The Mautam (I)

The Mautam:
On 2009 February 24, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) television series NOVA (in cooperation with National Geographic) aired Rat Attack – a documentary featuring the mautam in action.

In the remote corner of eastern India, freshly dug graves in numbers too many to count cover the land. Men roam the forests in search of food. Women dig for roots to fill their family’s bellies. Others walk hundreds of miles in search of rice to feed the stomachs of the starving children. The year is 1959 and the Indian government is confused as it watches thousands of people die from a natural disaster unlike any other – an unfathomable famine. It is caused not by the weather like a storm or tornado, but by small vermin – a plague of rats in the millions. The people call it the mautam and it fills them with dread.

Records from the early years of the British Raj verify an event so mysterious and rare that biologists still are puzzled by the mautam that is described so carefully in Indian myth. Evidence describes these mass rat outbreaks in India in 1959, in 1911, and before that in 1863. This odd proof clearly indicates this weirdly predictable schedule of a rat plague and famine every 48 years.

NOVA was able to capture footage of the most recent mautam beginning in 2006.

It is a warm September night. And in a small northeastern Indian village, the crop is ready. Rice hangs ripe in the stem and tall stalks are bearing plentiful corn. Harvest is scheduled to begin tomorrow and farmers soon fall asleep. However, under the cover of night, a force of nature is underway that will thwart the entire crop in the fields. The villagers have planted enough crops to feed their children and survive another year until the next harvest. But this year…there isn’t going to be a harvest. Within the next three nights, rats in the thousands trample out of the ground. As the farmers sleep in their bamboo huts, the rats overrun the fields and eat everything in sight.

In a small village of 40 families, the farmers in the village of Thlangkang expected a rich harvest of over four thousand pounds of rice. During this year – the mautam has won almost all of this. Farmers were only able to collect a little bit more than 50 pounds of rice. It will be a desperate year – farms all over India are experiencing similar catastrophes. Over a course of days, all the rice in the fields disappears. Now, there is not enough rice to even re-sow for the coming year.

The culprit at hand is not an uncommon foe to the world of plagues: the Black rat (Rattus rattus).
Originating from the tropical regions of Asia, the black rat found its way aboard ships to Europe. It was here where the rat’s fame of carrying diseases was born. R. rattus is well known for carrying numerous pathogens including the bubonic plague. These omnivores are able to consume almost anything; they eat what most humans eat plus more. It can thrive in both the city and the countryside – and take advantage of ultimately any food source.

A Brief History of Time (I)

2010 April 14

To Whom It May Concern:

This is the first Literature Circle letter that I have composed. At this point, I am still attempting to find a technique for reading quickly while staying focused to the text. I notice that there is progress in my reading habits. However, the pace at which I am reading is not truly at a satisfactory level. At this point, I should be at the beginning of Chapter 09 (The Arrow of Time). Thus far, I have completed Chapter 03 (The Expanding Universe). Wow – six chapters behind in my readings. Nevertheless, progress has been made – and I believe that is as valuable and powerful. In the coming months (and if there is time over the summer) my goal is to build upon this now-stable reading foundation and hopefully practice the ability of good reading.

The text I have selected for 2010 April is A Brief History of Time: from the big bang to black holes. Professor Stephen W. Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA authored this 1988 compilation. The book is densely packed with rich information in all branches of physics – ancient and modern. In the Acknowledgements, Hawking writes “Someone told me that each equation I included in this book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end … I did put in one equation, Einstein’s famous equation, .” Basically, the professor hints that A Brief History of Time aims for a more general audience. He wishes not to limit this informative to those with advanced degrees from the University of Cambridge, but to readers with interest in the subject of astrophysics and lack of a PhD.

Hawking attempts to address and answer several questions – to the best understanding of 1988 science. These are the questions that compelled him to further his studies in cosmology and quantum theory: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end – and if so, how? It may also be the questions that stir interest to us all, to make us wonder about the space beyond our earth. Beyond our solar system. Beyond our galaxy. And lead us to the origins of the universe we see today. What makes this book so extraordinary is how Stephen W. Hawking is able to beautifully word complex (and often abstract) ideas and advanced scientific concepts with minimal reliability on the mastered levels of mathematics. Only several specialists are able to master the mathematics and use them to answer the aforementioned questions. It is further impressive that this book utilizes only one formula and can still answer some of these questions (like the basic ideas about the origin and fate of the universe) in a form that people without a highly developed scientific background can still understand.

