gilleain

52 ms·

751.
by gilleain 10y ago
I presume the idea is that of 'the other half' of evolution - that is, the spontaneous formation of order through simple physical processes coupled to symmetry breaking. Of course it can be easy to over-do the analogies between th
752.
by gilleain 10y ago
For proteins, at least, there is a lower limit on sequence length below which it is less likely to form a folded structure. Most proteins are around 200-250 amino acids long (see http://www.umich.edu/~zhanglab/publicati
753.
by gilleain 10y ago
Well no, but I remember a long time ago reading some theory about "red indians" having atomic weapons and it was somehow linked to ORME ( http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/ORMUS ) - absolutely crazy, yet entertainin
754.
by gilleain 10y ago
Make it clearer WHY so called 'homework questions' are not allowed and maybe come up with a different terminology. I see so many questioners get annoyed and say "But it's not homeowrk!!!" - it may not literally be h
755.
by gilleain 10y ago
What does sharing a common element have to do with anything? They are allotropes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_carbon ) - diamond, graphite, fullerenes, SWNT, etc all have very different properties.
756.
by gilleain 11y ago
Maybe the reasoning is : "get his partner to agree to the idea of him doing 80 hour weeks"...
757.
by gilleain 11y ago
That would be a protein that catalyses its own creation from parts (amino acids) rather than prions which catalyse a change in shape. There is a paper roughly in this area (polyphosphates and peptides in an autocatalytic cycle) here : http
758.
by gilleain 11y ago
Maybe it wasn't clear. The transformation A(B) is one where "A" catalyses a change in fold of "B".
759.
by gilleain 11y ago
Well, I don't know of any protein folding examples, but it seems a lot like an "autocatalytic cycle" which is an interesting part of origin-of-life theories. Stuart Kauffman wrote some things about this, but here is a counter
760.
by gilleain 11y ago
What do you mean by "looping multiple-step reaction"? If prions are "A'(A)->A'", do you mean "A'(B)->B', B'(A)->A'"? (Where A/A' are different forms of the same
761.
by gilleain 11y ago
You can break it down further into two separate surprises: 1) The normal form (PrPc) is mostly helical, while the diseased form (PrPsc) is mostly beta-sheet. 2) PrPsc catalyses the switch from helix to sheet. I find the first to be more sur
762.
by gilleain 11y ago
> as if US and European agribusiness hasn't done similar in countless other countries with similar brutality! That's the entire point of the article! It's saying that when (inevitably) US/EU business do terrible thi
763.
by gilleain 11y ago
Related : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10190975
764.
by gilleain 11y ago
It's hard for lifts to understand as well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avp9aUkM5g0
765.
by gilleain 11y ago
Not only unreasonable, but also fairly unwise to be asking a Belfast cab driver if he's a member of the IRA.
766.
by gilleain 11y ago
Some of it is definitely bullshit. From the article: >“Organic cold-pressed juice is rainwater filtered through the soil and the roots and the stems and the plants,” he said. “You extract the water molecules, the chlorophyll, the anthocy
767.
by gilleain 11y ago
I misremembered Albert-László Barabási for Laszlo Babai - I was wondering why you were unimpressed! Yes, scale-free networks (and so on, and so on), are oversold. Is his work really that bad though?
768.
by gilleain 11y ago
Catching all the pointzz (it also has badges!!) can be a problem. Especially on SO itself, there can be a race to answer a question, which means the quality of the answers suffers sometimes. Difficult questions really don't work well,
769.
by gilleain 11y ago
Totally agree that SO has little community (or quite a hostile one, if any) but that may be because it is a victim of its own success. I see the same thing happening in other stack-exchange sites, sadly. The underlying problem may be the gr
770.
by gilleain 11y ago
Hell no.
771.
by gilleain 11y ago
If you click on a leaf node, it walks the graph, expanding as it goes. Managed to find a triangle at one point. I wonder what the edges really are - some similarity measure, but what exactly?
772.
by gilleain 11y ago
Er, perhaps. InChI is already based on nAUTy, which even this work acknowledges as the fastest general approach (except for saucy, bliss, etc). So there are no implications of László Babai that have an impact on chemistry, AFAICT.
773.
by gilleain 11y ago
The part of the story that Snopes marks false is its use in the US : > While burundanga is a frightening drug, in all our searching for information on it we failed to come across news articles about its being used in the U.S. The regio
774.
by gilleain 11y ago
A little harsh, but yes in general scientists don't write great code or use the right tooling. The reason is simple : the purpose of science is not to write code but to write papers . That's not _at all_ to say this state of affa
775.
by gilleain 11y ago
> Vitamin C is the most effective virus killer in large doses if you time it right. Which viruses? All viruses? With what mechanism? This is nothing more than molecular fanboyism. Nothing is a panacea.
776.
by gilleain 11y ago
They really aren't doing themselves any favours here: 'Peeple co-founder Julia Cordray told the BBC: "With any new concept there is naturally fear. "When the people found out that the Earth was round instead of flat and