Chromosome Counting

I am reading this amazing book called Galileo’s Finger, the ten great ideas of science by Peter Atkins. In the second chapter it briefly describes about the process of Mitosis and Meiosis, the two basic cell division processes in most organisms. I remember having encountered these terms in high school but when I started reading about these today, this is how I actually felt

I struggled with the whole math of these processes because I thought each cell has 23 chromosomes. Turns out, I got that part wrong. duh! Each cell has 23 pairs of chromosomes.I don’t know why text books talk about chromosome in terms of pairs and not just the actual number!  And, if you are looking at the figures in any text book an “X” is actually one replicated chromosome. Anyhow, I haven’t read up on the details of the processes because I don’t think I need to know them yet. But here is the essential counting of chromosomes during the two processes:

1. Mitosis: Division of cells to yield two replicas of the original cell. The value in parentheses denotes the number of chromosomes in the cell.

Cell (46) —>  Diploid cell (92) —> 2 x Cell (46)

2. Meiosis: Division of cells to yield 4 haploid cells. The purpose is to prepare the gametes (sperms or eggs) which will fuse with the better half during fertilization.

Cell (46) —> Diploid cell (92) —> 4 x Haploid cell (23)

Random Realization – 2

Don’t know how to go about doing some task at work. A quick tip – create a draft email to send out to your team and define clearly – 

– what is the problem you are trying to solve.

– why are you trying to solve that.

– what are the approaches that you have already tried and they failed.

– what are the new approaches that might work.

– And then ask for advice.

Most of the times, this would help you arrive at the answer yourself. But don’t wait too long, if its really important to get the task done quick, just send the email. 

 

 

Random Realizations

Ok .. one of the most important things that I have realized in work so far is the importance of logging and properly documents the tasks you did, and storing them in some properly titled file. That would save a lot of time and frustration of searching through stuff when you encounter a similar task later. On the note of realizing how much logging can help improve productivity, I thought of reopening my hibernated blog 😛

I will try and keep on posting these random realizations ( or random rants 😛 ) as and when I get them.

RR – You might sound really opinionated in some discussions. Think twice – do you really believe what you are saying. Have some strong arguments to support your opinions. Choose your words carefully. Even though you don’t mean something, most of the times you may be sounding like a jerk.

On philosophy in computer science – Part 1

I used to wonder a lot in my first semester as to why computer geeks are also interested in things like science fiction, philosophy, metaphysics and all the stuff that most of the people can’t really understand nor they have much inclination to do so . Aren’t they just supposed to think of the algorithm and keeping coding.  But now I think I can understand why it might be so interesting. It is because these topics describe and suggests us some ideas .. ideas which we may never have thought.. ideas that makes the world around us more interesting .. ideas which help us understand, enjoy and appreciate this craziness that we are surrounded by inside and out.

I am not going to describe these ideas as I myself don’t have much strong opinions about them now :P. But such are the ideas that I am discovering attending the classes of Prof. Kannan Srinathan.  I will try to keep this post updated with the interesting insights described in class. The class is about Distributed Algorithms and is more of a research experiment than a normal one hour class where a prof comes, writes some formulas on the board and leaves the class leaving the students completely confused most of the times.

So what I have gained from these classes –

Ideal research should help person to improve his or her Imagination. Of course a lot of hard work needs to be put in to plunge into a subject, read about the work done so far, discussions with the peer group .. but it requires imagination to think of a new and different problem , to apply existing techniques to a different problem, improving the solution, proving the solution. It is equally important to sometimes show that a problem is really tough .. because that means sending out a signal to other fellow researchers saying “hey man .. stop working on this .. as it is really difficult to solve”

Research always doesn’t mean that you are changing the world. You may be attacking problems that would probably make zero difference in the way people live their daily lives. Most of the times the best theoretical claimed complexities are very tough to be realized in practice. So why then do you need to think and solve such problems .. ? This gave rise to famous class discussion of Action vs Inaction.

Before going to the concept of action vs inaction, lets see how getting a  solution of a problem changes things –

• It creates a numerous more problems to be solved.
• It may make or usually doesn’t make much difference to the society.

Very active reasearchers will say that they want to solve all the problems that exist. But they don’t realize that there are already an infinite number of problems to be solved, and on top of that by solving one problem they are creating infinite more.

Totally Inactive researchers say that already solving a problem is going to introduce infinite other problems. Stop now to be safe 😛 . World has progressed enough and whatever I solve, people are anyways going to be the same. What they don’t realize is solving something or atleast trying to do so .. changes something within us. That change has been committed to Nature’s mind. And that change will someday ( even if it is after centuries ) affect the world. We may not be there to see the effects of our works but we will be present somewhere in the causes of those effects.

So the problem of Inaction vs Action is to choose the Middle Path. Not to be so active that you don’t give the future generations a chance to work on any problems or not be so inactive that transfers all the burden to the future generations. Finally, our goal should be evolution.

