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Open up to Science
Students shy away from pursuing Science courses as they are afraid of narrowing their career options. DT finds out more about this trend from students, teachers and counsellors
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| RIGHT CHOICE - NOMORE: Science courses are not popular choices with the college goers any more (Agencies Photo) |
Science courses are going abegging in many colleges, including the top ones who've resorted to a third and a fourth list to fill up the required number of seats.
Science courses are not popular choices with the college goers any more. The trend is partly due to the popular perception that a science degree will cut the students off from a career in business or commerce.
There are students who drop out after taking admission in these courses to pursue engineering after a year, when they make it to an engineering college. The strength is even lower for pure science courses.
However, what the students fail to realise is that while going for placements or pursuing an MBA programme, the course you have graduated in is of little relevance. Abhinav Dua, who has got through Chemistry (Hons) in Sri Venkateswara College is trying to change his options to include Mathematics in his graduation programme as he thinks it's a better option than Chemistry.
However, what the students fail to realise is that while going for placements or pursuing an MBA programme, the course you have graduated in is of little relevance. Abhinav Dua, who has got through Chemistry (Hons) in Sri Venkateswara College is trying to change his options to include Mathematics in his graduation programme as he thinks it's a better option than Chemistry.
He says, "I aspire to do an MBA in finance. Having Maths as a subject would give me an edge as Maths, Commerce or Economics graduates are preferred for such courses. If I choose to study Chemistry, I think I'll be limiting my options and choices." And through his opinion, Abhinav is also voicing the concerns of hundreds like him who feel that taking up science limits their career prospects.
However, the truth is very different from these notions. Uttam Mukherjee got placed with a top consultancy after studying Chemistry (Hons) from St Stephen's. He plans to do an MBA later. He says, "I had to face a group discussion to qualify a round for my job at the consultancy. Once I cleared the group discussion I was treated like any other applicant and I fared well in the interview. I feel it's about proving oneself at the interview. Now, I shall have work experience and it'll be counted as a plus point when I want to do an MBA. Being a Science student doesn't limit your chances to be enrolled in an MBA program, there isn't any discrimination."
However, the truth is very different from these notions. Uttam Mukherjee got placed with a top consultancy after studying Chemistry (Hons) from St Stephen's. He plans to do an MBA later. He says, "I had to face a group discussion to qualify a round for my job at the consultancy. Once I cleared the group discussion I was treated like any other applicant and I fared well in the interview. I feel it's about proving oneself at the interview. Now, I shall have work experience and it'll be counted as a plus point when I want to do an MBA. Being a Science student doesn't limit your chances to be enrolled in an MBA program, there isn't any discrimination."
Teachers are aware of the current scene and are doing their best to counsel the students and tell them the facts about the scope of Science. They assert that doing a science course is certainly not the dead-end to a student's career.
Vibha Saxena, who works in the Chemistry Department of Venkateswara College says, "When parents and students come to meet teachers, they want to know about the scope of science courses. Along with the students, their parents also feel that options are limited, but that's not true. A person with Chemistry can enroll himself for an MBA or get a good job in another stream. It's the lack of information that makes the people feel this way."
Career counsellor Pervin Malhotra says, "Doing a pure science course doesn't limit options in a student's academic life. Whether it's law or management, everything is an open option for students. Nothing can stop them from taking up good jobs or a career in a different stream."
source : the times of india
source : the times of india
Nanogenerator Fueled by Vibrations
An array of zinc-oxide nanowires that generates current when vibrated with ultrasonic waves could provide a new way to power biological sensors and nanodevices.
An array of zinc-oxide nanowires that generates current when vibrated with ultrasonic waves could provide a new way to power biological sensors and nanodevices.
Using ultrasonic waves to vibrate an array of zinc-oxide nanowires, researchers at Georgia Tech have made a tiny generator that can produce direct current. By taking advantage of the fact that zinc-oxide nanowires are piezoelectric--they can convert mechanical energy into electricity--and by finding a way to collect electricity from multiple nanowires, the researchers have taken a big step toward a practical nanoscale power generator.
"We can make each and every wire simultaneously and continuously produce electricity," says Zhong Lin Wang, a professor of materials science at Georgia Tech, who led the work. In a Science paper published this week, Wang and his colleagues demonstrate a prototype device, about two millimeters square, that generates around 0.5 nanoamperes of current for more than an hour.
