Pennes Bioheat Transfer Equation
October 7, 2009 at 10:57 pm | In Biothermofluids, Lecture Notes, Research Notes, Thermal Sciences | Comments OffTags: bioengineering, bioheat equation, bioheat transfer, Biology, biothermology, heat transfer, pennes bioheat, pennes model, Research, Science, thermal biology, tissue
It can be argued that one of the most influential articles ever published in the Journal of Applied Physiology is the Analysis of tissue and arterial blood temperatures in the resting human forearm by Harry H. Pennes, which appeared in Volume 1, No. 2, published in August, 1948. Thus begins Prof. Wissler, his 1998 revisit to this classic paper by H. H. Pennes. In that 1948 paper, he proposed what can be identified today as the first analytical Bioheat transfer model with experimental validation from temperature variation data in human forearm. Many later models have refined what he proposed but his basic insight that blood is a carrier of heat, adding a distinct perfusion term to the the standard heat equation, remains a major contribution.
Where should that new store or temple be?
September 30, 2009 at 2:09 am | In Research Notes, Science Notes | Comments OffTags: economics, microdynamics, offbeat, population density, Research, scaling laws, Science, shopping
Where should a business set up its new commercial store – chain or single – to maximize its profit? There may be a demand for the store in a sparsely populated region but it may be wiser to locate the store in a densely populated region for more profit. Is there a definite correlation between population density and commercial facility density?
Similarly, if the government or citizen group wants to locate a public facility – temples, toilets, grocery store, fire station – where should that be? It is not for profit, but should be easily accessible by many. Is there a suggestive correlation in this situation?
The answer to the above two questions is yes.
Chandrayaan confirms water on Moon's surface
September 24, 2009 at 5:21 pm | In Information | Comments OffTags: Astronomy, chandrayaan, indian moon mission, lunar mission, moon, moon mission, moon water, Science, Space, videos
Data analyzed from the recently aborted mission of Chandrayaan confirms the presence of water on the Moon. This discovery is due to the Moon Minerology Mapper (M3) device from NASA, carried on board Chandrayaan. NASA will hold a press conference later today to brief about the new scientific findings. NASA confirms this and thanks ISRO.
As it stands today, three different spacecraft have confirmed the presence of water on the Moon. Water doesn’t seem to be present in the craters and crevices but as hydroxyl or water molecules strewn diffusely across the moon’s surface in low concentrations. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) on board Chandrayaan was able to detect wavelengths of light reflected off the surface that indicated bonds between hydrogen and oxygen molecules. This means the presence of is either water or hydroxyl.
Hydrogen deposits measured by Lunar Prospector
Continue reading Chandrayaan confirms water on Moon's surface…
When a Mobius ring is dropped into a fluid
September 9, 2009 at 9:15 pm | In Fluid Sciences, Research Notes, Science Notes | Comments OffTags: drag force, engineering, fluid mechanics, mobeus band, mobius, mobius band, mobius strip, Research, Science, wake
We have heard of the Mobius band. A one sided strip, it is a topological peculiarity. Over the decades it has popped up in several places in knowledge-space: the self-induction free Mobius resistor, the Mobius gear, the shape of the trajectory the Solar wind plasma assume in their route to chaos when interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field, the musical arrangement of J. S. Bach’s Crab canon, the space of dyads, to name a few.
What happens when a solid, rigid, Mobius ring is dropped into a fluid, say, water? Will the drag forces acting on it be any different from that for a regular (section of a) solid cylinder? The answer is yes, according to a recent experimental study by Leweke et al. (2009).
Continue reading When a Mobius ring is dropped into a fluid…
Quotes
September 4, 2009 at 6:41 pm | In Quotes | Comments OffTags: homework, teacher, teachers day
Teachers do their homework before class while students do it after
- (Retd. IITM) Prof. V. G. K. Murthy, in his Teachers’ Day address today at CLT, IITM.
Bioheat Transfer
August 13, 2009 at 6:10 pm | In Biothermofluids, Lecture Notes, Research Notes, Science Notes, Thermal Sciences | Comments OffTags: bioengineering, bioheat, biological heat transfer, Biology, biomedical, biomedical engineering, biotechnology, cryopreservation, cryosurgery, engineering, heat transfer, physiology, Research, Science, thermoregulation
Bio means Life. Bioengineering applies engineering principles, laws of physics and chemistry in a general sense, to the understanding and modeling of living systems. Biotechnology identifies methods, processes and techniques resulting from bioengineering. Such technology attempt control and duplication of bio-processes (chemical, mechanical) performed by living systems. Examples include the micro-scale (molecular level) recombination of DNA to the macro-scale functioning of an artificial lung [1].
