Khoj 2008 – Gurgaon

Like last year, I was invited to be a judge for the International School Competition on Science Projects in DAV Public School at Gurgaon. The projects dealt on issues of Global warming, Future Energy Sources, IT, Clean and Green City, etc. Overall the students were very enthusiastic about their models but when it came to conceptual understanding the students were found to be not so competent.

Later on the second day, I was one of the panel members for the discussion on the topic of Science Education – A Challenge. This was held for the teachers. The other members of the panel were from IITD, NCL, BARC. The panel discussed on how the teachers can help the students to generate an interest towards science, about classroom learning, conceptual understanding, relating their learning with their daily experiences, etc.

pathway modelling of glycolysis in gnowsys

As final year project of B.Tech in Bioinformatics, Pradnya, Lakshmi, Thara students from D. Y . Patil  Institute of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Navi Mumbai, worked on a project on representing pathway modelling of glycolysis in gnowsys. The project involved to create dictionaries, store into gnowsys and then represent using graphviz. The project report can be viewed from the trac site.

The glycolysis pathway is represented using the transformations that each molecule undergoes. For e.g. the glucose 6 phosphate gets transformed into fructose 6 phosphate as a result of phosphorylation. Such processes in glycolysis have been mapped to represent the pathway.

process modelling of mitosis in gnowsys

As final year project of B.Tech in Bioinformatics, Ruchi student from D.Y . Patil from D. Y . Patil Institute of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Navi Mumbai, worked on a project on representing processes modelling of mitosis in gnowsys. The project involved to create dictionaries, store into gnowsys and then represent using graphviz. The project report can be viewed from the trac site.

The mitotic process has been represented in the form of prior-state and post-state. For e.g. in prophase, the chromatin’s prior state is thin, fibre-like and its post state is thick, condensed form. In this case, the chromatin’s properties are getting changed. In this way, we have modelled each change in the structural objects by representing the changes in the states of the object.