Abstract

Prof. T.V Ramakrishnan,

BHU, Benaras

Prof. B.N. Dev,

IACS,  Kolkata

Physics and Chemistry Nobel Prizes in 2007 are linked to modern surface science, which has developed over the past five decades. Surface science is the child of the union of science and technology and it has emanated from the confluence of concepts and tools in physics and chemistry with technological innovations. Essentially all the concepts and theoretical tools used in this field emanate from condensed matter physics and physical chemistry. Examples include electron scattering and emission for surface characterization, electron tunneling for surface imaging, and the use of density functional theory for the prediction of surface structures and reaction dynamics. Modern surface science was born in the early 60s of the last century because of the confluence of three factors: ultrahigh vacuum technology, the availability of single crystal samples and discoveries in the physics of electron-solid interactions. Another aspect of surface science is that it grew up with semiconductor microelectronics. This presentation will proceed via tracing some milestones to the maturity of the present state, and finally to future prospects.

Prof. M.R.S. Rao,

JNCASR, Bangalore

 Human Genome and Beyond

First-Principles Theory in Materials Sciences:

Is it at all relevant?

Materials Sciences is basically an experimental Science. Is First-Principles theory at all relevant? Empirical analyses and "rules of the thumb" are ubiquitous in this area and appropriately so. We shall discuss the need for first-principles theory and its relevance.

The distance of Europe from India may propel the India based Neutrino Observatory (INO) to a privileged position on the neutrino stage. After a brief summary of the state of neutrino physics and the INO project, we focus on a `magic baseline' beta-beam experiment. We discuss its unique advantages in unraveling neutrino masses and mixings.

Dr. Anil Kakodkar,

Chairman AEC, & Secretary, DAE

Pictures

Prof. T. Padmanabhan,

IUCAA, Pune

Prof. K. Bhattacharyya,

IACS, Kolkata

Asian Contribution to World Science

The contribution of Asia to world science is rich and varied. It ranges from the invention of materials- like brick (in India) and paper (in china) to fundamental concepts in mathematics (zero in India). The term “algorithm” originates from an Iranian mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi (AD 780-850, who discovered algebra). Nobel Prize is often hailed as the crowning glory in science. Nobel Prize came to Asia (in science) for the first time in 1930 through C. V. Raman. Subsequently, several Indian, Chinese, Japanese, one Pakistani and one Egyptian scientists received the Nobel. It is true that some of them (Khorana, Chandrasekhar, Yang, Lee, Salam and Zewail) carried out their Nobel Prize wining research outside Asia. But that does not diminish the respect for Asian knowledge. Then there are the two Bose-s (JC and SN), who missed the Nobel but whose contributions may be more profound than many Nobel laureates. Some of these glorious Asian achievements will be re-visited in this talk. Asian knowledge (and values) has an important relevance in the recent, remarkable economic progress in East Asia. The economic success in Asia indicates, as Amartya Sen argues, that “European culture is not the only road to modern success. We now know that other values work too - and often work better - and this is the lesson that has been merging over the last century, beginning with Japan's remarkable economic progress.”

26.06.2008

Prof. D. Chatterjee,

IISC, Bangalore

Status of Proteomics Research in India and the Benefits

Characterization of protein profile in any living organism is a big task and was unthinkable even two decades back. Report on the presence of numerous spots on chromatograph appeared during late seventies, each representing one protein, but it was not possible to identify them separately. Developments of genome sequencing in one hand, and technological advancement of Mass spectrometry on the other, have helped now to address questions at various levels. The snapshots of proteins metabolizing in real time can be taken with various degrees of competence. The immense importance of the field is now realized in medical field and clinical proteomics are being used for diagnosis, or recording metabolic changes under various stresses. In our country serious efforts in Proteomics research started in this century only. However, in last 5 years, at least 100 centre throughout the country have started or planning to start this area of research. One should keep in mind the cost associated with it. Thus it appears that active researchers in Biology, Medical science and allied areas have realized the phenomenal gains one can achieve through Proteomics studies. In this lecture will discuss some of these efforts along with few examples from our own laboratory.

