Platinum Jubilee 1934-2009
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No. 49 March 2009 Newsletter of the Indian Academy of Sciences Platinum Jubilee 1934-2009 Inside... 1. 2008 Annual Meeting, 2008 Annual Meeting Delhi ......................................... 1 The seventy-fourth Annual Meeting of the Academy, the last major event 2. Platinum Jubilee Meeting – I, before the launching of several Platinum Jubilee programmes, was hosted by Hyderabad ............................... 3 the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi during 31 October – 2 November, 2008. The number of Fellows and Associates attending was about 180. 3. 2009 Elections ......................... 5 At some of the lectures many school students were present in the audience; 4. Special Issues of Journals ...... 7 however overall, the participation by faculty and students from the many institutions in Delhi was somewhat less than may have been expected, no 5. Discussion Meeting ............... 11 doubt in part due to logistical reasons. A special meeting with about 32 teacher 6. Refresher Courses ................ 12 invitees was held on 30 October in the evening. 7. Lecture Workshops ................ 14 The Presidential address by D Balasubramanian was titled "The human 8. Platinum Jubilee eye lens: A tissue that age does wither, custom does stale" (with due Programmes .......................... 22 acknowledgement to the bard). It was a fascinating account of the structure, 9. Academy – Springer composition and ageing processes of the lens, a real 'eye-opener'. To put Co-Publication Agreement .... 25 this in perspective, one may recall that we humans (and our near relatives) are intensely visual creatives, with as much as 40% of our brain capacity 10. Obituaries ............................... 25 devoted to sight. So the eye is our prime sense. We learnt that the great 11. Scholarly Communication impressionist Claude Monet, whose enchanting paintings of water lilies in the Age of the Commons ... 31 date from 1899, started losing vision by 1908; cataract was diagnosed in 1923, good corrective glasses were available by 1925, but he lived only 12. ‘Lilavati’s Daughters’ ............. 32 till 1926. The effects of his deteriorating vision seem evident in his late works. We also learnt that worldwide 1% of the population suffers blindness EDITOR N. Mukunda Published by Indian Academy of Sciences Bangalore 560 080, India Phone: (080) 2361 2546, 2361 4592 email: [email protected] This Newsletter is available on the Academy website at: www.ias.ac.in/patrika/ To receive a regular copy of the Newsletter, please write to the Executive Secretary of the Academy ([email protected]) Forthcoming Events – 2009 Refresher Courses Jaihind College, : May – June 2009 Dhule Alagappa University, : 7 – 22 May 2009 Karaikudi Rajiv Gandhi Institute of IT & Biotechnology, : 11 – 23 May 2009 Pune Mangalore University, : 11 – 23 May 2009 Mangalagangotri University of Hyderabad : 15 – 29 June 2009 Hyderabad Osmania University, : 26 June – Hyderabad 11 July 2009 Lecture Workshops Karnatak University, : 17 – 18 April 2009 Dharwad Forthcoming Platinum Jubilee Lectures – Please see page 24 2 – of which 60% are cataracts, 10% infections, 8% due to lack of glasses. Cataract, like Alzheimer's, is an PLATINUM JUBILEE age-related problem; and in India 5 million cataract surgeries are carried out annually. Some of the reputed MEETING – I, institutions in this field are the LV Prasad Eye Institute Hyderabad in Hyderabad, the Aravinda group in Madurai, and the Sankar Nethralaya group based in Chennai. 2 – 4 July 2009 Narayani Gupta's public lecture, 'Delhi – the city of many gates' traced the fascinating history of this city Programme over more than a thousand years, its cosmopolitan nature and mix of cultures, as well as the birth of 2 July 2009 (Thursday) Urdu and beautiful new architectural styles. All this rich 0930 – 0950 Welcome address by President heritage is so easily missed if one is embroiled in the hassles of contemporary life and movement in the 0950 – 1030 capital. C Rangarajan's public lecture, 'The state, Session 1A Special Lecture of the Indian economy – Achievements and Lalji Singh, Centre for Cellular and challenges' was a scholarly appraisal of our situation Molecular Biology, Hyderabad and prospects in the midst of the present worldwide Genetic diversity in Indian populations crisis. The comforting thought was that thanks to and its implications in health and some prudence and caution over the years we would disease not suffer as much as many other countries. 