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How Netha Hussain uses Wikipedia to fight health misinformation

Meet Netha Hussain, the India-born medical doctor in Sweden who has garnered widespread recognition for her unwavering commitment to combating medical misinformation.

Dipin Damodharan

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Netha Hussain at Singapore during Wikimania 2023. Credit: Bijay Chaurasia/Wikimedia Commons

As social media became popular, so did the flood of information. This is the post-truth era of content explosion, where unreliable news and information spread like wildfire. Fake news comes in many forms, depending on one’s interests and religious frameworks. It was rampant throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In such a complicated time, it assumes great significance to lead the fight against fake information. When the battle is against health misinformation, it becomes a noble act.

This is Netha Hussain, a Sweden-based doctor and Wikimedian who has been relentlessly fighting against medical misinformation for the last 14 years. Born in the southern Indian state of Kerala, Netha holds a PhD in Clinical Neuroscience from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has received the Honourable Mention Award from the Wikimedia Foundation in recognition of her fight against fake information and the Open Source Academic Award from the renowned American company Red Hat for health articles written on Wikipedia.

Organizations, including the United Nations, have praised Netha’s efforts. EdPublica brings you the story of Netha’s fight against medical misinformation, which also reminds us of the importance of scientific literacy. Recently, she has been working on mapping and bridging the knowledge gaps related to women’s health on the English Wikipedia. This WikiProject is an initiative to identify knowledge gaps and improve the quality of content related to women’s health in Wikimedia projects.

Image credit: Adam Novak / Wikimedia Foundation

The news came at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak. “A few people were hospitalized after eating a fruit that not many people had heard of. It was poisonous. They believed that eating it would help them fight against COVID-19. They got that information from the Internet.”

It is recurring incidents like the one above that give more strength and relevance to the struggle of this young doctor in her inexorable fight against false information related to health that fills the online space. Many methods had been touted as treatments that offered no guarantee of preventing the impact of the COVID-19 virus. She laid out all this. The Wikipedia article written by Netha was widely discussed globally. Organizations like the United Nations mentioned this Indian woman doctor on their official social media platforms and shared her video.

If we don’t…

Netha has been writing articles on Wikipedia for over 14 years. She started by writing an article about Chammanthi (a spread typically associated with Indian cuisines). Later, the young doctor wrote on many subjects, with articles focused on COVID-19 being the most popular. Settled in Sweden, she is a clinical neuroscientist with an interest in research.

“People trust me because I am a doctor. Having a medical degree helps combat fake news. Wikipedia has very few medical editors, which also increases my responsibility. If we don’t, no one else will. No one knew anything about COVID-19 at the beginning. Later, I learned it for my profession. It has also been used in Wikipedia,” states Netha.

The ‘Viral’ Article

“I had to write notes as part of my studies. So, I thought that if I go ahead and write it on Wikipedia, it will be useful for the rest of us. Whatever is being taught that day, I look it up on Wikipedia while studying it. Then I try to improve that article. And then it became an easy process,” Netha recalls her journey.

Netha Hussain at EduWiki Conference 2023/ Credit: Bondova devojka/Wikimedia Commons

Netha says that when the flow of writing came, the later work changed to a way of being able to articulate points and find references. She writes mostly health-related articles on Wikipedia. Being a voluntary activity, there is no financial benefit to it. According to Netha, the most reliable information is written in a language that people can easily understand.

“It is a very difficult task to prevent and eliminate fake information,” says Netha. “It’s like a genie out of a bottle. Once it’s released, it’s awfully hard to get back in. It will spread very quickly.”

“Fake news has been a problem since the start of COVID. If you eat garlic, you will not get COVID. COVID will not come in the summer. So many rumors were spread. Fake propaganda was active here when COVID first started in China,” Dr. Netha points out.

As mentioned earlier, she has been a Wikipedia volunteer for over 14 years and is a prominent Wikimedian. Wikimedians are those who write and edit articles on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Netha’s Wikipedia article, List of unproven methods against COVID-19, was seriously discussed across the world. She detailed the list of non-scientific methods related to COVID-19.

At the same time, Netha reminds us that Wikipedia is never a definitive source. “However, there is very little misinformation because everyone is there to help others. Mostly good information. Many editors, like me, watch Wikipedia pages. Everything will be checked to see if someone is editing and if it has credibility. It’s just that it can sometimes take time to spot errors in poorly read articles.”

Netha’s lead article on COVID-19 was one of the most read pieces. The article, titled The COVID-19 Pandemic, was read by more than 40 million people in March–April 2020 alone. “No other article has been read by so many people in such a short period of time. So, it is a record on Wikipedia itself,” says Netha.

