Its In The Syllabus

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 5/20/2013 3:28:00 PM

'From PhD comics:The tables can very easily be turned on you, the faculty, when a student go over the syllabus with a tooth comb and then holds you to every dot and comma in it. My friend who is an igneous petrologist and faculty at a local university here in Pune saw the nasty side of the syllabus centered education. As a researcher, my friend is highly enthusiastic about his work and often launches into long excursions about it during lecture time. He didn't think the students mind(...)'

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Again! Charles Darwin Was Wrong.. About The Tree Of Life

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 5/16/2013 10:17:00 AM

'Well.. I guess the headline "Darwin Was Wrong" always sells! But The Guardian should have thought a little before publishing this. It is an article on how the recognition of lateral gene transfer i.e. the transfer of genes aross taxonomic groups is proving Darwin's idea of a tree of life wrong.Read this passage: Evolutionary biologists say crossbreeding between species is far more common than previously thought, making a nonsense of the idea of discrete evolutionary branches.I don(...)'

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Genghis Khan And Interdisciplinary Research

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 5/14/2013 2:22:00 PM

'State of the Planet has quite a readable account of how a period of warm climate in the early 1200's may have produced an abundance of grass and livestock in Mongolia, fueling the expansionist ambitions of Genghis Khan.Here is an interesting passage from the article:In 2013, Avery Shinneman, a biologist at the University of Washington, will analyze sediments at selected lakes in order to estimate abundances of livestock over time, using varying levels of fungal spores that live in t(...)'

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OF Flies Mice And Men- Francois Jacob 1920 -2013

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 5/10/2013 3:31:00 PM

'The great French biologist Francois Jacob died on April 19th 2013. I started this post and left it lingering in draft. I want to post it now. Carl Zimmer at The Loom  has an essay which outlines one of the key moments of Jacob's career- when he realized how cells turn genes on and off.  That formed the basis of understanding gene regulation and laid the foundation of the field of developmental biology. For that work he shared the Nobel Prize in 1965 with Andre Lwoff a(...)'

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Summer In My Neighborhood

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 5/9/2013 4:00:00 PM

'Its been a blazing week with temperatures over 100 deg F. Pune this past few days has been as hot as I can ever recall. Time for ice tea and cool stewed mango drinks. Evenings are very warm too. We are giving our rugby kids water breaks every 10 minutes.But walking through the small lanes near my house are sights like this one:Summer can be glorious too. And the alphonso mangoes and cold beer is helping!'

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V.K Gaur On Earthquake Research, Jaitapur Seismic Risk And Role Of Scientists

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 5/1/2013 10:37:00 AM

'The Hindu carried an interview with Vinod Kumar Gaur, seismologist with the Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation. His work on the seisimic risk at Jaitapur southern Maharashtra where a nuclear power plant has been proposed was criticized by the Indian government and his colleague Roger Bilham denied entry into India on the grounds that he violated the terms of his tourist visa. I share the suspicion of many that the Indian government is too sensitive and insecur(...)'

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My Criticism Of K.S Valdiya's Paper Published In Current Science

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 4/25/2013 2:55:00 PM

'and Valdiya's reply was not satisfactory at all..To those unfamiliar with the sequence of events:1) Giosan et al publish a paper in the May 2012 issue of PNAS on fluvial geomorphology of rivers around the Harappan civilization and conclude amongst other things that the Sutlej and Yamuna rivers got diverted from the channels now occupied by the river Ghaggar (Haryana Punjab plains) to their present day course by Late Pleistocene. This meant that the Harappan civilization along the ri(...)'

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Review Article: Recurrence Of Great Subduction Zone Earthquakes

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 4/22/2013 9:38:00 AM

'Open Access in Current Science:  Kusala RajendranThe last decade has witnessed two unusually large tsunamigenic earthquakes. The devastation from the 2004 Sumatra–Andaman and the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquakes (both of moment magnitude ≥ 9.0) and their ensuing tsunamis comes as a harsh reminder on the need to assess and mitigate coastal hazards due to earthquakes and tsunamis worldwide. Along any given subduction zone, megathrust tsunamigenic earthquakes occur over intervals consi(...)'

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On The Use Of The Word Archaic In Writing About Evolution

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 4/17/2013 4:45:00 PM

'In an interesting article on hybridization in human evolution in Earth Pages by Steve Drury I came across the following sentence: Multi-regional evolution posits archaic populations  originally living in and outside Africa being  gradually assimilated by migration and interbreeding that transferred modern traits everywhere yet retained some regionally distinct features of the archaic groups. The first model clearly has to be modified as evidence accumulates for some de(...)'

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Science Proceeds By Funerals

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 4/16/2013 9:57:00 AM

'Above all, science is a human institution. And as a machine for thinking, it's greater and more powerful than any of its single participants. You said that science proceeds by tiny steps. It also proceeds by funerals.University departments are just waiting for the professor to get out of the way so the younger guys can get in.That was author Ian McEwan on a very listenable hour of Science Friday on the importance of science writing in science books as well as science in fiction. The(...)'