Has it been a month already ? :( :) :o Oo

It’s been a month since I have been at IIIT-H.  And I am spending most of  final four months of my undergrad doing research here. Really felt good saying “research” 😀 . I arrived in college and got an entire room to myself in the hostel,  allotted a computer to work on in the lab, no restrictions on the hostel timings, working along with some of the sincerest people  I have ever seen, cheap and unlimited food .. What more can one want ?

So what have I been doing the last one month ?

Exploring research areas under Prof. Kishore Kothapalli – mainly general purpose computing using GPUs  and computational geometry algorithms for range queries.

Attending classes on Distributed Algorithms taught by none other than Prof. Kannan Srinathan who can be described as a heroic, saintly, philosophical computer scientist. I will be writing some more posts to describe these classes 🙂

Participated in CodeSprint 2 and giving many interviews for getting a full-time working opportunity ( I don’t like to call it a job. And just so you know chinese food and early morning technical interviews are a bad combination :P)

Observing people doing research here. It is just a delight to see people working here. Makes me regret my decision a little of not having given gre. But I am definitely inspired and one never knows when one will land up doing some awesome research work.

I should ideally be preparing for my GATE exam which is going to be on 12th Feb and I have no idea what I am going to do 😛

Coming soon will be posts about my project work , some ideas on research which will entirely be my views as I don’t think I have much experience to boast yet 😉 .

Another year about to begin!

So ..I can’t wait till 26th comes along. It’s my birthday. Another year gone !! Oh What a year it has been .. I went green to blue to yellow this year \m/ on Topcoder, a good internship, lots of fun times in Hyderabad and a superb Rajkot trip with friends. And it has been a equally lazy year too. Weeks have passed when I have done nothing but watched series and movies. Guess I experienced both the extremes this time :).

I was just thinking of one thing I would like to ask God as a present for my day. That would be Productive Infinite Patience. There have been moments in this year when I have been sooo restless without any solid reason. Now when I look back I feel that those impatient moments were stupid. Just takes a moment to halt and see how impatient I am becoming. It’s not until some of my friends or family points out that I regain a little patience.  Hope this year will bring more understanding and better ground to stand on.

Is love your cup of tea?

It is around 2:30 am in the morning and I am not able to sleep. So, I made a good cup of tea and sat in the balcony staring at the stars and moon and thinking about nothing or no one in particular but just wondering about a feeling called Love. And sipping my tea, I realized that Love is my cup of tea. I mean literally a cup of tea.

So I decided to give it a thought and what hit me is a very interesting comparison. I am probably writing this because I love to drink tea. You may like coffee or hot chocolate but ya some warm beverage. Most of the days, when I get up in the morning the first thought I have is ‘I just want some tea.’ If I get some tea in the morning I know that my day is going to be great. No matter what happens during the day I have taken my precautionary medicine in the morning. When I am tired or with a close friend or watching the sunset or upset, I long for a good cup of tea. Because that time I know that everything is going to be alright, that time I don’t worry if I have a worthless job or remain jobless for life – I am just enjoying my tea and am relaxed and try to keep everything aside.

This is of course coffee .. but you get the point

I try not to spoil my time sipping tea by being in the middle of people shouting or fighting .. I try to get to a far away place .. maybe in the company of some close friends and enjoy the peace spread. Then when I have had my tea, I feel ready to face the world, go and do my work for the next few hours. Another thing that I have noticed is that I feel so grateful when I am having a refreshing cup of tea. I think it’s probably the only time I am thanking God with all my heart.

I was near Coimbatore for a past few days and hell yeah! they make good tea in South India. Tea was going to be available only from six to half past six in the morning. Usually I sleep till late hours but I found myself waking up before six even before the alarm went off. If I tell this to my roomie back in college she is going to be very proud of me waking up so early without help. When I returned home, I made a perfect cup of tea and was flaunting it. But I am clever, never flaunt  your tea so much so that other people would come and grab your cup 😛 .. ya let them have a whiff… let them tell you how great it is .. revel in the greatness of your tea but then go to your favorite secluded spot and enjoy it.

Some people may call this addiction .. but hell with them. This is Love. If you yearn for someone just like you yearn for a cup of tea after a long day ..both are probably same sort of feelings. If you feel this comparison reduces the feeling of Love to a cup of tea, think of it like this –  just a cup of tea could also teach you about Love.  So .. If you are alone and find yourselves longing for a cup of tea … know that Love is not far 🙂 .

P.S: If you took portions of this post as innuendos, you need help.

Long way to go …

“When it comes back to giving to society , don’t you think you are doing too less ..”  these words came from one of my best friends and they hit me like lightning . I am basically an introvert and my friend had asked me to take a small part in something that I felt a bit afraid of .. and I denied. But on hearing these words I felt a pang in my heart not because they came from a friend (I am happy that they came from my best friend and it has made our friendship grow even stronger)  but because they were clearly sounding true . Clearly the context is not as important as the message is. I am actually happy that I denied the first time because it gave me some space and some time to reflect on whether I was really progressing in life or whether I am just stagnant in life. It has planted a seed of gratefulness and am grateful to my friend to have shown me the right way and given me a chance to rethink and change my own decisions , to rise above my own inhibitions .. Finally we may reach a long way in our careers , in our passions but the question really is whether we have reached a long way in Life ..

