Tech AvenueThe second installment of The Scholars’ Avenue’s latest feature.

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Inside �

New Steel Technology CenterRead about KGP’s latest research facility.

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Foundation DayA look at the Nina Saxena award and Foundation Day.

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T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U E

T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U EIIT KHARAGPURSEPTEMBER 9 2007 1

Central LibraryCL's getting bigger and better ! Here's the lowdown.

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Department In FocusThe E&ECE Department examined in-depth.

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www.scholarsavenue.org

Halls Ka Haal - 2The second article of our series on the state of the Halls in the campus.

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Pro f . Damodar Acharya, the present D i r e c t o r o f I IT Kharagpur, is an alumnus and faculty of the Institute. He was the founding

Vice-Chancellor of Biju Patnaik University of Technology, Rourkela and has held the post of Chairman, AICTE, New Delhi.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

Scholars Avenue (SA) : One of the first activities of yours since taking over as Director was to initiate a tour of departments. What prompted this and how far are you satisfied?

Prof. Damodar Acharya (DA) : As the Director of the institute I feel it is important for me to know each and every faculty. Being an alumnus and faculty, I have known the senior members but I need to get in touch with the young ones. I need to know the kind of work each of them are doing, the kind of problems they are facing. It is also important to know how each and one of them can be helped to give his/her best. I also feel the need to identify pockets of excellence. Each of the departments is probably doing really well in specific research areas. We need to target those and try to make the institute, the reference point in those fields for other institutes across the nation. Though these visits are at a preliminary stage right now, the support I have received from one and all has been really encouraging.

SA : Referring to the plans of increasing student strength to about 15,000 in a decade or so, don't you think infrastructure is going to be a major bottleneck?

DA : I agree that we have serious problems concerning infrastructure. They requ i re augmenta t ion . Increasing students' accommodation is one of the things that top my list right now. We already have a committee in place to evaluate structural stability of old halls. We are examining the possibility of adding a floor in each block in all the halls. This will increase the current capacity by 20-30% in a short time. Of course with time new hostels have to be added.Apart from this, the basic amenities like toilets, water supply and sewerage are in need of improvement. We are in talks with the government of West Bengal to get an alternate water supply system in place. The construction and repair work right now is very slow. We need to speed them up.We also have to take steps to address

such issues as better connecting road to the Campus and building of a flyover across Puri Gate. Things are shaping well. I hope we will soon find solutions to them.With increasing student strength the size of faculty is bound to go up. It's e q u a l l y i m p o r t a n t t o h a v e infrastructure in place for that. Several of the quarters have already been declared unsafe and they'll soon be demolished.Another area of concern is the academic infrastructure. We'll need new labs, new classrooms etc. to accommodate greater number of students.These things that I mentioned are

ones that we have to do at any cost. We do not have an alternative. A 60 year old Institute needs renewal. This provides us an opportunity to convert a 60 year old Institute to a young and vibrant 16 year old Institute.We also need to consider the fact that things are a lot different now as compared to the times when I was a student. Back then, a sizeable chunk of students coming to the campus hailed from rural background or joint families. Therefore they could cope with things like no fans in rooms. But these days, students come from more affluent backgrounds. We must match their expectations as well.

SA : In what way do you expect the alumni to contribute?

DA : The Alumni can contribute in terms of intellectual capital. They can act as adjunct and visiting faculty. They can guide and mentor students. Even a short talk by a successful alumnus, I am sure, will prove to be really inspiring for the students. We can really use their help for d e v e l o p i n g i n t e r n a t i o n a l collaborations and contacts with the industry.Each one can contribute in whatever way he is capable of doing. Financial aid is not the only way for an alumnus to give back to his/her alma mater.

SA : There is a prevailing feeling amongst the students that the Director of the institute has very little direct interaction with the students. How do you plan to change that?

DA : Let me assure you that I am absolutely accessible. Anyone and everyone should feel free to contact me whenever necessary. Moreover I also plan to formalize channels to increase this interaction. On these lines, the Senate has passed a proposal for a mentoring system. The system will have 5-10 students under each mentor (from the faculty) with whom they could discuss problems; academic, professional and personal.

Parents could depend on mentors for their wards. I am also examining options to establish direct links with the students.

SA : We have heard great things about your work during your stint at the SRIC. We are sure the students would like to know more about that.

DA : (Very modestly) I did nothing. I am glad that SRIC is doing exceptionally well and it's not because of one person but is a result of dedicated efforts of everyone involved. This year alone we have received confirmation for projects worth over one hundred crores.

The Scholars' Avenue thanks Prof Damodar Acharya for taking time out for the interview and hopes that his plans for the betterment of the Institute are implemented quickly and smoothly.

Visions of The Director

� Increase in the strength of students to 15,000 and faculty to 2000 in the next 10 years, in order to bring IIT Kharagpur at par with the world's best universities. The focus will be to have minimum critical mass of students and faculty for excellence in each area.

� Involvement of more students in projects and in the

institute laboratories, so as to attain a certain critical mass required for making research work productive. This would create an environment conducive for collaborations with other research organizations and universities. The Institute has to go global to produce graduates that excel in today's globalized economy.

� Improvement of existing infrastructure & construction of new academic and residential complexes, commensurate with the planned increase of students and faculty.

� Introduction of a "mentoring system", which would help the students to foray into their fields of interest with much needed guidance and support.

� Development of a "knowledge network", consisting of the students, alumni, and faculty, which would act as a forum for floating ideas and inviting opinions. This would encourage discussion and dialogue, and enable the members of this forum to find help and co-operation in their subjects of interest.

The Man At The HelmThe Scholars’ Avenue goes one-on-one with the new Director

TSA Snippet

� The IIT Kharagpur campus has a total of 55 kilometres (34 miles) of roadways.

� Baron Sushantha Kumar Bhattacharyya, an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur was awarded the CBE in 1997, the Padma Bhushan in 2002 and was knighted in 2003.

� 615,000 imperial gallons or 2,800, 000 litres is the total capacity of the 12 water tanks in the campus.

� I IT Kharagpur has 117 communities after its name on Orkut!

� 10% of the Institute Budget is a l located to the CL with yesteryear's book budget being a whopping 1.5 crores.

justifying the cause goes, subjectivity renders everything armored with enough defence. Besides, you can't really pit math against poetry and hope for a good fight to death. They don't come from the same town, they don't have the same weapons, and frankly, we wouldn't really ever want to lose one of them, would we?

