Evolution - my perspective -- "Gene Mutation caused by Mind"

Since childhood I have always been thrilled about Evolution when I first read it in one Environmental Science (EVS) text-book. Remember EVS? It is a standard text-book in Goan secondary schools. I will try to describe evolution very briefly so that we usher in the context. Evolution is defined as "the change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms through successive generations". Mutation (as in the change) in organisms is driven by two processes, 'natural selection' and 'genetic drift'. Natural selection (Darwin's theory) is synonymous to the concept of "survival of the fittest". Genetic drift is a random change in common traits in a population (and not linked to the natural selection concept). -- all definitions courtesy Wikipedia.

The way science is progressing, it is always about 'what you see is what you believe'. Basically because theories need proofs and proofs can be validated only with experiments.  I feel that evolution process has a third dimension which is distinct from the two processes described above.

When I was young I used to wonder how some fish have a false eye on the back or the tail. The obvious reason is when a predator fish strikes another fish it notices the eyes first. The survival rate is higher if it bites the tail. For that matter all animals that have eyes look in the eyes of other animals when they refer to them. Here are some photos which I picked up.

Another striking example is the Weaver Ant mimic spider.

And here's a Weaver ant (popularly called a 'Humlo' in Konkani).

These mimic spiders attack the poor ants by deceiving them. I have seen this happen at my ancestral house. The weaver ants crawl on a branch just like the one above. The mimic spider hides itself under the branch and does not show itself unless an ant is alone. When the ant is alone, it tries to deceive it into believing that its just another brother ant and then it attacks.

As you can see, these are not random genetic changes. These a very selective changes, depending on how, say, a fish perceives a predator fish may be thinking. Or how a predator spider thinks it can mimic and deceive an ant. Even the dinosaurs, each species have distinct horns. How can you have a horn  through survival of the fittest? or through random genetic changes? Does the current definition of evolution accommodate mimicry or stealthiness as shown above? NO!!!! Not yet. Now that I have stepped in! :-P I will augment the theory of evolution today!

The current theory of evolution accounts for 'reactive' changes, which may be true. For example, when a population is struck by a deadly disease, many die. But those who manage to survive develop the immunity for it. This information is then passed on to future generations. I think evolution can also be 'proactive' and this definition may well be predominent.


I think that the third dimension to the theory of evolution is "Gene Mutation caused by Mind"! Mimicry and stealthiness cannot be achieved unless you observe. And only the mind can process the observation. This also means that there is a direct link between the mind and the genes. Again this also means that mind is a significant player in the process of reproduction. Nowadays we find more and more cases of how a DNA combination can describe an emotion or a personality trait.


Let me go one more step further. When you are planning a baby, have a good mindset first! Indulgence in bad things will only get passed on to the generations ahead!

Indian neutrino lab to have world’s biggest magnet

India is set to start work on a 250-million-dollar underground laboratory, called the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO), which will be built in the Bodi West Hills Reserved Forest in the state of Tamil Nadu.

INO will be made of 50,000 tonnes of magnetised iron, dwarfing the 12,500-tonne magnet in the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

The iron sheets will interact with the neutrinos and spew out charged particles, whose paths will be bent by the iron's magnetic field. About 30,000 detectors sandwiched between the sheets of iron will track these charged particles, providing information about the incident neutrinos.

INO will initially study atmospheric neutrinos, which are produced when cosmic rays smash into the upper atmosphere. It will be sensitive to both neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, which interact with matter in different ways.

Neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts oscillate between three types: electron, tau and muon. INO should help physicists understand which of the three types is the lightest and which is the heaviest.

Courtesy - www.zeenews.com
http://www.zeenews.com/news663195.html

Swarg, Prithvi and Patal, manifestations of the same world?

Today, I was travelling in the bus to office and it takes 90 minutes to reach. All along the way my mind is usually empty :-) and as you know 'An empty mind is a devil's workshop'. But I do try to shoo the devil off by following a modified idiom, 'A good thought a day keeps the devil away!'.

So what is a devil? Isn't it a manifestation of bad thoughts and actions? There are so many other examples on the good side too, like Laxmi for wealth, Saraswati for education and Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh for creation-preservation-destruction. Such representations exists in other religions as well.

In Hinduism, an evil man will go to Patal (Hell) and will be tortured. A virtuous man will go to Swarg (Heaven) and experience eternal bliss. And then what happens? Does he stay there forever? Hindus say that a man will go on reincarnating (Janm) in this world (Prithvi) until we know how to detach ourselves (the Soul) from the body (Mukti) and permanently bind to the Almighty (Paramatma). Does that means that a man will be sent back to Prithvi for another stint with incarnation? Is it like a packaged tour to Hell or Heaven, that we end up on Earth (Prithvi) again and again?


