Links ...

1. Nobel Laureate Vekatraman Ramakrishnan will deliver the IISc Centenary Lecture on the 5th of January, 2010 on From Baroda to Cambridge: A Life in Science.

2. International Student Admission at IISc:

   ... IISc is happy to announce that fellowships will be awarded to the most promising students who are selected for admission to one of these programmes.

3. Pallavi Singh in Mint: Innovation universities may have fiscal freedom:

   The 14 innovation universities that are being planned as centres of excellence along the lines of Harvard and Oxford may be kept outside the purview of the nation’s top audit body so that they are financially independent, which would make them unique in the country.

   [An MHRD note] ... states that the innovation universities will frame their own rules on academics and the qualifications needed for teaching positions, and get to decide their own fees, curriculum and rules for the appointment of faculty.

   With regard to financial autonomy, the ministry says funds spent on research or teaching will be kept out of the ambit of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, or CAG, a constitutional body that audits and assists state and Central institutions with accounts and accountability.

4. Samantha Stainburn in NYTimes: The Case of the Vanishing Full-Time Professor. The scene is pretty grim in the US:

   In 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or tenure-track professors; today only 27 percent are. The rest are graduate students or adjunct and contingent faculty — instructors employed on a per-course or yearly contract basis, usually without benefits and earning a third or less of what their tenured colleagues make. The recession means their numbers are growing.

Nina Paley on The Cult of Originality

Nothing is original. For a work to have meaning, it must use language – it must “make sense.” It needs to work with memes already living in the host mind: language, images, melodies, patterns. It can’t be wholly original. It can hardly be original at all.

From Nina Paley, a free culture enthusiast/activist whose Sita Sings The Blues is available -- yes, all of it -- on YouTube.

'Why your boss is incompetent'

... following promotion a person is likely to regress to their baseline competence, losing that extra something that prompted their rise. That baseline might be above or below the degree of competence demanded in the new, high-level job. If in a particular workplace the staff who are promoted consistently fall short in this respect, promotion can become the dominant force driving pervasive ineptitude [...]

More in this New Scientist article.

Hat tip: Teppo Felin at OrgTheory.

Education in India: A Year in Review

Archana M Prasanna in the Business Standard: A Testing Year for Students, Despite Reforms. [Update: The Hindu also has a summary of key developments during 2009.] Here's the section on the HRD Ministry's plans and actions after Mr. Kapil Sibal took over:

HRD’s 100-day plan

The Ministry of Human Resource Development rolled out a 100-day agenda this June with an aim to set up an autonomous overarching authority for higher education and research; making the Class 10 board exam optional; review the functioning of deemed universities; give interest subsidy on education loans taken by poor students and public-private partnership in school education, among others.

National Commission for Higher Education and Research is based on the recommendations of the Yash Pal Committee and the National Knowledge Commission and will subsume in it agencies like the UGC, Medical Council of India and the AICTE. It will formulate policies for law and medical schools, engineering colleges and technical institutions, among others.

Among others, the agenda also mentions a law to regulate entry and operation of foreign educational providers that will regulate these and let good foreign universities enter India. The minister had already directed the UGC to review the functioning of all the ‘deemed-to-be-universities’ and report the deficiencies within the next three months. Operationalising the newly established 12 central universities and 2 new IITs and academic reforms like the semester system and a choice-based credit system will be among the other priorities.

The decade in pictures

A US-centric graphic from NYTimes, but still worth a look: Op-Chart: Picturing the Past 10 Years by Phillip Niemeyer.

Physics in the Living Room

... I [love] the people at PSI. They are not only smart physics students, but good pool players, nice cooks and fantastic friends. PI provides you with a nicely furnished apartment (you do not even need to bring in towels!). Each flat has 3 bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. The living room has a huge blackboard on which we usually discuss our doubts with flatmates, or make cartoons.

That's Saurabh Madaan on the Perimeter Scholars International program of the Perimeter Institute.

ICTS Public Lectures

Sidebar

Do spread the word to your folks and friends in Bangalore. Here's the brochure.

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The inaugural event of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) of TIFR will feature three public lectures in the J.N. Tata Auditorium in the IISc campus.

