Science Camp, Cultivation, City of Joy etc!

Hello everyone on Blogosphere. It seems like a decade I am away from this blog except to those who are in space or in Miller's planet (courtesy: Interstellar). Coming back here was not a compulsion by the way, but a reflection of the fact that I have been living some beautiful days since November 9 in the city of Joy, Calcutta. The best part of these few days was the freedom I was awarded to do whatever I want which is rare in a government job. I am indeed thankful to my official as well as practical hosts in this city as well as to my university for sending me here. I came here on duty leave taking our students to the National Science Camp held during November 10-12 at Science City here. Although the organizers sent me a hard copy of invitation letter, they simply denied accommodation to me after my arrival, thanks to the lack of communication between national and local organizers. Although they took good care of our students, I had to roam here and there before somehow managing to get into the IACS guest house. Thanks to all who helped me out and gave me a place to stay at night within such a short notice and that too on a weekend. Although the trip to Calcutta started like this, it took off very smoothly as I could utilize my day time reading and discussing things at IACS theoretical physics department. I felt as if I am reading some new science after a long long time. The hectic teaching and administrative work schedule at my workplace hardly allow me to do something creative or read something new. Days were fun with science, whereas the evenings were fun with tasting new food with friends at places like Tandoor Park (Jadavpur), South City Mall (Jadavpur), Peter Cat (Park Street) etc. Visiting the Victoria Memorial at night was simply amazing, such a mesmerizing structure. My stay here also allowed me to watch the new movie Interstellar released last week. This would have never been possible in a small town like Tezpur where I work. Before leaving tonight, just thanking everyone who made my stay comfortable and enjoyable. Also a big thanks to the National Science Camp organizers who could not offer me a place to stay but finally paid for my stay at a place which I am sure is better than anything the organizers would have offered. Adios City of Joy, hope to visit again!

Adios 2012!

2012 indeed was great (to me at least), not just because the world didn't end on 21st December but for several other reasons, mostly academic though. The year took off while I was in the awesome city of Montreal, Canada. Although it was very cold, watching the snowfall and tasting so many different varieties of wines from different countries were something which made my stay there memorable. I got learn some new physics and could finish some parts of the project before leaving. The most hectic part during the first couple of months of 2012 was to write thesis and apply for postdoc positions. The job market scene was so poor that even after applying for around 40 odd positions trough AJO, I didn't get any positive response. After coming back to India in March, I submitted my thesis in the month of April without too much editing, but thankfully it didn't have to go through too many corrections after reviewer's comments came. I am thankful to the anonymous referee for reviewing my thesis just on time. That enabled my institute to hold my defense just on the deadline (a week before the convocation) and my degree was awarded in the 50th convocation of IIT Bombay. Although I could not attend convocation, getting both Masters and PhD degree was really really huge for me. Another gift from 2012 was the central government job I got in Tezpur University where I am working now. That was a big relief after so many postdoc rejections. It was also like a dream coming true that I got a job in my home state Assam and that too in Tezpur which is just 25 kilometer from my home. I also made my second trip to ICTP for the BENE 2012 workshop, participated in the TeVPA 2012 conference in Mumbai. Not just me, 2012 was a great year for Physics in general. Discovery of Higgs boson at LHC, measurement of non zero reactor mixing angle are undoubtedly the most remarkable things happened in the science this year. I hope similar excitements would continue in the year 2013 as  well, may not be from LHC which wont have any proton proton collisions until 2015, but from other experimental frontiers as well related to dark matter, neutrinos and many more. Happy New Year 2013 to all of us!

A few Updates!

