My reply to this article:

When Religion Collides with Medical Care: Who Decides What Is Right for You?

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/04/02/molecules...

Doctors and science can find several ways out. I have an interesting story to tell. Some years back when a child was brought to India from a West Asian country for an operation, her parents' religious beliefs didn't allow the doctors to transfuse "others" blood into her body. Her condition was very weak. So the doctors here found a way out - by boosting her own blood levels for several months by carefully giving all the vital nutrients required and monitoring, collecting and storing her own blood and then giving it back to her at the time of operation. In the end the child was saved.
Saving the lives and helping the needy are the main priorities. Science can find ways to do this - religion or no religion!

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2012/04/flipping-icebergs/

Artists spinning science:
http://reesenews.org/2012/04/03/artists-scientists-explore-climate-...

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FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENCE IN SOCIETY
University of California, Berkeley, USA
17 - 19 November 2012
This Conference will address disciplinary and interdisciplinary challenges in the sciences, and in particular the relationships of science to society.
http://science-society.com/conference-2012/

http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/why-working-more-than-40-hours-...
Working for more than forty hours a week is not only non-productive but harmful!

According to a handful of studies, consistently clocking over 40 hours a week just makes you unproductive (and very, very tired).
Bad news for me!- Krishna

”Maybe we’re just too dumb” - Nobel laureate physicist David Gross

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=secret-computer-co...

Scientific method:
The scientific method is universally used in all different branches of science and it always includes certain steps, which can be applied to any experiment:

Question/Problem: The first step to any scientific inquiry is to ask a question about something. This is what you want to find out by doing your experiment. For example, you might start with a question like “In what temperature does a lima bean plant grow the fastest?”
Background Research: Before beginning the experiment, you must research all the scientific principles involved. During this step, you are gathering together the existing knowledge related to the experiment you intend to conduct. Using the above example of a lima bean plant experiment, you might research the plant’s typical growing conditions, water needs and other characteristics.
Hypothesis: A hypothesis is simply an educated guess about what you think will happen in your experiment, based on the research you’ve conducted. In the plant example, you might guess that lima beans will grow the fastest at temperatures of 85 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Experiment: Next, you conduct the actual experiment. In a science project context, you will need to outline and explain your procedures in detail and follow them exactly. Your experiment must also be designed to isolate the single variable you want to measure. In the lima bean example, you would set up a series of plants to have identical conditions except for the temperature. If you varied other things besides the temperature, you wouldn’t be able to tell which variable caused the change in results. In real scientific tests, the experiment is usually conducted several times and the results must be repeatable to be considered valid or proven.
Analysis: After conducting your experiment, you must look at the data you’ve collected and make a conclusion. The conclusion refers back to your original question. For example, you might conclude that lima bean plants grow the fastest in temperatures from 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Your results do not always prove your hypothesis correct. One of the most exciting things about science is that your guess is not always right and sometimes you will get unexpected results. When that happens, you must use what you’ve learned to try to explain why you got the results you did instead of the results you predicted.

Here is an interesting story of a science (and also litt.)-inspired person :
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hubli/Science-wedding-gets-...

His four-page wedding invite does not give information of just his bride and himself, but also of world famous scientists, litterateurs and rationalist writers along with their photographs and some poems!

He says:

The luxuries and comforts we enjoy today is because of the contributions of scientists, poets and litterateurs.

(That is what I call true inspiration - when you are deeply into something! - Krishna)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47067078/ns/technology_and_science-spac...

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
The New Scientist Eureka Prize for Science Photography
The Australian Museum and New Scientist magazine invite you to enter the New Scientist Eureka Prize for Science Photography for your chance to win a share of $10,000. Open to those 18 years and over, this Eureka Prize is awarded for a single photograph that most effectively communicates an aspect of science. What does science mean to you?
http://eureka.australianmuseum.net.au/eureka-prize/science-photogra...
Due: 4 May 2012

Judging Criteria

a. Technical excellence (20%)
b. Aesthetics (30%), and
c. Creativity in communicating a science concept or idea (50%)

Here is an interesting story - Physicist fights off traffic fine with science!
A US physicist came up with a rather calculative method to prove his innocence and get himself out of a traffic challan.
Mr. Dimitri Krioukov, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, was pulled over for running a stop sign. The finewould have been $400. However, Krioukov wrote an academic paper to argue why he ought to be found not guilty. Its title: "The proof of Innocence". The judge bought it, said Mr. Krioukov. He was acquitted, the ABC News reported. According to the Huffington Post news website, in making his case, Mr. Krioukov writes that a police officer can perceive a car as not having stopped, even though it really did stop. He argues that the officer, watching at an angle about 100 feet away, confused the car's actual speed with its angular speed. Krioukov claims that he did stop the car and restart quickly, and that the officer missed it. (ANI)
Well done, Mr. Krioukov! This is what science can do. Provide proof!

