University Of Calcutta Research Articles

Historical Note: Harding Professorship of Higher Mathematics at Calcutta University

Historical Note: Harding Professorship of Higher Mathematics at Calcutta University

Association of APOE Gene Polymorphism with Stroke Patients from Rural Eastern India.

Context:Studies from the different ethnic regions of the world have reported variable results on association of APOE gene polymorphism in stroke.Aim:The aim of this study is to find out the possible association of APOE polymorphism in stroke patients in ethnic Bengali population.Settings and Design:A prospective case–control study was undertaken in the Department of Neurology, Burdwan Medical College, Burdwan, West Bengal, India, over a period of 3 years.Methods:We collected 10 ml venous blood samples from 148 clinically and radiologically diagnosed acute stroke patients (80 of ischemic stroke and 68 of intracerebral hemorrhage) and consecutive 108 ethnic age- and sex-matched controls, in ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid vials after informed written consent. Genomic DNA was prepared at S.N. Pradhan Centre of Neurosciences, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India. Exotic single-nucleotide polymorphisms (rs429358, rs 7412) were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism for genotype of APOE.Results:The frequencies of different APOE allele among 80 ischemic stroke patients were 5.6% (n = 9) for E2, 75.68% (n = 121) for E3, and 18.7% (n = 30) for E4. The E3 allele is significantly over-represented (P = 0.004) in controls compared to the patients (88% in controls vs 75.6% ischemic stroke patients and 80% hemorrhagic patients). A significantly high frequency of APOE4 allele was observed in ischemic (18.7%) and hemorrhagic patients (11%) compared to controls (8%). The E4 allele plays a major risk for developing ischemic stroke [odds ratio (OR) = 2.744; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.43–5.10] and E3 plays a protective role for hemorrhagic stroke (OR = 0.53; 95% CI: 0.29–0.96), while E4 allele plays a nonsignificant (P = 0.31) increase in trend in hemorrhage stroke (OR = 1.4).Conclusions:There is significant association of APOE gene polymorphism in stroke patients of ethnic Bengali population. The E4 allele increases significant risk for development of ischemic strokes, and it also plays nonsignificant increase in trend in hemorrhagic strokes.

In Conversation with Sanjukta Dasgupta

Sanjukta Dasgupta, Professor and Former Head, Dept of English and Ex- Dean, Faculty of Arts, Calcutta University, teaches English and American literature along with New Literatures in English. She is a poet, critic and translator, and her articles, poems, short stories and translations have been published in journals of distinction in India and abroad.Her inner sphere overlaps the outer on the speculative and the shadowy. There is a sublime inwardness in her poems. Her recent signal books include Snapshots, Dilemma, First Language, More Light, and Lakshmi Unbound. She co-authored Radical Rabindranath: Nation, Family, Gender: Post-colonial Readings of Tagore’s Fiction and Film, and she is the Managing Editor of Families: A Journal of Representations.She has received many grants and awards, including Fulbright fellowships and residencies and an Australia India Council Fellowship. Now she is the Convener, English Board, Shaitya Akademi. Professor Dasgupta has visited Nepal and Bangladesh as a member of the SAARC Writers Delegation, and has served as a co-judge and Chairperson for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region). She has visited Melbourne and Malta to serve on the pan-Commonwealth jury panel. She is now an e-member of the advisory committee of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, UK. She is Visiting Professor, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, and she is the President of the Executive Committee, Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library in Kolkata.The interview was conducted via email in December 2018.

Association of fat patterning, type 2 diabetes mellitus and MTHFR gene polymorphism: a study among the two ethnic groups of Tripura, North-East India

Authors are thankful to the participants for their voluntary participation. Financial help obtained from University of Calcutta [(BI (65) 8 & 9]. Authors are also grateful to Dr. Rajesh Chatterjee, faculty member of Tripura University for his support and cooperation.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Contributed by Indian Universities to Shodhganga: A Case Study of Osmania University, Hyderabad

The present paper examines the electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) contributed by Indian universities to Shodhganga of INFLIBNET. It was found out that 206, 909 full-text theses were contributed by 355 Indian universities to the digital repository. The study has listed out only top 10 universities which have contributed highest number of ETDs to the repository. Among 355 Indian universities which have contributed, University of Calcutta tops the list with 11, 495 theses. Osmania University (OU) is also one of the contributors to Shodhganga. It was found out that, among 355 universities, OU stands in 71st position. This study makes an attempt to find out the faculty-wise and department-wise contributions made by OU, Hyderabad which is the seventh oldest in India and the third oldest in south India.

