Puhudiwula, Sri Lanka – In the district of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, Puhudiwula is a village of abandoned wells. Though new and well-built, these wells can be found in every garden, costing around 100,000 rupees ($700) to build. The villagers, however, will not drink or even cook with the water, which they believe is driving … Continue reading
Asha de Vos knew what to expect before the big announcement. “The hardest part was keeping it secret,” she tells The Sunday Times. The only Sri Lankan so far to have a Ph.D. in marine-mammal-related research, de Vos was named an Emerging Explorer by the National Geographic Society in May this year. Subsequently featured … Continue reading
[COLOMBO] South Asia’s medium-sized and secondary cities, rather than its megacities, will determine whether urban development succeeds or fails in the region says a UN report. The State of Asian and Pacific Cities 2015, released in October 2015 by the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and … Continue reading
[COLOMBO] An integrated resource recovery centre (IRRC) model, which uses composting, recycling and bio-digestion, offers an inexpensive solution to the escalating problem of waste management in Sri Lanka, say the authors of a new Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) publication. The island nation’s cities face multiple waste management challenges arising … Continue reading
[COLOMBO] Sri Lanka has made significant progress on maternal and child health but falls short on critical health services for vulnerable women, sexual minorities, the country’s at-risk population and those who live in former conflict areas, say the authors of a country profile on sexual and reproductive health. This two-part report on Universal Access to … Continue reading
[COLOMBO] High spatial resolution images captured by drones are bettering those generated by satellites, and enabling researchers in Sri Lanka to study crop health and irrigation in greater detail. A team of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has been testing the Swiss-manufactured eBee, or Electronic Bee in the skies above the Anuradhapura district, this … Continue reading
Simon Singh is immediately recognisable in a crowd — his dramatic haircut riffs on a Mohawk and his oval, gold-rimmed glasses glint in the light. One of Britain’s leading science communicators, Singh left Cambridge with a PhD in particle physics and followed that with a stint at CERN. He then joined the BBC as 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
Earth hangs suspended over a stack of old magazines, in what used to be Arthur C. Clarke’s foyer. Parts of the aging space mural are peeling, but the sight is still pleasing to visitors entering the home of one of the 20th century’s greatest science-fiction writers. A floor above, past the green sign on the … Continue reading
It’s interesting to note that the man who would take India to the Moon and later to Mars had never even travelled beyond his district in South India until he completed his Masters in 1982, aged 24. Mylswamy Annadurai would join the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) that same year. Now it takes six levels … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 