Hawking first starts the Introduction saying “We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.” Many times when children ask, it is still common for parents and educators to mumble some religious texts or simply give a shrug. It is possible that some are still uncomfortable with these issues as they vividly show the limits of human understanding...

Assignment: What are your goals?

What are my writing goals?

Well, at this point, my goal is to actually finish all the blogs that I have missed. Ha. Let us see how much I can actually accomplish this week. Spring break gives me an awesome opportunity to make-up the blogs that I have missed and improve my grade. I should be making an A in this class and because I fail to complete the simple assignments, I receive such a low grade in the class. It is unfortunate really.

But what goals are there, what am I out to accomplish? Maybe there is no exact set goal. Thus far, I see myself simply typing up facts and compiling my research into an assignment for English class. Am I truly writing for myself or just for the grade? (Not like it seems to matter; I am neither writing for myself nor receiving the grade, ha). One aspect of my writing I want to improve is my efficiency. For some unknown reason, I am just not able to mold ideas in my mind into words on paper (or on the computer). At some points I am not able to even brainstorm good ideas. Just as an idea, I have been working on this post at the computer lab and at home for at least a total time of three hours – and I am only at word 275. And now after staring at that again, I am starting to work on this at a much faster rate.

In a grammatical viewpoint, my writing appears to have good syntax and a somewhat sophisticated vocabulary (or so I say…). Overall, organization may be an issue. I know that when I compose essays, I usually do not outline and plan out/brainstorm my works. Not too dissimilar to what I am typing now, I am composing the ideas the come to my mind. Maybe one aspect of my writing I should improve is my initial organization and processing of ideas. In turn, I would probably spend less time getting distracted and trying to pull my thoughts together because my general ideas will have been outlined already. Guess that might also be a valuable skill for the SAT and ACT college entrance exams – both of which have timed writing sections.

What is the purpose of my blog?

Primarily, I see it as a digital notebook for my English Assignments. I know that earlier in the year, I felt that the blog could be a site to share all the cool information that I researched. In some cases, I can agree with that – and it is true that the blog site shares information that I have researched. However I see the blog more as an assignment.

If I did have an additional purpose for my blog, it would be to educate the readers on topics of science. Science oversees almost all aspects of life, really. It provides structure to mathematics and explains the advanced and sophisticated complexities of our bodies.

Chemistry

Ok – my grade in English class is plummeting downhill faster than a spacecraft making its decent. For this reason, I am going to spend all of today to attempt to raise the grade. Ah, if only my blog posts don’t take an average of three hours to complete. Goodness, a day solely dedicated for English class. I guess is the sacrifice to make for failure to complete my work.

—Matter—

I have no idea particularly why I want to go into this subject on this post, but I want to blog about chemistry.

So, what is matter? In the most complex terms, matter is any material substance that occupies space, has mass, and is composed predominantly of atoms consisting of protons, neutrons, and electrons, that constitutes the observable universe, and that is interconvertible with energy.

In short, it is the “stuff” of which the universe is composed and has the two characteristics: it has mass and it occupies space.

To understand the nature of matter, it is classified in various ways. The three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas are defined by:

-solid: rigid; has a fixed shape and volume

-liquid: has a definite volume but takes the shape of its container

-gas: has no fixed volume or shape; takes the shape and volume of its container

The state of a given sample of matter depends on the strength of the forces among the particles contained in the matter; the stronger these forces, the more rigid the matter.

Substances have physical properties. Typical physical properties of a substance include odor, color, volume, state (gas, liquid, solid), density, melting point, and boiling point. A pure substance can also be described in terms of its chemical properties, which refer to its ability to form new substances.

An example of a chemical change is wood burning in a fireplace, giving off heat and gases and leaving a residue of ashes. In this process, the wood is changed to several new substances. Other examples of chemical changes include the rusting of the steel in cars, the digestion of food in the stomach, and the growth of grass in the yard.

In a chemical change a given substance changes to a fundamentally different substance or substances.


—Kinetics—

I still need to suck out one hundred words…so let’s continue with chemistry into the study of kinetics.

