Nanoparticles in motion?

So, we've formally defined nanoparticles as any particle of the size range 1-100 nm (where 1 nm = 0.000000001 m). And this is the scale at which nanotechnology operates.However, I was thinking about nanomachines in nature. Nanorobots that have come alive through the process of evolution.

I'm talking about viruses. Yes, those pesky little things that make you sick. Viruses pose a problem, however. We don't know whether to classify them as alive or dead. Before we make an attempt to do that, we need to understand what the term "life" means and define what a living thing is.

The Nobel laureate physicist Erwin Schrodinger defined life this way: "Living things avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium". And that's a pretty good definition. Also, it means that viruses are very much alive. Viruses replicate, have DNA/RNA as genetic information, a boundary of proteins that separates it from the environment and are subject to evolution.

I like to think of viruses as nanorobots as plenty of viruses fit in the formal definition of a nanoparticle. The smallest dsDNA viruses are the hepadnaviruses such as Hepatitis B, at 42 nm; parvoviruses have smaller capsids, at 18-26 nm. As a whole the viral family geminiviridae is only about 30 nm in length. However, the two capsids making up the virus are fused, divided the capsids would be 15 nm. (Source: click here)

So, while we began thinking about nanoparticles in the early 1960s, nature was already engineering its own nanorobots for millions (perhaps billions) of years.

Science and religion: Will it blend?

December 4th, last day at my first international science conference.

I am waiting for my uncle to pick me up from the university, when I overhear an interesting conversation between a student from the university and a guest.

The student says "My family is a family of pundits (Hindu scholars of religious scripture). We've been pundits for the last ten generations, and I'm the first to break the tradition and venture into science. My father's never impressed with my work. He just says "His (God's) power still holds, where science reaches it's limits." I don't think he'll ever appreciate what I do."

Similarly, my uncle asked me about stem cells at the dinner table that night and after listening to me talk for the next 10 minutes, he laughed it off ,saying "Great! But I'm not impressed until they can make a soul."

My neighbour's daughter, 12 years old, asks me "Our theology teacher at school says that science is a bad thing. And learning science is wrong. Do you think so?"

My reply, of course, was that her dear teacher is wrong. And if she is right, she should immediately stop using anything that is the product of science. Which, I know for a fact, isn't possible.

So, are science and religion compatible?

The answer is not simple.

So, what's the issue?

Religion has long been portrayed as the enemy of science and reason, supposedly due to lack of evidence of a higher power, and the failure of religion to solve mankind's problems.

This idea of incompatibility between science and religion, I believe, arose in the West prominently due to famous incidents such as the case of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for being a heretic. His fault? To conjecture that the stars are like our sun, each having their own planets, and that the universe is infinite.

Galileo Galilei is famous for being labeled a heretic by the church for advocating the heliocentric model of the solar system, rather than the Aristotelian geocentric model.

The Muslim world, once flourishing in the sciences, went downhill after the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, who claimed that falsafa (which literally meant philosophy, but included logic, mathematics and physics) are fundamentally incompatible with Islam. The Islamic world hasn't recovered from that downfall, ever since.

This scares the scientists, who believe that religious indoctrination necessarily implies the loss of one's scientific inquisitiveness. Which is not necessarily so.

The situation is very similar to the West being so afraid of Islamic terrorism, they began to abuse and insinuate Muslims who are looked at with suspicion for no fault of their own.

The theophobia associated with scientific thought these days, is disturbing.

To me, my religious beliefs are a very, very personal thing. And I do not bring them up unless I need to. It is the same with science. I do not try to mix the two aspects of my life. My spiritual life is my own, and I believe no one has the right to question my belief in anything, Just as I do not question theirs.

As I've mentioned earlier, I believe we are all a collection of belief systems, and so, I believe I cannot and should not force my opinions on those who might have a different worldview.

My suggestion?

Atheists condemning and ostracising religious people as non-scientific based solely on their religious beliefs is ridiculous. Of all the people, I believe scientists should be the ones to have an open mind, and be more tolerant towards different belief systems, regardless of whether they appeal to you or not.

Nevertheless, I also believe that religious leaders from all major religions should embrace science, just as they have embraced it's various offerings. And I encourage religious people to learn science, even if it is to know the mind of God.

I'll end with a quote from one of my favourite characters, Mr. Rzykruski from the film Frankenweenie. This quote beautifully explains the reason behind the rejection of science by various religious fundamentalists.

Pretty neat, right?

The Pale Blue Dot.

Something beautiful that I wanted to share with you guys.

We are so self-absorbed that we seem to forget how insignificant we are.

To remind yourself of the humbling grandness of the cosmos, we need to take a look around us.

The picture, famously known as the "Pale Blue Dot", is a picture of Earth as taken by the spacecraft Voyager 1, six billion kilometers from Earth.

Can you see it? Me and my crush, in one picture. Yay!

All we can see, is a pale blue dot. It might seem like a dream, to imagine that life exists, in all it's glory, on that tiny speck of dust in the vastness of the cosmos.

