Big news on Stem Cell based Artificial Retina!!

Great to hear so many encouraging news from Science in action podcast. Really feels good to see advancements in science.

Artificial retina grown in lab
In a significant step forward in stem cell science, scientists in Japan have created an artificial retina from embryonic mouse stem cells in the lab. The retina is the back part of the eye, which has photosensitive cells, which react with light and allow us to see. The artificial retina is only at an early developmental stage. But it could be used as a tool for disease modelling. And in future, if the same process can be done using stem cells from the patient, the retina could be used to harvest these photosensitive cells for transplant. There are 150 single gene mutations that affect the retina, including age-related macular degeneration which affects 10% of patients aged 66 to 74.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00fvlfk#synopsis

One year Anniversary of oil Gulf Oil Spill or I should say Drama

Interesting to note that most of the news channel are busy talking and interviewing people who complains about not being properly compensated rather than focussing on actual damage itself. Funny part is that most of people are unhappy about compensation paid by BP. As per them, BP officials are too stingy and are asking too many papers on top of grabbing ability to sue BP. So they don't want to sign or get money from them. I think hopes are that they might be able to extract more money from BP later on by suing them. Which is fine I think.

I guess, focus of this drama is ultimately money instead of initial cry about damage to nature and our mother earth. Such a pity.. and shame.. However, who knows, If I were in their situation, I would have also been thinking about myself first than about anything else.

I hope US government and Obama administration will try to keep focus on it as natural disaster and continue to monitor and evaluate damage to nature and ecology due to this disaster. Remember guys, we need to focus on bigger picture rather than immediate short term benefits!!

Fight Against Corruption in India

I was thinking about corruption.. I believe that Corruption is one of the oldest practice of human civilization along with one of the oldest trade. Everyone will agree that corruption is there in some form or other in all the countries. Nature, form or severity may be different, but it is there is all parts of our beloved planet earth including all living things.. However, some countries it is still taboo and considered bad where as some countries, it is accepted norm. In case of India, I feel that only person who is not corrupt is the one who is not getting chance to be corrupt. Having said that, there are still some exceptions.. there are still some "Jantoos" in the zoo who are still honest!! no offense.. but the people who are not corrupt are in reality considered not to be street smart.. Sad.. but unfortunately true.. I know I will hear from lot of you about it.. 

So.. What drives corruption.. Why people resort to corruption.. Why some societies are more corrupt.. Why some are not so corrupt..  any guesses or answers or solutions.. I don't know.. I do feel that it is driven by income disparity.. coupled with social & atmospheric pressures.. divide between rich and poor..

In case of India, all these factors were further fueled by centuries of occupation by foreign forces who only wanted to extract money one way or another.. lastly, 2 centuries of British rule crippled this further by paying enormous salaries to Civil Servants (I guess, even for Britishers, ICS was one of the top salaried job) and paying almost nothing to rank and file workers in both administration and police jobs. On top of it they further fueled feudalism to continue suppressing common people..

none of the above is good enough excuse for corruption in modern times.. now a days there are enough opportunities for everyone who wants to work hard and make money honestly.. Still we are one of the most corrupt societies.. Why? We are Gandhi Nation!!! Which can be taken both ways depending on which Gandhi you pick.. If you say that we are Mahatma Gandhi nation then we should not have any corruption.. it should be Ram Rajya every where.. However, if you say that we are Nehru/Gandhi Nation (which we are currently) then corruption as an accepted norm is fine..

What is solution to this deep rooted mentality in India? When I was kid, I used to say that, when India got independence, we should have dismantled British Police force, as Britishers were able to rule India only due to them.. If I remember correctly, my views about them were to hang them all in public execution.. that was naive and foolish at the best.. it wouldn't have fixed any problem for that matter and most likely created more problems for new nation.. What else could be solution? Double or triple their salaries? I doubt if India could have been able to afford it or even that would have fixed it. Once you get into this habit of bribery, you can't stop it..

I feel that only solution is to have increase education level, increase information availability, open door discussions and true form of democracy and complete stoppage on unrestricted number of terms for government positions. We need to accept that fact that there are still 400 million people in India below poverty line. Most of the western societies can't survive at or above (slightly) this so called poverty line of India, forget about people living below poverty line.. Indian youth needs to look at this problem and fix it. Nobody else is going to help India.. India needs to help themselves.. As far as higher population is concerned.. I am not that big fan of that argument.. Japan had and still have population density more than India.. around 1950s both the countries were more or less in same situation.. does any one knows what is the only thing common between Toyota and Hindustan Motors (makers of famous Ambassador cars in India).. It was their foundation day.. both companies were founded same day.. In-fact Hindustan Motors had more starting capital than Toyota..