Well, quite a few updates to be precise. That's natural when one is away from the blogosphere for a long time. Lots of things happened since my last post, not all of them worth mentioning of course. The most important of them perhaps is my new affiliation and job. Yes, as I mentioned earlier, my PhD life ended on June 30, 2012 as scheduled without taking any extensions. And thankfully, I dint have to roam around jobless for a long time. I got an offer from a central government university in Tezpur, a small town in the Indian state Assam. Though I was supposed to join HRI, Allahabad sometime in July as a postdoctoral fellow, this offer from Tezpur University came as a big surprise. Being a fresh graduate, I applied there with zero expectation but with a good reason (as the University is just 30 km away from my Home). Also, I did know that its the best University in the North Eastern region of India and the education system is not too different from the IIT's. I am not much sure how different life would have been if I had gone to HRI rather than coming to Tezpur. But one difference is for sure: in Allahabad I would been crossing the river Ganges everyday whereas here I am crossing the Brahmaputra everyday ;-)

Anyways, life is quite enjoyable here in Tezpur specially after I got a campus residence few days back. I hardly feel like being away from my alma mater IIT Bombay. But of course the difference is severe if one goes outside the Tezpur University campus and that of IIT Bombay which for me is not of any concern as I never got addicted to typical city life in Bombay or any other cities. I have been teaching Electromagnetic Theory to MSc first year and General Theory of Relativity to MSc second year. Plus I have to take BTech Physics tutorials sometimes and have to guide an MSc second year project student. Yes, its quite hectic for a beginner as it sounds! But, same load will be on a postdoctoral fellow also in any good research institute. So, I have nothing to complain either to my employer or to myself. It's true (obviously) that teaching load slows down individual research quite a lot. That's the only thing which concerns me most here. I hope I will be able to complement this by visiting some good places whenever my university allows me. Recently, I visited ICTP for the workshop on BEhind NEutrino mass and mixing (BENE) which turned out to be a really good experience with almost all the big shots in this field from all around the world delivering some enlightening talks.I listened to so many talks on discrete flavor symmetries there that I have started liking some of them now, though discrete symmetries always looked very unnatural and ugly to me while I was a PhD student. I am planning to visit Aizawl, Mizoram next month for another conference and perhaps DAE symposium also which will be in January at Shantiniketan, West Bengal.

Hope to post some more updates soon, Cheers!

No Work For last one month :(

Since the quarter final match of ICC cricket world cup, I have been doing no work at all. Just after the World Cup, I went to PRL, Ahmedabad for a meeting on Dark Matter and then to Assam. The meeting on dark matter was not as good as I was expecting. This might be because, there was a big international workshop cum conference at SINP, Calcutta on the same topic in January. Anyway, it was nevertheless useful for me, the hospitality at PRL was as good as before. Just after returning from PRL, I left for home in Assam. It was really tiring to do consecutive journeys but you usually don't feel it much when you are going towards home sweet home after a gap of six months. This home trip was special for me in the sense that I was at home during the occasion of Bohag (Rongali) Bihu. Although the fever of Assembly Elections in Assam somehow diminished the excitement for Bihu, for me it was special. It was great to be at home on this occasion after a gap of 9-10 years. I could also cast my vote for the first time in my life, and that was quite exciting. I also visited the physics department of Tezpur University (a Central University located in a town called Tezpur) and gave a talk on my work. Apart from preparing the talk, I have done nothing for the last one month or so. Trying hard to get back to work now..it seems really difficult after a long gap :(

Japan 2011 disaster!

Japan has been one of the worst sufferer of natural as well as war disasters throughout the ages. And none of them could stop them from becoming one of the most developed nation in the world. The latest such disaster in the March 10th quake of 8.9 magnitude in the Richter scale which brought Tsunami as well as nuclear disasters by triggering blast at couple of nuclear power plants. Japanese premier has called it the worst disaster since world war II. So far there have been three blasts in the nuclear power plants which is slowly increasing the radiation leak. Even the city of Tokyo which is around 25o km away from one of such nuclear plant, has detected a minute increase in radiation level (not a threat to human life so far). If further such radiation leak is not controlled, this can prove to be much worse than the Tsunami itself which killed more than 10 thousand people. Not a single good news is coming in the media till now about the situations in Japan. Instead of asking the people to be united and calm at this time of disaster, some stupid media is trying to related this quake with a possible end of the world hypothesis in 2012, creating a panic among the common people. There is nothing new happening, such natural disasters have been happening since the beginning of life. This time the situation has become critical due to the blasts at Nuclear power plants. But I hope Japan will prove to be strong like before and will restore their development, their economy. Hope the whole world will stand united and will do whatever then can for this beautiful country and its people.

