Evolution of the human race – mutation of DNA in modern times. Is our DNA changing?

By Rudresh Pandey

DNA can be put side by side to a language, and particularly a written language. DNA enables the information to be transferred on, from one generation to another but interestingly there has been no noticeable change in human DNA, brought about by biological evolution, in the ten thousand years of recorded history.

It is also important to note that the amount of knowledge handed on from generation to generation has grown enormously. This is an information age and with internet there is an information and knowledge expulsion in past few years.

How is this age of knowledge and information of human race related to DNA of human beings?

The DNA in human beings contains about three billion nucleic acids. However, much of the information coded in this sequence, is redundant, or is inactive. So the total amount of useful information in our genes, is probably something like a hundred million bits. One bit of information is the answer to a yes no question (or a on or off light bulb this is how our digital information works).

By contrast, a paperback novel might contain two million bits of information. So interestingly a human is alike 50 Mills and Boon romances. A major national library can contain about five million books, or about ten trillion bits. So the amount of information handed down in books, is a hundred thousand times as much as in DNA.

Even more important, is the fact that the information in books, can be changed, and updated, much more rapidly. It has taken us several million years to evolve from the apes. During that time, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, is about a bit a year.

By contrast, there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information, here too, is garbage, and no use to any form of life. But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA.

This has meant that we have entered a new phase of evolution. At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information.

In the last ten thousand years or so, we have been in what might be called, an external transmission phase. In this, the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage, has grown enormously.

Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes. We may be no stronger, or inherently more intelligent, than our cave man ancestors. But what distinguishes us from them, is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, over the last three hundred. It is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race.

Possibility of life in universe. Are we alone? Are aliens real?

By Rudresh Pandey

If the argument about the time scale for the appearance of life on Earth is correct, there ought to be many other stars, whose planets have life on them.

Some of these stellar systems could have formed 5 billion years before the Earth. So why is the galaxy not crawling with self designing mechanical or biological life forms?

Why hasn't the Earth been visited, and even colonized?

Is it possible that we humans will come across any aliens?

Or we already have aliens, ETs and UFOs visiting our planet?

To me answer to the last question is simple with a very simple logic. Ay visit by a UFO, any ETs or any aliens from outer space would be much more obvious, and probably unpleasant.

If you buy this logic the obvious question, which must be answered to support this logic, is –

What is the explanation of why we have not been visited?

One possibility is that the argument, about the appearance of life on Earth spontaneously, is wrong. Maybe the probability of life spontaneously appearing is so low, that Earth is the only planet in the galaxy, or in the observable universe, in which it happened.

Another possibility is that there was a reasonable probability of forming self reproducing systems, like cells, but that most of these forms of life did not evolve intelligence. We are used to thinking of intelligent life, as an inevitable consequence of evolution.

But it is more likely that evolution is a random process, with intelligence as only one of a large number of possible outcomes.

It is very important to understand if intelligence has any long-term survival value. Bacteria, and other single cell organisms, will live on, if all other life on Earth is wiped out by our actions.

There is support for the view that intelligence, was an unlikely development for life on Earth, from the chronology of evolution. It took a very long time, two and a half billion years, to go from single cells to multi-cell beings, which are a necessary precursor to intelligence. This is a good fraction of the total time available, before the Sun blows up. So it would be consistent with the hypothesis, that the probability for life to develop intelligence is low. In this case, we might expect to find many other life forms in the galaxy, but we are unlikely to find intelligent life.

Another way, in which life could fail to develop to an intelligent stage, would be if an asteroid or comet were to collide with the planet. It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth, about 70 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. A few small early mammals survived, but anything as large as a human, would have almost certainly been wiped out.

It is difficult to say how often such collisions occur, but a reasonable guess might be every twenty million years, on average. If this figure is correct, it would mean that intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no major collisions in the last 70 million years. Other planets in the galaxy, on which life has developed, may not have had a long enough collision free period to evolve intelligent beings.