Imagine Indian economy's size if our productivity was same as Japan's... I am sure it would have been biggest economy of the planet..

Any how coming back to Anti-Corruption. Can any country flourish with such a high level of corruption.. China is one such example.. what I heard or read so far.. China is equally corrupt society.. However, there is no comparison between China and India's progress report. So why is elimination of corruption so important for India.. is it just my thoughts as I am from India and I have seen corruption very closely or something else..
I think it is long enough.. 

Libya Air Strikes

Lot of my friends have expressed their opinion about Libya No Fly Zone or Libya Air attacks. Lot of people are shocked to see Noble Peace Prize Winner Obama going for war or going to kill hundreds and thousands of people..
There are different arguments against air strikes.

Primarily, Why only Libya? Why not other countries in middle east where similar protests by population are suppressed without much of noise from western world. Is it just because Libya has more oil and gas than those countries? or those regimes are more friendly to US/West than Col. Gaddafi. Why not similar action in Myanmar (Burma) where "Junta" Regime has killed thousands of people in last decade. There it would have been even more easier to dislodge them. They will simply go if US and West simply stops trading with them. But no body cares about these countries for variety of reasons.

Then, second question is about exit strategy.. We are saying that there won't be any boots on the grounds. CIA is already working with rebels. What does that means. Can we get away without sending any boots on ground. What if all this results in further deterioration in conditions in Libya. What if new government is somewhat similar to Afghanistan's Taliban. There is no guarantee of decent regime if Col. Gaddafi is dislodged. If he some how manages to stay then we are in even bigger trouble. Probably, Libya will become even better sanctuary for Al-Qaeda type organizations.

In my view, there was imminent danger of wiping out couple of cities in Libya by Col. Gaddafi's forces if air strikes were not started. Unfortunately,  I think it was question of number of causalities. Which action will result in how many loss of lives. I guess, result was more in favor of air strikes.

Then about exit strategy. I am assuming with US and western tactical support, Rebels should be able to dislodge Col. Gaddafi and his regime. There is very slight chances that he might survive. I feel that is worth the risk. Also, if some sense will prevail in rebel groups and Libyan mass population, I think something good will come out of it. They are not fighting just to get rid of Col. Gaddafi. Hopefully they are looking for bigger goal of true freedom and democracy in their country/area.

I hope for best and wish them all the best!! 

What is Love?

Is love a feeling or sentiment or hormones or brain chemistry or heart muscles or matrix or God or action or verb or what?? Is it one way or has to be two way?? What drives it?? Why we love certain things or people at certain time and then we love something else or somebody else at some other time. Why it keeps on changing.. or in some cases stays constant.. But then Change is only Constant of the world so it can't be constant.. It has to change. Why it becomes understanding or compromise.. why can't our pure and solid love for things and people remain constant what ever the time or circumstances may be?

Which factors influence our love to certain other objects and living things or even certain groups like nations or religion or language or so many N number of things.. Why we are ready to die for love, say of other human or religion or nation and now many a times ready to take life of others in the name of love of... What exactly generates love and what annihilates it.. Is it matter Vs dark matter balance issue? Is it some kind of cosmic combination which effects it..

Enough of questions.. I am sure everyone has lot of theories and understanding about it..

For now, some of my theories.. I think origin of love should be attributed to basic motivation or greed or fear of human brain cells.. Before you dump my theory, remember I am not talking about only about certain aspect of love.. I am fairly generic and at very high level at this point.. Still I strongly believe that every lovely relationship starts with either of these factors.. Be it love for child, mother/parent, opposite sex, religion, nation and any other kind of lovely groups or individuals or things or physical or mental objects.. Once human brain (or for that matter any living thing's brain) sees some thing which will either satisfy or protect them from something, they will start loving that individual or group.. Sometimes motivation is so great for certain entity that we ignore bigger picture of humanity that we ought to love everyone or everything. Due to extremely high motivational forces for certain entity we even start hating some other entities. Let us keep this topic to love only for now ;-)

After that it depends on our actions and involvement with the other entity. I think verb form of love takes over after that. Then it is up to us to keep on cultivating love bank or certain point, start diminishing it.. Multiple other factors like genetics, social environment, education or more importantly our ability to think and process information drives it. We start calling it maturity or understanding or many other names.. Ideally, love should be without any motivation but I don't know anyone who has that kind of love.. Even if someone says that they only love this planet or universe, that also is driven by our ultimate survival..

