Understanding Neuronal Networks & The Mystic Brain: An Insight

The most wonderful machine known to human race is perhaps the conglomerations of around 100 billion cells or neurons and its myriad interconnections, the human brain. The urge to understand the brain and use the knowledge to make human lives better has inspired me to persue[or rather opt to persue :)..thats more commensurate to the current scenario] for a career in neurosciences research. The Project ‘nPAD’ testify the quest for the same.
Understanding the working of the brain and its underlying foundations have intrigued the researchers, recent advances has shown brain wiring is probably the key factor behind it .Furthermore, it is also assumed that specificity and plasticity are the fundamental requirements for brain wiring. Networks transforms simple inputs into complex output that mediate brain function and behavior, often achieved through non linear operations. The understanding of these principles can greatly aid areas like machine learning and artificial cognition which are necessary to design and fabricate kinetic and interactive artificial intelligence. This applied to the robotics platform coupled with innovations in network algorithms can create a new breed of intelligent and self sustaining machines which can automate various workflows and processes.
Molecular imaging methods and computational techniques in neurosciences can provide valuable insights into the dynamics of cortical connections. This may be achieved by imagining neuronal function in single cell level and monitoring network activities. Imaging Ca2+ in vivo using extrinsic dyes or genetic reporters and the future development of sensitive voltage reporters are the proposed mechanism for such experimentations. Functional imaging of single‐cell activity in vivo combined with molecular markers that might provide information as to cellular identity will enable the determination of network connectivity and its plasticity following activity‐dependent manipulation. Mechanisms of rapid functional plasticity can also be investigated by imaging of single cell molecular changes and synapses.


The Roadmap :

Here, I can take the liberty to introduce to the readers one of the greatest talks which has been instrumental in drawing my attention and also further consolidating my career goals in the fields of neurosciences. The speaker not only delivers a fervent speech to ignite new research but also dismisses the sullen thoughts of morphological disorientations present in the core areas of neural research and the myths thats circumvent the growth of an unified Brain Theory.The hallmark of the research and the path for development as sketched is that it is inspire by the progressive idea of generation of a unified theory for Brain apprehension and not for amassing some more neurophysiological or anatomical data or either to develop newer computational techniques as it has been the swansong of the neural reseach community for decades now. This is testified by fact that data from Medline ,Nature &IEEE publications[sources uncinfirmed] about 17% of Biological and computational research is directly or indirectly related to Brain Sciences. This has led to the generation of colossal data related to neurosciences with no apparent breakthroughs that can directly address the cause of Humanity ..or answer the query ..."What we are ? ..and How we are ?"
Hope some day this fellowship of endless quest will end and men will rise again to a new truth ...

About this Talk

To date, there hasn't been an overarching theory of how the human brain really works, Jeff Hawkins argues in this compelling talk. That's because we still haven't defined intelligence accurately. But one thing's for sure, he says: The brain isn't like a powerful computer processor. It's more like a memory system that records everything we experience and helps us predict, intelligently, what will happen next. Bringing this new brain science to computer devices will enable powerful new applications -- and it will happen sooner than you think.

Why you should listen to him:

Jeff Hawkins' Palm PDA became such a widely used productivity tool during the 1990s that some fanatical users claimed it replaced their brains. But Hawkins' deepest interest was in the brain itself. So after the success of the Palm and Treo, which he brought to market at Handspring, Hawkins delved into brain research at the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in Berkeley, Calif., and a new company called Numenta.

Hawkins' dual goal is to achieve an understanding of how the human brain actually works -- and then develop software to mimic its functionality, delivering true artificial intelligence. In his book On Intelligence (2004) he laye human neocortex doesn't work like a processor; rather, it relies on a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next. He thinks that "hierarchical temporal memory" computer platforms, which mimic this functionality (and which Numenta might pioneer), could enable groundbreaking new applications that could powerfully extend human intelligence.

"Even if Hawkins finds only a small sliver of the Holy Grail he seeks [in brain research], he'll add yet another industry-moving startup to his resume."

Business Week

A paean against perfidy ....

Sometimes there are people who is so close to you ...but it takes a few hundred miles to reach them ...and few thousands more to interact with them ..this anomaly is a canonical reaction of the colonists or the administrators who fails to realise the ingenious and highly mundane human relationships that nature has nurtured. It does not care about the prattles of perfidy but believes in the perennial paean of universal brotherhood. Its not a predilection extended to those who are weaker and less privileged..neither do we aim at prevaricating what history tells us ...but it is a bliss, a reticent stream of unanimousity running deep inside our veins ...one neither needs the magnanimity of a scholar neither be erudite of a scientist to understand the discordant truth ...he just needs to have the alscrity to understand the depth of the human relationship and the veracity to accept it ....the world will be a better place to dwell in if we can innervate the sense of sorbidity ..and recant from the path of refute and prattle over the qualms...and be complaisant with the profound sense of unity and reliance.

