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Archive Events of 2012
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organised a seminar by Martin Killias on International Comparisons on Abstract: Surveys have considerably extended the possiilities for international comparisons on crime and criminal justice. Whereas comparisons based on police and court statistics face serious problems related to offence definitions and counting rules, surveys allow standardizing definitions, methods and rules of analysis. With innovative interview techniques (computer-assisted telephone interviews and now computer-assisted web interviews), field costs of surveys have decreased to a point where this method becomes affordable across the Globe. This will allow assessing to what extent popular explanations in Western countries hold internationally. For example, many explanations of offending developed in the USA have turned out to be of questionable validity in Western Europe. We can expect many more such discoveries once countries beyond America and Europe participate in such projects. Tuesday, 31 January 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences
Abstract: Recent experimental realizations of axial anisotropic spin-½ chains have intensified the research in one-dimensional spin-½ systems. The combination of anisotropy and frustration induced by competition between the nearest and next nearest neighbour exchanges in these systems gives rise to many interesting exotic phases like bond order wave, Néel and chiral vector wave phases in the ground state. In this talk, scaling of the order parameters and the Quantum phase diagram of a model Hamiltonian with axial anisotropic nearest and next nearest neighbor spin exchange interactions are discussed. A new quantum phase diagram of this model Hamiltonian is constructed using a combination of the exact results of finite system sizes and density matrix renormalization group method. School of Biotechnology SEMINAR NOTICE SPEAKER: Prof. Gerald Hoefler DATE: January 30, 2012 School of Life Sciences organised a seminar by Dr. Alan Hinnebusch on Mechanism of ribosomal scanning and AUG selection in translation: where to begin? on 27th January 2012 Centre for Philosophy Talk by Richard Sorabji on Moral Conscience: Its Origin and Meaning Date: January 27, 2012 NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME TOPIC: Migrations in Northeast India and Its Implications for the Strategic Security of India SPEAKER: Ms. Lianboi Vaiphei ABSTRACT: North East India’s strategic location surrounded by vast international borders has made it into an important destination for many migrants from neighboring countries. In recent years the North East has attracted a large number of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh due to political turbulence in these two countries. Both the neighboring countries of Myanmar and Bangladesh face socio-economic problems, due to which there is an exodus of population from the two countries into India’s Northeast region. Besides, the two countries are also struggling with democracy and their practices, which make it a breeding ground for militancy that spread across the geo political borders. The militancy finds an easy nexus with insurgencies of the northeast which makes it economical for drug smuggling as the region is very close to the golden triangle, one of Asia's two main illicit opium-producing areas. It is an area of around 367,000 square miles (950,000 km) that overlaps the mountains of four countries of Southeast Asia: Burma, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. The paper seeks to analyze the implications of the migrations that occurs in these region, especially with regard to Myanmar and Bangladesh and its implications as well as link for the rise of insurgencies movement and the consequences for the security of the Northeast region in particular and the country as a whole. Date: January 27th, 2012 organised an international conference on Historiographical Engagements in India A Symposium in Honour of Professor R.S. Sharma from the 27th to 29th January, 2012 The contribution of Professor Sharma, who passed away this year, to the study of Indian history is so great that a number of issues raised by him continue to dominate academic discussion. We request you to join us in our endeavor to pay tribute to this rich scholarship. The conference seeks to highlight the contribution of Prof. RS Sharma through his own writings and through a historiographical focus on certain themes that reveal shared concerns across the chronological divide of ancient, medieval and modern in Indian history. Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture By Jairus Banaji On ‘Regions that look seawards’: changing fortunes, submerged histories and the slow capitalism of the sea Historians of the Indian Ocean are aware that many of the toponyms that appear in travellers’ accounts and in geographers like Ibn Khurradadhbih remain complete mysteries to us, so that even when information is conveyed about some of these places, it remains largely unusable. This paper seeks to dispel some of that obscurity by suggesting plausible identifications for several of the South Indian toponyms in the Periplus, in Cosmas and in Ibn Khurradadhbih, and tighter locations for ports like Nelcynda. For example, it is argued that ?a?a??/Becare in the Periplus and Pliny was not Porakad but Varkala (20 km southeast of Kollam) whose white-sand beaches are backed by the red laterite cliffs that were known to the author of the Periplus as ‘Red Mountain’. Nelkynda must have been somewhere in its vicinity to the north, since the country boats described by Pliny came downriver from there to Becare on the outbound voyage. Poudapatana in Cosmas was Puthupatanam (Puthuppanam at Vadakara beach in Kozhikode district), the ‘Budfattan’ of Ibn Bat?t?ut?a and a satellite port of Calicut when the latter displaced Kollam in the fourteenth century. For Alagankulam, whose location is known, this kind of toponymic mapping establishes a wider chronological span than the several seasons of excavation seem to suggest. I shall try and show how. Part 2 of the paper looks at the chronological patterns of individual sites and their possible connections to each other. For example, among the Tamil ports, Arikamedu fades after the second century but resurfaces in the Chola period. Puhar/ Kaveripattinam to its south was a thriving Coromandel port down to the later sixth when much of it was washed away. Nagapattinam had emerged by the seventh century and was the main Chola port by 1000, still thriving in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. And so on. ‘The apparent death of a coastal region may be no more than a change in the rhythm of its life’, wrote Braudel of the Mediterranean. ‘It may pass in turn from coastal trading to long-distance voyages, that is for the historian, from an unrecorded to a recorded existence, vanishing again from his attentive gaze every time it lapses into its obscure everyday life’. This was surely even more true of the Indian Ocean whose regions retained their vitality due to the sheer density of ports (of ‘informal harbours’, as The Corrupting Sea calls them) and individual sites resurfaced with no apparent logic. The essential stability of the Indian Ocean trade system sprang from the constant reshuffling of its major ports and the remarkable continuity or resilience of the mass of lesser ones. Nagapattinam took over from Puhar, Cambay from Bharuch (Barygaza), Calicut from Kollam, Cochin from Cranganore (Kodungallur), and so on, in a long succession of displacements that define the history of the Ocean in all periods. These fluctuations were much less dramatic than, for example, the ferocious struggle between Kish and Hormuz for control of the trade from the Gulf to southern India that dominated the thirteenth century. They imply Braudel’s more complex, slower-moving histories that remain largely submerged. Yet a major upshot of this purely chronological mapping (the anatomy of the Ocean’s life cycle, so to speak) is the sheer vibrancy of the late antique and early-to-middle medieval periods which saw not just the astonishingly rapid emergence of Basra as the terminus of an expanding Gulf-controlled network (with Sasanian origins) that had reached south to Shanga by the later eighth century and spawned Muslim communities in much of coastal India by the tenth, but a whole cluster of new or substantially renovated ports like Sanjan in south Gujarat, Mantai in Sri Lanka, Nagapattinam on the Coromandel Coast, and Barus and Palembang in Sumatra. The final part of the paper draws on Giorgio Cracco’s classic study of Venice in the thirteenth century to argue that le grand trafic maritime was always dominated and controlled by powerful merchant capitalists in all periods of the history of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Yet Cracco’s lead has never been pursued systematically to explore this issue for the historiography of the Indian Ocean. I suggest that Byzantine sources enable us to distinguish at least two groups of capitalists, (1) financiers or merchants who specialized in financing international trade, and (2) shipowning merchants, and that the evidence for the Indian Ocean indicates that much of the international trade in that sector was controlled by the latter, e.g. the Aden-based nakhudas who figure in Goitein’s India Traders of the Middle Ages. However, here there was no sharp separation between rulers and merchant capitalists, and competition within the maritime capitalism of the Indian Ocean often took the form of coastal rulers seeking to monopolize or dominate access to the major shipping lanes, on a model that is certainly better exemplified by the Zamorin’s capture of Cochin at the end of the fifteenth century than by the struggles between Kish and Hormuz or even the Chola expansionism of the eleventh century. Jairus Banaji studied Classics, Ancient History and Modern Philosophy at Oxford in the late sixties and Modern History at JNU in the early seventies. Recent papers include ‘Late Antique Legacies and Muslim Economic Expansion’, in Money, Power and Politics in Early Islamic Syria, ed. John Haldon (Ashgate, 2011) and ‘The Economic Trajectories of Late Antiquity’, in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Johnson (Oxford University Press, 2012). His most recent book Theory as History (Haymarket Books) won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Prize for 2011. He is affiliated to the Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London and currently working on a short book called Marxist Theory and Contemporary Capitalism. Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, organised an interactive meeting with Padma Bhushan Prof. Kirit Parikh on Indian Planning and Implementation Challenges 24th January 2012 CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC STUDIES AND PLANNING SEMINAR NOTICE SPEAKER: Professor Kamihigashi TOPIC: Asset bubbles in a small open economy DATE: January 24, 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Length scale of dynamic heterogeneity and its relation to time scales in glass-forming liquids Speaker: Chandan Dasgupta Date: January 23, 2012 Abstract: The role of the length scale of dynamic heterogeneity in glass-forming liquids in the enormous increase in the relaxation time upon supercooling has received much attention recently. Using molecular dynamics simulations and finite-size scaling for a realistic glass-forming liquid, we establish that the growth of dynamic heterogeneity with decreasing temperature is governed by a growing dynamic length scale. We also perform a computational study of a four-point structure factor, defined from spatial correlations of mobility, for the same liquid and show that estimates of the dynamic correlation length and susceptibility obtained from this study are consistent with the results of the finite-size scaling analysis. However, the observed dependence of the simultaneously growing time scale of the long-time alpha-relaxation on system size does not exhibit the same scaling behavior as the dynamic heterogeneity: this time scale is instead determined, for all studied system sizes and temperatures, by the configurational entropy, in accordance with the Adam-Gibbs relation. We also investigate the dependence of the time scale of the short-time beta-relaxation on temperature and system size. A finite-size scaling analysis of this dependence reveals the existence of a length scale that grows as the temperature is reduced. Surprisingly, the temperature dependence of this length scale is found to be identical to that of the length scale that governs the growth of dynamic heterogeneity at the alpha-relaxation time scale. This result suggests a close connection between short-time dynamics and dynamic heterogeneity at time scales of the order of the alpha-relaxation time. This talk is based on work done in collaboration with S. Karmakar, S. Sastry, S. Sengupta and P. Bhuyan. School of Environmental Sciences Talk on "Nitrogen Loss Biogeochemistry in the Peru-Chile Oxygen Minimum Zone" By Prof. Mark Altabet Date: January 23, 2012 Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a seminar by Yael Berda on Administrative Memory and States of Emergency
Towards a Model of Colonial Bureaucracy Abstract: The scholarly debate on colonial continuities and inherited political structures has been an ongoing debate in postcolonies for decades. In recent years, groundbreaking scholarship on the colonial state has turned its gaze to the toolkits of procedural violence and legal arsenals it developed for the management of populations. However, we know little about the bureaucratic structure, routines and procedures of the colonial state and how these are perpetuated in the postcolonies. Yael offers a theoretical model of colonial bureaucracy that follows different organizing principles than Max Weber's classic model of bureaucracy. She argues that the organizational impact of "the rule of colonial difference" and the disjuncture of sovereignty in the colonies, produced a different model of bureaucratic administration that continues to shape the policies, routines, procedures and states of emergency that govern life in the postcolonies. Friday, 20 January 2012 School of Computational & Integrated Sciences organised a seminar by Dr. Soumya Datta on Complex Dynamics of Real-Financial Interaction on18th January 2012 Abstract: We investigate whether the macrodynamics of financing investment can provide an endogenous explanation for emergence of growth cycles in demand-constrained closed economies. Since the interaction between the real and the financial sector resembles that between a predator and a prey species in an ecosystem, the broad framework of Kolmogorov-Lotka-Volterra class of models is employed to answer some of these questions. We demonstrate the possibilities of stable growth cycles through an application of Hopf bifurcation theorem; however, under certain conditions depending on the relative strengths of various macroeconomic feedback effects, the stable growth cycles are replaced by a variety of more complex dynamical possibilities, including emergence of complex and chaotic dynamics. We also examine the possibilities of financial crises emerging as a by-product of these processes, and effectiveness of monetary policy in the form of Taylor-type interest rate rules in this context. Centre for Studies in Science Policy SEMINAR SERIES "A Climate for Change? Critical Reflections on the Durban United Nations Climate Change Conference" By Prof. Bobby Banerjee on 18th January 2012 About Speaker : Bobby Banerjee is Professor of Management and Associate Dean (Research) at the College of Business, University of Western Sydney. His research interests include critical management studies, sustainability, postcolonialism, Indigenous ecology and social movements. He has published widely in international scholarly journals and is the author of two books: Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and the co-edited volume Organizations, Markets and Imperial Formations: Towards an Anthropology of Globalization. Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Timothy D. Walker on The Portuguese Royal Hospital and Medicinal Garden in Goa: Acquisition and Dissemination of Indigenous South Asian Healing Knowledge 18 January Wednesday Portuguese colonial exploration and settlement during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries included a significant dimension of medical inquiry, the impact of which resonated throughout the European scientific world and beyond. Early contacts with native peoples and sustained missionary activity, combined with pragmatic attempts to address threats to the health of European settlers in the Asian tropics, occasioned Portuguese medical-botanical prospecting in India, the Persian Gulf, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and East Africa. Such pioneering experimentation added extensively to global knowledge and understanding of traditional indigenous healing practices and pharmacological botany. The enduring impact of these early scientific inquiries has long outlasted the transient economic importance of the Lusophone maritime empire. Descriptive works about Asian medicinal plants by Portuguese observers during the early modern period informed Europeans for the first time about many of the efficacious drugs commonly employed in indigenous healing traditions. Portuguese colonial agents spread indigenous drugs and information about Asian native healing methods to Europe, as well as to colonized territories in Africa, Brazil and throughout Asia. By the late seventeenth century, medical practice in the Portuguese-held enclaves of Asia, and in South India particularly, had become thoroughly hybridized, with applied remedies in colonial health institutions relying heavily on indigenous medicinal plants. To ensure a ready supply of common local and imported healing herbs, the Royal Military Hospital in Goa, administrative capital of the Estado da Índia, maintained on its premises a medicinal garden, supervised directly by the Chief Physician of the Portuguese Asian Empire. This paper will explore the layout, use and role of this garden as a multicultural space, wherein European and Malabar (and, indeed, even East African, Malaysian, Indonesian, Chinese and South American) concepts about healing blended. The paper will describe the physical space of the garden, its Indo-Portuguese caretakers and their unique medical cosmology, and the hospital environment that placed so much importance on the remedies supplied through this garden's bounty. Further, the paper will describe various medicinal plants cultivated in Indo-Portuguese hospital gardens, their applications and effects, as well as the social context in which the medical practitioners who employed these plants operated. Dr. Timothy Walker (B.A., Hiram College, 1986; M.A., Ph.D., Boston University, 2001) is an associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. At UMD, he serves as Fulbright Program Advisor (faculty and students); Associate Director of the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture (2007-2009); a member of the graduate faculty of the Department of Portuguese Studies; and an affiliated faculty member of the Center of Indian Studies and Program in Women's Studies. Walker is also an Affiliated Researcher of the Centro de História de Além-Mar (CHAM); Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. From 1994 to 2003, he was a visiting professor at the Universidade Aberta in Lisbon. During Fall Term 2010 Walker was a visiting professor at Brown University. Walker is the recipient of a Fulbright dissertation fellowship to Portugal (1996-1997), a doctoral research fellowship from the Portuguese Camões Institute (1995-1996), and a NEH-funded American Institute for Indian Studies Professional Development Grant for post-doctoral work in India (2000-2002). Walker has also been named a fellow of the Portuguese Orient Foundation (Fundação Oriente), the Luso-American Development Foundation (2003 & 2008), and has held a Wellcome Trust Travel Grant to the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London (Spring 2003). Walker also worked as a Lisbon-based researcher (1999-2001) on the Atlantic Slave Trade CD-Rom Database Project (Cambridge U. Press; D. Eltis, S. Behrendt & D. Richardson) and on the Global History of Leprosy Project, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford University (2003). During the 2003-2004 academic year, Walker taught for the University of Pittsburgh Semester at Sea program. From 2005 to 2007 he held a U.C. Davis/Mars Research Fellowship while working on the "Colonial Chocolate Project," coordinated through the University of California Davis Department of Nutrition. He remains a consultant for the Historical Division of Mars, Inc. In 2007, Walker was named a senior researcher on a National Science Foundation-funded project to study the competitive sharing of contested religious sites around the globe (2007-2011). Beginning in December 2010 he held a fellowship from the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal, to support the writing of a new monograph on Indo-Portuguese colonial medicine and hybridized medical culture. Most recently, Walker was named a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (July 2012-June 2013). Teaching fields include Early Modern Europe, the Atlantic World, the Portuguese and their empire, maritime history and European global colonial expansion. Current research topics focus on the 17th and 18th centuries, and include the adoption of colonial indigenous medicines by European science during the Enlightenment, slave trading in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as commercial and cultural links between the Portuguese overseas colonies in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Special Centre for Molecular Medicine Date: 18th January, 2012 Abstract: Several different c ells types undergoing stress (viral, endoplasmic reticulum etc) or injury synthesize and deposit an abnormal hyaluronan (HA)-based matrix that contains unique structural information recognizable by inflammatory cells. Murine airway myofibroblast cultures and a novel organotypic airway epithelium model is used to determine cellular responses to poly I:C (a viral mimetic) and tunicamycin (endoplasmic reticulum stressor). These two stimuli induce abnormal HA matrices differently. Mouse bone marrow-derived cultured mast cells were found to bind this HA structures in clusters. Our result also suggests that CD44, a primary receptor for HA, has a crucial role in the binding of mast cells. Inflammatory cells (mast cells, eosinophils, neutrophils, monocytes/macrophages) adhere to HA and degrade abnormal HA matrix. This degraded matrix further stimulates the cells and thereby plays a crucial role in regulation/progression of inflammatory processes. School of International Studies organised a seminar on 'Nehru as an International Thinker' Dr Priya Chacko is a Lecturer in International Politics in the School of History and Politics. She completed her BA (Hons) at the University of Queensland and her PhD at the University of Adelaide. Prior to returning to Adelaide, she held teaching/research positions at universities in New Zealand and South Africa. Her research interests include identity and foreign policy in India, India and global governance, India's engagement in Africa, constructivism and postcolonialism in International Relations, non-western thought in International Relations and the domestic and international politics of South Asia. Her recent publication is Indian Foreign Policy: The Politics of Postcolonial Identity from 1947 to 2004 (London and New York: Routledge, 2012). Date: 18 January 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Modelling of nanomaterials for solar energy & bio-applications Speaker: Biswarup Pathak Date: January 17, 2012 (Tuesday) Abstract: Nanotechnolgy is gaining momentum in the every field and got the potential to design new materials for the applications of renewable energy materials to health sciences. At the same time with advancement of computer power, computational material science became very powerful tool in designing materials for their applications. Our current dependence on fossil fuels must be superseded by new sustainable and environmentally friendly renewable energy materials. Sun is the most powerful source of our energy and most forms of the renewable energy comes either directly or indirectly from the sun. Sun is the most powerful source of our energy and most forms of the renewable energy comes either directly or indirectly from the sun. For the large-scale utilization of solar radiation it is essential to find ways of converting and storing the energy in a convenient form for later use. In particular for mobile applications, storage as chemical energy is most common and safest way. Two major approaches are considered by us here. The first relates to the direct transformation of solar radiation in solar cells to electricity, thus to power an electrolyzer to split water and generate hydrogen which is then stored chemically. The second (indirect) utilizes the stored hydrogen to react with oxygen in a fuel cell producing electricity and restoring the water and closing the cycle. My efforts are for last few years in the modeling of new materials for utilization of solar energy and bio-application for DNA sequencing. The theoretical description of surface reactions for solid catalyst, bandgap tuning for solar cell, electrodes designing for hydrogen fuel cells has undergone a radical development in recent years. The human genome DNA sequence is very unique, different from one person to other, and basic blueprint of our life. The DNA sequencing is very important for every individual for their medical treatments and risk assessments. The nanopore electronic DNA sequencing has attracted a lot of interest in this regard. The underlying reaction mechanism for each of these processes are very important for their understanding and improvement. Here, I will present some of these topics along with our results to show how computational materials science can contribute towards the designing of materials for their potential applications. School of International Studies organised a seminar on 'Air Power Diplomacy' Speaker: Dr Adam Lowther Dr Adam Lowther is a military defence analyst at the Air Force Research Institute, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He is the author of Americans and Asymmetric Conflict: Lebanon, Somalia, and Afghanistan and coeditor of Terrorism's Unanswered Questions. Dr Lowther has also written papers on the Iraq War and military strategy. Date: 17 January 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Quantum spin liquids Speaker: G. Baskaran Date: January 16, 2012 Abstract: Quantum fluctuations in ordered antiferromagnets, encouraged by low dimensionality or geometric frustration could destabilize
long range order and create a disordered state of spins, albeit
with important quantum coherence among spins. Such a
quantum disordered or liquid like state of spins is called a
quantum spin liquid (QSL). P.W. Anderson, developed Pauling's
theory of resonating valence bond (RVB) state to describe QSL. Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a seminar by Deepta Chopra on State-Society Relations in Policy-making Abstract: This paper traces the key events in the formulation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) with a view to reflect on the dynamics and interactions between the Indian 'state' and civil society that led to the passing of this Act. In doing so, emphasis is given to the inherently political and dynamic nature of these interactions. At the same time, the paper discusses the difficulty of neatly segregating actors as either 'state' or 'society'. It concludes that changes in state-society relations in India are underway both in terms of an unprecedented wave of citizen action and involvement in policy making, and through the adoption of a wide range of strategies for influencing the content as well as process of policy formulation. Friday, 13 January 2012 Maths Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Degrees of maps between Grassmannians Speaker: Swagata Sarkar Date: January 13, 2012 Abstract: Brouwer degree is an integer-valued numerical invariant connected to continuous maps between compact, connected, oriented manifolds of the same dimension. This concept was first defined by Brouwer, who proved that the degree of a map is a homotopy invariant. The Brouwer degree plays an important role in both mathematics, especially geometry and topology, and physics. In this talk, we will start with the definition of Brouwer degree and go on to discuss certain properties of the degree. We will also define Grassmann manifolds, which are classifying spaces for vetor bundles, and talk about the possible degrees of continuous maps between two Grassmann manifolds. School of Computational & Integrated Sciences Speaker: Dr. Nick Jones (Mathematics, Imperial College London) Topic: Mitochondrial Variability Date: 13th January Abstract: In this talk I'll discuss our work on mitochondrial variability. Mitochondria serve as power stations for the cell and a conventional view has treated them as isolated organelles. In fact they are very dynamic: networking, fissioning, fusing, being consumed and being generated. We recently found a surprising experimental connection between a marked variability in the average rate of transcription of cells in a population and a marked variability in their mitochondrial content. I'll discuss our mathematical and computational attempts to summarize this data. They suggest the existence of a partly-heritable factor which is connected to cell-to-cell variability. I'll then move on to discussing how the genetic content of mitochondria might vary through time and make connections with disease. Centre for the Study of Social Systems SEMINAR NOTICE Centre for Philosophy organised Lecture and Discussion Akeel Bilgrami On January 11, 2012 11 a.m.: Lecture of "The Concept of Identity in Politics" 2.30 p.m.: Discussion on Akeel Bilgrami's article "Secularism: Its Content and Context" All are welcome School of Computational & Integrated Sciences Speaker: Dr. Samrat Chatterjee Topic: Understanding relation between aberrant cell signaling and disease - experiment coupled with mathematical model Date: 11th January (Wednesday) Abstract: The ability of cells to perceive and correctly respond to their micro-environment is the basis of development, tissue repair, and immunity as well as normal tissue homeostasis. Errors in cellular information processing are responsible for diseases such as cancer, autoimmunity, and diabetes. By understanding cell signaling one can use it effectively in disease treatment. We begin with understanding response difference in mature and immature B-lymphocytes on engagement of the antigen receptor. Our experimental results suggest that immature B cell has weak initial Lyn signaling in compare to mature B cell and thus fail to activate downstream signaling pathway. However, to understand the mechanism behind the observed phenomenon, we use mathematical model and our proposed model suggests that there is a negative regulator or feed-back loop responsible for the observed phenomenon, which was then further substantiated experimentally. Then we study a general cellular signaling network, where a design principle is discussed on the complex architecture of the signaling network. Using a mathematical model we identify that the organization of motifs in specific manner within the network serves as an important regulator of signal processing. Further, incorporating a systemic stochastic perturbation to the model we propose the possible design principle, which has been verified in a large, complex human cancer signaling network. Finally we investigate the mechanism of amyloid formation under different micro-environment. Recent studies showed that amyloid deposition can initiate signaling pathway leading to apoptosis and so it is important to understand the mechanism involved in the formation of this amyloids. Contrary to popular belief, the origin of polymorphism is decided during fibril formation, our result suggests that the fate of polymorphic assemblies is already decided at the stage of oligomerization. Later through mathematical model we study the role of different parameters in the formation of amyloids. WOMEN'S STUDIES PROGRAMME, SSS-II, JNU organised a Seminar on On Translating Simone de Beauvoir's 'Second Sex': Reasons, Process, Reflections by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier DATE : 11th January 2012 JOINT BIO Central Library, JNU is organised Ist Library Lecture Series and Outreach Programme Documentation of Oral History:Experiences at South Asian Oral History project at the University of Washington Libraries by Dr. Deepa Banerjee, on Tuesday, 10th January 2012 About the Topic : South Asian Oral History project at the University of Washington which captured the history of South Asian Immigrants to Pacific Northwest. through Oral History interviews. The interviews are now part of National Museum of Immigration in Ellis Island and a book " Roots and Reflections: South Asian Map Pacific Northwest" by the oral historian Amy Bhatt and Nalini Iyer is being published by University of Washington Press (Publication due 2012) based on my project. http://content.lib.washington.edu/saohcweb/index.html About the Speaker: Dr. Deepa Banerjee joined University of Washington Libraries in 2006 as a South Asian Studies Librarian and has been working closely with the faculty and students from South Asia programs at the University of Washington. As a general Reference and Research Librarian, she assists students with their wide ranging research needs from various subject areas through individual consultations, virtual chat and working at the reference desks. She plays an active role as a member of various local and national library committees. Examples include Scholarly Communications Committee, Diversity Committee, CONSALD (Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation), Association of American Libraries, ACRL / AAMES (Asian African and Middle Eastern Division). She has served as a Chair of the AAMES Publication Committee and AAMES Conference Planning Committee. She has also been the editor of AAMES newsletters. Deepa also has publications, conference presentations and projects to her credit. One of her projects " South Asian Oral History Project" has received national acclaim and led to a book publication titled " Roots and Reflections : South Asians Map the Pacific Northwest" by University of Washington Press co authored by Dr Amy Bhatt and Dr Nalini Iyer based on the project. Publication is due in September 2012. Deepa has worked in a variety of library settings in Australia, Canada and US prior to her current position. Deepa has an MLIS from Australia and a PhD from India.
Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Exploring and exploiting the carbohybrids towards biological application Speaker: Ram Sagar Date: January 9, 2012 Abstract: The biological roles of carbohydrates have until relatively recently been viewed as simple ones: as sources of energy, e.g., glucose, or as polymeric building materials, chitin in crab shells, cellulose in wood. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that modified carbohydrate in the form of carbohybrids are becoming more biological relevant molecules that can act as marker in important recognition processes such as microbial infection, cancer metastasis and cellular adhesion in inflammation, in addition to many intracellular communication events. Further a collection of "natural-product-like" small molecules that specifically perturb the individual functions of gene products are facilitating the exploration of biological pathways. Diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS) that aims to populate the chemical space with skeletally and stereochemically diverse small molecules with high appending potentials has been becoming the focus of research for medicinal chemists and chemical biologists. Therefore, the development of an efficient route for the synthesis of drug like small molecules, that specifically perturb the individual function, has been paid great attention. The present talk taken from my pre- and post-doctoral research work will be focused towards the efficient and stereoselective synthesis of carbohybrids as drug-like molecules starting from various glycals as chiral synthons. The biological applications of synthesised carbohybrids will be also addressed. Centre of Arabic and African Studies organised an International Interdisciplinary Conference on "Meaning, Culture and Values" in collaboration with Davis & Elkins College, WV, USA January 5-7, 2012 Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies organised talks by Dr Ainura Asamidinova Duration: Jan 2-9, 2012 Centre for Linguistics Talk by Amresh Sinha on The Use and Abuse of Subtitles in Film on Friday, 6th January, 2012 Special Centre for Molecular Medicine Speaker: Vivek Rai, Ph.D. Date: 3rd January, 2012 Title: The RAGE axis: Novel Structural and molecular insights and key regulations in chronic inflammations and tumorigenesis. Abstract: The immunoglobulin superfamily molecule RAGE (receptor for advanced glycation end product) transduces the effects of multiple ligands, including AGEs (advanced glycation end products), S100/calgranulins, high-mobility group box-1, amyloid-beta peptide, and beta-sheet fibrils. In diabetes, hyperglycemia likely stimulates the initial burst of production of ligands that interact with RAGE and activate signaling mechanisms. Consequently, increased generation of proinflammatory and prothrombotic molecules and reactive oxygen species trigger further cycles of oxidative stress via RAGE, thus setting the stage for augmented damage to diabetic tissues in the face of further insults. Many of the ligand families of RAGE have been identified in atherosclerotic plaques and in the infarcted heart. Our work suggests that RAGE-dependent acceleration of atherosclerosis in ApoE-null mice is dependent on the action of the ROCK1 branch of the transforming growth factor-beta pathway. Further, we discovered a novel ligand, lysophosphatidic acid for RAGE in vascular signaling and tumorigenesis. These findings identify novel roles for RAGE as a conduit for ligand signaling and indicate that therapeutic strategies to modify the pathological actions of LPA in vascular disease and tumorigenesis should include targeting the interaction of LPA with RAGE. A novel binding interface as a target for suppression of RAGE ligand-stimulated signal transduction is identified in our recent study.
Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Radhika Mongia On Disciplinary Power and the Colonial State: The Bureaucracy of Migration Control 29 February 2012 Mainstream migration scholarship sees extensive, bureaucratized state control over migration as a distinctly twentieth-century phenomenon. In contrast, this paper outlines the bureaucratization and micro-management of nineteenth-century indentured Indian migration as an exemplary instance of the deployment of what Foucault calls disciplinary power, a characteristic feature of the modern state. Providing an overarching analysis of a huge bureaucracy (of emigration officers, health inspectors, police officers, recruitment agents, etc.) that spawned an array of mechanisms to monitor disparate aspects of the migration and the migrants (ranging from the health and fitness of emigrants to the character of recruitment agents, from the dietary scales on ships to the sleeping arrangements and exercise routines of emigrants) the paper focuses, especially, on aspects of disciplinary power that, through multiple, minute, and rigorously specified rules of documentation and record keeping, are enmeshed in the production and organization of standardized knowledge. The paper simultaneously examines how the regulation of colonial migration was embedded in the knowledge protocols and documentary obsessions of the modern state and reflects on the analytical and empirical distinction often posed between the colonial state and the modern/metropolitan state. Radhika Mongia is Associate Professor of Sociology, Women's Studies, and Social and Political Thought at York University, Toronto. Her current research is situated at the intersection of history, law, and political theory and explores the makings of the global modern. Among other venues, her essays have appeared in journals such as Public Culture, Gender & History, Cultural Studies, and Comparative Studies in Society and History. Mongia's book, Genealogies of Globalization: Migration, Colonialism, and the State, is forthcoming with Duke University Press and Permanent Black Press CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT SPECIAL LECTURE on UNDERSTANDING MARRIAGE TRENDS IN ASIA by PROFESSOR GAVIN JONES on Wednesday, 29th February 2012 Centre for Philosophy organised a Lecture by Dr. Daniel Raveh Archives on Contemporary History Jawaharlal Nehru University organised 15th P.C. Joshi Memorial Lecture by NIKHIL DEY on PARTICIPATIVE DEMOCRACY AND THE FUTURE OF DISSENT 28th February 2012 Prof. Sudha Pai, Rector, JNU presided over the function Usha Ramanathan, Independent Law Researcher and Activist Chaired the Session Advanced Instrumentation Research Facility ELECTRON MICROSCOPY AND ITS APPLICATIONS on 28 &29 February, 2012 School of Biotechnology organised on February 24-25, 2012 Meet the Speaker, SLS organised a talk by Prof. G. Krishnamoorthy on February 23 & 24, 2012 School of Arts & Aesthetics Presented ‘Rethinking Political Performance in a Time of Reaction’ A Talk by Prof. Janelle Reinelt on 24th Feb’12 (Friday) JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY organised Third Professor P.N. Srivastava Endowment lecture on Higher Education Landscape: Ideation and innovation spaces in quest for a new trajectory on Friday, 24 February 2012 CENTRE FOR PHILOSOPHY ICPR sponsored National Lecture on UNIVERSAL HUMAN LIBERATION: Alain L. Locke and Critical Pragmatism by Leonard Harris, Ph.D. Abstract: I argue that universal human liberation is a necessary precondition for the possibility of the good, whether the good is conceived in pluralist, communitarian or liberal terms. I use the critical pragmatism of Alain Locke to defend this approach. Universal human liberation (UHL) is a sufficient precondition for the possibility of actualizing the good, minimally conceived. UHL occurs through the struggles of particular communities and individual agents. UHL is a process to be measured by how far we have travelled from the past, whether or not the good exists. UHL is the freedom from the boundaries of national and racial ideation separating communities; boundaries excluding the poor, workers, proletariat and the wretched from peer-ship in the human family RESOURCES: “Alain L. Locke,” John R. Shook, Joseph Margolis, eds., Companion to Pragmatism, Blackwell Publishing Company, 2005, pp. 87-93. “Universal Human Liberation and Community: PixleyKalsakaSeme and Alain L. Locke,” Claude Sumner, Samuel W. Yohannes, eds., Perspectives in African Philosophy: An Anthology on ‘Problematics of an African Philosophy: Twenty Years After 1976-1996’, Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Printing Press, 2002, pp. 150-159. "Community: What Type of Entity and What Type of Moral Commitment?" Robert Birt, ed., The Quest for Community and Identity, New York: Rowman& Littlefield Publishers, 2001, pp. 243-255. "Universal Human Liberation: Community and Multiculturalism," Cynthia Willett, ed., Theorizing Multiculturalism, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Company, 1998, pp. 449-457. "The Horror of Tradition or How to Burn Babylon and Build Benin While Reading A Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note," Philosophical Forum, XXIV: 1-3 (Fall-Spring 1992-93) 94-119. on 24TH FEB.2012 Centre for the Study of Social Systems SEMINAR NOTICE Topic: Class, Caste, and Gender Relations: Female Workers in Kerala 1930 - 2010 CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC STUDIES AND PLANNING SEMINAR NOTICE SPEAKER: Prof. Nobuhara Yokokawa TOPIC: Dynamic Comparative Advantage and Evolution of Capitalist World System DATE: Thursday, February 23, 2012 Centre for Studies in Science Policy SEMINAR SERIES End-of-life Automobiles and the Challenge of Recycling in India by Captain N.S.Mohan Ram India’s vehicle population has increased exponentially over the last two decades. The government has yet to formulate policies, systems and regulations to deal with end-of-life automobiles. Currently, scrapped vehicles are cut and sold by low-tech units resulting in low recoveries and environmental pollution. They employ child labor and use unhygienic practices presenting serious ecological hazards. By 2020, with proper recycling procedures, we can recover annually over 15,00,000 tons of steel scrap, 180000 tons of Aluminum and 75000 tons each of recoverable plastic and rubber. We have to dispose over 25000 tons of residues in landfills. This figure will increase by about ten percent every year in line with the increase in vehicle population. Capt Mohan Ram is a pioneering engineer, who has awarded the Vishist Seva Medal (1977) for designing India’s first indigenous frigate - INS Godavari. He was also the President and then Director of the TVS motor company and was crucial for turning it around in 1991-93. on Thursday, February 23rd , 2012 Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Monika Zin On Names of Kings and Stories: Inscriptions from the Stupa in Kanaganahalli 22 February 2012 The still little-known stupa in Kanaganahalli (Karnataka, dist. Gulbarga) is of enormous importance not only because of the extraordinary beauty and matchless design of the well-preserved reliefs, but also because of its inscriptions. Among these the inscriptions that label the events represented in the reliefs are of particular interest, as they mention titles of jatakas and of episodes from the life of the Buddha which are sometimes different from those given in literature. The inscriptions also name scenes which seem to represent historical events: they name “raya Asoko” as well as at least five kings of the Satavahana dynasty, three of which (Mantalaka, Sundara Satakar?i and the early Pulumavi) were not known from historical sources before. The inscriptions apparently describe actual events, since “raya pulumavi ajayatasa ujeni deti” can hardly be explained as anything but a report that Pulumavi is giving Ujjayini (Pali: Ujjeni) to Ajayata. Monika Zin is Professor in the Department of Art History, Free University, Berlin. She has published extensively on Ajanta paintings. Her current research is on Nagarjunakonda Monasteries and their School Affiliations; and Studies on the Interpretation of Kizil paintings. Her recent publications include Guide to the Ajanta Paintings II, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2003; Compassion and miraculous powers. Difficult conversions and their iconography in Indian Buddhism, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006; Samsaracakra, the wheel of rebirth in Indian tradition (with Dieter Schlingloff) Dusseldorf: House of Japanese Culture (EKO), 2007. North East India Studies Programme Special Documentary Film Screening A Measure of Impunity Directed by Maulee Senapati Followed by Interactive Session with Prof. Sanjoy Hazarika on 21st February (Tuesday) 2012 Maths Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Sub-Laplacians on Step-Two Nilpotent Lie Groups Speaker: Mukund Madhav Mishra Date: February 21, 2012 Abstract: The Heisenberg group was introduced as a group of certain
quantum mechanical operators which later appeared as the
boundary of certain Siegel half space. The natural geometry
of the Heisenberg group turns out to be sub-Riemannian and
gives rise to a Laplace like operator which is known as the
Heisenberg sub-Laplacian or the Kohn Laplacian. When looked
upon as a Lie group, the Heisenberg group is a two step
nilpotent Lie group with one dimensional center. The Potential
theory of the sub-Laplacian on the Heisenberg group is a very
rich subject today. Kaplan in 1980 introduced a class of two
step nilpotent Lie groups, known as H-type groups which
generalize the Heisenberg group and gave a fundamental
solution for the sub-laplacian on an H-type group. Beals, School of Arts & Aesthetics The White Mughals of Delhi a talk by William Dalrymple Friday, February 17, 2012 William Dalrymple, celebrated writer, is the author of several historical books on the Mughal and early colonial period. This month, the Asia Society in New York opened an important exhibition co-curated by Dalrymple and Yuthika Sharma. Titled Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857, this exhibition is an in-depth examination of late Mughal art. To mark this event, William Dalrymple gives a talk at the SAA on the 'White Mughals of Delhi' - the British and European men who lived in Delhi in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and became an integral part of Mughal court culture in its last days. Maths Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Non-compact skew products of distal minimal flows Speaker: Gernot Greschonig Date: February 17, 2012 Abstract: The talk presents a structure theorem for topologically recurrent real skew product extensions of distal minimal compact metric flows. It turns out that such an extension can be represented by a perturbation of a so-called Rokhlin skew product. We obtain as a corollary that the topological ergodic decomposition of the skew product extension into prolongations is continuous and compact with respect to the Fell topology on the hyperspace, providing a minimal compact metric analogue to the Mackey action. Centre for the Study of Law and Governance Abstract: Structural and Process approaches to democratization treat countries in isolation, assuming that either internal structural features or intrnal political dynamics lead to transitions from dictatorial rule to democratic rule. However, such a perspective is unrealistic. Countries don't exist in isolation. Powerful international actors have worked to impede or promote democratization. In addition, such international dynamics as war and peace, or democratic diffusion/imitation also have an impact. These dynamics will be systematically explored. Friday, 17 February 2012 Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies organised a lecture by Prof. Hamid Naseem Rafiabadi on Kashmiri Sufism and Rishism Friday, 17 February 2012 School of Biotechnology Differential regulation of neuronal transcription factors by synaptic activity Dr. Sangeeta Chawla on February 17, 2012 Abstract: Activity-dependent changes in gene expression are fundamental to alterations in neuronal connectivity within neuronal circuits that occur both during development of the nervous system and during behavioral responses. I am interested in understanding how signalling pathways triggered by electrical activity differentially regulate distinct neuronal transcription factors. Transcription factors are primary effectors of gene expression and their differential regulation provides a mechanism for fine-tuning gene expression in response to different patterns of neuronal firing in different neuronal circuits. My work has investigated regulation of two key transcription factors, CREB and MEF2, in rodent hippocampal neurons. Both transcription factors are prominent players in regulating neuronal viability, development and plasticity. Synaptic activity, which is a prosurvival signal, activates both CREB and MEF2 factors. In contrast, neurotoxic stimuli such as high extrasynaptic glutamate concentrations inhibit both CREB and MEF2. I will present work that highlights some of the similarities and differences in their regulation. Gender Sensitization Committee against Sexual Harassment organised a street play "DASTAK” Directed by Arvind Gaur Date: 17th February 2012 School of Life Sciences organised a lecture of “Meet the Speaker” lecture series by Prof P. Balram on "Protein Sequences and Biological Function" Thursday, 16th February, 2012 “Meet the Speaker” lecture series features invited lectures at SLS by respected national and international luminaries in the field of science. Their talk would be followed by an interactive session with selected students who can then put questions to them in person over lunch. Centre for the Study of Social Systems Topic: Community without Communion: Thinking through Political Violence in Contemporary India Speaker: Dr. Ruchi Chaturvedi Date: 16th February 2012 (Thursday) Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Jean-Philippe Imbert on Sexuality, History and /of Art: the Saint Sebastian Archetype Wednesday, 15th February, 2012 What are the relationships existing between society, art, sex and sexuality? What is at stake in the recording of sexual practices and generating of sexual narratives (visual and textual) in a specific society? This seminar, aimed at historians, will come from the discipline of comparative literature, using texts as sociotexts, providing hermeneutical clues to the telling of their own times. The first part of this seminar will focus on the diachronic evolution of sexual history through literary and artistic artefacts in the Western World, focusing on sexual texts, pornography and erotica as a means to record the unspoken history of specific European periods raising some of the following issues: When does a private story become history? How does a private story become history? Why does a private story become history? The second part of this seminar will focus on the Saint Sebastian Archetype, from its inchoative stages to today. Starting with the discipline of martyrology, we will look at the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian to look at the historical abyss existing between sexuality and the Sacred in the Christian world. Then we will see how this archetype has morphed during the French Renaissance, to be reborn thanks to, or because of, masculinity studies, LGBT studies and queer studies. Finally, we will look at how Sacred imagery and Sacred texts have shifted onto the profane arena, and regained some of their powers, be it in the French, Spanish, Mexican or Japanese sociocultures, using literary texts as key providers of male homosexual narratives. Jean-Philippe Imbert lectures in French and Comparative Literature at Dublin City University, Ireland. His main fields of teaching, research and publication focus on the artistic and literary representations of sexuality and teratology (evil, the taboo and pain) in French, Hiberno-English and Mexican XXth century socio-cultures. Former President of the Association of French Studies of Ireland (ADEFFI), he is on the Board of yearly the Franco-Irish Literary Festival. He is Chair of Sexuality Studies at DCU, has created the first MA in Sexuality Studies of Ireland and has created the Pluridisciplinary Center in Sexuality Studies, EROSS (Expressions, Research, Orientations : Sexuality Studies). Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a lecture by Robert Grey on Cause of Democratization:Structures and Processes Abstract: Scholars of democratization divide into multiple camps, the most important of which are the structuralists and the process schools.Among structuralists, many emphasize the crucial importance of economic development, arguing that it is overwhelmingly rich states which become and/or remain democratic. Other streams of structuralist thought emphasize the necessity of a pre-existing democratic culture, or a supportive class or the pre-existence of a rule-of-law state.Process or agency approaches criticize structural approaches as deterministic and apolitical. They argue that political actors, not structures, create democracies and focus on how new democracies have been created.They emphasize particularly relations between dictatorial governments and their opponents, negotiations to introduce elections and the compromises they see as essential to the process. on Wednesday, 14 February 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Mechanobiology of cell-substrate interactions Speaker: Michael Sheetz Date: February 14, 2012 Abstract: The morphology of cells, organs and whole organisms is determined by the generation of forces on the immediate environment, which is either extracellular matrix or adjacent cells. We are currently engaged in studies to understand the detailed molecular mechanisms involved in a variety of phenomena from fertilisation to brain function. Further, we are developing several new tools and protocols for measuring cell forces at the molecular level, which are revealing many new aspects of how cells can both generate and respond to external forces. We have an effort underway to define quantitatively the steps involved in cell adhesion to and spreading on a matrix-coated surface. Using a variety of cell lines that are missing proteins in various motility pathways, we are determining the quantitative changes in the spreading process. This will enable us to generate a working model of the process of spreading that is consistent with previous studies as well as our findings. School of Computational and Integrative Sciences Speaker: Marcin Zagórski Date: 13th February, 2012 (Monday) Abstract: We consider a simple model of gene regulatory dynamics derived from the statistical framework describing the binding of transcription factors to DNA. We show that the networks representing essential interactions in gene regulation have a minimal connectivity compatible with a prescribed function. Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling is then used to determine how the imposed functional capabilities lead to specific network motifs. In the case where the regulatory networks are to exhibit multistability, we find a high frequency of gene pairs that are mutually inhibitory and self-activating. In contrast, networks having periodic gene expression patterns (mimicking for instance the cell cycle) have a high frequency of bifan-like motifs involving four genes with at least one activating and one inhibitory interaction. Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a lecture by Robert Grey 10 February 2012 Competing Conceptions of Democracy and How to Measure It School of Arts & Aesthetics Getty Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professors Programme presented "A Complete Dictionary of the Language of the Listening Eye": by Prof. Dario Gamboni on 10th February 2012 Centre for the Study of Social Systems Conference on Standardization of Education: From 10-11 February 2012 Centre for Studies in Science Policy Special Lecture “Techno-nationalism and Techno-globalism in the Rise of China and India” By Dr. Andrew B. Kennedy on Friday, 10th February 2012 Abstract: China and India face a similar dilemma as rising powers: how to advance national technological capabilities without becoming excessively dependent on the outside world? This talk provides an overview of the approaches that these two countries are taking to technological development and emphasizes the differences between them. More specifically, it contrasts China's "pragmatic techno-nationalism" with India's movement toward "pragmatic techno-globalism." It then surveys possible explanations for China and India's divergent paths, drawing on different traditions in political science and international relations. It concludes with a series of questions for discussion. About Speaker : Andrew Kennedy is Lecturer in Policy and Governance at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 2007. He is the author of The International Ambitions of Mao and Nehru: National Efficacy Beliefs and the Making of Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2012), and his writings have also appeared in International Security, The China Quarterly, Asian Survey, Survival, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. Centre for the Study of Social Systems SEMINAR NOTICE Topic: The Political Imagination of State Reform: Making Political Community after Apartheid in South Africa Speaker: Dr. Suren Pillay Date: 9th February 2012. Centre for Historical Studies Organised a lecture by Professor John Perry On Az Turk-o Tâzîk: Linguistic Badges of the Military-Executive and Secretarial-Literary Classes in Post-Mongol Western, Central, and South Asia (with Asides on Dervishes and Ulama) 8 February 2012 Turkish-speaking dynasties were established in the Islamicate ecumene from the 11th century on, until during the 16th-18th centuries virtually the whole area from Morocco to Bengal, and from Kazan to the Sudan, was ruled and policed by a Turkish or Turkicized elite. A subordinate elite, the administrative strata of such polities, was co-extensive in broad terms with the local literati and lay intellectuals, and comprised in the eastern regions a Persian-speaking/ writing or Persianized native elite. These symbiotic classes, the "Men of the Sword" and "Men of the Pen," identified themselves and distinguished their respective functional niches and claims to prestige by their onomastic designations, i.e. the combination of their given names, honorifics, and professional titles: not so much by the etymology of the words themselves, but by the noun phrase (NP) syntax (essentially, the word order) of the whole unit. The evolution and rationale of this system (not always transparent to the users themselves) will be expounded and related to its historical role in society. Professor John R, Perry (University of Chicago, Emeritus) earned his PhD from Cambridge University in 1970. His dissertation was published by Chicago University Press in 1979 as Karim Khan Zand, A History of Iran 1747-1779, and subsequently appeared in Tehran in a Persian translation and in Sulaymaniya in Kurdish, and in a more popular format in the OneWorld (Oxford) 'Makers of the Muslim World' Series (2006). During the 1980s his main research interest shifted from history to linguistics, especially of Persian and adjacent languages. His principal books in this field are Form and Meaning in Persian Vocabulary: The Arabic Feminine Ending (Costa Mesa, Cal., 1991) and A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar. Handbook of Oriental Studies, Vol. 11. (Leiden: Brill, 2005). He has combined the two interests in several related projects of historical sociolinguistics, such as mechanisms of the transmission of Arabic vocabulary into Persian and its further incorporation in the other languages of the Persianate ecumene; and the historical interface of Persian and Turkic languages – of which the present talk is an example. Many of his articles are available to read and download on his U of C website, http://nelc.uchicago.edu/faculty/perry. He is currently a Visiting Fellow of JNIAS. School of Biotechnology TITLE: Outreach Program of India Bioscience SPEAKER: Dr. Athulaprabha Murthy DATE: Feb. 7, 2012 India Bioscience (IBS) is an outreach initiative that was founded to function as a catalyst to revitalize research and education in India. We aim to bring all biologists in India and Overseas on a single platform that fosters collaborations, networking, mentoring, exchange of ideas thereby contributing towards the development of biological sciences in India Overall. Our present, activities include the “Young Investigator’s Meeting”, a webportal - www.indiabioscience.org, Webinars with institutions overseas and outreach within Indian Universities and research institutions. Our website aims to bring together the scientists in India and overseas on a single forum. Active discussions, blogs on experiences, opinions on scientific topics, highlights of Indian science, grants, jobs, conferences, seminars a just a few of the many information you could find on our website. Special Centre for Molecular Medicine Speaker: Dhruv K. Sethi, Ph.D. Date: 7th February, 2012 Title: "Horror autotoxicus: T cell receptor recognition of self and foreign antigens”. Abstract: Self-reactive T cells that escape elimination in the thymus can cause autoimmune pathology, and it is therefore important to understand the structural mechanisms of self-antigen recognition. We have reported the crystal structure of a T cell receptor (TCR) from a patient with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis that engages its self-peptide–major histocompatibility complex (pMHC) ligand in an unusual manner (Sethi et. al., J Exp Med (2011) 208:91). The TCR is bound in a highly tilted orientation that prevents interaction of the TCR-a chain with the MHC class II ß chain helix. Only a single germline-encoded TCR loop engages the MHC protein, the tilted binding mode also prevents peptide contacts by the short complementarity-determining region (CDR) 3ß loop. This structure is the first example in which only a single germline-encoded TCR loop contacts the MHC helices, thereby, demonstrating that there are multiple unusual ways for self-reactive TCRs to bind their pMHC ligand. The reduced interaction surface with the peptide may also facilitate TCR cross-reactivity. The etiology of multiple sclerosis, a debilitating neurological disease which is the leading cause of disability in young adults, is unknown. It has been hypothesized that a viral or bacterial peptide can cause activation and proliferation of T cells in the periphery which then cross the blood-brain barrier and react with self antigens in the central nervous system. I am currently studying the mode of binding of peptides from human pathogens, which despite limited sequence identity with the self peptide from myelin basic protein can activate the autoimmune T cells when presented by HLA-DQ1. The crystal structures of the TCR-pMHC complexes with two such peptides have been determined, a bacterial peptide from Pseudomonas and another from Herpes Simplex virus. The overall topology of the TCR-pMHC binding, in both, is very similar as when recognizing the autoimmune peptide, with local conformational changes in TCR and MHC side chains. This is very intriguing considering that the peptide sequences are conserved at only three positions vis-à-vis MBP85-99 albeit at different peptide positions; these structures suggest that crossreactive peptide recognition may not be energetically unfavorable compared to recognition of the self-peptide. Further characterization of the binding of such cross-reactive peptides using surface plasmon resonance, peptide binding competition assays and T cell proliferation assays to determine the fine specificity of the recognition, is ongoing. Our analysis will help to better understand not only the etiology and pathogenesis of autoimmunity but also the role of microbial and viral pathogens and infectious diseases in regulation and disruption of immune homeostasis. School of Arts and Aesthetics presented Some Reflections on New Bollywood Cinema A Talk By Sangita Gopal Author of Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema (University of Chicago Press) and co-editor Global Bollywood : Travels of Hindi Film Music (University of Minnesota Press) on Monday, 6th February, 2012
