Do the dance!

Watch this video, first alex and now snowball.
What do you see- well a parrot gone crazy, yes...but also the fact that the bird moves its body to the different beats it hears- it is called rhythmic entrainment, which us humans took pride of as a unique gift bestowed only upon us. Clearly how much more egotistical can we get. Apparently we are not so unique anymore...
Anyway scientifically it is a very interesting aspect because apparently there are no videos of dogs or other mammalian pets doing the moves!

Here is what the author of the dispatch section had to say

" it also raises fascinating questions about the species that aren't on the list. The most obvious gaps are domesticated animals like dogs or horses: despite their pervasive exposure to music, not a single convincing demonstration of mammalian pet dancing was found. This negative evidence supports the everyday observation that dogs can't dance, and the outstanding question is why not. What is lacking?

Another group conspicuous by its absence are nonhuman primates. The absence of any true ‘dancing chimpanzees’ is surprising, not just because chimpanzees are our closest relatives but because they naturally engage in ‘drumming’ in the wild [7]. Chimpanzees often drum with their hands or feet on rainforest trees in the wild, generating far-carrying, quasi-rhythmic signals. Similarly, gorillas beat their bodies, and occasionally objects, with a rough ‘beat’. Thus, our nearest living cousins exhibit a behaviour suggesting that some form of propensity to drum was present in our common ancestor, making the lack of evidence for ape entrainment surprising. But given that most humans do not interact with chimpanzees regularly, and that most chimpanzee owners (in entertainment or science) do not post videos online, this negative evidence does not yet provide compelling evidence of absence. An open mind concerning apes remains warranted."

Biology of Music: Another One Bites the Dust, Volume 19, Issue 10, 26 May 2009, Pages R403-R404

They also go on to acknowledge the fact that one cannot rule out the possibility that pet-dancing may simply have not been uploaded to YouTube! Nevertheless it is an interesting evolutionary question. So next time you see your pet dancing away to rock and roll music, film it and put it on YouTube, someone might actually use it for something useful!

Below are the references of the two papers

A.D. Patel, J.R. Iversen, M.R. Bregman and I. Schulz, Experimental evidence for synchronization to a musical beat in a nonhuman animal, Curr. Biol. 19 (2009), pp. 827–830.

A. Schachner, T.F. Brady, I.M. Pepperberg and M.D. Hauser, Entrainment to music requires vocal mimicry: Evidence from non-human animals, Curr. Biol. 19 (2009), pp. 831–836.

Looking to rent..

I had to obviously write about it when I saw it, "Rent a room in someone else's life?" That statement is big, innit. The character Sai in "The Inheritance of Loss" ruses about this when she sees she has missed out on some grand childhood. To me it is big because I feel it sometimes, when I see people who are smarter, more creative, much more nicer and have a distinct identities (Note: need not be anyone famous, I use my discretion to define these values!!). But think about it- how cool would it be to rent, even for just a little while, a room in someone else's life!!

What am I

What am I? I think about this more often these days, you know. What do people mean when they say "I am an Indian or I am American or whatever". I mean are they identifying who they are with where they are from? I am not belittling the fact that where you are shapes you up as a person but that cannot be the whole story, can it? May be it does but for me that is not all. I don't think I can associate a country and its traditions with who I am, it is mostly a mixture of the ideals, principles, and traditions that I have garnered from various parts of the world. Of course some by being in those parts of the world and some, you may not believe it to be true, some from books I have read over the years. What is interesting is that I have taken this thought a step that has led to me being more and more saddened by the existence of boundaries between countries. I don't understand why we need them. I know I know, governance issues, cultural issues, and whatever other issues one can think of....but I can still wonder about it, can't I? Is it that hard of people from a gamut of cultures and geographical locations to be together....won't it be fun? We can learn so much...think about it!!!

