Eminent Guyana-born scientist cops RSC Medal
Dr. Mohamed Jamal Deen (right) with Chairman of the Thomas W. Eadie Award Committee, Ralph Haas and Mrs Meena Deen.
By Adit Kumar
Guyana born internationally acclaimed scientist, Dr. Mohamed Jamal Deen, was the proud recipient of the prestigious Thomas W. Eadie Medal offered by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). The presentation took place at the Annual Banquet and Awards Ceremony held on November 15 at the Grand Hall of the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, where the outstanding accomplishments of RSC’s award recipients were recognized.
It was part of the activities of the Annual General Meeting and Symposium of the Society which spanned from November 14 to 16, 2008.
The symposium, with the theme, “The Cultures of War and Peace,” explored some of the causes of war and considered why peace is often fragile and short-lived.
Thirteen medals and awards were given out at the function and 72 new Fellows and 2 Specially Elected Fellows were inducted into the ranks of the RSC at the event which was described as a genuinely inspiring event culminating RSC’s annual activities. According to RSC, the new fellows are “among those who, today, help build the world we live in tomorrow.”
Professor Deen’s citation from the RSC reads: “Dr. Deen is a major contributor and world leader in microelectronics/nanoelectronics and optoelectronics and has made significant contributions to communication systems hardware. He is the world's foremost authority in the modeling and noise of electronic and optoelectronic devices, particularly silicon transistors and high-speed photodetectors for application in wireless communication circuits and optical communication receivers.”
Dr. Deen’s current research and technology development interests are in information and communications technologies, with special emphasis on health and environmental sciences.
This award is the only engineering award offered by the RSC and is given “in recognition of major contributions to engineering or applied science, with preference given to those having an impact on communications, in particular the development of the Internet.”
It was established by Bell Canada in 1979, “in appreciation of its past Chairperson of the Board, Thomas Wardrope Eadie, and in recognition of the increasingly important role of Applied Science to the quality of life in Canada.”
According to the RSC’s website, “RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada, is the senior national body of distinguished Canadian scientists and scholars. Its primary objective is to promote learning and research in the arts and sciences.”
Dr. M. Jamal Deen, is believed to be the first Guyanese and Caribbean-born national to receive the celebrated medal. He is professor of electrical and computer engineering at McMaster University, and current Canada Research Chair in Information Technology.
The eminent scholar and scientist is no stranger to awards as he has been elected by his peers to the highest status in three national academies and four professional societies including Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada - The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (which is the highest honor that can be attained by scholars, artists and scientists in Canada), Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering.
Professor Deen recently returned from Germany where he conducted research on the modeling of nanoscale semiconductor devices and their applications to millimeter and microwave applications as a recipient of the prestigious Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. And earlier this year, in recognition of his outstanding research and academic work, he was the recipient of the 2008 Academic Excellence Award conferred by the Guyana Awards (Canada) Council.
Born in Georgetown, Guyana, Dr. Deen attended Queen’s College where he was a regular prize winner. He then attended University of Guyana, majoring in Mathematics/Physics, winning the Irving Adler Prize as the best graduating mathematics student and the Chancellor’s Medal as the second best graduating student in the University, both in 1978. During his undergraduate studies, he was also a full-time mathematics/physics/science teacher at Indian Education Trust College, later renamed Richard Ishmael Secondary School.
Professor Mohamed Jamal Deen brings a tremendous amount of pride to the Guyanese community and is another example of the lofty heights achieved by students of the University of Guyana as they pursue their international professional careers.
Guyana born internationally acclaimed scientist, Dr. Mohamed Jamal Deen, was the proud recipient of the prestigious Thomas W. Eadie Medal offered by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). The presentation took place at the Annual Banquet and Awards Ceremony held on November 15 at the Grand Hall of the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, where the outstanding accomplishments of RSC’s award recipients were recognized.
It was part of the activities of the Annual General Meeting and Symposium of the Society which spanned from November 14 to 16, 2008.
The symposium, with the theme, “The Cultures of War and Peace,” explored some of the causes of war and considered why peace is often fragile and short-lived.
Thirteen medals and awards were given out at the function and 72 new Fellows and 2 Specially Elected Fellows were inducted into the ranks of the RSC at the event which was described as a genuinely inspiring event culminating RSC’s annual activities. According to RSC, the new fellows are “among those who, today, help build the world we live in tomorrow.”
Professor Deen’s citation from the RSC reads: “Dr. Deen is a major contributor and world leader in microelectronics/nanoelectronics and optoelectronics and has made significant contributions to communication systems hardware. He is the world's foremost authority in the modeling and noise of electronic and optoelectronic devices, particularly silicon transistors and high-speed photodetectors for application in wireless communication circuits and optical communication receivers.”
Dr. Deen’s current research and technology development interests are in information and communications technologies, with special emphasis on health and environmental sciences.
This award is the only engineering award offered by the RSC and is given “in recognition of major contributions to engineering or applied science, with preference given to those having an impact on communications, in particular the development of the Internet.”
It was established by Bell Canada in 1979, “in appreciation of its past Chairperson of the Board, Thomas Wardrope Eadie, and in recognition of the increasingly important role of Applied Science to the quality of life in Canada.”
