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Gurman Bhatia

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The final day at St. Stephen’s National Science Fest started off with a conventional debate. Organised by the Debating Society, the motion for the NSF Debate was, “This house will allow parents to choose the genetic composition of their kids”. The event witnessed participation from a total of nine teams, with Hindu College emerging as the best team.

The winning team comprised of Vibhor Mathur and Nomaan Hassan. Nomaan’s argument against the motion, also won him the title of the Best Speaker of the debate.

The adjudicating panel for the event comprised of Riya Sharma, Midhandeep Jain and Mehvish Rathor – all experienced debaters of the Stephen’s clan. One of the adjudicators says, “Some really astounding ideas came up, such as how tolerance for diversity is a perhaps a very trivial part of human culture – which certainly does make a lot of sense if you can defend it well. The debate surely had some interesting moments.”

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Winners of the Treasure hunt.

The closing event for the National Science Fest was a culmination a ride ranging from different corners of Stephen’s through the Treasure Hunt. Parichay Mazumdar, Maitreyee Rudola, Ayushi Kathayat and Sadiah Zahoor of St. Stephen’s College emerged as the winning team in the same.

The organising committee also announced the results for Competition of Young Scientists and Enthusiasts (CYSAE), a multidisciplinary competition held on the previous day. From six teams that went into the finals, St. Stephen’s College emerged as the winner, with a team from IIT Delhi settling for the second position. The winning team from St. Stephen’s College comprised of Nishchaiy Suri, Shreya Arya and Ojasvi Khare.

The second day at St. Stephen’s National Science Fest started with the interdisciplinary Competition of Young Scientists and Enthusiasts (CYSAE). 12 teams started off in the competition, out of which 8 moved on to the second round. The second round comprised of programming problems and required participants to design algorithms in any programming language. With the ability to approach a maximum of five problems in one hour, six teams moved on to the final round on the basis of the same. In the final round, while four teams were from Stephen’s, the other two were from Hansraj College and IIT Delhi. In the final round, the six teams were supposed to first choose between Physics and Chemistry, and then solve a set of five questions based on that subject in the span of one hour. The final results of the competition are still awaited.

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Students solving Physics problems in the final round of CYSAE.

The initial events of the day also had a Scientifik Exhibition on Innovative Practices for the Conservation of Natural Resources judged by Dr. Kinkini Dasgupta Misra, from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. Out of the 5 contenders, the team from Army Public School was declared the winning team.

Moving from academia, the day also witnessed a General Science Quiz prepared by the Quiz Society of the college and conducted by Debobrato Sen Sharma and Akshit Goyal of the St. Stephen’s Quiz Society. 18 teams competed in a written preliminary round, out of which 7 teams moved on to the finals. The quiz had 42 questions coming from different scientific fields. The first position was obtained by a mixed team from Stephen’s and Hindu College, comprising of Ayan, Prerna and Rahul. However, an all Stephen’s team of Rabin, Sukrita, Surabhi bagged the second position. Talking about his favourite question in the quiz, Debobrato says, “We had a question where we told people about the characteristics of a spider and showed them a picture of the same. An additional fact was that the name of the spider was inspired by a character from the Jungle Book. Many people worked it out, despite seeing it for the first time.”

In Kapture, a digital imaging competition, students were given two hours to go around the campus, click photographs and then edit them on digital editing software to create their entry for the competition. 15 teams competed to create images under the theme The Dark side of St. Stephen’s. Andriyas A. Silas and Zoya Singh of St. Stephen’s won the competition in an entry that reflected towards an existing gender bias.

The Winning Entry at Kapture – Photography and Digital Imaging event.

Another fun event of NSF was ‘Absurd Theory’ – a competition about presenting theories and backing them up by scientific reasoning. The winning theory of the competition was presented by Mitrajyoti Ghosh of St. Stephen’s College. Mitrajyoti in his theory went on to propose that human kind existed on the planet before dinosaurs. Talking about absurd theories, he says, “Absurd Theory to me is about the fun in science. It shows that a scientific temperament can be applied to any situation. The fun of theorical science is that you don’t necessarily have to think of the big questions. Even the small questions can give you a lot of scope for imagination!”

Apart from the competitive events, the day also had talks on Wavelets and Quantum Mechanics in sessions with Dr. Prasanta Panigrahi of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata and Dr. Sameer Sapra of IIT Delhi respectively.

Featured Image: Dr. Prasanta Panigrahi

The past six months have been a period of growth at DU Beat. We have revamped our website, have worked towards telling better stories and have also grown our communities on social media platforms immensely.

Today, we introduce our gift to DU Beat readers for the fest season – an Events Calendar at DU Beat.

Delhi University is a hub of activity. Come February and March, and the fest season is all set to enthral everyone. However, often events pass by without you getting to know of their existence. We came up with a solution for this common problem – an Events Calendar.

