Every great advance in science has issued from
a new audacity of the imagination. - JOHN DEWEY
published weekly, issue 103, Monday July 26, 2010
"Do not allow
Your mind’s fear
To persecute
Your heart’s poise."
According to a new study by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, the quickest and best way to slow the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice is to reduce soot emissions from the burning of fossil fuel, wood and dung. Jacobson said, “There is a big concern that if the Arctic melts, it will be a tipping point for the Earth’s climate because the reflective sea ice will be replaced by a much darker, heat absorbing, ocean below. Once the sea ice is gone, it is really hard to regenerate because there is not an efficient mechanism to cool the ocean down in the short term.”
In his study Jacobson used an intricate computer model of global climate, air pollution and weather that he developed over the last 20 years that included atmospheric processes not incorporated in previous models. He examined the effects of soot – black and brown particles that absorb solar radiation – from two types of sources. He analyzed the impacts of soot from fossil fuels – diesel, coal, gasoline, jet fuel – and from solid biofuels, such as wood, manure, dung, and other solid biomass used for home heating and cooking in many locations. He also focused in detail on the effects of soot on heating clouds, snow and ice.
Jacobson found that eliminating soot produced by the burning of fossil fuel and solid biofuel could reduce warming above parts of the Arctic Circle in the next 15 years by up to 1.7 degrees Celsius. This is quite significant when compared to the fact that the net warming in the Arctic has been at least 2.5 degrees Celsius during the last century and is expected to warm significantly more in the future if nothing is done.
Jacobson also found that although fossil fuel soot contributed more to global warming, biofuel-derived soot caused about eight times the number of deaths as fossil fuel soot. He found that soot emissions kill more than 1.5 million people prematurely worldwide each year, and afflicts millions more with respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease and asthma, mostly in the developing world where biofuels are used for home heating and cooking. Providing electricity to rural developing areas, thereby reducing usage of solid biofuels for home heating and cooking, would have major health benefits, he said.
Jacobson’s climate model is the first global model to use mathematical equations to describe the physical and chemical interactions of soot particles in cloud droplets in the atmosphere. This allowed him to include details such as light bouncing around inside clouds and within cloud drops, which he said are critical for understanding the full effect of black carbon on heating the atmosphere.
“The key to modeling the climate effects of soot is to account for all of its effects on clouds, sea ice, snow and atmospheric heating,” Jacobson said. Because of the complexity of the processes, he said it is not a surprise that previous models have not correctly treated the physical interactions required to simulate cloud, snow, and atmospheric heating by soot. “But without treating these processes, no model can give the correct answer with respect to soot’s effects,” he said. Jacobson argues that leaving out this scale of detail in other models has led many scientists and policy makers to undervalue the role of black carbon as a warming agent.
Jacobson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
Source: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/july/soot-emissions-ice-072810.html
July 29, 2010
Question: What do you think of a person who is an atheist?
Sri Chinmoy: We say that someone is an atheist because he says that there is no God. I say that there is a God, but he says, “No God, no God, no God.” When he goes to that extreme, he will see that his negative feeling itself is a form of positive feeling. At the extreme he says that there is nothing. But what he calls nothing is, for us, something; and that very thing we call God.
Sometimes the sky is overcast with clouds and there are no stars or moon visible. But we know that when these clouds are dispersed, we will immediately be able to see the moon and the stars. When the clouds disappear we see that there is a moon, there are stars. But an atheist cannot see beyond the clouds; and he stays with the clouds.
Question: What do you mean when you say Universal Reality?
Sri Chinmoy: Universal Reality is the reality that is not seen or felt in infinitesimal measure. You cannot take out a portion of the Universal Reality; it is not something that can be broken into various pieces. You can’t separate a portion from Existence. Universal Reality means the Reality from which nothing can be taken out. It is whole, complete, unlimited. Universal Reality means the Reality that came from the Transcendental Vision of the Supreme. The Transcendental Vision and the Universal Reality are one. They cannot be separated. The Supreme’s Transcendental Vision is universal. The Creator came down from above and then He became the universe.
July 29, 2010
Researchers – Alpana Mahapatra, Farida Valli and Karishma Tijoriwala from the D.J. Sanghvi College of Engineering, in Mumbai, India, explain that there are several nanotechnology approaches to water purification currently being investigated and some already in use.
In most of the nanotechnology approaches to water purification the materials used are carbon nanotubes and alumina fibers for nanofiltration, nanoscopic pores in zeolite filtration membranes, nanocatalysts and magnetic nanoparticles. Nanosensors, such as those based on titanium oxide nanowires or palladium nanoparticles are used for analytical detection of contaminants in water samples.
The research team claims that nanotechnology can purify water of sediments, chemical effluents, charged particles, bacteria and other pathogens. These researchers say that nanotechnology can also purify water of toxic trace elements such as arsenic, and viscous liquid impurities such as oil.
