Yoda Sutras: Concourse No.45

Series 1

V - 9: Flowering is the Thing

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.

Material Science:

Nuclear Waste-Storage Materials

Plutonium stowed underground in blocks of the mineral zircon would erode its housing in as little as 1,400 years, according to new measurements. Zircon no longer tops the list of substances for storing radioactive waste from dismantled nuclear weapons and other sources, but the new way of measuring its durability could lead to more precise estimates of the life span of other storage materials. The new method measured the number of atoms dislodged on average in a sample of zircon every time it was struck by an alpha particle spewed by radioactive plutonium. Every time one of these particles slams into a mineral such as zircon, it knocks thousands of atoms loose, breaking down the material's regularly spaced crystal structure and making it more prone to leak. But researchers have had trouble pinpointing the exact rate of destruction. Experts pondering how to deal with radioactive waste (particularly long-lived plutonium shed from dismantled weapons and reprocessed reactor fuel) a decade ago proposed storing it underground mixed with the durable mineral zircon. They soon discovered that zircon expands by up to 18 percent when irradiated, making it less attractive as a potential containment medium. In an attempt to better gauge zircon's staying power, researchers spun small samples of synthetic zircon mixed with plutonium 239 in a type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device. The instrument keyed in on changes in the orientation of silicon 29 isotopes in the zircon. Specifically, in response to a magnetic pulse from the MRI, the isotopes would vibrate at a particular frequency depending on how many were crystalline and how many were disordered. (The spinning, at 200,000 revolutions per minute, enhanced the instrument's resolution.) The research team found that each alpha particle displaced about 5,000 atoms. Prior estimates had put the number at between 1,000 and 2,000, which translated to about 6,000 years of durability for zircon, a mere sliver of the hundreds of thousands of years that underground facilities are expected to be able to contain nuclear waste without releasing any radiation.

Think.

Biology: Bird Brain

Learn.

Big brains do not just develop overnight. To get that density of circuitry and higher order processing takes time. According to the "cognitive buffer hypothesis," this supposed "cost" of time spent in extended development is offset by the advantages afforded by larger brains—namely, the ability to tailor behavior to different environmental stimuli. A new study of birds provides the first physical evidence of this hypothesis. The report reveals that birds with bigger brains relative to their body sizes were found to have a better chance of survival in nature. Almost all studies in the past have only shown correlations between certain lifestyles and large brains. The new study took data collected by diverse ecologists to determine that a larger brain provides a survival edge. Birds are ideal subjects, because so much is known about them. For example, scientists know the average brain size of nearly 2,000 species of birds. Researchers surveyed roughly 220 avian species from polar, temperate and tropical areas; they studied mortality rates using such methods as capture-and-release, putting little bands on a sampling of birds during the warm months and keeping tabs on how many returned after the cold season. When the findings were collated (and corrected for factors such as migratory behavior, protracted care by parent birds, style of chick development and competition for reproductive success), the researchers found a significant correlation between adult brain size (relative to the body) and low mortality rates. The findings suggest that large-brained animals might be better prepared to cope with environmental challenges such as climate change and habitat destruction.

Imagine.

Understand.

Genetics:

Ethnic Differences

Tay-Sachs disease seems to favor Jews of Eastern European descent. Cystic fibrosis has an affinity for Caucasians. Type 2 diabetes strikes Latin Americans and people of African descent more often than it does those of other ethnic groups, appearing at rates of incidence that are 90 and 60 percent higher, respectively, than in Caucasians. Researchers have been conducting studies such as the International HapMap Project—a global effort to catalogue common single-nucleotide variations, such as the addition, deletion or substitution of a base in the code of a gene—to get to the bottom of long-observed correlations between ethnicity and common complex diseases. But those efforts have borne little fruit. So, rather than characterize these individual nucleotide changes in genes, a team of researchers employed microarray technology—essentially a genome chip that allows a researcher to analyze the expression of many genes at once—to study across Chinese, Japanese and European populations many different traits that are coded for in a type of white blood cell. Their results were that different ethnic groups not only carried different genes, but there were greater disparities than previously believed in the degrees to which genes that were the same among ethnic groups were expressed. Further, the genes themselves did not control the levels of their own expression, rather noncoding regions adjacent to them determined whether to ratchet up or down the proteins or other functional end products the genes encoded. The researchers note that large-scale changes to DNA—such as specific substitutions or deletions of genetic material—almost certainly also contribute to differences between ethnic groups. But expression levels likely can explain some of the ethnic underpinnings of Tay-Sachs and cystic fibrosis as well as hypertension, which plagues those of Afro-Caribbean descent at a higher rate than other populations.

Explore.

Investigate.

Experiment.

