JC says

The other day I was reading a book “Experimental Pulse NMR: A Nuts and Bolt Approach” by Eiichi Fukushima and Stephen B W Roeder and I was encountered with a sentence which says,”Fluorescent lights generate noise which can be picked up in the spectrometer.” (para 1, page 13). I wonder if they are talking about NMR spectrometer (as they don’t mention it explicitly in the sentence). I have never come across this statement anywhere and I liked it. I wonder what kind of frequency is emitted by fluorescence lamps other than visible spectrum which adds to noise in the spectrometer. May be thats the reason why NMR and fluorescence spectroscopists don’t get along with each other so nicely….:).

By the way the book mentioned above is really nice and I liked going through it.

Guys, there is a decent scheme CSIR has come up with, only for the fresh PhDs though. Looks like Govt of India is trying to stop the “Brain-Drain”. Its a decent post-doctoral fellowship of Rs 35,000 pm plus HRA and an annual contingency of Rs 300,000, wow!!! At least “big people” in India are now realizing that its also “money” why people are not pursuing basic sciences in India. I am pretty sure that this would attract young scientists to remain in the country and “uplift” the level of Science. I do have a copy of the circular from CSIR with me which can be downloaded by clicking here. Also, I do not have any other information regarding, last dates, how to apply, application format etc., for all these inquiries, please contact CSIR directly.

In India, Children’s Day is celebrated on November 14 every year. This date marks the birth anniversary of independent India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Children’s day is celebrated on this day in recognition of his lifelong fondness and work for children. He loved children a lot. Children used to call him “Chacha Nehru” (Uncle Nehru).

Here are some of the pics I captured over a period of last month. Trees were never so beautiful, they were either green or no green, so this is the perfect time to see a good transition of colors from green to no-green. I am enjoying it totally.

And here comes the first snow of the winter and first snow of our life (me and my wife; we were waiting for the bus at a bus stand when it snowed). And later when I got up next morning, the view from our house was awesome!!! The white thing in the pictures below is SNOW!!

I wish you all a very happy diwali. May GOD bless you all.

So, here I am. Back in to writing business. Got some time so thought of writing some stuff. Life is cool here in US. Actually temp is so down, it has to be cool. Lets start from the first day in US. It was good, one of my friends (Ravi) from TIFR was here to pick us (myself and my wife) up at the Detroit airport. We landed in US with pre-furnished room in a two bedroom apt (I am sharing a room with ravi in his two bedroom). That actually saved a lot of hassel. Here are some pics:


Got over with jet lag which took two days…and then went to Chicago. A hotel was booked for us there in Chicago for two days and we had to look for an apartment and fix a deal in those two days. Well that was done and we got a nice apartment on 10th floor of building in University Housing.
I should also mention the experience of Amtrak at this point. Amtrak is the rail service which connects Ann Arbor in Michigan to Chicago and we decided to travel by this. We got the tickets booked and reached the station. The train was on time. However, in the middle of our journey, there was an announcement “Because of heavy rains (just a few cms), the tracks in Chicago are flooded and trains cant go there so we will stop the train at Michigan City station and a bus will take all the passengers from there to Chicago”. Nevermind, by train or by bus, does it matter? But I was just thinking about trains getting delayed in Mumbai due to very heavy (much more than a few cms as compared to Chicago) rains. So think again before abusing train system in Mumbai or India. This happens in Chicago too. After sometime we heard another announcement that its difficult to reach to Michigan City and now we will have to leave the train at Niles. Finally, we reached Chicago 3 hours late.
We had another good experience after reaching at Union Station, Chicago. We started looking for cabs. A cab fellow came asking if we need a cab. We said yes and we got into his cab. But we just couldn’t notice that his wasn’t a cab but a car. There were some numbers flashing on his screen which we thought might be meter. We gave him the address of the hotel and started. He gave a nice welcome and talked nicely. Got friendly while talking. We told him that we are both doctors. He took us for MBBS doctors and kept on telling “doctors are next to GOD”. I got a bit restless once we crossed the 60th street since we had to go to 55th street. Now I was not talking and just watching the street numbers we are passing. After a city round we reached our 55th street and he asked for 85 USD. I asked him that it looks a bit too much for this distance but not argued too much, since we have heard too much about a few people in Chicago and moreover I didnt want to take any chance in a new place. So I gave him the amount and went inside the hotel. The reception guy told me it should not have been more than 20 USD.
Anyways, its a nice and well ventilated apt which we have signed for a year. Here are some pics:


One of my friends from IIT Mumbai (Prashant) was there to help us get familiarized with the place, the buses, the mkt and everything else in Chicago. He was, and is still of course, of great help in an unknown city.
We travelled by Amtrak from Ann Arbor to Chicago a couple of times and the experience was more than bad everytime. Can you ever imagine a train running out of fuel and another train ahead of it had to be called back and hooked the first train to take it to its destination? That actually happened in one of our journeys from Ann Arbor to Chicago and we were late by just 7 hours. After that we decided not to travel by Amtrak ever again by choice. Currently one of us (myself or shilpy) travel every weekend by Megabus (a very nice bus service between some cities of US); you have wifi in the bus, you have movies playing in the bus, the bus stops in between for food and on top of that not late by more than an hour or so….what else u want. I wish these days of separation end soon though (a little sad for this part of the story).
I forgot to write about my first good purchase in US, the iPhone 3G, it just rocks yaar.
And the lab, I have joined Hashim lab at U Michigan. It is full of good people. Alex, Liz, Katie, Anette, Evgenia, Max, Andrew, Jameson, Scott, Jeremy, Neetu…everyone is there to help me out for anything, I just have to tell them. A good work environment’s most important ingredient is the people around u and I have that ingredient in full along with a 600 Bruker which is available right next to my sitting place.
Lets hope to get best out of the place. So far I am liking it, liking it a lot actually.

Below is the protocol I follow for chemical shift referencing (direct for 1H, and indirect for 13C and 15N). Actually I always have to look back and forth for referencing, so thought why not make a small script and put it on web so that the access becomes handy.

!!! The referencing should be done on the day of recording experiments !!!

!!! No rounding off of frequency numbers !!!

1. Record a one-D (1H) spectrum (s2pul on Varian and zg on Bruker) of the buffer (or sample) containing DSS.
2. Set the cursor on the right most line (DSS line) in the 1H spectrum of the sample. For Varian, type rl(0p) to set the DSS line to 0 ppm. In Bruker, use one of the buttons on the top panel to do the same.
3. Type movetof (Varian) to set the tof at DSS line. In Bruker, use one of the buttons on the top panel to set the O1 at DSS line.
4. Check the 1H frequency (spcfrq command in Varian will display four values, use the first one: RF Channel 1 (Obs) frequency). This frequency will be called as H⁰

Now,

1. For proton refrencing, check for frequency numbers against sfrq (Varian) or SFO1 (Bruker) values in the procpar file (Varian) or the acqu file (Bruker) of any experiment; call them as H^val.
2. For nitrogen refrencing, check for frequency numbers against dfrq2 (Varian) or SFO3 (Bruker) values in the procpar file (Varian) or the acqu file (Bruker) of any experiment; call them as N^val.
3. For carbon-aliphatic refrencing, check for frequency numbers against dfrq (Varian) or SFO2 (Bruker) values in the procpar file (Varian) or the acqu file (Bruker) of any of the HNCA, CBCANH type experiment; call them as CA^val.
4. For carbonyl refrencing, check for frequency numbers against dfrq (Varian) or SFO2 (Bruker) values in the procpar file (Varian) or the acqu file (Bruker) of HNCO and HN(CA)CO type experiment; call them as CO^val.

References:

1. Wishart et al, “1H, 13C and 15N chemical shift referencing in biomolecular NMR”, JBNMR (1995), 6, 135-140.
2. Wishart et al, “Protein chemical shift analysis: a practical guide”, Biochem. Cell Biol. (1998), 76, 153-163.

