Nada más

"No quiero nada, nada más
que no me dejes, frente a frente, con la vida."
Juan D'Arienzo and Luis Rubinstein

The hall was filled with music and life. Nothing more.

Everything within was part of those two axioms, the dim light had become a mere sound and the dance revealed itself the essence of living. She stood stoic as a pillar, a stance of serene readiness only softened by a faint, but blindingly honest smile. I embraced her at the edge of the floor and stepped onto the solidity of wood, away from a carpeted floor that could hold the weight of D'Arienzo's beat no more. As I stepped down I felt, more than realised, that something had changed, as if my mind had been left behind, unceremoniously tucked away inside the shoe bag. Within me remained feeling, and the dewy voice of Alberto Echagüe permeated me. Nothing more.

"Cuánta nieve habrá en mi vida
sin el fuego de tus ojos!
Y mi alma, ya perdida,
sangrando por la herida,
se dejará morir.
Y en la cruz de mis anhelos
llenaré de brumas mi alma,
morirá el azul del cielo,
sobre mi desvelo
viéndote partir."

Following the song's tale, I bled my soul onto the dance floor, but curiously it was not lost, but uplifted by the emotion of this curiously tragic song. In short, I danced as if I were in love. Nothing more.

The Dragon's Daughter

I offer you the transliteration, more than translation, of another Ukrainian folk story recorded in the book "З живого джерела". I have taken the artistic liberty of changing some elements of the story and elaborating on some others.

Once upon a time, a wealthy man travelled to a distant realm to trade. But water was scarcer than precious stones in that kingdom, so the merchant turned thirsty as death. Desperate, he went to the Tsar, who surely must have water. How could he not? For he was not only lord of all that land, but also a Dragon and a skilled sorcerer.

"Sir. If you give me that which you have at home, I shall let you drink the water of my well," said the Tsar, smirking.

"Except my wife, I will part with anything," replied the man and signed the vow. But he did not know that soon after he set out, his wife bore him a son, and one such that words can't describe! Swift as grass he grew and strong as an oak. When the merchant returned home, a boy ran to embrace him, saying: "I am your son, Ivan."

Hearing this, the man first rejoiced but, remembering the vow, started weeping.

"Why do you cry, papa?" asked the boy.

"Never you mind."

Time passed and the boy quickly became a young man. One day, as father and son were building a cattle shed by the river, Ivan spotted a scrap of paper hidden in the dam. Unfolding the paper he discovered the vow made between the merchant and the Tzar.

"Papa, why did you not tell me that I'm given to the Tsar? Prepare me for the journey, for I will go to the Tzar."

The father and the mother dressed their son in his dearest clothes and their direst tears - as many as they could muster - their liquid sorrow could quench his thirst in that desert land.

When Ivan reached the Dragon's palace, he was greeted by the lord himself and his three daughters. The youngest one loved him at once.

"Ivan," the Dragon spoke. "This night my river must be dammed and my field ploughed, the wheat sown, grown, ripened and reaped, threshed and winnowed, the grain milled and a bun baked for breakfast."

The boy walked away heavy-hearted, but on the way to his quarters encountered the Dragon's daughter again.

"Do not despair, Ivan, all will be well!" she said to him. "Go and rest until the morrow."

As great a mage her father was, his power was still shadowed by hers. When darkness fell, she whistled, and before her loomed two wispy servants. She whistled again and they flew to the field in a flurry. When Ivan woke in the morning, a hot bun lay ready on the table. This he took to the Dragon, who ground his teeth in rage, for he had failed to abase Ivan. Curbing his fury, he spoke:

"Ivan. This night my best horse must be tamed; it stands in my stables, behind twelve doors."

Ivan was a good horseman, and eagerly made for the stables, but his way was barred by the Dragon's daughter, who warned him:

"Ivan, don't be fooled. This task is harder yet than the last! The horse within is Father, and as soon as you approach him, he will trample you to death." Then she thought, and added, "It's too late, I will help you. Go and rest until the morrow."

As soon as all lay to sleep, she whistled and her airy servants appeared. She whistled once more and they soared into the stables, squeezing through the twelve gates and they grasped the horse's mane and rode upon it through the night until it was winded and so wetted with sweat that it seemed it had been drenched in water. The wild horse galloped and galloped, but eventually stood still. The servants took the fatigued horse back to the stables and vanished.

