Ephemeral Reflections

  artwork by@allison_horst     After framing the title I realised that it is reminiscent of The title of ‘my experiments with truth’ by Mahatma Gandhi. As, I have never read that book or its summary, so I can not put any disclaimer here whether or not this article is inspired by that work. Now these tidbits aside, let us move on to the topic. I was first introduced to this magical language called ‘R’ in my masters. To say that my masters course exposed me to the areas of research and methods of teaching for science which I was not exposed to in my graduate course (which was basically an extension of school work), would be an understatement. It widened my perspective on science which otherwise I would have treated in the same as textbooks. Even though we were taught bioinformatics in bachelors, the need for learning programming wasn’t mentioned even in passing. It will definitely not improve your career prospects. It was just about using a set of tools for some analysis an...

The most imperative thing here is the reason why I started reading this book. Because this defines the context in which I saw its content. It has been some years since I started wondering what the cause of violence by religious people is. Violence is part of human nature. But if we blame certain religious beliefs incite violence then why, why Buddhist majority countries like Vietnam and Sri Lanka persecuted their minorities. If religion does grant you peace then why another majorly Buddhist country, japan, turned out to be one the worst offenders of war crimes in world war II. Do their beliefs not create an inherent conflict? Where nationalism triumphs religion? And where religion directs nationalism. Most of the Tibetan protests have been non-violent. But at the same time, can you ignore the firebrand Buddhist monks of Sri Lanka? I wanted to know how such deeply religious people could live a life that is in complete contrast to the ​​original teachings of their dharma. Although this b...

I revisited origami During lockdown. And initially..... I went berserk. When you have got no work to do, You have to have something to keep your hands (but more importantly, mind) busy... and especially if you are one of those people whose mind keep flitting from one thing to other and you get bored rather easily, After 2-3 movies series down... I was left with the same existential question again, Who do I do?   So, I again turned to origami. I guess this is one of those hobbies which you can pick up whenever you want and wherever you have left it. And the fact that you only need a paper to begin with (later on, you can down the rabbit hole of exquisite papers, sizes, designs, textures, etc.) It's the perfect way to get going when you are in total lockdown to no access to any non-essential supplies, whatsoever.   I find this particularly suitable for me since its an art which doesn’t require you have an excellent freehand. Here having a rigid hand helps (in many branches of or...

We always have some unexpected connections to the things ( and the people ) we have loved and lost over a period of time. Years ago, I was big fan of this Japanese paper folding art 'Origami'. But, I have this bad habit of losing interest over (simply because they are not exciting anymore ....  a bored mind is a very dangerous one). So, this love of mine was lost in time. But some time ago I started watching a TV series called 'Heroes'. In this, Hiro Nakamura convinces Charlie Andrews of his power of time travelling by instantly creating a thousand paper cranes around her. (on a side note: thousand paper cranes have cultural significance in Japan... the legend says this brings luck. Cranes are sacred creatures who are said to live for thousand year. so, one crane for each year. they are also symbolizes fidelity. And they bring luck. So, if you have the patience to fold a thousand cranes ... you will be granted a wish. Also, you can find the story of Sadako and thousan...

I wonder how surfing internet sometimes become like falling down a rabbit hole. I was once looking up something for a friend during when I came across the 'standard essential patents'. This somehow lead me to gene patents. This term revived a distant memory. When I was in B.Sc., one of my friend told me that  the biotech industry stocks suffered a huge loss in single day when president Bill Clinton declared human genome sequences should be available freely ( see  Clinton - Blair Statement ). Of course, this was quite far from the day when their supreme court declared genes are not patent-able after long legal tussle (this I learned now, not then). So I have decided to simply collect the status of gene patents in India and abroad. I present a summary of what I learned and thoughts over here.  A little bit of history for the most famous gene patent litigation. BRCA1 and 2 are quite infamous genes. These genes are involved in DNA double stran...