The Body

 

I have been a fan of Bill Bryson for many years now. Starting with "A Short History of Nearly Everything"(2003), I have tried to keep up with his numerous books on popular science that blend hard facts with a wry sense of humour.

"The Body: A Guide for Occupants" is perhaps one of his fattest books. In over 500 pages (excluding the refs and index) it covers not only many parts of the human body but also what happens when things go wrong due to diseases or cancer. 

What fascinated me the most is the number of times he begins a sentence with the phrase "we still don't know", or "It is still a mystery why...".

Take for instance his description of a patient name Frau Deter who approached a psychiatrist complaining of persistent and worsening forgetfulness. She could feel her personality draining away, like sand from an hourglass. The psychiatrist, Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915) now has the disease named after him. Researchers have since figureed out that the Alzheimer's begins with an accumulation of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid in the sufferer's brain. What do these protein fragments do in the normal course? we don't know. Patients also accumulate tangled fibrils of tau proteins about which, once again, we know hardly anything. What we do know is that as these proteins build up in the brain - 

Alzheimer's first demolishes short-term memories, then moves on to all or most other memories, leading to confusion, shortness of temper, loss of inhibition and loss of bodily functions, including how to breathe and swallow...People with the disease die twice - first in the mind, then in the body.

Nobody know why some people get Alzheimer's and others don't. It accounts for 60-70% of all dementia cases, and is thought to affect about 50 million people around the world. Little is known about the remaining 30-40% of dementia cases. We have given some of them unique names and recognise them from typical symptoms but the only thing we know is that is is caused by the "disturbance of neural proteins"! One of them is Lewy Body Dementia which is particularly distressing to loved ones because victims frequently lose inhibitions and the ability to control impulses, so they tend to do embarrassing things - shed clothes in public, steal from supermarkets, etc.,  

BB also has something to say about the limits of "modern medicine". Alzheimer's drugs have a 99.6% failure rate (!), one of the highest in the whole field of pharmacology. At the same time, most  of the money available for research is skewed towards ailments of the rich. There is a whole category of 'neglected tropical diseases' that affect more than a billion people worldwide. One of them, Lymphatic filariasis, affects more than 120 million people. Ditto for leishmaniasis, trachoma and yaws.

Perhaps it takes a kind of mad obsession to tackle diseases of this magnitude, and we owe much of what we know to those who paid with their lives. A German parasitologist, Theodor Bilharz (1825-62) wanted to have a better understanding of a tropical disease called schistosomiasis (akal Bilharzia or Snail Fever), so he bandaged the pupae of cercaria worms to his stomach and took careful notes as they burrowed through this skin en route to invading his liver. He survived this experiment but died at 37 (!) while trying to stop a typhus epidemic in Egypt.

So, as Max Ehrmann says in his Desiderata, "with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world!". For the human body, it is still an extraordinary fact that having good and loving relationships alters your DNA...and conversely, not having such relationships doubles your risk of dying from any cause!

Yantras of Jantar Mantar

 

 Jantar Mantar is one of the iconic monuments of Delhi. It figures in almost every representational image of the city skyline alongside the Lal Qila, Qutub Minar, and Lotus Temple. It is supposed to mean "instruments for measuring the harmony of the heavens", and yet there is hardly anybody who is able to explain how these astronomical instruments were used.

 The Jantar Mantar is Delhi is one of the five built by Raja Sawai Jai Singh about 300 years ago. For a city that dates back a few thousand years, this site is relatively new, so it is all the more surprising that there are no oral or written records of the Raja's purpose or intent of building many such sites in North India.

Recently the Hindustan Times seems to have taken some interest in drawing public interest to these monuments. Earlier this year, Aheli Das informed us - "Delhi’s Jantar Mantar observatory on the road to former glory". More recently, Kabir Firaque wrote a more detailed, engaging piece titled, "Delhi Heritage - The Science of the Observatory - How Jantar Mantar Read the Cosmos" 

Alongside the descriptions of the Samrat Yantra, Misra Yantra, Rama Yantra, Jai Prakash Yantra, it was interesting to know that there are instruments here about which we have absolutely no clue - the Niyat Yantra (the four semi-circles), and the "wall of mystery". The task of deciphering these puzzles has become all the more difficult after earlier attempts at 'restoration' plastered and painted over the graduation markings on many of these instruments.

Despite these constraints, some good people labour on - Dr. Aalok Pandya of IGNTU-Amarkantak, Sheh Kesari, a Ghaziabad based amateur astronomer, and a leading expert, Prof. Virendra Pratap Sharma who is now with the University of Wisconsin. Then there is architect Rachana Sankhalker who has written a graphic novel titled, "The Astronomical Observatories of Sawai Jai Singh" (PDF download available for free!).

Lets hope all these efforts will help us add some meaning what seems to most of us like abstract pieces of art spread out in the middle of a park in New Delhi!

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References & Links

Delhi’s Jantar Mantar observatory on the road to former glory - https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/delhi-news/delhis-jantar-mantar-observatory-on-the-road-to-former-glory-101736533001106.html 

Indole-nt

One of the most remarkable things I learnt this week is about an organic compound called Indole.

The topic came up randomly on X through a Business Insider video titled, "Why is Jasmine Oil so Expensive?".  A firm in Tamil Nadu was being featured for being one of the largest exporters of Jasmine oil in the world. 

While it is interesting to know the kind of effort that goes into the extraction process (about 5000 hand-plucked jasmine buds in 1kg; and 1000kg of buds to extract 1kg of jasmine oil costing over $5000!), what struck me is a somewhat quirky fact - you get the amazing fragrance of Jasmine only when the oil is around 2% concentration. Once you exceed this concentration the same oil first smells like rotten leaves, and then like shit!

This is because of one key ingredient in Jasmine oil - Indole - which is found in faeces in higher concentrations. 

So the trick is to capture the fragrance at the right moment, which is soon after the Jasmine sambac flowers bloom, and then to blend and dilute it in such a way that you get perfumes such as Doir's J'Adore fragrance.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Business Insider - https://youtu.be/Rt16uOqImI0  

* M.Hainey - Perfume Design - https://www.mizubrand.com/blogs/news/the-story-of-indole-in-natural-perfumery-white-florals

A Matter of Fermions and Bosons

 

What is the world made up of? 