“When people rely on Wikipedia, they should be given good information, or they will go somewhere else and be cheated. That’s why I think this work is important,” says Netha confidently.

She points out that there are many reasons why we are misled by fake information. “One of the reasons is our biases. Some illnesses do not require modern medicine. Some require fasting. We make sure that our understandings are somehow correct and reject those that are not. We believe in messages sent by someone. And the flood of information is a problem.” Netha says the key is to teach people how to spot fake information. Learning to spot fake information should start in childhood. The way science is taught should be changed.

Dr. Netha hails from Kunnamangalam, a town located in the Kozhikode district of the South Indian state of Kerala. She moved to Sweden to pursue her PhD studies after graduating from Calicut Medical College with a degree in medicine and surgery.

Dipin is the Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of EdPublica. A journalist and editor with over 15 years of experience leading and co-founding both print and digital media outlets, he has written extensively on education, politics, and culture. His work has appeared in global publications such as The Huffington Post, The Himalayan Times, DailyO, Education Insider, and others.

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Earth

In ancient India, mushy earth made for perfume scent

Kannauj, a city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, offers a sustainable alternative in producing perfumes using traditional modes of distillation.

Khushboo Agrahari

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Copper stills involved in dheg-bhakpa hydro-distillation | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

A sweet scent typically lingers around in the air at Kannauj, an ancient city in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh. It’s an imprint of the countless occasions when it had rained, of roses that bloomed at dawn, and of sandalwood trees that once breathed centuries of calm.. Though mushy smells are not unique to Kannauj, the city utilized traditional distillation methods to make perfume out of these earthly scents.

Kannauj has had a longstanding tradition in perfume-making since four centuries ago. The city, colloquially known as the country’s ancient perfume capital, still uses rustic copper stills, wood-fired ovens, and bamboo pipes leading to sandalwood oil-filled vessels, or attar as it is colloquially known, to make their perfume. Though it gives a pre-industrial look, a closer peek would reveal an ecosystem of complex thermal regulation, plant chemistry, sustainability science, and hydro-distillation chemistry at work.

When synthetically-made but sustainable perfumes, and AI-generated ones share the spotlight today, Kannauj’s tryst with perfumes offer an alternative, sustainable model in traditional distillation, which is inherently low-carbon, zero-waste, and follow principles of a circular economy; all in alignment with sustainable development goals.

Traditional perfume-making is naturally sustainable

In industrial processing, hydro-distillation is a commonly done to separate substances with different boiling points. Heating the liquids produce vapors, which can later be liquefied in a separate chamber. Perfumers in Kannauj follow the same practice, except it promises to be more sustainable with the copper stills, a process colloquially known as dheg-bhakpa hydro-distillation.

There’s no alcohol or synthetic agents in use. Instead, they heat up raw botanicals – such as roses, vetiver roots, jasmine, or even sunbaked clay – to precise temperatures well short of burning, thereby producing fragrant vapor. The vapors are then guided into cooling chambers, where they condense and bond with a natural fixative, often sandalwood oil. Plant residue is the only byproduct, which finds use as organic compost to cultivate another generation of crops.

The setup for dheg-bhapka hydro-distillation to make perfume | Photo Credit: By special arrangement.

Trapping earthly scent to make perfume

In the past five years, Kannauj’s veteran perfumers noticed a quiet, but steady shift in their timely harvest and produce. Rose harvests have moved earlier by weeks. Vetiver roots grow shallower due to erratic rainfall. Jasmine yields are fluctuating wildly. The local Ganges river, which influences humidity levels essential for distillation timing, is no longer as predictable. For an entire natural aromatic economy built on seasonal synchrony, this uncertainty has rung alarm bells.

“The scent of a flower depends not just on the flower itself,” Vipin Dixit, a third-generation attar-maker whose family has distilled fragrance for decades, said to EdPublica.

“It depends on the weather the night before, on the heat at sunrise, on the moisture in the air. Even the soil has a scent-memory.”

Vipin Dixit, a third-generation attar-maker, whose family have distilled fragrance for decades | Photo Credit: By special arrangement.

As a result, perfumers in Kannauj have begun to adapt, applying traditional wisdom through a modern scientific lens. Local distillers are now working with botanists and environmental scientists to study soil microbiomes, measure scent compounds using chromatography, and develop community-based rainwater harvesting to ensure sustainable crop health.