Pre-Award vs Post-Award

8 girls from various engineering institutes were awarded the  “Google Women in Engineering Award , 2010”, I being one of them. 24 girls were invited to attend a two-day Conclave at  Google Hyderabad. It’s been a major achievement for a girl still studying in 2^nd year of her B.Tech. I have been quite fascinated by the thought of analysing myself in the pre-award and post-award scenario. And well here is the thing.

Pre-Award :

I am interested in programming and problem-solving. I am quite happy solving cute puzzles, knowing about various programming techniques etc. but did not think of the bigger picture. I am not known to many people in my college and am quite satisfied in writing code , watching movies / series , spending time thinking in my nice small room.

Now comes the more fun part or should I say the funny part. Hmm… it might come to you as a surprise but I have not travelled by air in the last 7 years and well yes, I felt quite foolish to ask my friends and even googling about the nitty-gritty in air- travel :P. Nor have I travelled this far all alone by myself. This is the first time I am going to visit a place in South-India and am quite excited.

Post- Award :

I am exposed to the better world around me. I am amazed to see people involved in various projects involving different areas in Computer Science. That motivates me to work on some current areas in Computer Science which are having widespread applications and are intellectually satisfying too. Once I take up enough courses in my BTech , I guess I will have figured out what interests me the most and I hope to pursue it passionately. The other thing that I have learnt is that it is always good to know about things happening around you, be it in the industry or in research. Not merely because it may give you an edge over others but also because it helps you to appreciate your own work or passion and reveal many possibilities of where you can apply your ideas.

Coming back to college after having won this award, suddenly people start recognising you. It kind of gives me a weird feeling. It makes me happy that people notice but at the same time it makes me feel some sort of a responsibility that I have, in making other girls aware about this wonderful opportunity and helping them achieve it. In a way, this idea of a ‘Women in engineering award’ is awesome. It really motivates girls in engineering and lets them get rid off their own inhibitions and makes them ready to pursue what really interests them and thereby contribute to society.

Hmmm after having visited Hyderabad all alone by flight , I have come to a conclusion that air-travel is much simpler form of travel and that I loved the travel part. I dont feel panicky of travelling all alone anymore. And ya , Hyderabad simply rocks!!Well finally I got some cool stuff with “Google” on it  😀 . I feel more attachment for this stuff than I feel for the award.

Everyone feels some sort of a sense of achievement after winning such an award .. but believe me the feeling is nothing compared to the feeling I get when my rating increases in Topcoder or even when I submit a medium level problem in SPOJ or when I solve a DP  ;).

As its always true , the best interpretation of any experience always comes in retrospection and I would like to come back and add something more to this post when I will have lived a little more of my life  and when my musing becomes mature enough.

Days well spent :)

When you feel its going to be worse than ever, it comes out to be completely opposite ! Ya this has been true in my case .. This sem I started with a mindset that ohoo Analog Circuit , Analog Communication , all blabla courses with all the more boring labs and tutorials . I had felt as if it would be too tough  to cope up with the courses and it would be a busy time , but things have taken a completely different route 😀 .. No wonder I have been feeling like its a nice picnic time here in college 😉 . We arent kept that busy with classes etc.. instead people are excited about Synapse , my college festival.

These days I watched two telugu movies “Bommarillu” and “Nuvvosthanante Nenoddantana” and two korean movies “How to keep my love” (I guess its a weird translation for a movie name) and “My Sassy Girl” (This is the 6th time I saw this one). Hmm how did I switch to watching movies when the languages doesnt make much sense to me ? Hmm thanks to college dc++ 😉 Just typed in movies and saw a complete list of movies in different languages and I thought like why not watch something unconventional and I must say I made a good choice that day. I would have definitely missed some wonderful movies if I had gone for some good old English or Hindi movies.  I loved Bommarillu . For anyone who likes to watch romantic movies which are like having some nice message and good decent comedy , this is the one movie I would suggest.  The songs rock!! Bommani Geesthe is the song I am humming these days. I even submitted a nice SPOJ problem successfully listening to this song . Somehow music has great power and language is definitely not a barrier. NN was a nice classic love story , enjoyed it too (of course I loved watching Siddhu more than the movie ;)) Coming to korean movies , “My Sassy Girl” is simply awesome. Many funny incidents on the way of love and a great unexpected climax. “How to keep my love” explores the power of waiting and patience and also illustrates the “Survival of the fittest” principle.

Amidst all these movies I had a kind of deadline to think about. I was trying to implement a small pencil in Multipoint which I couldn’t  search from the internet . Being new to C# etc, I felt like I will not be able to do it 😦 .. But as fate may have it , one of the team members implemented it using  Microsoft WPF , and now all I had to do is to just change some lines of code here and there  for Multipoint .This is the second incident that made me realise that when we feel its coming to a dead end , we will find some new door to enter and there is no reason to worry.