We all remember something about this from our school days: All matter is made up of atoms, which in turn are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. We also learnt over the years that things are not so simple..

This engaging video presents one of the best explanations I have come across so far, of what the latest scientific research tells us, as well the things it just cannot explain.

It tells you about the universe made up of energy fields made up of Fermions and Bosons. Fermions are made up Electrons, the Up-quark (Uq) and the Down-quark (Dq). The familiar protons and neutrons each contains three quarks...all the beauty and complexity we see in the world around us is made up us these three components, over and over again..

Then there is the fourth one, a peculiar cosmic ghost flowing through us all the time - the Neurtino.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* https://www.quantamagazine.org/theories-of-everything-mapped-20150803/

* https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-video-tour-of-the-standard-model-20210716/

Experts vs. Dart-Throwing Monkeys

 

Statistics was never one of my favourite subjects. When faced with grades at the wrong end of the bell-curve, I would console myself with a quote attributed to Mark Twain - "There is lies, damn lies, and statistics"!

However, over the years, I have warmed-up to the subject - thanks largely to the stunning visualisations of Hans Rosling, and books like Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow". This post is about the latter. 

The nudge for this came about ten days ago when a friend posted a book recommendation with a quote by Richard Feynman - "The first rule in science is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool". The book in question was - "The power and paradox of self-deception" by Shankar Vedantam.

The first question that came to my mind was - Is this any different from the ideas described so well in Kahneman's book?  I went back to the book and found that he discussed not only all sorts of cognitive biases but also ways in which the intuitions of subject experts can be built into robust decision-making models.

What I like about Kahneman is that he is a practitioner who moved to academia. Unlike most ivory tower theorists, he served in the fledgeling Israeli Army in the 1950s, setting SoPs (still in use) for officer selection before moving to a university in USA, and winning the first Nobel prize for psychology/economics in 2002. 

Two of my key takeaways from this book were on Subjective Confidence and Intuitions vs. Formulas. Here are two quotes from the book on the topics which are perhaps best described in the author's own words. 

First, Subjective Confidence.

Facts that challenge...basic assumptions - and thereby threaten people's livelihood and self esteem - are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them. This is particularly true of statistical studies of performance, which provide base rate information that people generally ignore when it clashes with their personal impressions

We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers

In other words, people who spend their time, and earn their living, studying a particular topic produce poorer predictions than dart-throwing monkeys who would have distributed their choices evenly over the options. Even in the region they knew best, experts were not significantly better than non-specialists...The reason is that a person who acquired more knowledge develops an enhanced illusion of her skill and becomes unrealistically overconfident. 

...Using an analogy from Isaish Berlin's essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox" -

Hedgehogs "know one big thing" and have a theory about the world; they account for particular events within a coherent framework, bristle with impatience towards those who do not see things their way, and are confident about their forecasts. They are also especially reluctant to admit error. For hedgehogs, a failed prediction is almost always "off only on timing", or "very nearly right". They are opinionated and clear, which is exactly what televisions producers like to see on their programs. Two hedgehogs on different sides of an issue, each attacking the idiotic ideas of the adversary, make a good show.

Foxes, on the other hand, are complex thinkers. They don't believe that one big thing drives the march of history. Instead the foxes recognise that reality emerges from the interactions of many different agents and forces, including blind luck, often producing large and unpredictable outcomes....Foxes are less likely to to be invited to participate in television debates.

On Intuitions vs. Formulas

Paul Meehl's book - "Clinical vs. Statistical prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of Evidence"...This 'disturbing little book' presented the results of 20 studies to examine whether Clinical Predictions based on the subjective impressions of trained professionals were more accurate than statistical predictions made by combining a few scores or ratings according to a rule... The formula was more accurate than 11 or 14 counsellors! It was proven again in other studies on violations of payroll, success in pilot training and criminal recidivism.

Princetown economist and wine lover Orley Ashenfelter shows us the compelling power of the power of simple statistics to outdo world renowned experts. Ashenfelter predicted the future value of Bordeaux wines based on info available the year they were made - he converted conventional knowledge into a statistical formula that predicts the price of wine based on three features of the weather - average temp over the summer growing months, the amount of rain at harvest, and the total rainfall during the previous winter.

A key conclusion... to maximise predictive accuracy, final decisions should be left to formulas, especially in low-validity environments

Does Vedanam's new book present any new ideas? I don't know yet. It does seem to me that path-breaking ideas presented in "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow" may now be getting repackaged in newer books. Perhaps I am suffering from an anchoring bias, but I do believe Kahneman's book is something you need to have on your nearest bookshelf, as a constant reminder that there is more to this world than meets the eye, that intuitions can be trusted - but only to a certain extent. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Cognitive Biases - https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-cognitive-bias-2794963

* Animated book summary - https://youtu.be/uqXVAo7dVRU

* The hedgehog and the fox - http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9981.pdf

* How Big Data can predict the wine of the century - https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2014/04/30/how-big-data-can-predict-the-wine-of-the-century/?sh=5f2c35c531a9

Ribosomes - Making Sense of Blobology

This is not a book I would ever pick on an impulse. The cover itself  is quite intimidating - a confusing, colorful blob of tangled ribbons. On first glance it looks like a tome for the lab nerds, for those seeped in structural biology, the followers of specialized science journals, and certainly not the general reader.

I picked this book only because on the dark cover, I noticed blurps from three writers I admire - Siddharth Mukherjee, Richard Dawkins and Bill Bryson. The stock comment ' I could not put this book down' from one of them pointed towards the possibility the book could be read - and understood - by folks like me, those who are not specialists but merely curious.

I was not at all disappointed.  The author,Venki Ramakrishnan is the 2009 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and his book, "Gene Machine" is a personal story of a physicist turned biologist who helped decipher the secrets of the Ribosome.  Even if the topic sounds esoteric, the book is a down-to-earth narrative of a boy from Baroda who made it big.

Yet it is not the typical story of a south Indian vegetarian in USA. You get the impression of a adventurous, outgoing guy riding a series of lucky breaks. Perhaps the first of these came through a HoD at Baroda-U who got a letter from Ohio University seeking prospective students. Nineteen year old Venki is then offered a graduate scholarship without the usual GRE scores. He lands up in the America in the midst of the anti-war protests of 1971, and immediately after graduation, gets married to Vera Rosenberry, a talented illustrator of children's books, and a single mother.

