316 karma · joined January 1, 2012
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/30...
"If the sample contains the RNA of the Zika virus, the test area turns purple."
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-05/uot-rld05061...
SHERLOCK is an evolution of CRISPR technology, which others use to make precise edits in genetic code. SHERLOCK can detect the unique genetic fingerprints of virtually any DNA or RNA sequence in any organism or pathogen. Developed by our founders and licensed exclusively from the Broad Institute, SHERLOCK is a method for single molecule detection of nucleic acid targets and stands for Specific High Sensitivity Enzymatic Reporter unLOCKing. It works by amplifying genetic sequences and programming a CRISPR molecule to detect the presence of a specific genetic signature in a sample, which can also be quantified. When it finds those signatures, the CRISPR enzyme is activated and releases a robust signal. This signal can be adapted to work on a simple paper strip test, in laboratory equipment, or to provide an electrochemical readout that can be read with a mobile phone."
"Mologic said it will invest a part of an expansion to its $4.9m grant from the Bill and Melinda-Gates Foundation to finance access to Sherlock's INSPECTR™ platform, which the Cambridge-based US company licences earlier this year from the Wyss Institute.
Under the agreement, Mologic will provide its lateral flow-based platform CARD, which has been demonstrated to provide a 1,000-fold improvement in sensitivity over current technology, and its immunoassay platform ELTABA for enzyme activity detection. Sherlock Bioscience will provide its synthetic biology-based INSPECTR™ platform, which consists of a DNA hybridization-based sensor that can be easily programmed to detect target nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) with single base pair specificity, coupled with a paper-based synthetic gene network that translates the sensor’s detection into a bioluminescent signal that is easily visualised or captured on instant film. Crucially, this process can be done at room temperature and does not require any instrumentation."
https://european-biotechnology.com/up-to-date/latest-news/ne...
Two small things I have loved when I came across them:
5 Min Physics from UQ (PHYS1171) https://teaching.smp.uq.edu.au/fiveminutephysics/index.html#...
Newton's cannon. Look at its beautifully simple source code - one short html + javascript file (I see your javascript code for orbital motion is similarly easy to follow.) https://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/html5/NewtonsCannon4.htm...
Something I was going to further explore, if I had had to do more physics tutoring/teaching: https://www.geogebra.org/m/M4nBYbbG#material/fHHvnhjm
The Italians are obviously overwhelmed: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-h...
The Germans would be my best guess for methodical data collection https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/09/people-shed-high-levels-... But the South Koreans have done the most tests of their population.
Dennis Carroll points out that addressing the COVID-19 disease requires international cooperation: nautil.us/issue/83/intelligence/the-man-who-saw-the-pandemic-coming
One guy has been collecting lots of resources, including journal articles: https://virus.travel/cs
Note:
Official names have been announced for the virus responsible for COVID-19 (previously known as “2019 novel coronavirus”) and the disease it causes. The official names are:
Disease
coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
Virus
severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...
Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive. Now it’s unbearable.
By Jamal Khashoggi September 18, 2017
When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?
With young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s rise to power, he promised an embrace of social and economic reform. He spoke of making our country more open and tolerant and promised that he would address the things that hold back our progress, such as the ban on women driving.
But all I see now is the recent wave of arrests. Last week, about 30 people were reportedly rounded up by authorities, ahead of the crown prince’s ascension to the throne. Some of the arrested are good friends of mine, and the effort represents the public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to express opinions contrary to those of my country’s leadership. The scene was quite dramatic as masked security men stormed houses with cameras, filming everything and confiscating papers, books and computers. The arrested are accused of being recipients of Qatari money and part of a grand Qatari-backed conspiracy. Several others, myself included, are in self-exile and could face arrest upon returning home.
It anguishes me to speak with other Saudi friends in Istanbul and London who are also in self-exile. There are at least seven of us — are we going to be the core of a Saudi diaspora? We spend endless hours on the phone trying to understand this wave of arrests that have included my friend, businessman and thoughtful Twitter personality Essam Al-Zamil. It was just last Tuesday that he returned home from the United States, having been part of an official Saudi delegation. That is how breathtakingly fast you can fall out of favor with Saudi Arabia. It is all quite shocking. But this has not been business as usual in my country.
In 2003 and again in 2010, I was fired from my job as editor in chief of a “progressive” paper, Al-Watan. During the years in between, I served as media adviser to Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to Britain and then the United States. Perhaps it seems odd to be fired by the government and then serve it abroad. Yet that is truly the Saudi paradox. In the starkest terms, Saudi Arabia is trying to moderate the extreme viewpoints of both liberal reformers and conservative clerics. And the arrests span that spectrum.
Why would this climate of fear and intimidation be so prevalent when a young, charismatic leader is promising long-awaited reforms to spur economic growth and diversify our economy? The crown prince is popular, and his reform plan was supported by most of the 30 clerics, writers and social media superstars who were rounded up in the middle of the night.
