Drink More Coffee and Save the Environment!

Ah! I'm dying for a cup of coffee!

Coffee is a $70 billion global industry (twice the size of the Hollywood entertainment industry). 80% of Americans and a high percentage of people elsewhere drink coffee regularly to become alert and stay awake. New research at the university of Nevada shows promise that coffee can save the environment too.

Photo source: Wikimedia commons 

Since coffee was discovered in Ethiopia and spread around the 11th century in the Arab empire, it has either been promoted as a wonder drink or a terrible health hazard. Historically, the caffeine drink was well suited to Muslims, because the stimulating effects of caffeine helped stay awake and alert during prayers. 

Coffee is popular also with non-Muslim coffee drinkers globally , who need to stay awake and alert for whatever reason they have.

Coffee Banning was Common in Europe

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Allen, Stewart in his book, The Devil's Cup gives a history of coffee banning. Coffee was put on trial in Mecca as a heretical substance and banned in Ottoman Turkey. Pope Clement VIII got addicted to coffee and resisted banning it. 

"Why, this 'Satan's drink' is so delicious it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptising it and making it a truly Christian beverage." 

• The Ethiopian Orthodox Christians banned coffee till 1889, because it was a Muslim drink. 
• King Charles II banned coffee in England (for 11 days only, as the king gave in to coffee shop owner protests), because in Europe it was associated with rebellious political activities. 
• In Germany Frederick the Great tried in 1777 to ban coffee so that money wouldn’t go out of the country. 

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How Drinking Coffee can Save the Environment

Professor Manoranjan Misra, Narasimharao Kondamudi and Susanta Mohapatra of the University of Nevada at Reno have found a way to develop biofuels from used coffee grounds (the powdery remains in the machine, which is thrown away after coffee has been prepared).

Photo source: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

If this method of preparing bio-diesel spreads, soon all the cities will have a whiff of coffee in the exhaust smell. Not only is coffee-grounds efficient as it yields 10-15% of biodiesel by weight, the resulting biodiesel high viscosity and standard engines can use that easily. Professor Misra claims that 5-7 kgs of coffee grounds could yield a litre of biodiesel. 

Some ingenuous people can already make biodiesel from leftover and recycled cooking oils at home, coffee-based biodiesel is better suited to larger scale industrial processing. The biodiesel manufacturing process of transesterification, where the grounds reacts with alcohol in the presence of catalysts, might pose unnecessary risks of the alcohol being directly consumed by thirsty DIY chemists.

There is however, a drawback. New Scientist claims that about 140 litres of water is needed to grow the coffee beans needed to produce one cup of coffee, and the coffee is often grown in countries where there is a water shortage, such as Ethiopia.

Is it time to buy shares of Starbucks and coffee producers for your grandchildren?

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Further reading: 
Narasimharao Kondamudi, Susanta K. Mohapatra, Mano Misra (2008). Spent Coffee Grounds as a Versatile Source of Green Energy Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 56 (24), 11757-11760 DOI: 10.1021/jf802487s

India Grasping the Moon by Chandrayaan Moon Mission

With the launch of Chandrayaan 1, India has made clear her intention of being recognized as a modern 21^st century spacefaring civilisation. 

The emphasis on the scientific and research aspects of India’s first moon mission launch are not out of sync with the Indian national character and historical heritage. 

India has given birth to four major religions of the world, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Ignoring hotheaded fundamentalists, these religions generally do not have any inherent conflict with science or scientific reasoning. Thus, it is not strange that the tradition of scientific thought has a history in India longer and richer than most other places.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

The scientific achievements of India are fascinating. Iron was known in the Ganga valley in the mid second millennium BCE. 

The Indus-Saraswati Civilization built planned towns with underground drainage, civil sanitation, hydraulic engineering, and air-cooling architecture covering a region about half the size of Europe. 

Weights and linguistic symbols were standardized across this vast geography, for a long period of over 1,000 years, from around 3,000 BCE to 1500 BCE. Textiles and steel were the mainstays of the British Industrial Revolution. Both had their origins in India. Textiles turned out to be the first major success of the Industrial Revolution, and Britain replaced India as the world's leading textile exporter. The technology, designs and even raw cotton were initially imported from India.