In the initial chapters, Venki has a nice way of explaining his work with analogies. In the late 70s everybody knew that the ribosomes were responsible for protein synthesis, but nobody knew how -

"Imagine you are a Martian peering at the earth from above. You observe tiny objects on the surface that move mainly in straight lines, ocassionally turning at right angles...you could tell tht they consume hydrocarbons and emit carbon dioxide along with some pollutants and some heat. But you have absolutely no idea what these objects are, let alone how they work. Only by knowing the detailed construction of the object would you be able to see that it is made of hundreds of components that work together and that it has an engine connected to a crankshaft that make the wheels turn..."

Venki's search takes him from the university to his first job with the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee and then to Brookhaven on the East Coast. Along the way, X-ray crystallography becomes the main tool for deciphering the structure of the various complicated components of the ribosome at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, UK.

The book also helps you catch a glimpse into the petty politics of those engaged in cutting edge science, of the walled garden that is open only to those from 'elite' institutions, and the manner in which the race for a Nobel Prize brings out the worst in many scientists.

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LINKS

Good Reads - Gene Machine - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39088590-gene-machine

An Award Ignored

Strange are the ways of the Indian media.

A few days ago, an Indian scientist-entrepreneur based in Japan won the country's top environment award for 2017, and it was barely mentioned here. Bits of the news appeared on the web-editions of India Today and DNA, both apparently sourced from a newsfeed site called UNIIndia.

Dr. Shrihari Chandraghatgi, CEO of EcoCycle Corporation, was awarded the Environment Award for 2017 in Japan for "developing cutting edge technologies to address burning environmental problems". This award is the highest honour given every year jointly by the Ministry of Environment, Japan, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan and The Nikkan Kogyo Shinbun (a media group). What is more,  Chandraghatgi is the first foreigner to win this award.

What exactly is the cutting edge technology developed by Chandraghatgi to address 'burning environmental problems"? According to information available at his company website, EcoCycle has developed a unique technology for environmental remediation and recycling of organic solvents in semiconductor industries. It uses microorganisims to clean the soil and groundwater contaminated with chlorinated solvents and hexavalent chromium. The company has also developed unique on-site emission analytical techniques for semiconductor industries.

India does not have a significant semiconductor industry. Much of its requirements are imported. While this may have been a reason for the rather tepid response here, it fails to see the larger picture. In one of the interviews, Chandraghatgi gives an open offer aimed at India - "Now it is my turn to work in India where large scale health problems are reported because of consuming toxic groundwater. If any organization, government or NGO, wants to take up such cause with concern of public health, I am ready to provide my technology and vast experience free!"

Will this offer be taken up in right earnest? Or will we continue to wear our blinkers and look-up towards the West - USA, Europe - technological breakthroughs that are relevant to India?

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* (20Jun17) -UNI - "Agri. Microbiologist Dr Shrihari Chandraghatgi gets Japan Award" http://www.uniindia.com/agri-microbiologist-dr-shrihari-chandraghatgi-gets-japan-award/states/news/906665.html
- Dr Shrihari is currently helping Ministry of Industry, Thailand in forming environmental regulations and educate with remedial technologies.
- In 2017 he established a NGO, Kibono Hikari literally means Ray of Hope to help under privileged children in India with educational and medical support.

* (21Jun17) - IndiaToday - "Indian Agri-Microbiologist given Environment Award in Japan" - http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/indian-agri-microbiologist-given-environment-award-in-japan/1/983894.html

* (21Jun17) - DNA - http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-indian-agri-microbiologist-given-environment-award-in-japan-2479336

* (2015) - Son's donation for Scoriosis treatment - http://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/others/baby-anjummehboob-patel-shrihari/articleshow/47062930.cms?

* EcoCycle Corporation, Japan - http://www.ecocycle.co.jp/e_organization/e_organization.html

Breathing Life into Statistics

There is lies, damn lies and statistics. And then there is Prof. Hans Rosling.

Rosling was Swedish specialist in Global Health, and a tireless evangelist for the cause of statistics - especially the art of presenting dull, boring numbers in stunning visualizations.

The first time I saw Rosling in action was in this TED video, made about 10 years ago:

Earlier this year, in February 2017, I was saddened to know that Rosling had died of pancreatic cancer. And today, for some reason, I found myself going through a BBC documentary on him, followed by an urge to revisit a few of the simplest statistical tools that I had learnt to use, but forgotten from disuse and disinterest, over a period of time.

While I could sail past the concept of Averages, and even wrap my head around the Normal (Poisson) Distribution, I had forgotten all about Standard Deviations (SD), Statistical Correlation and Dependence..

As explained in this video, the SD process consists of (1) collecting data (2) calculating the average/mean of the data set (3) subtracting this mean from each of the data units, and squaring the differences, (4) calculating, once again, the mean of the squared units, and, finally, (5) calculating the square-root of the 'mean of differences' to get the Standard Deviation, which tells you how diverse the numbers in your data-set are.

Why exactly do we go through this five-step process? What is the logic behind all this squaring and subtracting? I still don't know...but it does remind me that I had asked the very same question in a classroom many years ago, and failed to get a satisfactory answer. Then, as now, the whole thing seemed like a form of gymnastics with numbers.

And yet, Hans Rosling seems like the sort of guy who would have given me a clear, logical answer, and triggered in me a passion for data. How wish I had come across such a teacher, a few decades ago!

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LINKS:

TED Video - "The Best Statistics You've Never Seen!" - https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tedspread

Don't Panic: The Facts About Population - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

Gapminder Foundation - http://www.gapminder.org/

Obituary (Feb., 2017) - Hans Rosling: Data visionary and educator dies aged 68 - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38900572

Murthy Vs. Rao

Is there one invention from India that has become a household name in the globe? 
Is there one technology that has transformed the productivity of global corporations? 
Is there one idea that has led to an earth-shaking invention to delight global citizens?

These were some of the questions posed by Narayana Murthy at an IISc convocation ceremony in July 2015. As expected, it provoked loud yelps of protest from India's scientific community, including the big daddy of them all, Prof. CNR Rao, who countered it by just tossing the question back to Murthy - What has the industry contributed to S&T in India?