Take, for instance, the poetry of Emily Dickinson and one critique by a group of young orthodox Jewish students. One of her many God laden poems reads like this:

'Twere better charityTo leave me in Atom's tombMerry, and nought, and numbThan this smart misery.

A bunch of young students realized that this was what was at the core of every single one of human endeavors, the leaning toward some Other self. Dickinson, provoked by God's reluctance to listen to her prayers, was questioning the value of consciousness. Aldous Huxley used to think that the desire to get out of 'consciousness' was basic to human beings, and this was what fueled every God theory, as well as every brewery and hashish factory. The urge to transcend one's own self has been the fountainhead of almost all of art, and a lot of substance addiction. God figures in here thus, as another outlet of that same primordial cry, to get out, to fracture fingernails scratching the back of reality. In the bible:

"He who loses himself shall find himself”

throes of such exciting visions, the inexplicable beauty of fractals, the bizarre loveliness of butterfly wings wreaking tornadoes, with ideas such as the Novikov principle that render time travel hypothetically possible, with offshoots in ideas like free will, something precariously close to the God concept. Maybe science will ultimately prove to be Alexander's sword slashing open this delicious Gordian Knot that has kept man so enthralled for ages.

Knowledge, and along with it doubts, have been passed on as legacy, mutatis mutandis, through all these millions of years, and we can draw upon them to ask a lot of questions, like others before us, Descartes then, Dawkins now. How on earth did we come into being, literally, or why we do what we do, or what our purpose in life is. And then we can double back and ask ourselves what exactly we mean by 'life' or 'purpose' or even being'. God or no god, our own beautiful minds have been at work all this while. A long time back, someone came up with God maybe, and that was insanely brilliant. Then, with time, we got accustomed to his higher presence, fought some wars over him, and made him out to be the end of our own egocentric personal equations. Then along came the glorious i c o n o c l a s t s , t h e v e n o m o u s Nietzsches, and they were brilliant too, at what they choose to do. Meanwhile, there were those who never really bared their teeth at god, nor laid prostrate in his benevolent mercy, but used him, the idea of him to feed the artistic gristmills of their minds. And through all this, God never went out of fashion, never ceased to be hot air, never really died on us. God has been an exercise in imagination, and it's been a pleasure working with Him.

In God, We Trystcience, like any other philosophy of life, begets Sembodiment, demands to

be put into practice. Open a dictionary, and this would be found somewhere under 'science': "...all scientific facts and explanations are subject to test and must be rejected as the best hypotheses when new evidence falsifying them is found." As things stand there is not much what might be called tangible proof of the existence of God. On the other hand, a mammoth body of mythological and sacred literature has been disproved using the very elementary of scientific tools. Consider the Omnipotence Paradox. It is mostly formulated in terms of the God in Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), which hammer home the omnipotence of God every two preach out of three, but can be applied to the idea of omnipotence irrespective of religion. One version of it, the 'paradox of the stone' goes: Can God create a stone so heavy that even he cannot lift it? If God can create such a stone, he can't lift it then, and ceases to be omnipotent. If he cannot, it must be that he wasn't omnipotent to begin with in first place.

This though is obviously not the last word on the issue. Students of epistemology will fall over each other to point out that even though it seems like a paradox, semantically, it is not, since we are constrained by entities our language can or cannot begin to describe, and omnipotence, of all things, could very well be one of the latter. But this objection actually opens up the debate to some degree, a far cry from the nutshell champions of the religious cause recede into at the mere scent of a doubt. Science is funnily altruistic, it makes you want to go out there and shout it out from rooftops, so that all those men and women, with their slick suits and slicker gizmos, would lend you an ear. Everyone who has read abysmally small parts of General Relativity want to become gravity's own prophets. But even still, it does make one wonder why is it that the high priests of science, people who live such just lives, where science = progress and progress = personal comfort/wealth more times out of most, where they can see it all happening, and can see it as their own doings, choose to pointlessly introduce a high flying God character into beautiful logic and mess it up. Pick up that dictionary again: "..a feeling that something exists or is true, especially one that has no proof." God is like the idea of peace, and science, enfant terrible, spoilsport in the Nirvana game, is the H-bomb. And everyone's turned into an Oppenheimer crying Shanti Shanti while they dust the last dregs of bomb powder off their laboratory overalls

Science is a philosophy. And if honesty to a philosophy in terms of practice is to be the judgement call, there are enough Sunday service regulars, enough of bell tolling pundits, enough of five-times-a-day allahmen, maybe even more than the skeptics amongst the scientifically literate, to brand all of them at par, if not higher, with science. And as far as

Also, the relationship with God doesn't really demand that there be a god. Dickinson's later poetry reveals that she has stopped caring whether her god responds to her. She thinks it is a difficult relationship, and they both know it, even if they don't look each other in the eye. Mirza Asadullah Khan 'Ghalib', the 'godless' poet, once wrote:

I know the truth about the promise of heaven,

Still, it is a nice thought to keep the heart amused

On the other hand, he mocked those who took the idea of religion too seriously, with:

I could have been a saint, had I not been so drunk.

This from a man who also wrote:

When there was nothing, there was God

If nothing had been, God would have been

My very being has been my downfall

If I hadn't been, what would it have mattered?

Through all this one realizes God is a very personal possession. For Ghalib, as for Dickinson, it was 'his Allah', and no science, no logic could take their bittersweet enmity with their gods away from them.

Some biologist claims to have discovered a part of the human genome he calls the 'God Gene'. Technically VMAT2, this gene is not an encoding for the belief in god itself, but is a physiological arrangement that produces the sensations associated with, as some say, faith, or more specifically, spirituality as a state of mind. And of course, there will be people who will figure out how psychological transcendence is brought about, through some neurons rubbing others off the wrong way, or some hormone exciting on its own. The new physics is already in the

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Editors � Aditya Marathe, Anuj Dayal, Arish Inam, Robin Anil, Sheekha Verma, Sreeja Nag, Suvrat Bafna

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T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U E OPINION AVENUE SEPTEMBER 9 20072

At the start of each autumn semester, the senior halls get ready to organize various events aimed at familiarising first years with their new environs, and giving them an idea of what life at Kgp entails. Three events have already been conducted this year - 'Khoj' by Azad, 'Akhada' by Patel, and 'Teachers Day' celebration by RK.