Another possibility is that there is a reasonable probability for life to form, and to evolve to intelligent beings and develop themselves to inter planetary travel but at that point, the system becomes unstable, and the intelligent life destroys itself. We too may end up with a nuclear war or something similar.

Maybe there are other forms of intelligent life out there, but that we have been ignored. This part of universe is like an African desert which gets very few tourists.

The most important part in this debate is not if there is any life out there. We should really think, Should we be look forward to meet a more advanced civilization?

Don’t forget what happened to people of America meeting Columbus.

Why Most Start-ups Fail.

by Rudresh Pandey

learning from failure is something every entrepreneur needs to do. Start-ups has to avoid failure and this is the most important and the only job they have. so why most start-ups fail? following are few:

Idea has to be really better if it is new and unique!  

Narcissism of business idea is the first killer, so get a reality check and try to listen to all. Taking risk is the name of the game but please keep your ear to ground.

Don't lose perspective.

The most common reason for it is surprisingly being over focused and too wrapped up in own Idea.

Out of cash.

Yes! this is a killer... big one... reasons: poor budget, poor plan (or no plan at all...) At time it takes long to raise rounds of funding and burn rate is high so boom!!, or some combination thereof.

Concepts, not complete products.

Ideas and inventions are fascinating, but consumers and businesses generally buy complete products they can actually use. There is a world of difference.

Gaps in the strategy.

Strategy needs hard work and lot of hard work!! that's it.

Partners or the team can't get along. 

Often the initial strategy fails that is when this problem starts. Make sure your partners are not to make a quick buck make sure you get committed partners.Invest in your management team.

Competitors with existing solutions don’t give up so easily. 

From disk drives and CMOS chip technology to pencils and paper, there are barriers to topple the status quo and, sometimes, old-school solutions that are tried and true and the powerful companies that market them hang in there far longer than anyone would expect.

Complex Market.

Complex Market phenomenon with lots of moving parts that are difficult to predict. Moreover, some entrepreneurs simply don’t think ahead.

Bad advice from the wrong people. 

With all the hype over entrepreneurship, the quantity of information has gone way up while the quality has gone way down. That means entrepreneurs are getting lots of bad advice from unqualified sources. The worst thing about it is, when they actually get good advice that conflicts with what they've been told, they don’t recognize it for what it is. Sad but true.

Aam Aadmi Party and Indian Democracy.

by Rudresh Pandey

It is said we Indians lives on Cricket, Cinema, Religion and Politics as we Indians are very passionate on these issues. Any casual living room discussions or any intellectual discussions on copious news channels emerging every day revolves around these topics. We are not the only democracy in the world, we are also not the best democracy but for sure our democratic system is very unique.  We have evolved our own system starting from an experiment of mixed economy of socialistic and capitalistic views. We adopted a mix model of economy at the time of independence from British rule on 15 August 1947; this was unique as the world was divided in socialistic and capitalistic camps at that time. We could hold this economic model even when the USSR collapsed with its socialistic model. We did change by opening our economy in 1990s but these changes were smooth as compared to other economies. These were more of economic changes than political but yes it had its social effects as it resulted in growth in the GDP and average income of the country.  

India is a strong democracy. Strong in the sense that it is robust and has survived many ups and downs. Various democracies could not survive they were taken over by dictators or collapsed due to various reasons. The major reason for India being a strong democracy has been the political culture we Indians have. Politics has been a major engagement of an average Indian. We are more involved with our political parties than just voting for them. This has made the Indian  democratic set up robust as it prevented any attempts of dictatorship etc.

Indian democracy needs changes and reforms, the reason for the reforms in our democracy and political system is because we has evolved a system of our own. The idea of democracy in India was taken from British system after our independence but it evolved after that. This process of development of democracy in India is more of social change than just a development of political system. India had a very strong ruling class for centuries. Even before British came and ruled this sub continent it had many strong ruling clans. So adopting a system that involves every one and a common men has been slow. We saw emergence of few political parties signifying a change in social thought and political orientation. Emergence of Bahujan samaj Party or Mr Laalu Yadav was due to uprising of a section of our society.  The emergence of these political forces  were because a section of the society was not in the mainstream of the political system and other major political parties could not match their expectations.