CNRR's rhetorical response does not, of course, answer any of the questions posed by Murthy. So a one can come to the concusion that the short answer to NM's questions is "Sorry, none at all."

Perhaps a part of the answer to Murthy's questions lies in the way scientists like CNRR are reacting to his convocation speech. A touchiness that comes from being insecure, a misplaced sense of self-importance, and an attitude that would do the proverbial ostritch very proud indeed!

Oddly enough, less than a week after Murthy's speech at IISc, CNRR stated (20 July) almost the same thing in different words. “The IISc. is characterised by very mediocre research", he said,  "mainly because they have a lot of facilities.” I guess the man who had a traffic circle outside IISc named after himself decided to change tack because he thought the institution was being criticised by an outsider who was a capitalist, and a bourgeois to boot.

Fortunately NM has refused to be drawn into a debate with CNRR. His simple response was, "He is a great scientist...So when he says something, all of us should listen to him with respect”.

Anybody who has read the full text of NMs speech would realize that his target audience was a whole generation of young scientists who who were going to seek greener pastures in the West. Even if  a few of them return home with one technology, one invention or one idea, it would still be a great outcome for India.


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LINKS

* Copy of the speech delivered by NM - http://scroll.in/article/741723/full-text-narayana-murthy-questions-the-contribution-of-iits-and-iisc-in-the-last-60-years
* CNR Rao's response - http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/industry-contribution-to-science-pathetic-professor-c-n-r-rao/
* CNRR on IISc - http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/iits-iisc-are-not-the-best-in-the-world-says-cnr-rao/article2066308.ece

Science, Technology and Society

Last week there were two interesting events in New Delhi that gave us interesting perspectives on how Science and Technology is viewed in different societies, and across cultures.

The first was the screening of a documentary at IIC on G.N Ramachandran (aka GNR) the Indian scientist who discovered the triple-helix structure of Collagen, and the second, a talk at CPR by Prof. Sheila Jasanhoff from the Havard Kennedy School titled, "US-EU GM Crops Controversy: A Case for Epistemic Subsidiarity?".

The first one was fairly straightforward. The 30-minute documentary was on GNR, a scientist in newly independent India who sets up a frugal lab at Madras University, and using relatively basic equipment cracks a scientific problem that had eluded the likes of Linus Pauling and Francis Crick (of the DNA fame): the structure of Collagen, the most abundant protein in mammals.

The documentary desribes GNRs struggles to get adequate credit and recognition for this discovery, the attempts by British scientists to delay the publication of his findings in Nature, and of the fact that India had failed to recognise GNR adequately.

Prof. Jasanhoff's talk was on an altogether different plane. A scientist of Indian origin, she described her decision to focus on USA and EU as a "tactical decision" to avoid being straightjacketed as an India Scholar, and of her amazement at the way in which scientific data is interpreted in distinctly different ways across regulatory boundaries. The fact that there is a lack of consensus on this even amongst developed countries is described as the 'Paradox of Risk Governance'.

And what is Epistemic Subsidiarity? Perhaps one way of describing it is that knowledge and undestanding (epistemology) is best handled by devolving decisions on it to the lowest practical level (subsidiarity).

This framework is used to explain the big differences in the way USA and EU countries view Genetically Modified Organisms, leading up to the Asilomar Conference (1975) which drew up, for the first time, guidelines to ensure the safety of Recombinant DNA technology.

My biggest takeaway from both the events was the striking divergence in outlook of Indian scientists and of PIO/NRI scientists. The former has tied itself down in knots by basking in past glories, and creating an incentive system that stifles innovative thinking, while the latter has its sights focused on the future.

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LINKS:

• CPR - link to talk by Sheila Jasanhoff - http://cprindia.org/news/4574
• YouTube: GN Ramachandran's Work (1/3) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inGEPFiMwEA

An Offer to Work in India

How difficult is it for science & technology to thrive in India?

Everytime I see a news article or TV reporter gushing about the achievements of a scientist or entrepreneur of Indian origin, I am reminded of Prof. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. In 2009, soon after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Prof. Ramakrishnan declared, "Nobody has approached me about an offer to work in India. However, I can categorically state that if they did so, I would refuse immediately.”!

What explains this vehemance, this deep disenchantment?

Perhaps a part of the answer lies in the way we build and run our public-funded scientific institutions. Some of them are run like personal fiefdoms with no succession plan in sight ("after me the deluge!"), and in many others dedicated individuals find themselves embroiled in a constant battle with ted-tape.  

A couple of years ago, the official press release on the prestigious Marconi Prize  awarded to Prof. Paulraj, actually stated that he was driven out of India because "bureaucratic battles began to take their toll"... This was one scientist who returned to India, in 1986 from Stanford-U, and set up two institutions - CAIR and CDAC - before being hounded out. So he just went back to USA and went on to create the MIMO standard which is at the heart of 4G mobile technology we all use today.

Our short-sightedness was also highlighted recently in a widely circulated blogpost by Dheeraj Sanghi. Having been a member of numerous selection committee's, he describes how "Participating in...committee meetings can be very depressing as they expose this myth about India being the largest producer of scientific manpower."

Add to this the daily tussle we witness between the IITs/IIMs and the hon'ble Cabinet Minister for Human Resources Development, and the disheartening picture is all too complete.


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LINKS / REFERENCES

* (12 May 2015) - Dheeraj Sanghi - The Quality of Faculty -- http://dsanghi.blogspot.in/2015/05/the-quality-of-faculty.html

* (Firstpost, 2014): R. Jagannnathan - http://www.firstpost.com/india/nadella-as-microsoft-ceo-a-slap-in-the-face-for-indian-system-1374951.html
- We need to ask ourselves: why does our system kill future heroes, while the US helps raise even ordinary Indians to iconic levels
- The short point: our system is designed to keep people out, not get them in. The true value of an IIT or IIM is not the intellectual capital they produce, but their filtering expertise

* (Hindu, 2009) - Nobel Laureate bemused by deluge of goodwill -- http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/nobel-laureate-bemused-by-deluge-of-goodwill/article33379.ece

On Hexagons

If you wanted to cover a large flat space with with equal pieces, without leaving any gaps, which shape would you choose?

In 300 CE, Pappus of Alexandria said that it was best to use Hexagons, just like bees do.  Pappu's idea remained a conjecture for 1700 years when in 1999, Thomas Hales proved that proved the Alexandian right through the honeycomb theorem.

