Hanuman Is Light

“The beautiful face of that large-eyed Sita, whose eyes are coppery red, spotless and long, was like that of the moon released from Rahu.” (Valmiki Ramayana, Sundara Kand, 35.86)

cāru tac ca ānanam tasyāḥ tāmra śukla āyata īkṣaṇam |
aśobhata viśāla akṣyā rāhu mukta iva uḍu rāṭ ||

There are so many aspects to the dedicated servant of Shri Rama known as Hanuman. He is a factual person, not a fictitious creation of an imaginative mind. Though those who lack faith in the impeccable authority and teachings of the Vedas will try to look for only symbolism in the character of Hanuman, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t symbolic aspects to that real-life person. In this verse from the Ramayana, we see that Hanuman is light, among many other things.

Is he the sun? Does he carry an electrical charge with him? Is he like a lamp? Actually, the darkness he dissipates is much stronger. That darkness is like a cloud that turns an otherwise bright day into a dreary one. The darkness removes the hope of reuniting with the eternal friend that is the Supreme Lord. That darkness is so strong that it looks like it will never go away.

Indeed, who hasn’t suffered doom and gloom? It’s difficult to have patience in the tough moments. This is because time can’t change the situation soon enough. The sober minded person realizes that time will operate. It already does so through the changing of bodies. There is boyhood, youth, old age, and then death. These changes are effected through time.

dehino 'smin yathā dehe

kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā

tathā dehāntara-prāptir

dhīras tatra na muhyati

“As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 2.13)

Happiness and sadness are like the two sides of a coin. The fate on a certain day depends on where the tossed coin lands. The pair represents duality as well. Happiness for one person may mean sadness for another. With birth there is death. With heat there is cold. With up there is down. Each side is defined in relation to the other. If there were no cold, heat would have no meaning. The definition of death is based on the event known as birth.

In the situation referenced above, the darkness is very strong and it relates to more than just the duality of the material world. This darkness is the influence of the Rakshasas in Lanka preventing Sita Devi from being with her husband, Shri Rama. The king of that city is stopping Sita from serving her beloved. That service wasn’t hurting anyone, either. It was taking place far away, in the forest of Dandaka. Ravana had his own enjoyment available in Lanka. Why did he have to bother Sita?

The darkness of ignorance gets stronger the more a person tries to appease kama, which is material desire or lust. Ravana was fully under the control of his senses, instead of the other way around. That is why he thought he could not live without Sita, a person whose beauty he had heard about from his sister.

We see here that from hearing the words of Hanuman, Sita’s countenance changed. Her face became like the moon just released from Rahu. In Vedic astrology it is the influence of Rahu that causes eclipses. The moon right after the eclipse is very bright. In the same way, Shri Hanuman’s influence has removed the Rahu that was Ravana and the people serving him.

Hanuman carries the light of the Divine. He brings the message of Godhead. He is not God Himself; despite what those who favor him strongly out of sentiment may say. Hanuman is equal to God in the sense that the interest is always the same. Hanuman is never in kama. He is always in bhakti, which is devotion. He uses his amazing potency to help others return to bhakti. He does this by removing the darkness of the negative influence of aggressors like Ravana. He is time’s agent to help the devotee regain the light of devotion.

In Closing:

When to leave this misery of mine?

Can’t move fast enough endurable time.

Like with birth then death a certainty,

Material world full of duality.

The darkness in Lanka even stronger,

Separation from Rama for Sita growing longer.

Hanuman with him carrying a light,

Happiness Sita’s face turned bright.

Detecting ‎Brain‬ Waves with Atomic Vapor

It’s really hard to hear what the brain is saying. Neural impulses -- currents of ions moving through channels between the brain’s 100 billion neurons at a potential of about 0.1 volt -- produce magnetic fields in the range of a trillionth of a tesla, about a 100 million times weaker than Earth’s magnetic field.

That electrical activity can be detected by electrodes placed on the scalp, or directly into the brain, that measure the difference in voltage between different points. That method, however, if used non-invasively, can’t identify the location of the signal with sufficient accuracy for many uses.

“For conditions such as epilepsy, doctors need to know where the epileptic center is,” says Svenja Knappe of NIST’s Physical Measurement Laboratory. “Magnetic signals detected outside the head can create images with much higher spatial resolution, but the signals are exceedingly faint.”