Contributions from bioengineering has been to several conventional engineering categories including instrumentation and measurements, materials, analysis, and modeling. Biomedical engineering (BME) is the application of engineering principles and techniques to the medical field. In a way, any engineering invention, application or method applied to humans and their health related issues in particular can be considered as a contribution of bioengineering. For instance, as early as the 16th century Professor Sanctorius (1561-1636) of Padua, attempted developing a thermometer for comparing temperatures of different persons [3].
Biothermology or Bioheat transfer, the study of heat transfer in biological systems, can be seen as a subdivision of bioengineering.
Peer Review and the Art of Warli and Dekora
July 28, 2009 at 10:16 pm | In Academics, Asides, Micro Muse | Comments OffTags: arts, dekora art, fusion art, indian art, paintings, peer review, worli art
In academia, peer review can get thankless. More so, if you do one per week, right through the year and still keep receiving review-pending reminders. I haven’t reached that hectic visibility yet, but do enough to already feel swamped.
No real complaint. Peer review is part of my job.
The thing that most reviewers dread is not those standard peer-review requests that provide enough duration for completion of the task with enough competence. It is the unexpected, one-night-stands, rather demands, that put us off. The anguish felt as a reviewer is measurably more than that felt as an author, awaiting the review results of our submitted paper.
Real complaint. Overnight peer review is (also) part of my job.
But this micro-muse has a happy ending.
Continue reading Peer Review and the Art of Warli and Dekora…
Why writing Science in the internet is waste of time
July 26, 2009 at 9:06 pm | In Academics, Micro Muse | Comments OffTags: indian public, indian science, indian science literacy, indian science report, public science literacy, Science, science and technology, science blogging, science education, science literacy, science outreach, science writing, technology
It is not waste of time for scientists to engage the public by popularizing the science practised by them. But there is strong evidence that, at least in India, internet is not the medium to pursue such popularization. Earlier, I have argued otherwise – read here, here and here. But I wasn’t aware of the statistically vindicated evidence, right here on the web. It doubly argues for my case – with its statistics and my neglect of it on the web.
Observe below, the two key survey results from the 2004 Indian Science Survey Report – pdf of full report available from Indian National Science Academy website. The survey sample-set includes all slices of Indian public – from urban to rural, educated to illiterate, dinkys to paupers. Even with a similar 2009 (or 2020) survey, I don’t think the result would be very different from this.
Continue reading Why writing Science in the internet is waste of time…
Science, savvy?
July 26, 2009 at 5:09 pm | In Academics, Science Notes | Comments OffTags: indian national science academy, indian science, indian science literacy, online science quiz, pew research survey, public science education, public science interest, Science, science education, science literacy
How much do we like Science? How much has Science contributed to our welfare? How much do we regard scientists? As the public of a nation or the World, how would we answer these questions? Perhaps with subjective answers accompanied with a bright nod or a rueful shake of the head.
How much Science then, is the least we should be knowing as public?
Summer Movie List – July 2009
July 9, 2009 at 7:25 pm | In Asides, Movies | Comments OffTags: adventure movies, akira kurosawa, alfred hitchcock, blake edwards, cinema, classics, comedy movies, drama, great movies, humor movies, ingmar bergman, jacques tati, jim jarmusch, kamal haasan, mel brooks, peter sellers, spielberg
Flaunting book-lists in our blogs doesn’t qualify us as scholars. Presenting a movie list doesn’t make us one either. Such lists perhaps convey only the narcissist identity crisis the list-maker unabashedly conceals in the stated sharing.
There, I have come clean of my motive. Allow me to present a list of movies I watched in part or full in the past three months. Not all of them are new movies and the listing is random in order with few comments wherever I could muster them.
Before the list, a note on my tastes. I am a sucker for comedy and gentle humor. Gentler the better. Next comes adventure and romance, including all sorts of action slam-bang but I stop short of glorifying violence and human depravity. Bitter-sweet is fine, but sweeter the finer. I watch movies (or attempt an art) to enjoy and feel inspired. Not to get depressed and pessimistic with life.
My recommendations carry a [*] next to it. Your judgment should still save you.
Paper Read List June 2009 – 2
June 30, 2009 at 12:10 am | In Read List, Research Notes | Comments OffTags: bioheat, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, references, Research
If your research interests doesn’t involve convection, fluid flow, porous media, bio-heat transport, this may not be of interest to you.
Part 2 of this month’s research paper read list.
Paper Read List June 2009 – 1
June 30, 2009 at 12:07 am | In Read List, Research Notes | Comments OffTags: bioheat, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, references, Research
If your research interests doesn’t involve convection, fluid flow, porous media, bio-heat transport, this may not be of interest to you.
Part 1 of this month’s research paper read list.
Quotes
June 16, 2009 at 6:31 pm | In Quotes | Comments OffTags: computers
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.