I heard this for the first time in this TED video by Eduardo Sáenz de Cabezón:



But how did bees determine that this was the best shape? And how do they pass this knowledge across generations?

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MORE

* Why do honeybees love hexagons?  http://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-do-honeybees-love-hexagons-zack-patterson-and-andy-peterson

Eyeing Botox

Clostridium botulinum (Image source: Wikipedia)

In 1895 a Belgian bacteriologist named Ermengem took a close look at a piece of rotten ham that had poisoned thirty-four people.

Under the microscope, Ermengem discovered a bacteria that would become the center of attention for military strategists, doctors, cosmetic surgeons, and foodies: Clostridium botulinum.

C. botulinum is an anaerobic spore-forming Gram positive bacteria which produces Botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) - one of the world's most lethal biological weapon agents. One single gram of BoNT can kill 14,285 people (ingested), 1.25m people (inhaled), or 8.3 million people (injected). Amazingly, this very same toxin is now being used to cure vision disorders like Strabismus (squint eyes), amblyopia (lazy eyes), and for the removal of facial wrinkles (botox)!

How on earth did people discover that the most lethal neuro-toxin in the world can cure eye problems and make ladies look prettier??

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LINKS / REFERENCES:

- Botulinum Toxin Type-A (BXTA) - First Indian manufacturer (2007) - Bio-Med, Ghaziabad - brandname "BotoGenie" - http://www.biomed.co.in/aboutus.html
- Allergan Inc., USA - http://www.allergan.com/index.htm
- Coleman & Zilinskas (2010): FAKE BOTOX, REAL THREAT, Scientific American, June 2010 -- http://www.fakebotoxrealthreat.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/sciam-botox-june2010.pdf
- NIH / NCBI: BIOWEAPON & MAGIC DRUG --- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3028942/
-Talreja, Vishaka (2007): CHINESE BOTOX WON'T LET YOU LOOK YOUNG, TOI, 28Oct 2007 -- url -- http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2007-10-28/news/28481698_1_botox-treatment-botox-shot-chinese-botox
- A 100 unit Botox vial is priced at Rs 16,650. On the other hand the Chinese botox is available at a price 40% less than AllergAn's Botox.
- Anti-wrinke procedure costs Rs. 15,000 to Rs. 20,000
- 25,000 non-surgical Botox procedures in 2007 --- In USA there were 3 million such cosmetic procedures in 2006

Fortunate Accidents

"Annals of science", it seems, "is littered with blunder, mishap and blind alley made good". The Independent came up with a few interesting examples:

• Upsalite - newly synthesised magnesium carbonate material - MgCO3 - unrivaled capacity to absorb water - potential uses - domestic humidity controls, pharma factories, electronics to oil-spill clean-ups - discovered accidentally when a reaction was left bubbling over a long weekend.
• Penicillin - Alexander Flemings Staphylococcus cultures were invaded by mould.
• Pacemaker - Wilson Greatbatch fitted the wrong resistor to his heart-recording machine
• Aspartame (artifricial sweetener) - A scientist researching coal tar failed to wash his hands before he ate!
• Post-It - brainchild of a failed glue-inventor

Where can I find a more comprehensive list of such 'happy blunders'?

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LINKS

* Chance Breakthroughs - 'The Independent', London

Silicon Landscapes

"A surface of silicon was revealed as a land of gentle, steadily rising undulations, in which the track of the probe could be seen like furrows dug with a plough. This particular image was so riveting and so beautiful that “Heini” (as Dr Rohrer told everyone to call him) had to take young Dr Binnig away for long walks through the real mountains to get their discovery in perspective, and to calm him down."

This is an excerpt from the Economists' obituary to Heinrich Rohrer, the father of nanotechnology, "quantum tunneling" and the Scanning Electron Microscope (STM).

When the technique was discovered in the 1980s, scientists were amazed to discover completely distinct, new 'landscapes' on the surface of metals.

Where can I find the image that Rohrer found so beautiful?

Was it something like this?

Surface of Silicon under STM (Image - Webphysics)

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LINKS

• http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21578630-heinrich-rohrer-father-nanotechnology-died-may-16th-aged-79-heinrich-rohrer?
• IBM - STM Image Gallery - http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_project.php?id=4245
• http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee230/sp08/giessibl%20Si%207x7%20AFM%202000.pdf
• http://education.mrsec.wisc.edu/Edetc/background/STM/
• http://webphysics.iupui.edu/warmup/iupui_archive/stm.html

'Bias for thought against action'

"Although Indians blame ideology (and sometimes democracy) for their failings, the truth is that a mundane inability to implement policy -- reflecting a bias for thought and against action -- may have been even more damaging."

This is a quote from an essay written by Gurcharan Das in Sep., 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs. Nearly six years later, just about every point in the essay continues to hold good, including this trenchant comment about our bias for thought over action.

The most recent example of this was on display at the 99th Indian Science Congress, attended by over 15,000 scientists and students. Here, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared in his inaugural address that China had beaten India in science. A comment that drew headlines the next day.

A few days later, an intrepid journalist from the Indian Express, Amitabh Sinha,  found that Mr. Singh been repeating the same platitudes for years. Sinha notes, "speeches of the Prime Ministers in the last 10 years reveal how repetitive this exercise has become reflecting either a policy stasis in the sector, lack of bold reforms or both. Each year, the PM underlines the same themes: increase in investment, de-bureaucratisation of scientific establishments, public-private partnerships. So much so that sometimes the Prime Ministers use the same quote to make the point."

For a PM widely criticised for his 'masterly inactivity', one wonders why he had to bring China into this inaugural address. Was it to goad the scientists into action (while assuming they had a short memory), or was it merely to add a dash of variety & drama to his repetitive public statements that are merely reflect our continuing bias for thought against action?

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LINKS / REFERENCES

ENS (2012): China has beaten us in science: PM, Indian Express, 4 Jan., 2012, URL - http://www.indianexpress.com/news/china-has-beaten-us-in-science-pm/895449/

Sinha, Amitabh (2012): If science seems stuck, so do the Prime Ministers, 8 Jan., 2012, URL- http://www.indianexpress.com/news/if-science-seems-stuck-so-do-the-prime-ministers/897127/

Kulkarni, Sudheendra (2012): INDIA NEEDS SWADESHI S&T, IE 8 Jan12 p11

Editorial - Indian Express (9 Jan 2012): THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, URL - http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-more-things-change/897460/

Startling Yellows

.

