Winning Spirit

At the end of 19th over, Mumbai Indian’s (MI) needed just 4 runs from 6 balls to win the match against Rajasthan Royals (RR).

At the end of 19th over, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) needed just 5 runs from 6 balls to win the match against Chennai Super Kings (CSK).

Both the chasers had 3 wickets in hand.

The situations in both the games are much similar, but not the spirit. RR showed the winning spirit by not allowing MI’s to score even singles. They curbed any possible runs, which resulted in two run outs and finally the victory by 2 runs. On the other hand, CSK started their 20th over much similar to RR by taking the wicket of Taylor who is in terrific form, but finally allowed the new batsman to score the winning runs.

Stephen Hawking – A Professor from a local hospital in Cambridge?

When did Prof. Stephen Hawking become a Professor of Applied Mathematics at a local hospital in Cambridge?

Story from here.

My Experience with Hotel Eden

It now has become a ritual for our group in HTTP lab at IIT Madras to celebrate our achievements (of all scales) by treating each other in a finest restaurant. It helps us not only in  enjoying the food with best ambiance, but also in the strenghthening of our social ties. Today, a couple of my friends took us to one of the best hotel in besant nagar, The Eden, to celebrate the submission of  their new research findings to a prestigious journal. Today’s gang consists of four Ph.D scholars, two M.Tech guys and two Dual Degree students, all but one from Mechanical Engineering, the other guy from Aerospace department.

We planned to leave from the campus early so as to reach the venue on time to avoid long wait since Eden is a type of place where every family would like to go for an outing after a short walk along the coast of Bay of Bengal. Located at the residential area of Besant nagar and near to the bus stand, Eden stands to serve a variety of vegetarian food ranging from south indian special, idli to continental spaghetti, to north indian parathas. The dining hall is not so spacious, but sufficient enough to accomodate 2 to 3 groups of people (of 8 to 10 in numbers) who would like to treat their family / friends.

We splitted into two groups, each with 4 members based on those who own the campus ferrari (a bicycle), and those who don’t and so have to catch the insti bus. The four of us who own the cycle  cycled till the campus main gate, catch the government bus from CLRI bus stop, reached the venue earlier than the rest, booked the seats for 8 people and waited for the remining people to come and join us.

The server managed to arrange a table such that eight of us can sit at same place and enjoy the food together, by combining some of the available tables which are meant to give some privacy for couples. Though it took some time for him to make this arrangement, it bought us sufficient time for the rest of the people to come and join us. We started the occasion by ordering the starters – spicy crunch, cheese rolls and kathi rolls.

It took about 25 minutes for the server to serve the starter itself, and by the time it arrived, we are already done with our planning for the main course. One of us took the turn to note down the choice in a tissue paper, and placed the order while others charged the starters hungrily. Little did we expect that we get the starters in such a small quantity which is not sufficient even for a couple! So we have to fight like someone throwing a piece of bread towards people who are starving to death to get just the taste of the starter.

While the taste of food in Eden is good, the service is pathetic. Because this is the first time we are having food at this outlet, we are basically ignorant about the quantity they serve. Judging by the cost and prior information of same food at several other outlets of same quality, we ordered for three starters hoping that we all will get a fair share. I was disappointed after looking at what is being served. At least the server could have told us about the quantity that we might get at the time of placing the order to give us an idea so that we could have selected our starters accordingly.

My experience with Hotel Eden doesn’t end here! We placed an order for one more starter to please ourself with a reasonable share of food. However, about the same time the main course was ready and so the server served the starter after we had the main course! Apart from other issues such as not serving wash bowl, tissue paper etc., we also faced the problem of not serving the main course to all at the same time.  This made us to miss the fun part of all – sharing the food with friends and get the taste from the variety we ordered together.

By and large, we momentarily decided to end the treat with main course without having the dessert to have kulfi n pan at the petty shop just outside the restaurant. The overall experience for us can be summarized as a bit of enjoyment cum moody experience. I hope we won’t go to the same restaurant in future for any occasions. Or at least I am not going there again.

A talk on rainfall estimation from satellite radiances at science club

Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) has been organizing science club meetings every month, since 2001. The objectives of the club meetings are;

• to promote and motivate research among young scholars
• to lay a common platform / forum where the scholars can present about their research work followed up with a discussion session

However, (according to the organizer), presentations from a number of research scholars on their work has come down over the years. In order to keep the club active, CLRI has extended the speaker’s profile to include faculties and principal investigators from various organizations and institutes.

