Books Giveaway- I: Physics and Maths and What does it mean to be alive?

This is the first giveaway in series of many. Let me know through Facebook messenger, Google+ or Gmail if you are interested in taking these books. If you suspect that you know someone, who might be interested in these free books - share! I bet they will make great gifts! And thanks! :D
I will accept your donations ONLY if you feel inspired to make one. 

I hope the books find a curious reader! I encourage you to check the books out before deciding if you want the book.

1. The Road to Reality: This book is BOOKED now.

If your heart warms at the sound of 'physics' and the life is much more beautiful when you know the gorgeous mechanics of it, then this 1040-pages + could be your favorite addiction. My copy is in flawless hardcover format. It aint new but it could easily pass for one! 

Here is the Amazon link:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Reality-Complete-Universe/dp/0679776311

2. Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: This book is BOOKED now. Of all books that I am giving away, this one is the hardest to part from. It stands as my favorite mathematics book inside out! This where dreams are written through nonlinear dynamics and take wings post bifurcation! 

Written by perhaps the only mathematician, whose articles have been regular in New York Times, this book has been a great read for me. 

My copy has some pencil marks in the initial chapters. It is slightly marked and morphed on one of its edges. There is a story behind this metamorphosis. In short the bag that the book was in, got soaking wet in rain and stuff inside the bag started leaching colors onto each other. 

Here is the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Nonlinear-Dynamics-And-Chaos-Applications/dp/0738204536

3. Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Evolution and the Meanings of Life: So, you think that 'The Selfish Gene' was a great book? You ain't seen no great book, my fren'! Read this one up!

This book is perhaps most enjoyed with Darwin's evolutionary theory on mind when pondering questions like- "Woah Life!

Thee rocks! But howzz? And whyyz" or if you are curious about the purpose and phenomenon of this life and entertain a scientific bent of mind - then this book can help nudge the mind many notches higher in evolution.

In 1995 this book was National Book Award Finalist. My copy is in great condition with no markings or signs of wear and tear.

Here is the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/DARWINS-DANGEROUS-IDEA-EVOLUTION-MEANINGS/dp/068482471X

4. The Quantum Universe, Everything that can happen does happen: Do you want to read about the following questions and some quantum answers to them: What is the music of atoms? What is illusion and what is real? Is the universe in a pin-head? Or rather is pin-head the universe? (Or even-better) where is the universe and where is the pin-head?

If you heart jumps in curiosity and excitement about above questions and their potential quantum explanation- this small book (smallest in this series) is for you!
My copy is as good as new! It is impossible to tell otherwise!

Here is the Amazon link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Quantum-Universe-Anything-Happen/dp/0306821443

Day 6: Blacksburg's Farmers Market challenges me and I SNAP

I saw it on my Facebook - 

It was happily lurking there '2014 Virginia SNAP challenge, Eat Smart, Move More'. The challenge is to eat for just a week with a budget of $32 in solidarity with millions in USA, who eat on that budget week after week.

( I cry as I type this. I am on day 6 and I have 5c left from my $ 32 budget. I do have enough lentils, rice and vegetables to last me until end of day 7. But I have only 5c for buying all things that I miss eating. And, I cry. How privileged! As my mom would say- how spoiled!)

Oh I digress!

This is my story so far:

Day 0: To a week well planned!

On Friday evening last week I went to Eats and got yellow split pea lentils (- they were cheapest of all lentils, total was $4.97), cheapest organic brown rice ($3.02), fruits and vegetables on sale (Eggplant -$0.65, 4 apples -$ 1.98). The plan was to eat lentils and rice with vegetable here and there. And, have apples as snacks. 

Day 1: Oh my innocence and the rain!

It rained heavens on Saturday. I do not own a motor-driven vehicle, so I walked to farmer's market (~3.5 miles). By the time I reached campus I was half drenched and felt lazy and cold and decided to take shelter in my workplace (a lab at VT). I was convinced that I could make it throughout without using match benefits from Farmers Market. (Aah! The glory of innocence (ignorance - as I say now)!

Breakfast: 3 cups of hot water and an apple

Lunch: rice, lentils and more than half of the eggplant.

Dinner: I was so full with the heavy meal of Lunch that I had another apple for dinner.

Day 2: The work begins~

Breakfast: Hot water and apple

Lunch: Rice, lentils, and leftover eggplant

Dinner: Went to Eats again. (why! oh why!) Had got seduced by the thought, "Oh my budget is great and I am only going to hunt for vegetables on sale. And few yogurt covered almonds and chocolate covered cashews will not really amount to much!" Aah! The ease of addiction to these habitual privileges! 

Got sweet-potatoes, ginger, handful of chocolate covered cashews and yogurt almonds, more apples at sale and few prunes. Total = $ 12.03

Day 3: Another oops and ouch moment!

Breakfast: Apple and microwaved sweet potato

Dinner: Regret, Apple and microwaved sweet potato

Day 4: ...

