Nature India Photo Contest 2018 is now open

Posted on 31 Oct 2018 by Subhra Priyadarshini

[Update on 10 December 2018: Deadline extended to 20 December 2018]

Nature India’s annual photo competition is back!

This year, we are delighted to announce three cash prizes worth $350, $250, $200 for the top three winners. The top 10 winning entries will be part of a roving exhibition across venues in India.

Submit your entries now for a chance to win these exciting prizes and to be featured on Nature India‘s blog Indigenus.

The theme for this year’s contest is “Vector-borne Diseases”.

About 700,000 people around the world die every year from diseases transmitted by vectors such as mosquitoes, sandflies, blackflies, ticks and tsetse flies. Major vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue, schistosomiasis, human African trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and onchocerciasis account for around 17% of all infectious diseases.

They are most prevalent in tropical and subtropical regions, and among the poorest. Since 2014, major outbreaks of dengue, malaria, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika have caused large-scale devastation.

We invite entries that focus on the gravity of vector borne diseases. You could choose any aspect of the issue to highlight – disease manifestation; hygiene and sanitation; breeding grounds; the science and pseudoscience; new and emerging solutions; mitigation; preparedness and whatever else can creatively and aesthetically convey the subject in question.

Prizes

There are three cash awards to be won – the first prize worth $350, the second worth $250 and a third prize of $200. In addition, ten finalists will be featured on Nature India.

Photographs will be judged for novelty, creativity, quality and printability. Winners will be chosen by a panel of Nature Research editors and photographers alongside a leading Indian scientist working in the area of vector-borne diseases. The winner and two runners-up will receive a copy of the Nature India Annual Volume 2017 and a bag of goodies (including Collector’s first issues of Nature and Scientific American and some other keepsakes) from the Nature Research. One of the winning entries also stands a chance of being featured on the cover a forthcoming print publication.

Eligibility

The contest is open to all – any nationality, any occupation, any profession. You may use whatever camera you wish – even your cell phone – as long as the photograph you send us is unedited, original, in digital format and of printable quality. Just make sure you are not violating any copyrights. Also, no obscene, provocative, defamatory, sexually explicit, or other inappropriate content please (refer to the contest terms and conditions below).

Please send your entries in jpeg format to npgindia@nature.com with your name and contact details. Please mention “Nature India Photo Contest 2018” in the subject line of your email. The photograph must be accompanied by a brief caption (please see some photo captions here for reference) explaining the subject of the picture along with the date, time and place it was taken.

We will accept a maximum of two entries per person. The last date for submissions is midnight of December 20, 2018 Indian Standard Time. On social media, please use the hashtag #NatureIndphoto to talk about the contest or to check out our latest updates.

The theme for our inaugural photo competition in 2014 was “Science & technology in India”. In 2015, it was “Patterns”, in 2016 we made it simple with “Nature” and last year it focussed on the “Grand Challenges”. We have received some breathtaking entries from across the world all these years. You might want to take a look at the winning entries of the Nature India Photo Contest 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 for some inspiration or the entries that made it to the top to get an idea of what we look for while selecting winners.

[TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Please read these terms and conditions carefully. By entering into this Nature India Annual photo contest (“Promotion”), you agree that you have read these terms and that you agree to them. Failure to comply with these terms and conditions may result in your disqualification from the Promotion.