A beautiful read

Rebecca- a beautiful read indeed. But I must admit I read half of the book yesterday while I doted on the first half for about a month, not because I was in love with it or anything, might I add! Somehow there seems to have been a "I-can't-believe-so-much-detail" threshold that I never crossed in the first half or may be because I was too dumb to understand the beauty of Daphne Du Maurier's writing. Contrary to the first few hundred pages, the second half of the book was amazing. In fact, yesterday, there were parts of the book where I was almost in tears. It is a romance-mystery novel of sorts. Although the book is just ridden with too many words (duh..!!) there were a lot of catchy, interesting and rhetorical phrases. Like this one below

"I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end."

My verdict: go ahead it is a masterfully crafted suspense novel but you have to bear through the first 100 pages!!

Guys seriously why could'nt you?

Guys, come on! Why could'nt I get a job like this? Anyway this led me to think- what are some of the best jobs around, like living on an island and making friends? Let me know if you can think of any- may be I can switch my profession!

Insect love

Normally I would not say I love insects, but one look at his gallery- I am in love with these scary monsters!

Earth day was yesterday folks

If you Earth day is something that was instituted very recently, you are wrong. April 22nd was declared the Earth day in 1970 in the US. It is mostly celebrated as Earth week these days. The International Earth Day is different and is celebrated on March 21st, the equinox day. Whichever day or week it is, I am really proud that Harvard is really big on reduce, reuse, recycle policy and I am proud of myself because I don't throw anything that can be recycled or reused (no, I am serious, not even the tiniest scrap of paper gets thrown in the trash). In fact Harvard does much better than a lot of other universities. So do Boston and Cambridge- these cities are far more advanced in terms of their sustenance policies than most other.
Quick diversion here: I am proud of my parents too because they are big on the three Rs so much so that my dad made a usable mug out of a milk bottle!
For some of us, it might not mean anything at all. But think about it- how hard is it really to recycle folks? Plastic recycling can be harder because there are codes but paper, come on!!! We all can do that much at least for our part.
The other thing I believe everyone can do is to plant SOMETHING, ANYTHING really! I live in an apartment and would love to have a big (or small really, अरे कुछ भी चलेगा भैया) garden। But I have decided it is too hard for me to not have green living things as my pets so decided to grow my own apartment garden. Since space is a limitation I am not planting a lot, obviously. But the big question now- will the seeds I sowed, germinate?!
People do so many creative things though- be it Dervaes's homestead in Pasadena, CA or the brainchild of Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer, Terracycle Inc.
To me Earth day or Earth week is just a reminder about how beautiful this place we live in is and it also reminds me that I do not have to hike or trek along the thousands of trails spread across various parks to enjoy the bounty that is nature.

FOR ME EVERYDAY IS EARTH DAY FOLKS AND I AM PROUD OF THAT!!


PS I must say in this tech age, I have not encountered a slower site than Terracycle Inc. I hope they read this post and get a better page that loads faster!
Wow yesterday was all gloomy post, today all earthy...seriously this must be mid-life crisis...

Meltdown

While the world is facing a financial meltdown, I think I am facing an existential meltdown. Well maybe meltdown is a strong word- may be I could call it existential crisis. You know the usual- "நான் ஏன் பிறந்தேன்" (I think that is the correct spelling in Tamil- it means why was I born, used to be our favorite phrase in BITS) type issues. So I am a great believer of a few things, among those are these two "every person is here for a reason- you just have to find out for yourself what yours is" and "everything that happens, happens for a reason".
But I find myself in this whirlpool of incessant thoughts about "what I should be doing?"
I thought science is what I should be doing but something has changed (well me getting really excited about good science and great research minds has not been tarnished yet!) and I don't feel like I belong! But I feel like I don't belong anywhere. I am at a stage in my career now where I have to decide on something and ACT on it. I am failing at the first step, decision-making. Here I am wavering about it all, thought this ended like ten years ago! Its asking the question "what should I become when I grow up?" all over again and that feels strange.
I think I will play along, ponder over such questions and hope that once it is actually time to make the big decisions, everything will miraculously fall into place.

