Blogging blogs!!!

Budget 2006-2007

2006-03-01T00:58:00.000-08:00

So, the day which everybody was waiting for, very eagerly, finally arrived yesterday (Tuesday, Feb 28) and annual budget was put forth in the parliament by the Honorable Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. To have a look on entire budget click here.
If one is specifically looking for our FM's offerings to education sector, he/she is strongly recommended to go through Abi's blog.

A very simple mathematics!

2006-03-01T00:40:00.000-08:00

No algebra=No calculus=No science=No technology=We're totally *&$#FRTDG!!!!!

This appeared in Scientific American's blog > BLOG : SCIAM OBSERVATIONS. To access the full content, click here.

Bush Syndrome and Science!

2006-02-26T01:25:00.000-08:00

Over Afganishtan and Iraq issues, Bush administration is already facing the wrath of most of the countries. But, it seems Bush administration's sensory organs have become one way. It is doing what it wants to do, it is making others listen, see what it wants others to listen, to see. It has evolved as a complete dictatorship. And critcizers of Bush administrations are not only directly or indirectly affected countries, but from within US also. Their attitude and way of execution of their whip and whim have affected every walks of life and science community of US is one among them which has stood against present federal administration and criticizing administrators strongly when they realized that Bush syndrome has affected science also and science is under attack.
Nature, in its latest edition (23rd February 2006), has coverd this issue in its editorial under the title "Science under attack". In this article, editors mention that, in the annual meeting of the American Assoaciation of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) many scientists including molecular biologist Davis Baltimore raised their voices against Bush administration for its entire operational philosphy.
The kind of attitude Bush administration has adopted towards science and its practitioner, can be made out from the following statements:

"......a great many scientists now believe that Bush administration is not only prepared to ignore the scientific facts in making policy decisions, but also to suppress finding that conflict with its own priorities."

Baltimore - Nobel laureate is considered most eminent voice in all of American science. He suggested that:

"The bush administration's approach to science stems from its adherence to a particular philosophy of government, that of a 'unitary executive'. Instead of resignedly shrugging their shoulders whenever such a case of scientific manipulation arises, Baltimore argued, scientists need to recognize the potency of the threat that this government philosophy represents to the long-cherished independence of US science."

It's evident that the present govenment's operational philosophy has badly affected the foundation of the philosophy of science and is proving to be the great deterance in the progress of science without which advancement of any civilization can not even thought of. This example shows that how whimsical attitude of a dictatorian leadership can provide a gloomy future to a free and liberal society.

Preschooling

2006-02-25T23:30:00.000-08:00

In olden days, home was considered to be the primary school for a child, and the mother, a primary teacher (it is all together different issue that there was no emphasis on girls' education those days.). But, presently, both the parents are working and most of the families are nuclear. In such a situation, the concept of 'preschooling' is gaining momentum.
"Preschool" is the period befor a child starts its formal schooling. Every child needs it. The Hindu gives a very good account of this in the article which appeared on 12th of February (Magazine - a supplementory) :

"Preschool" is the period, before a child enrols in the school system. Whatever their background, all children have the same needs. Preschool is not merely an age-band; it is a period when the child should be engaged in learning what is preparatory to formal learning.......

Further, the article emphasises that preschooling helps children recognizing and enhancing all their latent capabilities:

"........At preschool, therefore, one should enhance all the latent capabilities of a child, such as social, physical, communicative, cognitive, intellectual, aesthetic, and psychological skills, so that children will complete their first six years, fully prepared for the broader learning that happens for a dozen years thereafter. Such a programme is sure to give a head start to their lives."

This article I find very well articulated and scientific. And, at present I find many parents also have recognized the potential of preschooling. But, still the figure is very small, especially in smaller cities where a child is being subjected to traditional learning system or the above mentioned latent capabilities are being administered individually which become very fragmented. Even if there is a joint family or in a nuclear family mother is house-wife, in current scenario, importance of preschooling is ever-increasing. So, there is an urgent need to create awareness about this novel concept so that children can be benefitted with this system. Apart from creating awareness, we have to prepare very trained personnels to cater the need of such a fabulous system.

Get Together!

