The Chaotic-Neutron

For all those eager souls who watch my blog regularly and the not so regular passer-by readers, i apologize. This was probably the longest break i’ve taken from blogging since i started doing it in June 2003.

Life has just been incredibly hectic and sometimes i just lose track of what i want to do with my life … I guess it is one of those researcher’s blocks but being at this as long as i’ve been, the experience has been mind bogglingly stressful. I can frankly say that i’ve never in my life worked as hard as i did in the past 3 months. The downside is that i did not end up with a lot of results as i expected but just an extra paragraph in my thesis.

I could ramble on for a longer time but hey, if you wanna hear it, bring on a Jack daniels and meet me at College station. Now, i wouldn’t say i am completely out of work these days but i definitely do have lesser amounts of it to do over the summer.

With this post as the new start, i should be posting regularly in the coming days about stuff that are interesting and hopefully you enjoy too ! So keep watchin’.

The past month and a half have just breezed through without any interesting events. I have been working a lot on my research and today, managed to complete my code although still amateurish in its effort. There is still a lot more to do but i should get to it after my thesis defense in March.

Now, i am proud to announce that i have successfully completed a 0-D and 1-D coupled kinetics/hydraulics code with feedback, a code i started writing from scratch, almost 6 months back and is now a breathing, living monster of more than 9000 lines. Can’t say how beautiful this feels

Another update is that i have been working on my site – The Chaotic Neutron where i plan to post a lot more than just the rants and links that i usually post here. The site is still under construction and hopefully will get it working on all aspects very soon. So, keep visiting my site from now on and i assure you that you will learn something every visit !

That’s about it for now. Got to get back to writing my thesis and finishing it before March 7. That’s my deadline after which my advisory committee would certify me to be a qualified master’s graduate

Before i begin, this article has a lot of physics concepts in it. If physics is not your cup of cake, go ahead and read my other posts ! 

Now, did the title catch your eye ?! It sure did that to me. I went ahead and read the article over at NS and was amazed at what i saw there. The article details about an unknown scientist’s work in Germany about an attempt to make a GUT(Grand Unification Theory) which ended up opening new realms to explore and exploit.

Hyperspace is a concept which will enable a spacecraft to reach Mars in less than 3 hours and a star 11 light years away in only 80 days. Now that, is abstract physics at its best

If you are interested, go ahead and read the article. If not comprehensible, it sure is a nice read that reminds me of ‘Star Trek’.

Bird flu  

Bird flu has overshadowed the year 2005. The abominable virus claimed many bird lives in South East Asia before heading across Europe to Russia and Ukraine. However, the more scientists and officials talk about the deadly threat, the less credible it looks to people. Some people believe there is no such thing as bird flu. They think the whole story stemmed from the fights over the world market between the poultry producers. Others blame the pharmaceutical companies that are keen to spread panic and therefore make us buy more medicines. Which story should we believe in? Does the bird flu really exist? Does it pose a threat to humans? Did other threats of the worldwide proportions materialize?

It did not take long to tackle the problem; doctors found a pathogen and a vector – coronovirus and a palm cat, a viverrine animal normally used for food in China. However, the urgent measures could not stop another myth from spreading far and wide. The myth said that the SARS problem was made up to lower China’s economic growth and disrupt the exceedingly profitable tourist industry in South East Asia.

Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Lev Sandakhchiyev:

“Discovering a new more dangerous type of previously unknown coronavirus in the patients was direct evidence of a real threat. The ‘spinning’ of that epidemic stressed the importance of international cooperation. Many people did realize that humankind was destined to face new or recurrent infectious diseases. Therefore, a system of global and domestic monitoring is highly required.”

Spent nuclear fuel

Following a heated debate in 2001, the Russian president signed into law the bill on storage and reutilization of spent nuclear fuel from foreign nuclear power spent nuclear fuelplants. Specialists were unanimous while explaining to their opponents that spent nuclear fuel was not just the waste material from the nuclear industry. According to them, it is a high-tech product that can be used for extracting raw materials and energy. Despite potentially huge profits Russia could make (one ton of spent nuclear fuel costs $1 million; total estimated amount of spent nuclear fuel is 200 thousand tons), environmentalists have been relentless in their opposition to the new law.

