DNA detection by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
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.
Genetics by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
High level DNA studies? :-)
Cultured meat by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
This is something worth investigating!
Video 1.
Inside the Quest to Make Lab Grown Meat by WIRED (2018)
Source.
Interviews with a few startups in the area, most of the time with Eat Just.
youtu.be/QO9SS1NS6MM?t=217 taught Ciro Santilli something he really appreciated: uncanny valley.
It basically replaces a bunch of discrete digital components with a single chip. So you don't have to wire things manually.
Particularly fundamental if you would be putting those chips up a thousand cell towers for signal processing, and ever felt the need to reprogram them! Resoldering would be fun, would it? So you just do a over the wire update of everything.
Vs a microcontroller: same reason why you would want to use discrete components: speed. Especially when you want to do a bunch of things in parallel fast.
One limitation is that it only handles digital electronics: electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/25525/are-there-any-analog-fpgas There are some analog analogs, but they are much more restricted due to signal loss, which is exactly what digital electronics is very good at mitigating.
Video 1.
First FPGA experiences with a Digilent Cora Z7 Xilinx Zynq by Marco Reps (2018)
Source. Good video, actually gives some rationale of a use case that a microcontroller wouldn't handle because it is not fast enough.
Video 2.
FPGA Dev Board Tutorial by Ben Heck (2016)
Source.
Video 3.
The History of the FPGA by Asianometry (2022)
Source.
Parallel evolution by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
The cool thing about parallel evolution is that it shows how complex phenotype can evolve from very different initial genetic conditions, highlighting the great power of evolution.
We list some cool ones at: polyphyly.
Charlie Wilson's War by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
The Nerdy Kid in the White Shirt scene from Charlie Wilson's War
. Source.
Video 2.
The old man lost his horse scene from Charlie Wilson's War
. Source.

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