Network Theory

I have been meaning to write about this for some time but never quite got around to doing so - there have been a few reference to the concept of 'Six degrees' on several e-groups that I am a member of - indeed, the idea of 'Six degrees' propounded rather simplistically back in the late fifties basically was that every body in the world is connected to somebody else perhaps half way around the globe by six degrees of separation i.e in six hops it is possible for anybody to connect with anybody else in the world or in other words somebody you know, knows somebody else who knows someone else who knows yet another person and so in six such hops you can connect with a person who lives a world away and who you may never have set eyes on! Well, the idea was thought of as yet another urban legend or myth and nobody quite had tested it . Recently it turns out that it has been tested by a couple of Universities in the US and found to actually be not mere urban myth but very much true.

The testing involved getting a packet across from some of the remotest parts of the world to a particular person at Harvard University, Boston without actually having the address of the person in Boston. A couple of courier companies were recruited to fly packets addressed to that person for free, no matter from where it is coming and a notation was made as to how many hops the package made to get to Boston! Incredibly, some 27 out of 40 packets made it to Boston from far away villages in Kenya and India and Inner Mongolia in less than six hops!! In other words the network actually found the final address of the person in Boston as it went along its way!

So Six degrees is no more a myth - the concept has actually evolved into the science of Network Theory, a highly abstract, mathematical concept that has now become central to the idea of fighting stuff like terrorism and cancer!! A quick reading of the piece below will tell you how!! If you are too lazy to do that let me see if I can quickly summarise the concept for you here! A network consists of hundreds of connections, some connections have a lot more connections connecting to it than other connections - these are called hubs. Thousands of hubs and connections then form the network! The Internet works this way, as do networks of terrorists and this is the way cancer spreads in the body!! The beauty of a network is that if some connections fail, the network will continue to work, albeit a little slower! But if a hub fails, then the network begins to crawl and if a few hubs fail the network itself crashes! So does this concept tell you a few things about how to kill a viral infection in a computer network? Or how to knock out a terrorist network?

Albert-László Barabási and Network Theory

At one point or another, you’ve probably heard of “six degrees of separation,” the theory that, through social relationships, you’re only six handshakes from anyone on the face of the earth. Or, you may have heard of its pop culture

incarnation, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” a trivia game in which players attempt to link any Hollywood actor to Kevin Bacon through six films (or fewer). What you may not have heard is that an exploration of these concepts, which were

once dismissed as trivialities or urban myths, has led to a new, groundbreaking branch of science known as “network theory.” By examining the unexpected ways in which all things relate to one another – from musical crickets, to websites, to Hollywood actors scientists are honing on solutions to some of the world's most complex problems.

Network theory pioneer Albert-László Barabási, a Distinguished Professor of Physics in the College of Arts & Sciences, has emerged as one of the world’s foremost experts in the science of networks. Through such innovative undertakings as a complete mapping of the World Wide Web, Barabási has discovered that certain, basic patterns underlie all connections and relationships. In his book, Linked: The New Science of Networks, Barabási writes, “There is a path between any two neurons in our brain, between any two companies in the world, between any two chemicals in our body.

Nothing is excluded from this highly interconnected web of life.” Barabási’s work is already famous; Linked is available in eleven languages, and are among the most cited field. But his research will attain level of popular recognition this February’s U.S. release of documentary called Connected:The Power of Six Degrees (also known around the globe as “How

Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer”). The Connected documentary investigates the various mind-blowing applications of network theory in our everyday lives. In the film, Barabási and other scientists suggest that computer viruses, infectious diseases, proteins in the cell, and human social groups are all governed by the same fundamental concepts. And, through the application of these discoveries to the military, to technology, and modern medicine, Barabási has a guiding hand in research that may help us to control AIDS, break-up terrorist networks, and yes, perhaps even cure cancer.

What a week its been!