In the morning the Dragon called Ivan and spoke to him, the cold sweat on his brow barely concealing his choler:

"This eve you must come to me!"

As soon as Ivan left the court, the Dragon's daughter appeared to him and urged him:

"Ivan, if you go see Father, he will strangle you! You and I must flee."

Quickly they gathered their things and left the palace.

They walked and walked when suddenly they heard a rumble. The Dragon's daughter pressed her ear to the ground and whispered:

"They are pursuing us. We must hide."

She took a blade of dry grass and ripped it in twain, and at once she became a field of wheat and Ivan its watchman. Soon arrived a horseback host, the Dragon's servants, who asked Ivan the watchman:

"Did you not see a boy and a girl running past?"

"I did see them run past when this field was sown."

Discouraged, the servants returned to the palace, where the Dragon enquired:

"So, did you overtake them?"

"No, we did not."

"Did you not see anyone?"

"No, only a guard keeping ward over a field of wheat."

"That was them! Had you but torn the smallest kernel of wheat, you would have grasped her very head. Go forth once more, and catch them this time!"

Soon again they were on the heels of Ivan and the girl. Hearing their hoofs hitting the ground, she took a pebble from the road's side and broke it in half, whereupon she became a church and Ivan a priest upon the porch. The horsemen, having reached the church, asked the priest:

"Did you not see a boy and a girl running past?"

"I did see them run past when this church was built."

The irresolute riders returned to the palace, where the Dragon scolded them once more:

"It was them once more! Had you but clutched the knocker, you would have held her very neck." With this, he rose from his throne, climbed to his highest tower and called to his servants, "fetch me my pitchforks!"

He propped each of his eyelids with A fork and, as he watched the horizon he caught a glimpse of his daughter and Ivan. He spread his wings and dashed after them. Hearing the whistling of the wings, the daughter gasped:

"We are lost, Father is after us! But there's still one chance. Do not let him drink of me."

She then took a tear from her eye and tore it in two, turning herself into a well, and Ivan into a Cossack, a sabre at his waist. Soon, the Dragon reached the well and asked the Cossack if ever he saw run past a girl and a boy.

"Never did I see" replied Ivan.

But the Dragon glanced in his eye and realised the truth at once, so he said to the Cossack:

"Let me satiate my thirst!"

"You may not. From this well only the Ataman¹ may drink."

But the Dragon did not take heed, and instead stooped over the well. As he took the bucket to his mouth, Ivan, in one swift stroke severed his head. The well turned back into a girl, and the Cossack into a boy, who together walked back home and idled in wedding feasts.

^{1 Cossack chief.}

Dancing with Gardel

"Volver,

con la frente marchita,

las nieves del tiempo

platearon mi sien.

Sentir,

que es un soplo la vida,

que veinte años no es nada..."

Carlos Gardel

"The Mute" sings better every day. Yet no-one dances when the Thrush of Buenos Aires calls. He's probably rolling in his grave, his elegance twisted by a feeling of unfairness. Some say it is a sign or respect to not dance to the dead man's baritone, yet is it not sacrilege to let his memory fade in the milongas where he was an accomplished dancer. Let us speak with him then, echo his words with our hearts, their beat reverberating softly between our feet and the earth beneath.

So let him return, his forehead wrinkled, his temples silvered by the snows of time.

And let us feel, for life is but a breath, twenty years a trifle...

a Dream is a Dream is a Dream

I write inspired by the madness of the Friday eve, its petty decadence of aimless men and women, sleepwalkers on cement lubricated by brew, spit and sticky sweat. Do they know they are dreaming? You never know until you wake up...

I dreamed some nights ere of a young woman who answered by the name Ferre, yet whose true name is lost in the dream, known only to Morpheus. She found herself standing in the midst of a spacious chamber, of tall pastel coloured walls broken only by a staircase, steep as only Dutch mountains can be, winding its way round the room. At its highest point stood something that can only be described as a Lovecraftian abomination, of barely defined shape, texture and colour. Yet impression cannot resist description, and my memory of it is of an entity a little like a starfish moving as a mockery of man; bearing the rocky, brittle texture and colour of charcoal, its darkness broken only by the edges of it shape, so sharp that they nearly glowed. As it started descending the stairs, slowly, Ferre woke up from her dream, shaking and sweating.