Social Health:

Depression and Chronic Headaches in Women

As if blinding migraines are not bad enough, new research shows that women who get them are more likely than others to suffer from major bouts of the blues, especially if they also have headache-related symptoms like low energy and joint pain. A study found that women who suffer from chronic headaches (more than 15 a month) are four times more prone to major depression than those with episodic headaches (fewer than 15 monthly). Chronic headache sufferers were also three times more likely to report "a high degree" of related symptoms such as fatigue, insomnia, nausea, dizziness, and stomach, back and joint pain. The study found that patients with chronic headaches accompanied by other ailments were 32 times more likely to develop major depression. Painful physical symptoms may provoke or be a manifestation of major depression in women with chronic headache, and depression may heighten pain perception. This relation between migraine and major depression suggests a common neurobiology. Scientists studied 1,032 women who sought care at headache clinics in five states—593 were episodic headache sufferers and 439 chronic headache patients. About 90 percent of them were diagnosed with migraines. The research was part of a larger study to determine whether there are genetic and environmental factors that might predispose patients to chronic headaches, related symptoms and depression.

Analyze.

Know.

Study.

Astrophysics:

Type 1a Supernova

By examining gas lit up by an exploding star, astronomers have obtained new insight into how a common type of supernova erupts. According to a widely accepted model, the stage is set for a type 1a supernova when a dense, Earth-size star called a white dwarf steals gas from a bloated companion star. When the gas-guzzling white dwarf tips the scales at more than 1.4 times the mass of the sun, it blows to smithereens. That's the theory, but astronomers aren't sure that they've got it exactly right. Getting the model correct is critical because researchers rely on type 1a supernovas to measure the distance and expansion rate of the universe. Researchers at the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, studied in detail the type 1a supernova SN 2006X, recorded by telescopes last year as it erupted in a galaxy 70 million light-years from Earth. Spectra taken at the Very Large Telescope in Paranal, Chile, and the Keck Observatory on Hawaii's Mauna Kea show evidence of fast-moving clumps of material near the exploded white dwarf. The speed of the clumps, about 50 kilometers per second, and their separation suggest that they were probably expelled by a red giant star—the white dwarf's presumed companion—about 50 years before the dwarf detonated. Red giants are known to have strong winds that could carry off large clumps of material at the measured speeds. By indicating the presence of a red giant, the observations support the prevailing model of how type 1a supernovas detonate.

Innovate.

Ponder.

Perceive.

Create.

Electronics:

Magnetizing Silicon

Penetrate.

At the heart of data-reading heads in new computer hard drives are devices whose exquisite sensitivity derives from manipulations of a magnetic property of electrons called spin. Such devices, part of an ascendant technology known as spintronics, might capture more turf from conventional electronics if spintronics developers could somehow render silicon magnetic. Now, a team of researchers may have done just that. The team reports shooting ions of manganese, a magnetic metal, into silicon. As a result, the semiconductor attained a magnetic field about a millionth as strong as the one iron has. That may seem minuscule, but it's strong enough to be useful for spintronic devices, according to the researchers. What's more, the field persisted at temperatures commonly reached in electronic devices. Some doubts remain about the new material's ultimate usefulness. For instance, tiny clumps, possibly of manganese, form in the bombarded silicon. Such structural irregularities often spell bad news in microelectronic devices.

Wonder…

But Beware!

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

_________Transcend._________

Atha Yodanushasanam

Now begins the teaching of Yoda.

Existence is infinitely graceful to everybody; small or big makes no difference. Small trees flower, big trees flower. Flowering is the thing!

A small river also dances and reaches, a big river also dances and reaches. You are all like rivers, you all will reach to the ocean. But don't make it a goal.

When you dance but there is no dancer, when you observe but there is no observer, when you love and there is no lover, it happens!

You create your failure yourself — if you are asking for the goal, you will be a failure. In the ultimate, the goal-oriented mind is a hindrance, the greatest hindrance.

You simply be! Come the ultimate will! Let it be the ultimate's decision and problem, not yours.

You dance and sing and be ecstatic, and let God worry. Why are you worried?

To be an achiever is to create the greatest tension that can happen to the human mind. Then you cannot look herenow, then you are looking far away, distant, in the future.

Creativity always means self-transcending, always transcending. A painter goes on painting, and always transcending himself.

God comes to you many times and returns, because you are not there. You are never wherever you are.

10.

These are the two situations: either you are worried or you are ecstatic, and both cannot exist together. If you are ecstatic, you are madly ecstatic. If you are worried, you are madly worried.

11.

Just let things be in their own way. You don't come in the way, you don't try to change anything.

12.

The only thing is how to stop worrying and how to start living. Be a liver, just let things be in their own way.

Close your eyes, meditate.

May the force be with you.

Jesus said to his disciples, "For whom are you waiting? I am here!" Even his disciples were asking, "When will the Messiah come? When?"—because Jews were waiting for centuries for the Messiah's coming and when he came they were not ready to welcome him. They are still waiting. And Jesus HAS come and they are still waiting. And even when Jesus was not there, many other Jesuses were there, and they have always been coming. God is always overflowing.

- Osho