hisay lama

  Picture from Okinawa island in Japan        I want to share my perspective on research, particularly in basic science. I’ve noticed that many renowned scientists, especially physicists, often choose research problems that fascinate and excite them. Interestingly, many of these scientists also have a deep interest in the humanities and arts. They dedicate their resources and efforts to these pursuits, ultimately publishing their findings. Along the way, they develop quantitative and analytical tools or physics-based models to better understand the problems they are investigating. For example, I recently attended a talk by a well-known physicist from the UK who was studying literature from the medieval era. I approached the talk with curiosity but found my interest waning as it progressed, likely due to my limited understanding of literature. However, what really lingered with me was the question: Is this an important problem to study? Should leaders in the fiel...

My working space at my Tokyo residence I think learning/growth in most individuals can originate from two sources, namely, curiosity-driven and insecurity-driven learning processes. Let me first talk about curiosity-driven learning, herein, a mind is self-directed, focused on personal goals, and uses the available knowledge to succeed in their goal. Moreover, the mindset is driven by intrinsic thoughts, with a motivation of growth and free from external pressure or comparison. Such an approach fosters originality, leading to the development of unique ideas and work. In contrast, a n insecure mind more often follows others, always seeks external validation and avoids risks, leading to a path defined by external influences rather than personal aspirations. It is mostly guided by induced thoughts, moreover, ideas are shaped by the expectations and achievements of others. With this mindset, we may have career growth, but we may lose the authenticity and the originality. Howe...

While climbing Mt. Takao in Tokyo, Japan. A midst this life journey, an important and critical philosophical aspect that continuously haunts my mind is, "understanding oneself". This self-awareness can potentially provides the necessary vision to progress, navigate amid obstacles, and move freely.  Further, there is another important concept that comes in;  "Ignore and explore".  By this, I mean ignoring what we feel is unimportant and exploring the uncharted aspects of life.   However,  there is often a situation where we can't do anything except wait and wait until external events unfold and show us a path to move. O ften resulting in a state of hallucination where we can get lost in a cycle of thoughts, finally forcing us to embark on something completely new. Therefore,  initiating new endeavours in life and accepting the changes should be ubiquitous activities. Besides, it's also important to note that  many aspects of life lack quantifiable ...

The pursuit of excellence is often attributed to a combination of four factors: Knowledge, Intelligence, Hard Work, and Luck. However, attaining all four may not be entirely feasible, particularly given that Intelligence and Luck are beyond our control. Despite this, I firmly believe that Hard Work, a factor entirely within our purview, serves as a cornerstone for success. Furthermore, a diligent effort has the dual capacity to not only propel one's work ethic but also to actively contribute to the accumulation and enhancement of Knowledge. While certain factors may remain elusive, the steadfast commitment to hard work can empower individuals to navigate and shape their paths to excellence.

Pokhara Lake, Nepal   In today's society, it's common to be constantly bombarded with images and messages of people who seem to have it all together. From social media influencers with perfectly curated feeds to celebrities with seemingly perfect lives, it's easy to fall into the trap of wanting to prove ourselves to others. However, I believe it's much more important to live to improve rather than prove. Living to prove implies a constant need for external validation. We might feel like we must constantly prove ourselves to others by achieving certain milestones or reaching certain goals. While there's nothing wrong with striving for success, it can be dangerous to base our self-worth solely on the opinions of others. When we live to prove ourselves, we essentially give others control over our lives, which is never a good thing. On the other hand, living to improve means that we're constantly striving to be better versions of ourselves. We're not focused on...

Morning view of Trapani downtown from the hilltop of Sicily, Italy.      

                                View of Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto, Japan For much of our life, we pay significant efforts in  excelling in our careers,  building relationships, making good friends, having good teachers, being good students and  make good relations.  I believe having all of them is a great blessing, but unfortunately, all of us are not so lucky or well-deserved to have them all.  Working for them has always been difficult for everyone; sometimes, we may give up.  But, whether we succeed or fail, we keep accumulating an important thing during our journey, it is called an "experience". For every individual, it is different, and mine is unique too.                 As I grew old, I discovered that "experience" is my  most valuable possession . It may be filled with  happiness, sadness, struggle, or whate...

View of Suwon city from the Suwon fort (South Korea) With the development of science and technology, everyone will certainly accept that the socio-economic life of human beings has changed a lot due to their advancement. I believe it's similar to how the world changed during the 18th century after the industrial revolution in Europe. Machines were slowly introduced into the world and became essential to human lives. This advancement has created wealth and improved social and economic conditions. Similarly, since the late 20th century, the discovery of the personal computer and the internet has taken the world into a new "digital era" era. In this age, the internet has become an essential part of life. We use it for everything: gathering information, remotely controlling machines, doing research, entertainment, connectivity, communicating, finding a job, travelling, ordering food, shopping and many more. This era of information and technology is storming into an individual...

                                                            Tibetan prayer flags in my room The topic I choose here is again not technical or analytical but rather philosophical. Such philosophical concepts have immensely driven me to live and have shaped my mind. For example, I have often questioned myself: how important is it to keep a record of our past or plan for the future? The experience from the past is necessary because it teaches us what to do or not do; essentially, it is a learning experience. While planning for the future is also essential because it provides a vision to move forward.  I find that thinking about these two aspects, at least in me, brings anxiety or stress. Thinking about the past brings guilt, and thinking about the future brings fear. This situation often reminds me of a proverb by Master Uruguay in the m...