She found herself within the very same chamber, now darker in tonality, a tranquil, dark olive. Beside her stood her friend, whose name is, perhaps, Galla. She soothed the trembling Ferre, as she thought of the time before the nightmares, before the pills. Were the capsules the cause or merely the catalyst of dread? She looked at the container standing on the squat night table, her hand grasping what her eyes could but touch. Holding the flask by her heart, to the bewilderment of Ferre, she unscrewed the cap and dropped one copper coloured capsule, a miniature metallic egg. Confusion gave way to terror when Ferre saw Galla take one pill and place it into her mouth. They gulped in unison.

Sleep pulled at her eyelids, dragging them down, but Galla would not concede before a curtain call to her pupils. Her eyes endured the constant assault of sand, searing but unyielding. And since Galla would not go to the Dreamworld, It would come to her. Between the grains stuck to her lashes she saw a familiar shape still on the spiralling stairs. Before it even quivered, she had dashed to meet it, her feet swallowing the stairs in pairs and triads until they stood beside it, their hunger quenched. Then sluggishly, painfully even, their languid legs moved in unison up the last handful of steps to a tall door. Galla tentatively taped the door ajar and stood aside, letting the leviathan lump its way within while she motioned Ferre to scale the steps and follow her fear into the room.

Ferre closed her eyes briefly to gather courage and found herself before the frame. As soon as she had stepped through it, she found herself back in the same room, dizzy with the knowledge that her dread had departed forever. Another memory surfaced soon after, a shadow of a dying girl, leaving His side. But who was He?..

Too late. I awoke confused, nagged by a prophetic feeling. I stood and went in search of Father, he would know. I found him in the dressing room and recounted him my dream and collected my thoughts.

"The strange thing is..." I added, only to be interrupted by his brisk departure. The thought was broken by the bang of the door.

Distracted, my attention fell on a set of emerald garnments hanging from a rack. A mess jacket reminiscent of a Matador's. A suit, tainted by a dark stain under the left clavicle. Some trousers...

...and Father returns and looks into my eyes, concerned. Bloodied and tired despite the rest...

...I wake yet again, woken by Galla's kiss, a deep flow of liquid tenderness, but it's not enough. I look at Ferre and ask her. Her fleshy lips don't even quiver, her short hair a helmet isolating her, keeping her warm in her coldness. As I wake again, some machine measures the coordinates of my thought: "Where are you Ferre?"

Sex, lies and statistics...

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Mark Twain

Not all things can be a gender issue. After seeing an article claiming that women were more promiscuous than men I had to laugh. I laughed again when I saw one claiming the opposite. Where the articles were written and who took the time to carry out the "research" is immaterial, so let us leave those issues aside. Also, since most of these articles are driven by an agenda to either showcase men as womanisers or women as "manisers", let's only consider the heterosexual population.

My argument is the simple fact that, on average, no gender can be any more promiscuous than the other. Let's just consider the population of an imaginary world called Miscu. Its population is composed of two genders, the "pro" and the "iti".

In Miscu, each sexual union "is" a real union, for establishes an unbreakable bond between the participants.

In the above example, both individuals have engaged in sex with one other individual. The sexual bond is not directional so both individuals, and hence genders, are equally promiscuous. Since the number of men and women in our own world is approximately equal, both genders must be equally promiscuous by definition. If you don't believe my simple example above, look at this more complex one below, where 10 individuals are involved...

In the example above, the number of links between individuals (9, precisely) remains the same for both the "iti" and the "pro" genders. Both genders are still equally promiscuous, on average, meaning that the mean is still meaningless. This leads to a more interesting point though: despite the fact that both genders have an equal number of sexual partners, the distributions of these bonds in each gender are different in a number of different ways...

• The promiscuity of the "pros" is less variable, ranging between one and two partners compared with a range between zero and five in the case of the "itis".

• The median number of sexual partners (i.e. the middle number in the distribution) is smaller for the "pros" (2) than for the "itis" (3).

• The mode (i.e. the most common number), on the other hand, is greater for the "pros" (2) than the itis (0).

• I won't even start writing about the skewness and the kurtosis, as by now you'll probably have seen my point :-)

This point is that statistics at its simplest can be a dire tool of deception and delusion, but if used properly, can give us much information. So let's just go beyond our simplistic gender biases and past the typical "itis are more promiscuous than pros" headline and try get a little closer to the truth...

