There is small patch of white on the can which is temperature sensitive. If the beer can is cold enough, the words “Cool” appear in silver. If the can is not cold, the words don’t appear. Thus you don’t need to second guess the temperature. Drink if “Cool”, don’t if not !

This is a disposable spoon. It looks like steel. Buts its 100% plastic!

Its perfect for gatherings where you want to come across as polished but don’t want to bother with cutlery. Bought this home with me from a wedding. Couldn’t get myself to throw it in the dustbin. Totally innovative. Loved it!

Click on the images for a larger version.

In case you missed it, here is one about donkeys.

The Human Brain

If there has been something constant in my life, its been the desire to understand how things “work.” The brain is the center of our universal experience but is still not adequately understood. Because of the importance and mystery of the human brain I’ve always wanted to understand how it “works.” I’m not part of the camp that believes that the brain is divine in origin or radically different in some way and thus not amenable to methods of rational, scientific inquiry. No. The brain is an exquisitely complicated and subtle machine with trillions of components. Still, it can be understood and it is being understood. We know more about the brain now than 10 years ago and immeasurably more since a 100 years ago. Large swathes of the public still think of the brain in terms of the language of a bygone era: the Ego and the Id of Freud. Or maybe they’ve seen movies like One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and think of mental institutions as frozen in time; still administering shocks and sedation. Its an unfortunate stereotype because other parts of the medical profession like cardiology have become über cool (with some help from medical dramas ). Terms like pacemakers, defibrillators, artificial hearts, bypass and triple-bypass have entered into common parlance. Neurology to a lot of people still means Lobotomies and Grand Mal seizures. Its partly the failure of the field to communicate its achievements and partly because medical progress in understanding the brain has been comparatively slow.  We have been hindered so far because the brain is the most complex organ in our body.

Nevertheless, Science continues to make amazing advancements in the understanding of the brain through disciplines like Neuro-Biology, Genetics, Chemistry, Artificial Intelligence and Psychiatry.  The state of the art has advanced quite far till now. Consider this: We can see what parts of the brain are involved in real-time thought when people are put into a functional MRI scanning machine. So if you are thinking visual thoughts, the visual part of the brain lights up on the screen. If you are having sexual thoughts then the sexual centers light up. This technique is constantly being refined and holds a lot of promise in treating diseases and understanding how the brain functions as a living system. All this is non-invasive live imaging. Sample another development: Scientists have come up with external robotic limbs that monkeys can learn to control through electrodes planted in their brain. And then there is a whole field of anti-depression research that has understood the functions of neurotransmitters in our brains. Today, there are specific medicines available that target one or two neurotransmitters in the brain instead of raising the level of all of them as older drugs did (e.g. SSRIs). For some people, SSRIs and other newer drugs have literally saved their lives.

The Female Brain

My fascination for brains in general and females in particular caused me to pickup The Female Brain by Dr. Louann Brizedine some weeks back. The book is an informative and fun read. There are lot of sweeping generalizations about the behavior of the sexes throughout the book which can make the book seem a little too simplistic, but putting in caveats and “your mileage might vary” statements everywhere would have made things equally tedious. This is not a book for “experts” but Dr. Louann has nevertheless tried to be scholarly with over 100 pages of notes and references tucked away at the end of the book for the benefit of boffins and reactionary critics.

My recommendation is that you read this book to get a good overview of the workings of the female hormonal system and its effects on neurotransmitters and emotional centers of the brain. Dr. Louann shows us how hormones play an important role in a woman’s mood, desire to mate and rear children and communicate with other humans. She explains how estrogen and testosterone influence the wiring of males and females at birth all the way through puberty and beyond. One does get the feeling  that Dr. Brizedine tends to blame hormones for everything (given that is her area of specialization) but there are places where she adequately defers to genetics, upbringing, diet and environmental conditions as a way of explaining female behavior. This is not only a book on hormones; there is a fair amount of evolutionary psychology i.e. why women behave the way they behave from an evolutionary standpoint. I’ve read a lot of Richard Dawkins and Matt Ridley in the past and these arguments do have a certain appeal for me.

The book is peppered with stories and case studies of  crazy teenage girls and their crushes, infidelity, divorces, postpartum depression, sexual problems, love and marriage. Dr. Louann uses her deep insight into female psychology and medical expertise to treat these patients. Most of these stories have a happy denouement which may give some readers a false belief in the efficacy of the drugs and theories Dr. Louann is promoting. But its a minor quibble.

Dr. Louann Brizedine comes across as a kind woman who sincerely believes in the equality of sexes. The prose is friendly and non-feminist. She has a balanced viewpoint that both sexes have evolved slightly different brains because of the different roles they have played throughout history and that no brain is “superior.” Female brains are better at certain tasks and Male brains are better at certain tasks. Men and woman are partners, she seems to emphasize throughout the book.  As a man, I found the book very helpful in furthering my understanding of the women in my life. I came away touched, and infused with a greater appreciation of their innate abilities.

