Responsibility: A deeper Reflection

As children, we hear the word responsibility countless times. It often slips past us like any other word, carrying little weight. Yet, as I grow older and reflect more deeply, I realize that responsibility is not just a word—it is a principle that shapes lives.

To be responsible is to fulfill what is entrusted to us, whether assigned tasks or expectations. Sadly, this quality often seems absent today. Many children neglect responsibility for their own education, leaving parents and teachers to struggle to instill it. Vendors fail to deliver goods on time or process bills properly. In such cases, responsibility is replaced by endless follow‑ups—someone else must chase to ensure things get done. In fact, one way to measure responsibility is to ask  - How often do others need to follow up with you?

In the professional world, responsibility is directly tied to value. Those who take ownership of important tasks are the ones most highly rewarded. The greater the responsibility, the greater the trust—and the greater the compensation it commands. On the other hand, simply “showing up” or leaving as soon as the boss departs is not responsibility; it is avoidance.

Responsibility also has a profound personal dimension. It means taking charge of your own actions, your own choices, and ultimately, your own life. Too often, people begin any account of misfortune by blaming others. But true responsibility means refusing to shift blame. When you are in charge, you own the outcomes—good or bad. The most successful individuals are those who embrace responsibility fully, for themselves and for others.

Responsibility, then, is not just about duty—it is about integrity, growth, and empowerment. It is about being accountable not only to others but also to yourself. So I urge you - take this word seriously. Live it, practice it, and let it guide your path.

Days of a Scientist - Juggling overlapping things..

These days we are asked to provide several things within a day or so. It typically involves project reports, work updates, presentations, apart from other jobs such as processing bills for purchase. In between if I find time, I sit with my students to discuss science.

There are days when I sit in my office and try to read a paper when someone distracts me. This happens every 10 mins. Let me tell you, with age reading a paper has become kind of a daunting task. Lately, I find myself busy doing multiple things within a given time. Not that it actually adds any value to my scientific career, but it has become a constant feature nevertheless.

August, September, very busy time of the year. Teaching Ph. D course work.  8th to 12th September skill development classes from my lab. Second day is entirely mine. Every time, I try to teach something new and it becomes quite taxing. Preparing lectures with new content and so on.

12th - Teaching course work, conducted Essay competition for wards of IICB employees for the CSIR foundation day.

Meanwhile, I was given the job of stage and hall management committee of CSIR - Foundation day program. I had to manage meetings in between my workshop activities.

15th to 19th September 2025 - BIC workshop in TRUE campus guest house room number 120.

22nd to 26th September 2025 - NNP workshop in TRUE campus guest house room number 120.

15th was the starting day. We could manage to teach all the sessions and hands on properly.

16th - I had to deliver a lecture in Central school in salt lake under Jigyasa program. Went well.

17th - we had guest speaker Prof. Ahmed. I had to be there.

18th - workshop

19th - Another guest speaker came. I had to pick him up from airport followed by talks.

It was a busy day with lots of overlapping activities. Research Associate interview and chairing sessions at INCOB 25 in Bose institute were two overlapping events. Managed the interview while sitting outside the auditorium of Bose institute followed by straight heading to auditorium for chairing a very important session. I was also supposed to be there for a TNPC meeting.

Not to mention it was also the last date for completing the discard jobs of the PIR items. It meant checking the PIR items, physically moving them to a designated area and documenting it.

In between hindi pakhwada and other things were going on.

20th September working day. Also day to take the candidate on Botanical Garden trip.

22nd September, first day for NNP workshop, also CSIR foundation day. So, I had to shuttle between the campuses for running workshop as well as for doing my duty.

23rd September, incessant flood and also interview at science city, so had to be there at home to conduct online interview till 8 PM in the night.

24th September  Second monitoring committee meeting of AMR

25th September workshop

26th September exams and valedictory ceremony for NNP project. 

Awards and recognition in India - the way I see it

 I was never into applying for any award, memberships or recognition because I feel that we should not apply or influence someone to get recognized and till now I hold the same ground. I feel recognition should come from the work you do not by lobbying or by knowing someone. As I see more and more people recognized by their contribution to a certain field I fail to find where the real contribution is. In India, if one wins one award, they also win all others one after the other. Because one recognition gets some visibility that drives the other and so on. Now, I take a pause and would like to ponder over the quality of the people who determine who should be awarded. Do they read enough papers, do they update themselves with the technology OR they are part of some gossip club where science and technology is gossiped and hearsay determines the future.  Recently, 75 women were celebrated for their contribution in STEAM. Now I am wondering where are their contributions hiding. Who has decided that. Sadly, I see many distinct names missing who are in a much better place to be nominated rather than the people who adorn this list. I feel it is time, we stop celebrating such successes and stop spreading lies, give promotions and recognition to such people if we really want to enhance our science. 

Getting a driver's license in Kolkata

 Thanks to Nitin Gadkari ji's initiative, now there is a national portal for obtaining a driver's license. The site to visit is https://vahan.nic.in/nrservices/ . There you register your intent to get yourself a driver's license. 

I have made one 20 years back in Bangalore in 2001. There, I remember, there was a written test conducted where we took paper  and pen and wrote the test in a room. The results were declared almost immediately. Subsequently, there was a small buffer time within which one needed to give road the test. It was indeed a road test, where one has to drive on the road with real vehicles and animals and humans all around. Both the tests were fair so to say and I passed the road test in the second attempt (failed the first one: Another long story. Road test was going fine till a dog appeared suddenly out of nowhere. I stopped the car and could not start due to nervousness) and got a license for 20 years (Till 2021). So, I was wondering whether to go for a renewal or take a fresh test. Taking a fresh one seemed more appropriate. So, we filled the forms and submitted the documents online. Our test dates were scheduled and the time slot was also scheduled. The date of written test, we had to go to the DMV (Kasba). They verify the papers (mainly Adhaar card and address proof etc.). Then an OTP is generated that has the login and password information for the written test. One can get the photograph taken digitally and get the signature digitally registered in the same office at the same time by standing in another queue. After that, using the login and password, one can go for the computerized test. Note: If you happen to go anytime other than your scheduled slot, the system will not take you. For this test, there are many online study materials one can find. I find this link very useful: https://indianauto.com/tips/guidelines-on-getting-loan-against-your-car-nid6418 . Once I started answering the multiple choice questions, I get to see my scores. The moment the scores are more than 50% of the total mark, you don't have to proceed any further. You will immediately get an OTP that you have cleared the Lerner's permit. At that point of time, you can also go to the Vahaan site and download the learner's permit.

Regarding the road test, there is a buffer time (usually between a month to 6 months) within which you have to go and give the road test (here the road test does not mean actual road test. Only a small place marked for going forward and reverse to complete the test). So, on our scheduled date and time, we went for the test. Unfortunately, the place is extremely crowded and chaotic and an unsuspecting mind will not be able to figure out what to do. After several rounds of asking we figured out that there is a place where the car has to go 100 meters forward and 100 meters reverse to test driving. That is it. We somehow managed to go near the test site. They were letting the driving school people to precede everyone else. After waiting for a couple of hours, I went and asked the MVI when they are going to take our test. They said, you just wait. After the driving school is done, you can give your test. But I protested. So they made me write an application that I need to give test in our own vehicle. [Another alert, always carry plain paper, pen, staplers and glue stick if you are going to any such places to avoid un-necessary hassles.] I did just that and then they allowed us to give the test. The test lasted for 2 minutes. After the test, they signed on the document and wrote "passed". They said nothing. I was wondering if the test is done, is that it or we needed to wait longer and what paper to give what to take. Nada - nothing no communication. We waited and saw what the driving school was doing. They handed over bulk paper and per candidate they were paying the MVI 200 INR. We were not sure what was that for though. They did ask us 200 rupees in sign language but we ignored. We did not realize that we had to take the copy of the page signed as passed before handing them over. Since we didnot pay any extra money, we were not certain whatever will happen to our recently "passed" trophy paper. We handed over all the documents to them "without taking copy" and were extremely anxious about this. Then the waiting started.

We were checking the web site for the status. On the web site, it showed us that ground test is conducted and road test is awaited. We were wondering what is that next road test is all about. In front of our eyes so many driving school people zoomed in and out with the 2 minutes test. Do we have to give another test? Since we did not have copy of the "pass" signed paper neither did we pay that 200 rupees, we were very anxious.  Just like that one week passed has and the status on the web site did not change. Then we decided to visit the DMV personally to see what is happening there. To our surprise, even if there are some automation, but the human components are slow and there are no accountability there. Even if someone i sitting at one place, there are no system is check whether the paper actually moved. After waiting in DMV for several hours, we discovered that there was a saint like person called "Bablu da" who does work selflessly. It is rare to find such people in government offices. Even though I work for the government, I still have this impression about all things government. We approached him and he pulled out the file and took our paper (among the few unfortunate ones who still did not show up at DMV) and put it in front of the signing authority. We got an OTP to our phone and could download the provisional drier's license from the web site. Now the status is pending at the "printing" stage. We don't know when that is going to happen and whether we need to discover another Bablu da who will escalate the printing of the license. By the way, we had driving test on 21st Dec 21 and got the approval on 28th Dec 21. So long as this is a valid document we are not approaching anyone...

Altogether we have paid Rs. 550 as fee and not spend anything else for the whole thing...

Congratulations!! To Mayuri!!

Congratulations Mayuri!! From all of us!! For passing the most exhaustive exams that humanity faces. 

It really feels a kind of weird to see our name and IICB for a different reason than what was meant to be.. I feel like sharing my thoughts on this... 

It has been an overwhelming week for me. Completion of course work, beginning of skill courses, CSIR foundation day, paper deadlines,  institutional administrative job, guiding students, doing paperwork for funding agencies on the work front. At the home front, running a home as a late bloomer sandwich generation where parents and child's well being are completely lying on my shoulder. My ever so reluctant playful child's exams, meeting with various societal obligations, travels - it is a super busy life. I am not complaining about any of it, since fully aware I chose to come back to India for all these only. Now maintaining my sanity and getting charged every morning with a proper exercise regime is often taking a backseat. But this is just a regular day for a PI. But there are days when one of your best students chooses to give UPSC exams a try and successfully clears it. This examination attracts a lot of publicity and media frenzy. I see a lot of activities happening around when she clears the exams and mentions the PI' s support as one of the contributing factors. While it feels good to be appreciated, I have a weird feeling. Suddenly giving so much importance to something that was clearly not in my job profile neither was in my priority list.  I also feel the pressure the other students might be feeling right now. 

When someone congratulates me, I have mixed feelings. While I feel super happy that my student has achieved the un - achievable and has acknowledged me, but I wonder what has it got to do with me? Apart from being plain happy when I see one of my students will probably have a good and respectable life, but as a researcher I feel it is kind of my failure that I could not keep one of my best to stay motivated to do science.  What we probably need for our country at this time is to have fiery innovators with the best mind. The scientific innovators who can think independently fill in the innovation void we have. Launch products make a difference. 

We spend money on research but are unable to make a dent in the global scenery. We spend endless hours at work without getting a product at the end of our time as a scientist. We are not providing the best options to our students who work so hard to get a PhD. At the end of their PhD journey, they are left with very few options that include going for a postdoc abroad and struggling further to get college and university jobs that are too few. Academic/scientific jobs are even more scarce and the recruitment procedure is extremely arduous and long. We are not creating the best opportunities for our young minds, therefore, there is a kind of uncertainty developing in  them. Can we change anything about that? Can we create more opportunities where our young minds will feel secure to complete a Ph.D. and will be assured of a job? Can we have world class University and Institutes funded in public private partnerships where we have innovations seeing a clear way ahead for translation? Can we ease our purchase processes so that we don't spend 80% of our time complying with the ever changing purchase rules? Can we stop consolidating our research funds at the end of every March 31st, so spending will be meaningful? Your comments are most welcome!!

My Farewell Speech

When I joined this lab, O'dear,

I came across people

Who immediately became close and near

Arpita, Madhu, Subhadeep and Lubna

Our first trip to Shantiniketan was euphoric

And a total hit, hai na

We collected our cyano from there

And all of us 

Started taking their care

Ma'am said, we are sitting on gold mine

True it is, they are precious greens

That could make our lab shine

On fridays and saturdays, we were visited by a special guest

Not actually a guest, Ada became one of the labmates, 

The smallest, the cutest

Neha, Gyan, Sushma, Devdas, Madhvi, Shreya

The trainees kept the youthfulness alive

With their chitchats, their hehe haha

Samrat and Mayuri accompanied me in the coursework

We went back to college days 

With our assignments and homeworks

Arijit, Abhishek and Pijush became our labmates

In no time, 

We started sharing our fates

Postdocs were more like friends and less like a senior

Diyadi, Rajibda, Adityada guided in our works,

Made concepts clearer

I got married and had to leave Kolkata

The difficult truth of our society

I got Delhi as my new pata

But, my fate was tied with this lab

I successfully convinced my near ones

That we do good work, that our lab is fab

I came back to Kolkata and found newbies with their own sets of tool

Shashikant, Asha were later joined by

Priya, Geeta, Subhajeet and Kajul

I wish that this lab grows and becomes the best

Believing and leaving to the juniors

All the rest 

Google meet Camera issues (Camera starting... never started)

 Ever since the pandemic has raised its ugly head, most of the meetings, classes are held online. Our CSIR family came up with MS Team, and there is this zoom meetings and Webex platforms. While all of them are fine so far, I had this strange issue with my google meet where, from my laptop, I could never start my camera. As a result, nobody could see me. Although this is not a problem, often my audio did not work. This created trouble while taking online classes. I had to come to office during wee hours to attend a meeting launched in google meet platform. While all other apps were fine with video, this problem persisted with google meet. Not to mention, this is the free platform that many of us like to use only added to my troubles. I checked all my settings, gave all desktop apps permission to access my camera regardless of the security threat - still all failed. The last nail on the head was when my daughters online classes started and teacher could not see her.

Today I decided to do one last try. I tried with an external camera but still no luck. Finally I started browsing again to find a solution. And dang this is what I got from google search @ https://support.google.com/meet/thread/41815190?hl=en

This is what I exactly did and my camera started working. Thanks to the amazing people for posting the response. In brave browser, this is the url where you can disable and relaunch the browser.

brave://flags/#enable-media-foundation-video-capture

On the first item "Media Panel Video Capture" make it disabled and relaunch the browser. it works fine.

Joshua Hill [Kesterson ES]

8/13/20

SOLUTION FOUND!!!!

Thanks to User 17638620824911394124 for finding this.

Like everyone else my camera worked fine on Meet with Chrome for months, then BAM, stopped working. Works fine in other browsers (Firefox) and programs (Zoom). Tried everything that everyone else mentioned and nothing.

So please try this:

1. Open Chrome browser

2. Copy and paste the following into the address bar at the top of the browser:

chrome://flags/#enable-media-foundation-video-capture

3. In the drop down for "MediaFoundation Video Capture" select "Disabled"

4. Relaunch Chrome and it should be fixed.

Google, WTF!!!!! How are y'all not on top of this? Especially during this pandemic and with so many inquiring about this rampant problem. Thanks again to User 17638620824911394124!

Community Specialist

 

Luong

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A bad day and rendezvous with our own random musings blogspot!

Yesterday evening, suddenly I felt all blank and had pinching headache on left side twice. I left for home and had a small fight with Nikhil after which I tried sleeping but could sleep only after 2 hours of uneasiness and struggle. Today morning, again I was feeling sick and lots of emotional turbulence was stopping me from starting my day. I dropped an email to Ma’am that I would not be able to come to lab and then whole day did nothing. Nikhil asked me what has happened to me but there were too many reasons for my present state of mind. I could figure out what was wrong but was unable to find a way to come out of this seemingly never ending situation of problems.

Since some time now, I have been multitasking in both professional and personal lives; professional not as much as personal though. Professionally, multitasking not because I have been running from chemistry lab to our wetlab and sometimes bioinformatics but because since I joined back from January, I felt few times that I have been running more to R&C, AO chamber, Accounts, Bill than doing my research work. And this would not end just running downstairs but also several rounds of calls to ICMR and then going and personally meeting the AO there.

Personally, things changed for me two years back after I got married. Life does change for everyone after marriage but more important is how those changes affect you. I got married to a family which is not entirely different from mine but their outlook is different in several things and situations. Where before marriage, I have learnt that girls and boys are equal, suddenly I started witnessing several occasions of gender inequality and though I must say, things are not as strict and orthodox as compared to what many other girls have to go through but for me, its not only marriage but my Dad’s ill health too. And mostly, I being the one to look after them, time demands seems quite tight. And its not just the time demands but more of emotional and mental work to convince my husband’s family that girls have their own family too and though ageold traditions say that girls leave their parents after marriage, I don’t think it’s right to leave my ill father alone. But, my husband’s family expects me to give them more time. And, I find myself struggling balancing time between work, my parents and my husband’s family.

While all this was going in my head back and forth, I opened my laptop and opened the random musings blogspot. I read what I had posted long back(The uncertainty principle and challenging the imposiible), I read Ma’am’s blog (set your priorities reset your goals), Madhu’s blog(Keeping yourself fit 1 year of journey of fitness) and suddenly I felt emotional and empowered too.  

I felt less anxious. I observed we used to write so nice things. These blogs didn’t take away my worries but they gave me strength to carryon. Thanks to all of us for contributing to the blogsite. I hope we all will continue to write.

Madhu's Acsir guidelines for thesis submission

PhD thesis is a big thing to write and submit. submission is a big event. after submitting we have to follow up at-least weekly thrice otherwise will not be be knowing whats happening with a thesis. we are not aware of guidelines and rules. I learnt certain guidelines in a hard and tough way while submitting my thesis. I am writing it here maybe helpful for people ( but they can change the guideline anytime)

1.  make sure you have your thesis ready before DAC 4 then give DAC 4 ie open colloqium.
2. DAC 4 is the last chance to finalize your thesis title.
3. If your giving new title to your thesis make sure before DAC 4 you give a letter to Dean of Acsir and get it approved for thesis title change.
4. once you are done with DAC 4 after 15 days you can submit your thesis. make sure you to pay thesis submission fee of Rs 5000.
5.  print 2 hard copies of your thesis co-ordinator asks for it.
6. Documents for thesis submission are given below

1. final thesis with pdf (should contain certificate from your PI that should be attached, check format)
2. your passport size photo
3. High school certificate.
4. Acsir semester fee receipts
5. Thesis submission fee receipt
6. Grade card (from coordinator)
7. list of publications.
8. synopsis
9. thesis submission checklist excel file needs to be filled with your passport size photo along with personal details.
10. CSIR 800 project (Date should be before the DAC 4 )
11. Review article ( should not be having identical title as your thesis. date should be before DAC 4)
12. Project proposal ( same as above )
13. DAC 1 report
14. DAC 2 report
15. DAC 3 report
16. DAC 4 report
17. comprehensive report
18. list of examiner ( 8 members  as per present new rule 3 member can be given from same city must be from different institutes, you should not be having publications with examiner, details should be filled from the given format get it signed from PI and coordinator in all the pages)
19. Registration letter

These are the documents  required for thesis submission. make sure you make a PDF of all this and make a zip folder as well as separate folder containing all this and copy in PD and give it to coordinator.

Make sure you don't make any mistakes on titles, name, dates, grades.

In Review Article and project proposal grade should be written as satisfactory or unsatisfactory, don't put any other grades. Make the front page ready.


make sure you don't have any compliance with sem fee confirm you paid all the fee before submission and submit your thesis .


all front pages , excel files are available with me, can be shared upon request.

These are the rules needs to be followed when i submitted my thesis , often change the rules.
Happy thesis submission :)

Remembering my homeless day 5 years back today

I am remembering this day today 5 years back when I was literally homeless (rather we were homeless). It was 4th of July 2012, the independence day of USA when people enjoy a day off and a long weekend. In our community (Ruidosa Ridge), there was a small celebration where they usually block the traffic where children parade. We were most of the time onlookers through our large front windows. Suddenly we saw a SUV pulled off few meters away from our home. The man and his family got down off the SUV, of course we know them, they are the people who bought our home for a throw away price!! In case you want to take peek here is the image that we took ourself! https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/601-Flintwood-Ln,-Arlington,-TX-76002_rb/?fromHomePage=true&shouldFireSellPageImplicitClaimGA=false&fromHomePageTab=buy They are a nice Vietnamese family. We signed the documents on 25th June 2012 and the condition was we would stay there 10 more days in the house. We thought may be he dropped to enjoy the independence day parade in the community. He came inside the house and sat with no signs of going out. Our home almost empty except for few items that we would need to sustain our self for another month in the country. He and his kids came and he ordered his older kids to sit on the couch saying "Go sit on your sofa". I was like ?!!!! Then at 9 AM they blocked the traffic in front of our house for the annual parade. He sits and tells us you can take your time to vacate. We were like, was it not suppose to be tomorrow?! As per our calculation, July 5th should be the 10th day. In any case, since he bought the house, we have nothing to say in this scenario. We immediately booked a hotel near by and planned to move and told him that we will leave for the hotel after sometime. His youngest was 2 years old and was crying for food, at that point instead of going back, he called his wife and asked her to bring the food. We looked at each others face and realized that he is determined to evacuate us on that particular hour!! The milk was still boiling on the gas stove and we were still sipping hot tea. Then we sprang to our feet and began preparing for evacuation on a war footing! We packed whatever we could, rest we dumped on the dumping place in front. At that time the traffic curb had been lifted, parade was over. It was approximately 10 AM in the morning. I poured hot tea into the flask and rest all in the back of the car. Off we left for the hotel... Hotel was just 10 minutes away. Hotel guy said check in time is at 2 PM and since it was a holiday they were packed, cant take us early! We roamed with the luggage at the back of the car from hotel to hotel, and all the hotels had the same story.... Finally after 2 hours of roaming, we found one that allowed us a check in at 12 PM, and there we went. The next day was a long day for me because I had to leave for Virginia for the annual OMGN workshop, so it was essential that I take some break and PREPARE for the workshop. Thank god it is over and thank god for the 2 hours homelessness. It teaches you the value of a shelter.

Keeping yourself fit 1 year of journey of fitness

The reason am writing this blog is people at work and in my institute regularly ask me how I maintain my fitness? since when i started this journey i was weighing 96kgs in december 2016 now I came down to 79 Kgs and people enquire me about the journey which I had come, i always try to tell them and motivate them, some people ask for the tips, diets and exercises which I follow, I had PCO's that problem also got solved because of my routine. In short I will share my routine , it will be useful for someone those who are trying hard to get fit, Am still on my way I have to go long way to reach my goal. I went for swimming as well, I learnt swimming, had a drawback of swimming in chlorinated water makes the hairfall worst, I stopped due to that.

1. In 1 year I ran around 5-6 marathons obviously first 1 was 5 km and i was having heavy breathing, later on when i try running continuously Am able to make it.

2. I started with exercising regularly as a starting point i tried to wake at 7:00 am and walk for 45 mins.

3. Then i started waking at 6 exercise continuously, i started liking running, I have a passion for cycling, on weekends i ride my bicycle for some 10 to 12 Kms.

Other than running the exercises can be done are

1. plancks ( my favourite)

2. Jumbo squats.

3. Crunches.

4. Half push up or full push ups.

5. Leg raising.

 

This link contains few exercises which can be followed

http://www.prevention.com/fitness/moves-tone-inner-thighs

6. lunges.

Important thing is dont forget to stretch yourself before and after exercises, otherwise it will hurt your muscles, If your running try doing streches.

Food i consumed

1. morning breakfast milk, muesli sometimes i have a boiled egg or omelette along with it or if i get bored I eat egg and bread toast or Upma .

2. Eat some fruits also grapes, oranges, prunes or apples, I compulsory eat 3 dates per day, drink water in empty stomach, while exercising please hydrate urself well otherwise will lead to cramp , I had faced this problem.

3. I have cofee and Tea in between with 2-3 biscuits if am hungry.

4. Lunch I eat 2 roti, chicken or fish and sabji along with curd in canteen since I stay away from home sometimes I take dal as well.

5. During winter I had chance to get fresh green veggies so I just take ( carrot, beans, peas, tamato, broccoli, capsicum, sweet-corn , coriander along with chicken steam piece without chicken also you can eat, for flavour u can add the soup-powder to it ).

6. In summer i prefer eating milk with oats or poha or 2 roti and tadka dal important dinner time is 8.30 to 9 and sleep by 11 or 11.30

7. I eat rice weekly once on Sunday noon. 

These are the steps I have followed to maintain my fitness and get cured from PCO's and Menstrual Cramps.

Have a Healthy body or life , automatically you will get or success in your life, without good health you cant do anything, no use of job or money if  you dont have a healthy body. Hope this blog tries to help everyone those who are trying to loose weight. Good luck and get motivated and motivate others and help others to have a healthy life.

Tips for maintaining the health and especially people with poly-cystic ovary

People Iam among the one those who suffer from poly-cystic ovary (PCO) now a days it has become  common among the young girls and teenagers, I wanna give tip to the person those who have PCO with obese. Iam having this PCO diagnosed from 2012 with irregular Menstrual flow and heavy cramps. I suffered with these problems. I tried many things homeopathy, ramdev medicines, allopathy my treatement started from AIMS and tried the ayurveda nothing helped me . I started to realise that just increasing my weight with acne, nothing else changing. Then I started strictly probing to this issue, from the December 16th  2015, started with the physical activities like morning 1.5 hours exercising and changed my routine become a morning person and stopped eating chocolates, icecream, any fried items, briyani etc . . In the starting some times I couldn't control my taste buds I ate like 2 to 4 spoons not much. Then I strictly followed diet since i see changes in my body shape and i started liking the changes instead of buying or eating the unhealthy foods, I started to treat myself with good running shoes, decent Bicycle, sports Tee note smart watch, participate in marathons categories (5 Km then slowly to 10 Km) [ I was wearing xxl Men's Tee now i wear Women's Large am still on the way to my goal] .Now the main reason am writing here is to help people those who have PCO.

Tips
1. Become a morning person.
2 If your overweight no potatoes, fried stuffs, junks and completely stop eating rice ( to see a change very quickly). weekly once Sunday lunch I treat myself with Rice.
3. Eat dates , resins , muesli, steam chicken,  salads , spinach's (not with much pesticide one's) egg, milk[no sugar] and fruits as breakfast, morning start your day with water it's too good I normally drink 400 Ml of water starting from waking up from my bed to till I workout  carry water with you.
4. Have green tea (no sugar) , can have coffee but with less sugar, take stairs and try getting the basic health bands which will motivate you to count the calories you burn, measure your activities, (I basically wear this band and I compete with my cousins and younger brother who are extremely fit try to defeat them in the activity goals).
5. Have your lunch by time, Don't eat the masala gravies, oil and potatoes just fill your stomach , have curd no salt or sugar and if you follow all this you will see the changes, and people in my institute started to ask me what I am doing, I started telling them about my exercises and diets and started getting compliments and many people get inspired started following exercises , they tell me when i meet them.
6.have fruits with you like apple , orange or banana. have puffed rice (chivda in local language) not with the deep fried stuffs.
7. Night dinner strictly should be taken within 8.30 many people ask me don't you feel hungry at late night , I tell them I sleep at 10.30 or 11.
8. unavoidable situations you  can have unhealthy foods not more than 2 spoons or pieces and not daily.
9. I followed all these as a fruitful results lost so much of weight my Menstrual cycle become regular, and heavy pain disappeared get mild pain for an hour and I lie down or take rest for sometime then will be alright, acne also will disappear , you will feel too fresh and look young. you can see the changes and I got motivated and writing this blog to help or motivate people like me.

Can stricter traffic rules be imposed...

If you are driving in India, you will agree with me that you almost always wear your heart in your sleeves. You cant predict what will happen in a second. I have this compulson to drive everyday and it has proved to be a nightmare. If the traffic is one way, you will see buses moving diagonally, autos, two wheelers over taking you in almost every direction and there is no concept of lane. There may be vechicle ready to cross the street from other direction, with half its body in your lane. So, to be safe, you may have to put your foot on the break perpetaully only to see that you are not moving but everybody else. I am frustrated with this because so much of fuel is being watsed!! So, I decided to write to the PM about re-inforcing traffic rules. Here is a snippet of what I wrote...

"We all know that vechicles running in 4th gear utilizes fossil fuel most efficiently. However, it is almost impossible to go in 4th gear 99% of the time in any given road. The reasons may be many including that of bad road conditions, traffic jam etc, which seem to be unavaoidable. But there is a component that can be largely avoided; and that is by following the traffic rules. I travel everyday to drop my 2 year old to day care and often take a narrow lane to avoid traffic. However, although the lanes are one way, but vechicles do come from the other end, often hitting us, brushing us arguing with us. The offenders are most often the auto, taxi, hand ricksaw pullers and cars driven by drivers. I am wondering if a strict rule can be re-inforced where the traffic offenders are heavily fined so that traffic flows in a reasonably controlled manner. I dont have the data on how much of fossi fuel can be saved by this, but I guess it is not going to be less than several thousand crores a year. Can a clause be made so that people will be made to obey traffic rules, irrespective their alliance with parties or their positions. Can the violators be tried under serious loss of national property? I am deeply concerned about the fuel wastage; the loss of time; peace; pollution all at the sae time because some people choose to dis-obey traffic." Now the wait begins if there  is going to be a response and if so if anything will change at all....

Set your priorities - reset your goals

Recently I went to one of our old students meetings events in Bhubaneswar. There were great invited speakers, one of the speakers was from Commerce stream of Utkal University Dr. Bal. Over so many years, he has not lost the ability to enchant students by his flowing smooth conversations. He told us a story and I want to retell it here. It goes like this...

A man often thought he was sick. He would complain about abdominal pain, chest pain etc and frequent a doctor. Doctor - a very knowledgeable person was very patient with him. He would sit with him listen to him order tests and finally would tell him that nothing is wrong with him. However, this continued. One day the man again visits the doctor and seeks help. The doctor this time wrote 4 prescriptions and asked him to read on his way to a sea beach resort. The first one should be read in the morning, next one in the noon, third one in after noon and fourth one in the evening. The man was very eager and morning 6 AM before starting his journey to sea beach he opened the first one. It read 2 words - "Listen carefully". He was disappointed by the prescription but decided to follow doctors instructions nevertheless. He focused on listening. On his way he heard the sound of birds, the sound of wind, sound of insects and many more things that he failed to pay attention to. He was actually delighted that he actually heard so many new things. Eager as he was, before the noon time starts, he opened his second prescription that read "look back". All these years he never stopped and looked back. Now he focused on thinking about all the good things that happened to him in last few years. Many of them were great lessons that he had already forgotten. Many were pleasant memories,  many were true happiness. He did not realize the time passed by and it was already time to open the third prescription. The third one also read 2 words "redefine goal". He thought about it and was trying rationalize the goals he was working on. Slowly none of that made any sense to him, He started thinking about the purpose of his life. Purpose of life is not just to come earn money live for yourself alone. It is much more. Giving back is something that he never thought about before, now he started thinking about it seriously. He felt very good about it. Then it was already the time for opening the 4th prescription. By this time he was already sitting by the beach. As he opened the prescription, it says "write your worries on sand". He followed the instruction and started writing all his worries on the sand. It took him 1 hour to write the entire thing. But there came a big wave and wiped out everything he wrote in few seconds. There he got the biggest lesson in life. Worries are only as good as we think about them. They have no value absolutely. What matters most is to pause, redefine our goals, search for the right things that truly defines us. Everyone is unique. Comparing with the other person or acting like another person does not actually work. Always thinking about problems leads to un-necessary health worries.. There he learnt a great lesson in life. Hope you all enjoyed reading it.

A sudden desire to post something here..

It has been quite sometime since I blogged last. All my sites including twitter is now stagnating with a big pause. There is no particular reason for it, but I guess too many distractions are going on now.

I noticed few changes in the way I think now and decided to blog.

One of them is....

Today when I entered the lab, I saw a message by Deeksha on the board saying that she will miss the lab. Yeah, she is going to be away for few months. Then tomorrow another student will be away for one and half months on vacation. Now already three students are away for a conference. The lab suddenly seems empty. Now I recall the day I joined and asked for a room, all that I got is this 250 sq. ft lab. We had to sit here work here, keep our equipment here. Then I really longed for a small personal space. Now 2 years on, I dont think I want to have a personal place. I am so used to sit with the students, and started liking it. Now I dont think I will like a personal space anymore...

The other one is...

I read an article today where someone (an actor) is complaining that people dont give her any importance. Had it been few years back, I would have been really empathetic towards her and would have concurred with her thought about this. But now, contrary to that, the immediate thought was how can she think what people should do or not do rather than what she can do for herself. I think this is a very significant thing. The way we think many times is always what others should have done to make our lives easier. We never think what we can do in a given situation to make things better for us. This leads to victim-hood mentality. Frequent complaining, passing on the blames to others is part of this and often leads to failure in life. Contrary to that, staying appreciative to what you have, and working around the problem often helps out to a large extent. We forget that we have no control over others hence feeling miserable about what others should do will not help. Rather finding a way to change ourselves in a given situation will solve  our problems.

So to say, I am really very happy that my thoughts have now changed :)

sleepless night

Now  the time is 4.00 am  at  Calcutta, feeling hard to sleep and tossing myself in my bed and closing my eyes tightly and trying to sleep, but couldn't , the reason may be am going to be away from my lab after one year, usually my routine is from morning 10.30 to night 9 or 10 Pm i stay in my lab though my PI is also not strict or forcing me to stay in lab , since mine is computational biology, i can work from anywhere, for that also i have a full permission from my mentor still i feel full-fledged to complete my given task at my lab @computational biology and Genomics lab ,IICB . for the past one year  i didn't take any leave i work in all the days even during the most famous durga pooja , being attentive at IICB learnt many things , now i have completed my coursework  part in my Phd i feel that am half way through, some times i feel iritating about the asignments, and boring classes and hard part is exams still i took it in a sportive way and the good thing about the coursework is i came to know many colleague who work in different areas and got so many friends in my facebook list also, my masters and bachelor was purely bioinformatics i knew very few things in biology , during coursework i learnt so many new-things it was really a basic knowledge but it was very useful and essential for me, firstly i learnt the principles of many apparatus how it works such as gel electrophoresis, SDS, confocal microscopy, staining techniques, western blot and it made me to think , the very basic and common methods we use in research i learnt from there, such as statistics, etc .... then successfully completed my 1st sem of my coursework , once i entered into my 2nd sem i learnt little higher things such as signaling pathways how it can be blocked and approaches, genome sequencing , genomics etc ... i also have some of the favorite teachers who thought me, i really enjoyed my 2nd semester since it has less number of subjects, there i learnt how to become a good scientific learner,  given many assignments and submitted within the given time, also managed to work in lab within my deadline , gave many seminars though some of them really went good, and many of them were unsatisfied , In structural biology and bioinformatics we have journal club also i really came forward to organize many of my lab-mates felt as a headache still i went forward so that i can manage to do multitasking, i keep myself busy in doing my stuff,  and i did some household things in my lab such as taking care of purchases, cleaning, defrosting  the fridge and maintaining the cleanliness, and taking care of one of the prestigious server we have that is corona with 48TB RAM and 4 compute nodes with 16 processors in each node , fortunately whenever we had a power-shutdown or any problem with the server i was there to maintain , and i really care for my server since all our data's are there and tats like our gold mine, i really dontwant to talk about other labs here, i want to comment about my lab is all my lab members patiently bared with me and they full-fill all my wishes eating pizza, giving me chai party, helping me in programming and troubleshooting my problems, professionally we all are healthy friends no ego's  and simple life living researchers , moreover my lab is like my home i have all my belongings over there , i make maggi and green tea whenever am tired and hungry and shops are closed, though am away from my home i celebrated rakshabandan, friendship day, independence day, ganesh pooja, saraswati pooja with my labmates and got so many cadbury's also and i shared with all. am really very far from my home though no home-sicks managed myself and my family is also very co-operative and really they helped in all my times, Now its time to spend my time with my family am going for my vacation once i think that i will be away from my lab, first thing comes in my mind is all my work will get postponed and i miss my second home that is my lab @IICB though i will be at home still planning to work for at-least 2 hours per day so that i can complete atleast some part of my work and save time, though many people will think that its not right, but i believe in hard-work its the best time for learning and achieving, i believe in the quotes that Today's hard-work is tomorrow's fruit , and would like to mention here that i had to apply for my passport as my Duty i did, police verification also done at my place where i live now and the police shamelessly got bribe and went, i have paid since he is demanding, still the passport office have hold my passport i was not aware about this once i checked my status came to know then i went regional passport office and enquired i was thinking that since i was not in my permanent place during verification so dint get passport but at my place they are so loyal they dint ask for bribe and they mentioned in the paper that candidate was residing here and now studying at calcutta, but the kolkata police took a bribe also and i have shown all my proofs he is unable to understand english i guess he dint fill the clearence form and gave empty one to regional passport office and the officers showed me i have seen by myself i feel like blasting at him i told them am going home i will not be here for month explained my case they considered and undstood my situation and they said no need of verification at permanent they have cleared and asked me to meet them once i come back from home since i can again start the verification when i come back , the good people also there very nice to know this and  i have many things to share since dontwant to make very long essay i will stop with this.... and will be missing my lab days and IICB very MuCh.... i thank my Mentor for giving me  this opportunity.....

The uncertainty principle and challenging d impossible!!

I was reading this book “A brief history of time” by Stephen Hawking; a person I am quite fond of. While reading, I came across this chapter “The Uncertainty Principle”. This chapter gives a crisp description on the uncertainty principle and its implications. Most of us know what uncertainty principle is but just in case we forgot, it states that at a particular time, its impossible to accurately calculate both the position and velocity of a particle; the details can be found in the book I just mentioned.

During 19^th century, in the wake of Newton’s laws, the famous French scientist Marquis de Laplace suggested that the future of the universe and also human behaviour could be completely predicted if we could calculate its present state. This implied that the future events could be determined by us humans and hence it challenged the intervention by God! Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!), Heisenberg came up with his uncertainty principle which proved to be a setback to Laplace’s dream of a deterministic universe because if one is unable to exactly measure the present position and velocity of an entity, how can one determine its future state?

The uncertainty principle together with Quantum mechanics led to the sad death of Laplace’s deterministic theory and gave way to the probabilistic universe which states that a future event could not be fully predicted but what could be predicted is a number of possible outcomes. (Einstein was not quite convinced with this theory and he also got God involved in all this which was evident in his emotional statement “God does not play dice”!)

What happy thing I could visualize from this is that this theory favours probability and thus there is no certainty or even impossibility for any event to take place; though some events are favoured more than others but this does not kill the chance for a seemingly impossible event to take place. So, if we want something and the present situation makes it seem impossible, we shouldn’t give up because with the uncertainty principle prevailing, nothing seems certain and also nothing impossible!

Bit of odd...

