India's Contribution to Science & Technology

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Aldonkar
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Aldonkar »

Amber G. wrote:Google, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, and now Twitter run by CEOs who grew up in India...Many from my alma mater IIT - Wonderful to watch the amazing success of Indians in the technology world .. Thanks to good schools and the opportunity America offers.
Also Illumina, a company in the news due to the use of its products in genome sequencing Covid 10 virus. The CEO is Francisco De Souza who has a Indian father, Greek mother and was born in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). Also Ivan Menezes, CEO of Diageo (UK) the largest drinks co. He is a US citizen but was born in Mumbai. His elder brother was CEO of I think Citicorp some years ago. The media always overlook Christian Indians because their names are Western/Hispanic.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by anupmisra »

Paul wrote:Always wondered why 2nd Gen Indian Americans are not able to match to their FOB cousins......
Give them time.

BTW, I think you meant "1st generation Indian-Americans". As I am a naturalized citizen, my son who was born in the US would be 1st generation. Today, the 1st generation is generally in their twenties or under, but are getting into top universities. However, to your point, I have come across a few 2nd gen Indian-Americans whose grandparents moved to the US in the 60's and 70's. These 2nd generation kids have little to no affinity with India.

So, in all fairness, give them time.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

anupmisra wrote:
Paul wrote:Always wondered why 2nd Gen Indian Americans are not able to match to their FOB cousins......
Give them time.

BTW, I think you meant "1st generation Indian-Americans". As I am a naturalized citizen, my son who was born in the US would be 1st generation. Today, the 1st generation is generally in their twenties or under, but are getting into top universities. However, to your point, I have come across a few 2nd gen Indian-Americans whose grandparents moved to the US in the 60's and 70's. These 2nd generation kids have little to no affinity with India.

So, in all fairness, give them time.
We have Prof Amar Bose, perhaps the most famous of these but MIT, Google, Facebook, Twitter, have *plenty* of these 2nd/3rd generations in *very* important posts. (Due to racist past immigration laws, 1960's was the time when immigration, in significant numbers, from India. That was about 60 years ago.

I know plenty of Indian Americans (who consider themselves 'desi') who (and their parents and grand_parents) were born in US. (My own extended family - if you count my parents who moved here to be with their children - can count 5 generations)

PLENTY of them doing quite good.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Paul »

An article that somewhat but not completely aligns with the thrust of my argument.......2nd Gen Indian Americans cut off from their India roots do not have the ______ that their FOB counterparts have.....due to their cultural deracination. I think that they need to make more trips back home to assilimate the India advantage.


A lesson for those parents who have inculcated the look down on India feeling amongst their progeny.

http://www.businessworld.in/article/Are ... 7k.twitter
Are We Blunting Our Children’s “India Advantage”

Perhaps that indescribable magic behind iconic Indian origin professional managers, academics, professionals, entrepreneurs on the world stage and at home who have acknowledged this India Advantage as a key ingredient in their becoming successful global Indians.


One stark social contradiction that can be seen often in affluent metropolitan India is that as the world moves into an Asian or an Indian century, a section of society seems to be unwittingly eroding their children’s natural “India Advantage”. An advantage that is the unique alchemy inside homes during growing up years that combines an ethno-cultural way of life with the modern and contemporary. A way of life that gave strong foundational roots to build a successful career anywhere in the world. And which perhaps is also that indescribable magic behind iconic Indian origin professional managers, academics, professionals, entrepreneurs on the world stage and at home who have acknowledged this India Advantage as a key ingredient in their becoming successful global Indians.

Contrast that with being globally aware and locally ignorant which seems to be the new normal. It is not uncommon to routinely encounter suave young adults, intelligent and worldly-wise but clued out about most things Indian. An ethno-culturally incongruent section of youngsters with speech and thought aligned virtually to a distant world. A world where Connecticut and Birmingham are pronounced to near perfection but Calicut and Birbhum draw a blank and thoughts drift amidst alien shores without at least one firmly anchored locally as a foundation and in doing so perhaps inadvertently frittering away that crucial India advantage.

Since early personality is largely shaped by parental influence at home, providing children with a simulated growing up environment alien from their immediate and natural could potentially put their child’s future at risk. Cultural incongruence can misalign personality make one pretentious and adversely impact career. And in any case if India is where much of play will happen then what better natural advantage than the knowledge of pitch condition and lay of land to win at the game.

Media, technology, globalization, changing social attitudes and busy working parents are commonly attributed causes for this cultural incongruence. All undeniably correct but shouldn’t part culpability be shared by the growing-up environment at home because that after-all has a disproportionate impact on developing a young mind. Much at home seems designed to simulate an alien environment that transports a child’s imagination to a world that is different from what they exist in. Picture books have unfamiliar characters, devices stream AV content from foreign lands, pop-icons and role models are distant, food and socializing norms are westernized, holiday destinations are abroad and even festivals are imported.