Sidharth’s Rating 4.0/5.0

Popular Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke is dead at 90 in Sri Lanka. Clarke is famous for his “2001: A Space Odyssey” and prediction of the concept of geostationary satellites. A comprehensive obituary can be found at the New York Times website.

I remember being hypnotized by Arthur C Clarke’s “Rama” series of novels in college. I picked up “Rendezvous with Rama ” almost on a whim. And then, for next few days, I couldn’t get enough! I read all of four them! I still remember being in a trance like state at that time. I just couldn’t wait to get back from my classes to read Clarke…

Ultimately, much of Clarke’s science “fiction” is grounded in “real” science. And thats what makes him a great read. So while advanced powers are doing all kinds of technologically amazing things in his novels, the plot still has a plausible ring to it. Clarke also conveys the sense of grandeur of the universe and its unsolvable mysteries masterfully. Mankind in many of Clarke’s novels is technologically inferior and weak compared to the “other” civilization. The sense of vulnerability is therefore very palpable and ultimately heightens the sense of adventure and the mystery of his stories. Clarke doesn’t provide all the answers (as some science fiction authors do) in his novels which can be frustrating. But consider this: when we do come in contact with a alien civilization we won’t know all the answers anyways.

I’ve been off science fiction for a while, unfortunately, but I  should get back to it. Its a mind broadening experience.

Let me leave you with some really lovely quotes by Arthur C Clarke (from Wikipedia)

• Clarke’s three laws
  • 1. “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong”
  • 2. “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible”
  • 3. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”

• “The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”

• “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.”

• “Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what’s over the next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without information. Without information, you’d go crazy.”

• “The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.”

I agree with the thrust of the comic. However, it seems to imply “Let them believe what they want to believe cause we are right.” Thats are dangerous approach. What happens if you want to recruit the next generation of scientists and no one is available because their minds  are closed by religion?

Its important to propagate views on science and rationalism lest we be overrun by the hordes of obscurantism and religion.

We must recruit more people to science, logic and rationalism because “they” are recruiting too.

The articles are excellently written and have valuable tips in them. What a wonderful resource!

read more | digg story

The first visitor was Prof. Kumar Patel of UCLA, the Indian origin inventor of the $CO_2$ laser. He gave two talks. The first talk was for graduate students where he shared his insights and gave us some tips. The next talk was about about using lasers to detect explosives and chemical warfare agents. Both talks were interesting but I want to share some of the tips he gave us during his freewheeling, informal conversation with graduate students:

• Be extremely ambitious and try to solve tough problems. Its no point trying to do old, solved problems a new way. Instead, go for fresh problems. Often, the greatest advances have come from scientists who solved problems that others would have considered impossible but out of inexperience the scientist never knew that! Experience can also prove to be a hindrance because it teaches you that you “can’t” do a problem in certain ways. Young people bring a certain irreverence to research that helps them make progress on so-called “impossible” problems.
• What level of research should you pick? Should you pick a system that is simplified to its core or should you study a system in all its beautiful complexity? There is no correct answer. By stripping a system to its fundamental components and modeling its essential features you can learn a lot. But you can loose understanding of the collective behavior of the components. A beautiful example is the human brain…you must understand its basic component, the neuron and their collective behavior. A complete understanding of the human brain is not possible without understanding both. You cannot understand collective behavior of the neurons (e.g. thinking, dreaming, planning etc.) without understanding the basic components and vice-versa. Therefore what should happen is an integrative approach to science: Some people work from top down and others work from bottom up. Both will have something valuable to teach each other. (My idea: We see this in physics today. Astronomy tries to understand huge aggregates of particles in the form of galaxies, stars, planets etc. Particle physics tries to understand the fundamental particles themselves. Both disciplines feed off and fertilize each other. What aspect of science you choose to study i.e. the building blocks like cells, DNA, protons, quarks etc. or complex systems like the human brain, the weather, galaxies, the immune system etc. is a matter of personal taste. All of them are important, worthy pursuits)
• I asked Prof. Patel whether science is for young people only (He invented the laser at a young age of 26). (I’m sort of an “older” student who has commenced his Ph. D. so I was personally interested in knowing whether I could still make an impact. It helped me that my question also was very applicable to him because he was in his sixties!) The answer he gave was fascinating: He said that the work he had done in the last six years was work he could never have done in the past. Its always a trade off he seemed to imply. At a young age you know a lot about a narrow area and you don’t know what is impossible. At an older age you know something about everything but are burdened by “this can’t be done” and so on. Also you just can’t keep up with the level of detail in research. (My idea: At a young age you should pursue a specific line of research to every level of detail possible. At an older age your ability to keep up with this level of detail may be lost but you can think about science which combines different areas. Here your experience helps you).