Max Perutz Science Writing Award 2009

Tonight I have been pleasantly surprised to have been awarded a Highly Commended prize at the Max Perutz Science Writing Award, sponsored by the MRC. I got to spend a lovely night in the Gherkin, where we drank good wine, ate delicious food and, thanks to the DJ, danced a bit of Tango! Thanks also to the MRC for organising a Master Class on writing with poet Lavinia Greenlaw and the Guardian's science journalist Alok Jha.

The essay below is considerably more down to earth and less philosophical than my previous entry, though I hope it still is able to convey my amazement at the phenomena we call vision and consciousness.

Memories of a brain cartographer

Look. The world before you seems simple. It almost appears as though, somewhere inside your head, a cinema projector displays what your eyes capture and interpret. But that's not how we function. Instead, your brain is a cartographer, housing on its cortex a multitude of sensory, mostly visual, maps. Like regular maps, brain maps are drawn in a continuous and fluid way. Just as neighbouring countries are placed adjacent on a map, neurones that respond to similar visual locations are also grouped together.

Depending on the task at hand, our brains pick the best map to get the job done. When we talk about the Earth, depending on the context we interpret it in terms of political, geographical or weather maps, each with its rules and highlights. Just like a map maker, the brain interprets the world surrounding us by simplifying it: it splits it into categories, uses landmarks, and traces frontiers.

Over a dozen maps have recently been found in humans, spread about the brain's cortex. Some maps detect the edges and corners that delineate the outlines of objects. Others only take heed of movement or colour. Another few just seem to predict where you'll soon lay your eyes. Still others are centred on where your eyes are pointed, or relate to the position of your head or hands.

So, that variety is fascinating, but what does this add to science? Well, much of current brain science focusses on labelling a particular brain region with some function. Research programmes often try to find the "centre" for, say, envy, face perception or motivation. Remarkably few have actually explored how the brain manages to map and co-ordinate itself, that is, how it actually works.

My research focusses on learning more about visual maps, especially how they interact with attention and memory. Both are central to actual perception; for example, as you read this line you "see" the ones above and below, but ignore them; and if you close your eyes you'll find it hard to recall items around the paper or screen you read this from.

To find visual maps I use an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanner to obtain 3D images of brain activity through time, while volunteers perform a visual task. In one such task, participants look at a computer screen split into sectors, each sector filled with a pattern of waves changing in shape with time and disappearing. Their job is to pay attention to and then remember the patterns in some places while ignoring the rest. Then, I extract two different results. One contains the hot spots of activation during the attention and memory periods. The other, using a fairly new technique, finds chunks of brain where the pattern, not the general level, of activity, varies depending on the spatial location of stimulation.

In this way, I found that the occipital cortex, in the back of the head, showed much map-like activity when volunteers both paid attention to the visual stimuli and kept them active in memory. Interestingly, during the memory period the maps in occipital cortex were not active overall, but only subtly changed their pattern of activation. On the other hand, maps in parietal cortex, at the top and back of the brain, could be detected only during the attention period. Curiously, these same areas showed very high activation during memory, despite displaying no map-like responses.

The benefit of this increased knowledge becomes clear when we look at cases of brain damage that result in some form of visual deficit. Patients with blindsight are effectively blind, but can learn to navigate the environment. Visual neglect, on the other hand, affects attention such that patients can "see" but simply don't notice things happening in half of their visual field. Individuals with optic ataxia can describe how objects look, but find it impossible to interact with them. In contrast, those with visual agnosia are unable to name or describe objects, but can grasp them perfectly.

Many such syndromes can be better understood and treated if we know the precise properties of both the damaged and intact visual maps. We could guide rehabilitation by taking advantage of the plasticity of the brain. We might, thus, stimulate the activity of intact visual maps that communicate with the damaged ones, helping reactivate and regenerate them. This research hints at ways we might "encourage" brain cortexes to do this.

Even as my results add to our knowledge, though, they raise more questions. Why do brain areas sometimes act as maps and other times not? How do maps work when they are inactive? Much work remains to be done, but many benefits remain to be reaped. Still, one thing we can say for certain: there's much more to vision than meets the eye.

Independent/Bosch Technology Horizons essay... third time lucky?