Nikolai Shingarev, Director of the Information Center of the Federal Agency on Nuclear Energy:

“No spent nuclear fuel is being brought into Russia despite the law. We will probably sign the first contract under the new legislation for a small consignment of spent nuclear fuel from a research reactor in Uzbekistan. Today Russia is receiving nuclear waste from the nuclear plants built in the Soviet era in Ukraine ($370 thousand per 1 ton) and Bulgaria ($600 thousand per one ton). Reutilization waste materials will be stored in Russia only if the governments OKs the storage and only if fuel had been originally produced in Russia. 75% of revenues will be allocated for environmental programs and the remaining 25% will make part of local budgets.”

10 myths of the past, which never materialized

Steam-driven locomotive: serious scientists were asserting that cows would stop bearing offspring and produce milk at the sight of a locomotive. They also clamed that air would be squeezed out of train carriages at 20 km per hour and passengers will suffocate as a result.

Robot: intelligent machines will shake off dependence and take command of the world; humans would submit to the power of the machines.

Spacecraft: spacecraft were making holes in the atmosphere during the takeoff; the earth’s protective anti-radiation layer of the atmosphere will be eventually destroyed and thus the earth will be exposed to dangerous space particles.

Microwave oven: fried sausages can irradiate in the dark; radiation from food cooked in the oven will pile up in the human body and cause cancer.

Cell phone: radiation emitted by a cell phone receiver can affect the brain by liquefying it. Paradoxically, a cell phone phobia could not stop the massive spread of cellular communications all over the world.

Vaccination: the danger of vaccination is one of the longstanding fears in the world; the first objectors appeared shortly after the first vaccination campaign launched by Dr. Edward Jenner in 1796; many objected to vaccination in Russia at the end of the 1990s.

Environmental pollution: some people feared that the civilization would come to end by 2020 due to sky-high levels of industrial and communal pollution which should result in a lack of oxygen and poisonous evaporation.

Asbestos: Micro particles of asbestos cause lung cancer. Asbestos was produced in Canada and the USSR. Canadian asbestos companies went bankrupt following an anti-asbestos propaganda campaign instigated by the competitors. Russia’s asbestos makers have survived the bad times. The incidence rate of cancer in the town of Asbest does not exceed an average national incidence rate of cancer.

Global warming: industrial emissions of carbon dioxide cause the greenhouse effect that leads to overheating of the earth’s surface. Consequently, polar ice will melt away causing the global ocean level rise by one meter.

Ozone holes: Freon used in refrigerators and deodorants will destroy the ozone layer of the atmosphere, which protects Earth against the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation. As a result, the number of cancer and other deadly diseases will grow.

via PRAVDA

Good news : I earned a GPA of 4.0/4.0 this semester. Just so if you don’t realize the significance of that, its the full score goddammit. Awesome. I have worked very hard this semester and i should say that eventhough my oral qualifier didn’t go that well, it sure did help me to refresh my ideas on engineering to such an extent that i could help even people with over 10 years of experience to understand what’s what !! 

This is absolutely fantastic. I have just now finished writing a 1-D neutron diffusion code with feedback in C# which works and got the news that i got a full score. Can this day get any better ?? It doesn’t matter actually since i still have almost 20 pages of my thesis to write in 3 days. That’s 7 pages/day atleast to write and believe me, writing a thesis is the worst thing you can get your hands on. Hopefully i will finish it off before next tuesday and will go on a vacation with a clear mind !

I actually have a lot to post and have saved them in my draft but right now, there’s just lot of work to be done. Maybe, i will post them all after new year’s. I will, surely, entertain you with lots of good thought provoking posts after the new year and as a bonus, will introduce you to my site. Until then, bye folks.

The past few days have been the most stressful period as far as my gray cells can look back in time. The downside of all the stress is that my sleep cycle is terribly screwed up and there is no telling what the schedule for my sleep will be, say tonight. Although, sacrificing a bit of sleep does give me a lot more time to work rather than doze off for some rest, the body cycle, my concentration and focus have started to waver quite a bit.

I got intrigued and set about to analyze the effects of such a sleep starvation on the mind, health and found puzzling pieces of facts. Here i present to you, my review article on “Sleep deprivation and its ill-effects”.

Disclaimer : This is a review post about the different articles i found with information, facts from those sites on hacking sleep, sleep cycles, problems that sleep deprivation can induce and my thoughts to manage a balance between lesser sleep and better health. Read on if you want to learn all about ‘Sleep’. Or so i lure you !

