Parasara Sridhar Duggirala's Blog

This book covers the history of genes, right from the age old theories of heredity to the most recent developments on gene editing with CRISPR/cas9. Interleaved with this history are some personal stories about the author's family members who suffer from Schizophrenia. The book is divided into 5 parts based on the chronological and scientific themes. I would consider this book more as a textbook written in an accessible way than a non-fiction book. I certainly learned a lot about the various scientific developments in genetics and contributions of a bunch of Nobel Laureates and also people like Oswald Avery and Rosalind Franklin who were fully deserving of a Nobel. When someone mentions that DNA has a double helix structure and is coiled within chromosomes, I always wondered, how do they know that? This book lays out a sequence of experiments which demonstrates that 1) Chromosomes are carriers of genetic information, 2) Using bio-chemistry, one can know the underlying chemica...

This book is a character study of Eileen, a 24 year old introvert from a dysfunctional family who works as a clerk in prison. She meets a charming girl and something happens. The book is presented as Eileen, who is now 60, recalls the sequence of events during the week of Christmas when she was 24. The story of this book can be condensed as a short story of 10-15 pages, but I think that is not the point. In this book, you actually get to meet Eileen. Although there was a very thin story line, I really liked this book. Eileen's character has aspects of innocence, stupidity, rage, compassion, and cruelty all mixed together. In the end, I felt like I met a real person. We can empathize with her while hating some of her actions. Her internal monologues are long, but a very lively and interesting. From her description, it is clear that she suffers from body dysphoria, depression, delusions, possibly sociopathic tendencies. But, instead of using labels, Eileen just describes her condi...

I am a fan of stories. Stories tell us about human condition and helps us empathize with the villains and cheer for heros. If you do not think that a story has to have a hero, sure, I understand. There is a protagonist and their circumstances. We would put ourselves in their shoes and get to feel their condition. This book is not one of them.  This story is about Silvie, daughter of a middle aged bus driver, Evil, who is also an amateur archaeologist. Evil's wife is Mrs. Indifference. A Prof. Stupid with three students, two guys Blah and evil-Blah, and one girl, Superwoman along with Evil family go on an "experimental archaeology" expedition. Silvie is charming in her own way and sometimes can intimidate Blah and evil-Blah. But she is also "impressed" by Superwoman. Evil and Stupid do a pre-iron age ritual and coerce Silvie (who is a minor, btw) into doing something that is clearly objectionable. Superwoman saves the day. This is not a story. There is no ...

Boy! Was this a disappointing read! I thought Nate Silver knows what he was doing when I saw FiveThirtyEight give 30% chance for Donald Trump to win the election. His interviews after the election were also refreshingly sane. He pointed out that many polls gave Hillary a high chance of winning without actually worrying about the margin of errors in polls. He also mentioned that sometimes these margins could be correlated. I remember him say that if you have a coin where tales can come up with a probability of 0.3, you will see that the coin does result in a tail sometimes. I had high hopes of understanding what Nate can teach me about predictions. After reading this book, I am really disappointed. The book can be summed up in one sentence: always think of predictions as probability distributions and be mindful of uncertainties. The book did not have a proper beginning and ending. The chapters are all ad-hoc. The book talks about prediction in the following disciplines: Economy, Poli...

As a researcher, I interact with Science on a daily basis writing papers and grants, mentoring students, crafting research problems, conducting peer-review,  and finally in communicating science to students as well as peers. Contrary to popular belief, I do not spend hours debating the various philosophies of Science, rather, I know it at a practical level and conducting science is how I earn my livelihood. Reading this book is one of the few times I engaged in actively thinking about the philosophy of Science. Unlike most books on science, Thomas theorizes that the most important aspect in the scientific enterprise is the paradigm . He affirms that scientists are interested in expanding the "reach" of a paradigm by devising new explanations and methodologies for applying a paradigm in a specific scenario. He postulates that a paradigm is in crisis only when there are several "faults" --- the instances where a paradigm does not sufficiently explain the observati...