Khoj which is a treasure hunt for first years was held on the 1 st of September. The event promises feverish excitement, cycling, clues, torches and the first prizes of the year for the freshers. Major emphasis had been paid this year on the safety of the participants, this eventually paid off and Khoj remained the fun event it was supposed to be. Next in line was 'Akhada'. Akhada consisted of a line up of high energy events such as Kho-

Kho, Kabbadi, and Matki Phod. There was chaat, and food from Swagat to satisfy hungry stomachs after an evening of high energy and pure unadulterated fun. At the end of the event, strains of tempo shouts of MMM, Patel and Kgp could be heard from Patel.

The Teachers day celebration thheld on 5 September by RK hall

was flagged off by the honourable Director and Deputy Director. Then the audience was treated to a string of dazzling performances in music, choreography and dramatics

ndby the 2 years from RK. The icing on the cake though was the thrilling

stperformance of a group of 1 years in a choreography event. Welcome freshers! Kgp style.

May The Good Times Begin!The senior halls welcome the freshers to KGP

Halls Ka Haal-2An update on the construction activities in the institute

Come the first day of a new semester and every KGPian is faced with the daunting task of registration. Despite successive student office bearers promising to streamline the system, registration day is still the stuff of nightmares.

The registration process is divided into three phases. First is the payment of fees which is completely handled by the State Bank of India's Kharagpur branch. Next comes the electronic flagging of the registration handled by the academic section. And finally there's the selection and allotment of breadth subjects and electives. Logistics support for the entire process, in the form of software and data management services, is provided by the Administrative and Computer Support Section. Each of these phases has its share of problems, which add to the complexity of the overall registration process.

There have been several attempts at reforming the system. Some have definitely worked. The fee payment process, for instance, is now probably the smoothest of what it has been in years. The introduction of the ATM and e-banking modes of fee payment has had tremendous success in

reducing the mad rush at the bank counters on the day of registration. Credit cards as modes of payment are also being looked into. But this march forward has not been complemented by a better system for electronic flagging of the fee payment.

Consequently students still have to stand in long queues to get their fee payment flagged. The Administrative Computer Service Support Center explains that this is a necessary evil. The Accounts section of the Institute requires a copy of our fee slip, to tally the amount of money collected for registration with the banks statements and account for any errors in the bank's statements to the Institute.

The third stage is the filling up of the breadth and elective forms online. Unlike previous semesters, this time the breadth form had to be filled after registering for the semester, to avoid the usual hullabaloo over requests for change of breadths. The initial breadth allotment was on a first come

first serve basis, but owing to glitches in the software and after complaints from students, it was later changed to a system based on a CGPA cutoff, which worked much better.

The biggest question right now on everyone's lips would be: When do we get a smoother and more streamlined process?

The problem area now is the

Registration Roulette....

The March 29, 2007 issue of The Scholars' Avenue carried a report on the ongoing construction activities in the Institute. We talked to Prof. H. N. Mishra (Chairman HMC) and Mr T. K. Mukherjee (Chief Engineer) to bring you the following updates.

Rani Laxmi Ba i Ha l l o f Residence: The hall was scheduled to be completed in July this year so as to be available when the new batch of undergraduates arrived. But after a few hurdles and hiccups, the revised deadline is for 15 th of September, and in any case the construction will be complete by the end of September.

Lal Bahadur Shastri Hall of Residence: This hall has been proposed with accommodation for 2000 boarders, and will be a major step in easing the space crunch in the

Institute. A committee of professors had been formed and a meeting of tentative architects was held during Prof. S. K. Dubey's tenure as the Director. According to Mr. T. K. Mukherjee, expected dates of commencement and completion of construction should be known by the end of September.

B. R. Ambedkar Hal l of Residence: The proposal for this hall is also in the pipeline. The plan is expected to take off once the modalities for the Lal Bahadur Shastri Hall have been worked out.

Guest House: The construction of the hundred room fully air-conditioned guest house is in full swing and it is expected to be completed by June 2008. It is expected to take care of the

renovated and is now provided as lodging for these trainees. Another proposal is being worked upon for the addition of extra living space in senior halls. The new building for the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law is a l so under construction behind Vikramshila and is expected to be completed soon.

With the increasing intake of students every year, concrete steps are being taken to tackle the growing space crunch. The Scholars' Avenue hopes that none of these steps gets stuck in the proverbial bureaucratic maze.

Watch this space for further updates.

accommodation crunch during SF, Kshitij, and the Placement Season.

Apart from this, final touches are being given to the extra floors on top of MT hall, and they are expected to open up for boarders soon. Another d e v e l o p m e n t i s t h e n e w accommodation for Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) trainees. The old building in front of the BC Roy hospital has been shaped up and

electronic flagging which can't be sped up unless there is a faster and error free flow of information from the bank to the Academic Sections servers about the fee payment. This involves ironing out the electronic clearing issues within the bank and its branches, and this is something that is unlikely to happen only with pressure from the institute without the bank taking it upon itself.

In the meantime, an option is shifting the electronic flagging phase to the individual departments. This could go a long way in polishing the system and reducing the burden on the students. But again, collecting all the summaries from the various departments and then collating and tallying it with the bank will only serve to add to the confusion. Staggering the registration process over a few days could also be a viable option, but it might lead to loss of working days for the institute.

All said and done, one thing is for sure. What the entire process needs right now is a thorough overhaul. With the intake increasing in leaps and bounds every year, things are only going to get tougher, both for the administration, and for the students.

Extra Floors in MT Hall

R a j i v G a n d h i S c h o o l O f I n t e l l e c t u a l P r o p e r t y L a w

Rani Laxmi Bai Hall

aFlow of data from bank to the Institute servers still not smooth and fast enough.

aCredit card payment in the pipeline.

aElectronic flagging necessary to account for any errors in the banks statements to the institute.

aStaggering the registration process is a viable option.

T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U EIIT KHARAGPURSEPTEMBER 9 2007 3

T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U E IIT KHARAGPUR SEPTEMBER 9 20074

th57 Institute Foundation Day

Dr. S P S Khanuja (Director, Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Lucknow) and his team was awarded the very first Nina Saxena Excellence in Technology Award for their path breaking development of anti-malarial drug variety of plant Artemisa annua. The team came up with complete technology package to improve health while enhancing rural income through value chain development. This innovative contribution of CIMAP was also included in the Technology Day address to the nation by Honourable President of India as one of the f ive most important technologies of the year.

Presenting the award to Dr Khanuja, Chief Guest Prof. K L Chopra,former Director of IIT Kgp, said: "The award-winning research exemplifies the best of scientific research. Its outcome is beneficial to those who receive its product and those who participate in its p roduct ion . I t i s bene f i c i a l economically as well as in the area of healthcare. It scientifically optimizes the benefit of something that is grown naturally."