This Promotion is run by Nature Research, a division of Springer Nature Limited a company registered in England with registered number 00785998 and registered office at The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London N1 9XW (“Promoter”).
To enter this Promotion you must be: (a) resident in a country where it is lawful for you to enter; and (b) aged 18 years old or over (or the applicable age of majority in your country if higher) at the time of entry. This Promotion is void in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria and where prohibited or restricted by law.
This Promotion is not open to directors or employees (or members of their immediate families) of Promoter or any subsidiary of Promoter. Promoter reserves the right to verify the eligibility of entrants.
The Promotion is open for entries between 00:00 on 14/11/2017 and 00:00 on 20/12/2017 IST.
No purchase is necessary to enter this prize Promotion and will not increase your chances of winning.
You can enter this Promotion by emailing npgindia@nature.com
Only two entries per eligible person. More than two entries will be deemed to be invalid and may lead to disqualification.
Promoter accepts no responsibility for any entries that are incomplete, illegible, corrupted or fail to reach Promoter by the closing date for any reason. Proof of posting or sending is not proof of receipt. Entries via agents or third parties are invalid. No other form of entry is permitted. Please keep a copy of your entry as we will be unable to return entries or provide copies.
The prize for the Promotion consists of the following: Three cash awards worth $350, $250 and $200 for the top three entries respectively, a copy of the Nature India Special Annual Volume 2017 and a bag of goodies (which includes Collector’s first issues of Nature, November 1869 and Scientific American, August 1845; and some other keepsakes) from Nature Research.
The prizes shall be awarded as follows: The prize will be decided in the week following the close of the Promotion. The winners will be notified via email. Winners will be selected by a four person panel of Nature staff, at least one of which will be independent from the Promotion, based on photographic merit, creativity, photo quality, and impact. Full names of the judging panel will be available on request. Any decision will be final and binding and no further communication will be entered into in relation to it.
Ownership of entries: for consideration into this Promotion, you must sign a license to publish form granting the intellectual property rights to Nature Research for your image. This may be used in promotional or marketing material in print and online. You confirm that your entry is your own original work, is not defamatory and does not infringe any laws, including privacy laws, whether of the UK or elsewhere, or any rights of any third party, that no other person was involved in the creation of your entry, that you have the right to give Promoter and its respective licensees permission to use it for the purposes specified herein, that you have the consent of anyone who is identifiable in your contribution or the consent of their parent, guardian or carer if they are under 18 (or the applicable age of majority), it is lawful for you to enter and that you agree not to transfer files which contain viruses or any other harmful programs.
The winner(s) of the Promotion shall be notified by email no more than two weeks after the Promotion closes.
The winner(s) will be required to confirm acceptance of the prize within ten working days and may be required to complete and return an eligibility form stating their age and residency details, among other details. Promoter will endeavour to ensure that winner(s) receive their prizes within 30 days of the date they confirm acceptance of the prize. If a winner does not accept the prize within ten days of being notified, they will forfeit their prize and Promoter reserves the right to choose another winner(s). Promoter’s decision is final and Promoter reserves the right not to correspond on any matter.
The name, region of residence and likeness of the winners may be used by Promoter for reasonable post-event publicity in any form including on Promoter’s website and social media pages at no cost.
You can find out who has won a prize by sending an e-mail to npgindia@nature.com or checking the Nature India blog website Indigenus (https://blogs.nature.com/indigenus).
Promoter reserves the right to cancel or amend these Terms and Conditions or change the Prize (to one of equal or greater value) as required by the circumstances. No cash equivalent to the Prize is available.
All personal data submitted by entrants is subject to and will be treated in a manner consistent with Promoter’s Privacy Policy accessible at https://www.nature.com/info/privacy.html. By participating in this Promotion, entrants hereby agree that Promoter may collect and use their personal information and acknowledge that they have read and accepted the Promoter Privacy Policy.
Promoter may at its sole discretion disqualify any entrant found to be tampering or interfering with the entry process or operation of the website, or to be acting in any manner deemed to be disruptive of or prejudicial to the operation or administration of the Promotion.
Other than for death or personal injury arising from negligence of the Promoter, so far as is permitted by law, the Promoter hereby excludes all liability for any loss, damage, cost and expense, whether direct or indirect, howsoever caused in connection with the Promotion or any aspect of the Prize. All activities are undertaken at the entrants own risk. Your legal rights as a consumer are not affected.]

SciArt scribbles: The molecule painter

Posted on 30 Oct 2018 by Subhra Priyadarshini

Many scientists embrace the artistic medium to infuse new ideas into their scientific works. With science-art collaborations, both artists and scientists challenge their ways of thinking as well as the process of artistic and scientific inquiry. Can art hold a mirror to science? Can it help frame and answer uncomfortable questions about science: its practice and its impact on society? Do artistic practices inform science? In short, does art aid evidence?

Nature India’s blog series ‘SciArt Scribbles’ will try to answer some of these questions through the works of some brilliant Indian scientists and artists working at this novel intersection that offers limitless possibilities. You can follow this online conversation with #SciArtscribbles .

Shraddha Nayak paints to bring clarity to complex biological phenomena. A PhD. from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, USA, here’s how this Bangalore-based biomedical scientist and illustrator finds stunning art in everyday biological processes.

Shraddha Nayak

Towards the end of my doctoral studies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I was strolling down the city sidewalks one chilly evening and came across a beautiful art store. The last time I made an oil-painting was in middle school. At that moment, I felt like a small fish that fell for the bait. Of course, I was enticed into buying a few paints that looked and smelled delicious.

At first, I made some random art, but those days my mind was swirling with lymphocytes and macrophages and interleukin production and it made an appearance on my canvas (Image 1 below).

