Nandan Nilekani is one of Indian’s foremost entrepreneurs. He was co-founder of information technology company, Infosys, and is now Chair of the Unique Identification Authority of India. The Authority aims to provide a unique online identifier for every Indian, to make it easier to deliver services. In his book Imagining India, Nilekani tries to chart […] … learn more→

Remember the good old days, when we complained about students emailing us all the time? Like back in 2006, when The New York Times ran an article on students’ pestering of their professors with email: At colleges and universities nationwide, email has made professors much more approachable. But many say it has made them too […] … learn more→

It is always a bit difficult to tell others what it is like to be yourself, but I can tell you this: I began my PhD in Australian history during 2010 and last week I gave a fairly successful pre-submission seminar. The next goal: to have completed a PhD while I’m still 25. I suppose […] … learn more→

Australia has an unprecedented opportunity to resolve issues of escalating insurance prices caused by an uncertain climate. The time has come to curb the trend towards increased economic exposure to natural catastrophes. The recent change of government, the upcoming Australian G20 in Brisbane in 2014, the establishment of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Centre […] … learn more→

As a researcher funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), since October 1, I’ve known that I will be not be receiving my monthly fellowship. This has meant that my work, investigating genes\’ role in vertebrate development, has been put on hold. Like many other scientists faced with the US government shutdown, I was […] … learn more→

Scientists have hammered home once again the message that climate change is very real and very important. Climate scientists have been saying this for decades, yet carbon emissions worldwide continue to soar. It’s easy to blame governments for not taking stronger action, but this is unfair: many want to go further, but are deterred by […] … learn more→

The UK Red Cross has called for makers of videogames to more actively embed and interrogate the laws of war by, for example, punishing players for killing civilians or using torture to gain information. However, attempts to explore war in a more sophisticated way in video games are often greeted with criticism from the media. […] … learn more→

The announcement of Alice Munro as 2013’s winner of the Nobel Prize for literature marks the high point in the 82-year old writer’s long career, but also a significant recognition for the form with which she is so closely aligned, the short story. She has been called “Our Chekhov” by the American writer Cynthia Ozick. […] … learn more→

My plane touches down just before midnight at Entebbe airport, by the shores of Lake Victoria, on a warm humid evening in East Africa. I walk through a drab, tired-looking terminal and out to a waiting vehicle in a dimly lit parking lot. I have arrived in Kampala, Uganda, for a four-day visit to Uganda […] … learn more→

For the past 14 years, Dan Snyder, principal owner of the Washington Redskins football franchise, has defied incessant calls from activists and journalists to change his team’s name and Indian logo to something less “offensive.” In May, he added extra rebar and a moat of burning oil to his previous vows on the name-change, telling […] … learn more→