Chemistry is far more complex than mixing “stuff” and seeing what happens. In fact, chemistry is known as the central science as it focuses and links many of the other branches of natural and physical sciences. Without chemistry, the complex nature of biological functions would be difficult to explain. It is needed to explain reactions and interactions with the physical world – and thus physics.

So what is kinetics?

Kinetics is a branch of science that deals with the effects of forces upon the emotion of material bodies or with changes in a physical or chemical system. In short, it studies the effects of reactions. It also deals with the mechanisms or vehicles by which a physical or chemical change is effected.

Sugar II

When we think of sugar, usually the standard white granulated sugar that is seen in packets comes to mind.
But in the scientific world, sugar is a far more complex subject. Molecules of complex sugar molecules are more commonly known as carbohydrates, while more simple sugar compounds are plainly “simple sugars.” In actuality, all sugars are carbohydrates – they contain a carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in the empirical formula C_n (H_2 O)_n. The underscore _ indicates the location of a subscript. In this configuration, it can easily be seen that carbohydrates are hydrates of carbon molecules – hence the name carbohydrate. For simplicity, carbohydrates are usually written in the form C_n H_2n O_n with {n ∈ Z 3 ≤ n ≤ 7}.

Carbohydrates are the main energy source of all organisms. As I mentioned before, these sugars vary widely in chemical composition – from the simple monosaccharides and disaccharides to more complex oligosaccharides – which contain up to ten molecules of ‘simple’ sugars connected by bonds. The root -saccharide derives from the Latin saccharum and Greek sakcharon. The Greeks modified this from the Prankrit sakkharā and Sanskrit śarkarā – all to mean sugar or gravel. Mono-, di-, and oligo- roots all refer to the numbers of saccharides (one, two, and ‘few’, respectively).

So how do plants produce sugars that we consume?

All plants have an organelle chloroplast which contains a green photosynthetic pigment that produces the chemical compounds with the aid of radiant energy from the light of the sun. The photosynthetic pigment is also responsible for the varying colors of green in plants. Photosynthesis is the process in which plants use radial energy from the sun (in addition to water and carbon dioxide) to form a simple glucose sugars molecule C_6 H_12 O_6. This process yields the energy plants need to survive – and it then can manufacture the more complex sucrose and fructose combinations. The photosynthetic process can be represented in a chemical equation 6 CO_2 + 6 H_2 O + sunlight →3 C_6 H_12 O_6.

In the culinary realm, because sugar does not occur in the form of glucose in plants naturally – it is usually modified from other sugar. Glucose is the main form of sugar in corn syrup. There is a distinct difference from corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup found in many processed foods. This difference is just how the syrup is produced and the enzymatic processes that occur in each.

How is normal corn syrup useful?

Because of its different chemical structure, glucose is known as a preventative measure for crystallization in simple syrup.

Simple syrup:

Although I still do not know why exactly it may be called simple – I know it is a simple combination of sugar and water; it also just happens to be very simpleto make. Simple syrup has many uses in the kitchen where a liquid form of sugar is required. The best example is adding sugar to cold drinks. Notice how it just settles to the bottom of the container…? It just does not want to dissolve.

Reading

This is only a quick break from science and the chemistry of cooking. But this month and the end of February has been an extremely tiring and stressful. With the start of Literature Circles, my homework load increased three fold. Literature circles are the newest installment of my English class curriculum. It utilizes small groups of two or three who read a particular text of no less than two hundred pages. The reading is to be completed in three weeks at one week intervals. I chose a partner who is a good friend of mine. Initially, we were undecided upon which book we were going to read. Another friend of ours in the class had no partner, but a book he was interested in reading. Soon the three of us obtained copies of Octavia E. BUTLER’s book Parable of the Talents.

Far beyond high school, I realized that the pace at which I read is far slower than the usual pacing of my peers. I rarely read books in my spare time, not that I truly have any spare time nor do I read for pleasure. At its most basic, the only time I read fiction works are for English-Language Arts class or other education.