I seriously do not believe so. I think Swarg, Prithvi and Patal are manifestations of the same world. It is right that we keep on reincarnating but only on Earth (unless there is another habitable planet :-)). Whether you are sent to Hell or Heaven only means whether the birthplace on Earth is Hell or Heaven. There are two perspectives to this. Firstly, whether you perceive it as Hell or Heaven and secondly, whether the place is really rotten! But I think the former is true. Because it is finally on how you perceive it. One sibling in a family may feel it is the best place he could be, and the other sibling may sulk and curse it all the way.


If you are virtuous and kind then you will be promoted to Heaven in you next Janm. If you are vicious then you will be demoted to Hell. But all is in this very world. I mean look at it, there are plenty of places which are suitable to be either one of the extremes.

Success. Can you tell me what it is?

I can read your mind! You are asking me, why Dr. Ambedkar's statue in this blog post? Well, I feel that he is an erudite statesman and he guided our country in the direction of success.

Coming back to the topic. What is success? I feel success is more of a paradox. I work hard and I achieve something, then I am successful. Tomorrow I lose what I had achieved, so I am unsuccessful? Success is not something that you achieve when you reach a goal, but it is the path that is taken to pursue it. I think this is the right definition. This post is open-ended, so I would like to know your opinion.

Success is primarily based on three pillars, Knowledge, Wisdom and Strength. I feel intelligence is not primary because it is derived from these pillars. Knowledge and wisdom is pretty easy to understand, I mean the concept. But how do we define strength?

Strength may be Will Power (grit) and Execution Power (power to get things done). Every person has strong traits and weak traits in his personality. Strong traits are easy to handle because there is immense strength associated with it. You may be the best in that field. I am not only talking about career, but also other simple aspects like housekeeping, emotions, practicality, sex (?), fatherhood, motherhood, unclehood, bachelorhood, old-man-hood (? Well I am sure you guessed it right!) and so on.

My curiosity is towards how to derive strength from the weaker traits in a personality. For example, there are somethings which your inner self desperately wants you to do, but your conscious mind knows that it is wrong and always tells you not to do it. In such situations, the inner self mostly wins.  The few times when your conscious mind has won is always because you derived the strength from some source. I would like to know what are the sources that you derive your strength from? Yesterday, my late beloved granny came in my dreams and whispered something. Today, I gained super-strength from that! There are other cases where I take advice from my beloved ones and so on.

Is it possible to have full control upon oneself?

University of Manchester scientists win the Nobel Prize for Physics

Coup for UK Physics, as two University of Manchester scientists are awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery of graphene.

Professor Andre Geim and Professor Konstantin Novoselov have been awarded the highest accolade in the scientific world for their pioneering work with the world’s thinnest material, graphene.

This represents a landmark achievement for Physics in the UK, as it is the first time an academic or academics have received the Nobel Prize for Physics while on the staff of a UK university since 1979.Graphene, with the potential to revolutionize the electronics industry, was discovered by Professors Geim and Novoselov at the University in 2004. It has rapidly become one of the hottest topics in materials science and solid-state physics.

Professor Novoselov, 36, known as Kostya, first worked with Professor Geim, 51, as a PhD-student in the Netherlands. Andre Geim joined the University of Manchester in 2001, Kostya Novoselov followed Geim to Manchester in 2004. Both of them originally studied and began their careers as physicists in Russia.
The award of the Nobel Prize means there are currently four Nobel Laureates at The University of Manchester.

(This is a an email received by all alumni of the university.) 

Laser War - War paradigm of the future

Let me be the first to say this; laser weapons are going to be the next paradigm of war strategies. Maybe people will remember me after say 15 years, that I had claimed this. He He!

Today, nuclear weapons and their delivery systems like fighter aircrafts, submarines and ballistic missiles are the mainstay of all the nuclear weapon states in the world. The nuclear command in these countries is predominantly involved in modernizing these delivery systems.

Simultaneously, a few countries including India have started investing heavily in R&D of laser weapons and their delivery systems. These are called Directed Energy Weapons (DEW). For example, the US is developing an air borne laser delivery system called the YAL-1A (shown in pic - courtesy Wikipedia)

This delivery platform is a Boeing airliner modified to fit a laser device which can generate a laser beam having 1MWatt of power. If it is focused on an enemy aircraft, it can fry it in mid-air at the speed of light. India has also started a lot of projects in this area, both civilian and military oriented. The civilian projects involve 'laser dazzlers' which have applications in health care, transport etc. The military applications involve diffusing Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), causing temporary blindness to neutralize a person, etc. The strategic application is to create a blanket cover over India to protect it from hostile projectiles and enemy aircrafts using high power lasers. Currently India has developed a gas dynamic laser systems which can generate a laser having a power of 100 KWatt. The gas dynamic technology is old and is not portable. The next step is to create solid state lasers which are very portable and can be fitted on various platforms. This is projected to be achieved by 2020.

