World Focus by Abhishek Vasoo

Bitcoin. Blockchain. Mining. If you haven’t come across these words in the last few months, chances are that you may just be living under a rock. This year has been all about cryptocurrency—from the skyrocketing valuation of Bitcoin to the rise of mining farms around the world, to thefts in the tens of millions of dollars. Despite its rapid rise in popularity in today’s world, many still don’t understand the concept of cryptocurrency. Just an online search will leave you befuddled with the information overload, and I can vouch for that. When I first started, I was inundated with jargon and concepts, which left me more confused than I was at the start. But after scrolling through many forums, articles, and infographics, I realised that while learning the in-depth working of cryptocurrencies requires sound technical knowledge, learning its basics is rather simple. In this article, I’ve covered the absolute basics of cryptocurrency: why was it created? How does it work? What gives it ...

Heroes of Indian Science – Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose (<i>The Origin of Fingerprinting</i>, William Herschel, Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press, 1916) Snapshot This is the story of two men, Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose, who laid the foundation for modern forensics but whose efforts went unrecognised. While the individual man is an insolvable puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,   The Sign Of Four It is easier to catch a thief if you know him. Or her. Therein lies the seed of an idea that has captured human imagination for centuries and, along the way, beguiled millions with iconic fictional characters and their equally iconic sidekicks. There is something about the fingerprint. A hundred questions spring up and yet not one is countered on the double. Human mind being what it is – incurably curious, a profile soon begins to take shape. Whose fingerprint is i...