Another real story to prove how science could be helpful: An young boy, whose father was a sweeper in railways went to railway station one day along with his father. While his father was sweeping a railway bogie, the boy started wandering and got lost. The bogie he was playing in was attached to a Kolkatta bound train and the boy reached Kolkatta. As he was very young and didn't know how to get back home, he started wandering in the Kolkatta streets. Somebody got him admitted in an orphanage. One Australian couple adopted him and took him to Australia. There he got educated, grew up and joined a good job. But he remembered his biological mother and wanted to meet her. So he used Google maps and tried to locate his home town. Finally one day eh succeeded. He came back to India and went to his home town again with the help of Google maps and found his parents and family members. His illiterate parents were speechless when their long lost son came back home again . This is what education in science does to you. It will show you the way when you are lost and desperate.

http://www.siliconindia.com/news/life/Women-and-their-Incredible-In...

Success of tsunami forecast depends on identifying the true  cause of an earth quake. If the earth's crust moved horizontally during plate movement during an earthquake rather than vertically, it won't trigger tsunami. Vertical tectonic plate movement displaces water upwards, it can trigger massive columns of waves — as was the case in 2004 - and cause tsunamis.

As a result, the speed at which scientists can identify the direction in which the earth's crust has moved in the event of an earthquake is crucial in issuing an accurate tsunami forecast quickly.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=herd-thinking&...
Science education through cartoons

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How rain drops are formed:

It illustrates the concepts of accretion — when the tiny droplets of water that form clouds bump into each other and combine to form larger drops — and cohesion, the attraction that water molecules have for each other. The “saturation point” that is mentioned in the video is the point at which a cloud can no longer absorb any more water and may release it as rain.

I am disappointed by this assertion : “I’m nonetheless going out on a limb and guessing that science will never, ever answer what I call “The Question”: Why is there something rather than nothing?” End of the science? Really? So it’s okay to chuck 2,000 years of scientific method out the window – a method that does not claim it will always find the truth, but a method that at least doggedly pursues the possibility that one *can* find answers rather than shrugging and assuming that not everything can be understood.

The idea of an infinite fractal cosmos was: “haunting, evocative…perhaps the most exquisite idea in science or religion…” - Carl Sagan

http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw/

Fractal Cosmology

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My reply to this article on Scientific American: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/04/23/science-...

Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing

What a gloomy picture?! Negative vibes? Yes. Science is still in its infancy. We cannot expect much from a child. It still has to grow a lot, learn a lot, think a lot, experiment a lot and come up with explanations.Is it even right to expect a child to solve all your problems and answer all your questions?
Is it right to explain things in the way religion or baseless beliefs do about the existence of our universe? If God, if one really exists, came into existence on his/her own from nothing, like the believers say, the universe could also have originated out of nothing without anybody or anything creating it! How is that for an explanation?!
Some Eastern religions say God is present in each and every atom of this universe and universe itself is the image of God and you cannot separate God from the universe! This fundamental question of origins of universe or God is too complex for an infant science to answer. Science has imbibed positiveness in me and I hope the difficult questions will be answered by science one day not in the immediate future though or in our life times.Have patience. Let science and human understanding grow to an adult stage. And be positive.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2134042/QUAN...

The making of an activist scientist

Science students all the big ideas haven't all been discovered. There are several more. Find some!

Basic science gives information about how systems in nature work. First go for it in order to choose research as career.

Go into science for the enjoyment and fascination of the work. Not for money, awards and  prizes

http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?id=diet-goggles-fool-br...

Diet Goggles Fool Brain into Eating Less

Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science

by S. Chandrasekhar

http://books.google.co.in/books/about/Truth_and_Beauty.html?id=SO2I...

What is sixth extinction?: An exhaustive survey of the 5,487 identified species of mammals—which includes us—reveals that one in four are dying out. From amphibians to corals, the planet’s animals are disappearing, mowed under by increasing cropland, felled forests and polluted oceans. This disappearance of plants and animals from our planet has been dubbed the sixth extinction because it may be the sixth time that the Earth has experienced a mass loss of species.

Why there are less women in science and technology areas: Science and technology doesn't discriminate between men and women. According to Ms. Tessy Thomas, India's missile woman, Science has no gender. Science does not know from where knowledge is coming - it is only the willingness to learn and know things that matters. If you are willing to take on challenges and learn from experience, that is what is required for women to shine in science and technology.
When women do excel in male-dominated jobs, they're not generally celebrated for it. In fact, women may be penalized for being too ambitious, too confident, too assertive.

People attribute 'hard work' to men and 'household' work to women. The requirements for doing well in certain scientific fields don't fit with the attributes women are considered to have.

This stereotype is not correct and is responsible for the backwardness of women.

