Our World Our Times

  In my work on 'Nonkilling Futures', I happened to explore the recent trends based on data that reflects the looming disaster, now on a back burner due to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. More than a decade back as the  Global Environment Outlook (GEO) Reviewer with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working for United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, we could for the first time delineate the scientific basis for the looming climate disaste r before humank ind. As a Fellow of the Academy of Zoology, I had the distinction of being awarded awarded the Amrita Devi Bishnoi Medal in 2013 for highlighting the l atest trends that were emerging. Many years earlier, I had the opportunity to volunteer with a group of 2000 youth from neighbouring states of Bihar, Bengal and Andhra the very next day after the Orissa Super Cyclone in 1999 as the Executive Director of the largest youth organisation in the world, N...

    Consciousness, Quantum Biology, and the Hidden Role of Spin: Bridging Mind and Matter Introduction: The Oldest Mystery Meets New Physics There isn’t a single accepted explanation of consciousness—there are several competing theories, each trying to explain how subjective experience arises. Here are the major ones: 1. Global Workspace Theory (GWT) Associated with: Bernard Baars, Stanislas Dehaene Idea: The brain has many unconscious processes running in parallel. Consciousness happens when information is “broadcast” globally across the brain. Analogy: A spotlight on a stage—whatever is illuminated becomes conscious. Strength: Matches brain imaging data well. Limitation: Explains access to information, but not why it feels like anything. 2. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) Associated with: Giulio Tononi Idea: Consciousness depends on how much information a system integrates (meas...

How Spin, Chirality, and the Quantum Spark of Life: How Electron Spins May Have Shaped Biology Why does life choose one handedness over another? Every protein in your body is built from left‑handed (L) amino acids , and every strand of DNA uses right‑handed (D) sugars . This remarkable uniformity — called biological homochirality — is one of life’s most striking signatures. Yet classical chemistry offers no reason why nature should prefer one mirror-image form over the other. A growing body of research now points to an unexpected source: quantum mechanics , specifically the behavior of electron spin in chiral environments. At the center of this emerging field is the Chiral-Induced Spin Selectivity (CISS) effect — a discovery that is reshaping our understanding of the origin of life. The Quantum Foundations: Why Spin Matters Electrons carry an intrinsic angular momentum called spin , which influences how molecules form, break, and interact. In chiral molecules — those with a he...

Illustration Source:            https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/the-origin-of-homochirality/9073.article One of the most striking chemical features of life is homochirality: biological systems use molecules of a single handedness. Proteins are built almost exclusively from L-amino acids, while nucleic acids and most polysaccharides use D-sugars. This uniform molecular handedness is not required by physics, yet it is universal among known life and fundamental to biochemical structure and function. Understanding how homochirality arose is therefore central to origins-of-life research, bridging prebiotic chemistry, physical asymmetries, kinetics and evolutionary selection. because having a single handedness (L-amino acids, D-sugars) lets biological chemistry build long, regular, information-bearing polymers and highly specific catalysts; that uniformity is essential for reliable folding, enzymatic activity, and efficient replication, so once a small bi...