One of the most surprising innovations is trapping petrichor — the scent of first rain — through earth attars. Clay is baked during extreme heat waves, mimicking summer conditions, then distilled to trap the scent of rain hitting dry soil. This aroma, called mitti attar, is one of the few scents in the world created from an environmental phenomenon; and not a flower.

At a time when the world is scrambling to save biodiversity, the humble attar may become a template for green chemistry — one that doesn’t just preserve scent, but also restores the relationship between science, nature, and soul.

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Society

How Scientists and Investigators Decode Air Crashes — The Black Box and Beyond

The final report may take months, but it will be critical in issuing safety directives or revising standard procedures.

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As rescue and recovery operations continue following the June 12, 2025, plane crash in Ahmedabad, aviation safety experts are now focusing on the technical investigation phase. With 241 lives lost, the search for the cause isn’t just about accountability—it’s about prevention.

The Black Box: Aviation’s Memory Keeper

1. What Is the Black Box?

Despite the name, the black box is actually orange — for visibility. It consists of two components:

  • Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR): Captures conversations and audio from the flight deck.
  • Flight Data Recorder (FDR): Logs dozens to hundreds of parameters — speed, altitude, engine status, control inputs.

These devices are housed in titanium or steel and can withstand:

  • Temperatures above 1,000°C
  • Underwater pressures up to 20,000 feet
  • Crashes with up to 3,600 G-force

They also emit underwater locator beacons for up to 30 days.

2. Forensic Engineering & Flight Reconstruction

Beyond black boxes, investigators use:

  • Radar data and air traffic control logs
  • Wreckage analysis for structural failure clues
  • Satellite-based tracking systems like ADS-B
  • Weather data for turbulence or wind shear insights

Forensic teams often reconstruct the flight path virtually or even physically using recovered debris to determine failure points.

3. Human Factors & AI in Modern Investigation

New tools like machine learning and human factors analysis are used to identify procedural errors or lapses in judgement.

In many modern investigations, AI helps:

  • Filter large datasets (e.g., over 1,000 flight parameters per second)
  • Detect patterns missed by the human eye
  • Predict similar risk scenarios in future flights

What Happens Next in the Ahmedabad Crash?

Authorities, in coordination with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), are likely:

  • Retrieving and analyzing the black box
  • Interviewing air traffic controllers
  • Reconstructing the aircraft’s final seconds using both data and simulation

The final report may take months, but it will be critical in issuing safety directives or revising standard procedures.

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Researchers Unveil Light-Speed AI Chip to Power Next-Gen Wireless and Edge Devices

This could transform the future of wireless communication and edge computing

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Credit: Sampson Wilcox, Research Laboratory of Electronics/MIT News

In a breakthrough that could transform the future of wireless communication and edge computing, engineers at MIT have developed a novel AI hardware accelerator capable of processing wireless signals at the speed of light. The new optical chip, built for signal classification, achieves nanosecond-level performance—up to 100 times faster than conventional digital processors—while consuming dramatically less energy.

With wireless spectrum under growing strain from billions of connected devices, from teleworking laptops to smart sensors, managing bandwidth has become a critical challenge. Artificial intelligence offers a path forward, but most existing AI models are too slow and power-hungry to operate in real time on wireless devices.

The MIT solution, known as MAFT-ONN (Multiplicative Analog Frequency Transform Optical Neural Network), could be a game-changer.

“There are many applications that would be enabled by edge devices that are capable of analyzing wireless signals,” said Prof. Dirk Englund, senior author of the study, in a media statement. “What we’ve presented in our paper could open up many possibilities for real-time and reliable AI inference. This work is the beginning of something that could be quite impactful.”

Published in Science Advances, the research describes how MAFT-ONN classifies signals in just 120 nanoseconds, using a compact optical chip that performs deep-learning tasks using light rather than electricity. Unlike traditional systems that convert signals to images before processing, the MIT design processes raw wireless data directly in the frequency domain—eliminating delays and reducing energy usage.

“We can fit 10,000 neurons onto a single device and compute the necessary multiplications in a single shot,” said Ronald Davis III, lead author and recent MIT PhD graduate.

The device achieved over 85% accuracy in a single shot, and with multiple measurements, it converges to above 99% accuracy, making it both fast and reliable.

Beyond wireless communications, the technology holds promise for edge AI in autonomous vehicles, smart medical devices, and future 6G networks, where real-time response is critical. By embedding ultra-fast AI directly into devices, this innovation could help cars react to hazards instantly or allow pacemakers to adapt to a patient’s heart rhythm in real-time.

Future work will focus on scaling the chip with multiplexing schemes and expanding its ability to handle more complex AI tasks, including transformer models and large language models (LLMs).

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