aissq.org All India Students’ Essay Competition 2015 : Bhaktivedanta Institute Kolkata

Organization : Bhaktivedanta Institute Kolkata
Conference Name : 9th All India Students’ Conference on Science and Spiritual Quest (AISSQ-2015)
Competition Name : All India Students’ Essay Competition
Essay Topic : Contributions of Ancient India to Science
Applicable For : Students
Applicable States : All India
Submission Last Date : 30 July 2015

Website : https://aissq.org/

All India Students’ Essay Competition:
The essay could highlight and focus on any of the following seven areas and questions:
i. Mathematics and Logic:
What are the contributions and wisdom of ancient Indian mathematicians? Could we find in their texts, the solutions to at least some of the most current problems in mathematics? Could their works help us to understand many of the mind-boggling concepts in modern mathematics, such as ‘infinity’, ‘imaginary numbers’, ‘point’, ‘space’, etc.?

ii. Physics and Cosmology:
The Vedic seers had expressed a lot about cosmos, planets, movements of atoms, gravity and many more in their ancient writings. Could their profound thoughts help us to resolve many of the modern issues in physics and cosmology, such as, what is mind and how it interacts with body? What is matter really? What is dark matter? What is dark energy? What about our planetary systems and origin of universe itself? Could Vedanta help us understand problems of modern particle physics?

iii. Life Sciences and Psychology:
What are the contributions of ancient seers in areas such as, genetics, evolutionary biology, bio-informatics, biochemistry, bio-physics, neuroscience, embryology, virology, cell biology? Could their wisdom help us understand and resolve the question of life and its origin? How the Vedic seers understood our human psychology -mind and its workings? Could the concept of ‘soul’ still make sense in modern biology? What about the meaning and purpose of life, of which we have no clue today – could the ancient scriptures reasonably and precisely provide and define this?

Similarly, there are areas of:
(iv) Ethics and Virtues – India’s precious heritage;

(v) Engineering Sciences: Metallurgy, aerodynamics, bioengineering, computers, electronics and others;

(vi) Health and Medicine

(vii) Philosophy and World Religions.

Guidelines :
The essay could be structured into various sections. Placing content in sections reflects consolidating your viewpoints into important concepts that you wish to highlight.

A thorough literature review will always enable students to grasp and conceptualize their ideas. Therefore, to win in an essay competition, proper justification from various literature of the concepts is mandatory.

The essay essentially needs to have an abstract. Typically, an abstract is written after finalizing all the contents of an essay.

Quote examples whenever they are necessary. This is true to the sense that examples always make one to comprehend difficult concepts and philosophies very easily.

Provide original illustrations for few sections. Illustrations will enrich your presentations. These illustrations could be hand drawn and if they are taking from websites, they need to be copyright free. Plagiarism and infringement of copyright issues will be dealt very seriously by Essay Competition Committee.

Avoid plagiarism totally. Standard Journals define plagiarism as the reuse of someone Else’s prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicitly acknowledging the original author and source. Therefore, copying material as it is from various sources such as Journals, Magazines, Books, Websites without acknowledging the sources and without any further effort to restructure the sentences is one of the most common approaches in Plagiarism. To avoid plagiarism, apart from acknowledging the source, one should construct sentences on their own. If there is difficulty in this front, approach your seniors or colleagues who are more familiar in the construction of both simple and complex sentences.

Please note that all essays and facts mentioned there in about ancient India should be accompanied with references to the original texts. Indirect references and web references are not acceptable.

It is recommended that you should approach a professional proof reader or an English lecturer to correct your essay for tense and grammar.

Finally, include a conclusion section that summarizes your concepts. All entries in essay competition should be typed. No hand written entries will be allowed.

The number of pages is limited to 8. The essay competition entry shall be submitted in both doc/docx format and pdf formats.

The essay article shall be submitted in the specified format. The format and ready template can be down loaded from the download link below. The essay is to be submitted through Email only to <esssay.aissq@gmail.com>

Important:
Submission Last Date: 30 July 2015 (firm dead line)
Submit your essay by email: essay.aissq@gmail.com

Prizes:
All prize winners will get an opportunity to present their essays during 9th All India Students’ Conference on Science and Spiritual Quest (AISSQ) to be held on 30th October – 1st November 2015 at IIT Kharagpur, India. They will be reimbursed 3-AC to-and-fro train fares and will be given attractive prizes, medals and certificates.

Essay related queries can be mailed to:
1) Hare Krishna Mohanta, Email: harekrishna.bits@gmail.com
2) Ramjee Repaka, Email: rr.aissq@gmail.com

Note:
Please remember that a fundamental purpose of writing a good essay is to enrich one’s technical, creative, and communicative skills without jeopardizing ethical values.