Accessing the Events Calendar

Visit www.dubeat.com/events-calendar and access all events in a calendar format.

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If you would rather prefer a list format, just switch with the “List View” tab on top.

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Viewing an event

If you want to know more about an event listed in the calendar, just click on the event link. We not only provide you with the date, time and venue of the event, but also list out additional details including links to their official websites/Facebook pages.

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Searching for events

Want to search for a specific event or events scheduled in a particular college? Use the events calendar search. Using the date range and category filter, you can also narrow down your search.

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Upcoming events

Upcoming events are listed in our right sidebar. We remember that the idea was to help you track events in the University at all times.

Submitting an event for being listed

Have an event scheduled and want it to be listed in our calendar? Spare two minutes and fill this form. Our team will surely consider adding it to our calendar. Only the following entries are considered valid:

  • Only events that are open to all DU students all eligible to be listed on the website.
  • Your submission must include the date, time and venue of the event.

With the new events listing on DU Beat, we hope this fest season will surely be more organised for our readers. For updates on what is happening in various Delhi University fests, stay connected to DU Beat!

If there is a suggestion that you want to make, do write to us as [email protected]. You can also mention @du_beat in a tweet or send us a Facebook message. We want to hear from you, no matter what the medium is!

Eight days after announcing the results for first year students, Delhi University started rolling out the results of second year students on the 29th of December. The University has declared the third semester results of 24 courses including History, Political Science, Biochemistry, Zoology and Journalism. The results of many popular courses including English, Economics and Commerce, still remain awaited.

Just like the results for first year students, the University has hosted the results on two servers. Only this time they seem to be working just fine.

Update on 1st January: #DelhiUniversity has declared the examination results for 2nd year students of 17 courses today. These courses include Economics, English, Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics and B. Com (Pass). The result of courses such as B. Com (Hons) and Bachelor’s of Business Studies haven’t been declared yet.

(Link to check results)

When a sea of civilians gathers at Ramlila Maidan, it is the swearing-in ceremony of an ‘Aam Aadmi’.

There is one thing that Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has said over and over again – Pichle do saal se iss desh mein kuch toh adbhut ho raha hai. (Meaning – Since the past two years, there is something extraordinary happening in this nation). And perhaps, if there one word to describe the spirit of such a crowd, it is indeed extraordinary. Right from the metro station, one is immersed in supportive slogans for the new Chief Minister. As you flow in to swarm of people, there is security intact for the leader that refuses to have guards all around him. The people gathered are constantly engrossed in shouts of “Arvind Kejriwal Zindabad!” and “Dilli hui humari hai, ab India ki baari hai”. With every word in the speech that aims to fight corruption, there is a cheering from the crowd. Finally, the everyday Delhite is content. Despite being a huge crowd, it is a disciplined group of people – the right term being self-disciplined here. Working towards the idea of self-responsibility, the people are focussed to help out with tasks of managing people as well as arranging chairs. Overall, there is a spirit of volunteerism. As sounds of “Bharat Mata ki Jai” fill your ears and the national flag is seen flying high, there is also a spirit of nationalism.

While everyone celebrates Arvind Kejriwal and his victory against established brands of Indian politics, for me it is the celebration that was special. For me, it was all about seeing the satisfaction and the enthusiasm in eyes of the common man/woman.

See entire photo gallery here.

Delhi University declared the result for the examinations held for the first semester in the Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) on Saturday, the 21st of December. The announcement of the results comes shortly after a fortnight since the examinations ended. This is also the first round of results to have come out for the semester exams held in November and December.

While the results of a total of 42 FYUP courses have been announced, some courses including Journalism and Mass Communication are not present in the list. In order to avoid the crashing server that follow the announcement of all results, the University has hosted the results on three separate servers this time. Only, they still seem to be crashing with students’ attempts to access their results constantly going in vain.

Link to the results servers: Link 1Link 2Link 3

The DU Beat team is extremely glad to present a new interface for our readers! Welcome to the new DU Beat – one that is more mobile, interactive and surely more focused towards the news that you want to read.

Mobile

Is it the metro travel and the bus rides when you wish to read DU Beat? Well, DU Beat is faster and slicker on mobile now. Pages are lighter and at the same time more interactive. High five on being the smartphone and tablet addicts!

Sociallike

We love Facebook and Twitter and we know for a fact that so do you. That is why social media integration on DU Beat is stronger than before. Discover the total number of likes and tweets on every post and if you appreciate the content, participate and add one to the number! The next time you are reading an article, take a look at the number of shares on the left. If you like the post, make it count.

Visual

Delhi University is a place full of visuals – those of people, events and activity all around. The new DU Beat focuses on the same. Through the introduction of galleries, now get a glimpse of activity around the campus simply by glancing through a couple of photos. Look out for latest galleries on our homepage!