During autumn, how do the Ginko trees (Ginkgo biloba),come up with the brightest yellow foliage?

Botanists refer to this phenomenon as "leaf senscence in deciduous trees"  and is linked to the changing seasons (a "phytogerontological phenomenon"). The change in leaf coloration is generally due to the progressive loss of chlorophyll cells coinciding with the partial retention of carotenoids.

The big difference between the Ginko and other leaf-shedding trees like Maples and Lindens is that, as the green chlorophyll disappears, as much as half of total carotinoids originally present in the leaf is retained by the time of shedding, which give it a bright yellow color. In the other tree species, carotenoid retention is less pronounced but still high enough to cause a golden appearance of the autumnal foliage.

Now, if you were to ask the why question, explanations are not so easy to find...

It has always intrigued me that as far as plants are concerned, the green color - so soothing to inhabitants of concrete jungles - belongs to the  a wavelength that is practically useless for photosynthesis. And so plants & trees absorb all other wavebands and rejects the green color.

Much the same way, carotinoids appear yellow-red in color but they absorb the blue light. So why is there a longer retention of carotinoids in the Ginko leaves??



---------------------------------------------------------------
REFERENCES:

Matile, Philippe (2000), Biochemistry of Indian summer: physiology of autumnal leaf coloration. Experimental Gerontology 35 (2000). pp. 145-158

Connections!

One of the most fascinating TV series I've ever seen, is available online for free!  :-)

James Burke's BBC series - "Connections" and its sequels were telecast on DD-India, a few decades ago. Here are links to the entire blessed series, on YouTube:

Episode I - The Trigger Effect

Part 1/5 - Intro questions - dependence on tech networks - Eg. Manhattan, NY
Part 2/5 - Niagra power-station Adam Beck 2 - a Relay trips on 9 Nov., 1965
Part 3/5 - Grids shut down; black-out in hospitals, subways, ATC controls - Technology Trap - escape to the countryside? can you use a plough?
Part 4/5 - 12,000 years ago - migration to river valleys - invention of the plough; bread > oven tech; straw mats > cloth weaving;  laws & weapons to protect ownership. Building canals teaches you to work stone, geometry and mathematics > then you can build pyramids - step-pyramid of King Djoser at Saqqara near Cairo (2700BC)
Part 5/5 - Nile flooding - astronomy - Sirius rises before dawn on the 17th of July every year - one day before the annual flooding begins - Karnak - centre of a 4000-year empire built on simple technology - tech that `tied us for good`; Kuwait's dependence on technology - built in 4000 days!

Why those inventions happened between 6000 yearsago and how...or where they happened or when they happened, is a fascinating blend of accident, genius, craftsmanship, geography, religion, war, money, ambition...above all, at some point, everybody is involved in the business of change - not just the so-called "great men"....at no point of time did an invention appear just like that. You had to put together a number of things that were already there..

Episode II : Death in the Morning

Part 1/5 - Lydia (Turkey) - touchstone for testing gold purity - Alexander`s standard gold coins - Alexandria Library - 500,000+ books, ran for 1000+ years - Crafty law - `if you came to the port with a book, it had to be copied by the library` - Ptolemy`s (150AD) calculations & astronomy - star catalogue - 1022 stars.
Part 2/5 - - Lateen sail vs. old roman square sail - 1200AD -  Chinese stern-post rudder + lateen sail + Ptolemy`s star-charts - not used widely until 1456AD when the Turks took Constantinople and blocked East-West trade - triggered 16th Century - Voyages of Discovery -  - Francis Drake`s (1540-1596) - sea-captain, pirate, politician - the queen got 50% of the booty and pirates became `nobles`)- Portolan charts - mostly made in Majorca -  the Compass and the inaccuracies between `True North` vs. Magnetic North! - Elizabeth-I`s (1558) England - `worthless money, plague, filthy cities...stimulated a depressed economy by encouraging privateering sea-dogs - Drake, Raleigh and Hawkins...they went about with a gutsy disregard for convention which we describe today as `criminal``! 
Part 3/5 -1581 - compass-maker Robert Norman`s puzzle about a stationery needle > doctor, William Gilbert`s book on magnetism > Otto von Guericke`s invention of Vacuum Pump > Impressed Ferdinad-III (Holy Roman Emperor). Guericke`s spinning suphur ball (sparks) led to the discovery of electricity & telegraph! Many facinating branches - (1) Vacuum pump > discovery of gases > oxygen > how lungs work > respiratory medicine (2) Vacuum Pump > steam engine > railways (3) Vacuum pump > testing for sparks > modern radar.
Part 4/5 - Electricity - lightning strikes on gunpowder stores - Benjamin Franklin - lightning rods - interest in weather stations - hot-air balloons-  Ben Nevis in Scotland - morning `Glory` - Charles Wilson 1896 - International Cloud Atlas
Part 5/5 - Charles Wilson`s Cloud Chamber 1895 > X-ray clouds > Watson Watt - Radar + Rutherford`s - atom disintegration in cloud chamber + B29 bomber --> Hiroshima 6 Aug., 1945, 8:15AM....death in the morning.

Episode III - `Distant Voices`

Part 1/5 - Normans knights beat the Saxons at the Battle of Hastings (1066 AD). Advantage -  the stirrup
Part 2/5 - Henry-V ends the 400-year domination of the knight on horseback at the Battle of Agincourt (25 Oct., 1415). 8000 vs. 30,000 Frenchmen - secret weapon - the Welsh Longbow. Three inventions that bossted agriculture productivity - mouldboard plough, horse-collar and horse-shoe...and the 3-field system
Part 3/5 - Gunpowder from urine and dung (Urine > ammonia; bacteria+dung + nitrate; mix with woodash, filter with water = saltpetre crystals (KNO3);  So gunpowder = KNO3+sulphur + charcoal  /// Why didn't China not transform the world with its inventions?...
Part 4/5 - Cannon mania needed cash which came from the silver mines of Jachymov (aka Joachimsthal) in the moutains of northern Czech (1536) - produced 3m ounces in silver coins a year (Thaler > Dollar) -
Problem of flooding mines refered to Galileo who sends his student, Toricelli.  Experiments on  air pressure and effect on vacuum - Fr. Matin Mersenne connects with  Blaise Pascal (mercury dish experiments)> invented the Barometer! French astronomer Jean Picard carrying his barometer observed sparks...
Part 5/5 - Luigi Galvani (1783) sees frogs legs jump with charged scalpel // Volta's "pile" for electricity - Oersted's (1820) class with compass needle - electricity has a magnetic field - 1825 - first electomagnet in England - 1875 - A. Graham Bell reaches patent office just 2 hours before competitor...and people start hearing distant voices.

