Information Pasteboard
Weekly reports of meetings at NAL, snippets of R&D activity, conference announcements and other features of popular interest
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Information Pasteboard |
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News and Events #IP 854,26 Jan - 1 Feb 2009 National Symposium on ‘Open Access and Building Institutional Repositories (NSOABIR)’ The unprecedented escalation in the journal subscription price, together with increased number of scholarly communications resulting in more number of new journals have lead even well-endowed institutions in developed countries to reduce number of renewals of journals ever year. This journal crisis and the developments in Internet technologies paved the way for Open Access Movement (OAM) world over. The open access literature plays a vital role; both in terms of research communication and access, provided, of course, the benefits in terms of economic and social recognitions are assured by this system. With this critical situation facing the scholarly community, the Information Center for Aerospace S &T (ICAST) had organized a three day National Symposium on ‘Open Access and Building Institutional Repositories (NSOABIR)” during 21st to 23rd January 2009 as a part of NAL’s Golden Jubilee celebrations at NAL premises. Nearly 60 delegates from academic, R&D and Corporate sectors participated in this meet. The inaugural session started with an invocation followed by a welcome address by Dr. I R N Goudar, Head ICAST and Chairman of the symposium. He introduced the chief guest and mentioned that CSIR has taken an initiative in promoting Open Access by way of constituting a ‘Group on Open Access for Science Publications (GOASP)’ with a mandate to come out with CSIR policy on OA, steps to be taken to build Institutional Repositories at all CSIR laboratories to negotiate with publishers in the matter concerned to copyright and IPR issues. As has been the tradition ,the chief guest Prof. Subbaiah Arunachalam lit the e-lamp. Ms. Poornima Narayana, convener of the symposium presented a detailed account about the theme and the program details. Prof. Subbaiah Arunachalam delivered a keynote address on ‘“Why do we need open access to science? A developing country perspective” and gave a comparative scenario about the Open Access movement in the world, Asia and especially in India. He called upon the scientists, researchers and academicians to make their publications open for increasing visibility, usage and impact factor while overcoming the fear factors such as the copyright problems etc. He brought to the notice of audience that National Knowledge Commission under the chairmanship of Mr. Sam Pitroda has already recommended implementation of OA in the country, setting up of Institutional Repositories by every institution which is the most effective open access channel. In his Presidential remarks, Dr. A R Upadhya , Director NAL mentioned the importance of open access in the current situation stressed that information has to reach the grass root level for the less privileged in the country by making the scholarly communication open as OA provides easy and low cost access. Mr. Shyam Chetty , Chairman Library Advisory Committee & Head, Flight Mechanics Division released the Symposium CD containing the presentations of the resource persons, the software DSpace for setting up of IRs and other useful publication. Dr. M N Satyanarayana, convener, NAL Golden Jubilee Committee proposed the vote of thanks. The technical sessions addressed the relevant issues of the Open Access Initiative/Movement like Scholarly Communication, OA journals, Digitization and Digital Workflow , Institutional Repositories, IPR and Copyright issues of OA and IR, CSIR Metadata Harvesting service and two case studies those of NIO, Goa and NAL. The resource persons were Dr. H S Siddamallaih, NIMHANS, Mr Raghuraman and Mr. Francis from NCSI/IISc, Mr. T B Ananad, GEIT, Mr. Sahu, NIO and Dr IRN Goudar and Ms. Poornima Narayana from NAL. The second day was completely dedicated to lecture/demonstration on setting up of IRs using DSpace, the most popular Open Source software jointly developed by HP Laboratories and MIT, USA. Dr. A R D Prasad and Dr. Devika Madalli from ISI, Bangalore explained the various factors involving in setting up of IRs including an account on DSpace, Metadata standards (Dublin Core) etc. apart from giving a detailed demo on installing DSpace administering IR, depositing and document review/moderate before the documents are made available on IR. All the sessions had very active interaction from the