11/22/2018 0 Comments 11 Million-YO Ape Fossil Discovered in Gujarat: Here Is Why It’s a Momentous Find!It was during a field visit across the barren stretches of Kutch Basin in 2011 that Dr Ansuya Bhandari and her team stumbled upon a fossilised upper jaw of an ape. by Lekshmi Priya S Unearthing fossils is part and parcel of the life of a palaeontologist, but it is undoubtedly thrilling for them to come across a prehistoric specimen that is about 11 million years old! What would be even more remarkable is the possibility of the chance discovery opening up newer realms in previously unexplored areas. The unearthing of a fossilised upper jaw of an ape by a group of Indian palaeontologists in Gujarat has only proved that Earth continues to baffle the best of us with its many, mysteries and that there is only so much that we know of its humble beginnings. It was during a field visit across the barren stretches of Kutch Basin in 2011 that Dr Ansuya Bhandari and her team stumbled upon a fossilised upper jaw of an ape that would later become a momentous discovery in the Indian paleontological circle. This is because the fossil belonged to an adult ape (hominoid family) from the genus Sivapithecus and lived roughly between 11-10.8 million years ago (Miocene). The fact that this is the only known ape fossil that has been unearthed in the peninsular region of India makes it all the more extraordinary because other specimens of the same species were previously found in the Shivalik hill range. “Fossils of the Sivapithecus genus have been previously unearthed near the Siwalik hill range, spreading across Pakistan, Churia Hills in Nepal and around the Himalayas (Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh). Now this finding, almost 1,000 km south from the previous finds has increased the geographic range of the genus. It also fills a time-window of approximately 11 million years in the evolutionary history of hominoid remains in India,” said Dr Bhandari, who is a scientist from the Birbal Sahni Institute in Lucknow to The Hindu. Recently published by PLOS ONE, an international scientific journal, Dr Bhandari’s paper is the first such study in the area. While part of the original field survey included other palaeontologists from Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Dehradun and IIT Roorkee, the X-Ray and CT scans were conducted by researchers of Duke University in the United States. According to Dr Bhandari, the researchers now believe that Sivapithecuseither holds more proximity to the modern orangutan of Southeast Asia or an ape that was part of an early distribution of fossil hominoids, including the great apes, the chimps, gorillas and orangutans and also, humans. Based on already existing information on the Sivapithecus genus, the authors believe that the fossilised jaw could belong to a large-sized ape from either one of the two species of Sivapithecus, namely hysudricus or sivalensis.
As the specimen contained a high concentration of iron due to being embedded in an iron-rich primaeval soil bed, the researchers have not been too successful in conducting a more in-depth analysis of the fossil through radiation. However, they hope that this discovery will lead to greater attention and create a scope for more intensive studies in the future. “Kutch is a paradise for fossils. Many associated mammal fossils belonging to the Miocene age have been discovered here in the past, including whales and sea cows. The new discovery will help us understand in detail the evolution of great apes,” said Professor Sunil Bajpai from the Department of Earth Sciences at IIT, Roorkee and former director of Birbal Sahni Institute. He is also one of the contributing authors of the paper. Courtesy: www.thebetterindia.com
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11/15/2018 0 Comments Journey into the Cave of BonesBy Jenny Marder Illustrations by Rebecca Mock Layout by Megan Crigger Marina stood at the mouth of the Rising Star cave and looked inside. Outside, it was the rainy season in this grassland part of South Africa, home to jackals and porcupines and cobra snakes and thorn trees. She knew that deep inside the cave lay thousands of bones. Small bones and large bones, jawbones and ankle bones, finger bones and foot bones and skulls. The bones belonged to strange creatures that lived a long time ago, before there were humans. But to reach the bones, Marina and five other scientists had to make a long, dangerous journey underground. From deep inside the cave, they could begin to solve the mystery of these creatures. Marina entered the cave. The sun shone in through a skylight. She walked down a path of loose gravel rocks and turned left into a narrow hallway. It was much darker now that the sun was gone. A headlamp attached to her helmet lit the ground ahead, casting shadows. She dropped to her belly and shimmied through a dusty tunnel. The tunnel was called Superman’s Crawl. That’s because most people only fit through with one arm stretched above their head and the other held tight against their body, like Superman flying. Marina was small enough that she could crawl through, but barely — her whole body filled the opening. Bats lived deep inside the cave, she knew, and she hoped they wouldn’t fly right smack into her. She emerged, headlamp first, and