R.P. Aditya

Scientists are racing to understand why immunotherapy drugs have worked for a few cancer patients when the medicines should have had no effect.

From 2010 to 2017, downtown Seattle added 60,000 jobs. Over the same time period, the number of solo car commuters into the city’s central business district dropped by 4,500, or 9 percent, according to a new report from Commute Seattle. The city was able to absorb the employment boom without setting off a traffic explosion thanks mainly to a dramatic increase in transit ridership. The number of transit commuters getting to work downtown has increased by 41,500 in the last seven years, a 6 percent increase. About half of all trips into downtown Seattle at rush hour are now made by bus or rail. Solo drivers account for just a quarter of downtown commuters.

Seattle’s remarkable performance was driven by major investments in transit. Since 2014, Seattle and King County have increased overall transit service 13 percent, fueled by strong support at the ballot box. With three new Link light rail stations — including two that connect the University of Washington to downtown — the system is carrying 35,000 additional weekday trips since 2015, nearly doubling ridership. Those expansions were part of transit funding packages voters approved in 1996 and 2008. In addition, in 2014 Seattle voters approved a 0.1 percent sales tax hike and higher vehicle registration fees to add bus service within the city. As the city has added light rail service, it has systematically evaluated and adjusted its bus network to complement those changes. As a result, the share of Seattle residents living near frequent transit increased from about 25 percent in 2015 to 64 percent in 2017. “People wanted more bus and light rail options, and we delivered,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine in a press release. “More service means more riders, and we will continue to make improvements to make it even easier to get downtown, and across the region.” In 2016, voters in the Seattle region approved a 25-year transit funding package, which will add key connections in the city and roughly double the size of the rapid transit network. Commute Seattle based its report on a survey of 1,784 downtown employees from randomly selected workplaces. Commute Seattle is a quasi-government organization that helps administer programs encouraging downtown workers to get around without private cars. It is supported by the city of Seattle, King County Metro, Sound Transit, and the Downtown Seattle Association.

The problem isn’t that poor children don’t have access to computers. It’s that they spend too much time in front of them.

The inventor of the term “social entrepreneur,” Bill Drayton, has a challenge for the world.

The 17th century Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn is remembered as one of the most prolific artists of his time. He is known for his paintings of the countryside and biblical scenes, now displayed in museums around the world. But his lesser-known titles feature some unlikely subjects: Mughal emperors Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb from far away India.

Rembrandt was born in what was then called the Dutch Republic, and never visited India. But his 23 surviving drawings of Mughal emperors, princes, and courtiers, believed to have been produced between 1656 and 1661, show how trade between the East and West sparked an unlikely instance of creative cross-pollination.

One of these detailed drawings, which features Shah Jahan and his son Dara Shikoh, belongs to the collection of the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. This museum will soon launch an exhibition titled Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India that reveals how the iconic European painter was inspired by artists from thousands of miles away. It will include 22 of his works, alongside Mughal paintings with similar compositions.

Rembrandt’s paintings are believed to be based on Mughal works of art brought to Amsterdam by the Dutch East India Company, which began trading in India in 1604. Over the following years, the Dutch established factories and warehouses along the coast near the city now known as Surat, in Gujarat, and in Calcutta (Kolkata). As their business, exporting cotton, silk, and even opium, flourished, the Dutch also carried home many Indian artefacts, some of which would end up in Rembrandt’s personal collection.

As Stephanie Schrader, curator of the exhibition, notes in its catalogue, the Dutch painter owned “East Indian cups, boxes, baskets, and fans as well as 60 Indian hand weapons, including arrows, shafts, javelins, and bows, and a pair of costumes for an Indian man and woman.”

Rembrandt himself doesn’t seem to have owned the Mughal paintings he tried to imitate, Schrader says. However, he may have had access to those owned by his clientele, which included wealthy merchants who made their fortunes working for the Dutch East India Company. These merchants were likely to have come in contact with the trade representatives of the Mughals.

In his drawings, Rembrandt paid close attention to the way Indians dressed.

“Rembrandt’s copies reveal his fascination with the Mughal style as well as his curiousity about the depiction of elaborate clothing and jewelry,” Schrader writes in the catalogue. “The fine tasseled lappets of the Muslim jamas (stitched coats) at the right shoulder, the intricate folds of the turban, the rouched paijamas (loose pants), the transparent muslin skirts, the soft leather folds of the upturned jutis (shoes), and the intricately patterned patkas (sashes), all rendered by Rembrandt in laborious detail, are unmistakably Mughal.” She adds that the Dutch master even tried to depict their turban ornaments, decorated daggers, and sword hilts.

