Category: Uncategorized

Did you know that this creature can predict future? and is also one of the most efficient hunters in the universe!?

A lengthy but interesting blog so please bear with me!

The answer to the above question is not a human who to be frank and without his or her tools would be a very poor hunter and predictor! It is also not that famous octopus or parrot who used to “correctly” predict which team would win the world cup!

With over 97 percent success rate which is unheard of in the natural world, the most efficient hunter is so accurate and effective that there is no equal!

This hunting machine also studies the pattern of flight and movement of other insects and thus can actually predict with amazing accuracy on the next movement of the prey!

It is a matter of great luck that this is a tiny animal or else we would be in trouble!

Undaunted by swarms of potential distraction, they hunt within visually cluttered environments like the riverbanks they call home. What’s more, they do all this while performing aerial acrobatics!

The champion in question is that whose body shape has actually inspired several machines and a legendary creature of the myth!

In spite of all these features, its small size makes it non threatening so much so that children (human this time!) play with them!

The humble and quirky Dragon Fly!

How do they achieve the kill rate though? 

Researchers in an attempt to study this probed the optic lobe, an area of the insect brain responsible for processing visual information. 

With glass electrode tips 1500-times thinner than a single strand of human hair, they found neurons responsive to prey-like targets, including one called ‘Centrifugal Small-Target Motion Detector 1’, or ‘CSTMD1.’ 

A comparison here is that humans have around 86 billion neurons while the insect’s small brain has around 2 million neurons! 

The first property mentioned above is ‘prediction.’ 

When a prey-like target zips across the dragonfly’s visual field, some neurons encode the area ahead of the target, exhibiting an enhanced sensitivity in this region and suppression elsewhere. This likely prepares the dragonfly to respond to an imminent target and forms a prediction of the prey’s trajectory, even if it becomes obstructed (such as when it flies behind the leafy branch of a tree)! A feat which even Google’s GPS maps may not be able to match! 

To understand the second property let me tell you of a competition we faced in a mall in Malaysia! There was a hanger with six cylindrical objects falling one by one in random. Three on either side! We could get only a couple! That is when my ex army officer father told me that no one can get all! So you must concentrate only on one side and you can get at least three! Try it! Dragon fly does exactly that! It is called

‘Selective Attention.’! 

When presented with a pair of rival targets moving on different trajectories, a dragonfly must choose only one for lunch, or risk missing both. In a winner-takes-all manner, CSTMD1 responds to just one of the rival pair, encoding the target’s trajectory in a train of electrical impulses, ‘spikes’, unperturbed by the presence of the rival distractor!

Of course dragonfly being the best predator takes it one step further!

When a pair of rival targets are presented together, the dragonfly brain generates an independent ‘spotlight’ of enhanced sensitivity for each target, complete with prediction, regardless of which is selected!

Though initially this predictive enhancement for the rival distracter does not influence CSTMD1’s response to the chosen target, it becomes apparent when the chosen target disappears! Attention is then able to quickly and easily switch to the previously ignored target, without a period of confusion, delay, or the need to ramp up a second response!

This ‘preattentive’ tracking of non-selected targets could be critical in allowing the dragonfly to keep track of other potential prey or predators while engaged in an active pursuit for one target, allowing the dragonfly to freely switch targets with ease. 

Encoding and prediction of the original target trajectory becomes less sensitive as the system ‘locks-on’ to the new target, reminiscent of the ‘Inhibition of Return’ previously only observed in human, primate, and avian research!

The dragonfly’s ability to effectively encode the trajectory of multiple targets and switch with minimal loss of time or delay is the 97 percent! The research to these can one day give us better self driven vehicles and drones! All from a fly! Now precision and speed and accuracy also is the hallmark of birthday celebrity Zakir Hussain and being a Tabla Player myself (I mentioned I can play Tabla! Now good or bad you have to decide!), I think of him as my guru since it was his effortless rendition which inspires me even now!

Now dream like a fly and you will fly (at least in your dreams!)

Good Night!

