Striking that perfect balance between work and managing a family is never easy. And being a scientist does not make things any easier. Feeding a fussy infant with experiments tugging at your brain, dropping your children to school as a grant deadline looms in the afternoon: juggling all these requires tremendous skill and exceptional time management. That's when child care facilities are a godsend.

Child care centres play a big role in helping parents handle their careers. Knowing that this can boost an economy, many countries like Australia and Norway offer subsidized child care facilities to their citizens. In India, a day care facility is mandatory in government institutes. NCBS too has its own child care facility - but it's something that people here know very little about. I decided to find out more about it: how it works, what it involves and the people who make it happen.

On 14^th of March our wildlife students along with 5 faculty members left for the Andaman Islands for 2 weeks to be trained in marine ecology as part of the Master's course in Wildlife Biology and Conservation. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago of over 350 islands, provide extraordinary opportunities for wildlife studies. The islands have almost 90% forest cover, and the mangroves and evergreen forests form habitats for species of about 200 birds, 85 reptiles, 60 mammals and thousands of invertebrates. Many of these are found nowhere else in the world. The coastline consists of sandy beaches, rocky shores, coral reefs, shallow and open seas, making this an incredible place to study marine ecology. From the conservation viewpoint too, there is much to think about here. Thirty-eight of the islands are permanently inhabited, and the flora and fauna, along with the many indigenous tribes (such as the Jarawas, Sentinalese and Great Andamanese) face a variety of pressures from an accelerating influx of settlers from the mainland.

A hard fought battle between competitors and judges has boiled down to these final, but difficult decisions. The first NCBS photo competition has come to an end with the announcement of the judges decision for best photo and runner-up. Ashesh's brilliant image of the hole in the roof of the cave had a clear edge over competition with unanimous votes from all our judges. The winner was clear, but the heat was on for the second spot.

As with the popular vote winners, the winners of the judges prize will receive cash awards reimbursable against the purchase of books, for Rs 1000 and Rs 250 respectively.Winners can contact the accounts section with the bills corresponding to their book purchase in order to receive their reimbursements.

A group of students in the MSc. Wildlife and Conservation programme in NCBS recently made a short (7-min) documentary film about a place that is host to a unique but fast disappearing population of birds. It is 50 km from Bangalore, yet hardly any of us know about the dangers faced by its wildlife. This is the story of how and why the documentary was made and what the students learned from the experience. (Watch the documentary, Awaiting Death on YouTube here.)

A team of neuroscientists, led by Prof. Sumantra Chattarji at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore has identified  previously unrecognised synaptic defects in an area of the brain that is involved in the debilitating emotional symptoms of Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), the leading genetic cause of autism and mental retardation. The study is of potential therapeutic significance because it also shows that even a relatively brief pharmacological treatment is capable of correcting some of these defects in mice that were genetically engineered to model FXS. The work, done together with collaborators at New York University, will be reported in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of June 7-11.

A team of students from Bangalore’s Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology were judged to have made the “Best Presentation” at the prestigious International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) Competition, held on Monday, November 2nd at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At iGEM, undergraduate teams from around the world compete to build innovative genetic devices in living cells, applying synthetic biology to solve problems in areas such as environment, energy, health, and foundational research.

There is probably no single topic of research that straddles as many NCBS teams as olfaction. Despite seeming the most mysterious of our senses, the sense of smell is actually the simplest sensory system to study, and NCBS teams try to understand it from every angle.

BANGALORE: Bangalore’s pre-eminence as the country’s science capital just received further endorsement.The US-based National Science Foundation (NSF) has ranked the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) as the number one centre in India for US graduate students to take up research fellowships and short-term programmes. Two other Bangalore institutions — the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute for Information Technology — are among the top eight destinations for science research.