2006-01-30T23:00:00.000-08:00

It was the evening of 28th January. I got an unexpected call from one of my very close friends, Dhiru Bhai (please don't mistaken him with characters like Munna bhai and other bhai log). Dhiru told he was there in Bangalore only. I jumped with joy. The moment he called me up, I was busy with some other stuff. So, I asked him that I would contact him after half an hour or so. Later on, when I called him up, I came to know many people were getting together on 28th of January but all of them would stay together for next two or three days. All these people were my batchmates in undergraduate college, NITK Surathkal. Alok kumar from South Koria, Rajnish Sinha from Chennai, Dhiru from Mangalore and the remaining guys, Kapila, Narayan, Rahul, Naveen and Amit from Bangalore only, had gathered the same day in Kapila's flat. I joined them the following day. It was really a great feeling to see some of them after a long time (more than a year or so). In the evening we went to Bangalore Central for shopping. Bangalore central is really a gigantic shopping complex having four floors. It was followed by dinner at the hotel Three Quarter Chinese -- food was awesome and the total expense for nine persons came around Rs. 1700/-. And after having dinner, we came back to the flat, chatted for sometime and then slept. Next morning, I was back to pavilion -- IISc at my workplace.

Some Cool Sites for All Hot Stuffs!!!

2006-01-22T14:50:00.000-08:00

For long, I didn't blog. It's not that I was not willing to blog. I was willing, but was devoid of topic to write on. Today, I, finally, thought why not to share my some of the coolest sites with my bog-viewers. I don't remember a day when I didn't visit these sites. These sites have become, it seems, a part and parcel of my life. For me, these sites are great source of informations. Whenever, I feel like doing nothing related to my curricula, I just open these sites and keep reading and this is also one of the reasons for my longer stay in the lab in compared to room which I use only for sleeping. These sites are as below :-

Nature

Science

Scientist American

Popular Science

Science Daily

New Scientist

HowStuffWorks

Wikipedia

And finally, not to mention, Mighty Google! - Omnipresent and God of the Earth!
You can observe most of the sites cited here are related to science and I have become a true lover of science. I am sure some of you will visit these sites and get benefitted from them and that's why I have not given any kind of description about the sites. Click, Read and get ENLIGHTENED!!!

19th Student Annual Symposium - Part II

2006-01-15T10:35:00.000-08:00

Second day of symposium started exactly on time. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend all the talks of second day. Like first day, there were two invited talks on following day also. I, really, regret for missing the talk which was delievered by K. K. Nanda on Gas phase synthesis of metal and semiconductor nanoparticles. I came to know from my friends it was a wonderful talk. Second invited talk was followed by Prof. S. Karthikeyan, a newly joined faculty in our department (metallurgy). His talk was on Sliding friction in ductile metals - can modeling techniques teach us anything. This presentation was definitely one of the best talks ever attended by me. One can learn lot of things from his presentation - how to make presentation, how to present it, how one can go on implementing his/her work beyond the periphery of its domain of working. It really impressed me and I would like to implement in my future activities. Remaining talks were also nice, but only by students of my department. Symposium was concluded with a small cultural program by Prashant potnis and his group. Finally, all of us joined for dinner in the department itself - very nice food (in the mess we rarely get nice food!).
Overall, symposium was a showcase of management and technical talent pool of our department. This symposium has brought many new ideas in the forefront and given new directions to think, work and implement in day-to-day life to make this society a better and comfortable place to live-in. I am sure, all of us will cherish the memory of this wonderful symposium for long.