The meetings are usually held in three different venues in a rotation policy: CLRI, IMSc and University of Madras. Today’s science club meeting was  the 96th one, since the formation of the club in 2001, and was held at The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) campus. My guide Dr. C. Balaji , (Associate Professor in IIT Madras) presented a talk on “Rainfall measurement from satellite radiances”, where he briefly talked about

• the history of rainfall measurements such as bowls, tipping buckets,…
• rain gauge – the gold standard for measurement of rainfall
• using modern technologies such as radar, disdrometer, etc
• active and passive sensors
• calibration of passive sensor using information from an active sensor
• developing algorithms to estimate rain using passive sensor and validate the estimate using active sensor
• satellites in orbit, and their data products
• India’s commitment in space – launch of MeghaTropiques
• Global Precipitation Measurement and its importance

The talk was preceded and succeeded by a couple of presentations in biotechnology, specifically on tuberculosis. Since my background is different from biology, much of the talk was like greek and latin to me. But from their presentation, I came to know that the vaccination for the disease which works very well in European countries does not work at all in India because of several reasons; one of the reason being the favorable conditions of the bacteria to be virulent. The statistical tools that they are using to analyze their data like optimization of the parameters, is similar to what I have been using for rainfall prediction.

The club was dispersed after the group photo session, and lunch at the IMSc guest house.

How NASA Helped US Olympic Swimmers in Beijing

The following extracts were taken from Shane Dale’s (Deputy Administrator in NASA) blog.

Many of us have been glued to the TV set, watching the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.  Many may be unaware that NASA technology has been used to help the U.S. Olympic swim team.

…we developed a wind tunnel test protocol to assess fabric performance, based on extensive work done by NASA on drag reduction in the mid-1980s…  In all, more than 60 fabrics were tested in one of Langely’s small low speed wind tunnels to assess which fabrics and weaves had the lowest drag.

All U.S. swimmers wore the LZR Racer. The U.S. won medals in 31 events, winning gold in 12 of them.  For 23 out of 25 of the world records broken at the Beijing games, the swimmers were wearing the Speedo LZR Racer.  Americans broke 11 of those records or 44 percent of the world records broken.  94 % of all gold medals and 89 % of all the medals were won by swimmers wearing the suit. Additionally, every men’s swimming event was won by an athlete wearing the LZR Racer.

One of the reason why Americans are powerful is they do most of the things scientifically. Its time for other countries to stop fighting for no cause and promote science for the benefit of their people.

Poor Americans

He (Munawwar Hasan) told rediff.com, “I am opposing the nuclear deal with the Americans. America is against the interests of Muslims. Muslims hate Americans. If this deal goes through, then Americans will make a lot of money.

“They will use the money to make bombs and then bomb Muslims with it. We are not going to let that happen. We are against the Americans.

As if American’s don’t have money and this is the only way they can earn them!

Basics of Thermodynamics

“you can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game”

From demon spawn

Are you famous?

“Yes sweetheart”, says the bird!

Dasavatharam

Dasavatharam, the most expected movie of the year 2008, features Kamal Haasan and Asin in the lead roles. Released on June 2008, Dasavatharam is a class in itself for it features Kamal in ten different roles. K S Ravikumar has directed this mega budget movie for Aascar Ravichandran. Himesh Reshammiya from Bollywood (his debut in Kollywood) has scored the music. Kamal, always known in the industry for trying out something new, is handling ten different roles in this movie. In doing so, he had broken the record of Sivaji Ganesan’s nine roles in ‘Navaratri’. The movie was shot in different locations in India , Malaysia and the US.  Kamal’s ten roles are countered by Asin’s dual role (for the first time in her career) in the movie. Mallika Sherawat dons an altogether different cap in this movie. She appears as a CIA agent while Jayapradha, the well-known character artiste, plays another important role.

Watch the trailer of Dasavatharam.

Introduction to Dasavatharam was taken from Youtube videos, and was edited by Jam.

Identify your Gold Chain

You are walking on a deserted street, wearing a gold chain. From thin air, someone appear in front of you and in lightening speed picks up your chain and runs away. Unlike calling for someone to help, or running towards police station to cry (which normally many people will do), let us imagine a situation like this. You immediately  chase the thief and have caught him. Now when the police comes and starts the enquiry, you will be asked by the police to identify yourself, and also provide enough proof to substantiate your claim that it is your gold chain. How on earth will you prove to the police that it is your chain?

Its quite possible that the thief may claim to the police that the gold chain belongs to him and you are trying to snatch it away from him by force! What source will you cite to prove to the police and claim your gold chain back?