According to the researchers the main advantages of using nanofilters, as opposed to conventional systems, are that less pressure is required to pass water across the filter, they are more efficient, and they have incredibly large surface areas and can be more easily cleaned by back-flushing compared with conventional methods. For instance, carbon nanotube membranes can remove almost all kinds of water contaminants including turbidity, oil, bacteria, viruses and organic contaminants. Although their pores are significantly smaller, carbon nanotubes have shown to have an equal or a faster flow rate as compared to larger pores, possibly because of the smooth interior of the nanotubes. Nanofibrous alumina filters and other nanofiber materials also remove negatively charged contaminants such as viruses, bacteria, and organic and inorganic colloids at a faster rate than conventional filters.
A caution
But the researchers caution that even though water purification based on nanotechnology has not yet led to any human health or environmental problems, further research into the biological interactions of nanoparticles should be carried out. This is because in nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes the much greater surface area to volume ratio of nanoparticles can make them more reactive and lead to so far unrecognized and untested interactions with biological surfaces.
Source: http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=33766&prevQuery=&ps=10&m=or
July 28, 2010
(This talk was given by Sri Chinmoy at Unversity of Edinburgh; Edinburgh, Scotland on 17 June 1976)
Dear seekers, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to give a short talk on ingratitude and gratitude. These are two forces. Ingratitude is a destructive force, whereas gratitude is a constructive force. Every day in our multifarious activities, either we express ingratitude or we express gratitude to our fellow human beings.
Ingratitude is not our inability to acknowledge the gifts we receive from others. Ingratitude is our deliberate unwillingness to acknowledge the gifts we receive from others. Gratitude is receptivity, the receptivity that acknowledges others’ gifts, others’ love and concern. Each time we express gratitude, we expand our hearts.
Receptivity can be increased. How can we increase our receptivity? We can increase it by cultivating it. The farmer cultivates the ground and then he sows the seed. He waters it and eventually the seed germinates and grows into a sapling and a tree. Here also, when we cultivate our gratitude-heart, we get the opportunity to sow our pure love there. This pure love grows into true concern, and true concern eventually becomes inseparable oneness.
When we want to pick a beautiful flower from a tree, we look around to see if anybody is observing us. We feel that nobody should know that we had to take the flower from some other place. We want to show the world at large that this flower was ours right from the beginning. In order to do that, we try to destroy the branches of the tree.
We receive gifts from our friends in the inner worlds but we do not want others to know about it. So we speak ill of our inner friends, consciously or unconsciously. We want to make the world believe that we are self-sufficient, but the rest of the world knows that we are receiving something from others. Ingratitude is nothing but a sense of inferiority, an inferiority complex. The gifts we get from others we do not want to acknowledge. We are afraid to expose ourselves to others.
Ingratitude, impurity and the doubting mind go together. It is impurity that divides and separates us and does not allow us to have the feeling of oneness or gratitude. And this impurity unconsciously or consciously is treasured by the doubtful mind. Gratitude, purity and the loving heart always go together. The gratitude-flower grows in our purity-heart. Purity expands our heart. Purity awakens our entire being within to the highest level of consciousness. The heart is self-giving. And what is self-giving today becomes tomorrow God-Delight and God-Perfection.
Here we are all seekers. Some of us are extremely sincere, while others are to some extent sincere. Those who are sincere seekers of the highest magnitude are all gratitude to the Supreme. When they observe their relationship with their Beloved Supreme, they see that He showers upon them Peace, Light and Bliss in abundant measure from Above. If they forget to offer their gratitude to their Inner Pilot, the Inner Pilot does not mind. He immediately forgives them. The Beloved Supreme is bound to forgive even insincere seekers if they forget to offer their loving gratitude while on the way to the Ultimate Goal. God is infinitely above our ingratitude-heart. But although God may forgive the seeker, the sincere seeker may find it impossible to forgive himself. When his sincerity-flower petal by petal fully blossoms, he gets tremendous pangs in the inmost recesses of his heart if he has not offered gratitude to the Supreme.
God does everything unconditionally. We try to become His perfect instruments and we try our utmost to become worthy of His infinite Compassion, infinite Love and infinite Light, Peace and Bliss. Our ideal is to be like Him. Our inner cry is to become exactly the same as our Transcendental, Universal Pilot Supreme.
Within us is the animal kingdom, the human kingdom and the divine kingdom. The animal in us does not allow us to become fully human. The human is us does not allow us to be fully divine. The animal in us is anger, jealousy, impure thoughts—these are the animal forces within us. They do not want us to become properly human. The animal in us is a hungry tiger. The human in us often feeds the tiger. But instead of being grateful, sometimes the tiger devours us. The human in us is our sense of division. The human in us wants to control itself without being part and parcel of any collective group. Always it wants to remain off by itself. It does not want to go to the divine, to the all-pervading, the all-loving, all-illumining and all-fulfilling divine. The divine in us brings us joy, love and satisfaction. But the human in us devours this joy and then does not care for the divine. It speaks ill of the divine. It falls short of the divine and then it becomes totally indifferent to the divine. It remains aloof and makes us feel that the divine does not exist. So the animal in us does not want the gift that it gets from the human in us, and the human in us does not want the gift from Above.