Sleep

Until the 1950s, most people thought of sleep as a passive, dormant part of our daily lives. We now know that our brains are very active during sleep. Moreover, sleep affects our daily functioning and our physical and mental health in many ways that we are just beginning to understand.

During sleep, we usually pass through five phases of sleep: stages 1, 2, 3, 4, and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. These stages progress in a cycle from stage 1 to REM sleep, then the cycle starts over again with stage 1 (see figure 1). We spend almost 50 percent of our total sleep time in stage 2 sleep, about 20 percent in REM sleep, and the remaining 30 percent in the other stages. Infants, by contrast, spend about half of their sleep time in REM sleep.

The amount of sleep each person needs depends on many factors, including age. Infants generally require about 16 hours a day, while teenagers need about 9 hours on average. For most adults, 7 to 8 hours a night appears to be the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as 5 hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day. Women in the first 3 months of pregnancy often need several more hours of sleep than usual. The amount of sleep a person needs also increases if he or she has been deprived of sleep in previous days. Getting too little sleep creates a “sleep debt,” which is much like being overdrawn at a bank. Eventually, your body will demand that the debt be repaid. We don’t seem to adapt to getting less sleep than we need; while we may get used to a sleep-depriving schedule, our judgment, reaction time, and other functions are still impaired.

Although scientists are still trying to learn exactly why people need sleep, animal studies show that sleep is necessary for survival. Sleep appears necessary for our nervous systems to work properly. Too little sleep leaves us drowsy and unable to concentrate the next day. It also leads to impaired memory and physical performance and reduced ability to carry out math calculations. If sleep deprivation continues, hallucinations and mood swings may develop. Some experts believe sleep gives neurons used while we are awake a chance to shut down and repair themselves. Without sleep, neurons may become so depleted in energy or so polluted with byproducts of normal cellular activities that they begin to malfunction. Sleep also may give the brain a chance to exercise important neuronal connections that might otherwise deteriorate from lack of activity.

With this brief introduction into the physics of Sleep, let us see what some of the recent articles and posts have to say about ‘Polyphasic sleep’, ‘Hacking Sleep’ and their effects.

Polyphasic sleep

Polyphasic sleep is a sleep pattern specification intended to reduce sleep time to 2–5 hours daily. This is achieved by spreading out sleep into short naps of around 20–45 minutes throughout the day. This is supposed to allow for more waking hours with relatively high alertness.

The method uses natural human sleep mechanisms to maximize alertness when sleep time needs to be minimized. However, it requires a rigid schedule which makes it unfeasible for most people. It can work well for those engaged in activities which do not permit lengthy periods of sleep (e.g. sailors).

Again, several articles have been written recently about Polyphasic sleep and the attention it has gathered, forces me to look into the subject in detail. But first, let us look at the Sleep cycles and understand the different phases involved during a normal sleep routine before trying to attempt Polyphasic sleep.

To start off, let us look at a great article which has detailed analysis on the sleep cycles, phases, physiological effects, the natural rythm and factors that can affect a normal sleep. The article is very formal in nature and looks more like a technical paper, but we have to note that it thoroughly analyzes the different components that induce sleep, namely

1) The circadian component and
2) The homeostatic component

The author then talks about some of the habits that are misconceptualized in society about sleep and talks about some of the myths and discusses the implications of each. I definitely did learn a lot in this part. I am sure you will too !

Here’s a detailed look at the sleep cycles, the average duration of each cycle and which cycle is important to feel refreshed and to avoid the uneasy feeling even after 8 hours of sleep.

In the course of the night, we alternately enter two phases of sleep :

• NREM sleep (named for non-Rapid Eye Movement) – Scientists believe that NREM is the critical moment of memory consolidation in which the hippocampus(central memory switchboard of the brain) works as the neural trainer for the neocortex in which long-term memories will be stored. Those long-term memories cannot be formed without entering appropriates stages of the sleep cycle! You cannot learn effectively if your sleep gets cut short in the morning. Or if it gets interrupted during the night. Even if you try to sleep 15 hours per day in short pieces of interrupted sleep, your learning results will be dismal! Long story short, No NREM -> Not a solid long term memory.
• REM sleep (named for Rapid Eye Movement) – The brain in REM sleep is a hard-working brain that has little to do with the notion of energy-conservation and rest in sleep.

