Work stress and heart disease

No kidding! A Canadian study has shown that stress at work can increase your chances of a heart attack. What a surprise? In any case, you can read about it here.

Why pure science?

I will never be able to put as well as Victor Weisskopf did in 1964 in article that has been reprinted by the CERN Courier in this article. Of the many wonderful things he say here, the following catches my attention:

The value of fundamental research does not lie only in the ideas it produces. If science is highly regarded and the importance of being concerned with the most up-to-date problems of fundamental research is recognized, then a spiritual climate is created which influences all other activities. An atmosphere of creativity is established which penetrates to every cultural frontier. Applied sciences and technology are forced to adjust themselves to the highest intellectual standards, which are determined in pure research; that is what attracts productive people and brings productive scientists to those countries where science is at its highest level.

Ajay Sree Chandra --- In Memoriam

I suddenly realized that as a blogger from IISc, I had not said anything about such a serious matter as the recent suicide of one of our students. Of course I did not know this student; I had no way of knowing him. But the news filled me with a cold horror and dread. More recently there has been a lot being written about the caste dimension of this sad, cruelly ironic and tragic situation. I have nothing to say about any of that. In posting this article, I want to simply lay open my door to any student of the Institute (or elsewhere?) to discuss any of their problems and I will offer whatever little I can by way of assitance, solace or counselling. Also, here are a few words of condolence to his family and his friends, although I just don't know how my words can help anyone.

(Mis)measure of science

On Swarup's blog I found a link to this awesome article by Peter Lawrence on the mismeasurement of science. I often like to joke that Euclid'e H-index cannot 13. But jokes apart, it is very important the science policy makers take note of the arguments here.

Deccan Herald article on Nuclear Deal

I must confess that I have not been following the nuclear deal very closely. Of course one has the gut feeling that there is something really rotten about it. In fact, there is very little that one can read about what it is in any way a good thing. I may link to other articles in the upcoming days. However, here is a very striking article from today's Deccan Herald. Here is a quote.

Equally, for the UPA government, especially for the Congress party, there is bound to be sensitivity in identifying with a US administration that is about to go on yet another crusade against a Muslim country. For completely different reasons, therefore, the Manmohan Singh government and the Bush administration have unspeakable concerns in ensuring that somehow the nuclear deal is wrapped up before the dogs of war are let loose in West Asia.

Of course being a Muslim or otherwise has nothing to do with opposing the activities of the US in the region.

Spreading the word at Christ College

I was happy to accept the invitation of my friend and colleague Diptiman Sen to be a mentor/lecturer/presenter at two programmes arranged by the Indian Academy of Sciences recently, and which took place at Christ College in the southern part of Bangalore. The first was for Pre-University teachers and the second for Degree and Post-Graduate College teachers. To my pleasant surprise at the second event there were many M. Sc. students as well. At the first programme, the teachers asked me deal with some difficulties they had in explaining concepts after a fairly detailed introduction I gave. At the second, the teachers said that they had no difficulties! So there I was having to fill up about two and a half hours! It turned into a very long impromptu set of lectures on the present status of elementary particle physics. I enjoyed it very much, even if the participants did not! Also striking on both occasions was the warmth and hospitality of the organizers. I hope there will be more invitations for such programmes coming up!

My recent popular (?) science writing

Here I am giving links to three articles that I wrote with summer students and my former student Shivaraj who has now gone off to Minnesota. The first two were written with students coming to me from the Institutes `Young Science Fellowship Programme' [the syntax does not really make sense; anyway that is what it is called] and these are Keshav Choudhary, Lishbanya Mohapatra, Indrajeet Patil and Avinash Rustagi. The third one is with a student, Kshitij Garg, who came to me through the KVPY programme.

The first article is on the observation of exotic baryons at Fermilab and has been published in Current Science here.

The second article is on oscillation phenomena in heavy-meson systems and has been published in Current Science here.

The third article is on quantum entanglement phenomena in B-meson system. This has been accepted for publication in Current Science.

I will direct the readers of this humble blog to the articles themselves and they are meant for such a readership.