"The technique essentially provides a new method of power generation," says Pulickel Ajayan, a materials engineering professor at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute. He says that the generator could be coupled with devices that are difficult or inefficient to power using conventional means.
One important application is powering implantable biological sensors. According to Thomas Thundat, who researches nanoscale biological sensors at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, current battery technology limits the use of microelectromechanical sensors that measure cancer biomarkers, blood pH, and glucose. These sensors are getting smaller and smaller, but conventional chemical batteries can't keep up. "[The batteries] are huge and they run out of power...most of the time it's the battery that's big compared to the sensing part," Thundat says. "We have always been looking for very small power sources that don't need refilling." The new nanowire generator looks like a promising answer, he says. It could be implanted in the body, and, driven by muscle contractions, blood flow, or external vibrations transmitted through tissue, it could power the sensors.
The generator could also drive nanodevices. Wang's research group has previously made nanowire pressure sensors that can detect extremely small piconewton forces as well as nanowire gas sensors. (See "A Nano Pressure Sensor.") Instead of an external battery, these devices could run on wind or water flow using the new generator.
A key innovation that has led to the nanowire generator is a new electrode design. The surface of the platinum-coated electrode has a zigzag shape like the teeth of a saw: it has alternating parallel peaks and trenches. This zigzag electrode goes on top of an array of upright zinc-oxide nanowires, and its teeth can push many nanowires at the same time if it moves up and down.
To vibrate the electrode, the researchers package the device, put it in water, and expose it to ultrasonic waves. As the zigzag electrode moves up and down, its peaks push and bend the nanowires, which generate electric current that the electrode collects simultaneously. "The wires can be compressed, can be vibrated left or right--it doesn't matter: all the current adds up in the same direction," Wang says.
This is the first demonstration of a direct current output from nanowires that are driven by mechanical energy, says Charles Lieber, a chemistry professor at Harvard University. The new development is a "key step towards novel, cost-effective, adaptable, and mobile applications of nanogenerators in nanotechnology," he says.
For real-world applications, the current generated by the nanogenerator would need to be higher and more stable. Wang's research group is working on improvements toward that goal. Right now, the nanowires are grown randomly, and the researchers estimate that anywhere between 250 and 1,000 nanowires contribute to the current. This is less than 1 percent of all the wires in the array, Wang says. An important next step is to grow a more regular array of nanowires that are uniform in size and height. Matching the nanowire pattern with the pattern on the electrode would utilize all the nanowires, increasing the current output and making it more stable, he says.
The research team also needs to increase the generator's lifetime. It runs for a little more than an hour right now, and Wang says the researchers are not sure why it dies after that time. As a proof of concept, though, Thundat says that this work is a "major advancement in the power-generation area."
"We can make each and every wire simultaneously and continuously produce electricity," says Zhong Lin Wang, a professor of materials science at Georgia Tech, who led the work. In a Science paper published this week, Wang and his colleagues demonstrate a prototype device, about two millimeters square, that generates around 0.5 nanoamperes of current for more than an hour.
"The technique essentially provides a new method of power generation," says Pulickel Ajayan, a materials engineering professor at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute. He says that the generator could be coupled with devices that are difficult or inefficient to power using conventional means.
One important application is powering implantable biological sensors. According to Thomas Thundat, who researches nanoscale biological sensors at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, current battery technology limits the use of microelectromechanical sensors that measure cancer biomarkers, blood pH, and glucose. These sensors are getting smaller and smaller, but conventional chemical batteries can't keep up. "[The batteries] are huge and they run out of power...most of the time it's the battery that's big compared to the sensing part," Thundat says. "We have always been looking for very small power sources that don't need refilling." The new nanowire generator looks like a promising answer, he says. It could be implanted in the body, and, driven by muscle contractions, blood flow, or external vibrations transmitted through tissue, it could power the sensors.
The generator could also drive nanodevices. Wang's research group has previously made nanowire pressure sensors that can detect extremely small piconewton forces as well as nanowire gas sensors. (See "A Nano Pressure Sensor.") Instead of an external battery, these devices could run on wind or water flow using the new generator.
A key innovation that has led to the nanowire generator is a new electrode design. The surface of the platinum-coated electrode has a zigzag shape like the teeth of a saw: it has alternating parallel peaks and trenches. This zigzag electrode goes on top of an array of upright zinc-oxide nanowires, and its teeth can push many nanowires at the same time if it moves up and down.
