Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.29

Series 1

IV - 2: ‘God’ Means Infinite Potential

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.

Technology: Internet Congestion

Several technical challenges must be overcome if the Internet is to continue growing at the current phenomenal rate. The primary challenge is to create enough capacity to accommodate increases in traffic. Internet traffic is increasing as more people become Internet users and existing users send greater amounts of data. If the volume of traffic increases faster than the capacity of the network increases, congestion will occur, similar to the congestion that occurs when too many cars attempt to use a highway. To avoid congestion, researchers have developed technologies, such as Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM), that transfer more bits per second across an optical fiber. The speed of routers and other packet-handling equipment must also increase to accommodate growth. In the short term, researchers are developing faster electronic processors; in the long term, new technologies will be required.

Think.

Astronomy:

Brown Dwarf – White Dwarf System

Learn.

The lives of stars like the sun follow a predictable course: billions of years spent pumping out energy as hydrogen fuses into helium in a superhot core followed by an expansive phase when the fuel runs out. Such older sunlike stars become red giants, swelling to consume the hydrogen in the outer reaches of their atmospheres until that too is consumed and the swollen star's outer layer is expelled as a nebula. This leaves behind a small, so-called white dwarf consisting of the residual helium core. Now scientists have discovered an unusual binary star system consisting of a brown dwarf (a pseudostar 55 times the size of Jupiter but still too small to reliably fuse hydrogen) and a white dwarf. Its existence proves that the brown dwarf came out almost unaltered from an episode in which it was swallowed by a red giant. The brown dwarf may have even gained mass from the common envelope that existed during the system's (known as WD 0137-349) red giant phase. But it also lost some distance from its stellar neighbor. During its engulfment, the brown dwarf spiraled ever closer to the helium core until now the two orbit each other every 116 minutes; the brown dwarf travels at speeds of 800,000 kilometers per hour (nearly 500,000 miles per hour). Despite its name, the brown dwarf only survived thanks to its size. Had it been less than 20 Jupiter masses, it would have evaporated during the red giant phase.

Imagine.

Understand.

Biology:

Stress Response in Plants

Stuck in one place, plants must endure a host of pests and problems. Too much light, too little light, bacterial invaders, insect infestation—the list seems overwhelming. Yet plants persevere, adapting to changing conditions both in their physiology and their genomes. Now scientists have shown that this ability to increase the frequency of genetic mutation in response to stress is passed through as many as four subsequent generations. A team subjected several thale cress plants—Arabidopsis thaliana—to harsh levels of ultraviolet light or evidence of bacterial pathogens. The plants survived the ordeal by upping the frequency of homologous recombination (genetic swapping) during cell division as expected. More importantly, the plants passed this elevated mutation rate onto their offspring at a rate two to four times higher than in the progeny of unstressed parents—even when these offspring were not challenged with UV or pathogens. This trait persisted when only one of the parent plants was stressed and regardless of its gender. Yet, the increased frequency does not derive from a random change in the genetic code of the plants, because the entire population of stressed plants responded in similar ways.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Genetics: Flood-resistant Rice

Rice, like most plants, needs water. In fact, it needs more water than most: the shoots of this marsh plant are typically partially submerged. But rice, like most crops, still does not stand up to total submersion. Despite being the staple of flood-prone regions, most strains of rice die if submerged for more than four days and even short-term inundation can stunt growth and impact harvests. Now researchers have identified a gene that confers the ability to survive extended submersion in some rice cultivars and successfully introduced it into those that lack this critical protection. A team of scientists first identified a stretch of DNA—dubbed Submersion 1—linked to immersion survival. Narrowing their focus to one gene in this stretch that proved highly variable in various rice strains—Sub1A-1—the researchers found that it conferred the ability to withstand high waters for up to two weeks and then renew growth once the waters subsided. Current annual rice crop losses exceed $1 billion, particularly because the highest yielding varieties do not withstand flooding at all. But by introducing the gene into strains that previously lacked it, the researchers improved tolerance for submersion without diminishing yield levels and grain quality.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Medical Research:

Helping Smokers Quit

Smoking tobacco killed 100 million people over the course of the 20th century. It is a leading cause of cancer, heart disease and other ailments. And it is on pace to kill one billion more this century if current trends continue. Yet, quitting smoking is hard to do for a variety of physiological and psychological reasons. New research indicates, however, that a novel drug—based on an older plant cure—aids heavy smokers in their quest to quit. A team put together two randomized, double-blind studies of a new drug—varenicline tartrate—with funding from Pfizer. The compound works by blocking nicotine from receptors by binding to them itself and triggering lesser physiological effects, which may help smokers resist the temptation to light up. This is exactly what the first study of 626 smokers revealed: those given the highest dose of varenicline quit at nearly three times the rate of those given only a placebo—48 percent and 17 percent respectively. The drug also outperformed an antidepressant, bupropion hydrochloride, sometimes used as a quitting aid. And one year after treatment, 14 percent of those smokers using varenicline remained free of cigarettes, compared to just 6 percent of the bupropion-treated and less than 5 percent of those given a placebo. Varenicline did show some side effects, including nausea, but the second study of 647 heavy smokers revealed that spacing out the dose of the drug over the course of the day could limit that impact while maintaining high quitting rates.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Electronics: Memristors

Penetrate.

After going unchallenged for decades, the transistor’s supremacy could come to an end. Researchers have demonstrated a new type of electronic component that could replace transistors as the building blocks of computer chips, and lead to faster, more powerful and less energy-thirsty computers. Stanley Williams and his collaborators at HP Labs in Palo Alto, Calif., have created a surprisingly simple new device called a memristor. It is an electronic component that, with a change in electrical resistance, can store data. A memristor is a piece of an electric circuit with baggage: Its history determines its electrical resistance. Depending on the voltage that was recently applied to it, a memristor will switch from acting as an insulator (“off”) to acting as a conductor (“on”) and back. This on-off capability offers engineers a way to build circuits that manipulate and store information. The most immediate advantage of memristors is that they could be packed into chips up to 100 times more densely than transistors. For decades, progress in electronics has relied on shrinking the features of computer chips, roughly doubling the number of transistors per chip every two years—a trend that has become known as Moore’s law, after Intel cofounder Gordon Moore. But engineers’ ability to shrink transistor-based electronics is rapidly approaching physical limits, and Moore’s law is expected to hit a hard wall in about 10 years. The memristor offers an alternate way to continue progress.

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

To be incomplete is beautiful. In fact, to be incomplete is a basic requirement of being alive. The day you are perfect, you are dead.

Imperfection should not be condemned, but taken as an openness. Imperfection means open — still growing, still moving, still living.

Miserable people are and happy people are not because they don't allow their misery. When they don't allow their misery they don't allow their happiness either.

So live whatsoever is there, live it in totality. When you live in totality, any ideal you don't have. When you start living perfectly, an ideal you have.

Always false perfection is — you are imitating. Because perfection has to have an ideal, and all ideals create imitators. Totality is yours, borrowed perfection is.

Existence is never exhausted; potentiality is infinite.

'God' means infinite potential — you can go on growing, and you can go on growing, and there is no end to it. Wherever you are, you can still go on growing.

Whatsoever you become, you will again find new doors opening, new peaks challenging, new adventures waiting for you, new dimensions calling you forth, invoking, provoking.

When the mind is dropped, you are no more separate from the universal, you are one with the universal. In that cosmic expansion, whatsoever is known is truth.

10.

The real man of self-knowledge is both together — simultaneously both. He is action plus inaction.

11.

Sitting, in God he is. Walking, also in God he is. Not doing anything, in God he is. Doing a thousand and one things, in God he is.

12.

Be a lotus flower — remain in the water but don't be touched by it. Then beauty there is and grace there is, and life enriches you.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

The purpose of the scientist is to sail the oceans of the unknown and REDISCOVER the islands of truth. It is neither discovery nor invention. Discovery means 'for the first time'. That is stupid. Eternity has been in the past — all the truths that we know again and again, are only rediscovered. They have been discovered many times; then we get fed-up, then we start forgetting a truth. It becomes too much, or boring — then we forget the truth. Then, after a few centuries, again we rediscover it. Truth is not something that is discovered for the first time; it is rediscovered again and again. Truth is eternal. We can move away from it — it is very natural for the human mind, it gets bored very soon. But once we have forgotten, the old again looks like new.

- Osho