1. Avi Wigderson: The "P versus NP" problem: Efficient computation and the limits of human knowledge
   5:30 pm, 27 December 2009

   The “P vs. NP” problem is a central outstanding problem of computer science and mathematics. In this talk I will attempt to describe its technical, scientific and philosophical content, its status, and the implications of its two possible resolutions.

2. David Gross: The Role of Theory in Science
   5:30 p.m., 28 December 2009

   On the occasion of the inauguration of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, TIFR, I shall share some of my observations and conclusions as to the various roles of theory in science. Physics is the field of science where theory is most established and it is the most mature and powerful of the sciences. But theory, much of it derived from physics, is growing in importance in the neighboring fields of astronomy, chemistry and biology. Theory can both deepen our understanding of separate areas of science, as well as provide the intellectual glue of interdisciplinary research.

3. Albert Libchaber: The Origin of Life: from Geophysics to Biology?
   5:30 pm, 30 December 2009

   One of the deepest and most controversial questions of our time is that of the origin of life. In this public lecture a hypothesis is presented, according to which the temperature gradients existing in the earth - which led to plate tectonics and the formation of undersea thermal vents - also led to the evolution of life around these vents. Movies will be shown of experiments, in which all stages of this scenario are justified: how thermal gradients led to plate tectonics, to DNA amplification in thermal vents, to polymerisation of peptides at high pressure, and to the organization of bacteria. This mixture of physics, chemistry, and biology illustrates how life can originate without the intervention of the sun, driven only by geophysical thermal gradients

Sexual rivalry / battles

Ouch!

... to really study the mechanics of the duck penis, you can't just fluff the animal. You need to give it something to have sex with. That's where the glass tubes come in. Brennan used four different shapes: a straight tube; a counterclockwise helix that matches the spiral of the male's penis; a clockwise spiral going in the opposite direction; and a tube with a sharp 135 degree kink, that mimics the position of the first cul-de-sac pouch in the female's vagina.

Ouch!

Pity the man whose wife writes a memoir. [...]

Consider Elizabeth Weil's husband, Dan. On Sunday, in the New York Times Magazine, Ms. Weil previewed a memoir she is writing about their effort to improve their marriage. She doesn't stint on the frisky bits—or rather, what she proclaims to be the insufficiently frisky bits. The conjugal part of their equation is apparently "not terribly inventive." Ms. Weil derides their "safe, narrow little bowling alley of a sex life" and tells us that she and her husband "hadn't been talking to each other while having sex. And not making eye contact either." One thing's for sure: If that hesitation to make eye contact suggested a certain reticence, Ms. Weil has overcome it.

Scoundrel Suraiya

[Update: Some readers seem to have a problem with the word 'scoundrel.' Read the quote at the end of the post to see where it comes from -- it dates back to Samuel Johnson aka Dr. Johnson.]

Jug Suraiya may not like the idea of carving new states out of existing ones; he violates all norms of debating ethics in equating the demand for smaller states to treason:

Should Pakistan's ISI give a medal to K Chandrasekhara Rao, the spear leader of the separate Telangana movement? Or to Mayawati who wants a separate Bundelkhand, and to those who are clamouring for Harit Pradesh, Vidarbha and Gorkhaland?

The ISI has always wanted to balkanise India, to break it up into small bits and pieces which can be gobbled up at will, or left to languish in their fragmented insignificance. Are those who are agitating for smaller and smaller Indian states willy-nilly doing the ISI's job for it?

What is worse, this trash appears right at the beginning of Suraiya's post, which just goes to show that Ambrose Bierce is right:

Patriotism, n. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Swamy's tribute to Samuelson in Rediff and The Hindu

Via T.T. Ram Mohan, I had seen this tribute to Paul Samuelson in Rediff by Subramanian Swamy, a political non-entity with an uncanny ability to stay in the news. In his post, TTR had already alerted his readers about one of the sidelights in the article: Swamy's grouse with the Delhi School of Economics; in recounting this part of the story, Swamy names names:

Amartya Sen invited me to join the Delhi School of Economics as a full Professor in early 1968 stating in a hand-written letter that my 'gaddi was being dusted.' I therefore spent three months in the summer of 1968 at the Delhi School of Economics as Visiting Professor, before returning to Harvard with the intention of winding up and joining as Professor of Economics at the Delhi School.