Do you what is a Gumshoe and who is Eugène-François Vidocq?

Vidocq is an inspiration to many novelist and writers and a French criminal!! But that is only one half of the story!

Now the Sherlock series starring Benedict is one of the best series on Holmes and here Sherlock calls himself a Highly functional sociopath! In simple terms the only difference between him and the criminal is that he is on this side of the law!

Even in the movie catch me if you can, the thief played by Leonardo is finally recruited in catching thieves like him! 

This brings us to a conclusion that only a criminal and that too a successful criminal can become a politi…I mean Detective! 

In the lines of Lincoln Rhyme, the best detective on chair! To catch a criminal you must think like one! Get into his mind and proceed! Amelia Sach’s his assistant and future wife (that is when she was no longer his assistant!) had done that many times! 

And the one who actually started this trend was Vidocq!

So after a bad childhood and life of crime and several brush with the law and also being sentenced to death, he finally had a revelation and a change of heart and then told his superiors that he can work as an informer!

Years passed and finally he became a criminalist and helped the police catch criminals! With his fame and fortune growing he became more professional on the other or this time, the right side of the law!

He later on became the founder and first director of France’s first criminal investigative agency, the Sûreté Nationale, as well as the head of the first known private detective agency. Vidocq is considered to be the father of modern criminology and of the French national police force. He is also regarded as the first private detective!

This story has inspired so many writers including Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, and Honoré de Balzac! Edgar Allan Poe was prompted by one story about Vidocq created the first detective in fiction, C. Auguste Dupin, who appeared, for example, in the short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, which is considered the first detective story!

Inspired by this and many other story was another author who was a doctor with a genius mind called Arthur Conan Doyle and created one of the most famous detectives ever; Sherlock Holmes!

Did we miss something!? Well yeah, Gumshoe!

So the chief characters of a detective like say, The Batman (he is actually a detective more than a crime fighter! In fact in the early novels, his detective skills were more famous! He was again ‘inspired’ by Holmes!); is that they have to be shady and stay in the shadows! And most importantly they must be quiet! So when they walk the shoes which used to be very hard those days used to make lots of noise! 

The early detectives thus had a special type of rubber soled shoes which used to be quiet! It became their trademark so much so that of the the slang for the detectives used to be GUMSHOE!

To gumshoe meant “to sneak around,” and by 1906 became a common nickname for plainclothes detectives (or “private eyes”), famous for moving stealthily in their quiet rubber-soled shoes!

Now another group of detectives are those who like to sneak and reveal secrets! They find the truth and tell it to us! They are called Journalists and news reporters! Of course nowadays when I want something fun and full of gossip I see the news while for serious and truthful stuff I see the shows in OTT! One of the most famous news anchor and probably one of the loudest is birthday celebrity Arnab Ranjan Goswami!

Do not listen to him before you sleep though! He will wake you up!

Good Night!

The best (or the worst!) thing about morals and sayings is that almost every moral or saying will have an equally popular but opposite moral or saying! There are so many examples of that!

One person may say “All good things come to those who wait ” while another will say 

“Time and tide wait for no man” These patterns are called Opposite proverbs!

Here are a few! Wise men think alike is more of less opposite to Fools seldom differ!

One of the most popular adage is, ‘The best things in life are free’ which is opposed by another famous proverb, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch!’ 

One of the most famous is, ‘Slow and steady wins the race’ which is antagonized by ‘Time waits for no man’! 

The only thing which I have been able to decipher is that life is not just a single proverb or principle! It is a balance of the opposites! Unless you have a proper balance, it will not work! Like the Deva and Asura (or more accurately Sura and Asura)!

One of the constant advice given by elders and your teacher or boss is usually to finish your work in time and not to procrastinate! 

Now everyone knows Procrastination is the act of unnecessarily and voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so. It is often perceived as a negative trait due to its hindering effect on one’s productivity, associated with depression, low self-esteem, guilt, and feelings of inadequacy.

But there is a catch here! It can also be considered a wise response to certain demands that could present risky or negative outcomes or require waiting for new information to come! 

