Information Pasteboard
Weekly reports of meetings at NAL, snippets of R&D activity, conference announcements and other features of popular interest
|
|
Information Pasteboard |
|
News and Events #IP 1000 21 - 27 Nov 2011 #IP 999 13 - 20 Nov 2011
The Belgian Delegation led by Minister President H.E.Kris Peeters visited NAL on November 17, 2011. H.E.Kris Peeters inaugurated the CSIR-NAL – LMS “Incubation centre of Flight Simulation” at FMCD Controls Lab, FMCD on November 17, 2011. Mr Shyam Chetty, Acting Director, NAL welcomed the team. H.E.Kris Peeters in his address said “For my delegation it is a great honour to be here and of course we have a lot of companies who are in my delegation but certainly LMS is an important company in Flanders and I am happy there is a working relationship between NAL and LMS”. He mentioned that he is looking forward to knowing more about the activities of NAL and find possibilities of working together. Mr Jayant Nadiger, Trade Commissioner of Flanders introduced the visiting team and their affiliations and gave a brief about their domain expertise. Mr Shyam Chetty made a brief presentation about the activities of NAL. In his Presentation he talked about NAL’s Mission, R&D activities, Technologies, Facilities, Civil Aircraft programme and Contributions of NAL to National and International projects. He spoke about the significant work being carried out in NAL in the area of Aero Thermal Sciences, Structural and Materials Sciences, Systems Engineering, Societal Missions and Civil aircraft programme. After the presentation Mr Shyam Chetty took questions from the guests and responded to their queries. In the afternoon session presentations were made by the Belgium Business Delegation – LMS (Leading Partner in test and Mechatronic simulation in Automotives, Aerospace and other advanced manufacturing industries), HTMS (Metal sealing, Production and Design), ELECTRONIC APPARATUS NV (Printed Circuit Board) and IMEC (World leading research in nano electronics. Delivers industry relevant technology solutions). ONAM celebration at NAL The celebration started with an invocation by Miss Prerana. The Chief Guest Dr J Alexander, IAS (Retd.) Former Chief Secretary and Ex Minister Govt. of Karnataka inaugurated the function by lighting the traditional lamp. Mr D Saji, President, Kairali Kalavani formally welcomed the gathering and spoke briefly about Kairali Kalavani and its activities. Dr J Alexander, the chief guest of the day sang a song bringing in the importance of onam celebration. He said Onam originated as joyous annual memories of the golden rule of King Mahabali, a mythical king, who ruled Kerala very long time ago. He narrated some anecdotes about the secularistic attitude of the rulers of Kerala. He commented on the globalization of the world and reminded that the rishis of India had spoken of Vasudha Eka Kutumbam (they had dreamt world is one family) 5000 years ago. He also briefly touched about the history of formation of Kerala. A souvenir TANIMA was released on the occasion by Dr J Alexander. Dr Bharati Bai Basu, the chairman of the Souvenir Committee gave a brief report about the souvenir TANIMA. Mr M K Sridhar, M&A in his presidential address mentioned about Maharaja Sri Swathi Thirunal who he said, has composed music in several languages and was truly secular. He also mentioned that NAL encourages and supports all the various regional cultural units of the club. Dr J Alexander distributed prizes to the winners of pookalam and drawing competition. Mr Shijo Francis, Secretary, Kairali Kalavani delivered the vote of thanks. A cultural programme was organized with bhartanatyam dance recital, khatak dance, poetry recitation, violin recital , thayambaka etc. Finally everyone was treated to a grand ONAM SADYA.
