academic

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There have been as many as 2 incidents of shooting in the campus of IIT Madras at 5 PM today. The first one occurred inside the Central Library and the other just outside the Library building. The shooter shot himself after killing at least 35 people. The shooter has been identified as final year Mechanical engineering student of the institute. His name is being withheld for security reasons as speculations suggest that he had more than 1 accomplice.

This shooting comes just 5 days after the deadly act by Cho in Virginia tech, which claimed 33 lives.

The reasons for this barbarous act are still being analyzed. The history of victims is also being considered as past relationship with the shooter can help trace the reason. This might be very well an act of vengeance as there are more girl victims in the shooting. Love can be a reason but other reasons are not being ruled out.

IITs are known for their intense academic pressure. The work load and subsequent fear of failure has driven people to suicide in other IITs. The killer’s friends have informed Serendipity that he was under great depression because of impending danger of extension in this project. An extension means spending another 6 months in the campus. His employer could cancel his selection and he would have ended in a precarious situation as far his career is concerned.

His friends, without an exception, have told us that he used to weep in front of them because of his fear of extension. His fear can be gauged from an incident in which he is supposed to have begged in front of his ailing guide, in his home towel, to let him finish his project within 2 months as this is the maximum delay his employer would accept. The night before, he cried on everyone who offered him a shoulder. He even broke into tears at a recent institute day function when the mention of seniors leaving the campus came up. He would spend most his time asking others whether his work is enough for a degree. He would carefully listen to everyone’s project and then draw parallels with his own project. Tears would again wet his cheeks if other’s project would exceed his in terms of

1. The total lines in the simulation code

2. The total number of research papers referred to.

3. Number of times a student has met his guide.

4. Number of graphs obtained.

He seems to have gone ‘nuts’ (as described by his friends) during the past few days. He forced his friends to obtain at least one graph for him using the software they were using. He is supposed to have varied his work in MATLAB, ANN, FLUENT, C++, MARK, ANSYS, PRO-E, AUTO-CAD and our own Excel!

One of his close friends has told us that he called up today morning and asked him to get few floppies. But as floppies are not available in shops these days, he asked him to get a digital camera so that he could take snaps of the results. When he last called his close friend, he informed him that he is going to the library to ask the librarian to help him categorize the data as they categorize books.

The success of IITians around the world brings a lot of pressure on the fresh graduates. Out of their naiveté, they take the initial failure as fatal to their career and end up ruining their lives.

Stay tuned to Serendipity for further developments on this shooting incident.

A student at University of Missouri has been in jail since February for creating false terror threats. He would walk into the university with waving a paper bag, holding a knife and saying he had a bomb and anthrax. His friends blame his economic situation and his academic performance behind this act of his.

Over 1,700 students have now signed the “Help Sujith” online petition urging Missouri’s governor and other top officials to help the Indian student. They said Sujith suffered from depression and was homesick due to financial burdens and academic pressure.

They are requesting authorities to show some leniency towards him. Even before the Feb 28 incident, Sujith, had been struggling with chronic depression and emotional breakdown, according to information posted on helpsujith.org [HT]

When Mr. Raja Ramanna came to IIT Madras to give a lecture after the Nuclear plant at Kalpakkam was setup, he was bombarded with the safety concerns as Madras is just 80 Kms from Kalpakkam. The only answer he gave was, “Chernobyl cannot happen in India because our engineering not as inquisitive as the Russian ones”. Expectedly he was booed for this response of his. Well the Chernobyl accident occurred because engineers trying to test safety of the plant committed a big blunder. Due to a faulty program the power generation fell to 1% of 35000 MW, electric (the normal output). They were so scared that they immediately restarted the plant but in the process the remnant radioactive product increased the heat generation. They tried to control it by reinserting the control rods but it broke.

Chernobyl plant after the blast

The results were devastating as 1000s lost their lives after the blast. The USSR tried to play down this magnificent disaster but the Time magazine expose left them with no option. Its often considered the fuel to fire of rebellion that existed among small USSR states. There are few interesting facts about nuclear energy I wish to highlight-

1. Hitler had plans to build a nuclear bomb but a wrong information with one of this consultants help prevent it. Actually you need at least 14.5 Kgs of enriched U-235 to sustain a uncontrollable chain reaction. His advisor guessed it to be few tons which was not possible to accumulate in 5 years period so they abandoned the plan. Imagine the terror that would have been unleashed if his consultant had the correct figure.

2. The Three Mile Island accident in US was the first accident of peaceful use of nuclear energy. US was lucky that the plant didn’t explode because their engineers weren’t that adventurous. It was caused due to a faulty pump.

3. The Chernobyl disaster caused over a million death which is much lesser as compared to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The radiation reached as far as Sweden.

4. India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974 at Pokhran. It was code named ‘The smiling Buddha’. Mr. Raja Ramanna, who was one of the 3 persons who knew about the test beforehand, had a hotline to Mrs. Indra Gandhi, PM of India. But the hotline failed after the blast so he came to the nearest village to call her, “Madam, the Buddha has finally smiled”

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at the Indian nuclear test site in (Pokhran)

First underground nuclear explosion at Pokhran in Rajasthan on May 18, 1974. Photo shows a view of the crater formed after the explosion.[source]

5. There is something known as the China Syndrome. Its a movie that released 13 days before the Three Mile Island accident and incidentally it showed a nuclear plant accident caused because of a faulty pump! The syndrome goes like this- in case of a nuclear explosion in US a huge crater will be created and the underground water will become radioactive. This theory assumes that the crater will be so big that it will stretch till the other end of earth to China. Well obviously this theory is just a farce as the maximum depth can be 10 kms.

