One of the best Straight Dopes... interesting in a mathematical kind of way... but don't worry, totally understandable if you read it over and over.
Link
Suppose you're on a game show and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Saturday, March 1, 2008
"Exception that proves the rule"
This is from The Straight Dope, and it's one of my favourite sites.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_201.html
"I've looked up citations of this saying dating back to 1664, and in every case it was used in the brain-dead manner we're accustomed to today--that is, to suggest that non-conforming cases, by the mere fact of their existence, somehow confirm or support a generalization. Obviously they do nothing of the kind. We like to think proverbs become proverbial because they're true; this one is an exception. It certainly doesn't prove the rule."
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_201.html
"I've looked up citations of this saying dating back to 1664, and in every case it was used in the brain-dead manner we're accustomed to today--that is, to suggest that non-conforming cases, by the mere fact of their existence, somehow confirm or support a generalization. Obviously they do nothing of the kind. We like to think proverbs become proverbial because they're true; this one is an exception. It certainly doesn't prove the rule."
Sunday, February 24, 2008
How can plasma cells make 2000 Immunoglobulins/sec?
I came across this astonishing figure in Kuby. It’s amazing. I don’t know about humans but in E.coli, 15 amino acids are translated per sec. Now an immunoglobulin molecule has more than 1200 amino acid residues.
Part of the answer involves the unfolded protein response. High protein synthesis requires very high activity in the ER. under high stress conditions, native proteins accumulate in the ER. Certain transmembrane proteins have receptors that detect increasing amounts of native protein accumulation and release factors which bind to these. It also secretes a large number of molecular chaperons which facilitate proper folding of the proteins.
For more information look here.
Part of the answer involves the unfolded protein response. High protein synthesis requires very high activity in the ER. under high stress conditions, native proteins accumulate in the ER. Certain transmembrane proteins have receptors that detect increasing amounts of native protein accumulation and release factors which bind to these. It also secretes a large number of molecular chaperons which facilitate proper folding of the proteins.
For more information look here.
What is a Geisha?
I was watching 'Memoirs Of A Geisha' yesterday on HBO. Long time back, I had tried to read the book too but never got through it. Everything is so subtle and understated. What troubled my curiosity was what a geisha really is? Is she just a fancy prostitute?
Wikipedia - Geisha
Wikipedia - Memoirs Of A Geisha
Wikipedia - Geisha
Wikipedia - Memoirs Of A Geisha
Friday, February 22, 2008
What this blog is about
Quantum fluctuation. Inflation. Expansion. Particle-antiparticle annihilation. Deuterium and helium production. Recombination. Galaxy formation. Turbulent fragmentation. Massive star formation. Stellar evolution. Iron production. Supernova explosion. Star formation. Planetary differentiation. Volatile gas expulsion. Molecular reproduction. Protein construction. Fermentation. Cell differentiation. Respiration. Multicellular organisms. Sexual reproduction. Evolutionary diversification. Trilobite domination. Land exploration. Comet collision. Dinosaur extinction. Mammal expansion. Homo sapiens manifestation. Language acquisition. Glaciation. Innovation. Religion. Animal domestication. Food surplus production. Inscription. Warring nations. Empire creation and destruction. Civilization. Constitution. Industrialization. World conflagrations. Fission explosions. Computerization. Space exploration. Population explosion. Superpower confrontation. Internet expansion. Resignation. Reunification. World Wide Web creation. Composition. Extrapolation.
(-taken from Eric Schulman's A Briefer History of Time)
And this blog is about snapshots of all that...
(-taken from Eric Schulman's A Briefer History of Time)
And this blog is about snapshots of all that...
Welcome
Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.
To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.
Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favoured evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely-make that miraculously-fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny change of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result-eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly-in YOU.
- Bill Bryson
A Short History Of Everything
To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.
Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favoured evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely-make that miraculously-fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny change of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result-eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly-in YOU.
- Bill Bryson
A Short History Of Everything
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