According to the RSC’s website, “RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada, is the senior national body of distinguished Canadian scientists and scholars. Its primary objective is to promote learning and research in the arts and sciences.”
Dr. M. Jamal Deen, is believed to be the first Guyanese and Caribbean-born national to receive the celebrated medal. He is professor of electrical and computer engineering at McMaster University, and current Canada Research Chair in Information Technology.
The eminent scholar and scientist is no stranger to awards as he has been elected by his peers to the highest status in three national academies and four professional societies including Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada - The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (which is the highest honor that can be attained by scholars, artists and scientists in Canada), Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering.
Professor Deen recently returned from Germany where he conducted research on the modeling of nanoscale semiconductor devices and their applications to millimeter and microwave applications as a recipient of the prestigious Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. And earlier this year, in recognition of his outstanding research and academic work, he was the recipient of the 2008 Academic Excellence Award conferred by the Guyana Awards (Canada) Council.
Born in Georgetown, Guyana, Dr. Deen attended Queen’s College where he was a regular prize winner. He then attended University of Guyana, majoring in Mathematics/Physics, winning the Irving Adler Prize as the best graduating mathematics student and the Chancellor’s Medal as the second best graduating student in the University, both in 1978. During his undergraduate studies, he was also a full-time mathematics/physics/science teacher at Indian Education Trust College, later renamed Richard Ishmael Secondary School.
Professor Mohamed Jamal Deen brings a tremendous amount of pride to the Guyanese community and is another example of the lofty heights achieved by students of the University of Guyana as they pursue their international professional careers.
Will the Biblical flood visit again?
Uncontrollable floods wreak havoc in unlikely places
Moscow, (RIA Novosti) - The world geological community is warning that today's seismic activity on our planet is nothing compared with what is to come.
Over the past three years, Pakistan, for example, has been hit by dozens of earthquakes. In March 2005, 80,000 people died under the rubble there. Tens of thousands of people drowned during an overwhelming Asian tsunami at the end of 2004.
China and Afghanistan have been rocked by quakes again more recently.
These natural disasters, which have swept our planet in recent years, indicate that the world has entered an era not only of a political, but also of climatic, instability.Most scientists - biologists and environmentalists - tend to blame the human race for the catastrophic climate change on the earth. No doubt, the greenhouse effect due to industrial activity plays a considerable role in global warming, but there are other reasons worth considering.
The earth is rotating around its own axis slower. The International Earth Rotation Service has regularly added a second or two to the length of a 24-hour day in recent years.
This is the main reason, according to Igor Kopylov, professor at Moscow Energy Institute, why the planet - a gigantic electrical machine - has had its energy balance upset.
He expressed this viewpoint in 2004. Kopylov is convinced that the Earth has entered the first phase of a global change. A weakening of the earth's magnetic field was first registered early in the 20th century, and a consistent drop in the speed of rotation, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It has been established that when the earth's rotation slows by one second a year, it releases a tremendous amount of heat, hundreds of times the volume of energy released by human industrial activity.
If we accept that all processes on the earth run according to cosmic cycles, which, in turn, depend on the Solar system's position in our galaxy, then humankind may be facing another great flood.
The Solar system, including the earth, travels through the galaxy in spiraling elliptic paths. The cycle time for the larger spiral is 200 million-210 million years, and for the smaller one, which determines minor galactic cycles, 26,000 years.
Correspondingly, half a cycle lasts 130 centuries. This period almost exactly coincides with the date of the last flood, the occurrence of which was real. The myths and legends of many peoples including that of the Bible recorded the event.
The flood has been dated rather precisely: at 11,100 BC. If we accept that the civilized society on the earth has been developing for 400,000 years, then this period saw 30 great floods, and we are witnessing the beginnings of the next flood.
The cosmic cycles are so gigantically long by human standards that they have little impact on the life of people, but the active initial phase of the galactic cycle is of vital importance for the development of civilization.
In the view of Russian scientists, the earth currently finds itself at precisely this point in the cycle.
The transitional process in the electrical machine, that the earth can be divided into three phases.
During the first - lasting 300 to 500 years - a relatively quick change in the direction of cross current (according to the law of electric machines) will alter the earth's magnetic field, with the northern magnetic pole shifting to the eastern part of the Arctic Ocean.
This change in the earth's magnetic field is accompanied by strong magnetic storms, earthquakes and disastrous atmospheric events caused by a change in the circulation of oceanic waters and the atmosphere.
The change in the magnetic field leads to changes in the earth's ozone layer, which cause abrupt leaps in the biosphere's evolution owing to the altered level of radiation. As the average temperature of the planet rises, ice glaciers begin to thaw, raising ocean levels across the world.
The first, "warm" phase of the transitional period is the shortest and most active. This period witnesses a relatively fast braking of the planet and the release of tremendous amounts of heat, leading to global warming.
In the second phase, the magnetic field will stabilize. The earth will slowly increase its speed of rotation to return to its near normal speed. The increased speed of rotation will bring on a cold spell, the ice glaciers will regain their mass, and the oceans will displace their former volumes.
In the third phase, the transitional period will end, the speed of the earth's rotation will stabilize, and the planet's energy balance will return to the conditions of previous millennia.
Following the last Great Flood, people began migrating from East to West. Are we now to see a great exodus to the East?