BSN E-Bulletin :: Volume 2, November 2010

The E-Bulletin Articles are available in the PDF Format. Adobe Reader is required to view the PDF files. The Adobe Reader is a free program available from the Adobe Website.

E-Bulletin Team

Aagat Awasthi

Bal K Joshi

Raunak Shrestha

Saroj Ghimire

Dipesh Dhakal

Rajesh Chaudhary

Pawan Dulal

Pawan Bashyal

Samjhana Thapa

Contact Us

Biotechnology Society of Nepal

2nd Floor, 16-Gurju Marg,

Dillibazar Height,

Kathmandu-32,

Nepal.

PO Box 8973 NPC 250

E-mail: info@bsn.org.np

THE EDITORIAL

Our objective from the e-bulletin is to encourage everyone to write something what we have learned for the day or a week or a month. For students, it could be an essay they truthfully write for their assignment with latest and/or breaking news they find (but of course, without a support from Wikipedia or a copy-and-paste from an article). We will help them to find the most recent information in their field of interest from our program, like the Article on Demand (AOD) and other sources. For scientists or researchers, it could be a review on a book they read or an interesting article they find relevant to their topic of research. For academicians, for industrialists, and other professionals it could be their experiences with students they are involved with, problems they face in setting up a lab, their experiences of troubleshooting problems in the lab, or anything related to science, they are up with, they write down in their diaries. Let us realize that it was just a normal letter written by an ordinary person like “us”, who died in Titanic, which is now being auctioned for hundreds of dollars. The letter does not have anything significant but holds significant importance historically.. That is the power of written evidence and science cannot be an exception.

To be honest, we do not have a big scientific history. We have not developed or discovered anything significant to be remembered as compared to Europe, America and even some south-Asian countries. This is partly because we have been very contented with what we had. We did not seek any alternative and education had been a rare commodity. But let us realize that flushing toilets we use daily were first used by the Romans and Scottish people in 3100 BC. This was not an overnight invention; the advancement took centuries of modifications. This had been possible by passing techniques and information right from the inception of the idea from one generation to another. In contrast, what has been the condition of whole south-Asian region until recent years? Were not we satisfied with primitive methods of sewerage? What does this prove? It is not that we do not have our endemic technologies. We never wrote anything or read about them. We would be ignorant to say we neither had any methods of expression nor did we have any sort of written scripts. Despite having such a rich Sanskrit language, why did not we write and record our technologies that we practiced in the past? The aim of this article is not to discuss the flaws in any of the systems we had in the past. It is just to help all of us realize that things have been changed and are changing with the advent of internet and computers. Education is more accessible. So why not use this opportunity and help ourselves to create and quench our thirst for knowledge and also help us do the same thing for others?

It is a misfortune that learning is still viewed as the scariest part of life. It is regarded as a way to find a job or better earnings. This limits the horizon of learning. In addition, isn’t it that this limits the duration of time we allocate for learning? What should we do after we find a job of our interest at an early age? Doesn’t it terminate the learning curve? We cannot achieve much of science if we are not really into it. A true scientist or a professional always tries learning something new and most importantly, implementing and sharing with others what he has learned. Anything a true scientist shares could be a trail blazing clue for someone in some corner of the country. We are trying to begin a new trend of writing and recording science that we missed from our history due to lack of education. Your experiences and information you have achieved will help us in our endeavor.

BSN E-bulletin is always right there when you have anything to share – may be your experiences for people who have similar interests. We believe that writing is to express rather not to impress. We want to encourage you to write about science and technologies to create our own history for generations to come. We want you to help us in helping yourself and others to progress. That has been the motivation of BSN and the E-bulletin volume 2.
Lastly, we would like to thank the authors of articles for this edition. We are always looking forward to receiving your articles.

Thank you indeed.