The Parable of the Black Belt

Source: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html
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Picture a martial artist kneeling before the master sensei in a ceremony to receive a hard-earned black belt. After years of relentless training, the student has finally reached a pinnacle of achievement in the discipline.

"Before granting the belt, you must pass one more test," says the sensei.

"I am ready," responds the student, expecting perhaps one final round of sparring.

"You must answer the essential question: What is the true meaning of the black belt?"

"The end of my journey," says the student. "A well-deserved reward for all my hard work."

The sensei waits for more. Clearly, he is not satisfied. Finally, the sensei speaks. "You are not yet ready for the black belt. Return in one year."

A year later, the student kneels again in front of the sensei.

"What is the true meaning of the black belt?" asks the sensei.

"A symbol of distinction and the highest achievement in our art," says the student.

The sensei says nothing for many minutes, waiting. Clearly, he is not satisfied. Finally, he speaks. "You are still not ready for the black belt. Return in one year."

A year later, the student kneels once again in front of the sensei. And again the sensei asks: "What is the true meaning of the black belt?"

"The black belt represents the beginning -- the start of a never-ending journey of discipline, work, and the pursuit of an ever-higher standard," says the student.

"Yes. You are now ready to receive the black belt and begin your work."

To me, there are two lessons in this story.

First, the Ph.D. is the beginning, not the culmination, of your career. Don't worry about making it your magnum opus. Get out sooner, rather than later.

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Sonic boom

If you are interested, first watch the Youtube video linked to by the title of this post. It's a very interesting video that explains in simple terms how and why a sonic boom is caused.

Here is my attempt to explain to you and myself and understand the principles behind supersonic flight: Actually I am trying to answer this week's question in The Hindu's SciTech section's Question Corner.

As you might know, sound is pressure changes in air (that's why sound needs a medium to travel). Every moving object changes the pressure of the air it's trying to occupy as it tries to move, and this makes sound, whether or not we can hear it.

As explained in the Wikipedia article here, it's accepted by the current scientific community that the sudden drop in pressure is what causes the visible condensation cloud that surrounds an aircraft travelling at transonic speeds (speeds slightly below and above 330m/s).

As the nose of the aircraft hits a point in the plane into which it's moving, pressure of the air suddenly rises, and as the aircraft moves through the plane, it falls steadily and goes below the normal value to reach a minimum, and when the tail of the aircraft leaves the plane, it suddenly rises back to normal again. This can be thought of as tracing the letter 'N', and hence the name of the wave, N-wave. This N-wave follows the aircraft wherever it goes.

Now, in this N-wave there is a point at which the air pressure goes below a certain point, causing a corresponding sudden drop in temperature. The temperature goes below the dew point, and hence causes the water vapour to condense into water droplets, forming a condensation cloud around the tail of the aircraft.

I hope that explains the formation of condensation cloud. I still don't understand how dew point works though, I hope I can make another post out of it.

Dr. Kalam's visit to CMU

Yes, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam visited CMU today, and due to a lucky coincidence (I was looking for something to eat), I had the opportunity to attend his talk and the interaction session that ensued. At the beginning of the talk, he asked the audience to pick a topic that they wanted him to talk about. Unfortunately, nobody suggested anything (and I neither) and he fell back to his default starter topic - his career and contribution to India's science and technology.

It was amazing to hear him say "I don't buy the brain drain." And I agree with it too. The world knows no borders - the countries are human made divisions on earth for their self-destruction. Even Sunita Williams, after having spent a record time in spaceflights and spacewalks, said the same thing - she couldn't see borders between countries.

He concluded his talk with the an answer to the question: "What's India's biggest problem right now?" - Confidence.

Naresh got an autograph from him at the end.

bolisms

Metabolism is the term used to refer to the set of all the reactions occurring in the living body.
Metabolism comes from the greek root metaballein "to change". I think it has nothing to do with the word meta, meaning beyond/para.

Metabolism can be split into catabolism and anabolism. Reactions can occur in two ways, remember? A + B gives AB in anabolism, where the reactions occur to build up tissues and cells. Catabolism is the other way round: It's the breaking up of large molecules into constituent parts, and then used in assimilation.

How's that now?

Fats, Carbs, Calories and the whole shebang

I was always confused when people discussed fats, carbs and their calorific value, and what makes you obese, etc with or in front of me. So, to avoid that confusion and shun the ignorance, I decided to do some research myself and this is what I found out about food and nutrition:

Calorific value of each: Each gram of fat has 9 Calories, each gram of carbohydrates, or carbs, has 4 Calories and each gram of protein has 4 Calories of ENERGY (along with the building blocks of the body), which is equal to that of carbs. Note that 1 Cal = 1 kcal of energy, which is the standard convention, but is rarely used. It's surprising to me to note that the body can survive without carbs - because, unlike vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids, etc, the carbs are not essential nutrients - the body can synthesize everything it needs from the essential nutrients mentioned above. For example, glucose, a carb, can be synthesized from the protein you eat. Then why should we eat food with carbohydrates in it all? Because carbs are the most important source of energy and the most abundant in the food we eat.