But it is not as much the imported which poses a risk but the increasingly conspicuous absence of the other, the local, which has the potential to blunt that critical India advantage. This significant other was an informal lifestyle ecosystem made up of a variety of ethno-cultural reminders during growing up years. Vernacular communication, copies of Amar Chitra Katha lying around, depending on where you came from, a P.L Deshpande, a Feluda or a Premchand beckoning from the bookshelf, a Gita, a Kural or some other spiritual books peeping at you from the pooja room and that constant trilogy of festivals, food, and attire. A Sitar or a Tabla in the corner and daily rituals like Arti and Sandhya Vandana added a distinct flavor and LTA restricted to anywhere within India and holidays to towns where grandparents or the family deity lived or to some pilgrimage center contributed to geographical awareness.

This local flavor at home during growing up was an essential ingredient in the alchemy that made up the unique India advantage. But that alchemy seems disturbed. The imported has edged out the local inside homes and which is perhaps the main cause for spawning a globally aware but locally ignorant section of youngsters.

Can a virtually acclimatized lifestyle inside a western cocoon yield dividend? For excellence in the virtual can well be below average in the real. And real India in the Indian century with its opportunities will be hyper-competitive and demand excellence. Expensive college fees abroad or buying into expensive immigration programs can only offer temporary insurance to escape the cauldron of intense competition that is India. But a confident awareness of ethno-cultural roots is perhaps the firmest launchpad for take-off into the heat and dust that will be the Indian century. After all, so many Indian and Indian origin achievers have used it for a successful launch. Why not give the same benefit to our children from early years.

Because in the end for success it’s all about originality over imitation, natural over pretention, and individuality over personality. To remain connected with your deeper roots as you soar tall. And like starships have the advantage of ground control as they explore the universe, let your child have the India advantage as she finds her place in the world. It is her natural advantage. She was born with it. Let’s not take that away from her.

The author is a business strategist. He tweets as @vikramlimsay
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Several Indian Americans Entrepreneurs, Innovators and Entertainers in Forbes List of 30 Under 30
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(Plenty of them second/third generations, who grew up here in US).
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Manish_P wrote:I think it is likely that this is that Prof. Verma.
Prof Verma's alma mater - IIT Kanpur Felicitating Prof Hc Verma..(From a recent Institute news - with Shiksha Sopan team and a few Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur colleagues.): Good we are valuing our teachers.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Vayutuvan »

Amber G. wrote:Several Indian Americans Entrepreneurs, Innovators and Entertainers in Forbes List of 30 Under 30
Image
(Plenty of them second/third generations, who grew up here in US).
Both Ms. T. Doshi and Ms. U. Shivaraman work for large companies - Google and Uber respectively. Why is that a big deal?
Mr. Sid Yadav founded a company which is somewhat mitigating.

I found these three in "the 2022 consumer technology 30-under-30" at this link.
https://www.forbes.com/30-under-30/2022 ... technology

Mr. Akshar Bonu founded "The Custom Movement" which had a funding of $150K
Crunchbase wrote: Funding Round
Aug 19, 2019
The Custom Movement raised $150,000 / Pre Seed from SV Angel and Y Combinator
During the heydays of the Internet (ca. 1998-2002), anybody who inserted a few jargon words like "HTML", "Web Browser", "Dynamic Web pages", "PHP" got $500K at the end of a fifteen-minute presentation.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Vayutuvan »

Dr. P. Rajpurkar has done work in "deep learning", "deep AI". Let us see how this low-hanging fruit harvesting works out in the long run. Paint me skeptical. We all remember how Sanjiv Siddhu's company i2 fared after initial successes of harvesting low-hanging LP application fruits. Now it is called Blue Yonder or something with annual revenue of barely $350 million. It is a consulting company - not a product company anymore. At the height, i2 had yearly revenues of $2 billion, IIRC.

Mr. Raunak Nirmal
Raunak Nirmal, an India born Sikh American who has made it to the 30 Under 30 list for Forbes magazine, in the category of Retail and E-commerce.

Nirmal is the CEO of Acquco, "an institutionally-backed acquisition company" that he founded in 2020, according to the company's website.
The above is not really a big "contribution to technology and science", A good business idea may be. That is yet to be seen.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Paul »

Sidhu runs another IBP solutions company called O9 solutions.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Born on this day in 1894: Indian physicist Satyendranath Bose. In 1924 Bose sent a seminal paper to Einstein in which he derived Planck’s radiation formula without recourse to classical physics. Einstein extended the paper’s concepts, signaling the creation of Bose-Einstein statistics.
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Bose-Einstein statistics applies to particles like photons which don’t have half-integer spin. It underlines critical phenomena like lasers and superfluidity in liquid helium. It took until 1995 for Bose-Einstein condensation to be experimentally verified.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Today is birth centennial for Harbind Singh Khurana - Noble prize winner for cracking genetic code and synthesizing the first artificial gene.

His story is remarkable - born in a village of <100 people, mostly illiterate, dodging Partition and then succeeding.

