Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.40

Series 1

V - 4: A Dream is a Dream

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.

Global Warming:

Service Sector Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The furls of gas that billow from smokestacks on power plants and other heavy industries are a visible source of the greenhouse gas emissions warming our world. But the economy is filled with invisible releases of carbon dioxide and other climate-change-inducing gases that lurk behind everyday products and services. New research shows that the service sector—such as banking, hospitals, computers and retail stores, among other businesses—is responsible for more than one third of industrial greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Industrial ecologist Sangwon Suh of the University of Minnesota compiled a database on 480 products and services that lists 1,344 environmental impacts, including the emission of the ubiquitous carbon dioxide along with 43 other greenhouse gases, including methane, nitrous oxide and 13 different hexofluorocarbons. He then measured the total direct emissions associated with the making of a product; for example, the amount of coal burned to generate a kilowatt of electricity and how much carbon dioxide was released in the process. But he also measured all the infrastructural greenhouse gas emissions that support the product's fabrication; for example, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted while mining the coal, treating it and transporting it to the power plant. What has to be taken into account is what is behind the service sector. For instance, a bank needs a building structure, which needs cement and steel, which directly or indirectly produce greenhouse gas emissions. This equation leads us to calculate the entire supply chain in the U.S. Suh's analysis finds that the service sector, which accounts for more than 60 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, pumps out 37.6 percent of overall greenhouse gas emissions in the country, or nearly 1.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. In fact, retailers rank second only to electric utilities in terms of total associated greenhouse gas emissions followed by restaurants and hospitals.

Think.

Brain: Gender Differences in Aging

Learn.

Men and women’s brains age differently. A team of Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, find that the activity of genes in men’s brains begins to change earlier than it does in women’s brains. The types of genes that change with age also differ between the sexes. The study also found that in both genders, each part of the brain examined had its own pattern of aging. The team collected brains from people who had died of various causes between ages 20 and 99. The researchers isolated messenger RNA, or mRNA, from the people’s brains. Messenger RNA is a courier molecule that carries instructions encoded in genes to the cellular machinery that will build proteins using those instructions. Genes that produce higher levels of mRNA are more active. The researchers examined gene activity in four parts of the brain: the hippocampus, the entorhinal cortex, the postcentral gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus. Brain scientists expect changes in gene activity as the brain ages, and previous studies have demonstrated some changes in other parts of the brain. In the current study, overall gene activity appeared similar in people aged 20 to 59. And people aged 60 to 99 showed similar patterns of overall gene activity. But the researchers detected variability in their data. They decided to see whether gender differences might explain the variability. It turns out that with age, men show changes in metabolic activity. Specifically, genes that control energy production in the brain are less active in men starting at about age 60, meaning that metabolic activity slows down. But after the initial drop in activity, men stabilize their gene activity and show no further decline after age 80. Women’s brains change too, but the changes begin later and keep marching on as the women get older. Women showed gene activity changes in genes that help establish connections between brain cells and in genes that control information exchange in the brain. Women also showed a drop in energy production, but the decrease was not as great as for men.

Imagine.

Understand.

Quantum Physics:

Losing Quantum Weirdness

Physicists have made the first “movie” of a microwave pulse transitioning from the quantum-physics world to the classical-physics world. The researchers say that their method may help in understanding at what point in nature quantum physics ends and classical physics begins. It could also shed light on how to keep information inside future computers that would take advantage of quantum physics. Quantum objects — generally, anything that’s small enough to be ruled by quantum physics — can exist in multiple forms at the same time. An atom, for example, can be in two places at the same time, as can the crests and troughs of electromagnetic waves, such as in a microwave pulse. Any disturbance from the outside world can cause a loss of this quantum innocence — loss of coherence, in physics parlance. The state of the object becomes progressively more definite, until the object picks one state, as would be expected from everyday experience. Normally, physicists cannot capture all the information contained in quantum coherence, since a measurement produces an answer that’s just one in a range of possible outcomes. Now a team of researchers have observed this transition in a microwave pulse trapped between two superconducting mirrors. The researchers probed the pulse by shooting thousands of rubidium atoms across it, one atom at a time. Each atom extracted a small amount of information from the pulse, without destroying its coherence. The near-perfect mirrors allowed the photons in the microwave pulse to bounce back and forth, establishing a standing wave that lasted several milliseconds. Through the reflections, the pulse, bit by bit, lost coherence, and the position of the peaks and troughs came closer to being definite. At the same time, the path the pulse follows to lose coherence is also different each time. To obtain the most complete picture of the process, the researchers repeated the measurement thousands of times on identical pulses. Higher-intensity pulses tend to behave more like classical than quantum objects. The researchers hope to learn more about the boundary between the quantum and the classical world.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Cosmology: The Primordial Universe