Delhi proved it once again!

Commonwealth games brought a vast difference to the capital city of India in terms of infrastructure, road, transport, quality of living etc. The successful completion of the games put a very good impression of the city at international level. But better roads, better way of transport do not always mean that the people are good and Delhi has proved it once again. Delhi has maintained the top position in the country probably for a long time in terms of crime against women. It is considered to be one of the most unsafe city for women in India. That clearly shows the typical mind-sent of common people towards women there. The day before yesterday there was another incident of gang-rape in the city. And this time also the victim was a BPO employee. No wonder that states like Haryana which is the worst sufferer of problems like female foeticide, honor killings, dowry and all neighbors the capital city. Until the people change their mindset, develop a little respect for women I doubt if such incidents can be stopped by strict law and order. Delhi has a mixed crowd, people from various parts of the country come there for various purposes. Out of them, may be the number of people coming from the seven north eastern states is the largest. And the crime against north eastern women is also largest. Apart from the most heinous act of rape, there are many incidents of racial abuse also. And north eastern people who look different from the people of rest of India fall prey to such racism very easily. People call them "Chinki", a disgusting word which I came to know of when I went to Delhi for the first time to pursue my BSc. When I introduced myself to couple of friends in the college and told them that I am from North East, their first reaction was how come I don't look like a chinki. People are so used to these words that they don't even think this could be a racist word. You can't make fun of people with their looks, color etc. But it's hard to convince people. Most of the time I give up when I try to convince anyone that these words make fun of people's look and we should not use them. But the same people reacted like anything when there was racial attack against Indians in various cities in Australia. Racism of any kind and anywhere is intolerable and I regret to say that Indians also suffer from it in their country. But it always goes out of notice to most of us, people think the abusive words are just for making fun. They are not only abusing the north eastern women, but at the same time they are making them look like alien to the rest of the people in the city. They feel lonely, insecure because of this and the most unfortunate ones become victims of the most heinous act of rape followed by murder sometimes. We can't always keep blaming the law and order situation, government, police for failing to provide safety to the women in a city. We, the people have to change and develop mutual respect towards our fellow human first.

What's going on in this country?

I usually try to keep myself indifferent to politics, media and all. But it seems too much now to keep myself so. I do not know if me as well as billion citizens of India are being fooled around by the stupid media here or is it really true that everything is going wrong across the country (except the stock exchange probably). The only good news I see nowadays is that the boom in stock exchange, creating new and new records. But these stock exchange records hardly make any difference to the poor in this country. Although economics is something I hardly understand, but I can definitely say that these so called economic boom is creating an absolutely wrong image of the country in the world as if we are really developing a lot. The poor-rich hierarchy is increasing like anything in this country and only the rich people's growth gets reflected in the sensex mirror. Anyway this is not a new issue in this country, it has been like this always and nobody pays much attention to it unless the sensex crashes. India has been facing so many internal problems recently starting with the Maoists who are as worse as terrorists but somehow our politicians are protecting them saying they are son of this country only. The second turmoil is the Commonwealth Games (CWG). Although it was a matter of proud when India won the bid to host this prestigious event, now I guess most of the citizens feel it to be shame now. Nothing is going well with this event which is scheduled to be started on 3rd October 2010. Looking at the present situation I seriously doubt if it is going to happen at all or not. After missing deadline many times, the whole organizing committee is found to have misused the funds allotted for the event. Not only that, the stadiums they prepared are not up to the mark and yesterday it came in news that the Accommodation at the Games village was too below international standards as complaints came from many foreign delegates. Today a foot bridge collapsed there adding one more feather to the CWG cap. The billions of people in the country have been made laughing stock in the world just because of some corrupted politicians and bureaucrats. While the government might be focusing on this CWG, on the other side Kashmir is boiling like never before. The ongoing protests there have crossed 100 days as well as 100 casualties so far and no agreement, understandings have been reached so far between the government and the separatists there. The hard-line separatists now want Kashmir committees in both India and Pakistan for some reason I do not understand. I seriously doubt whether those separatists want Kashmir to be an Independent country or a province in Pakistan or China may be. This unrest in Kashmir has also brought a serious concern of safety in the country specially in the CWG event in Delhi. I hope everything will remain alright at least till the end of this event.