Interestingly three great scientists and nobel prize winners, I admire (Dr S. Chandrasekhar, Dr. Salam and Dr Khorana) - were born in what is now Pakistan.. They have been completely ignored by that land of Pure but this well written article in Dawn, written by his grand-nephew is worth reading.

Dr Har Gobind Khorana at 100: Re-evaluating a shared heritageImage
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by vimal »

Har Gobind Khorana not Harbind Singh Khurana.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medic ... graphical/
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

^^Thanks - (I can not edit my typo anymore)
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

I attended (virtually) IIT Kanpur's Convocation where Chief guest was PM Modi - (Also present were CM Yogi Adityanath, and ex ISRO chief). One part surprised me most was the "degrees/certificates" were not paper copies but digital certificates (delivered by PM with push of a button to thousands of graduating students). Even in other advance countries very few universities do that now.

Watch:




(IT Kanpur students received digital degrees based on an in-house blockchain-driven technology that has been developed by the IIT-K under the National Blockchain Project in India. Hence, these digital degrees are highly-secured, verifiable globally, and are unforgeable, according to recent reports)

Interesting the main leader who is driving all this leading technology is Prof Agrawal - SUTRA fame!
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Vips »

Physicist Deepak Dhar Becomes First Indian to be Conferred with Prestigious Boltzmann Medal.

Stalwart Indian physicist and Emeritus Professor at the Department of Physics, IISER, Pune, Prof Deepak Dhar will be conferred the prestigious Boltzmann Medal for his contribution in the field of statistical physics.

The Boltzmann Medal is given every three years by the C3 Commission on Statistical Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) at the Statphys Conference.

The Award, comprising a gilded medal, honours outstanding achievements in statistical physics. The award will be given during Statphys 28 to be held in Tokyo from August 8 to 12.

IISER, Pune announced the award on its Twitter handle and Facebook page late on Thursday evening after Prof Dhar received a letter from the IUPAP. However, the IUPAP website had no mention of the award.

Prof Dhar shares the prize with John Hopfield, an American scientist.

When IANS spoke to Prof Dhar to congratulate him, especially as he is the first Indian to get the prestigious award, the scientist said: "The award was instituted in 1975 or so. We have had people such as Satyendra Nath Bose ... one should not ignore the great work that they have done in this field."

The 1951-born Dhar is known for his research on statistical physics and stochastic processes. He is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies - the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, and the National Academy of Sciences, India - as well as of The World Academy of Sciences.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has awarded him the 'Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize' for Science and Technology for his contributions to physical sciences in 1991.

Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, K VijayRaghavan tweeted: "Professor Dhar is one of the brightest physicists around. He shares the prize with John Hopfield, of whom the same can be said. From Allahabad University, IIT Kanpur, California University and then TIFR, he has left a great imprint in each place."

A science graduate from the University of Allahabad (1970) and a master's in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1972, Prof Dhar moved to the US for his doctoral studies.

In 1978, he returned to India to start his long career at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) as a research fellow the same year and over the years, became a full professor.

Post-retirement, he continues his association with TIFR as a distinguished professor of the institution. He also serves as a distinguished visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

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Domestic patent filings outnumber international applicants in India for the first time in 11 years.

For the first time in 11 years, the number of domestic patent filings has exceeded that of international patent filings in India in the three months to March 2022.

This is a significant milestone in the context of the IP innovation ecosystem, according to a statement from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on April 12. “For the first time in the last 11 years, the number of domestic patent filings has surpassed the number of international patent filings at the Indian patent office in the January-March 2022 quarter,” it said.

This means that out of 19,796 patent applications filed, 10,706 were filed by Indian applicants as against 9,090 by non-Indian applicants.

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Graph 1: Quarter-wise patent applications filed by Indian applicants vis-à-vis non-Indian applicants.

Filing of patents increased more than 50 percent - from 42,763 in 2014-15 to 66,440 in 2021-22 — in a span of seven years. There is also nearly a five-fold increase in grant of patents in 2021-22 (30,074) as compared to 2014-15 (5,978).

Further, the time for patent examination has also been reduced from 72 months in December 2016 to five to 23 months at present for different technological areas.

Overall, India’s ranking in the Global Innovation Index has increased to 46th in 2021 — up 35 ranks — as compared to the 81st spot in 2015-16.

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Graph 2: Filing and grant of patent applications over the years

Commending the “consistent efforts” by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and Intellectual Property (IP) office, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said their coordinated efforts “will take India a step closer to its ambitious target of being in the top 25 nations on the Global Innovation Index”.

Goyal also acknowledged the DPIIT’s efforts to strengthen the IPR regime in India by fostering innovation and reducing compliance burden.

“The coordinated effort by DPIIT and the IP office has led to an increased IP awareness among all strata of the society. These efforts have on one hand led to an increase in the number of IPR filings, on the other, reduced the pendency of patent application at IP offices,” he said.