Central Library, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) cordially invites you to the Library Lecture Series and Outreach Programme Topic: Embedded Librarianship Speaker: Dr. Triveni Kuchi Chairperson: Dr. H K Kaul Date: Friday, 3rd February 2012 JNU Seminar Series Towards lnterdisciplinarity Lecture on Computational Linguistics, Corpora and Standards: The Big Picture by Dr. Girish Nath Jha Chair: Prof. Alok Bhattacharya, School of Life Sciences Date: 3rd February 2012 The JNU Seminar Series addresses the challenge of interdisciplinarity. Specifically, it seeks to enable, sustain and nurture dialogues across disciplines. This initiative intends to close the gap between the 'two cultures' within JNU and aims to generate and energize research ideas and ways of thinking about knowledge and scholarship. Abstract: The talk will introduce the field of Computational Linguistics (COLING) as an inter-disciplinary area of research and application under Artificial Intelligence (AI). Two popular approaches of COLING will be discussed - a) the grammar based approach where formal models of language analyses are developed and used. In this context, a short report on the progress made at JNU and its demonstration will be done. The statistical methods of COLING where large sized annotated corpora are used to train computers to learn linguistic patterns will be discussed next. In this context the talk will present the multilingual annotated corpora developed at JNU and its potential applications for automated language analyses and applications. The next section will introduce the standards and the necessity to develop resources as per global standards. In this context, the efforts to develop language technology standards in India under Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) will be highlighted. The concluding section will do a need analysis of such standard linguistic resources in India and their current status. For further information please contact: Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Single Phase & Nanocomposite Epitaxial Thin Films and Nanostructures exhibiting Multiferroic Properties at Room Temperature Speaker: Alain Pignolet Date: February 3, 2012 (Friday) Abstract: In recent years, multiferroic materials –- materials possessing both ferroelectric and magnetic properties –- have come into prominence, both for their fascinating behaviour and promising applications in microelectronics and photonics. This presentation highlights our recent work on the fabrication and characterization of multiferroic epitaxial films, nanostrucrtures, and nanocomposite heterostructures exhibiting superior ferroelectric and magnetic properties at room temperature. Centre for International Trade and Development (CITD) Title of the seminar: `Systemic' flight to quality from emerging economies, and enabled international credit lines Speaker: Gurbachan Singh Date: 03 February 2012 (Friday) Abstract: This paper builds a simple but new model to highlight a puzzle. Commercial banks routinely extend credit lines to firms, which need to be effectively backed by some reserves. In contrast, international credit lines for emerging economies to take care of flight to quality hardly need to be backed by reserves. This is because the so-called systemic outflow from emerging economies is accompanied by inflow into developed economies. So funding liquidity need not be a problem even if reserves are small. This suggests that ceteris paribus the market for credit lines to take care of flight to quality ought to exist more easily than the market for usual credit lines for business investments.It is actually the opposite. Why? One explanation can lie in the dual agency perspective (Tirole, 2002). Central banks and the IMF can then act as mediators and provide enabling conditions. We also discuss possible extensions of the model to analyse some related issues. NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME (NEISP SEMINAR SERIES 2012) TOPIC: Kaladan: A River of Forgotten Voices and Forsaken Rights? SPEAKERS: Salai Isaac Khen Nang Mo Kham Aung Zaw Win Abstract: On April 2nd 2008, Indian Government signed an agreement with Burmese Government (then military junta) for the KMMTT (Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport) project. The project will connect the eastern Indian seaport of Kolkata with Sittwe port in Rakhine State by sea; it will then link Sittwe to land-locked region of Mizoram in North-Eastern India via river and road transport. It involves building a sea port in Sittwe, dredging a stretch of Kaladan River between Sittwe and Paletwa, and construction of land road from Paletwa to Indian border. People living in the four townships impacted by the project (Sittwe, Ponnakyun, Kyauktaw, Paletwa) are mostly ethnic Arakan and Chin people who have endured decades of neglect, conflict, socioeconomic and political suppression. There was no knowledge among local communities of any EIA/SIA carried out on this project and if the reports existed, the results hadn’t been shared with the local people. High level of anxiety is being felt by the local population though they still hope for potential benefits the project could bring to their communities with increasing trade and transportation. Their main concerns are over the negative environmental, social and economic impact of the project such as environmental degradation, collapse of river bank, contamination of freshwater, destruction of fish resources and habitat, and loss of their livelihood as they lose their alluvial land, farmland and fishing grounds. KMMTT project brings with it a tremendous potential to the region which has long been racked by conflict and rights violation. Whether it’s a potential plan to bring a responsible development and peace to the region and its people OR another policy that will escalate the existing conflict and entrench the neglect of rights of ethnic people, and also environmental and ecological conservation of Kaladan River remains unanswered questions. Date : 3rd February (Friday), 2012 Center of Arabic and African Studies In collaboration with Istanbul Foundation for Science and Culture, Turkey is organised a two day international conference on Theme: Living in Peace and Harmony in a Multicultural World: The "Risale-I Nur" Perspective Date: 1-2 February, 2012 Centre for the Study of Social Systems SEMINAR NOTICE Topic: GhostNet, the Chinese Hack Speaker: Arun Mehta Date: 2nd February 2012 (Thursday) Abstract: Around 2007/2008, the Government of Tibet In Exile began to suspect that the Chinese were hacking into their computers, and requested researchers from the University of Toronto to investigate. They uncovered GhostNet, whose targets included offices of the Government of India. Over the next few months, the Canadians were able to hack the Chinese hacker network itself, and got access to documents being exported from computers infected with Chinese malware. It became clear that India was by far the biggest target of the Chinese hackers. When this report was published, the Indian Foreign Minister in China had no comment to offer, and ever since then, the government seems to have swept the matter under the rug. No investigation seems to have been carried out, no lessons learnt, no corrective measures taken. For an attack on India no less serious than Kargil, shocking lapses on the part of the Defense, IT, Home and External Affairs ministries were brought out by the use of RTI . Since cyber warfare is sure to be an integral component, if not indeed the main part of future international conflicts, it is time for the Indian government to take a closer look at how it protects us from cyber attack. CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC STUDIES AND PLANNING SEMINAR NOTICE SPEAKER: Professor P.N. (Raja) Junankar TOPIC: The Global Economic Crisis: Long-Term Unemployment in the OECD DATE: Thursday, February 2, 2012 PROGRAMME FOR THE STUDY OF DISCRIMINATION AND EXCLUSION organised a Lecture on ICS Memoirs: Making Hetero-patriarchal Elites in Independent India by February 2nd, 2012 Centre for Studies in Science Policy SEMINAR NOTICE Topic: “The Persistence of the Elephants” Speaker: Prof. Thomas R Trautmann Abstract: The retreat of the elephants is the name of a book by Mark Elvin about the environmental history of China where elephants, once distributed throughout, have now been reduced to a population of a few hundred on the border of Myanmar, due to the advance of agriculture over the last 7,000 years. Causes of the retreat of elephants worldwide have been much discussed. But their relative persistence in India requires explanation as well. The talk will explore the elephants, forests and forest people to kings during the long reign of kingship in India, how the Indian pattern differed from the Chinese, and how it influenced Southeast Asia and the Hellenistic kingdoms in ancient times. Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture By Professor Shen Han On The Influence of British Marxist Historiography: Some Reflections from China 1 February, 2012 The British Marxist historical school is the most influential and preeminent of the Western historical schools that were introduced into China. The reasons for the influence of the British Marxist school lie not only in the achievements of the historians, but also in the academic background of the Chinese historical circles and the tasks of ideological emancipation they faced. In China prior to 1949, there was little emphasis on research in world history. After 1949 and the establishment of the PRC, in order to build up the subject, some post graduate students were sent to the Soviet Union and eastern European countries, and Soviet scholars were invited to China to give lectures and hold seminars. Many of these students became prominent in teaching and research in world history. In historiography in the 1950s and 1960s, Chinese scholars followed the Soviet approach to historical interpretation. Some adopted the classical Marxists’ conclusions as their own in historical research, using historical research as the main methodology to interpret the conclusions of the classical Marxists. Thus, historical study became rigid and stereotyped, closed to new ideologies and research methodologies. Furthermore, Chinese historians also faced the problem of breaking away from the bondage of Stalinist doctrinarism, and they sought to emancipate their thoughts and carry on their research on the basis of actual historical facts instead of doctrine. British Marxist historical school met these urgent needs in China, making it possible to criticize doctrinaire Marxism while keeping to the basic metaphors of Marxism. Professor Shen Han is at the Department of History, Nanjing University, China. Professor Han research interest lies in British history and modern European history. Professor Han is the author of British Parliamentary and Political History (Nanjing University, 1991); Morphological History of Western State (Gansu People’s Publishing House, 1993); Studies of European Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (Nanjing University, 1993); The Chartist Movement in Britain (Gansu People’s Publishing House, 1997); Evolution of Western Social Structure from Medieval to 20th Century (Zhuhai Publishing House, 1998); The Rebelling Generation. History of Western Students Movement in 1960s (Gansu, 2002); History of British Land System (Xueling Press, 2005); A short History of Capitalism (Xuelin Press, 2007) and History of Capitalism, vol. I, (People’s Press, 2010); Vol. II (Forthcoming 2012). Professor Han has translated into Chinese Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (Beijing, 1997); Gianfranco Poggi, The Development of the Modern State. A Sociological Introduction ( Beijing, 1997); E.P.Thompson, Customs in Common (Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2002); Alan Wolfe, Limits of Legitimacy (Commercial Press, 2005). Centre for Political Studies (UGC-DSA I) organizes a National Seminar On Political Mobilization and Social Movements in Contemporary India Dates: 31st January & 1st February, 2012 Presentations by:
Maths Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Abstract: Any discrete dynamical system (X,f) induces another discrete dynamical system (\Psi, \bar{f}) on the hyperspace. In this talk we wish to relate the dynamics of the base map to the dynamics of the induced map on the hyperspace. In the process, we give conditions on the endowed hyperspace topology under which the chaotic behaviour of the map on the base space is inherited by the induced map on the hyperspace. We also discuss the case when the map f is replaced by a finite union of functions. The relation, obtained thus, is a set valued function. We try to relate the various dynamical properties of such a relation with its individual units as well as its induced counterpart on hyperspaces. We also study the effect of the internal errors present in the system. We show that none of the chaotic properties are structurally stable stable and are not preserved under the uniform limits. We derive conditions under which some of these properties are preserved under uniform limit. We also discuss almost automorphic affine automorphisms on nilmanifolds. Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a seminar by Supriya Roy Chowdhury on Old and New Slums in a Rich City Abstract: The divergences in the urban poverty literature are fairly stark. International agencies (World Bank, ADB) see urban poverty as primarily produced by rural-urban migration; poverty of cities is, on this view, part of the overall ongoing and positive story of urbanization and falling poverty rates. On the other hand, several scholars have seen R-U migration as only a very partial explanation of urban poverty, thus locating the roots of urban poverty, not in migration but in features of the urban political economy: lack of access to education, and notably, the structure of the urban informal sector where the poor work. The informal sector itself is a highly contested concept, seen by some scholars as primarily profit/efficiency enhancing, while other scholars see informality as given in the very structure of global capitalism, in low wages of unskilled labour, and self employment in low income petty trade and services. These debates spill on to the question of appropriate policies to tackle urban poverty: do the urban poor need interventions at the level of delivery of basic amenities, or does urban poverty call for structural changes relating to work and wages. This presentation draws on field research in Bangalore city on two sets of poor households -- new migrants found in temporary settlements in the city’s peripheries, and slums located in old inner city neighbourhoods which house second/third generation dwellers -- to reflect on these debates. I argue that informality – unregulated wages and working conditions – defines the poverty of households found in both old slums and in new migrant settlements. Friday, 30 March 2012 NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME TOPIC: “Divide Assam Fifty-Fifty” SPEAKER: Kaustubh Deka ABSTRACT: Student organizations have provided crucial platforms for the performing and performance of different identities in Assam at various levels: from the inceptions and articulation of identities from within the ‘movements’ to acknowledgement or ‘deliverance’ of it in the form of accords /negotiations as well as their further ‘circulation’ beyond these arena. In the recent times, the All Bodo Students Union’s (ABSU) rhetoric of ‘divide Assam fifty-fifty’ has captured the imagination of many; debates have flared up on the question of Assam’s territorial integrity vis-a-vis the question of ‘homeland’ and ‘identity’. In a similar vein, ethnic minority student groups like the Karbis, Dimasas, Mishings among others have also rallied behind ideas of territoriality and indigenity. However, there exists a politics of solidarity alongside the politics of difference due to a sharpening of the existing class-relations of mutual dependence between different ethnic groups and communities in recent years and student politics have been one of the most powerful and early receptor of these changes. Threat of displacement due to plans of big dam construction, threat of massive influx of illegal foreign migrants into the state, problems of floods and erosions have moved many a student groups with seemingly diverse agendas into common platforms of struggle; thus potentially broadening the ambit of the identity discourse in Assam from the path of an essentialist-exclusivist and uni-polar aspect to multiple-interpretations and implications. The relationship between All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the other ethnic minority student groups like ABSU, All Assam Mishing Students Union (TMPK), Karbi Students Association (KSA) is one of changing strategies and shifting narratives, which indicates that identities are not fixed but are being reconstituted through interactions and deliberations at all levels of state and societies. It is this politics of alliance making, both in a contingent and substantive manner, being displayed by the student organizations time to time that shows the limits and possibilities of a politics hinged on identity in general and of the contestations within the ‘domain’ of student politics in Assam specifically. Date: March 30th, Friday, 2012 The School of Arts and Aesthetics organised a presentation by Prof Janaki Nair On her book Illusion of Permanence: Visualizing Legitimacy in Mysore Prof Tapati Guha Tharkurta, CSSS, Kolkata was the discussant.Prof Tapati Guha Thakurta is Professor of History at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Date: 30th March 2012 Jawaharlal Nehru University and NIPFP are organised 2012 Economic Theory and Policy Conference March 29-31, 2012 CENTRE FOR PHILOSOPHY Talk by Dr. Indrani Bhattacharya On Knowledge and Human Nature:Wittgenstein's Naturalizing of Epistemology Date: March 29, 2012 Abstract: I argue that Wittgenstein's remarks concerning the practices of human enquiry in On Certainty contain a naturalistic view of epistemic norms. The norms by which an agent is said to know, be certain of, or doubt a proposition are not grounded in reason but instead are products of human nature, where 'human nature' is understood as including both biological and socially modified elements. I show that this interpretation of the main lines of argument in the text sheds light on Wittgenstein's criticism of the internalist model of justification presupposed by Moore and the external world (or radical) skeptic. Furthermore, I explain the relationship between Wittgenstein's naturalism and his preferred method of doing philosophy (in this case epistemology) through "perspicuous representations" of (epistemic) language-games. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Chair Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Memorial Lecture TOPIC: Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Methodological Alternatives in Social Sciences SPEAKER:
Umesh R. Bagade CHAIR:
Roger Jeffery DATE: 29 March, 2012 CENTRE OF INDIAN LANGUAGES 7th Kabir Memorial Lecture (Sponsored by NCPUL, Ministry of Human Resource Development) on GHALIB’S DELHI TO LUTYENS’ DELHI By PROF. MUSHIRUL HASAN Presided over by: Prof. S.R. KIDWAI Physics Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Date: March 28, 2012 Abstract: We review the continuum theories for nematic liquid crystals and discuss their applications to a new generation of liquid crystal displays, known as bistable liquid crystal displays manufactured by the industry. In the first part of the talk, we model the Post Aligned Bistable Nematic Device manufactured by Hewlett-Packard Laboratories within the continuum Oseen- Frank theory for nematic liquid crystals. We propose a novel topological mechanism for bistability and find four topologically distinct low-energy states that mimic the experimentally observed stable states. In the second part of the talk, we model the planar bistable device reported by Tsakonas et al within the continuum Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals. We consider the cases of strong anchoring and weak anchoring separately. We find six distinct equilibrium profiles and we study the multiplicity of static equilibria as a function of the anchoring strength. We also obtain estimates for the critical anchoring strength in terms of the material parameters and propose a simple dynamic model for the switching characteristics of this device based on the concept of variable anchoring strength. This is joint work with Radek Erban, Chong Luo, Jonathan Robbins, Chris Newton and Maxim Zyskin. Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Suraiya Faroqhi On Artisans in Ottoman Istanbul 28 March 2012 Between 1988 and 2007, Suraiya Faroqhi was a professor at the Ludwig Maximilians Universität in Munich, Federal Republic of Germany. Between 2002 and 2007, she chaired the ‘Institute for the History and Culture of the Middle East and Turkish Studies’ (Nahost-Institut). After retirement in 2007, she accepted a position as a professor of history at Istanbul Bilgi University, where she is currently teaching; in 2010, she was also the chairperson of the History Department at this university. Suraiya Faroqhi studied at the universities of Hamburg (Dr. Phil. Germany) and Istanbul (Republic of Turkey), as well as at Indiana University/ Bloomington (MA for Teachers). Before becoming a professor in Munich, she had a lengthy career in Turkey (from instructor to full professor, 1971-1987), working at Middle East Technical University (Ankara). She went through the process of the doçentlik/Habilitation not once but twice: in Turkey (1980), in Bochum/FRG (1982). Suraiya Faroqhi is an honorary member of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and hold an honorary doctorate from Bogaziçi Üniversitesi, Istanbul (2001). School of International Studies organised a seminar on ‘NonAlignment 2.0: A foreign and strategic policy for India in the twenty first century’ Chair: Dr Siddharth Mallavarapu Speaker: Dr Srinath Raghavan Discussant: Professor Varun Sahni 'Conflict Resolution in Aceh in the context of current situation in Indonesia' Speaker: Professor Sri Wahyuni Sri Wahyuni is the director of Patimadora, an Aceh-based NGO focused on assisting and encouraging women’s capacity-building and participation in development and conflict resolution. Ms Wahyuni has been an activist in the field of human rights, peace-building and conflict resolution in Aceh since 2000. She has led a programme dedicated to reintegrating ex-combatants into the community using art and culture. Ms Wahyuni has worked for several years at the Indonesia Planned Parenthood Association in Jakarta. Additionally, she has worked with the Asia Foundation-Jakarta focusing on media, human rights and democracy issues. Ms Wahyuni has recently begun researching Acehnese spiritual arts. She hopes to use this knowledge to support building peace and eliminating violence within Aceh. 28 March 2012 CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC STUDIES AND PLANNING SEMINAR NOTICE SPEAKER: Prof. Jens Christiansen, TOPIC: The Political Economy of the G-20 DATE: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 Maths Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Abstract:We will discuss p-adic Galois representations associated to certain quarternionic forms, and local methods to compute the modulo p reduction of these representations in the small weights range. Time permitting, we will also discuss some techniques to compute the reductions for large weights. Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a Panel Discussion on Women, Development and Planning PANELISTS ARE: Date: 27th March 2012 Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Chair One Day Seminar on Introspecting and Prospecting Dalit Politics in India Date: 27 March, 2012 (Tuesday) Advanced Instrumentation Research Facility CONFOCAL/ LIVE IMAGING MICROSCOPY AND ITS APPLICATIONS In order to assure the highest levels of quality work and productivity from JNU, it will be our policy to keep all scholars well trained through our program of SPECIAL HIGH INTENSITY TRAINING. In continuation of this, third Workshop / training on “CONFOCAL / LIVE IMAGING MICROSCOPY AND ITS APPLICATIONS” will be scheduled from 26-27th March 2012.The training / workshop shall have lecture / presentations by applications specialist followed by the demonstration session. Physics Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences
Abstract: Every physical system would eventually reach an equilibrium. We demand the same for a fluid dynamical system, that is, it reaches an equilibrium . We further assume that this equilibrium can be expressed in terms of a partition function. These two very physical assumptions put intricate constraints to fluid constitutive relations. We have been able to recover almost all known results of fluid dynamics from these assumptions and have even been able to find new physical effects. Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health organised a special session on “Rejuvenating the Spirit of Universal Health: The Role of ICSSR and ICMR” 26 March, 2012 Jawaharlal Nehru University organised PANDIT HRIDAY NATH KUNZRU MEMORIAL LECTURES, 2012 Theme: Regionalism and Multilateralism during 12-24 March 2012 Centre of Japanese, Korean and North East Asian Studies, SLL&CS organised a conference on Colonialism in India and Korea: Issues and Perspectives Date: 23rd and 24th March, 2012 NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME TOPIC: Collecting and Displaying: The Naga from 19th to 21st Century SPEAKER : Dr. Vibha Joshi ABSTRACT : This paper will explore the politics of collecting and display in Western and Indian museums from 19th to 21st century and its relevance to the source community. From mid-19th to mid-20th century some Naga communities came under the focus of British officers, who were amateur anthropologists, as well as those of professional anthropologists, collectors, and curators. Detailed monographs were written and objects collected following the guidelines in 'Notes and Queries' booklet by the Anthropological Institute in London (now RAI). These collections and photographs were an integral part of museum based anthropology. Much as this was a part of the then prevalent idea of categorising people and objects into typologies on an evolutionary scale, it was also an attempt to amass a holistic collection of a peoples' material culture at a particular time when they were seen as undergoing irreversible socio-cultural change. Currently (2012) there is a vast collection of objects, photos and unpublished and published archives in the Western and Indian museums as well as in private holdings. The paper will explore the politics of permanent and temporary displays (exhibition) and archival holdings in both Western and Indian museums - and the disengagement of Naga themselves from these. It will question the apparent lack of interest among the Naga about their own cultural history and archives. Is this attitude a result of the present politics of nationalism and internal competitiveness or a result of lack of access to archives? What kind of relevance do the archives, objects and photographs hold and /or should hold for the source community? Through this presentation I want to generate discussion on the relevance of museum collections and archives for the source community and its history and identity. Date: March 23th, Friday, 2012 Centre for International Trade and Development (CITD) Title of the seminar: Endogenous Human Capital Formation, Distance to Frontier and Growth Abstract: We examine human capital's contribution to economy-wide technological progress through two channels -- imitation and innovation -- innovation being more skilled-intensive than innovation. We develop a growth model characterized by quality-ladder type of production process and an endogenous ability-driven skill acquisition decision of an individual. We show that skilled labor is growth enhancing in the ``imitation-innovation" regime and the ``innovation-only" regime and unskilled labor is growth enhancing in the ``imitation-only" regime. It is found that steady state exists and, in the long run, an economy may or may not converge to the world technology frontier, depending on its initial position and the growth rate of the frontier economy. In the diversified regime, technological progress raises the return to ability and generates an increase in wage inequality between and within groups, an increase in average wage and the consumption of skilled labor, a decline in average wage and the consumption of unskilled labor and, furthermore, an increase in the stock of skilled-human capital -- consistent with the pattern observed across countries. On the other hand, as technology level increases, wage rate and, consequently, the average income and consumption of skilled and unskilled labor, and hence that of the aggregate economy, increase in the ``innovation-only" and decrease in the ``imitation-only" regime, and there exists a constant level of income inequality between and within group of skilled-unskilled labor in both the specialized regimes. Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU “Science, Technology and Medicine in India, 1930-2000: The Problem of Poverty” 22nd - 23rd March 2012 Centre for Philosophy Talk by BIRGIT KELLNER on Placing Reason in Buddhism:Perspectives on the Prama?a Tradition Date: 22nd March, 2012 Abstract: Epistemology and logic were the main concerns of an identifiable tradition in Buddhism initiated by Dignaga (ca. 580-540) and Dharmakirti (ca. 600-660), active on the Indian subcontinent from ca. the 6th to 13th centuries CE. Concerned with analytical methods and rational means, focussed on the rigorous application of argument and invested in the elaboration of standards of validity, this tradition became the object of conflicting interpretations and assessments in Indological and Buddhological discourse in the 20th century. Buddhist logicians were variously denounced as a crowd of wranglers and bean counters violating the ethical ideals and spiritual priorities of their noble religion, hailed as beacons of true reason, claimed as rationalists operating within the frame of Buddhist hermeneutics, praised for developing reason into a spiritual “technique for the self” akin to Greek philosophia in its Hadotian inflection, and contextualized as apologists of their religion in an increasingly hostile environment in post-Gupta India. Through a critique of some of these perspectives, this talk highlights critical issues in Buddhist epistemology and logic in the context of its intellectual history. School of Computational and Integrative Sciences Speaker: Dr. Deepayan Sarkar(ISI Delhi) Topic: Assessing Copy Number Variation Using Genome-Wide Alignments Date: 22nd March, 2012 Abstract: The sequencing of entire mammalian genomes is a major achievement that is expected to have profound implications for biology and medicine. Many modern high-throughput experimental methods, such as optical mapping and short-read sequencing, rely on genome-wide alignments to such a reference sequence. However, this implicitly assumes that the genome of the individual being studied is largely identical to the reference genome, which is not always true. One important type of difference is copy number variation, whereby relatively large segments of the genome have a lower or higher number of copies than expected. Copy number alterations have been implicated in diseases such as cancer. Copy number variation can also be a nuisance factor when comparing data from two or more individuals. In this talk, I will outline a method that uses alignments to a reference genome to study copy number variations. We frame the problem as a comparison of two non-homogeneous Poisson processes, where changes in copy number are equivalent to changes in the relative intensities of the processes, and use a hidden Markov model to detect such changes. Centre for Political Studies organised the NIRMAN FOUNDATION LECTURE delivered by Professor Chetan Bhatt On the theme: Global Human Rights and the Transformation of Warfare On 21st March 2012 Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Nitin Sinha On Between Lease and Permanent Settlement: Gangetic Diaras and the Colonial State (1790s-1880s) 21 March 2012 Looking at the interplay of law and revenue in understanding the colonial practices and policies towards diaras of mid-Gangetic region, the talk addresses a fairly neglected area in agrarian-ecological history of South Asia. The constant formation and disappearance of lands due to river-shifts raised several issues of which the secure revenue extraction and fixation of proprietorial rights were the most important from the viewpoint of colonial state. The maximization of revenue did not necessarily mean the dilution of the idea of permanent settlement; however, throughout the nineteenth century, the state failed to arrive at a standardized set of practices to deal with fluid landscapes. This failure, however, did not mean that the colonial state was a helpless onlooker in this flexible landscape. A range of regulations and acts aimed at determining and standardizing the course of engagement with the people and the landscape. One of the ways of doing so, on which this talk will focus, was the system of lease. It is argued here that lease need not be seen as an anti-thesis to the idea of the Permanent Settlement but was a system that emerged from within the pragmatic choices made under the system of the Permanent Settlement. Nitin Sinha is a research fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (Centre for Modern Oriental Studies) in Berlin. He attained his doctorate in modern South Asian history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2007. His current work focuses on the socio-historical dimensions of the River Ganga in India. His book, Communication and Colonialism in Eastern India: Bihar, 1760s–1880s, based on his doctoral work, will be published in June by Anthem Press, London. Nitin Sinha has published on issues of transport and the ‘mutiny’ of 1857, mobility and criminality, and railway labour movements in nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial India. He has also taught M. A. seminar courses on the theme of colonial transition in British India in universities of Heidelberg and Humboldt in Germany. Centre for Studies in Science Policy SEMINAR SERIES “An Adventure into Science, Technology and Innovation Management” By Prof. M.O. Ilory on: Wednesday, 21st March 2012 School of International Studies on ‘Assessing the theory of Fourth Generation Warfare: Case Studies of Counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab’ Speaker: Ms Vinita Priyedarshi Centre for Studies in Science Policy SEMINAR SERIES “Changes in Medical Consumption in India Looked Through Select Explorations in Regulation” ByDr. Parthasarathi Banerjee on 21st March 2012 The School of Physical Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University presented the DAE - CV Raman Lecture by Padmashri Prof. K.L. Chopra Title of the talk: Atom-by-Atom Creation of Nanomatter Date: March 20, 2012 …. creation of nanomatter involves several basic processes, which includes generation of atomic species as the building blocks, transport of the species through an appropriate medium and interaction with each other on a suitable substrate …. Special Center for Sanskrit Studies, J.N.U. An important activity under DIT sponsored projects for Indian languages organised a one-day workshop on Digitization of India's Ancient Scripts - Brahmi, Sharada and Grantha on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 India has millions of ancient manuscripts in almost all major scripts which are today recognized as scripts of India's national languages. However, the three ancient scripts - Brahmi, Sharada and Grantha - in which we have a significant number of ancient manuscripts - are not recognized as representing India's major national languages. These script have a sizable volume of Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit manuscripts which are very important from the perspectives of India's history and culture. These manuscripts can not be preserved in the digital age unless proper standards are made for digitizing them. This workshop focused on the following aspects - CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC STUDIES AND PLANNING SEMINAR NOTICE SPEAKER: Prof. Hajime Sato, TOPIC: Beyond neo-liberal myth: The case of the Indian steel industry in comparison with the Japanese and South Korean steel industry DATE: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 SPS Journal Club organised a talk on Validity of Classical Dynamical Density Functional Theory by S. M. Kamil Date: March 19, 2012 Abstract: Classical Dynamical Density Functional Theory (DDFT) aims to write the equations for time evolution of fluid density incorporating the results of classical equilibrium DFT. At a coarse grained level , the description of a fluid can be given in terms of density field. Which is done by averaging of the particles for a given length scale (spacial coarse graining ) and for a given time window ( time coarse graining). Equilibrium solution of the Fokker-Planck equation corresponding to dynamical equations of density field obtained from DDFT , leads to the conclusion that the density functional used in equilibrium DFT plays the role of Hamiltonian in DDFT. We check the validity of these equations by comparing the results of Monte Carlo simulation using Ramakrishnan-Yussouff (RY) functional for hardspheres as the Hamiltonian and MD simulation of hard spheres. These simulations have been performed with and without external periodic field. We find that in both cases the results are not in favor of DDFT, while equilibrium DFT gives very satisfactory results. CAPACITY BUILDING TRAINING PROGRAMME FOR SC/ST/OBC ( & OTHERS) STUDENTS MONDAY 19TH, MARCH Academic Staff College organised Prof. Amrik Singh Memorial Lecture on Freedom of Media by Shri Kuldip Nayar on Moday March 19, 2012 School of Language, Literature & Culture Studies organised 3-Day International Conference & Exhibition and Cultural Programmes on March 15-17, 2012 JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY S E M I N A R Speaker : Prof. Manju Bansal Title : "Genes vs genomes: Role of non-coding regions in gene regulation" Date : 16th March, 2012 Centre for International Trade & Development (CITD) Title of the seminar: Distributional Effects of Tariff Reforms in India Abstract: I evaluate the distributional impact of tariff reforms in India using household survey data. The main objective of this paper is to examine whether increasing inequality in recent years could be attributed to trade openness. Tariff reforms trigger several general equilibrium effects which eventually affect household consumption and wage income. I estimate all these effects separately and find that all income groups have significant welfare gains. In addition, it appears that tariff reforms have pro-poor distributional effect in rural areas and pro-rich distributional effect in urban areas. CJKNEAS, JNU, and the Japan Foundation organised Japanese Cultural Festival on 16th, 17th & 18th March, 2012 Centre for International Legal Studies Speaker: Dr.V.G. Hegde Programme for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion (PSDE) organised the Screening of Jai Bhim Comrade by Anand Patwardhan on March 16, 2012 School of Life Sciences organised an annual science research festival March 14-15, 2012 Physics Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Spissitudinal Explorations Speaker: K. Sridhar Date: March 15, 2012 (Thursday) Abstract: The historical evolution of the concept of spissitude will be briefly put forth followed by a discussion of the recent manifestations of this idea in particle physics. The latter discussion will be in terms of explicit model realizations and the empirical viability of these models and their experimental tests at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be discussed. Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament (CIPOD), Jawaharlal Nehru University Globalization, Migration and Informalisation of Labour Markets March 12-14 2012 Centre of Indian Languges organised an International Seminar on Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Jan Lucassen On New Developments in Migration History: National (the Netherlands), Continental (Europe) and Global 14 March 2012 I would like to start with a national migration history of the Netherlands from 1500 to the present times, meant as a contribution to the national debate which is heavily influenced by Geert Wilders, a xenophobic politician. From there I will move (discussing similar problems in other countries) to the emergence of a European migration history. Finally I would discuss attempts to build similar quantitative reconstructions worldwide (see http://socialhistory.org/en/projects/global-migration-history-programme). I would like to end with remarks on the state of affairs in the development of a long-term (c. 1500 onwards) migration history of India. Apart from the phenomenon of indentured labour and some precursors into the Straits since c. 1790 there is nothing much in the field. Jan Lucassen (1947) studied history at Leiden University and Utrecht University (PhD 1984). He taught history at a teacher training college in The Hague (1972-1974) and at the Universities of Utrecht and Hull.
