DNA detection Updated +Created
DNA detection means determining if a specific DNA sequence is present in a sample.
This can be used to detect if a given species of microorganism is present in a sample, and is therefore a widely used diagnostics technique to see if someone is infected with a virus.
You could of course do full DNA Sequencing to see everything that is there, but since it is as a more generic procedure, sequencing is more expensive and slow.
The alternative is to use a DNA amplification technique.
DNA microarray Updated +Created
Can be seen as a cheap form of DNA sequencing that only test for a few hits. Some major applications:
DNA repair Updated +Created
DNA sequencing milestone Updated +Created
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.
NIST Atomic Spectra Database Updated +Created
DNS configuration of Ciro Santilli's website Updated +Created
AKA how this GitHub page gets served under the domain: cirosantilli.com
Ciro only touches this very rarely, and always forgets and go into great pain whenever a change needs to done, so it is important to document it.
The last change was of 2019-07-07, when Ciro moved from the www subdomain www.cirosantilli.com to the APEX cirosantilli.com. A redirect is setup from the www subdomain to APEX.
GoDaddy DNS entries:
Type    Name    Value                   TTL
A       @       185.199.108.153         1 Hour
A       @       185.199.109.153         1 Hour
A       @       185.199.110.153         1 Hour
A       @       185.199.111.153         1 Hour
CNAME   www     cirosantilli.github.io  1 Hour
Moved cirosantilli.com to Porkbun 2022-02, unfortunatly records were not automatically updated and domain went down for a bit, upadded to new entries for IPv6 as well which are not documented by GitHub:
TYPE 	HOST	ANSWER	TTL	PRIORITY	OPTIONS
A	cirosantilli.com	185.199.108.153	600
A	cirosantilli.com	185.199.109.153	600
A	cirosantilli.com	185.199.110.153	600
A	cirosantilli.com	185.199.111.153	600
AAAA	cirosantilli.com	2606:50c0:8000::153	600
AAAA	cirosantilli.com	2606:50c0:8001::153	600
AAAA	cirosantilli.com	2606:50c0:8002::153	600
AAAA	cirosantilli.com	2606:50c0:8003::153	600
CNAME	www.cirosantilli.com	cirosantilli.github.io	600
  • Custom domain: cirosantilli.com
  • Enforce HTTPS: checked
And the CNAME file is tracked in this repository: CNAME.
Integer factorization algorithms better than Shor's algorithm Updated +Created
A group of Chinese researchers have just published a paper claiming that they can—although they have not yet done so—break 2048-bit RSA. This is something to take seriously. It might not be correct, but it’s not obviously wrong.
We have long known from Shor’s algorithm that factoring with a quantum computer is easy. But it takes a big quantum computer, on the orders of millions of qbits, to factor anything resembling the key sizes we use today. What the researchers have done is combine classical lattice reduction factoring techniques with a quantum approximate optimization algorithm. This means that they only need a quantum computer with 372 qbits, which is well within what’s possible today. (The IBM Osprey is a 433-qbit quantum computer, for example. Others are on their way as well.)
Integrated circuit Updated +Created
It is quite amazing to read through books such as The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray by Charles J. Murray (1997), as it makes you notice that earlier CPUs (all before the 70's) were not made with integrated circuits, but rather smaller pieces glued up on PCBs! E.g. the arithmetic logic unit was actually a discrete component at one point.
The reason for this can also be understood quite clearly by reading books such as Robert Noyce: The Man Behind the Microchip by Leslie Berlin (2006). The first integrated circuits were just too small for this. It was initially unimaginable that a CPU would fit in a single chip! Even just having a very small number of components on a chip was already revolutionary and enough to kick-start the industry. Just imagine how much money any level of integration saved in those early days for production, e.g. as opposed to manually soldering point-to-point constructions. Also the reliability, size an weight gains were amazing. In particular for military and spacial applications originally.
Video 1.
A briefing on semiconductors by Fairchild Semiconductor (1967)
Source.
Shows:
Interesting members of the Santilli family Updated +Created
Found through Google with no direct relation known to Ciro Santilli:
Possibly related variants:
Interface Message Processor Updated +Created
NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Updated +Created
This post-quantum cryptography competition by NIST is a huge milestone of the field.
It was mind blowing when in 2022, after several years of selection, one of the 7 finalists was broken on a classical computer, not even in a quantum computer! news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30466063 | eprint.iacr.org/2022/214 Breaking Rainbow Takes a Weekend on a Laptop by Ward Beullens. Dude announced he had a break a few days before submission: twitter.com/WardBeullens/status/1492780462028300290 On Twitter. He's so young. Epic.
Edit: and then, after the third round, things were a bit unclear, so they made a fourth round with 4 choices out of the 7 from round 3, and in August 2022 one of the four was broken again on a classic CPU!!! OMG: arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/08/sike-once-a-post-quantum-encryption-contender-is-koed-in-nist-smackdown/
Nobel disease Updated +Created
The Eighth Day of Creation has a related quote:
In a conversation a few weeks earlier at the faculty club of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a couple of biologists had speculated whether Pauling, whose recent popular book on the benefits to health and sanity of massive doses of vitamin C was stacked in display near the entrance of the M.I.T. bookstore, was showing signs of what one of the men called "old scientist's disease" - which they defined as what happens to great men when they grow beyond the psychological reach of the salutary system by which scientists blow the whistle on one another's mistakes.
Video 1.
The Nobel Prize Winners With Crazy Theories by Qxir
. Source.
OpenShot Updated +Created
Ubuntu 20.10 crash...:
  exceptions:ERROR Unhandled Exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/openshot-qt", line 11, in <module>
    load_entry_point('openshot-qt==2.5.1', 'gui_scripts', 'openshot-qt')()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/openshot_qt/launch.py", line 97, in main
    app = OpenShotApp(argv)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/openshot_qt/classes/app.py", line 218, in __init__
    from windows.main_window import MainWindow
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/openshot_qt/windows/main_window.py", line 45, in <module>
    from windows.views.timeline_webview import TimelineWebView
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/openshot_qt/windows/views/timeline_webview.py", line 42, in <module>
    from PyQt5.QtWebKitWidgets import QWebView
ImportError: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libQt5Quick.so.5: undefined symbol: _ZN4QRhi10newSamplerEN11QRhiSampler6FilterES1_S1_NS0_11AddressModeES2_, version Qt_5_PRIVATE_API
Optical fiber Updated +Created
Video 1.
The Story of Light by Bell Labs (2015)
Source. Gives some ideas of the history of fiber optics. Features: Herwig Kogelnik.
Video 2.
Fiber optic cables by EngineerGuy
. Source.
Video 3.
Fiber optics fundamentals by Shaoul Ezekiel
. Source. 2008 at MIT. Theory and demonstration.
Optics Updated +Created
When dealing more specifically with individual photons, we usually call it photonics.
Ordered pair Updated +Created
Sets are unordered, but we can use them to create ordered objects, which are of fundamental importance. Notably, they are used in the definition of functions.

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