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It is apparent to every keen eye that the greatest issue Pakistan faces today is religious extremism. It is our misfortune that today this is not merely limited to an ideology. Its communication is through the written and spoken word. It has now crossed these confines and entered the realm of carnage and terrorism. The political, economic and social, in …

Li-fi is a technology that has been in a process of development for quite some time now. The term Li-Fi ‘Light Fidelity’ was coined by Edinburgh University Prof Harald Haas in 2011, though the technology is also known as visible light communications (VLC). Reading about new energy-efficient technologies that can transform the world to a cleaner and greener place, with …

The ‘Dead Reckoning: Memories of the Bangladesh War’ brings truth to light Sarmila Bose, a granddaughter of Sarat Chandar Bose, a famous Indian nationalist leader and a brother of Subash Chandar Bose is a senior Research Fellow in the politics of South Asia at the University of Oxford. She has been a political journalist in India and combines academic and …

Small sensors found in most smartphones and laptops are sensitive enough to detect the movement of moderate and large earthquakes, and could vastly expand the information gathered during seismic events in densely-populated cities, new research suggests. The devices, called micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers, measure movement in three dimensions and tell the phone’s screen to flip from horizontal to vertical when …

National Geographic ‘Xpeditions’ section defines migration as the movement of people from one place of the world to another for the purpose of taking up permanent or semi-permanent settlement. However in ‘International Migration’ people migrate from one country to another. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, international migration is a global phenomenon that is growing …

In the past decade, Brazil achieved sustainable economic growth, became the sixth largest economy in the world, and was also able to significantly reduce income inequality. Hence, the country was able to lift 40 million people out of the poverty and now have more than 50% of the population in the middle class. One of the sectors that has benefited …

The United Nations’ (UN) International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer is celebrated on September 16 every year. This event commemorates the date of the signing of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer in 1987. The theme of 2013 is ‘A healthy atmosphere, the Future We Want’. Background In 1987, representatives from 24 countries …

Recently, I was invited to a conference in Paris to introduce smart card platform in Pakistan, which according to the organizers will change the way governments deliver services. One of my co-speakers was a renowned British innovator, an airline owner and a prolific writer. I asked him, ‘What is the greatest invention of all times.’ ‘Wheel’, he replied assertively, and …

This essay was declared the best in 1st JWT Essay Competition The pithy maxim above suits the contemporary situation of Pakistan. Much ails the country today’ from roads to courts, seminaries to granaries and educational institutes to public policy forums’ there is a lot that calls for our attention and adequate riposte. Is the state itself responsible for this incredible …

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometres) from our sun. Voyager 1 has been travelling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, …