The 4th Asian Winter School on Strings, Particles and Cosmology

Today I have got a mail from the organizers asking me to give the travel details if I would like to attend the Asian Winter School on Strings, Particles and Cosmology to be held in Mahabaleshwar, India from 11 January to 20th January, 2010. It would be a great pleasure to attend this school since many big shots from across the world including Harvard, Princeton are coming. But this school has a date clash with WHEPP (2 Jan-12 Jan) about which I have mentioned in the previous post. I am quite surprised since both the school as well as the workshop have been organized by the same institute ICTS (International Center for Theoretical Science, http://www.icts.res.in/). Although the school will cover mainly theoretical aspects from string theory point of view and the workshop is on phenomenology, yet I believe there will be lots of people who have common interests in both strings as well as HEP phenomenology. It could have been nice to leave an option for such people having common interest to attend both the school and the workshop. Although the phenomenology workshop is more important for me from my current research point of view, I am not being able to resist my temptation of bunking the last two days of workshop and go to the school ;). Anyway I am hopeful of arriving at conclusion which one to attend before it is too late..:)

WHEPP XI 02-12 Jan, 2010 @PRL, Ahmedabad

The next Workshop in High Energy Physics Phenomenology(WHEPP) will be in Physical Research Laboratory(PRL) Ahmedabad, India from 2nd to 12 January 2010. The workshop will be having five working groups: Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology, Neutrinos and Physics Beyond the Standard Model, LHC physics, QCD and QGP and B-Physics. There will be 15 review talks and same number of specialized talks during the first five days of the workshop. The first week participants are required to join one of the working groups and start discussing possible new projects. The second half of the workshop is devoted entirely to working group activities. At the end of the workshop the coordinators of the working groups will summarize the progress of new projects started in the workshop. I have got an invitation today to participate in the workshop. Thanks to the organizers for that. Its been a long time I have not gone for any schools, conference and life has become too boring staying at the same place. Looking forward to WHEPP XI and hope to have lots of fun.

APKGK is a good timepass..

After watching most of the hollywood blockbusters which tops the IMDB best movie list, nowadays I have been trying my luck on some bollywood commercial movies. You can never trust newspaper reviews about bollywood commercial movies, the only way to know about the movie is to try it. I know it's quite tough, you can't go on trying all the movies since most of them are pathetic. You need to be very very lucky to find a good movie as the first one to pick up. I am lucky in that sense as I have picked up two good (better call them average) movies, Wake up Sid(WUS) and Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani (APKGK). I posted sometime back regarding my opinions on Wake up Sid. Yesterday I watched the second one. Surprisingly both of them have Ranbir Kapoor in the lead role and I found the character played by him in both the movies somewhat similar. An immature, careless guy discovering life and love which have made him matured, serious about life and all. APKGK is more like a comedy than WUS having some really funny and somewhat stupid scenes in between. Katrina is looking cute as always, Ranbeer looking stupid, confused as he always is. Although it is not a very good movie, at least I was not upset after watching it. I am dying to watch some good English or Hindi movie for a long time. The best movie I have watched in the last couple of months is a German one called "Der Untergang" (The Downfall) with English subtitles. It is a really good movie and worth watching at least once. Hope to see some good English/Hindi releases during the Christmas time.

A great day indeed...!!..;)

I must say today is a really great day for me. My PhD supervisor replied to my mail just 21 minutes after I wrote it. Usually it takes months to get a reply :P. I think he might have found my mail interesting as I have written about some latest calculations and results I have got along with an attachment. Although I was quite upset after I saw a paper two days back where similar works have been done, yet I have argued the differences in my calculations from that in my draft as well as in the mail. Hope my supervisor will appreciate it. Till then, just keeping my fingers crossed :).