participants. The highlight of the symposium was a two hour panel discussion on the topic’ Impact of Open Access on Science Communication” on the last day which was addressed mainly to scholars and researchers in an attempt to inform them about the impact of open access on new forms of scholarly/scientific communication. While open access is gaining strength and popularity as a new model for dissemination of information, there are still many issues yet to be addressed such as pricing models, peer reviewing, indexing and impact factors, archiving and the stability of this new publishing model for scientific literature. The discussion turned out to be a ‘real brain storming session’. The panelists were chosen from scientific/academic community, the information seekers and information managers, the information providers like Mr. N V Satyanarayana MD, M/s Informatics India (Pvt) Ltd. as the moderator and other members were Dr. H S Siddamallaiah, PSO, NIMHANS, Dr. M D Deshpande, Head, Research, M S Ramaiah School of Advanced studies, Dr. A R D Prasad from ISI and Dr. L Venkatkrishnan and Dr. I R N Goudar from NAL Two recommendations were made in matters like archiving and funding for publication activity as a part of R&D budget. The valedictory session was chaired by Mr. N V Satyanarayana, and presided by Dr. M R Nayak, Advisor (M&A), NAL. Ms. Poornima Narayana
#IP 853,19 - 25 Jan 2009 National Trisonic Aerodynamic Facilities (NTAF) of the National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore is the main collaborator and supporting agency for all the Aerodynamic characterization tasks related to ISRO’s launch vehicle programmes. During the current year, nearly 900 blowdowns, which is about 80 percent of the total blowdowns in a year, have been conducted on the following configuration of ISRO. - PSLV XL (Extended strapon motor) configuration – 3 campaigns. - RLV(Reusable Launch Vehicle) configuration – 3 campaigns. The aerodynamic data generated on the PSLV XL configuration, culminated in the Historic Launch of our moon mission – CHANDRAYAN. The enormous amount of wind tunnel data generated for RLV, has given ISRO a high level of confidence in the aerodynamic design of RLV. The timely support extended by NAL and in particular the team at NTAF in generating the vital aerodynamic data for PSLV XL (Chandrayan Launch) has been well appreciated and acknowledged by ISRO. Dr A R Upadhya, Director, NAL congratulates the officers and staff of NTAF. Congratulatory message Following is the text of a congratulatory message sent by Dr A R Upadhya, NAL, Director to Mr Anand Mahindra We are happy that Mahindra and Mahindra are partnering with us in the first Public-Private partnership in civil aircraft design and development in India in the design of NM-5 5-seater General Aviation Aircraft. We look forward to meaningful joint design and development of this aircraft leading to first flight by end of 2009.
#IP 852, 6 - 18 Jan 2009 Holistic Approach to the Management of Health in R&D Organisations A seminar on Holistic Approach to the Management of Health in R&D Organisations was organized as part of NAL Golden Jubilee Celebrations on Friday the 9 January 2009 at the S R Valluri Auditorium, NAL, Bangalore. Dr Ranjan Moodithaya, Head, KTMD welcomed the gathering and the speakers - Dr K Govinda Babu, Assistant Professor, Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology and Dr Prasanna Kumar, Head, Department of Endocrinology, M S Ramaiah Medical College. He complimented Dr K S Nanjundaswamy, CMO of NAL for his efforts in setting up of the NAL Health Centre with a number of state of the art facilities like ERBA Smart Lab: a fully automatic biochemistry analyzer, X-Ray, Physiotherapy etc. He added as Dr Swamy was signing off this month and having this seminar in his honour is just appropriate way of saluting him. Dr A R Upadhya, Director, NAL in his opening remarks said we have had a number of seminars with technical theme of aerospace science and it was very thoughtful of NAL Health Centre to have taken the initiative to have one for the human body which is the most complicated engineering form built by God. With periodic checkups and a little extra care one can get the wake up calls from the doctors, but finally it is we who need to take care of ourselves to be in good health and happiness. Dr K S Nanjundaswamy, CMO gave a detailed account of the Importance of Master Health Checkup. He said some of the diseases may not manifest clinically even above the age of 35 years. These diseases, if identified at the initial stage of the onset (doctors can prevent the further complications caused by