Episode IV - Faith in Numbers

Part 1/5 - Aqueducts that fed the gain-mills at Barbegal near Arles (28t of flour/day)- ruined when the Roman empire fell apart 1500 years ago -  burden of taxes -  The church held together through the chaos of middle ages - it was the `telecom dept`
Part 2/5 - Water wheels- Bennedictian monks  - systems management - best sheep rearing techniques - best wool - 2 key inventions - the foot-loom (too fast - no enough yarn!) and spinning wheel - Bruges  became a huge wool-textile centre - surplus cash  spent in Champagne Fairs  -  Italians most active - 15 cities had consulates in Troyes - until 1340s famine - 1347 - attack by fleas....black death! arrived in a ship from Crimea - before receding four years later, it killed 40 million people, 200,000 villages wiped out.
Part 3/5 - Prosperity again after black-death - old linen > paper. Paper became cheap but clerks were few (black death) so printing evolved - a goldsmith named J. Gutenberg (1450s) invented inter-changable typeface - this democratized knowledge - most influential:  an Italian named Aldus Manutius  came up with the first `pocket edition` in Venice. Also invented the `italic` type to fit more into his pocket editions - Venice - richest city in Europe, full of businessmen...and Greeks- refugees from Turkish conquest of Constantinople (1453)
Part 4/5- Greek workers in printing presses popularized the classics...arts and architecture.
This got people like Michaelangelo into big prestige projects...1615 - building in Salzburg - mechanical toys, fountains - Lyon - craze for Chinese silk weaving patterns - perforated paper and cards.
Part 5/5 - The Jacquard loom  did not catch on in France because of the Revolution...it was a hit in England...paisley shawls became popular - automatic riveting machines helped build great iron ships...corssing the seas became easier! Ships moved the `poor huddled masses of Europe` to America...by 1870s more than 7000 per day....8 million between 1850-1880! - 10 year census - John Shaw Shillings - Herman Hollerith  > Tabulating Machine ...1890 census was done in half the time - US pop 62m.

Episode V: Wheel of Fortune

Part 1/5 - Priest-astronomers observing the moon - told farmers when to sow - also observed planets (from `planeta` Greek for `the wanderers`!) - dusted out Ptolemy`s chart for 1022 stars -  Arabs - Astrolabe
Part 2/5 - Khalif Al Mansur - founder of Baghdad, got sick as a dog in 765 - cured by medico-astronomer from mountain monastry - Jurgis ibn Bakhtishu - First European medical school at Salona (?) in Italy - on the route of returning crusaders -- conflict between the traditionalists (church) and new thinkers --> nasty inquisition. Astronomy also helped in telling the time (replacing sundials and candles) - for praying at the right time - water clocks! But water froze in winter...so they used just the weights and came up with the verge & foliot!
Part 3/5 - Clock - machine telling people when to pray, when to work - a tapering "fuzee" to help a spring unwind evenly - main centre for watchmaking - Nuremberg (eg. Nuremberg egg by Peter Henlein) < good at metal work < because it was in a mining area -- produced best armor + best trinkets - Hans Lipperske - offers a looker (telescope) to the Dutch army (1603) -- Galileo used it to see Jupiter`s moons, questioned the catholic church`s earth-is-centre view and got imprisoned (1609) - Pisa cathedral 1681? swinging lamp.....Christiaan Huygens  1656 invented the pendulum....but it was not useful for the mariners.
Part 4/5 - Irregular spring problem - glass makers and refractory furnance...technique taken to steel furnaces by a clockmaker called Benjamin Huntsman  for making better springs - Jesse Ramsden - marked precise measurements on a sextant (1774) -- using screws made of Huntsman`s steel
Part 5/5 - America did not have skilled workers so they borrowed the Factory system and the idea of interchangeability parts from Honoré Blanc - then came Frank Gilbreth`s time & motion studies - went crazy seeing the inefficiency of bricklayers - The price of mass consumption...loss of individuality. Is there anything in your pocket (paraphelnaria of people`s pvt lives) that is not machine-made??

Episode VI: Thunder in the Skies

Part 1/5 - Rising prosperity in England - chimney, plastered walls, drapes and glass panes of Hardwick Hall. Kitchens & glass factories - flue drafts, mini-turbines..

Part 2/5 - Queen-E desperate to make bronze cannons - Copper from Bristol mines (1566) - Zach`s coal furnaces for making glass - 16th century property boom - shortage of wood for navy ships, so glass-makers packed off to cut forests in America for their charcoal, to Jamestown, Virginia.

Part 3/5 - History of Steam Engines - Bristol entrepreneurs: Miner Sir Robert Mansell helps Zach with money; 1699,  a young Quaker called Abraham Derby  turns up, makes brass utensils and then iron-ware, then copper at Coalbrookdale --- ends up making iron without impurities. The problem of flooding in coalmines solved using the Neocomen Engine (Thomas Neocomen building on T. Savery`s idea). Improved further by James Watt with his double cylinder, using John Wilkinson`s (1773) cannon-boring technique to make sturdy cylinders.

Part 4/5 -  Wilkinson`s BiL, Joseph Preistley tinkers with gas in brewery next door, makes soda, writes to Alessandro Volta about sparks. Volta, roaming around the Italian lakes of Cona and Maggiore uses `marsh gas` (methane) to fire his  uses his Glass Electric Pistol - 1850 Arctic ocean - whaling - oil for lamps replaced by an alternative discovered by Edwin Drake  - petroleum.