Book Review :

The Clash Within - Democracy ,Religious Violence and India's Future

An American who flies the Indian flag

June 19, 2007

Martha C Nussbaum will tell you that the only flag she keeps in her home in Chicago is the Indian Tricolour. A Distinguished Professor of Law and Ethics, she is involved with the Department of Philosophy, Law School and the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.

Her involvement with India is quite substantial. Nussbaum is the author of The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future published recently by the Harvard University Press.

The book seeks to point out to Americans that while America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremists in another part of the world.

Throughout the book, Nussbaum challenges the vision of those who want to create a homogeneous India, and she bemoans the threat to the legacies of Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharal Nehru.

The author of a new book on religious freedom in India recently spoke to Rediff India Abroad Managing Editor (Features) Arthur J Pais.

You have dedicated this book to Amita Sen. Tell us about her.

To readers she might be best known as the mother of (the Nobel Laureate) Amartya Sen but I don't think of her in that way only. She was one of Rabindranath Tagore's leading pupils. She had leading roles in the dance dramas in his school in Shantiniketan.

Then later in her life she wrote two very interesting books about the school. One of them has been translated into English, under the title Joy In All Work. It talks about the role of the arts in the school.

So, to me, she was a wonderful expression all through her life, of 92 years, of the spirit of Shantiniketan; a spirit that was not only alive, critical, participatory, and democratic but also involving the imagination and the arts, very centrally in the development of children.

'The great strength of Indian democracy has been its imaginative vigour and its critical bite'

June 19, 2007

What have you learned from her as a model? And how are you conveying that idea in your book?

She, along with her son Amartya, helped me to understand a lot about India and Tagore. I wanted to bring forth in this book the things that Tagore brought forward. First of all, he believed that Western nationalism was in part the product of a lack of cultivation of imagination and poetic sensibilities. He really did think that both the critical capacities and the imagination were essential for the health of any democracy.

In the book, I try to show, on the one hand, how those abilities were really quite central to the founding of the Indian democracy in the person of Gandhi; in particular, in the imagination of suffering.

One of the great strengths of the leadership in the early days of the democracy and Nehru, in particular, was the ability to connect, in imagination, with the suffering of the poor.

But, more recently, there are two dangers. First, the politics of Hindu nationalism has in some cases taken young children and disciplined them in a monolithic ideology that is not alive to the imaginative experience of the other. That's one danger.

But more generally, the schools in India are focusing so much now on science and technology as the dominant mode of instruction and rote learning that through India we see a marginalisation of imagination and also perhaps the critical capacities. And I worry about that; because one of the great strengths of Indian democracy has always been its imaginative vigour and its critical bite. So, I'm just hoping that people don't lose sight of these things that Tagore stood for.

Image: Rabindranath Tagore. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

'I don't find any reason to suppose that the birth within a culture automatically confers understanding'

June 19, 2007

A good portion of your book looks at the Indian-American community in the US. Why is that important?

It's important because, firstly, a great deal of the passion behind some of the attacks on scholars who write about the Hindu Right and write about Indian history in the way that the Hindu Right doesn't like has actually come from America. The Indian-American community is so rich and fantastic, a source of tremendous intellectual ferment and strength, and it is increasingly admired all over the country.

The book seeks to convey to this community a complicated sense of what's going in the scholarly world and what's going on in India and to do so, I thought, was very important. My impression is that a lot of people in the Indian community believe that their religion is being slandered by American scholars of the history of religion. They (Indian Americans), in all good faith and sensitivity, object to this.

I am trying to give them a more balanced picture of what these scholars are doing and the fact that they are inspired by a deep love of India and by things that they did not like in America. But their critics make them out to be insulting Hinduism just the way the disdainful colonial usurpers did decades ago.

There is no reason why an American scholar cannot by himself or herself develop an adequate understanding of another culture. And I don't find any reason to suppose that the birth within a culture automatically confers understanding.

But it is interesting to note that the two most controversial interpretation of Paul Courtright's dense, scholarly tome Ganesha: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings that I discussed in my book in fact originated with two of Asia's most venerated scholars. And yet the book was attacked as being a crude product of Western colonial imagination.