found herself face to face with the first difficult climb: a three-story rock cliff shaped like a dragon’s back, with spikes sticking out along its spine. She grabbed a safety harness stored on a shelf of rock and pulled it on, clipped into a rope and scaled up the rock face, searching for footholds and handholds as she climbed. At the very top was a three-foot gap, a deep black hole that looked bottomless and dropped down to nowhere. Here’s the thing about injuries in a cave like this. If Marina were to break an arm or a leg, a medical team would be required to live with her in the cave until it healed. She tried not to think about that. She was scared, but she took a breath and then leapt across the gap, like a superhero. The toughest bit came at the end: a climb down a narrow crack with jaggedy bits of rock sticking out, like teeth. It was like climbing down the jaw of a supersized shark. One section was especially narrow, only 7 inches wide — that’s skinnier than a soccer ball. She turned her helmet sideways and wiggled her body through. On the ground again, she dangled her legs into the last hole. Her feet found a ladder, and she was in.
For a month, Marina and five other scientists climbed in and out of the cave every day. Once inside, they used toothpicks and small paint brushes to remove dirt from the bones gently, grain by grain. Sometimes they talked and sometimes they worked quietly, focusing on their fossils. They had to be careful - really, really careful - not to damage them. Many of the bones crisscrossed each other underground. Like a game of Jenga, it was a struggle remove the top bone without disturbing the ones underneath. Getting one bone out safely often required digging out three or four other bones with it. They had favorite bones: Hannah’s favorite was a lower jaw. For Marina and Becca, it was a set of tiny hand bones. While they worked underground, clouds formed outside the cave. Heavy rain soaked their camping and cooking tents. People at the campground braced against the wind, holding the tents down by the tentpoles, so they didn’t blow away. And when the scientists emerged later that day, back up the narrow crack and down the spines of the dragon’s back and back through the Superman Crawl, they would hear of the great storm that had passed through. But underground, it was quiet and calm, and they focused on their job. Each fossil they tagged with a number and put in a plastic baggie. Then they wrapped the baggie in Bubble Wrap, placed the Bubble Wrap in a plastic container, and wrapped the plastic with more Bubble Wrap so it was protected on its trip to the surface.
animals would be mixed in. If they had fallen into the hole by accident or been trapped there by a natural disaster, there would be clues of that in the cave. But there were no other animal bones and no signs of earthquake or avalanche. It’s likely they were put there on purpose by the Naledi — maybe as part of a burial ritual. But exactly why and how remains a mystery.
And there are still so many mysteries to solve. How long ago did this creature live? What did it look like? How did it behave? How closely related is it to us humans? What did it eat? What did it do? Was it smart? How smart? Scientists will be chipping away at these questions for a long time. Which means children like you will grow up to be science detectives who are smart and curious and brave, who strap on headlamps and climb up cracks in caves to study ancient bones. And the questions — those really big questions that today’s scientists haven’t answered, well, maybe you’ll be the one that solves that mystery. Courtesy: www.pbs.org BY FENELLA SAUNDERS
When I’m putting my 3.5-year-old to bed every night, we have some down time where we just hang out on her bed together. One night I looked at her and asked, “Want me to tell you a science story?” She said, “Yes!” As a science communicator and a mom, I’m always looking for ways my young children can encounter science in their everyday lives. Instead of thinking of science as something they have to seek out or have special skills to do, I’d like them to see it as something that happens in all aspects of life. Recently my older daughter and I found an especially fun way to link science to the everyday, and it all happened while she was in her monkey ballerina pajamas. When I’m putting my 3.5-year-old to bed every night, we have some down time where we just hang out on her bed together. One night I looked at her and asked, “Want me to tell you a science story?” She said, “Yes!” For our first science story I decided to give her a basic, personal introduction to cells. I told her, Inside of you right now there are billions and billions of cells, all working together to make up you. And each cell is so teeny-tiny that you can’t even see it. The cells grow and divide and make more and more cells all the time. There are cells in your skin and your bones and your heart. [“And my muscles?” she chimed in. “Yes, your muscles too,” I said. “They’re in every part of you.”] And cells have a lot going on inside of them as well. They have a nucleus [I said this as nu-cle-us so she could repeat it, which she did], which is kind of like your brain. It keeps all the information for the cell to grow and build more cells. And there’s also a mitochondria. [Mi-to-chon-dri-a, I