Indeed, its been a happening week this one - it all started with the news that our son Ashwin has made it to the submarine arm of the Indian Navy! The boy has been dreaming about this for some time now but he knew that it was not going to be easy given that the competition was going to be tough. Out of 16 that made it upto the Medicals in INS Ashwini in Mumbai the numbers were whittled down to 12 because 4 didn't make the cut on Medical grounds. Now it was going to be between the 12 that survived the tough Medicals and it would be upto the Training Officer to decide how many would make it out of the 12 remaining officers. Navy HQ obviously decides how many Submariners would be required in the year and that number was 6 - so out of the 12, only half would make the final cut. It was tension time for Ashwin but in the end all that tension was worth it because the Training Officer was convinced that he deserved to be part of the 6 that would go to Submarine Training School in Vizag for their 6 month submarine induction course in Jan 2010. We are so happy for Ashwin because he got what he wanted but it still beats me why anybody would want to spend the rest of his working life in the Navy under water!!

In the midst of all this important stuff happening in Ashwin's life we got word from a prospective groom's family that they would like to take forward a proposal for our daughter to marry their son! Massive debate erupted at home as to whether Ammu was old enough to be married - she will be 22 in a few days. My argument was that I think it was time for her to be married because she needed to have a slightly older man in her life to keep her feisty nature under control! I know she'll kill me if she reads this but truth must be told! So by my logic if we were to wait till she is older then the guy she marries will be older and may be into his thirties so it would make sense to find a groom for her while she is in her early twenties. Thankfully it seems like she is willing to bite the bullet. Horoscope matches have been done and there is this lad based in Mumbai, son of a Lt. General in the Indian Army who will see her on Sunday 6th Dec and we should have a go - no go decision soon enough!

Its been lovely to see the extended family rally around and call/email Ammu and tell her that she should go into this meeting with an open mind. Loved the way Veena from the UK, Bindu from Bangalore, my Mum from Kottayam, Sunil and his wife Ammu from Kochi, Gopichettan from Mumbai and so many others got in touch with Ammu to get her spirits up. So much so she's raring to go! Fingers crossed, lets see what the coming week has in store for us! Maybe there will be a meeting of minds in Mumbai this Sunday!

OGA Offsite Reunion Poovar 28th and 29th Nov 2009

The last few days have been a blur what with the build up to the OGA Offsite REunion in Poovar, Kerala and the travel to Australia in-between all the Reunion tamasha. But the Reunion happened and was most enjoyable.

