Thinking about The Secrets of Nature

Well, I had thought of writing many things in this blog, in the past few months; but was extremely busy with my work to take my time off. Though today is no different from the busiest days, I had a pressing thought, that pushed me to blog.

Thinking about the secrets of nature, humans (some of them) do believe that they are the superior beings, and have all powers vested with them. But, I got an analogy, that was striking to me, when I was dwelling upon these thoughts.

According to the Big bang theory, the world started as a single cosmic atom, and kept splitting into stars, planets, and moons. All of these have a life; i.e., they have a birth and death. It is an accepted fact of science, that stars, planets and other heavenly bodies do have life and death. Similarly, even in our body there are thousands of organisms in the form of bacteria, that are born, and live and die. Probably according to these organisms, your body is their world, as earth is to you, and some times, they jump from one body to another, as man plans to visit/stay in other planets like mars.

So, the universe (like the heavenly objects), humans and even the smallest creatures (like the bacteria) do have a birth, life and death. A striking aspect that differentiates one from the other is the longevity.

Continuing to think in this fashion, it leads to a thought that the earth we live in, could be our master, and we are like those countless bacteria that live in our body. As we take steps to keep our body in a healthy condition, the earth too sometimes takes these steps, that comes to us as natural disasters like, floods, earthquakes etc...

So, taking this analogy further, when we pollute our environments, we behave like those bad viruses in our body, to our master - the earth; As long as we are good in maintaing the health of our master - the earth, we would be safe, otherwise, we are bound to be punished by our master.

I do sometimes think, that humans have been given a greater control over other species in the earth is to protect our master - the earth from being damaged/polluted/ruined by others and at the same time to protect the good species (similar to good bacteria in our body) from being annihilated. Therefore in my thinking, humans could have evolved as an 'intelligent medicine' to save the earth, while in reality, we may be using that 'intelligence' to meet our own self-interests and therefore ruining the objectives of our master - the earth.

Hope everyone realizes this.

Superior Evolution

I had an opportunity to visit the Birla Science Museum, while I was in Hyderbad last week. The Birla Science Museum had tools for scientific demonstrations, and also portrayed real dinosaur fossils. Apart from that there was a replica of the now submerged city of Dwarka near Gujarat. The thing that struck me most was the mention about the origin of life, in the dinsosaur part of the museum.

"The earth is old by 460 million years and if this is shortened into one day, then life began at the 7th hour. Dinosaurs came at 22:30 and disappeared at 23:40. As far as man is concerned, he was born in just the last minute of the day. "

That harped my mind, whether the man is really the so- called evolved creature!. That opens a possibility that there may be superior creatures evolved at some later point of time. Also, if you look at the other creatures that were around, the first living being were unicelled, then followed by multi-celled, vertebrates, mamals etc... So, there seems to be a superior evolution happening. But ofcourse, dinosaurs, the giant creatures that ruled this earth are no more now. But few million years later, man the creature is seeming to be master of earth. But how far it lasts is an interesting question!!. Again the possibilities seems to be too many to think of - whether man will be replaced by another superior creature or he evolves himself into a far more superior creature or he just sits there, while another superior creature evolves in the years to come are matters of interest, and would lead to inconclusive debates (atleast in our life time, until man does some thing foolish to destroy himself!!)

And to end, an Australian aboriginal proverb in today's newspaper again struck me. It says 'All of us are visitors to this point of time and to this place'.

Stem Cell Research - A New Medical System

This article was inspired after reading many reports in daily newspapers and particularly in one issue of National Geographic about the Stem Cells.

Basics
Before our birth into this world, we were all embryo's and then grew up into foetus and then came out as a baby and grow up into what we are today. Our body as you know is made up of tissues, which are made up of cells, that are specific to the organs where they live, like nerve cells, liver cells, bone cells etc... There are 200 or so kinds of cells that constitute a human body. A lot of cells grow and die in our body every day.

Stem cells
These are the special cells that can be mapped into a particular kind of cells. That is they are the generalized cells. There are two kinds of stems cells - Embryonic Stem cells and Adult stem cells.

