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Relevant particulars on the CSIR Research Scheme,NEHU,Chemistry
Scheme Term Extension

Forwarding Letter to the Application for Extension
fwd_ltr_appl_extn.jpg
One Year Extension after the first Term of 3 years

      By placing the mouse cursor on the picture above and with a click on the picture the webpage with URL:  http://geocities.com/saravamudhan1944/aravamudhan_resume.html can be dispalyed in a new window

 

Dr.S.Aravamudhan

PI CSIR Research Scheme: "Shielding......Crystal....Structures"

Department of Chemistry

North Eastern Hill University

Shillong 793002 Meghalaya

 

 

The Head

Human Resources Development Group

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research

CSIR Complex, OPP. Institute of Hotel management

Library Avenue, PUSA

New Delhi 110 012

 

Subject: Application for Extension of the period of the Grant of the this Scheme from 01-01-2005 till 31-12-2005

 

Reference: The annual report 03-04 and application sent by POST [on 01-10-2004] to the CSIR in the prescribed form   for renewal

 

Sir:

 

Please note that in my application form for Renewal of the Scheme during 01-04-2004 till 31-12-1944, I have requested to make provisions for Extension of the Scheme for one year after its Natural Termination. And at this juncture while I should be submitting the Final Technical Report soon after 31-12-2004, I find that I must reiterate the necessity for this extension. Only the ampount sanctioned as lumpsum 4 lakhs eqipment grant and the Contingency grant @ Rs.1250/- per month, which [as I had indicated earlier with reasons as to how] is an underestimated estimate, could be spent in this scheme. But as I foresee, the impact of this project could be better, if the required funds could be invested much more than what has till now been available under contingency. For the utilization of the staff grant appropriate provision be made so that the University Finance Department could have the necessary flexibility to advice the PI to go ahead with the expenditure with unspent amounts sanctioned under one head of account by the CSIR, when required under other head of account when more amount is required to be spent than the sanctioned amount. These need not slow down the progress of the Sceme if the Funding agency finds it is reasonable.

I hereby request that the tenure of the scheme be extended for one more year with the necessary communications to facilitate financial accounting for more effective implementation of the scheme at North Eatern Hill University, Shillong.

 Enclosed herewith a Justification for this required extension may be found.

 

                                                                                                 faithfully,

 

 

                                                                                              S.Aravamudhan

                                                                                              Lecturer & PI

                                                                                              Department of Chemistry

                                                                                              NEHU Shillong 793022

                                                                                              Meghalaya

 

 

 

Justification:

 

The Following points indicate the DEVIATIONS from the original plan of work and require more support from the External Agency to be pursued after the Termination of the Scheme.

 

The first phase of the project implementation as envisaged in the original research proposal was to construct the Magic Angle Spinning [MAS] Probe for the AC 300 NMR Spectrometer at the RSIC, NEHU for which it was plabnned to collaborate with NCL, PUNE. There had been no change in this prime objective to provide the MAS facility nor any change in the requirement of the collaborative effort.

However there had been a change in the methodology and the materials due to the following turn of events:

1. The main component for the construction of MAS assembly is the stator/rotor assembly and this part of it was supposed to have been a stock available at NCL as much as it was used for the previously published MAS construction. Soon after the CSIR Scheme of this PI at NEHU was sanctioned [by this time this was all efforts of two-year-before 01-01-2002] the situation prevailing was that the stock of stator/rotor assembly at NCL has become not so much of available material for this purpose and efforts to contact the various manufacturers for procuring the spare part stator/rotor took about 2 months. And propmtly replies were received that no manufacturer would be selling this item as listed component except as a spare assembly for their original MAS Probes procured. This sitruation was a set back but, effort by this PI in trying to contact Bruker  BioSpin {Sales/Marketing Division} on this matter resulted in an optimistic turn since the Bruker BioSpin exhuded such an understanding in this context that they were making possible for this PI to procure the Bruker's original Mechanical assembly with stator/rotor at the costs amounting to reasonably within the reach of the equipment grant in this Scheme. This scene was neither known before as a possibility, nor it is any compromise of the original plan as portrayable by the descriptions below:

2. The fact at RSIC, NEHU is that the entire maintenance and operational aspects have to be with the available technical assistants at RSIC, who do not have experience in the Solid State NMR aspects either instrumentational or the Magnetic Resaonance Technicalities. If a probe constructed entirely indigenously is brought before them, then to make them get used what another user [though it is this PI with reasonably weell equipped with the required prerequisites to use and impart training] has to provide on his own Reasearch project [and not a unit procured from the manufacturers weell known to them with familiar service personnel] would have been an inexplicable hurdle. This has now turned out to be nonexistent becuase the mechanical assembly as they would be handling would be the familiar Bruker design like that of the present liquid-state NMR probe setup. No longer there is any requirement for trying to acquire the stator/rotor assembly separately. This is a   special offer from Bruker BioSpin for the research project of this PI.