Image 1: Oil colour depiction of the dendritic cell (far right) frantically prodding the sleepy lymphocyte to wake up: “We have been invaded. You gotta head to battleground NOW buddy”{credit}S. Nayak{/credit}

I liked how it turned out and made a few more. I am not sure if this helped me with research, but time slowed down while painting and I was wrapped in peace.

Visual bias

Research on adenosine biology (my laboratory interest during PhD) has been going on for almost 90 years. The amount of literature that exists is phenomenal and I often found myself drowning in it. I wanted to put my readings in one frame, in one big picture to see how all these studies connected. I also relished making graphs and little representations of data, and spending hours under the microscope to get the perfect shot, more than doing wet-lab experiments.

Consequently, the day I stumbled upon a whole fascinating world of biomedical visualisation, I was off the diving board. Since then, I have realised the significance of design. Look at our good old paper clip for example, or an iron box or a spoon among numerous others. We tend to take these products for granted, but they are designed so efficiently that within milliseconds of laying sight on them we know what they are meant for. The same applies to scientific figures and illustrations. There are design strategies one could follow, that helps the message jump out instantly at readers.

For example, see Image 2 below. The scientist wanted a depiction of the above discovery in context of cardiovascular disease. I used colour sparingly, only for the main characters, to enable distinction between wild type and mutant. The background contextual illustration being important to convey the message has been presented, but greyed out to prevent distraction from the main point.

Image 2: 2D illustration for a scientific paper showing how somatic mutations in hematopoietic stem cells can undergo clonal expansion and lead to cardiovascular disease. {credit}S. Nayak{/credit}

Thinking 3D

Cellular and molecular biology are very visual. Textbooks and scientific articles are replete with diagrams and illustrations. We have come a long way since the hand-drawings of the Renaissance period to digital renditions to communicate research and hypotheses. What we study, more often than not, involves looking at structure and/or dynamics and/or interactions from the bustling lives of characters that are invisible.

We only see a part of this drama unfold under the microscope. Why restrict ourselves to 2D thinking when our data is 3D, and when we have 3D tools to visualise the above facets? A few clever and creative scientists have developed (and are constantly expanding) ways of exploiting 3D animation software for research and its communication.

These are the very 3D programs used to create animated Disney-Pixar movies, or even used for automobile and architectural design beside other uses. They enable us to create context, test our hypotheses, consolidate data and simulate reality. And so, my journey as a molecular animator began. For example, see Image 3, where I use 3D animation to to help a lipid researcher visualise structural facets of a high-density lipoprotein (HDL) receptor.

Image 3: A 3D animation snapshot image to partially solve 3D structure, oligomerisation and ligand-binding of the HDL receptor.{credit}S. Nayak{/credit}

These programmes also provide wings to my imagination in fun ways. Working on an animation around a popular family of proteins found at the cell membrane (G protein-coupled receptor or GPCR), I drifted a little to create Image 4, from the adenosine receptor point of view, considering how much coffee the world drinks. (Caffeine, the stimulant found in coffee binds to adenosine receptors temporarily preventing drowsiness. Adenosine receptors are an example of GPCRs.)

Image 4: A 3D illustration titled “Why does it always caffeine on me?”{credit}S. Nayak{/credit}

I am not sure if I am creating art. The cell and molecular representations that we currently use, appear to be pieces of art on their own. Don’t you agree?

[Shraddha Nayak can be contacted at shraddha.m.nayak@gmail.com. She tweets from @Na_y_ak ]

Suggested reading:

SciArt scribbles: Coupling creation and analysis with collages

SciArt scribbles: Technology to aid dance

SciArt scribbles: Music to tackle PhD blues

SciArt scribbles: Playing science out

Artists on science: scientists on art

Science without borders: The Bhabha legacy

Posted on 24 Oct 2018 by Subhra Priyadarshini

As young physicists at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai circa 1981, Alak Ray and Prajval Shastri experienced an exciting era in the life of the institute, set up by visionary scientist Homi Jehangir Bhabha in 1945.

In this guest post, Ray, now a Raja Ramanna Fellow at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (TIFR) and Shastri, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore peer into the institute’s history, armed with Indira Chowdhury’s book Growing the Tree of Science, Homi Bhabha and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

The campus of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research around the time of inauguration of its new buildings in January 1962 in south Bombay (now Mumbai).{credit}TIFR archives{/credit}

After seventy years of the government of independent India nurturing scientific enterprise, even in the face of criticism of its investment in the fundamental sciences, it is a good moment to review the story of what many regard as the prized jewel of them all – the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), which was founded in 1945 by the physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha with the help of the Dorabji Tata Trust.