CSIR NET

Today the CSIR NET result came out, and to my surprise I cracked it. I don't know what to say, but one thing for sure: this is the easiest competitive examination in India probably. I appeared it with almost zero preparation, attempted 50 percent in paper I and 75 percent in paper II and still I got rank 70. Wow...sounds cool, isn't it? The examination was in December last year, I was busy with my semester activities till November end, then went to Guwahati for ten days, came back to Bombay just one week before the NET examination, revised some of my MSc syllabus. And the way we went to appear the exam in Pune was like going for a picnic. We were six together and most of us had no preparation at all. Anyway it was fun. Although this JRF will not be useful for me practically but it will certainly be a tag in my CV :)

Horrible weather

I came back from Mahableshwar after attending the Asian Winter School (bunking the last day of course). The weather there was very pleasant, neither too cold nor too hot. Just after coming down from there I started feeling the heat. I could not believe Bombay can be so hot in January. Although I have been staying in Bombay since last three and half years, I don't remember if the weather was as hot as this in the month of January. I am sweating like hell, and the strawberries which I bought from Mahableshwar thinking that the cold weather will help me take those to my home which is three thousand kilometers away. I am leaving Bombay day after tomorrow, I just hope at least some of the strawberries will be in good shape till then. I always defended life in Bombay talking about the weather here, but looking at the present condition, I don't think I was correct in saying Bombay weather is the best in India.

Awesome Banquet Dinner

Last night we had a banquet dinner at Fountain Hotel, Mahableshwar where the Asian Winter school is currently going on. It was really amazing.....the food, the drinks and specially the dance floor they arranged. Although they did not have any music to play other than typical bollywood dance numbers, nobody complained however. Forget about few Indians on the dance floor including me, the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese danced like anything. Many of the people on the dance floor had no idea what they were doing..I was dancing like I did on new year's eve in Delhi which my cousins said was really crazy. There were many funny things going on in the stage apart from the dance. Among them, there was a Chinese guy who was wearing a lungi which he bought from Kerala, and while dancing the lungi was falling down again and again :D. Some of the Japanese were dancing such a way that it looked like Kung Fu. The best part was the last ten minutes of our crazy dancing when we requested Kenneth Intriligator (Professor, UCSD) to come to the stage and to our surprise he did not refuse. He gave us good company till the end. It was really enjoyable and one of the best experiences in my life. I never thought I would someday dance like this in front of so many people from abroad. Sometimes I get confused whether I am dreaming all these things or did it really happen. Anyway, thanks to ICTS once again for such an awesome banquet dinner.

