Information Pasteboard
Weekly reports of meetings at NAL, snippets of R&D activity, conference announcements and other features of popular interest
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News and Events #IP 983 25 - 31 Jul 2011 “How to take care of your Heart ….” “Heart attack will not happen to me - this is what every heart patient believes until it happens; Indians are genetically three times more vulnerable than Europeans. Indians develop heart problems at a younger age - the average age of the Indian patients is 45 years as compared to 65 years in UK. It is no more the case of young son bringing his father, but the other way round: an old father bringing his young son to the heart clinic in India! Past the age of 60, heart blockages do not mean the end of the road”, these were the revelations made by Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, The Chairman, Narayana Hrudalaya, Bangalore, and Asia Heart Foundation, Kolkata at NAL on 20th July. He was delivering the Invited Lecture, “How to take care of your heart and general health” under the aegis of CSIR-NAL officers‘club. Dr. Shetty began his lecture with certain facts about heart attack – Diabetics are more vulnerable; so also smokers and others taking tobacco in any form; strong family history with male members not surviving beyond 50 years; obese persons with abnormal lipid profile and hypertensive are more prone for heart problems. He said, “Type ‘A’ personalities – typical bosses on the edge of their seats who want results for the tasks yesterday – are also more vulnerable “. Coming to the ideal diet his prescription was reduce fat content as far as possible, 2-5 tea spoons of oil (Mind, not table spoons), reduce the amount of carbohydrate, increase protein, include fruits and salads. He suggested “Perfect” breakfast: “Corn flakes, one cup of milk, and one banana, and this can keep you going till your lunch”; he said in a lighter vain that he was not sponsored by “Kellogs”. “When to eat is important than what you eat ”, he said. H e had a simple mantra to lose weight - walk, water, and diet- have to drink ten glasses of f water (2-2.5L per day) to lose weight. Dr. Shetty's advice regarding who should go for a heart check up: everyone above 40 years at least once a year, a chronic smoker, diabetic, obese and hypertensive more often. He pointed out, “A resting ECG may be normal but may conceal a heart problem; a treadmill test would be able to pick up an abnormality under stressed condition”. Dr. Shetty revealed that the first eight hours after the heart attack is the Golden period of the heart attack: If medication is provided within this period, in the majority of the cases the heart attack can be reversed. “Take the patient with any severe heart pain at the earliest to a hospital or nursing centre with provision for intensive coronary care facilities. . After the Golden period there could be permanent damage to the heart. If the patient is not taken to the coronary care unit within 24 hours, the chances of his survival reduces by 50%”, he said. He also emphasiz ed not to take chances attributing the heart pain to any other condition like acidity or a heavy meal previous night etc. “….After all, you would not be adversely affected if it is not a heart attack, but you could be saving the life otherwise”, he advised. Dr. Shetty mentioned that heart patients in the age of 30-35 are at high risk and need aggressive treatment. The development of heart attack after the age of 50-60 is due to the normal ageing process, and they may not always need intervention. One can lead a normal life after an angio plasty procedure, or bypass surgery as long as one controls the diet and takes medication as per doctor’s advice. He cautioned that if a cardiologist advises intervention after just reading an angiogram report which diagnosis a 6 0 percent blockade without examining the angio film himself, one may have to seek a second opinion. Elaborating he said, it is not just the percentage of blockade but the original diameter of the coronary artery that matters – a 7 0 percent blockade in a narrow coronary artery is more critical than a 7 0 percent blockade in a large artery. Both the diameter of the artery and the blockage have to be considered before any heart operation. When it was informed that Dr. Devi Shetty has performed more than seventy thousand major heart surgeries out of which fifteen thousand operations on children, many of them new born babies, the audience were spell-bound. The Q&A session which followed was lively and elicited many more facts and advices on many aspects of the subject. Dr. Shetty talked about acute shortage of Doctors, and the need for 500 new medical colleges to produce them. He mentioned that less than 10% of the population has access to secondary and