Category: Scientific Progress

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. George Bernard Shaw

“I broke my vertebrae and suffered from a traumatic brain injury in a car accident” my friend told me.
He had acute back pain and depression after the accident.
He started drinking heavily.
“Due to depression, I began to have suicidal thoughts” he added
One night he went to his bed and stared in his medicine cabinet.
He said to himself, “if I take all of these prescription pills, what do I have to lose?”
Right then his cell phone rings.
He closed his eyes and said to himself, “don’t answer it, it’s my time.”
But he didn’t know why he looked over and saw it was his mother.
He picked up and his mother said, “son, I know you are suffering, I am quitting my teaching job and coming to your place. You need me at this point, I will be there if you need anything.”
“I don’t know why my brain turned upside down that day, I thought, my mother is quitting her job for me and I’m thinking of taking my life” he said.
“That day I began rethinking and it became a habit in my life, from that day forward, I never looked back in my life again,” he continued.
“I’m a design engineer now and work for one of the fortune 500 companies” he said.

Design engineering is his bread and butter at the moment.
He said to me, “The habit of rethinking is fundamental to my profession if I have to survive but for me it gives more energy in my personal life.”
At best what he assured me is he is constantly aware of his limits of thinking but still expects something out of his everyday task and he is convinced that it is possible by the practice of rethinking.
He always doubts what he knows and he is always curious about what he doesn’t know.
I was very impressed by what he was telling me.

I was more interested in how he does it.
I realized that I should update myself as much as I can based on what he was saying.
We definitely need new data from our own as well as others’ experiments and experiences to make a habit of rethinking.
Not only you and me but every single individual should update from his or her inner and outer experiences through thinking and rethinking process.

Recently, I also realized that being a scientist or engineer itself isn’t only a profession, it becomes more and more of a pattern of thinking.
It improves other parts of life significantly.

Though my friend works in design science, I believe working on any science is a lifestyle of thinking and rethinking which is completely different from preaching and prosecuting.
Why do scientists and engineers think and rethink is because they are trying to find the truth out of something.
To find the truth, they have to run an experiment to test their hypothesis and make the result known called knowledge.
These experiments and results are so crucial that they not only guide their daily decisions regularly but also the norm of our society.
Look around, the most luxurious and essential things we use everyday are products of scientists.

Scientists are always trying new things.
Their experiments often fail, but they should become happy in the newness and shouldn’t mind the failures. They never think of overinvesting in their experiments and don’t take it personally if a new experiment fails.

My designer scientist friend told me, “science is not only an academic concept and doesn’t come only from literature.
My mother’s telephone call is one example of how our mind changes subconsciously.
Many things at work come from experience.
Experience teaches us that as a scientist we shouldn’t fall in the trap of confirmation bias and desirability bias. This is the problem of academic people.”

In his words, the former bias is to see what we expect to see and the latter bias is to see what we want to see.
These biases stop our curious intelligence.
They make us good at thinking but worse at rethinking.
We become lazy on rethinking because we just accept linear thinking.

I learned from my friend that rethinking is a skillset, but if we go deep down it’s also a mindset.
We have many mental tools that we need in life.
We only have to get them out and remove the rust.
Rethinking habits helps us to find the correct mental tool.

He further added that the curse of knowledge is nothing but knowledge itself because it closes our mind to what we don’t know.
Good judgment depends on having the skill and the will to open our minds.
Mind only opens when we rethink and think continuously in a cycle.
Every time when we take a step forward with an open mind, we have to revise and update our understanding of the task and the world.
“My mother opened my mind and helped me to live and understand the world,” he said.
Any task is for the world so all tasks in life are connected irrespective of the nature, professional or personal.
This revision usually involves a lot of thinking and rethinking regarding our facts, opinions, beliefs, taboos, agreement, and disagreements.
The most important thing is we have to readjust our expectations that shape our findings.
At present we have to view our experiences as periods of our lives. Youth, apprenticeship, marriage, parenthood, sickness, death, and so on are connected to our task. Everyone has to capture this progression when we think of the next step.
The career that we always worry about nowadays is the capacity to navigate this course of progression through experiences rather than facts.
This is how my friend views his life as a design engineer.

He added, “In driving, we learn to identify our visual blind spots and remove them with the help of mirrors and sensors. But in life, our mind doesn’t come equipped with those tools, we need to learn to recognize our blind spots and revise our thinking accordingly”.

I have seen that the smartest minds today who study computers, biology, and math have come to understand that the world no longer only sees predictable, linear thinking.
Instead, our life is filled with chaos, challenges, and complexities.
We experience periods of order and disorder, linearity and nonlinearity. If we go deeper in thinking and rethinking, in place of linearity, we see loops, spirals, wobbles, twists and turnabouts.
Linear thinking sees the world in quantity and symmetry but non linear thinking removes those boundaries.
That’s what my designer friend experienced.
If we understand these life principles on a deeper level, each one can become a better scientist as well as a better human being.

“The obstacle of rethinking is arrogance, which I have experienced across the labs and offices” he continued.
Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction in one’s mind, that stops rethinking.
Our humility and kindness is a permeable filter that absorbs life experiences and encourages us in rethinking to convert them into knowledge and wisdom.
Rethinking is the integrity of a scientist.

We have to live and we cannot live without making mistakes.
When people make mistakes, we as scientists, have to take it as an opportunity to explore.
So we have to make mistakes but learn from them. Once we repeat these mistakes in life, we acquire wisdom. Eventually, we realize that the wisdom that we acquired is not real wisdom. This realization brings the invention of new wisdom.
We only live truly and happily once we continue the cycle of this old wisdom replaced by new wisdom for the rest of our life.
This is the ultimate consequence of thinking and rethinking.
It’s a sign of wisdom to avoid believing every thought that enters our mind.
It’s a mark of emotional intelligence to avoid internalizing every feeling that enters our heart.

Scientists who are right a lot listen a lot, and change their mind a lot.
If we don’t change our mind frequently, we’re going to be wrong a lot.
The power of listening is not just talking less.
It’s more than that.
It gives the luxury of skills in asking and responding.
The most important thing is to show interest in other people’s interests or work rather than trying to judge their position or prove our own agenda.

Always think this way.
Scientist is a person who is in outer space and observing things very carefully.
When you get to see an overview of the earth from outer space, you realize you share a common identity with all human beings.
If you are in space then you see the Asia and Africa continents below, they behave like cities that would move from an airplane.
The amazing thing is that we can circle the entire planet in 90 minutes from space.
Moreover, from space, stars look the same as from earth but our planet earth gives us a different perspective about life and humanity as a whole, we start to think how fragile the earth planet is where all of humankind exists.

There is a difference between thinking effectively and thinking efficiently, that you realize more when you think from outer space.
As my friend said, thinking effectively means working a thing in the right way but thinking efficiently means thinking only the right things as I did when I received my mother’s call in the time of turmoil.

Though the job of thinking is not difficult, but, most of the time we don’t put it into practice. This is the difficult part in life.
Difficulty is not always proportional to importance.
Just take some examples in this respect which are not difficult at all but very powerful for our lives.
In medicine, simply washing hands has proved to be second only to penicillin in saving lives.
How difficult is it to wash hands?

Immunocompromisation is a way to explain a weak immune system in our body.
When our immune system is weakened, our body can’t fight off viruses, bacteria, or fungi very well. This can lead to serious infections and thousands of people die every year.
To improve our immunity, just taking more cranberry juice and chill peppers do a vital job.

Cranberry juice changes the acidity of the urine, preventing bacteria from gaining foothold for infection. Research shows that cranberry juice has a beneficial effect on gamma delta T cells, a special type of immune T cell. These cells are found in the lining of the gut and other mucous membranes of the body including the urinary tract.

Similarly, the bright red, yellow, and green colors of chile peppers contain bioactives like Zeaxanthin, lutein, and beta-carotene.
The bioactive form that carries the heat, capsaicin, activates the immune system and increases the number of circulating white blood cells and antibody producing beta cells.
How difficult is it to drink more cranberry juice and eat a little more chili peppers?

Scientific transactions are similar to investment transactions.
A lot of professional investors always say that the key to market success is not your skill and knowledge as an investor compared with other individual investors, but the skill and knowledge with which each specific investment transaction is made.
Exactly the same way, the successful scientist is not equipped only with skill and knowledge compared with other scientists but also with scientific transactions based on skill and knowledge.
This scientific transaction is nothing but the practice of thinking and rethinking.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

When we move in life, we have to make a lot of sensible decisions to achieve what we want.
When we age we always wish we could be a little bit more creative to make those decisions, we could take a little bit more risks.
Some decisions may not look creative on the surface but give persistent clues on the horizon for long lasting impact for society.
Knowledge only isn’t sufficient for us, experience only isn’t sufficient either.
Wisdom is required to lead success and a creative quality of life.
Wisdom is a counterpart of creativity.
Generally experience combined with knowledge leads to wisdom.
Here is one example applied in scientific work.
I was reading about Dr. Tom Perls and his research.
I came to know that in general women have higher longevity than men due to various reasons.
Therefore, Dr. Tom Perls, a MD doctor and researcher, gives blood every eight weeks to mimic the loss of iron due to menstruation in women, which he believes will increase his longevity.
He not only verbally says that he has been doing research in his lab on the same topic for many years.

Our general perception is a little different.
We think iron is important to our body especially for blood.
One thing is sure that when great minds exhibit wisdom, wherever it might be: politics, science, administration, business; they generally flip the coin and try to see both sides very carefully.
That is where creativity comes into play as Dr. Perls does his research.

“Iron is a critical factor in our cells’ ability to produce nasty molecules called free radicals that play an important role in aging, so less iron is important in our body,” Dr. Tom Perls said.

One way to remove excess iron in our body is blood donation.
By blood donation we not only decrease iron in our body, but also extend our own life.
Let’s say we don’t extend our own life but we might save someone else’s life as we know there are many people out looking for blood.
Our Karma is what our Karma does for others.