said, and yes, she repeated that as well]. That’s where the cell makes all of its energy. And you? You started out as just one cell! And that cell split up and made more and more cells, until it made you into a whole person! For a young child a story of this sort isn’t meant to cover all the details, of course; it focuses instead on a basic concept and links it to something about the child’s own familiar world. My daughter seemed truly fascinated. She peppered me with questions, which in typical child fashion weren’t completely on topic. (“What’s inside my finger?” “What’s inside my nails?”) Perhaps best of all, she asked if I could tell her another science story the next night. For some families such stories are a longstanding tradition. When I discussed the idea with some of my science-writer colleagues, several had had this experience as children with their own parents. But many of my peers expressed surprise (and delight) at the idea. And when I posted about it on Twitter and Facebook, the response was immediate and enthusiastic. All of this suggests to me that it would be useful to have some conversations about making science stories at bedtime a more mainstream idea. Hence, this post to get the conversation started—or restarted. A recent blog post for PBS Newshour took up the topic and provided some great tips on how to make science bedtime stories work better for kids. As parents we’re used to reading books to our children at bedtime, but here it seems like the old tradition of oral storytelling, without any pictures or media, could be more effective. A personalized, one-on-one narrative—where the topic connects directly to the child, and the child has your undivided focus—really could be key in making it stick. Courtesy: www.americanscientist.org Written by Amy Krolak WHAT ARE THE FACTS?Some of the statistics are:
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?In the fall of 2013, I began working as a Literacy Tutor at the elementary school near my home. My primary responsibility was working daily with 15-20 students in K-3. My working experience would expand to include many more responsibilities and students. This was not an unusual practice as I had a contracted number of hours to complete within one school year and no hours would be earned during school breaks. As a Title One school, our student body was overwhelmingly families that qualify for free or reduced lunch and a majority of the students were students of color. What I didn’t anticipate in my preparation to spend 1700+ hours amidst these students was the emotional toll it would take on me at times. I had been a regular elementary school volunteer for the 8-year span of my own 3 children but then I had moved into work involving mostly high schoolers for over a decade. One of the symptoms of my multiple mental illness diagnoses involves difficulty with regulating emotions. I found I was not prepared for how emotional I would become watching the students at my school struggle. I anticipated the academic part and my week long training and materials covered that aspect of the school environment. But the mental and emotional struggles I saw were a bit of a shock to me. I will freely admit that on more than one occasion, I was guilty of thinking: Do SOMETHING with these crazy kids!! As time progressed, all I could do was watch the Administrators, Behavior Specialists, Psychologists, and Social Workers diligently address these behaviors. Since I am not a certified mental health professional nor was I privy to the students’ mental health status, I will tell you what behaviors I observed. On any given day, students had emotional and behavioral needs that were beyond what the school could do to support, leaving the students disengaged from learning. Students were out of their learning areas and there were physical altercations and other unsafe behaviors such as climbing on top of furniture and throwing items. According to www.urban.org, “For children, the long-term mental health effects of poverty are even more alarming. In addition to occupying cognitive resources needed for education (arguably the clearest path out of poverty), poverty is toxic to children. Persistent stress and exposure to trauma trigger harmful stress hormones that permanently affect children’s brain development and even their genes. The damage to childhood development is so severe that medical professionals now describe the early effects of poverty as a childhood disease.” HOW DO WE DETERMINE?The signs of mental illness in children vary by age and type of illness, with some psychiatric disorders appearing even in preschool years. However, two warning signs tend to cross over into all categories and signal that you should consult with a professional such as a psychologist or therapist:
The following signs may also indicate the need for professional help: · Decline in school performance · Poor grades despite strong efforts · Constant worry or anxiety · Repeated refusal to go to school or to take part in normal activities · Hyperactivity or fidgeting · Persistent nightmares · Persistent disobedience or aggression · Frequent temper tantrums · Depression, sadness or irritability WHY DOES MENTAL HEALTH MATTER IN SCHOOLS?NOT AN EVEN PLAYING FIELD Nonetheless, schools vary greatly in the degree to which they are willing and able to accommodate mental health issues. “Some are doing a lot and training teachers on how to recognize warning signs and talk to families. And others are doing very little to understand the needs of students and how to work with families,” said Gruttadaro. Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/one-five-children-mental-illness-schools-often-dont-help/ In fact, young people with access to mental health services in school-based health centers are 10 times more likely to seek care for mental health or substance abuse than those who do not. However, a dedicated mental health presence in school-based health centers has not yet become a reality on a national scale. A critical shortage of mental health professionals like child and adolescent psychiatrists and clinical child psychologists translates to a knowledge gap in schools concerning how to best manage and mitigate mental health disorders. There are approximately 8,300 practicing child psychiatrists in the United States; the estimated number needed to satisfy demand is 12,600. In fact, it turns out that mental health disorders are actually pretty common. WHY SHOULD I CARE?Hopefully, I have made my points regarding the mental health crisis affecting a great many young people especially in terms of receiving an education. If you are not in the school system either as an employee or student or relative of a student, you may wonder why this is your problem. There is, of course, the financial burden, either of extra funding necessary in the school system or to pay for the care of young people in detention centers and then jails. There is an increased risk of criminal activity if they drop out of school. But there are other costs also: safety of other students and the community, costs of reliance on government assistance if they are unable to get or keep a job, and children with mental illness grow into adults with increasingly more difficult to treat mental illness.
I won’t argue politics or go off on my soap box about the need for a society to take care of its citizens. What I want to emphasize is that like the stigma attached to a mental illness diagnosis in contrast to societal acceptance of, for example, a young person with an insulin dependent Diabetes 1 or a child with a severe peanut allergy, to go away. I want parents to be able to comfortably seek the help they need from pediatrician, teachers, or daycare providers. I am aware that there is a difference between a child with a severe mental illness, with violent tendencies, and a child with a generalized anxiety disorder, like a little 4-year old I helped in preschool as an Early Childhood Special Education Paraprofessional. My point is that while the student was protected under privacy laws, to not have the rest of the students and their parents know her condition, our school district has created a special education program for these youngest kids, that has at its core, to grow or heal out of special education. Early intervention is so very essential. 10/4/2018 0 Comments 14 Indian Scientists Who Changed The World. And Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Them!by Shreya Pareek Science is an important part of our everyday life, even more so than we notice. From our fancy gadgets to the the technologies we can’t live without, from our humble light bulb to the space explorations, it is all gift of science and technology. I wonder what would we be doing if none of these things were invented? How often do we take out the time to think about those extra ordinary minds who made life easier for us? Here is a list of 14 Indian scientists who achieved a global recognition 1. Sir. CV RamanChandrasekhara Venkata Raman won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for his pioneering work on scattering of light. Born in Tiruchirapalli on November 7, 1888, he was the first Asian and first non-White to receive any Nobel Prize in the sciences. Raman also worked on the acoustics of musical instruments. He was the first to investigate the harmonic nature of the sound of the Indian drums such as the tabla and the mridangam. He discovered that, when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called the Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman effect. In October 1970, he collapsed in his laboratory. He was moved to a hospital and the doctors gave him four hours to live. He survived and after a few days refused to stay in the hospital as he preferred to die in the gardens of his Institute (the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore) surrounded by his flowers. He died of natural causes on 21 November 1970. Before dying, Raman told his students, Do not allow the journals of the Academy to die, for they are the sensitive indicators of the quality of Science being done in the country and whether science is taking root in it or not. 2. Homi J. BhabhaBorn on October 30, 1909 in Bombay, Homi Jehangir Bhabha played an important role in the Quantum Theory. He was the first person to become the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India. Having started his scientific career in nuclear physics from Great Britain, Bhabha returned to India and played a key role in convincing the Congress Party’s senior leaders, most notably Jawaharlal Nehru, to start the ambitious nuclear programme. Bhabha is generally acknowledged as the father of Indian nuclear power. But few people know that he was absolutely against India manufacturing atomic bombs, even if the country had enough resources to do so. Instead he suggested that the production of an atomic reactor should be used to lessen India’s misery and poverty. He died when Air India Flight 101 crashed near Mont Blanc on 24 January 1966. Many possible theories of the crash came up including a conspiracy theory in which the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is involved in order to paralyze India’s nuclear program. 