To learn more on sleep cycles, read the above article and The power of the Sleep Cycle. There are some interesting quotes in the article about ways to improve the alertness, fitness and health even with lesser sleep if proportioned rightly. This is very interesting.

Another article which created quite a buzz on ‘Polyphasic sleep’ is the ‘Uberman’s sleeping schedule‘. The recent article over at Kuro5hin talks about the Uberman’s sleeping schedule or Polyphasic sleep where the author manages to get just 3 hours of sleep everyday and freeing more time to work with 5-6 20-30 min short naps.

The idea behind this is to maximize the REM(rapid eye movement) sleep when your brain is still mostly active, conjuring dreams that we see. Interesting concept again but not quite workable if you don’t have the luxury to control your working time. Also, the effects mentioned in the article are only short term and the author has no clue about the long term effects of such a Uberman schedule. Definitely a risky bet IMO.

After reading the previous article, i was searching to find the effects of such a polyphasic sleeping schedule and stumbled upon another article which quotes and mentions the effects of polyphasic sleep from journal articles. Let us quote from ‘Ubersleep? Hacking Sleep? Stupid!‘

Like i guessed, there are some serious side effects to such polyphasic sleep. Here’s a small list of the long term effects that you need to be aware of before trying any of this.

• Your health will suffer
• Less sleep equals more fat
• People who sleep normally, live longer
• You increase your chances of having a car wreck

Some of it, i could have guessed by intuition but some of it has factual data to support it.

Based on the previous article, i suspected that maybe obesity is somehow related to sleep deprivation. Reason : I have been eating very less over the past few days combined with lesser sleep but i have still managed to gain over 3lbs in weight in the past month.

This article argues that ‘lack of sleep’ is a factor for obesity. The author also mentions couple of good stories and research attempts to discern the effects of the polyphasic sleep.

But oh well, no one is stopping anyone from trying polyphasic sleep but IMHO, dont try it, without researching the full effects of what it will do to you !

Moving on, i did find more scientific articles that have made observations on ‘What Losing Sleep Does to a Body‘.

While many aspects of sleep remain a mystery — including exactly why we sleep — the picture that appears to be emerging is that not sleeping enough or being awake in the wee hours runs counter to the body’s internal clock, throwing a host of basic bodily functions out of sync.

“Lack of sleep disrupts every physiologic function in the body,” said Eve Van Cauter of the University of Chicago. “We have nothing in our biology that allows us to adapt to this behavior.”

The amount of necessary sleep varies from person to person, with some breezing through their days on just a few hours’ slumber and others barely functioning without a full 10 hours, experts say. But most people apparently need between about seven and nine hours, with studies indicating that an increased risk for disease starts to kick in when people get less than six or seven, experts say.

–Holy crap. If what they say is true, then i might have actually reduced my life span by atleast 10 yrs now for sleep starving myself over the past 6-7 years. Read this article too to learn some of the recent research activities being done to find out exactly the detrimental effects of inadequate sleep.

Another scientific article i found was ‘Down for the Count‘ which observes the sleeping habits of mammals in general.

“People who don’t have REM sleep are remarkably normal,” Dr. Siegel said. “There’s no evidence for any intellectual or emotional problems.”

So why do mammals and birds have REM sleep at all? “The best answer I can come up with is that it’s there to prepare you for waking,” Dr. Siegel said. “When the important work of sleep is done, REM sleep just makes you as alert as you can be while you’re asleep.”

–Well that rules out REM maximizing Ubersleep for me. Goodbye polyphasic sleep.

Now a few other articles suggest that “Deep Sleep May Be Genetic”. Eventhough the argument sounds appealing, i am very skeptical about the validity of such a thing. I think that deep sleep is directly related to a person’s stress level and ability to calm his mind. Hence, to get a deep sleep, I think that the psyche of a person matters and not the genes he derived from his parent. Well, i could be way off or closer than you think, but let further research prove me wrong.

In the light of learning scientifically about sleep, i feel obliged to link to another article that is based on sleep research. The article ‘Deep sleep short-circuits brain’s grid of connectivity‘ discusses how the brain functions during deep sleep. Here’s a quote from the article.

In the human brain, cells talk to one another through the routine exchange of electrical signals. But when people fall into a deep sleep, the higher regions of the brain – regions that during waking hours are a bustling grid of neural dialogue – apparently lose their ability to communicate effectively, causing consciousness to fade.

After reading so much about the different kinds of sleep cycles, methods to optimize sleep, i definitely felt that there is one other thing all the previous authors missed out. Meditation.

Meditation builds up the brain

What effect meditating has on the structure of the brain has also been a matter of some debate. Now Sara Lazar at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, US, and colleagues have used MRI to compare 15 meditators, with experience ranging from 1 to 30 years, and 15 non-meditators.

They found that meditating actually increases the thickness of the cortex in areas involved in attention and sensory processing, such as the prefrontal cortex and the right anterior insula.

“You are exercising it while you meditate, and it gets bigger,” she says. The finding is in line with studies showing that accomplished musicians, athletes and linguists all have thickening in relevant areas of the cortex. It is further evidence, says Lazar, that yogis “aren’t just sitting there doing nothing”.

The growth of the cortex is not due to the growth of new neurons, she points out, but results from wider blood vessels, more supporting structures such as glia and astrocytes, and increased branching and connections.

-The research reinstates what we already know about the oriental methodologies involving meditation and the benefits of it. Theories apart, i have been practising meditation for well over 2 years although not very regularly and from my personal experience i can say for sure that if you do it right, it can compensate for hours of sleep deprivation. At the end of the meditative session, i usually feel alert, more conscious, and more alive. The symptoms of drowsiness and lethargy vanish and i am ready to do more work. It is important to understand the process of meditation to get the maximum benefit. The vital component is the ‘breathing’, which will determine how peaceful a feeling you are going to reach and the steadiness of your breathing will quicken the process. I am no where near an expert on this and i suggest that if you are interested, read up more or ask a professional.

Anyway, IMHO, meditation can definitely help me more than any theory on polyphasic sleep. But hey, no one is stopping you to try something different. And if it works, i’d be happy to know.

Diverging from the topic a little bit, on the topic of Alarm clocks, here’s another interesting article : ‘Alarm clocks are bad. How to wake up and feel better‘.

If you are one of those persons who relies heavily on alarm clocks to wake up in the morning, like i do, then you already know how irritating the sound of the alarm can be. But is there an easier way to wake us up with an alarm, without abruptly disrupting the sleep but to slowly ease in to getting up, and to avoid that groggy feeling after sleep ? Yes. The article provides an innovative method that aims to do that albeit expensive. In the end, another cool idea and a nice theory !

Here’s another scary finding ! An article that took sleep deprived doctors as test subjects has recently concluded that the attention, vigilance, driving skills suffer as much from long work hours & overnight shifts as from blood alcohol level of 0.04%.

Read more about ‘Lack of sleep affects young doctors just like alcohol‘.

In the end, there seems only one way to beat the time crunch. A ‘28 hour day schedule‘. I have thought about such an idea before but never realized that someone else would be interested on similar lines. Here’s the crux of the idea.

We know that there are 24 hours & 7 days in a week, a total of 168 hours. Instead, if we have 28 hours/day with a 6 day week period, we could have longer hours in a day, more time to work and more time to sleep. Voila ! But us humans, err, me i am sure, will still manage to work for 22 hours and get only 6 hours of sleep. Now i wonder how that would be like !

Conclusion :

Sleep well. Eat well. Life is probably(?!) not worth screwing around. My advice : Screw polyphasic sleep. Embrace meditation.

You only have one life to live. Enjoy it while it lasts.

References :

1) Polyphasic sleep – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2) The power of the Sleep Cycle
3) Good sleep, good learning, good life
4) Uberman’s sleeping schedule
5) Ubersleep? Hacking Sleep? Stupid!
6) Sleep Well or Die. Part II
7) Optimal sleep Scientists Finding Out What Losing Sleep Does to a Body
9) Down for the Count
10) Deep sleep may be in your genes
11) Deep Sleep May Be Genetic
12) Deep sleep short-circuits brain’s grid of connectivity
13) Meditation builds up the brain
14) Alarm clocks are bad. How to wake up and feel better
15) Lack of sleep affects young doctors just like alcohol
16) A 28 hour day schedule
17) More links on Sleep, its importance, effects of deprivation