I believe this is how most publicly funded research and some private research institutes work.
This research was conducted by a public Indian university (IIT Madras). Which, by the way is literally more selective than IVY league universities
This particular lab happens to be primarily privately funded, donations, grants, etc,. Most big ticket research at IITM like this one are industry-funded or donation-funded. The public funds cover all the usual stuff and I don't mean to understate it.
Edit: it seems you were right.
Apparently they have received big donations from ex-alumni including the co-founder of infosys and the founder of Fairfax Financial Holdings. Pretty cool!
The centre will power a large-scale multi-disciplinary effort to map human brains at cellular level. It is supported by Infosys co-founder and IIT Madras’ Distinguished Alumnus Kris Gopalakrishnan and his wife Sudha Gopalakrishnan. Since 2014, Gopalakrishnan has been involved in seeding research at the institute at the intersection of neuroscience and engineering.
Doesnt matter how selective they are if the Budget of 1 MIT is $5 Billion while the budget of all 23 IIT is less than $1 Billion. There is a reason why so many Indian scientists move out of India.
I think it’s good for people outside of India (myself included) to know how competitive life is over there. Indian research institutes seem to be truly top notch and they deserve due respect. That was my reason to share.
I should have clarified that I was defining selectivity as the ratio between applicants and accepted candidates.
Getting in this school requires someone to be among the top 250k takers of a specific exam (JEE main) typically, it’d be taken by around 1.5 million students. If one is among those 250k, one can choose to do the advanced test.. which in 2025 was cleared by 56 880 students .. from which, 18,188 students were admitted.
And yes, if you have more than .. 84 candidates, your process would be more selective. However, I think the fair comparison would be .. say .. the MIT?
On the same year, the MIT got 29,282 applications and admitted 1,324 students
So if you apply to the MIT you’re more than 3 times likelier to get accepted.
Not a fair comparison. IITs are a bottleneck given there aren't better (in terms of reputation and outcome) schools here. And plenty more apply simply because it's a rite of passage for every Indian kid. I'd guess less so for MIT given kids pre-reject themselves.
> So if you apply to the MIT you’re more than 3 times likelier to get accepted.
That's based on numbers only, not reach or desirability. It's like saying India must be the best place in the world to live because it has the largest population.
my understanding is that they took 3 specimens, aged 25 gestational weeks, 9 and 54 years old.. did “800 serial histological sections” and manually tagged them. But you can check out the information yourself here: https://anchor.humanbrain.in/
I guess it depends on what you expect.
If you expect the train to be on time .. yes, India is much better than Germany. ~80% trains delayed 15 min or less vs Germany 36% trains delayed 15 min or less.
It can get pretty bad when your train is delayed so you miss your connection and now you’re stranded in a random town waiting for the next train .. which is coming .. at 5am the next day. Or you can take the regional and hopefully make it in 12 hours with 3 connections instead of your original 4 hour leg. :D
If you expect a comfortable and quiet experience, then I’d agree with you, Germany can be a much nicer experience.
> I guess it depends on what you expect. If you expect the train to be on time .. yes, India is much better than Germany. ~80% trains delayed 15 min or less vs Germany 36% trains delayed 15 min or less.
I won't defend DB too much here but saying that 64% of trains in germany are delayed more than 15min is just plain wrong. The official statistics put it at 40% for 6min or more for long distance trains and 11% for regional trains in 2025[1]. I think if there would be 15min statistics, DB would be on a sinilar level to India for long-distance. Not something to be proud of, but not as desastrous as you paint it.
Though, maybe I misunderstood? Do you have sources for the indian numbers?
Hey,
I’m sorry for the delay, had to take a train yesterday (how fitting).
I think you have a point. I got the German statistics from the official site https://zbir.deutschebahn.com/2025/en/interim-group-manageme... and yep.. I missread, dbahn marks passenger trains as delayed after >5 min. Only cargo passengers are marked delayed after >15min.
It seems that India doesn’t really release this data officially but it can be obtained from third parties. In this specific case, I got my figure from a news article. I am not entirely sure about the primary source, they just quote a gov. official statement.
From what I read, the main criticism is that the 80% just takes into account the delay at the last station, not the intermediate ones and 15 min is indeed a lot.
Not all countries have a rail pass and not all countries offer a 100% discount pass. And even less offer a 100% discount on all trains and for non residents
> allows unlimited rail travel within one participating country, excluding the holder’s country of residence
One of the things that always bothered me because it's such an arbitrary rule and has hugely different effects for people from different countries. Like, people from Switzerland or Belgium can easily move around all over the place after a short domestic trip. For a few lucky fellers from Lichtenstein or Luxemburg the rule is practically non-existent on account of the small sizes of their countries, whereas someone from eastern France has to pay for a long-distance ticket across all of France if they want to explore the western part of Europe, and all they get is Spain and Portugal (and Andorra—do they have a train line?) with no way to visit Scandinavia, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Czechia, Slovenia or Germany without having to pay for a cross-country trip through France a second time.
Also the age limitation for European citizens whereas non-Europeans have no such limit.
I’d argue that most residents would likely have access to better offers locally.
As for the age limit, I think it just lets you get a cheaper inter-rail, which is subsidized by the DiscoverEU. AFAIK, you can always buy a full interrail pass for all countries.
And yes, non eu people can buy eurail.: but that one is much more expensive than the equivalent interrail, I think.
Maybe I’m wrong about the last one tho
> OMG.. are we really doing this? T_T It’s just the marketing term….
Quick one-off jokes that commentators on HN take way to literally and start a whole diatribe about? I mean, apparently :D Relax, it's only a joke, I have no issues with Interrail and use it myself from time to time too... Not sure I'd agree it has anything to do with European or EU identity, but anyways, I guess some do :)
I remember a professor once told us “democracy might not be the best kind of government. It’s just the best we have found to organize a peaceful power transition”.
And .. to this date .. I agree .. it’s not about making the best decision.. it just allows us to come to a decision on a seemingly fair process.
Given the Weberian definition of government I'm wont to go on about, democracy optimises for legitimacy, rather than optimal decisionmaking, speed, efficiency, or any number of other possible goals.
But it doesn't do that. It allows a majority to do whatever it wants, including redefine the rules to guarantee its permanent majority.
Or the rules are written to avoid that, in which case the power rests with the minority who is happiest with the status quo.
It works only if most people don't want to push their advantages to the limits. But if men were angels, there would be no need of laws. The system will always fall prey to whoever is most willing to push their advantage as far as it will go.
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