But I did not realise then that the Left triumvirate of Sen, K N Raj and S Chakravarty had in the three months discovered that I was not only not ideologically neutral or soft like Jagdish Bhagwati, but hard anti-Left and wanted to dismantle the Soviet planning system in India besides producing the atom bomb.

So when I arrived in India in late 1969 this triumvirate scuttled my ascending the dusted gaddi. Sen was at his hypocritical best in explaining to me his volte face. [...]

Fortunately there was a professorship open at IIT-Delhi. Dr Manmohan Singh was the chairman of the selection committee. Samuelson with Kuznets, the 1971 Nobel Laureate in economics, wrote the committee strong letters of recommendation. Armed with it, Dr Singh did not wilt under the huge pressure mounted by the triumvirate and I was appointed a Professor of Economics in October 1971. But it did not last long.

The triumvirate then persuaded Indira Gandhi that I was a closet member of the RSS with chauvinist views, and a danger to her. With the KGB favourite Nurul Hasan as education minister, I was easily sacked in December 1972, but re-instated by court in 1991.

A couple of days ago, I saw the same article as an op-ed in The Hindu. It was the same article, alright; except for this episode where Swamy trashes "the Left triumvirate of Sen, K N Raj and S Chakravarty" and "the KGB favourite Nurul Hasan"!

Links ...

1. Noam Scheiber in New Republic: Upper Mismanagement. "Why can't Americans make things? Two words: business school. "

   The business schools had their own incentives to channel students into high-paying fields like finance, thanks to the rising importance of school rankings, which heavily weighted starting salaries. The career offices at places like Harvard, Stanford, and Chicago institutionalized the process—for example, by making it easier for Wall Street outfits and consulting firms to recruit on campus. A recent Harvard Business School case study about General Electric shows that the company had so much trouble competing for MBAs that it decided to woo top graduates from non-elite schools rather than settle for elite-school graduates in the bottom half or bottom quarter of their classes.

   No surprise then that, over time, the faculty and curriculum at the Harvards and Stanfords of the world began to evolve. “If you look at the distribution of faculty at leading business schools,” says Khurana, “they’re mostly in finance. … Business schools are responsive to changes in the external environment.” Which meant that, even if a student aspired to become a top operations man (or woman) at a big industrial company, the infrastructure to teach him didn’t really exist.

2. Scott Berkun: Everything is a Project, Even This.

   I wrote awhile ago about why project managers get no respect, and that’s because people who make a big deal out of the project-manageryness of their work, as opposed to the domain of the things they make (homes, software, films, cookies) come off as a kind of weenie, a pm-weenie if you will. They appear to be people who are more interested in schedules, budgets and methods than the results those tools help achieve, which is kind of weird. It’s like the director of a bad movie who talks only about his fancy zoom lenses, or that the film came in under-budget. They miss the point.

   But the best project managers, including those people who do lead or manage things yet never use the pm title, somehow know instinctively that everything is a project. They know there needs to be a driving force of thinking, a constant source of social energy, a list or a table or a spreadsheet, that makes it easier for everyone to push their own small decisions forward, increasing the odds with every single effort that the results will be good.

3. Robin Marantz Henig in NYTimes -- Books of the Times : A Hospital How-To Guide That Mother Would Love -- "Atul Gawande’s provocative new book explains how a technique used by pilots — the simple checklist — can dramatically reduce patients’ deaths in hospitals." [The book appears to be an expanded version of Gawande's New Yorker article in 2007].

   In 2001 Dr. Pronovost borrowed a concept from the aviation industry: a checklist, the kind that pilots use to clear their planes for takeoff. In an experiment Dr. Pronovost used the checklist strategy to attack just one common problem in the I.C.U., infections in patients with central intravenous lines (catheters that deliver medications or fluids directly into a major vein). Central lines can be breeding grounds for pathogens; in the Hopkins I.C.U. at the time, about one line in nine became infected, increasing the likelihood of prolonged illness, further surgery or death.