Some key initiatives taken up by the government over the years that have bolstered India's IP regime include fee concessions such as 10 percent rebate on online filing, 80 percent fee concession for start-ups, small entities and educational institutions, and provisions on expedited examination for startups and micro, medium and small enterprises (MSMEs) along with other categories.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Another great -
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There's little doubt that Meghnad Saha deserved a Nobel Prize for his equation shown below -- Relating the temperature in stars to their elemental ionization states eventually unlocked the door to stellar energy and nucleosynthesis.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Rakesh »

https://twitter.com/DeshGujarat/status/ ... pxiyMr05Vg ---> Prime Minister will inaugurate the Regional Science Centre in Bhavnagar which is spread in 20 acres.

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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by vijayk »

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/in ... 827619.cms
Researchers from IISER-Thiruvananthapuram and IIT-Indore have developed a new artificial light-harvesting system that can efficiently capture light for power conversion by mimicking photosynthesis, the process by which plants absorb sunlight and produce sugars. The research has been published in the prestigious 'Royal Chemical Society - Chemical Science' journal.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by suryag »

Panini's final rules decoded
This is a great achievement if indeed true. I had done NLP long long ago and the basic premise of it hasnt changed with only incremental optimization happening over the last two decades, however, this will change that.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Cyrano »

The reaction of our learned Sanskrit scholars is mixed to say the least. For a good analysis of the claims made by Oxford watch this:
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Vayutuvan »

suryag wrote:I had done NLP long long ago and the basic premise of it hasnt changed with only incremental optimization happening over the last two decades, however, this will change that.
Are you still working in NLP (not Nonlinear programming here in the context but rather) Natural Language Processing? Both NLPs are connected at a fundamental level but I digress!
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

xpost:
India confers Padma Vibhushan (second-highest civilian award) to Dilip Mahalanabis for pioneering the use of ORS that saved many lives globally. He demonstrated the effectiveness of ORS while serving in refugee camps during 1971 Bangladesh liberation war.
He was a pediatrician known for pioneering the use of oral rehydration therapy to treat diarrheal diseases. Mahalanabis had begun researching oral rehydration therapy in 1966 as a research investigator for the Johns Hopkins.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Ashokk »

Indian Scientists Pioneer Novel Technique For Creating Strong Bimetallic Structures With Enhanced Properties
A new bi-metallic joining process has been developed by Indian researchers to produce a bimetallic composite made from copper and steel that is highly suitable for engineering applications.

This composite has outstanding thermal and electrical conductivity, making it ideal for various applications such as hydraulic pump components, cooling staves, hot-work tooling applications, guide plates, and heat exchangers.

The development of bimetallic structures has become increasingly important in the world of technological advancements. These structures are highly customizable and offer a unique combination of individual material properties, making them well-suited for a wide range of applications.

Research in this area has significant implications for various engineering applications where the thermal conductivity and strength of the components play a critical role.

The bi-metallic composite made from copper and steel exhibits excellent mechanical properties, exceptional corrosion resistance, and high thermal and electrical conductivity.

However, welding copper and steel together can be challenging due to the differences in their melting points, thermal conductivity, and thermal expansion properties. As a result, joining copper and stainless-steel bimetallic structures without defects has been difficult.

To overcome this challenge, researchers at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), an autonomous R&D centre of the Department of Science and Technology, have developed a novel bi-metallic joining process using a technique called laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) or selective laser melting (SLM) technique of metal 3D printing.

This technique involves layer deposition by metal powder melting, which creates a small melt pool of stainless-steel powder with subsequent high cooling rates, limiting the intermixing of the stainless-steel melt on copper surface, the Ministry of Science and Technology said in a statement on Friday (24 March).

During the L-PBF process, the laser beam interacts with the metal, impacting the degree of intermixing between copper and steel.

The researchers have successfully demonstrated the formation of the interfacial microstructure and bonding mechanism and investigated the reason for achieving a strong interfacial bond.

Tensile behavior studies were conducted, and the results convinced the researchers of the strong copper-steel bimetallic bond at the interface.

Micrographs obtained through high magnification imaging facility showed the limited intermixing of the copper and steel-rich regions across the interface.

The diffusion of Fe, Cr, and Ni elements from the steel to the copper side led to solid solution strengthening of copper near the interface, with a gradient drop in hardness from the interface on the copper alloy side.

The bi-metallic joining process between stainless steel and copper alloy, using laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) technique, has the potential to revolutionise the engineering industry by offering customisable and strong bimetallic structures with enhanced properties, the ministry said.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Lisa »

Amber G. wrote:xpost:
India confers Padma Vibhushan (second-highest civilian award) to Dilip Mahalanabis for pioneering the use of ORS that saved many lives globally. He demonstrated the effectiveness of ORS while serving in refugee camps during 1971 Bangladesh liberation war.
He was a pediatrician known for pioneering the use of oral rehydration therapy to treat diarrheal diseases. Mahalanabis had begun researching oral rehydration therapy in 1966 as a research investigator for the Johns Hopkins.
Image
Wow, it took 50+ years for this to happen! This man's actions has saved millions of lives.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by sanjaykumar »

WTF?