A study on self-esteem and academic background of the students in higher education

This paper intends to study the self-esteem and academic background of arts, science and commerce students in higher education and also attempts to find out the relationship between self-esteem and academic background among students in higher education. The researchers used purposive, stratified random sampling technique for selecting the sample comprising of 600 under graduate students from different colleges affiliated to University of Calcutta. Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI) developed by Singh and Srivastava (2010) and self-made Interview Schedule for measuring the academic background of the students was used for collecting data. The collected data were analyzed by using mean, Standard Deviation (SD), percentage, t-test, and Pearson product-moment coefficient of correlation test and accordingly interpretations were made. Result revealed that arts and commerce students are significantly different from the science students in respect of level of self-esteem; but however no significant difference was noted in the level of self-esteem between arts and commerce students. The researchers also observed that there is no significant difference in the academic background between arts and commerce students however, the academic background of science students was found to be relatively better than arts and commerce students. It was noted that there is a significant positive relationship between self-esteem and academic background among the students pursuing their studies in higher education.

Meghnad Saha: work, life and times

AbstractIt is no coincidence that IAU and Saha’s ionization formula are about the same age. Both events are related to World War 1 and connected with Germany though in entirely different ways.Once sufficiently large number of stellar spectra had been obtained and empirically classified according to the Harvard scheme, it was inevitable that theoretical explanation would be forthcoming. The only surprise was that the breakthrough came from the far-off Calcutta which was nowhere on the world research map.History chose the hour; the hour produced an unlikely hero: Meghnad Saha. Calcutta University had just become a research centre under Indian auspices. By a fortuitous combination of circumstances immediately after the war, the latest German language physics publications arrived in Calcutta as a personal library. While Europe needed time to resume scientific exchanges and activity, India seized the opportunity and produced two outstanding pieces of theoretical work: Saha’s ionization formula (1920), and Bose statistics (1926). It is to the credit of The Royal Society that it elected Saha as a member (1927) in spite of the government’s objections arising from Saha’s anti-British stance. Saha however was unable to carry out further observational and experimental work suggested by the theory.Saha was a multi-faceted personality with strong views on political ideology, the role of science in a new nation and other topics. India’s charismatic Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, during 1947-1964 had a soft corner for sophisticated, suave, upper-crust people. Impatient and angry, confrontational rather than persuasive, Saha did not qualify.Saha is justly regarded as one of the founders of theoretical astrophysics. Examination of his life and work is a rewarding exercise from various points of view: development of modern astronomy; Western science and the non-West; and political and social activism of a leading scientist and educator.

Asok Ranjan Das Gupta

Asok Ranjan Das Gupta was born into a highly educated Hindu family in Dualaptur, East Bengal. His father later became professor of mathematics at the University of Calcutta (now Kolkata)....

Implementation of Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) in Discipline of Library and Information Science

In every society education plays a significant role in building a good nation. There are numerous institutions playing this role in our country. Now they have entered into semester based system to introduce Choice Based Credit System (CBCS). Lack of relationship between education and skill development in learning phase needs redesigning of education system and globally accepted evaluation. Indian higher education institutes have been dependant on marks or percentage for evaluating students. The marks specified in the field of study acquired by this CBCS system, can help students opt their own choice based subjects and have mobility to join different institutions. This paper highlights the Choice based credit rating system in Library and Information Science, its impact on learner and Teacher, pros and cons of it. To improve the quality of education the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) took a vital step for implementing a universal system of education all over the India. Most of the disciplines in arts and science have a regular 3 years under graduate course be it in honours and general pattern. But Library and Information Science (LIS) as a subject has not been able to develop its under graduate course of three years in this specific field. However University of Calcutta has developed a 3 years BA/BSC honours in Library and Information Science. A significant amount of literature has been published in CBCS but none of them are available relating to LIS field.