3. VisvesvarayaBorn on 15 September 1860, Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya was a notable Indian engineer, scholar, statesman and the Diwan of Mysore during 1912 to 1918. He was a recipient of the Indian Republic’s highest honour, the Bharat Ratna. Sir M V suggested that India try to be at par with industrialized nations as he believed that India can become developed through industries. He has the credit of inventing ‘automatic sluice gates’ and ‘block irrigation system’ which are still considered to be marvels in engineering. Each year, his birthday 15 September is celebrated as Engineer’s Day in India. Since river beds were costly, he came up with an efficient way of filtering water through ‘Collector Wells’ in 1895 which was rarely seen anywhere in the world. (Source) 4. Venkatraman RadhakrishnanVenkatraman Radhakrishnan was born on May 18, 1929 in Tondaripet, a suburb of Chennai. Venkataraman was a globally renowned space scientist and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was an internationally acclaimed Astrophysicist and also known for his design and fabrication of ultralight aircraft and sailboats. His observations and theoretical insights helped the community in unraveling many mysteries surrounding pulsars, interstellar clouds, galaxy structures and various other celestial bodies. He died at the age of 81 in Bangalore. 5. S. ChandrashekarBorn on October 19, 1910 in Lahore, British India, he was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for his mathematical theory of black holes. The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him. He was nephew of CV Raman. Chandra became a United States citizen in 1953. His most celebrated work concerns the radiation of energy from stars, particularly white dwarf stars, which are the dying fragments of stars. He died on August 21, 1995, at the age of 82 in Chicago. 6. Satyendra Nath BoseBorn on January 1, 1894 in Calcutta, SN Bose was an Indian physicist specialising in quantum mechanics. He is of course most remembered for his role played in the class of particles ‘bosons‘, which were named after him by Paul Dirac to commemorate his work in the field. \ Bose adapted a lecture at the University of Dhaka on the theory of radiation and the ultraviolet catastrophe into a short article called “Planck’s Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta” and sent it to Albert Einstein. Einstein agreed with him, translated Bose’s paper “Planck’s Law and Hypothesis of Light Quanta” into German, and had it published in Zeitschrift für Physik under Bose’s name, in 1924. This formed the basis of the Bose-Einstein Statistics. In 1937, Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his only book on science, Visva–Parichay, to Satyendra Nath Bose. The Government of India awarded him India’s second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954. 7. Meghnad SahaBorn on October 6, 1893 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Meghnad Saha’s best-known work concerned the thermal ionisation of elements, and it led him to formulate what is known as the Saha Equation. This equation is one of the basic tools for interpretation of the spectra of stars in astrophysics. By studying the spectra of various stars, one can find their temperature and from that, using Saha’s equation, determine the ionisation state of the various elements making up the star. He also invented an instrument to measure the weight and pressure of solar rays. But did you know, he was also the chief architect of river planning in India? He prepared the original plan for the Damodar Valley Project. 8. Srinivasa RamanujanBorn on December 22, 1887 in Tamil Nadu, Ramanujam was an Indian mathematician and autodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. By age 11, he had exhausted the mathematical knowledge of two college students who were lodgers at his home. He was later lent a book on advanced trigonometry written by S. L. Loney. He completely mastered this book by the age of 13 and discovered sophisticated theorems on his own. We hadn’t known before that he faced a lot of health problems while living in England due to scarcity of vegetarian food. He returned to India and died at a young age of 32. Ramanujan’s home state of Tamil Nadu celebrates 22 December (Ramanujan’s birthday) as ‘State IT Day’, memorializing both the man and his achievements. 