In fact there is a new term which is almost as bad as Procrastinate which is in fact almost the opposite meaning! 

So this is the act of completing tasks as soon as possible even if it costs extra effort or the quality of the outcome deteriorates!

Some people may use this approach in order to avoid the anxiety and stress of last-minute work! 

In some areas this faster but inefficient completion of work is actually considered an unhealthy behavior pattern and is accompanied by symptoms such as conscientiousness, eagerness to please, and high energy!

It has been observed that people who do this may try to find shortcuts to be more efficient and productive, but it may result in outcome which is inferior or 

undesirable! The action is impulsive and close to reckless! 

The term which describes such a feature is now known as Precrastination!

So if your boss or teacher or parent is telling you to hurry up or Precrastinate! Tell them that it is not advisable! Of course do not procrastinate also for too long! Go for the balance! I have recommending a new term for that balance! Crastinate!

Balanced or crastinated (not a real word but it fits! So I am thinking that if it used regularly then it will be accepted in the ever expanding English vocabulary!) performance also was of birthday celebrity Makarand Deshpande! You may not know him by name if you procrastinate and not search in Google but if you precrastinate, you will instantly crastinate and recognize him! 

Now if you want crastination in your life then sleep on time! Neither pre nor pro!

Good Night!

Read with patience! Am sure you will find it interesting! I concentrated more in the blog today than sketch and it shows!

Many times many of you would have got up one day and though, “Wish I was born in some other country!” But the value of water is felt only by those who have been stuck in the desert!

In any case you can be thankful that you are not born in this tribe in the Amazon! The tribe is called Satere-Mawe! Though it sounds like a satire, it is far from fun!

Before that you must know of this pain index, the Schmidt Pain Index ranks insect stings on a scale of 0 to 4 — 0 being no pain at all and 4 being absolutely excruciating!

Now many of you would have been bit or more accurately stung by the bee! Remember how painful it was! The bad news is that it is only 2 in the index!

Rated at the almost top of the scale (4.0), but still not the most painful sting, is that of the tarantula hawk. Their bite has been called Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has been dropped into your bubble bath. A bolt out of the heavens. All you apparently do is Lie down and scream! 

Sometimes referred to as “spider wasps,” tarantula hawks grow up to two inches in length and the bright color of their wings acts as a warning to any potential predators. By nature, tarantula hawks are not aggressive…to humans at least. 

Now if you have arachnophobia and are scared of spiders like tarantulas then this is a wasp even the Tarantulas fear!

Female tarantula hawks will paralyze the spider and proceed to lay an egg on its abdomen. The newly-hatched larva will then feed on the immobile spider. In the United States, tarantula hawks are primarily found in desert regions.

They repeat the ritual until the boy can endure the stinging and ensuing pain and paralysis without shedding a tear. This can take up to 20 attempts!

In spite of this gruesome nature and bite, they are not top in the list!

The top bite champion is an ant! 

The most painful sting of all — the bullet ant sting!

The pain has been described as “pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel” and rated i

as a 4.0+!

off-the-charts pain that lasts up to 24 hours.

These ants are the largest of the ant family, at about one inch in length. Like others on this list, bullet ants are not instinctively aggressive, but become so when as a defense mechanism. Their sting releases poneratoxin, a neurotoxic peptide that causes severe muscle contractions, a burning sensation, and great pain.

Coming to the Satere-Mawe tribe and why you are fortunate that you are not born in that tribe! 

One of the test of being a ‘man’ or manhood for the boys is to force their hands into gloves filled with, yes! The bullet ant! And you think it’s hard! Nothing is easy! Like the difficult and formidable task done by the great birthday celebrity Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata to make start Tata group which is now one of the best conglomerate in the country and the world!

Now watch out for any red ants below your bed and sleep!

Good night! 

There is a crime committed and all you can find are some finger prints. That is usual but the scene of crime was in the jungle and there were no other human beings present!  But then you are in Australia and the crime was just stealing of some food and eucalyptus leaf! and all you see are these cute bear like creatures hanging around!

Same thing happened some years back!

The police took fingerprints from six chimpanzees and two orangutans housed at zoos in England. They weren’t just looking for a unique souvenir; they were testing to see if any unsolved crimes could be the fault of these banana-eating miscreants!

Now while these primates ended up being as innocent as they seemed, the police did determine that their fingerprints were indistinguishable from a human’s without careful inspection!

A few years later, in 1996, a different type of mammal came under police suspicions!The same animal seen in Australia! 

Yes! The Koala Bear!

The word “koala” comes from the Dharug gula, meaning ‘no water’. Although the vowel “u” was originally written in the English orthography as “oo” (in spellings such as coola or koolah — two syllables), the spelling later became “oa” and the word is now pronounced in three syllables, possibly in error!

While it makes sense that orangutans and chimpanzees would have fingerprints like us, being some of our closest relatives, these other mammals are evolutionarily distant from humans. It turns out that fingerprints are an excellent example of convergent evolution, or different species developing similar traits independently from each other!

Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last common ancestor of those groups. The cladistic or technical term for the same phenomenon is homoplasy. 

The recurrent evolution of flight is a classic example, as flying insects, birds, pterosaurs, and bats have independently evolved the useful capacity of flight. Functionally similar features that have arisen through convergent evolution are analogous, whereas homologous structures or traits have a common origin but can have dissimilar functions. Bird, bat, and pterosaur wings are analogous structures, but their forelimbs are homologous, sharing an ancestral state despite serving different functions.

The opposite of convergence is divergent evolution, where related species evolve different traits. Convergent evolution is similar to parallel evolution, which occurs when two independent species evolve in the same direction and thus independently acquire similar characteristics; for instance, gliding frogs have evolved in parallel from multiple types of tree frog!

Now all you have to do is go to Australia, find a Koala whose fingerprints match yours and do the crime and blame it on the Koala! Alternately you can simply not do the crime! As how even the birthday celebrity Shahid Kapoor  while acting in series like Farzi will finally say, “Crime does not pay”!

Now wipe your fingerprints from the crime scene and sleep!

Shubh Ratri!

Language is a barrier sometimes! The knowledge of English is very necessary in these times to show that you know things!

Someone may be clever or intelligent in his or her own native language but the lack of knowledge of English may be an issue.

Of course in the times of the information technology and Translate, things are much easy and of course the knowledge of English does not necessarily mean you are clever or intelligent! 

There is a chart called the Gantt chart, this is a commonly used graphical depiction of a project schedule. It’s a type of bar chart showing the start and finish dates of a project’s elements such as resources, planning, and dependencies! Officially Henry Gantt in 1910-15, an American mechanical engineer, designed the Gantt chart and this is used in so many prominent companies all over the world including and not limited to Amazon and Ikea!

Gantt originally created his tool for systematic, routine operations. He designed this visualization tool to more easily measure productivity levels of employees and gauge which employees were under- or over-performing. Gantt also frequently included graphics and other visual indicators in his charts to track performance. One of the first major applications of Gantt charts was by the United States during World War I.

The earliest Gantt charts were drawn on paper and therefore had to be redrawn entirely in order to adjust to schedule changes. For many years, project managers used pieces of paper or blocks for Gantt chart bars so they could be adjusted as needed!

Of course later on the development of computers made way to develop and create complex and more streamlined Gantt charts which are used even today!

Now where does the language issue come you would ask?

Well accurately speaking the first charts similar to Gantt was actually developed in 1896 by Karol Adamiecki, who called it a harmonogram!

Adamiecki, however, published his chart only in Russian and Polish which limited both its adoption and recognition of his authorship! In 1896 Adamiecki invented this novel means of displaying interdependent processes so as to enhance the visibility of production schedules. In 1903 his theory caused a stir in Russian technical circles!

Adamiecki is the author of the law of harmony in management and in 1972 the State College of Economic Administration in Katowice was named after him, and in 1974 it became the Karol Adamiecki University of Economics!