Here's the low down on the build-up to Poovar, Poovar itself and post-Poovar! Somebody said 'theres never a dull moment with Georgians' - well there really couldn't be a more apt statement! The action started within minutes of us boarding the train for Poovar!! As the train pulled out of Chennai Vinoo had his pre-mix suitably camouflaged in Coke and was taking his regular swigs, he wouldn't put his bottle down and I think thats what attracted that Railway Protection Force policeman to Vinoo - he tugged the bottle out of Vinoo's hands, breathed deeply with his nose over the mouth of the bottle and motioned to Vinoo to see him outside the A/C compartment!! We didn't even notice what was happening until Vinoo was seen stepping out of the air conditioned area! Outside, Vinoo was told that it would be a 3000 buck fine and he would be de-trained at the next station for drinking on board the train!! After a little bit of pleading and coaxing the policeman settled for a bribe of 200 bucks and gave Vinoo his bottle back and told him to go into the loo and finish it!! Which ofcourse, Vinoo did without a whimper, glad that he got his vodka and coke back!! Soon it was time to hit the sack - I was billeted in the next coach while Sattar, Jen, Sudha, Kevin Lewis, Mary and Vinoo were in one area. I headed off and went to sleep - around 1030pm my phone (which was with Sudha) rings and Paan comes on the line almost desperately pleading with Sudha to put me on the line! She finds her way to my bogie and wakes me and puts Paan on the line - the man was charged with collecting 40 bottles of booze from the Naval Base in Kochi and ferry it to Poovar. It turns out he got busted by the cops the previous day - it is a non bailable offence to carry commercial quantites of booze without a licence in Kerala so Paan was about to go in to the cooler and be the guest of the Kerala Government!! He somehow worms his way out of that situation and calls me and says he cannot take the booze down to Poovar because it is too risky! His exact words were ' if you can ferry it please do so, I'm outahere'!! Now, our train would be passing through Kochi but we were to head straight to Poovar so how was this problem to be solved?!! The decision was taken that Vinoo and I would hop off at 0600hrs on 27th morning at Kochi and find Paan and the booze and find a way to get it to Poovar! Imagine a reunion without the hooch!! The thought was worrisome for every OG out there!! I called Sanil to see if he could arrange some police protection! He insists that we should not ferry the booze in a Tourist vehicle (Yellow number plates) and must do so only in a white number plated vehicle - he would try and arrange one for us but it would be past 10am when we have some news on that! It turns out that the Manager of the hotel that Paan was parked in was the husband of one of Sudha's 60 cousins! We latched on to the man who very helpfully offered to let us use his car to ferry the booze - that was very brave of him because if we did get caught, the car would never ply the roads again! But an ex-Army officer knows that some risks are worth taking! So Paan, Vinoo and I set off in a Maruti Esteem stacked to the roof with booze, headed to Trivandrum some 160 km south of Kochi. We smiled at every cop enroute so as not to look like a trio of boot leggers ferrying our booty! As luck would have it we got to Trivandrum without incident and headed for my cousin's home where Sattar, Jen, Kevin, and Sudha were parked. It was lunch at my cousin's place and Vinoo and Paan then took over and ferried the booze across to Poovar from Trivandrum! That evening all of us Chennai folks headed out to Poovar to check out the place for the games and other action that Sattar had planned. At dinner at the resort I get a call from Sanil saying that Ivan Jacob boarded a train from Calicut to Trivandrum with a ticket dated 26th October instead of 26th Nov!! Poor guy almost got thrown out but the TTE took him under his wings and provided him place to sleep - the train gets in at 0500hrs and the vehicles booked to ferry folks from Trivandrum station to Poovar wouldn't leave till 10am! So at 0530hrs in the morning my cousin's husband and I went and fetched Ivan! Now we were too many to fit in the car we were to bum from my cousin to get to Poovar!! Soon that was sorted out by arranging for Ivan to head back to the station to catch the vans ferrying folks to Poovar! In the mean time we hear that our man for all seasons - Thamilarasu was in Chennai on 26th instead of being in Poovar, so he was to fly to Madurai that evening and drive to Tuticorin, pick up his man Friday Vivek and drive out the same night to Poovar!! Mr Gardner and wife and Mr Wood and his wife were arriving with the Coimbatore gang next morning. There was another Chennai gang arriving at Trivandrum Station by another train - all these mind boggling logistics were beautifully handled by the Organising Committee consisting of NRK, Bhagee, Narayan, Singappa Raja, Rathinashekhar, Babu and a dedicated bunch of guys who worked their butts off to pull off the Poovar reunion. The Isola Di Cocco resort is a beautiful sprawling campus - we needed cell phones to pull in the foks to get the reunion going - which mercifully happened as per plan, under the shade of coconut trees on the backwaters of the Poovar river. Speeches done - Sattar took over in his own inimitable way with all the games and had the crowd buzzing in no time. The Treasure hunt for the kids was a terrific hit as also the other games arranged for the adults. It was quite hot and sultry by then which meant that beer could never taste better!! Lunch followed and what a spread that turned out to be - the mango fish curry was awesome as was the roast chicken curry! The EC Meeting was next - it was surprisingly well attended and the participation in the discussions was excellent. That was where the goody bags were distributed - super stuff - there was even a beautifully mounted Seashell with an individually personalised brass plaque! Ofcourse, there was lots of other goodies too - branded Sugar, Salt, Matches, Beedies, Curry masala and even a packet of condoms for good measure!! The beautifully personalised Appreciation Scrolls were also presented to those who helped put Poovar together. Hats off to the Organisers for the details they looked into. The highlight of the Poovar Reunion was the Banquet and Poolside Ball on 28th evening!! As usual Sattar had the crowd in party mood very early in the evening. The Live Band was fantastic - those guys deserve a big hand - they played on till 2am that night!! Because of the openness and large spread of the resort the music didn't affect any of the folks who wanted to call it a day early! The next morning folks were woken up by the Resort staff and told that the boat rides to the beach would begin at 0630hrs!! Many actually made it for the boat ride only to learn that the boat man had gone to church! So we hailed a boatman who was poling his way through the backwater and some hitched a ride in the boat which is actually used to ferry ducks about and it sure smelled that way!! By 1030hrs that morning it was time to start bidding goodbye to the 95 OGs and families who had shown up for Poovar 2009. Soon we discovered that a Mallu movie shooting was to take place in the resort and they needed some of us OGs in the movie! Paul and JC actually feature in one of the scenes of the movie - don't ask me the name of the movie - am sure one of those who attended will remember! The Valedictory address by Mr Gardner was short and sweet and basically focused on all the organising that had gone into the Reunion and terrific bonding that was on display. To put it in a nutshell - a great time was had by all! Click on the link below to check out some of the photos of our trip to Treasure Island Poovar 2009