9. Jagadish Chandra BoseAcharya J.C. Bose was a man of many talents. Born on 30 November, 1858 in Bikrampur, West Bengal, he was a polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist. He pioneered the study of radio and microwave optics, made important contributions to the study of plants and laid the foundation of experimental science in the Indian sub-continent. He was the first person to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals, thus demonstrating wireless communication for the first time. What’s more, he is also probably the father of open technology, as he made his inventions and work freely available for others to further develop. His reluctance for patenting his work is legendary. Another of his well known inventions is the crescograph, through which he measured plant response to various stimuli and hypothesized that plants can feel pain, understand affection etc. While most of us are aware of his scientific prowess, we might not be aware of his talent as an early writer of science fiction! He is in fact considered the father of Bengali science fiction. 10. Vikram Sarabhai Considered as the Father of India’s space programme, Vikram Sarabhai was born on on 12 August, 1919 in the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat. He was instrumental in the setting up of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), when he successfully convinced the Indian government of the importance of a space programme for a developing nation after the launch of the Russian Sputnik, in this quote: "There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no ambiguity of purpose. We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the moon or the planets or manned space-flight. But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society." He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1966 and the Padma Vubhushan after his death in 1972. While everyone knows of his primary role in the establishment of ISRO, perhaps many of us do not know that he was also the force behind the establishment of many other Indian institutes of repute, most notably the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) and the Nehru Foundation for Development. 11. Salim AliSálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali, born on November 12, 1896 in Mumbai, was an ornithologist and a naturalist. Salim Ali was among the first Indians to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and his bird books helped develop ornithology in the sub-continent. This Birdman of India was the key figure behind the Bombay Natural History Society after 1947 and used his personal influence to garner government support for the organisation. He was awarded India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan in 1976. 12. Har Gobind KhoranaBorn on January 9, 1922 at Raipur village in West Punjab (now in Pakistan), Khorana was an Indian-American biochemist who shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that helped to show how the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, control the cell’s synthesis of proteins. In 1970, Khorana became the first to synthesize an artificial gene in a living cell. His work became the foundation for much of the later research in biotechnology and gene therapy. How many are aware that the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Government of India (DBT Department of Biotechnology), and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum jointly created the Khorana Program in 2007? The mission of the Khorana Program is to build a seamless community of scientists, industrialists, and social entrepreneurs in the United States and India. Khorana died of natural causes on November 9, 2011 at the age of 89. 13. Birbal SahniBorn on November 14, 1891 in West Punjab, Sahni was an Indian paleobotanist who studied the fossils of the Indian subcontinent. He was also a geologist who took an interest in archaeology. His greatest contributions lie in the study of the plants of India in the present as well as the historical context. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in 1936, the highest British scientific honor, awarded for the first time to an Indian botanist. He was a founder of The Paleobotanical Society which established the Institute of Palaeobotany on 10 September 1946 and which initially functioned in the Botany Department of Lucknow University. Sahni died on 10 April 1949 due to a heart attack. 14. APJ Abdul KalamAvul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, born on October 15, 1931 is an Indian scientist who worked as an Aerospace engineer with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
Kalam started his career by designing a small helicopter for the Indian Army. Kalam was also part of the INCOSPAR committee working under Vikram Sarabhai, the renowned space scientist. In 1969, Kalam was transferred to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) where he was the project director of India’s first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) which successfully deployed the Rohini satellite in near earth’s orbit in July 1980. He also served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. Kalam advocated plans to develop India into a developed nation by 2020 in his book India 2020. He has received several prestigious awards, including the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour. Known for his love for children, did you know that Kalam had set a goal of meeting 100,000 students in the 2 years after his resignation from the role of scientific adviser in 1999? May he continue to inspire millions. |
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