1030 – 1100 Tea break There were two technical special lectures: Ajay Sood 1100 – 1300 on 'Fascinating dynamics of soft matter', and K Muralidhar on 'Mammalian prolactin'. Sood dwelt Session 1B Lectures by Fellows / Associates on the behaviour of matter in nonequilibrium conditions, 1100 – 1120 P. P. Sadhale, IISc, Bangalore a subject overlapping with chemistry, biology, chemical A serendipitous discovery of a novel engineering, and materials science. Like some others, drug target soft matter too is a subject 'san frontieres'. Muralidhar 1120 – 1140 P. N. Vinayachandran, IISc, Bangalore covered a research effort of more than three decades with origins in the Indian Institute of Science, then Impact of physical processes on Bay of Bengal biology continued at the University of Hyderabad, and finally at Delhi University. 1140 – 1200 Indranil Manna, IIT, Kharagpur Novelty of nano-dispersed solid alloys Two other truly notable events of the meeting were and thermal fluids a Panel Discussion on 'Women in Science', and on the cultural side, a brilliantly choreographed and 1200 – 1220 E. Arunan, IISc, Bangalore performed ballet 'Karna' in the Mayurbhanj Chau Making weak bonds and breaking strong tradition. A report on the Panel Discussion will appear bonds with supersonic techniques soon at the Academy website, and will lead later to a 1220 – 1240 Srikanth Sastry, JNCASR, Bangalore Position Paper from the Academy. Slow dynamics and the glass transition in supercooled liquids The other events in the programme, which overall was a very rich one, were 18 lectures by Fellows/Associates, 1300 – 1430 Lunch break a Symposium on 'Complexity and computation in the 1430 – 1730 natural sciences', and one on 'Energy'. The former covered stochastic processes and statistical physics, Session 1C Lectures by Fellows / Associates biochemical pathways, the Indian monsoon, and 1430 – 1450 K. Sandeep, TIFR Centre for turbulence. The latter covered photovoltaic technologies, Applicable Mathematics, Bangalore present status and prospects of nuclear energy, and Inequalities and partial differential energy from bio-resources. equations 3 1450 – 1510 Rajendra P. Roy, National Institute of Chithra Madhavan, ICHR, Chennai Immunology, New Delhi Temple architecture in India: An Sorting out nature's tools for protein example of cultural evolution surgery Shireen Moosvi, AMU, Aligarh 1510 – 1530 Sudip Chattopadhyay Darwin and interpretations of history National Institute for Plant Genome 1300 – 1430 Lunch break Research, New Delhi 1430 – 1510 The role of ZBFs in arabidopsis seedling development Session 2B Special Lecture : Surendra Prasad, IIT, New Delhi 1530 – 1600 Tea break 1510 – 1800 1600 – 1620 Y. Narahari, IISc, Bangalore Session 2C Lectures by Fellows/Associates Games, auctions and market design 1510 – 1530 Soniya Nityanand, Sanjay Gandhi 1620 – 1640 T. Pradeep, IIT, Chennai PG Institute of Medical Sciences, Light emitting clusters of noble metals Lucknow Excitement about mesenchymal stem 1640 – 1700 Bipul Pal, IISER, Nadia cells Spintronics : A new twist in electronics 1530 – 1550 Mewa Singh, University of Mysore, 1700 – 1720 P. Sankaran, The Institute of Mysore Mathematical Sciences, Chennai How do animal species space out or Maps between Grassmann manifolds coexist in their wild habitats? 1550 – 1620 Tea break 1720 – 1740 G. P. S. Raghava, IMTECH, Chandigarh GPSR: A resource for genomics, 1620 – 1640 S. N. Suresh Babu, VSSC, proteomics and systems biology Thiruvananthapuram Aerosols and climate 1800 – 1900 Session 1D Public Lecture : Narender Luther, 1640 – 1700 Abhijit Mitra, IIT, Guwahati Hyderabad The wireless world: Upcoming trends History and heritage of twin cities 1700 – 1720 P. S. Mukherjee, IISc, Bangalore 1915 – 2015 Cultural Programme Molecular assemblies of finite shapes: Design and self-assembly via co- ordination. 3 July 2009 (Friday) 1720 – 1740 N. Mahajan, PRL, Ahmedabad 0900 – 1300 Physics of beauty: A window into the Session 2A Symposium – Darwin and Evolution known and unknown (Convener: V. Nanjundiah) 1740 – 1800 N. Srinivasan, IISc, Bangalore Ashok Sahni, Panjab University, Evolution of protein-protein interactions Chandigarh 1830 – 1930 Planetary-scale events and evolution Session 2D Public Lecture Michael Witzel, Harvard University W. Selvamurthy, DRDO, New Delhi Origin and development of language in South Asia: Phylogeny vs Epigenetics? 4 July 2009 (Saturday) Ranajit Chakraborty, Univ. of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati 0930 – 1300 Genetic evidence of the peopling of Session 3A Lectures by Fellows/Associates India 0930 – 0950 A. C. Mishra, National Institute of Virology, Pune 1030 – 1100 Tea break Problems and perspectives of avian R. Narasimha, JNCASR, Bangalore influenza emergence in India 4 0950 – 1010 Veena K. Parnaik, CCMB, Hyderabad Renee M Borges Novel insights into spatial and functional Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore organization in the cell nucleus Area : Evolutionary biology and behavioural ecology. 1010 – 1030 S. Natarajan, IISc, Bangalore Are the metal-organic