#IP 998 6 - 13 Nov 2011 Valedictory function of Vigilance Awareness Week- 2011
The Vigilance Awareness Week (VAW) was observed in CSIR-NAL from 31st October to 5th November, 2011. The observance of the week commenced with the pledge the employees took on October 31, 2011 “…we shall continuously strive to bring about integrity and transparency in all spheres' of our activities… we shall remain vigilant and work towards the growth and reputation of our organization. …”. . The Valedictory function of VAW - 2011 was arranged on thursday, November 3, 2011, at S R Valluri Auditorium, NAL, Bangalore. The Chief Guest for the function Mr Anurag Sahay, IRS, Chief Vigilance Officer, HAL, Bangalore said the ‘focus of the week is on vigilance related awareness and theme for VAW 2011 is participative vigilance’. Further he added ‘we have to pause and see as to what is happening today in the country. The scourge of corruption/the cancer of corruption are spreading far, wide and deep. We not only have cohesive corruption we also have collusive corruption/grand corruption. The high and mighty have taken the system for a ride as the enforcement agencies are not good enough, the Chief Vigilance Commission (CVC) being only recommendatory in nature’. He quoted Mr N Vittal, Former CVC’s statement ‘in the manifestations of corruption, there are five elements: the neta, the babu, the lala, the jola [represented by non-governmental organisations] and the dada’. He added ‘the public anguish could be seen in agitation taken up by Sri Anna Hazare, youth have come out in large numbers. Social networking sites, news channels have played their role in the awareness. We need to ponder as to Will the lokpal be the panacea for all evils’. He shared with the audience a real life illustration of participative vigilance. He said ‘it is a request to all, be careful in whatever you do, whenever you are taking discretionary decisions record the reasons in real time’. His final line was ‘Take care of small things, big things will take care of themselves’. Dr Muthukrsihnan, COA welcomed the gathering and said “Vigilance week is celebrated to bring about social awareness amongst the people about the need to be self-accountable to the society and to the nation. The objectives of vigilance week are also to bring about awareness of the rights and duties of the individual in curbing corruption-both social and economic”. Mr Shyam Chetty, Acting Director, presided over the function. In his address he said ‘Today’s scenario Vigilance is not more important than anything else. Corruption is an infection that should not be allowed to creep in any form. Corruption has become a part of life and hence it has to be fought tooth and nail Corruption has to be eliminated at all levels and for this all of us have to join hands. If we all do our little bit corruption can be eradicated - Many drops make an ocean’. The Chief Guest Mr Anurag Sahay distributed prizes for the winners of various competitions conducted in connection with the VAW for the students of Kendriya Vidyalaya, NAL and the employees of NAL. Mr Shekar Anandan, Section Officer, Vigilance Section proposed the vote of thanks. Ms Radha Ramani compered the function. Best Oral Presentation Award at NCCM 2011 The paper “Nanostructured Au-WS2 solid lubricant coatings prepared by magnetron sputtering” by B Deepthi, Siju, G Srinivas, Praveen Kumar, Jakeer Khan and Harish C Barshilia presented at National Conference on Chemistry of Materials 2011 held on 28th September, organized by Centre for Advanced Materials, Tumkur University has been awarded Best Oral Presentation Certificate. This paper was presented by Ms B Deepthi, SRF , Surface Engineering Division.
Dr Poornima Narayana, Head, ICAST received the Platinum Award – A Special Appreciation Award from CSIR Central for the Pioneering Contribution made to the CSIR Open Access Movement.
#IP 997 31Oct - 5 Nov 2011 International Open Access Day celebration at
CSIR-NAL The ‘International Open Access Day’ was celebrated at S R Valluri Auditorium in CSIR-NAL on October 24 2011 in commemoration with the ‘International Open Access Week’. This global event in its 4th year is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access (OA), to share what they have learned from professional colleagues, and to help inspire in wider participation in helping to make OA a new norm in scholarship and research. Dr. Poornima Narayana, Head, ICAST welcomed the gathering and highlighted the significance of open access movement and initiatives being adopted around the world. A ‘road show’ of video clipping depicting the advantages of OA was screened followed by a power point presentation on the current scenario of OA at international and national levels. The OA mandate framed by the CSIR Core Committee and the guidelines / policies were highlighted. The Chief Guest of the day was Prof. P. Balaram, Director, IISc, the editor of the popular journal ‘Current Science’, an advocate of open access especially open archives. The topic of his presentation was on ‘Science Publishing: Issues of Access’ wherein he expressed his concern over the science publishing, the publisher’s growing monopoly and in particular author’s rights. He opined that open archives – one of the prominent OA channel is more preferable for promoting scholarly communication. In his own words “much publicly-funded research work done in India and other developing countries appears in high impact factor journals. The key question is, how should the fruits of publicly-funded research be made available to readers in the developing world at no cost? Since the question of who pays for open access journals is unresolved, scientists should go ahead and promote open archives. His concern regarding the funding of publishing in OA journals was clearly evident when he remarked ‘OA – who will pay for the publishing - Authors or Readers??’ In Europe and the United States, the costs of publishing in open access journals are underwritten by grants from bodies such as the Wellcome Trust, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the US National Institutes of Health. These all provide grants that are far larger than any seen by scientists in developing countries.” He appreciated the efforts of Librarians / Information Scientists for bridging the gap in providing the much needed information between the publishers and the information seekers. Professor Balaram suggested that the various consortiums, forums and organizations in the country have to come together for negotiations with the publishers with clearly defined agreements towards post-termination and perpetual access and discuss at length these issues at national policy making level while coming out with strong legislation to have sustainable open access model. Dr. L. Venkatakrishnan, Head of Experimental Aerodynamics Division, CSIR-NAL was the second speaker of the day on the topic ‘Open Access: Promised Utopia Or Eventual Reality?’ He gave a brief background on publication channel with peer review, a lengthy process taking around 18-21 months. His presentation touched upon the various channels/routes of OA: green, and gold for archival purposes. He presented a clear picture of rising / escalating cost of the commercial journals as the actual reason for the evolution of Open Access while citing the different OA journal models: completely free and author-pays-model (PLOS). In total agreement with Prof. Balaram’s statement of promoting OA through open archives (IR), he put a straight forward question “Faculty creating, editing and reviewing content – Are publishers required?”. Citing the famous phrase “Chicken or Egg”, he pondered over the issue of ‘More Downloads -> More Citations’ Or More Citations -> More Downloads?’ Regarding the funding aspect especially in developing countries which Professor Balaram had already raised in his talk, Dr. Venkatakrishnan mentioned that general reaction of OA as ‘Wider Access -> More Downloads -> More Readers -> More Citations and finally to more funding’. He also provided some insight into the copyright policies of different publishers and statistics of authors citations/downloads in OA Context. Mr. Shyam Chetty, Director, CSIR-NAL in his remarks highlighted the advancement in OA and mentioned about the adoption of OA mandates/policies at CSIR. He also mentioned that, CSIR will lead the OA movement within the country and take on board other scientific channels to form a ‘National Open Access Policy’ including legislation if necessary to mandate the availability of out put of publicly funded research in public domain in near future. He appreciated the role of CSIR-NAL in actively advocating and promoting the OA initiatives. He congratulated Head, ICAST & team representing CSIR-NAL for being recently awarded the ‘Platinum Award’ for the pioneering contributions to the CSIR OA movement along with CSIR-NIO. He further mentioned that the CSIR-NAL’s Institutional Repositories (IR) has been one of the top ranked open repositories in the world’s leading IRs. He mentioned that CSIR-NAL has been identified as the nodal point for guiding/setting up of IRs of not only other CSIR labs but other institutions in the country. Mr B S Shivaram anchored the event while Mr. S R Dey proposed vote of thanks. Poornima Narayana
Congratulations Rohit Master Rohit Dey, son of Sri.Satya Ranjan Dey of ICAST-NAL, of Class IX KV NAL has been awarded the SECOND Prize during the 39th Jawaharlal Nehru KVS National Science Exhibition 2011 held at Ahmedabad on 20-21st Oct 2011 on the topic "Disaster Management". Rohit prepared models for the projects titled "Intelligent Robot and Micro Air Vehicle (MAV)". Master Rohit was earlier adjudged the second prize winner at the
Rajyothsava celebration 2011 The Rajyothsava celebration 2011 at CSIR-NAL started with an offering of puja to goddess Bhuvaneshwari on Nov 1, 2011 at 10.00 am. Dr Poornima Narayan, President, Karnataka Samsrithika Sangha and Head, ICAST welcomed the gathering. Mr M K Sridhar, Advisor M&A, hoisted the Karnataka flag on the occasion of 56th Karnataka Rajyothsava day. He briefly gave an insight into the history of kannada and spoke about the various dynasties that ruled over Karnataka. A team of young children from NAL staff quarters presented a melodious music programme singing patriotic kannada songs. The programme ended with a vote of thanks by Ms Vijaylakshmi. CTFD.
TEAM NAL wishes our colleagues a very happy, healthy and productive life after superannuation on 30 Oct 2011. Mr Payani M, ALD Mr Munikrsihna, APMF Ms Muniyamma, ADK
Editor: Dr C Divakar, Joint Head, KTMD, NAL.
Recent issues of NAL Information Pasteboard Prev To
access previous issues of the Information Pasteboard please choose |
||||||
The Beginning (18 September 1992)
.gif)