Recent phenomenon of emergence of Aam Admi Party signifies change in political thought. It signifies the desire of people to have better governance and better value of their tax money. Success of a political party that too in such a short span of time signifies a change in peoples orientation. It is not that the party has given a thought to people it is rather change in political orientation that has resulted in emergence of Aam admi party. This party has been the result of the change in the expectations of people from the political parties. The existing Political parties have not been able to meet these expectations which resulted in the gap and created a niche.  It will be interesting to see how the things unfold and weather this new political party which is the result of peoples expectations not fulfilled can really fulfill what people expect.

India and China’s lunar landing.

by Rudresh Pandey

With the  tricolour landing on the Moon on 14^th novmember 2008, India had become the fifth member of this so called elete  club. It was even called a new chapter in the history of India's space exploration. Others to reach the Moon are the US, former Soviet Union, Japan (even though by a malfunction and its orbiter crashed on the lunar surface) and the European Space Agency.   

Former Indian president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, center right, greets Indian Space Research Organization Chairman G. Madhavan Nair, center left, soon after India's Moon Impact Probe successfully landed on the lunar surface, in Bangalore, India, Friday, Nov. 14, 2008.

In april 1975 India’s first satellite, Aryabhata, was launched. ISRO has grown from its initial start as hanger-on to Soviet Union to the top three Asian space agencies (with China’s CNSA and Japan’s JAXA). 

Aryabhata  Launched on19 April'75

Today ISRO is a important partner in numerous international space projects. Chandrayaan-2 is an ambitious project of ISRO with Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) an agreement was signed between the two agencies on  November 12, 2007, to work jointly ISRO has the prime responsibility for the orbiter and rover, Roskosmos is to provide lander. (Design of the space craft was completed in August 2009 and ISRO finalized the payload for Chandrayaan-2 per schedule). The mission is rescheduledto 2016 as Roskosmos was unable to develop the lander on time. 

ISRO has worked brilliantly with its mission to support India’s development goals. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai,the visionary leader envisioned that pace activities could play a meaningfulrole in national development and solving the problems of common man. ISRO has successfully operationalised two major satellite systems namely Indian National Satellites (INSAT) for communication services and Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites for management of natural resources; also, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) for launching IRS type of satellites and Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) for launching INSAT type of satellites. India’s space program started in 1962 and has grown exponentially from its humble beginnings as the Indian National Committee on Space Research (INCOSPAR). The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), set up in 1969, is INCOSPAR’s successor.

Insat satellites, with their unique weather sensors, are a good example of ISRO’s traditional approach. Insat satellites were at first launched mostly by Europe’s Ariane and are now being put into orbit by India’s own Geosynchronous Space Launch Vehicle (GSLV). This technology is entirely homegrown with minimum foreign input as possible. This policy of ISRO and has resulted in development of its own industrial base and has saved costs. Chandrayaan 1 represented a major break from this tradition. ISRO incorporated instrument packages from Britain, Germany, Russia, Sweden, and the USA. USA also altered its approach from the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)  for Chandrayaan 1 mission.

With China’s Chang’e-3 and the lunar rover Yutu (Jade Rabbit) landing - China’s first soft landing on the lunar surface on Saturday, December 14, 2013.  we again face a question - why travel to the moon at all? We Indians have more questions to it. Are we in a race with China?

As  far as Moon is concerned the answer is very clear. The moon has minerals to supply us materials depleting from Earth. Moon gives us the base test technologies needed to explore space and future space technologies. China has more to this reason; its key objective is to show the world China’s “technological power” and “military muscles”. India on the other hand has never used ISRO to showcase its muscles infect ISRO demonstrated that Space program can be cost effective.  Against our over enthusiastic media ISRO has not been in competition with China.  But yes it is for sure that space technology will be an interesting area to look for.