CSIR UGC NET JRF December 2011 Notification / Apply online

CSIR will hold the Joint CSIR-UGC Test on 18th December, 2011 for determining the eligibility of the Indian National candidates for the award of Junior Research Fellowships (JRF) NET and for determining eligibility for appointment of Lecturers (NET) in certain subject areas falling under the faculty of Science. The award of Junior Research Fellowship (NET) to the successful eligible candidates will depend on their finding admission/placement in a university/ national laboratory/ institution of higher learning and research, as applicable.

• Junior Research Fellowships (NET)
• Lecturers (NET)

Educational Qualification:

M.Sc. or Equivalent degree under the subjects mentioned in para 2.1 above, with minimum 55% marks for General & OBC candidates; 50% for SC/ST candidates, Physically and Visually Handicapped candidates and Ph.D. degree holders who had passed Master's degree prior to 19th September 1991.

A candidate can also apply for the Test under RA (Result Awaited) category, if he/she is appearing or has appeared in his/her final year (Last Semester where Semester system is there) of M.Sc. OR equivalent Degree Examination in subjects mentioned in para 2.1 above during the academic Session 2011-2012. Such candidates will have to submit the attestation format (given at the reverse of the application form) duly certified by the Head of the Deptt./Institute over his/her signature and rubber stamp (with address and name) from where the candidate is appearing or has appeared in the final year(Last Semester where Semester system is there) M.Sc. or equivalent degree examination. However, such candidates shall be admitted to the Test provisionally. 

They shall only be considered eligible for JRF-(NET)/LS-(NET), if they are able to produce the proof of having passed the Master’s Degree examination in the relevant or related subject with the requisite percentage of marks and within the stipulated IMPORTANT DATES time frame. Students enrolled in integrated MS-Ph D. program are also eligible to apply for JRF in subject areas of NET. Their eligibility for Lectureship will be subject to fulfilling the criteria laid down by UGC.

Subjects of The Test:

The Test will be held in the subjects as given under:

• Chemical Sciences,
• Earth Sciences
• Life Sciences
• Mathematical Sciences
• Physical Sciences

Age Limit:

• For JRF (NET): Minimum 19 Years and maximum 28 years as on 01-07-2011 (upper age limit may be relaxed up to 5 years as in case of candidates belonging to SC/ST/OBC(Non Creamy Layer), Physically handicapped/Visually handicapped and female applicants).
• For LS (NET): Minimum 19 years, as on 01.07.2011. No upper age limit.

Date and Scheme of the Test:

The single paper MCQ based test will be held on Sunday, the 18th December, 2011 as under:

Morning Session:

Subject	Marks	Timings	Duration
(i) Life Sciences (ii) Mathematical Sciences	200	9.00AM-12.00PM	3 hrs

Afternoon Session:

Subject	Marks	Timings	Duration
(i) Chemical Sciences (ii) Earth, Atmospheric, Ocean and Planetary Sciences (iii) Physical Sciences	200	2.00 PM-5.00 PM	3 hrs

Syllabus of the Test:

The question paper shall be divided into three parts, (A, B & C) as per syllabus & Scheme of Exam.

• Part 'A' shall be common to all subjects. This part shall contain questions pertaining to General Science, Quantitative Reasoning & Analysis and Research Aptitude.
• Part 'B' shall contain subject-related conventional Multiple Choice questions (MCQs), generally covering the topics given in the syllabus.
• Part 'C' shall contain higher value questions that may test the candidate's knowledge of scientific concepts and/or application of the scientific concepts. The questions shall be of analytical nature where a candidate is expected to apply the scientific knowledge to arrive at the solution to the given scientific problem.
• Negative marking for wrong answers, wherever required, shall be applicable as per scheme of Exam. Syllabus & Scheme of Exam of single Paper is given in the Information Bulletin for this test at Annexure "A" and may also be seen at CSIR website: www.csirhrdg.res.in

Examination Centers:

The test will be held at 26 Centers spread all over India, as specified below:

Bangalore, Bhavnagar, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Guntur, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Imphal, Jammu, Jamshedpur, Karaikudi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Nagpur, Pilani, Pune, Raipur Roorkee, Srinagar, Thiruvananthapuram, Udaipur and Varanasi.

For more info please visit this Link:

Biochemistry Den official site 

(Just click this link and get CSIR old papers with key and Study materials absolutely FREE  FREE)

Protein folding made easy

Protein folding has nothing to do with laundry. It is, in fact, one of the central questions in biochemistry. Protein folding is the continual and universal process whereby the long, coiled strings of amino acids that make up proteins in all living things fold into more complex three-dimensional structures. By understanding how proteins fold, and what structures they are likely to assume in their final form, researchers are then able to move closer to predicting their function.

This is important because incorrectly folded proteins in humans result in such devastating diseases as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, emphysema and cystic fibrosis. Developing better modelling techniques for protein folding is crucial to creating more effective pharmaceutical treatments for these and other diseases.

Computational methods of modelling protein folding have existed for a couple of decades. But what McGill researcher Jérôme Waldispühl of the McGill Centre for Bioinformatics has done, working with collaborators from MIT, is to develop algorithms that can work from a laptop computer to examine a protein's fundamental chemical properties and then scan a number of possible protein shapes before predicting the final form that the protein is likely to take.

The results have been impressive. Whereas classical techniques for predicting protein folding pathways required hundreds of thousands of CPU hours to compute the folding dynamics of 40 amino acids proteins, the program tFolder implemented by Solomon Shenker – a former McGill under-graduate student now at Cornell – has been able to predict correctly in 10 minutes on a single laptop, a coarse-grained representation of the folding pathways of a protein with 60 amino acids.

Waldispühl and his students continue to work on their algorithm to improve its success rate at predicting protein folding with broader categories of proteins including some that are important in DNA-binding. The research was recently presented at the 15th Annual International Conference in Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB 2011).

Heaviest element officially named Copernicium

Label follows tradition of naming elements after merited scientists 

The heaviest element yet known is now officially named "Copernicium," after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicium has the atomic number 112 — this number denotes the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom. It is 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element officially recognized by international union for chemistry IUPAC. 

The name for the element was suggested by the team that discovered it, led by Sigurd Hofmann at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Germany. The suggested name "Copernicium" in honor of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) follows the tradition of naming chemical elements after merited scientists.

IUPAC officially announced the endorsement of the new element's name on Feb. 19, Nicolaus Copernicus' birthday. Copernicus' work in the field of astronomy is the basis for our modern, heliocentric world view, which states that the sun is the center of our solar system with Earth and all the other planets (in our solar system) circling around it.

On the periodic table of elements, Copernicium will have the symbol "Cn." The team had originally suggested "Cp" as the element's symbol, but because this abbreviation has other uses in science (such as a material's specific heat), the team agreed to "Cn."

Other elements named for famous scientists include: Einsteinium (for Albert Einstein), Fermium (for nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi), and Curium (after Marie Curie and her husband Pierre).

Hofmann and his team were able to produce the element Copernicium at GSI for the first time on Feb. 9, 1996. Using the 100-meter long GSI accelerator (an atom smasher), they fired zinc ions onto a lead foil. The fusion of the atomic nuclei of the two elements produced an atom of the new element 112. But the atom was only stable for a fraction of a second.

Further independent experiments confirmed the discovery of the element. Last year, IUPAC officially recognized the existence of element 112, acknowledged the GSI team’s discovery and invited them to propose a name.