I think the way people in west look at us could be little odd. I have forgotten all about that forcibly. However, a very recent encounter with a very old professor reminded me all of that and I wanted to muse about it here. There is this poster number 100 something and near that sits a old professor. I will not name him. That place was very empty, so I decided to ask few questions on the poster.

Then while talking the professor asks me where am I from,I said India. Then he says I know that but where exactly in India. Then I said Kolkata. To that he says I travelled to Kolkata once via a train through Howrah.I knew what he was going to tell next - and that is what exactly he said. He fell sick with the contaminated water. The place was very dirty and he felt very sorry for the people who stay there etc. etc. He also made statement that those who come to USA are atleast saved from the bad life people have in India. This got me into thinking why do we make ourselves look like that to the external world? Are we so pitiable. People generally judge from the outward look of everything,be it road, people or dirt. Hope someday we will appear and behave cleaner so that people look at us with respect.

This is not the end of it.He even went on to ask if my name was a brahmin name?I said names are not brahmin, sometimes surnames are! To that he surprised me to say that Tripathy is a brahmin name. That got in to me and I did not want to stand there and talk. Basically he was trying to point out all the evil we have. From dirt, to poverty to anarchy to caste system. So, I feel it is time for us to behave differently portray ourselves differently and change the system. Only  by voting right we can do it.... 

Visiting Cold Spring Harbour for a meeting? Here is what you should know

In my over a decade stay in the USA, I have not visited the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratories. Although there were a lot of very interesting meetings took place there, the registration cost was a big deterrent. I decided to attend the fall Genome Informatics Symposium starting 30^th October 2013 this year. Although the whole journey was rather unpleasant I will not discuss that here. I will talk about my experiences of staying in affordable places and travelling to long island from there and the science.

Internal Transportation:

I booked a place in Bronx through the trusted AIRBNB web site. I have had pleasant experiences before using their services. I stayed very close to the Botanical Garden Bronx. Getting to the hosts place from JFK was not an issue, only taxi fare was a bit higher. So, try avoiding taxis and travel light is the first lesson. After I reached there first day I just slept, did not know when I was sleeping and when getting up. Then one of friends picked me up the next day to her house in Brooklyn. The best way to travel is take a metro card for a week (If you are travelling a short term) . This friend was staying in Avenue H and daily it was a train from Avenue H to 34^th Herald Square before taking another transit to Long Island Rail Roads.

How to go to Cold Spring Harbor:

From anywhere in the city; the best way to go to cold spring harbor is to take the Long Island Rail Road (LRR) to Syosset (Not cold spring harbor). The final destination for this train is Huntington. This train starts from Penn station, and goes via Jamaica. So whichever place is close to you just take. Suppose I am coming from Brooklyn, then I will either get down at Atlantic or 34^th Herald Square. From Herald square I have to walk one block towards 33^rd street and 7^th avenue (Herald square is at34th and 6^th avenue). There is Penn station. Upon exit from Herald square you will find several boards telling which way is the penn station exit. Upon coming out also there will be boards and direction to Penn station (This is opposite to Hotel Pennsylvania). Then for going to cold spring harbor you have to take Long Island Railway services. Your Metro card will not work.

Word of caution for buying weekly LRR weekly pass:

 Here one thing to take care is if you are starting on Saturday then take a pass, otherwise travel as a daily passenger. For instance I took a weekly pass that is around 88 USD on Tuesday, but its validity was between saturday through Friday. So, in other words, I paid for the travel I have not made. This is something you have to be careful about since it is not written anywhere. If you take a train from Penn station, it takes easily one hour to reach Syosset (Remember you are suppose to go to Syosset – don’t go to the cold spring harbor station). Just get down the stairs on the opposite end. This is where the cold spring harbor shuttle stops and ferries people through the station and institute. It stops right at the Grace auditorium where most of the meetings take place. I was attending the EBI workshop that preceded the genome informatics meeting. It was taking place at Blackford hall which is at the right hand side of the grace auditorium and easy to find.

Going for EBI workshop what to expect?

If you are going to attend the EBI/Ensembl workshop, they will ask you to install the virtual machine which is a typical linux box created on any operating system. A word of caution is to bring in an OK sort of laptop. With my small laptop, I had terrible time doing anything. I am going to write on how to create a virtual machine shortly (watch out my blog site). 

The Meeting:

The meeting is itself very tiring. It starts at 9 AM and ends at 9.30 PM. And they have these poster sessions in between. So, it may be better to stay very close by. Even I was told that all other meetings are also arranged that way.

The Science:

This meeting is all about algorithms and software for genomics, so it is very appropriate for people who are in this field. Lots of tools and algorithms are discussed here before they get into publication, so students watch out for this. Met Allpaths assembler creators, ENCODE people and many other familiar faces. Overall pretty good!

By the way I am live tweeting talks #genomeInformatics 

WE ARE ALL MOTIVATED- either positively or negatively

I heard a story of two brothers and wanted to share with u all.
One was a drug addict and drunk who frequently beat up his family. The other was a very successful businessman who was respected in society and had a wonderful family. How could two brothers raised by the same parents, brought up in the same environment be so different??????The first brother was asked, "What makes U do what U do? U r a drug addict, a drunk and u beat your family. What motivates U?" He answered, " My father. My father was a drug addict, a drunk and he beat his family. What do U expect me to be? That is what I am."The second brother was asked, " How come U are doing everything right? What is your source of motivation?" And guess what he said?????"My father. When I was a little boy, I used to see my dad drunk and doing all the wrong things. I made up my mind that that is not what I wanted to be."

MESSAGE

Both brothers derived their motivation from the same source, but one was using it positively and the other negatively. Negative motivation brings the desire to take the easier way which ends up being the tougher way.
Thanks!!!!