Monthly Archives: May 2018

City student emerges winner in Google contest

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Abishek V. Ashok

Abishek was roped in by FOSSASIA, which is engaged in open source software development

Abishek V. Ashok is dreaming big these days.

The 17-year-old computer science student from SNDP Higher Secondary School, Udayamperoor, is among the 12 grand prize winners from India in the Google Code-in 2017, a contest held globally to introduce pre-university students aged between 13 and 17 to open source software development.

Third time lucky

He had participated in the contest twice in the past but turned lucky third time around.

Abishek, who lives in Panangad, was among the 1,000-odd students roped in by FOSSASIA, an organisation from Asia engaged in developing open source software, as part of the contest. He was asked to complete 93 coding tasks in 49 days between November and January this year.

“Three days were given to complete tasks while seven days were given for more advanced ones. Many of these tasks required me to spend sleepless nights in preparations before actually coming up with the code,” said Abishek who claims to be the first ever grand prize winner from Kerala in the globally renowned contest. He says writing code to convert a bunch of images in the SVG (scalable vector graphics) file format to the PDF (portable document) format as the most challenging of his tasks.

All the completed tasks were submitted by FOSSASIA to Google Code-in team who vetted it and announced him as a Google Code-in Grand Prize Winner. “I now plan to pursue computer science in IIT or even MIT,” said Abishek who fell in love with technology and computers at a very young age.

He is now awaiting a visa for flying to the Google headquarters in the U.S. to accept the award and attend a few seminars next month.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by M.P. Praveen / Kochi – May 22nd, 2018

Tribal research centre for Wayanad

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Field centre to study genetic diseases

The government has initiated measures to establish a tribal anthropological research centre in Wayanad with a field station at Attappady.

The project, to be implemented in association with the Kolkata-based Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI), seeks to make a detailed study of tribal communities in Kerala.  The field station will study the incidence of sickle cell anaemia and other genetic diseases among them.

AnSI Director Srivastava Vinay, Deputy Director Sasikumar, and Senior Human Ecologist Umeshkumar called on Minister for Tribal Welfare A.K. Balan here on Saturday and discussed the modalities of the proposal. The team later left for Wayanad.

The campus of the Institute of Tribal Studies and Research Centre at Sulthan Bathery is one of the possible locations for the project. Institute Director Pushpalatha informed the team that the proposal would be taken up with Calicut University.

The researchers later visited the Manthanam Adiya colony at Thirunelly and interacted with the residents. It was decided to take up a study of the tribe immediately. The incidence of sickle anemia among tribespeople in Wayanad would also be given priority.

A press note issued here said a seminar on the anthropology of tribespeople in the State would be held in August.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Kerala / by Special Correspondent / Thiruvananthapuram – May 19th, 2018

Eminent physicist Sudarshan passes away

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He was recommended for the Nobel Prize nine times, but never awarded

Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan, popularly known as E.C.G. Sudarshan, who made path-breaking discoveries in the realm of quantum optics died aged 86 in Texas on Monday morning.

Professor Sudarshan was a faculty at the University of Texas for the past 40 years. A globally-recognised theoretical physicist, Professor Sudarshan had often pointed out that Physics meant everything to him. He was recommended for the Nobel Prize for Physics nine times, but never awarded.

Professor Sudarshan made significant contributions to the field of theoretical physics — optical coherence, tachyons, quantum zeno effect, open quantum system, spin-statistics theorem, non-invariance groups, positive maps of density matrices and quantum computation, to name a few.

Born to E. I. Chandy and Achamma in Kottayam on September 16, 1931, Professor Sudarshan graduated from the Madras Christian College in 1951 and did his postgraduation from the University of Madras. He later moved to Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, where he worked for a brief period with Homi Bhabha, father of Indian nuclear programme before moving to University of Rochester in New York to work under American physicist Robert Marshak. They founded the V-A theory of of the weak force, which eventually paved the way for electroweak theory.

Contributions ignored

Professor Sudarshan also developed a quantum representation of coherent light later known as Sudarshan-Glauber representation. Glauber was awarded 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics for the contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence. Renowned scientists in India and abroad had then observed that the Nobel Committee had ignored the contribution of Professor Sudarshan, who justly deserved to share the coveted award.

An eminent scientist who drew parallels between science and Indian philosophy, Professor Sudarshan was honoured with several awards, including Padma Vibhushan (2007), Dirac Medal (2010), Bose Medal (1977) and C. V. Raman award (1970).

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Kerala / by Special Correspondent / Kochi – May 14th, 2018