Its the monsoon time again in Mumbai and this calls for the trekking season. There are many beautiful “ghats” around Mumbai where one can go trekking. At this point I should mention that I used to be very confused with the usage of term “ghats” as in north India, this particular term is used for river banks etc, however, here in Mumbai or may be in Maharashtra, this term is used for hilly areas. Anyways, its not the term but the place which matters and these ghats are actually very beautiful during monsoon season.

Last sunday (22nd June’08 ) we, a group of 12 people from TIFR, decided to go trekking to Naneghat, a simple but not so simple trekking point, and sufficiently famous on google. The process started a day before when the food shopping was done (butter, bread, jam, thepla, singdana, banana, malpua…). All of us were instructed to sleep well in time as we have to leave for Kalyan by first local from CST. Instructions were followed and all of us were there at TIFR gate around 3:45 am, however, as usual one-two persons delayed and by the time we reached CST, we missed 4:22 local and we then boarded 4:43 one. Nevermind, everyone was in joyous mood and excited for the first trek (for most of us) of the monsoon. Photography sessions by some amateur photographers were going on on the way. After reaching Kalyan, we decided to have a “light” breakfast, which was not so light for some of us. There was fresh wada-pao coming out of oven, and all of us had it. Wada-pao has never tasted so well before!! Then there was a tea-session and in the meanwhile an idli-waala came out of the blue. So having idli was also a must-to-do job. After all these rituals we took a bus to NaneGhat (bus which goes to Malshej ghat goes directly via NaneGhat, otherwise one may have to change at Murbad an then at Tokawade). The bus journey was 72 km (i did not measure it, bus conductor told us the figure). A funny incident happened in the bus. As soon as conductor came to us for tickets, I asked him the fare to NaneGhat, he told in marathi, “panchees chalis”. I obviously did not understand and asked him again to tell me in hindi. He then told 45 Rs. I was shocked to hear that out side mumbai the journey is so cheap, for 72 km journey and for a group of 12 persons, this fellow is asking for just 45 Rs., that means only 3.75 Rs per head…i gave him happily a note of Rs 50 expecting a coin back. But he started shouting in marathi, its Rs 540 in total (that means Rs 45 per head)…well, then suddenly i remembered that similar incident has happened with us while we were on to Kashid beach last year. Finally we reached NaneGhat and photography sessions were continued on the way. Trekking started. Easy but not so easy. Everyone was excited. But by the time we reached the base of the actuall hill, it was almost 4-5 km and a little fatigue was there on every face. We decided to have another round of breakfast. The journey started again. Being the slowest member of the group, I was following the foot steps of the ongoing members and thus no question of loosing the way. Besides, there were arrow marks painted on rocks by some kind people. Finally, we reached the top in about 4 hours and to our surprise, there was a chai waala there in the cave upstairs. We enjoyed the tea along with the beautiful sight of the Sehyadri Mountain range, then went further up and passed the “Naneghat Pass” and went up the hill. Actually I dont have adjectives at the moment to explain the view, one has to go there and see by himself.
Then there was a little rain, while we were on top of the hill, and we unanimously avoid dancing in the rain and came back to the cave for shelter. After a little rest, we started trekking down the hill as it was already 3:30 pm. Again, me and my dear wife were the two last members of the trail. Suddenly the distance between the last member of the trail and the two of us was out of voice distance. I mean, we started shouting the names of the people but there was no body to listen, believe me, that was really haunting…since already there was no light because of dense forest in some stretches, and on top of that there were clouds all around. But we kept faith in “GOD” and followed the painted arrows. After walking alone for around half an hour, we found our group members sitting and waiting for us. That passed, and we reached downstairs at around 7:15 pm. Another hill to cover next was…how to go to Kalyan now, as there is no bus stop at the NaneGhat starting point, and no State Transport bus driver was kind enough to stop the bus. Then one of us went to Tokawade (4 km from there) by the help of passing by biker, and hired a big jeap (took Rs 100/=) which accommodated all of us and we reached Tokawade in no time. There a bus was waiting for us to take us to Kalyan (this time the total fare was Rs 408/=, may be its 3 by 2 bus thats why….). Had dinner at a “nice” restaurant (at least air conditioning was nice) at Kalyan station and took the local train to CST and reached TIFR at around 1 in the night. Some of the photos I clicked can be seen here.