That is why Knappe’s team is at work on a new kind of magnetometer that can detect fields as weak as a few femtotesla (10-15 T, or quadrillionths of a tesla -- far smaller than the ion currents generate), potentially at a fraction of the cost of conventional systems.

The typical instrument used in magnetoencephalography (MEG) is an array of a few hundred highly sensitive field detectors called SQUIDs.* These devices operate near absolute zero, and have to be immersed in liquid helium.

“It’s like a gigantic helmet that’s largely filled with helium,” Knappe says. “So it requires thermal insulation that keep the sensors a couple of centimeters from the head, and it can’t be adjusted to accommodate different head shapes and sizes. The prototypes we are building -- called microfabricated optically pumped magnetometers (µOPMs) -- do not require cooling, and can be placed within a few millimeters of the scalp.”

The devices measure the effect of magnetic fields on a trapped population of rubidium atoms enclosed in a glass cell about a cubic millimeter in size. A laser raises the temperature to about 150 °C, resulting in a vapor of a hundred trillion atoms. A specially polarized, “pump” laser beam is directed through the vapor, aligning the spins of all the atoms in the same direction. The same laser is used as a “probe” beam: It shines through the vapor, out of a window in the cell, and into a special detector that measures the polarization of the arriving light.

In the absence of a magnetic field, the atoms’ spins would retain their original orientation, and the polarization of the probe beam would remain unchanged. But when a field is present, it twists the atoms’ spin orientation slightly. That, in turn, changes the amount of the light entering the detector.

In their present form, the Knappe team’s µOPMs have been tested against SQUID-based detectors and have been shown to approach the limits of sensitivity of commercial SQUIDs. But there is much more to be done on many fronts.

In the near term, “we want to increase the dynamic range of those sensors and improve the noise rejection,” says project scientist Abigail Perry. “A screwdriver or some other metal implement in the neighborhood will have much larger fields than we’re trying to measure -- even when they’re three meters away. A car driving by outside we would see and hear on the detectors.”

The principal noise-reduction scheme is to use two highly sensitive instruments -- one at the measurement site and one far away. The on-site sensor will hear the desired signal, but both will hear the magnetic noise. So it should be possible to subtract out much of the magnetic interference, raising the signal-to-noise ratio.

Another problem is designing a system that will be flexible enough to be widely applicable. “Every head is different,” says project scientist Dong Sheng. “So we have to have a mechanism for assessing exactly where the sensors are with respect to the brain.” A lot of peripheral questions come into play. For example, the team is experimenting with different combinations of plastics to reduce the amount of conductive material in the µOPM’s enclosure.

“Eventually, of course, we’d like to reduce the amount of shielding that’s needed for MEG -- to take magnetometry out of the shield,” Knappe says. “We hope that future systems could work in the field, where there’s no liquid helium around for a SQUID-based detector. This could maybe help to diagnose traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) where they happen.”

Major TBIs cause structural damage to brain tissue that can be seen using conventional MRI. However, lower-intensity injuries -- which may still be very dangerous -- do not cause the same damage, and therefore don’t show up on conventional MRI.

“But some of the naturally occurring waves in the brain do seem to be affected by such injuries,” Knappe says. “The electrophysiology seems to be altered, but there is no apparent structural damage. So medical personnel are looking for a biomarker that says, ‘Oh, here’s something!’ MEG could contribute potentially to providing that marker, and help diagnosticians decide whether to send a soldier back into combat or a football player back onto the field. It’s especially important in the case of concussions, because if you have a second one, it just multiplies the severity.”

A mobile MEG system might not be that far in the future, Knappe says. “We’ve built prototype arrays, we’ve put them on people, there is a nascent industry that is starting to take these procedures over, and the companies are selling prototype systems. So there has been a lot of progress. They are starting to be used in pilot studies, though not so far in clinical studies.

“If we want to go beyond what the current system can do, get higher spatial resolution, that hasn’t been demonstrated yet. We think we have the technology, but we don’t quite know. Still, we could be as much as halfway there.”

Meanwhile, Knappe’s project, part of PML’s Atomic Devices and Instrumentation Group, is finishing up work on the latest generation of µOPM prototypes. They will be evaluated by team’s medical collaborators Yoshio Okada and Matti Hamalainen at the Boston Children’s’ Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in coming months.

