Sayantan Datta

Kolkata

Science Writer, Journalist and Communicator at Freelance

They/them | Award-winning journalist | Bylines: @queerbeat_media, @the_hindu & more | Assistant Professor @kreauniversity | Opinions my own

Articles

Yeast shows physics can give rise to multicellular life sans mutations

1 week ago | thehindu.com | Sayantan Datta

By the time Nishant Narayanasamy joined Shashi Thutupalli’s lab at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru in 2019, the lab had a new guest: a yeast colony that had seemingly grown way beyond its expected size. The snowflake yeast had been shipped from William Ratcliff’s laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the U.S. Regular yeast — the same organism that makes cakes fluffy — grows as a single cell.
How safe AI is in healthcare depends on the humans of healthcare

2 weeks ago | thehindu.com | Sayantan Datta

Researchers at IIT-Madras and the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute in Faridabad are developing an artificially intelligent (AI) model to use ultrasonography pictures to predict the age of a growing foetus. Called Garbhini-GA2, the model was trained on scans from about 3,500 pregnant women who had visited the Gurugram Civil Hospital in Haryana. Each scan labelled different parts of the foetus, its size, and its weight — measures that can be used to predict a foetus’s age.
Vilayati kikar: The making of a supervillain

3 weeks ago | thelifeofscience.com | Sayantan Datta

I will take this townI will make it my ownI will walk the streetI will feel the beatOf the sun on my faceI will say I like it hereAnd I will stay. – Song of the Migrant by Anonymous I found the above poem on one of the walls of my current workplace in Hyderabad. As a newcomer to the city, these verses provide me with motivation and a sense of solidarity. I moved to Hyderabad in 2024, leaving my family home in the outskirts of Delhi for the first time.
Does AI still hallucinate or is it becoming more reliable?

2 months ago | thehindu.com | Sayantan Datta

When people on the internet searched Google for “cheese not sticking to pizza” in May 2024, the newly launched “AI Overviews” feature of the popular search engine replied “you can … add about ⅛ cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness.”In a series of strange answers, the artificial intelligence (AI) tool also recommended that people eat one small rock a day and drink urine in order to pass kidney stones.
I am not good at sharing

2 months ago | datta-sayantan.medium.com | Sayantan Datta

I can love you as my own,And hold you as close as would make it hard to breathe,I take myself to the edge of the cliff,And take a step further if it would, to your benefit be,I can take on the world, it’s wild beasts,And be your shield from it as long as my heart beats,I can make you in my image,If my image were to you, your wish to be. I cannot however, for anything in the world,Share you with another to love you as me,Because, for all my virtues and all my sins,I am not good at sharing.
AAP Reshuffle: Manish Sisodia’s Punjab Play, Saurabh Bhardwaj’s Delhi Fight, Kejriwal’s Last Stand

Mar 24, 2025 | thequint.com | Sayantan Datta

When the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept Punjab in 2022, it was a triumph of Arvind Kejriwal’s vision—a grassroots rebellion against the old guard, promising clean governance and farmer-friendly reforms. Fast forward to March 2025, and the party’s Delhi fortress lies in ruins, toppled by a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after a decade of AAP dominance.
Sisodia’s Punjab Play, Bhardwaj’s Delhi Bid: AAP Rejig is Kejriwal’s Last Stand

Mar 24, 2025 | flipboard.com | Sayantan Datta

2 hours agoComedian's jokes about an Indian state leader are being investigated as potential defamationNEW DELHI (AP) — A comedian popular for his biting political humor is being investigated for possible defamation over jokes made about an Indian state leader who is an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in yet another case raising questions over freedom of speech in the country.
Two campuses within one

Mar 20, 2025 | thelifeofscience.com | Raunaq Saraswat |Sayantan Datta

On 8 March 2023, the Initiative for Gender Equity and Sensitisation (IGES) at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) organised a “Women’s Night Walk”.
In Odisha, coal dust is clogging leaves and blocking carbon uptake

Jan 27, 2025 | thehindu.com | Sayantan Datta

The Bengal Nagpur Railway had been tasked by the British Indian government with developing rail networks in eastern and central India. In 1900, when its workers were digging in Jharsuguda, now a district in Odisha, they stumbled upon large coal deposits. Nine years later, Jharsuguda’s first coal mine was established and a century later the region was producing more than 15 million tonnes of coal in a year. Coal is a fossil fuel produced by the decomposition of dead plants trapped in layers of soil.
In breakthrough, scientists find pressure sensor in fat tissue

Jan 22, 2025 | thehindu.com | Sayantan Datta

In a video uploaded to the internet in November, Ardem Patapoutian, who shared the medicine Nobel Prize in 2021, unbuttoned his cuff and pulled up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo near his elbow. As he flexed his arm, the tattoo came to life. The tattoo was of the PIEZO mechanosensitive channel – a class of proteins that helps us sense pressure – and the flexing demonstrated how the channel opened and closed in response to pressure.