DNA amplification is one of the key DNA technologies:
- it is one of the main ways in which DNA detection can be done.
- it is the first step of Illumina sequencing, since you need multiple copies of several parts of the genome for the method to work
Like PCR, but does not require thermal cycling. Thus the "isothermal" in the name: iso means same, so "same temperature".
Not needing the thermo cycling means that the equipment needed is much smaller and cheaper it seems.
Most of these are going to be Whole-genome sequencing of some model organism:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_genome_sequencing#History lists them all. Basically th big "firsts" all happened in the 1990s and early 2000s.
- 1975 by Sanger et al.: 5 kbp of the single-stranded bacteriophage ΦX174 using Sanger's radiolabelling method
- 1981 by Sanger et al.: 17 kbp of human mitochondrial DNA via Sanger method, known as the Cambridge Reference Sequence
- 2003: Human Genome Project (3 Gbp)
The by far dominating DNA sequencing company of the late 2000's and 2010's due to having the smallest cost per base pair.
To understand how Illumina's technology works basically, watch this video: Video 1. "Illumina Sequencing by Synthesis by Illumina (2016)".
Illumina Sequencing by Synthesis by Illumina (2016)
Source. The key innovation of this method is the Bridge amplification step, which produces a large amount of identical DNA strands.
One of the things Ciro Santilli really likes, see: Linux Kernel Module Cheat.
This is especially interesting for user mode emulation.
The central theme of The Matrix (1999).
Described at: www.sligocki.com/2022/06/10/ctl.html
Basically everything that applies to the blogs section also applies here, but university lecture notes are so important to us that they deserve a bit more talk.
It is arguable that this is currently the best way to learn any university subject, and that it can already be used to learn any subject.
We basically just want to make the process more efficient and enjoyable, by making it easier:
One major problem with lecture notes is that, as the name suggests, they are merely a complement to the lecture, and don't contain enough detail for you to really learn solely from them without watching the lecture.
The only texts that generally teach in enough depth are actual books, which are almost always commercial.
So in a sense, this project can be seen as a path to upgrade free lecture notes into full blown free books, from which you can learn from scratch without any external material.
And a major way in which we believe this can be done is through the reuse of sections of lecture notes by from other universities, which greatly reduces the useless effort of writing things from scratch.
The intended mental picture is clear: the topics feature docs.ourbigbook.com/#ourbigbook-web-topics will is intended to act as the missing horizontal topic integration across lecture notes of specific universities, e.g:
MIT calculus course UCLA calculus course
* Calculus <---> * Calculus
* Limit <---> * Limit
* Limit of a function
* Limit of a series <---> * Limit of a series
* Derivative <---> * Derivative
* L'Hôpital's rule
* Integral <---> * Integral
Example topics page of OurBigBook.com
. One important advantage of lecture notes is that since they are written by the teacher, they should match exactly what "students are supposed to learn to get good grades", which unfortunately is a major motivation for student's learning weather we want it or not.
One big open question for this project is to what extent notes written for lectures at one university will be relevant to the lectures at another university?
Is it possible to write notes in a way that they are naturally reusable?
It is our gut feeling that this is possible. But it almost certainly requires an small intentional effort on the part of authors.
The question then becomes whether the "become famous by getting your content viewed in other universities" factor is strong enough to attract users.
And we believe that it might, it just might be.
Notable mentions:
Other notable people that are likely also awesome but Ciro has less familiarity with their contributions:
- Dwayne Richard Hipp from SQLite
- Daniel Stenberg from cURL
- Michael Niedermayer also from FFmpeg. ikaruga.co.uk/~snacky/mn.html highlights his brutal directness and efficiency, and sometimes sense of humour
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 2. You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either OurBigBook.com or as a static website.
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally. Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact