Carthik Sharma

PicBreeder is an ongoing effort at UCF (where I study/work) to create images using Genetic Algorithms. It is a community-based website where you can create an account and breed your pictures. I saw Mutating Pictures doing the rounds, and thought of how PicBreeder deserves some attention too. For one, you have more options for fun at PicBreeder, and you can turn a Butterfly into a Bat!

Filed by Carthik at 4:49 pm under Science, Research No Comments

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Craig Venter, the guy who paid to sequence the genome, is at it again. This time, a team of 20 scientists including a Nobel Laureate have created an artificial chromosome from first principles, using artificial chemicals. They intend to introduce this into the cell of a bacterium on whose genetic makeup the whole thing was based off. The cell will be taken over, and a new species will be created. Technically.

As a post script the article mentions that Venter’s lab is filing for a patent for the newly created life form. Patents never seemed like too good an idea to me. Patenting a life form seems downright ridiculous, and very dangerous.

Cool stuff, and I would cheer the Venter Lab on, if not for the patent, and the unbridled, bombastic script that issues from them, a sample of which follows:

“We are not afraid to take on things that are important just because they stimulate thinking,” he said. “We are dealing in big ideas. We are trying to create a new value system for life. When dealing at this scale, you can’t expect everybody to be happy.”

Filed by Carthik at 4:44 pm under Science No Comments

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Knuth, Up Close - it is so hard to find anything resembling a closer look into the lives of the great. Knuth is one of the greats still alive. I enjoyed the article immensely.

Filed by Carthik at 2:55 pm under Science, Research 1 Comment

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My new roommate, who shares my first name, subscribes to the Wired magazine. Nice magazine, really. I never thought I’d use visually stunning to describe a magazine, but it is that, and much more. There were very few articles that I skipped, and every one of the articles I read was interesting and thought provoking.

As an example, there was this article titled, “What kind of genius are you?“. So it appears that there are two kinds, the Conceptualists, and the Experimentalists. The early- and late-bloomers. The author, an economist, has made it his life’s work to study the phenomenon across diverse fields, like painting, literature, film-making and music. The results are clear — there are the Picassos and Mozarts, who do their best work early in their lives, and then there are the Cézannes and Beethovens, who take time to hone their technique, and bring out the best in themselves.

Long after they are dead, these things seem to matter very little, but I can see how the late bloomers must have been frustrated through much of their early lives, watching other, less-talented individuals surpass them in acclaim, and the later-life depression of the early-peakers — never able to rise again to their early productivity later in their lives.

Filed by Carthik at 10:20 pm under Science 1 Comment

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When I was a little boy, I used to get frequent stomach aches. Almost everytime, my grand mother used to heat a dosa kallu (a flat, heavy non-non-stick frying pan). Then she’d roll up a long piece of cotton cloth, make a puff out of it and heat it on the kallu and transfer the heat to my tummy - it was a very good feeling. The pain would gradually subside, and after 15-20 minutes, get reduced to a minor irritation.

Turns out, scientists at the University College at London just verified the fact that heat helps combat stomach pain. They didn’t need to have done the research to have known that, really - all they had to do was be a little boy, and go to my grandmother complaining of a stomach ache.

And to think that I used to think that it was the magic in her hands that took the pain away…

Filed by Carthik at 12:44 pm under Yours Truly, Science 2 Comments

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This is so deserving of WorldChanging.com attention.

Alka Zadgaonkar wrings plastic waste for profit.

A Ph.D. in organic chemistry in Nagpur, India has put into practice a plant that converts all sorts of waste plastic into fuel oil, petroleum gas and solid petroleum coke. It can work with all kinds of plastic waste, and doesn’t need the waste to be cleaned first. A fractional residue containing metals is the only possibly harmful by-product.

Alka and her husband Umesh, are buying in 5 tonnes of plastic waste everyday in Nagpur at prices attractive to rag pickers. They are wringing fuel oil out of that unsightly pile and selling it to industries in the Butibori Industrial Estate, on Wardha Road out of Nagpur. Production from their plant, Unique Plastic Waste Management & Research Co Pvt Ltd is sold out for the next year.

Reading the article gives some insight into the method used, as well as the difficulties they had to face in starting this up — their offer to let the government make use of the technology got stalled, and they finally struck it out on their own with a bank loan.

Their son, Akshay, is a geek, and the “youngest” MSDN developer in the world, at 12!
That encouragement led Akshay to become at 12, the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Software Developer [MCSD]. The Zadgaonkar family was sent tickets to Seattle for a private meeting with Bill Gates. [Akshay, yet to finish college is interning with Microsoft at Hyderabad.]

My first thoughts on reading about this on some other site was that this too will be a hoax — snake oil — so to speak, but I think this one passes the ultimate test of legitimacy - a google search (just kidding).

Man, if these guys were in the United States, she would have been a millionaire, and VCs would be lining up on their porch. Not in India, though:

But at the Zadgaonkar household, values have hardly changed. Success sits lightly on this family of knowledge seekers: Alka refuses to give up her calling as a teacher.

Somebody take up on this, and start disposing of plastics in a useful way, please.
(If you eat at Subway, you can help, by saying you don’t need the plastic bag for the sandwich )

Filed by Carthik at 1:18 pm under India, Science 18 Comments

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I read up on Benford’s Law recently, which explains one of the many things that I have always wondered about. You see, my apartment number is 15029, and a lot of the apartments in my complex have a number starting with a 1, and so it is with a friend’s apartment complex I had been to the day before.