But again, we are all evolving. The animal in us is evolving into the human and the human in us is evolving into the divine. The divine in us wants to go to its Source, the Supreme. The human in us tries to become divine by mixing with someone who consciously embodies divinity and spirituality. When we see a spiritual Master, when we see a saint or a sage, someone who is embodying Peace, Light and Bliss, we try to serve him, please him, become a member of his inner family, his spiritual family. Then, when we become spiritual, we try to please our Eternity’s Beloved Supreme. We try to become the exact prototype of His Universal and Transcendental Existence.
The animal grows into the human by serving, the human grows into the divine by serving, the divine grows into the Absolute by serving. While serving, we offer our gratitude, for it is the higher force that has granted us the opportunity to develop through our service. There are millions and millions on earth who are still fast asleep. But we have been awakened. By whom? By a higher force. So each time we get the opportunity to serve, we feel that it is because a higher force has kindled the flame of aspiration and dedication inside us. Therefore, we are grateful. Gratitude looms large when we are given the opportunity to be of service to the Supreme in mankind.
This gratitude-power is our expansion-power, our self-expansion-power. Each time we offer our gratitude to the Supreme, we expand our hearts and grow into the Universal Heart and Transcendental Reality.
July 28, 2010
According to a report by the National Research Council the federal government needs to establish information and reporting systems — such as climate services and a greenhouse-gas accounting system –that provide a range of information on climate change and variability, observed changes and causes, potential impacts, and strategies for limiting emissions or adapting to impacts. The report emphasizes the importance of coordination across the federal government and with state, local and private sector decision makers.
The report says, the new national system for providing climate services should inform decision makers and assist them in managing climate-related risks. Information should be timely, authoritative, and based on rigorous natural and social science research and tailored to government- and private-sector users at the national, regional, and local levels. For example, agricultural producers trying to decide which crops to grow need timely seasonal forecasts, data on likely outbreaks of diseases or pests, and advice about long-term strategies for adapting to climate impacts; and forest and park managers need information to control fires and plan for longer-term ecosystem management.
The report identifies several key functions that should be included in climate services, such as enhanced observations and vulnerability analyses on a regional scale, sustained interaction with stakeholders and research to understand their needs, an international information component that provides data on global climate observations and impacts, and a central accessible web portal that encourages sharing of information. The report points out that the existing federal capabilities overlook these functions.
The report recommended that the comprehensive greenhouse gas management system for monitoring, reporting, and verifying emissions should include a unified accounting protocol and a registry to track emissions at a detailed level. Monitoring is essential for developing effective emissions policies and verifying claims that emissions have been reduced, the report says. Such a system could build on the existing expertise of agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The report emphasizes that federal policies should not unnecessarily supersede measures already being taken regionally or locally. For example, more than half of Americans live in states, counties, and cities that have enacted a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and many private companies are taking significant steps to reduce their carbon footprints. So any federal policy being made must not supersede these measures being taken at the local level. This means the new national system for providing climate services should also be designed to evaluate and assess state and local government and private-sector responses to climate change.
The study panel recommends that decision makers in the public and private sectors need to implement an iterative risk management strategy that adapts to new information, conditions, or technologies that could affect climate change policies. The decision makers also need to account for many uncertainties about the severity of impacts and options for responding to them. According to the report, the government could also review and revise programs such as federal crop and flood insurance in the light of the risks of climate change.
In order to improve climate change communication and education among the general public the report recommends some strategies such as urging federal agencies to support training for researchers on how to communicate complex climate change information and uncertainties to different audiences. In addition, a national task force of educators, government leaders, policymakers, and business executives should be established to educate people about climate change its causes, consequences, and potential solutions.
The report says, the federal government should review and promote credible product standards and labels for consumers that provide information about energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. The government should also consider establishing an advisory service on these issues targeted at the public and small businesses. This would help consumers selecting more energy-efficient products with lower emissions and to reduce their energy use.
This report is part of a congressionally requested suite of studies known as America’s Climate Choices.
Source: http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12784
July 23, 2010
I ENTERED
I entered
Into the sombre care of human thought.
Nothing there was.
I entered
Into the illumined Palace of Thought divine.
Something there was.
I entered
Into the conditionally surrendered
Soul of human life.
There I saw God smiling.
I entered
Into the unconditionally surrendered
Soul of Life divine.
There I saw God becoming.
July 23, 2010
A mid-ocean ridge (MOR) is a mountain range on the ocean floor. A typical MOR has a valley known as a rift running along its spine, formed by plate tectonics. These MORs result when convection currents which rise in the mantle as magma uplifted seafloor at a linear weakness in the oceanic crust, and emerge as lava, creating new crust upon cooling. A mid-ocean ridge demarcates the boundary between two tectonic plates. All the mid-ocean ridges of the world are connected and form a single global mid-oceanic ridge system, making the mid-oceanic ridge system the longest mountain range in the world.
