February 27, 2010 by Soma.

Mag Lab Open House

Saturday, Feb 27, 2010, 1:00 to 3:00 PM

Tallahassee, FL 32310

We all went to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Advanced Superconductivity Center during their Open House event. We saw the 900 MHz 21 T magnet, magetic levitation, colors of Manganese oxidation states, great horned owl and other fun stuff.

I spoke to couple of scientists about YBCO and other high temperature superconductivity research.

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June 24, 2009 by Soma.

FAMU Environmental Science Institute

2009 Environmental Science Summer Camp Award Reception
Rattler Den, FAMU Student Union

Wednesday, June 24, 12-2 PM
Tallahassee, FL 32307

The 2009 FAMU-NOAA Environmental Science Institute’s  Summer Camp students (four separate groups) presented their lab projects and their video projects this afternoon at The Rattler Den in Florida Mechanical & Agricultural University’s Student Union Building. About 100 people parents of the students, summer camp staff, graduate students of the Institute and judges of the projects attended the function, reception, and the award ceremony.

VTS and another student were the presiding officers. They first welcomed everyone to the function and invited Dr. Roboinson, Director of the Institute to speak. Following the speech there was lunch. Then the student’s video project were shown and winner (group 4) was announced. Then the science project was presented. Finally the Summer Camp Coordinator presented all the students with their certificates and their trophies.

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April 21, 2009 by Soma.

FSU Town Hall Meeting

Askew Student Life Center Auditorium
942 Learning Way

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

3:30 - 5:30 PM

Tallahassee, FL 32306

Today there was a town hall style meeting about Budget Crisis at FSU at the Askew Student Life Center Building where the President, Provost, Faculty Senate President and Vice-President of Florida State University were present. First the President gave a talk about the situation, explaining the hole FSU is in. He also showed graphically how the general revenues have declined over the last three years and told that even the optimistic projection for the next two years don’t even fill the hole fully.  Then both members of the Faculty Senate addressed the audience alternating with each other. Once they presented their talks, the question and answer session began.

 There were five general area of questions and the first one pertained to Panama City Campus. Then the rest of the questions pertained to Deadman School of Hospitality and Golf Management. Later questions were about how will the students be able to complete the courses they were already registered. The answers to these questions were that no final decision has yet been made about closures and students already enrolled will be allowed to complete their courses.

 Once the on-line and e-mail questions were done, the audience questions were heard. The general theme was what was the reasoning behind selecting 21 programs that were targeted for closure. The Provost said there were no single criteria for their selection. He said that there were three proposals one of the proposal was what was published.

Both the President and Provost stressed that no final decision about closing any of the programs have been finalized. They asked everyone to concentrate on the political process rather than worry about the program cuts. But again and again the questions were raised why for example Russian languagae program has been targeted while the cost of running the program is minimal.

They asked people to call their Senators, Representatives, and the Governor first to reduce the cuts. Then they said we can worry about the program cuts. However, they stressed that FSU will be very different from now than it was 4-5 years ago.

Archived webcast can be seen at this link: http://mediasite.apps.fsu.edu/Mediasite/Viewer/?peid=a31b4966b6d3448db4c078006fdd326c (You need to have Internet Explorer or install Microsoft Silverlight to see the webcast).

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April 15, 2009 by Soma.

Proposed cuts a surprise

Tallahassee, FL 32317

The proposed cuts to programs in FSU came as a surprise to many. The extent of the cut rather than whether there will be cuts in the program was the biggest surprise. Everyone at FSU knew there will be furloughs or pay-cuts but no one was expecting such a large and deep cuts across the school affecting 21 programs (elimination) 15 programs for restructuring.

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April 14, 2009 by Soma.

FSU Proposes to close 21 Programs
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Tallahassee, FL 32317

In today’s morning news both in print (Tallahassee Democrat) and radio (WFSU) everyone in Tallahassee learned about the proposed closure are about 21 programs at Florida State University. The proposal has been put forward by the FSU budget committee based on the expected reduction (not finalized yet) in funding for higher education from Florida legislature.

The news was a big shock to many since there were no indication that the cuts this deep were in the planning.

More links:

Tallahassee Democrat article Proposal
Tallahassee Democrat article Department Response

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January 15, 2009 by Soma.

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October 31, 2008 by Soma.

My First Web Page in Tamil Language

Fridaym, October 31, 2008

Tallahassee, FL , USA

With the help from couple of articles and an utility by Yesudas, I was able to write a whole webpage in Tamil in Unicode. Unicode allows the webpage to be seen in Tamil without one having to install any fonts. The page should be in Tamil on all modern operating systems (Win2k, WinXP, Vista, MacOSx, Linux, etc) and on all modern browsers (Firefox 3.0, IE 7.0, Safari, etc).

Enjoy!

வருடம் 2000-த்தை தலகாசி தமிழ்ச் சங்கத்தின் ஆரம்பமாக கருதலாம். அந்த வருடம் திருமதி மற்றும் திரு முத்துசுவாமி அவர்களும், பானுவும், நானும் தலகாசியில் வாழும் தமிழ் நண்பர்களையும் அவர்களின் குடும்பத்தோரையும் ஒன்றாக கூட்டி ஒரு மாலை நேரத்தில் ஒரு விழா தோடங்கினோம். அன்று மாலையில் இந்தியா, மலேசியா, சிங்கபூர், மற்றும் இலங்கை தமிழ் நண்பர்கள் பலர் பங்கு கொண்டனர்.2000‍ முதல் 2002 வரை எங்கள் கூடுதல் பொதுவாக தமிழ் நண்பர்களையும் அவர்களின் குடும்பத்தோரையும் பார்த்து பேசுவதும், பழகுவதும், உணவு அருந்துவதுமாக இருந்த‌து. அற்சமயம் திருமதி உஷா சந்திரா மற்றும் திரு நமா சந்திரா அவர்களும் (கல்லூரி ஆசிரியர்கள்) தலகாசியில் வாழும் தமிழ் குழந்தைகளுக்கு தமிழ்ப் பாடம் சொல்லி தர ஆசைப் பட்டார்கள். அதை அடுத்து வந்த தமிழ் வருடப்பிறக்கு அனைவரும் தமிழ் நிகழ்ச்சிகள் செய்ய வேண்டும் என்று பிரியப்பட்டார்கள்.

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October 10, 2008 by Soma.

Mock Presidential Debate at School

BHPS, Tallahassee, FL 32308

Today VTS will be one of the kids who will speak for a randomly selected party platform’s Presidential choice. He will have to speak and defend his party’s platform within short time after he was given the topic.

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August 24, 2008 by Soma.

IUCr 2008 Conference

21st Congress of the International Union of Crystallography

OICC, Osaka, Japan

Sunday, August 24, 2008

I picked-up my registration at the counter for the IUCr 2008 Conference at the Grand Cube Osaka (aka Osaka International Convention Center) and picked up my bag and headed straight to the mini symposium. I attended several mini symposium in the macromolecular section in the morning. I ran into couple of my former colleagues and spoke with them,  had coffee and late lunch with them.

In the afternoon session I attended two talks at the macromolecular section and two at the powder diffraction section. There were couple of more I wanted to attend but they were at the same time slot and so I had to miss them.

I also attended the Bruker-AXS Lunch-on session

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August 8, 2008 by Soma.

AR to RA

Friday, August 8, 2008

08/08/08; 08:08 AM

I will become a RA today from AR

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