Remembering 26-11

Today is the first anniversary of the most horrible terrorist attack not only in Bombay, but in the entire country which killed around two hundred people including a few foreigners. Although after that incident no such major terrorist attacks have happened so far, it's difficult to comment on how much India has learned from it and how much improvement on the internal security have taken place. I still feel somehow, our security forces are not well-equipped although a specialized commandos have been deployed in Bombay almost after one year of 26-11 to prevent further attacks. I also doubt if the victims got enough compensations from the Government. Needless to talk about the culprits behind this attack, no punishment has been given so far, the trials are going on in a never-ending way. It seems unlikely that Indian judiciary system will award them capital punishments keeping an eye on the fact that many such terrorists like Afzal Guru (behind parliament attacks) are still alive and may be will be freed under Kandahar Airline hijack situations. Its really frustrating for the common Indian citizen to see such stupid things happening in the country, mass murderers are kept alive and freed to invite more situations where the common public have to suffer. Anyway I pray for all the victims as well as their families on the occasion of 1st anniversary of 26-11 and just hope Bombay would never suffer like this.

Sleeping less than 7 hours a day?

Today I got a mail from someone in the department of metallurgy and material science, IIT Bombay which emphasizes on the need of good sleep. In fact he forwarded the mail to all the IIT B people. It's a very good time to remind all the students with the probable consequences of not having good sleep since end semester examination has already started and most of the students might be planning night outs to prepare for examination. The fellow who has sent the mail seems to have collected a few very important points:

1. Short sleep duration (less than 5 or 5-6 hours) increased risk for high BP by 350% to 500% compared to those who slept longer than 6 hours per night. Paper published in 2009. And high BP kills for sure.

2. Young people (25-49 years of age) are twice as likely to get high BP if they sleep less. Paper published in 2006.

3. Individuals who slept less than 5 hours a night had a 3-fold increased risk of heart attacks. Paper published in 1999.
4. Complete and partial lack of sleep increased the blood concentrations of High sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hs-cRP), the strongest predictor of heart attacks. Even after getting adequate sleep later, the levels stayed high.
5. Just one night of sleep loss increases very toxic substances in body such as Interleukin-6 (IL-6), Tumour Nacrosis Factor-Alpha (TNF-alpha) and C-reactive protein (cRP). They
increase risk of many medical conditions including cancer, arthritis and hear disease. Paper
published in 2004.
6. Sleeping for less than or equal to five hours per night leads to 39% increase in heart diseases.
Sleeping for less than or equal to 6 hours per night leads to 18% increase in heart disease. Paper
published in 2006.

The fellow has also pointed out the possible region behind the sudden death of a Mumbai based
CEO of some MNC as the lack of sleep. I really appreciate the effort made by him. I hope the IIT junta will pay a little attention to it.

Do we need "Bombay to Mumbai" type conversions every year?

It has become so common nowadays to see changes in the name of cities, streets as well as states in India. Every time I see the news "Union Cabinet has approved the change in nomenclature from xyz to abc", I find it so odd. People are so used to the earlier names that such a sudden change brings real chaos. Someone says correctly that everything was done by the British, we just keep changing the names. I agree that, some regional sentiments are attached to such changes. The names given by the British to the cities, states may not sound like the way it should be according to the language specific to that state. But why no one was there to think about it before? Its more than sixty years now since India got independence and now people are becoming desperate to change everything. They don't even realize how long it will take for the new name they give to become familiar to the world. For example if you change the name of a fifty year old institute like IIT Bombay to IIT Mumbai just because some political parties change the name of the city from Bombay to Mumbai, people would find it very difficult (specially abroad) whether these two names correspond to the same institute or not and that will surely gonna affect the academic part. But no matter what happens to the institute reputation and popularity, political parties will change the name for sure sooner or later. Today I have seen "Orissa is now Odisha, Oriya becomes Odiya" in Times of India which is just a replica of Bombay->Mumbai, Bangalore->Bangaluru and many others. I remember people in my state were also proposing the change of the name from "Assam" to "Asom". I am however not in favor of it. Basically the true ethnic pronounciation is neither Assam nor Asom. It is just a convenient way to write since there are some letters in Assamese alphabet which are pronounced in such a way that there is no counterpart in English or in Hindi. People write those alphabets either by using "s" or "h" in English. Thus although change in such nomenclature may have some correctness in the case of other states, this is not the case with "Assam->Asom". May be we should better stick to the earlier and most popular name of our state. Personally I feel, its the people of the state who have to carry the true identity of the state they belong to and their ethnic culture, not the name of the state.