6. I am a CIA agent.

Regarding Mr. Raja Ramanna I mention in the first paragraph, well I kind of agree with him. My father is a senior engineer with government of India so I am aware of the realities in power plants. There is one incident I still remember; an engineer called my father late in the night because he was not sure which grease to put on the transformer and because of that the whole district had power cut. It was really weird for the engineer to call my dad as he is not directly responsible for maintenance of power plants as he has risen to the higher level in the hierarchy. The engineer later told him that he didn’t want to take the risk by his own guess or my consulting his immediate seniors because he was not that confident. I hope the engineers at Chernobyl were as dumb as out Indian counterparts.

BTW point no. 6 is a joke, if you haven’t guessed by now. This has been shamelessly borrowed from an email by my Professor Arunn Narasimhan

1) It is a CLOSED BOOK/NOTES Exam
2) Mixed Convection (what Dr. Balaji taught) is NOT included
3) Rest of what I covered will be included (from start until the beginnings of Natural Convection)
4) Calculators are allowed but may not be of much use.
Only one computer is allowed and it is already there.

I know there are some missing points above and will be filled to my advantage, when required.
BTW, point 8 is a joke, so smile before you close this email
Cheers,
Arunn

I was first exposed to Internet in 2000. It was an era of costly browsing as the Internet revolution was in its incipient stage. People used to browse for mainly 2 reasons

1. For entertainment purposes like Desibaba,Desimama and the social networks of yahoo like chat rooms.

2. Exam results.

My friends created one yahoo id each and we used to send e-greetings to each other even though we were roommates. E-greetings were cool and it could have overtaken Archies card galleries only if the Internet charges wouldn’t have been Rs. 60/hour. One of my friend once saw me login to yahoo mail so he saw me enter my password. He later told me that he now knows my password. Upon asking he told me that it’s 5 stars, *****.

I was addicted to the Internet since then. I was more into that yahoo part of entertainment and online poker. The very idea of meeting from someone across the globe excited me. Internet cafe owners used to warn us not to reveal our identity while chatting especially to Indians. They used to advice us to use Delhi or Calcutta because Bihar has a very bad impression on others.

When I came to IIT, I was greeted by sunshine from Sun Microsystems. Just in case you are not aware of this wonderful piece of computers, they have a central system to which every computer is connected, they run UNIX (UNIX are these wonderful operating systems which have been created by men/women, of darkness who are geeks, for morons like me to gawk; they have no graphic user interfaces) and the so called CPU boxes are smaller than a keyboard. My chatting obsession took a very serious beating when I found out that I need to talk to the Computer Centre incharge to install yahoo messenger on my account, not because it was a rule but because no one knew how to install it. After a while I saw few students using it but the wonderful interface made me loath UNIX to the extreme. I had to wait for a couple of years before my dreams would become a reality.

It was during my 3rd year when we were given Internet connection in rooms. This also marks the end of my educational career and a beginning of a totally new life, the online life that I have. My increasing CGPA took a U turn towards decrease and suddenly I was supposedly taken into the world of Rise of Nation (a computer game), Waste (peer to peer sharing software) and firefox. I no longer felt the urge to work on my academics as I had other things to worry in my life.

Its not that Internet had only negative effects on me, it had many positives too-

• I was addicted to yahoo messenger because I had this ludicrous gut feeling that someday I will meet a girl and fall in love. I am too shy to carry out this courageous act in reality but Internet offers a wonderful opportunity to people like me to really express themselves. If this girl has a reason to do PhD then I have a reason to blog! Anyway its all history now, perhaps sometimes later. But I have learned a lot from this experience which will be a part of my survival kit all my life, NEVER EVER INVEST EMOTIONS WITH SOMEONE OUTSIDE YOUR FAMILY (at least online).
• Internet opened new vistas of knowledge for me without which I would be considered an idiot. I read newspaper online daily, search for journal papers and blog.

Saying all this I fully and wholeheartedly suport the recent move in IIT Bombay to restrict the use of Internet

“Internet access will be barred between 11 p.m. and 12.30 p.m. at IIT-Mumbai’s 13 hostels to encourage students to sleep early and to try and force them out of their shells. There has been a decline in academic performance and also participation in sporting, cultural and social activities has gone down,� Gopalan said.[source]

I know its too late to put this restriction as the addiction will be too hard to overcome but then this initiative was always on the cards. I can fully understand IIT Bombay student’s woes. May be with time they will get used to it. This ban wouldn’t have a drastic affect on the present batch but definitely the coming batches.

Not just negligence in academics but there were many associated social issues. People were so addicted to they computers that they completely neglected other activities like sports and cultural. They stopped socializing; this can ruin the whole culture. One reason why IIT Madras performs so well in Inter-IIT sports meet is that fact that sports is still taken seriously here as Internet came in late here.