Monthly Archives: December 2015

Nature India partners with NIAS

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NIASNature India is proud to have been associated with the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) as media partner of the just concluded 4th International Conference on Consciousness, Cognition and Culture: Implications for the 21st Century (9-11 December 2015).

According to NIAS Director Baldev Raj, consciousness is one among the frontiers of human enquiry for both science and philosophy. “Understanding consciousness has implications not only on academic progress but also on outcomes that would influence human thinking, well-being and culture. The challenge of consciousness studies is that, on one hand, it brings together many disciplines heralding interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies, and on the other hand, attempts to provide topology maps with qualitative and quantitative understandings.”

Consciousness research promises to deliver significant contributions to emerging disciplines such as medical humanities, brain-computer interfaces, philosophy of psychiatry and psychology. A fundamental enquiry is to discover the brain wirings to find the mysteries and complexity of consciousness and human experiences. “India is the land of pluralistic thinking and experiences, with diverse classical philosophies and cultural engagements. We have a lot to offer to the academic world, and different ways to understand consciousness and human mind, derived from ancient wisdom traditions of our country as well as from the cultural richness combined with current strengths of theoretical and experimental sciences,” he says.

Head of the NIAS consciousness studies programme and a key organiser of the conference Sangeetha Menon says the conference covered abstract and theoretical concepts on one side and the physical, biological, cultural, psychological and philosophical perspectives on the other. “The goal was to open a broader space to place intricate ideas that are complex by being multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary, yet shedding light on understanding consciousness.”

Here’s a short editorial titled Consciousness studies: An overwhelming mélange that I wrote for the conference abstract book:

Quite a few winters back, while strolling in the Natural History Museum of London I chanced upon an exhibition that was simply called “Who am I”? Quite a leading question, that. And like everyone around me, I was curious. What followed was a series of revelations from tracking my ancestral records to giving me a macro perspective of the being – genetically, physically, culturally, biologically and philosophically. It was a journey at multiple layers.

Just a couple of summers back, four of us friends – a Hindu from India, a Christian from Pakistan, a Muslim from Bangladesh and a Buddhist from Sri Lanka – were musing about life, cultures and consciousness sitting on the sidewalls of the Sawayambhunath Temple in Kathmandu, as the beautiful cityscape lit up under us. At that very moment, as if by magic, we suddenly realised our descents and the amazing variety we represented in just four bodies – two male and two female. The moment was captured for posterity with a self-timer and lovingly captioned ‘Four Idiots’ owing to the preceding conversation that revealed how little we knew of each other. And how much always remains to be known despite our best efforts.

It is this overwhelming mélange that an interdisciplinary study such as consciousness brings to the table. From the abstract to the theoretical, from birds and bees to chimpanzees and fish, spanning smells, sights, sounds, perceptions and disorders – the canvas is simply breathtaking.

The International Conference on Consciousness, Cognition and Culture: Implications for the 21st Century is all set to celebrate this diversity. Not just through scientific studies and mathematics that unlock the brain’s many computer-like wares and vice-versa, but also by taking a peek into the philosophical, traversing the mystic, peering into religion and finding deeper meaning in poetic devices.

The conference, which will bring together some leading names in consciousness studies from across the world, is hoping to meander effortlessly between philosophy 0f psychology and neuroscience and from the concepts of punishment and reward to neuro-medicine. Nature India, a showcase of India’s science, is proud to be associated with such a mixed-bag conference as its media partner.

India deadliest country for environment journalists: RSF

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Doesn’t look like great times to be an environment journalist in India.

More than 3000 environment journalists from across the world have spent sleepless nights over the last 10 days to cover the Paris climate talks (or the 21st Conference of Parties — COP21) concluding today. However, excesses of a different kind threaten their peers elsewhere, according to a new report released by Paris-based body Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF or Reporter Without Borders).

India has emerged as the deadliest country for environment journalists, according to a global investigation by RSF, with at least two inquisitive reporters in the Asian nation being murdered in 2015 and many others harassed, threatened and subjected to physical violence. Closely following is Cambodia, where one reporter was killed in 2014.

New Picture

Source: RSF

Jagendra Singh, a freelancer for Hindi-language papers for more than 15 years, died from burn injuries in Uttar Pradesh state after he posted an article on Facebook accusing a government minister of involvement in illegal mining and land seizures. Sandeep Kothari, another Hindi language reporter, was found dead in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. Police said local organized crime members had pressured him to stop investigating illegal mining.