“This is one of several important applications for our magnetometer technology,” says NIST Fellow John Kitching. “We hope these sensors will begin to make an impact in a variety of areas, including nuclear magnetic resonance, magnetic anomaly detection, and navigation, in the coming years. It’s an exciting time to be involved in this field!”

* A superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) is a highly sensitive detector of magnetic fields. It senses the effect of fields on the current in a superconducting loop containing Josephson junctions

Image : A helmet-like array of chip-scale atomic magnetometers being developed in NIST's Physical Measurement Laboratory.
Courtesy/NIST

Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/solids/squid.html

http://whatis.techtarget.com/…/superconducting-quantum-inte…

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Josephson-junction

Cecile G. Tamura

ரவிவர்மாவின் ரகசியக் காதலி

“சுஜாதா பதில்கள்” படித்துக் கொண்டிருந்தேன்.

அதில் ஒரு கேள்வி :
“ ‘டாவின்சி கோட்’ படித்தீர்களா ? தமிழில் ஏன் அது மாதிரியான புது நாவல் முயற்சிகள் வருவதில்லை ?”

சுஜாதா :
“ தமிழில் அவ்வகையான நாவல்கள் எழுத உலகப்புகழ் பெற்ற ‘லாஸ்ட் சப்பர்’ போன்ற சித்திரம் தமிழ் நாட்டில் வேண்டும். ....

டாவின்சி ரேஞ்சுக்கு இல்லாவிட்டாலும் , சிப்பாய் கலகத்தை ஆராய்ச்சி செய்து, அதில் ஒரு தமிழன் கலந்து கொள்வதாக, ‘கருப்பு சிவப்பு வெளுப்பு‘ என்ற ஒரு தொடர்கதை ஆரம்பித்தேன். ‘கையை வெட்டுவேன் நிறுத்து’ என்றார்கள். எனக்கு இடது கையால் ஷேவ் செய்து பழக்கமில்லாததால் நிறுத்தி விட்டேன். என்னதான் ‘ரத்தம் ஒரே நிறம்‘ என்று எழுதினாலும் ஆரம்ப உற்சாகத்தை இழந்து விட்டேன்.

ஒரு யோசனை தோன்றுகிறது. ராஜாரவிவர்மாவின் லக்ஷ்மி, சரஸ்வதி சித்திரங்களுக்கு யார் மாடலாக உட்கார்ந்தார்கள் என்று ஆராய்ந்து ஒரு நாவல் எழுதலாம்.”
:
# சுஜாதா இப்படி எழுதி இருந்ததைப் படித்தவுடன்
“சும்மா இப்படி சொல்ல மாட்டாரே சுஜாதா...?
யார் அந்த ரவிவர்மாவின் லக்ஷ்மி, சரஸ்வதி மாடல் பெண்கள் ?” என்ற தேடுதல் எழுந்தது...

தேடினேன்..பிடித்தேன்..
ரவிவர்மாவின் லக்ஷ்மி, சரஸ்வதி
–இரண்டுக்கும் போஸ் கொடுத்த மாடல்.....
ஒரே பெண்தானாம்..!

சுகந்தி என்ற சுகுணாபாய்.
கோவாவைச் சேர்ந்த மஹாராஷ்ட்ரப் பெண்.

ரவிவர்மாவுக்கும் இந்தப் பெண்ணுக்கும் நெருங்கிய தொடர்பு இருந்ததாக “கிசுகிசு” உண்டாம்..!

இதை வைத்து நாவல் அல்ல .. ..
சினிமாவே செய்து விட்டார்களாம்..!

எது எப்படியோ..?
ரவிவர்மாவின் புண்ணியத்தால் அந்த சுகந்தி என்ற சுகுணாபாய் , சரஸ்வதியாகவும் லட்சுமியாகவும் அமரத்துவம் அடைந்து விட்டார்.

ஆம்...
நூறாண்டு காலம் ஆனபின்னும் ,
இன்றும் கேரளாவின்
பல வீட்டு பூஜை அறைகளிலும் ,
கோவில்களிலும்
லஷ்மியாக ,
சரஸ்வதியாக
வாழ்ந்து கொண்டிருக்கிறாள் .....

ரவிவர்மாவின் ரகசியக் காதலி...!

  ஆம் ... காதல் அழிவதில்லை...!

John Durai Asir Chelliah