In recent months, Saudi Arabia has instituted several new and extreme policies, from full-throated opposition of Islamists to encouraging citizens to name others to a government blacklist. Those arrested were on that list. Columnists close to the Saudi leadership repeatedly demanded that Islamists be “eradicated.” It’s no secret that the crown prince despises the Muslim Brotherhood, yet it is actually a strange contradiction to identify a person as a Muslim Brotherhood activist. I always found it ironic when a Saudi official bashes Islamists, given that Saudi Arabia is the mother of all political Islam — and even describes itself as an Islamic state in its “ Higher Law.” (We avoid the term “constitution” because of its secular interpretation and often say that the Koran is our constitution.)
Regardless of who is being targeted, this is not what Saudi Arabia needs right now. We are going through a major economic transformation that is supported by the people, a transformation that will free us from total dependence on oil and restore a culture of work and production. This is a very painful process. Mohammed bin Salman is best served by encouraging constructive, diverse opinions from public figures such as Essam and other economists, clerics, intellectuals and business people who have instead been swept up in these arrests.
My friends and I living abroad feel helpless. We want our country to thrive and to see the 2030 vision realized. We are not opposed to our government and care deeply about Saudi Arabia. It is the only home we know or want. Yet we are the enemy. Under pressure from my government, the publisher of one of the most widely read Arabic dailies, Al-Hayat, canceled my column. The government banned me from Twitter when I cautioned against an overly enthusiastic embrace of then-President-elect Donald Trump. So I spent six months silent, reflecting on the state of my country and the stark choices before me.
It was painful for me several years ago when several friends were arrested. I said nothing. I didn’t want to lose my job or my freedom. I worried about my family.
I have made a different choice now. I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZFhjMQrVts
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Key points: People are spreading the virus before they start to show symptoms. Real number of cases is 10 times known cases. So if you think there are 100 cases in the country there are actually 1000, and, with a doubling time of 6 days, in a month's time there will be about 20 000, and on it goes.
Kids, in particular, fail to show symptoms and are infecting their elders.
This is one of the real dilemmas. Do we send them home from school, to reduce the kid-to-kid infection rate? Also, they need to stay away from their grandparents. But that will then require nurses with kids to be home to look after them. Who will then do the required testing and nursing in the health system?
We all have to practise infection control:
"The current scientific consensus is that this virus can be spread within 2 meters (6 feet) if somebody coughs. Otherwise, the droplets fall to the ground and don’t infect you.
The worst infection then becomes through surfaces: The virus survives for up to 9 days on different surfaces such as metal, ceramics and plastics. That means things like doorknobs, tables, or elevator buttons can be terrible infection vectors.
The only way to truly reduce that is with social distancing: Keeping people home as much as possible, for as long as possible until this recedes."
Soap, hand sanitiser and bleach destroy viruses.
"As Micfo amassed VPN clients using the illegitimately-obtained IP addresses, a lot of traffic — some being criminal — filed through its network without a trace, according to government subpoenas directed at Micfo and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Golestan and Micfo are not charged with being part of or even aware of illegal activity transmitted via VPNs across Micfo’s servers. The DOJ charged him and the company with “defrauding the internet registry to obtain the IP addresses over a period of several years.”
Prosecutors said Golestan’s alleged scheme was valued at $14 million, which was based on the government’s estimated value of between $13 and $19 for each address in the secondary market, according to the court complaint.
Born in Iran, Golestan, 36, started Micfo in 1999 in the bedroom of his childhood home in Dubai before emigrating to the U.S." https://www.pymnts.com/innovation/2020/secure-smart-cities-c...
As to whether you might consider working in the field of bioinformatics, I can only pass on a comment from a researcher in the field. She says that they are being "swamped with data". Lots of data, but a lack of computer nerds to work on it.
PS I also noticed the reference to post-translational modification in one of your comments. This is one of the factors that makes for the amazing variety in protein/enzyme functioning. Humans have about 20 000 genes to encode about 75 000 different enzymes, plus a multitude of structural, storage, hormonal, etc. proteins. So you can see that translation of the gene is only the beginning of the story; post-translational modifications are needed. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/posttransl... It's an unlimited area of study - one I stepped out of and wish I had stayed in. Of course, to make any sense of a complex system, one has to concentrate on a small part of it. Focus on what takes your interest (and you can get paid for).
Examples:
Was it to do with climate change? Check the emails to my sister.
Was it some geeky thing? Check the emails to my brother.
Was it to do with teaching? Check the hyperlinks list that I created in MS Word (Outline view).
Was it ego-boosting? Check my HN comments.
Was it to do with other interests, such as shares, bridge, Twitch, solar, …? Check my Chrome folders.
Was it political, e.g. Trump? Check my MS Edge browser bookmarks.
Was it software related? Check my Facebook "Saved" list.
Was it biology-themed? Check my Facebook posts.