After reading about Dr. Tom Perls, I realized how people become so creative and do remarkable things in life.
If successful such as Dr. Tom Perls, then, transformation in human generations occurs.
This creative idea does not only come from his simple logic, it also comes with his knowledge, background, and experience. He understands why women have a menstruation cycle every month but men don’t.
There is another major difference.
Women give birth to babies and lose a lot of blood during this process.
Except for these two natural phenomena, men and women are equal in the context of blood in their body.
My simple curiosity, how is it related to longevity?
Is it simply imagination or wisdom?
How do people think this far?
Because the human mind is creative by design, it’s up to us how we use it.

Amit Goswami, author of “Quantum Creativity”, talks about discontinuous creativity which jumps from one pattern of thinking into a completely new one.
It does not progress through incremental steps in between.
Once the creative leap is made, the world changes forever.
Just take a few examples.
Einstein’s theory of relativity, Alexander Fleming’s antibiotic penicillin, Picasso’s cubism, Beatles’s music.
Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first controlled, sustainable airflight, Newton’s laws of motion.
Just to name a few.
Creativity requires a leap in awareness in very small ordinary things or processes that are around us.

We are only aware that Iron is needed for our blood to be healthy.
To completely understand iron, we need a leap in awareness about our functional body and its mechanism.
A leap in awareness is the consequence of brain power that leads to wisdom.
This is just one example of how people connect dots through a limitless brain.

Remember, if we are improving on existing things then we are innovators not creators.
Creativity brings something into existence that has never been here before like the work of Albert Einstein or Sir Isaac Newton or Stephen King.
Think of Stephen King as a current living person because of his creative writing.
At the moment, he is one of the world’s most successful and prolific writers.
He has published numerous horror, suspense, crime, science fiction, and fantasy novels.
How does one mind create such diversity?

To be creative is normal but to act creatively consistently is abnormal.
As the 18th century French philosopher Voltaire said, “ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd one.”

Creativity doesn’t follow the same trend in all directions.
As we all know, Sir Isaac Newton invented calculus and devised the formula for universal gravitation.
He discovered that light consists of a wide range of wavelengths, with each one representing a constituent color of light.
As an author of the famous book “Principia”, he described the foundation for classical mechanics including his three laws of motion.
This all clearly tells he was a genius, a keen creative mind.
But he lost everything as an investor, which is kind of absurd for us to perceive.
When he was asked about his experience about the South sea bubble regarding stock investing, the renowned physicist and mathematician would say, “ I can calculate the motion of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people.”
This clearly indicates the human brain works differently in different disciplines regardless how creative the mind is for a particular activity.

I remember one of my friends’ creative writing journeys.
In his mid-twenties, he wrote the following in his diary when he was in a deep relationship with someone.
He showed me the following letter he wrote during that time.

Dear Mlaka,
Sometimes, I question, am I in love with you?
I questioned myself to my innermost numerous times.
Why do I listen carefully when you speak?
Why do I always say good words and appreciate you?
Why do I like to touch you lovingly with affection?
These questions are coming in my mind constantly, I realize that I am in love with you.

I know love heals and love also renews us so that I generally forget my pain when I see you.
I know love makes us feel very safe whatever the situation would be, it has provided me with strength.
A lot of time I’ve felt that love makes me very close to my God as I visualize your picture in my meditation.
I know love also conquers all of my fears but I don’t know how long I have to fight for it.
Due to this intense love, I am becoming young physically and emotionally everyday.
I see and feel the benefits all the time.
I believe I am reversing my aging process.
I believe I am also reversing my creativity process.
For me falling in love with you is an altered state of consciousness in which my perceptions, interpretations, and choices in life are being transformed.
I am in love so I am carefree and open to new experiences all the time.
At the same time, I am vulnerable and invincible too.
Sometimes I also worry about things, people, and situations.

But, anyway, I am very renewed, exhilarated, and joyful at every moment that I’ve shared with you.
My love has detached me from my usual mundane and opened my awareness to the magic of life.
And then, I felt I am alive, and will remain alive forever.
So I want to let you know Mlaka, I just want to be alive forever with you.

Yours, PFV

After this letter, for almost 10 years, he didn’t write anything as he told me.
His creative awareness about writing was completely gone.
“Now I’m pretty much sure that creativity is a skill.
Not only creativity is a skill, but it can be learned quickly too. Practice doesn’t make us perfect, it makes us permanent,” he added.
“Once we absorb our task by just observing what’s happening in our mind, we all become super creative one day,” he further added.
After resuming his writing again after a long gap, my friend is the author of two very successful books.

From my friend’s experience and my understanding,
If we want to be creative, we need two kinds of control in our life, we need restful awareness which can be achieved mainly through meditation.
We also need restful deep sleep which can be achieved mainly through physical exercises.
These are required because science has shown that the body needs 4-6 weeks to reset and regain its physiological and meditative bearings, which has a connection to our brain that evolves our creativity.
Reset and regain happens during sleep.
Restful awareness and restful sleep maintains the hypothalamus gland that controls body weight, body temperature, hunger, thirst, fatigue, and circadian cycles.
The interim phase through meditation and sleep allows the hypothalamus gland to recalibrate and readjust.
Wisdom doesn’t appear suddenly, it appears with good physiology and proper habits.

Remember, only to do creative work is not wisdom, understanding its continuous resources through rest and sleep is wisdom.

When we try to understand our work and its impact on our identity, we all start to become creative.
We all start to connect dots whatever we do in our life.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

“Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

It was a day of August, I was drinking tea on my patio and my 3 and half year old son was playing around me.
I have to confess that even though I have already raised two daughters, I’m actually not a very good dad in many ways . I’m usually a quiet person when I’m preoccupied with things and especially at times of rest and wondering.
My son, however, was hitting walls with his baby guitar.
Since he was annoying me, I yelled at him, and he started to cry and walked away to his mom.
Within a few minutes he was back, saying, “Daddy, I want to talk to you.”
“Sure, Aayam?”
“Daddy, why do you become so rude to me?
I’m a good boy. You also better be a good boy, Daddy.”
This was a hard ball for me on my head, my son hit the ball right on my head. I was short-tempered and rude.
I realized that I’d spent many years as a short tempered rude dad. At that moment, I also realized I need to change. But how?
Most importantly, I realized that raising my son was not about correcting his shortcomings and yelling at him. He could correct himself at some point in the future. I was worried how I would nurture this precocious strength that he displayed at an age under 4.
This was an amazing learning experience for my social intelligence.
I asked myself how I could read the desires, needs, and emotions of my son with reasonable accuracy.
As I said, I’d raised two daughters already. Raising children, I know now little bit, is far more than just fixing what was wrong with them.
Kids bring amazing strengths with them which we don’t know.
It is about identifying and amplifying their strengths and virtues, and helping them find the niche where they can live these positive traits to the fullest.
If we achieve this as a dad, I guess, all dad would be very happy in their lives.

I was wondering what might be the reason that I was unhappy and showing short temper at my 3 and half year old son.
I got some answers from Junki.
One day I met a woman in a baby care center because I was looking for a good baby care center for my son.
Her name was Junki, as she said, in our conversation.
She was working in a care center for the last 15 years.
I found that Ms Junki’s work is one of the most important parts of her life. She was very happy that she is in the line of work to look after kinder babies.
When she expressed her feelings I realized that what she does for living is a vital part of who she is.
It is one of the first things she tells people that she loves babies, she wants to be around them so she works in the baby care center.
She told me she usually takes her work home with her, she even takes her work on vacation too.
Ms Junki feels very inspired about her work because she loves it everyday.
She told me she thinks her small step helps to make the world a better place.
During our conversation, I knew that Junki doesn’t have any kids of her own as God didn’t permit her to have.
But I didn’t find any pinch of unhappiness in her face.
She encourages everyone to love and nurture children and make children a priority because what kind of world we are creating depends on them.
At one point she told me, as a parent we don’t have to do giant things, just control the temper and love them.
It made me speechless.
Ms Junki told me she would be really unhappy if she were forced to stop working, she is not interested in retirement until her body allows her to perform the work.

“The most important thing in my life is not to find the right job, there is no such thing that exists, it is basically finding the job I can make a Calling through recrafting. The recrafting process, whatever we do in life, brings the most happiness to us”, Junki said.

After working so many years with so many high profile educated MBAs, PhDs, and MDs; I realized that human strengths like integrity, kindness, dedication, and love for anything are not the same things as talents.
Human strengths are moral traits but talents are non-moral.
Junki taught me what the differences are between a job, a career, and a Calling.
Many of us do a job for the paycheck at the end of the week or month, we don’t see any other interests in it.
Job simply becomes the obligation of life for example to support the family.
When there is no wage we simply quit and look for another job and repeat the same process.
This does not bring any happiness at all in our lives.
In the end of the day, this simply helps us to grow as a short-tempered and rude person.
And obviously, an unhappy creature!

There is another thing in life: a career, which is a deeper personal investment in our work than a job.
In career, we measure each achievement through money, advancement, and prestige.
We obviously seek promotion, prestige, power, and , of course, more money.
We become assistant lawyers or assistant professors or assistant managers in the beginning, and then become full lawyers or full professor or senior manager after a few years of working.
When there is no more promotion, we start to look for something else, because this is required for gratification and meaning in life.
There is no doubt, if there is no promotion and no more money coming, we look for other options.
We remain still unhappy because inherently we remain unsatisfied with our own life so we come home and yell at our own kids.
Just think for a second, what kind of parents yell at their own kids?
Of course, those who are short tempered, rude, and unhappy in their own life.

As Ms Junki taught me, there is one more important thing in life, a Calling, which is a vocation rather than a job or career.
As we all know very few people have this vocation in life.
This is a passionate commitment to work for our own satisfaction.
This is also called fulfillment.
If we have a Calling, we see our work for a greater reason, work becomes something larger than ourselves.
Work becomes fulfilling in its own way irrespective of money, advancement, and prestige.
There is no money, no promotion, no prestige, but work continues in life for joy and self satisfaction.
Any job can become a Calling, and any career can become a Calling.
A teacher who views the work only as a job cannot have a Calling but a baby carer who sees the work as a contributor to make the world a nicer and responsible place can have a Calling.
If we have a Calling in our life, we mostly remain happy in our life, we don’t yell at our own kids at home, we don’t lose our temper on them.