Why is India obsessed with a moon mission?

Is it competition with China, a flexing of muscles, a desire to claim India’s ‘rightful’ place in the community of nations or a genuine scientific pursuit of knowledge? 

Though ‘official’ history has, since the ascent of the West, been very biased towards a Western point of view, questioning minds have started correcting this propagandistic tilt of perspective by their open-minded studies and findings.

Why do we continue teaching in schools that Copernicus was the first astronomer to formulate a scientific heliocentric cosmology to challenge the Church’s view of Earth in the centre of universe, when the Indians, the Chinese, the Muslims, the Sumerians, the Mayas, and other civilizations had held these views centuries or millennia earlier?

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Many people argue that India sending moon probes is a terrible misallocation of resources. They argue that India should be feeding the poor, cleaning the environment and removing poverty. 

The fact that this can be a strong and vociferous public debate in India on this topic shows that there is freedom of speech and a functioning democracy. So, how should wealth be distributed? This is a very contentious topic and answers depend on who you ask. But, there are two basic theories of wealth distribution.

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Two Theories of Wealth Distribution

There are basically two theories of wealth distribution.

1. According to one theory, the rising tide lifts all boats, and everyone benefits (even if unequally) from rising prosperity. 
2. The second theory says that some boats are anchored and will sink when the rising tides come in. 

The graph above would show that wealth distribution of Gini-coefficient as it is measured is rather good for India, unlike many other countries of the world.

Many of the vigilant organizations like NGOs and social enterprises in India are the watchdogs trying to detect the anchors and make sure that anchored boats are freed to rise with the tides. Unlike somewhere else, where these NGOs and watchdogs would be in prison, they are doing their best to make sure that the rising tide of prosperity lifts all equally in India.

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Previous initiatives like Indira Gandhi's Garibi Hatao, or abolish poverty were dismal flops in India (4% of all funds allocated for economic development actually reached the three main anti-poverty programs), but this new wave of prosperity has improved the lives of more people than before.

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A country or culture, which does not have bold and far-reaching dreams, stagnates, while a country obsessed by mad visions is a concentration camp of misery. 

Visitors in India say that the overall mood in India is generally very upbeat after decades of stagnation. 

Visitors to North Korea have not reported such feelings.

Read more about the technical aspects of the mission here.

Two Languages Two Minds! Cultural Frame Switching!

Do you behave differently in different surroundings, especially when you are speaking in different languages?

Are you aware of CFS or cultural frame switching?

What is Cultural Frame Switching?

Cultural frame switching refers to the phenomenon where bicultural individuals shift values and attributions in the presence of culture-relevant stimuli.

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I notice that I am a very different person while I speak Italian compared to when I converse in Finnish. Many bilingual individuals speak about their similar experiences with speaking different languages. For example, in one context they are more extravert and open, while they are more subdued and conscientious in another. They say that they feel like a different person depending on which language they are speaking. A new study lends credence to their claims.

Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, charted the personality traits of 225 Spanish/English bilingual subjects in both the U.S. and Mexico as they responded to questions presented in each language. 

The five dimensions along which difference were noticed among bilinguals are: 

1. Extraversion
2. Agreeableness
3. Conscientiousness
4. Neuroticism
5. Openness. 

Ramírez-Esparza and her colleagues found that when using English in USA, the bilinguals were more extraverted, agreeable and conscientious than when using Spanish. The differences in neuroticism were not significant.

Previously researchers have shown before that bicultural individuals can assume different roles depending on environmental cues. But the new results indicate that character itself can morph.  

“To show that changes in personality—albeit modest ones—can be triggered by something as subtle as the language you’re speaking suggests that personality is more malleable than is widely expected,” Ramírez-Esparza explains.

When bilinguals answer questions in their native language the values and attitudes associated with that language condition their answers. When they respond to a questionnaire in their second language, norms and values associated with that language affect their responses.

Though switching tongues will not turn a bookworm into a party animal, but the variances are noticeable nonetheless.

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The number of bilingual and bicultural people in the world is significant. 

Does having the ability to function in different personality modes give you skill and competence advantages as an employee or as a community member? 

Does it make you a better team member or a better boss?

Photo source:: http://www.morguefile.com/ Photographers:  taliesin and Keith Richardson