A first of its kind, this national award has been instituted by IIT Kharagpur to commemorate Late Nina Saxena and her spirit of technical excellence. The Award will be open to all Technologists who are Indian Citizens and will be given out every year by a distinguished commit tee on the Ins t i tu te Foundation Day. The Award is being funded through an endowment of the Nina Saxena Memorial fund (collected through IIT Foundation, USA).

Dr Nina Saxena graduated from IIT Kgp in the discipline of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering in 1992. Going against the tide, and in spite of excellent job offers, she joined a two year research project at Kgp, undertaking work in the area of producing medical instrumentation at cheap and competitive rates in India.

She did her M.S. in Computer Science from USF Tampa. On account of her brilliant GPA and academic acumen, she was awarded the coveted graduate fellowship and honoured by multiple societies, like Epsilon Phi Epsilon and Phi Kappa Phi. Thereafter, she undertook her PhD in Computer Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin in the area of Formal Verification completing it in a short span of three years.

Her desire to be on the leading edge of technology led her to INTEL, where she joined as a senior engineer. She led cutting edge research and development in the area of next generation server architecture (IA-64) design and formal verification and was awarded by many distinguished societies for leading path-breaking R&D efforts. She was also invited as Session Chair in International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD).

Dr Saxena initiated contacts with government departments and agencies to assist her in an effort to use solar energy for projects meant for rural and tribal development in India. In parallel, she also was trying to raise money through venture capital firms to achieve her goal. She passed away tragically in 2005.

Nina Saxena Excellence in Technology Award

Dr SPS Khanuja receiving the award

TDS and ETMS came up with inspirational productionsPhoto Courtesy: Hansraj Mishra Photo Courtesy: Shreevant Tiwari

Prof. H. R. Tewari (HRT) - Spring Fest, Kshitij and Manzar are the three fests of the Institute. Manzar this year was scheduled for the Autumn Semester while Spring Fest and Kshitij are held in the Spring Semester. We felt that these fests span almost the whole academic year, consequently taking up a lot of time and effort on the students' part. In a bid to improve the situation we decided that Spring Fest and Manzar should be held together.

TSA: Does this mean that the two fests will come under the umbrella of a single fest or will they be two separate entities sharing time, space and resources?

The past few days have been a blitzkrieg on the fate of our very own "Literary" addition to the Big League of IIT Kharagpur's Fest Circle and various unconfirmed rumours have been clouding the air. The Scholars' Avenue met Prof. H. R. Tewari, Dean of Student Affairs to get a lowdown on the beat of Manzar, in a bid to clear the air surrounding the issue.

Here are some excerpts from the interview .

TSA - Sir, we have heard about a decision in process, to merge Spring Fest and Manzar, the literary fest. Can you please shed some light on the issue?

Manzar Ì Spring Fest?The Scholars’ Avenue talks to the DOSA on the Manzar ‘affair’

HRT: We have informed the two teams of the decision that has been taken. The teams will have to coordinate among themselves and work out the finer details. They will share the three days during which Spring Fest is held, whether as separate teams or just one is for them to decide.

TSA: The news that the various department fests will not be held from now on, has also been afloat. Has a decision been taken regarding this?

HRT: This is not true. The department fests were not at all discussed.

The Scholars' Avenue subsequently talked to Tejaswi Singh Kushwah, the General Secretary Social and Cultural Activities who informed us that the core teams of Spring Fest and Manzar have an imminent meeting dotting their calendars before which nothing can be said.

For regular updates, keep tuning in to www.scholarsavenue.org

According to a decison taken in the last senate meeting, a mentoring system has been initiated for first and second years, whereby they are assigned mentors from among the faculty. A detailed list of this years mentors can be viewed at http://10.15.1.50/ugs

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An exciting proposal for a Rs. 3 Crore project that is ready for submission to the Institute for full adoption of RFID technologies at CL. The benefits could just begin with smart cards, 2.5 lakh RFID tagged books, staff-less extended hours, drop-boxes to return books due, and more. “"We are hopeful that the budget is provided and soon. If so, we will be one of the very few Science & Technology Libraries in India to boast of such a system. There are tangible benefits, in spite of higher initial investment, we are confident the Return on Investment will be much better, in terms of overall library efficiency, and faster service to users.”

- Prof. S S Bandyopadhyay Chairman, Central Library

Here's the sad part, though. An optimist would estimate the span of this project to about 2 years unto completion, so most of you reading this may well miss the benefits this

T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U EIIT KHARAGPURSEPTEMBER 9 2007 5

Wi-Fi shall blitz the musty drafts of CL in the next two weeks. Unfortunately, owing to the possibility of internet misuse, personal laptops will have to wait for an improbable inter-IIT dissertation on the issue before they experience these new winds

The Central Library

� For all them budding Smoots, if Google Scholar seems to have checkmated all your attempts to get that very journal, it is time you know how to do it right. Walk up to your Department Library representative and confidently place your needs in his/her hands. The CL reviews subscriptions quarterly and encourages new additions against deletion of seldom used journals, but it is your department that has to paint its importance red.

� The Digital Library website has E-Resources in a plethora of subjects. The INDEST Consortium, funded by the MHRD, provides access to full-text research paper databases like IEEE, ASME, Elsevier and Science Direct. There are Subscribed E-Resources, that the college pays for, which include a large number of purchased E-Books and E-Journals, such as over 30,000 books from the e-brary. This easily accessible site is truly a gateway to a cornucopia of information on almost any topic of academic interest.

� Yet another first of its kind in India is the Institutional Digital Repository, started in 2004. This is based on DSpace, an open source software from MIT, and is a database of all educational aids and resources a student could ask for. These include class lecture notes, question papers, PhD theses, 10,000 e-books provided by Springer, faculty publications, conference proceedings etc.

The quiet, little room named "Digital Library" is fast adapting to the new ways we study, with renovation of workspace to increase its capacity to 38, new upgraded interior decor by professional interior designers, instrumental music for a quiet ambience, free high-quality scanning of CL books & resources, very low cost printing solutions (maybe at less than a rupee per page) and more.

� For all those perspiring bookworms, Netaji Auditorium is to blame for diverting the central air conditioning to meet its own requirements. However, readers can rejoice, for cooler temperatures are scheduled to hit the aisles of the Annexe - the "air conditioning experts" are already on their way.

� The library hours have, yet, not been blessed with the extensions which students have so forthrightly been demanding, due to various reasons like shortage of manpower. However, we can soon expect the permissible hours ticking to midnight.