 In 1988 he joined the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam) where until ultimo 2000 he acted as Research Director, and since is a senior research fellow. From 1990 he is professor of 'international and comparative social history' at the Free University in Amsterdam. In 2004 he became an ordinary member of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. His main research interests are comparative global labour history, including labour migrations, craftsmen's and journeymen's guilds, labour relations (in particular in the brick industry) and the monetization of remunerations. His list of publications can be seen at http://socialhistory.org/en/staff/jan-lucassen. WOMEN’S STUDIES PROGRAMME organised a film screening MANDI directed by Date: 14th March’12 About the film:This 1983 film is based on a classic Urdu short story ‘Aanandi’ by Pakistani writer Ghulam Abbas. It deals with a brothel at the heart of a city, in an area that some politicians want for its prime locality. They rally up against the brothel and its inhabitants in the name of morality, and soon everyone in the area jumps on the bandwagon. The politicians offer to put up an alternative residence for the prostitutes, only this place is miles away, isolated from the city. Starring: Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil Centre for Studies of the Informal Economy organised its Inaugural Conference on Labour in Rural India: Economic, Political and Social Dimensions since early 1990s Wednesday, 14th March 2012 School of Life Sciences, organised National Symposium on MICROBES IN HEALTH AND AGRICULTURE March 12-13, 2012 Jawaharlal Nehru University Supermen of Malegaon A Documentary by Faiza Khan about the making of "Malegaon ka Superman', a film directed by Shaikh Nasir which narrates the fascinating story of a ragtag crew of people from Malegaon who set out to make a 'Superman meets Bollywood' flick on a shoestring budget. Shaikh Nasir and Faiza Khan were present at the screening for a discussion Tuesday, 13th March, 2012 Maths Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Various aspects of hypercomplex numbers Speaker: Debapriya Biswas Date: March 13, 2012 Abstract: A hypercomplex number is a traditional term for an element of an algebra over a field where the field is the real numbers or the complex numbers. We will talk about Clifford algebras a kind of hypercomplex number and show that it has applications in analysis, geometry and Physics via Mobius transformations which act on the group SL2(R) based on Erlangen Programme. We will then present the three spaces elliptic, parabolic and hyperbolic and discuss about the corresponding geometries. Lastly, we will explain the compactification of the corresponding spaces. CESP Young Scholars' Seminar on March 12, 2012 A Special lecture by School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University organised THE TWENTIETH KRISHNA BHARADWAJ MEMORIAL LECTURE “On Alternative Notions of Change and Choice” by Prof. Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, on Monday, 12th March 2012 Maths Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Dual of C_{ps}(X) Speaker: Pratibha Garg Date: March 9, 2012 (Friday) Abstract:
This is a study of the dual space of continuous linear
functionals on the function space Cps(X) with a natural
norm inherited from a larger Banach space. Here ps
denotes the pseudo-compact open topology on C(X), Centre for International Legal Studies ON INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNALS AND COURTS: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Date : Friday, 9 March, 2012 ABSTRACT: Since the last half of the twentieth century, international criminal tribunals have been utilized as a means to achieve justice in the situations of gross violations of human rights during international and non-international armed conflicts. Many experiments have been made in this regard, such as International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Iraqi High Tribunal, Cambodian Extraordinary Chambers, Sierra Leonese Special Court, and the International Criminal Court. Most of these tribunals, chambers and courts have been variously termed by the critics, such as victor’s justice, sham tribunals, selective justice and ex post facto justice. In today’s talk, an attempt would be made to theorize these international criminal tribunals. Although any framework to theorize these tribunals cannot be immune from criticism, especially so when such attempt is made from developing countries and small powers, yet my proposed framework establishes these tribunals and courts in this way: hegemonic tribunals of International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo; veiled hegemonic tribunals at former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq, Cambodia, and Sierra Leone; and semi-hegemonic tribunal of International Criminal Court. When the basic norms of international criminal law, such as sovereign equality of nations, no punishment without law, no crime without law, not becoming a judge in one’s own cause could be flouted in the name of international criminal justice, the international community would consider such justice as unfair. In today’s talk, these basic norms of criminal justice would be analyzed. An attempt would also be made to consider India’s position in the nuanced world of international criminal justice, as India is amongst ninety odd countries which have not yet accepted International Criminal Court as a viable mechanism to achieve international justice. BRIEF PROFILE OF ANUPAM JHA Dr. Anupam Jha is Assistant Professor in Senior Grade at Faculty of Law, University of Delhi. He teaches Public International Law and Indian Legal System for the last nine years. He has been recently appointed as Associate Professor in Department of Law and Jurisprudence, Sikkim University. He studied law in Delhi University and further completed his Master’s and Ph.D. from Delhi University on ‘Combating International Crimes: Response of International Criminal Law with special reference to International Criminal Court’ in the year 2007. He has been awarded UNHRC Most Active South Asian Participant Award 2004, UGC-TEC Fellowship to Mauritius 2008, Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship 2010. NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME TOPIC: Writings From The Northeast: Poetics Of A Protest Literature SPEAKER: K. B. Veio Pou ABSTRACT: Literatures from the Northeast, written in English and/or translated into English, have gained new grounds of recognition from other parts of the country and the world of late. This, one may suppose, is triggered by a newfound interest on the subjects surfacing from the region, including the emerging new writers who write about them and the land as a response to the misunderstanding and misjudgments pronounced upon them since long; that the Northeast is sparsely developed, infested by insurgents, filled with supernatural environments, etc. Weighing the nature of exoticism and mystification in the minds of many, the region possesses high chances of springing surprises in any given area and at any given moment. Even when it comes to literature many still wonder and ask: What might be the subject matter of their stories? What could be the contents of their poetry? How are their characters like? Given the diversity of culture, creed and geography of the region one can also logically induce the presence of a vast body of literature. This paper proposes to explore the contemporary Northeast literature written in/or translated in English with special reference to poetry. Date: March 9th, Friday, 2012 Centre for Studies in Science Policy SEMINAR SERIES “Climate Change, CO2 Sequestration, Carbon Trading: Social and Technological Relevance” By Dr. Malti Goel Date: Wednesday, 7th March 2012 Abstract: Global warming and climate change are providing new threats to our energy security and sustainability. Energy security is determined by energy availability for meeting the basic needs in transportation, building, industrial and agriculture activities. Fossil fuels continue to dominate the world energy scene and are currently meeting 82% of the global energy needs. They are also the reason for increasing CO2 and other greenhouse gas pollution. As the greenhouse gas emissions are increasing, their concentrations in the atmosphere are rising, resulting in global warming. According to IPCC 2007 mean rise in global temperature has been recorded as 0.74oC from 1905 to 2006. Current energy situation in India is dominated by the use of coal in power generation as well as in industrial production. The total electricity installed capacity has reached approximately 188 giga watts (GW) in 2010. Fossil fuels continue to dominate and the projected growth in the use of fossil fuels in 2031-32 (the installed capacity approaching 800 GW - Integrated Energy Policy of India 2006) indicated coal dependence could be almost 50 per cent of it. For energy sustainability, the CO2 sequestration (carbon capture and storage - CCS) is an emerging technology option for capturing excess CO2 from air and fixing it permanently away from the atmosphere. At the same time, new market based international collaborations are appearing on the scene through Carbon Trading as a tool for reducing global carbon emissions. An outcome of Kyoto Protocol UNFCCC, carbon trading is relevant to both developed and developing countries. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) was proposed in the Bali meeting of 13th COP in 2007 as a means of CO2 sequestration through ‘avoided deforestation’. The REDD is seen as an instrument for women empowerment and making them responsible for developing strategies for adaptation and mitigation of climate change. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY organised a seminar on Imaging protein activity in living cells: Src kinases at the leading edge. by Dr. Akash Gulyani Date: 7th March, 2012 (Wednesday) Abstract: Signaling networks that control cell behavior are tightly regulated in space and time. Fluorescent biosensors for living cells can provided a valuable window on the dynamics of these networks, providing quantitative information on the kinetics and localization of protein activity in vivo. However, biosensors for living cells currently require considerable optimization for each target and are also limited by the availability of naturally occurring ligands/binding elements with appropriate target specificity. In this talk, I will describe a new approach of generating biosensors based on an engineered fibronectin monobody scaffold that can be tailored to bind different targets via high throughput (HT) screening. Using the artificial monobody scaffold and extremely bright reporter fluorescent dyes, we generated a biosensor that can report the activation of endogenous, unmodified Src family kinases (SFK) in living cells. The new SFK biosensor in conjunction with automated analysis of cell edge dynamics provides revealing insights into the role of Src kinases in cell migration. I will discuss my future plans for generating biosensors for individual Src family kinases that are important in cancer and host-pathogen interactions. Development of a new class of biosensors based on small molecules that are specific for active conformations of signaling proteins will be described. I will discuss new biosensor development strategies using high-throughput, high content imaging. Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Max-Jean Zins On Forms of Funerals: New Patriotic Rituals in Kargil War 7 March Wednesday India repatriated systematically for the first time in its history the corpses of its soldiers and officers killed on the battle field during the Kargil war. The very specific national and international contexts of this war explains the forms of these funerals, organized around the two different notions of "martyrs" (shahid) and "heroes" (vir) that were then intensively used. Indeed, a new patriotic ritual was "invented" by India during the Kargil war which may even have had some consequences on the vision of death itself, notwithstanding the political motivations of the BJP government of that time. Dr Max-Jean Zins is a political scientist belonging to the French National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS). He is a member of the Centre for International Studies (CERI) at the Institute of Political Sciences, Paris. He teaches on Indian political history at the University of Paris 1 - Sorbonne. He is the director of the Indo-French programme of cooperation in social sciences at the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH, Paris). In the '80s', Dr. Zins was a research associate at the CPS, JNU. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY organised a pre-submission doctoral thesis seminar presentation on ‘British Geostrategic Perspectives on the Southern Atlantic Region’ Speaker: Mr Krishnendra Meena 7 March 2012 The Alumni Association of JNU (AAJ) Maths Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Derivation on Triangular Algebra Speaker: Balchand Prajapati Date: March 6, 2012 (Tuesday) Abstract: Let R be a commutative ring. A derivation d on an R-algebra A is an R-linear map satisfying d(xy) = (dx)y + xdy for all x,y \in A. The derivation d is said to be an inner derivation induced by a \in A if d_{a}x = [a,x] for all x \in A. We prove that if d is a derivation on a triangular algebra Tri(ZG, QG, ZG) then it is the sum of two inner derivations. That is, d=\delta_a+\delta_b, where a, b \in Tri(ZG, QG, ZG). In this seminar we shall discuss basic properties and examples of derivations and some theory of rings and group rings. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY organised a seminar on 'Field Notes from Pokhran: A Presentation by CIPOD IInd Semester MPhil Students' 6 March 2012. Centre for International Trade and Development (CITD, Jawaharlal Nehru University) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) organised a seminar on “Field Experiments in Market Segmentation Strategies for the Deployment of New Agricultural Technologies: on Monday, 5 March 2012 Presenters: Abstract: Making agriculture more productive and efficient is paramount to improving the day-to-day quality of life of poor farmers. However, promising agricultural technologies often are not adopted by poor and marginalized farmers. With scarce public resources available to support agricultural research and extension, the innovation and dissemination process will need to become more efficient and more inclusive of the private sector. We present results from a field experiment with two main goals: (1) to elicit farmers’ heterogeneous valuation of a new technology—laser land leveling (LLL)—to help inform market segmentation strategies and (2) to test to see if farmers learn about the technology and its benefits from early adopters. The study combines an experimental auction with the randomized introduction of the technology in three districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Using data from the experimental auction we test a number of market segmentation strategies for their ability to increase adoption cost-effectively, and also their potential to be inclusive of poor and marginalized farmers. We find that segmenting by landholdings and plot size are among the most effective strategies. Leveraging the randomized introduction of the technology within our sample, we use social network data to find that male farmers and their spouses gain exposure to LLL, and learn about its benefits, through their networks of agricultural contacts. The presence of network effects suggests that providing incentives for early adoption will increase later adoption, and that such incentives could be more effective if distributed across different social circles in order to be inclusive. Programme for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion (PSDE) organised Dialogue with Survivors: Communal violence, justice,hope and reconciliation followed by a music recital Date : March 05, 2012 Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Prof. Indira Hirway on "Employment Guarantee, Livlihood Generation and Planning in India" Chair & Moderator:Prof. G.K.Chaddha Friday, 2nd March 2012 Maths Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Complex Structures on Product of Odd Dimensional Spheres Speaker: Ajay Singh Thakur Date: March 2, 2012 Abstract: Product of odd dimensional spheres S^{2m+1} x S^{2n+1}, n,m \geq 0, is an even dimensional differential manifolds. Calabi and Eckmann obtained a class of compact complex non-algebraic manifolds by constructing complex structures on S^{2n+1} x S^{2m+1}, m,n >0. We generalize this construction to obtain a family of complex manifolds which are non-algebraic. In this talk we shall briefly review the basic definition of complex manifolds with examples. We shall then describe the construction of Calabi and Eckmann. The School of Arts and Aesthetics organised a talk by Prof Catherine B Asher on Mughal and Rajput Lives: Elite Culture in 16th and 17th Century North India In this talk Catherine Asher will discuss the intersection between the political ideology of the Mughals and their Rajput contemporaries in the production of art and architecture as a way of showcasing imperial images. Her presentation will cover not only the role of rulers in the promotion of concepts of kingship but also the patronage of high ranking Hindu and Muslim nobles as facilitators of these emblems of power. on Friday, 2 March 2012 Catherine Asher is a professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota. She has written extensively on Indian art and architecture since 1200 in a series of essays and books, but has been particularly interested in the Mughals and how they were perceived in the 19th through 21st centuries. She is the author of the seminal Architecture of Mughal India (1992), co-editor of the volume, Perceptions of South Asia’s Visual Past (1994), and co-author (with Cynthia Talbot) of India before Europe (2006). Currently Catherine Asher is working on the built environment of Jaipur from its foundation in the 18th century to the present. To celebrate forty years of School of Social Sciences a conference was organised on Democracy, Pluralism and Justice: Challenges for India in a Changing World' on 29 February-2 March 2012, Centre for English Studies Prof. Neol Salmond on ICONIZING GANDHI IN NORTH AMERICA on Thursday, 1st March 2012 Brief bio of the Speaker: Professor Salmond was educated at Upper Canada College, Bishop’s University, and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He went on to do an M.A. in the History and Philosophy of Religion at Concordia in Montreal. He studied Christian theology and then Sanskrit at McGill University obtaining his doctorate in Asian religions in 1999. He also studied South Asian art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and held an internship in the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum. He has been a faculty research fellow with the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute in India and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.