   Dr. Pronovost wrote down the five things that doctors needed to do when inserting central lines to avoid subsequent infection: wash hands with soap; clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic; cover the patient’s entire body with sterile drapes; wear a mask, hat, sterile gown and gloves; and put a sterile dressing over the insertion site after the line was in.

Sheer awesomeness of exponentiation

Two cartoons:

1. Abstruse Goose.

2. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

That's all.

Vivek Reddy on Telangana

In an Indian Express op-ed, he concludes:

Internal self-determination is essential for the survival of the Indian state which has to accommodate people with multiple identities. Creating a separate state should be a function of two factors — identity and governability. Telangana satisfies both these criteria.

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See also: Vikram's post at An Academic View of India: Mayawati is asking for more states, therefore it must be a bad thing.

Peter Griffin on Chetan Bhagat

In Forbes India, Griffin has a great profile of Chetan Bhagat -- the man behind novels that sell and sell even as critics yell bloody murder.

Teller of Stories:

The literary establishment wasn’t impressed. Some reviews were savage. Many put his success down to smart marketing and pricing. Bhagat was bewildered. They were comparing his books to classics and finding them wanting. “Does it say on the cover: ‘this is a great book’? Do I say that on my Web site? Saying Chetan is no Tolstoy is like saying Infosys is no Google, so Infosys is a crap company. Why are they [the media] so high-handed? Newspapers that are sold for a two rupees, magazines that are sold at railway stations, read by ordinary people...” he trails off, takes a breath. “They’re not serving the country, they’re serving the country club.”

The criticism of his output evidently hurts, though he claims a thick skin. When 2 States was being edited, he says, he asked Rupa to put “the most anal liberal arts major to vet the copy.” He wanted to say to critics at large, “It’s not bad English! Just say you don’t like it! I got bigger pricks than you to work on it.”

He’s made a choice here as well. “People who love me will love me. Those who hate me, nothing I do will change their minds. Even an Obama has critics. Who the hell am I? I can please those who love me or try to convert those who hate me. But negativity brings my spirit down. So I chose to do the former.”

There's also an accompanying interview of Bhagat. FWIW, Giiffin's version of the writer is far better than Bhagat's own version.

Venki in India

The latest Nobel sensation of Indian origin, Prof. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, gave a lecture yesterday at the Madras University to a 3000-strong audience [pic]. Here's the way different media outlets covered this event:

1. Priscilla Jebaraj in The Hindu: Appreciate Science for What It Is:

   Asked how students could aim to emulate him and “win a Nobel for India,” Dr. Ramakrishnan answered emphatically: “That is the wrong question to ask…You can’t go into science thinking of a Nobel Prize. You can only go into science because you’re interested in it.”

2. Sify: 'Red tape, politics dither scientists from returning home':

   Calling for "autonomy from red tape and local politics" in India, Nobel laureate Indian-American scientist Venkataraman Ramakrishnan on Tuesday said many scientists of Indian origin may return home if the government made "attractive offers" to undertake research in science.

3. G.C. Shekhar's report in The Telegraph is a commentary on Madras university officials. The very opening paragraph -- which is not about what happened, but about what did not happen! -- is revealing:

   Thankfully, there were no welcoming arches or roadside banners for “Tamil Nadu’s third science Nobel laureate”, or Venkatraman Ramakrishnan might have turned back and returned to England.

   There's more such fluff before the business of reporting the main event even begins:

   After arriving at vice-chancellor G. Thiruvasagam’s office, Venki spurned a car ride to the nearby auditorium. He chose to walk down, striding past the waiting Toyota Innova with his backpack slung over his shoulders even as the varsity officials hurriedly fell in step.

   ... Venki arrived in khakis and a half-sleeve green shirt while the VC wore a suit.

See also: Venki's dad commenting on his son's work, and Venki's views on 'helping' Indian science. This bit of candor is touching:

Asked whether he would like to teach Indian students through EDUSAT facility, Ramakrishnan said, "You must realise that I have never taught in my life except for two years in Utah. Otherwise, I have been doing research in labs where there is no teaching."

"But, I have been able to lecture about my research. I am actually not a professor," he said.