A hydrothermal vent: A hydrothermal vent is a fissure in a planet’s surface from which geothermally heated water issues. Hydrothermal vents are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart, ocean basins, and hotspots.
Hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor
A hydrothermal vent on the ocean floor spews super-hot, mineral-rich water that helps support a diverse community of organisms including giant tube worms, clams, limpets and shrimp. Hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean typically form along the Mid-ocean ridges, such as the East Pacific Rise and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. These are locations where two tectonic plates are diverging and new crust is being formed. The water that issues from these hydrothermal vents consists mostly of sea water drawn into the hydrothermal system close to the volcanic edifice through faults and porous sediments or volcanic strata, plus some magmatic water released by the upwelling magma. As the vent water bursts out into the ocean, its temperature may be as high as 400°C (750°F). Yet this water does not boil because it is under a lot of pressure due to the tremendous weight of the huge body of ocean above.
While hydrothermal vent sites occupy small areas on the sea floor, the plumes formed when hot acidic vent fluids mix with cold deep-ocean seawater can rise hundreds of meters until they reach neutral buoyancy. Because these plumes contain dissolved chemicals, particulate minerals and microbes, they can then be detected for kilometers or more away from their source as they disperse horizontally in the ocean. The chemical signatures of these plumes vary according to the type of vent site from which they originated.
The three known types of hydrothermal vent sites “Type 1″, “Type 2″and “Type 3″ are distinguished by the kinds of rock that host the sites. The first type of vents occur throughout the world’s mid-ocean ridges and are hosted by rocks that are rich in magnesium and iron –called mafic rocks. The second and third types of vent sites are hosted in rocks called ultramafic that form deep below the seafloor and are composed of material similar to the much hotter lavas that erupted on Earth’s very earliest seafloor, thousands of millions of years ago.
The Mid-Cayman Rise (MCR) is an ultraslow spreading mid-ocean ridge located in the Cayman Trough – the deepest point in the Caribbean Sea and a part of the tectonic boundary between the North American Plate and the Caribbean Plate. At the boundary where the plates are being pulled apart, new material wells up from Earth’s interior to form new crust on the seafloor.
Deep-sea hydrothermal vents along the Mid-Cayman Rise
An interdisciplinary team led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) under took the first expedition to search for deep-sea hydrothermal vents along the Mid-Cayman Rise.
The team has reported discovering three distinct types of hydrothermal venting. The team identified the deepest known hydrothermal vent site and two additional distinct types of vents.
The first two sites the team identified are extremely deep and were named Piccard and Walsh in honor of the only two humans to dive to the Challenger Deep – the deepest part of the world’s ocean. The plume detected at the Piccard site – 800 meters deeper than the previously known deepest vent – was comparable to plumes from the “Type 1″ vent sites, first found in the Pacific Ocean in 1977. The Walsh plume also exhibited signals characteristic of a high temperature site, but with a chemical composition (notably the high methane-to-manganese ratio) typically found at a high temperature, ultramafic hosted “Type 2″ vent site. The third site – which the team have named Europa, after the moon of Jupiter – most closely resembles the “Lost City” vent site in the mid-Atlantic ocean— to date the only confirmed low-temperature “Type 3″ site.
Chris German who is the chief scientist as well as the a WHOI geochemist said, “This was probably the highest risk expedition I have ever undertaken. We know hydrothermal vents appear along ridges approximately every 100 km. But this ridge crest is only 100 km long, so we should only have expected to find evidence for one site at most. So finding evidence for three sites was quite unexpected – but then finding out that our data indicated that each site represents a different style of venting – one of every kind known, all in pretty much the same place – was extraordinarily cool. The discovery of ultramafic-hosted vent sites on the Mid-Cayman Rise could provide insight into the very earliest life on our planet and the potential for similar life to become established elsewhere.”
For this mission, German and his colleagues using CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth) array augmented with sensors to detect suspended particles and anomalous chemical compositions mounted on both a water sampling rosette and a deep-diving robot called Nereus, sniffed out deep-sea plumes originating from the seafloor hydrothermal vents. Using a combination of shipboard and shore-based analyses of water samples for both their chemical and microbial contents, the team was then able to track the plumes toward their sources as well as to determine the likely nature of the venting present at each site. Nereus can operate in both in tethered or “remotely operated” (ROV) mode and free-swimming mode.
The ultimate goal of the mission was to switch Nereus to ROV mode and dive on each vent site to collect samples using Nereus’ robotic manipulator arm. But when they came to within < 250m of the vents at the seafloor they had to stop the mission because of the intervention of the tropical storm Ida. However the research team shared their findings with an international team led by Jon Copley of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK, who returned to the MCR in Spring 2010 and imaged active vents at both the Piccard and Europa locations using a deep-towed camera called Hybis.
German said, “Given the range and diversity of systems present, and now that we have established exactly where the sites are and what they look like, we really can’t wait to get back and collect first samples with our ROV Jason. This region has the potential to develop into an exciting natural laboratory with plenty of potential for repeat visits and long-term experiments over the decade ahead.”
