Why do they do?

This is not the start I was expecting. Some times things become harder to understand in your own perspective, especially when the reason for it sounds very childish. It is even harder to take it easy when some one doubts your honesty. I may have used some strong words which are uncalled for the topic. The heart of the matter is we were expecting to get some information . The information can be obtained only from one source (at least for now). As we know them very well (I now doubt that), we talked to them about getting the information on a later date. Everything went well till the actual day came. The replies are standard " oops! we cannot do it at the moment. We are not happy with the progress we make, give us some more time" I would have preferred a straighter no!. At least it could have saved some anxiety. The reason I feel bad about is that I know the real reason behind the refusal. It has to do with we getting the information out in the real world. It sounds like a good reason to refuse. But really what hurts more is that we literally promised about the retaining the information. In actuality, we would have helped them had we got the information.
But the best part is now I am confident that I am striking the right chord. May be the information we want is merely a confirmation of what we already know. I am sure they will come to us in the future for the same and I am sure I would be more than happy to share.

P.S: The blog might be really abstract for most of you. But I cannot go any deeper at this time.

Not the time!

I was reading a letter from a person in Chennai (I am not mentioning the name as I am not sure whether he actually wrote it, nor do I know whether he is a writer as my literary expertise is novice to say the best) I am writing my opinion on the content of the mail related to the media coverage of the recent Mumbai terrorist atrocities. From the words of the mail, I feel that he is a left wing person. The whole purpose of the mail was to lambaste almost all the T.V. Channels about their coverage of the incident. He sounded more interested in refusing to acknowledge Taj Hotel as the Icon of India (I don't do it either) rather than the actual nature of this abominable act. I saw a couple of curious points he made

1) The channels should have given more importance to CST terminal and should have identified all those dead people.

Do you really expect them show the gory images of dead people on the street and pay attention to all those dead rather than looking to save the rest. I think it is better to show the places where the morons called terrorists are still unleashing their ignorance and make the people aware of their surroundings than focusing on a place where it is already done and dusted.

Identifying the victims on these magnitudes of attack is not an easy job and it would have been stupid if the T.V channels started showing the faces of brutally assaulted victims.

Most importantly, the writer of the mail hails from Chennai so he might be following it on television as I did and we have no clue whether any one were permitted to enter CST immediately after the attack?

2) The media was not focusing on the common people and were very concerned about the rich people

I do feel sometimes that screen personalities take up more coverage than real achievers. But it stops only with their personal achievement. Whenever we generalize the term "rich" we conveniently forget about their value to the society. Not all of them are just rich in material things. We need to realize that lot of the common people do need them for their livelihood. Just because they stayed in a posh hotel which we don't like or their principles, we cannot treat them that badly. We need to understand that if any of our industrialists die in situation like these, the loss for the society is more than a personal loss. The whole blog is not about socialism or Communism or which is better. I just want to point out that, don't hasten your decision in times like this.

There are plenty more in the mail I didn't like. I am not going to write about them all. People tend to get emotional very easily so these kind of mails are not to be taken seriously.

I was checking a video forward sent by my friend in some Pakistani channel. There was this buffoon claimed as an expert analyst. His point was the whole attack was organized by Indian Military (He even said that the Americans organized the 9/11 attack) and his evidence was the terrorists were wearing a saffron wrist band and Muslims don't wear them. Wow,What a point? Okay let me go and get a skull cap and become a Imam (I really didn't mean any offense to the sentiments). I don't know about the channel or the name of the buffoon but I am sure I don't need to.

To finish off in a lighter tone

I watched the Hindi movie "Yuvraaj" last night. Being a Tamil only speaking south Indian, my push for watching this Hindi movie was the music by none other A.R.Rahman. I am not sure whether the movie was intended to be funny or very unintentional comedy. Looking at the posh sets I think the later. I was laughing my heart out, when Salman was crying about how his heartless father chased him out of the house. All those instances told by Salman made it very clear that father did what he should have done. I hope Subash Ghai will be wary of these kind of sentimental scenes in future.

Moved

I happened to see the most talked about video of the latest times " The plight of Tamil speaking people in Srilanka" It was one of the most disturbing videos I have ever seen in my life. Something needs to be done for the people over there. It is not possible for anyone to live in such atrocious conditions. However, as proclaimed by many of the Tamil fraternity, mostly "screen personalities", supporting Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTEs). In fact, they are half responsible for all the problems there. These kind of events reiterates the need of Gandhi's principle of non-violence. I sincerely believe that had the Tamils in Srilanka had a Gandhi like figure or a firm believer of non-violence, they might be enjoying a very peaceful life they are entitled to. Because of the belief in violence and the unquenched quest for power of the so called "Leaders or Liberators" who are few in number, a large section of innocent community is being vandalised and in fact killed.