Image: Varanasi, photographed by Seema Pant

'Lots of ungrounded beliefs circulate, as naturally happens when people feel sinsecure'

June 19, 2007

You insist Islamic fundamentalism has no grip over India. But how do you account for the widespread belief in Gujarat and several other states that Muslim fundamentalist groups get funds from the Gulf and are going around converting people?

I find that there are lots of ungrounded beliefs circulating, as naturally happens when people feel frightened and insecure.

For example, the widespread belief in a Muslim population explosion, used by (Chief Minister) Narendra Modi in his re-election campaign in Gujarat, turns out to be entirely groundless, and yet when one points to the census data, people still believe Modi rather than the census.

The RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) supports widespread reconversion efforts, that is well documented, but Muslim fundamentalism simply has not played a significant role in Indian politics, and I fervently hope that the current and past ill treatment of Muslims does not alter that situation.

'Muslim fundamentalism simply has not played a significant role in Indian politics'

June 19, 2007

I hear criticism even from people who are not necessarily supportive of Hindutva that many scholars and activists on the Left do not criticise the fundamentalist and secessionist Muslim leaders enough.

I hear criticism even from people who are not necessarily supportive of Hindutva that many scholars and activists on the Left do not criticise the fundamentalist and secessionist Muslim leaders enough.

I think that Muslims are criticised all around the world. Here, I was writing a book for Americans who start from the position of thinking that Muslims are bound to be fundamentalist, or bound to be agitators.

One thing I want Americans to understand is that here (in India) is the second- or third-largest group of Muslims in the world, depending on how you count, and they are living, by and large, as peaceful, democratic citizens. Most Americans do really think that Muslims all want to take over and they don't want democracy and they want nothing but Islamic law.

To that audience, I want to emphasise the diversity in Islam globally and in fact, India's Muslims have been, by and large, good democratic citizens. Of course, with respect to Kashmir -- which I do not discuss in the book -- there is absolutely no doubt that some of them played a bad role.

So, if I was writing a book on Kashmir, I would engage in a lot of criticism of that. But, again, the religious tensions that took place in Gujarat, it's not that all Muslims are innocent victims. I don't want to suggest that at all. But I think, on the whole, they don't have organised terrorist plans, partly because they are so powerless.

The recent government survey has shown that a majority of Muslims across India are really poor and disadvantaged. In Gujarat, that is the one case that is not so. Because, in Gujarat there are quite a lot of Muslims that are prosperous merchants and traders. On average, there is no single state except Gujarat that has prosperous Muslims. Even in West Bengal, in spite of so much support from the Left, they have never risen from the position of being poor labourers on the large, feudal estates.

Image: After a terrorist attack. Photograph: Sebastian D'Souza/AFP/Getty Images

[Adopted from India Abroad a rediff publication]

A Trip on Dussera: Jamalabad Fort
-------------------------------------------------------------

Overlooking the Arabian seas and nestled by the garland of the dotted hills of the westen Ghats the Kudremukh range forms an unique outback with deep valleys and steep precipices. Herein lies a Trekker's delight yet 'undiscovered' by the tourists...a secluded hill station , retaining it pristine and profound natural beauty.















The high rock forms a part of the Kudremukh range of hills near Belthangadi. It is surrounded by lush green flora on all frontiers with the top veiled by the mist and the cloud....


















On the top of this single piece of granite the fort of Tipu Sultun was built...the same ..our destination on the day of Dusseera..........here the Biomeds go..on ...and on ...&on...

........Conquering the Gateway .........

After a three hour long journey ......with lots of intro and technical and HR stuff on the way ......and few puri bhajji and masala dosas gulped down ........Baseer bond fasting..huh ..(a big respite for many..no acknowledgemens and inspirations here) ........we did reach to out first halt...the base where we start of wih out expedition towards the unknown ........the Gate is here...whats inside .???...lets walk in ...statistically not much ....a couple of miles of walk ...another couple climbing the slippery ,mossy ,grassy, watery granite stones..........chale chalo .....!!!

The History behind Genesis

The fort was built by Tipu Sultan in 1974 and later renamed after the name of the Sultan's mother Jamalbee. The stories are numerous centred round this mostly unknown fort but as history goes...the fort was once captured by the British but again Tipu snatched it back ...and remained in his possession till 1799 ..till his defeat and demise in Fourth Mysore War and in the following year in 1800 the fort was remanded back under the queen's authority.
As of the present state it lies unattended , totally derelict and in utter relics ...only the Archaeological Survey of India proudly announcing ..something was here and it is being preserved for the future(:) but it never tells...it needs to be present at 'present'..)