these diseases). He spoke about what is master health checkup? what investigations will be done?, why master health checkup is necessary?, what are the advantages of undergoing master health checkup? What should you do? how will you be benefited? He summed up his lecture saying with Matser Health Checkup we can learn more about our heart, kidney, diabetes and be aware of the risk factors, and learn to adopt a healthier life style for a healthier heart. This will go a long way in decreasing the chances of heart disease, paralytic stroke and sudden death etc., and give you guidelines for a Scientific Preventive Programme. Dr D Amarnarayan proposed the vote of thanks and the programme was compered by Dr M N Sathyanaryana, Jt. Head, KTMD. Dr K Govinda Babu, Assistant Professor, Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology gave a brilliant lecture on “Prevalence of Cancer and its prevention in the Indian Population” with statistics. Dr Prasanna Kumar, Head, Department of Endocrinology, M S Ramaiah Medical College and CEO, Bangalore Diabetes Hospital gave a very enlightening talk on “Diabetes and its prevention in the Indian Scenario”. The two specialists were unanimous in their view that exercise and a healthy balanced diet is a critical component of good health that can lower the risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Both doctors elaborated on what constitutes a healthy balanced diet and quantum of exercise required to keep good health. K S Nanjundaswamy and N Shailaja Menon #IP 851, 5 - 11 Jan 2009
Vidyadhar Y. Mudkavi Aerofest 2008
#IP 850, 29 Dec- 4 Jan 2009 Congratulations Mr V P S Naidu Mr V P S Naidu, Scientist, Multi Sensor Data Fusion Lab, Flight Mechanics and Control Division, National Aerospace Laboratories has been awarded PhD degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Mysore, Mysore for the thesis titled “Kinematic and Image Data Fusion with Application to Tracking of Moving Objects” under the guidance of Dr J R Raol, Former Head, FMCD NAL.
CFTRI Director Dr Prakash 1st Indian IAFoST President Dr. V. Prakash, Director, CFTRI, Mysore took over as the new Honorary President of the International Academy of Food Science and Technology (IAFoST) of the IUFoST recently. He was decorated as the President in the 14th Congress of International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST) held during 19-23 October, 2008 at Shanghai, China. Dr. Prakash is the first Indian to have been nominated as the President and also is the first Fellow of IAFoST from India when he was elected.
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the 19th. Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) made extensive preparations. They even had put up bill boards announcing the event at Malpe Beach. Dr. A.Chincholkar of MIT and his team and the Malpe Police did an excellent job of the arrangements, and the public could enjoy the show at close quarters. Two weeks before this, NAL's Clipper Powered Hang Glider (PHG) was transported by road and Dr. Pai had made practice landings on the beach. By about 10 am, Hansa made a fly past and attracted a large crowd. This was followed by Zen Air aircraft. PHGs from Indian Navy and X-Air piloted by Vinitha made landings on the beach. By this time quite a crowd had gathered. We tried to give a running commentary. But it looked like people were far more interested in seeing aircraft in action. Long-EZ piloted and built by Pavan Kaula made a huge impression. He made a few agile maneuvers and had even made his own arrangements to leave smoke trail to add to spectacle. One of the Zen-Air aircraft made a landing as well though it was not planned to do so. When asked, the pilots said that they felt an irresistible urge to make a landing on the beach. Once again, the weather was superb. Later, two PHGs and X-Air made low pass almost in formation and impressed the crown very much. Two paramotors from Para-Regiment Training Centre, Bangalore hung around and made big impression on young minds. The mini airshow itself was flagged off by Dr. Raj Warrier, VC, Manipal University. At the end of the show, a small function was arranged. At this function, Dr. Warrier and Dr. Sandeep Sancheti, Director, NITK spoke. They expressed their happiness over the event organized by NAL. Dr. Upadhya presided over the meeting. Suvarna Sadhana and a Souvenir were released during this function. The dignitaries also formally opened the exhibition. A fair number of public made visit to the NAL stall and two other stalls set up by NITK and MIT. It was an eventful day. Director NITK had arranged for a beautiful beach-side dinner.