tertiary health services. He also indicated the need for paramedics. He spoke about the health insurance scheme ‘Yeshasvini‘ in association with the Government of Karnataka where every farmer contributes Rs.10/- per month for his healthcare. It is one of the world's cheapest comprehensive health insurance scheme designed for poor farmers of the state, and has been a run-away success in Karnataka with over 4 million people presently covered under the scheme. Dr. Shetty mentioned that India has a great opportunity to dominate the global health sector which is worth 4.5 trillion US dollars (One trillion US dollar is the size of Indian economy!); this would also lead to empowerment of women. Dr. Shetty ended his talk by saying that since aviation had set the best safety standards, translating the practices, protocols and regulations of the latter to healthcare would guarantee safety of the patients. He predicted that in next ten to fifteen years a large number of expert doctors as consultants would be replaced by “Expert Computers” as consultants. He sought the cooperation from NAL software experts to develop such expert software, and he said, “This was my hidden agenda when I agreed to visit NAL and deliver the lecture”. Mr. Shyam Chetty, President, CSIR-NAL Officers’ Club introduced the speaker in the beginning and, highlighted the commitment and vision of Dr. Shetty to provide quality and affordable health care to masses in the third world countries. He said Dr. Shetty was looking for collaboration with engineering laboratories like CSIR-NAL & CAIR to develop case-history based expert systems with access to proven medical databases which would help less-experienced medical practioners in remote locations in making accurate diagnosis, and thereby provide proper line of treatment. Dr. A. R. Upadhya, Director & Patron CSIR-NAL Officers’ Club complimented Club for inviting Dr. Devi Shetty, an internationally renowned heart surgeon, developer of new procedures for heart surgery and institution builder to NAL and giving the benefit for a large number of colleagues on caring for the heart. The Director focused his address on the emotional aspect of “Human heart”: he recalled that heart is figuratively associated with a host of emotions like love, affection, generosity, kindness and intuition; the heart plays an important part in our lives and gave examples of Hindi and Kannada cinema using the word ‘DIL’ and ‘Hrudaya’ respectively. His narrations from the story book he had read recently were interesting. Dr. Girija Gopalratnam, Secretary, NAL Officers’ club delivered the vote of thanks. Little Ishita and little Mudita added a tinge of color to the formal meeting by presenting a potted plant to Dr. Devi Shetty. C. Divakar Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty’s Lecture #IP 982 18-24 Jul 2011 Adieu to Dr.(Mrs) K.S. Rajam Mr. V.K.William Grips Dr Rakesh Mohan Jha received best paper award for the paper "Implementation of Refined Ray Tracing inside a Space Module", authored by Ms Balamati Choudhury and Dr Rakesh Mohan Jha presented at the 7th International Symposium on Management, Engineering and Informatics MEI 2011, at Orlando, Florida, USA on July 20th, 2011. Visit of Bell Helicopter’s Team
#IP 981 11 -17 Jul 2011 New Heads, Joint Heads and Deputy Heads Mr. V. K. William Grips is new Head and Dr Bharathi Bai J Basu the Deputy Head of Surface Engineering Division. Mr. Jayaraman is the acting Head of Propulsion Division. Dr. C. Divakar, Scientist G, Material Science Division is appointed as Jt. Head, KTMD. The Engineering Services Division has been merged with Centre for Civil Aircraft Design and Development (C-CADD, NAL). Dr. H.N.V. Dutt is appointed Head , Mr. M. S. Kamaleshiah the Joint Head and Mr. S. Ravishankar Deputy Head of C-CADD. All the above appointments are with effect from July 1, 2011. C-CADD will have a new leadership from 1 July, 2011 following the superannuation of Shri. M.S. Chidananda on 30 June, 2011. Dr. H.N.V. Dutt, Scientist G and the current Joint Head, C-CADD will be the new Head, C-CADD and Programme Director (Civil Aviation Programme) and will also continue as Project Director (SARAS). Shri. M.S. Kamaleshaiah, Scientist F and Responsible Manager, Quality Control and Head, Model Shop will be the new Joint Head, C-CADD. Shri S. Ravishankar, the present Associate Project Director (CAD / CAM, Tooling) and Head, Engineering Services Division will be the new Deputy Head, C-CADD and Head, Aircraft Prototype Manufacturing (Prototype Manufacturing Facility) of C-CADD which now includes erstwhile Engineering Services Division. Dr. H.N.V. Dutt joined NAL in 1983, sought retirement in 1998 and spent a couple of years at ISRO and returned back to NAL on 1 March, 2000. He is a mathematician turned theoretical aerodynamicist turned