My Dominant Hemisphere

Courtesy laurenatclemson @ Flickr (attribution license)

Just thinking aloud a question that’s been ringing in my head recently. Gravity is the weakest force that we know of. In flapping its tiny wings, a fly easily overcomes the gravitational pull of this gigantic earth that we inhabit. A massive airplane can carry hundreds of people on board as it cruises the skies.

But what is it that makes gravity so weak? I think the secret lies in the gravitational constant. What if there’s a force out there whose constant(s) make it so weak that we just haven’t experienced its direct effects yet? A force weaker than gravity?

Could the Higgs field be a candidate for what I’m thinking about?

Copyright © Firas MR. All rights reserved.

Courtesy Lydia Elle @ Flickr (by-nc license)

I just finished a great lecture series on the history of mathematics by Dr. David Bressoud recently¹. Remember how I once spoke about elegance in inelegance? How some people have argued (eg: Lee Smolin) that the universe just might be complex by nature? How mankind might just be wrong about looking for simple and thus elegant solutions to explain physical phenomena?

Well, I was pretty intrigued by some of the stuff I learned about Henri Poincare’s work in this regard. Poincare is famous for a number of things, his Poincare conjecture being the most obvious of them. A Russian math guru, Grigori Perelman, apparently proved this conjecture some years back and among other peculiar things, not only declined the Fields medal but also a million dollar prize for solving one of the toughest math problems ever known.

But I was particularly piqued by how Poincare was fascinated by this idea of finding elegance and hidden patterns even where one might expect junk. Here are what might be interesting questions as crude examples:

Take a random set of 100 beads. Throw these beads on the floor. They scatter randomly. How many throws would be needed to find at least three beads on the floor that yield an equilateral triangle when they are connected? How many throws would you need to find a cluster of beads that is of a certain shape or size?

That there is some sense of order even in randomness and chaos, is truly an enchanting concept.

Have any thoughts of your own? Do send in your feedback !
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1. Queen Of The Sciences (Lectures by David Bressoud)
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Copyright © Firas MR. All rights reserved.

zaveqna@flickr (by-nc-sa license)

I’ve been studying mathematics lately and really enjoying it. Here’s an interesting story about the history of the trigonometric function, ‘sine‘.

Early in the 1st millenium A.D., a new way of thinking about chords was coming about. The chord is defined as the straight line that joins two points on the circumference of a circle. The ancient Greeks had developed trigonometric functions to calculate the length of arbitrary chords. But several centuries later, by the early 1st millenium A.D., mathematicians in India began to think about calculating and working with half-chord lengths instead. For this, they developed the familiar ’sine’ and ‘cosine‘ functions that we still use to this day. The earliest accounts of the use of the half-chord in Indian texts, is from the Surya Siddhanta (c. 300 – 400 AD), written in Sanskrit. The sound of the Sanskrit word used for ‘half-chord’ was ardha-jya [ardha = half, jya = chord]. Perhaps they found this word too long and eventually it was shortened to jya or jiva for all practical purposes.

By roughly the end of the 1st millenium A.D., the vanguard of scientific growth was now in the hands of the Arab world. In translating the works from Sanskrit into Arabic, scholars in the Arab world transliterated and pronounced jiva as jiba [جب]. The sound ‘jiba‘ is recorded in Arabic as two consonants j [ج] and b [ب] with no vowels explicitly written between them. The vowel sounds are merely implied.

Several centuries later, after the decline of scientific growth in the Arab world, came the Europeans. When they in turn came upon the Arabic word for jiva and tried to translate it, they of course ended up with a word, ‘jb‘ [pronounced as 'jay bee']. Apparently, they were oblivious of the implied vowel sounds. Things were dandy for the Arab scientists, but the Europeans couldn’t make any sense of the sound ‘jay bee‘ because such a sound doesn’t exist in any of the words in the Arabic language. They found that the closest sound to ‘jay bee‘, was the sound ‘jaib‘ or ‘ja-eeb‘, in the Arabic word for the mammary gland! And so the Europeans assumed that the half-chord was to be referred to with a Latin word that meant mamma, mammary gland or any of its other synonyms. Perhaps out of modesty, it was ultimately instead decided that the word used for the fold of a cloth utilized to cover a mamma would be appropriate to refer to a half-chord. This word was ’sinus’. And from this Latin word ‘sinus‘, ultimately came the English word ‘sine‘ that is in use today!