Better late than never which proves that English language or not, real talent shines no matter what! But still English knowledge does help! A big bag of real talent also was Pankaj Udhas who like his name can give you so many emotions and if you listen to his song “Chitti ayi Hai”, you will definitely feel Udhas or sad especially if you are far from your near and dear ones.

Listen to his soft songs to give you a nice warm sleep!

We will miss you Pankaj ji; heartfelt condolences, Om Shanthi…

Shubh Ratri!

Absolutely delighted with this blog! Hope you like it too! Sketch could have been a tad better!

Everyone wants honey! I am writing about the original liquid nectar one and not the nick name you give to that someone special or specials!

Bees are probably one of the most important species in the world and all they do their whole life is work! In fact the average male in the colony who has done his function of reproduction is thrown out as soon as possible! While the workers work to collect honey from so many flowers in a complicated routine and contribute to pollination.

In contrast you have the Hornet! This is a devil! All it is capable of is stealing and killing! Some of them are called the Murder Hornets which are a particularly ruthless breed of hornet assassins!

The Murder Hornets like to attack and try to raid honey bee hives for food! Unfortunately for them, the honey bees have come up with a defense against their raids. What the honey bees will do is surround a single hornet with multiple bees, creating a tight, spherical formation around the hornet. The bees then begin to beat their wings ferociously. The beating is rhythmic and constant and in a specific direction! The unidirectional flow of air causes the heat to build up in the center! The miracle of nature is that the bees have naturally evolved in such a way that they can survive in heats just a couple or so degrees more than the hornets which literally gets cooked alive in the ‘Tandoor’ made by the bees!

Ingenious you would say but then nature finds a way!

And in Vietnam, that’s the giant hornet Vespa soror!

The Vespa soror has figured out a way to avoid this trap or heat ball!

Giant hornets will hunt honeybees on their own and grab them one by one!
But what is really lethal to honeybees is when they flip into a multiple hornet attack strategy. And when they do this, they essentially want to kill all the adult defenders so that the colony is no longer protected!

Which essentially means the thing which you have been listening to since ages! Unity in strength! The heat ball or the bee Tandoor will only work if everyone cooperates and does this united! Or else it fails! Much like how the attackers take out the scouts!

But do not worry for the, the bees have one more trick up their…wings!

A handful of beekeepers saw these spots! Whenever the bees detected a giant hornet nearby—but not other, smaller hornets—the honey bees began to arrange bits of these secret substance near the entrances to their hives. And the hornets themselves were less likely to land on a nest adorned with these spots which used to stink and stick!

Yes! The spots are cow DUNG! or Bull SHIT! sometimes even other poop is used!

This was surprising since bees generally keep their nests clean and tidy. They’re good at keeping diseases and pathogens out—two things that could be hiding in animal poop!

It isn’t clear why or how the poop shield works, but there must be some chemical inside the poop—presumably derived from the plants that the animals originally ate—that either actively repels the hornets or camouflages the scent of the bees’ nests!

Some beekeepers call this the Bull Shit defence!

Now next time someone exclaims bull shit! Do not get offended especially if you are a fan of the Honey (all kinds!)! Hope all this was not confusing! As confusing as reading out the name Danny Tshering Phintso Denzongpa! You can simply say oh! The birthday celebrity Danny Denzongpa!

Now wish good night to your Honey (s)!

What is the relation between Kodak the photo company and a product which fixes things (not your broken heart though! That cannot be fixed!)?

The link is a person called Harry Wesley Coover Jr

His dissertation was on commercial synthesis of vitamin B6! But that process was taken over by army so this blog is not about that link!

Harry then joined as a chemist in the company Eastman Kodak! One of his research and his team’s major focus was to make clear plastic gun sights! This was of course for use by allied forces and his repeated experiments created one candidate with a minor flaw! It was clear but it was sticky!

He stopped the research during the war for almost nine years and came back to further the research.

The original material he discovered was cyanoacrylate! and so Coover and his team at Eastman Kodak examined cyanoacrylates again!
Coover was overseeing Kodak chemists investigating heat-resistant polymers for jet canopies when cyanoacrylates were once again tested and proved too sticky.
Then tragedy struck when a chemist in the group informed Coover that he had permanently damaged an expensive refractometer by gluing it together!