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Digital Footprint of the Newspaper

The newspaper that you pick up every Wednesday has a different experience attached to it. Now, find the e-issue of the weekly newsletter easily in the website sidebar, conveniently placed for our readers to explore.

Interactive Reviews

DU Beat has always been enthusiastic about reviews. The idea behind the same is to share our explorations and observations with the rest of the student community. However, if reading a review on DU Beat seemed boring up till now, the new version is surely built to change that. Scroll at the bottom of every review and see a box with our rating and a summary of the analysis.

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Adding to all these, we have several more features that will be added within the next few days. Until then, we hope that you like the change and would now love reading DUB a little more than earlier. We are exploring domains that are of interest for our readers and we surely love feedback.

If there is a suggestion that you want to make, do write to us as [email protected], mention @du_beat in a tweet or send us a Facebook message. We want to hear from you, no matter what the medium is!

Lady Shri Ram College for Women organised the first Manohar Shyam Joshi Memorial Lecture in the college Auditorium on the 8th of August 2013. The lecture by Mrinal Pande, Chairperson, Prasar Bharati on the “Art of Story Telling in India” witnessed a packed auditorium and was attended by esteemed academicians along with the family of Late Manohar Shyam Joshi.

For those of you who might be unaware, Manohar Shyam Joshi was the writer who penned down the first Hindi soap opera of Indian Television – “Hum Log” and the popular “Buniyaad”.

Dr. Bhagwati Joshi, wife of Manohar Shyam Joshi formerly worked as a lecturer at LSR. Paying remembrance to his great work, the college organised the lecture.

Preeti Dhawan, Vice Principal, LSR and Meenakshi Gopinath, Principal, LSR with Dr. Bhagwati Joshi

The lecture by Mrinal Pande touched upon the story telling traditions in India stating that stories in India exist as a duality of entertainment and information. She also said that often it is ‘irony’ that creates the magic in stories. Further, the discussion delved into censorship where she stated the existence of state censorship and self-censorship. While the former can be fought against, it is the latter that is more harmful. Taking instances from Premchand’s Godan, Folk lore in Buddhism and Manohar Shyam Joshi’s work, the lecture engaged well with the diverse audience. The lecture was a multi-lingual one with the guest comfortably switching between Hindi and English and quoting Sanskrit shloks.

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Mrinal Pande, Chairperson, Prasar Bharati

LSR’s much loved KK (Kasturi Kanthan ma’am) shared an experience of her interaction with Manohar Shyam Joshi. The event ended with a short movie made by a first year student on Manohar Shyam Joshi and an address by the family of the writer.

Image Credit: Nalini Prasad

Delhi University on Monday announced the official schedule for the Delhi University Students Union 2013-14 elections.

The last date for students to submit nomination papers has been declared as 4th September till 3 p.m. and the final list of candidates will be announced on 6th September, post which no student can withdraw their nomination.

The actual voting will take place on 13th September and separate timings have been allotted for day and evening colleges.

The nomination papers for the DUSU posts would be available from the DU website while for the central council applicants could obtain the same from the colleges and the departments concerned.

On Saturday, VC Dinesh Singh had also declared the chief executives who would be responsible for the execution of the elections this year.

Prof. Ashok Vohra from the Department of Philosophy has been appointed as the Chief Election Officer, Prof. D.S Rawat from the Department of Chemistry as the Chief Returning Officer and Dr. Satish Kumar, Deputy Dean, from the University Information Centre as the Returning Officer for the DUSU elections 2013-2014 which includes holding positions as the office bearers and members of the Central University Council. VC has also appointed the Principals and Heads of the Institutions which are affiliated to the DUSU for the conduct of Election of Office Bearers and Members of the Central Council of DUSU in their respective colleges for the current year.

Image Credit: freedigitalphotos.net

According to a notice released by Delhi University on the 31st of July, admissions in the university will continue for reserved category students. The 10th and last cut-off of Delhi University that came out on 29th July brought about a couple of ‘reopenings’ in several colleges for General category candidates. While General category seats might now be sealed and a few might remain vacant, the University wants to fill all reserved category seats.

Colleges have been asked to display the number of vacant seats course wise and category wise based on the actual intake of General category students up to July 31st.

Students registrations will take place between August 1st and 3rd. Students are applicable to register only if they had filled the OMR form. The candidates would then be given an acknowledgement of their registration.

After the registration, students will be admitted on the basis of merit and the number of available seats in each course. The admission procedure would be conducted between August 5th – 7th.

All reserved seats must be filled according to the actual intake. The University would be taking necessary action against the institutions who fail to do so. If in case seats remain vacant in SC/ST category due to the minimum eligibility criteria, seats can be alloted interchangeably between the two.

All colleges are supposed to submit the seats and category status of courses to the office of Registrar, Delhi University on the 8th of August.