Remember, Gregor Mendel didn’t have a job or career in genetics, he ran his famous genetic experiments as a hobby and later turned his hobby into a Calling.
Benjamin Franklin didn’t make his work either job or career, he ran many lightning rod experiments due to his own interest, which later turned into a Calling.
Emily Dickinson’s job or career was not to write poetry, she started to write poetry to create an order in her own life that later turned into a Calling.

I thought to myself how do I value myself as a dad? A good dad or a rude dad.
Can I measure my worth like a piece of diamond that keeps shining all the time?
If my inner worth was this clear to me, I would not make these words and I would not yell at my own son.
This isn’t simple to measure our self worth so I am keen to make a few words about this and realize what’s wrong with me.

My son, I know looking at me at this very moment is very happy now because he already forgot my yelling.
He is having the purest mind at age 3 and half.
I believe he is the most genuine and pure-of-heart at the moment.
When complete strangers see him, he runs towards me as his dearest person.
Each time he sees the animal, he begins crying and runs towards me for protection.
I provide him comfort in a time of fear.
But why do I yell at him?
Probably, because I am not happy inherently with my own life and transferring my venom to my son at home.
I have not figured out my own Calling yet in my life.

As a dad, this confused me initially, but I realize now that it is simply my son’s genuine heart and mind reaching out to me in a time of need.
There is nothing but joy in my heart as I write about the wonderful son I know.
I can only dream of becoming the best dad I believe I could be.

I know my real and authentic happiness appears when I identify and cultivate my most fundamental individual strengths and use them all the time as much as I can in my work, love, and parenting life.

There is a Chinese proverb I always recite, “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit fortune. If you want happiness lifetime, help somebody.”
How can I help others and be happy as I can not help and understand my own little son at home?

Remember, the cure of anything is uncertain in our life, but prevention is amazingly effective. Just think of how getting midwives to wash their hands ended childbed fever.
Just think of how immunizations ended polio.
Likewise, ending a short temper and rudeness isn’t a cure but a prevention of becoming an unhappy person.

Good life is something beyond a pleasant life, and a meaningful life is something beyond a good life.
As Ms Junki said, one step closer to a meaningful life is controlling a short temper and not yelling at our own kids at home.
One step closer to a meaningful life is turning our job or career into a Calling and connecting the world with what we do everyday consistently.
These are the secret sauces of happiness.

Remember everyone, good things obviously come to those who have patience, foresight, and love so don’t lose your temper with your own kids at home.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

I saw a young man closing his eyes and doing meditation under the shade of a tree.
I went closer to him, he heard the sound of my steps and opened his eyes.
I greeted him saying hello, and also expressed my sincere sorry for the disturbance, he didn’t respond except with a simple smile.
I asked him, “what was happening in your mind when your eyes were closed?”
He replied, “I wanted to walk across the land, but the earth was covered with thorns.”
“One option came to my mind, it was to pave my road, to tame all of nature into compliance.”
“Suddenly, a second option appeared in my mind, I wanted to make sandals so that thorns couldn’t stop me walking.”
Once I heard this, I said to myself, the second option is what R&D is, the internal solution to solve the existing problem.
Of course, R&D is not a single individual but is a unified approach.
R&D is not a submissive force of unity, R&D is not an overpowering force either.
R&D is intelligent thinking and preparation, it is a cultivated resilience which helps us to gain the ability to bounce back and try again with more experience and wisdom.

Can you guess?
What happened over the last 300 years?
Of course, there were a lot of changes over the years.
Some very prominent transformations that changed our lives were the industrial revolution, discovery of penicillin, electricity, the light bulb, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, and space traveling.
Just few to name major transformations that changed our lives in many different ways.
At present, we are in full fledged technological revolution with the invention of microchips, computers, and smartphones, all connected to the world wide web.
With these tools in hand, we have become a globalized community and each of us is one click away from what we intend to do.

Let’s check a little bit of history.
There were at least five technological revolutions from the 1770s to 2000s.
The industrial revolution began with Arkwright’s water-powered cotton spinning mill in Cromford, England in 1771.
This was followed by the age of steam and railways, the rocket steam engine for the Liverpool-Manchester railway in 1829.
The age of steel, electricity, and heavy engineering was the next big move. Andrew Carnegie’s Bessemer plant in Pittsburgh, USA in 1875 revolutionized the world.
Then came the age of oil, the automobile, and mass production of the first Model-T at the Ford plant in Detroit, USA in 1908.
And, the age of information and telecommunications began when Intel unveiled the microprocessor in 1971.

At present, our technology revolution includes information gathering, decentralized approach, and globalization. Information gathering means knowledge as capital in the value added society.
Our global communication system enables instant globalized interactions between local segments. This is a powerful tool to create economies of greater scope and scale and it turns into a huge economic market.
In all of these efforts, the R&D’s role is in the top level and it’s changing at a very high speed. One of the most important changes is the valuation of R&D which can not be defined by numbers anymore. Valuation runs through human’s mind, science, technology, and psychology.

In the past, businesses were defined by their physical structure; more plants, more property, and more equipment. They were considered as tangible assets.
At least, we could make an R&D valuation based on them.
Nowadays, the concept of growing a business has been transferred to the intangible components more. They are more of intellectual properties such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, brand marketing, brand value, attractiveness of product, and the delivery of the product through various outlet channels.
Currently in the USA, the intangible investment rate of the corporate sector is roughly twice that of the tangible investment rate and it keeps growing.
We have come very far, the value of creating aspects of knowledge, information, and entertainment, all of this is possible through the global internet.
The cost of the physical input has gone down but the value part has grown exponentially.

Think of Uber technology, how come a single app can democratize and revolutionize the whole transportation industry in approximately 72 countries and 10,500 cities.
What are the tangible assets of Uber?

Look at Google, can we think of life without it?
The single small box appears on our screen which is very clean and simple, every person knows where to type and just click go.
It has changed human society completely in so many ways which are impossible to explain.
What are the tangible assets of google? Where are its office buildings and infrastructures globally?
Remember, Google spends more than 15% of its revenue on R&D. Their R&D spending has more than doubled since 2016.

Any science and technology company’s product portfolio is created by R&D endeavors which are dedicated to invent, design, and produce products and services for us.
The higher the technology, the more R&D is embodied in a company’s products and greater the asset value of its product portfolio.

The genius Albert Einstein is very relevant here.
“You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.”
R&D is a source for the next level, it is key for waves of disruption and obsolescence.
In recent years, the bigger companies are spending a lot of money on R&D.
For example, Facebook is spending almost 21% of its revenue towards R&D spending.
Amazon’s R&D spending is more than 10% of its total revenue.
This tells the story where we are going.

R&D always moves in a slow fashion as a series of accepted notions and theories because it is science driven by the market.
We always think that scientific discovery is a process of adding intellectual bricks to an established norm. Many times scientific progress occurs by stepwise process but sometimes also happens by crisis.
But R&D’s role is the same both times.
Take an example of covid-19 vaccine development.
The crisis completely destroys the intellectual deposition of the existing phenomenon and takes us into the direction of new territory.
Normal scientific development works in a normal condition which is the scientific community’s common path. But the crisis violates the common scientific path and leads us into a new direction at very high speed.

Max Planck, a German physicist and Noble laureate has said beautifully, “ A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Past R&D used to be a prudent way of doing things.
But now when you tell people you are a traditional R&D member, you are considered old-fashioned, out of step, clinging to an old idea for a time that has come and gone. The world we are seeing is on the move.
If you are not constantly running computerized model algorithmic experiments, you must be falling behind in R&D.

Any kind of R&D is a noble endeavor because it identifies people’s self-discipline, psychological endurance, and civic community dedication.
Scientists understand that outstanding creations are often born of small modifications or small thinkings or sometimes by small errors.
Problems persist if the R&D scientist has the brittle dependence on the safety of absolute perfection. In such a scenario, any small error triggers fear, uncertainty, and confusion that muddies the decision making process.

We always glorify the essence of teamwork in a corporation’s success but there is also another part in R&D. Many companies’ intangible assets are created by a single R&D person, working and thinking alone.
I’m not discrediting the team effort, what I’m emphasizing is the culture of thinking which is possible when you are alone.

The sistine chapel ceiling is one large fresco that depicts nine separate scenes from the book of Genesis. The amazing fact about this phenomenal work, in addition to its never ending attractiveness, is that it was created by one person working alone, under extremely difficult conditions.
Johann Wolfgan Von Goethe once said, “Without having seen the sistine chapel , one cannot form a truer picture of what one person is capable of.”
R&D scientists fall exactly into the same category.
Our world has already shown over and over again that pure discovery and invention is one person’s capability under extremely passionate conditions.
There is nothing except pure human spirit and interest.

The good R&D managers should always think about how to increase the intrinsic value of business. The manager of the organization who misleads scientists may eventually mislead himself or herself.
This has a grave consequence for the organization. A good R&D manager should nurture the atmosphere of self-confidence among R&D personnel.
Self-confidence is directly linked to self-reliance, and self-reliance, in turn, is the foundation of R&D management.

Here is one way to improve self confidence among R&D scientists.
All R&D scientists and managers must read philosophy and psychology.
Just think about this: why Plato and Aristotle always said practical wisdom involves the combination of skill, conviction, and opportunity.
Any R&D’s mission is to bring practical wisdom into reality.
When we become R&D scientists and managers, skill always indicates right knowledge, conviction indicates good judgment, and opportunity indicates effective application.
In today’s world, each one of these is an intangible asset for the organization.

The whole function of philosophy is to produce habits of action.
In any organization, R&D begins the action. Our beliefs are really rules for taking actions.
For R&D scientists, there will inevitably be times when they need to try new ideas, release their current knowledge to take in new information. But it is very critical for them to integrate the new information in a manner that doesn’t violate who we are and what we want.

Let’s bring William James for a while, the “father of American psychology.”
William James always advocated that nobody understood better than him the role of philosophy in human life.
He is considered the creator of American Pragmatism.
William James did not begin as a philosopher, he had a medical degree but never practiced medicine.
He studied psychology and Roman stoic Marcus Aurelius, Ralph Waldo Emerson was his intellectual godfather.
We as R&D scientists can learn a lot from William James, as we are creators of actions in our organization.