More important is how to continue love for that entity over a period of time without too much of deltas on time curve.. I guess, for this we need to create awareness in ourselves that we love certain entity and we need to keep loving it. If we want love to continue without too much of diminishing returns then we need to work for it. We need to take certain actions such that other entity sees them as love not just by using words.. There is very good chance that if we continue to take actions close enough to selflessly (though as per  my earlier principle or theory there is nothing like selflessness) we may find some decent return on those actions throughout the life.. But everyone is good at least by their own definition... then it is quite possible that they may still not see it selfless love as their expectation of actions to prove your selfless love may be different.. In this case, most important thing is honesty.. Once you are honest, you will be brave, and you will communicate and clearly outline your selfish interest (however minor they may be) behind your loving actions and hopefully this will result in other person/entity returning the favor and tell you what kind of actions constitutes as selfless love to them..  Once this happens there could be fairly constant love for those entities..

Cheers!!!!!

New Quarter of New year!!

Wao.. it is already end of March (for many of my friends in India and east of California it is already April).. Time is flying fast and I thought it is good time to review and adjust (mostly :-) ) my new year resolutions..
Check and review my compliance to them and see where I am.. So far my current review is giving real bad scorecard. I think I either I need to revise my targets downwards or really step up efforts to come up to speed to catch with them. I am behind target on many of my resolutions.. I think I need both things to catch up on them.. I will keep everyone posted by end of next quarter.. On positive note, it is first time that I was able to think about my resolutions by March end.. otherwise I used to forget them mostly by February.. Let us hope that my memory will help me remember them for rest of the year!!

Cheers!!

At Google, Page Aims to Clear Red Tape

Interesting article in WSJ about Google's founder Mr. Page taking over and trying to instill his old style back in company. Remember he was original Google CEO till 2001 before Mr. Schmidt took over.

I strongly believe that founders should leave company to professionals and take up non-management roles in company (at the most). I have watched couple of companies closely, where founders continued role at top management and after initial phenomenal success but then became bottleneck for companies growth. There are very few Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison type of founders or CEOs. But wait.. in case of Steve Jobs, he was also kicked out of company and honestly he was more successful on his second stint. Any how that is not main reason for this note..

I was wondering about these changes. Especially in a big company like Google. Basically, what Mr. Page is trying to do is to replicate another success similar to what they had done in early 2000. That early success still accounts for 95% of google's revenue till date. At the same time Google as a company has tons of load of bureaucratic machinery around it. Which is nothing more but a legacy of Professional CEO (no offense to Mr. Schmidt) trying to build execution machinery. However, most of the time as companies grow, this results in higher baggage then the real productive hands. Even though Google is famous for its creative and very intelligent workforce but we are yet to see any significant breakthrough in product line-up..

Does that mean if we get rid of all this machinery build-up (I am assuming it will be easily 80% of total Google workforce), will we be still able to maintain revenue level in core search business? Unfortunately or fortunately.. answer is yes.. We will still be able to see same revenue base with almost same growth pattern if we get rid of all non-search based groups. So why not do it.. Answer I think lies in Google stock price, which is mainly driven by hopes of future growth. It is in $600 USD range not just for growth in search.. but hoping that there will be some other magical blockbuster product which will further double Google's revenue overnight.. Also, we need to understand that Google's employee cost is still insignificant as compared to total revenue. So they have lot more buffer to blow up before they should worry about this extra baggage.

Now, what Mr. Page is trying to do is to reverse the ever increasing trend of cost structure without any significant upside or benefit. Lot of time when companies become big and bureaucratic they have hundreds or thousands of projects which shows dreams about billions of dollars of revenue on paper but in reality they will be lucky to touch million dollar mark. Along-with bigger machinery and structure lot of these projects and their owners can hide and do something or other... not necessary really useful. It will be really interesting to see if Mr. Page can weed out these dumb projects or cultivate couple of real good winners from them.. In general I like his style so far though it is too early to say anything. Though it is literally impossible to these things single handedly, I am sure Mr. Page will be able to clear some dust for sure.

Even though Google has plethora of other successful products, revenue base is still basic Search and Adsense model. Sooner or later, other search engines will close up the gap and their cash cow will get weaker and weaker. So Mr. Page doesn't have any option but to create some other blockbuster product which is not only good for users but also for Google in terms of revenue. Off-course, with the amount of cash Google has, they can fire all the engines and try multiple projects to replicate original success along with buying some other good startups with real cool ideas..

What I have seen so far, bigger companies it is hard to build something really useful so I am more inclined to spend money on buying some good small companies where idea or process is good and you can leverage your big machinery to scale it to universe. Having said that, I would think that Mr. Page shouldn't get obsessed by internal projects and operations. He should try to cultivate them, as it is good for great companies.. but  shouldn't get obsessed with it.. There is limit to what a big company can do in creativity and new things... Ideally they should hire some good COO who can take care of operations and day to day management, and these visionaries should continue on vision and directions of companies.. more importantly on some good acquisitions which can be aligned and enhance their core business model and process.

