IndSciComm podcasts

Here is a 35 min podcast if you want to know more about who we are. We are a trio. We owe our childhood to growing up in different Indian cities - on a staple of books, street-food, music and of course, science. We met during our undergraduate years at Acharya Narendra Dev College, in the University of Delhi. We went on to do different things after completing our Bachelors degrees' in Biomedical Science. We are passionate about science in its various forms and beyond our immediate research interests. We hope to enthuse people with our fondness as we experienced from a family member, a teacher or a scientist. Our belief is that stripping of science from the constructed notions of a scientist (bookish, nerdy, lab-coat wearing and loner) will go a long way to get the general public interested. This is hence an attempt to open a dialogue on scientific issues... be it an interesting article from a research group or an engrossing talk or podcast and or even a conversation at the intersection of science and society. Comments and suggestions are welcome here or on twitter @IndSciComm. Our views are personal and do not reflect those of our employers past or present.

Here is our first ever Shoot the Shit episode - we talk about Smart watches, the now-defunct company Pebble and Shruti's father's new love - Alexa, Amazon's personal assistant.

Listen to our new podcast where we talk about our favourite Nobel and IgNobel science - all with a dash of nerd-ery, geekiness and lots of science jokes!

We talk to Parshati Patel who is an Astronomer turned Science Communicator and currently works as an Education and Outreach Program co-ordinator at Western University in London, Ontario in Canada. Parshati talks to us about visualising and understanding how planets form.

In this edition of our mini-podcast series, we talk to Vaishali Rawat who is a writer and conservation advocate at Wildlife Conservation Society in India. She is also Sanctuary Asia Magazine's Young Naturalist of the year for 2017. She talks to us about the importance of ecology, wildlife conservation and geography in our everyday lives. References: Wildlife Conservation Society India - http://www.wcsindia.org/ Prerna Singh Bindra - http://prernabindra.com/ Tiger Link - http://ranthambhorefoundation.org/tiger-link/ http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/people/earth-heroes/10742-vaishali-rawat.html

Devayani Khare is a Geomorphologist who talks to us about Citizen Science and all the different ways in which normal everyday people can get involved in doing science. Links - Devayani on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Geo_Sophist Devayani's posts on the Travel Scope blog - http://travelscopeindia.com/blog/?author=2 India Biodiversity Portal - http://indiabiodiversity.org/ Article on Citizen science projects in India - https://indiabioscience.org/columns/indian-scenario/how-citizen-science-is-helping-solve-indias-environmental-challenges Seasonwatch - run by the NCBS Zooniverse - an archive of citizen science projects Eyewire - Reconstructing neurons in 3D

Chintan Sheth can fly to any spot on the planet, whenever he wants. In fact, he can even fly to Mars if he so wishes! He can do this with a click and a scroll. He wants to tell you that you can too! Listen to him talk about his work! Links - Chintan on Twitter Global Explorer Chintan's writing in The Wire Chintan's work featured in The Indian Express

Shrinivasan Raghuraman studies some really shy animals. But they hunt, taser, harpoon and even suck blood! Want to learn more? Press Play! Related links - Shrini's work on cone snail toxins and other cellular profiling Baldomero "Toto" Olivera's laboratory A hunting cone snail A net hunting cone snail Vampire snails Artist: All Free Sound Effects Song: Telephone Ring Pick Up Download/Stream: https://audiograb.com/UcwwPO9I

Deeptha thinks Zebrafish are the coolest fish in the world. Probably even the coolest animal ever? Do you know why? Listen! Links: Zebrafish are native to the Himalayan region! The Dorsky Lab at the University of Utah General introduction to Zebrafish and studying their brain - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZDwo20hl1E Zebrafish embryogenesis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ6vkDr_Dec

Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of Starship IndSciComm. Its continuing mission - to explore strange new science. To seek out new scientists and new explanations. To boldly go where no one has gone before. Links: Six Easy Pieces Feynman's lectures LIGO  , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO Baryonic asymmetry Beauty factory Quark Antimatter (from NASA Science News) Higgs Boson General Relativity

Listen to our first ever yearly round-up of what we do for work, in our free time, our favourite shows and our scientific, nerdy and geeky pet peeves.

Hummingbirds are some of the tiniest birds with one of the highest metabolism rates ever found in the animal kingdom. Listen to Anusha Shankar explain how they manage to sleep at night and not die of starvation!   Links: Anusha's website Anusha's twitter Anusha is a National Geographic Explorer! End music - "Hawaiian Winter" from Hooksounds

Vijay Ramesh talks to us about why its important to learn from the past so that we can effectively predict our future - not just for global warming, but also for bird migrations! Links: Vijay Ramesh on Twitter Vijay Ramesh's website National Geographic's interactive article on bird migrations in the Americas

Can you feel somebody else's emotions? Pain, frustration, relief and even happiness? Humans might be one of the very few species that can do this with remarkable fidelity! Reema Jayakar explains how understanding this universality of emotions was a turning point for her as a neuropsychologist. Links: Reema on Twitter

Manan Gupta talks to us about how reading Richard Dawkins helped him change his interests, how subject boundaries are artificially created and his current graduate work on Evolution and Niche construction. Tune in! Links: Manan's Google Scholar Nandini's work on Asian Elephants Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker JNCASR's Evolutionary Biology Unit Further reading on Niche construction Background sounds from the BBC Sound effects archive Copyright 2018 BBC Episode music from the Free Music Archive. Springish by Gillicuddy    