PS Aha..picture is worth a thousand words, so now will you believe me?!! May be this might be what others call "mid-life crisis"?!

Yeaah..go ahead replace us

Beware we will all be soon replaced by machines or may be perhaps we can sit back and relax while we let robots like Adam do our experiments for us (smell a long vacation here). Adam has been developed by Amanda Clare's group in the UK. He can come up with hypothesis and test them too. How cool is that people?! But he still needs somebody to add more lab consumables and of course clean the waste he generates. May be I should get an Adam- since he can perform all those things that I am doing right now.

The Automation of ScienceRoss D. King, Jem Rowland, Stephen G. Oliver, Michael Young, Wayne Aubrey, Emma Byrne, Maria Liakata, Magdalena Markham, Pinar Pir, Larisa N. Soldatova, Andrew Sparkes, Kenneth E. Whelan, and Amanda Clare (3 April 2009)
Science 324 (5923), 85. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1165620]

Close proximity

What do you do when you are in close proximity to people like her? She is only 4 years older than I am and she already features in the top 100 living geniuses (see the article here). She is one of the three women who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Medical School. You can read her profile in
Science 25 April 2008: Vol. 320. no. 5875, pp. 442 - 443, DOI: 10.1126/science.320.5875.442
Her foray into stardom came about when she found a novel way to identify targets for positive selection during the course of evolution. It is a pretty neat technique, although the math part goes over my head.

PS I am mediocre but at least I am not surrounded by it! Here I am, can't even get a PCR to work...

Schadenfreude, hope not

Schadenfreude is a German word that describes the pleasure that one derives from others misfortunes. It is very closely related to envy. In this nice paper, the authors show that despite the two emotions being correlated they activate different regions of the brain. While envy activates neural connections related to pain, sch.. activates the reward center of the brain. But can anything be ever so simple.....of course not. The authors show the interplay between social pains and pleasures.

Taken from

NEUROSCIENCE: Pains and Pleasures of Social Life

Matthew D. Lieberman and Naomi I. Eisenberger (13 February 2009)

Science 323 (5916), 890. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1170008]

Analyses of brain activity reveal a link between social and physical pains and pleasures.

"If maintaining one's social value is a need like other physical needs, then the greater the pain caused by negative social comparisons, the greater the pleasure in response to seeing the comparison target socially devalued (schadenfreude). The authors found that greater envy and dACC activity in response to a negative social comparison was associated with greater schadenfreude and ventral striatum activity when learning of that comparison target's subsequent downfall."

Basically what it means is if you envy someone, you get greater pleasure when misfortune strikes them. In fact Leiberman and Eisenberger think of this as something akin to physical needs such as food when you are hungry! What is even more interesting is the fact that the brain is treating things as important as lack of food and water similar to social pains such as envy. Now why would that be?

If you have access you should read the article (don't worry if you don't understand much of it) and for people who are not used to neuroscience jargon, you should read the perspectives that is referenced above.

When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude

Hidehiko Takahashi, Motoichiro Kato, Masato Matsuura, Dean Mobbs, Tetsuya Suhara, and Yoshiro Okubo (13 February 2009) Science 323 (5916), 937. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1165604]

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5916/937

Time well spent with friends

This weekend, my time was well spent with friends. We were all very cheery, cheery to the point of being hysterical, I am guessing it is because of the baby boom. Yeah...I am so excited, and I ought to be, a friend of mine is pregnant. I surely exposed everyone to my dual neigh-cum-laughter, really I used to laugh hysterically and usually it used to sound more like a horse's neigh. Life changes so fast, one minute you think "well that is it for now, no BIG changes" and then boom there is the jolt again! If I feel that way, I can sure understand how the soon-to-be parents might feel. What was interesting was each of us had our own vices to teach to the newborn, including the "mum n dad"- Ashok wants to give it shots of tequilla, another friend wants to pick it up and spank it. So we will have to wait and watch how the kid grows up despite our presence!!
For now we are all super-charged when it comes to this couple...and of course the would-be mom gets the say in most matters.

