Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Sciencedom is agog with arrival of a new era. This is the era of controlled application of electricity. But that an Orissa-born scientist, Dr. Asoka Misra is the father of this era is yet to be acknowledged.
“Low-intensity electric fields can disrupt the division of cancer cells and slow the growth of brain tumors, suggest laboratory experiments and a small human trial, raising hopes that electric fields will become a new weapon for stalling the progression of cancer”, reports the August 2007 issue of Physics Today, the flagship magazine of the American Institute of Physics, highlighting a research, performed by an international team led by Yoram Palti of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
Deep Brain Stimulation, that facilitates resurrection of vegetative patients, reported in Nature, and conveyed by The Telegrapgh, 13 August, 2007, is claimed to be a “technique that uses the minutest quantities of electric current supplied through electrodes drilled deep inside the brain with millimeter accuracy”.
Biomolecular recognition in DNA with better resolution is claimed to be possible through a technique called electro deposition technique that pivots on use of Cadmium Selenium (CdSe) which is a semi-conductor, as shown online 16 Jan.2007 under the caption �Biomolecular Recognition in DNA tagged CdSe nanowires, Sarangi et.al.
International industrial giant Philips has claimed to have invented “fluidfocus lenses”, the technique of which is counter-claimed by a France firm Varioptics. But the method common to both is controlled application of electricity.
“A current of two-thousandth of an ampere of electricity applied for 20 minutes is enough to produce a significant improvement” in enhancing verbal skills, reports Nature News online quoting a study by Meenakshi Iyer of National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland. (The Telegraph, 1 Nov.2004)
Many more utilities with promises to usher in hitherto unknown advantages for human society like Sperm Filter to fight infertility (The Reuters, 5 Jan.2005), Deep-brain-Stimulation to allow the surgeon to “neuro-navigate” through the brain to the nearest millimeter for tackling Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s syndromes, Flexy-gadgets as conceived by researchers at Sony Tokyo Lab to Flexi-display in ads to Electric specs with adjustable focus (Science News, 2006), are a few of what are in store.
Controlled application of electricity is the life spring of all these techno-achievements
If all these achievements, present and future, metamorphose into a new era of technology, Dr. Asoka Misra, a scientist born in Dhenkanal of Orissa, should be aptly acknowledged as the father of this era.
He is the first scientist to have invented the method of controlled application of electricity to interfere into the structure of a matter in order to manipulate its character into a desired state, which was first published in the referral journal of United States of America, ‘The Metallurgical Transactions A’ in 1985 proceeding eventually into publication of his conclusive determination in the February 1986 issue of the same journal under the caption, “Misra Technique”. His invention has been patented vide US Patent No.5,253,696 dated 19th October, 1993. And, in patenting the method of controlled application of electricity, expressed in the patent as “method for controlling solidification of metals and other materials”, Dr. Misra is the first in the world. His method has been referred to and relied upon in registration of later patents in USA.
It is marked that after publication of “Misra Technique” in 1985-86 and specifically after his technique was available for public perusal consequent upon registration of his patent in 1993, controlled application of electricity has become a sure process in shaping of various innovations that has given birth to a new era in the Sciencedom.
Honesty prevailing, Dr. Mishra deserves to be acknowledged as the father of the era of controlled application of electricity in scientific innovations as these are post-patency his method.
[Dr. Asoka Misra, did his M.S. in Metallurgical Engineering in 1972 as well as Ph.D. in Physical Metallurgy in 1975 at Polytechnic University of New York, USA and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA, from 1977 to 78. During his Doctoral but prior to Post-Doctoral period he also worked as Quality Control Engineer, Clinton Engines Corp, Iowa, USA from 1975 to 1977. After Rutgers, he joined IIT, Kharagpur as Assistant Professor in Metallurgical Engineering in 1979 where from he proceeded in 1991 to New York for two years in a scientific quest. In intervening period of 1986-87, he worked as Visiting Fellow at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
However, on leaving USA in 1993, he thought of helping Orissa grow in Technical education and joined O.E.C. as Principal in 1993. Since then he has steered several Engineering Colleges of Orissa as Principal including BIET, Bhadrak / ITER, Bhubaneswar / GHITM, Puri / SSECT, Balasore / KIST, Jatni / NMIET, Bhubaneswar before accepting the present assignment at KEC, Bhubaneswar.
He has four inventions to his credit out of which, two inventions are named after him and known as (1) Misra Technique and (2) Misra Random Rotation Technique. Misra Technique that forms the crux of this report has been patented in USA in 1993.]
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