It also turns out that this cross-pollination worked both ways: The Mughal emperors were great patrons of the arts, and the empire’s artists, too, were known to paint western rulers and distinctly European scenes. For instance, included in the Getty exhibition is a painting by an unknown Indian of an aged Dutch woman making pancakes, a theme often found in the oeuvres of Rembrandt and other Dutch artists themselves. The Indian has woven in Mughal elements in his interpretation, including a coloured, cloudy sky and local architecture.

Here’s a selection of Rembrandt’s works, inspired by Mughal paintings:

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From thickly cut squares to slender rounds with crusts so golden Louis-Camille Maillard himself would swoon.

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Before you can tell them that you got a C- in geography or that you once thought the word XING on the road was pronounced “Zing,” your children will see you as a perfect human knowledge-dispensing machine. And they will ask you a lot of questions.

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Researchers trained an orca to mimic human sounds like, “hello,” “Amy” and “bye-bye,” which could contribute to understanding of the behavior and culture of killer whales in the wild.

Parents today are stressed. They’ve lost old friends. They miss their old hobbies. They’re too tired for sex. They feel judged. A few years ago, one study reported that the drop in happiness after having a first kid was larger than when experiencing unemployment, divorce or the death of a partner. Yes, unemployment, …

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Research shows a link, but it isn’t retirement itself that leads to a longer life, but what you do in retirement.

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Tired of the sanitised, filtered, and happy depictions of the everyday lives of her friends and family on social media, Kaviya wanted to talk about things and issues that not many like to discuss or even acknowledge in public. So, much in the vein of #100DaysOfHappiness and #100DaysOfExercise, the Mumbai-based artist decided to take up her own 100-day challenge on Instagram; but hers is #100DaysOfDirtyLaundry.

“All we see are posts with filtered selfies, vacation check-ins, fitness goals achieved, stylish clothes, and fancy restaurant dinners,” said the 28-year-old. “However, behind the rose-tinted glasses of social media, ours is a generation that is grappling with serious issues—complicated relationships, materialistic binges, mental health, addiction to our mobile phones, sexuality, and body negativity. I felt a strong need to address these so-called dirty taboos from a personal perspective and to help have an open conversation about them online.”

A real look at life

With this mid-year resolution, Kaviya uploaded the first post of #100DaysOfLaundry on her Instagram page on June 6, 2017. The topic was something most women shy away from—flatulence. The illustration shows a woman leaning on the arm of a chair while letting out a fart. In the accompanying note, Kaviya talked about the time she accidentally broke wind in front of her boyfriend—“Oh, it was such a hell of a smelly, noisy one that I should have jumped onto a rocket and disappeared into space. But what did I do? I went into a manic fit of laughter. So did he. And that’s when I knew that hey this relationship is here to stay.”

Most of Kaviya’s illustrations are on the lighter side. Apart from bowel movements, she discusses habits such as stalking people on Facebook, taking a million selfies, being overly possessive of boyfriends, girlfriends and best friends and internet trolling. The women on her Instagram feed flaunt their unshaved legs, imperfections, and, most importantly, opinions.

However, there are times when Kaviya talks about issues that deeply affect her and her generation—the fear of being lonely, cynicism, relying on social media to validate one’s self worth.

“I have many times, during the project, deliberated on openly speaking about certain intense, difficult topics like sexuality, relationships, and fears because they felt fiercely personal to be shared online,” she said. “I have been questioned by my close ones as to what purpose sharing my dirty laundry to the world served. But I was, and I am still, convinced how art can be a powerful medium for opening uncomfortable but necessary conversations. Most issues we are grappling with as a generation—like loneliness, anxiety, depression—are because we are always told not to openly talk about such taboos. Why? Because then people would judge us. But I think the more unbiased conversations we have about such topics, the more normalised they become.”

Bouquets and brickbats

Though Kaviya has no formal training in art, growing up, she maintained an art journal, in which she would doodle and write down her thoughts. But once she started working, she forgot about it. In 2017, frustrated with her corporate job, she started sketching again.

Kaviya has been inspired by various social media projects. One that particularly stayed with her was a 100-days project—artist Indu Harikumar’s #100IndianTinderTales. Harikumar illustrated the experience of Indian Tinder users based on the stories sent in by people who were using the dating app regularly. “In a country where we immediately hush someone at the mention of the word sex, her brilliant project discussed closeted topics like sexuality, intimacy, and desires,” said Kaviya.

Kaviya is no stranger to trolls on the internet. On uploading posts related to topics like menstruation, misogyny, and sexual harassment, she has been accused of doing this project for the shock value. At the same time, she has received words of encouragement and support from strangers. “For all its drawbacks, social media can be a very powerful medium to build a global community of shared experiences. I have had many women from countries such as Pakistan and Brazil reach out saying how much they related to the work; it makes one realise that whichever part of the world you belong to, the range of emotions and experiences most people go through is pretty much the same.”