Remember, psychologists, philosophers, and R&D scientists are not far, all they do is study the human mind.
Psychologists study the mind’s defection and philosophers figure out ways to improve thoughts for better decision making, and finally R&D scientists assimilate both and create products and services for human beings.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

I was at the national conference of the American chemical society. After attending numerous presentations, I was at a social gathering cocktail party, a fun, mix up, and refreshing network evening.
I was at the table with one of my colleagues who is now an assistant professor in the university.
All of a sudden, the late professor and Nobel laureate Ei-ichi Negishi stopped by our table.
My friend and I greeted him.
My friend immediately jumped and asked, “Professor Negishi, it’s our pleasure, you are with us this evening, can I share something with you?”
Professor Negishi replied, “yes, of course.”
“Professor, I’m two and half months pregnant now,” she mentioned.
Professor replied, “ Wow, nice, am I the first person to know after your husband?”
My friend replied, “yes.”
“Many many congratulations, you are about to enter into the most fulfilling job on the planet, mom,” Professor responded.
“Any tips professor, I know you raised two astounding daughters,” my friend added.
“In the end of the day, you and your husband’s life revolve around your kids, just keep that fresh always in your mind, it would be an amazing and thrilling experience to live by, especially being a mom and a professor at the same time” professor Negishi replied.

“By the way Sophia, you don’t become a good professor by becoming knowledgeable yourself, you become a good professor by knowing how to transfer knowledge to others effectively, and as a mom you will have an edge for the later part,” professor Negishi added.

“Thank you professor, I have one more weird question to ask you because I’ve got this golden opportunity. I’m with you this evening, I don’t know what’s coming to my mind” my friend added.
“Sure,” Professor Negishi replied.
“By any chance, could you remember, how long you and your wife didn’t talk to each other due to some kind of misunderstanding or argument or whatever it could be during your conjugal life?”
“Wow, this is difficult to answer, you are taking me long long back, of course, we had many many of those instances.”
“Well, as far as I remember, for at least 5 to 6 hours we didn’t speak, but for most of the time, I broke the silence” professor Negishi replied.
“Thank you professor, thank you for sharing,” my friend and I greeted him again saying bye when he was moving to another table .
When the professor left, I told my friend, “congratulations, am I the second person to know this secret news after your husband?”
She laughed and said, “kind of yes.”

I told my friend, “I was expecting questions related to either a chemistry project or your professor position or maybe research funding or any university related to a Nobel laureate chemistry professor, but you surprised me with unexpected directions.
You are unpredictable”.

“My friend, sometimes life takes us far from our real current standing ground, what we do everyday and what we think everyday, I guess this is what life is all about,” she expressed.

“I was the most timid person throughout my life and still I’m.
I became irritated very quickly.
I rarely felt secure and calm,” she expressed.

“My decision power had been uprooted long back.
I always felt infected and contagious.
Everything looked fictitious to me” she further added.

“I never understood what I wanted in life until I met a man whom I married 5 years ago who transformed me completely into a new me,” she expressed.

“This is not the appropriate time to share all of these but you just told me as an unpredictable person so I’ve got motivation to initiate different aspects of my life even though I’m meeting and talking to Nobel laureates and brilliant minds in our field on this beautiful evening. Nobody knows what’s inside us and what is the cause of our suffering and infection unless we express it,” she added.

“My parents always focussed on my weaknesses, they never allowed me to improve my strength.
I was very good at storytelling and map reading but they always pushed me in mathematics and statistics where I was weak.
I was weak in Spanish in high school but very good in English so my parents hired a Spanish tutor for me.
My story telling capacity got plateaued and never crossed the barrier but nobody cared.
These were my childhood memories.
I couldn’t do anything but I could reflect and connect now,” she said emotionally.

“I came from a very unusual family situation. My parents didn’t talk to each other for many years, even though we’re under the same roof.
My childhood consisted of numerous silent dinners and numerous silent lunches.
Now I’m an adult but I feel this is so awkward and unmotivated.
My parents said they didn’t divorce because of me.
Dad wanted to show his love and care for me more than my mom, and my mom wanted to show her love and care more than my dad.
They had competition to possess over me.
I never understood what they were trying to prove until very recently in my life.
I was in the middle taking advantage of both of them without knowing the chronic infection inside me.
Though I’m an adult now, my childhood memory sometimes suffocates me and is affecting my adult life,” she expressed.

“Sometimes, guilt and shame are very important to reconsider.
Many times my dad showed his guilt but never improved on his behaviour.
My mom also showed shame many times but never showed any attention around my dad, she was centered only in herself,” my friend noted.

“My dad and mom never sat together and discussed and learnt anything from each other. Both always tried to find whose fault was associated more than what was the actual truth. Finding somebody’s fault accelerates our ego but finding truth accelerates peace.
Ego and truth are very strong words but sometimes we are compelled to dissect them.
My mom was a project manager in a tech company and dad was a sales officer.
Both were immigrants to the USA from Japan, both were very exhaustive in their 30’s and 40’s, both were trying to be perfect, both were trying to be somebody else, but I had no clue who that somebody else was.”

“As far as I understand, we were somehow an upper middle class family financially, but dad was always running behind the commission rather than his annual salary.
My mom was always running behind more work performance and quick job promotion.
Relationship promotion never became a priority for my dad and mom.
My mom always complained about things that didn’t go as per her expectation.
She failed multiple times, her projects failed multiple times, and she didn’t meet her expectations multiple times, but she always complained about them.

I remember Stephen Hawking, a great physicist, cosmologist, and author who lived with the crippling disease ALS for 55 years. He has said beautifully, “people won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining,” she mentioned in a very soft voice.

“Now I learnt that once we start something, we don’t need to know it all at once.
Our complete potential and results start to appear once we trust our work.
In the end, complaining becomes so insignificant we actually don’t need it in our life.
I learned this from my husband.
At present I’m struggling to get my assistant professor position as a tenured position in my university.
I also know it’s tough because there are limited universities and limited tenure tracks, the majority of these tenured positions have already been occupied by my dad and granddad faculties.
But I’ve learned how to be calm and confident throughout the process and, most importantly, trust in me.”

“I remember, I used to come from school and I always saw either only dad or only mom at home, there were rare incidences where I saw both of them together at home at same time.
If dad were at home, he used to ask me “how was the school?” she said.
I used to say, “good”.
“Our conversation used to end and I walked towards my room.
When I came out for a snack in the kitchen, my dad was already on the phone,” she added.

“Later in life I learnt that people always do things which they want, not what they need.
Want becomes so vicious in life that we all can also gradually change our want into need if we are not conscious in our decision,” she added.

“Due to my silent home environment, I never knew the fine line between courage and confidence in my life because I never had that discussion at my home,” she said.

“Do you know the difference now?” I asked her.
She said, “I’m learning.”
“Yes, I know, I did some bungee jumpings,” she said
“That’s great, you accomplished your long quest of bungee jumping.”
“Awesome,” I added.

She said to me that once she was wrapped in a large elastic cord for the first time for bungee jumping, she was kind of senseless but she just gave up, closed her eyes and let it go.
She said, “I was really curious to know how it feels to have courage?”
She said, “I didn’t have confidence at all at the first time, it was just courage because I was shivering on the elastic cord.”

“Upto now I have done five bungee jumps, so I’ve learnt the difference between courage and confidence.
My husband has run multiple marathons.
He says that the present record of marathon is 2 hours 1 minute with Eliud Kipchoge.
But there will be somebody in the future with a lot of confidence who reaches the tipping point and will surely break the present record.
He always tells me that our life expands or shrinks whether we show courage or not, but exponential life expansion happens only when one courage turns into repetitive acts, that is the birth of confidence,” she said.

Her explanation was quite intriguing for me.

She said, “courage is an act where we don’t know the end point. We don’t know what is on the other side and how does it feel when we reach there?
But confidence is different, when we become confident, we know what is on the other side.
We gradually grow it.
Our brain can smell confidence and feel it.
Confidence is the same as our muscle, we can build it the same way as muscle.
I learned this from my husband.”

Suddenly, she received a call.
“Is this Sophia?
“Yes it is.”
“Do you have a dad named Brad in Macomb, Illinois?
“Yes, who is this, please?”
“Mr Neal, I’m Dr. Neal Kornik, calling from McDonough District Hospital, Macomb illinois. Brad was in an accident tonight. He is stable now but in critical condition.”
Sophia stood up and ran on the floor. “What happened?”
“As best we understand, madam, he was driving a car at dusk, he was making an U turn, he was hit from behind. Are you his closest relative?”
“Well, yes ….uh…well, no, I mean my mom is alive but my mom and dad don’t speak.”

I just heard what she said and how her life is leading up to now.
She cried in front of me.

She said, “Why did I tell the doctor that my dad and mom don’t speak to each other?
I don’t know, maybe my mind is working on autopilot.
It wasn’t intentional, it suddenly came in my mouth, maybe this burden is in my subconscious.”

She called her mom in Philadelphia.

“Mom, I never asked you anything in my adult life. Can I ask you something?”
Mom replied, “is everything okay Sophia”
She said, “yes.”
Her mom said, “yes, of course, you can ask.”
“Mom, it is very serious but promise me first, you won’t reject it,” she reiterated.
Her mom said, “promise.”

“Mom, my dad, your husband is in critical condition in McDonough District Hospital at Macomb, Illinois, he got in an accident. I received a call from the doctor and according to the doctor, he is stable but in critical condition. Mom, could you go right now to Macomb, Illinois and see my dad?” she said.
Her mom said, “yes.”

Next morning, my friend Sophia also took the first flight to Springfield, Illinois to go to Macomb.
Once she entered the hospital room, she saw her mom was on her dad’s bedside.
When they saw her, they both had tears in their eyes.

“Mom and dad, you might not be happy after reading this piece of content.
You might say what kind of daughter you are who shares her personal family story to the world.
Mom and dad, I’m not judging you, this my life is your gift.
Whoever I am now and wherever I stand, it’s all due to you both.
I haven’t seen god, so for me, you are on the same level, you are no different from god.
I always respect you both and I always love you both, my love and respect will remain the same no matter what, unconditional. period.

I gave permission to my good friend to write about me and my family, this is my only pure feeling that I expressed with him so that I can think and act mentally strong.
I wanted to clear my mind and body both.”