aeronautical engineer. He is a highly talented computer scientist, with expertise in computer system design, operation, maintenance, software development, use of sophisticated application software, system administration and many others. He has been a member of NAL’s civil aviation initiative from day one when Prof. RN, the then Director formed the Civil Aviation Unit in 1989 – 90, comprising of half a dozen scientists from the erstwhile Aerodynamics Division. Over the years, he has added aircraft configuration and wind tunnel testing, performance, stability and control and design to his repertoire. Dr. Dutt is a “no nonsense” person, totally frank and open in all his actions and a man who is always in a hurry, he always runs, never walks! Dr. Dutt is an extraordinarily-dedicated scientist, fully committed to the idea that CSIR-NAL should be the leader in design and development of small aircraft as indeed mandated by the Government. Shri M.S. Kamaleshaiah joined NAL in 1988 as a mechanical engineer in the erstwhile Aerodynamics Division. He is a very innovative mechanical engineer who in the very early days of the ‘Xerox’ machine designed and partly built a duplicating machine in his spare time! When C-CADD started the wind tunnel test programme for the SARAS and HANSA and started to participate in the various Air Shows both within the country and elsewhere, a Model Shop was formed in C-CADD in 1995 for which Shri. Kamaleshaiah was nominated as the Head. He has made a large number of GFRP models for wind tunnel testing, display models of various sizes and several full scale mock ups of SARAS and NM5. He was named as the Responsible Manager for Quality Control (in simple words Quality Chief) under the new CAR-21 rules of DGCA. Over the last several months he has worked closely with all the participating Divisions of NAL, HAL / potential vendors and with the local DGCA officers in preparing the documentation required under CAR-21 rules. MSK is a lively conversationalist with a penchant for witty one-liner which he does not hesitate to use any time or with anybody!! Shri S. Ravishankar, Scientist F, joined NAL in 1990 as Scientist in the erstwhile Aerodynamics Division. He also is a highly talented mechanical engineer with a very deep understanding of the science and application CAD / CAM. In the initial years of his stay at NAL, he participated in the LCA wind tunnel model design and fabrication. His responsibilities included modeling, NC programme preparation and validation and supervision of manufacturing and final inspection. Since NAL did not have all the facilities required, Ravi used to go to ADA for modeling and NC programme development and validation and to a variety of small and medium scale industries for NC machining and to NTAF model shop for final assembly and inspection. This experience from modeling to inspection stood Ravi in good stead at CAU to which he was moved from the Aerodynamics Division in 1993. Every single machined part of the SARAS has gone through Ravi’s hand at some stage or the other. It is entirely through his dedication and quest for perfection that out of about 5000 parts manufactured, rejection was less than 1% - an extremely laudable performance indeed. Recognizing his talent he was appointed as the Head, Engineering Services Division in 2009 when that position fell vacant on superannuation of the then incumbent. Now that Ravi has additional responsibilities in C-CADD, ESD has been merged with C-CADD for effective management. For all the years, Ravi hasn’t neglected his ambition to work for his Ph.D. He is currently an external registrant at IISc and is nearing completion of his Thesis on the broad subject Computational Metrology. The three scientists in key leadership positions at C-CADD have all been associated with me in one capacity or other since the time that they joined NAL. I am extremely happy and justifiably proud that their talent and dedication has found just recognition. The coming years are critical to the success of the projects in progress and the seats that they are going to occupy will be “hot”. But I am sure that they will not only succeed but they will succeed hugely. I would like to take this opportunity of wishing them all the best in the respective responsibilities that they have undertaken. K. Yegna Narayan Dr. R. Kannan, Mr. G. Venu, Mr. P. Pratheesh Kumar and Mr. P. Manjunath, Propulsion Division, have won the Second Best Paper Presentation Award in the National Conference – ASET 2011 on Emerging Trends in Propulsion Technologies for the paper entitled Development of a Mixed Bed Catalytic System for Providing endothermic Cooling with in-situ Generation of Hydrogen Gas for Scramjet Combustors held at Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), Mahendragiri, Tamil Nadu during 17-18 June 2011.