Growing the Tree of Science (Oxford Univ Press, New Delhi 2016) by Indira Chowdhury treats us to a visit of this famous institute and its history. The reference to a growing tree in the title comes from an address by Bhabha in 1963 at the National Institute of Sciences of India: “A scientific institution… has to be grown with great care, like a tree.”

Chowdhury distills the history of the institute from years of effort she put in to set up the TIFR archives. She explores the early efforts of scientific institution building around the time of India’s independence in 1947, when science was envisaged as being serviceable to the nation and a tool of nation building, but the need to nurture institutional spaces without borders was also recognised.

Bhabha undertook this nurturing with enthusiasm, though juggling multiple responsibilities within a few years of founding the institute left him little time for research. He concentrated on creating the conditions for conducting good research, in enticing stellar scientists to visit, and to recruit established scientists to lead various programmes. A largely unknown initiative by Bhabha was his invitation in 1952 to Richard Feynman “to spend a couple of years or more here as a Professor of Theoretical Physics”, which Feynman declined.

A poignant story of Bhabha’s sense of science without borders concerns the Chinese mathematician S. S. Chern. During the intense civil war in China (1948), Bhabha wrote to Chern at the Mathematical Institute of the Academia Sinica at Nanking, which Chern himself had founded in 1946 after returning from Princeton. Bhabha wrote, “Although we know the patriotism which prompted you to prefer to work in your own country despite the many attractive offers from abroad, we realise that the present conditions must make work in your neighbourhood extremely difficult, if not impossible… I am therefore, writing to you to offer you the hospitality of this institute… to spend one year in the first instance as a Visiting Professor?” By this time Chern had already accepted J. R. Oppenheimer’s offer at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, but was deeply grateful “for the concern of my foreign friends, which has never failed me”.

Bhabha smoothly and successfully recruited the mathematician K. Chandrasekhar in 1948 and the physicist M. G. K. Menon in 1955, though he failed with astrophysicist S. Chandrasekhar. In 1962, he offered George Sudarshan an Associate Professorship. Sudarshan had worked in TIFR’s emulsion group earlier (1952-1955) at the Old Yacht Club. Then, while on leave from TIFR at the University of Rochester, Sudarshan, with his thesis advisor Robert Marshak, worked out the universal V-A theory of weak interactions, for which they were nominated for the Nobel Prize multiple times. But the effort to repatriate Sudarshan failed because Bhabha tried putting Sudarshan on par with others who stayed on in the institute and did their research in India.

Indeed, Chowdhury writes about Bhabha’s notion of “self-reliance which had instilled in him an unswerving faith in the scientists who had trained at his institute”. She elaborates, “It was this group that had been responsible for growing the roots of the tree of science and Bhabha the master gardener was unwilling to carry out any process of grafting a foreign branch which could potentially disturb the stability of the tree itself.”

Chowdhury asks, “The institutional model itself had an unresolved paradox at its core – was it national or international?” She opines that the “ambiguity at the heart of Bhabha’s grand vision presented a troublesome dilemma – how to be international and national at the same time”.

The idea of using modern science for social transformation has been debated among the Indian elite since social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s time in the 1820s. The debate has touched on questions such as: What are the priorities for development? What types of scientific activities are most appropriate for a developing country like India? How can a scientific community be best established within a traditional society? How can scientists working in such a society keep their loyalty to the internationalism of science and at the same time deal with the more local and immediate needs of their own countries? [see “India’s Scientific Development”, William Blanpied, Pacific Affairs, vol 50, 91,1977)].

In the first two decades after India’s independence the international network that Bhabha built worked together with India’s nationalism and was happy to contribute to the development of institutions for a newly independent India. (The most notable scientist in this network was Nobel prize-winning experimentalist P. M. S. Blackett – see “Empire’s Setting Sun?”, Robert Anderson, Econ. Pol. Weekly, vol 36 (39), 3703, 2001). Chowdhury points out, “The sense of national self-realisation and an awareness of international cooperation went hand in hand.”

Bhabha also successfully drew a strong connection between fundamental science and technology development. Bhabha in his letter to the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust in 1944 wrote, “It is absolutely in the interest of India to have a vigorous school for research in fundamental physics, not only in the less advanced branches of physics, but also in the problems of immediate practical interest to industry. If much of the applied research done in India today is disappointing and of very inferior quality, it is due to the absence of sufficient numbers of outstanding pure research workers who could set the standards for good research.”