I was lead to believe it was a Bangladeshi fellow.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Congratulations to Professor C.R. Rao on being awarded the International Statistics Prize 2023.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Vips »

Cabinet nod for National Quantum Mission.

The government on Wednesday approved the National Quantum Mission to nurture and scale up scientific and industrial research and development in quantum technology. The mission involves a cost to Rs 6,003.65 crore from 2023-24 to 2030-31.

The National Quantum Mission (NQM), approved at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will accelerate quantum technology-led economic growth and nurture the ecosystem in the country.

"NQM is going to give India a quantum jump in this arena," Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh told reporters here.
recommended by

India will be the seventh country to have a dedicated quantum mission after the US, Austria, Finland, France, Canada and China.

"The new mission targets developing intermediate scale quantum computers with 50-1000 physical qubits in eight years in various platforms like superconducting and photonic technology," he said.

He said satellite-based secure quantum communications between ground stations over a range of 2000 km within India, long distance secure quantum communications with other countries, inter-city quantum key distribution over 2000 km as well as multi-node quantum network with quantum memories are also some of the deliverables of the mission.

Singh said the mission will help develop magnetometers with high sensitivity in atomic systems and atomic clocks for precision timing, communications and navigation.

It will also support design and synthesis of quantum materials such as superconductors, novel semiconductor structures and topological materials for fabrication of quantum devices, Singh said.

He said single photon sources/detectors, entangled photon sources will also be developed for quantum communications, sensing and metrological applications.

Singh said four thematic hubs (T-Hubs) will be set up in top academic and national research and development institutes on the domains -- quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing and metrology, and quantum materials and devices.

"The hubs which will focus on generation of new knowledge through basic and applied research as well as promote R&D in areas that are mandated to them," the minister said.

Singh said the mission can take the technology development ecosystem in the country to a globally competitive level.

The mission would greatly benefit communication, health, financial and energy sectors as well as drug design, and space applications.

It will provide a huge boost to National priorities like Digital India, Make in India, Skill India and Stand-up India, Start-up India, Self-reliant India and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), Singh said.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by sanman »

India to fund Quantum research



I wish scientist would not make basic mistakes in binary code
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by vsunder »

This is not about Indians but a small historical note I wrote about Spectroscopy and tied to events in India. Unfortunately the pictures that went with this small note cannot be reproduced here. I had said something more about Vainu Bappu the prime mover later for observational astronomy in India whose pioneering work led to the establishment of modern Astronomy in India. I have edited all that out.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Of Chillies, Guntur and Helium

Guntur is a mandi town in Andhra Pradesh. It is famous for being one of the largest mandis/markets for fiery red chillies in India and presumably the world. A staple of Andhra cuisine, Guntur practically supplies the bulk of the demand of this fiery spice all over India and the world. Close by is the town of Tenali, the birthplace of the noted wit and poet Raman of Tenali one of the jewels in the court of the emperor Krishnadeva Raya of the Vijaynagar(Hampi) Empire. Vijayawada an important railway junction and manufacturing town is also close.
What is less known is that the inert gas, one of the lightest of the inert gases, Helium, was discovered at Guntur. Helium is an element and as the name suggests, it has something to do with the Sun(the Greek Helios). Fusion processes in the Sun fuse together hydrogen and Helium is formed, releasing the tremendous energy and light that sustains life on Earth.

It is in this Guntur a total solar eclipse occurred on August 18, 1868. To observe the Sun during the period of totality, a French astronomer Pierre Janssen, journeyed to Guntur and observed a bright yellow line in the spectrum of the Sun's aurora during the period of totality of the eclipse. He wrongly concluded that this was due to the element Sodium present in the Sun. This line is indeed close to the yellow Sodium lines.
On October 20 of the same year, English astronomer, Norman Lockyer, observed a yellow line in the solar spectrum, which, he named the D3 line because it was near the known D1 and D2 Fraunhofer lines of sodium. He concluded that it was caused by an element in the Sun unknown on Earth. Lockyer and English chemist Edward Frankland named the element Helium from the Greek word for the Sun, ἥλιος (helios).

It would be later, on March 26, 1895, Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay isolated helium on Earth by treating the mineral cleveite (a variety of uraninite with at least 10% rare-earth elements) with mineral acids. Ramsay was looking for argon but, after separating nitrogen and oxygen from the gas, liberated by sulfuric acid, he noticed a bright yellow line that matched the D3 line observed in the spectrum of the Sun. These samples were identified as helium by Lockyer and British physicist William Crookes.

Ramsay would be awarded in 1904 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on separating and isolating Helium terrestrially. Ramsay too is tied to India. He was an advisor to the Indian Institute of Science(IISc) and it was he who suggested that it be established in Bangalore. The land on which the IISc stands today was a gift of the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnarajendra Wodeyar one of the most far-sighted kings of India. Funds for the construction of what is now the central administrative building of the IISc was provided by JN Tata. The attached photos are of the astronomer Janssen and the chemist Ramsay.