Type Specimens of Names in Angiosperms at Calcutta University Herbarium (CUH) – II

Type Specimens of Names in Angiosperms at Calcutta University Herbarium (CUH) – II

Arun Kumar Sharma (1924–2017)

Professor Arun Kumar Sharma, former Sir Rash Behari Ghosh Professor and Head of the Department of Botany, founder Programme Coordinator of the Centre of Advanced Studies in Cell and Chromosome Research at the University of Calcutta, and Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow and National Professor of the University Grants Commission, INSA Golden Jubilee Professor, President of the Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences India, and General President of the Indian Science Congress Association, a distinguished alumni and recipient of the best teacher award of the University of Calcutta, and the founder and editor-in-chief of the international journal Nucleus (Springer Nature), breathed his last on 6 July 2017 in Kolkata. Whereas the Sharmas (A. K. Sharma and Archana Sharma (AS)) did not have any biological progeny, they are survived by a large number of students (who consider themselves as their surrogate sons and daughters), admirers and academic beneficiaries spread across the globe.

Phytoplankton Diversity in the World Heritage Site of Indian Sundarbans: An Overview

Examines in Marine Biology and Oceanography Phytoplankton Diversity in the World Heritage Site of Indian Sundarbans: An Overview Atanu Roy1, Subrata Trivedi2 and Abhijit Mitra3* 1Department of Biotechnology, Techno India University West Bengal, India 2Department of Biology, University of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia 3Department of Marine Science, University of Calcutta, India *Corresponding author: Abhijit Mitra, Department of Marine Science, University of Calcutta, India Submission: October 25, 2017; Published: January 16, 2018 DOI: 10.31031/EIMBO.2018.01.000507 ISSN: 2578-031X Volume1 Issue2

Growth of ETDs in India: An analytical study of top contributing Universities of Shodhganga

Shodhganga has become one of the most preferred and trusted sources for research works of institutions across India because of its vast availability of ETDs contributed by 130 universities across the country. The present study is based on quantitative measurement of the contributing universities of Shodhganga to identify the major contributing institutions to the repository, language of ETDs contributed, departments that contribute more number of research works and the amount of research work undertaken by the Indian universities in the last decade. Results show that of all the contributing universities, University of Calcutta is the top contributor with 11025 ETDs out of which the university's Department of Science has contributed 2205 ETDs. Shodhganga also contains other language ETDs and majority of VBSPU's contributions are in languages other than English. However the one area in which the repository has to improve is to make availability of year-wise records for all the ETDs.

Philosophy of Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo- A Critical Analysis

Sri Aurobindo , was an Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet. He joined the Indian movement for freedom from British rule, for a while became one of its influential leaders and then turned into a spiritual reformer, introducing his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution. Swami Vivekananda, known in his pre-monastic life as Narendranath Datta, was born in an affluent family in Kolkata. His father,Vishwanath Datta, was a successful attorney with interests in a wide range of subjects, and his mother, Bhuvaneshwari Devi, was endowed with deep devotion, strong character and other qualities. A precocious boy, Narendra excelled in music, gymnastics and studies. By the time he graduated from Calcutta University, he had acquired a vast knowledge of different subjects, especially Western philosophy and history. These, then the Shâstras, the Guru, and the Mother¬land are the three notes that mingle themselves to form the music of the works of Vivekananda .The present paper brings out the critical analysis of the philosophies of the two great spiritual philosophers and writers in a comparative style.

The FRS nomination of Sir Prafulla C. Ray and the correspondence of N. R. Dhar

Sir Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861-1944) was the first Indian chemist to achieve high international reputation. Originally trained at the University of Edinburgh, he worked for many years at Presidency College in Calcutta and then at Calcutta University. He built up a remarkable school of chemical research by attracting many outstanding students to work with him and published about 150 papers-many of them in leading British and German journals. Ray was highly respected by his British peers and was the first Indian of that era to be nominated for FRS, in 1913. At the time when his nomination was being considered by the Royal Society, Ray's favourite student, Nil Ratan Dhar (1892-1986), who was to become the second Indian chemist to achieve high international reputation, worked in London and Paris for a few years. Even when Dhar was merely a 24-year-old student, he lobbied with several leading British chemists for the election of Ray and kept Ray informed in a series of fascinating letters-giving us a rare glimpse of what election to the Royal Society meant for Indian scientists of that era. During this time, Ray received a knighthood for his contributions to chemistry, and Nature published a front-page article on Ray's 'life-work'. Many British chemists felt strongly that Ray should be elected FRS and were willing to discuss Ray's case with the young Dhar quite openly. But, rather mysteriously, Ray never got elected.