The next talk was by a French Prof. Étienne Ghys on the Butterfly Effect. The Butterfly effect is popular description of chaos: How a small event can have extremely large impacts on a system. “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” is a one of those questions that have entered the public imagination. I have my own version of the Butterfly effect (intended to be a joke of course)

[Sid Butterfly Conjecture 1] No matter how insignificant or poorly cited your research paper is, like the flap of a butterfly wing that causes a tornado in Texas, your paper will eventually have a earth shattering impact on the world of science

This has another humorous implication:

[Sid Butterfly Conjecture 2] All research papers whether by Einstein or obscure researchers have the same impact eventually.

Incidentally I shared Sid Butterfly Conjecture 1&2 with the French Prof when I bumped into him. He seemed to love it!

The third talk that I want to mention was by S.R. Varadhan a famous Indian origin mathematician from ISI Calcutta who is now at Courant Institute, NYU. S.R. Varadhan was the winner of the Abel Prize (considered the Nobel Prize for Mathematics) in 2007. I have blogged about him here.

Hoping to learn from him, I asked him about the secret to his success. The answer was “you should have passion in what you do”. True, it was boring answer but its worth mentioning here because sometimes the secrets to success are quite simple. We shouldn’t expect rocket science answers to everything. Too often, the expectation of rocket science answers or tricks means that we don’t want to concentrate on the basics (which are obvious but tough to implement) like hard work, perseverance, passion, excellence, time management and so on.

It was inspirational to hear from two Indian origin scientists who have reached the heights of success in their fields. Can I apply their suggestions in my life? Only time will tell.

If we wish to discover if there is intelligent life outside our solar system we must first look for planets like Earth that orbit around other stars. Now thats difficult. Planets don’t emit light like stars so are extremely faint, almost invisible to our most powerful telescopes.

But there an indirect method that we can use to infer if a star has planets orbiting it. The method does not allow us to see the planets but simply infer that they are there.

If you have studied celestial mechanics you would have learnt that planets do not circle their parent star. Actually the star and the planet both orbit the center of mass of the system. Here is an excellent animation taken from wikipedia that illustrates the concept. The cross is the center of mass of the system.

Check out this blog entry for more details. Part 2 of the blog entry.

As you can see, the star wobbles as the planet goes around it. Light emitted from this star will be blue shifted as the star is approaching Earth and red shifted as it recedes from Earth. This periodic Doppler shift will allow you infer the existence of planets around other stars. Of course, there are lots of caveats and complications but this is the essential concept.

Its is tremendously simple but amazing idea and I wanted to blog about it, even though umpteen websites talk about the same thing.

Here is a good article that talks about this method in greater detail

Nuclear Fusion may be the answer to our energy problems. Its environmentally friendly (unlike Nuclear Fission which produces long lived radioactive waste) and does not cause global warming (No CO2 emissions). Moreover, Nuclear Fusion reactors can never explode like Nuclear Fission Reactors (e.g. Chernobyl).

The problem is that we still don’t know how to do Nuclear Fusion efficiently! Nevertheless, we are close to mastering the technology. In 20-30 years controlled Nuclear Fusion may become a reality.

JET was an experiment by the European Union that solved many problems in the field of controlled thermonuclear fusion. The JET Tokamak program was active for about two decades until 1999.

John Wesson, a member of the Jet Team has written a freely available book The Science of JET. You can download the book here and here. (Use the first link. The fonts are messed up in a few places on the second link).

The Science of JET is a fantastic non-technical book. It explains everything you need to know about fusion via Tokamaks in a wonderfully simple fashion. Plasma confinement has a reputation for being a very tough subject but John Wesson makes it simple. If you have studied college physics you will be able to follow the book very easily.

John Wesson stresses concepts. You come away with a good understanding of Tokamaks. There are also lots of interesting stories that make the book part tutorial and part historical account.

What you will learn/gain from the book:

• A good feel of plasmas. How they are confined magnetically in Tokamaks
• A good understanding of plasma heating techniques like RF heating, neutral beam heating and Ohmic heating
• A good understanding of important components of Tokamaks like Diverters, Toroidal and Poloidal coils etc.
• How to achieve fusion. Basic concepts like fusion triple product, energy confinement etc.
• H-modes, Instabilities, confinement, energy losses etc.
• The technology behind various components of a Tokamak fusion reactor
• History of the field and other experiments in Japan and US

The book sparked my interest in controlled fusion. Here is a list of resources and videos that will be useful while reading John Wesson’s book.

Wikipedia entry on Tokamaks

Fusion Basics from the JET site

The Plasma Edge (really good article)

Some advanced articles from the JET site

Nice JET movie, Another Movie

ITER: The successor to JET

ITER is an international collaboration unlike JET, which was mainly European. A prototype nuclear fusion reactor (ITER) is expected to produce 500 MW of power. India is part of the international collaboration!

India’s latest Tokamak, SST-1 (slightly outdated website)

Institute for Plasma Research, Gujarat, India

Overview of Tokamak Results