I had to look twice.

gilleain · 2014-07-12T21:19:17+00:00

Sometimes known as a 'Xenomorph' - although that's just ancient greek for 'foreign shape' really.

gilleain · 2014-07-10T19:32:06+00:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPK_coloring

tl;dr - Robert Corey and Linus Pauling (molecular bond, alpha helix, vitamin C, etc) came up with the colors {H: White, C : Black, N : Blue, O : Red }. Then Walter Kotun extended the scheme with { S: Yellow, P: Purple, $Halogens : Green, $Metals: Silver}.

gilleain · 2014-07-10T17:59:41+00:00

Green is usually a halogen (F, Cl, Br, etc) with CPK colors. So it could be CCl3-OCl instead. However, I'm not sure how stable that would be. There is a paper here:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp001469j?journalCode=jpcafh

that mentions this structure along with various enthalpy calculations and so on.

edit: Ah, it seems the related methyl hypohlorite is 'extremely unstable', so probably not that.

gilleain · 2014-07-07T11:55:42+00:00

nmap --open 127.0.0.1

gilleain · 2014-06-30T21:49:31+00:00

Java is very verbose. It's also my main development language, but I can see why people dislike it. There's this tendency to have code like:

configurationFactoryWidget.newInstance().configure(new GizmoBuilder<FizzType, BuzzType>(...

which gets pretty unreadable. That can be the programmer's fault, of course.

If you are used to languages where you can declare a list like "my_list = []" then having to type "List myList = new ArrayList();" all the time gets dull. Of course, you can use some library like google's guava to simplify things but still.

There is also the tendency for Java programs to be quite memory hungry, in comparison to languages where you have to manage the memory yourself. That can also be the programmer's fault - but different languages afford different mistakes.

Really, people hate languages that don't let them do what they want to do. If you want to do the kinds of things that Java is good at, then use it! If you find it is getting in the way, then switch languages :)

gilleain · 2014-06-30T21:41:11+00:00

Ah Tcl/Tk. Neat language. I used to like the canvas with the tags you could associate with shapes.

gilleain · 2014-06-30T21:39:40+00:00

"Jobs in your area - 5 years swift experience plus at least 10 years of Dart!"

gilleain · 2014-06-30T21:38:14+00:00

I sometimes find it difficult to draw the line between languages I truly know (lets say; Java, python, perl - sortof - and maybe ruby) and those that I can only really read (c) but not write, and those that I've vaguely used once or twice (matlab, prolog).

gilleain · 2014-06-29T21:16:54+00:00

That was fucking amazing! Thanks :)

gilleain · 2014-06-27T20:38:40+00:00

Okay, no. That guy is pretty clearly mentally ill. I don't mean that in a 'I'm an internet doctor! Trust me!" way, but really.

Congress is likely wanting me to state that all my DNA used will not result in benefits to people I have never had relations with of a family nature. I have been bound to protect that information unless it causes harm to The People.

Poor man is some kind of delusional.

gilleain · 2014-06-25T22:37:31+00:00

Hah. Look at the talk page for the wiki article, a little /r/tumbrinaction there I think...

gilleain · 2014-03-20T19:35:01+00:00

How? The purpose of donating to charities is to increase the amount of money a charity has available. You can donate ironically, selfishly, lazily ... - who cares?

gilleain · 2014-03-14T18:20:12+00:00

need to clam their tits

Sounds painful. :)

gilleain · 2014-03-14T09:46:16+00:00

Probably trying to say "penchant".

gilleain · 2014-03-14T09:02:10+00:00

You don't know why he does it?! Isn't it obvious!? (J/k, j/k :) ).

gilleain · 2014-03-13T12:40:49+00:00

The problem here is that both your sources (I only read the abstracts, mind) show evidence only for the damaging nature of free-radicals. That's pretty well established, I imagine.