On science not getting due share of credit: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/scientists-not-getting-due-credit/252182...

http://www.radiolab.org/

Quarks are the building blocks of the protons and neutrons that populate the nuclei of atoms.

"We are all star stuff"- Carl Sagan

http://the-philosophy-of-science.blogspot.in/

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENCE IN SOCIETY
University of California, Berkeley, USA
17 - 19 November 2012
This Conference will address disciplinary and interdisciplinary challenges in the sciences, and in particular the relationships of science to society.
http://science-society.com/conference-2012/

What are Fusion and Fission? SA answers this Q:

The curious world of Scientists!

No level of bio-diversity loss can occur without adverse effects on ecosystem functioning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012w66t

Science can be neither conquered nor defended by armies and its advancement will change the way humans govern themselves. Science cannot be controlled or arrested. Science doesn't respect distances or frontiers or laws. The major thing is the world is becoming ungovernable. The real force in our time is no longer politics, but science. And science took away the strengths of politics. Citizens now must be persuaded rather than ordered in this new age of knowledge - Israeli President Shimon Peres

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/science-is-changing-h...

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2012/05/dark-matter-search-turns-...

http://www.whatscientistsread.com/take-part/

Does literature impact what scientists study?

How does art inspire science? It may seem a difficult question to answer with any empirical evidence, but in a new research project Scottish scientists aim to do just that.

Launched yesterday, What Scientists Read? will aim to find out what influence literature has on scientists and the decisions they make.

Asking questions like “how does reading literature affect scientific thought and practice?” and “does reading literature affect the career decision to become a scientist?”, the project team will conduct interviews with scientists in Scotland to try to unravel the influence on science of the creative arts.

Fear not, though. Even if you’re ruled out of the interviews due to geographical disadvantages you can still take part in the study. The project’s website hosts a forum where any scientist can go and add to the discussion.

The launch of the project is great timing. At the crossroads between science and art there has long been debate about how the arts feed back into scientific research - whether as a justification for the art or for the funding - but for ArtLab nothing is going to be as compelling as some cold, hard scientific fact.

Why do People Die While Running Marathons?

Heatstroke can certainly be a factor, as can hyponatremia -- low sodium levels in the blood often caused by drinking too much water during exercise. However, in the vast majority of cases, people die during marathons because of a heart attack. Marathon running puts an extraordinary stress on your heart, one that your body was not designed for.

It's a classic example of a concept known as "the reverse effect" – where too much of something that is normally good for you can have the opposite impact. According to a study presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2010 in Montreal, regular exercise reduces cardiovascular risk by a factor of two or three.

Research by Dr. Arthur Siegel, director of Internal Medicine at Harvard's McLean Hospital, also found that long-distance running leads to high levels of inflammation that may trigger cardiac events,ⁱⁱⁱ and a separate study published in Circulation found that running a marathon lead to abnormalities in how blood was pumped into the heart.^{Research by Dr. Arthur Siegel, director of Internal Medicine at Harvard's McLean Hospital, also found that long-distance running leads to high levels of inflammation that may trigger cardiac events,iii and a separate study published in Circulation found that running a marathon lead to abnormalities in how blood was pumped into the heart.iviv}

http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2012/05/11/peak-fi...

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENCE IN SOCIETY
University of California, Berkeley, USA
17 - 19 November 2012
This Conference will address disciplinary and interdisciplinary challenges in the sciences and in particular the relationships of science to society.
http://science-society.com/conference-2012/

MUTAMORPHOSIS II: TRIBUTE TO UNCERTAINTY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE Prague
6 - 8 December 2012
Do you have something original to say about our world that is increasingly fuzzy, unstable and chaotic? Are you interested in how crisis, uncertainty and complexity can come together in order to question the known as well as predict and/or model yet unknown? Do you want to share projects intrinsically linking domains of scientific, artistic and technological research and creativity that can be introduced as relevant tools for better understanding of our common future? We invite you to respond to the Tribute to Uncertainty theme.
http://mutamorphosis.org/2012/tribute-to-uncertainty/

How Science of animal colours helping us:
Birds, butterflies, squid and other creatures often sport intense or changing colors that are not formed by pigments but by highly organized nanostructures that researchers are only beginning to unravel.
Orderly and disorderly geometric patterns of these nanostructures reflect only certain wavelengths of light, creating specific colors that in some cases can also shift if the structures get wet or if their dimensions change.
Scientists are making synthetic materials that mimic these biological structures, which could lead to cars or dresses that change color as they move, sensors that detect impurities in drinking water, efficient optical chips for cell phones and authentication marks on credit cards that are exceedingly hard to counterfeit.

“There is a confusion about science. We don’t know everything right away. We have ideas and speculations and you might have a theory before you have a premise confirmed—experimental data, before you know what it means…"