Soma Purana

I have just begun to learn Kant, an 18th century philosopher. Kant emphasized reason and freedom. What is freedom? If I suddenly have an urge to drink soda and have before me Sprite and Pepsi, and I chose Pepsi, did I exercise freedom? I chose Pepsi on my own accord. But, what drove me to look for soda in the first place? Freedom is not acting in a free manner to chose the means to achieve a given end. Freedom is in choosing the end itself. Oftentimes we are instruments rather than authors of the purposes we pursue. This freedom to choose the end itself is what gives us dignity. Kant's conception of morality: What makes an action worthy? What makes an action worthy is not the end result but the motive behind the action, the quality of the will that led to the action (doing the right thing for the right reason). Kant says "a good will shines like a jewel even if fails to accomplishes nothing." Motive confers moral worth of an action. Kant gives an example. ...

I want to approach this question differently. Rather than make a subjective pronouncement based on what comes to my head right away, I want to start with the notion, I have no clue, but let me try to figure it out. Suppose people are allowed to sell their one kidney. We have two kidneys, presumably, for a reason. May be it is for redundancy, if one fails the other one is sufficient to maintain life. Or for the proper function both kidneys need to be working and with only one kidney, may be life is deficient. If we consider the redundancy reasoning and if we assume failure of kidney is highly likely after a certain age, then there is the question of seller's remorse. But unlike seller's remorse where the seller sold his stock in stock market at a low price and later the price doubled, here we are talking about life and death. The stakes are high. If we didn't have flood insurance and our house is washed away in a tsunami, we say, well it is only the house. But, we can...

Military recruitment is going down in US. There are three ways of increasing the recruitment. Increase pay Implement conscription Hire mercenaries. During Civil War, US adopted a combination strategy conscription and mercenaries. Andrew Carnegie who was drafted could hire a substitute mercenary and send him in his place. He paid the mercenary a few hundred dollars which was less than what he would spend in a year for his fancy cigars. Strange system but that was allowed during Civil War. Even voluntary army has an element of coercion. Those who are economically poor and cannot get any job opportunity are "coerced" to join the military. I like conscription. I would like to combine that with increasing pay, may be double it. Conscription forces the society to think carefully about what wars we should engage in and limits the wars to truly what is essential to defend the borders. This should reduce the size of the military, not increase it. I was highly moti...

When I registered, I accidentally chose audit. The EdX webpage was done in such a way that it gave the impression that you had only two options. One was audit or another was paid verified certificate. I didn't want to pay, so I chose audit. But there indeed was free honor certificate option as well but it was not clear how to sign up for it. Later I found out how to navigate to sign up for that option. In any case, I sent a mail to EdX and they couldn't reverse my audit status. I added a comment on the discussion board. The professor intervened and I got the certificate. I spent so much time on this course and it felt good to receive certificate acknowledging my accomplishment. 

I am planning to take computer science courses this year. I did biology related courses mainly in 2013. Comp Sci is hard. I learned some Python programming - want to improve my programming over the year. Programming is essential for pretty much all Comp Sci courses. I just started Stanford's "Algorithms: Design and Analysis Part 1". Lots of lectures. I am sure this course is going to be overwhelming. Let us see how it goes.

I am continuing MOOCs with the same vigor as before. Started MOOCs in Sep. 2012. So far I have completed 28 courses. My latest MOOC completion with distinction is "How Viruses cause Disease" by Prof Vincent Rcaniello of Columbia U. I also completed Jason Hafner's (Rice U) Electricity and Magnetism and passed it with 92% (>85% is A) but didn't get the certificate, because, I found out when I registered I accidentally chose audit only. I am right now studying Python programming, and a MOOC course called "Justice" from Harvard.

Unalienable right to life is one of the most difficult rights to enforce when it comes to taking one's life. If a person decides to kill himself, if he does not succeed, he will be punished (I guess) but probably mildly. He can attempt again. If he succeeds, it is done, there is nothing anyone or any government can do. In a normal trade, there is a seller and a buyer. In suicide, there is a seller, But who is the buyer? There is no buyer. Therefore, it is not a transaction and therefore, you cannot claim it be illegitimate. You cannot even claim it to be immoral? Who has done the immoral act? The person doesn't exist anymore. The person who killed himself is only in memory, thought. What about war? The war scenario seems more useful to discuss it would appear. In the case of a soldier who is killed in battle, did the soldier have the right to engage in an activity where the likelihood of getting killed (thus giving up his life) is high. At least here, there is an act...