Okay... I must admit and share what happened on the lunch day of Day 3! I had my cooked lentils and rice at work for lunch and it was great. Then my best buddy at work asked me - 

"Hey do you wanna go to (our favorite place) for our (favorite salad)?"

It was so tempting. I said -'yes!' And I spent 5.53 dollars of my SNAP budget in a single meal!!! 

When I realized it during lunch I told my friend about this SNAP challenge and how I had just spent 1/6th of my budget for a single meal! She offered me her corn cake (as she always does- it is so so goood!) and I refused. She laughed and said, "It is free." I joined her laughter and refused again. How many people living on SNAP benefits eat out with their buddies, who offer them free desserts? No thank you. I will not eat it.

Back to Day 4: Recalibrating... ... ... ...

Breakfast: Microwaved Sweetpotatoes

Lunch: Lentils and Rice, I am missing vegetables. I will buy some tomorrow.

Dinner: More Lentils and Rice

Day 5: Farmers Market! 

Yay! I still have some 4 bucks left and I can buy vegetables and apples at farmers market worth $8! Wednesday is the best day in the world!

Breakfast: Some more lentils and rice - and this batch that I cooked was not really appetizing.

Snack: Apples and microwaved sweetpotato with a ginger - try it sometime!

Lunch + Dinner: Met the people behind the scenes of this challenge and farmers market. It felt great to talk to them! 

I got a picture clicked- yay! First picture of the challenge- and I know I know- no one likes to read anything without pictures.

Bought a $3 bag of kale, a $2 mighty big celeriac with superfluous greens on it. For two bucks I get both the tuber and the greens! Of course, I picked the celeriac that had most greens attached on it.

For Linner, Dunch or whatever one calls it - I had the tasting sample of the soup at the farmers market. I know it has come to this that I am munching on free samples. It was delicious! Oooh! I en-joy-ed it. Thank you Farmers Market SNAP challengers for cooking so well and offering! And I got the recipe too! 

I chewed on celeriac leaves until I could take it no more. Had an apple- it was the sweetest and most juiciest apple that ever landed on my tongue. Eating celeriac leaves earlier, definitely helped to give the apple juice explosion shock therapy to my tastebuds.

Picked up two candies from a workshop that I attended in the evening.

Day 6: The SNAP day! Another Oops and ouch moment, and I am still continuing!

Breakfast: (Had 4 prunes from my landlord's pantry- and this is where I broke my $32 SNAP challenge) Celeriac leaves with lentils and rice. Oh! Microwave chopped celeriac leaves! They are the best microwaved greens that naturally start smelling like fenugreek leaves. I thoroughly enjoyed eating lentils and rice with microwaved celeriac leaves. 

Celeriac (without most of its greens that at time of writing this post are the glory of my tummy. Bag of kale and my bowl of lentils-rice with microwaved celeriac leaves.)

Lunch: Two apples and left over lentils-rice with microwaved celeriac leaves

Dinner: On the menu right now: More lentils and rice with celeriac leaves

There will be a Day 7 tomorrow- I promise me.

Talking Science and not Sanskrit ~

I want to tell you a story. It starts with – 'Once upon a time' and it goes like this:

Love descends:

Once upon a time, a child was born in a rustic village of India and was embraced by love of his mother. Two months later, I returned home from my boarding school and I heard his voice for the first time.

“Mom, is that a cat?”

“It is your brother”, she said.

New born babies, I guess sound all the same, no matter their species. And, of course, I was hoping for a cat. 

The Un-magical spell:

Many years passed and I came to USA for graduate school.

When I went to visit home for the first time, there was so much excitement in home and everyone wanted to know what I did here in USA. So, I started telling the room full of my family and extended family members about my research. About 20 seconds into my elegant narration of the super grand work that I had been doing, I had very successfully put everyone to dead sleep!

Meanwhile my little brother, who as it turned out was not a cat, was playing outside, completely oblivious to my newly acquired un-magical charm of sleep. When he came back home, he asked me the same dreaded question that my relatives dared asked earlier in the day, “Didi (elder sister), what is that you study in your America school?”

You see, I will happily play the Pied Piper and lead the entire world to sleep or doom or whatever that comatose-sleep was. But I can't do that to my brother!

So, I told him a story instead:

"A story of vast vast ocean, oh so blue! An ocean, as big as thousands of lakes put together! You see earth can appear quite small in Geography books and fast flying airplanes. But listen, earth is huge – our big town, our entire big town is not even a speck on this soccer ball of earth. 

Some people spilled some oil in middle of ocean and the fishes were not able to breathe and they died. When this oil reached land, the land birds, who were playing with the water got oil all over them and their feathers got stuck. They could not fly and died. In my school, I am studying how to best clean this oil when it reaches the shore. You see, sometime oil makes puddles like water puddles after rain and sometimes it make small balls with sand like our mumma makes sweetmeat balls with butter. I want to know which one should I clean first- the puddle or the balls."

