains vaccinated against, apart from cost which I summarise below.

Our brain needs to perceive the world around us by hearing and recreating it in our mind. This requires that our brain has a way of identifying any new sound as it appears, separating it from other sounds that are present and finally representing it as a distinct object in our mind. An important question in understanding how the brain recreates an 'auditory scene' is therefore: how does the brain detects appearance of new sounds?