Facilities in Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany

Computer Section (Electronic Data Processing)

256 Kbps Leased Line Internet connection provides 24 hours Internet facility to the Institute staff. At present 53 Pentium computers are connected with the LAN. For the back-up support of Leased Line, 500 hours ISDN and Dial-up accounts are purchased and successfully configured to maintain Internet connectivity whenever leased line is down. This year Institute has procured 2 Laptop computers and 8 Pentium-IV systems with all peripherals like UPS and Printer.

The Computer Section has undertaken a six months DOEACC B-Level Project. In this project Ms Rupali Saxena has developed BPMS (BSIP Personnel Management System) software for Establishment Section using Visual Basic as a front end with Oracle 8.0 RDBMS for data storage and security.

A menu driven user-friendly software package has been developed for Form-16, which extracts data from the pay, calculates the taxes and prints the Form as prescribed by the Govt. of India. Payroll and pension packages are also modified as per the requirements and also the annual account, budget and revised estimates are prepared. Besides, the section has provided the continuous technical support to the staff and has done the basic maintenance of hardware and software available in the Institute.

Library

The library of the Institute is one of the finest libraries on palaeobotanical literature in the world. It was started with personal collection of Professor Birbal Sahni who donated books, reprints and related documents to the Institute of Palaeobotany. The Library subscribes for about 150 national and international journals and about 80 periodicals. The Institute regularly distributes reprints of its publications and exchange of reprints is also encouraged. A facility for sharing the resources from other libraries located in Lucknow is also available. The Library is equipped with computer facility with Libsys Software.

Publication Unit

The publication unit can trace its origin to publication of 'Palaeobotany in India' in the year 1932 by Professor Birbal Sahni as a prelude to publication of a regular science Journal on palaeobotany. The journal was renamed "The Palaeobotanist". The first volume of Institute's journal dedicated to Prof. Sahni, appeared in 1952 as Birbal Sahni memorial volume, the Institute has so far published 53 Volumes each having 3 numbers. From time to time the Institute has also brought out special publications including memorial lectures, books, monographs, catalogues, atlases, annotated synopses, proceedings of international conferences, special publications, annual reports and news letters.

Museum

A humble beginning was made to set up a museum with the collection of fossil plants by Prof. Sahni from India and abroad. Subsequent collections made by the scientists of the Institute from different parts of the country have enriched the Museum. The holotype specimens, slides and figured specimens with registered numbers are stored in the Museum according to international standards and are readily available for studies. Duplicate specimens are donated to school, colleges, universities and other museums in India and abroad for teaching purpose.

The foundation Stone laid by Sri Jawaharlal Nehru is a museum in itself as it is made up of 77 fossil specimens of different ages collected from several countries, embedded in a marble grit-cement mosaic block.

Prof. Birbal Sahni's manuscripts, writings, excursion tools, microscope and several articles of importance are also displayed in a room known as "Founder's Room"

Herbarium

Herbarium maintains a reference collection of the living plants for the comparative study of fossil material. The Herbarium consists of four sections: (1) General collection of dried plants mounted on herbarium sheets, (2) Xylarium - collection of woods and their thin sections, (3) Sporothek - collection of pollen and spore slides and polleniferous material and (4) Carpothek - collection of fruits, seeds etc.

Scanning Electron Microscope

SEM study helps in studying morphographic features of seeds, cuticles, spores and pollen grains, etc.; ultratome is useful for cutting thin sections for observations of structural details of cuticles, exine of spores and pollen grains under Transmission Electron Microscope.

MPV 1 & 3

The facilities of MPV-1 &-3 microscopes are available for study of coal characteristics under incident and UV light and for determination of rank of coals and lignites.

Section Cuttimg

Logitech Section Cutting and Polishing Machines are used for cutting sections of fossil woods; Image Analyser and scanner for developing database on palaeobotanical researches are being utilised.

Maceration

Latest Maceration facilities are available for the recovery of organic remains from the sediments.

Radio Carbon Dating

Geochronometry started in the Institute with the establishment of Radio Carbon Dating Laboratory as a National facility in 1973. The absolute ages of the strata are obtained by the radiometric dating. The Radio Carbon (C-14) and Fission-Track dating methods are already established. Considering the increasing requirements of Quaternary workers the laboratory further took-up the Liquid Scintillation Counting of Benzene in 1997 using ultra low level counting system 'Quantulus' for more speedy work.

Atomic Absorption Spectrometer is available for elemental analysis which helps in the interpretation of chemical data to infer the climatic changes of the recent past.

Aims and Objective Facilities Fellowship Programme