Remarkable, isn’t it?

Feel free to send in your feedback, corrections and comments .

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References:

1. Queen Of The Sciences (Lectures by David Bressoud)

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Copyright © Firas MR. All rights reserved.

Remember Wilson the volleyball, from the movie ‘Castaway‘? In a dash of newfound creativity and imagination, I shot a couple of photographs today of a coconut that shared an uncanny resemblance to Wilson! Seemed like the perfect opportunity for some prop-photography .

Wilson reads for the USMLE.

Somehow he seems quite absorbed with the book , don’t you think? Ah, nothing beats the joy of laying back, relaxing and reading a nice book.

Wilson in the Orient.

On his travels to the Orient, he received a fancy hand-held fan as a gift from a monk. In fact, that is exactly where he discovered his inner intellectual .

Wilson is a bike rider ...

… and loves his moped. How else would an intelligent coconut choose to conquer the streets?

Copyright © Firas MR. All rights reserved.

Romanesco broccoli - One of many examples of fractals in nature. (Wikipedia)

What do Mandelbrot and Einstein have in common?

They were/are both math aficionados. But more importantly, they both laid down the foundations for thinking about abstract natural phenomena in a geometrical way. The impact was reverberating.

Before Einstein came along, people had no real sense of gravity at all. Yea sure, there was Newton’s universal law of gravitation. But no one really could make any sense whatsoever of how exactly gravity might operate. Was it a wave? If so, at what speed could it act? Was there something particulate about it? Gravity was so mystical. And as always, so have been the concepts of time and space. Einstein’s greatest achievement in my view is that not only was he able to lay out the underpinnings of such phenomena in the form of a couple of abstract equations, but perhaps more importantly, that he devised a method to think about them visually. In developing his theories of special and general relativity, Einstein proposed the idea of the space-time fabric. It has a 3-D structure, yet represents four dimensions – 3 in space and 1 in time. Gravity would result from distortions in this fabric. The speed with which gravity could influence an object would depend on how fast these distortions could travel. And this central notion of ‘distortions in a fabric’ would also influence our understanding of the more difficult to grasp concepts of time and space. Time and space could mean different things to different observers depending on how this fabric was warped or sliced.

Mandelbrot achieved the same thing with his theory of fractals. How can complex natural structures and phenomena be represented mathematically? How to mathematically model a plant, the form of a human or a mountain range? In spite of how incredibly difficult it all sounds, these complex shapes could all be simplified into repeating units of tiny yet geometrically simple components – fractals. Mandelbrot went on to write his epic, “The Fractal Geometry Of Nature” and there was no turning back. Suddenly so many of nature’s workings could now be analyzed mathematically. An immensely significant step for mankind indeed. What I find absolutely fascinating about fractals, is the discovery that many intangible natural phenomena also contain a fractal component. Dr. Ary Goldberger and his team of researchers at Harvard Medical School have been working on applying fractal theory to medicine and biology. For those of you who might not be familiar with Dr. Goldberger, the name might ring a bell if you’ve read his books on electrocardiography. For Dr. Goldberger, interest in electrocardiography runs in the family, his father having invented the augmented limb leads back in the day. Among some of the things I learned about his work on electrocardiography, is that his team has shown that there is a fractal nature to ECG waveforms! This isn’t something like representing the heart itself in fractal form. It’s the activities of the heart that we are talking about here. Something really quite abstract. By looking at these fractal patterns, one could potentially detect pathology at a much earlier stage. Fractal patterns and their aberrations could help detect diseases in ways that no one had ever imagined! If you want to dig what’s cool, check out what’s been going on in the world of fractals in medicine – from human vasculature, to the brain and beyond. A quick PubMed query would lead you to a lot of riveting literature on the topic. Don’t forget to also take a look at the excellent documentary on fractal theory from PBS NOVA, “Hunting The Hidden Dimensions“.

Copyright © Firas MR. All rights reserved.