19th Annual Student Symposium - Part I

2006-01-13T00:30:00.000-08:00

It started little late by five minutes among a very small presence of students. But after 15 minutes or so, lecture theatre was completely filled with students. Sugeetha was the comperer and inauguration's presidential lecture was delieverd by Dr. A. M. Sriramamurthy, Director, DMRL Hyderabad. In his address, he covered almost all aspects of materials science and engineering very briefly, including a brief overview of the development of superalloys. He also added on that a wide range of research opportunities are lying ahead of us and evoked student community to take up the initiatives and do research to benefit the whole society. Today, this department dedicated a committee room to late Prof. Adcock, the founder and first chairman of the department. Prof. Srinivasan, head of the division of mechanical engineering sciences inaugurated the committee room. It, thus, brought us to the end of the inaugural function and it was followed by high tea.
Technical session started with Prof. Satyam Suwas's talk on Recent trends in crystallographic texture -- really, a very nice talk. It was followed by a series of talks presented by students. There was one more invited talk by Amitava Mukherjee on Groundwater arsenic contamination -- a nice piece of work. All the papers presented during first day of the symposium were, indeed, very informative and of high quality which shows the sincerity and the amount of hard work put by students of this department. I hope, tomorrow also, same trend will be repeated.
To get to know about the symposium please visit our website:
htttp://platinum.met.iisc.ernet.in/~sympo/ or click here

A Trip To Mysore

2006-01-10T00:45:00.000-08:00

It was one of the most memorable journeys. I really enjoyed this trip. I was accompanied by my younger brother, Sonu and one of my friends, Vinod Gupta, who is presently working for Infosys, Bangalore. My brother and myself started our journey from IISc Campus and Vinodji from Infy Campus at 6:00pm, on 3rd January. We (my brother and me) reached Majestic bus stand within half an hour but Vinodji took two hours and thirty minutes to arrive at our common meeting place "Majestic bus stand". I met Vinodji after a very long time, not less than five years. It was, really a nice moment. On his arrival, all of us went to have dinner in a hotel which is at the bus stand and it caters Andhra style food. It was the best food I ever had in any of Bangalore's hotels-- indeed, a very nice food outlet to hang around. Quality of food is extremely good and on top of that food is comparitively very cheap (for three of us it came only 220/-).
Our real journey for Mysore started at 10:00pm and we reached Mysore in three hours or so. After getting down at the bus stand, we hired a pre-paid auto-rickshaw to go to the flat Vinodji's friend, who works for Infosys, Mysore. Auto driver was also not familiar with the locality we wanted to go. So, in the process of reaching his flat, we wandered over half of Mysore. Somehow, we managed to get the right address and immediately after reaching there, we slept.
Next day, we kept roaming and visited three places: Mysore palace (a unique exemplary of architecture), Chamundi Hill and Vrindavan Gardens. Mysore palace and Chamundi hill, are in the vicinity of each other, whereas Vrindavan Garden is around 20-25km away from the city. This garden is worth visiting in the evening (after dusk) to enjoy its lighting arrangement, colored fountains and the best one- the musical fountain.
The most important outcome of my visit of Mysore was that I found this place to be extremely good. A neat and clean city, with adequate infrastructre, decent public and again availability of nice and cheap food. I really loved the place and would like to visit the place again.

Evolution Vs Creation!!!

2005-12-29T09:08:00.000-08:00

In the year 1958, Charles Darwin wrote a book The Origin of Species and it gave entirely new direction to world about the existence of creatures on the earth. It denied completely The Theory of Creation (God has Created Us) and postulated a new theory The Theory of Evolution. Science journal in its december's last issue has come up with ten the most pathbreaking events in science and declared one of them Breakthrough of the year : Evolution in Action. There are many more articles which are available for free and can be read or downloaded on visiting the site via above links.
These are really very-very nice articles and worth to go through these. I am sure you will enjoy these (at least I did).

IISc Assaulted!!!!

2005-12-29T07:45:00.000-08:00

We used to think that IISc was the most vunerable place for gruesome attacks. We came across one yesterday: killing of a great soul of India, Prof. Puri from IIT, Delhi and injuring four more. Nobody still knows the motive behind such a heinous act but one thing is clear about the security level inside the campus. Here security arrangement is just for namesake. Anybody can walk in anytime, to any place and can finish the job, leaving people behind him/her wondering about the motive of the person. I personally feel that security measures should be taken up much more seriously so that IIScians can do their research under a very peaceful ambience, not under "TERROR".

2005-12-26T07:22:00.000-08:00

I'm back...
Hi everybody!!!!

As I told you in my first blog that I'll be back very soon, so I'm....And I feel that I have given a new dimension to my personality having joined your world of blogging. For long I was thinking I will start blogging but due to some or other work I was not able to do it. But, finally I did it. I will try to be regular.

2005-07-24T05:18:00.000-07:00

I will write my blog after few days. Till then please wait.