July 21, 2010
Zinnia elegans
Zinnia elegans:
Zinnia is a common garden annual plant with solitary daisy like flower heads on long stems and sandpapery, lace shaped leaves. The leaves of seedlings provide a rich source of single cells that are dark green with chloroplasts and can be cultured in liquid for several days at a time. During the culturing process, the cells change in shape to resemble the tube-like cells that carry water from roots to leaves. Known as xylem, these cells hold the bulk of cellulose and lignin in plants, which are both major targets of recent biofuel research.
Lignocellulosic biomass refers to plant biomass that is composed of cellulose (23-53%), hemicellulose (20-35%), and lignin (10-25%). Cellulose is biosynthesized in plant cells by joining molecules of glucose (a simple sugar) into long chains through a process called polymerization. The plant then assembles these chains of cellulose into sheets. It is cellulose in lignocellulose that has potential for the production of fuel-grade ethanol by direct fermentation of the glucose. However, enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulose and raw cellulose into glucose is hindered by the presence of lignin. The enzyme called cellulase, which hydrolyzes cellulose to glucose, becomes irreversibly bound to lignin.
Accelerating efforts towards lignocellulosic biofuel production
In order to successfully implement new approaches for conversion of biomass to liquid fuels a thorough understanding of the detailed three-dimensional molecular cell wall structure of plants is essential. Michael Thelen from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says, “The basic idea is that cellulose is a polymer of sugars, which if released by enzymes, can be converted into alcohols and other chemicals used in alternative fuel production. But for this to happen efficiently, we need to find ways to see how this is proceeding at several spatial scales.” Alex Malkin, an expert in atomic force microscopy, also from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says, “The capability to image plant cell surfaces at the nanometer scale, together with the corresponding chemical composition, could significantly enhance our understanding of cell wall molecular architecture.”
In order to enhance their understanding of the molecular structure of cell walls a team led by Michael Thelen, in collaboration with researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, has used four different imaging techniques to reveal the structure of plant cell surfaces at the nanometer scale, of Zinnia elegans. The team was able to visualize single cells in detail – their cellular substructures, fine-scale organization of the cell wall, and even chemical composition of single zinnia cells, indicating that they contain an abundance of lignocellulose.
It was Catherine Lacayo, a postdoctoral scientist working with Thelen and Malkin who came up with techniques that reveal the inner structure of cell walls in these single xylem cells, which represent about 70 percent of the cellulose in plants that can be used in fuel processing. “This approach will be useful for evaluating the responses of plant material to various chemical and enzymatic treatments, and could accelerate the current efforts in lignocellulosic biofuel production.”
Source: https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2010/NR-10-07-03.html
July 20, 2010
Question: Why should spiritual people accept life around them?
Sri Chinmoy: If you say that those who enter into the Himalayan caves and neglect society will find less difficulty in realising God, I may agree with you. But if they do not accept humanity, what do they ultimately gain? If I love God, my Father, and if I see that my brothers and sisters cannot yet approach Him, if I am a really fine person, what will I do? I will offer my light and my achievement to my brothers and sisters. I have received realisation from my Father, but if I do not give it to my brothers and sisters, then is it not shameful on my part?
You may say that other paths are easier than mine because there the seeker escapes from the world. But in the ordinary world only a culprit wants to escape. If one has done something wrong, he tries to escape. Some spiritual Masters do want to escape even though they are not thieves. They are sick of the world and sick of the world’s ingratitude. Constantly they try to help humanity, but humanity ignores them, misunderstands them, criticises them, abuses them. They become disgusted and feel that the thing to do is to escape from the world. Again, there are some who are real heroes. They say, “Let humanity insult us, speak ill of us; still we shall give humanity what we have to offer.”
Our path is the path of acceptance. If we do not accept something, how are we going to transform it? If the potter does not touch clay, how is he going to shape and mould the pot? If his ultimate aim is to make a pot or pitcher, he has to touch the clay. This clay is the world. A spiritual Master enters into the inconscience and ignorance of the seekers and throws light into them. Then he moulds, shapes and gives strength to their inner being. Our path is undoubtedly the heroic path. Those who follow our path are playing the role of divine warriors. Divine warriors are those who fight against doubt, worry, fear, obstruction, limitation, imperfection, bondage and death. Our path is a path for the brave.
At the same time, the results one gets from following our path come in infinite measure, because our path has accepted humanity. If you have a large plot of ground and if you have the capacity to cultivate it, then you are bound to get a bumper crop of realisation for humanity. But if your plot of land is very tiny, then what are you going to get? Our path is difficult because it has accepted the outer life. If you don’t love God, everything is difficult. But nothing is really difficult when you have true love for God. If you really love God, our path does not seem difficult at all; it seems very safe, secure, easy.
Our path is the path of acceptance. We accept our brothers and sisters as they are; then we give them what we have and what we are. Only then is God pleased with us and will He be eternally pleased with us, because we have consciously made our life a life of self-dedication. This is the easiest path for the sincere, the most fulfilling path for those who are totally dedicated and the best path for the brave souls who want to walk, march and run along the road of Eternity.