Que pasa amigos?

Last weekend we were in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It reminded me of home junta. Warm weather, fruiting mango trees, coconut trees, hibiscus and other beautiful flowering plants of the tropics, people strewn about in roadside stalls doing absolutely nothing, traffic, the houses...everything reminded me of home. It was an interesting blend of India and US.

So the trip began with a bit of a drama- we landed 15 minutes or 60 miles away from San Juan at St. Thomas. We were not aware of the fact that our flight was just going to stand in the airport for 2 hrs and we were not going to be allowed to get out of the aircraft. Oh well, we did get to SJ eventually! Thankfully that was the only drama!
We spent a day traveling to El Yunque (took a really small hike to some random waterfalls) rain forest and then to Fajardo (Seven seas beach). It was a very quite place but weather played a spoiled-sport, as I was settling to take a nap under a tree, it began to rain....
Well that was that, after randomly driving around we got to Condado, where we stayed. The evening was spent walking around the area. Next day we did have a good plan. But like all good plans ours was busted too...we spent nearly an hour waiting for our burgers (Worst service at Chicago burgers in Old San Juan) that were not even worth the wait!!! I liked old San juan- had a very spanish feel to it. The image on the right is the fort at old SJ, again built by the spaniards, essentially a fort to protect the city.The streets were narrow and the buildings were beautiful. My only crib: I could not go around the city more and do some shopping.
We spent the rest of the day at the beach (Isla Verde), I found a spot under the shade and took a wonderful nap. There was just enough breeze and just enough sun!!
That evening there was some sort of a festival going on- which we did enjoy along with some decent chinese take-out. Called it a night around 11PM.....had an early flight to catch the next morning

A lab of almost 100

Wow, I have only heard about Bob Langer cursorily. He has about 80 people in a lab that spans about 1300 sq. m. at MIT.He is almost 60 years old and has a CV that is about 75 pages long. He has received several awards including the 2008 Millennium Prize. Nature has this to say about him. Boy, at almost 60 years of age, that man is quite something. I was truly awed, not as much as I was when I read "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" (this was when I fell in love with Richard P. Feynman). What was interesting and amusing to me in that profile by Nature- at the end of the day "on his way home, he stops for an ice cream — coffee chip frozen yoghurt with hot fudge sauce". Goes to show how important stopping to enjoy a cup of icecream is- no matter how successful you are!

On redaction

Onion had this to say about redaction of documents by the CIA. Pretty cool, I thought!

The BIG read

In April 2003, BBC launched a search for England's best loved book, you the most popular read if you will. English loved the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's mega-book was the best-loved book.
I have not read Lord of the Rings or any other book pre- and post- LoR by Tolkien (I loved the movies though!). Anyway I was intrigued by this list and decided to see how much of those books have I read- (I must say I got this idea from here although the BBC actual book list seems to be modified a bit). I took a look at the original list and guess what I have read only 34 of those 100 books. Ow, when am I ever going to finish reading especially when my reading list already has a back log of about 30 books. That list is the one that seems to be expanding at an alarming rate!
See below for the list, and do let me know how many you have read and what you liked best.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen-X
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling-X
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee-X
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell-X
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger-X
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens-X
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott-X
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy-X
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell-X
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling-X
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling-X
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling-X
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck-X
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll-X
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez-X
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens-X
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson-X
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen-X
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald-X
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas-X
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell-X
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens-X
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck-X
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy-X
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth-X
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky-X
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden-X
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding-X
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding-X
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy-X
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo-X
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho-X
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer-X
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez-X
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Bacteria are the best indeed

Two weeks ago, there was a talk by Bonnie Bassler (Priceton University). Her talk was absolutely great- she was extremely energetic, enthusiastic and seemed very passionate about her work. She also seemed to absolutely love bacteria. When I listen to a talk I want to hear the speaker's passion for his or her work show in their talks. I cannot stand talks that are drab no matter how good the person might be. Just does not give a good impression you see.
She spoke about quorum sensing in bacteria and I was blown away by how the concept of multicellularity may not be new at all.
But I do have questions about it- while the bacteria produce auto-inducer(s) specific to their own species (say a regional language) and a common auto-inducer (universal language) made across a wide variety of bacteria, the evolutionary aspect of why bacteria need such a mechanism is unclear to me, especially if they are invovled in only one downstream signaling process.