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Paranoia Over Google Mapping Tools Persists In Indian Officialdom

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 4/8/2013 3:50:00 PM

'sigh... I keep writing about this only partly as comedy.. but mostly in frustration...From an article in the Hindu about the recently held "mapathon"contest organized by Google.As Delhi Police investigates whether Google violated rules in holding a competition that asked users to add information about their local areas for its online map, the U.S. Internet giant on Saturday said it had responded to queries raised by Survey of India more than 10 days back and hasn’t heard from it(...)'

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Biogeography And Teaching Evolution

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 4/5/2013 3:49:00 PM

'Joshua Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education, Oakland, CA, USA has a wonderful essay in Evolution: Education and Outreach on how observations of the bio-geographic distribution of species helped Darwin and Wallace to work out independently their theories of evolution through natural selection.He suggests that many of  today' students who are often reluctant to accept evolution because they see differences between species as unbridgeable gaps can overcome thi(...)'

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Lessons In Carbon Storage From Geological Analogues - Open Access Geology

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 4/4/2013 4:06:00 PM

'Mike Bickle and Niko Kampman in an open access article in the April issue of Geology summarize the findings of two papers (1 , 2)  published in the same issue on naturally occurring CO2 accumulations in sedimentary reservoirs and inferences drawn on their long term fate.One potential strategy to manage growing atmospheric CO2 is to inject and store it in deep sedimentary aquifers with a retention time of at least ten thousand years.The article identifies the key questions:(1) h(...)'

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Huh? Thousands Of Rivers Wiped Off Map Of China

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 4/2/2013 7:06:00 AM

'The first national water census pointed out that thousands of rivers (28 thousand was the figure given) shown on previous maps are now missing from China' s state water maps. See this article.Explanations:Official- Climate change is to blame for the drying of some waterways. Plus some earlier mistakes by cartographersEnvironmentalists: Ill conceived development and over use of underground water resources.That last one is an important point. Much of the base flow of rivers, especiall(...)'

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Health Impact Study Of India Coal Power Plants

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 3/26/2013 4:08:00 PM

'Do check out this New York Times interview with Dr. Sarath Guttikunda on the impact of India's coal power plants on health and environment. Dr. Guttikunda founded Urban Emissions, an air pollution research firm based in New Delhi and is also affiliate associate research professor at the Desert Research Institute, the environmental research arm of the Nevada System of Higher Education. He blogs at Urban Emissions.Why are such studies important?From the interview:From epidemiological (...)'

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India Energy Report- Some Rambling Thoughts

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 3/25/2013 2:31:00 PM

'The latest from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. For those who follow the energy sector, nothing terribly new here, but it is a useful document to keep bookmarked for quick reference.Meanwhile Swaminathan Aiyar takes an optimistic look at the future of methane hydrate deposits which he thinks can provide significantly to India's energy needs. These deposits are formed when methane is trapped within a crystalline cage of water molecules. They occur in cold deep sea sedimen(...)'

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ISRO Plans New High Resolution Remote Sensing Satellite

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 3/18/2013 4:13:00 PM

'...but will the public have easy access to the data?Something this article does not address. India's remote sensing program is no doubt a great science and technology success and the imagery and digital data is being used by scientists for research and natural resource management.Where India and ISRO are falling short is the continued denial of the best quality images to the public at large.  Bhuvan - ISRO's  answer to Google Maps - launched a few years ago is still servin(...)'

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Florida Sinkholes Also Pose A More Subtle Danger

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 3/7/2013 11:30:00 AM

'Last week, a fatality, as the ground gave way under a Tampa Bay area home.  However, the more common concern regarding sinkholes is their connection to groundwater quality. Despite its reputation as a great tourist destination, Florida is also a major agricultural state. The soil is reenforced with fertilizers, and crops are sprayed extensively with pesticides. Environmental managers worry that these chemicals might find their way into groundwater.This concern is not unique to (...)'

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"Submerged Continent" Story Trending For The Wrong Reasons

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 3/5/2013 11:26:00 AM

'It does seem so judging by the comment stream of this article by Akshat Rathi which appeared in The Hindu last week. The article is currently in the most popular list of the Sci-Tech section of The Hindu."This could be another malefic design to make tamils believe they belong to different continent. As the validity of 75 yrs old dravidian myth is busted by science dna researches and rationale thinking. This could be yet another attempt to confuse south people".from:  Periya(...)'

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Kaolinite And Chinese-Mexican Pottery In 1600's Mexico

Author : Suvrat Kher      Blog : Rapid Uplift      Date : 3/1/2013 4:14:00 PM

' My Book Shelf # 25As with a previous post which pointed to the role of silver as a catalyst for the movement of people across the oceans and a meeting of Asia with the America's in 1600's Mexico, geology in the form of clay deposits played a role in bringing full circle the story of Chinese (Ming) influence on Mexican ceramic art from the mid 1600's onwards. The district of Puebla in Mexico has kaolin deposits of exceptional quality formed mostly by the hydrothermal alteration(...)'

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