July 20, 2010
Researchers from Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new vaccine-delivery patch that could allow persons without medical training to painlessly administer vaccines – while providing improved immunization against diseases such as influenza.
The vaccine-delivery patch consists of an array of 100 needles. Each needle is 650 microns in length. These needles are arranged on a water-soluble backing. Pressed into the skin, the microneedles quickly dissolve in bodily fluids, leaving only the water-soluble backing. The backing can be discarded because it no longer contains any sharps.
The microneedle arrays were made from a polymer material, poly-vinyl pyrrolidone, that has been shown to be safe for use in the body. Freeze-dried vaccine is mixed with the vinyl-pyrrolidone monomer before being placed into microneedle molds and polymerized at room temperature using ultraviolet light.
In their study, one group of mice received the influenza vaccine using traditional hypodermic needles injecting into muscle; another group received the vaccine through dissolving microneedles applied to the skin, while a control group had microneedle patches containing no vaccine applied to their skin. When infected with influenza virus 30 days later, both groups that had received the vaccine remained healthy while mice in the control group contracted the disease and died.
Three months after vaccination, the researchers also exposed a different group of immunized mice to flu virus and found that animals vaccinated with microneedles appeared to have a better “recall” response to the virus and thus were able to clear the virus from their lungs more effectively than those that received vaccine with hypodermic needles. At present the researchers are not clear as to why vaccine delivery with dissolving microneedles has shown to provide better protection.
According to the researchers, though the study examined only the administration of flu vaccine with the dissolving microneedles, the technique should be useful for other immunizations. If mass-produced, the microneedle patches are expected to cost about the same as conventional needle-and-syringe techniques, and may lower the overall cost of immunization programs by reducing personnel costs and waste disposal requirements.
One of the researchers, Mark Prausnitz, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, said “In this study, we have shown that a dissolving microneedle patch can vaccinate against influenza at least as well, and probably better than, a traditional hypodermic needle. The dissolving microneedle patch could open up many new doors for immunization programs by eliminating the need for trained personnel to carry out the vaccination. This approach could make a significant impact because it could enable self-administration as well as simplify vaccination programs in schools and assisted living facilities.”
Ioanna Skountzou, an Emory University assistant professor, said “Another advantage of these microneedles is that the vaccine is present as a dry formulation, which will enhance its stability during distribution and storage.”
Sean Sullivan, the study’s lead author from Georgia Tech. said “We envision people getting the patch in the mail or at a pharmacy and then self administering it at home. Because the microneedles on the patch dissolve away into the skin, there would be no dangerous sharp needles left over.”
However, to assure safety and effectiveness, clinical studies will have to be done before dissolving microneedles can be made widely available.
Other members of the researcfh team included Jeong-Woo Lee, Vladimir Zarnitsyn, Seong-O Choi and Niren Murthy from Georgia Tech, and Dimitrios Koutsonanos and Maria del Pilar Martin from Emory University.
Source: http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/dissolving-microneedles-patch/
July 19, 2010
(This talk was given by Sri Chinmoy at University of Glasgow; Glasgow, Scotland on 16 June 1976)
Dear seekers, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to give a short talk on ignorance and knowledge. This subject is familiar to each and every human being. Again, each human being deals with ignorance and with knowledge according to his inner receptivity and his outer capacity.
Ignorance wants to conquer; knowledge wants to illumine. Ignorance wants to conquer the world by fighting, strangling and killing. Knowledge wants to illumine the world by loving and by becoming one with the world. Ignorance is hunger for constant separativity. Knowledge is hunger for constant unity. Ignorance teaches us how to consciously or unconsciously bring to the fore the destructive, animal qualities of the world. Knowledge teaches us how to dive deep within and bring to the fore the illumining, divine qualities of the world. I come, I see, I conquer: this is the message of ignorance. I love, I serve, I become: this is the message of knowledge. I come into the world, I see and feel God’s Creation around me and I want to conquer it, dominate it, lord over it. This is the message of the ignorance-teacher within me. The knowledge-teacher within me teaches me to love and serve the world and to become God’s instrument in the world. By listening to the knowledge-teacher within me, I love and serve God and I grow into my inner Being, the highest Reality that is at one with God Himself.
When we pray to God to fulfil our desires—our teeming, countless desires—at that time it is ignorance that is playing its role in and through us. When we request God to take our side, to be on our side, then again it is ignorance that is playing its role in and through us. But when we pray to God to fulfil our aspiration and grant us the capacity to be on His side, at that time it is knowledge that is playing its role in and through us.
Aspiration is our inner cry, the cry that climbs up high, higher, highest. While climbing, it illumines the unlit human in us, purifies the impure animal in us and serves the divine in us for God’s manifestation on earth. When we are on God’s side, the finite in us consciously merges into the Infinite and the individual ‘I’ becomes one with the Universal Reality.