Fat is not what you think it is: It's unfortunate that it was named fat by someone I don't know, and this whole confusion always pops up when people discuss fat(s). READ CAREFULLY: Fat is ESSENTIAL for the body, because some important vitamins can be digested only in conjunction with fats (fat-soluble, they are called), and fats are required for maintaining healthy hair, skin, cell function, body temperature, basically MAKING the body, AND they also serve as energy stores for the body, and the last function is what scares people away from fats, and the primary purpose of fats is forgotten and we tend to think that fat makes us fat. Then what makes you look fat if you are eating too much? It's the excess energy you are eating in the form of Calories (all that comes from carbs, fat and protein in total), that you are not spending fully, that gets stored as body fat and that's what makes you look fat.

What makes you look fat is actually adipose tissue, also informally known as body fat, and is typically present deep beneath the skin in the form of adipocyte cells. The main function of body fat is to be used as a reserve energy source for the body, as mentioned above. Adipose tissue is built up when you are taking in more energy than you are actually spending, and this energy can come from protein, carbs and fats - in the ratio I mentioned in the first paragraph.

Lesson learnt: It doesn't matter if you are eating carbs or fats or protein or anything else, if you want to be in control of your weight, your flab and hence your health, eat only that many calories you are going to spend - and that's what my dad's been telling me all my life - "Exercise cheyyaraa naa kannaa!"

First post during my PhD life

I am taking three courses here and I also have to start some project work after discussing with my advisor today what projects are available in the first place. I am doing Biochemistry, Intermediate Statistics and Image registration in Bio-Imaging - the three courses. I didn't think I would do chemistry ever in my life again, but this biochemistry is different: it is clearing some of my unanswered doubts in chemistry and biology - exactly because of which questions that were left unanswered, I used to hate chemistry during my JEE days.

Statistics is the extension of what we did in PRP, but it's getting much more complex with multivariate analysis. The only problem (maybe not a problem, but a plus point in the long run) is that we have three assignments every week...one every week per course...and no copying - the TAs are competent enough to detect fraud, unlike back on our campus. I am very disappointed by the plummeting quality of JEE, GATE and other entrances to IITs by the year. They are the first step in maintaining the quality of education at IITs.

In addition to this, I will have to start research in day or two. As we come to the topic of cooking, it's completely different for me here. We are buying vegetables off the store called Giant Eagle and are cooking every dinner - Naresh and me. Naresh is helping me a lot with everything. It's good that he is a little miser than me: when I answer his question - "Why do you need to buy that thing?" it helps me answer myself and gain control of my own spending. There is also an Indian store called Kohli's where you can basically get all the spices for Indian cuisine and all edible items available in India that you can't typically buy in the US.

Life is not yet boring here - I am taking Ballroom dance classes this semester - (I think you know what ballroom dance is...), so I have something to look forward to when the week gets boring. And some weekends we go out to some place to visit in Pittsburgh - we visited the Ventakeswara Temple here - the largest in the US, on our first weekend. We went to a museum (Carnegie Science Center), but it was basically like a children's museum - all physics principles we studied at school demonstrated by working models. Then we went on top of a hill in the heart of the city (called Mt. Washington, and people live there, it's not just a hill) in the center of the city (main areas/centers of the city are called Downtown areas anywhere in the US, like Mount Road in Chennai, Koti in Hyderabad, etc), and it was very good to see the whole city from such a high point above the city. These are the three places we visited. I am planning to buy a camera sometime later after I get my first stipend at the end of this month and write a kind of online blog article explaining my experiences in my first month in the US for people who want to know abt my welfare - and they can read it...

Get more enthusiastic - mingle with more people and ask questions to everybody you meet - life will get more interesting. I am trying to change myself after I got out of the campus - talk to more people, try not to be feared by things that look insurmountable at first but are just pebbles later on, get active in whatever you do, utlilize all the resources here - by the way, all games and sports are free here - they give you all the equipment when u show your id card - we played baddy twice, frisbee once, some indoor games like pool, foosball, TT sometimes. I am trying hard to balance my curricular and extracurricular life, and have to get used to resisting temptation, I don't want to repeat the same mistakes I made on the campus at IITM - tempted by the comp and waste time on movies. It's good that there are no DC++s or somethings like that here. We can watch movies online but have to put fight and search for the movie we want. I haven't tried that yet, and I have no reason to try anytime soon.

I request you all to keep me updated with happenings in India and for that matter anywhere in the world- it could be anything - what's happening in AP, India, your family if you want to let me know, your office, political situation that's not reflected in the newspapers, rumours, gossips, philosophical articles - virtually anything you think would be of some or even no value to me. Email is the only means of visual and more effective communication. We can't trasmit all the information we want over just voice on the phone!

This is the first time I am writing such a long post after I got here.

PS: This post is copied in most part, from an email I sent to my friend, since I didn't want to write it in a new way and spend a lot of time on it.