Khagol # 125 - Jan 2020 - Eng & Hindi

| KHAG L | No. 125 - JANUARY 2021 | 02 In his lecture, titled `War and Peace: Conflict and Cooperation in an Insect Society', Professor Gadagkar presented examples of observations and experiments attempting to understand the workings of a particular tropical insect society, the Indian paper wasp 'Ropalidia marginata'. Many species of insects such as ants, bees and wasps organize themselves into societies consisting of a small number of fertile queens and a large number of sterile workers. Displaying features such as conflict, cooperation, altruism, division of l abour, commun i ca t i on and much more , they para l l e l and sometimes surpass human societies. In an eminently pedagogical delivery, Professor Gadagkar deftly guided the audience through a series of fascinating questions, and their even more fascinating answers, about the life cycle and behaviour of the paper wasp society. For example, what characteristics of an individual wasp determine whether or not the wasp will become the queen of the colony? If the current queen is temporarily removed from the colony, allowing a new queen to emerge, and then the old queen is returned to the colony, which of the two queens will dominate? How does a given colony respond to `alien' wasps from a second colony? Could one of these `aliens' become the queen of the first colony? Professor Gadagkar demonstrated how these questions could be addressed using very simple and inexpensive tools, demanding only the perseverance and enthusiasm of the researchers involved in the experiment. And more often than not, the answers to these questions (such as the ones related to `alien' wasps) were not only counter- intuitive from a human standpoint, but also surprisingly relevant for human social interactions. The lecture ended with a lively discussion with the Zoom audience, as well as questions taken online over YouTube and passed on to the speaker. The recorded lecture is available at the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH I0-xuQTc8. RamyaM. Anche, who has joined IUCAAin November 2020 as a Post-doctoral Fellow under the WALOP Instrument Development Programme. She finished her integrated MTech – PhD degrees in Astronomical Instrumentation from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, in collaboration with the University of Calcutta in 2019. She worked as a Research Engineer in the Huairou Solar Observing Station (HSOS) of National Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), Beijing till February 2020. Her doctoral thesis focused on determining the polarization capabilities of astronomical telescopes. She developed an analytical model for determining polarization effects due to the telescope's optics and the instruments for two telescopes. One of them is the upcoming ThirtyMeter Telescope (TMT), whichwill be built in Hawaii in the next decade, and the other telescope is the Multi-Application Solar Telescope (MAST) at the Udaipur Solar Observatory (USO), India. The model was experimentally verified for the MAST telescope using spectro-polarimeter. In addition to this, she also worked on polarimetric data reduction and analysis for the novae systems. In IUCAA, shewill beworking on the polarimetric modelling and calibration for the WALOP, and also involved in the characterization of the CCDs used in the WALOP. She is also equally interested in astronomy outreach and has been an active outreachmember of the IIAoutreach teamfor the last 8 years. Sowgat Muzahid, who had carried out doctoral research in observational astronomy at IUCAA, and received a PhD degree in October 2013 from the University of Pune. Then he moved on to the Pennsylvania State University, USA, for post-doctoral research during April 2013 - August 2016. In 2016,he received a post-doctoral associateship at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands during September 2016 - August 2019. He has been an active member of the Multi- Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) consortium since then. Before joining IUCAA as an Assistant Professor in December 2020, he was at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) in Germany as a Humboldt Experienced Research Fellow during September 2019 - November 2020. His primary focus on research is to understand the role of diffused gas in the formation and evolution of galaxies using ultraviolet/optical spectroscopy. Welcome . . . Addition to IUCAA Core faculty Addition to Post-doctoral Fellows