In the world envisioned by God, there are two divine members of God’s family that have been playing the eternal game of Light and Delight on earth: faith and purity. Each human being is constantly attacked by ignorance-forces. These ignorance-forces are doubt and impurity. Faith is the Supreme within us, the divine representative within us, the divine child within us that is growing and glowing, illumining and fulfilling. Doubt tries to conquer the faith within us and poison it. Faith also wants to conquer doubt. But when faith conquers doubt, it does not poison doubt, it does not destroy doubt. Only it illumines doubt, for faith regards doubt as the younger member of its family. Therefore, faith feels that it is its bounden duty to illumine doubt, which is a younger, destructive member of the family.
Just as doubt tries to destroy our faith, so does impurity try to destroy the purity that is within us and around us. It tries to destroy not only our purity, but also our divinity. If impurity is successful, then it does destroy our purity, but it can never destroy our divinity. Purity is of the heart and for the heart, so it can be destroyed. But divinity is of the soul and for the soul; therefore, it can never be destroyed. In the course of time, slowly, steadily and unerringly, purity and divinity conquer impurity. They do not destroy impurity, but they purify its very existence. They show impurity a part of the divine reality that is within.
Doubt is a destructive force that will destroy not only faith but also itself. Impurity also is a destructive force. When faith, purity and divinity conquer these ignorance-forces, these forces are illumined, perfected and fulfilled. Let us say ignorance is a thorn that has entered into our foot. It takes another thorn to rid ourselves of this ignorance-thorn. This second thorn is temporarily our saving- power. Then what do we do? We throw away both the thorns because we fear that the thorn that has become our saviour will eventually create problems for us.
At this point, wisdom has to enter into the picture. Wisdom is not the information that we get from the world around us. Wisdom is what we get from our soul. Wisdom at every moment energises the physical in us, the vital in us, the mind in us and the heart in us. When the physical is energised, it opens its door to the supreme Reality. When the vital is energised, it opens its door to the supreme Power. When the mind is energised, it opens its door to the universal Peace. When the heart is energised, it reaches the height of Transcendental Oneness.
The finite in us is not aware of the Infinite, but when it is made aware of the Infinite, it has an inferiority complex, and it does not want to be consciously one with the Infinite. The finite is an ignorance-force. But the Infinite feels its oneness with the finite. It feels that there was a time when it was not the entire ocean. It was just a tiny drop, like the finite. And then, from that tiny drop, it widened its consciousness and expanded into the ocean itself. This occurred through the process of evolution. Again, the Highest, the absolute Truth, was originally One. God was One and then He decided to become many. The Infinite consciously decided to become the finite. Knowledge tells us that within the Infinite, we can find the finite and, within the finite, we can find the Infinite. Just because God is infinite, He can enjoy Himself in the tiniest atom as well as in the infinite Vast.
Knowledge tells us something more. Divine knowledge tells us that the many and the One were, from the very beginning, identical; they were made together. The One is the Vision; the many is the Reality. God the Vision and God the Reality are all the time together. From God’s Vision-Power, immediately Reality came into existence. Again, with Reality-Power, Vision came into existence. God wanted to enjoy Himself. He wanted to offer Nectar, Immortality, to His whole Creation. With the Creation He felt the expansion of His Self-Form, His manifested Form. When He first created the world, with His inner Vision He saw the ultimate future. Now, slowly, steadily and unerringly, He is unfolding His Vision.
July 19, 2010
Topological surface states
Topological surface states are a class of novel electronic states. Unlike conventional two-dimensional electron states, these surface states are expected to be immune to localization and to overcome barriers caused by material imperfection.
In the conventional two-dimensional electron states, electron flow in materials is impeded by imperfections — seemingly slight edges and rifts act like cliffs and crevasses in this microscopic world, blocking electrons in their path. However recent theories, predict that in some compounds containing elements such as antimony there exist topological surface states where in electrons on the surface of these materials are not impeded by the material imperfections. These electron states in fact transmit through naturally occurring surface defects and are immune to disruptions in their flow.
Extraordinary physics behavior in a “topological surface state” observed
Now for the first time a team of Princeton University scientists have observed the extraordinary physics behavior in a “topological surface state” on a microscopic wedge of the metal antimony. The researchers used a scanning tunnelling microscope to measure the transmission and reflection probabilities of topological surface states of antimony through naturally occurring crystalline steps separating atomic terraces. The scientists observed that the topological surface states of antimony penetrate barriers such as the crystalline steps with high probability.
With lab instruments, the team was able to measure how long electrons are staying in a region of the material and how many of them flow through to other areas. The results showed a surprising efficiency by which surface electrons on antimony go through barriers that typically stop other surface electrons on the surface of most conducting materials, such as copper.
Commenting on their observation of the “topological surface state” in antimony lead researcher, physics Professor Ali Yazdani said, “Material imperfections just cannot trap these surface electrons. This demonstration suggests that surface conduction in these compounds may be useful for high-current transmission even in the presence of atomic scale irregularities — an electronic feature sought to efficiently interconnect nanoscale devices.”