Embryonic Stem Cells
These cells had to be plucked from a young human embryo. These cells have the ability to modify themselves into any form of cell. But this ability of those cells happen only in the Mother's womb - Natural way, as of today. Scientists are trying to figure out the process and want to coax these naive embryonic stem cells to modify themselves into the required specific type of cell. For example, if a person's liver has been affected, and incase if they had obtained his/her embryonic cells's (it should have been obtained, as soon as he/she had developed into an embryo in his/her mother's womb.) they could coax them into liver cells, mulitply them and infuse them into his body (there are very rare chance of rejection, as it's his own body cell). These freshly infused cells may cure the old and damaged cells and thereby set his liver right.

Adult Stem Cells
These are the immature cells found in specific regions of our body like bone marrow and other organs in adult human beings. But these cells, usually can be coaxed only to emulate the cells in that part of the human body, from which they had been taken. But again there are a few arguments that the research can be advanced and these adult stem cells can be made to coaxed into any kind of cell required.

Future Research
Currently Stem cell research seemed to be bogged down in controversies over religion. i.e., A lot of people seem to be opposing this research. Also other ideas, like taking cells from the umbilical cards (that are discarded at birth), unwanted embryos disposed by fertility clinics are being floated. But still then, a significant amount of research has seemed to happen with U.S leading with the identification 70 embryonic stem lines, followed by Sweden and South Korean, which has 24 embryonic stem cell lines identified. (though it has limited the research, because of religious issues). India too figures in the list, with 10 stem lines being identified, as of date.

It's just another day - Poem

This Phrase 'just another day' stuck up with my mind for a while and I got this poem.

You could have just born into this world - but
It's just another day;
You could have conquered the whole world - but
It's just another day;
You would have been on the top of the world - but
It's just another day;
You could have faced many losses - but
It's just another day;
You could have been devastated - but
It's just another day;
You could have just found your love - but
It's just another day;
You could have just escaped the material world - but
It's just NOT an another day - for you!.

Zheng He - A great Voyager

I got to knew about Zheng He through one of the recent issue of National Geographic. Though we had a lot of mention about Vasco da gama and Columbus in the history subject during our school days, I don't even vaguely remember Zheng He, before this enlightening and vividy written article. Here's the life of a great icon in short.

Zheng He - known as Ma He - a central asian muslim - born to a rural official in a Mongolian Province - taken captive and ritually castrated by a Chinese army that overthrew the Mongols in 1382 (Zheng He was related to Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire. The Mughals of India also claim their descendance from  Genghis Khan and are considered as turkic-mongol is another different story) - Assigned to work for Zhu Di - he rose to a key strategist - that made Zhu Di the emperor in 1402 - Chosen to lead one of the powerful naval forces ever ensembled - he went to Thailand, Malacca Straits, Indonesia, Srilanka, Malabar Coast in India, and to Swahilli Coast in Africa and then to few countries in Africa and then to Arabic countries - tried to develop the ocean trade with these countries - mutual visit of ambassadors - thus mixing business exploration and diplomacy - and therefore established China as the leader during the 15th Century.

The major land battle was fought in Srilanka - that was witnessing the fight between Tamils and two mutually hostile Sinhalese Buddhist rulers - Zheng He fought a battle and brought a settlement - which was then ruled by Sinhalese king Parakramabahu VI for 55 years after it - But after which the violence erupts again, and ironically still today the fighting continues (Well, to be precise, the wars were happening, since 2nd Century BC (250 BCE), as per the history available - probably starting with Chola King - Elara - also known as Manuneedhi Cholan).

Zheng He spent a good amount of time in the Malabar coast around cochin in kerala in India. He had initiated a lot of trade particulary the spices with India, and his jottings in 15th century describing the spice trade remains very much unchanged even today. Zheng He is said to have died during his way back to China from the visit to Mecca and arabic countries during his 7th Voyage. During these years of his voyage China too has moved its capital from Nanjing to Beijing. Zheng He is said to be a good natured and generous man. Zheng he (as he was castrated) adopted his brother's son. 

Reasoning behind a Superstition

A few days ago, I was having lunch at one of the tables in our office canteen. A colleague who was sitting in the other table asked me for the salt box (We usually have a pepper box and a salt box at each of the tables in our canteen, and the salt box was not there in my colleague's table.) I took the salt box from my table and gave it to him. He refused to get it in his hand; instead he asked to place it in the table. He said that it's a custom or rather a belief, not to handover salt to some one as it will lead to a fight!.