I have been reading political and moral philosophy by Bentham, John Stewart Mill, Robert Nozick, John Locke. Absolute right in our life that a pure libertarian would assert is not something majority would agree and can be expected. I can donate a kidney (if I have two working kidneys) to save the life of a loved one. But no doctor would take my healthy heart even if I wholeheartedly(!) agree to save the life of a loved one. Kidney and heart are both parts of my body but I seem to have different levels of right to them. If I want to donate my hair, no one would quibble with that right. If I am suffering from a terrible chronic hopeless condition, do I have a right to end my life? If I try and don't succeed, I will be punished by the government. If I succeed.... If I give away my car, I cannot claim it back. If I give away myself to slavery, by the same logic, I cannot claim it back. The car example seems just. But the inability to claim back the right to our self that wa...

This was a 9 week EdX course offered by Caltech (Professor Antonio Rangel). This was the toughest course I have taken so far. I just scraped through and got my certificate. In spite of the frustration it caused, I think it was well worth it. I understood so many concepts that I was not aware of such as dead weight loss, Pigouvian tax, impact of government policies on consumer surplus, producer surplus. The calculus part is that difficult (it does involve some partial derivatives, but is is mostly single variable calculus) but requires a lot of thinking. Right now I have three more ongoing MOOCs, Virology (How viruses cause disease) from Columbia U, Electricity and Magnetism from Rice U, and Engineering systems in motion: dynamics of particles and bodies from Georgia Tech. The last course involves a lot of vector analysis and a little bit of vector calculus. E&M from Rice involves a lot of integral calculus, the course culminated in theory of electromagnetic waves which does invo...

My yoga teacher made a profound statement one day in class. She said yoga is mostly unseen. I have been reflecting on this statement. Yoga generally has three main components, They are breathing, asanas, concentration/awareness. Asanas are externally observed and others can see it. Breathing is a technique and can be observed if the teacher looks at you closely. In a large class it is is difficult how well and correctly the students are breathing. But, the most important part of yoga, being aware and focused is totally unseen by the instructor or others. Only, the student practicing yoga knows it. 

I usually go for Bikram yoga in the morning (9:30AM class). Bikram requires consuming a lot of water an hour or two before yoga. Since I get up early anyway, this is not a problem for me. My morning fluid consumption involves the following. A large cup of coffee two large glasses of of ginger water one large glass of warm water with honey one large cup of tea I prepare ginger water as follows. I boil water. I add to it one or two inch slice ginger finely chopped. I add also one green chili finely chopped. I boil for couple more minutes. I filter the boiled finger water. Add a dash of Himalayan pink salt and squeeze one whole large lime. Add more water (about seven cups). I consume this during the day, mostly in the morning. Ginger has following benefits which are fairly well established through studies http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=72 effective in alleviating gastrointestinal distress reduces intestinal gas the biggest benefit is gin...

After learning a little about genetics and virology, I have come to the following conclusions. No organism  can live forever. All cells except neural cells need to be replaced at some point. This is done through cell replication. The mechanism of cell replication implies every time a cell replicates one end of each chromosome in the DNA genome called telomere is shortened. Eventually telomere is so short replication cannot occur. That starts the unavoidable decline and death. Neural cells cannot regenerate and therefore, evolution generally preserves these cells no matter what their condition is. All cells accumulate defects over time. These defects can be mutations in the genome or infections. There comes a point when the neurons have so much defect, even as they continue in the system, they are essentially non-functional. That starts the decline of brain health which includes memory and even the ability to control the functioning of the organism.

Not all cells and organs have the same degree of immune response. Some cells and organs cannot tolerate the accumulation of fluid, swelling, and inflammation and have naturally reduced immune response as a result. Examples are central nervous system, vitreous humor of the eye. Neurons don't regenerate and therefore have to block apoptosis. Some viruses take advantage of the reduced immuno response in these cells and organs and cause persistent infections. A type of persistent infection called latent infection can last the life time of the host. Many viruses attack the immune cells. HIV infects CD4 T-cells, macrophages, monocytes, and dendritic cells. Our body can replenish the immune cells and that is the reason AIDs is a very long persistent infection. After many years our body cannot make the immune cells in sufficient quantities leading to final collapse of our immune system and we finally die off of opportunistic infections.

We all give and take. I think what matters is the net. Some people give more than they take and some take more than they give. Quantifying this net is not easy. If you smile when you see another person, you both feel happy and there is only give for both. So, this is not necessarily a zero-sum game. Entropy of the universe increases with time no matter what. The question is do your actions accelerate the universal entropy increase? Or, do your actions help actually reduce the entropy? [I remember Samhita in my MAT251 - Calc III class coming at the end of the class to the desk and arranging neatly the quizzes strewn over the desk by other students. What a nice effort to reduce disorganization which works towards reducing entropy.] In general, a teacher, any teacher, gives more than he or she takes. Generally, people at the lower end of the economic scale like workers in restaurants, sanitation workers, a bus or train conductor give more than they take. A researcher gives mor...