The author is a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, an elected fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also a long term associate of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research(TIFR), a DAE Institute under the aegis of the PMO of India. He can be contacted by email at
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by vsunder »

THE FIBONACCI NUMBERS AND PARTITION QUESTIONS IN INDIAN MUSIC AND SANSKRIT POETRY


Some time back I wrote this small note (see link at the end) of how the Fibonacci number sequence was investigated by Hindu mathematicians some 1300 years before Fibonacci. Fibonacci lived from 1170-1240CE in Pisa, Italy. Contrary to Fibonacci's motivations, Hindu mathematicians like Pingala 200 BCE and even earlier about 1600 years before Fibonacci, encountered the so-called Fibonacci numbers in questions arising from Sanskrit Poetry and the problem of Talam, that is beats in Indian music and the partition of cycles of beats. Thus partition problems of numbers have a very ancient origin and one that attracted the interest of Hindu mathematicians 2500 years ago. In my note I present a motivation of the partition question based on percussion instruments used in Indian music like the mridangam, ghatam or tabla and end with a rigorous mathematical proof which connects the Fibonacci numbers with partitions of rhythmic cycles of beats in music or poetry. The proofs are elementary and based on mathematical induction at the level of high school. All that is needed is a bit of common sense to understand the proofs.
To refresh, the Fibonacci numbers are the numbers

1, 2 , 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89,...... ad infinitum

where each number is obtained by adding the previous two numbers. It is quite remarkable that Nature herself chooses this number sequence. Many flowers possess the same number of petals as one of the numbers in the list above. One such flower is the Sunflower. There are others like the chicory and the daisy.
Other examples are buttercups have 5 petals; lilies and iris have 3 petals; some delphiniums have 8; corn marigolds have 13 petals; some asters have 21 whereas daisies can be found with 34, 55 or even 89 petals.
Other situations where the Fibonacci numbers appear is in the leaves on certain branches of trees and so on.

There is a reason why Fibonacci numbers occur in Nature. An understanding can be obtained from the way Fibonacci posed the problem. He considered a pair of rabbits, a male and a female who reproduce every month and have exactly two offspring, a male and a female. The off spring begin to have offspring exactly a month later, who are in turn a male and a female. . The question of Fibonacci was that after n months what is the rabbit population? Flowers and tree limbs and leaves obey such rules for propagation and so no wonder you see these numbers in Nature.

The aim of my notes which were written keeping serious school students in mind, was to connect the question of beats/Talam with the Fibonacci numbers and showcase some of the striking achievements of Hindu mathematicians. Typically all that is told is that Hindu mathematicians invented zero while very deep results like Brahmagupta's(598-668) theorems that are among the first that address Rationality Questions in Arithmetic Algebraic Geometry , investigation of partition questions and Fibonacci numbers and so on are hardly known to Indians.

The Fibonacci numbers are related to the famous Golden Ratio which for aesthetic reasons is the best ratio for the length and height of a picture frame or a building facade as discovered by Renaissance architects. Here is the article on Fibonacci numbers and Beats in Classical music and Sanskrit Poetry

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ileContent



Later if I feel like it I may post my notes with a very lucid exposition of Ramanujan's and Kloosterman's work on their sums.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Lisa »

vsunder wrote: Later if I feel like it I may post my notes with a very lucid exposition of Ramanujan's and Kloosterman's work on their sums.
Will look forward to those posts. Thank you.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by vsunder »

Sivaramakrishnan Pancharatnam

Pancharatnam (1934-1969) is a name most Indians are unfamiliar with. He was a nephew of CV Raman and a brilliant physicist whose life was tragically cut short at the age of 35. He did profound work on the Polarization of Light by the age of 22(1956) and was literally the Maestro of the Poincare Sphere. Raman had very high hopes he would get a Nobel Prize. In fact when Nehru once visited Raman's Institute in Bangalore, Raman introduced Pancharatnam to Nehru as a future Nobel Laureate. Pancharatnam was also involved in the Sarvodaya program with slum cleaning etc. Raman always held that Pancharatnam died catching some infection with his slum cleaning seva. Pancharatnam was in the UK when he died working on the then exciting field of Optical Pumping.

Pancharatnam was elected a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences at the age of 25, one of the youngest ever to be accorded this honor.

The Pancharatnam phase later re-discovered by the British physicist Sir Michael Berry in a more general framework(1983) is a quantum mechanical effect that arises from holonomy that is the curvature of the Poincare sphere. In this note of mine I explain a bit what the Pancharatnam phase is and at the end how it is also linked to what is called CR Geometry and my work. The wikipedia entry for CR Geometry discusses my work and I also at the end of my small note show what that connection is to the Berry-Pancharatnam phase through a certain curvature. There is a short list of references in my note which will allow one to read more about the life and work of this genius and his promise that was tragically cut short.


http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~chanillo/panch.pdf

The wiki page for CR Geometry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CR_manifold

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

The wiki page for S. Pancharatnam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Pancharatnam
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

CV Raman has *many* nateble members in his family/several generations who have contributed a lot.
(I knew him and many members of the younger generation very well over the decades)
I posted quite a few posts about this in other dhagas which many will find interesting.