� If school chased you around with the Solitary Club of Literacy, it's time some students learnt some education here at college. Downright deplorable incidents like pages being torn off limited-edition books worth over $200 are probably the reason the CL has such strict rules about summer allotments and otherwise. There ARE some things money can't buy. Please, do NOT tear pages from books in the library. You'd probably spend more on your post-study snack than in Xeroxing what you need.

The Answers to some Outstanding Questions

The first of its kind in this "technology" miasma, the Classical and Contemporary Literature Section became functional on 29 th August and books worth over Rs. 50k, as per students' suggestions at forums like the IIT Book Fair, are being stamped and sealed and ready to hit the racks. At present, only faculty members and staff are allowed to issue books from the CCL section, and only for 15 days at a time. We hope this facility will be extended to students soon.

" To carry knowledge to the doors of those that lack it and to educate all to perceive the right !

Even to give away the whole earth cannot equal that form of service! “

- Manu

The Central Library is one of the largest science and technology libraries in India. It boasts of about 3,00,000 volumes including books, back- volumes of periodicals, micro forms, video forms, theses, patents and standards, and over 1000 journal subcriptions. In addition, computerised catalouging and online resources make this monolithic entity truly indispensable to academic pursuit of any sort. And the good just got better! TSA decided to profile the CL, as it is known in short, and were pleasantly suprised to find a slew of improvements and additions, both in the short and long run. Here's the short of what all one can expect to find at the CL in the near future.

In Focus - E&ECE“If we can't do it, then who will?"

Established in 1951 under a collaborative program with the University of Illinois, USA, the department has come a long way since then to become a leading center of learning in the field of electronics and electrical communication today. Pioneering research activities, state-of-the-art labs and a tremendous growth in the field of electrical communication have catapulted the growth of the department and made it a favoured destination for students.

It goes to the credit of this department that, it has research activities to its name ever since its inception when research activities in the relevant areas were almost non-existent in the country. These days, research in the department is focused broadly in five different areas - Microelectronics and VLSI design, Telecommunication Systems and Networking, RF and Microwave, Fiber Optics and Lightwave

Engineering, Image and Video Processing and Digital Signal Processing. Over the last 5 years, the department has had over 300 publications in various journals, about 600 conference papers, 12 Indian patents and 22 US patents, which tell the success story. The department has 22 well-equipped labs to support the teaching and research activities. These labs have been maintained in excellent conditions through frequent upgradations and modernizations. The department's funding from sponsored projects have amounted to around Rs.15 crores in the last 5 years. The depa r tment ha s a c t i ve c o l l a b o r a t i o n s w i t h s e v e r a l international universities from USA, UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and Singapore. The multinational industries in close contact with the d e p a r t m e n t i n c l u d e Te x a s Instruments, Motorola, National Semiconductors, Intel and many others.

The department has had several awards and honours to its name. A new feather was added to its cap recently when it was awarded the "TechnoShield" award in recognition of its pioneering contribution in the field of Microelectronics and VLSI in India. It is an award given by the India Semiconductor Association and was jointly awarded to IIT Madras and IIT Kharagpur this time. Apart from this, the department boasts of its faculty members, who are INSA, INAE and IEEE fellows and have been the members of the editorial boards of international journals, like the publications from IEEE, Elsevier etc. The students are not far behind either - a casual look at the convocation awards 2007 list shows the dominance of the E & ECE students in academic circles.

The alumni of the department have made the department proud in more ways than one. One can name Parvati Dev, Director of Stanford

University Medical Media and Information Technology; Prith Banerjee, Senior Vice President of Research and Director of HP Labs; Supriyo Datta, Thomas Duncan Distinguished Professor at Purdue University; V. P. Sandlas, Former Director of DEAL and CC (R&D) of DRDO; Arjun Malhotra, Co-founder of HCL; Biswadip Mitra, CEO of Texas Instruments and many others.

Apart from the academic activities, the department has a v i b r a n t d e p a r tme n t s o c i e t y comprising of all students, faculty and staff which acts as a platform to enhance the interpersonal relations. The society organizes several social and cultural functions throughout the year - the recent cricket match between the students and faculty being worthy of mention. All in all, the E & ECE department, the first of its kind among the seven IITs, prides itself in being only one of its kind in everything it does.

Round and Round we went!

The GolC near Harry’s gets a brand new look!

Telecom Networks Lab

Microwave Engineering Lab

T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U E IIT KHARAGPUR SEPTEMBER 9 20076

DEBATE :st1 N. Aniruddhand2 Anshul Kamrard3 N. Raghav

ENGLISH ELOCUTION:st 1 Digvijay Gagneja

nd2 B. Nishantrd3 Ayush Kumar

Arka Bhattacharya

BENGALI ELOCUTION:st 1 Souvik Chatterjeend 2 Tanmoy Haldarrd3 Arka Bhattacharya

WHAT'S THE GOOD WORD:st 1 Mithun Madhusudan

D Sri Harsha Kumar Ritwik

nd 2 Rushin Shah Savi Kumar Jain Anupam Prakash

Nilesh Kumar Gupta Vivek Choudhury Bharat P. Bhat

DUMB CHARADES:st 1 D Sri Harsha

Aditya Sai Anup Bishnoi

nd 2 Siddharth Prabhu Siddharth Singh Dhruva Mukherjee

rd 3 Reshmi Ghosh Sreeja Nag Bhawana Bothra

POSTERING:st 1 Pradipta Banerjeend 2 Dunna Anveshrd 3 Pankaj Kumar Chaukikar

& Abhirajika

rd 3

won by Azad.

The Water Polo league matches on the first two days were mostly one-sided with Patel emerging as a strong contender for the glitter. These matches were conducted behind closed doors on the second and third days after apparent misbehavior by spectators. The most nail biting contest of the tournament was the semifinal between Azad and RP.

Immediately after the first semifinal, where Patel drubbed Nehru to enter the finals comfortably, RP and Azad were pitted against each other - two almost equally balanced teams. When the normal time ended at 7 goals apiece, extra time witnessed

Second years - well settled into the halls by now, beaming and full of hall tempo - got their first chance at exuberant shouting, cheering and jeering when the fray for this year's Sports GC started with inter hall Aquatics and Water Polo events. Even the weather didn't stop them from bellowing tempo shouts and sounding drums, much to the ire of the authorities. They didn't get much to cheer about in the first events though. Chirag Siraloke, a first year student representing MMM hall, lived up to his pre-tournament hype as he won every individual event with a comfortable margin so much so that everyone got used to it and wished that their man comes second, banking their hopes on the relays. They were in for a surprise as MMM won the medley and Azad was disqualified on technical grounds.