– Bernard Avishai (not sure this is he)
Ilaiyaraja and the Curse of the Visual – Concluding Part
June 15, 2009 at 5:21 pm | In Asides, Carnatic Music | Comments OffTags: azhagar malai, balamuralikrishna, Carnatic Music, cinema music, ilaiyaraaja, ilaiyaraja, ilayaraja, music, music directors, ragas, rimsky korsakov, tamil film music, tamil music, thiruvachagam, thiruvasagam, virumandi
There is a definite growth pattern the diligent can perceive in a creative musical career, be it classical or commercial. Imagine a frustum of an upright cone. At the start of the career, an otherwise talented musician (or artist) is somewhere close to the base of the cone, with the largest radius around representing the listeners. Importantly, wide base also necessarily implies a wide range of listeners – from those who are connoisseurs to theoreticians to musicians to laypersons, cutting across all slice of the population. In other words, the artist is popular.
Continue reading Ilaiyaraja and the Curse of the Visual – Concluding Part…
Ilaiyaraja and the Curse of the Visual – Part 4
May 30, 2009 at 10:32 am | In Asides, Carnatic Music | Comments OffTags: choreography, cinema music, classical music, hey ram, ilaiyaraaja, ilaiyaraja, ilaiyaraja music review, ilayaraja, kamal hassan, maestro, mahendran, manirathnam, mullum malarum, music, music directors, music reviews, rajinikanth, tamil film music, tamil music, thalapathy
Tamil film industry has its share of movie directors who are one hit wonders. Irrevocably spoilt by such fleeting success, they realize the rest of their career as one long list of blunders. Such visual diarrhea piggy back on the best from the Maestro, often the only contribution of those movies to the Tamil art world. Our claim on his music has been our undeserved birthright.
That the Maestro had obliged a million times and more to such non-entities could be taken as a sign of confused values, or mark of his indefatigable creative baton. To paraphrase the Bard, the quality of Maestro’s mercy is not strained; it droppeth as a gentle rain from Heaven upon the place beneath – fertile or barren. Abandon hope, all ye enter the movie hell for watching such a movie. The music shall remain bound by the curse of the visuals.
Continue reading Ilaiyaraja and the Curse of the Visual – Part 4…
Ilaiyaraja and the Curse of the Visual – Part 3
May 18, 2009 at 3:28 pm | In Asides, Carnatic Music | Comments OffTags: choreography, cinema music, classical music, ilaiyaraja, ilaiyaraja music review, ilayaraja, kamal hassan, maestro, music, music directors, music reviews, poonthalir aada song, rajinikanth, santhana katre song, sathya, tamil film music, tamil music
Carnot Engines are efficient and ideal. And unreal. The rest including the now dead steam engines are real and inefficient. Likewise, ‘translation engines’ are observed to be non-Carnot with inevitable finite informational entropy generated during their operation.
We are aware of the near impossibility of exact translation from one language to another perhaps since the times we realized two distinct languages – like human speech and a bird’s song. It is only natural then to lament the futility of translating creative expression in one art form (music, song) into another (visuals), without an associated loss of information and joy. Nevertheless, in the hoary culture that Tamilians are familiar with, we have documented successful synergy between nAtiyam (dance) and isai (music) or even iyal (theatre) and isai (music).
When modern Tamil music has its composers and loadstones well connected to the roots and worthy of that hoary culture, it is a shame to prematurely pose our hands heavenwards with an abhinayam expressing exasperation and epitomizing the incapacity in Tamil movies (or theatre or simply visual arts) to translate music into meaningful visuals.
Continue reading Ilaiyaraja and the Curse of the Visual – Part 3…
Ilaiyaraja and the Curse of the Visual – Part 2
May 4, 2009 at 12:05 am | In Asides, Carnatic Music | Comments OffTags: cinema music, dharma yudham, ilaiyaraja, ilaiyaraja music review, ilayaraja, kajuraho kanavile, maestro, music, music directors, music reviews, rajinikanth, santhana katre, sridevi, tamil film music, tamil music, thanikkatu raja
There lies more than one potential and potent sociology (or even neuroscience) research problem in the contrast of tastes supposedly exhibited by the Tamil speaking populace.
Regardless of their education and social stature, they display humongous tolerance short of apathy and even relishing proclivity short of crassness to gaudy and illogical visuals called movies. Coexisting on the other hand is their nuanced, connoisseurship musical taste irrespective of, again, their education and social stature or even extent of musical knowledge.
Art is subjective and art-forms doesn’t perhaps require logic or method for its appreciation. But it beats my common sense to pulp the artsy subjectivity of the common Tamilian that righteously celebrates the Carnatic Music Trinities or their follow-up acts culminating in modern musical giants like G. Ramanathan, K. V. Mahadevan, M. S. Viswanathan, Ilaiyaraja, is the same subjective source that ‘appreciates’ the homogeneously simpleton Tamil movies. Exceptions exist in exceptional movies but their contribution to Tamil visual art-form is perhaps outrageously meager when compared to the contribution of the associated musical scores to modern Tamil music.