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/Sailendra.Bhaskar/TreasureIslandPoovarOffsiteReunion2009#

http://picasaweb.google.com/vegaanba/IsodiLoCocooa?authkey=Gv1sRgCJWS1aGM0eeByAE#

Finding the Founder

Almost 18 months ago a few of us Old Georgians located in three continents set about to try and dig up more information on the Founding Principal of our old school in the mountains of South India! The people who led the charge were John Castellas in Melbourne, Monty Shroff in London, Bryan Mulley in Leicester, Brian McDonald in Coimbatore and a few others. We could find huge amounts of info on the man and his work, his movements in and out of India, his speeches from the pulpit and at fund raising events in India and the UK and so much more - why, John C even managed to locate and buy two copies of a book written by the good Reverend - one of those copies actually signed in his own hand is now in the School Archive! Over the months John and I realised that the Reverend must actually have been a reclusive sort, who shunned publicity and actually stayed out of pictures. The nearest we got was to a long shot picture (1914) of Lord Pentland , Governor of Madras Presidency the first sod at the foundation laying ceremony of the old school in Kodaikanal! There was a man of the cloth in the picture but his face was hardly recognisable! We plodded on, trawling through the internet and going after any lead we could get, we were told that the United Theological College in Bangalore kept detailed records of Missionaries who served in India - last July we checked the place out but only managed to find lots of material written by JB - no photos again! Last week John C was at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Archive where he finally came upon a group picture featuring Missionary Lecturers at the Richmond Exhibition, July 20 1907 - mercifully the picture was captioned and the Reverend's name was clearly visible. From that picture John zoomed-in and got a better look at the man and sent it out to me. Some months ago I had made a visit to the Egmore Wesley Church founded by Rev John Breeden in 1905 with the idea of trying to search its archives for a picture of the Reverend - they actually had 12 portraits of Englishman Pastors of the church but none was captioned so nobody knew who was who! One of the minions of the church actually told me to go ahead and chose any one of the pictures and caption it as that of JB!! 'Who is to know' is what he asked me in Tamil!!! Well, now that John C had obtained an image of the Reverend I went back to those 12 portraits and could very quickly identify the portrait of our man!! Here it is - the Founding Principal of the St. Georges Homes , my old school!

Ominous signs for Inglish!!

Driving to work this morning I saw this catchy advertisement on one of Chennai's bus shelters, of two girls cuddling a nice looking guy with a large tattoo on his arm with the alphabet S emblazoned on his arm and the caption read 'Seema = S = Sheila' - I didn't quite get it so I scanned the ad for more info and there it was the message - 'Now SMS on a diet, pay per character'!! This was from Docomo the Japanese GSM player who have tied up with Tata Indicom to offer GSM services in India.