#IP 980 4-10 Jul 2011 I have known Chidananda as a scientist in the Propulsion Division from the time I joined NAL; however both of us were not of the garrulous type; our acquaintance did not proceed much beyond the “Hello” stage! I knew through his colleague in the Propulsion Division that he was an excellent mechanical engineer specialized in internal flows in general, and in ejectors in particular. I believe that Chidananda’s expertise in ejectors was put to good use in the LCA intake testing. Meanwhile, the feasibility report of LTA, the initial ‘Avatar’, of SARAS, had been completed and we had started to look at various systems. We had selected a P&WC turboprop engine with pusher prop. The design of the nacelle was a complex one to ensure adequate air into the oil cooler when the aircraft was standing on the ground on a hot day. I felt that we needed to do some full scale tests on the nacelle, particularly addressing the issue of adequate cooling air into the heat exchanger. I requested Chidananda to help us in setting up the test facility and carrying out the experiments. He readily agreed much to my happiness and did a thoroughly professional job, not only in the tests but also in the analysis and presentation to P&WC team of experts. He, then, was involved in planning and executing the tests in the IISc Open Circuit Wind Tunnel with forward speed. I very soon realized that Chidananda would be a great addition to the LTA design team and accordingly requested Dr. Prahlad, the then Director, to see if Chidananda could be transferred to C-CADD. He would not only be the Associate Project Director for all mechanical systems including the power plant but also be Deputy Chief of Design and Joint Head, C-CADD. Dr. Prahlad enthusiastically agreed to this proposal and agreed to talk to the then Head of Propulsion Division, Dr. B.R. Pai. Dr. Pai readily agreed and Chidananda become a part of the LTA team in 1998. I was a bit concerned since the tradition in NAL was that if a HOD agreed readily to a transfer of one of the division’s scientists, then that scientist was either average technically or difficult to get on with or both! But in Chidananda’s case, there was absolutely no cause for concern: not only was he technically extremely sound, as a person we couldn’t have got a better human being! In a lighter vein, the manner in which Chidananda was brought to the project is similar to “Camel and the Bedoin”. The readers can figure out who is the Bedoin and which is the camel and which the tent? Anyway Bedoin was the happiest chap. But, I can say this without any reservation that Chidananda’s presence was not only in the technical part of the project but also was crucial in higher-levels of project management. He took over as Head, C-CADD and PGD, CAP in 2007 when I superannuated and was doing a fantastic job when the unfortunate accident happened and we lost the aircraft and three irreplaceable human lives. I was then in C-CADD with him when the message came in and I could see the utter pain in his countenance. The days and months following the unfortunate event was to him as indeed it was to all of us most traumatic with the statutory investigation, all kinds of press reports and the large number of “I told you so” chaps. It is said that the true mettle of a leader can only be known in adversity. Nobody could have done a better job during the past few years technically and managerially at the same keeping the morale of the team high. Using aviation parlance I call Chidananda “an all- weather or IFR leader” and the rest of us “good weather or day VFR leaders”. Hats off to him! CSIR-NAL should initiate an award for the wives of the leaders and staff of major projects! All of us are of such an age that we are all afflicted with the “empty nest syndrome” with our children setting up their own houses; imagine having to spend practically the whole day up to late evening all alone waiting for the spouse to return home. Chidananda had made a concession, albeit a small one, to his wife that come what may, they would go out to the KSCA Club to play some game or the other. Unfortunately, many meetings were scheduled on Friday late afternoon and invariably, they would extend past 6.00 PM. One could almost tell the time watching Chidananda starting to squirm in the chair, getting up and sitting down till he garnered sufficient courage to quietly slip out!! after a quiet nod at me, indicating that he was leaving!! Anyway Chidananda had found a good equilibrium with his wife!! In the past two decades and a bit that I have known Chidananda closely, I have never seen him take any leave – not even for a mild disposition like a sore throat, stomach upset and so on. This is probably because he has been eating lunch at the Belur Canteen every single day throughout this nearly 40 years service at NAL! Perhaps his greatest quality is that he maintains his cool even under extreme provocation. I have never seen him lose his temper under any circumstance. (But Chidananda himself told me that he had on a couple of occasions in recent time.) In this respect he is the M.S. Dhoni of aeronautics (interestingly both have the same initials, M.S!!) In the same vein, the word “No” does not exist in his vocabulary. This means that he will be loaded with a quantum of work which is much more than what an individual can handle. But he never complained: the quintessential gentleman of the old school that he is, he will never complain. It gives me great pleasure to offer my felicitations to Shri Chidananda on the eve of his retirement after nearly four decades of dedicated service to CSIR-NAL. I would like to take the opportunity of wishing Chidananda and his charming wife Jayashree good health, active life and great happiness in the years ahead. A small but important piece of unsolicited advice: Chidananda, enjoy your grand children now as now wouldn’t come again! K. Yegna Narayan Editor: Dr C Divakar, Joint Head, KTMD, NAL.
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