3. These developments could take shape at a much slower rate than what otherwise would have been including the delays of having to go through the acquiring of purchase committee approvals for the required import of this assembly.

The above has the major contribution in changing the course of implementation to this stage. Since the scheme was approved only two years after the first initiatives, at the outset while commencing the scheme on 01-01-2202 the PI had a rather gloomy  picture at the time of receiving the sanction of the scheme than this cheerful turn.

That no staff [JRA/SRA/RA] could be appointed in this scheme is a trend quite obvious and explainable, given the experience of this PI during the early stages of the installation and utilization of the facility at this NMR Sysytem in NEHU, Shillong. But, this would be the enthusiasm on this project was not in any way a foregone conclusion eventhough there are reasons to state for this continued nonavailablity of technically motivated research scholars. This state of the technical know how had prompted this PI to set the trends for an "INNOVATIVE PROGRAMME"  initiatives on Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Techniques. Thus unintended outcome is the drafting of a viable course curriculum and get this also reviewed by the expert committee of the UGC is an unstated outcome of the efforts to implement the CSIR Research Scheme on providing a reinforced Magnetic Resonance Facility at this University.

 

The following enumeration of the Work Done During in this scheme indicates that for the changed Plan of Work and the progress made thus would require a much longer evolution period under the support of the CSIR so that a clear appreciation of the realization of the Objectives in spite of the changes and how the support from the external agency has contributed necessarily to the advantage of the host institution

 

Significant progress has been made in implementing the first phase of the project, namely, the construction of the Magic Angle Sample Spinning MASS probe accessory for the AC 300 NMR Spectrometer at the RSIC, NEHU. The spontaneous special offer from Bruker BioSpin to provide the basic mechanical assembly of the Probe (MASS) body has reduced the effort in acquiring good quality material for the construction of the probe and have it designed and machined in a precision work shop.

During the process of implementing this project, particularly because of the experiences gained while trying to appoint a staff in the project, a necessity arose for working out a durable curricular contents for a graduate programmes, appropriate and comptible with the average student level, so as to impart a capability to them to gain the technical know-how for using the Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy at a rate commensurate with the rapidly advancing technological provisions for the utilization. Aconsiderable progress has been made in this direction, and the course-curricular structure drafted out by this PI under the frame work of the INNOVATIVE PROGRAMME of the University Grants Commission has been reviewed by an Expert committee of the UGC and found adequate for a PG level course on Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Technique. However, the PI would be able to surge forward only if a Bench top Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometer Unit could be procured as a supplementary unit to the existing FT NMR AC 300 Spectrometer at the University. This requirement of a durable Syllabus, though was under the consideration since a long time, did gain the necessary emphasis during the course of implementing ths CSIR Project. This activity was not explicitly indicated as a specific phase in the objective of the CSIR research proposal. Nevertheless, implicit is that advantages accrued due to the support of the CSIR towards the overall need for improving the infra structure facilities.

This effort would go a long way in trying to impress on the users of the RSIC facility about the MASS technique and its use in effectively extracting structural informations on systems which are hitherto being studied only in liquid state NMR. This would be contributing to the lasting benefit of the CSIR Scheme which would continue to accrue even after the termination of the CSIR project. While evolving this course structure, the other explicitly stated phases of the CSIR Schemes have implicitly progessed without a necessity for any chronological sequence to implement the phases in the sequence as listed out in the priginal research proposal.

The effort to make progress on the results, which were obtained for the NMR measurements made at the TIFR, Mumbai during August 2003 with the VARIAN UNITY 600MHz NMR Spectrometer, have gained in their significance in view of the contributions made by this PI in the National and International Symposia and Conferences on NMR. These trends seem to be furher substantiated by what is being currently reported in literature as clarifications on interpretations of chamical shifts and induced fields.

These effectively pave the right way for the use of the MASS facility [phase 1 of the CSIR Research scheme] when the construction is completed for use. 

 

The folllowing is a description of the Nature of the work yet to be done should indicate to the Funding External Agency what could really be the credibility that the Funding Agency can look for when this task is accomplished, from the point of view of the what acrrued till now due to this CSIR Research Scheme

 

The electronic components required for the tuning of the sample coil of the MASS probe have to be acquired and it is known now that these have to be imported and are not avalable as listed items for sale by the manufacturers of the MASS probes. This would require considerable effort to find components available from General Electronic Component suppliers that match the specifications of component as required for a specialized instrument like MASS probe.