Now in my hands, I hold a four hundred page book that I must complete in three weeks. Unfortunately, there was no time to reassign myself to another group or attempt to persuade both partners to switch titles. Four hundred pages – three weeks. My group decided to divide the book into even thirds based on the number of chapters. Luckily there were twenty one chapters and twenty one divides into three seven times evenly. Therefore it reasoned that twenty one chapters should be dispersed in three seven-chapter intervals. And thus it was set, seven chapters were to be read each week (if it isn’t obvious, that roughly can equate to one chapter per day). In Parable of the Talents, BUTLER writes approximately fifteen pages for each chapter…fifteen pages of reading each day. Yuck. I knew I should not have agreed to read this book of four hundred pages. I understand that many avid readers scoff at the idea of ‘only’ fifteen pages, which they could read in ten minutes. I am the complete opposite; I cannot read quickly, possibly five pages in a half-hour at most – depending on how dense the material is presented.

Anyhow, one week passes. I should be starting the second installment of my book. I should be starting chapter eight. I should be at page 135. But what have I accomplished in seven days? Almost nothing, absolutely nothing. The only time I spent reading was during class and lunch. My marker rests at page thirty. One hundred pages behind pace.

I decide it is time for a meeting with my English teacher. My English teacher (whose name shall remain undisclosed) and I shared a valuable conversation. We both learned something new about me and my reading. He told me to take a half-hour of reading time, and take notes on what thoughts are going through my mind, what distractions are around me, and what else is possibly hindering my reading pace. My teacher explains that the issue is less likely a problem with reading itself, but other aspects which may affect my reading. The notes I took gave a framework to build upon…

Sugar

The human tongue can essentially detect five different flavors: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savory (also: umami). What substances taste sweet? Sugar, of course – but why do we have a natural attraction to sugar and sweets? When we are born, we have a natural attraction to sugars, because sugars (usually) mean energy. On the same token, at a young age, many children dislike vegetable. When cooked (and exponentially worse when over-cooked) enzymes react in response to the high heat to form extremely bitter compounds. And in many cases in the natural world, poisons and toxics are bitter. As humans mature, our food pallet becomes more sophisticated and becomes more comfortable with pungent, spicy, sour, and bitter flavors. It is for this reason why adults are more comfortable consuming vegetables; their pallets are less affected to the bitter components of a dish more than the other complex harmony of aromatics and spices of a fully-‘developed’ pallet.

Studies have shown that there is a relation between the ability (and severity) of tasting PTC (phenylthiocarbamide) paper and the flavor of vegetables. PTC is a chemical which is extremely bitter to some of the population, while virtually tasteless to others. This strange difference of two extremes is dependent on a genetic encoding to taste certain bitter compounds. Those with high sensitivity to PTC (myself included) showed an extreme disgust to vegetables (I can recall placing the PTC paper on my tongue and immediately spitting it out. That taste lingered for hours – if it helps, the paper tasted like chloroquine or quinacrine that you would take for prevention against malaria.). Conversely, those who seemed to have no effect from the PTC had no issues with vegetable consumption. Therefore, some children don’t eat their vegetables because they don’t want to, but because s/he is too sensitive to the bitter compounds or even become unpalatable…so it is not entirely the kids fault.

Moving onto another subject of sugars… (I understand the majority of the text above is about bitters, but I thought it was interesting and decided to do the extra research)

Albeit not as complex as salts and flour, sugar has a unique array of varieties. Apart from the normal white granulated sugar, there is brown sugar (golden brown and dark brown), raw sugar, and all types of sugar syrups (like corn syrup). So how does sugar arrive on our supermarket shelves?

It all begins with the sugarcane stock.
Sugarcanes are any of about twenty five species of tall grasses (like bamboo) in the Saccharum genus which originated somewhere in Asia. In many cases, the sugar found in the sugarcanes at the grocery store is a hybrid of the twenty five. Cultivators carefully select the best characteristics of the sugarcane and decide which best moves to the next generation of crop. It is not uncommon for stocks to grow from six feet to as high as nineteen feet in height.

After harvest, the cultivators have several options to produce a consumer product, all based on its final destination. In Costa Rica, I have had the pleasure of taking the whole sugarcane, pressing it through rollers, and straining the pulp to produce a pitcher of a sugarcane juice. This elixir was served in a shot glass and looked like a clouded mixed drink. The taste was concentrated – sweet, but not overwhelming and with a nutty flavor. It was an opportunity to enjoy a rich Costa Rican delicacy of cold pressed sugarcane.