I have always wondered whether a physician can really understand the condition of the patient unless the doctor himself (or herself) has experienced it. I haven't had a headache, so I don't really know what it feels like to have a headache. Sometimes, I say it gives me a headache and I don't really mean that, it is just a matter of saying. Is the doctor's knowledge bookish? Different patients may have different levels of tolerance to the pain. How do you exactly quantify the level of pain? Shooting pain, stabbing pain, throbbing pain.. What do these things really mean? Health is of course much more than pain related. Blood pressure may be asymptomatic. You may not feel a thing but you could be sick. It looks like a doctor's job is enormously complicated.

Not necessarily! There are several serotypes. The fifth serotype was discovered in 2013. " While they are all closely related to each other, infection with one serotype only offers limited and temporary immunity against other serotypes. In fact, multiple infections with different types of dengue increase the risk of severe dengue infections such as dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome. - See more at: http://healthmap.org/site/diseasedaily/article/fifth-dengue-serotype-discovered-102513#sthash.2hf8yqoI.dpuf" If you had the first infection with DENV-1 and later got the second infection with DENV-2, the antibodies you generate will bind to the virus DENV-2 but cannot prevent infection. Dengue can be extremely debilitating. There is no vaccine or cure for dengue at this time.

There are very few viruses that cause tissue damage. These are called cytolytic viruses. Most viruses are non-cytolytic. Clinical symptoms of viral disease (fever, aches, pains, nausea, malaise) are caused by our immune system's response to infection. This is why immunopathoplogy is called too much of a good thing. An enteroviral infection, and in particular to coxsackievirus B3, can cause extensive heart tissue damage (myocarditis) requiring heart transplant.  The heart tissue damage is caused by CTLs in our immune system (CTL is CD8 T  lymphocytes ). Perforin is a cytolytic protein found in CTLs and NK cells (natural killer cells), Mice  that have perforin knockout gene show no heart damage when  infected with Coxsackie B3.  Herpes stromal keratitis most common cause of blindness in developed countries is also mediated by CD4+ Th1 cells. In this case virus replicates in corneal epithelium but that is not the cause of the disease. The disease is cause...

I cannot think of humans in the previous centuries (>1000 years ago) hitting something constantly like we do on computer keyboards. Evolutionary response takes tens of thousands of years, so obviously we are not equipped to pound the keyboard and not suffer the consequences. I have a bad habit of hitting the keyboard harder than it needs to be and occasionally my fingers hurt. I have to remind myself to make it soft and use switch fingers (I am not a typist). Whenever we do something that requires applying force or (really, impulse) on parts of body due to technological changes, ask yourself, did my ancestors in may be a different activity have similar force/impulse on the same part of the body? If the answer is no, most likely you are not properly equipped to continue practice. Anyway, even after another ten thousand years, we won't be equipped to hit the keyboards hard since that type of activity is not going to affect "fitness" (in terms of being able to reprod...

Epigenetics is a sexy subject for those who are not doing research on epigenetics. One thing I learned in a recent MOOC course I took on Epigenetics is there is no clear evidence of epigenetic changes passed on to offspring through gametes in humans. Epigenome is completely wiped out and reprogrammed during sensitive periods (primordial germ cell development and pre- and post-implantation periods). If you do see transgenerational epigenetic “inheritance” you must ask (a) are they transmitted transgenerationally, i.e., via gametes, or (b) brought about by mothering style, placenta alteration, newborn nutrition, etc. People (particularly, science journalists) are eager to claim true epigenetic inheritance through gametes referring to dutch famine, Overkalix, etc. However, subsequent careful studies did not indicate transgenerational effect of the famine. It is surprising that it is epigeneticists that caution about making sexy claims in epigenome inheritance. Others seem to liber...

I used to have memory problems years ago. Now I don't. I hardly forget things now. I may not necessarily take action on things I remember, but I don't forget them. I still have one problem; I don't listen well. But I have improved in this area also. This is my new year resolution. Listen well. I don't know what caused my memory to improve. It could be one or more of the following. Started lots of online (MOOC) courses a little over a year ago. I have done 25 courses so far. This has been a lot of exercise to my brain. I am still continuing this.  I started Bikram yoga about a year ago. This has improved my strength. Yoga requires a lot of mental concentration, being very still in poses and out of poses, focus on breathing. My Mercer county college teaching. This is not a recent activity, I have been doing this for almost 18 years now. But it does require a lot of preparation and work to my brain. It may be that these days I feel I don't need to remember muc...