As a friend of mine said, "Its all getting a bit predictable!" after having previously won and being Highly Commended. Having written my third essay for the Independent/Bosch Technology Horizons Award, answering the question "How can technology and engineering provide innovative solutions to today's global challenges?", I have been one the 14 (out of 545 entries) short-listed students for the 2009 prize. I was happily surprised to find out that I won 2nd prize, meaning I've collected all 3! A pity for me, and a boon for the younger generation, it is that I'm now too old to participate in the contest again... I think. Stand by for next year ;-)

UPDATE: To read previous winning and 2nd place essays by the various contestants in recent years, check out the new Bosch Technology Horizons site!

"Waste not want not

Climate change: our direst global challenge. The media preaches manifold solutions, including the well-worn emphasis on renewable energy sources and status quo approaches like "clean coal". Technology has endowed us with god-like powers of geoengineering: we can either help nature, by infusing iron into oceans to proliferate carbon-absorbing plankton, or bypass nature by floating lenses in space to reflect the Sun - a modern-day Perseus' shield.

This is all very well. But so long as it evades the underlying problem, our entire approach remains misguided. Climate change is one symptom of our society's affliction: its vampiric lust for energy. There's no denying that climate change must be prevented, but if we don't attack its root cause our efforts remain in vain. Here's where engineering comes in handy. It's not simply the tools it provides, but the philosophy it embodies. Engineering is all about efficiency - using just enough resources to solve a problem, and doing it well to boot. In recent years, researchers have realised we waste much of the extracted energy before using it. That's why an engineer's mindset is so beneficial to scientific research. Let's see how...

Even as we liberate the energy latent in light, wind and tides, much of it is lost. At times when the supply of generated energy exceeds the moment's demand, conventional batteries cannot effectively store the excess. Often the problem is that we store energy in an inefficient form. Think, "what is cheaper and simpler, my thermos or my laptop battery?" Terry Murphy, CEO of SolarReserve has put this simple idea to use in solar thermal plants, by storing energy as heat in molten salt until it is needed to create electricity. A similar approach, useful for wind turbines, is the use of flywheels which store rotational energy by increasing their speed of rotation, then release it back as they slow down.

Photovoltaic solar plants, however, can't afford these solutions, since they produce electricity directly. By way of solution, Donald Sadoway at MIT has developed a cheap and efficient liquid battery, in which energy is stored as metal ions, then freed when the ions fuse into an electrolyte. But perhaps the most promising method is one inspired by photosynthesis: professor Daniel Nocera of MIT has happened upon a holy grail of chemistry - an efficient catalyst to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter of which can be burned to run our car or used in a fuel cell. Importantly, this process does not need a large infrastructure, so every household could manufacture its own fuel.

Speaking of households, new technologies will avoid waste here too. A breakthrough by MIT researchers Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder, speeds the tunnelling of lithium ions inside batteries. This means much higher speeds of recharging, allowing a mobile phone to charge within 10 seconds, and an electric car in 5 minutes. This simple development could effectively eliminate the energy waste from chargers being left on overtime.

A quite different solution is necessary for the PC, an energy hog in our age of constant Internet access. Companies like CherryPal propose a shift towards "cloud computing", where the bulk of processing power is distributed and accessed by many users from individual home terminals. These terminals are simple, integrated and ecological machines that avoid energy waste. However, their connection to the cloud can provide scalable processing power depending on our needs - from web browser to supercomputer.

Yet another way to conserve energy mirrors the thermos example described above. Recent improvements in the manufacture of aerogel, a powerful insulating material, mean it could be affordable enough for use in utilities, such as fridges and ovens, and even in construction. This means we could keep the right places in our houses cold and warm using far less energy. Given that buildings cause over a third of carbon emissions, this becomes a very attractive proposal.

Another big spender is lighting, since our addiction to incandescent bulbs burns one whole fifth of the energy we produce. LED bulbs, similar in usability to incandescents, use some 30 times less energy and have a lifespan 100 times longer, but their price has made them prohibitive. Until recently, that is: a new advance by Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University allows LEDs to be manufactured en masse on silicone wafers instead of the typical sapphire, at a fraction of the usual cost.

In the light of these advances, reducing our carbon footprint is a piece of cake: all we need is to learn how to slice our cake more thinly! When it comes to tackling the challenges ahead, the old proverb is right: "waste not, want not"."