SyEnce Blog

Photo by Science Shrestha The quake has all left us devastated. Our confidence even in the next second has been shaken. There is real palpable fear that we are all living with. Yes, fear grips everyone and it may stay with us. Those who have not faced more casualty will also face this emotion for days to come. So, how does one deal with this? How do you face it?

Photo by Science Shrestha For relief workers in Nepal after the massive earthquake on April 25, one of the challenges is just knowing where to go: Most roads and buildings don't exist on a map. But that's a situation that's changing, hour by hour, as thousands of volunteers around the world build a detailed  digital atlas of the earthquake zone  as part of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). Volunteers use aerial images from satellites to mark open spaces where helicopters or planes might land with supplies, highlight streets between towns and villages, and outline buildings that aid groups can use to guess where victims might be. Using OpenStreetMap technology—known as the "Wikipedia of maps"—they build continuously updated maps that can be used online or downloaded into navigation devices. 72 hours after, thousands of amateurs have mapped something like 30,000 buildings. Just two hours after the earthquake hit, the organization's coord...

Patan Durbar Square after the massive earthquake. Photo by Science Shrestha Saturday’s Nepal earthquake has destroyed housing in Kathmandu,  damaged World Heritage sites , and triggered deadly avalanches around Mount Everest. The  death toll is already reported as being in the many thousands . Given past experience, it would not surprise if it were to reach the many tens of thousands when everyone is accounted for. Nepal is particularly prone to earthquakes. It sits on the boundary of two massive tectonic plates – the Indo-Australian and Asian plates. It is the collision of these plates that has produced the Himalaya mountains, and with them, earthquakes. Our research in the Himalaya is beginning to shed light on these massive processes, and understand the threat they pose to local people. The science of earthquakes The April 25 quake measured 7.8 on the  moment magnitude scale , the largest since the 1934 Bihar quake, which measured 8.2 and killed around 10...

Have you ever imagined life without technology? What life is like when you're allergic to technology? Watch the following video:

Afghan Girl [1984] Photographer:  Steve McCurry And, of course, the afghan girl, picture shot by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. Sharbat Gula was one of the students in an informal school within the refugee camp; McCurry, rarely given the opportunity to photograph Afghan women, seized the opportunity and captured her image. She was approximately 12 years old at the time. She made it on the cover of National Geographic next year, and her identity was discovered in 1992. Sudan Famine UN Food Camp [1994] P hotographer: Kevin Carter The photo is the “Pulitzer Prize” winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan Famine. The picture depicts stricken child crawling towards the United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat him. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as ...