Dr. Laungani is the first ever Associate Professor to be featured in our series! Listed as we chat about Plant Ecology, Biochar and his work at Doane University in Nebraska. Links: Dr. Ramesh Laungani at Doane University The Laungani Lab Biochar The 100Women STEM project

How fast can you say the name of our summary episode without stopping? Feel like trying? This is what its called - A Seasonful of Soupçons! Listen to our banter and discussions on what we learnt from our first clutch of episodes! Links: Intro and Outro music are samples from "Que Paciencia" by Los Sundayers from the album Disco Pirata

This is our first podcast in Tamizh - the first in a new series titled ‘அறிவியல் கடல்’ which means ‘Sea of Science’. The title of this podcast is ‘உதாரண உயிரினங்கள்’ which is Tamil for model organisms. We will be focussing on the use of these organisms in biological research. Following is an English transcript. Abhishek: Hello! My name is Abhishek Chari and I am a member of IndScicomm, a science communication collective. In our ongoing efforts, we have created podcasts as well as written articles that discuss interesting aspects of scientific research, the researchers involved in this effort, their discoveries and the effects of scientific progress on the past, present and future of human society. We also collaborate with Indian scientists, researchers and writers at all levels of the scientific enterprise in creating our science communication materials. We are very happy to present this podcast in Tamil, which is one of the national languages of India. Amrita Anand, a student at America’s Baylor College of Medicine, collaborated with us to produce this podcast. She is working for her Ph.D, and conducts research on hearing. She will now introduce the topic of our conversation. Amrita: Hello! My name is Amrita Anand. I am very happy to participate in this wonderful podcast. In this part of the podcast, we will be talking about model organisms that are used in biological research. In the next part of this podcast, we will specifically talk about the use of mice as model organisms. Abhishek: When we were discussing the idea of making a podcast in Tamil, Amrita suggested this topic. She also helped with writing the script and translating it into Tamil. Now, before talking about mice, let’s discuss model organisms. Here are some examples of model organisms that are used to study aspects of the human body’s growth, development, functioning and disorders: different species of microbes, flies, zebrafish, birds, mice, rats, guinea pigs and monkeys. The foremost reason for the use of model organisms is that it is not possible to conduct some forms of biological experiments on humans. So, scientists have chosen organisms that are a close enough match to humans in terms of their genes and other biological features, and use these as model organisms for their research. Amrita: Apart from how similar model organisms are to humans in terms of their genes and genomes, there are other important reasons for some organisms being chosen as model organisms rather than others. The ease with which certain organisms can be reared and maintained in the laboratory and the kind of experiments that they can be used for… These are the factors that scientists use to choose the appropriate organism to use as a model, to answer questions about specific biological phenomena. Abhishek: Amrita, could you give us some examples of model organisms that are used in specific areas of biological research? Amrita: Specific model organisms are used in different areas of research. For example, regeneration is studied using certain species of worms. The relationship between genes and the environment is researched using certain species of flies. Zebrafish are preferred model organisms for researching embryonic development. Zebrafish larvae have transparent bodies which makes observing their internal organs really easy. Another example is the use of mammals like mice in biomedical research. Abhishek: Is there an advantage to using model organisms like mice in biomedical research? Amrita: Some diseases take years to show symptoms in human beings. But, in certain lineages of model organisms, diseases can show symptoms in relatively reduced timeframes, like weeks. Due to this, it is easier to conduct research about certain diseases in such model organisms. This is why scientists use model organisms like m

Mental illnesses are conditions that affect our thinking, perception or emotional response to events. They do not manifest similarly in all individuals and can develop as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia among others. While the precise biology of these disorders is unknown, scientists believe that genetics, environmental causes and psychosocial stress have a role to play. Mental illnesses are usually treatable but require proper care and therapy.  However, social stigma and a lack of understanding has affected the way individuals with mental illnesses seek professional and medical help. Additionally, previous laws did not provide adequate support for patient rights. With these issues in mind, the Indian parliament passed the Mental Health Care Act in 2017 to replace the older Mental Health Act of 1987.  This law was recently notified on 29th May 2018 and covers crucial issues of patient rights, refusal of treatment and advanced directives.  We spoke with Dr. Soumitra Pathare to get a sense of what the new law has in store and where it might still have issues. Interview by: Navneet A Vasistha Podcast edited by: Shruti Muralidhar Links: What is Mental Illness Dr. Soumitra Pathare: Director of Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy at ILS Gazette of India: The Mental HealthCare Act 2017  History of Mental Health law in India: Narayan and Shikha 2013 Firdosi and Ahmad 2016 Music Credits - 'Curiosity' by Lee Rosevere from the 'Music for Podcasts' album. Used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

We continue our discussion on the Mental Health Care Act with Dr. Soumitra Pathare. Interview by: Navneet A Vasistha Podcast edited by: Shruti Muralidhar Links: APA resolution against homosexuality as a mental disorder Depathologizing homosexuality Drescher et al., 2015 WHO statistics about Psychiatrists and Nurses per 100,000 across the world (2014) Low number of psychiatrists in India  Music Credits – ‘Curiosity’ by Lee Rosevere from the ‘Music for Podcasts‘ album. Used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)