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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

940 / A theme of death and celebration

Alcohol and tobacco don’t have the prerogative to generate diseases readily associated with drinking and smoking. At the same time, disgusting graphics employed in antismoking campaigns often backfire, as they ignite the rebellious traits in youngsters. But we know smoking…

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959 / Social distancing was an apt lesson

Zebrafish are known for their pro-social behaviour, but around 10% of them are ‘loners’ who dismiss social cues. The brain activity of this minority differs from that of their pro-social siblings. At the same time, even typically social zebrafish avoid…

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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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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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930 / Cancer patients and astronauts

Both astronauts and cancer patients have a decrease in muscle mass, bone demineralisation and changes in heart function. Astronauts may have trouble focusing or they get a little forgetful (space fog), and this experience is similar to what is called…

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933 / Drummers can do things impossible

Given that you are not a drummer, you can perform fine motor tasks only with one hand and you will struggle to play different rhythms with both hands simultaneously. Drummers, however, “can do things that are impossible for untrained people”….

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208 / Information, just a small amount

Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran once remarked that people would never understand each other unless their language is reduced to half a dozen words. The truth is that often we need only that many words (a small amount of information) for…

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932 / Immune system and human lifespan

The human immune system has always been evolving and it is still evolving, but lifespan continues to increase with each generation. In addition, lifestyles and ecologic natures can really differ and influence immune responses. A malaria parasite has infected Africans…

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901 / Ooh! Woohoo! Oops! — Vocal bursts

Ooh! That is  surprise. We make spontaneous sounds to express everything from elation (Woohoo!) to embarrassment (Oops!). A statistical analysis of responses to more than 2,000 “vocal bursts” (nonverbal exclamations) conveys at least 24 kinds of emotion. An audio map…

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