Ten environment reporters have been murdered since 2010, according to RSF’s tally. In the past five years, almost all (90 percent) of the murders of environmental journalists have been in South Asia (India) and Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Philippines and Indonesia.) The one exception is Russia. Mikhail Beketov, the editor of Khimkinskaya Pravda, a local paper based in the Moscow suburb of Khimki succumbed in April 2013 to the injuries he sustained in November 2008 while campaigning against the construction of a motorway through Khimki forest.

The RSF report points out that journalists who cover environmental issues live in a dangerous climate and are exposed to potentially devastating forces. “We are not talking about nature’s hurricanes, squalls, downpours or lightning,” says Christophe Deloire, RSF Secretary-General. At the intersection of political, economic, cultural and sometimes criminal interests, the environment is a highly sensitive subject, and those who shed light on pollution or any kind of planetary degradation often get into serious trouble, Deloire said in the report.

The situation of environmental reporters has worsened in many countries since 2009, when RSF conducted the first global study on the issue. Environment stories range from global warming to deforestation, the exploitation of natural resources, pollution – issues that often involve more than just protection of the environment, especially when they shed light on the illegal activities of industrial groups, local organized crime and even government officials. Environment reporters are often pitted against very strong lobbies and end up paying a high price for their journalistic pursuits. RSF says, like political and business reporters, many environmental reporters acknowledge being approached by companies trying to bribe them.

RSF notes that forming peer associations to protect themselves would be a better way of dealing with these atrocities instead of fighting lonely battles against mighty corporations, corrupt politicians and mafia groups.

Nature Index India analysis reports surge in publication

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Indian Science Ascending report release

Indian Science Ascending report released

A new analytics report from Nature Index — ‘Indian Science Ascending’  — released today, notes a surge in high-quality scientific publication in India between 2012 and 2014. The report, produced jointly by Springer Nature and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), reveals that in high tier journals, Indian academic institutions co-author more papers with international companies than with domestic firms. The report was released at the CII Global Higher Education summit in New Delhi.

The analysis is the first of a new style of reports that further probe data from the Nature Index to answer questions about India’s place in global science, especially when compared with countries that have similar volumes of index output in 2014 and with broadly similar economic conditions (including Australia, Brazil, Italy, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan).

The Nature Index database tracks the author affiliations of nearly 60,000 scientific articles published in an independently selected group of 68 high-quality science journals, and charts publication productivity for institutions and countries. The Nature Index report Indian Science Ascending shows a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8% between 2012 and 2014 in the output of top-quality science in the country.

The report also chronicles India’s particular strength in the broad discipline of Chemistry, which shows the largest increase in CAGR of 8.6% among the comparator countries. The collaboration analysis reports that India’s international collaboration far outweighs domestic collaboration, and zooming into links between industry and academia reveals that Indian academic institutions collaborate mainly with international corporations through their international branches.

India_white-paper-int6_Page_01Here are the key highlights of the report:

  • At number 13, India is among the top 15 countries globally in the Nature Index 2014.
  • India’s research output has grown steadily since 2012, showing stronger CAGR of 8% than other countries with comparable output and economic conditions.
  • Chemistry continues to be India’s strongest research area with 50 per cent of India’s overall Nature Index output coming from Chemistry alone.
  • The US is India’s top collaborator followed by Germany. India collaborates with 85 countries, mostly in Europe. Other strong collaborative ties include East Asia and Australia.
  • Institutions in India collaborate mostly with inter­national counterparts, but their largest collaborations tend to be with other domestic institutions.
  • Industry–academia collaboration is yet to take off in India, but Indian academic institutions have good col­laborative ties with international cor­porations.

President Designate, CII, Naushad Forbes said,“There’s a common perception that India fails to produce anything of significant scientific value, but this report presents a refreshingly different picture of Indian science, supported by evidence – a fact reflected in its title: India’s Ascent Towards World Class Science. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently launched a single-window mechanism called “Imprint” for release of R&D funds to academic institutions along with other policy measures. Hopefully soon then, our “historic love affair with chemistry”, aptly highlighted in this report, will be replicated in other areas of science too.”

According to Antoine Bocquet, Springer Nature Vice President Sales, Japan, India, Southeast Asia and Oceania: “Since its launch in 2014, the Nature Index has provided a new way to look at the scientific literature and the research organizations that contribute to it. India’s investment into R&D has stayed less than 1 per cent of its GDP for the past 2 decades, although the growth in Indian output in the index shows a steady increase. With other new initiatives by the Indian government such as tax incentives for R&D, we are excited to see the outcome in future years and continue working with CII to track the country’s growth both in the quantity of high-quality research and diversity in collaboration patterns. India will continue to be a driver of growth in both the quantity and quality of global research and a country to watch closely.”