Ramblings

I was watching an Interview of A.R.Rahman yesterday (I got this bad habit of reading or watching while eating). Like all those who were born after 1972*, I am an die-hard fan of his music. I complained in one of my earlier blogs (I consider it as the most incoherently organized blog I have ever seen) that he isn't focusing on Indian music. I even went to the point of saying that he doesn't fit into the western musicals and he should get back to his roots. I still believe that his western compositions have been inspired heavily by his Indian tunes and I rarely find it amusing to listen to something which has already been done beautifully. But I got a chance to know why he wasn't composing as much as we like. He said to the host of the show " I get the same kind of situations to make songs. Everyone wants pathos, romantic duet, opening song and one kuthu** song and it becomes monotonous for me. I have to make sure that I like the song 100% so that at least 10% of it would be likable for the listeners" I realized how true it was. I listen to cine songs only and as he said they all have same kind of situations. With no control over the visuals, and some time not even sure of whether the song would be shown on screen, it would be very tough for any music composer to keep churning out one after the other. What could an alternate? I am thinking of listening to private albums (which haven't got any base in South India). It is not that I never listened to them before. I listen to TSJ studios @ http://blog.tsjstudio.com/ (yup the same ones whose song "ragasiyam" was mistaken to be in the film Vaaranam Ayiram) and I listen to http://vanithaudios.blogspot.com/. Both of them are known to me but if you listen to TSJ studios you wouldn't mind that. My favorite female singers usually are typical carnatic singers who also sings cine songs. "Bombay" Jeyashree and Sudha Raghunathan are my favorites. I like the voice (I call it as a basal voice) of the singer in http://vanithaudios.blogspot.com/ and It looks like she has exposure to Carnatic music as well so I listen to that as well.

I read the following quote allegedly told by Einstein (can one of you say whether it is authentic?) but I liked it a lot. "If the truths don't substantiate theories, change the truth" (I loosely translated it from Tamil)

*- 1972 is not the absolute year. I assume those people would be 20 years or younger when "Roja" was released.
**- Kuthu is a kind of feel good song of the physically working class people (This is entirely my definition and I didn't mean to offend any one)

Recent Buzz about Nanotube toxicity

I am back to blogging after a long hiatus. The recent buzz about the toxicity of carbon nanotubes had my phone ringing all day with inquiries about its impact on my research and with it my future. The whole topic was started by a widely read daily USA news paper. The next day it was published in Indian newspaper (at least in Chennai). For those of you who is wondering why am i writing a blog on this topic, I am working on using Single-walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWNTs) especially the ultra-short form of them (US-tubes) for "Diapeutics" (Diagnosis+Therapeutics) applications. Before posting my views, i should say the paper was the first one to study the Mesothelial (Kind of cell membrane you could find in the Pleural (Chest) and Peritoneal (Abdomen) cavities )effects of carbon nanotubes and a neatly researched one as well. The authors on this paper have enough experience and expertise on this subject. "Mesothelioma" is a type of cancer caused by fiber like particles especially asbestos) . Since carbon nanotubes are known to be longer in length, they make a very good candidate for the studies. But the kind of carbon nanotubes they used were called multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs). These MWNTs have multiple layers of Graphene sheet as opposed to single sheet in the case of SWNTs. They are really long > 2 micron and broad with diameters ranging from 15 to 160 nm. Where as the ultra-short tubes we use for our studies are only 50 nm in length and 1.4 nm in diameter. And for all of my well wishers the study itself showed that if the CNTs are smaller they have a no harmful effects (Even though the two material are different). In addition, what ever studies we had so far showed that the SWNTs and US-tubes are non toxic and could be used for clinical applications. I personally feel that this observation would have no negative effect on the area of nanobiology or in the use of nanoparticles for imaging application (my field of research) as it will be very difficult to administer a micron length nanotube in to the body as obviously the 'frustrated phagocytosis' ("the inability of the immune system to completely engulf the foreign object" will take place and you could have very little success in cellular labeling as longer particles (>100 nm) are not the best of particles for higher loading efficiency. For those of you have not got the access to the original article, i am quoting the conclusion from the article published online (see the reference below) "As such, our study does not address whether CNTs would be able to reach the mesothelium in sufficient numbers to cause mesothelioma following inhalation exposure. Although the study suggests a potential link between inhalation exposure to long CNTs and mesothelioma, it remains unknown whether there will be sufficient exposure to such particles in the workplace or the environment to reach a threshold dose in the mesothelium. Intraperitoneal injection of long asbestos into the peritoneal cavity of rodents has been demonstrated to cause mesothelioma in the long term. However, our study did not address whether the mice exposed to long CNTs that developed inflammatory and granulomatous changes would go on to develop mesotheliomas. Neither did our study rule out the possibility that short CNTs may have some intrinsic pathogenicity by virtue of their particulate nature, which would not have been detected in the assays used here, which are specific for fibre effects. These are research questions that must be addressed with some urgency before the commercial use of long CNTs becomes widespread."

(Reference :
"Carbon nanotubes introduced into the abdominal cavity of mice show asbestos-like pathogenicity in a pilot study"Craig A. Poland, Rodger Duffin, Ian Kinloch, Andrew Maynard, William A. H. Wallace, Anthony Seaton, Vicki Stone, Simon Brown, William MacNee & Ken Donaldson. Published online: 20 May 2008; | doi:10.1038/nnano.2008.111; Nature Publishing group")