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The source material we try to curate is ‘Zebra Crossing’ — a Sunday column carried by The Indian Express for twenty years (2000-2020).

All along a continuum of global cohesion

Call us Team ZC. We have members from India (where our project took off), China, and Pakistan. And, extending to the farthest geographical point on the Earth’s surface from India, Team ZC even has a member from Chile—nearly 17,000 kilometers or 10,500 miles away. This is just a tangential indication of how truly global we are, thanks to our lively presence and interactions on ResearchGate (RG), a social networking site with over 20 million researchers. The first person to sign up at our former site, covid19on.com, was a Karachi-based researcher from RG. The pandemic united us as it disregarded all national boundaries. Covid19on.com was launched in December 2019—months before governments worldwide began announcing lockdowns one after another. Back then, most Team ZC members were part of TEAM 19. These two teams can be viewed along a continuum of global cohesion or synergic cohesion, as we are engaged in a project to curate hundreds of print media articles. The section “Notes From The Backend” will brief you on how we go about it.

These two teams can be viewed along a continuum of global cohesion or synergic cohesion, as we are engaged in a project to curate hundreds of print media articles. The section “Notes From The Backend” will brief you on how we go about it.

A shortcut across the information highway

The column Zebra Crossing was concieved as a shortcut across the information highway — at a time when dial-up was the only internet option, even for privileged users in first-tier firms. Right now, a host of ResearchGate (RG) scholars contend that the column holds an encyclopedic scope — a finding substantiated by AI briefs.

Our team
consists of students, academicians, coders, designers and journalists.

~ STELLA DENVER

215 / Dance as a suite of wooing signals

A courtship dance of the Bilaan, a Filippino hill tribe of the Davao del Sur region, simulates the mating behaviour of forest birds. It starts with two richly-plumed males eyeballing three females. The females scamper to safety, covering their heads…

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947 / Politics and a biometric bracelet

In a thought experiment of historian Yuval Noah Harari, a hypothetical government insists that every citizen should wear a biometric bracelet. This device monitors body temperature and heart-rate, 24 hours a day. The big data hoarded this way is analysed…

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179 / Language: The peak innovation?

It was Eors Szathmary who likened language to an amoeba, and the human brain to the habitat in which it can thrive. The Hungarian scientist’s explanation for his choice of simile is that “a surprisingly large part of our brain…

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955 / Penguins can teach us one trick

Imagine a place where the air temperature can drop to minus forty (-40) Celsius and the winds can bolt atspeeds of 40 meters per second? Antarctic penguins live in a place that exactly fits the description. They routinely hop in…

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000 / Experimental

PAGE FOR EXPERIMENTS IN POSTING art gallery is set to redefine cultural landscape. The revitalized art gallery is set to redefine cultural landscape. The revitalized art gallery is set to redefine cultural landscape. The revitalized art gallery is set to…

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181 / Flipping the Indian flatbread right

It’s sad that no scientist has figured out the physics of tossing the Indian flatbread `parotta’ into the air. The secret of such a fascinating vertical-flying-saucer effect should not remain unidentified. For, what would happen if we try the feat?…

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963 / Running Nineteen, with no hugs

The year 2020 would go into history as the “no hugs” year — a year in which people were forced to limit the opportunities for physical contact, so as to protect themselves. There is a paradox in it because physical…

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914 / Mona Lisa: Not a Duchenne smile!

One bizarre remark on Mona Lisa’s smile is that she doesn’t smile at all; it’s a visual illusion. And wasn’t Leonardo da Vinci a master in optics? Turns out, half of the claim is true — literally! Neurologists Lucia Ricciardi…

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965 / A plunge in human-made noise

COVID-19 couldn’t have silenced the mobile Towers of Babel, but it did stop the stampeding humanity in its tracks. The global effect of physical distancing (it isn’t social distancing) and the stoppage of services, idustries and collective movements marked the…

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