“Though I may not be 100 percent free from any judgement because I’m human with soul and mind, but trust me, I’m moving in that direction.
And I request to everybody, please, try to be free from any kind of judgement that you have.
We humans are here on earth not to judge others but to do our part of the task to make this world a beautiful place.
Who am I to judge my parents?
Actually, who am I to judge anybody else on the planet?
I always love you both, dad and mom.
I wish you both all the best.
Please, dad and mom, forgive me if I did something wrong by sharing our family story to the world,” she noted.

“My friend, I also know, your head is still running, why did I tell professor Negishi about my private news.
Professor Negishi gave us revolutionary scientific achievement in the name of Negishi reaction in 1977 when he was 42 years old.
But he got the Nobel prize at age 75, after working 33 years for the same discovery which he made when he was 42.
The mystery is that our society is weird, it only credits the work when we become old for the same work that we did when we were young.
My friend, we can learn a great lesson from professor Negishi, he is one of my heroes in my life.
I want to tell everyone that when you are young, please take risks, experiment, wander, travel, create, participate, show courage, and build confidence.
We have one life to live.
I wanted to have this conversation with you, professor Negishi, and my little one in my womb.
Believe me, he or she, I don’t know yet, is listening from my womb,” she said.

Rest in peace, wishing you peace professor Negishi.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

We’re at the dining table.
My 12 years old daughter said, “Daddy, everybody says you are a scientist but, daddy, what do you actually do at work?”
My wife jumped quickly and said, “Your daddy makes chemicals in a chemical company.”
My daughter immediately responded, “I hate chemicals.”
My daughter completely shut her mind regarding any activities related to chemicals. She started to complain about her shampoo and nail polish.
She also complained about her paints that she used for her painting class.
“These chemicals are so bad, I think they are very low quality chemicals, my hair gets tangled after using a particular shampoo,” she added.
She turned towards her mom and said, “Mom, I remember you’re complaining about your nail polish last time, you couldn’t remove nail polish completely, am I right?”

I told my daughter, “what your mom just said about my day to day work is true but she missed my main task, making chemicals is only a very small part of the work that I do everyday.”
“My main job is to think about how to solve problems that we all face everyday.”
“Just as you said, you’re not happy with poor quality shampoo, poor quality nail polish, so tell me, who do you think should do work on how to make better shampoo that doesn’t tangle your hair?
Who do you think will solve the problem of low quality nail polish?” I added.

I told my wife in private that you could have said it in a different way so that they don’t shut down their door of perception, their door of listening, and their door of understanding.
My wife nodded with a smile.

As a family, we must be very conscious about our pitch statements regarding our everyday work, our hobbies, and our leisure, when we discuss things on the dining table with others, especially with our children.
Dining table is a very important place to explore our children’s interests.
Interest is the only tool to make people curious, there is no other way around.
Interest is a force that propels us out of bed every single morning and makes us ready to get going.
Sometimes interest becomes really insane. Neil Armstrong, an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer, and the first person to walk on the Moon, got his pilot’s license before his driver’s license.
Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha, was interested in peace, he was a prince who renounced his position and wealth to seek enlightenment as a spiritual ascetic, attained his goal of peace and founded Buddhism.

We always say to our children, “You are too small, you don’t understand now, there are so many things I do at my work which are very important. You’ll learn them gradually when you grow up.” These are some answers many parents say to their children without giving any specifics.
If we cannot say what we do 8 plus hours everyday at work in a couple of sentences which they can understand then we’ve a serious problem as parents.

When I was a naive and a new parent, I used to say to my daughter that I make chemicals and sell them to make medicines. This is another type of answer I’ve found most often used by many other parents who also work in a place where things are made and sold.

There is nothing wrong with this answer but if your children don’t like making or selling chemicals or any medicines or any other particular things that you are involved in then you are done.
They don’t want to listen to any further details regarding your work, experience, and expertise.
If we don’t like some food then we don’t want to taste it, if we don’t want to taste it, then we don’t know what it feels like tasting.
This is true to all of us, including children, not only in food but also in many life experiences.

When children lose the patience to listen to us, they don’t understand our passion, our dedication, and most importantly, our attitude.
Listening isn’t only to listen to somebody, it’s a mental toughness practice, we need a lot of energy not to speak but to listen.
Listening is not just to be quiet, it means to be at present.

It’s not about our chemical knowledge or medical knowledge or legal or business knowledge or any specific expertise that we have which we are telling to our children.
It’s all about children’s experience of human attitude by opening their eyes, ears, and senses.
Our attitude is key to solving the most challenging human problems in the 21st century.
If our children are not paying attention in developing a good attitude then it will hamper in many different ways in their adult lives.

A good attitude is a settled way of thinking or feeling about a person or a thing that is generally reflected in a person’s behavior.
Good attitude also makes us aware of others’ perceptions towards us.

The most essential degree that we need in life is a good attitude.

Many skills are teachable but attitude is not.

I told my daughter, “I work various things but all of them help to improve people’s lives in different ways.”
Today I attended a presentation from a person from a cell phone company who was looking for something that he could add in cell phone battery materials so that the cell phone battery can last many years.
Think about your cell phone or laptop, what do you think if you don’t have to charge it for many weeks?

My daughter said, “That would be cool.”

Our cell phone and laptop’s battery life is still very short, we have to carry a charger all the time.
We have to solve this problem by creating technology so that we don’t have to carry a charger.
This is just one example of the type of problems that I face every single day at work.

I further added, “This is just one example of how I work to make a positive difference to people’s lives. I also help to discover unique ways and materials to treat the most challenging diseases. Many people are dying everyday due to many chronic diseases.”

I work to empower people as a team who are to deliver breakthroughs so that people get benefits faster and quicker. This team of people are called scientists.
Scientists always challenge the status quo.
Scientists are a very small segment of society but they change society forever.
They always work in unison to solve human problems because each person has specific expertise.

I also contribute to making science a tool of any technology that changes human lives on many frontiers.
Think about how technology is reshaping us to enhance our quality of life. We are living longer because we know how to cure many diseases.
Unfortunately, people are still dying due to many new diseases appearing every single day like cancer, dementia including Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and schizophrenia.

We have developed CRISPR as one of the biggest discoveries of the 21st century. It allows researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. CRISPR is a gene editing tool that has revolutionized biology research, making it easier to study disease by correcting genetic defects, treating and preventing the spread of diseases, and faster to discover drugs.

We have developed faster communication for documents via email and instant messages so that we don’t have to wait for the mailman to receive information. But what about physical delivery of things, can we do it everywhere using any technology such as drones?
Actually, this has already been started but we need more sophisticated technology to access a larger population.

We are developing a driverless car so that we can sit back in the car and read the book while commuting to work.
How does it feel?
My daughter replied, “scary.”

We’re living in the age of coronavirus, hundreds of thousands of people are dying, people around the world are still struggling to get vaccines easily.
This pandemic showed us as proof that the importance of science and scientists in any place on earth is always in top priority for human progress.
We still don’t have vaccines for children under the age 12.
Recently we made and delivered vaccines quickly and efficiently using science as a tool for age 12 and older to prevent the pandemic.
This is one example of how great human minds work at times of crisis taking advantage of science as a tool when we are desperate to save people’s lives.
Those people who made this vaccine mission successful worked 24/7 non-stop using science as a tool and developed a new mRNA technology.
At present, vaccines for COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, are the only authorized mRNA vaccines.

Kudos to all of those great minds who contributed to make mRNA vaccines and make our lives safer.

These are only a few examples of why science is the utmost tool for any kind of technology for human progress.

“Daughter, I’m just one of the many curious minds who are dedicated to human progress through science, whatever breakthrough technology it could be,” I added.

In reality, daughter, you don’t have to worry about anything at this point.
You have to focus on the basic foundation when you are young: excellent reading skill, excellent writing skill, excellent listening power, basic fundamental science and mathematics, and most importantly a very good attitude towards a person and a thing.

The basic foundation of education provides you how to handle the aforementioned tools in life, but sharpening these tools is a never ending process. You have to do it continuously throughout your life.

You’re just 12 years old, the work you will be doing may not exist now, therefore, don’t worry about it.
Always keep looking and focus on what you really love to do. You may not know or you might not have found what actually you love to do yet.
Focus mostly on why you do your work more than what you do, because why connects you to the broader world.
Your why should be bigger than yourself because it connects the people around you.

Don’t hate people and things quickly, sometimes the person or thing that you hate the most becomes the person or thing you love the most.

As I said, don’t worry about any existing work your dad and mom are doing, they are here to solve the existing problems, you might have to be ready to solve those problems which may not exist now.
Learn as many skills as you can which help to solve human problems by creating your own unique interests.
Always remember, your why should always be bigger than your how, this allows you to find security in insecurity in your work.
You have to know the answer of your why from inside otherwise you will never understand the answer from outside.
To do this, you must have a good attitude.

Keep in mind, a lot of things that we study in school or in textbooks become out of date pretty quickly and make no relevance with a particular time.
History is a good indicator how things keep changing, and our education also follows the same.
You have to develop the problem solving attitude which is directly related to the update of what happened today, yesterday, last week, and last year.
This update is more crucial than the past history, past textbooks, and past degrees.
I’m not saying these are not important but what I’m saying is don’t put too much emphasis on them and forget the real working ground.
You’ve to learn every single day by various means until you die, this is possible only if you become interested in learning.
Remember, problem solving attitude is learning from history and connecting to the present.

If you show your frustration and disliking thinking of your dad and mom’s everyday work at this age then you might start to lower your expectations in life.
This will affect you when you face bigger human problems later in future, when you should be ready to serve the world.

Remember, your mind is limitless.

The following are my two current mental projects that I constantly discuss with my friends who are generally problem solvers in one way or another. I know there is no guarantee that we could solve them during our lifetime.
Many people debate about these things as possible or impossible, but, in my personal view, we don’t have to go to the far ends of the spectrum, who knows 50 to 100 years from now how technology evolves.
Therefore, you might have to continue to be vigilant in such problems when you or your generation grow up and possibly bring solutions during your time.
These are just two of my personal favorites I like to mention to you but there are multiple of these types of challenges we have.