Let me repost <this post from about 5 years ago in physics dhaga>
Amber G. wrote: Yes, the family had *many* many world renowned personalities. Not only in Physics or sciences but in arts, medicine too. Many of his family members are/were very modest - for example a nephew was my classmate and very good friend, but no one in IIT (except very close friends) even knew that he was related to the family. (Our families have been close friends for 50+ years)

Let me just mention a few famous people in this family which many here may know but may not realize it (or may not even know this)

Chandrasekhara Venkata (C. V.) Raman (Noble Prize, Raman Effect)
Chandrasekhara Ramaswamy (brother of C. V. Raman) - famous meteorologist - (Ex) Director-General of the Indian Meteorological Department - Authority on Indian monsoonal patterns. (Very nice family - everyone in his family was very smart. (They were also very kind and fun loving for us kids). I learned a lot from him and his family - now second/third generation of the family - all at extremely good places)

Venkatraman Radhakrishnan (son of C. V. Raman) Astrophysicist(pulsars, interstellar clouds etc) .
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (nephew of C. V. Raman - Nobel) Astrophysicist
Sivaraj Ramaseshan (nephew of C. V. Raman) Famous crystallographer (was Director of the Indian Institute of Science, President of the Indian Academy of Sciences etc.
Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar (nephew of C. V. Raman) Another famous physicist (liquid crystal technology - and since name was similar/ same as "chandra".. was many times confused with other nephew the astrophysicist.
Sivaramakrishna Pancharatnam (nephew of C. V. Raman) distinguished optical physicist (Pancharatnam phase for polarized beams passing through crystals was after this guy's name.
Chidambara Chandrasekaran (nephew of C. V. Raman) Famous demographer and biostatistician ( with Edwards Deming, he devised the Chandra-Deming formula) Big shot in Indian government/the World Bank and the United Nations- President of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population
Ramaswamy Rajaram Another physicist (his wife is also a first rate physicist and their son too)

Of course, there are many in next generations - for example - V. Shanta (great-niece of C. V. Raman) a famous oncologist,
Uma Parameswaran (great-niece of C. V. Raman a Indo-Canadian author ( biographer of her great-uncle C. V. Raman.)

****
Another thing which impressed me was CV Raman (and his brothers/nephews/nieces) knowledge in other fields. CV Raman knew LOT about botany, Human eye (medical) etc.. I was amazed he will pick new stuff very fast.

From mother's side Shivaji Ganeshan (Tamil super film star) was close relative.. And some very famous Tamil authors.
***
Another incredible fact is some brilliant women in the family - Lalitha (Chandra's wife) was one of the first (if not the first) Indian woman - she was the only - one of very rare - woman grad-student of CV Raman. Lalitha comes from a very brilliant (and famous) family from her mother's side. (Chandra's love marriage was unusual in those days but this was a very brilliant couple and they had a very happy life)
(There is a biography by Wali which is very nicely written - If people want to read further about the family).

I could go on. I have very treasured memories and I am very happy and proud that some of the mine and their next generation people are good friends. :).
As said above first woman grad student in physics in IISc was CV Raman's grad student - Lalitha who became her niece - she was also a first rate physicist and wife of his nephew Nobel Laureate Chandrasekhar ... Inspiring many women physicists ...

Several grand nephews are also fairly well known..and the trend continues. ..

(BTW this trend - family (over generations) of some famous physicists have produced/inspired quite a few gems in generations to come
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by vsunder »

I talked about S. Pancharatnam above and also linked a note I wrote about his work on Polarization and how it relates to CR Geometry and my own work giving also a wikipedia link to the CR Geometry page which tells you about CR Geometry in a bit more detail with lots of additional references to pursue including a reference to my own work. I also said he went to the UK and there worked on Optical Pumping at the time of his demise. Here is an article which appeared some years ago in not everyone's favorite magazine The Wire, which describes Pancharatnam's work at the time he died and how it had an impact on the work of Claude Cohen-Tannouji the French physicist who won a Nobel Prize. Cohen-Tannouji did contribute an article to the Pancharatnam memorial volume in 1994. Pancharatnam passed away in 1969. The Wire article is quite nice and well-written and I encourage people to read it as it is written for the lay reader who is scientifically inclined. Essentially when you cool a substance you slow the motion of the molecules of the substance. But how do you slow the motion of a single atom and another single atom of another substance, just one atom of two substances. Say you slow just one single atom of Sodium and one single atom of Caesium. Then you bring together the two atoms so that they combine and form a molecule and in a sense you watch the molecule forming. This sounds bizarre but is among the consequences of Pancharatnam's work. Sadly he died young and also died when tunable lasers were in their infancy, who knows what other clever things he would have found if he had lead a full life.


https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences ... -reaction/
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by vsunder »

The Construction of Vedic Fire Altars and Pythagoras's Theorem


Construction of authentic Vedic Fire Altars and the rituals associated to it have long been forgotten in the rest of India. This tradition has remained though amongst the Namboodri community in Kerala. They have closely guarded the secrets and resisted all requests to film it. Finally a Berkeley sociologist Frits Staal was given an opportunity to film the Agnicyana Homam in 1975 and I shall link the amazing video below. Till then except for certain members of the Namboodri communiy nobody else had seen this ritual being performed and in the 20th century it was performed rather infrequently. A feature of the Agnicyana is that the entire yagyashala is set on flames and burnt to the ground at the conclusion of the rituals.