Competition for the second spot though, continued on the next day. Finally MMM secured the first position with a vivid 81 points, followed by Nehru with 27 and Patel with 22. The only gold that MMM didn't win was the free style relay,

It's that time of the year again, with the strains of tempo shouts, cheers and jeers beginning their ascent to a crescendo. Students from all Halls of Residence square off for various Open IIT Social and Cultural events. These events are a trial ground for new talent, and a reiteration of those 'stars' still present for competitions. Most of all, Open IIT Events are a venue where each Hall pits all the fresh talent it has, against that of other halls, and seeks out the best for the Inter Halls later in the year.

As always, the results of events so far are a mixture of the old stalwarts and an interesting composition of freshers. A list of recently concluded events are as follows.

Location: Main BuildingLength: Around a metreColour: Dull Red

What are we talking about? If you are more than six and a half feet tall, and are practicing for Inter IIT Weightlifting then voila! You can remove this "easily accessible in-case-of-emergency" fire extinguisher from its stand and read the faintly visible words 'In case of fire' on its body. This piece of dilapidated equipment was probably set up a few decades ago when a prudent admin i s t r a t i on r e a l i z ed t he importance of fire safety and decided to act on improving it. Decades later, the cause has been neglected and the only testimony to their efforts remains in these lonely and overlooked pieces of equipment clinging desperately to the walls of the Main Building.

Prashant, who graduated last year from the Department of Electrical Engineering, was surprised to see a fire extinguisher which he failed to notice over the past few years. Fire e x t i n g u i s h e r s n e e d r e g u l a r maintenance by competent persons to operate safely and effectively, as required by fire safety legislations. Lack of maintenance can lead to an extinguisher not discharging when required, or rupturing when pressurized. Explosion of corroded extinguishers must be considered as a very dangerous accident. The authorities must make sure that all the fire extinguishers are periodically checked and maintained.

Warning! Soc Cult Season is Open!

Sports RoundupThe Sports GC kicks off with Aquatics and Water Polo

Action!

desperate efforts by both teams but didn't prove decisive either as the scores were tied at 8-8. Penalties were a completely different affair though. This was the first time in anyone's recollection that a match had to be taken to such extremities, Azad managed to put in four penalties only to find that two of them were disqualified, RP pitched in two. The second round of penalties went 3-2 in RP's favour. As is the case always,

con t rove r sy su r rounded the refereeing standards. Some penalties were arbitrarily disqualified while others were given as 're-takes' on technical grounds. No explanations were provided for either.

The final was an anticlimactic affair when Patel almost completely dominated the match against RP after a nervous first quarter, eventually winning 7-3. Azad beat Nehru comfortably in the match for the third place with a score of 7-4.

Even though the authorities did a splendid job of preventing any major conflicts amidst high adrenalin rush, the ever prevailing question still remains on the bias and quality of refereeing.

T h e B e n g a l i Te c h n o l o g y Dramatics Society or BTDS is regarded as one of the most professional societies in Kharagpur. The Society's Annual freshers' production was held on 23 rd August. B T D S i s a s o c i e t y w h o s e performances are regularly patronized by the faculty in the campus, and this production was no exception. The play "mesh-o-rakkhosh" (translated as "The sheep and the devil") was a treat to watch as the actors delivered a stellar performance. The brilliantly done play successfully conveyed its message that man himself possesses the power to arouse or subdue the devil within him. It was quite evident that painstaking effort had been put in to the production, the lights and props had been especially well done, and the background score too had been well thought out. We hope that in the future too, as now, BTDS continues enthralling the audience with its captivating performances.

T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U EIIT KHARAGPURSEPTEMBER 9 2007 7

The winning Patel Hall Team

Nimtz and Stahlhofen found that the reflected signal and its quantum-tunneling counterpart arrived at their respective photo detectors at the same time. This led them to conclude that tunneling photons bridged the gap between the prisms instantly, violating the 3,00,000 metre-per-second speed limit laid out in the special theory of relativity by Albert

T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U E TECH AVENUE SEPTEMBER 9 20078

Scientific applications are one of those use-cases where having access to the program source especially makes sense. However, MATLAB's closed-source nature makes extending it rather difficult. It must be noted that almost all add-ons and toolboxes developed for MATLAB are produced by MathWorks, the company that owns MATLAB.

Thankfully, however, there have been some very successful attempts to create free (in both senses of the term) drop-in replacements for MATLAB. Two of the most popular are Scilab, which is jointly developed by two French institutions, and GNU Octave. Both are designed with MATLAB compatibility in mind. While Scilab comes with a built-in M AT L A B - t o - S c i l a b c o d e -converter, Octave goes one step further and can directly execute MATLAB code. While GNU has made a few improvements to the language specifications, it is very easy to make Octave regress to MATLAB-level.

C a s e - i n - p o i n t : p a r a l l e l execution. MATLAB does not come with native support for cluster-computation (clusters are networks of computers that can share resources and computing tasks). MATLAB is descended from serial C libraries, and as such a complete code-restructuring would be needed to parallelize it. MathWorks has in the past shown reluctance to build such support into the program. Both Octave and Scilab, however, can easily be extended to work with the Message Passing Interface (MPI), a standard Unix clustering interface, using specially-written libraries.

And both come with free replacements for most standard MATLAB toolboxes - such as the Control Systems toolbox and the Image Processing toolbox. Scicos can replace Simulink for dynamic-system control.

Einstein could be wrong after all! Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen of University of Koblenz (Germany) say they broke the ultimate speed barricade using Quantum Tunneling, an achievement which could totally change the way we understand the world around us completely. The team conducted an experiment in which microwave photons travelled instantaneously between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to three feet apart. First the two prisms were set against each other with a small gap between them. When the microwaves were sent through the apparatus, most of the signal was reflected internally by the first prism - but some of the signal tunneled through the gap and went through the second prism.

Einstein.

Though the experiment has not been officially published so far, it has been a hot topic for debate in the geek world. Some physicists are already jumping the gun saying the observations are being interpreted incorrectly, others are more cautious in their criticism. But what must not be forgotten is that physics can play tricks when you use quantum phenomena to look for loopholes in relativity.

2Does this mean E=mc has to be discarded? Or is it back to the age old question - we've got it all wrong? Only time will tell. If only we could define time, if only Einstein were alive! Watch out for this space for more updates in the coming issues.