SNBNCBS, Kolkata

Reduction of Quantum Noises

Prof. Probir Roy,

SINP, Kolkata

Searchlight On Susy

Supersymmetry (or SUSY in short), a proposed invariance under generalizd spacetime transformations linking fermions with bosons, can be described without exaggeration as one of the most beautiful recent ideas in Physics. It is supposed to be broken in the real world by soft terms with mass dimension less than 4. As a result, the leading ultraviolet behaviour of exact supersymmetry is retained, but supermultiplets with fermionic and bosonic partners are split in mass. The superpartners of the known elementary particles, called sparticles, are taken to be too heavy and beyond the energy reach of accelerators functioning till now. However, the mass scale of weak interactions in the Standard Model is radiatively unstable owing to the Higgs field. This can be stabilized by SUSY, provided the sparticles lie in the mass range O(100) GeV to O(1) TeV. The exciting news is that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), about to start at CERN, (Geneva) any day, should be able to produce and see such sparticles. Moreover, the supersymmetric version of the Standard Model has a neutral stable weakly interacting sparticle which is a very good candidate for the cold dark matter inferred from observations in cosmology. If produced when two protons collide with a CM energy of 14 TeV at the LHC, this sparticle will leave a telltale signature in the form of a large missing transverse energy. In this talk, an overview will be given of supersymmetry in particle physics, its discovery prospects at the LHC and its relation to observational cosmology via cold dark matter

RRI, Bangalore

Orbital diamagnetism, Hall fluctuation theorem and all that: Revisiting a surprise of physics

NCBS, Bangalore

Membranes in living cells: Alive and kicking.

Prof. M. I Savadatti,

Karnatka University

Managing Higher Education:
The University Experience.

SINP, Kolkata

Physical boundaries induce interesting ordering and long-range correlations even in structurally disordered materials. For example presence of surface induces long-range correlation in liquids. We shall discuss here various types of confinement induced ordering that give rise to novel properties. This effect becomes very important in nanomaterials as confinement length scale is comparable to molecular size.

IISC, Bangalore

Half A Century Of Structural Biology In India. A Personal Perspective

Mr.Atanu Raha,

Principal Chief Conservator of Forests West Bengal.

Use of Remote Sensing Technology for Survey of Sunderban Resources. 

Mr. S.P.Gon Chaudhuri,

W B Green Energy Development Corp.Ltd.

Solar Energy – Global and Indian scenario

Prof. P. Mitra

S I N P, Kolkata

Parity and time-reversal in the fundamental interactions

Prof. Partha P. Majumdar,

ISI, Kolkata

Peopling of South Asia: A Genomic View

Genomic reconstruction of migration trails of modern humans indicates that south Asia has served as a major corridor for the geographic dispersal of humans from out-of-Africa.  Identification of the routes of this dispersal has been difficult. mtDNA and Y-chromosomal markers suggest that the most significant route of this dispersal was from the Horn of Africa across the mouth of the Red Sea along the coasts of southern and southeastern Asia into Australia.  The extant population of south Asia comprises a large number of isolated groups of varying sizes.  This, coupled with the facts that Indian populations have had early contacts with populations outside of the region and that there have been many invasions of India, has resulted in a high degree of genetic diversity in this region.  No clear geographical patterning of the distribution of allele frequencies of genetic markers can be observed within this region.  The entry of the Indo-European speakers from central Asia to south Asia resulted in a massive social restructuring.  This social restructuring has left genetic imprints, and has also resulted in a significant genetic differentiation between caste and tribal populations.  Although the tribal groups carry genetic signatures of being early settlers, it has been difficult to identify which specific subgroup of tribals may have been the earliest settlers, although genomic evidence points to the Austro-asiatic speaking tribals being the earliest settlers.  The contribution of the Indo-European speakers to the south Asian gene pool was overestimated; this contribution appears to have been small.  Further, genomic data suggest that there was some back-migration to central and west Asia, and even to Africa.