Underwater archaeology is a nascent discipline, which has as its objective - exploration, excavation and preservation of the cultural heritage of man lying buried in the sea, lake and rivers. Sunken ships and submerged human settlements constitute a major part of man's heritage. Another objective of marine archaeology is to generate data useful for scientific study of sea-level fluctuations in the past, which will enable oceanographers to visualize the possible effects of marine transgression on ports and erosion of beaches. Maritime activity in India has a long history of more than 6000 years. By 3000 BC,the Indus people were trading overseas with Sumer (ancient Iraq), Egypt and Arabian countries. They were pioneers in building a tidal dock at Lothal (2500 BC). Their ships carried luxury goods to various countries. After the destruction of Harappa, Mahenjodaro, Lothal (Gujrat) as a sequel to natural calamities, there was no information about the political, cultural and social life in the subcontinent except what the Epics and Puranas could supply. The Marine Archaeology centre, established in 1980, undertook extensive underwater exploration off Gujrat coast in search of the legendary city of Dvaraka, said to have been submerged by the sea. This resulted in the discovery of the submerged Dvaraka, which proved that Mahabharata is not a myth. Similarly in the east coast, Poompuhar, the early Chola capital and an 18th century ship-wreck has also been discovered. Recently oceanographers are said to have found a submerged city, dating back to 5500 BC, in the Gulf of Cambay. This matter will also be discussed in the lecture.
The appearance of life on earth around 3.8 to 3.5 billion years ago from (most likely) inanimate matter remains one of the biggest mysteries of nature. The simplest unit of life that we know -- a cell of a bacterium -- is a structure of mind-boggling complexity, organization, and order, enclosed in a membrane. On the other hand, the surface of the earth about 4 billion years ago consisted of a much simpler and disordered mixture of small molecules, subject to a flux of energy and matter from outer space. The mystery is: How did the first living cell -- a tightly knit, self-reproducing, complex chemical organization of macromolecules -- arise spontaneously in this disordered mixture in a short span of a few hundred million years? This question consists of several smaller mysteries, both biochemical and `organizational', nested with each other. The talk will review some basic facts about living cells as well as conditions on the prebiotic earth as we know them, and elaborate upon the above puzzle. In particular, it will focus on the organizational question: How can a cooperative chemical network of molecules emerge spontaneously in a disordered soup and how long would such a process take? A possible answer to this question, based on a mathematical model and the idea of `autocatalytic sets', will be presented.
Boomerangs, which are basically curved, aerodynamically enhanced sticks, have long been in use as hunting tools in many countries (including India). But the returning boomerang, used as an amusing toy by Australian aboriginals, has attracted much attention for nearly two centuries. It is perhaps best seen as a flying top that uses aerodynamic and gyroscopic forces for 'steering' it back to the thrower.
A small collection of boomerangs acquired during visits to Australia will be on display.
"Ecotourism" is an environment-friendly, sustainable and nature-based form of tourism that is also meant to benefit indigenous people and local communities. But there are serious concerns about its current practice. The homelands and cultures of these people, left untouched by traditional tourism, are now commercialized by ecotourism. Governments of the developing and underdeveloped countries and multinational corporations disregard the interests of such people. The few benefits that the indigenous people derive from tourism are far outweighed by the damage it causes them. Indigenous people and local communities maintain high biological diversity within their traditional territories over generations. But they do not have direct participation in approving, planning, regulating, implementing and monitoring tourism activities. The social and political aspects of the community needs to be recognized. The indigenous peoples and local communities need to be considered as the equal stakeholders in Ecotourism.
Honeybees live in large colonies consisting of tens of thousands of worker bees, a few drones and a single queen. The older worker bees specialize in surveying the environment of the colony for nectar, pollen, water and propolis. Upon finding a profitable resource, worker bees return to their colonies and recruit other workers for transporting the discovered material to the nest. To do so, honeybees use a dance language. Being a system of communication involving arbitrary symbolic conventions, the honey bee dance language is thought to be closer to human language than anything else ever used by animals. In this talk I will introduce the honeybees, describe the properties of their dance language and review recent research aimed at convincing skeptics that honey bees do indeed use the information contained in the dance language to locate food and other resources.
The talk looks at the cultural products of Trinidadian Indians, descendants of indentured workers from the labour migrations of the late 19th century. These East Indians, as they are called locally, comprise - although by a small percentage - the majority population in the island republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and along with Guyanese Indians, make up the bulk of "Indians" in the Caribbean, where their ethnic and cultural identities are defined against the people of African origin, who have been politically dominant in the region. In areas of "African" dominance in the New World, music is arguably the most significant cultural practice, often creating an arena where all kinds of social and political issues are debated. When Hindi cinema enters such an arena, the visual image gets less emphasis and it is the music that contributes crucially to shaping "Indian" identities.
This talk owes its origin to a recent (spurious) claim about the discovery of a new value of Pi (= circumference / diameter), followed by the speculation about how science will be affected if the value of Pi is changed. Based on this question, the speaker tries to discover how much of mathematics is there in our everyday lives. In this talk, he will share some of his observations and also address some questions on the teaching and learning of mathematics.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging has revolutionized human diagnostics in the last decade, it is continuting to provide new inscights and information on human body and its functioning through developments such as MR-spectroscopy, MR-angiography, MR-microscopy and Functional-MRI. This talk will highlight the methodology of these various techniques with representative examples.
The monotonic increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during the past 100 years has caused a 0.7 degrees C increase in global mean temperature. Most of the increase in CO2 is on account fossil fuel burning in industrialized countries. In order to reduce the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere an international convention called Kyoto Protocol was adopted. Under this protocol the developed countries were expected to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels. Countries such as USA did not want to sign this protocol because it will have a direct impact on their lavish lifestyle. During the past ten years it has been shown that aerosols can also have an impact on global climate. Soot is an aerosol released due to incomplete combustion. In developing countries a lot of soot is released on account of the use of inefficient and old motor vehicles and biomass burning. Hence developed countries are trying to shift the blame and argue that global climate change may occur due to soot aerosols. Who is right?
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