I have always loved the story of how my grandparents fell in love. Thatha was cycling down a street in Chennai, on his way to work, when he passed by Pattima’s house. She was on the balcony, brushing her beautiful long hair. They locked eyes and smiled shyly at each other. The rest – a … Continue reading
Scientists in Sri Lanka have developed mobile weather stations capable of capturing and transmitting near real-time rainfall data. Equipped with atomic clocks for precise time and date readings the devices log on to global positioning satellites (GPS) automatically. The devices are based on open-source technology and rely on local materials — at US$250, they are … Continue reading
Vimila Velthas lays out lunch on the table in the courtyard. She has prepared a traditional Jaffna meal – yam, coloured orange with the heat of chillies and cooked till creamy, a spicy fish and eggplant curry served with fat grains of red rice. Velthas presses her guests to eat more and scoffs gently at … Continue reading
You are stateless – you can lay claim to no nationality, and no nation claims you. You may have been born into anonymity as one of the persecuted Rohingya in Myanmar, your life encircled by fences of camps for the internally displaced, your only option to flee across the border to another refugee camp in … Continue reading
A new study is among the first of its kind in Sri Lanka – and its hearing from men that makes it so. ‘Broadening Gender: Why Masculinities Matter’ tackles the subject of gender-based violence, asking men, who are statistically many times more likely to be the perpetrators, questions about if and when they first committed … Continue reading
I never anticipated being quite so enthralled by the sight of a man vacuuming a spotless floor. It’s not just what he’s wearing – a white coverall with a hood – but the whole room around him. There’s nothing here in the way of interior décor – the worlds largest clean room is all function. … Continue reading
To Ajit P. Yoganathan a malfunctioning heart is also an engineering problem. To a select group of surgeons, he is the man they visit before they enter the operating theatre. They are looking to him to understand what to expect and to help them make the smartest possible choice. Currently the Regents’ Professor in the … Continue reading
There is a time in the wake of her great rage – after she has torn her left breast out, after she has called fire down on the city of Madurai – when a widowed Kannaki finds a moment of quiet by the banks of a river. Across from her boys are tussling, engaged in … Continue reading
The biomedical in biomedical engineering ensures that Angelo Karunaratne’s raw materials are quite distinct from his counterparts who specialise in say, aeronautics. His playing field is the bridge that links medicine and engineering and he works not just with plastic and metal but with living tissue. With the completion of his PhD, the young Sri … Continue reading
By November 29, Dr.Nalin Samarasinha a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Houston, Arizona, felt like he had been on a rollercoaster. As Star gazers, professional and amateur alike, waited with bated breath to hear of ISON’s fate, reports began to pour in. A few hours before, the comet had attained perihelion, skimming … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 