Kaviya recently posted the Day 74 of #100DaysOfLaundry on the tendency to post every moment of one’s relationship on Facebook and Instagram. “If your relationship isn’t online, is it even real?” she asks in her post.

She has 26 days’ worth of laundry left to air.

This piece was first published on Scroll.in. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

New research suggests a strong link between genes, dietary fat and prostate cancer.

Changing minds on vaccination is very difficult, but it isn’t so important when a law can change behavior.

If you commute by BART and Muni, you’ve no doubt been in the frustrating situation shown in the lead image. You get off your BART train at Civic Center or one of the other downtown stations, run up the stairs, tag out of BART, run across the mezzanine, tag into Muni, run back downstairs, and miss your train by seconds. At off-peak times, this can easily add twenty minutes to your trip. And thanks to the cage bars around the stairs, sometimes you actually get to see the train you’re going to miss as you rush through this Habitrail for humans. “That scenario has happened to me too many times to count!” said Rachel Hyden, Executive Director of the San Francisco Transit Riders, who said she wants to see the obstacles between the two systems removed. In addition to its January 1 fare increase of 2.7 percent, BART is now adding a $.50 surcharge on paper tickets, in an effort to encourage all riders to use Clipper. “We have two Clipper vending machines at many stations and at least one in all stations,” explained BART spokesman James Allison. “We have sold 45,000 Clipper cards since their installation last autumn.” Muni also adds a surcharge for using cash and offers discounts for transfers from other agencies when using a Clipper card. The idea in both cases is to simplify and speed boarding and payment, with the ultimate goal of getting everyone using Clipper or a fare app and eliminating cash fares and clunky paper tickets. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC)’s “Transit Connectivity Report,” done in 2005, found that 51 percent of BART riders transfer to and from bus or light rail at Civic Center Station alone. Once the two agencies are using 100 percent electronic fare collection, there will no longer be any need for two sets of fare gates. Streetsblog has inquiries out to BART and Muni, and will update this post accordingly, but so far it seems that there are no plans for removing the barriers between the two systems.

“The commission was set up and seeks to do as much integration as we possibly can … but our legislative powers are somewhat limited on this subject,” said Randy Rentschler, Director of Legislation and Public Affairs for the MTC, which administers and manages updates to the Clipper system. “We require [BART and Muni] to have passes that are interchangeable, and we finally got Clipper, but the issue about the configurations of the stations and the frustration you just articulated is not something we have directly engaged in–but maybe we should.” So how might it work if one could freely transfer between Muni and BART inside the stations? Streetsblog ran through some scenarios with Arielle Fleisher, Transportation Policy Associate for SPUR, and a specialist in fare integration issues. Even if Muni and BART still insisted on totally segregating their revenue streams, there’s no obvious reason the Clipper system couldn’t handle merging the fare gates/barriers at the downtown stations. If, for example, someone tapped onto Muni at West Portal, and tapped out at West Oakland, the Clipper computers would just treat it as one Muni fare and one BART fare from downtown San Francisco to West Oakland. In the opposite direction, transferring riders would have to tap out of BART using the Clipper machines on Muni trains, which would simultaneously deduct the Muni fare, just as it does now (or a Clipper reader could be installed where the BART stairs reach the Muni platform). Fleischer hopes the agencies would take things even further and truly integrate the fare structure with a unified, distance-based zone system across both agencies, as exists in London and many other cities. “We’ve been advocating to do a fare integration and coordination study so we can have a bigger conversation about opportunities for the future,” she said. Fleischer and Hyden both agreed that the current situation, with the two transit agencies using cages and separate banks of fare gates to keep customers segregated, is maddening–it’s also incredibly confusing for visitors who aren’t used to San Francisco’s arcane systems. “We need to remove the barriers to entry if we want to make transit a top choice for regional travel,” said Hyden. “The gates between BART and Muni are the most obvious and literal form of a barrier making it difficult and confusing to transfer between the two.”

Quilt, a start-up in Los Angeles, links women who want to schmooze, study and surf the internet — all in the comfort of another’s home, for a fee.

On the northwest coast of Washington State, a community has chosen to live off the grid, some of them for the simplicity and saved money, some for safety.

The areas of the country with the largest robot work forces gave the president an unanticipated advantage in the Electoral College.

“She’s fine,” the doctor said. “You’re doing a good job, don’t worry too much.” I could not worry too much? That was an option?

It’s not easy being a disrupter. With any new trail you blaze, you’re bound to face backlash. But it is 2018, and I just feel that this is a year for bold gestures. It is time.

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A typical lesson in an American classroom might look something like this:

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Some of the people who visit open houses are not in buying mode at all, they just want a peek at how others live.