Out of the darkness came the light. About 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the radiation from that fireball cooled and faded, plunging the cosmos into blackness. A few hundred million years later, the first stars emerged and relit the universe. And now scientists have a better idea how it happened. Astronomers have long struggled to accurately model this milestone event. Simulations suggested that clouds of dark matter — invisible material making up more than 80 percent of the mass of the universe — gathered and compressed pockets of the hydrogen and helium gases forged during the Big Bang. When the compressed gases achieved densities high enough to ignite nuclear reactions, a star was born. And according to these models it was a whopper — 100 to 300 times the mass of the sun. But such simulations arrive at the final mass estimate by leapfrogging over some of the trickier astrophysics, making the models uncertain. A new model for the first time simulates the formation of a primordial star without having to rely on an array of approximations. The simulation tracks the gases that pack together inside a sufficiently massive dark-matter cloud, or halo, about 300 million years after the Big Bang. Over the course of about 100,000 years, according to the model, the compressed gases reach densities roughly equivalent to that of liquid water on Earth. At that point, the gases inside the halo have formed a protostar, about one-hundredth the mass of the sun. Although the simulation stops at this point, the researchers estimate that in about 10,000 years — an eye blink in astronomical terms — the protostar will pack on enough additional material to become a star about 100 times as heavy as the sun. The birth of the first stars fundamentally changed the universe. Their emergence not only ended the cosmic dark ages — the murky period after the fading of the radiation from the Big Bang — but set the stage for the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters as they appear in the universe today. Although these heavyweights lasted for only about a million years, their death in supernova explosions seeded the universe with the first elements heavier than lithium.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Electronics:

Hafnium-based Transistors

Intel and IBM have jointly figured out a way to further shrink the size of transistors, the tiny on-off switches that power computers. The trick is introducing the metal hafnium into the mix—an addition that marks the first major change in transistor materials in four decades. Hafnium-based computer circuits would likely be denser, faster and consume less power than existing microprocessors. This discovery directly addresses one of those grand challenges in semiconductor manufacturing. Intel demonstrated a hafnium-based microprocessor capable of running three different computer operating systems. In its transistors, hafnium oxide plays the role of the so-called gate dielectric, an insulating layer that separates the transistor's electrode from its silicon channel for carrying current. A voltage emanating from the electrode switches the transistor on or off by controlling the flow of electrons across that channel. The key is making the insulator as thin as possible in order to switch the channel faster and pack more transistors onto a chip. Over the past decade, Intel and other microchip makers had increasingly bumped up against a fundamental problem: electricity would begin leaking from the glasslike silicon dioxide insulating layer as its width shrank to nearly a nanometer. Consequently, the transistors required inordinate amounts of power. To overcome this obstacle, chipmakers had to determine how to replace silicon dioxide with so-called high-k materials like hafnium and zirconium. A material's performance as a gate dielectric depends on its thickness and its k-value, or dielectric constant, which reflects its ability to store a charge. Because hafnium has a higher k-value than silicon dioxide, it should be able to do the same or better job at a thickness that prevents leakage. That advance would allow Intel to shrink the smallest dimension of its transistors from today's 65 nanometers to a svelte 45 nanometers, keeping the furious pace of transistor miniaturization on its expected track.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Genetics: A Rare Neurodegenerative Disease

Penetrate.