“Speed of Light Barrier Broken”... or so claim German scientists

The KLUG Korner

In spite of the very suggestive name, the Club of Rome isn't another Studio 54. Though the discussions could seem very akin to those in a nightclub which in its own words relate to the conviction that, "The future of humankind is not determined once and for all and that each human being can contribute to the improvement of our societies."

What the Club of Rome did do though, which doesn't happen in nightclubs, was publishing the very shocking, controversial and debatably true report entitled "The Limits to Growth". Borrowing heavily from Jay. W. Forrester's System Dynamics theory, this publication went on to create several models offering predictions on the state of the world several years into the future. A summary of the report may be a c c e s s e d a t

. A revision of the report entitled "Beyond the Limits" was published in 1992, followed by a thirty year update in 2003. The revision supposedly corresponded to the time when, according to the Club of Rome model, humanity was already making demands on the environment in excess of what it could provide for.

Almost 40 years later, a few of the predicted crises have happened, a few have been averted and a few await us. Believe the report or don't though, it did change a few ways we used to do things. From the often thrown-around concept of sustainability, to corporate social responsibility and business ethics this report laid down the ground for most anthropocentric business practices prevalent in the world today.

The Club also has a so-to-say "youth" wing, comprised mainly of those in the late twenties or early thirties. Called the TT30, the members are appointed for a period of 2 years and then necessarily rotated. Their first meet together was held in 2005 in Norfolk, Virginia.

http://www.clubofrome.org/docs/limits.rtf

Clubbing In RomeAre there Limits to Our Growth?

waves cannot pass through walls, p r e v e n t i n g o t h e r s f r o m eavesdropping. Researchers describe two major ways of making the technology feasible- Infrared and white LED wireless LAN systems. These are "optical" systems as they transmit data via invisible and visible light waves (or photons).

The area of research that promises vast technical applications is white LED LAN networks. Unlike other existing lighting sources, an LED can be easily used to operate as a visible-light wireless transmitter, a concept first suggested by a research team at Keio University (Japan).The LED's rapid on-and-off response time makes it possible to modulate visible light for encoding wireless communications. Though research and development in this area seems nascent, Optical Broadband networks are poised to ride the next big wave in the area of communication. Ten years down the line, you may not need those LAN ports and cables anymore to download the latest movies!

Electronics Engineers today all over the world dream of the ultimate communication technology which will make data delivery and exchange for everyone, everywhere and at all times a concrete possibility. Though much has been achieved using the radio based wireless technology Wi-Fi, the system suffers from slow transmission speed and channel capacity. An emerging alternative which is gaining popularity is Optical Wireless Technology. Rather than transmitting radio waves, optical wireless local area networks send data in coded beams of white or infrared light - the latter being the same invisible wavelengths found in TV remote controls.

Optical systems can connect wireless digital devices to a data port in a room, which in turn can be linked to whatever high speed broadband network serves the house or building. It is focused, interference free and offers limitless bandwidth. It is more appropriate for large business spaces with many high bandwidth users in close proximity. Moreover, light

Broadband Enlightened!Information to now ride on light for faster travel

Thus Spake... Mullah Nasruddin

thMullah Nasruddin, the famous 13 century philosopher, is known for his satirical personality, biting tongue and an extraordinary capability of raising profound philosophical questions through overtly meaningless acts. This is exemplified by several anecdotes of his life that have been documented over the centuries. One particularly interesting anecdote is as follows.

The judge of a small village had gone on a vacation. As a replacement, Nasruddin was given his job for a few days. He called up the first case and started the hearing.

"You are right,” said Nasruddin after hearing one side.

"You are right," he said after hearing the other side.

"But both cannot be right," said a member of public sitting in the audience.

"You are right, too!" said Nasruddin.

MATLAB Replacements

elevators. Not

too bad, huh? Life would still be very manageable,

more so for us KGPians, for KGP is a village that's yet to

come to terms with electricity.

Think of life, on the other hand, in the absence of a toilet. The inventor of the toilet is an unsung hero. What would we be without him? Think about it. Actually, don't; if toilets hadn't been invented, we'd all be in deep shit, wouldn't we? Does it make any sense that the inventor of the toilet isn't mentioned in any literature?

This isn't mankind's only display of the total absence of the ability to reason logically. Why would one rather remember the name of the company that invented Post-it notes than the name of the person who invented the toothbrush or the comb? Why do we know who invented Velcro , but not know who conceptualized Paneer Butter Masala? Why are you still reading this?

T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U EBHAAT AVENUESEPTEMBER 09 2007 9

DID YOU KNOW? At age 70, more than 70 percent of men are still potent!

Wh y ?

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Apparatus: Average human being.

Aim: To study the average human being's thought processes, and to identify the effects of some anomalies in the human thought process flowchart.

If you're perceptive enough, you would have realized that humans tend to jump on the bandwagon, to do what the others do. People rarely

think for themselves; they'd much rather just lie back, sipping a cup of cold coffee or sucking on a lollipop (preferences do vary, you know), and let other people do the thinking for them, except, of course, when the time comes to choose dessert.

Agreed, there is no profit to be h a d f r o m c r i t i c i z i n g h u m a n beings. From p e r s o n a l exper ience , criticizing the self causes an acute pain in the lower back. There is, however, something to be gained from analyzing facts and observing what effects they have on our actions.

Let us proceed systematically here. The fact is that people think what the others think, and remember what others remember. An indirect, but severe effect of this is that the wrong people are appreciated. How, you ask? Well, like this.

Quiz books and encyclopedias sing praises of Otis, the inventor of the elevator. Now, take a little time and think what life would be like without

Critically acclaimed director Darren Aronofsky's latest cinematic fugue, "The Fountain", has been six years in the making. Its storyline fuses Biblical and Mayan creation myths with a romantic love story spanning the past, the present and the future. Although enigmatic, and at times, confusing, it draws the curious viewer in with elegance. Starring Rachel Weisz (Izzie) and Hugh Jackman (Tom), it is quite literally a tale of the ages. The duo are a couple hopelessly in love with each other and their story is depicted in three interweaving tales. One in the past where he is a Spanish conquistador fighting to save his country and she, his queen. Another is in the present, where he's a scientist and she's his terminally ill wife who's writing a book named "The Fountain", which doesn't see completion. And the last is in the future, where he's in a biosphere along with a dying tree, a metaphor for his dead wife, that's inexorably travelling

towards Xibalba, a nebula that signifies death and rebirth in Mayan creationism.