No one died that day. And, life moved on.

Memories that inspire:

About two years later, working on my PhD, we had our mentors, professors and big people reminding us over and over again that we need to learn how to communicate our research.

Aah! How the joy of giving the gift of sleep to my family clashed with the shame and sadness of my boring narratives!

One usual night, I was talking to my brother on phone about his school and he told me about this new subject that they have to study- Environmental Science. I chimed in, “Brother, I study that subject too! Wow!” And, I so remember what he said-

“ I know. I remember you told me that you study how to clean big oceans from oil. The birds and fishes die when oil is spilled and you want to clean the oil puddles and oil balls.”

He remembered. And, in his remembering he imparted the secrets of scientific communication to me. 

May be this passed your noticing, but our world has been much lighter and brighter place since then.

As I write my first blog for VT SuN to talk about my research, I write it for my Guru of scientific communication, my darling baby brother!

Uninstalling old version of R in Ubuntu 12.04.4 for R 3.1.1

After many frustrated attempts at installing the newer version of R aka R version 3.1.1 (2014-07-10) I finally figured out what was perhaps happening.

I had done the glorious and famous step 0 of:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove r-base
sudo apt-get remove r-base-core

up to no avail! R.2 something always managed to run and execute itself.

"Sock it to Me"

What finally worked was an interesting combinations of various suggestions on internet that some how worked together - like a miracle!

The long and short of the procedure of installing R. 3.1.1  after successfully effacing the older version of R is:

Uninstalling the older version
Step 1: Do the Step 0 (the above mentioned glorious and famous step 0) of removing r-base and r-base-core

Step2: See what still remains:
 dpkg --get-selections | grep "^r\-"'

Step 3: Individually purge the files that belong to 'r-' family. I used sudo apt-get purge (name of R related file)

Installing the R 3.1.1 (2014-07-10) -- "Sock it to Me" 
Step 4: Followed suggestions as mentioned here: (http://askubuntu.com/a/352438) Please note that when I typed in the command for seeing r packages
apt-cache showpkg r-base I saw different packages than the ones mentioned in the comments. This is explainable as packages keep updating with newer ones showing up. I had the following show up:

Package: r-base
Versions:
3.1.1-1precise0 (/var/lib/apt/lists/cran.rstudio.com_bin_linux_ubuntu_precise_Packages) (/var/lib/dpkg/status)
 Description Language:
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/cran.rstudio.com_bin_linux_ubuntu_precise_Packages
                  MD5: 5787ca79ed716232c4cc2087ed9b425b
so I did
sudo apt-get install -f r-base=3.1.1-1precise0

Step 5: Typed in R and bingo!!

Enjoy R folks!

Research warns that Frozen Boogers are linked to Sure Death

Bleaksburg, VA.  Following reports of the area woman, who got frozen boogers during her stroll in single digit temperatures yesterday, researchers are now warning that frozen boogers are directly related to sure death.
Virginia Tech researcher P. See was heard screaming in campus hallway, "Stay away from frozen boogers! They are (like) death bombs!"

Research done at the local University in Bleaksburg, suggests that there is a strong correlation between death and frozen boogers. Dr. See was further heard saying, "Almost everyone, who had frozen boogers is now dead. Those who are still alive will die one day. I repeat- Stay away from frozen boogers!!", he shouted emphatically.

He added quickly, "If one actually succeeds in avoiding frozen boogers, one is not guaranteed not to die. However it is still very important that frozen boogers are completely avoided. The numbers of death related to frozen boogers are very important and can not be ignored." 

Earlier today officials at UBF issued a warning notice to all their poorly paid labourers and advised them to avoid deadly frozen boogers. 

University warned its denizens to not pick up frozen boogers off the grass or the snow. Students were advised to not scratch underneath desks during class as the bullies can easily plant frozen boogers there.

According to an area woman, her boogers froze during her casual stroll to work yesterday. The secret sources informed that she attempted to snort boogers off her nasal cavity when they froze mid air. The detailed news can be found here.

Area woman misses work as she frantically searches for Onion Reporters to report frozen booger

Bleaksburg, VA: Area woman is reported to be on a look out for Onion Reporters. Locals reported that she is missing work that she is actually paid to do, as she is looking around for Onion reporters frantically. It is reported that today morning the area woman attempted to snort her nose boogers out on the snow as she walked to work, and her nose boogers froze, leaving her helplessly looking for Onion reporters. 

An area man unable to comprehend her passion to get news of her frozen boogers out was heard saying,"She is so frantically running around searching for Onion reporters. I mean, man! It is just frozen booger! She is acting like like it is frozen brain or innards or intestines or so!"

Her colleagues at work on the other hand, totally echo the need for attention and media hype of her frozen boogers. One of her colleague was heard saying about her frozen boogers, "This is perhaps the most interesting scientific observation to have come out of our work group! Like ever ever!"