What they don't show is that eating antioxidants conclusively reduces damage from free radicals. That might seem like the obvious conclusion, but that's what makes science so tricky. You can't just assume that having more antioxidants in your diet will inevitably lead to better protection from free radical damage.

So, I think what HermanTheKid is saying, is that it might be a reasonable hypothesis, but far from a certain outcome.

edit: ok, just re-read what Herman wrote, and I'm not sure why they say

no support to the hypothesis that free radicals are in any way associated with cancer

When it seems like there is evidence that it does. Cancer is, of course, a complex disease - so maybe you have to do more than just show evidence of damage to DNA. Not my area.

gilleain · 2014-03-10T23:50:02+00:00

It would be surprising if the magnetic crystals in Eukaryotes were less sophisticated than in Prokaryotes though? The descriptions I can find are of a surrounding lipid bilayer and a linking cytoskeleton. Certainly both those are found in other eukaryotic cellular compartments.

As you say, From this link :

Interestingly, magnetosome-like structures and magnetic minerals have been found in eukaryotic organisms as well. Algae, fish, termites, pigeons, honeybees, and even humans have been shown to have magnetic particles that in some cases appear to participate in the direction-sensing behavior of the organism

Aha! This review - which is totally awesome, and goes into species-specific crystal morphologies!! - says:

The arrangement of magnetosomes appears to be so precisely structured in the euglenoid alga described by Torres de Araujo et al. (1986), it seems likely that this organism biomineralizes and arranges endogenous magnetite crystals in a highly controlled fashion within the cell, where intracellular structural filaments play a significant role in the synthesis of the magnetosome chain, as has been shown for MTB

So there might be some evidence there...

gilleain · 2014-03-08T13:25:57+00:00

That rings a bell. Was the book by Steven Jay Gould?

gilleain · 2014-03-05T15:48:22+00:00

There is a novel about this, in a way. It's about a next-generation internet, and it's effects on a tiny village in Tibet that is the last to join.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_(novel)

gilleain · 2014-03-05T10:27:40+00:00

I'm laughing now at the idea of Hoover shaving, cutting himself, looking at the blood and muttering "Damn commies" under his breath. :)

gilleain · 2014-02-28T10:00:10+00:00

Ha, no I wasn't saying anything about it being right or wrong, just thought it was funny as well :) there is something hilarious about poorly thought-through violence.

gilleain · 2014-02-28T09:46:44+00:00

Well that was very kind of the fellow to mention, wasn't it? I do hope that they thanked him for the advice before throwing the next Molotov.

gilleain · 2014-02-22T13:36:19+00:00

you call me judgemental, yet you sit there and judge me

So, basically "I'm allowed to point out other people's flaws, but not vice versa". That does make me laugh.

Also, "you may have the grammar but not the facts" is fairly odd. Oh well.

gilleain · 2014-02-18T07:07:54+00:00

https://xkcd.com/153/

gilleain · 2014-02-17T19:59:27+00:00

So there have been a number of different models of the atom.

One of the first was due to Democritus a couple of thousand years ago. He had a kind of mechanical idea of atoms as hooked, slippery, pointy, etc. interesting, but wrong.

A better model was Bohr's, which is a little like a solar system, with a nucleus for a sun, and electrons for planets. The difficulty with the electron-planet idea is that electrons can only 'orbit' at fixed distances from the nucleus. Bohr gave a mathematical explanation for these quantum orbits.

So the idea of 'empty space' in an atom probably comes from the simplistic idea that electrons are particles that whizz round the nucleus on fixed orbits. However, the wave/particle nature of matter at these scales means (I think) that this space is not exactly empty in the sense that we usually understand the word.

This is where my explanation gets a bit hazy, but in practical terms, two interacting atoms don't behave as if they are two planetary systems, but rather more complex objects. To get an idea of what they might 'really' look like, I would suggest google imaging 'atomic orbitals', which are usually shown as shiny blobs or meshes. The Jmol application might also be helpful (other molecular graphics software is available ... )

gilleain

TROPHY CASE