Super-resolution microscopy Updated 2025-07-16
Super-resolution means resolution beyond the diffraction limit.
First you shine a lot of light which saturates most fluorophores, leaving very few active.
They you can observe fluorophores firing one by one. Their exact position is a bit stochastic and beyond the diffraction limit, but so long as there aren't to many in close proximity, you can wait for it to fire a bunch of times, and the center of the Gaussian is the actual location.
From this we see that super-resolution microscopy is basically a space-time tradeoff: the more time we wait, the better spacial resolution we get. But we can't do it if things are moving too fast in the sample.
Tradeoff with cryoEM: you get to see things moving in live cell. Electron microscopy fully kills cells, so you have no chance of seeing anything that moves ever.
Caveats:
  • initial illumination to saturate most fluorophores I think can still kill cells, things get harder the less light you put in. So it's not like you don't kill things at all necessarily, you just get a chance not to
  • the presence fluorophore disturbs the system slightly, and is not at the same Exact location of the protein of interest
Maser Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Principles of the Optical Maser by Bell Labs
. Source. Date: 1963.
Netflix Updated 2025-07-16
Why are there two sexes? Updated 2025-07-16
It is not obvious why there have to be two sexes.
Sex itself is obvious: by mixing genes we increase variability.
But having two sexes rather than just being able to reproduce with anyone reduces the possible mating pool by half!
Go (programming language) Updated 2025-07-16
Likely a good replacement for Python. If the ecosystem gets there, Ciro Santilli would gladly use it more.
L Updated 2025-07-16
O Updated 2025-07-16
Surjective function Updated 2025-07-16
Mnemonic: sur means over. So we are going over the codomain, and covering it entirely.
Asset bundler Updated 2025-07-16
In order to make websites efficient and portable, a lot of transpilation is needed.
Bipedalism Updated 2025-07-16

Unlisted articles are being shown, click here to show only listed articles.