An Unbelievable/Uncomfortable/Inconvenient Truth

Yesterday I came to know about an article related to P. Sainath, the 2007 winner of Magsaysay Award for journalism, literature, and creative communication arts and his studies as well as various published articles on Indian Poverty. The article titled "Uncomfortable Truth: P. Sainath reminds us that India is still a poor country" was published more than one year ago. The link to the same is here (http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/173677093_1.html). It is billion times more shocking than "An Inconvenient Truth", the documentary film on global warming. Nowadays due to media coverage as well as increase in public awareness, global warming has become the topic of discussion everywhere and people at least know what it is. But this "Uncomfortable Truth" about Indian poverty will probably give a shock to people from all over the world. Specially at a time when Indian economy is considered as one of the fastest growing economy and people projecting Indian economy as one of the most dominant one in coming years, people can hardly imagine that more than seventy percent of the Indian population is below the so called poverty line. However the Government report says a different story (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India). It is difficult to say which one is true. But an extensive study made by a person like P. Sainath can not be ignored at all. I do not know how the Indian Government will react to it. But if it is true, it will surely show how fragile Indian economy is. After all, an economy which is surviving on just one fourth of the population can not be a stable economy although for a certain period it may show significant growth. I have just come to know that P. Sainath is coming to IIT Bombay sometime in November. I hope he will make the things clear to us.

China leaves no stone unturned to keep India worried all the time..

From Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, from fake medicines with "Made in India" tag to Extremists in North East, it seems China is very much interested in keeping India worried. After declaring Sikkim as a part of India, China has directed its attention towards Kashmir and North East, the two most unstable regions of India hit by insurgency problem and many others. Needless to mention that China claims several thousands square kilometers of Arunachal Pradesh as its own territory. Having objected to Dalai Lama's proposed visit to Tawang in November, China even raised protest after the Indian PM visited Arunachal. It is also believed for a long time that the militants in the North Eastern states of India who are fighting for so called "sovereignty" get arms as well as shelter in China. According to media report China is also planning to construct a dam in Tibet which will severely affect the flow of the river Brahmaputra in Assam. It has also been reported that China is involved in various civilian projects (and may be military also) in the Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) region, which India considers as illegally occupied by Pakistan. Apart from issuing separate visa to Indian nationals who are from Kashmir, China is now projecting Kashmir as a separate country. The handouts given to invited journalists in Tibet by the Chinese Government says "Tibet borders with India, Nepal, Myanmar and Kashmir". What the hell does it mean? Leave these political issues aside. China is doing more than that. Few months back I have seen in the news that China is exporting fake medicines with "Made in India" tag to African countries. What China wants after all? They would have probably invaded India again like they did in 1962 if India had not developed nukes by now. I hope India will act strongly against all these in a diplomatic way. China may be the fastest growing economy in the world, it may have the largest military strength, but that does not mean they will keep doing whatever they want. I was surprised to see the US president cancelling his meeting with Dalai Lama(during His visit to the US) just to keep the Chinese happy before his visit to China. Anyway I know too little politics to comment more on such issues. Its better to get back to physics...:)

Purpose of Blogging

Sometimes I wonder why I am spending my time on the blogosphere. I keep writing random stuffs through which I don't have to carry any information to anyone. And I don't even think whatever I write here may prove to be useful for someone. But personally I was benefited a lot by several blogs. Those sincere bloggers are really doing a great job by sharing their ideas, opinions related to diverse fields. Specially the physics stuffs they write are very recent as well as significant. Whereas I use my blog as an open diary. I just write whatever I learn, whatever I do and all. I don't even know if they are worth writing, but it seems from a couple of months it has become one of my hobbies. I hope after spending another two-three years on the blogosphere I would be able to write some constructive things based on my own ideas.