In its entirety, the movie is a tale of Tom's struggle with death and love; of his struggle to let go of life, and to accept his wife's eventual death. The spirit of his character is aptly exemplified by this outburst in the movie:

"Death is a disease, it's like any other. And there's a cure. A cure - and I will

find it."

His love, strengthened by his hatred for death, fuels his incessant search for a cure to aging, which his scientific persona discovers in a compound extracted from a tree in remote South America; a tree likened to the Tree of Life. The same Tree is his companion in the future; in the biosphere, where it, along with him, eventually goes through a cycle of

death and rebirth upon reaching Xibalba. The movie ends with Tom realising that "Death is the road to awe". It is something that is eventual; something to be revered, not feared; death as immortal life and finally,

death as an act of creation; which is the central theme of the movie.

On the more technical side, the haunting soundtrack by Clint Mansell permeates the entire film infusing it wi th a v ib rant me lancho l i c atmosphere. The visual effects in the movie are truly spectacular and spectacularly unique too. The breathtaking visuals were shot with a minimum of computer graphics,

creatively making use of macro-photography of particle motion in fluids. The visually brilliant "death and rebirth" sequence at the end of the movie, which has been excessively compared to the "stargate" sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is the absolute climax. Truly, "The Fountain" is a movie that stimulates the mind and the senses.

Overall, it's a movie that inspires you to question yourself, to question your life and your convictions, especially those on mortality. It is one of those movies that you will either worship for its profundity or mock for its apparent stupidity. Though remarkably abstruse and difficult to comprehend for the most part, it is a beautiful masterpiece, visually and metaphysically; and is recommended v iewing fo r those eage r to contemplate some of the more poignant questions life poses to us.

"Everyone in Hollywood has said no to The Fountain at least once,

including the people who eventually made it”

- Darren Aronofsky

The Fountain

reaffirming that common sense is

still hype... as always

Bhaat Ave Reviews...Verdict: ììììì

Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that s t o p s b r i g h t i d e a s f r o m penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

Pepperlonely: The piece of pepperoni left on the cardboard when you pick up a piece of pizza.

Squatic Diversion (n.): Any pretended activity that commands a dog owner's attention while the dog relieves itself on a neighbor's lawn.

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Re-Wired!The Scholars’ Avenue brings you an update on the electricity bills

The Empowered Committee of the Ministry of Steel has recently cleared a proposal from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, to set up a Steel Technology Center at a cost of Rs.20 crore approximately. The Centre will play a catalytic role for higher learning and research in the field of steel making.

The proposed Steel Technology Center would be run according to the rules and regulations applicable to such centers already existing at IIT Kharagpur. IIT Kharagpur will provide facilities like manpower, administrative and infrastructure support and available equipment and laboratory. The center will encourage faculty members to offer more courses on iron and steel, take up research projects relevant to steel industry in India and to encourage students to take up projects relevant to steel sector for dissertation. It will also carry out laboratory trials of technology developed jointly by the faculty of IIT Kharagpur, scientists from the National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML) and scientists and engineers from steel industries and in which pilot plant trials can be taken

up by NML, Jamshedpur and shop floor trials by the concerned industry.

The estimated expenditure of Rs. 20 crore for setting up the center includes, among others, installation of laboratory facilities to address problems in iron and steel making and related areas. The Department of Science and Technology will bear 20 percent of the cost including the expenditure on the Chair professor and five research fellows. After five years, the recurring expenditure will be taken care of by the income generating activities of the center.

Source : Press Information Bureau, Government of India.

Kgp this month saw the formal unveiling of a new society - T e c h n o l o g y Transfer group

(TTG). The society, first of its kind in a u n i v e r s i t y i n I n d i a , w a s conceptualized last semester by a group of fourth years who realized the absence of such a society in Kgp. Most major universities have a society such as this working to integrate the research carried out on the campus, into the industry and ultimately into the life of the common man. The society consists of a group of students basically functioning under the SRIC and under the guidance of Professor P P Chakrabarty, Dean of SRIC, and Professor S Tripathy, Head of RGSOIPL. The basic agenda of the TTG is to act as an interface between the academia and the industry, so that the technologies being developed in the institute can be utilised by the industry adding value to both the industry and the institute, and to p r o m o t e p a t e n t i n g o f t h e technologies developed on the campus. The society has been granted use of the infrastructure available at

SRIC, and will be funded by the same. SRIC has allotted space on its server for the group's website and email ID’s. The website is expected to be up and running in a few days. SRIC has also provided the group with access to one of the class rooms in the School of Information Technology, for use in holding meetings and other group activities. The society is currently working on a handful of technologies that it thinks will interest the industry. It has created an exhaustive list of companies that may be interested in the technology and the group has even received favourable responses from quite a few of these. The society is then intended to act as the facilitator in the dealings between the industry and the developer. The TTG also plans to act as a vehicle through which industry feedback could be used to alter research in such a way that it may be made more relevant to the outside world. The group thus has a lot of relevance in making the Institute much more than just a place of higher education. The team of Scholars Avenue extends its warm wishes to the Technology Transfer Group, and wishes it luck in all its present and future endeavours.

Recap

This is the third article in a series, on the issue of grossly different electricity bills of the various halls, being published by The Scholars' Avenue. The upheaval in MMM after the first year boarders were asked to pay extra charges precipitated the first article of the series in our 17th April 2007 issue. Our interview at that time with the Chief Engineer of the Electrical Section, Mr D Chakraborty elicited the explanation that the differing charges for different halls were due to the presence of faulty meters, especially in RK and RP. He further added that remedial steps had already been taken and the meters had already been replaced. We had reported that the effect of this step would be seen in the bills for the session January – June 2007.

Present

Cut to September 2007 and The Scholars' Avenue has obtained a copy of the electricity bill for the session January – June 2007. It shows that the promise has indeed been upheld and that all halls are on par with each other except for small variations that can be attributed to a multitude of minor causes. Thankfully, the student population can now look forward to not having to pay exorbitant extra charges in the future. With this, the matter does indeed look settled. But there still remains the issue of the Azad and Patel hall boarders who are required to pay the huge extra mess charges resulting from excessively high electricity bills for the period July – December 2006. Is there any solution to their plight? Let's hope the proper authorities look into the matter seriously.

Technology Transfer Group Steel Research Center

TSA Snippet

Previous Institute Convocation Guests:

1956 Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

1957 Dr Radha Krishnan 1959 Dr Rajendra Prasad

1962 Dr Zakir Hussain

T H E S C H O L A R S ’ A V E N U E IIT KHARAGPUR SEPTEMBER 9 200710