Other interesting way to do this could be to cultivate fork-out and merge culture. In bigger companies like Google if some of the mid/senior management is so sure about their idea or project and the revenue numbers, then give them seed money and ask them to start their own company. This group of employees should get shoe-string budget and incubation time of a year or two max. If they are successful then companies should buy them back at hefty premium (still a peanut for companies like Google).  If they can't live up-to their promised numbers then they should be allowed to be taken care by market forces. Essentially cultivate real "High Risk High Reward" culture and eliminate complacencies due to fat and guaranteed minimum salaries. In other words give real responsibility and ownership.

Finally, here is the original article from WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703784004576220902706041400.html

Is end of Mobile Competition in US near?

If AT&T and T-Mobile's merger goes through, I think it will be catastrophic for Cell consumers in US. What ever the reason may be, as of now US consumers pay one of the highest charges for what may be at the best called shabby service in Cellphone market. I think, after this merger it will be even worse. I remember, when AT&T had purchased, SBC's cell phone business and promises were made about improved and great service as a result of that merger. Yeah.. we did got iPhone on AT&T.. and I think that was it it.. In the name of improved service we only got more dropped calls and continued to get poor reception and same higher rates or even higher...

I don't know.. In case, Obama administration's FTC/FCC allows this merger.. I am going to hate this administration forever. I believe, it won't be just me, there will be millions of AT&T's subscriber who will hate it.. Not that T-Mobile's service is any great, but as long as there are two players in GSM mobile area, there was hope that things may be better. IF, this merger goes through.. nobody will have any hopes of better cellphone service ever in US..

I hope administration will see how past mergers in this area has resulted in so called better pricing for consumers and will decide accordingly.

Is it too little and too late?

Glad to see some action by international community (aka US, France, Britain & Arab League) on Gaddafi Inc. Honestly, same action would have dramatic impact if our Dear Mrs. Clinton would have worked harder on getting coalition sooner. However, I am happy to see some action, for which I had lost all hopes after Japanese Earthquake/Sunami tragedy. I am happy to see some support, even though it is too little and too late and if it was taken earlier, it would have save lot of lives. but... never mind..

At the same time, I was ashamed to see India abstaining from voting for resolution on Libya. It just shows how much guts we have to face truth and do what is right and then we want permanent position on UN Security council. Shame on Indian government and diplomats. This totally exposes them. They need to accept the fact that world order is changing and there can't be neutral postion. You have to on the side of truth and people. You simply can't sit in a corner. If Gaddafi Inc. was that great friend then you are better off opposing resolution. But then you don't have guts to do that. As an Indian, my head goes down when these type of incidences happen.. We simply can't keep on supporting Dictatorships like Gaddafi Inc. and Myanmar Junta and such.. Come in open and support "Satyamev Jayate" which is more of symbolic icon of Indian government rather than anybody really following or understanding it. Hiding or running away from truth is only going to prolong these kind messes we are in. We need to understand that People are friends not rulers.. Rulers come and go but your image and reputation stays as a true friend with People. It doesn't make any difference, if you get couple of billion dollars worth oil services contracts or get lot of your gas/LNG (in case of Myanmar). You need to support truth and only truth.. truth is never easy to follow but rewards are equally greater if you follow path of truth and base your friendships and relationships on truth..

I hope people's revolution wil continue to spread and continue to become mature. Governments as a whole will become better and thus this whole world!!!

Entire World's inaction in Libya

Finally some action by Arab League.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/03/12/libya.civil.war/

Based on the reports from Libya, at this point this seems to be totally inadequate action. Damage is already done to most Of the rebel forces. Now ground offensive by Gaddafi's militia is going on to wipe them out. At this time it should have been complete warning to Gaddafi Inc to leave country immediately. But then 90% of Arab leaders have their own autocracy at stake. They simply can't let one of their brethren go off so easily.

However, they are better than US, who could have done a lot more, much more earlier at much lower cost to Libyans and even their own forces. That was total failure of Hilary Clinton and ultimately one of the biggest failure of Obama's presidency. They need to understand one simple fact of diplomacy. You want people to be your friend not just regimes. If people are friend, regimes will be ultimately your friend. American Diplomacy needs to change their policy and instead of playing politics they need to follow fundamental facts and abide by them.
Unfortunately, now with Japan's earthquake and Sunami disaster libyAn people and it's uprising will fade away from rest of the World's memory. Good example was the news of police firing directly on civilians. Everyone will take advantage of this situation in. Middle east and try to suppress people's revolution for the time being.