  Statue of Compassion Buddha at Bongeunsa temple in Seoul (South Korea) In this blog, I would like to narrate three important questions which are deeply philosophical but used very often by researchers, corporations, business firms or even by an individual to understand the broad perspective of life. They are -  (i)  Why do we want to do something? (ii)  What do we want to do? (iii) How are we going to do? The rationale behind these questions is straightforward: they are broadly meant to funnel down our thought process to a list of a few essential questions that are relevant to us.  I find the coaches who train the corporate personnel insist executives ask these questions. Interestingly, the researchers are also trained to ask these questions, and they have to answer them every time they propose a research project.  Besides all this, I entered the 30s club, and life started knocking on a bell, creating an alert almost every time. All these 3 questions wand...

                                Picture of Pagoda at Gokokuji temple, Mejirodai, Bunkyo Japan Numbers are such an essential thing that helps us to count, calculate, measure or label things (Ref: Wikipedia). Although it is impossible to explain everything about the number, here, I will present my observation. I find it essentially everywhere,  we use it for several things, for example, we count years, weeks, days, time and so on.  In the context of a living being, the lifetime of survival, number of heartbeats, pH of blood or body fluid. Isn't that all fascinating? Such sort of numeral quantification has traditionally assisted many scientists to build a constructive intuition and understand life.  Another example is the picture shown above. This picture posses a specific number of pixels that spreads across its width and height.  Since the image is coloured, we additionally have 3 channels...

The candid picture at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo. It is very interesting to note that most of us are often asking several philosophical questions, such as -  (i) How should we live in a society? (ii) How should we behave? What is success? How to become successful? Many more. For a guy/girl just crossing a teenage, it is always very much confusing. They are oscillating between the do's and don't of their society. Unfortunately, I also went through such stages but still couldn't find the answer. But over the period, I just moved with smaller life goals or targets. Correct or not correct, I am not sure about that, but still, it worked for me. However, the challenging part is ethics that many of us do not keep to reach success or while fulfilling our life demands.    For me, life itself appears like a drama where everybody including me is acting. All of us are not speaking from the heart but always speaks what needed to be spoken. Over the period I also learn to speak the way...

Whenever I contemplate the concept of self-assembly, as sparked by Erwin Schrödinger's book What is Life?, I find myself drawing parallels between the phenomenon of self-assembly and the functions of the human body, particularly in the self-assembly of its cells. The human body is composed of a vast number of cells, each with its own dynamics and function, yet collectively, they exhibit behaviour distinct from their individual components. This resembles a thermodynamic system, wherein cells can be compared to atoms in a gas, densely packed and characterized by a macrostate of (P, V, T) = (1 atm, V, 37°C). Beyond pressure and temperature, other physical properties, such as the pH of human blood, also have precise values. At a specific pH, blood cells do not aggregate but interact electrostatically. As previously noted, the human body can be viewed as a self-assembled collection of diverse cell types. In principle, this perspective should allow us to quantify key physical variables ...

Ducks walking in the park at UNIST near Ulsan  When I walk around the campus, several questions buzz in my ear (apart from usual worry), mostly philosophical. The question that haunts me most are-  1. What is life? 2. How human beings are created? 3. Why all living organism dies? 4. What happens after we die? Do we have soul etc.? I know the origin of these questions are intrinsic and are driven by the curiosity to know about the existence of humans.  In an attempt to answer these questions - understanding the phenomena exhibited by the living entity at a subcellular level,  their behaviour and response to external change would be very important.  The founding stone in an attempt to answer the origin of life has already been kept by many pioneers, the one that inspire me is  Erwin Schrodinger and his  lecture notes titled " What is Life? ".     Today a large number of researchers, working in this domain are trying to describe the subject...

Haunted pavement of Ulsan National Institute of Technology during COVID-19  A short story, taken from the web source. I have expressed it in my own way. O nce upon a time,   Indra ( the God of heaven) got angry with the villagers. So he cursed the villagers and stated that - there will be no rain for another 12 years in their land.  Interestingly, he also mentioned that the curse can be removed if Lord Shiva plays his damru . So all the villagers went to Kailash and tried to convince Lord Shiva, but he didn’t listen to the villagers, as Lord Shiva was already informed by the Indra . Then all the villagers lost hope and returned to their home. They started facing the harsh situation of starvation. But there was one in the village named Aarav who was ploughing land, seeing him other people from the village started laughing. The villagers started mocking him, they say him stupid because he was working despite of being aware that his efforts will be futile without th...

Schematic of drying sessile droplet of comprising particles In this article, the derivation for the depinning time associated with the sessile drop evaporating on a substrate and maintained at different temperatures is illustrated. The derivation goes below -     The droplet evaporating at dissimilar rates are observed to depin nearly at the same scaled time $t/t_f$ (where $t_f$ is the time for complete evaporation). The argument can be supported by a rudimentary mathematical framework illustrated below: \begin{equation}    \frac{dV}{dt}|_{\Delta T} = -V_E|_{\Delta T} \end{equation} where, $V$ is the instantaneous volume of water in the droplet, $V_E$ is the evaporation rate which is a constant at the particular $\Delta T $ (difference of substrate and environment temperature), the negative sign at r.h.s indicates the reduction in volume with time. Now by integrating Eq(1), \begin{equation}   V(t)|_{\Delta T} = -t\,V_E|_{\Delta T}...