Most importantly, these kinds of problems also help us to make aware about our attitude, whether we are proactive or reactive or listener or talker.

My first thought.

We always talk about the shortage of fossil fuels for the future generations. Do we really know how much solar energy from the sun is wasted every single day?
So I’m still not sure whether we have to focus on preserving fossil fuels or to develop technology to use solar energy from the sun.
We’ve learned in fundamental physics that one form of energy can be converted to another form.
Does it make sense to you?

My second thought.

We eat food, we convert food into energy and that energy moves our body and our muscles.
Plants cannot move but still change one form of energy to another form.
Leaf slug is an animal that can do photosynthesis because it eats algae having chloroplasts.
Then, why can’t we do photosynthesis?
We eat plants that contain green chlorophyll, we have carbon dioxide that we generate inside the body, we drink water, we have sunlight, we have skin with pores.
So then where is the problem?
Why can’t we convert light energy into chemical energy in our body?
Am I thinking too superficially here?

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

What do you think about Sir Isaac Newton?
Was he a genius thinker?
Of course, yes.
Did he invent the law of gravity by miraculous experimentation?
Of course, not. It was by a powerful rational creative thinking.
As we all know, gravitation existed well before Newton’s time in this universe but the whole world was unaware of it.
There was gravity at the time the universe was formed.
The law of gravity was a ghost before Newton but he made it living.
That’s why Newton became the greatest scientist of all time.
Ghost is imaginary but living is usable that influences and prospers our lives directly or indirectly.

What about instantaneous change?
Did it exist before Newton?
Of course, yes, but it was again a ghost before Newton.
It was also imaginary before Newton but now we have the whole world of calculus, the extension of instantaneous change.
We are utilizing the whole world of calculus in different forms.

When we think about science, we still largely think only about invention.
Our curriculum, school, college, and society knows science mainly through invention and teaches us the same thing from the very beginning.
The younger generation is quite unaware about the other side of invention which is innovation.
At the same time, our society must teach innovation as the extension of invention in our institutions.
Unless we make people aware about innovation from the very beginning, society mixes invention and innovation and we never distinguish their priority.
As a matter of fact, invention and innovation have different core meanings.
Invention is a pure science but innovation is a business of value, the value which is flexible and can be rediscovered again and again.
Invention expands human knowledge but innovation utilizes it and accelerates human values and prospers us.

As a professional scientist, I see a huge knowledge gap even among the scientific community regarding the concept of innovation in both business and science.
Business itself is a branch of science, and innovation drives it forward.
There is still a wrong perception among ordinary people.
We are not fully able to make them understand the concept of business and innovation.
Business and innovation complement to each other.
They think business people are crooks, they loot the poor and they become rich.
As a matter of fact, business is a group of many different people.
It is a community of scientists, innovators, customers, employees, and suppliers.
All are integral parts of interconnectedness.
This is a business of innovation.
They all have specific missions but work together to prosper the human society.
If only one part is out of balance, then it affects others and would make our society unsustainable.
If scientists make supersonic jets available to travel space, then how many of us have access to go there matters because it affects our life and society directly and indirectly.
Innovation comes into play when ordinary people feel its influence in their lives.
The Wright brothers invented the airplane in 1903, the first commercial flight took place after 11 years in 1914, and the whole world changed.

Scientists may tell you a great deal about science but they tell you nothing about the future of innovation because innovation is a product of time.
Innovation captures great science and makes our life easy and comfortable.
Scientists must acquire innovation to lead not only an easy and comfortable life but also a happy and healthy life.

If we look back at the history of science, there is an endless series of stories of genius scientists who created inventions but then died broke and largely unhappy.
At the same time many other innovators utilized their inventions and made millions.

There are many examples of these situations, please allow me to go into some few modern examples.
Julius Lilienfeld, an American physicist and electrical engineer, patented the first transistor, but AT&T got the credit for the first working transistor.
Intel is earning billions of dollars from semiconductors, which is a product made based on the transistor.

Charles Babbage, a mathematician and philosopher, invented the first computer, but IBM innovated it and developed software applications for it.
IBM created an enormous and durable business serving billions of people across the globe, and is also earning billions of dollars.

In 1990, Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan, and Peter J. Deutsch, all students at McGill University at Montreal, Canada, invented the web content search engine but Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin became the most successful innovative winners.
They utilized it as their core business, they perfected it, they are serving billions now, and already became billionaires themselves.
Just think of our life without Google today.

It’s hard to produce many Newtons and many Einsteins as inventors in society.
Our society has certain limitations to produce this type of genius.
This also equally applies to innovators who generally perfect the inventions and change the livelihood of the general public.
We still have a confusing perception that innovation includes only grandiose scientific advancement. But in reality, innovation is a small idea, mini-management, little twist on supply chain, and a continuous thought about people’s life.

For every Bill Gates and for every Elon Musk, there are hundreds of innovators who are still working but have little or nothing to show to the world.
They started something, they failed, and they never tried again.
Failing means to give up, throw in the towel, but to keep trying is not failing, innovation is to keep trying.

Jennifer Aniston and Sandra Bullock worked as waitresses before they became Hollywood icons.
There were thousands of waiters and waitresses in the USA who never got a casting call from Hollywood.
During their time as waitresses also, Jennifer and Sandra were working mentally for acting.
They never gave up.
Hard work beats talent if talent isn’t put into mental work.

As invention, innovation is also expensive and it requires sustainability otherwise innovative efforts will disappear after a certain time.
We have to reduce risks in research otherwise there is a high chance of going out of business.

You can assume why big pharma buys potential small drug companies so that they can minimize their research effort.
This is done to reduce the risk and at the same time they can accelerate late stage development of small buying companies.
There is a high potentiality to go in the market fast.

There are many other versions of risk reduction on innovation.
When we think of big companies like Apple, we assume that they invest so much on design and development but they invest way more on patent litigation in comparison to pure research and development.
Pure research and development has no guaranteed result on stipulated time but still needs continuous emphasis for future advancements.

In science, sometimes, pure research and development also invites serendipity.
Artificial organs and black holes are unexpected discoveries but airplanes and automobiles are expected discoveries.
When there is an unexpected finding, it always becomes a promising area of innovation because there is almost no competition.
They are mostly the by-products of other major invention efforts so that there is no investment cost associated with.

Remember this, nobody starts invention and innovation with the hope of serendipity, it just happens as a by-product of continuous effort.

Failure is a recurring part of any research.
Any scientist who adapts all possible conditions to himself or herself, every single result depends on that person’s thought, emotion, and working model.
This is the reason scientists are sometimes quoted as unpredictable people.
Unpredictable basically indicates the freeflow thinking patterns.
Thinking pattern in innovation is amazing which is key in producing valuable results.
Most of us see only branches of the tree because they are up above the ground, no mental pressure.
We can not see roots because they are underground, needs more digging to see.
We don’t have time and energy to see roots, we see branches, enjoy it, and pass-by.
Whether you are an innovative scientist depends on why and where your focus is: on root or branch or both?
Innovative scientists also try to estimate the root and its underground spread while watching the branches on top.
The extension of root is new knowledge, new invention, and new science.
The decoration by the branches is a new innovation.
Root represents fundamental knowledge but branch represents more of an art than science.
Branches still need the support of root but they can give us many beautiful things in our life depending on how good interior designers we are.
Stronger the root, more the branches; more the branches, greater the selection of artistic decorations.
We ultimately want all: strong roots, strong branches, and beautiful decorations.

Innovative world doesn’t see only black and white, it actually sees in shades of gray.
To adapt to the innovative world, one must be curious and interested in learning.
We must see things from others’ views and find out nuggets in people before judging them.

Everybody says that diets of salad and fruit contain fewer calories, there is nothing new but the hidden part is both foods are less attractive eating materials.
We don’t like to eat.
Our psychology is that we are more tempted to eat chocolate than salad.
Innovation also lies in that borderline of hidden and known facts of human psychology.

We all know scientists are trained to design experiments rather than to develop people systems, but innovative scientists do both.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is a tool for innovative people, it is bigger than talent (IQ).
Emotional intelligence teaches us to collaborate with new dots which were unknown before to take a new direction.
Why did Bill Gates and late Steve Jobs adopt a daily meditation routine?
Because they wanted to excel in the world of innovation.
Emotional intelligence navigates society through which innovation emerges.
Innovation is our need to make our life easy.
Majority of us pretty quickly know the cost of a bottle of water in Walmart stores because there is a price tag but very few of us are able to estimate the value of the same water in the desert or halfway through a marathon because there is no price tag.
Cost comes from IQ but value comes from EQ.

We have no prediction of the future, we have only ideas from the past.
This is called literature search in research.
In any human project, the future we are trying to predict will indicate a past but a different past, another past having very little sameness of the previous past.
The people in the past, people in the present, and people in future would be different in various ways.
Understanding of this interconnectedness is innovation.
There is a beauty in the interconnectedness: innovators should be more eager to play with it.

R&D is the heart of Innovation.
We must see the continuity of existing products and services.
We must set priority on either the long run of existing product with less emphasis on R&D or short run of existing product or service with high emphasis on R&D.
This is a difficult choice but innovation seeks this distinction and balance.

Any technology company who does business for us if that doesn’t add new features or products continuously, they lose their customers and audience over the time.
If we aren’t emphasizing R&D, then innovative people will leave the company. This is a big risk in the sustainability of businesses.
If innovative companies stopped hiring new talents for research and development, their existing products would be obsolete very soon and there is a high chance that companies would go out of business.

We must seek the competitive advantage in research and development.
It could be more patent production, it could be a new kind of technological advancement.
If it is by patents, after a certain time, they will expire and the company’s competitive advantage will disappear.
If it is a technological advantage, there is always the threat that another newer technology will replace the old one.
And both are very true.
This is the main reason why Microsoft always competes with Google and Facebook always competes with Twitter.
Today’s advanced technology may become tomorrow’s obsolescence, if we don’t rediscover technology constantly.

Martina Navratilova, the greatest tennis player of all time, has said, “what matters isn’t how well you play when you are playing well; what matters is how well you play when you’re playing badly.” This clearly applies in research and innovation.

Slow and boring is also sometimes very good, especially in scientific and innovative development, be slow but always keep moving.

