Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
In 1994, the United Nations coordinated the first International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which resulted in the Programme of Action that formally recognized the right to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights (SRHR), including the right to safe abortion...
For many years, even decades, before the current global pandemic, environmental advocates have waged a war against single-use plastic. We’ve been winning that war. More and more consumers are carrying reusable bags for groceries and other shopping items, asking restaurants to use more...
Ever since the “most unlikely” Dutch scientist and pioneering microbiologist Anton van Leeuwenhoek scraped scum from his teeth and observed tiny “animalcules,” or germs, in the plaque samples beneath the first-ever microscope he invented, it bid fair to the presence of the microbial world...
China has for the first time taken the top position in the Nature Index as the biggest producer of high-quality research in chemistry. What will the future of China science look like? Quantum physics may be science on an impossibly small scale, but it is one field where China is staking a...
When you see multimillionaires, with their yachts and luxury houses, you probably assume that they are supremely happy. However, you might be surprised to hear that this is not necessarily the case. In 2006, Princeton University psychologist, economist and author Daniel Kahneman and a team of...
As the world continues to endure the uncertainty and anguish bought by the invisible threat both to individual lives and the global economy, many politicians cling to the idea that once a vaccine against the COVID-19 disease is found, the return to normalcy will at last become possible....
Every year, on Indian Science Day in February, India commemorates the discovery of the Raman Effect by Sir C.V. Raman. In 1930, Raman won the Nobel Prize in Physics and has been revered by Indians ever since. Fast forward to 2019, and the US National Science Foundation placed India third when...
Some news items manage to sum up in a simple and succinct narrative the entire madness of a phase of human history. We are now living in the era of hyperreality, in which everything that appears superficially ordered by logical principles is in reality structured by forces we have been trained not...
Echoing the vision of super-billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, Bao Weimin, a senior director at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, explained the logic behind China’s spectacular new foray into the space race. Its new mission aims at orbiting Mars for 687 days before...
On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered many businesses statewide to shut down in response to the raging resurgence of COVID-19 in nearly all 50 US states. That same day, a friend of mine landed in San Francisco after having spent six months living in Japan. On his flight, a United...
The COVID-19 pandemic lays bare a global crisis of gender inequality. While women have achieved considerable success in their fight for equality, they continue to face violence, discrimination and exclusion globally. Women are now disproportionately bearing the costs of the pandemic, surfacing...