Some contemporaries of Abraham Lincoln described the 16th U.S. president as exhibiting awkward mannerisms and a clumsy gait. About a year ago, researchers at the University of Minnesota announced the discovery of a gene for a rare neurodegenerative disorder called spinocerebellar ataxia type 5 (SCA5)—which can strike between early childhood and old age, affecting speech, writing and/or movement—in a family descended from Lincoln. Scientists say the president himself had a one-in-four chance of suffering from the disease, which affects about 0.005 percent of people and stems from a gene mutation that produces a protein called beta spectrin. Now, University of Utah researchers studying mutant nematode worms, whose nerves literally break due to their inability to express beta spectrin, may explain the coordination deficits observed in Lincoln's progeny. Researchers studied mutant nematodes as embryos, newborns and one-day-olds to see the effect of a beta spectrin deficiency on nerve cells. Using a jellyfish gene to illuminate the worms' neurons, the team found that there was little to no breakage in the nerve cells in embryonic nematodes. Nematodes that had just hatched, however, showed 26 percent breakage and day-olds had damage to 60 percent of their nerve cells. Each of these breakages occurred at the neuron's axon, a thin fiber that the cell uses to send electrical impulses to neighboring cells. As a cell grows, the cell body sends out a long, wirelike extension called a growth cone, which drags the axon (and thus the cell body) behind it as it searches for a target junction, or synapse, where it can communicate with other cells. The researchers observed branching of axons as well as errant new growth cones—indicating that the nerve cells had attempted to repair themselves. This suggested beta spectrin is not part of the development of healthy nerve cells, but plays a role in maintaining them. In another strain of nematode, the researchers deleted the beta spectrin gene—known as unc-70—as well as two genes that controlled muscle contraction. The latter deletions caused this family of worms to be paralyzed. Interestingly, the sedentary animals showed no damage to their axons, despite the fact that beta spectrin was nowhere to be found. The protein's role therefore must be in preventing breakage of the axons during movement. The researchers raise the point that a similar snapping of the nerves could be the cause behind SCA5—meaning this brittleness may have plagued Lincoln.

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

How can you go searching for the truth? How can you search? What will you do?

The truth cannot be sought. On the contrary, when all seeking stops, the truth knocks at your door; when the seeker is no more, truth comes to you.

When the known ceases, the unknown comes to you. When there is no known around, the unknown is there. With the mind you cannot reach.

The mind may be illusory, but it is creative — it creates dreams.

And a mind is always a particular mind. When the mind is no more a particular mind, when it becomes a Mind with a capital M it is no more mind, it has become consciousness.

The mind creates the world and then the world creates the mind, helps the mind to remain the same. This is the vicious circle.

For the mind everything is crooked, not because everything is crooked — the way the mind looks, anything that penetrates the medium of the mind becomes crooked.

Mind creates misery. It cannot create anything else because it cannot encounter reality. It can only dream — that is the only capacity for the mind. It can only dream.

You live in a house of glass, you cannot face reality. Whenever reality comes your house is shattered, and many houses you have lived in are shattered. You carry their ruins in the mind…

10.

Come closer and everything goes bitter; remain distant, beautiful everything looks.

11.

When the mind drops, objects disappear; then they are no more objects. Then you don't know where you end and where things start, then no boundaries there are.

12.

The whole effort of the mind is to get a better dream. Don't think that mind can give you a better dream — a dream is a dream.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

You just see — heaven, paradise, Firdaus, the idea of it — what is it? It is such greed, such lust. In the Mohammedan's Firdaus, heaven, it seems saints are doing nothing but copulating. Beautiful women are available, and streams of wine are flowing, and all that you need is immediately made available. And those beautiful women remain at the age of sixteen; they never grow. And one more beautiful thing about that: they again become a virgin. Whenever a saint makes love to a woman — only saints go there — when a saint makes love to a woman, the moment he is finished, again she becomes a virgin. That is the miracle of paradise. And what are your saints doing there? It seems an orgy, sexual orgy. And streams of wine.... Here you say, 'Avoid wine, avoid women' — for what? To gain better women and more wine in heaven? This seems to be illogical. But this is how people are lured, through greed. Or fear: if you don't come through greed, then fear, then hellfire — and eternal hellfire. You have not done so much sin, eternal hellfire is unjust. Okay, for ten years you are thrown into hell, one can understand — fifteen years, twenty years, fifty years. But eternal? You have not been eternally sinning here, so how can eternal punishment be given to you? It looks too much. But that is not the point; the point is just to make people afraid. Fear and greed have been the base of many religions.

- Osho