Payal Dhar

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.

This past June, as the US women’s soccer team was dominating the FIFA World Cup finals, player Megan Rapinoe offered one possible explanation for their success: “You can’t win a championship without gays on your team,” she said. “It’s never been done before, ever.”
The comment was a hat tip to Pride month, but it also acknowledged something significant: In this year’s women’s World Cup, there were more than 40 openly gay players and coaches—more than double the number who were out in 2015. (H...

Back in the day when Steam was just a fledgling, Valve's digital storefront only featured a handful of games from the developer itself. Almost two decades later, Steam is unrecognizable from that early form, its labyrinthine listings guaranteed (probably!) to satisfy even the most voracious gamer. When you sift through the good, bad, and downright awful, you can find some gems, though. And yes, some of them are even free.
Shooters, adventures, puzzles, role-playing, card collecting, solo, squ...

India and its cacophony of sights, sounds, tastes, and smells can be an assault to the senses, often overwhelming for some. Others like the challenge of navigating its mind-boggling diversity, and many seek—and find—balms for a tired soul. And then there are those who visit to heal their bodies. Bengaluru, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, is a teeming metropolis with a friendly soul, featuring good food, stunning cultural delights, and high-tech hospitals, making it an attractive medical tourism destination.

One inescapable truth of gaming is that there will always be bugs. Despite the weeks, months, sometimes years spent perfecting every little detail around storylines, game engines, physics, and more, developers can rarely account for every single combination of choices that players will make, what order they'll do it in, and what additional idiosyncrasies each player could add to the mix. Even as games have become more complex, changing from solo pastimes to worldwide community events, bugs and glitches have endured.

In early August, the Indian government mounted an unprecedented illegal occupation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (hereafter referred to as J&K or Kashmir) on the northern tip of the subcontinent. Abrogating Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which gave J&K a special status and laid out conditions contingent on which they had joined the Indian Union during independence from British rule, Parliament announced communication blackouts and curfews.

Modern cargo airships, propelled by jet stream winds, would be safer and more energy efficient than their predecessors, and could dramatically reduce emissions produced by maritime shipping.

Humanitarian crises always have a gender angle, particularly those involving armed conflict and state actors. Trends analysis by the United Nations in 2018 shows that sexual violence is factored into the broader strategy of conflict, with women and girls being disproportionately affected. It has been no different in Kashmir’s disturbed history.

What we eat, how we eat it, when, why, and where—the fundamental questions while writing any explorative or journalistic food piece—deeply inform our ways of life, varying widely across the globe. Yet in a world where the lens belongs to the white Western commentator, food too is experienced with an Orientalist bias. “I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that a lot of food writers pretend to know a lot more than they actually do when it comes to…let’s call it ‘ethnic’ food,” wrote...

In a bizarre twist to a plot that didn’t exist, the hospital soap Holby City decided to “bury a gay” it had already written out months ago. In the 30 July episode “Things My Mother Told Me”, a group of mostly strangers bid farewell to the immensely popular lesbian character, the ex-army trauma surgeon Bernie Wolfe, played by Jemma Redgrave.

The Zelda series has doubtless being among the most popular and enduring of all of Nintendo's game franchises. From the 1986 release of The Legend of Zelda to today's modern masterpieces, there are a grand total of 20 games and counting. Plus, there have been numerous remakes, spinoffs, and ports to other media, such as animations, anime, and games.
Nintendo has dipped back into that library with Link's Awakening, a new remake of the 1993 game of the same name adapted for the Nintendo Switch....

Scientists have searched for a sustainable aviation fuel for decades. Now, with emissions from air traffic increasing faster than carbon-offset technologies can mitigate them, environmentalists worry that even with new fuel-efficient technologies and operations, emissions from the aviation sector could double by 2050. But what if, by 2050, all fossil-derived jet fuel could be replaced by a carbon-neutral one made from sunlight and air?

Not everyone is lucky enough to see the Valley of Flowers in full bloom. First of all, as a high-altitude inner Himalayan valley, it remains inaccessible and under snow for most of the year. Second, it is not an easy trek—not just because of its altitude (around 3,500 metres above sea level) and the moderately difficult access route that involves negotiating a glacier, but also because it is a trip that needs to be taken in the rainy season, over wet and slippery forested paths, some perilous...

Hill stations, a quaint term for the holiday destinations in or near the mountains, are a colonial legacy that India is quite happy to retain. They were created in the early 19th century, when British expatriates unaccustomed to or made ill by India’s heat began to seek out cooler air. (Despite the name hill stations, most of these destinations are at mountainous altitudes.) The colonial rulers established pockets of England in once-remote Indian settlements — usually to the detriment of the local populations...