BLOG FROM RAKESH KUMAR JHA

Irina Khoroshko, from Zelenograd near Moscow, had learned her times tables by the age of five. Her precocious talent, encouraged by a maths-mad family and a favourite female teacher who transformed every lesson into one giant problem-solving game, led to a degree in mathematical economics at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. "My lecturer instilled in me the power of numbers and calculation, how it gives you the ability to predict things; in that sense the subject always felt magical," she says. Now Irina, 26, is a data scientist at Russian online lender, ID Finance, enjoying a lucrative career devising analytical models to determine loan eligibility. And this isn't an unusual story in Russia. But it is in many other countries around the world. Several studies confirm that all too often girls' early interest in Stem subjects - science, technology, engineering and maths - fizzles out and never recovers. So  relatively few women go on to choose eng...

Earth Day  is an annual event celebrated on April 22.  Worldwide , various events are held to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First celebrated in 1970, Earth Day events in more than 193 countries [1]  are now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network. On Earth Day 2016, the landmark  Paris Agreement  was signed by the  United States ,  China , and some 120 other countries. [3] [4] [5] This signing satisfied a key requirement for the  entry into force  of the historic draft  climate protection treaty  adopted by consensus of the 195 nations present at the  2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference  in Paris. In 1969 at a  UNESCO  Conference in San Francisco,  peace activist   John McConnell  proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be celebrated on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equip...

Personalized workouts to prevent heart disease can be designed by a new digital instrument, according to research published in the  European Journal of Preventive Cardiology . The EXPERT tool specifies the ideal exercise type, intensity, frequency, and duration needed to prevent a first or repeat cardiovascular event. "Exercise reduces cardiovascular risk, improves body composition and physical fitness, and lowers mortality and morbidity," said lead author Professor Dominique Hansen, associate professor in exercise physiology and rehabilitation of internal diseases at Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium. "But surveys have shown that many clinicians experience great difficulties in prescribing specific exercise programmes for patients with multiple cardiovascular diseases and risk factors." The European Association of Preventive Cardiology Exercise Prescription in Everyday Practice and Rehabilitative Training (EXPERT) tool generates exercise prescripti...

S leep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Thus wrote the English playwright Thomas Dekker in the 16th century, reflecting a view that has persisted through the centuries. Sleep is crucial to our wellbeing. Disturb it and you will find your constitution troubled and twisted out of joint. It is a view supported by science. Experiments in which men and women have endured periods of up to 11 days without shut-eye have shown that if we cannot sleep we develop increasingly severe symptoms: progressive decreases in concentration, perception and other higher mental processes. Intriguingly, these problems vanish once subjects are allowed a couple of nights curled up in their beds in a state of blissful unconsciousness. Just why we need sleep has been more difficult to answer. Freud argued that sleep allows us to have dreams in which we can act out wishes that are too disturbing to contemplate while awake. Others have maintained that sleep is a ...