Readability grades for this post:

Flesch reading ease score: 61.1
Automated readability index: 8.6
Flesch-Kincaid grade level: 8.2
Coleman-Liau index: 10.8
Gunning fog index: 11.6
SMOG index: 11

Cape Lion

It’s been well over a year since I had initially revamped the theme of my blog. At the time, I was mainly interested in improving compatibility with the web browser, Konqueror. The Digg theme worked well for me and I was pretty much happy with it overall. But after a couple of months anything gets boring! One of WordPress’s main strengths is the awesome collection of themes available. Some of these themes trickle down to WordPress’s hosting service, WordPress.com . It’s about time for a brand new theme, don’t you agree ? I now bring to you a completely refreshing look for the blog. Gone is the large image header. The focus is on extreme simplicity and lack of clutter. Even the RSS icon has been done away with completely, leaving only a line of text to click on instead. I’m also sporting a new gravatar – a public domain image that I stumbled upon at Wikimedia Commons and that just absolutely blew me away the first time I saw it. It is a drawing by the Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn of the now extinct Cape Lion (Panthera leo melanochaitus) made circa 1650-52 in Louvre, Paris. I thought, since one of the synonyms of my Arabic name ‘Firas’ (فراس) is ‘Asad’ (اسد) meaning ‘Lion’ in English, it couldn’t get any better! Another feature that I’ve introduced, is a rating system for posts and comments. You’ll find a very simple way to vote – a thumbs up or thumbs down – at the very bottom of each post or comment. However, I request that you please pay some thought before actually voting!

I hope you like the new look. Do send in your feedback. Polls can be meaningless, with multiple votes. But hey, give it a try!

On a side note, I have now entered exam mode. Yet again! Oh well, just another byproduct of living life as a medic I suppose. My last entry was a little long. I think I’ll be cutting down on writing for a while. Fear not though! If there’s something that can’t wait to be written, you’ll hear about it asap !

Powered by ScribeFire.

Copyright © Firas MR. All rights reserved.

[I took this shot with the macro setting on my camera. The shot was taken in a semi-dark room with a pink candle (seen in reflection) by the right side. This is my very first flickr macro shot! The screwdriver was put through hell when I tried unscrewing some of the tight fitting screws on my tripod . If you pay close attention to the way the hair are arranged at the tip, you'll realize that they are actually aligned along the magnetic field lines that developed there due to static electricity! Neat .]

Howdy all! I’ve been studying digital photography lately and totally enjoying it. Today, I’ll share with you folks essentially what had me in one of those ‘aha! so that’s it!’ moments.

Most digital cameras have an in-built light meter whose job it is to discern the brightness of incident light falling on an object, so that the camera can adjust its aperture, shutter speed or ISO settings to allow into the camera, just the right level of light to yield a proper exposure. These light meters usually are of the reflective category, i.e. they try to predict the incident light’s brightness based on the
assumption that reflective light equals 18% of incident light.

In other words, if

x = incident light
y = reflective light

then,

0.18x = y or x = y/0.18

It so happens that most objects satisfy this empirical rule and the camera judges incident light correctly.

In the case of white objects such as snow, etc. the actual equation is different. Assuming white reflects 90% of incident light:

0.90x = y or x = y/0.90

Because the camera calculates x as y/0.18 rather than as y/0.90 , it perceives incident light as being brighter than it actually is. The camera thus tries to decrease the amount of light falling on the film/digital sensor and as a result, underexposes the object. White objects turn into gray. And by extension, all highly reflective objects end up underexposed.

With black objects, the opposite happens. Assuming black reflects 4% of incident light:

0.04x = y or x = y/0.04

Because the camera calculates x as y/0.18 rather than as y/0.04 , it perceives incident light to be dimmer than it actually is. It thus tries to increase the amount of light falling on the film/digital sensor and as a result, overexposes the object. Black objects turn into grey. And by extension, all low reflective objects end up overexposed.

A great discussion about this topic and ways to solve this problem can be found on this website.

Any thoughts or tips of your own? I’m waiting to hear them! Adios for now !

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Copyright © Firas MR. All Rights Reserved.

Howdy people! I apologize for the lack of recent activity on my blog. I’ve been swamped with heavy academia lately and am finding it hard to devote time to it. Let’s talk about some fusion stuff today.

This thought just occurred to me. What if computers and software could evolve on their own? If I hypothetically had an operating system that could introduce random optimizations continually, there could be occasions when some random bit of code could prove to be a better fit to suit my hardware and take over. There’s an interesting page on Wikipedia here. Take a look and send in your thoughts and hopefully we can get an interesting conversation started! The idea is radical, no doubt. A couple of starter questions:

1. How do you build such a thing? Feasibility. How far along the line do you think such technology would come about?
2. What is the current status of artificial intelligence in desktop computers?
3. What benefits could you think of?
4. Any potential side-effects of the phenomenon?
5. Lastly, is this likely to affect how man and machine interact with each other and if so how?