The relics still stands tall ...a testimony of a glorious past...


Upholding the fighting spirit...in remission ...for centuries now....

The Journey to the Summit

The valley from the hills ( a mid -range shot)

A journey too tough ...but there are some to whom the road never seems unsurmountable ..no target unachievable ,failure and retreats may be the story of the day but there were some who could carry the FLAMES to the top ..and yup ..they did it ...kudos to those Bravehearts..
Back to the Base ...at the river banks....

In the End...it doesn even matter...

Someone wrote.."men may come and men may go , but i go on forever..." ...life is eternal and endless in its many forms and frequencies.....some people come ..some go ..some empires rise ..and they rise to fall one day ...but some truth remains unfazed by these vicissitudes ...
.........a new life generates from the relics ..and newer life forms ..and fresh youthful energy is drawn to the destination to taste the adventure , the fun , the dogma of uncertainty ..and thats whats unites us ..lets us grow into manhood...and thats what matters at the end of the day ..and nothin else.......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...........the obligation of endure never dies....

Sakti Rupena Sanksthita

[Story in FLASH]

"Ya devi sarbabhuteshshu,sakti rupena sanksthita
Namasteshwai Namasteshwai Namasteshwai namo namaha."


Storms of the summer have waned off ,the dripping rains of the moonsoons gradually gives place to the crystal clear sky as only fleecy clouds flow by the glassy firmament...the gentle lull of the gastly wind passes by the green fields creating a wave of lively dance....the grass seems greener as ever swiveling in the breeze busking in the golden sunshine...slowly as the days pass by the white 'Kash Phul" starts to blossom in the endless stretches of land- the people know its autumn again...and its the month of 'Ashwin' ,the time of mother's home coming....
The time has arrived for the mother to come ..for the people to meet their beloved ones ..and to worship the Power ..and the glory of "Streesakti"(women power)...as the Devipaksha(the term of the mother) takes over Pitripaksha (pitri=father) for the time onwards...
Durga - Goddess of deliverance - comes to earth on the seventh day after the autumn new moon. Seven days before Her arrival starts the Devipaksha. The day is being observed as ‘Mahalaya’, the day of invocation. In the dark night of amabasya (new moon), people pray to Goddess Durga to arrive in the earth to ward off all evils. On the dawn of ‘Mahalaya’, homes in Bengal resonate with the immortal verses of the ‘Chandipath’ (chanting of the hymns of ‘Chandi’).

'Mahalaya' is not an myth but a concept ..and a tribute..to the primeval source of power..the qualities of all inundated in form of one shaki ..one Nari..the unity of power, energy and enterprise within one soul one body..she is manifestation of the same individual in different forms and different names....She is one and yet known by many names. She is Narayani, Brahmani, Maheshwari, Shivaduti and She is the fierceful ‘Chamunda’, decked with a garland of skulls...the godess of power is eternal ..she has no birth ..no specific physical form ...but is an manifestation of majestic might..an unified strength..preeminently materialised to protect humanity ..and restore normalcy in the process of creation from the evil incernates......

This post is dedicated to someone who has been the unilateral and never exhausting source of my energy ..my power...someone i love more than my self....."amar maa"...!!!

Imagine Cup Community @ orkut.com


Orkut is an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends.We are committed to providing an online meeting place where people can socialize, make new acquaintances and find others who share their interests. Join orkut to expand the circumference of your social circle.


The orkut user base began with its creator, Orkut Buyukkokten, who invited his friends to join. They in turn invited their friends, and soon the network was born. While we'd love to include everyone who wants to join, we're trying to ensure that orkut remains a close-knit community of friends.
We have seen many students who has been eminant performers and achievers in Imagine Cup being avid users of orkut also.We also moticed a varied range of Microsoft related communities in Orkut..but no such student communities dedicated to Imagine Cup was traced in Orkut.
So we are Happy to initiate a new community of Imaginers on Orkut..
All on Spoke having an Orkut account are cordially invited to join.....
Please join us at.....
http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=19549662

See the screenshot of the community page....

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Windows Vista Aero provides spectacular visual effects such as glass-like interface elements that you can see through.

Can the Windows Vista experience vary on different PCs?
Yes. Windows Vista is the first Windows operating system with a user experience that adapts to take advantage of the capabilities of the hardware on which it is installed.
All Windows Vista Capable%




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