There are several aspects of the present FT NMR Spectrometer System [the AC 300 at RSIC, NEHU] which have to be looked into since only on the basis of the Working AC 300 system, the constructed probe would become useful. Or else CSIR may have to find an alternative placement for this MASS probe unit if its construction is completed since the cost of this import item exceeds Rs. 3 lakhs. This may not be a difficult task since this is a collaborative effort with NCL,Pune where there are requirements for probes of this type and where there are several FT NMR systems already functional.

As listed out in the last page of the Website URL:  https://saravamudhan.tripod.com/csir_schm_sa/ it is essential to procure software packages which are for structure-prediction-types based on chemical shift data. Thus the packages are essentially (i) Data bases of known spectra and chemical shifts (ii) packages enabling calculation of Chemical shifts of nuclei in molecules using theoretical procedures. Acquiring of these packages would require utilization of funds under appropriate head of accounts. The project originally submitted did not include the cost of these soft wares since as originally intended if a staff could have been appointed, the scholar would have had to spend the time in exclusively the first phase of the work since this requires acquiring skills in electronic instrumentation aspects which is not imparted as a matter of routine in the regular PG level curriculum. Since the effort to attend to the training of a staff was absent, the PI could spend time on the effort to look out for software packages which meet the specifications to be handled by, technical assistants to start with to the extent of maintaining PCs and Workstations supporting these soft wares as part of the facility and let the qualified assigned users to avail these software facilities. Since it is possible to find scientists handling such soft wares near this Centre for their requirements making this as a facility part of NMR facility in a University is a different trend which requires more efforts knowing the specialized package capabilities and the user environments which would enable the use of the same.

Acquiring data form Spectrometer on to another PC which is not a part of the spectrometer system of the manufacturers and processing data is a trend which requires unconventional efforts and from the displays in the Conference pavilions and other resources, reinforcements have to be added which would take shape when the first phase has been completed and the MASS probe accessory is functional.

The work which is being presented by this PI on INDUCED FIELD Calculations pertaining to magnetic moments and their effectiveness in explaining the trends of observed chemical shifts [ http://saravamudhan.tripod.com ] , has certain relevance for the MASS techniques. Particularly, while this PI was indicating the possible applications of these calculations in biological cells with different susceptibilities inside (inner compartments) and outside (outer compartments) the cell, these indications are being substantiated as valid by some of the recent publications in the Journal "Magnetic Resonance in Medicine"{ Vol 51, Number 3, page 441,march 2004] and "Concepts in Magnetic Resonance" [Vol 18, pages 72-95, 2003]. This encouraging trend has to be reinforced by this PIs intended trend of experiments [see the results reported in the webpage cited above, particularly the spectra with capillary tubes inside a 5mm NMR tubes]. The collaborating Scientist at NCL had expressed interest in experiments which this PI had been envisaging on magic angle spinning of liquid state samples for their consequences which are not very far from what was being reported currently in leading journals.

The present state of the PIs concerns on Induced Field effects and the Lorentz ellipsoids/spheres can be appreciated by the documentation at the URL: http://geocities.com/saravamudhan1944/eenc_ampere_lille.html  and the other links to web pages in that Webpage. 

All these at present which this PI has indicated can be realized by this PI only if the supportive measures to promote such interests are reinforcively enhanced. However, along these indicated trends any appointed staff can be trained and with assistance from resource persons at National NMR facilities in this country, the work can be constructively progressing. Hence it all depends on the Host institutions' appreciation of the purposes and the invigoration by the Supporting external agencies, in the cause of making this institution as part of the national stream. This coordination of the activities at this RSIC, with the National Facilities at TIFR, Mumbai and IISC., Bangalore is what is to be aspired as a durable consequence of this CSIR Scheme at NEHU with the collaboration of NCL, PUNE.

More details would be possible in the Final Technical Report soon after the 31st December 2004. Hence this PI would reinforce further the requirement of an Extension for this Scheme by one more year by trying to have a Plain paper application duly forwarded to CSIR by the Head of Instituion.

The provision of providing a durable curricular training on the spectroscopic techniques based on Magnetic Resonance phenomena would surge forward if the Rs. 42 Lakhs required for the bench top models could be forthcoming as the Extra Equipment Grant. As an alternative  the PI for this purpose should be requisitioning by a renewed application this amount from the Rs 50 lakhs set forth as possible grants by UGC for purposes of the INNOVATIVE PROGRAMMES. An OUTPUT DATA to UGC in the prescribed form would be sent indicating the situation by this PI as a provisional measure for an approval to be sought as coordinator of the envisaged programme.

 

http://geociteis.com/saravamudhan1944/ugc_inno_proposal.html

http://geocities.com/saravamudhan1944/inno_course_contents.html  

 

 

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