The above video has an audio clip from the audio-book version of Carl Sagan's book Pale Blue Dot, published in 1994.

For those who cannot watch the video, I'm providing the text below, although I would suggest that you watch the video.

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1997 reprint, pp. xv–xvi

About my Samsung Note 3: Why I love the device, and hate the company.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is perfection, from every angle. In, and out. Perfection.

Anyways, during my last visit to Jeddah, my parents decided to buy me a cell phone of my choice. And I chose the Note 3. Why? Because it's perfect.

And so, we bought the phone from a reputed electronics store, and got home.
We were admiring the device when a tiny brown paper fell from the box, on which was written that the device would work with sim cards issued from certain regions only, along with a list of countries where the phone would work.

We went back to the store, and it turned out, the store's management had no idea about it. Samsung never informed any of the stores about this ridiculous move. And that's not what's annoying. What's annoying is their customer service. Worst customer service. EVER.

Now, anyhow, the guy at the desk asked us to take the device to India, and assured us that it will be unlocked at any Samsung service center. So, we wanted to confirm that.

We went to the main Samsung service center, where we were greeted by neatly dressed gentlemen who were good at one thing: nodding. So this guy at the counter just nods, and nods. Pretending he understood whatever we said.

He goes in, and comes back after about 5 minutes. He asks us to speak to another guy at another counter. Now, this guy supposedly had a PhD in being an obnoxious arsehole whose genius solution for us was to buy a second Note 3 for use in India.

"Sir, this is for use in Saudi. This is Saudi product." In my mind, I'm like "No, bitch! This is not a Saudi product. And I paid 2,799 SAR for this thing. I expect you to work out a solution."

So, the second genius solution from this guy was "You want to unlock phone? Give 200 SAR, I unlock phone. After, no warranty. KHALAAS."

So, we left, muttering to ourselves.

Anyways, I got back to India. And I brought the Note 3 with me.

By this time, I was pretty irritated. I went to the local service center, and asked them to provide an unlock code to deactivate the region lock. They'd never heard of it before. And, they asked me to try unlocking it somewhere else.

My uncle said he knew a guy who could unlock the phone for 1,000 INR.

Now, this guy was also a PhD in being an obnoxious arsehole.

With his face shriveled like a roasted eggplant, he began hitting keys on random on his laptop. Although, all he was doing was trying to buy an unlock code from a website. Turns out, Mr. Obnoxious Arsehole #2 had mistaken region lock for carrier lock.

So, he said he couldn't unlock the phone.

It's been 5 months now, and my phone is lying in it's box. Unused.

Samsung has planned to apply region lock to it's previous devices, along with the Android 4.4 (KitKat) update. And if someone has, somehow, managed to bypass the region lock, it will be reactivated with every firmware update.

I tried contacting Samsung India, and was asked to contact Samsung UAE. While, they also mentioned that they cannot do anything as my phone is carrier locked. I tried explaining to the guy that it's a region lock, but he kept insisting otherwise.

Now I'm going to take the phone back to KSA, and give the Note 3 to my parents.
And I'm thinking of getting a Sony Xperia Z1 as my  Nokia C7 is being a pain (NOTE: it's been 3 long years with my C7!).

I end my rant with "Screw you, Samsung!" 

THIRST

This is one of my charcoal drawings. I made this one for a friend of mine. So, you like it?

Leave a comment.

It's GODZILLA!

Considering the fact that I have a garden, I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm freaked out whenever I see some creepy-crawly inside the house.

Imagine this: It's 3:30, and I'm awakened by nature's call. I walk into the toilet, all yawning and sleepy, when all of a sudden, I see 'GODZILLA'!
And by GODZILLA, I mean this disgusting house lizard that has been haunting my toilet every night.

I know it won't harm me, but I can't help but gag and run out of the toilet, and force myself to sleep, I say 'force myself' here because I really want to pee. Like, seriously.

Recently, I've bought peacock feathers, and kept one in each room, because I read somewhere that lizards are scared of them.
And you know what I did? I forgot to put one in the bathroom. So, I guess I'd have to get used to sharing my toilet space with this disgusting reptilian.

The little ones are kind of cute, to be honest. But I'd be more than glad if someone just threw a brick at them. (Please don't call PETA)

Thanks to these lizards, I have to double check my raisins before eating them just to make sure.

Some women might think I'm funny, cause I can't stand a 3 inch long creature. I really don't care.
Lizards are disgusting. PERIOD.

Anyways, if you're one of those women who think I'm not cool because I'm scared of lizards, please stare at image below and keep saying this: "I READ NOTHING, ASIF IS A COOL GUY".

Randomness

Well, this is not much of a post, really. Just a collection of photographs that I clicked randomly.

Feel free to comment! ;)

Le Blue Sky!

Sunlight hittin' the palm tree leaf. 

My beautiful li'l garden! 

Random snap of a dead tree trunk.

It was damn cloudy that day.

The neem tree in front of my house!

600 year old 'Banyan Tree'

Another garden photo! Yay!

Lol, the kitten was trynna catch a cricket or something

Isn't it CUTE???

Random village snap

Spooky neem tree