PROGNOSTICATION OF NF-ΚB AND P53 EXPRESSION IN DIFFERENT STAGE AND GRADE OF OVARIAN CANCER.

10Aug 2017 PROGNOSTICATION OF NF-ΚB AND P53 EXPRESSION IN DIFFERENT STAGE AND GRADE OF OVARIAN CANCER. Debarshi Jana , Sambhunath Bandyopadhyay , Priyanka Upadhyay , Arghya Adhikary and Asim Kumar Manna. Department of Gynecology & Obstetrics, Institute of Post-Graduate Medical Education and Research, A.J.C. Bose Road, Kolkata-700020, West Bengal, India Centre for research in nanoscience & nanotechnology, acharya prafulla chandra roy sikhsha prangan, university of Calcutta, jd-2, sector 3, salt lake city, kolkata-700108, West Bengal, India.

Screening for high productive salt tolerant mutant M4 lines in chickpea(Cicer arietinum L.)

Genetic improvement through induced mutation has been very effective in improvement of crops. Seeds of three popular chickpea variety namely BGM 408, B115 and JG 315 were treated with 10,20 and 30 kR of gamma rays. Then treated seeds with their respective control(0 kR gamma rays) were sown in the field of Calcutta University experimental farm,Baruipur (with no salinity) in three consecutive years to raise M1, M2 and M3 generations respectively.Some M3 lines having higher yield potential were subjected to grow as M4 lines in salt stressed field (5-7ds m-1) of Hingalganj,South 24 Parganas. Finally, some promising salt tolerant lines with improved seed yield were selected which have a good promise for coastal saline belt after releasing as a variety.

The Insiders’ Experience of an Undergraduate Level Ethnographic Fieldwork Training Program in India

Research on fieldwork experiences is not something new to the discipline of Anthropology. However, undergraduate level ethnographic fieldwork training programs in India as a research area still remained unexplored. The purpose of the study described in this paper was to explore the proceedings of undergraduate level ethnographic fieldwork training programs in India. This article uses the authors’ own recollections regarding an undergraduate level ethnographic fieldwork training program carried out by a college affiliated with the University of Calcutta. All four authors along with their 21 fellow students have participated as trainees in this fieldwork training program. Through a qualitative analysis of these recapitulated events involving the acts of “preparation before the field trip,” “doing fieldwork” right up to “writing of field reports,” the study stresses one of the less emphasized and methodologically significant issues of education and the socialization process the trainee fieldworkers pass through while doing fieldwork. This article illuminates how the real-time field exposure guides naïve students to realize the utility of different research tools, techniques, methods, and some of the true requirements of an ethnographic fieldwork.

Beyond the Apparent

The existing historiography on medicalisation of childbirth in India has overemphasised the role of female doctors in introducing Western medical ideas and practices pertaining to childbirth into the Indian zenana (secluded sections of respectable Indian households inhabited by females) and, hence, has uncritically assumed the absence of male involvement in midwifery as an unquestionable historical fact. Using Bengal as an example, this article will demonstrate that the medicalisation of childbirth was not single-handedly brought about by women doctors but was preceded by the constitution of a medical discourse on midwifery: a process enabled by the inclusion of midwifery in the medical curriculum of Calcutta University in the mid-nineteenth century under the guidance of the medical faculty of the Calcutta Medical College consisting entirely of male doctors, both indigenous and British. This article seeks to analyse the role of male doctors not in terms of the extent of their accessibility to the upper caste purdah women but by highlighting their instrumentality in buttressing the scientific and theoretical foundations of midwifery. It will account for the sustained presence of male physicians in multiple roles of professors, researchers, composers of reproductive tracts and nationalists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

A REVIEW ON IMAGE REGISTRATION ON PRINCIPLE AXES METHOD AND MUTUAL INFORMATION METHOD.

25Apr 2017 A REVIEW ON IMAGE REGISTRATION ON PRINCIPLE AXES METHOD AND MUTUAL INFORMATION METHOD. Madhurima Banerjee and Samir Kumar Bandyopadhyay. Dept. of Computer Science and Application, Heritage Academy, Kolkata, India. Dept. of Computer Sc. & Engineering, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.