the lithiumhead

Found the same question that I have been asking people all this while in this post Where do people come from? - Fin Moorhouse : “Here’s a question: as a great oak tree grows, the material for the tree came from somewhere. And just like how animals eat with their mouths, trees draw up nutrients from the soil. So why doesn’t a 10 ton oak tree form a big crater in the soil where its solid biomass came from? Where did all that tree come from?” Also from the article: “or effectively everyone who has ever lived, and even most living adults, your body contains at least one atom that has been part of them,” “Of course, more likely than the planet somehow finding an extra India+US amount of arable land to farm, a world without fertilisers is just a world with fewer people. On some estimates, perhaps two billion fewer people would be alive today without the Haber process, or at least some way of producing synthetic fertiliser on an industrial scale.”

  The other day we drove over the Mumbai-Pune Expressway with rain coming at us with full force! But with our windscreen polished with Turtle Wax Clear Vue Rain Repellent , we didn't even need to use the wipers! I am not really sure where to get a bottle of these in India, but I keep looking and trying out all kinds of rain repellents I can get my hands on locally. For reference, here is a list/survey of similar products. I tried Rain X which is is available in Pune, but it was totally useless!  Here is a video of Turtle Wax ClearVue Rain Repellent in action!! Oh the Awesomeness!! Been meaning to shoot such a video for 3 years now. Finally got to do it, thanks to that special someone with whom I shared the journey! 

In this blog post, I am going to collect links which shed light on various biology questions that have crossed my mind. Does a blood transfusion change your DNA? Answer: No, because "red" blood cells don't have DNA http://ask.yahoo.com/20050506.html I think cells in our body are Eukaryotes (cells which contain complex structures enclosed within membranes) but since red blood cell don't contain DNA, could they be Prokaryotes (cells which lack a cell nucleus (karyon), or any other membrane-bound organelles.) ? Answer: Every single cell inside our body is eukaryotic. Red blood cells lose their nucleus during maturation. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081115101935AASywZK

I bought a chin-up bar today. Idea is to regain the muscle mass that I think I have lost due to excessive computer use. This rod cost me 650 rupees. There were two cup like discs which had to be fixed facing each other on the door frame. Each had 3 screws to hold it in place. The rubber edges of the rods would sit it these cups. The rod comes with an L key which goes into the hole at one end of the rod. The rod to fixed into place by using this key to rotate the inner cylinder which telescopes out there by increasing the effective length of the rod slowly with each twist. The rubber ends compress against the cups which had been previously been fixed in the door frame. As it is with most things in life, if u tighten something too much, it break - observe the rubber end which buckled under pressure. I think the rod is still safe to use.   

  Bedsheet Fabric     FT232RL on an Arduino Duemilanove     Pyjama fabric     SMD Resistor and LED on an Arduino Duemilanove     Hair on the back side of my palm     Logo Engraving on a Canon Scanner       LCD Monitor Pixels   If these photos fascinate you, then do check our these photos taken by a Scanning Electron Microscope which have been published in the book Microcosmos: Discovering the World Through Microscopic Images from 20 X to Over 22 Million X Magnification by Brandon Broll ( Amazon link ) While you are at it, you may also like: Would dew believe it: The stunning pictures of sleeping insects covered in water droplets

Concentric circles of water bubbles in an Induction Cooker  (Reminds me of that experiment to trace out the magnetic lines of force using iron filings )

Here are some common materials as seen through an Illuminated Microscope (60x-100x) bought from RadioShack Piece of Fabric Printed Paper (Magazine / CMYK)

I have been wondering about this too long now... been too lazy about not looking it up earlier.. or might have looked it up and forgotten about it... so now i finally commit it to blog.. Why does it feel like you are dissipating energy (or in physical terms... power is being used up.. or work is being done continuously) when you have lifted up and are holding and object, because then ideally, physically speaking, the work done by our body on the object is ZERO.. here are the hits from google which answer that question. Incidentally, it also also explains why some peoples hand seem to shiver when they are lifting some heavy unevenly shaped object or doing some delicate work... ..because their muscle cells are kind of contracting and expanding continuously to hold the object in place... work: Holding something up http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-119026.html HyperPhysics:Work http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/work2.html

So with all the Esoinophilia causing much ache and lethargy, i was free to let my thoughts wander .. since those were the only things which could get to wander... couldn't get of the bed or couch for long, so no chance of letting the body itself wander... so back to wandering.. (and wandering led me to think of blogging..) I was thinking.. having donated blood 4 times, what would happen if some one was to accept a transfusion of someone else's blood.. would that person live on forever with two (or more) different types of blood cells? because both the blood cells will have different DNA and they will obviously replicate.. and hence both.. the original and donor's DNA maybe present in the blood stream of the patients.. Or maybe since the patient has more of his own Blood Cells of his own DNA, they would probably replicate more and much faster and the blood cells of the other DNA might get phased out.. Anyway, before i could wander further on that one, google led m...

Some quarter years ago, while sitting in a bus, i just wondered:"why is soil brown?".. a pretty common question... its common because the subject involved is common... but we seldom stop to think about such things.. A scientist/engineer would know why things are coloured: There is a photon associated with each wavelength of light. Light of different wavelength are composed of photons having differnt energies. The lights of different wavelength are perceived as lights of different colors by our eyes. Hence the different colors of light, are thought of as representing photons of different energy. Now object on which white light falls, are composed of molecules or ions in a lattice. The electrons in these materials can only move between well defined discrete levels. And while doing that these electrons absorb (lower energy level to higher energy level) or emit (higher energy level to lower energy level) photons. Since their energy levels are discrete, they can absorb only those ...

Recent floods (previous year's 26 july 2005 and the ones happening around today) evoke one to think about the fate of human race... Remember the movie "The day after tomorrow"? .. Maybe we are screwing up too much with our environment??? But then again maybe thats the way its supposed to be? The second law of thermodynamics states: "The entropy of an isolated system not at equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value." So one of the logical outcomes of the second law is that the human race will continue to exist as long as it manages to increase entropy of the universe at a rate greater than what it would be if it were extinct. So all the nonsense we do actually enables us to survive longer as a race... Imagine.. all the hot soupy particles of the solar system came together to form the sun and the planets (decrease in the entropy!?!) just so that we would be born - and the universe will have nice candidate to help facilitate its own ...