Also known as the first-digit law, it says that a number in things such as the front page of the Times, or on tax return forms have a 30-odd percent probability of starting with the numeral 1. In other words, if you look at real-life source of numerical data, the probability for different numerals being the first in the numbers is not the same.

This article also opens with a compelling classroom exercise in probability. The professor asks the students to toss a coin 200 times and write down the sequence of heads and tails observed. He often identifies fakers, who just write down a seemingly random sequence (in stead of actually tossing the coin 200 times), with surprising accuracy. The key is the fact that in 200 coin-tosses, the chances of 6 consecutive heads or tails appearing is surprisingly high, but not many fakers would think this would be so, and would avoid writing sequences with 6 consecutive heads or tails!

Interesting stuff - good examples of “laws” or truths of daily life that are just sitting out there, waiting to be written down as a “law”. Hope I stumble across some, sometime. Carthik’s Law - that would be the day, hell yeah!

Filed by Carthik at 8:50 pm under Science 2 Comments

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The rocket will be inspired by SpaceShipOne - something created in part with the money from Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. The launch pad will be in the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, 25 miles south of the town “Truth or Consequence”. The ships of Virgin Galactic, which has for it’s logo the eye of Richard Branson, with an eclipse for the iris, will have a seat for you, if you can spare $200,000.

Doesn’t it sound like something out of a work of fiction? It is all true.

Filed by Carthik at 12:42 am under Science 2 Comments

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It is a protein, belonging to the “hedgehog” family.

Who would’ve thought.

Filed by Carthik at 9:34 am under Science 2 Comments

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A friend tells me that an asteroid has been named after Douglas Adams. What’s funny is that the temporary name, or “working” name for that Asteroid was “2001 DA42″, and so it really seems like it was there to be named after Douglas Adams all along. 2001 was the year we lost him, and 42 is the now famous answer to life, the universe and everything.

Filed by Carthik at 12:52 am under Science 2 Comments

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Sasi asked me what non-fiction books I would read, given the chance, in the near future. So I put this list together, listing a few personal favourites. Some I have read, but wouldn’t mind reading, whereas some I haven’t. A couple of these are books I have half-read.
Ah Sasi, easy does it:

1. Bill Bryson : A Short History of Nearly Everything : Pretty simple, and basic, but interesting reading.
2. James Burke: Connections : Wonderful connections between some amazing things.
3. Romila Thapar: A History of India Vol.1
4. Romila Thapar: A History of India Vol.2 : Just so we know where we are from, if just cursorily.
5. D. Hofstadter: Godel, Escher, Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid : I can never seem to finish this. Mentally taxing, but and interesting, involving read.
6. Hau: The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers : Saw this at a bookstore once, spent 10 minutes with it. Returned the next day, and didn’t find it there. Have wanted it ever since.
7. Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Non-Fictions : not quite non-fiction but very challenging. Borges essay and short stories are complicated works of art.
8. Richard P. Feynman: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character : Read it a while ago, want to read it again.
9. Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene : want to see what was in it that made Douglas Adams an Atheist.
10. Martin Gardner: One of
    • The Colossal Book of Mathematics: Classic Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problems : A must-read, or so I’ve heard.
    • A Gardner’s Workout: Training the Mind and Entertaining the Spirit : Seems interesting enough to me.
    • The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener : Try it out for size.

Filed by Carthik at 3:31 pm under Yours Truly, Science 5 Comments

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A friend on a mailing list points me to a BBC article speculating on the discovery of a new species of giant ape.

Much of the article makes for interesting reading. Do things like …

Primatologist Shelly Williams is thought to be the only scientist to have seen the apes.

During her visit to DR Congo two years ago, she says she captured them on video and located their nests.

She describes her encounter with them: “Four suddenly came rushing out of the bush towards me,” she told New Scientist.

“If this had been a bluff charge, they would have been screaming to intimidate us. These guys were quiet. And they were huge. They were coming in for the kill. I was directly in front of them, and as soon as they saw my face, they stopped and disappeared.”

and

The animals, with characteristics of both gorillas and chimpanzees, have been sighted in the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to local villagers, the apes are ferocious, and even capable of killing lions.

really happen?

It reads like a fictional article from a movie, say, like Jurassic Park, or Lara Croft, or something.

The first thing I thought when I read …

I was directly in front of them, and as soon as they saw my face, they stopped and disappeared.

was, “Wow!, that must be some face, then.”

I know, I’m stupid and evil and insensitive, and perhaps a jerk too, but I have to admit, I had to laugh as soon as I read about the face that made the evil monkeys turn and flee.

Filed by Carthik at 6:11 pm under Science 8 Comments

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WorldChanging.com brings tidings of One World Health, a non-profit pharmaceutical company in the United States, with the goal of getting drugs that are not “profitable” for pharmaceutical companies.

When I was with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) I learned about “orphan” diseases, defined as diseases that fewer than 200,000 people in the US suffer from. I thought it strange that outside the US, some of these diseases are enormous. For instance, there are about 1000 cases of malaria in the US, and 500 or 600 million cases worldwide. You need to take your American eyeglasses off and consider the whole world.

– Says Victoria Hale in an Interview.

So what the company does is “rescue” such drugs that can have enormous use in the Third World and develop, test, and trial these to the point of being able to make it available to fight diseases and help millions.

I cannot begin to imagine the sacrifice she would have made to start this project. She describes her visit to India, and says she was pushed to tears at the sight of suffering in the villages. Often I think about the inquities that are so evident in the world, and in India, and I have to pause for a moment to be thankful for being able to acheive whatever little I have, and to have some this far. I hope I will be able to do something useful with my life too.

Filed by Carthik at 10:50 pm under Science 2 Comments

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