A boost for Basic Science Research in India

Shedding light on the fact(which has always been overlooked) that basic science research in India is still not upto the level of expectation, the department of science and technology(DST) has come up with a brand new policy to motivate young minds to opt for science. The usual trend among bright young students in India has always been to go for engineering or medical in reputed institutes like IIT, NIT, AIIMS etc. after passing out from schools. It is believed among the common people that only those students take science after school who could not manage to get a place in engineering or medical. Of course it does not make sense as someone may be genuinely interested in basic science and does not care what engineering or medical is. The reason behind such a trend is of course the much better job prospects after engineering/medical than basic science. Looking at the fact that students may not take science fearing no good job after MSc, the DST has come up with a policy to provide all kinds of financial support to students after MSc to carry out their research project for two years. However this grant will expire after two years and will be re allotted to some other students. DST believes that within two years the student will be able to make himself/herself eligible for a job. Well, I do not know how that gonna happen. In the news article appeared in Times of India which I read yesterday (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Science-graduates-to-be-paid-to-stay-in-class/articleshow/5190812.cms), it is not clearly given if the student has to carry out project under the supervision of some professor/scientist. What I am wondering is, suppose a student gets a grant to work on string theory for two years, what kind of job offer he/she will receive after he/she is done with the project. Since he/she is not a PhD yet, the project does not qualify them to get faculty position somewhere, and it is also a questionable how much good work he/she will be doing in two years. Although such policies are always good to encourage the students towards basic science, I see lots of ambiguities in it. I feel it might be a better idea to invest these money providing better facilities and stipends to PhD students which will encourage students to do research as well as will assure a job after completing PhD in any field which may not be true after a two year project. Anyway, that's what my opinion is. I wish this new DST move a great success, and hope many students will get benefited from it.

Meeting part II

Today we had the technical meeting where we discussed the objectives of the project I talked about in my previous post. There were so many discussions on various phenomenology issues, LHC signatures etc, I gave up completely in between. May be I do not like much to handle numbers which phenomenologist mostly keep doing from various experimental point of view. Anyway, at least Prof Godbole has motivated us to work on a particular problem no matter how much chances are there to get some positive output. I guess my job will be to do some dirty calculations using some numerical package. Although I hate such stuffs very much, I could not make it clear in front of the group members and they got convinced that I would be a good "bakra" whom they can ask to do such numerical stuffs. But before starting the numerical part, I need to get some motivations and feel of the problem, which I have not got completely so far. May be I need to go through all the references we discussed today and make a clear picture of the objectives as well as the motivations. I hope this project at least will keep me busy for the next year which will be good in the sense that my supervisor will be away on sabbatical.

Meeting part I

Finally it happened today, the much awaited meeting with my supervisor. I was with him for almost five hours including lunch. Though there were not much technical discussion, I got a bad headache after the meeting, and had to drink 3 cups of expresso to feel better ;-) . Anyway I fortunately could get my PhD registration form signed from him which I was supposed to submit in January 2009. I hope the stupid academic office won't delay my degree for this. Well, today Prof Godbole from CHEP, IISc Bangalore has also come to the department for discussions related to a DST(Department of Science and Technology) project which has been sanctioned recently. The project is all about Symmetries beyond the standard model and possible LHC signatures as well as connection to dark matter. The topic seems interesting from current research trends in high energy physics. There seems to be so much work going on these issues, I am totally confused which one to pick up and move ahead. There are many ways to incorporate higher symmetries in the standard model and each one has its own motivations. Tomorrow we will be having a formal meeting with Prof Godbole along with my supervisor as well as Prof Ramadevi and to discuss how to proceed. And I have to go through three PRD's tonight, and report if I find something interesting :( . By the way it was a great pleasure to meet Prof Godbole for the first time in a formal way. I became a fan of her after she published her book "Theory and Phenomenology of Sparticles" with Manuel Drees and Probir Roy. I will call it the bible of supersymmetry phenomenology. I am looking forward to tomorrow's meeting with the hope of getting some new ideas to work with :-)