On the proposed rise of the HECI from the ashes of the UGC

On 27 June 2018, the Human Resources Development Ministry of the Government of India announced that it would repeal the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act and introduce a new regulatory body for higher education called the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI). This announcement has received intense critique from a faction of the Indian academic world. Prof. V. S. Sunder expresses his concern over this corrupt initiative of bureaucratizing Indian higher education system.

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Symposium on “Digitization – Securing the Books of Yesterday for Tomorrow” on 10th August, 2018

The purpose of this Mini-Symposium is to bring together curators/librarians/ other interested people for a discussion on the importance of digitization (in addition to traditional long-term stage e.g. paper) in terms of access and searchability, by Carl Malamud. The Academy’s efforts at digitization of back issues of all its journals (back to 1934 and 1910 for J Genetics) will be discussed and the archive inaugurated. A Kannada translation (ebook) of the book ‘C V Raman Memoir’ by Jayaraman will also be released. The Academy is also collaborating with Malamud in projects to digitize and make available science-related resources from India, in addition to specifically digitizing publications (incl 50+ books) published by the Academy.

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India’s Nuclear Energy Program

* Global status of Nuclear Energy and its likely impact on reducing Carbon emissions
* Nuclear energy in India during the past century
* Plans in the new Millennium to accelerate nuclear expansion
* The Indo-US Nuclear Deal and its aftermath
* Impact of India’s Nuclear Liability Act on foreign reactor builders
* Assessing the actual damage done by nuclear accidents
* Dealing with public concern over radiation hazards

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Nature's traffic engineers have come up with many simple but effective solutions

From the tunnels built by termites to the enormous underground networks built by fungi, life forms have evolved incredible ways of solving the challenge of moving large numbers of individuals and resources from one place to another. But how do natural systems – which lack engineers or in some cases even brains – build and manage their transportation networks?

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