My claim is that when such technology matures, then it will render all current nuclear weapons and the delivery systems worthless. Because the lasers can just burn it off in a second! A very important requirement is to have very accurate and effective radars which can locate and track the enemy projectiles at runtime and activate offensive laser weapon systems which can neutralize it. Ground based, ship based and air borne radar systems have a limited capability to locate and track such projectiles because of limited range and accuracy.

The most ideal way is to have radars and laser weapon systems deployed in space, mounted on satellites. This opens a completely new and scary ideology called 'space weaponisation'. The name is quite intuitive. Currently, space is only used for civilian and reconnaissance purposes and fortunately the world has followed this policy. Any weaponisation of space is disastrous but i feel it is inevitable in the future. Just imagine, the Chinese can burn me off when I step out of the house, by firing a laser from space!!

If this is what is going to happen by the year 2020 itself, then why are we buying all these aircrafts, ships, submarines which are not immune to laser attacks? We should start preparing for laser defenses as well as offenses simultaneously.

Mobile robbers - Know the enemy.

Today I was about to be robbed of my mobile while travelling in the BMTC bus between the bus stops "Jayadeva - East End" and "BTM - Water Tank". This was the second time at the same place by the same gang. And the mobile robber gang operates all day and steals a lot of mobiles I reckon!

Their strategy; usually they are a gang of three and the **first sign of suspicion** is that they are drunk and stink of alcohol. They attack any guy who is standing close to the door way, so that they can flick off your mobile and run away easily. So it is not a good idea to stand near the door. One guy will stand in front and block your face away from the door, by clutching the holding-bar on the ceiling, in a peculiar way **second sign of suspicion**. Another guy will stand behind to block you from moving behind. The third guy sticks to you in front (facing his back) to attempt the robbery. Then he will use his hand to stealthily lift the mobile from your pocket **third sign of suspicion**.

I defended simply by holding down my mobile. This happens like in a split second!

Linking all the major rivers in India

There has been a long and old ideology of linking all the rivers in India. This has meandered over the years and shelved every time it was brought on the table. The concept was visualized by a British engineer Arthur Cotton way back in the 19th century. He wanted to build canals and link all the rivers in India. Then, Captain Dinshaw J. Dastur, an engineer, revitalised the concept in the year 1945. All the attempts were turned down because of the massive expenditure to materialize the project.

Today, India is poised to be an economic super-power and has the economic capacity to undertake such a colossal project. This year the north-western region in India suffered floods because of 11% more rainfall, and the eastern and north-eastern India received 13% less rainfall. Just imagine if all the rivers were connected, then the waters from the Jamuna and the Kosi could be redirected to meet the Bramhaputra or the Krishna or the Kaveri or a new canal through the Rajasthan desert. So many million lives could be saved, so much destruction and health hazards averted. Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam emphasized on this, in his speech at the Field Marshal KM Cariappa Memorial Lecture. 

If the project is undertaken, the canals can serve as water-ways for ships to deliver goods throughout India. This can be another significant and cheaper mode of transport. The Ganga basin is so flat that for the entire length of around 3000KM, the drop in altitude is just a few tens of metres. For this reason, the rivers flowing through the basin constantly change their paths over time. Just imagine, you have a hut on the banks of Yamuna and you have been living there for the past 10 years and suddenly, one early morning, the river changes path and it starts flowing right through your hut. What do you do? These canals will fortify the banks and prevent the river from changing its course. An artificial canal through the now dead Saraswati basin in Rajasthan can revive the lives of so many people.

This project can help in irrigation. There are many central and southern rivers in India which are not perennial. If connected with the northern rivers, they can be a constant source of water.  Smart water redirection systems can manage the water levels throughout India, bringing prosperity to the 60% of our population which is directly or indirectly involved in agriculture.

Water treatment plants can be systematically built and tanneries disallowed to flush effluents into the river. Of course without coordinated efforts from all the State governments, this is not possible. For example, Delhi cannot think of installing a water treatment plant because it will get choked from all the waste that is flushed into the river by the tanneries in Haryana. 

Did you know that we have fresh water  Dolphins in Ganga? Yes, they are still alive, I don't know how they survive. There are many many unheard of species in the Ganga which we have lost forever because of our own foolish doing. The ecology can be saved by implementing this project. I know this is too far fetched but I think it is time this project is taken seriously.