Blog@GraceJunction

The pictures of half burnt bodies, torched houses, damaged churches in Orissa, is bound to send horrifying chills in anyone irrespective of what religion we follow. These acts makes one question, are we living in the most modern of centuries? Or are we in some savage land, where there are no morals, no humanity, no law and order. Eventually all our beliefs result in acts, we ultimately are transformed to the likeness of what we believe as truth, be it Jihad, Religious terrorism or any kind of evil. Clearly evident from the convictions and faith of the religious groups that participated in the recent riots, one can easily trace the roots of these actions/riots to the beliefs and faith of the people in the act – beliefs which state that there exists no absolutes, every one can be true in their own terms, ultimately there is nothing called reality and its all an illusion. (more…)

Ten thousand years ago the agricultural revolution launched a slow wave of change. The industrial revolution, starting roughly 350 years ago, triggered a second – faster – wave of change. In the mid-1950s the United States started on the path to a completely new kind of economy – one based on knowledge rather than muscle power. This is part of a gigantic wave of technological, social and cultural change. What we’re living through now is history’s third great wave of change – one that is arriving at hyper-speed and is global in extent.

This new way of life – it’s really a new civilization or, for that matter, a “super-civilization” – is spreading out from the United States and has cells in many other parts of the world, from Japan and Singapore and China to India and Brazil.

The first phase of this current upheaval is the digital revolution and its social and cultural effects. The next phase is the fusion of the digital revolution with the genetic and biological revolution. (more…)

(Re-post from March 26th, 2008)

The papers today reveal a quest of science that started several decades ago. Physicists from all over the world are getting together in Europe and are racing to prove the existence of a particle that’s surmised to be at the heart of the matter!

Dubbed the “God particle“, the Higgs Boson, which “it” is otherwise called, is a controversial particle believed to bestow mass on all other particles. Scientists are hoping to discover traces of its presence in Fermilab’s Tevatron, a 17-mile-long circumference particle accelerator (also called the Hadron’s Collider) that smashes opposing beams of protons and antiprotons around a circular track, sifting through the debris with two immense detectors. This experiment is supposedly expected to bring back Europe as the leaders in Physics and not the USA! (more…)

While the third world countries are struggling with issues such as food shortage, unemployment, illiteracy, population control, low per capita income, inflation, communal and casteist struggles, poverty, natural calamities, insufficient resources, utilities and infrastructure, health and hygiene etc, the United States and many countries in Europe are fighting and arguing about something that most people in the world are not even able to think about -‘Gay Parenting’!

It’s such a big debate that the proponents of the Gay movement say, “The last decade has seen a sharp rise among gay people planning and forming families through adoption, foster care, donor insemination, and other reproductive technologies. The current period can therefore also be called a lesbian and gay ‘baby boom.’” (more…)

Konrad Steffen, climatologist who settled in Greenland’s icesheet in 1990, was only hoping to gather more insights into the processes that drive-and are effected by-changes on ice bodies of Greenland, that hold roughly 8% of world’s freshwater supply!

Today his Swiss Camp serves as eyes and ears for climate scientists worldwide. ‘Koni’ as he is called by his friends, personally customised and deployed much of the instruments that tell the scientific world, hour by hour and year by year about these ice sheets.

Greenland’s icesheets are very crucial, and kind of a barometer for the rest of the world because of its sensitivity to climatic changes and because of the tremendous influence it has on the ecological cycles in the Northern Hemisphere. (more…)

The human appendix (vermiform appendix), located at the junction of the small and the large intestine in all humans, is considered a vestigial (useful once upon a time but now degenerate and ill formed) organ. It is taught about in schools as a reminder of what used to be an useful organ some time in history in some remote ancestors of the human race.

Some say that the appendix used to be useful in the digestion of leaves and others say it used to be useful in the digestion of raw red meat and when our remote ancestors stopped consuming both these items, the appendix shrunk and has assumed in current shape and size! However both these views are questionable because very few mammals have an appendix at all and in those that do, it bears little ressemblance to the human appendix!

Everyone lives happily with it until it becomes painfully inflamed, when the only treatment is to remove it surgically. Then everyone lives happily without it! So why is it there in the first place? (more…)

Yesterday, I was introduced to this essential protein that I have had in me all my life and knew nothing about! In fact, its there in you, and in everyone who ever lived!

My friend tells me, if we were to make a man with brick and mortar, Laminin, the protein would be the mortar. It is the protein that holds everything in our body together. Really? There is enough and more about Laminin on the internet.

Laminin is a protein found in the “extracellular matrix”, the sheets of protein that form the substrate of all internal organs also called the “basement membrane”. It has four arms that can bind to four other molecules. The three shorter arms are particularly good at binding to other laminin molecules, which is what makes it so great at forming sheets. The long arm is capable of binding to cells, which helps anchor the actual organs to the membrane. (more…)