I just placed the salt in his table and was thinking about the reasoning behind the superstition. Though it's the first time I was hearing such a superstition, I was just wondering about what would be the reasoning behind it, and here's what I have guessed about.

It's a well known fact that a high Sodium or salt intake would increase the blood pressure and if you suffer from high blood pressure, you are bound to get irritated at the drop of a hat and that might end up in fight!.

Adding to the fact that this colleague was from Andhra Pradesh, where the food usually is very spicy and salty, when compared with the cusines from rest of India, adding more salt, would increase the Blood pressure and therefore would increase the probabilty of picking up a fight!

So, that should be the reasoning; but people circumvent in their own ways, as my colleague asked me to place it in the table instead of giving it in his hand.

My beliefs on Evolution

As promised in my previous post, here are my beliefs or thoughts on evolution. Here's the one liner.

"Everything in this universe will evolve".

I mean to say that it doesn't matter whether something is alive or not. Anything and everything in the Universe (including the world we live in) will evolve or change, in due course of time. Here time could be anything between a millisecond to a billions of years.

But that said, I also believe that changes or evolution to all of the things in the universe is happening (almost) always. The thing is that, we realize them only after a significant period has passed or rather I should say, we realize them only after we attain the capability of realizing them.

The question, whether, things change for the better or for the worse may arise. I believe that most of us are not in a position to differentitate between the good and the bad. Ultimately, I like to say that, (quoting some philosphical thoughts) everything will change for the better.

The above statements are my beliefs. I don't think it will be hard to prove, but I don't have the patience or interest to prove it scientifically. Though I am a scientist (by designation), my areas of work are on Information Technology. So, I would like to say that these thoughts are on a philosophical note.

The year 2005 - for me

Another year passed by. A new year has started. Nothing is special except that another fresh day has started and the earth has completed one more revolution around the sun. But still the grouping of days into weeks, months, years, decades, milleniums ... mean something significant to most of us.

At a personal front, a few significant things have happened for me in 2005.

• My marriage in February
• Obtaining the PMP certification in September
• Travelling abroad for the first time, to Australia for a paper presentation at the IEEE conference in November.
• Guiding a project in ontology based inferences
• Incorporated new sessions like Usability, Essence of Problem Solving, Ontology etc... as part of our courses
• Starting to 'Blog'
• Learnt so many new concepts, dwelled upon some and mastered a few.
• Travelled to Chandigarh, Chennai, Melur, Mumbai, Mysore, Shimla, Suttur and Tanjore within the country, and to Bangkok and Melbourne outside the country.

• Declining an offer to go to Grenada (part of west indies) as an IT expert (sponsored by the government of India) for designing solutions for the hurricane hit country.
• Shifting my house to a location that is 30 kms far off from my office and approximately takes 120-150 minutes of travel, owing to the interests of the family.
• My friend and colleague getting himself a transfer.
• Tried to come with a proper open source license for our software system, but still nothing has been decided
• Started to guide a group of people on generating useful inferences, using the concepts of event coorelation, as they requested me for some innovative project work, but later disappeared without notice.
• Our software localized in Punjabi, and successfully included in the package of Punjabi tools slated for release by the Prime Minister. Unfortunately the launch was postponed twice, and still yet to be released.

Though the last few points look like reflecting the negative aspects, I believe that everything happens for the good. I would like to dwell upon a few of my decisions in the rest of the paragraphs.

Declining the offer to go to grenada was one of the toughest decision for me in the last year. It was made within a short time. At one end, it is a job that will give me a sense of pride, apart from money. At the other end, the project that I was involved for nearly the past two years, seemed to be at a stage of bearing fruit; and I did not want to quit that and go. We have been in the mission of building ICT applications usable by rural people, and we have done a lot of field work too, apart from our technological activities, and I have been in the forefront of these activities right from the day, the project was started. I wanted to experiment, explore and learn further, and ofcourse reach the logical end of our work, before I jump to another. That made me to decline the offer.

On the positive side, the decision to appear for the PMP examination, decision to submit a paper for IEEE conference, decision to guide projects were some major decisions that has paid dividends. Thus 2005 in short was an year of opportunities/challenges, changes, and learning for me.For the reader, here's my philosphical note. There's no place for 'if ... then' in any history. Overall the year was eventful and satisfying.