So that’s it for today folks. See ya!

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EDIT: Due to sloppy editing, the comments were turned off for a couple of hours. Everything’s back to normal people, so I’m waiting to hear your comments!

Copyright © Firas MR. All rights reserved.

Source, Author and License

Today’s tech bytes:

Some very nice people over at Kubuntu’s tech support IRC channel brought my attention to the fact that Kubuntu 8.04 doesn’t have an LTS version. Apparently, both the KDE 3.5.9 and KDE4 versions have not been given that status as KDE development has been in flux lately. So people, all those Powered by Kubuntu 8.04 LTS post-scripts in my previous posts stand corrected as …Kubuntu 8.04 (KDE 3.5.9).

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Ever found the fact that from a fresh install of Kubuntu 8.04, Konqueror’s java behavior is a tad odd? No matter what you do, when you enable Tools>HTML Settings>Java, the java setting never sticks. It stays on the website you’re visiting but that’s it. As soon as you go to some other website, that java setting resets back to disabled. Furthermore, when you restart Konqueror, it’s the same deal again.

One nice person over at Kubuntu’s IRC channel was kind enough to share his solution. Goto Settings>Configure Konqueror>Java & Javascript>Java Runtime Settings. Uncheck/disable the option ‘Use Security Manager’. Click ‘Apply’>’OK’. Now enable java under Tools>HTML Settings>Java. Restart Konqueror. Yay! It sticks! Now, go back to Settings>Configure Konqueror>Java & Javascript>Java Runtime Settings. Check/enable the option ‘Use Security Manager’. Click ‘Apply’>’OK’. It’s a little weird but doing so doesn’t cause the funny java behavior to turn back on again and having any sort of security on a web browser is good .

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Tried the latest Opera 9.5 Beta 2/weekly snapshot on Kubuntu/Ubuntu? If you live outside of the US, there’s a good chance that your system locale settings are set to use something other than English US by default. It so happens that this causes Opera 9.5b2 to crash with a segmentation fault. In order to enjoy Opera 9.5b2, make sure you have Sun Java set as the default Java version (use this howto) and set your locale to English US (en_US). On Kubuntu 8.04 (KDE 3.5.9) do the following as discussed here :-

1. Goto System Settings>Regional & Language>Country/Region & Language
2. Click on the ‘Locale’ tab
3. Click on ‘Select System Language’ and choose ‘English US’
4. Click ‘Apply’
5. Restart KDE (log out and then log in) for settings to take effect

I have found the flash support to be a little flaky, at least with Opera 9.5b2. Opera, for me, often suffers from this grey box phenomenon. One moment a flash video works perfectly, other times I’d find grey boxes with audio but no sound. This becomes particularly the case when I’d have two or more tabs with flash video open in them and keep switching between them.

Quick user tip: To set your middle-click options, press the Shift key and then middle-click.
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Is it just me or does Firefox 3 RC1 seem faster on Windows XP than on Ubuntu/Linux? For me, FF3RC1 on Kubuntu 8.04 still seems to take a lot more memory than on Windows. I guess their Linux development is slow or something.

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Google announced their Google Health service recently. Privacy concerns abound.
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That’s it for today folks. See ya!

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Copyright © 2006 – 2008 Firas MR. All rights reserved.

Today’s technology tidbits:

The WordPress.com dashboard utilises the TinyMCE javascript visual editor when writing posts in the WYSIWYG format. Unfortunately as stated on its website, TinyMCE isn’t compatible with Konqueror. Why not? Well, here’s a quote from the freshmeat website for TinyMCE:-

…the day Konqueror and Opera implement the Midas specification I will look in to these browsers as target platforms as well…

I’ve noticed one aspect about Konqueror. Developers seem to focus on satisfying W3C standards as their primary goal, leaving the onus on compatibility issues to website and web-based app designers.

Anyhow, I do hope Konqueror and TinyMCE can work together someday soon.

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Ubuntu UK’s recent podcast had some very interesting discussion on Linux and security. Nothing’s bullet-proof .

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Links of interest:

1. Debian Med
2. Linux for Clinics
3. LinuxMedNews
4. The Linux Medicine Howto courtesy of The Linux Documentation Project

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That’s it for today folks. See ya !
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Copyright © 2006 – 2008 Firas MR. All rights reserved.