Describing what is sure to be a highly controversial idea, Science Magazine [paid or institutional access required] publishes an article about a group of scientists who are calling into question whether the Indus script is really even a script, in the traditional sense. Because of the fact that this article will not be accessible by most, I will liberally quote for the benefit of SM readers.

For 130 years scholars have struggled to decipher the Indus script. Now, in a proposal with broad academic and political implications, a brash outsider claims that such efforts are doomed to failure because the Indus symbols are not writing

Academic prizes typically are designed to confer prestige. But the latest proposed award, a $10,000 check for finding a lengthy inscription from the ancient Indus civilization, is intended to goad rather than honor. The controversial scholar who announced the prize last month cheekily predicts that he will never have to pay up. Going against a century of scholarship, he and a growing number of linguists and archaeologists assert that the Indus people–unlike their Egyptian and Mesopotamian contemporaries 4000 years ago–could not write.

That claim is part of a bitter clash among academics, as well as between Western scientists and Indian nationalists, over the nature of the Indus society, a clash that has led to shouting matches and death threats. But the provocative proposal, summed up in a paper published online last week, is winning adherents within the small community of Indus scholars who say it is time to rethink an enigmatic society that spanned a vast area in today’s Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan–the largest civilization of its day.

The Indus civilization has intrigued and puzzled researchers for more than 130 years, with their sophisticated sewers, huge numbers of wells, and a notable lack of monumental architecture or other signs of an elite class (see sidebar on p. 2027). Most intriguing of all is the mysterious system of symbols, left on small tablets, pots, and stamp seals. But without translations into a known script–the “Rosetta stones” that led to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform in the 19th century–hundreds of attempts to understand the symbols have so far failed. And what language the system might have expressed–such as a Dravidian language similar to tongues of today’s southern India, or a Vedic language of northern India–is also a hot topic. This is no dry discussion: Powerful Indian nationalists of the Hindutva movement see the Indus civilization as the direct ancestor to Hindu tradition and Vedic culture.

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Water is becoming increasingly scarce, all over the world. In India, perhaps fewer than a third of all Indians have access to “decent sanitation and high quality drinking water.” (See V’s earlier post on the subject) Nor is this just an Indian problem. Some of Australia’s biggest cities, for example, may run dry in just a few years, perhaps as early as 2006.

What is to be done? Well, there is the ancient vedic practice of Shivambu or Amaroli, but despite Morarji Desai’s best efforts, drinking one’s own urine has not(ahem) gone down well amongst the general population.

But don’t despair. In Singapore, they have harnessed the braininess of Brown scientists in the US to produce NEWater!

NEWater is the product of Singapore’s new water-treatment system, and it is wastewater that has been purified through advanced synthetic membranes called ZeeWeed. That’s right: The crystal-clear NEWater that gushes through the country’s faucets isn’t gurgling from a mountain spring. Most recently, it was flushed from a toilet. [Salon.com]

This process is the brainchild of Ashok Gadgil:

In December 1992, an outbreak of a new and dangerous strain of cholera began in southeastern India. Within months it had spread into neighboring countries, killing up to 10,000 people. The tragedy inspired Ashok Gadgil, an Indian-born scientist working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, to look for a new way to purify drinking water. Using science no more complex than the ultraviolet light emitted by an unshielded fluorescent lamp, he built a simple, effective, and inexpensive water disinfection system. Dozens of these systems are now installed around the world. “At the bare bones, using the simplest engineering, we could disinfect water for half a cent per ton. That’s shockingly cheap. You could disinfect water for one person, a full year’s drinking supply, for a couple of cents.”

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Bio researcher Vamsi Mootha, 33, just won a $500K MacArthur fellowship (via Political Animal). Mootha is an assistant professor at Harvard who researches mitochondrial gene expression to combat disease.

By comparing the protein fingerprints with gene expression databases, more than 100 previously unknown mitochondrial proteins were identified. He used a similar, coordinated approach to identify the gene that causes Leigh Syndrome French Canadian variant, a fatal metabolic disease.  In diseases resulting not from a single gene but the interaction of sets of genes, he introduced a computational method for identifying patterns of gene activity in specific diseases… As importantly, Mootha has pioneered powerful, adaptable computational strategies for mining data collected in laboratories throughout the world, providing an efficient means to hunt down gene interactions that lead to a wide variety of diseases.

The James Logan debate coach won one as well. The Fremont-Newark-Union City area across from San Francisco has desi and Afghan gang problems, so this guy’s in the thick of it.

For 15 years, against long odds, Tommie Lindsey has held together an award-winning speech and debate team at James Logan High School in the blue- collar suburb of Union City. His students frequently defeat well-heeled competitors from elite high schools.

His teams have won four state championships; three James Logan students have been top winners at the national level and 25 at the state level. This year the team has more than 200 students. Ninety percent of Lindsey’s students go on to four-year colleges. Overall at Logan, just one-third of students qualify for the state university systems… In recent years, the team has been featured in a documentary and won a $100,000 award from Oprah Winfrey.

A 200-person debate team is enormous.

You’re on the phone with your grandmother, and she wants to know when you’re going to produce grandchildren for her and how on earth you can be “dating” the same person for 2 years without any marriage plans. You tell her that these things take time, that people are complicated, and it’s hard to know where this is going. You feel morally superior as she clucks disapprovingly. You think, I’m a modern person, and I have science on my side.

Or do you? Well, today the BBC reports that:

People decide what kind of relationship they want within minutes of meeting, a study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships said. “It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. We make a prediction about what kind of relationship we could have with a person and that helps determine how much effort we are willing to put into developing a relationship.” The results were the same for people who talked for three, six or ten minutes. Prof Ramirez said: “That tells you things are happening very quickly. People are making snap judgements about what kind of relationship they want with the person they just met.”

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