The musical genius of Ilaiyaraja is often mired by the associated movie visuals. Purist fan of his replace often with usually in the previous sentence, while ‘fanatics’ like me would replace often with always.
Continue reading Ilaiyaraja and the Curse of the Visual – Part 2…
Ilaiyaraja and the Curse of the Visual – Part 1
April 30, 2009 at 4:16 pm | In Asides, Carnatic Music | Comments OffTags: agaya gangai, cinema music, ilaiyaraja, ilaiyaraja music review, ilayaraja, maestro, music, music directors, music reviews, rajinikanth, sridevi, tamil film music, tamil music
Phenomenon is a word that is almost an antonym to itself. In Science it means an observable event; an occurrence with perhaps no special significance that needs to be analyzed using logic and reason. However, in popular usage it means an extraordinary event perceived directly by the senses without having to use logic or reasoning, evoking feelings that oscillate between astonishment and wonder. An example for its Science usage is the Supernova. An example for its popular usage is the music of Ilaiyaraja.
Continue reading Ilaiyaraja and the Curse of the Visual – Part 1…
Book Read List Summer 2009
April 20, 2009 at 7:48 pm | In Books, Read List | Comments OffTags: Books, humor books, james rollins, john o'farrell, jug suraiya, lynne truss, malcolm gladwell, mystery books, salman rushdie, science books, umberto eco
Book Read List Dec 2008 introduced me to Charles Stross, Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge, James Rollins, Donald Westlake, MAJ Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Although I am yet to finish reading Neal’s Cryptonomicon or Westlake’s Drowned Hopes and have just browsed Vernor’s A Fire upon the Deep, I am going to follow other books by these authors. Tom Sharpe (no warmth in his humor) and Steve Berry (boringly predictable) are axed from future reads. There is an house front agreement all of the page-turning yarns of James Rollins should be collected and read the next day. But not any of his horror alter ego books should ever be touched by our shaking hands. Alastair Reynolds remains in the shelf for comment.
Here is a partial Summer 2009 book read list that should be revised as the Summer soars.
Science according to Dr. Kamal Haasan
April 17, 2009 at 8:47 pm | In Asides, Science Notes | Comments OffTags: atom bomb, bad science, butterfly effect, chaos theory, dasavatharam, dasavatharam movie, kamal haasan, kamal hasan, pop culture, pop science, pseudo intellectuals, Science, tamil cinema
Today’s Cinema Plus carries an interview with Kamal Sir[*]. As usual Kamal’s uncanny wit shows up when inquired about why he is not into politics as his peers seem to do, when he quips
It is a matter of choice. None of them have learnt Bharatanatyam or Carnatic music. I have!
But he goes on to say this (talking about Dasavatharam his recent success in which he dons ten characters with aplomb):
It is a complex subject simply told. I haven’t used chaos theory as a solution. No theory could be a solution. The theory of relativity resulted in the atom bomb. Even Darwinism is being challenged. I have used chaos theory to explain the disorganised world we live in. Something seemingly innocuous may have unexpected larger consequences in the future. It has been used in the past in films such as The Butterfly Effect. Mine is a new interpretation.
Let me leave out ‘no theory could be a solution’ and its ilk and take three sentences.
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From My Tamil Science Blog- மாவு மிஷினும் மோபியஸ் பட்டையும்
- கோனிங்ஸ்பெர்கின் ஏழு பாலங்களும் வரைகோலங்களும்
- இலையில் இருபரிமாண டோப்பலாஜிகல் மானிஃபோல்டுகள்
- விழித்திரை லேசர் சிகிச்சையின் ஒப்பியலாக்கம்
- காரைக்குடியில் அறிவியல் கருத்தரங்கம்
- ஆறுகட்ட பிரிவும் எர்டாஸ் எண்ணும்
- உலகே உன் உருவம் என்ன
- நமக்கு எவ்வளவு அறிவியல் தெரிந்திருக்கவேண்டும்?
- வௌவால், பற பற
- வலையில் அறிவியல் விளக்கங்கள் எழுதுவது வீண்?
- From Music & Musings
- Papers I am browsing
- Diffusion of scientific credits and the ranking of scientists
- Natural Convection Inside a Bidisperse Porous Medium Enclosure
- Why Do Red Blood Cells Have Asymmetric Shapes Even in a Symmetric Flow?
- Convection rolls in a rotating box filled with beads
- A safe operating space for humanity
- Reconstructing Indian population history
- Comparisons of Citations in Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar for Articles Published in General Medical Journals
- Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research
- The forced motion of a flag
- Turbulence structure in a boundary layer with two-dimensional roughness
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