If you want to be an innovative scientist, be a good scientist first with enough scientific understanding and make a habit of watching branches of a tree with artistic flavor.
Remember, innovation is art on science.
As a scientist, if you acquire artistic intuition, you will become innovative.
Innovation is flexibility, innovation is change which makes our life exciting.
But we must be careful of change. If we have to constantly change in different ways without meaningful purpose then we are destined to fail.
This is no fun at all in both personal and professional life.
As always, innovation needs correct but slow change.
Progress is always slow and always boring.
Enjoy this boredom everyone because after boredom we have to rest, and after rest we will rediscover ourselves.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

Sometimes we all take something for granted.
We used to brush off things when not in need and we realize its value at the time of need.
Either we don’t understand its value properly or we pretend not to understand it.
Yes, I am talking about the value of our essential workers during the time of crisis like we are experiencing at the moment.
I am thinking about our health care professionals on top of my head, our janitorial friends who clean the hospitals all day and night, our nurses who make things ready for doctors and take care of the infected, our research scientists who are inside the research building to invent vaccines for COVID-19, and the security personnels to smoothen our lives at the time of isolation and social distancing in the society.
Majority of the population is inside the house to be safe.
We must remember and salute these essential workers who are outside their house for us when we are inside.
Please, let’s not brush off these people when there would be no crisis, no pandemic, and no suffering.
Learn the lesson if we haven’t, and treat them with dignity and boost their morale.
Their importance is, as never seen before, in the history of mankind.

We always keep our life and our survival at the top of our priority in the front line, but there are some professions in existence which always focus on other’s life first.
This is the ritual of these professions.
One of my friends said, “I’ve always appreciated essential workers, I pray for them and I love and respect them.”
But many of us have a tendency to forget these people immediately after the crisis is gone.
We follow more actors, models, athletes, and entertainers in social media, spend time in their gossip on television as if essential people.
World’s top actors, top models, top sportspersons, and top media entertainers are inside the house at the moment and scrolling the news everyday for the latest update of vaccines in research laboratories so that they can come out of the house and have a normal life.
There are very few committed individuals working inside these hospitals and research laboratories, and the whole population is counting on them.
I appeal all of you to salute them.
There is nothing more important than human lives so these people’s value and contribution is priceless.

I am not debating who is essential and who isn’t, everybody is an expert of something and has something to offer in society.
I am just reporting the governments’ categorization of who is essential and who isn’t at present that gives us a lesson who we should attribute our value to.
We must protect and nurture essential people every single day irrespective of societal conditions.
Where should our focus be?
My keen target right now is especially healthcare professionals.

Life is unpredictable, five month ago it was normal, no coronavirus, and after five month, it is upside down now but some people on earth try to make it predictable all the time.
They are healthcare professionals.
These people surround themselves with the most vulnerable people: diseased, sick, addicted, and infected in the society and take pride in transforming them into venerable.
They invent hope and give it to their patients when there is no outside hope, no available medications, and vaccines.
You have seen and experienced these vulnerable people at your home, or at your workplace or in your community.
For example, they are COVID-19 positive.
As of today, at time of writing this content, almost 2.2 million people across the globe are already infected and 156 thousands are dead.
In the US only, where I am living, 710 thousands are infected and 37 thousands are dead.
We don’t have any vaccines or medicines yet.
Infected people are isolated from their family but our healthcare professionals are their ultimate hope and they are next to their bed to feed, support, and console them.

It isn’t hard or difficult to become a doctor or nurse.
There is a traced track to become a healthcare professional.
But, It just needs courage to work.
A mantra of three words to inspire- “Do the work” whatever it could be, is inside or outside of them.
Trust us healthcare professionals, you will win this battle of coronavirus.

For some people imagining becoming a doctor or a nurse is the worst job on the planet at this time.
People are getting infected, and are dying every single day.
The viral epidemic is spreading everywhere like an unseen flame.
Smart doctors in the hospital are tirelessly fighting to win.
There is an equal chance that healthcare professionals might get infected while serving the infected people.
Many of them are already infected and some have already died, sacrificing their lives while serving others.
They’re facing incredible challenges from all sides and there is no one and nothing you can depend on or can talk to.
They are fighting with the virus even though they are having limited resources in some situations in many least developed and developing countries.

Imagine how sensitive this person should be as a doctor at the time of crisis.
If doctors tell the patients’ family members that it’s a disaster, we are losing him or her, a dying situation; not only will the patient quit but also their family members will be paralyzed with fear and uncertainties.
A doctor’s job is to smoothen out the emotional roller coaster.
When they see the face of a chronic COVID-19 patient, they have to give a small quiet glimpse of hope from distance and control the emotion.
They never let your patient or patient’s family members experience the same highs and lows as they’re feeling because the odds are patients’ family members aren’t built to handle these kinds of ups and downs like doctors are.

As a responsible global citizen, as we all are now, our number one job is to be there for the healthcare professionals when they are struggling, making sure they feel heard and they know we are on their side.
When we are confined inside our house, they are doing hard work outside to protect us.
If you are a relentlessly positive and candid doctor or nurse, you’re going to have a greater chance of success in your cases and you’re going to be able to remain positive, even in the face of failure.

At this time of global pandemic, everybody is scared.
But still we should not forget how to boost the morale of our healthcare professionals.

There are few things in life that we have control over, few things that we have no control over, and few things that we have partial control over.
It’s extremely important to spend our effort on things that we have complete control over.
We all depend on the doctor’s knowledge, their expertise, their service, their work experience, and most importantly, their unwavering hope.

As a doctor, if you are constantly learning about body organs and their connection to our emotions, many things are under control- many good things will happen.
As a doctor you are the most successful person on how to do finishing.
Finishing is extremely more difficult than starting.
You only realize this when you have to finish.
You have to finish this pandemic.
And you have to save millions of lives.
When Donald Trump was running for president, campaigning and winning the election was finishing for him.
Now after winning, running the office as a president is finishing for him.
People are dying every moment, he is surrounded by a bunch of doctors everyday and trying to finish the pandemic.
The country is virtually on lockdown.
Finishing is difficult but it’s the only option now.
But still, our president needs to finish it by listening and supporting the healthcare professionals, and his desperation to finish is reflected in his briefings everyday in white house.
As a doctor, your role is the major force, you have the mindset and experience to finish the disease.
You finish the pain.
You finish the suffering.
Ultimately, if you can not finish then you allow God to finish the suffering of the patient.
After the final finish also, you come back home and play with your kids.
If you remember that final finish done by God in hospital, how do you play with your kid?
But you still play with your kid because you have a power from God to do so.
This may be one of the reasons that many people see you as a form of god when they visit hospital with little to no hope.
No doubt, you have seen, experienced, and understood the hard part of finishing more than anybody else on the planet.
Therefore, we encourage you, support you, love you, and care for you.
You are an angel for us.

I would like to ask all of you a few questions to reflect your life at the time of crisis.
“What problem do you solve on a personal level?”
Think for a moment for your answer, your life, and your work.

“What pain do you remove from other people’s lives?”
Again, take time and think about what you are doing at the moment.

What I am trying to say is that many of the great doctors or health professionals in the world are destined on the promise of removing pain from people’s lives.
We, as humans, have a huge problem right now and we are looking for a solution.
Healthcare professionals are working tirelessly to find this solution for us.
Lets salute them.

Keep in mind, we have many blind spots than we have clear vision in our life.
For example, unexpected global pandemic coronavirus is one of the blind spots in human life.
We must unlearn what we have learned in the past to defeat the coronavirus.
We have to unlearn ego, we have to unlearn selfishness, we have to unlearn hatred, and we have to unlearn resentment in all human relationships.
Lets express our sincere gratitude for all these fighters, our health professionals, across the globe.
Thank you so much for your service to humanity.

And finally thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

We all are living in very critical conditions across the globe. We are fighting everyday, every hour, every minute, and every second to survive. The viral pandemic is engulfing the whole planet, nobody is untouched.
Our priority has become to protect our family. During this painful lockdown period, our mind flows mostly with what’s happening around us.
Our mind does not like anything incomplete. It constantly asks why, why, and again why?
If we have a vacuum in our mind, especially on a topic not understood or clear, it tries to fill the gaps itself. When that does not happen, our mind goes searching for it.
This is the nature of our mind. It is very curious.

Sometimes, curiosity helps to turn mundane small talk into interesting beneficial intense discussions.
We don’t experience anything without interesting people, that’s what happened to me in one of my latest conversations.
I was talking to one of my virologist friends who does research in the national institute of health in Bethesda, Maryland.
I quote the words of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, “Those who aren’t curious learn nothing.”
I directed my attention to my virologist friend, completely shifting my focus to him.
I asked him many ‘why’ questions so that I can console my curiosity.
The following is just a small part of my conversation.

Moreover, recently, I was talking to many of my family members and friends and everybody seemed interested to know about this contagious coronavirus.
This kind of situation invokes our mind, we set aside our regular tasks and become more curious.
I am utilizing the time to ignite your curiosity.
Plutarch, a Platonist philosopher, has said, “Our mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.”

I asked him, “What is the main tool to defeat coronavirus caused disease COVID-19?”
He said, “We don’t know yet.
It could be vaccines or more people with antibodies.”

I asked my another curiosity, “Why is it different from the common cold?”
He said, “There are some coronaviruses that cause common colds. Most often, however, the common cold is caused by rhinoviruses, according to the CDC (Center for disease control and prevention). However, what we are dealing now is a new or novel coronavirus, this means it mutated in some way and became more deadly for us.”
“Actually, there is no cure for a cold, according to the CDC, and up to now the same applies to COVID-19.”

I asked, “Do we know the source of the coronavirus?”
He replied, “At present, the source of the coronavirus is unknown. Available evidence suggests that it has a natural animal origin and is not a constructed virus. It might have had its ecological reservoir in bats.”

I asked him the most common people’s question, “ Why don’t we have a vaccine for Covid-19?”
He added, “This is a little bit of a long process. We need to know about a virus to create a vaccine.”
“Our immune system has to learn how to fight a virus by knowing its face, which is actually the outside of the particle including telltale antigens.
The easy part is, scientists have already made the coronavirus RNA sequence available.”
“After its design, vaccines need to be produced, tested, approved, and manufactured in large quantities by big pharmaceutical companies.
The bottom line is, it takes at least one year to eighteen months, as health experts say.”