About the experiment, Robert Cava, Professor of Chemistry at Princeton said, “shows for the first time that the theoretically predicted immunity of topological surface states to death at the hands of the ever-present defects in the atomic arrangements on crystal surfaces is really true.”
The antimony crystals for the work were grown in the laboratory of Cava. Yazdani’s team worked in the specially designed Princeton Nanoscale Microscopy Laboratory, where highly accurate measurements at the atomic scale are possible because sounds and vibrations, through a multitude of technologies, are kept to a minimum. They used a powerful scanning tunneling microscope to view electrons on the surface of the antimony sample.
Researchers on the team include: Yazdani; postdoctoral fellows Jungpil Seo and Haim Beidenkopf; graduate student Pedram Roushan; and, along with Cava, his former postdoctoral fellow Yew San Hor, who is now at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Source: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/90/58A67/
July 15, 2010
BE THOU
Be Thou my body
That I may wake.
Be Thou my vital
That I may run.
Be Thou my mind
That I may fly.
Be Thou my heart
That I may dive.
Be Thou my soul
That I may reveal.
Be Thou my goal
That I may fulfil.
Be Thou my all
That I may only be Yours.
July 15, 2010
Proto-oncogenes: Proto-oncogenes are proteins that help to regulate cell growth and differentiation. Proto-oncogenes are often involved in signal transduction and execution of mitogenic signals, usually through their protein products. A proto-oncogene become an oncogene due to mutations or increased expression. The resultant protein is termed an oncoprotein. Oncoproteins are tumor-inducing agents. In organisms many abnormal cells normally undergo a programmed form of death called apoptosis. However activated oncogenes can cause those cells to survive and proliferate producing cancerous tumors. This process by which normal cells are transformed into cancer cells is called carcinogenesis.
Carcinogenesis arises from the activation of oncoproteins and/or inactivation of tumor suppressor proteins like the lethal giant larvae (Lgl) in flies and mammals. During the initial stage of carcinogenesis, transformation occurs in a single epithelial cell that grows within an epithelial monolayer. However, it remains unclear what happens at the interface between normal and transformed epithelial cells during this process. In Drosophila (fruit flies), it has been shown that normal and transformed cells often compete with each other for survival in an epithelial tissue, in a process called “cell competition.” However the molecular mechanisms whereby “loser cells” undergo apoptosis are not clearly understood.
Protein (CG10080) involved in “cell competition”
Now researchers Yoichiro Tamori and Associate Professor Wu-Min Deng of Florida State University and Yasuyuki Fujita of University College London have examined the involvement of lethal giant larvae (Lgl) in cell competition and shown that a novel Lgl-binding protein is involved in Lgl-mediated cell competition. Using biochemical immunoprecipitation methods, they first identified protein (CG10080) as the novel binding partner of Lgl in both flies and mammals. They called protein (CG10080) Mahjong a Chinese game in which winners and losers are determined through strong competition.
These researchers have demonstrated that Mahjong is involved in cell competition in both flies and mammals. In particular, they found that canine kidney epithelial cells depleted for Mahjong undergo apoptosis, but only when surrounded by non-transformed cells. According to the researchers this is the first evidence that cell competition can occur in a mammalian cell culture system.
At present the researchers are not clear what molecules/signaling pathways are regulated by Lgl/Mahjong during cell competition. But they hope that future studies might reveal important pathway components that could be targeted therapeutically to prevent tumor cells from “winning” in their race against normal tissue cells.
Source: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000422
July 14, 2010
Question: I heard the beautiful explanation of your philosophy about life. Really, that is what I understand by philosophy. But there is a word in Spanish, maybe it is because of the translation into Spanish, “to accept life”. To accept or discover. Is there not a difference between acceptance without investigation, without doubt and merely discovering life?
Sri Chinmoy: To discover life is different from acceptance. When we say, “discover life,” that means to go deep within and discover our own intuitive God-realisation. We speak of self-discovery, but self-discovery and God-realisation are one. When we discover our true self, we realise God, because in our true self is the existence of God. Now, we say life is a short span of time, say forty or fifty or sixty years. But this is not the real life. The real life came into existence and real life will always exist. This is a short span of life: fifty, sixty, seventy years which we call life, but the real life, which was there before the creation, and which transcends the creation, which is in the creation, which goes through death and passes beyond death and becomes the Infinity and Eternity together, that is called the real life.
So “acceptance” is the word I would use here for our day-to-day activities. Very often we get disgusted with the world and curse the world because of our fate. This is in outer life, in our day-to-day existence. Where the inner life is concerned, we call it discovery because we have to discover our true self and that true self is God. Self-discovery and God-discovery are one. When we are speaking of inner spiritual discovery, we call it self-discovery. But when we are speaking about our day-to-day life, people want to commit suicide because they are frustrated, they feel that the world has deserted them, the world has been a curse to them instead of a boon. So in that case I say, “No, face the world, face the problem.” When we enter into life, immediately some problem arises. Life is no problem. Life is an opportunity to realise God here on earth but instead of that, we feel life is only thousands and millions of problems. That is life.
July 14, 2010