Academic Spam!!

Hi Folks,

Today, I received the following email on my current academic email ID:

Dear Dr. Jeetender Chugh,

I am writing on behalf of an international publishing house, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.

In the course of a research on the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, I came across a reference to your thesis on “NMR in Proteomics: Investigations on Large Protein Assemblies and Method Developments”.
We are an international publisher whose aim is to make academic research available to a wider audience.
LAP would be especially interested in publishing your dissertation in the form of a printed book.

Your reply including an e-mail address to which I can send an e-mail with further information in an attachment
will be greatly appreciated.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Tatiana Costandachi
Acquisition Editor

LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing AG & Co. KG
Saarbrücken
Dudweiler Landstraße 99, 66123 Saarbrücken Germany

Fon +49 681 3720-310
Fax +49 681 3720-3109

t.costandachi(at)lappublishing.com / www.lappublishing.com

Handelsregister Amtsgericht Saarbrücken HRA 10752
Partner with unlimited liability:
VDM Verwaltung Aktiengesellschaft

Board of Directors: Dr. Wolfgang Müller (CEO), Christoph Schulligen, Esther von Krosigk

Supervisory Board: Prof. Dr. Johannes G. Bischoff (Chairman), RA Thomas Bischoff, RA André Gottschalk

A pretty impressive letter, and a very sophisticated spammer. They managed to dig out my Institute name and my thesis title correctly and then emailed me on my current academic email address, hmmm. I immediately checked on google, and found several blogs mentioning the receipt of similar letters. Cool thing is, if you search their website, you will find one (which can be made by spending a couple of hundred dollars easily). So, if you respond to the email, you will be asked to send your “Bank Account Details” for the so-called annual royalty deposits. Interestingly, they mention this on their FAQ page that it is OK to send them the account details as it is a very common process in Germany. I also believe that its more than just sending your account details, as they mention that you can just open a brand new account specially for this purpose and then send those details, which sounds quite safe. Is it possible that they can play with your thesis/paper (once they have all doc files)? I am confused.

Fluorescence: A source of noise in NMR?

The other day I was reading a book “Experimental Pulse NMR: A Nuts and Bolt Approach” by Eiichi Fukushima and Stephen B W Roeder and I was encountered with a sentence which says,”Fluorescent lights generate noise which can be picked up in the spectrometer.” (para 1, page 13). I wonder if they are talking about NMR spectrometer (as they don’t mention it explicitly in the sentence). I have never come across this statement anywhere and I liked it. I wonder what kind of frequency is emitted by fluorescence lamps other than visible spectrum which adds to noise in the spectrometer. May be thats the reason why NMR and fluorescence spectroscopists don’t get along with each other so nicely….:).
By the way the book mentioned above is really nice and I liked going through it.

CSIR Nehru Science Post Doctoral Research Fellowship!!!

Guys, there is a decent scheme CSIR has come up with, only for the fresh PhDs though. Looks like Govt of India is trying to stop the “Brain-Drain”. Its a decent post-doctoral fellowship of Rs 35,000 pm plus HRA and an annual contingency of Rs 300,000, wow!!! At least “big people” in India are now realizing that its also “money” why people are not pursuing basic sciences in India. I am pretty sure that this would attract young scientists to remain in the country and “uplift” the level of Science. I do have a copy of the circular from CSIR with me which can be downloaded by clicking here. Also, I do not have any other information regarding, last dates, how to apply, application format etc., for all these inquiries, please contact CSIR directly.

Chemical Shift Referencing Calculator

Below is the protocol I follow for chemical shift referencing (direct for 1H, and indirect for 13C and 15N). Actually I always have to look back and forth for referencing, so thought why not make a small script and put it on web so that the access becomes handy.

!!! The referencing should be done on the day of recording experiments !!!

!!! No rounding off of frequency numbers !!!

  1. Record a one-D (1H) spectrum (s2pul on Varian and zg on Bruker) of the buffer (or sample) containing DSS.
  2. Set the cursor on the right most line (DSS line) in the 1H spectrum of the sample. For Varian, type rl(0p) to set the DSS line to 0 ppm. In Bruker, use one of the buttons on the top panel to do the same.
  3. Type movetof (Varian) to set the tof at DSS line. In Bruker, use one of the buttons on the top panel to set the O1 at DSS line.
  4. Check the 1H frequency (spcfrq command in Varian will display four values, use the first one: RF Channel 1 (Obs) frequency). This frequency will be called as H0

Now,

  1. For proton refrencing, check for frequency numbers against sfrq (Varian) or SFO1 (Bruker) values in the procpar file (Varian) or the acqu file (Bruker) of any experiment; call them as Hval.
  2. For nitrogen refrencing, check for frequency numbers against dfrq2 (Varian) or SFO3 (Bruker) values in the procpar file (Varian) or the acqu file (Bruker) of any experiment; call them as Nval.
  3. For carbon-aliphatic refrencing, check for frequency numbers against dfrq (Varian) or SFO2 (Bruker) values in the procpar file (Varian) or the acqu file (Bruker) of any of the HNCA, CBCANH type experiment; call them as CAval.
  4. For carbonyl refrencing, check for frequency numbers against dfrq (Varian) or SFO2 (Bruker) values in the procpar file (Varian) or the acqu file (Bruker) of HNCO and HN(CA)CO type experiment; call them as COval.

References:

  1. Wishart et al, “1H, 13C and 15N chemical shift referencing in biomolecular NMR”, JBNMR (1995), 6, 135-140.
  2. Wishart et al, “Protein chemical shift analysis: a practical guide”, Biochem. Cell Biol. (1998), 76, 153-163.

How to increase the impact factor of Indian journals…???

Through this post I want to put forward a suggestion, in front of scientists in India, regarding how to increase the impact of Indian journals. I suggest that Indian Govt should make a rule, which should be applicable to all the universities and institutes across India, that we, the researchers of India should publish all the work in Indian Journals only. The journals may be peer-reviewed internationally. The journals may be available online free of cost, and free copies may be sent to major universities worldwide. The language used should be ‘english’ so that the fate should not be like Russians, who did this in russian language and their developments in science were restricted to themselves.
This would be a difficult thing specially when there is a tough “race” going among scientists to see their names in international journals of highest impact, however, this would certainly increase the level of recognition the Indian Scientists should get worldwide.
Well, initially students may face problems, as in the average impact factor per student will be certainly very low, however, as soon as the Indian work starts getting recognition, citations will increase and thus the impact factor. I have a strong feeling that this should work. The post is open for suggestions/discussion. I would appereciate visitors of this page for their comments.

visit to NMRS 2008

A great experience of the delhi-hospitality was exemplified by INMAS people in the NMRS 2008 meeting during 16-19 Jan 2008. Although there was a little confusion during first entry in the DRDO campus…but later on the meeting was memorized by good lectures, good food, and good location. NMRS 2009 was announced to be held in IICT, Hyderabad and NMRS 2010 in IISc, Bangalore.