My other query was, “ Is it seasonal?”
He replied, “We have no idea yet. Viruses are unexpected creatures.”
“They enter without alarms and surprise us in different ways.”

I asked, “Is this virus like the flu or zika or ebola?”
He said, “The answer in most part is no or we don’t know. Yellow fever, measles, mumps are also caused by viruses but the vaccines developed in the past are very effective for them.”


I asked, “So what is the solution?”
“The answer is we have to control the virus in some way. We have to win over the virus,” he said.

I asked, “How does it spread?”
“It spreads through different ways of infected human contacts, sneezes and coughs. But now we are learning more and more about this virus, it can spread by just talking or even just breathing. We might pass them object to object to us. There is likely that we might be carrying this virus without symptoms,” he added.

I asked, “How does it grow?”
He said, “The genetic material of a virus is RNA, but it is DNA in humans. Therefore, when viruses copy their genetic material, it doesn’t proofread its work. These mistakes are referred to as mutations.”

By the way, “what exactly is mutation?,” I asked.
He said, “It is abnormal growth in viruses. Viruses can cause mutation in the human genome or they can do genetic material change in their own genome.”

I further questioned, “How does it mutate?”
He said, “This is an animal virus. There is a possibility, it will continue to mutate. It gets mutated and adapted to another animal. It jumps from animal to human and continues as human to human transmission. As it goes infecting people, it also passes through a stabilization, which is also a part of the mutation process.”
“It might mutate different parts of the world in various forms depending on various factors, for example population density, it influences the number of people infected and how many chances the virus has to mutate.”

Finally, I asked, “What are the best precautions not to catch coronavirus?”

He said, “At the moment, avoid close contact with other people and wash your hands frequently with soap and water.”
“Alternatively, use an alcohol-based sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol.”
“Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth.”
“Stay home.”
“Cover when you cough or sneeze and then trash it properly immediately.”
“Clean and disinfect touched objects and surfaces.”
“Use a face mask if you are sick.”

We have to learn a lesson here, yes we have to learn a lesson here, we are not better prepared to combat the epidemic. We must be better prepared. Let’s focus on not spreading the virus at the moment. Until the major source of this virus is known, there is a high risk of its re-introduction and new outbreaks in humans.
Therefore, let’s fight against this virus and save lives.
We are together in this fight.

The information in this content is based on CDC (Center for disease control and prevention) and WHO (World health organization) information. However, as the situation surrounding COVID-19 continues to evolve, it’s possible that some information might change.

Thank you for your time.
– Yam Timsina

My hometown is on lockdown due to a pandemic coronavirus.
Most of the time I am working from home spending significant time on reading, brainstorming, planning, and analyzing the past experiments and results.
At this moment, world leaders and politicians are forced to go to the bottom of this pandemic, they are paying a lot of attention for not spreading the coronavirus pandemic.
They are processing and absorbing every single information of this nasty virus in more depth.

We support and encourage our world leaders and politicians to act fast against this viral tsunami to curb it. We will do our best to wipe out this pandemic as global citizens.

History has taught us that this type of pandemic occurs from time to time in our lifetime but I still assume that the huge devastation it has created is a consequence of our ill-preparation and foundation.
All politicians and leaders are learning hard lessons and we are paying the price of not having a focused robust research and development priority.

Keep in mind—we have no medications or vaccines to protect us from coronavirus until now. The only tool we have is physical separation (social distancing) from one another. Therefore, we need to use physical separation to stop this virus from spreading further at this point.

There are no shortcuts and quick schemes in medical research, we have to invest and investigate continuously to improve human lives.

Despite our geographical boundaries, coronavirus has taught us how to bring people together to fight against such pandemics, and how to share information together to protect us.

Another lesson for policy makers: research successes of yesterday are not enough but we have to continuously and consistently look for the challenges of tomorrow.
And how are we going to do this exactly?
The answer is: by investing, by inventing, and by innovating unwaveringly.
My pique questions.
What sets us off when we look for long term consistent A-level research and development?
What sets us off when we become eager to cut research funding?
What stimulates our desire to add funding in sports, politics and entertainment by cutting funding in scientific research and development?

This is the time to grade our leaders and politicians especially in advanced countries whether they have a growth mindset or fixed mindset especially for medical research.
People and leadership with a growth mindset never cut funding in scientific research and development.
We appeal to all visionary leaders to invest in young novelty seeking curious minds who make new inventions and innovations as attitudes towards their lives.

Suddenly, my cell phone rang and my uncle Addy was on the line.
We chatted a little bit about coronavirus, lockdown and its impact in society as well as in our professional life.
My uncle Addy said, “One day my department head of research entered my office and told, ‘Addy’- he is a new scientist in our group, pointing to a very young guy who came with him to his office.”
To Addy’s surprise, the new scientist looked very young and inexperienced.
My uncle Addy has been working in a pharmaceutical company for the last 30 years as a principal scientist.

Addy was quite shocked and went to his boss’ office the next day and asked, “What degree and experience the new scientist has?”
His boss replied, “He doesn’t have any previous work experience but he will succeed in our group.”

“I hired him because we need somebody in our discovery group who is young and thinks in a different way than we think,” the research head said.
“Addy, you are 60 years old now, and I am 66 years old. It is no offense, but trying new things for us is very hard. We are a company of invention and innovation. As we become older, our brain mechanism slows us down especially for you and me to immerse in the novelty.” Addy’s boss added.

“For our department we need novelty. This is possible only with people having increased sensory sensitization who immerse, explore, and experiment,” he continuously added.

Research also shows that young people are more likely to take risks, stay on the ball, and approach new and unfamiliar things without anxiety.
At one point Addy’s boss said something very interesting that actually inspired him to hire him right off the bat.

Addy’s boss said, “I already told you, we are old now to run this innovation company through only our perspectives.”
“I asked our new employee the same conservative interview question- Where do you want to be in five years?”
He said, “I would not dream about this but I would ask myself- Where do I not want to be in five years?- I would make a list and just do that”.
During the interview he said, “New ideas and concepts are nothing more than the unusual combination of existing ideas.”
“If we are looking for a completely new invention and innovation, “right” and “wrong” are often a matter of perspective. My “right” or “my truth” is nothing but only a function of my perception,” he added.

The old way of doing things in a new way is today’s necessity and this is possible only by young fresh brains.

This is absolutely no offense for old people. We have to learn from their experiences how to be in our own lane but we have to also evolve through overtaking at the time of crisis.
Science doesn’t lie, it explores the hidden mysteries of time.
When we become older, our curiosity gradually dwindles.
We collect more experiences, we become stronger in our feelings, knowledge, and feel proud how things work.
We don’t seek novelty because we stop asking questions.
We no longer want to go into uncertain situations.
We hesitate to take advantage of “free of charge” health tests because we are more focussed on negative results.
We enjoy comfort.
We want to put all the money in bonds and treasury bills rather than stocks.
We watch the same television channel even though we have 100+ channels on our TV.
We read the same newspaper.
Our curiosity gets lost because of our similar experiences, and same patterns in life.
Ultimately we become unable to break it and our learning becomes self-stabilizing.
When we become old, there is more downside to peek, our knowledge creates certainties and they become habits, and they entrap our mental capacities.
This has serious repercussions especially for research oriented invention and innovation companies.
The only way out of this problem is, old folks have to work with young curious minds.

The most harmful tradition among all is old folks start to instruct young people to follow rules and prevent them from reading their own intuition and trust.
Old folks stop listening to the young folks because old folks feel proud with “ value the old, shun the new.”

I am not making up these statements. In 2004, discovery channel had done a study that says after age 49, curiosity dwindles.

One of my friends told me, “It took me 4 weeks of daily training to ride the bike with confidence with no accident, but for the same level of competence, it took only 9 days for my son.”
My friend is 42 years old and his son is 16 years old.
The fact is: this applies to everything.

Young minds enjoy unconventional tools, procedures, and ideas. They learn faster because their neurons connect faster in different directions which didn’t exist before.

When we see the present interview process, first thing we look for is professionalism, energy, and self-confidence.
We judge these things on academic degrees and previous work experiences.
We assume these past actions as measuring tools for success.
Most of the older interviewers don’t even look at the hobby section in interviewee’s curriculum vitae or resume.
I am not being judgemental, I’m simply reporting.

One of my friends, who is still under 30, is a very successful computer engineer in silicon valley, earns a six figure salary, and told me that we can pinpoint a smart and curious mind from the hobby section of their curriculum vitae or resume.
As he said, “This is extremely important if you are looking for a self-monitored and intellectually curious mind. Their potential talents are reflected in the hobby section of their CV and resume. Interviewer should be qualified to read that. Their degrees and past work experiences make them sincere routine employees but not curious innovative individuals.”

He told me that if the interviewee has an everyday habit of doing mediation and aerobic activity, you simply can’t ignore that. These small everyday habits as an inventor or innovator work as a lubricant for your innovation engine.

The other factor we attribute to the younger mind is that they carry many ideas and they are able to filter bad ideas faster than old minds.
As two time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling said, “If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which one to throw away.”

Young minds observe their environment like anthropologists.
This is a key to success particularly in innovation.
They are interested in people who don’t look, think, speak or act like they do themselves.
They try to get behind the thinking of the others by relentlessly asking amazing questions.

At age 30, the world’s richest man on the planet, Jeff Bezos, had a successful regular job as hedge-fund vice president, but he quitted the job and started Amazon. His mind worked as an anthropologist, an innovator mindset.

Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity at age 26.

At age 18, Blaise Pascal invented the first mechanical calculator.

At age 18, Alexander Graham Bell invented the first modern telephone.

At age 17, Robert Heft created the modern day 50 star American flag.
Remember, these are only a few drops in a sea.

Age is an important factor for invention and innovation.
Deep immersion and trying out new things, as it appears, gets harder and harder as we become older.
Because of our past history of experiences makes it harder to immerse ourselves in the novelty.
Science is clearly supporting these findings.
In the invention and innovation group, it is essential to include the younger minds.
Invention and innovation loves youth. Nurture it.

Thank you for your time.
– Yam Timsina