Growing the Tree of Science paints the picture of TIFR and its journey of undertaking science in a newly developing nation on a wide canvas. The story however is somewhat less richly textured for the period after Bhabha’s death. Chowdhury does discuss the beginnings of molecular biology, radio astronomy and other disciplines in TIFR with the recruitments of the geneticist Obaid Siddiqi in 1962 and the radio astronomer Govind Swarup in 1963. Her story is however mainly concentrated in the earlier phase of these groups. The hits and misses of the Bhabha era affected TIFR’s later development and the future it looks into. One wishes that a deeper appraisal of the era that followed could be put together in greater detail.

[This blog was originally posted on ‘On Your Wavelength’].

Publishing tips: How not to fall for a predatory journal

Posted on 22 Oct 2018 by Subhra Priyadarshini

In this new blog series called ‘Publishing tips‘, we bring expert advice to help researchers navigate the academic landscape better.

In the first post of the series, Lea Gagnon, Editorial Development Advisor at Nature Research Academies, shares a handy check list that researchers can use to avoid falling prey to predatory journals.

Lea Gagnon

In the competitive academic landscape where researchers only have one chance of publishing their findings, some might be tempted to publish on the first invitation. Here’s one such classic, ego-flattering invitation:

“Dear esteemed doctor, based on your valuable experience and contributions, we are delighted to invite you to submit a manuscript to our journal.”

Hold on – if it sounds too alluring, it probably is. Many predatory journals use such aggressive seduction techniques (with repeated emails flooding your mailbox) to earn publication fees before acceptance and without delivering the promised services. Here are four evaluation criteria that could save you from falling prey to predatory journals.

Reputation

The first criterion to evaluate is the journal’s reputation. Is the journal published by an acclaimed publisher (e.g. Springer Nature, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, Sage, etc.)? How well do you and your colleagues know this journal? Are you familiar with the editorial board members? Some illegitimate journals will automatically play audio testimonies of researchers’ positive opinions on their website to influence you. Others will use the names of deceased or acclaimed researchers without their consent. And if they do agree to contribute, their involvement is often minimal. Make sure you discuss with your colleagues and confirm personally with the editors if and how much they are involved with the journal.

Credibility

The second indicator is the journal’s credibility. This can be assessed by its physical and online presence. Is the journal based in the middle of nowhere and only displays a P.O. Box? How easy is it to contact and hear from the editor? Can you find the journal in trustworthy databases such as Pubmed/Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, Embase or Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)? Is the journal a member of the Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE)? Is it listed on the black or white lists of illegitimate or legitimate journals? While Jeffrey Beall’s infamous blacklist was retracted in 2017, Cabells International has since developed both a black and a white list, adding to the DOAJ selective whitelist

Impact

The third benchmark to review is the journal’s impact, evaluated by several metrics such as the famous impact factor (IF). Journal IFs are published annually by Clarivate Analytics and calculated from citations in journals indexed in Web of Science’s Science Citation Index (SCI) but also Emerging SCI (ESCI), Social SCI (SSCI), Arts and Humanities CI (AHCI), Book CI (BKCI) and Conference Proceedings CI (CPCI). Only journals indexed in SCI, SCI-Expanded and Social SCI receive IFs. Homemade bogus IFs are commonly displayed on predatory journals’ websites, such as the “Global Impact Factor”. Therefore it is wise to double check whether they match the official IF released only in the Journal of Citation Reports.

Quality

Lastly, the journal quality needs careful examination. Are there any spelling mistakes on the journal’s website? How is the peer review process (e.g. single-blind, double-blind or open)? Are the published articles sloppy? Can you access all archived full texts? Most predatory journals claim to use peer review but rarely do, leading editors to accept manuscripts either instantly (e.g. a few hours) or within a few days, compared to several weeks in legitimate journals. When a journal fails to provide details of peer review process, you might want to see a few papers and screen for any fake papers, like this Star Wars midichlorians paper. To help you assess a paper that appears legitimate, the Equator Network developed valuable checklists (e.g. CONSORT for clinical trials) indicating what aspects of a study should be presented. The majority of predatory journals do not follow these checklists. For example, only 40% of 1907 human and animal studies published in predatory journals report having received approval from a research ethics committee. In genuine journals, such an unethical study would have been directly rejected from the editor’s desk.

So, exercise care when choosing your target journal by reading several articles from the journal and cross-checking its claims (IF, indexes). Follow this useful think-check-submit checklist and remember that most open access journals (except economic journals) only charge a fee after acceptance. If you do submit your hard work by mistake, never sign the copyright transfer agreement and insist on having your manuscript removed (see also advice on what to do if this happens).

After all, publishing your hard-earned research is one of the most important steps in your career.

[Lea Gagnon can be reached at lea.gagnon@nature.com]

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a blog from Nature India

Monthly Archives: October 2018