Payal Dhar

The part that artificial intelligence plays in climate change has come under scrutiny, including from tech workers themselves who joined the global climate strike last year. Much can be done by developing tools to quantify the carbon cost of machine learning models and by switching to a sustainable artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Social distancing and travel are two things, much like Kipling’s East and West, that you'd imagine would never meet. Then the novel coronavirus made it clear that the tourism industry needed strategies to survive beyond the pandemic. Thus, we can now wander virtual galleries and museums, take off on digital safaris, and experience remote guided tours. But there is another way to be transported to new worlds and challenged in mind and, sometimes, body. We’re talking about gaming.

Back in the late 1980s, for English composition class, I wrote myself into the British author Enid Blyton’s novel Secret Island in the form of an impressive 25-page story. It left my teacher, who would have preferred to see my prolificacy manifest in some original writing, unmoved. But it wasn’t originality that I was after. I was looking for a place where I was accepted without question, without the second glances and probing questions that accompanied me wherever I went.

Machine assembly has commenced, but this gigantic nuclear fusion experiment costing tens of billions of dollars is nowhere near starting up.

Under normal circumstances, India’s 450-million-plus labor force is considered an asset. Yet the government’s badly handled COVID-19 lockdown has caused large-scale labor distress, especially to the poorest and most marginalized workers, who make up about a quarter of that number. Experts predicting the impact of COVID-19 on India’s economy paint a dismal picture, especially with a recent spike in the number of cases.

In India, the COVID-19 crisis is turning out to be the perfect excuse for the government to consolidate its pre-pandemic surveillance ambitions. Since May 4, as restrictions began to ease, the government has mandated the installation of its contact-tracing smartphone app for anyone who works—whether for the government, a private company, or in the gig economy—or uses public transport. Failing to do so is criminal, says the home affairs ministry.

Researchers have been banking on millions of citizen-scientists around the world to help identify new treatments for COVID-19. Much of that work is being done through distributed computing projects that utilize the surplus processing power of PCs to carry out various compute-intensive tasks.

While the SETI@home project winds down, one of the world’s most versatile telescope arrays gears up to scan the skies for alien life.

While 2019 was a great year for gaming, 2020 is shaping up to outshine its predecessor. A ridiculous number of consoles are expected to hit the market this year alongside a slew of incredible games. On top of this, the world has had to respond to an unprecedented development in recent months: the COVID-19 crisis. As more and more people are forced to stay home, they are reaching for their gaming consoles and devices.

On a freewheeling UK tour, Payal Dhar stumbles upon her favourite literary inspirations—from James Herriot’s sheep-dotted Yorkshire to Rebus’s Edinburgh, the Bard’s home, and Platform 93⁄4.

Amid heavy police and paramilitary presence, against a backdrop of a targeted destruction of homes and livelihoods, and accompanied by a near-total absence of state support, relief efforts in the violence-hit neighbourhoods of north-east Delhi are helping residents start to pick up the pieces. But any appearance of normality is superficial.

Yoga retreats are believed to be great enablers in reconnecting with yourself, and for mental and physical detoxing. A retreat, in particular, that is folded inside a lush, tropical landscape, far enough from the hurly-burly of urban life to make it seem like the middle of nowhere. I learnt two life-changing things about myself at Museflower’s three-night yoga getaway—one, I’ll never be a farmer; two, when backed against the metaphoric wall, I can swallow my debilitating dislike of worms, and escort them off the premises.

Phantom pain was all that Keven Walgamott had left of the limb he lost in an accident over a decade ago — until he tried on the LUKE Arm for the first time in 2017, and told researchers that he could “feel” again. The arm is a motorized and sensorized prosthetic that has been in development for over 15 years by a team at the University of Utah.
Researchers around the world have been developing prosthetics that closely mimic the part of the human body they would replace.

"Did you mean Chiang Mai?" I invariably get asked every time I mention my trip to Thailand’s biggest northern city, Chiang Rai. Located close to the Golden Triangle (where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet), Chiang Rai remains fairly undiscovered despite its history as the capital of the Mangrai dynasty.