This post looks like a reply to my earlier post, dated 10th Oct 2008, where a school in London, UK has taken initiative to teach sanskrit to its students as a compulsory course for at least six years. Now you dont need to go to London to learn Sanskrit, instead you can now visit Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), premiere research institute in India, for the same. TIFR is now a days conducting workshop for “Sanskrit Sambhaashan” for 10 days (16/06/08 – 27/0608), with the help of volunteers of Sanskrit Bharati, a non-profit organisation working to bring Sanskrit back into daily life. I guess this is a good initiative by TIFR and other institutes and universities should follow from here. At this point, I dont think we need to mention the importance of the language once again.

Please provide your input.. I am in desperate need of ideas to convert this boring job of thesis writing (something, I am presently doing) into an interesting thing…. Well, I guess, the summary of all the useful ideas provided may be consolidated into a book and would be a benefit for many others who would be writing their thesis soon.. So, a kind request to all the visitors of this page, please contribute towards a noble cause….

Through this post I want to put forward a suggestion, in front of scientists in India, regarding how to increase the impact of Indian journals. I suggest that Indian Govt should make a rule, which should be applicable to all the universities and institutes across India, that we, the researchers of India should publish all the work in Indian Journals only. The journals may be peer-reviewed internationally. The journals may be available online free of cost, and free copies may be sent to major universities worldwide. The language used should be ‘english’ so that the fate should not be like Russians, who did this in russian language and their developments in science were restricted to themselves.
This would be a difficult thing specially when there is a tough “race” going among scientists to see their names in international journals of highest impact, however, this would certainly increase the level of recognition the Indian Scientists should get worldwide.
Well, initially students may face problems, as in the average impact factor per student will be certainly very low, however, as soon as the Indian work starts getting recognition, citations will increase and thus the impact factor. I have a strong feeling that this should work. The post is open for suggestions/discussion. I would appereciate visitors of this page for their comments.

This is one of the headlines in today’s newspaper (HT Mumbai edition) which got my attention and opened my half closed eyes. Yes, it is true, you may now ask visa office that you want to go to London because you want to learn Sanskrit, a language which was “earlier” mastered in India. A British school (St. James Independent School) in the heart of London has made learning Sanskrit and Vedic Mathematics compulsory for atleast six years. They claim this to be an exquisitely refined, most scientific language which is mother of most of the Indo-European languages. They also claim that this helps students in their overall cognitive development. Most of us Indians have forgotten about these facts and want our students to learn English to cope up with the world, want our students to be taught in “convent schools”. Well, I am no against of teaching English or being taught in convent schools, but we should realise some importance of our own language which “others” have started doing before it is too late. I remember learning vedic mathematics in my school days on my own. I dont think most of the schools even today have vedic mathematics in their curriculum. Sanskrit and Vedic Mathematics are still confined to specialised institutes.
I suppose this is high time when “we” should realise the importance of the language and regain India’s repute as the knowledge hub.

I got up today morning with a wish to view the live telecast of republic day celebrations being held in New Delhi. I was late by five minutes, the program starts at 9:30 am, but I was sad to know that people were more interested to watch Maria Sharapova playing tennis rather than praising “Jawans” of their own country who are practising day and night, colorfully dressed small kids of different schools dancing on Rajpath and various other formations by various states of the country. Somehow I managed to fetch the remote control of the TV and switched to DD national. As the time passed, people joined me in enjoying the republic day celebration, however, some of them were sitting just to get the remote so that they could switch to india-australia test series as soon as the program is over. Anyways, I enjoyed a lot with the formations of various states of India showing versatility in the cultures across the country, school kids dancing at nice songs, human pyramids on the royal enfield, the parade by different regiments, and finally the Rashtriya Gaan…

A great experience of the delhi-hospitality was exemplified by INMAS people in the NMRS 2008 meeting during 16-19 Jan 2008. Although there was a little confusion during first entry in the DRDO campus…but later on the meeting was memorized by good lectures, good food, and good location. NMRS 2009 was announced to be held in IICT, Hyderabad and NMRS 2010 in IISc, Bangalore.