Photo credit - Martin Beek {https://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfordshire_church_photos/} Cooperation is a trait in which the individual unit invest in behaviors that are costly to themselves but benefit the organization. Cooperation is an ubiquitous phenomenon in nature. Individual units work together and build larger structures that improve the collective wellbeing and survival. Anthill and beehive are colonies built… Continue reading Storyteller’s Ant-hill
Author: sureshmanickavel
Time
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/arun-d/ The most fascinating thing about nature is not how the human body is constructed by laws of physics. But it is how the physical reality is structured by biology of human mind. Time is the most intriguing concept constructed by human mind. It is the framework over which we experience change and… Continue reading Time
Ramasamy’s Calculus
Foundations of mathematics are in the substance of brain Photo credit: Hernan Pinera; www.flickr.com/photos/hernanpc During my high school days as I was learning to do trigonometry, a question always bothered me. What prompted us to ‘create’ trigonometry? For that matter, even calculus and statistics, how did we end up creating these mathematical techniques? I have a… Continue reading Ramasamy’s Calculus
Life and Heat of Wood Frog
Photo credit - https://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelpaul/ Wood frog dies in winter and returns back to life in spring Wood frogs are seen in the forests of Alaska and north eastern United States. It is the only species of frog that could survive the cold regions beyond Arctic circle. It does a fascinating trick to survive in sub… Continue reading Life and Heat of Wood Frog
What Steers My Mind?
Photo credit: Hernán Piñera; https://www.flickr.com/photos/hernanpc/ What steers my mind to make me believe that there is a right and a wrong? How do I develop a liking for one thing and an aversion to the other? Sometimes, I even believe that there is an universal ‘right’ path for me, for my whole family, or for… Continue reading What Steers My Mind?
Wisdom and Confusion
Photo credit - Richard Ricciardi - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ricricciardi/23513339926/ Primary concepts and constructed reality What is a person, but a collection of choices. Where do those choices come from? Do I have a choice? Were any of these choices ever truly mine to begin with?Westworld A living organism by using its sense organs captures a portion of… Continue reading Wisdom and Confusion
A 100 Watt Dream
Life is interposed between two energy levels of an electron Albert Gyorgyi Photo by Mike - https://www.flickr.com/photos/mjfrig/9560558346/ These words of Albert Gyorgyi are so profound that it can provoke intense curiosity. Flow of energy defines life and it was present in living organisms even before the rise of genetic molecules. It is the foundation upon… Continue reading A 100 Watt Dream
Crossing Swords with Senescence
Aging is a gradual phenotypic change due to progressive drift in the epigenetic knowledge. It is an outward expression of an ongoing mortal combat between the laws of physics and biological organizations. Physical laws are unyielding in nature and gets an unswerving universal obedience. Knowledge is biology's strength. During the growth phase of life, the tiny molecular machines extract order from molecular storm(heat) and the organism grows in size. During the aging phase, the chaos eventually consumes the order.
You, Me and Stories
What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories. There's nothing more powerful than a good story. Season 8, Game of Thrones. Mother Nature! What exactly is this ‘Nature’? She is associated with all favorable adjectives - beautiful, peaceful, spectacular, heavenly and motherly. Collectively we have decided to define nature as everything that is not a product… Continue reading You, Me and Stories
Biothermodynamics
Life is a little electric current Mae-Wan Ho Few years ago I did a presentation about the concept of brain death. At the end of the session a member in the audience asked me "what is the time of death?" She wanted to know the time that should be documented as the time of death… Continue reading Biothermodynamics