Even without these inducements we have a hard time trying to figure out the SMS lingo (technical term is textese!) of kids and some adults but now with a 'pay per character' option in the pipeline me thinks texting is going to get awfully cryptic!! You may well need to carry along a SMS dictionary to figure out some of those incredibly cryptic messages that land on your mobile in future!! Hang on a tick, I just discovered a site which provides exactly this service - www.smsdictionary.co.uk!!!






Indian English, or Inglish, will never be the same again! Don't know whether to cry or smile at this prospect!!!

Hats off to these good people

Was away over the weekend in Kerala - Sudha's brother was opening a new wing at his eye hospital in Kochi so we had to be around! Sudha ofcourse, had gone on earlier as she was required to be at hand at the betrothal of a niece of mine in Trivandrum. So lots of traveling has been happening and as a consequence lots of mails to catch up with!!

I have to recount the details of an interesting thing that happened to me enroute to Kochi. I usually take out all the stuff in my pockets and put it in my pillowcase before I retire for the night on the train. Its an overnight journey from here to Kochi. So as usual I took out my wallet, my credit card wallet , pen, mobile and other little knick knacks and put them into the pillowcase and hit the sack. I woke up next morning and took out all the stuff from my pillowcase and put it right back in the respective pockets and waited for the destination station - when it did, I grabbed my backpack and a little shopping bag and got off the train and headed home for breakfast. After lunch I receive a call from a strange number on my mobile phone asking me if I had lost anything on the train! I said 'I don't think so' and the voice at the other end asked me if my credit card wallet was with me - that was when it struck me that it was missing!! All my cards were in that one wallet as was my ATM access card and a few airline frequent flyer cards and my driving licence!! I almost froze thinking of the enormous damage that could have happened if indeed the wallet was lost! The voice at the other end of the line turned out to be that of an Inspector in the Railway Protection Force (RPF) that travels on the trains these days. The cleaners at the destination station had found the wallet and handed it over to the RPF Inspector who found my visiting cards in the wallet and made that call!! He soon verified that it was indeed my wallet and asked that I send somebody to Trivandrum Central to collect the wallet! By mid day the next day I had my cards back with me!! Don't know how to thank the folks who arranged all this and am so glad that inspite of all the cynicism that surrounds us, honesty is still something we can find around us.

Stems cells turned into ova and sperm!

In the latest issue of the journal Nature a few Stanford University scientists claim to have devised a method of converting stem cells into ova and sperm and can therefore produce an individual by the combining of those two stem cell products! Ofcourse, it means that infertility is really a problem no more - it will be possible to produce stem cells from the skin of infertile individuals and then it is only a matter of making those stem cells into sperm and ova! But it also means that sex is now redundant and so are male and female couples! The mother (the person who gives birth to the baby) can actually be both mother and father! It also means that gay men can actually have children with their own genetic make up if they can find a surrogate mother to house their child in her womb until it is time to give birth!

Interesting possibilities are being thrown up by this development - I'm sure that to people in the legal profession it must appear like a problem wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a conundrum because this raises so many legal issues! Fancy a mother also being the father of a child, is that a legal quagmire or what?!!

But as a person of science I am a little perplexed by this development because ova and sperm are generally haploid, having only one set of chromosomes i.e 23 chromosomes and not 46 that normal human cells have. Now stem cells too are by and large diploid in nature so how do these scientists go about making ova and sperms out of diploid stem cells - the article doesn't dwell on this issue, wish they would have. Also there is the issue that if female skin cells are used to produce ova and sperm the sperm will always carry only the X chromosome because females do not have a Y chromosome, now this would mean that female skin cells can only beget female children! Is the male as a species doomed to be consigned to the dustbin of history? If only for the purpose of generating Y chromosomes the poor male may yet be needed! All this doesn't bode well for humankind it would seem!