AIRF organised a Workshop on Application of Mass Spectrometry for Proteomics from 30th April to 2nd May 2012. School of Computational and Integrative Sciences Organised national Conference-cum Workshop on Search for Antimalarials:Mechanism Based Approach on 27th-29th April, 2012 NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME TOPIC: Revisiting Agrarian History of North East India: Focusing on the Brahmaputra Valley SPEAKER : Dr. Manjeet Baruah ABSTRACT : Doing agrarian history of the Brahmaputra valley provides the researcher with two kinds of historical sources, written and oral. The challenge is in collating both the kinds of sources for the evidences that we draw. One of the established means of historical interpretation has been to rely on the written sources, namely (a) the colonial archive, (b) the neo-vaishnava texts and (c) the buranji chronicles. However, since the thrust of interpreting these sources was influenced by the handling of the colonial archive, the emphasis remained on “factual” “data”. As a result, there was little meaningful handling of oral sources. The second point that I would like to focus is on situating agrarian history of the Valley as part of study of region formation. In this regard, I will argue that collating written and oral sources once again provides wider scope to explain relation between agriculture and culture, and the possibility of moving beyond identity studies in history. Lastly, I would conclude by an attempt to explore the importance of working on the Brahmaputra valley vis-à-vis doing socio-spatial history, especially due to its historical character of being both route and destination of migration in the wider region. Date : April 27th, Friday, 2012 Centre for Historical Studies organised an illustrated presentationby SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda On Ajanta and the Making of Sri Lanka’s National Myth The Simhala Avadana: Pilgrimage, Transmission and Mythology in the Ancient World Benoy Behl The Ajanta Caves (1998) In the 5th century AD however, this seminal event is recorded in a series of murals on the walls of the monastery of Ajanta in western India. Called the Simhala Avadana, it tells the story of the arrival of Prince Simhala in Lanka, his encounter with the Queen of the Rakshshis and her she devils and his later conquest of the island. Part this mural is also embodied in a Jataka Tale, The Valahassa Jataka. However the main source for this series is the Chinese pilgrim, traveller and Buddhist monk Hsüan-tsang (c. 602–664). Although he never travelled to the island, it is this Chinese monk who is our principal authority for the national myth of Lanka. Crisscrossing the heart of Asia in search of knowledge, he embodies the diffusion of cultures through the power of travel and transmission. Dr. SinhaRaja took his PhD degree from the King's College, London, in 1990. His thesis was on 'Nabob, Historian and Orientalist - The Life and Writings of Robert Orme, 1728-1801'. His articles on the subject have been published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (November, 1992) and in the University of Peradeniya History of Sri Lanka, Volume II (1995). He has since researched and published extensively on Sri Lankan Art as well as on Indian Art and Architecture. Some of his books are The World of Stanley Kirinde (2005), Ridi Vihare (2007) and Eloquence in Stone (2008). Currently, he is with the South Asian Studies Center, Bandaranaike Center of International Studies, Colombo. Centre for Studies in Science Policy CSSP Special Lecture Series “The Indian Battle to Save Access to Affordable Medicines” By Leena Menghaney Date: Wednesday, 25th April 2012 Abstract: India is a vital supplier of affordable medicine to the developing world – supplying over 80% of antiretroviral medicines developing countries. India’s approach to amending its patent law in 1970 and 2005 – is a clear example of a country shaping its legislation to promote access to medicines by fostering generic (local) production. Today India - ‘the pharmacy of the developing world’ - faces ongoing threats including the implementation of WTO’s TRIPS agreement, legal challenges by the pharmaceutical company Novartis and a controversial Free Trade Agreement under negotiation with the European Union. About Speaker: Leena Menghaney, a treatment activist and lawyer with Doctors without Borders in India, will speak about the importance of Indian generic production of medicines, its patent legislation and the pressures on the Indian government from the multinational pharmaceutical industry and their protectors in the US and the EU. CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC STUDIES AND PLANNING SEMINAR NOTICE SPEAKER: Dr. Alessandra Mezzadri, TOPIC: Bonded capital? The organization of homeworking in embroidery export networks in India DATE: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 Linguistic Empowerment Cell-JNU Award of Certificates, Books and Dictionaries by the Vice Chancellor to the students of English language Foundation Courses School of Enviromental Sciences organised Earth Day on 22 April 2012 School of Life Sciences organised "Meet The Speaker" a Lecture by Prof. Sudha Bhattacharya on 20 April 2012 Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a seminar by Jay Drydyk on Displacement by Development Abstract: Can ethics play any role in proposing solutions to policy standoffs between developers and stakeholders? The hard case of displacement by development will be discussed as an example of how ethics can point to a middle ground between 'managerialist' and 'movementist' perspectives. The central question of what is owed to the oustees is addressed by considering four moral rights to be realized in policy, in project management, and more widely in the public sphere. Discussion will be based on a new book by Jay Drydyk, Peter Penz and Pablo Bose (Cambridge 2011). Drydyk is a Fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association and Past President of the International Development Ethics Association. Friday, 20 April 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Carbon Nanotubes and Graphene: Ways of Formation and Novel Applications Speaker: Susanta Sinha Roy Date: April 19, 2012 Abstract: In recent years nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene, owing to their extraordinary mechanical strength as well as unique physical and chemical properties, have created a great sensation in nanotechnology research, especially in areas such as energy conversion and storage, biosciences and health, electronic devices etc. The key to the widespread application of these ‘wonder’ structures, on the other hand, necessitates fundamental understanding of their formation, large scale production, as well as successful use of well-known techniques for their characterization. We employed simple Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) method to grow wide variety of CNTs and graphene. We carried out a systematic time dependent growth of these structures and observed a whole new dynamics that dictate their nucleation and growth. We further employed techniques such as SEM, TEM, Raman spectroscopy, XPS and XRD to characterize the microstructures of these materials. We fabricated microfluidic devices comprising of CNT arrays, and showed that CNTs can be used successfully as microparticle filters in integrated microfluidic devices with stunning consequences. Largely, we investigated application possibilities of CNTs and graphene in other different emerging areas, e.g., i) as supercapacitors and fuel cell electrodes, ii) in electrochemical immunosensors, iii) as electron field emitters etc. Centre for Philosophy Talk by on Understanding Self and Other: A View through Narrative Memory Date: Thursday, 19th April, 2012 One of the core impairments in autism - a neurodevelopmental disorder - is a difficulty understanding others' thoughts and intentions, or Theory of Mind. For many decades, researchers and clinicians assumed that despite this impairment, children with autism had a spared or enhanced sense of self. Recent studies, however, have begun to show that alongside their difficulties in understanding others, persons with autism have a reduced sense of self. The current talk will present these findings, focusing on recent data from a study of narrative memory in autism - demonstrating the intricate links between self- and other-understanding in typical and autistic development. The Women’s Studies Programme, SSS-II, JNU organised a two day Workshop on The Challenges of Institutionalizing Women’s Studies DATE : 19th & 20th April 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Novel Material Properties Induced by Doping, Alloying and Irradiation Speaker: Sankar Dhar Date: April 18, 2012 Abstract: New multifunctional materials with novel physical properties are needed for the next generation device technology. One attractive and powerful approach is to explore the possibilities of inducing new functionalities by incorporating foreign elements into materials via energetic ions/laser beam and/or by chemical means, thereby harnessing the benefits of both intrinsic and extrinsic properties. In my talk I will give examples of how manipulation of the defects, Interface, surface, and dimensionality can lead to unexpected catalysis processes producing better epitaxial films with improved electrical and optical properties, magnetic properties without any magnetic element, electronic phase separation at the interface of two insulators, and controlled restructuring of nano-materials. Centre for the Studies in Science Policy Special lecture series, April, 2012 Environment and Society: A Case of Ship Breaking in Alang, Gujrat By Fedrico Demaria on Wednesday, 18th April, 2012 Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture By João Paulo Oliveira e Costa On Christian Symbols Assimilated by Asians in Early Modern Age 18 April 2012 (Wednesday) The Portuguese brought their religion with them to Asia; it was a perspective and a sensibility of Christianity that had been forged by the Europeans along 1500 years. Coming by sea, the Portuguese arrived in India without any kind of cultural transition, and they were convinced that their representations of Christ and saints, as well as the existing religious architecture were genuine. Nevertheless, all peoples tend to accommodate the Divine to their own image, as happened in Asia with the image of the Buddha. Something similar happened also with Christian symbols in Africa. The spread of Christianity throughout Asia was based on a Eurocentric perspective, but Asian artists (Christian or not) tended to give an Asian face to the Christian Divine as well as to the churches, when colonial power was not existent. From India to Japan, we can find much evidence of this dynamic intercultural encounter. João Paulo Oliveira e Costa is Professor and Head, Department of History, University of Lisbon. He is also Director of the Centre of Overseas History (CHAM). Professor João Paulo Oliveira e Costa has published extensively on the history of Portuguese expansion, spread of Christianity in Asia, notably Japan and India. Centre for English Studies School of International Studies organised pre-submission doctoral theses seminar presentations ‘Pathways to Regional Monetary Integration: Comparing the European and the East Asian Experiences’ ‘Impact of Partition on Sovereignty in India and Pakistan: A Theoretical Study’ on 18 April 2012 Centre for Philosophy Talk by on Peace and Justice in Levinas's thought CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC STUDIES AND PLANNING SPEAKER: Sourabh B. Paul, TOPIC: Breaking the Caste Barrier: Intergenerational Mobility in India Abstract: Amongst the various inequities typically associated with the caste system in India, probably one of the most debilitating is the perception that one is doomed by birth, i.e., social and economic mobility across generations is difficult. We study the extent and evolution of this lack of mobility by contrasting the intergenerational mobility rates of the historically disadvantaged scheduled castes and tribes (SC/ST) in India with the rest of the workforce in terms of their education attainment, occupation choices and wages. Using household survey data from successive rounds of the National Sample Survey between 1983 and 2005, we find that inter-generational education and income mobility rates of SC/STs have converged to non-SC/ST levels during this period. Moreover, SC/STs have been switching occupations relative to their parents at increasing rates, matching the corresponding switch rates of non-SC/STs in the process. Interestingly, we have found that a common feature for both SC/STs and non-SC/STs is that the sharpest change in intergenerational income mobility has been for middle income households. This is consistent with the effects of easing credit constraints, a phenomenon that did characterize this period. We conclude that the last twenty years of major structural changes in India have also coincided with a breaking down of caste-based historical barriers to socio-economic mobility. DATE: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Centre for International Legal Studies Friday Seminar Date : 13 April 2012 Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by G. Balachandran On Subaltern Cosmopolitanism in the Imperial Metropole: Notes Towards a Prehistory of Racism and Multiculturalism 0n 11 April 2012 This paper attempts to throw light on the social and spiritual worlds of racially and culturally mixed communities of Britain’s urban working poor in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. The subaltern cosmopolitanism I address here was a feature of many parts of the 19th-century world. It was particularly pronounced in port towns big and small on every continent, a port’s relative size and importance influencing its cosmopolitan geographies more than its ethos. While recognizing and touching on this universality,my focus here is on the intertwined lives of Asian, African, and local working poor in London. G. Balachandran (M. Phil. International Economics, JNU; Ph. D. Economic History, University of London) is Professor of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. Professor Balachandran has published on themes relating to global migration, global finance, labour relations and social conflicts (http://graduateinstitute.ch/faculty/directory/balachandran) Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Abstract: Recent experimental developments in detection and manipulation of quantum hall states with quasi-particles excitations following non-abelian statistics have raised hopes for building topological protected quantum bits which form fundamental units of a topological quantum computer. I will first discuss recent experimental attempts to detect the non-abelian nature of the ν = 5/2 quantum hall state. Then I will talk about our theoretical proposal for detection of neutral modes which exist at the boundary of the ν = 5/2 quantum hall state which is believed to be a direct reflections of the existence of non-abelian quasi particle in the bulk. For detecting a neutral mode it is natural to look for thermal response rather then electrical response. But measuring thermal response in a controlled way is a formidable task in real life experiments. I will discuss a setup, which can get around this problem by using a quantum point contacts in series follows by a shot noise measurement. I will also discuss some very recent theoretical and experimental developments which involve the use of a quantum dot as a thermoelectric probe for neutral modes. CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC STUDIES AND PLANNING SPEAKER: Prof. Anjan Mukherji, NIPFP TOPIC: Is Competitive Behaviour A Best Response? DATE: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 Centre for English Studies organised a Talk by Tabish Khair on MUSLIM MODERNITIES: PAST AND PRESENT On 10th April 2012 Born and educated mostly in Bihar, Tabish Khair is the author of various books, including the poetry collections, Where Parallel Lines Meet and Man of Glass, the novels, The Bus Stopped,, Filming: A Love Story, and The Thing About Thugs, a co-edited anthology of pre-modern travel texts by Africans and Asians, Other Routes, a collection of topical articles, Muslim Modernities: Essays on Moderation and Mayhem, an illustrated book for children, The Glum Peacock, and academic books, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Indian English Novels, and The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere, His new novel, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position, is to be launched shortly. Khair mostly lives in Aarhus, Denmark, where he teaches at the University. Centre for Studies in Science Policy WOMEN’S STUDIES PROGRAMME organised a Book Discussion EK AUR NEEMSAAR Participants: Date: 9th April 2012 EK AUR NEEMSAAR is a diary of a living and unfolding movement of five thousand dalit women, laborers and peasants in the Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh. This book, full of bittersweet truths of a movement’s journey, contains not only the words and reflections of many saathis of Sangtin, but also the everyday stories of their struggle and the poetry of their dreams. Special Centre for Molecular Medicine organised a talk on Epigenetic Modifications in Transcription Regulation: Implications in Therapeutics by Tapas K. Kundu, Ph.D. On Thursday, April 5th, 2012 Abstract: Even though DNA sequence determines the specificity of the gene, the fine tuning of gene expression is operated through epigenetic machinery. These include the modification of DNA organizing proteins as well as the DNA. The highly ordered nucleoprotein structure of the eukaryotic cell nuclei is referred as chromatin. The histone and nonhistone protein component of chromatin undergoes several reversible post translational modifications such as acetylation, methylation, phosphorylation etc. These epigenetic modifications are protein specific, more precisely also specific to amino acids in the substrate. We have found that lysine acetylation and arginine methylation of histones are essential for transcription regulations of RNA polymerase II, synthesis of mRNA as well as microRNA with functional consequences such as neural differentiation. The acetylation of histone chaperone has also been found to be essential for the chaperone mediated transcriptional activation. In the pathophysiological conditions such as cancer and AIDS; the normal function of these modifications alters and therefore enzymes responsible for these modifications would be target for new generation epigenetic therapeutics. We have discovered a few small molecules which specifically target these enzymes and eventually reduce the tumor growth as well as HIV multiplication in a model system. JNU Seminar Series Towards Interdisciplinarity Lecture on On Measurement of Social Variables by Professor T.K. Oommen Chair: Professor S.K.Sopory, Vice Chancellor, JNU Date: 4th April 2012 The JNU Seminar Series addresses the challenge of interdisciplinarity. Specifically, it seeks to enable, sustain and nurture dialogues across disciplines. This initiative intends to close the gap between the ‘two cultures’ within JNU and aims to generate and energize research ideas and ways of thinking about knowledge and scholarship. The seminar series invite faculty members from various Schools to present key ideas on cutting edge concerns in their respective fields. These interactions by speaking to general audiences will strive to evolve common languages for research and contemplation, while crafting academic possibilities for interdisciplinary efforts. It thus is forging fresh and creative academic bonds between the ‘two cultures’, research and teaching in JNU will produce an innovative learning frontier. Centre for Philosophy Lecture on HOW MUCH ADHIKARA DOES A COMMENTATOR HAVE TO INTERPRET A SASTRA TEXT by Prof T.S Rukmani Abstract: This talk examines the question of how much freedom an interpreter has when he is commenting on a philosophical sastra text in the Indian tradition. Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation and the Indian philosophical commentaries called 'bhasyas' have regularly interpreted the sutra texts to make their meanings clear to the reader. Using examples from Nyaya, Samkhya/Yoga and the Yogasutras this talk tries to deal with the question of what are the boundaries that a commentator can or cannot cross while dealing with a sutra text. Date: 4TH April 2012 (Wednesday) Centre for International Trade and Development organised an International Conference 2012 Trade, Growth and Development: Two Decades of Reforms in India and After on April 3-4, 2012 Special Centre for Molecular Medicine organised a talk on Role of Membrane Cholesterol in the Organization and Function of Serotonin1A Receptors: Implications in Health and Disease by Amitabha Chattopadhyay, Ph.D. On Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012 Abstract: The G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest class of molecules involved in signal transduction across membranes, and represent major drug targets in all clinical areas. The serotonin-1A (5-HT1A) receptors are representative members of the GPCR superfamily and are implicated in the generation and modulation of various cognitive, behavioral and developmental functions.1 Work from our laboratory showed, for the first time, that membrane cholesterol is required for ligand binding activity, and G-protein coupling of serotonin1A receptors.2,3 We have recently demonstrated that the signaling function of serotonin1A receptors is impaired in a cellular model of defective cholesterol biosynthetic disease, the Smith–Lemli–Opitz Syndrome (SLOS).4 SLOS is clinically diagnosed by reduced plasma levels of cholesterol along with elevated levels of 7-dehydrocholesterol and the ratio of their concentrations to that of cholesterol. Interestingly, recently reported crystal structures of GPCRs have shown structural evidence of cholesterol binding sites.5 I would discuss a novel mechanism by which membrane cholesterol could affect structure and function of GPCRs and propose that cholesterol binding sites in GPCRs could represent ‘nonannular’ binding sites.6 Progress in deciphering molecular details of the nature of GPCR-cholesterol interaction in the membrane would lead to better insight into our overall understanding of GPCR function in health and disease, thereby enhancing our ability to design better therapeutic strategies to combat diseases related to malfunctioning of GPCRs. In order to understand the membrane organization and dynamics of the human serotonin1A receptor, we tagged the receptor with enhanced yellow fluorescent protein (serotonin1AR-EYFP) and expressed in CHO cells.7 Detergent insolubility of the receptor was assessed using a novel assay developed by us in which treatment of cells in culture with cold Triton X-100 was followed by quantitation of the residual fluorescence of the receptor. We observed significant retention of EYFP fluorescence upon detergent treatment.8 Interestingly, results from Florescence Recovery After Photobleaching (FRAP) measurements performed under conditions of mild cytoskeletal destabilization suggest that receptor signaling is correlated with receptor mobility, in agreement with the ‘mobile receptor hypothesis’.9 Our recent work is focused on exploring the oligomerization of the receptor using HomoFRET and indicates the presence of constitutive oligomers of the serotonin1A receptor in live cells.10,11
WOMEN’S STUDIES PROGRAMME, SSS-II, JNU organised a Seminar on Feminist Approach to Combating Sex Trafficking and Prostitution by Gloria Steinem DATE : 2nd April 2012 Gloria Steinem is a writer, lecturer, editor, and feminist activist. In 1972, she co-founded Ms. magazine, and remained one of its editors for fifteen years. Her books include the bestsellers Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Moving Beyond Words, and Marilyn: Norma Jean Apne Aap Women World Wide Trust: A grassroots movement to end sex trafficking Maths Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Abstract: We will provide an introduction to Automata Theory and sketch an application to a transcendence result in Number Theory. (Based on lectures by J.-M. Deshouillers, and work of D. Thakur). School of International Studies ‘The Malvinas: Recovery Awaited Since 1833’ Speaker: Mr Ernesto Carlos Alvarez
Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a Lecture by SUMAIYA KHAIR on Issues of Human Rights & Justice in South Asia Tuesday, 22 May 2012 Central Library organised the 5th Library Lecture Series and Outreach Programme Topic: Depleting Archives and Disintegrating Histories Speaker : Ms. Shilpi Rajpal Chairperson: Prof. Mridula Mukherjee Date: Wednesday, 16th May 2012 Jawaharlal Nehru University organised the Inauguration of the Census Data Centre by Prof. S.K. Sopory and presentation on Houses, Household Amenities and Assets: Highlights from Census 2011 by Dr. C. Chandramouli on Monday, May 14th 2012 School of International Studies and Association of Asia Scholars organised a talk on Reimagining Water Cooperation in the Ganges Basin: Introductory remarks: Professor Swaran Singh,
Chairperson, CIPOD & President AAS on 11 May 2012 Centre for the Study of Law and Governance Certificate Distribution and Feedback Discussion in the Concluding Session of Speakers: (Focus of Discussion: Motivation to attend and Building Appropriate Capacities) School of Biotechnology SEMINAR NOTICE TITLE: Sample to Sequence SPEAKER: Tom Bittick and Richard Fekete DATE: May 7, 2012 Centre for Studies in Science Policy Seminar on “Rethinking Policy Innovations & Research Questions for Revitalizing Rainfed India” Context: Rainfed India has been languishing in the rain shadow of the Green Revolution for close to four decades. The skewed public investment paradigm towards perennially irrigated areas has led to the exclusion of close to 68% of Indian farmlands. Similar has been the status of low input animal husbandry and inland fisheries. The livelihood and incomes of more than half of India’s workforce depend crucially on this triad of agriculture-livestock and fisheries. Yet, there is no relevant paradigm for revitalising these sectors. Rainfed India straddles a wide range of agro-ecological and agro-climatic zones thereby making a universal policy prescription unviable. The need of the hour is to make policy a function of typologies so as to be able to deliver the required results. Research questions suited to this end also need to be evolved so as to provide a foundation for effective revitalisation. Irrigated areas as opposed to rainfed areas, have been has been the bedrock of the Green Revolution paradigm of high yielding modern agriculture. The agrarian backwardness of rainfed areas contributes to the continuing underdevelopment of such areas. The “area development” approach has been the core principle of Indian planning as a route out of underdevelopment for areas lagging behind. This approach necessarily includes agricultural as well as non-agricultural issues in it’s ambit. Rainfed area development, hence, is a multi-dimensional (or multi-disciplinary) approach primarily aimed at developing an area starting from a position of agrarian backwardness. A big-push public investment is therefore going to be a function of typologies. A differentiated and larger magnitude of public investment has become a necessity to revitalize the diversity of Rainfed India. The Centre for Studies in Science Policy - Economics Research Unit (ERU), has been set up with the mandate to evolve policy instruments for directing public investments to rainfed agricultural strategies and low-input animal husbandry. In effect, the CSSP ERU has attempted to frontally address the skewed nature of existing public investment patterns in which rainfed areas (as opposed to perennial irrigated zones) and low input husbandry (as opposed to high-input) receive inadequate policy attention and in part causing the continued aggravation of regional economic imbalances. The deliberations of this seminar would lead to raising critical policy issues and research questions by arguing for decisive restructuring public investment regimes in India, which can yield positive economic outcomes in agriculture, animal husbandry and fishery. We are planning to organise a Seminar “Rethinking Policy Innovations & Research Questions for Revitalizing Rainfed India” so as to bring together academics and planners for a deliberation on the path ahead for rainfed India in the 12th Five Year Plan. NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME, JNU organised A FILM SCREENING and DISCUSSION on PHIJIGEE MANI (My Only Gem) Directed by O. Gautam Speakers: Yaiphabee can no longer see the dismayed state of her parents. Her mother, particularly, leads a life of dejection. Yaiphabee need not trace the reason behind such condition; because she is already aware of it. One day she decides to take out a journey. A journey, which she thinks, would bring some change in her family. On the way she is also disturbed by the past memories of her family. Does her journey bring back the lost happiness? Can she bring back the smile on her mother's face? Date: 5th May 2012 (Saturday) PROGRAMME FOR THE STUDY OF DISCRIMINATION AND EXCLUSION (SSS) & organised a Lecture on ‘Progress’ Can Kill: Protecting the Rights of the Jarawas by
Sophie Grig School of International Studies organised a seminar on ‘Geopolitics in Asia: Evolving discourses and critical geopolitics’ Speaker: Professor Alain Boge Professor Alain Boge specialises in International Business, International Strategy, Geopolitics and International Relations 4 May 2012 School of Biotechnology TITLE: Imaging protein activity in living cells: Src kinases at the leading edge SPEAKER: Dr. Akash Gulyani on May 3, 2012
Summer vacation
Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Cavity opto-mechanics of Bose-Einstein condensates Speaker: Aranya B Bhattacherjee Date: July 27, 2012 (Friday) Abstract: e consider the dynamics of a movable mirror (cantilever) of a cavity coupled through radiation pressure to the light scattered from ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. Scattering from different atomic quantum states creates different quantum states of the scattered light, which can be distinguished by measurements of the displacement spectrum of the cantilever. We show that for large pump intensities the steady state displacement of the cantilever shows bistable behaviour. Due to atomic back-action, the displacement spectrum of the cantilever is modified and depends on the position of the condensate in the Brillouin zone. We further analyze the occurrence of splitting of the normal mode into three modes due to mixing of the mechanical motion with the fluctuations of the cavity field and the fluctuations of the condensate with nite atomic two-body interaction. The present system offers a novel scheme to coherently control ultracold atoms as well as cantilever dynamics. CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, ORGANISATION AND DISARMAMENT organised a Seminar on "When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order" by Mr. Martin Jacques on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Probing physics beyond the Standard Model with high energy astrophysical neutrinos Speaker: Poonam Mehta (University of Delhi, Delhi) Date: July 24, 2012 (Tuesday) Abstract: Observation of the phenomena of neutrino oscillations in low energy solar, atmospheric, reactor and accelerator experiments led to the strongest evidence for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). Neutrinos exhibit sustained quantum coherence even over astrophysical length scales since they interact via weak interactions. This makes them very reliable astrophysical messengers from extra-terrestrial sources as they are neither deflected in magnetic fields nor absorbed easily in a medium. Using high energy astrophysical neutrinos, we illustrate how the energy-dependent flavor composition can be used to measure BSM physics encountered by neutrinos during propagation from source to Earth. Specifically we consider neutrino decay and quantum decoherence to discuss the interplay of these two energy dependent effects and identify which new physics scenarios can be distinguished from the detected flavor ratios as a function of astrophysical parameters.
NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME (NEISP SEMINAR SERIES 2012) TOPIC: Civil Society and Ethnic Perception SPEAKER: N. William Singh ABSTRACT: Young Mizo Association (YMA) is the largest civil society organization in Mizoram. YMA endorses role of political society at some extent. It is a civil society with strong leanings on socio-cultural ethos. Identity consciousness is manifested to Mizo youths during socialization by YMA. Socialization agencies like educational institutions, families and church applauds YMA role. Organizing cultural events, active participation in voluntary community services, promoting Mizo attires and games/sports by YMA are ways of promoting identity consciousness in Mizo society. Cultural events are utilized effectively by YMA to manifest ethnic identity. YMA demands its members to be an active citizen. YMA revives spirit of activism and volunteerism to its members. Existence of YMA makes a difference in Mizo society. Date: August 31, Friday, 2012 The Educational Records Research Unit (ERRU) organised The Eighth J. P. Naik Memorial Lecture on Democracy, Equality and Education by Professor Ghanshyam Shah on 30 August 2012 Advanced Instrumentation Research Facility, Jawaharlal Nehru University Jointly Organized A Seminar on SAMPLE PREPARATION AND ITS ROLE IN MASS SPECTROMETRY ANALYSIS BY Dr. Marleen van Wingerden Date: 30th August 2012 Centre for Promotion of Human Rights Teaching and Research (HURITER), organised a Special Lecture on "Economics of IPR: Promises and Pitfalls" by Professor Amit Shovan Ray Chaired by: Date: 29 August 2012. SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES organbised a seminar on 'Major Lessons from Operation Pawan for Future Regional Stability Operations' Speaker: Dr Kalyanaraman Dr Kalyanaraman is an alumnus of Loyola College, Chennai, and of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. In 1995-96, he was Visiting Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. He is Editor, IDSA Website, and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Defence Studies. He is also the Review Advisor of IDSA's The Week in Review. Date: 29 August 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Versatile Applications of Nanotechnology in Biological Sciences Speaker: Jaydeep Bhattacharya Date: Aug 28, 2012 Abstract: Lipid membranes are versatile and convenient models for the study of properties of natural cell membranes. In particular, supported lipid bilayer is very popular for their uses as biomimetic/biosensoric platform (for biomolecules and cells) and it also possesses the quality of good insulation and selectivity. So during my research stay as Humboldt fellow I was engaged in construction of stable lipid bilayer inside a microfluidic channel. Special type of microfluidic flow cells were designed and nanoporous alumina support was fabricated inside the channel. The bilayer was immobilized by the chemical modification of the porous alumina surface. Stable bilayer on porous support inside a flow system was thus formed that can withstand the flow. This technique enabled me to measure transmembrane current across the lipid bilayer. The bilayer formation kinetics was measured electronically. In another work a chip was designed to conduct polymerase chain reaction (PCR) inside a droplet. The chip consists of three micro-heaters. It provides a spatial temperature zones to conduct the PCR instead of regular temporal thermal cycling. The droplet is moved on the temperature zones with the help of magnetic nanoparticles and a small magnet. During my Ph.D, I studied the folding of haemoglobin variants. As an extension of this work haemoglobin was immobilized on a nickel coated planar electrode and the folding was studied electrochemically. It was possible to measure the subunit ratio of the protein. In disease like malaria there is an alteration in the equilibrium of the subunit ratio of haemoglobin. Hence the above mentioned electrochemical tool can be used as a diagnostic tool for malaria detection. Currently I am engaged in the field of single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy where folding of the nascent polypeptide chain is studied during the translational process by in vitro protein synthesis on a surface tethered fluorescent labelled ribosomes. For the measurement of co-translational folding of a membrane protein Bacteriorhodopsin labeled nanodiscs (lipid molecule surrounded by a membrane scaffold protein) are used. A method for the surface modification is developed where the bio-molecules can be attached on a glass surface covalently in its active form and can be visualized in a single molecule level with very good statistical counts. To perform the reaction in physiological conditions, arrays of nanopores on a glass surface(Zeromode waveguides) are used to provide a spatial confinement that reduce the net concentration of the molecules to attomolar level. In my future work I would like to fabricate nanostructured microelectrode array for the bio-sensing applications as well as in single molecule studies. Book Reading from
by Gunjan Veda & Syeda Hameed Date: 27th August 2012 Panelist: Prof. Neerja Gopal Jayal / Prof. GJV Prasad Excerpt from the book: Beautiful Country is a journey towards understanding India. From the rarefied world of the Jalpaiguri tea estates to the crowded bylanes of Varanasi, from the pristine forests of Andamans to the seething valley of Manipur, from the scattered habitations of Ladakh to the flooded villages of Barmer - these are the roads less travelled. Read more.... SCHOOL OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURE STUDIES organised a Symposium on "Contemporary Modern Persian Fiction" on August 27, 2012 SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES organised a seminar on 'Australia and India in the Asian Century' Speaker: Mr Peter Varghese Prior to his appointment as Ambassador, Mr Varghese was Director-General of the Office of National Assessments. Prior to this, he was the Senior Adviser (International) to the Prime Minister. From 2002 until July 2003, Mr Varghese was a Deputy Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. From 2000 until 2002 Mr Varghese was Australia's High Commissioner to Malaysia. He has also served in Australian missions in Vienna (1980-83), Washington (1986-88) and Tokyo (1994). Mr Varghese served as First Assistant Secretary of the International Security Division in 1997 before being seconded in February 1998, to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet as First Assistant Secretary of the International Division. His other positions in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have included Assistant Secretary, Staffing (1991-92), First Assistant Secretary, Public Affairs Division (1994-96) and Head of the White Paper Secretariat (1996-97). Mr Varghese is a graduate in history from the University of Queensland. He was appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia in 2010. Date: 27 August 2012 SPECIAL CENTRE FOR SANSKRIT STUDIES SPECIAL LECTURE SERIES Speaker : Jinwol Young Ho Lee Date and Time : 24th August 2012 Topic : "How Buddhist Traditions have formed Differently in term Theravada and Mahayana?" Chair : Prof. Sempa Dorje Chair : Prof. Shashiprabha Kumar Date and Time : 25th August, 2012 (Saturday) Chair : Prof. Dong Hyeon Jung School of Arts and Aesthetics Presented Screen Presence Lost Film Cultures and Contemporary Art A Talk By Stephen Montiero Stephen Monteiro teaches in the Department of Global Communications at The American University of Paris, where he directs the Graduate Track in Visual and Material Culture Studies. He has written on media, art, and aesthetics for Grey Room, Photography & Culture, Kritische Berichte and Visual Resources. on 24th August, 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Materials & Technology for Life, Energy and Beyond Speaker: Smita Sarkar Date: Aug 22, 2012 Abstract: The constant quest for new materials has marked our journey from the stone age to the era of antibiotics onto the silicon age. For continued progress and sustenance, we need materials and technology that transcend traditional disciplines of science and engineering. The talk would focus on developing novel nanostructures, molecular assemblies, and devices with defined functionalities. I will present vignettes from my research in developing tailored surfaces and molecular assemblies for controlled charge transfer, fabricating hybrid inorganic-organic devices, harvesting solar energy, and biological sensing. New ways of integrating organic molecules with various semiconductors and other materials for advanced device functionalities will also be presented. Centre for Studies in Science Policy CSSP Lecture Series "Competing Through Technological Capability: The Case of the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry" By Professor Amit Shovan Ray, CITD, SIS, JNU Dr. Saradindu Bhaduri, CSSP, SSS, JNU Date: Wednesday, 22nd August 2012 All are cordially invited School of International Studies organised a seminar on 'Diplomacy of small states' Speaker: Ambassador Kishan S. Rana Ambassador Kishan S. Rana was educated at St. Stephen's College, Delhi University and holds a BA (Hons) and an MA in Economics (First Division). He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1960, retiring in 1995. He served as ambassador to Algeria, Czechoslovakia, Kenya, Mauritius, and Germany; Joint Secretary in Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Office (1981–1982); and head of personnel administration in the Ministry of External Affairs. In 1999, Ambassador Rana joined the e-learning teaching faculty of DiploFoundation and was named Professor Emeritus by Diplo in 2010. In 1999, he published his first book, Inside Diplomacy, a critical examination of how the Indian diplomatic system should be improved. That book prompted a major reform initiative and was followed by: Managing Corporate Culture (co-author, 2000); Bilateral Diplomacy (2002); The 21st Century Ambassador (2004); Asian Diplomacy (2007); Foreign Ministries (co-editor, 2007); Economic Diplomacy (co-editor, 2011); and Diplomacy of the Twenty-first Century (2011). Currently working on two books, he has published 50 articles on current affairs in academic journals. Date: 22 August 2012 Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a seminar, followed by a discussion by Diana Aviv On The Role of Non-Profit Organizations in Politics and Governance Abstract: The talk will highlight the role of the non-profit sector in U.S. politics and policy-making, followed by a discussion with the audience on how NGO's in India influence policy, and, on ethics, transparency, and accountability in the non-profit Sector. The discussion will encompass the regulation of the NGO sector, and how can NGO's maintain integrity and accountability amidst rapid growth in numbers and functions. Tuesday, 21 August 2012 * Independent Sector is the leadership network for America's nonprofits, foundations, and corporate giving programs
Prof John Cort is Professor of Religious Studies at Denison University, Ohio. He is known for his work on the Jain traditions of South Asia, which often illumines the making, function and meaning of icons and temples within and outside their religious contexts, through a close reading of the objects, rituals, practices, theological doctrines, debates and controversies. In this talk, he will focuss on Jain disputes relating to conceptions and practices of ornamenting Jina icons. Jawaharlal Nehru University and organised INSA-JNU LECTURE Human Prehistory: New Insights through Languages and Genes by Prof. Bernard Comrie Abstract: Advances in genetics over the last couple of decades have significantly enhanced possibilities for tracing the biological history of a population. Linguistic methods first developed in the nineteenth century and continually refined since then enable us to trace aspects the linguistic prehistory of a community. But genes are transmitted biologically, while individual languages are transmitted culturally. To what extent do the resulting pedigrees coincide, and how can we interpret both converging and diverging results? The lecture examines three case studies in detail: 1) Madagascar, where despite the geographical location off the African coast the local language is Austronesian. 2) Azerbaijan, whose dominant Turkic language only arrived in the Caucasus about a thousand years ago. 3) The Haruai of Papua New Guinea, where the near complete absence of historical materials requires detective work to unravel the community's longer-term history. Brief mention will also be made of other cases, including work in progress. In all instances, only the combination of methods from genetics and linguistics allows reconstruction of a reasonably accurate picture of prehistoric demographic processes. on August 14, 2012 Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture By Ajay Skaria On Between two and three: Gandhi and the politics of measure 14 August, 2012 When in Hind Swaraj the Editor attacks 'modern civilization', the numbers three and two figure very prominently. Modern civilization is the rule of the 'third party', and it is not 'any less savagery' when the third party settles the issue. This critique of the third party resonates, of course, with that long tradition which has identified justice and general responsibility with calculability and measure. (Thus, for example, Heidegger's remark that three is the first number--referring here to the argument that only with three does the concept of number emerge). Against three, Gandhi affirms two--it is preferable even that two parties should fight than that a third party should settle the issue. In this affirmation of two, Gandhi comes close that romantic tradition which thinks two as one, and rejects three because it introduces division. And yet, this paper suggests, his romanticism is constantly disrupted by another thinking of two, and even three. Symptomatic of the other three is the curious phrase 'trahit manas' in the Gujarati text. This word, which it would be lexically acceptable to translate as 'third party', is translated by Gandhi into English by 'ordinary man'. And it is the politics of the 'trahit manas' or 'ordinary man' that the Editor affirms. The paper explores this other thinking of the third, and relatedly of the second, which marks Hind Swaraj. Ajay Skaria teaches history at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India. He is currently completing a book on Gandhi, tentatively titled 'Immeasurable Equality: Gandhi, Politics and Religion' Advanced Instrumentation Research Facility Workshop/training on "Gas Chromatography & Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC & GC-MS)" from 13th - 14th August 2012. Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Fundamental Tests of Cosmology Speaker: Tarun Souradeep Date: Aug 9, 2012 Abstract: The increasingly exquisite measurements of Cosmic Microwave background anisotropy and polarization have transformed cosmology into a precision science. The talk will review this success story emphasizing the simplicity of the basic physics and geometric arguments that make this so compelling. I will also highlight some of the key fundamental assumptions that need to be observationally established to complete our understanding of the universe. I provide glimpses of our efforts in IUCAA on this new research frontier and indicate the nature of the challenges ahead. The School of Arts and Aesthetics Presented "The Nautch-Girl's Mirror: Sophia Plowden, Khanum Jan and the Hindustani Airs" a talk by Katherine Butler Schofield on 9th August, 2012 Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies organised Sanskrit Week Celebrations 2-8 August, 2012 Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies organised a seminar based on a recent book Capital Accumulation and Women's Labour in Asian Economies Date: August 8, 2012 Programme: School of Arts and Aesthetics Presented URBAN CHARISMA A Talk By Thomas Blom Hansen Author of 2nd August, 4.30 p.m School of Biotechnology TITLE: From hypothetical proteins to unknown cellular mechanisms: Emphasis on a novel transcription factor of heat shock genes SPEAKER: Dr. J. S. S. Prakash DATE : Aug. 1, 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Higgs for the laity Speaker: Debajyoti Choudhury Date: August 1, 2012 (Wednesday) Abstract:This colloquium style talk will introduce the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking and how it leads to the masses of elementary particles. The speaker will then discuss the recent discovery at CERN of `what looks like a Higgs Boson' and its implications on research in high energy physics.
NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME Topic: Development Challenges of Northeast India Speaker: Prof. Amar Yumnam Chair: Prof. Amaresh Dubey Date: September 28, Friday, 2012
Centre for the Study of Social Systems SEMINAR NOTICE Topic: Contemporary Life and Search for a Congruent Self Reflections on Alienation Speaker: Dr. A. Bimol Akoijam Date : 27th September 2012 About Speaker: Angomcha Bimol Akoijam is a graduate from Poona University and an MA and Ph.D. from Delhi University. Presently, he is an associate professor at the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Earlier, he had also taught at Delhi University and was a faculty member at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (popularly known as CSDS), a premier research institute based in Delhi. Besides his contribution to professional academic journals and publications, he also regularly writes for the print media. Besides being a professional academic, Dr. Akoijam has also been closely associated with various peoples' democratic movements in the country. Dr. Akoijam is also a cinema and theatre enthusiast. He has served as member of the Jury at Films Festivals. He has also scripted and directed a short film, Lang-goi-challa-bee, paradise under siege which was screened at the World Social Forum (Mumbai, 2004) and officially premiered in Imphal in 2007, and his second film Kari-gee Kirunee Nungshiradi is expected to be released in November, 2012. Besides, he deploys cinema as a socio-cultural and political text in teaching social sciences. He is also the founder director of Introspective Theatre (New Delhi). He has written and directed a play, Azadi Ki Khamoshiyan (The Silences of Freedom, a play based on Saadat Hasan Manto's work) which was premiered at the National School of Drama (NSD), New Delhi (2002). He had also acted as a subject expert for a diploma production of NSD, Marat Sade (directed by Sanmugahraja, 2002). Centre for South, Central, South East Asia & South West Pacific Studies, organised two documentaries 1. A Friend in Difficult Time: The Role of India in Freedom Struggle of Bangladesh (60 minutes) 2. Jihad without Boundary: Rise of Islamic militancy and future of secular democracy in Pakistan (50 minutes) By Shahriar Kabir, Date: 24th September 2012 (Monday) JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY Lecture by DR. MARIANO ITURBE on The Milesian thinkers and the beginnings of Western philosophical thought Abstract: Ancient Greece is not only the cradle of Western philosophy but has also left an imperishable legacy of literature and art to the world. It could be affirmed that the Philosophy of the Greco-Roman world from the sixth century BC to the sixth century AD has laid the foundations for all subsequent Western Philosophy. The birthplace of Greek Philosophy was the seaboard of Asia Minor and the early Greek philosophers were Ionians. It began in the city of Miletus, hometown of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, but it spread to scholars from other cities such as Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, etc. The Ionian philosophers saw that behind all change and transition there must be something that is permanent. Change is from something that already exists into something else that it is new. Change is not a mere conflict between opposites; there must be something permanent behind these opposites. Their main achievement has been to raise the question about the ultimate nature of things, not so much the concrete answers to this question. Date: Sept. 24th (Monday), 2012 Centre for Japanese Korean and North East Asian studies (CJKNEAS) jointly organised The 2nd South Asian Conference on 'Promotion of Korean studies in India and South Asia' on September 20th and 21st, 2012 School of Life Sciences organised a two-day workshop on Scientific Writing and Bioethics 20-21st September 2012 About: Scientific writing is an integral part of the research profession. All forms of scientific journalism needs to be carefully manuscripted when it comes to ethics and precise reporting, but this makes them monotonous and boring and, therefore, difficult to retain in memory. The workshop will provide an insight to the audiences and the participants on 'how to make scientific writing ethical and easy to grasp' at the same time. Eminent speakers from some of the best institutes of the nation are here to share some of their best views and experiences on "Scientific writing and Bioethics". Centre for Historical Studies organised a Seminar by Padma Anagol On 'In the interest of the nation': Women's roles and participation in the birth of the Hindu Right in colonial India 19 September 2012 Communalism has struck deep root amongst both Muslim and Hindu communities in contemporary India. Women's organisations and feminists have watched with concern the large scale participation of women on the side of the Right. More significantly, the mobilisation of women in right wing movements has been spectacular with no such success for women's movements with professed liberal agendas. To add to the predicament, scholars have noted the lack of a body of serious scholarly literature on the women's component of the Indian right. This paper seeks to redress the lacunae by analysing women's participation in the construction of specific communal historiographies for the nineteenth century in India. The text of Lakshmibai Dravid, a late nineteenth-century Maharashtrian woman-patriot's work titled Essays in the Service of a Nation written in the Marathi language is utilised here to understand the formation of Lakshmibai Dravid as an active political subject within the broader context of the rise of nationalism in a colonial situation. The historiography on the Indian Right believes that V.D. Savarkar, was the founder of the Hindu Right. This study instead, focuses on Indian women's writings through Lakshmibai Dravid's treatise in order to comprehend how and why women came to be the pioneers of extreme Hindu nationalist movements outlining the differences and similarities in the discourses of male and female ideologues. Dr. Padma Anagol is an alumni of Nehru University, Delhi having studied for her MA and MPhil degrees in CHS. She was a Commonwealth Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and gained her doctorate in modern Indian history in 1995. Currently she teaches Modern Indian History at Cardiff School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University, UK. Dr. Anagol's research interests are broadly in gender and women's history of modern India. She is the author of Emergence of Feminism in Colonial India: 1850-1920 (Ashgate, 2005). In this book she explored the formation of women's subjectivities in Maharashtra prior to the coming of Gandhi. She has also published many articles on Indian women's lives in the nineteenth century especially on legal issues regarding Child Marriage, Infanticide, Property Rights, Prostitution and the Contagious Diseases Acts. Much of her research work is anchored in understanding women's subjectivities and her latest book - Indian Women Patriots on the Colonial State, Race and the Political Economy of Nationalism – looks at the genesis of the Hindu Right in Western India paying attention to the issues of how women constructed discourses of extreme nationalism through the categories of nation, territory, language, religion, race and gender. Her present talk is a major theme in the book. Dr. Anagol has served as Editor of the UK based refereed History journal Cultural and Social History from 2006 to 2010. She is the Series Editor of 'India and the Raj' – a new strand inaugurated by the Continuum Press. She also serves on the Editorial Board of South Asia Research and is on panel of the BBC History Magazine as their Asia Consultant. She can be contacted on the email id: anagol@cardiff.ac.uk SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES organised a seminar on 'The future of US-Pakistan relations: implications for the wider region' Speaker: Dr Joshua T. White Joshua T. White recently completed his PhD in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. His doctoral work, based on extensive fieldwork in Pakistan, examined the decision-making patterns of Islamist parties, and their relationships with the state and with anti-state groups. Since 2005, Joshua has visited South Asia several times a year, and has held visiting research appointments at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and the International Islamic University in Islamabad (IIUI). He has presented his findings in numerous academic and policy forums and participated in several high-level US-Pakistan Track II strategic dialogues. He holds a BA magna cum laude from Williams College with a double major in History and Mathematics and a PhD with distinction from Johns Hopkins University. Date: 19 September 2012 Centre for International Trade and Development Speaker: Dil Bahadur Rahut Title: Nonfarm Employment and Rural Welfare: Evidence from the Himalayas Date: 19 September 2012 Abstract: The potential importance of non farm employment for the welfare of rural households has long been recognized, but whether the non farm sector offers prospects to improve welfare of the rural poor still remains a contentious issue. We examine distributional and wellbeing effects of non farm employment of rural households in the Himalayas. We account for heterogeneity of non farm employment, and estimate a system of structural equations to better understand the causal linkages between non farm employment and household wellbeing. The results confirm that disaggregating non farm employment activities matters. While low-return non farm employment is associated with lower income inequality, high-return non farm activities have a disequalizing effect on the distribution of household incomes. We also find that ability to engage in high-return non farm activities is associated with higher economic well being. Poor households, on the other hand, are unable to enter the high-return non farm sector and rely on low-return activities, which do not contribute to improved wellbeing. Speaker's Profile: Dr Dil Bahadur Rahut comes from Kingdom of Bhutan. He holds PhD in Development Economics from University of Bonn and a Masters in Economic Policy Management from Japan and Master in Business Administration (Finance) from India. He began his career in the Research and Statistics Department of the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan. He worked as Junior Research at the Centre for Development Research (ZEF), Germany; Research Fellow (Economics & Rural Livelihoods) Consultative Groups of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR-WFC) and Senior Fellow and Japan Chair at Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relation (ICRIER). From 2008-2011, he worked as the Chief of Research, Planning and Monitoring Department and Project Director Credit Card at Bank of Bhutan. He was also the Chief Executive Officer of Bank of Bhutan Securities Limited and the board of director of the Royal Securities Exchange of Bhutan. He has published in EPW, EDCC and several book chapters and working papers. His areas of interest are poverty & inequality, applied micro econometrics, impact assessment, household economics, rural livelihoods, social protections, natural resource economics and micro-finance. Philosophical Engagement with Daya Krishna A two-day colloquium organized by Centre for Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University In collaboration with Centre for Studies in Civilizations, New Delhi, India September 17–18, 2012
Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a seminar by Sylvie Guichard on How Autonomous are the Branches? Abstract: How are political parties organized in multi-level political systems? What are the links between the national party (or the central leadership) and its regional branches (or local units)? How much autonomy do the branches have? These classical questions of the study of political parties in federal states have found a new resonance considering the recent development within the BJP. Some commentators have even begun to note that the party is now not more than a collection of separate state units. Along this line and focusing on Gujarat, I will argue and show how over the last 20 years the Gujarat branch of the BJP has become an autonomous regional party. Friday, 14 September 2012 Centre for Historical Studies organised a Seminar by Professor Chris Bayly On Development and Sentiment. The Political Thought of Jawaharlal Nehru's Circle 14 September 2012 This Seminar originated as the first 'S. Gopal Memorial lecture' in Kings College, University of London. Professor Gopal was the speaker's mentor in Oxford in the 1960s and the lecture reconsiders Gopal's classic works on Jawaharlal Nehru, by examining the different intellectual trajectories of three of Nehru's key confidants and co-workers, G. B. Pant, P. C. Mahalanobis and D. R. Gadgil. Professor Christopher Bayly is Director of the Centre of South Asian Studies, Vere Hamsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, and a Fellow of St. Catherine's College at the University of Cambridge. Professor Bayly's key publications include The Local Roots of Indian Politics. Allahabad 1880-1920 (1975); Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars. North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1780-1870 (1983); Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (1988); Imperial Meridian. The British Empire and the World, 1780-1830 (1989); Empire and Information. Intelligence gathering and social communication in India 1780-1870 (1996); The Origins of Nationality in South Asia (1997); The Birth of the Modern World. Global Connections and Comparisons 1780-1914 (2004), and Forgotten Wars with Tim Harper (2007). School of Arts & Aesthetics the encyclopedic museum in the post-colonial presented a talk by James Cuno on Friday, 13th September 2012 James Cuno, formerly Director of the Art Institute of Chicago and now President of the J Paul Getty trust, is known for his many publications that engage with the history of museums and collections. His Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over our Ancient Heritage (Princeton, 2008) defended the right of major museums in wealthy nations to own antiquities drawn from many lands, arguing against the nationalistic claims of many post-colonial states. His Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum (Chicago, 2012), defends the encyclopedic museum - an institution that tries to collect and represent 'world' culture. Far from being a relic of colonialism, Cuno sees it as an institution that has an important role to play in the present day. Articulate, persuasive and controversial, Cuno is one of the most important voices in the globally interconnected world of museums today. Centre for Historical Studies organised a Seminar by Daniel Roberts On 12 September 2012 The enormous impact of James Mill's 1817 History of British India makes it in many ways difficult to conceptualise colonial history in India prior to his advent. As Javed Majeed has pointed out with regard to Mill's absorption of earlier historical sources (such as his treatment of the pre-eminent Orientalist Sir William Jones's works), Mill clarified what was ambiguous and contradictory in earlier histories and effected a resolution of Indian history which put it firmly on the path to the utilitarian forms of imperialism that characterised the Raj. The instability of earlier histories centred on the role apportioned to Hindu chronologies, mythologies and legends in the colonial construction of modern India. Mill's intervention in Indian history consigned such materials to the realm of antiquarianism, separating verifiable history (largely dated from European presence in India) from what he termed (citing Hume, Robertson and Gibbon) as 'the fanciful traditions of early nations'. Until Mill, Orientalist histories of India had broadly sought to reconcile empirical history with Indian mythological and legendary traditions, relating these in turn to Mosaic narratives of the Judeao-Christian tradition. Hindu myths and legends – as the Orientalists saw them – were useful material for entering into the historical imagination of the subject nation and might even help to rule it better. Such earlier renditions of Hindu literature often provided highly favourable representations of India, leading the Sanskrit scholar Thomas Trautmann to distinguish between 'Indomania' which he describes as 'the early British enthusiasm for India', and 'Indophobia', the widespread denigration of India which followed it in the wake of evangelical criticisms of Hinduism and of Mill's monumental History. My paper will turn to Orientalist researches in India during the period of Indomania to suggest the ways in which the earlier historical conceptions of India shaped literary representations such as William Jones's Hindu chronologies, critical writings, and poetry, as well as Robert Southey's pseudo-orientalist epic, The Curse of Kehama (1810). While recent criticisms of Southey's Indology have focussed on the evangelical cast of his attitude to Hinduism, I will attempt to draw out earlier conceptions of history that animate the action of his poem and inform its poetical language and style. Daniel Sanjiv Roberts is a Reader in English at Queen's University Belfast. He is the author of Revisionary Gleam: De Quincey, Coleridge, and the High Romantic Argument (2000), and has edited Thomas De Quincey's Autobiographic Sketches (2003) and Robert Southey's The Curse of Kehama (2004) for the definitive scholarly works of those writers. His edition of The Curse of Kehama was cited as a Distinguished Scholarly Edition by the Modern Language Association of America. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY organised a talk on THE GENERAL CRISIS OF MODERNISM: BY Professor RAJANI K. KANTH Tuesday, 11 September 2012 School of Language, Literature & Culture Studies, JNU Remembered SA'ADAT HASAN MANTO on his Birth centenary Vice Chancellor Prof. S K Sopory honoured Manto's daughters Nighat Patel, Nusrat Jalal & Nuzhat Arshad Writers from Pakistan- Tahira Iqbal & Rabia Sarfraz and Urdu scholar in JNU & NCPUL Director Khwaja Ekram spoke on the literary achievements of Manto. 10th September, 2012 Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study organised an Indo-Irish Workshop On Women in India and Ireland: Engendering the Historical Experiences On September 7, 2012 This workshop was a step towards contextualizing the experiences of the Indian and Irish women in the common colonial space (even beyond it). The workshop will also focus on representation/imagination of gender relations in the colonial discourse and how women experienced their 'colony' and their 'nation' and how women organized their work and life. Cutting across the common colonial space, some papers will also use writings of women as a tool to address the questions of power, sexuality and the State. The central idea of the workshop was to explore people and ideas across the two nations that have been instrumental in constituting gender relations. Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Study, JNU organised a Conference on Social Security and Pension for India's Unorganised Sector Workers: Context and Prospects on 7-8 September 2012 Centre for the Study of Regional Development National Seminar (6-7 September, 2012) on India's 2011 Census: Interpretations and Implications of the Results Prof. M.K. Premi delivered the Inaugural Address and Date: Thursday, 6th September, 2012 Mathematics Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: A Generalisation of the Eisenstein Schoenemann Irreducibility Criteria Speaker: Ramneek Khassa Date: Sep 6, 2012 (Thursday) Abstract: A result generalizing Eisenstein irreducibility criteria states that if ?(x) = S a_i x^i is a polynomial of degree n with integral coefficients such that as is not divisible by a prime p for some s = n, each a_i is divisible by p for 0 = i = s – 1, and a_0 is not divisible by p^2, then ?(x) has an irreducible factor of degree at least s over rational numbers. We observed that if ?(x) is as above, then it has an irreducible factor g(x) of degree s over p-adic integers such that g(x) is an Eisenstein polynomial with respect to p. In fact, we prove an analogue of the above result which extends generalized Schönemann irreducibility criterion and yields some more irreducibility criteria. Centre for Historical Studies organised a Seminar By Harbans Mukhia On "Alternative Modernity, Alternatives to Modernity, Multiple Modernities, What Else?" 5 September 2012 Until very recently, the notion of 'modernity' was, in C A Bayly's words, 'out there' for all to see, with no questions asked. Today, it is virtually in a shambles, under interrogation from numerous angles around the world, facilitated by the globalization of academia. Its early use to demarcate the present from the past gave way, Post-Enlightenment, to a value load of reason opposed to any sort of religion or religiosity, now derisively designated as superstition of the 'dark ages'. With positivism's privileging of science and technology, modernity evolved into an Abstraction, the approximation to which attested the degree of modernity of every society, institution, or even individual. Its paradigm was one of specific western 'rationality' and capitalist economy. In one powerful version, the approximation to this Abstraction in Asia, Africa and Latin America was mediated through colonialism and its discourses; in another, even as colonialism was contested, 'modernity' was demonstrated through parallel and comparable indigenous developments even prior to the colonial intervention, thus valorising the Abstraction. The movement of our ideas remains encircled by it. One severe effect of it all was the suppression of any expression of plurality of discourses. The circle is now being broken by postulates of alternative modernities, multiple modernities, Eurasian modernity, shared modernities, lost modernities and several other versions. The dual value-loaded hiatus that Post-Enlightenment had posited between the then present and the past in Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world is today under severe strain. It seems arguable that European modernity was not quite the exception either with reference to its own 'medieval' past or, more emphatically, with reference to the rest of the world. It is possible to envisage it as a continuous process and one that has evolved through multifaceted global interaction – economic, technological, cultural, ideational, or aesthetic. True, the Perhaps it is time to abandon 'ancient, medieval, modern' (likely to become irrelevant in the near future anyway) and conceptualise value-neutral categories: early, recent, contemporary or simple demarcation by centuries. Harbans Mukhia was Professor of Medieval History at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is the author of many books and numerous articles on economic and intellectual histories of early 'modern' India. CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, ORGANISATION AND DISARMAMENT organised a seminar on 'The transformation of IR in Brazil: a socio-history of twenty years of internationalization' Speaker: Ms Audrey Alejandro After obtaining her first degrees in Spanish translation (2006) and Law & Economics (2008) from the University Paul Valéry, Montpellier, Ms Audrey completed an MPhil in International Relations at Sciences Po Bordeaux, France (2010). That same year, she obtained a scholarship from the French Ministry of Research and Higher Education to teach and carry out her PhD research in this institution. Ms Audrey's research interest lies in the conditions of pluralism and reflexivity in social sciences. Her thesis investigates the question of ethnocentrism in the discipline of International Relations, specifically the normalising effects, global publication norms may have on the structuration of the academic fields in Brazil and India. Through fieldwork in both countries, Ms Audrey is a 2012 invited scholar of the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, and an associated PhD student at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi, India. Date: 5 September 2012 Centre for International Trade and Development organised seminar by Speaker: Ashok Guha on Reversal of Fortune Revisited: the Geography of Transport and the Changing Balance of World Economic Power on 05 September 2012 Abstract: What caused 'the reversal of fortune' – the change in power-balance between the North Atlantic countries and the dominant Asian powers of the pre-modern world? Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson argued that geography had nothing to do with this shift: health conditions determined the settlement pattern of West Europeans, who imported the growth-promoting institutions of their homelands wherever they settled but established purely extractive institutions in regions where they reigned but did not permanently reside. We, however, claim that geography was central. The key discoveries in the transition were those that made open-ocean navigation and trade possible. The locus of these discoveries and the responses of different regions to them were shaped by the transport geography of the medieval world. The degree of state support for these discoveries was crucial. Everywhere, this reflected the balance of power between maritime interest-groups and land-bound ones. The latter dominated the great continental countries, and, in a pre-modern world driven by land transport, these countries prospered. Their internal power-balance however ensured that their support for maritime innovation was negligible. As the new technology of ocean navigation worked itself out, a 'reversal of fortune' was therefore inevitable. The hitherto-marginalized maritime fringes of Eurasia gradually eclipsed the continental landmass. CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, ORGANISATION AND DISARMAMENT cordially invites you to a seminar on doctoral theses 'A Constructivist Analysis of India's Climate Change Diplomacy: A Study of Norms' Speaker: Ms Priya Naik 'Geopolitical Consequences of Occupation: A Case Study of Iraq' Speaker: Mr Ramesh Gaikwad Date: 5 September 2012 Special Center for Sanskrit Studies "Scientifying the Sanskrit vs. Sanskritizing the Science" by Bal Ram Singh Chair: Dr Santosh K Shukla, on 3rd September 2012 Abstract : Science has become a medium of sustenance as well as communication for the modern world. Whereas science may not have solved all the problems in the world, the scientific approach has become the universally accepted way of learning and understanding. The question is whether natural languages are available which express science naturally. While science appears complex, fundamental concepts of science are fairly simple. Mathematics has been used as a language of science because of its simplicity and accuracy. However, mathematics is not a spoken language, and the only effective spoken language that can express complex mathematical formulation has been Sanskrit. Sanskrit is a language in which each letter retains part of its original meaning even when used in different types of words with varying meanings. This concept is similar to chemistry being a language of material science where elemental characteristics are retained even when describing qualitatively different molecules. For Sanskrit to meet conditions of this analogy, the origin of letters, their pronunciations, and rules of their incorporation in words need to be well defined. The Paninian system of grammar for Sanskrit has withstood the test of time for over 2,500 years, with virtually no deviation. This would be unmatched with any other language of the world. Reference of Sanskrit as Devanaagari also refers to its being a perfect system of language. Sanskrit seems to be a rationally produced language, as anatomical origin of sounds in Sanskrit, from valar to labial, form a 5x5 set of consonants. Even vowels, a, aa, i, ee, u, oo, ae, ai, o, ou are arranged according to the shape of the mouth. When these sounds are emitted, a and aa, are pronounced from the throat, i and ee from the palate, o and oo from the lips, etc. This type of systematic sound articulation for serially organized alphabets is unprecedented. The system of articulation is prevalent in all Indian languages, except perhaps Urdu, and has also affected many languages in East and South East Asia. These features of Sanskrit may lend themselves for the language suitable for not only scientific scrutiny but also a better medium for science communication. In this presentation, similarities in science and Sanskrit will be explored as the medium of communication of knowledge. It will also be explored if writing, reading, speaking, and understanding Sanskrit could affect human brain differently to create atmosphere for pursuit of true knowledge.