Part of the Agnicyana ritual is to construct an elaborate fire altar to certain prescribed dimensions. Staal has written extensively about this aspect. I shall not get into this. What concerns us here is the Mathematics involved in the construction of the fire altar.
First consider a rectangle. One side of the rectangle is some standard length A. The other side B is given by the dimensions of the Yajaman. He is the person offering the Yajna. The dimension could be his height. Other dimensions like the height of his knees from the ground and so on are also used in constructing the fire altar. So we have a rectangle of dimensions AxB. Now the mathematical problem is to find a square of side length C, so that the area of this square is the same as the area of the rectangle. So you are really trying to solve

C^2=AB.


Let us give an example, A=1 and B=2. So C=square root of {2}. The square CxC is then used to mark out the dimensions of the very elaborate fire altar to perform the Agnicyana homam. Secondary appendages to the main fire altar uilize other dimensions and the entire edifice is very elaborate. Once constructed the Vedic Gods are invoked and summoned and the fire is the messenger through which the oblations reach the gods. Clearly the ritual involves solving a non-trivial square root problem that was accomplished perhaps 3500 years ago and certainly earlier by using Pythagoras's theorem as I show in my notes(there is a small proof in my notes to emphasize the fact that this is all rigorous) linked here

https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~chanillo/vedic.pdf

So, knowledge of Pythagoras's theorem certainly existed in dim antiquity in India and the notes and this write up serves to elaborate how Geometry arose in India via the need to construct fire altars. This later reached more sophistication with the construction of temples. While the Greeks developed synthetic Geometry to profound levels, Indian mathematicians were also using Geometry for practical purposes in remote antiquity with varying degrees of sophistication.

Here is the famous video with explanations and commentary by Frits Staal on the Agnicyana homam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYvkYk7GvJ0

Staal says very clearly in the video that this is how Geometry arose in India. Watch the video closely, you can see the yajaman being measured by a bamboo pole to construct the fire altar.

@Lisa: I have not forgotten your request on Ramanujan sums and Kloosterman sums. The notes were written as a community service as it is a difficult and very important topic and so I wrote an expository set of notes with complete proofs with my own perspective. It also was used by me in work on Stealth all these are on the Internet since a very long time. I can post the work on Stealth and the notes here but without a commentary by me it might be hard for people here to understand. There is even a video on the Internet of my collaborator speaking on the Stealth work. I simply need time to do a write up so that some of you can get something from my notes. Here are the notes in case you are eager to start reading them. I will hold off with the Stealth stuff. That research was funded by USAF you will see it when I link the paper eventually(in any case the Stealth paper is referenced in my notes so you can easily access it via the journal, its also posted on Researchgate). Anyhow here is the notes on Ramanujan sums and Kloosterman sums(They are highly important in Number theory and in general there are a lot of questions. My exposition deals with the classical case). Ramanujan sums and his theorem on them are on page 4 with his proof. Ramanujan sums are a special case of Kloosterman sums.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ileContent
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by vijayk »

https://swarajyamag.com/science/indian- ... -wearables

Indian Scientists Develop Super Flexible Composite Semiconductor For Next-Gen Displays And Wearables
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by sanman »

Samudrayaan - our mission to the bottom of the ocean:

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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Sad. Om Shanti. .
Deepest condolences on the demise of Professor MS Swaminathan, the legendary agricultural scientist & a key architect of the country’s ‘Green Revolution.

Image

One anecdote: After the nuclear tests of 1998, He said something very telling to in an Indian Science conference "
You people in Defence, Atomic Energy and Space think of these as "strategic". But without food security, we couldn't have done the nuclear tests."
He was right.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by VKumar »

Amber G. wrote: 29 Sep 2023 00:57 Sad. Om Shanti. .
Deepest condolences on the demise of Professor MS Swaminathan, the legendary agricultural scientist & a key architect of the country’s ‘Green Revolution.

Image

One anecdote: After the nuclear tests of 1998, He said something very telling to in an Indian Science conference "
You people in Defence, Atomic Energy and Space think of these as "strategic". But without food security, we couldn't have done the nuclear tests."
He was right.
People who have lived through the period of PL 480 during which we were surviving from grain ship to grain ship, never mind that the wheat was red wheat, can better appreciate his contribution to Bharat and food security.

May he attain moksha!
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