from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" to Era's "The Mass"

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

I was Googling something about "Die Waffen Schutzstaffel" SS, the Armed Protective Squadron of Nazi Germany. I jumped to the Chinese Wikipedia page about SS. They mentioned a song, which was misunderstood as the song of No.1 Panzerkorp (panzer corp) of SS in World War II. The Chinese wikipedia page argues it's actually "The Mass" by French composer Eric Lévi.

So I did some more Googling. The "truth" is that Eric Levi is a member of a French band called "Era". Era release a CD in 2003 called "The Mass", which is also the name of the first song in that CD. The rhythm is from "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (O Fortuna)", which is the most famous movement in "Carmina Burana", a famous composition of Carl Orff.

So who made the lyrics? Well, Carmina Burana, is a manuscript collection of poems, found in 1803 in the Bavarian monastery in Germany. --And, those manuscript was written hundreds of years ago...So, we don't know who wrote those lyrics.

Then Carl Orff compose rhythm for those poems. And then, at the year 2003, the band Era picked the most famous movement of Carmina Burana and mixed it with some rock stuff. Then, we have "The Mass".

I went to the Amazon page of this CD and confirmed this. In track listings, it said " 1. The Mass - Era, Orff, Carl". So Era is a good band. They still put the name of Carl Orff on it.

This is absolutely a good music. If you are bored by your homework or course project, this music will definitely wake you up.

Here is a YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-WnjVUBDbs


Here is another music that will wake you up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSKL5E3zSjs
The Ride of Valkyries, the beginning of Act III of Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), part II of Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), by Richard Wagner


PS: Music is a must-have of my life. I guess, one reason I have never had a girlfriend when I was in China (well, I am still a single in the US), is partially because Asian girls really do not like music. Most Asian girls think songs I like are awful, including Carmina Burana. I believe, most music I like has been or will have been famous around the world for centuries. You know Beethoven? You know Mozart? And Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" and Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" are frequently used in movies(such as "Apocalypse Now" or "Lord of the War"), commercials and re-composed by current bands. One day, a non-Asian girl said to me "I know you like Rammstein". I said, "how do you know?" She said because one day when she came to my office, my computer was playing the famous "Amerika" of Rammstein - well, don't tell me you don't know this band. Yup, I like heavy metal (like Rammstein or Die Prinzen) and New Age music(like Yanni). That's a driven reason for me to study German - I can at least understand the name of those works, from classical music to heavy metal music.

Further reading:
Carmina Burana: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmina_Burana
Carmina Burana, composed by Orff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmina_Burana_(Orff)
Era： http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Era_(musical_project)
Carl Orff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_orff
Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ring_des_Nibelungen
Walkürenritt(Ride of the Valkyries):http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ride_of_the_Valkyries

Giving thanks to our God in Thanksgiving

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

Almost 400 years ago, 102 people, prosecuted in England, left their country on a boat called Mayflower. People in their country did not like them and they were called Separatists, only because they intent to clean up the Catholic influence in the Church of England and they wanted to interpreter the Bible in their way rather than the way of the King of England. They came to the new land in a dream, a freedom dream.

Squanto, an native American taught them how to live in this new land. The next year, they had a harvest. So they gathered together to thank the God, because the reason they came the new land is to seek the freedom of Christianity.

400 years after that time, immigrants are still coming to the new land, which is now known as the United States of America. In the year 2007, 1.17 million people became the naturalized citizens of the US. No matter how poorly they once lived in their countries, no matter how badly they were treated in their countries, no matter how difficult for them to maintain their business, the American dream guided them to the new land, the “Promised land”, “the land flowing with milk and honey”, the land of hope, justice and opportunity.

God guided them to the new land and God also blessed them on this new land, as God blessed the Pilgrims to this land 400 years ago. No social connections, no money, nothing they processed in their own countries, how could new immigrants survive in the new land? The answer is the reason the coming holiday, the Thanksgiving Day. It's the God, who let us live well on this new land and fulfill our American Dreams.

So God, thank you. Thank you for guiding me to the new continent. Thank you for blessing my study and research after my arrival to the new continent. You, O Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light (Psalm 18:28) Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. (Isaiah 40:31) Thanks for giving me the gift and chance to study science and engineering to understand the splendid world you created and benefit people for wonderful lives through my work. The more investigation I do, the more I firmly believe the existence of You. So I pray to you for more good luck on my academic career. Lord, thank you for your grace that I have been saved by believing in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. There are many people out there who still have never heard your gospel. And because your spirit did not enter their hearts, so many horrible things are happening every day. Please use me and send me to the people who need you.

Lord, I also want to pray for a girl and I guess you know who she is. She studies so hard that she doesn't have enough sleep everyday. She has some health issues. So, please bless her to be healthy and happy to fulfill her dreams.

Finally, thanks God for giving us your one and only Son to wash away our sin. Thanks for giving us the chance to not be separated from you any more.

In the name of Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.

On the power of molecular computing

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

Eric You Hsu, Stephen Gang Wu and I spent few hours tonight to go thru these papers about DNA computing. You can see the property of DNA molecules to do some fancy computing stuff. Looks like DNA computing has some potential on logical constraint problems, many of which are NP-complete programs. Thus, they are tough to computer scientists.

Looks like they are all focus on SAT problems. We are look forward to some better ideas.

Few weeks ago at MIT, when I was at iGem 2008, I saw a fancy research conducted by a joint group in Missouri. They implemented the hash algorithm by controlling the expression of fluorescent genes. I talked to them and wanna do more investigation on this topic.

Prolog approach to DNA computing, IEEE Conference on Evolution Computer, 1997 (CEC'97)
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=592304

Using DNA to solve NP-complete problems, Science, 1995
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dabo/bio-comp/satgen.ps

Speeding up computations via molecular biology, university draft
ftp://ftp.cs.princeton.edu/pub/people/rjl/bio.ps

Molecular computation of solutions to combinatorial problems, Science, 1994
http://www.usc.edu/dept/molecular-science/papers/adleman-science.pdf

Solution of a 20-Variable 3-SAT Problem on a DNA Computer, Science, 2002
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1069528v1

DNA computing using single-molecule hybridization detection, Nucleic Acids Research 2004
http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/32/17/4962

Demonstration of a universal surface DNA computer, Nucleic Acids Research, 2004
http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/32/10/3115

DNA molecule provides a computing machine with both data and fuel, PNAS, 2003
http://www.pnas.org/content/100/5/2191.abstract

Stochastic computing with biomolecular automata, PNAS, 2004
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/27/9960.abstract

Good Encodings for DNA-based Solutions to Combinatorial Problems
http://books.google.com/books?id=2Bv8zVzxzYIC&pg=PA247&lpg=PA247&dq=Good...

Molecular computation: RNA solutions to chess problems, PNAS, 2000
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/4/1385.full

An autonomous molecular computer for logical control of gene expression, Nature, 2004
www.weizmann.ac.il/mathusers/udi/papers/automoleculcomp_nat04.pdf

Obama won! The spring for research, education, heathcare and technology

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

Obama finally won! I am very excited. I don't wanna write verbose words but list some simple reasons I like him.

He will try to maintain the leading position of United States in technology by

1. Doubling federal funds for basic research
2. Investing in University-based research
3. Making science and math education a national priority
4. Making the R&D tax credit permanent
   

Indeed, "free college" and "affordable healthcare" will bring much more undergraduates and much larger medical electronic market. I need them, for my future job, a university professor with a small high-tech company.

So, I am so happy he is the new president.