Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.27

Series 1

III - 9: Whatsoever Happens Around

Mind is a tangled web.

Use it to catch the world.

Try to comprehend the infinite complexity of it all…

…elegantly embedded in the fabric of space and time.

Open your eyes in amazement.

Be Aware.

See.

Evolution:

Cyanobacteria into Plastids

Photosynthesis is a neat trick: take light, carbon dioxide and water, and make sugar as well as oxygen as waste. This fundamental engine of life first arose in cyanobacteria, and scientists speculate that the progenitor to plant cells captured and incorporated these organisms. Millions of years of coevolution turned the once independent cyanobacteria into plastids—specialized cellular structures that are responsible for photosynthesis and have their own, highly edited genomes. Proof for this hypothesis has been lacking. But scientists studying a rare and novel amoeba—Paulinella chromatophora—have proven that it only recently captured its plastid and that this plastid shares much in common with its cyanobacterial ancestors. P. chromatophora was chosen for the study because it is the only known organism that does not share the same plastid as all extant algae, plants and other photosynthetic organisms. Its plastid retains a distinct cell wall but divides at the same time as the host and cannot be grown independently. Biologists generated a DNA library for the overall organism, isolating the genetic information of this unique plastid. The research revealed that the plastid shared many of the same genes as its free-roaming relatives: Synechococcus-type cyanobacteria. In fact, it still contained thousands of genes—such as photosynthesis-related psbO and nitrogen fixing nifB—that have either been incorporated into the nuclei of regular plant cells or lost entirely. All this points to a relatively recent symbiosis between P. chromatophora and its photosynthetic plastid. The amoeba’s close relative—P. ovalis—still feeds on cyanobacteria but has yet to incorporate them.

Think.

Biology: Tree Ring Records

Learn.

To reconstruct the climate and weather events of the past, before written records, researchers must plumb every indirect source of evidence they can find. In the case of hurricanes, sources such as windblown sand layers lying amid pond muck offer spotty resolution at best. Trying to build a better record, a team of researchers scraped flecks of wood from the rings of longleaf pines, long-lived softwood trees common along the U.S. coasts of the Gulf of Mexico and the south Atlantic. During big storms, water vapor containing the heavy isotope oxygen 18 condenses and falls first, rendering local precipitation deficient in that isotope for up to several weeks. Trees incorporate the depleted oxygen into their cellulose, and the longleaf pine in particular relies heavily on precipitated water, so isotope variations should show up strongly between rings. Counting rings would then reveal whether a given year had any hurricanes, although it could not pick out individual storms or their intensities. The team reconstructed the last 220 years of hurricane activity in the area around southern Georgia, representing storms that struck anywhere from the adjacent gulf to South Carolina. Consulting older trees could expand the record to 500 or 600 years. A reliable proxy record for hurricanes would be very useful as a way of evaluating models of storm activity.

Imagine.

Understand.

Genetics:

P16Ink4a

One hallmark of aging is the inability to heal as fast or maintain tissues and organs as well as in youth. These processes rely on stem cells, the immortal precursors of all the body's tissues, so failures in repair and regeneration could result from the failure of stem cells to renew themselves. The details of stem cell aging have remained mysterious, though. Recently several groups had noticed that a protein called p16Ink4a accumulates in stem cells over time, suggesting a role in their longevity. To test for its function, they deleted its gene from mice. Strangely, these mice tended to die from assorted cancers by the relatively young age of one. (Old age in mice is three years.) When researchers allowed the surviving mice to grow old, however, they noted something even more remarkable: the rodents had double the usual rate of new brain cell growth in their forebrains and similarly milder than normal declines in the proliferation of blood cells and pancreatic islet cells, which produce insulin. Overexpressing Ink4a in young mice also cut down the number of islet cells, effectively aging the mice prematurely. This is the first mechanistic insight into why stem cells age. The data suggest that Ink4a plays a widespread role. By turning off Ink4a, researchers have extended the lives of three different kinds of stem cells in mice, staving off some of the ravages of old age. In return, however, one ravage was greatly boosted—the animal's rate of cancer—suggesting that stem cells shut themselves down as they age to ward off the disease.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Alternative Energy: Fuel from Carbon dioxide

Chemist Gabriele Centi of the University of Messina in Italy uses solar energy gathered by a titanium dioxide film to ionize CO₂ in its liquid form. Mixing this ionized liquid carbon dioxide with water, chemists can create longer carbon chains, much like photosynthesis in plants. In current tests the process can create some natural gas and methanol, but the number and type of carbon chains cannot be controlled. Centi's team decided to try to use carbon dioxide in its natural form: gas. In a device much like a fuel cell, known as a photoelectrocatalytic reactor, the researchers tested several potential catalysts, ranging from copper to carbon nanotubes. In each case, the process turned CO₂ into more complex carbon molecules. Most intriguingly, depending on the catalyst involved, the researchers could create hydrocarbons with as many as nine carbon atoms—the kinds of useful fuels produced by industry using the so-called Fischer-Tropsch reaction—and with some control over the amount made. Further, by placing iron molecules within the carbon nanotubes, the process could be made even more efficient, though not as much as using expensive platinum or palladium.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Astronomy:

Supernova in Action

A star in a galaxy about 440 million light-years away released in a few seconds more energy than the sun will over the course of its entire lifetime, according to observations made on February 18, 2006. A high-energy jet of x-rays shot out from the doomed star's core and was captured by the Burst Alert Telescope on NASA's Swift satellite. The satellite relayed the information to astronomers on the ground, and within days a wide array of telescopes turned to the exploding object. Meanwhile the other telescopes on Swift continued to observe the unusually long-lived burst; it lasted more than 30 minutes compared with other examples that flared up for only milliseconds. As the x-rays faded away, the star itself exploded in a spectacular supernova—the first such supernova to be observed from start to finish. Beyond the novelty of the event, astronomers noted some unusual characteristics. A team used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to determine that the initial beacon was an x-ray flash rather than a more typical kind of gamma-ray burst. Another team used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to link the burst and the subsequent supernova as well as to determine that this supernova was half as bright as those typically preceded by such a burst, despite its emanating from a star 20 times as massive as the sun. Such details led some scientists to speculate that the series of events might be driven by the birth of a magnetized neutron star, or magnetar.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Medical Research:

Preventing Bacterial Conversations

Penetrate.

Bad things happen when bacteria start talking, most of the time. Via a process known as quorum sensing, the microbes send out chemical signals that build up until they are notified that there are enough of them present to initiate an infection. They then begin acting as a team, exuding a biofilm over the colony that helps protect the members from antibiotics and ramps up their rate of growth. Chemists have begun to design compounds that can interfere with this conversation and, thanks to new techniques that allow more rapid compound detection, have isolated species-specific ones. Helen Blackwell of the University of Wisconsin and her team have sped up the process of discovering such conversation stoppers by using microwaves to heat up—and therefore speed up—the chemical reactions that produce synthetic analogs of the bacteria's key signaling molecules. Creating the molecules more quickly also allows the researchers to test several possible analogs for effectiveness rather than just individual examples. Using this accelerated method, Blackwell and her team have identified several such compounds that prevented detection of comrades among specific bacteria, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which often plagues patients with health problems such as compromised immune systems. More important, it does not interfere with other bacteria's lines of communication, such as beneficial microbes in the human gut

Wonder…

But Beware!

Don't get caught in the mighty maze of your own mind.

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

This is called sansara — the world. Avoiding yourself is what sansara is all about — escaping from yourself, keeping your innermost core at the back.

When you find you are not, you are no more concerned with success or failure; there is nobody to succeed, nobody to fail. Equanimity arises, all is equal.

Life goes left, okay. Life goes right, okay. It doesn't matter; nothing matters any more. This is what we call joy. Joy is not synonymous with happiness, joy is far transcendental.

Joy is a state of being which remains unperturbed, undisturbed, whatsoever happens around. The cyclone goes on thundering, but at the innermost core everything is silent.

As you start moving inwards, more silence, more tranquility, more equanimity, more equilibrium, more centeredness, more groundedness — on their own accord they start happening.

The dance continues, but now there is no longer any dancer. And when the dancer is not, the dance has a grace.

The presence of the dancer is always a disturbance in the dance. The more you are self-conscious, the less your life will have joy

When you are total — so total that the action is all, and there is no actor behind it — then grace, then a new beauty, a new benediction, enters into your life.

How miraculous! to go on continuing in this beautiful world without a self.

10.

Empty-handed and vulnerable we come into the world, empty-handed and vulnerable we are going to leave it. Empty-handed and vulnerable must we be in it too.

11.

This 'my' and 'mine' arise out of the idea of 'I'. And the 'I' exists not — it is a presumption, you have simply assumed. The whole game is shadowy, very false; the basic thing exists not.

12.

When something is meaningless, futile, it drops. Not that you drop it, no —

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

When you go into a desire, great excitement comes into your being, great thrill, adventure. You feel a great kick. Something is going to happen, you are on the verge of it. You will be having this big house, this big garden, this beautiful woman, this yacht, this car — you are going to have this, and there is great excitement. And then you have the car, and you have the yacht, and you have the house, and you have the woman... then suddenly all becomes meaningless again. What happens? Your heart has dematerialized it. The car is standing in the porch, and suddenly there is no excitement any more. The excitement was only in getting it, because in getting it you became absorbed. You became absorbed, you forgot your nothingness. You became absorbed so much that your mind became overpowered by the desire. You became so drunk with the desire that you forgot your inner nothingness. Now, the desire fulfilled, the car in the porch, the woman in your bed, the money in your bank-balance — again, excitement disappears. Again the emptiness is there, yawning within you, ready to eat you up.

- Osho