The material when dried not only glued the substances together but also used to do it with so much strength that is was permanent!
Coover with his inventor mindset did not think much about the expensive refractometer which could be adjusted in the coming budget! But he thought out of the box and refined the process to make this material liquid which later on solidified as a glue!

Now Cyanoacrylate is used as a forensic tool to capture latent fingerprints on non-porous surfaces like glass, plastic, etc!

While much attention was given to the glue’s capacity to bond solid materials, Coover was also the first to recognize and patent cyanoacrylates as a tissue adhesive after his eldest son cut open his finger while making a model and glued the cut closed with the glue!
It was also first used in the Vietnam War in a spray form as a hemostatic agent to temporarily patch the internal organs of injured soldiers until conventional surgery could be performed. Tissue adhesives are now used worldwide for a variety of sutureless surgical applications in humans and animals with the same material!

Coover said many times that he was most proud of the medical applications of cyanoacrylates, that they had saved many lives and would continue to do so

Every home of course knows its final form which is used every other day! The first version of this adhesive was released in 1958!
Since it marketed by Kodak, it was known as Eastman 910.

You and me know it as, The Superglue!
Like the super glue fixes or joins two broken things, actors such as birthday celebrity Venkatesh Prabhu Kasthuri Raja known professionally as Dhanush, join many industries with their performances which transcends the boundary of language!

Now close the cap of the super glue (It is often marketed as one which can be used more than once but I have never been able to use it more than once! It normally gets solid or wasted! So I stick to the smallest pack for single use!) and sleep!
Good Night!

Who is Antonio Meucci?

The name does not ring a BELL?!

For an Italian old timer though, he is well known and this is his story!

He was a Florentine immigrant who was born in 1808, he studied design and mechanical engineering at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and as a stage technician at the city’s Teatro della Pergola developed a primitive system to help colleagues communicate! In the 1830s he moved to Cuba and, while working on methods to treat illnesses with electric shocks, found that sounds could travel by electrical impulses through copper wire. Sensing potential, he moved to Staten Island, near New York City, in 1850 to develop the technology!

When Meucci’s wife, Ester, became paralysed he rigged a system to link her bedroom with his neighbouring workshop and in 1860 held a public demonstration which was reported in New York’s Italian-language press!

In between giving shelter to political exiles, Meucci struggled to find financial backing, failed to master English and was severely burned in an accident aboard a steamship.

Forced to make new prototype machines after Ester sold his machines for $6 to a secondhand shop, his models became more sophisticated!

An inductor formed around an iron core in the shape of a cylinder was a technique so sophisticated that it was used decades later for long-distance connections!

Unfortunately, Meucci could not afford the $250 needed for a definitive patent for his “talking telegraph” so in 1871 filed a one-year renewable notice of an impending patent. Three years later he could not even afford the $10 to renew it! It is criminal since patent is a big gift to society and must be kept free! This is another way how some very rich ‘inventors’ could suddenly invent so many devices and file so many patents just because they had money to buy!

Now finally Meucci sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph company but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been ‘LOST’. 

Two years later another “inventor”, who shared a laboratory with Meucci, filed a patent for the machine, became a celebrity and made a lucrative deal with Western Union!

The name of the other inventor was Alexander Graham Bell and the invention was the telephone! Meucci sued and was nearing victory – the supreme court agreed to hear the case and fraud charges were initiated against Bell – when the Florentine died in 1889. The legal action died with him.

In 2002 Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle after the US Congress recognised Antonio Meucci, as a father of modern communications and as the true inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell 113 years after his death! Better late than never!? Life is not always black and white! There are areas of grey and other colours! Just like the Movie Black which is dark followed by his other movies which are actually very colorful by Birthday Celebrity Sanjay Leela Bhansali!

Now than Antonio Meucci for inventing the predecessor of your mobile phone and sleep!

Good Night!