(Subscribe to Science For All, our weekly newsletter, where we aim to take the jargon out of science and put the fun in. Click here .) In 1926, a seventeenth-century trunk containing over 2000 unclaimed letters was bequeathed to the Dutch postal museum. The letters were closed using an ancient technique called letterlocking, in which the writing paper is intricately folded and secured to become its own envelopes. Now an international team of researchers has virtually unfolded and unlocked the contents of one of the letters and the findings were published on Tuesday in Nature Communications. The team used a technique called X-ray microtomography. “The scanning technology is similar to medical CT scanners, but using much more intense X-rays which allow us to see the minute traces of metal in the ink used to write these letters,” explains one of the authors Dr. David Mills from the Queen Mary University of London in a release. The team developed algorithms to virtually ... » Learn More about How to read a 300-year-old letter without opening it
Renard et le bouc
‘Netaji was able to both respect and transcend religious differences’
Next Arthur J Pais In 1941, at the height of the Second World War, Subhas Chandra Bose went to Germany to seek Adolf Hitler's help in organising an Indian army to fight their common enemy, England . In the third part of his four-part interview to Arthur Pais, biographer Sugata Bose talks about Netaji's time in Europe . Part I: Grand nephew turns Netaji's biographer Part II: 'Netaji had a romantic, deeply emotional side to him' L et us talk about Netaji in Europe , and his outlook towards people of different religious and ethnic backgrounds. In the 1940s, Subhas Chandra Bose gave up his earlier inhibitions about meat and other food restrictions and so on, but remained essentially the same man in terms of his values. His biggest achievement in public life was to bring about the unity all of the religious communities of India: Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. Mahatma Gandhi also brought about ... » Learn More about ‘Netaji was able to both respect and transcend religious differences’