Part 5/5 - G. Daimler  and W. Maybach working at Otto Engines near Stuttgart, make first motorcar engine 1892 fuel spray (based on perfume spray!) in the Carburetor. Daimler`s distributor, E. Jellinek , comes up with a better idea(1899) for fuel ignitition using an electric spark! New car named after Jellinek`s daughter - Mercedes!

Summary: Neocommen`s piston + Drake`s oil + scent spray + Volta`s pistol = better engine. Wilhelm Kress tries to use it in a flying-boat 2 yrs before the Wright brothers...an idea that evolves into `thunder in the skies` -- a Concorde. `Invention capable of annihilating both distance and people...`



Episode VII: The Long Chain

1/5 - Freight transport - Fluyts from Holland (warehouse of Europe) - developed in Horne (1595) - stripped the fighting galleys to basics, added control & automation (block & tackle); 1648 - Edward Llyoyd started an insurance company - categorized ships according to soundness of its hull (AEIOU - U =bad), and equipment (Good, Middling, Bad) - protecting wooden hulls against worms with a mix of pitch & tar...America becomes supplier - buys slaves as labor - to cut pine trees, bury them in pits and roast them...tar bubbled out with turpentine
2/5 - 1776 - tired of being ripped off, the Americans declared independence...and so ended cheap pitch & tar; Karl Ross, Earl of Dundonald,  tried recuperating fortunes by going into the inventions business...found way to make coal-tar -- discovered that gas from coal ovens was flamable...told J.Watt, who told his employee William Murdoch, who became the `inventor` of gas lighting -- Artificial colors from coal-tar + waterproofing material with rubber (1823) - Macintosh

3/5 -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackintosh
- Mackintosh and Hancock started delivering waterproof everything all over the country - approached Kew Botanical Gardens for growing rubber in colonies
- Penang, Malaysia - nutmeg plantations....hacked forests - exposed, warm ponds - anopheles, malaria
- 1852 - malaria epidemics - the cure - Cinchona http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinchona grown in A.America or Java - neither belonged to the Brits
- Cinchona powder (quinine) + sugar + water + gin = malaria cure = gin & tonic invention!
- So Kew was not keen on rubber because the GovGen of India had demanded production of Q in India
- Royal College of Chemistry - William Perkin - finds a way to make synthetic quinine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Perkin
- 1856, while playing with a bye-rpduct of coaltar...he got a molecule very close the Q but it was the worlds first artificial dye -
- In 1982, most of these well fed, complascent, middle-class victorians regarded themselves and their country as the rightful guardians of anybody in the world they could muscle in on militarily or economically, to save them from themselves, of course!
- Chemistry was a very low-class thing to do...that is why Perkins teacher was a German, who were very good at promoting merit...
-But the Brits blew the opportunity ...and the Germans grabbed it!

4/5 - - By 1870 Germans were leaders in color chemistry - BASF, Hoechst, Bayer, Agfa
- You learnt much about chemistry though color - painkillers
- Green color which a crafty designer got the empress Eugene to wear
- Combine harvesters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_harvester invented by American Mccormi -- dropped price of wheat sharply
- But the Germans ate black rye bread made by Prussian aristrocrats - the Yonkers?
- But rye was being exported in leaving a growing population short of food...so they tried growing wheat but that needed fertilizer from Chile
- By 1890 all the money made by the industry was going to import food and fertilizer
- 1900 Fritz Haber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber tried to make fertilizer...succeeded in making sodium nitrate  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_nitrate
- 1909 - Haber and Bosch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Bosch were making tons of fertilizer

5/5 - - Germany - chemical industry + metal industry + now discovery of coal in Rhur moved her into the major league
- It bacame a major steel manufacturer - weapons and the first monorail in 1900 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn
- Growth reflected ambitions of Kaiser Wilhelm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II, who brought the country to the edge of greatness all because of coal-tar and the way German chemists had used it
- Also in 1900 W-II started building a big navy...arms race with Britain that ended in war in 1914
- First major battle was off the coast of Chile because it was the biggest source of sodium nitrate. NaNO3 + sulphuris acid = nitric acid, which is essential for making explosives ....but Chile had been blockaded by Britain, so the Germans came up with the Haber-Bosch process
- WW-I lasted four years...
- What happend to the Acetylene, discovered by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Klatte... but he flushed it down the toilet...it later a polymer - plastic, nylon -- unveiled by DuPont at Chicago WorldExpo 1933
- Acetylene also became a welding tool - oxy-acetylene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxy-fuel_welding_and_cutting
http://www.thepirateking.com/ships/brief_history_wind_powered_ships.htm

 Episode VIII: Eat Drink & Be Merry

1/5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-bz7nYGxgo&feature=related
2/5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa588EDwwiE&feature=related
3/5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiaQdoC92Ls&feature=related
4/5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRr2FltLwYI&feature=related
5/5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxkaD02iO1g&feature=related

From Ants to Human Behavior

.
At a time when I`m grappling with the prevailing `theories` in the Social Sciences, it was a great to see this wonderful video on the life and work of E.O. Wilson.

He spent a lifetime studying ants but to describe him as just a naturalist would perhaps be akin to calling Einstein a patent office clerk. About 40 years ago, at that time sociologists had come to a consensus that the human brain is a blank slate; that human behavior, including social behavior is determined by accidents of cultural evolution and by learning alone, and that instincts do no exist and that there was no such thing as human nature, EOW published a book titled Sociobiology, which suggested that human behavior is affected by genetic traits.

All hell broke loose. It was, of course, a very politically incorrect thing to say - even for a Harvard academic. But today, after much evidence has been collected, the consensus in Social Sciences has shifted to accommodate EOW`s ideas.

Here is the video (NOVA - PBS): 





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LINKS

E.O. Wilson

Pheidole - most abundant genus of ants in the Western hemisphere. EOW discovered nearly half of the 600 -odd species of this genus

Oleic Acid - the "smell of death". One the many pheromones used by ants to communicate. Dead insects 'smell' of oleic acid. So if a live ant is dabbed with it, its companions will just grab it and dump it out of the colony, into their garbage heap!
The Encyclopedia of Life - http://www.eol.org/: A project initiated by EOW, it is meant to be an online compendium of all life on earth. About 1.8 million life-forms are 'known' to man - this is a fraction (~1/10) of what is still 'unknown'. "Our present understanding of life on earth", EOW says, "is like trying to diagnose a man when you know only 10% of his organs!"