We were not this bad, what happened

Obesity cases have been steadily rising in the Indian subcontinent. The consumption of processed foods and fatty goodies are on the rise and, therefore, unarguably so is obesity. We were doing alright all these years, what happened? You walk into a mall in any Indian city, you would be drawn to the same sugary, fatty junk that we have now deemed "not healthy" here in the western world. Things like donuts, potatoes drenched in oil and many more unhealthy products are flooding the Indian households. It would not be fair if I just blamed it on the foods, we are becoming a LAZY bunch people! Not only do we not go out and actively exercise, even the little we did around the house has been replaced. What with so much domestic help and all...

The good thing here in the US is that a lot of the people are very conscious and awareness about obesity as a real health issue is ever-increasing.

I am not sure how best to warn people of the dangers of such a rapidly changing lifestyle. But people please if you read this post, educate your friends and family so they can educate their friends and family and hopefully we can make people realize that by slightly modifying our eating and exercising habits we can actually lead healthier lives.

PS You can read this article and this one to learn at least a little more about obesity in India. Not that a lot of research is going on right now.

You are not alone...

I find this amusing and annoying at the same time, I understand when you work you want to left alone but science is all about mingling- sharing ideas, sharing crazy hypotheses, sharing work space and more. I think science would have remained rudimentary if the iPOD was discovered 200 years ago. I am not sure I can embrace the idea of come to the lab, turn your iPOD on and do whatever it is that you might be doing- surfing the net, working on an experiment or reading papers. My old lab was different that way and I liked it- we did not flaunt the "oh-look-wires-coming-out-of-me and so glued to my ears I cannot take it off" thingies. We talked incessantly, our thoughts constantly collided with one another giving rise to better experiments, we would badger the newbies in the lab calling it the "we would love to get to know you" phase.
This iPOD fetish might have something to do with being in a big lab, your bench spaces themselves are so far apart that there is very limited extent of interaction.
Anyway, I think as scientists we should limit the use of such devices- use it albiet sparingly, at least when at work. I am just a fly on the wall but I hope I am making sense here. I think this is not just true about science, you walk on the road all you can see are people either talking to themselves (back in the old days we used to think such people had the crazies!), or talking to a cell phone or concentrating on the music that is playing right into their heads.
So long people...man is a social being afterall, is he not?

Start your day GRUMPY...

This morning something odd happened- well it might not be that unusual but it seemed a bit unnerving to me anyway. We came to the car parked on a busy road (especially crazy at 9:00 in the morning). He got in to drive while I waited for him to pull out of the icy mess and give me some space to get in. Incidentally he did not see the bicyclist. She thought he was going to stop for her but he did not see her. She was yelling out "stop for the bicyclist" but of course he did not hear her. He pulled out really slowly, while she also kept at it- and all that happened was she stumbled a bit. Okay mistake probably was his- I don't know, she saw him driving and not stopping and so she decided not to stop either... anyway she got really worked up and started screaming like crazy. Things like "Jacka**, can't you stop for a bicyclist" and much more. So nothing odd about it, right?
Well, while she yelling I was watching her in awe. I could not understand how someone could actually be so grumpy early in the morning. I mean come on, how do you yell like that with such loathing in the morning. After a presumably good night's rest, Yyou wake up, have coffee and breakfast, wash, get dressed and leave for whatever it is that you are going to do for the rest of the day. Amidst all these things what happens that makes you crabby like that? Then what happens to the rest of your day? May be she is going through something genuine...
I sure felt sorry for the next person that came in her way.
I cannot fathom such emotions, can you?