Is it a link needed daily? Make it a shortcut on my Edge/Chrome start-up page.
This gives a number of categories that are easily remembered, because of the emotional connections, and can be readily searched.
Lastly, I mostly use Chrome, because if I don't explicitly save a recent interest, I can quickly find it with Chrome's History (Ctrl-H).
For others looking for text-based programming for kids, there is SmallBasic https://smallbasic-publicwebsite.azurewebsites.net/
And another blocky course is https://studio.code.org/s/express-2019 (You can even toggle to show javascript.)
https://twitter.com/hashtag/InternetForIran?src=hashtag_clic...
"With the sexes segregated at school and boys and girls discouraged from socialising together, trying to get to know members of the opposite sex is a huge preoccupation for Iranian teenagers. They hang around shopping malls, in cafes and parks, parade up and down boulevards and spend lots of time cruising around in cars."[0]
I once saw a TV doc on life in Iran. The night-time cruising reminded me a lot of the film "American Graffiti". I imagine Iranian youth would not be happy with any increase in the price of fuel.
I take your point though that widespread protests signal more than just the discontent of youth.
[0]https://www.lonelyplanet.com/iran/background/other-features/...
"According to foreign-based economist Mehrdad Seyed Asgari in an article on Radio Farda's Persian website, the price of one liter of gasoline in Iran is currently about 8 cents while the price in the destination of smuggled fuel in Turkey, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistanis, Iraq, Afghanistan and Armenia is at least 1.23 US dollar. This means that every liter of smuggled fuel brings in a profit of more than a dollar.
The astonishingly low gasoline price in Iran is because the government subsidizes more than 90 percent of the cost; just the opposite of what many other countries do when they heavily tax fuels to reduce consumption.
The devaluation of the Iranian currency in the past one year has made gasoline at least three times cheaper in dollars. That has made smuggling even a more profitable venture."
Another aspect is that the subsidised price of fuel benefits the upper-middle class:
"Another problem is that this subsidy comes out of the country’s wealth but mainly benefits those who have a car and can afford to drive a lot. The richest 10 percent of the Iranian population benefits from the subsidy 11 times more than the poorest ten percent.
In 2016, 43 percent of Iranian families had gasoline fuelled cars. The other 53 percent do not own a car, so they do not benefit from the gasoline subsidy. The shocking reality is that the richest urban families own at least one car while only one percent of the poorest rural families have a vehicle."
If the aim of the price increase is to redistribute wealth, who is doing the protesting? (Facetiously, I suggest that it might be privileged youth who go cruising the streets at night.)
https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-fuel-gasoline-smuggling-san...
These are some of the reasons I left science: (1) Maybe I was too lazy - I certainly prefered to play bridge at night rather than spend my nights in the lab, in contrast to some of the others. (2) I didn't publish enough - I wanted to get the whole picture before I published and couldn't think about how to breakdown my computer modelling into smaller publishable chunks. (3) I was discouraged with how long projects took - my penultimate project took 5 years. (4) My last project working off someone else's grant money was so "boring" I lost my motivation for science. (5) I couldn't face writing grant proposals with the limited (20%) success rate.
Do I miss the work? Yes, every day. More and more, one can see that science is the future.
What could have been done differently to help scientists? Beginning scientists need to be provided with some guide about how to develop the personal (networking) skills, perseverance skills and publishing skills needed to succeed. For instance, I needed to continues to seek guidance when I struck one particular publishing block. If I had gone again to my mentor, who had a great publication record, I am sure he would have got me over my roadblock.
What was the biggest mistake of my career? I think the biggest error was not taking advantage of my lucky breaks. I had some great breaks: a particular science teacher at school, a very helpful PhD supervisor, and a world-first computer modelling project in the US. I know it sounds bizarre, but I thought those lucky breaks were an unfair advantage. I think I had to realise that life is going to throw both good luck and bad luck one's way and you have to make the most of the lucky breaks.
Why my interest? I taught Maths (in English) in Zhengzhou for a couple of years and constantly wondered where my students could find employment, so I recently searched online and found these articles about the iPhone assembly plant there. Some things I learnt: assembling iPhones is boringly repetitive, basically just install the same one screw all day, so workers only last about a year; the impetus came from Terry Gou, the Taiwanese billionaire founder of Foxconn; and, in the past, to be purchased by the Chinese, such "foreign goods" had to be shipped to Hong Kong, then turned around and imported back into China, whereas Foxconn negotiated virtual export/import at the touch of a button. The iPhone story, by putting my former Zhengzhou students in the "centre" of the US, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong tensions, made those tensions more "engaging" for me.
And yes, I am concerned about the plight of the Uighurs. I think the repression of that group is directly linked to the 2014 knife killings at Kunming railway station, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack. Immediately after that attack, metal detecters were set up at railway stations in Zhengzhou. And I noticed some Muslim businesses disappearing from the streets.