To vibrate the electrode, the researchers package the device, put it in water, and expose it to ultrasonic waves. As the zigzag electrode moves up and down, its peaks push and bend the nanowires, which generate electric current that the electrode collects simultaneously. "The wires can be compressed, can be vibrated left or right--it doesn't matter: all the current adds up in the same direction," Wang says.
This is the first demonstration of a direct current output from nanowires that are driven by mechanical energy, says Charles Lieber, a chemistry professor at Harvard University. The new development is a "key step towards novel, cost-effective, adaptable, and mobile applications of nanogenerators in nanotechnology," he says.
For real-world applications, the current generated by the nanogenerator would need to be higher and more stable. Wang's research group is working on improvements toward that goal. Right now, the nanowires are grown randomly, and the researchers estimate that anywhere between 250 and 1,000 nanowires contribute to the current. This is less than 1 percent of all the wires in the array, Wang says. An important next step is to grow a more regular array of nanowires that are uniform in size and height. Matching the nanowire pattern with the pattern on the electrode would utilize all the nanowires, increasing the current output and making it more stable, he says.
The research team also needs to increase the generator's lifetime. It runs for a little more than an hour right now, and Wang says the researchers are not sure why it dies after that time. As a proof of concept, though, Thundat says that this work is a "major advancement in the power-generation area."
SOURCE : www.technologyreview.com
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7:11 AM
Crawling robot reveals how fish evolved
The first animal to crawl onto land from the ocean probably looked a bit like today's salamander, and researchers have wondered how it was able to switch from swimming to walking. Now, European scientists have built a robot with a primitive electric nervous system that they say mimics that change in motion. The robot doesn't look much like a salamander it's nearly a yard long and made of nine bright yellow plastic segments each containing a battery and microcontroller but it does seem to move like one. The scientists chose the amphibious salamander as a model because the animal more closely resembles the first land-dwelling vertebrates. The point was to understand how a spinal cord developed to direct a swimming motion that could handle the different coordination needed between a body and its limbs for walking, according to the team led by Auke Jan Ijspeert of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland. So they first designed a basic nervous system modelled on that of the lamprey, a long, primitive eel-like fish. Then that design was modified to show how it could evolve into a nervous system that also could control walking. And to prove their point, they built the salamander robot which walks across floors, down the beach and even manages to swim in Lake Geneva. Its swimming motion uses undulations like the lamprey, while on land the robot uses a slow stepping gait with diagonally opposed limbs moving together while the body forms an S-shape. The work, the researchers reported on Friday in the journal Science, is "a demonstration of how robots can be used to test biological models, and in return, how biology can help in designing robot locomotion controllers." Studies of the robot show that our fishy ancestors likely used their primitive brains to make the evolutionary leap from water worlds to terra firma. The research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the French Ministry for Research and Technology.
SOURCE : THE TIMES OF INDIA
The first animal to crawl onto land from the ocean probably looked a bit like today's salamander, and researchers have wondered how it was able to switch from swimming to walking. Now, European scientists have built a robot with a primitive electric nervous system that they say mimics that change in motion. The robot doesn't look much like a salamander it's nearly a yard long and made of nine bright yellow plastic segments each containing a battery and microcontroller but it does seem to move like one. The scientists chose the amphibious salamander as a model because the animal more closely resembles the first land-dwelling vertebrates. The point was to understand how a spinal cord developed to direct a swimming motion that could handle the different coordination needed between a body and its limbs for walking, according to the team led by Auke Jan Ijspeert of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland. So they first designed a basic nervous system modelled on that of the lamprey, a long, primitive eel-like fish. Then that design was modified to show how it could evolve into a nervous system that also could control walking. And to prove their point, they built the salamander robot which walks across floors, down the beach and even manages to swim in Lake Geneva. Its swimming motion uses undulations like the lamprey, while on land the robot uses a slow stepping gait with diagonally opposed limbs moving together while the body forms an S-shape. The work, the researchers reported on Friday in the journal Science, is "a demonstration of how robots can be used to test biological models, and in return, how biology can help in designing robot locomotion controllers." Studies of the robot show that our fishy ancestors likely used their primitive brains to make the evolutionary leap from water worlds to terra firma. The research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the French Ministry for Research and Technology.
SOURCE : THE TIMES OF INDIA
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2:29 AM