Centre for International Trade and Development Speaker: Sangeeta Bansal, Title: The Informational and Signaling Impacts of Labels: Experimental Evidence from India on GM Foods on 31 October 2012 Abstract: Much of the debate between the European and U.S. positions about labeling of genetically modified foods has been whether consumers perceive labels as a source of information or a signal to change behavior. In this paper, we provide an experimental framework for examining these roles of information and signaling. While previous studies have focused on the impact of labels on consumer behavior, our interest is also what happens prior to the expression of aversion to GM-labeled foods. In particular, the experiment design allows the researcher to estimate a lower bound of the informational impact of labels on GM food aversion. The other novel feature of this paper is that unlike earlier studies, it uses subjects from a developing country. Centre of Indian Languages organised Vth PREMCHAND MEMORIAL LECTURE Speakr : Prof. Sudhir Chandra (Historian) Topic: Religion, Culture and Nation: Christianity in Colonial India Chair: Prof. Nityanand Tiwari Date: 31st October, 2012 JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY organised a seminar on "Rising China and the Asian Balance of Power" LEAD SPEAKER: DR BRENDAN TAYLOR Brief Bionote: Dr Brendan Taylor is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. He is a specialist on Korean Peninsula security issues, US–China relations, economic sanctions and Asian security architecture. He is the ANU-MacArthur Asia Security Initiative Focus Group leader since 2009 and Associate Investigator, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security since 2008. His recent publication is Sanctions as Grand Strategy, the Adelphi series, (London: Routledge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2010). He has published articles in journals such as Survival, Asian Security and Review of International Studies. COMMENTATOR: AMBASSADOR RICHARD RIGBY Brief Bionote: Prof Richard Rigby graduated in History at the The Australian National University in 1970 and went on to do his PhD - subsequently reworked and published by the ANU Press as The May 30th Movement - under Professor Wang Gungwu in the then Department of Far Eastern History. Prof Richard joined Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs in 1975, where he worked until the end of 2001: postings included Tokyo, Beijing (twice), Shanghai (Consul-General 1994-1998), London, and Israel (Ambassador, 2000-2001). He then joined the Office of National Assessments as Assistant Director-General, responsible for North and South Asia, where he worked until taking up his current position with the ANU China Institute in April 2008. PROF SWARAN SINGH, Chairperson, Centre for International, Politics, Organisation and Disarmament (CIPOD, SIS) will Chair the meeting Date : 31 October 2012 Advanced Instrumentation Research Facility Training Programme Flow Cytometry and its Advanced Applications in Research from 30-31st October 2012. NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME School of Social Sciences Jawaharlal Nehru University (NEISP Seminar Series 2012) Topic: Colonial Cartography and Ethnification: Emergence of Ethnonationalism in Northeast India Speaker: Dr. Lam Khan Piang Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University Date: October 30, Tuesday, 2012 Centre for Political Studies organised H. L. PARWANA MEMORIAL LECTURE by Professor G. Balachandran on Nailing a Crisis Lacking a Name: Cognition, Politics, Policy, c. 2007-2012 Date & Time: 29th October 2012 Group of Adult Education in association with KTH (Stockholm, Sweden) organised EXHIBITION & Talk on 'Urban Right to Water and Sanitation' Dr. Nandita Singh, Associate Professor at the Department of Land & Water Resources Engineering, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden, and Dr. Om Prakash Singh (Visual Anthropologist, KTH) will showcase their artifacts & photographs and also have an interactive session with faculty and students. ON 29TH OCTOBER 2012 (SSS-1 BUILDING). School of Arts & Aesthetics a talk by Edward Rothfarb on "Visions of India in California" on Friday, 26th October 2012 In this talk, independent scholar Edward L. Rothfarb discusses the mythology of India in California's visual culture. From the many Californian artists who pursued an interest in Indian art and spirituality to 20th Century Fox's 1955 film, The Rains of Ranchipur; the domed Lake Shrine and Retreat in Pacific Palisades, toNorton Simon's collection of South Asian sculpture, California has had many denizens who pursued India, or their ideas of India, Rothfarb will explore the visual connections between California and India, each the font of rich imaginaries. Edward Rothfarb is a scholar and art historian whose work focuses on India. His first book, In the Land of the Taj Mahal, was published by Henry Holt and Company in 1998. His second book, entitled Orchha and Beyond: Design at the Court of Raja Bir Singh Dev Bundela was published by Marg in 2012. Centre for Political Studies organised a Two Day International Workshop on Urban India and New Forms of Democratic Politics Date : 25-26 October 2012 JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY organised a seminar on 'Developments in Afghanistan' Speaker: Professor William Maley Professor William Maley assumed the position of Foundation Director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy on 1 July 2003. He taught for many years in the School of Politics, University College, University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, and has served as a Visiting Professor at the Russian Diplomatic Academy, a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, and a Visiting Research Fellow in the Refugee Studies Programme at Oxford University. He is a Barrister of the High Court of Australia, Vice-President of the Refugee Council of Australia, and a member of the Australian Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP). He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Global Responsibility to Protect, and of the International Advisory Board of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University. In 2002, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM). In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA). Date: 25 October 2012 Centre for the Study of Social Systems SEMINAR NOTICE Topic: RELEVANCE OF BUDDHIST THOUGHT TODAY Speaker: Ven. Geshe Damdul Dorji Date & Time: 25th October 2012 In 1998, Geshe Dorji Damdul joined the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics, Dharamsala for formal studies in Buddhist logic, philosophy and epistemology. He finished his Geshe Lharampa Degree (Ph.D.) in 2002 from Drepung Loseling Monasic University. He joined Gyudmed Tantric College for a year for Tantric studies. He is appointed as the official translator to H.H. the Dalai Lama since 2005. He has been serving as the interpreter for H.H. the Dalai Lama involved in doing written translations of many texts from Tibetan into English. He is working on two books, one on "Journey into the Paradox of Brain and Mind" and the other "What Constitutes the Ultimate Reality: The Effects of Understanding the Ultimate Reality" to be published soon. In 2004-05, for two years he was assigned as the Philosophy Lecturer for the Emory University Study Abroad Programme which is being held in Dharamsala, India since 2001. In 2008, he was appointed as a Visiting Fellow in Delhi University to give lectures in three of the University's departments-Philosophy, Psychology and Buddhist Studies. Currently his the Director of Tibet House, the Cultural Centre for H.H. the Dalai Lama, Delhi and travels extensively to teach Buddhist philosophy, psychology, logic and practice. Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a seminar by Duncan Green on Abstract: This month sees the publication of the second edition of From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can change the world. First published in 2008, the book was an attempt to provide a broad narrative on development. Drawing from this book, the speaker will examine the impact on development thinking of the major events of the last five years, particularly the global financial crisis, food price volatility, the Arab Spring, and accelerating climate change. These impacts include a heightened focus on issues of volatility, vulnerability and resilience, greater attention to the changing location and nature of poverty, and the increased influence of systems thinking on issues of complexity and change. Friday, 19 October 2012 Centre for the Study of Social Systems SEMINAR NOTICE Topic: LITERACY STUDIES: EXPANDING MULTIDISCIPLINARY HORIZONS Speaker: Dr. AJAY KUMAR Date : 18th October 2012 (Thursday) JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY Lecture by DR. MARIANO ITURBE on "Aristotle's theory of Cardinal Virtues and Ethical Leadership" Aristotle has left us three treatises on Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics and The Great Ethics or Magna Moralia. Of the three works, the Nicomachean Ethics is the one that has been studied more deeply and it comes to be the authentic Aristotelian Ethics. The starting question for Aristotle is to define exactly the nature of 'good' or final end of all our actions. Thus, his Ethics is teleological. His concern is action in so far as conducive to man's good or end. The concept of virtue implies the perfection of an operative faculty, namely intellect, will, or sensitive tendencies. Thus, for Aristotle a virtuous man is the one that lives the 'fulfilled life', a life according to reason. The doctrine of cardinal virtues can be applied to leadership and to managerial works. They enable leaders to habitually incorporate moral principles in their behavior. The practice of these virtues involves the exercise of the basic competencies critical to managerial resourcefulness. However, the continued exercise of the basic competencies does not guarantee that these will be done in a virtuous manner. It is only when these competencies are exercised consistent with moral principles that the practice of virtue is reinforced. The cardinal virtues are the "hinges" on which the basic competencies acquire moral significance. Leaders provide ethical leadership when they exercise the basic competencies in the pursuit of virtue. Date: Oct. 17th (Wednesday), 2012 Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Eunan O'Halpin On Afghanistan and the belligerent powers in the Second World War: diplomacy and intrigue in a neutral buffer state 17 October 2012 This paper explores the position of Afghanistan during the Second World War, with particular reference to the efforts of the various belligerent powers to extract concessions, to manipulate Afghan opinion, and to use Afghanistan as a base for attacking their enemies. A key element of the paper is its exploration of the limitations and advantages of the primary sources used - mainly British and American diplomatic and security records, and private papers - to explore the overall question of how Afghanistan managed her affairs surrounded on every side by major threats. The greatest moment of crisis for Afghanistan was September 1941, in the wake of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of her neighbour Iran, when Anglo-Soviet pressure forced the expulsion of Axis civilians. This was a matter in which Winston Churchill took a personal interest, using decoded Italian traffic from Kabul to support his policy of forcing Afghanistan into concessions against the advice of others. The paper will also touch on the clandestine work of the Axis legations in Kabul, including the smuggling of Subhas Chandra Bose to Moscow in March 1941 and the subsequent activities of his trusted aide Bhagat Ram Talwar. It will also review the growth in American interest and influence in Afghanistan from 1942 onwards. The overall argument is that despite its chronic internal weaknesses the Afghan state managed its external relations with judgement and finesse. Weak small underdeveloped states, just as much as powerful large ones, are more than capable of identifying and securing their long-term national interests. Eunan O'Halpin is Professor of Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College Dublin. A graduate of University College Dublin (BA, MA) and the University of Cambridge (Ph.D), he specialises in 20th century Irish and British history, and has a particular interest in the role of intelligence in policy making. Amongst his books are Head of the Civil Service: a study of Sir Warren Fisher (London, 1989), Defending Ireland: the Irish state and its enemies (Oxford, 1999) and Spying on Ireland: British intelligence and Irish neutrality during the second world war (Oxford, 2008). He is a founding joint editor of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, and a member of the international advisory boards of The Historical Journal (Cambridge) and 20th Century British History (Oxford) Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health organised
Centre for Historical Studies organised One day Indo-Danish Textile Workshop 16th Oct. 2012 Jawaharlal Nehru University organised one-day seminar Remembering Tapas Majumdar: A Colloquium on Discourses across Boundaries on 15th October, 201 Mathematics Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: The Concept of p-Deficiency and its Applications Speaker: Anitha Thillaisundaram Date: Oct 15, 2012 Abstract: We use Schlage-Puchta's concept of p-deficiency and Lackenby's property of p-largeness to show that a group having a finite presentation with p-deficiency greater than 1 is large. What about when p-deficiency is exactly one? We also generalise a result of Grigorchuk on Coxeter groups to odd primes. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY Lecture by DR. MARIANO ITURBE on "The Concept of Justice in Plato" Plato, together with Socrates and Aristotle, laid the philosophical foundations of Western culture. His thought has logical, epistemological, and metaphysical aspects; but its underlying motivation is ethical. At the centre of all his writings there is the Greek insight that Reason, the logos, is nature steering all things from within. For Plato, ethics and politics are indivisible implications of the natural order. He wanted to discover the real nature of the State. Thus, the Republic, the greatest of all his dialogues, has three main strands of argument deftly combined into an artistic whole –the ethical and political, the aesthetic and mystical, and the metaphysical. The Republic seeks an answer to the nature of justice. Justice consists in a harmony that emerges when the various parts of a unit perform the function proper to them and abstain from interfering with the functions of any other part. More specifically, justice occurs with regard to the individual, when the three component parts of his soul – reason, appetite, and spirit, or will – each perform their appropriate tasks; with regard to society, justice occurs when its component members each fulfill the demands of their allotted roles. Harmony is ensured in the individual when the rational part of his soul is in command; with regard to society, when philosophers are its rulers because platonic philosophers have a clear understanding of justice, based on their vision of the Form of the Good. Justice is the principle which makes the State a whole and maintains its parts in due proportion. Date: Oct. 15th (Monday), 2012 Centre for English Studies, SLL&CS on October 15, 2012 Centre of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian & Latin American Studies in collaboration with organised 8-12 October, 2012 Special Center for Sanskrit Studies Topic : "Antiquity and Continuity of Indian Civilization and Culture" Speaker: Mrs Kamlesh Kapur Chair: Prof Vijaya Ramaswamy, CHS, SSS, JNU on Friday, 12th October Centre for the Study of Social Systems SEMINAR NOTICE Topic: SOCIAL CONCERNS IN POETRY OF MD. IQBAL AND FAIZ AHMAD FAIZ Speaker: Dr. AKHLAQ AHAN Date: 11th October 2012 Centre for Studies in Science Policy SEMINAR SERIES Engineering Black Gold By Sophie Llewelyn Excluded from colonial breed improvement programs and largely ignored by post-Independence dairy planners, the water buffalo has achieved new prominence in dairy development planning over the past decade. This is especially so in Haryana, home to the Murrah buffalo -- India's largest, most productive indigenous dairy breed. Recent measures by Haryana's state government seek both to promote intensive buffalo dairying and to position the state as a "goldmine of Murrah germplasm," a global centre for high-yielding buffalo genetics. But what does entry into specialized buffalo husbandry mean for Haryanvi livestock keepers, buffaloes, and the environments in which they live? Date: 10th October, 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title:Theoretical Modeling of Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy for Cuprates and Topological Insulators Speaker: Susmita Basak Date: Oct 10, 2012 Abstract: A comprehensive scheme for modeling angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) of the cuprates and topological insulators (TIs) is developed where effects of matrix element, crystal structure, strong electron correlations (for cuprates) and spin-orbit coupling (for TIs) are included realistically in material-specific detail. The origin of high-energy kink or the waterfall feature observed in ARPES spectra of bismuth based cuprate (Bi2212) is explained using an intermediate-coupling model which starts from the three band LDA dispersion (parametrized in tight-binding form). Electron correlation effects are incorporated via appropriate self-energy corrections to the electron one-particle Green's functions. The energy dispersion and spin-texture associated with the surface states of bismuth telluride family of topological insulator are studied using a k.p scheme. A Green's function implementation of the k.p model is used to numerically simulate junctions at the surface of a semi-infinite slab of TI and ARPES spectra from the interface of copper deposited bismuth selenide is analyzed. Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: 3d, 3d-4f Coordination Clusters & Gold Nanoparticles: Synthesis, Structure, Magnetism & Other Applications Speaker: Tapas Senapati Date: Oct 9, 2012 (Tuesday) Abstract: Coordination chemistry is being increasingly employed as an extremely powerful tool in various applications such as catalysis, understanding biological systems including metalloenzymes, in the preparation of new drugs, in supramolecular chemistry, magneto chemistry including Single molecule Magnet (SMM) and in materials chemistry. Design of an appropriate ligand is at the heart of this field. Several approaches have been adopted for last hundred years to synthesize multitasking metal clusters. I will mainly present the two approaches, (1) Phosphorus-supported ligands and (2) Shiff-base ligands, which I have espoused to synthesis of multitasking 3d, 3d-4f or 4f coordination metal clusters. Phosphorus-supported ligands are mainly organo- phosphonic acids (RPO3H2) or phosphorous supported Inorganic rings (cyclo-, or cyclocarbo-phosphazine). The first part of this presentation will cover the synthetic strategy of multi metal assemblies and their application as magnetic materials, as catalyst and also in the field of nuclease activity. Second part of this presentation will cover the synthesis of gold nanoparticles and their applications. The Korean Section Centre for Japanese, Korean and North East Asian Studies, SLL&CS, JNU Supported by The Korea Foundation organised "Hangeul Day" on October 9,2012 In the gracious presence of Prof. S.K. Sopory JNU SEMINAR SERIES Brief talk, interactive session (Q&A) with students and faculty By
Chair: Prof. S. K. Sopory Date: 8th October 2012 The 2011 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to Jules Hoffmann, a French citizen native of Luxembourg, CNRS senior researcher emeritus and professor at the university of Strasbourg, jointly with Bruce A. Beutler for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity. They share the prestigious award with Ralph M. Steinman for his works on dendritic cells and their role in adaptive immunity. Jules Hoffmann, whose findings have revolutionized current understanding of the immune system by disclosing the main keys to its activation, is also laureate of the CNRS 2011 Gold Medal. Born in Luxembourg in 1941, Jules Hoffmann studied at the university of Strasbourg where he obtained his Ph.D. in Experimental Biology. He joined CNRS in 1964 and set up the CNRS laboratory "Réponse Immunitaire et Développement Chez les Insectes", which he headed until 2006. President of the Académie des Sciences Française in 2007 and 2008, he is also a member of the Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Germany and Russia. Jules Hoffmann is the laureate of the CNRS 2011 Gold Medal. He has also been awarded numerous prestigious prizes, such as, in recent years, the Rosenstiel Award for his work on immunity (2010), the Keio Medical Science Prize (2011), the 2011 Gairdner Award for medical research and the 2011 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine. Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Exfoliated Graphene: Doping Effects & Irradiation Sensitivity Speaker: Marika Schleberger Date: Oct 8, 2012 (Monday) Abstract: The Nobel prize in physics in 2010 was given to Geim and Novoselov for "groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene". They did not only discover a method to prepare the mono-atomic layers of graphite but also build a device to investigate the transport properties of the two-dimensional crystallites. Since then much effort has been spent to prepare larger graphene samples for industrial applications. However, to date the best quality graphene is still achieved by the simple method originally presented by the Nobel prize winners: mechanical exfoliation. In the talk a brief overview is given about the preparation method, its advantages and drawbacks. Experimental results on irradiation of exfoliated graphene samples with swift heavy ions will be presented and discussed. Equal Opportunity Office in collaboration with organised a 3-day sensitization workshop Antarchakshu: the Eye WithinTM on the 4th, 5th & 6th of October 2012 Inaugurated by Hon'ble Shri Mukul Wasnik Equal Opportunity Office, Jawaharlal Nehru University will be organizing a 3-day sensitization workshop called Antarchakshu: the Eye Within TM, , in Delhi at a national level in collaboration with the Xavier's Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC),Mumbai, a support and advocacy centre involved in awareness initiatives for the visually challenged.and Saksham Trust, New Delhi. This event is being supported by the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India through the National Institute for the Visually Handicapped (NIVH) Dehradun, a premier Institute in the field of visual disability working under the administrative control of the Ministry. Antarchakshu: the Eye Within TM, has been conducted by the XRCVC in Mumbai, for the past 6 years and will be coming to Delhi for the first time as an event which provides an opportunity to the larger community to not just experience and explore the world of the disabled, but understand it; a world which is not that different. Antarchakshu creates a simulated environment which gives a chance to its participants to be in the world of the disabled. It takes approximately an hour for the entire experience. The event will reach out to educators, government officials, employers, students, corporates, media, social workers and the public at large to spread the message of inclusiveness. The event is being organized in Delhi by XRCVC as part of its national level advocacy project – Project Access: An XRCVC – Sightsavers Initiative. Sightsavers works towards eliminating avoidable blindness and promote equal opportunities for disabled people. Centre of Social Medicine & Community Health (CSMCH), organised Internaitonal Workshop on Integrating Traditional South Asian Medicine into Modern Health Care Systems in collaboration with :
Journal Club SPS organised a talk by Dr. Rodolfo Cuerno Topic: Nanoscale Pattern Formation at Surfaces Abstract: In recent times surface sensitive techniques have allowed to characterize non-equilibrium phenomena occurring on the surfaces of solids at nanometric scales. Many of these processes have universality properties. We will review a few examples in which statistical mechanical tools are proving useful. Date: Friday, October 5th,2012 INDO-AUSTRALIAN WORKSHOP ON ARSENIC Organised by Inauguration on 3rd October 2012 PROGRAM SCHOOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES organised a lecture on "Regional Climate Modelling over South Asia" On October 3, 2012 By Dr. P. Kumar Centre for Studies in Science Policy Special lecture series, October 2012 Basics of Scientometrics and Application to Science Policy By Aparna Basu On October 3, 2012 JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY Lecture by DR. MARIANO ITURBE on Heraclitus and the concept of Logos Abstract: The Ionian philosophers include Heraclitus, who was born in the famous city of Ephesus. The world around us is a world of change, of things coming into being, changing while they are, and ultimately ceasing to be. Heraclitus, like the rest of the Ionian philosophers, tries to provide an account of nature, physis, the coming into being of things. He is thought to have cited fire as the nature or source of the things we experience. Heraclitus wrote a book On Nature. He speaks of universal change, but there is a harmony underlying it. Fire is the material element – the Arche – but logos is the harmony underlying the universal process of becoming: a never ending alternation of contraries. Thus, logos is the principle, the law that governs every transformation. The plan or order that steers the cosmos is, itself, a rational order. Date: Oct. 3rd (Wednesday), 2012 SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES celebrated 57th Foundation Day a series of events is being organised from on September 27, 2012 Inter-University GP Memorial Debate Competition SYNTHESIS Can India Emerge as Global Actor by 2020 on October 1, 2012 Lecture by Dr. Shashi Tharoor Reflections on Indian Foreign Policy and Remembering G. Parthasarthi The School of Physical Sciences, JNU organised Science Academies' Workshop on Ergodic Theory & Dynamical Systems on October 1, 2012 This workshop is addressed to masters and research students from universities and institutions in Delhi. Teachers are also welcome. Aim of this workshop is to inspire them to take up research in ergodic theory and dynamical systems. Five lectures by experts in the subject will be followed by an interactive discussion session. Speakers There were a discussion on "Recent development and open problems in the area" at 16:15 hrs. Sponsored by 3 National Sciences Academies:
Centre for the Study of Law and Governance organised a seminar by G. Mohan Gopal on Reforming the State's Idea of Justice Abstract : To secure the Republic and safeguard the Constitution, there is need to reform current State ideas of justice to make "justice" a more meaningful concept that would have a beneficial and measurable impact on the lives of the people of our country. Despite being the first goal of the Indian Republic, "justice" is its least understood and most contested ideal. Those who fight against the State do so in the name of justice. The State imprisons and hangs people in the name of justice. The execution of Kasab renews the debate on what constitutes justice in Gandhi's republic. Friday, 30 November 2012 NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME Topic: Ad dhocism and Conflict: Crisis Representation of India's Northeast Speaker: Dr. Athiko Kaisii Abstract: India's North East becomes theatre of insurgent movement in the post- independent period and continues to be increasingly infested with various armed organizations. Along with the emergence of armed rebel outfits, polarization of communities on ethnic lines, tension between the people of highland and lowland, issue of 'outsiders' and excessive state oppression dominate the tale of the Northeast India. Coupled with this, the sense of alienation that culminated into 'developmental conflict' was set with the start of Oil Plant at Diboi (Assam). The nature of conflict is more complex and intrinsic than what usually would have us to believe. The subject related to these issues may be irregular but not uncommon in 'mainstream' media. Nevertheless, in the absence of concerted effort, forms of reporting in mass media not only escalate the issues in Northeast, but also react in the similar veins that civil societies does. Date : November 30, Friday, 2012 CENTRE FOR PHILOSOPHY Lecture by Prof. Priyambada Sarkar "A religious point of view": Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Abstract: It is a well known fact that Wittgenstein while resenting to the questions asked by the members of Vienna circle, often turned his back on them and read the poems of Rabindranath Tagore .A few Wittgenstein scholars like W.W. Bartley, Ray Monk, Rudolf Haller have written about Wittgenstein's fascination for Tagore's poems, and his special liking for some of his symbolic plays like 'The king of the dark Chamber '.In fact, we learnt from Ray Monk(1990) that Wittgenstein along with his student Smythies began translating the play in English as he thought that the original English translation is not capable of defrosting the deeper religious significance of the play. But so far no one has explored the reasons for Wittgenstein's interest in Tagore's writing; nor has anyone ventured to find out the influence of the former on the latter though many of them are sure about this influence on his thinking (Ray Monk (1990), Garth Hallet (1992) Rudolf Haller (2003). In this lecture there'll be an attempt to bring out the parallels of Tagore's thinking with that of Wittgenstein as far as his views on religion is concerned. Date: Nov. 30 (Friday), 2012 Centre for Study of Discrimination and Exclusion (CSDE) SSS, JNU WORKSHOP ON NON-DISCRIMINATION AND EQUALITY For Research Students and Research Fellows 29-30 November 2012 Global Studies Programme (CSSS) organised a Seminar on Understanding the Middle Way Approach to Resolve the Issue of Tibet Chief Guest: Dr. Lobsang Sangay, Sikyong on Thursday, 29 November, 2012 CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE A Joint University of Sydney & Jawaharlal Nehru University Roundtable on Date: Tuesday, 27 November 2012 Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Sarmistha Dutta Gupta On The Illegitimacy of Desire and Rabindranath Tagore's Char Adhyay 23 November Friday Rabindranath Tagore's novella Char Adhyay (Four Chapters) published in 1934 was among the worst-received of all his literary works by the Bengali reading public in general and the revolutionary nationalists in particular. Not only did it get harsh reviews in the press, the revolutionaries of Bengal found it hard to believe that Rabindranath—who had been an inspiration to them in moments of national trial and a solace in times of personal crisis—could let them down so badly in this novel. Responding to the severe criticism that the novel was subjected to in a rejoinder entitled 'A Clarification' in the literary journal Probasi in 1935, Rabindranath asserted that the only thing that may 'properly be called the theme of this narrative' is the 'love between a man and a woman' and that the 'love story of a modern Bengali hero and heroine' has 'found a resonance in the context of the revolutionary movement in Bengal.'[i] When the novella was published, it is this 'love story' that critics bypassed, engaging largely with Rabindranath's more general critique of nationalist politics and specifically with the representation of extremist leadership. Looking into the history of the reception of the novel in the 1930s, I would like to suggest that in Char Adhyay, by imagining attraction and desire between co-workers of the opposite sex of a militant nationalist group, Rabindranath was perhaps for the only time in all of Bengali literature in the high noon of nationalism, prizing open the troubled relationship between sexuality, celibacy and nationalism. And it was this 'love story' and Rabindranath's critique of the nationalist protest of colonial masculinity advocated through obligatory sexual renunciation and disciplinary control of desire, which shocked the revolutionaries into a sense of disbelief and was generally evaded by critics. Sarmistha Dutta Gupta is an independent researcher, a literary translator and an activist of the women's movement. She studied English Literature in Jadavpur University and has written widely on gendered histories of politics and on women's writing in the sub-continent both in Bengali and in English. Her publications include Identities and Histories. Women's Writing and Politics in Bengal (Stree, 2010); Pather Ingit. Nirbachito Sambad-Samayikpatrey Bangali Meyer Samajbhavna (Women, Print Culture and Social Change in Bengal) Stree; 2007; Shantisudha Ghoser Nirbachito Rachana Sangraha (Collected Writings of Shantisudha Ghosh) School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University and Dey's Publishing; 2008. Sarmistha received the award 'Sudha Basu Smarak Purashkar' for her book Pather Ingit from Bangla Academy and was one of the awardees of the Charles Wallace India Trust's fellowships in 2011 for her current academic engagement with 'The History of Girls' Schooling and Education in Bengal: 1900-1950' under the aegis of the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK). She is a member of the Indian History Congress and the Indian Association of Women's Studies. As a literary translator, Sarmistha co-edited and introduced The Stream Within. Short Stories by Contemporary Bengali Women (with Swati Ganguly) in 1999. Thereafter, she published Outcast (2001), a collection of Mahasweta Devi's short stories and Giving Away the Girl and other Plays (2002) by Malini Bhattacharya. She was a Visiting Fellow at the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2000. Since 2008, she is a guest faculty at the Centre for Translation in Indian Literatures (Centil) in Jadavpur University's Department of Comparative Literature. Sarmistha has been an activist of Sachetana, one of the earliest feminist consciousness-raising groups in Kolkata, since 1984. She is also the founder-secretary of Ebong Alap, a voluntary organization that explores innovative pedagogies. Centre of Chinese and South-East Asian Studies organised a lecture under its lecture series CHINA PERSPECTIVE by Ambassador Wenchyi Ong Wenchyi Ong, is the Chief Representative of Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre (New Delhi). He was appointed Taiwan's Representative in India in August 2008. He graduated from National Taiwan University in 1981 majoring in International Relations. He has been in the forefront in promoting India-Taiwan relations while strongly advocating popularization of Chinese language in India. He is a pioneer in establishing Taiwan Education Centers like in Jamia and Amity. He is seen not as a traditional diplomat, but as an Ambassador of promoting cultural educational exchanges. 22nd November 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Inhomogeneous Effects in Iron based High Temperature Superconductors Speaker: Shantanu Mukherjee Date: Nov 22, 2012 (Thursday) Abstract: The discovery of iron based pnictide superconductors in 2008 provided a second testing ground after cuprates to understand the microscopic origin of unconventional superconductivity. The Fermi surface of pnictides contain both electron and hole pockets and the superconducting gap function is believed to have an s-wave symmetry with sign change between the two pockets. However, the recent discovery of iron chalcogenide superconductor K_xFe_{2-y}Se_2 with Tc ˜ 30K and containing only electron Fermi surface pockets cannot be explained by the sign changing s-wave scenario. Even more surprising is the observation of a closely lying phase separated anti-ferromagnetic state with large exchange fields (Hex˜40000 T) that would ordinarily destroy superconductivity. In this talk I will give an overview of the current understanding of these high Tc superconducting materials and discuss our recent results that provide some important clues to identify the superconducting gap structure and interface physics between a block anti-ferromagnet and a superconductor. Centre for English Studies organised a talk on 'Nonsense as the Tenth Rasa' by Michael Heymann Date: 22nd November 2012 WOMEN'S STUDIES PROGRAMME, SSS-II, JNU organised a Workshop on SEXUAL HARASSMENT BILL DATE : 20th November 2012 Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies organised an International Conference on Understanding Change in Rural India: Perspectives from Longitudinal Village Studies Supported by Dates: 19th-20th November 2012 School of Environmental Sciences organised a talk on "Analogs, expert judgment, dependency and aggregation" Speaker: Dr. John (Jacks) Schuenemeyer, Date: 19th November 2012 Brief Biosketch: Dr. Schuenemeyer received a BS degree in applied mathematics in 1969 and an MS degree in mathematics in 1971 from the University of Colorado. He received a PhD in statistics from the University of Georgia in 1975. He has been a statistical consultant for over 30 years and is presently the president of Southwest Statistical Consulting, LLC. He is Professor Emeritus of Statistics, Geography and Geology at the University of Delaware, where he served as a faculty member in Department of Mathematical Sciences from 1976-1998 and directed the Statistical Consulting Center. In 1991 he was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA). He is the recipient of the 2004 John Cedric Griffiths Teaching Award of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences, which also named him Distinguished Lecturer for 2012. He has served as a consultant to many organizations including the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, US Geological Survey, the US Department of Energy, the Potential Gas Committee, NBC News, the PGA Tour, Clarity Counseling and C-Lock Technology. His interests in statistics include model development and evaluation, graphics, expert judgment, classification, spatial statistics and statistical computing. His current work in earth science activities includes developing statistical methodology for gas hydrate assessment of the U.S. Federal off-shore areas and formulating analogs for petroleum assessment. He has authored over 100 research publications, given numerous invited talks and conducted workshops for scientists from industry, government and secondary school teachers. His book Statistics for Earth and Environmental Scientists, coauthored with L. Drew was published by John Wiley in 2011.
WORKSHOP ON 'RESEARCH METHODS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS' SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, 15-17 November 2012 LU XUN CULTURE WEEK – INDIA The Second Academic Forum of the International Society of Lu Xun Studies (ISLS), Seoul, Korea (Jointly organized by CCSEAS, SLL&CS and SAA, JNU; ICS; IIC; ISLS) International Conference on 'China's ongoing quest for cultural modernity into the 21st century: Lu Xun and his legacy' Centre for Englsih Studies organised a talk by Stephanos Stephanides Beyond Nostalgia? Translation and ethnographic allegory in the Indo Caribbean on the 15th of November 2012 Prof Stephanides's research activities are comparative literature, literary and cultural studies, post-colonial literature, translations studies, anthropology and ethnography. Vice-Chancellor Cordially invites you to the Ninth Nehru Memorial Lecture On "DYNAMICS OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT" By 14 November, 2012 JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY presented SPICMACAY Vocal recital by Pt. Ritesh and Rajnish Mishra on 14.11.2012 SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES organised a seminar on 'GENETIC RESOURCES AND THE NAGOYA PROTOCOL: AN ASSESSMENT' Speaker: Dr Archana Negi Date: 14 November 2012 Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by P. K. Basant On The City and the Country in Early India: A Study of Malwa 14 November 2012 The lecture is an attempt to explore historical processes in the long term. The narrative begins with the spread of agriculture and ends around the seventh century to test the generalisations about urbanism at the level of a spatial segment i.e. Malwa. By exploring Malwa I try to move beyond the Ganga valley that dominates our imagination about early India. Having discussed various theories about the beginnings of urbanism I set out to understand the idea of a region. Most of the time a region is understood as a delimited physical space. The study of Malwa created problems because it did not have very clearly defined physical features that would differentiate it from other regions. Geography of a native perception of space is missing in our researches. I tried to define a region 1. By studying the perceptions of inhabitants and their modes of living and 2. by studying the synthesis in the minds of the geographers, historians and anthropologists. The cycle of emergence and disintegration of agricultural communities led me to the question – Why did state and city not emerge in the wake of agriculture and technological innovation? Trends that are visible in the early historic period are 1. A sudden increase in the number of agricultural settlements. 2. A gravitation towards the area of Ujjain. 3. An increase in the spheres of interaction. 4. Fortifications in places like Ujjain. In the discussion on the structure of urbanization I analyse inscriptions from Sanchi. These inscriptions, no more than a sentence in length, mention identities of the donors. The study of these inscriptions gives us interesting insights into the social history of Malwa. They tell us about the kinship networks, professions and places in the early centuries of the Common Era. Such an exercise was needed because our narratives of history tend to undermine categories like kinship and family. Works dealing with emergence of the state in early India invariably wrestle with issues relating to kinship. However, we need to carry the story into the historical period. While the inscriptional material at Sanchi is marked by the near absence of kings and conquerors, visuals at Sanchi are full of scenes of war. A comparison of the information found in inscriptions and visual material helps us broaden the debate on the nature of political power in early India. Another important aspect is the nature of urbanism. The issues that are examined are 1. Was the city in the sixth century BCE same as the city a thousand years later? 2. The study of literature also led me to enquire about notions of space. A study of literature suggests that the boundaries of the 'Middle Country' (Madhyadesha) and 'South' (Dakshina) have shifted over a period of time. Geography too is a human invention and frontiers march to the diktats of history. 3. What is the history of the notion that residents of city are cultured and those of grama are vulgar? I suggest that it has some relationship with the absorption of the pratyanta gama and disappearance of the Paura janapadas P.K. Basant teaches in the Department of History, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi. His book, The City and the Country in Early India - A study of Malwa (Primus Books, New Delhi), was published earlier this year. Centre for Promotion of Human Rights Teaching and Research (HURITER), organised a Special Lecture on "Refugee Rights: Law and Practice" by Professor B. S. Chimni Date: 12 November 2012 Centre for the Study of Law and Governance screening of a documentary film followed by a discussion This or That Particular Person by Subasri Krishnan Abstract : The documentary film "This or That Particular Person" is a meditation on the notion of personhood as seen by the Indian State. It does so by examining the idea of official identity documents, and in that context, the Unique Identity number (UID or aadhar) project that was introduced in India in 2009. Through the lens of the UID, the film looks at what identity documents means to people, and how the aadhar project is perceived."This or That Particular Person" is also a conversation with the State about ideas of inclusion, exclusion, surveillance and citizenship, and it does so by interrogating the Unique Identity number project. About the Film maker: Subasri Krishnan an alumni of Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia, has been an independent film-maker for the past 8 years. Her work has ranged from a number of commissioned non-fiction films on rights based issues to documentary films. Her first documentary film "Brave New Medium" on internet censorship in South-East Asia, has been screened at film festivals, both nationally and internationally. "This or That Particular Person" produced by the Public Service Broadcast Trust (PSBT) which looks at the idea of official identity documents, and in that context, the UID number project, is her second documentary film Friday, 09 November 2012 Centre for the Study of Social Systems SEMINAR NOTICE Topic: DEBATES ON MASS AND COMPULSORY EDUATION IN INDIA 1840-1920 Speaker: Parimala Rao Date & Time: 8th November 2012 School of Environmental Sciences organised a Talk on Application of environmental isotope in water resource management on 8th Nov 2012 By About Speaker: Dr. U. Saravana Kumar joined the then Isotope Division of BARC after completing the Orientation Course for Engineering Post-graduates (1st OCEP batch of BARC Training School). Subsequently, he obtained his Ph.D (Water Resources) from IIT, Bombay (2001).His field of expertise is isotope hydrology with special emphasis on water resources management and environmental control. He has obtained a few advanced training in the field of isotope hydrology in abroad. He has served as an IAEA expert in a few countries in the region and outside. He has over 70 publications in various international and national journals and in conference proceedings to his credit.Presently, he is Scientist 'G' and Head, Isotope Hydrology Section of Isotope Applications Division, BARC. Also, he is a faculty of the Homi Bhabha National Institute and a recognized Ph. D (Civil Engg.) Guide of the University of Mumbai. Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Understanding Holography Speaker: Arjun Bagchi Date: Nov 8, 2012 Abstract: The formulation of a quantum theory of gravity remains one of the principle challenges of theoretical physics today. The holographic principle is a unique route to address this problem. It relates a theory of gravity to a theory without gravity in one lower dimension thereby paving the way for "understanding gravity without gravity". In my talk, I present an introduction to this intriguing principle. The studies of the holographic principle has been mainly confined to the anti-de Sitter spacetimes though the celebrated adS/CFT correspondence. After mentioning this briefly, I go on to my own work which describes how one should formulate holography for the more physically relevant flat spacetimes. Our discussions would be principally based on symmetries. We will formulate flat space holography as a limit of the usual adS/CFT and derive some very surprising and interesting results for 3d flat spacetimes. Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture by Aparna Vaidik On Revolutionary Conspiracy and Collaboration: The Approvers of Lahore Conspiracy Case (1929-30) 7 November 2012 This paper highlights an understudied aspect of history of anti-colonial nationalism - the role of the people who sat on the fence, displayed ambivalence, and at times played an active role in wrecking, damaging and sabotaging the nationalist enterprise. Such people appear, if at all, in the history of nationalism as 'traitors' in popular parlance and in academia as 'collaborators', labels which carrying a categorical moral bias of having worked with and for the enemy. By examining the history of nationalism through the lens of betrayal, this paper engages with a methodological question – is there a way of broadening the scope of the history of nationalism which incorporates acts of collaboration (e.g. spying, informing, perfidy, denunciation), without the implicit moral judgment and destructive potential embodied in the term? To tackle this question, this paper reconstructs the history of a renegade revolutionary, Hans Raj Vohra (1909-1985), one of seven government witnesses who gave evidence against their comrades, the revolutionaries of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army in the Lahore Conspiracy Case trial (1929-30). Aparna Vaidik is assistant professor in Department of History at Georgetown University, Washington DC. She is the author of 'Imperial Andamans: Colonial encounter and Island History', Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Aparna did her Ph.D. from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY cordially invites you to a seminar on 'ETHICS AND JUSTICE IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION' SPEAKER: PROFESSOR NANCY D. ERBE Nancy D. Erbe is Professor of Negotiation, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding (NCRP) at California State University Dominguez Hills where she has developed courses like Restorative Justice and Peacebuilding and the Ethics of Conflict Resolution. She has been invited to lecture at Cornell School of Law. Prior to joining NCRP, she was a visiting faculty scholar at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, Pepperdine University School of Law where she taught Dispute Resolution and Education. She taught at the University of California Berkeley, where with support from the Hewlett foundation, she developed and piloted curriculum in multicultural conflict resolution. She was also a member of the faculty at the University of Denver and the University of Oslo International Summer School. Her more recent book Negotiation Alchemy: Global Skills Inspiring and Transforming Diverging Worlds (August 2011) was recently published by Berkeley Public Policy Press, University of California, Berkeley. Date: 7 November 2012
Women's Studies Programme, SSS-II, JNU organised a film screening Papilio Buddha directed by: Jayan Cherian on 6th November 2012 Synopsis: A group of displaced untouchables in Western Ghats of India embrace Buddhism in order to escape from caste oppression. The film explores the new identity-political uprising based on Ambedkarism, gaining momentum among the Dalits in the region, in the milieu of an on going land struggle. School of Arts and Aesthetics Presented Narration, Knowledge, and Skepticism in History A Talk By Dipesh Chakrabarty on 2nd November 4.30 p.m Centre for Russian & Central Asian Studies Eurasian Politics: 1-2 November 2012 Centre for the Study of Social Systems SEMINAR NOTICE Topic: SOCIOLOGY @ JNU: Speaker: Maitrayee Chaudhuri Date:1st November 2012 Maitrayee Chaudhuri teaches at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is currently the Chairperson of the Centre. She was earlier the Director of the Women Studies Programme (JNU). Her books namely include ed. Feminism in India, ed. The Practice of Sociology, The Indian Women's Movement: Reform and Revival and ed. Sociology in India: Intellectual and Institutional Practices. Her research interest is: gender and globalization, media studies and the theory question in sociology.
Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Topological Gravity and Chern-Simons Gauge Theory Speaker: Camillo Imbimbo (University degli Studi di Genova, Genoa) Date: Dec 28, 2012 (Friday) Abstract: We will discuss the coupling of Chern-Simons gauge theory to topological gravity. This will require the Batalin-Vilkovisky formulation of the theory. As an application, we will compute the topological anomalies of the theory. CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE, JNU organised a workshop on "PLANNING THROUGH THE GENDER LENS" 28TH December'2012 Centre for Chinese & Southeast Asian Studies, SLL&CS Overseas Indonesian Students Association Alliance (OISAA), organised an International Symposium of Overseas Indonesian Students 2012 "Empowerment of Student in Nation Building" 19-21 December 2012 Inaugural Address: Celebrating 40 Years International Conference on Sociology Matters: Challenges and Possibilities of Social Science Knowledge in Contemporary India Date : December 18-20, 2012 For further information visit conference Blog: http://40yearscsssjnu.blogspot.in/ School of Computer and Systems Sciences Speaker : Prof. Shalabh Bhatnagar Professor Bhatnagar delivered three talks/tutorials. Talk 1: Optimization via Simulation I: Deterministic Optimization (19.12.2012) Talk 2: Optimization via Simulation II: Stochastic Optimization (20.12.2012) Talk 3: Optimization via Simulation III: Stochastic Optimization (21.12.2012) Dates : Dec. 19, 20, and 21, 2012 Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Time Evolution of Emission Spectra Nanovolumes & Nanomaterials Speaker: Anindya Datta Date: Dec 19, 2012 Abstract: The utility of the technique of time resolved area normalized emission spectroscopy (TRANES) in studying the nano- environment and dynamics will be discussed, with two examples from our recent research: photoluminescent silica nanomaterials and fluorescence probing of the nanochannels of nafion. School of Environmental Sciences organised a talk on "Satellite remote sensing of fires and air pollution in the South Asia" Speaker: Dr. V Krishna Prasad Date: 17th December 2012 Brief Biosketch: Dr. Krishna Prasad Vadrevu is working as an Associate Research Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. His expertise is in Remote Sensing and GIS applications. He gained his Ph.D in Remote Sensing during 2000 while working at the National Remote Sensing Center, Dept. of Space-Govt. of India. His PhD focused on characterizing biodiversity and forest cover dynamics in tropical forests using remote sensing techniques under the guidance of dual supervisors, physicist (Remote sensing aspects) and forest ecologist. He immigrated to United States during 2001 and accepted the Post-doctoral fellowship at the Agroecosystem Management Program, The Ohio State University. He worked on the agriculture, soils and ecosystem health projects using remote sensing. He was promoted to Research Scientist at the same place during 2005 and worked until 2009 at OSU. In early 2010, he accepted the job of Associate Research Professor at the Geography Department, University of Maryland College Park and is continuing his interests in remote sensing and GIS at the same place till date. In the US, he served as a PI and Co-PI on diverse projects funded by NASA, USFS and USDA, all involving spatial component. His research has been highly interdisciplinary and the publications are in satellite fire science, carbon cycling, biomass burning/greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity studies, spatial statistics, multi-criteria decision algorithms and ecosystem sustainability. Currently, Dr. Krishna is also serving as a Global Observation of Forest Cover (GOFC) Fire Implementation Team Executive Officer. As a part of Fire-IT officer, he coordinates fire activities all over the world. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Environmental Management (Elsevier) and editorial board member for Atmospheric and Climate Sciences journal (SCIRP) and Arid Land Research and Management (Taylor and Francis). 40TH YEAR CELEBRATION CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC STUDIES AND PLANNING Centre for Promotion of Human Rights Teaching and Research (HURITER), a Special Lecture on "Human Rights and Social Inclusion: The Indian Situation" by Professor T. K. Oommen Date: 10th December 2012 The Centre for Economic Studies and Planning The Third Sukhamoy Chakravarty Memorial Lecture "Biophysical Foundation of Production and Evolution of Economic Thought" by On Monday, 10th December 2012 Professor Prabhat Patnaik Communication & Information Services Mathematics Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Divergence in Groups Speaker: Pallavi Dani Date: Dec 6, 2012 (Thursday) Abstract: Consider a pair of geodesics emanating from a point in a metric space. The `divergence' of the pair indicates how quickly they move away from each other, by measuring how far one must travel to get between corresponding points on the geodesics, without backtracking towards the base point. Gersten used this idea to define a quasi-isometry invariant for groups. I will describe divergence in a variety of groups. This will include joint work with A. Abrams, N. Brady, M. Duchin and R. Young on right-angled Artin groups, and with A. Thomas on right-angled Coxeter groups. Centre for Historical Studies organised a lecture on A Land Full of Wild Animals: Snakes, Venoms and Imperial Antidotes in British India by Pratik Chakrabarti 5 December 2012 This paper traces the trajectories of snakebite and venom research in India from the late eighteenth to the mid twentieth century, which unfolds a complex trajectory of colonial science; including aspects of Orientalism, imperialism and tropical wilderness, and laboratory medicine. British naturalists from the eighteenth century engaged in extensive collection and study of Indian snakes and venoms and in experimentation with indigenous treatments for them. This was part of an Orientalist and Romantic interest in tropical nature and fauna, which developed alongside the colonial policies of destruction of wildlife and clearing of forests increase agricultural revenue. This tradition was overshadowed with the Pasteurian preoccupation with rabies in the late nineteenth century. It shows that the introduction of the Pasteurian vaccine research transformed this colonial enterprise into an effort to find a singular antidote to the multifarious problems of wilderness and disease in the tropics, while it also redefined the traditional Orientalist/British engagement with Indian natural world. It will finally highlight the limits of such enterprises, in terms of conceptualizing maladies, identifying singular antidotes and defining therapeutic practices and in the tropics. In doing so, it narrates the history of a medical tradition, which is simultaneously rich in its imagination and constructions and barren in its praxis Pratik Chakrabarti is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Kent, UK. He has published three monographs Western Science in Modern India; Metropolitan Methods, Colonial Practices (2004), Materials and Medicine: Trade, Conquest and Therapeutics in the Eighteenth Century (2010) and Bacteriology in British India; Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics (2012). He has recently written a textbook for Palgrave Macmillan, Medicine and Empire, 1600-1960. He is also the co-editor of the journal Social History of Medicine (OUP). He is currently working on the project, An Antique Land; Geology, Philology and the Making of the Indian Subcontinent. Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament organised a Half-day Seminar on "Evolving Security Landscape in Asia: Japanese and Indian Perspectives" 5th December 2012. Seminar of the School of Physical Sciences Title: Theory & answers for the protein folding problem Speaker: Jean-Numa Gillet (SCIS, JNU) Date: Dec 5, 2012 (Wednesday) Abstract: Protein folding, a major unsolved problems of science, is involved in many pathologies. Early folding theories were established in the late 1940's-50's, coinciding with the birth of simulation models as molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo. Anfinsen tempted to relate the global minimum of the protein's Gibbs free energy to its native folded conformation. Levinthal stated that finding the global minimum of the protein's energy landscape by random search can be longer than the universe age. I will give answers to Anfinsen and Levinthal and explain why I am cautious with simplifications as the hydrophobic paradigm. Centre for Promotion of Human Rights Teaching and Research (HURITER), organised a Panel Discussion on "Disability, Barrier-Free Academic Campus and Access Auditing" Date: 3rd December 2012 Inauguration by: Professor Girijesh Pant, Dean, SIS, JNU, New Delhi Chair: Professor B. S. Chimni, Chairperson, Centre for International Legal Studies & Director, HURITER, SIS, JNU, New Delhi Panelists: 1. Dr P. R. Ramanujam 2. Shri Vinod Kumar Mishra 3. Dr G. N. Karna* Advanced Instrumentation Research Facility, Organized a Seminar on Live cell study by Bioluminescence Analysis Tools by Date: 3rd December, 2012
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