Incoming links: Ciro Santilli
This is an extremely widely used technique as of 2020 and much earlier.
If allows you to amplify "any" sequence of choice (TODO length limitations) between a start and end sequences of interest which you synthesize.
If the sequence of interest is present, it gets amplified exponentially, and you end up with a bunch of DNA at the end.
You can then measure the DNA concentration based on simple light refraction methods to see if there is a lot of DNA or not in the post-processed sample.
Even Ciro Santilli had some contact with it at: Section "How to use an Oxford Nanopore MinION to extract DNA from river water and determine which bacteria live in it", see: PCR!
One common problem that happens with PCR if you don't design your primers right is: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_dimer
On one hand, yes, we need knowledge at all levels, and it is fine to start top-to-bottom with an overview.
The problem is, however, that there is a huge knowledge gap between the one liner "this is the truth" and the much more important "this is how we know it, these are the experiments" as mentioned at how to teach and learn physics.
Therefore, if you have that extremely rare knowledge, you should be writing that in addition to the dumbed down version with an open knowledge license. It takes time, but that's what really changes the world.
Ciro Santilli has always felt that there is a huge gap between "the very basic" and "the very advanced", as mentioned at: Section "The missing link between basic and advanced", which existing scientific vulgarization is not doing enough to address. In a sense, filling out this "middle path" is the main goal of OurBigBook.com.
Ciro really enjoyed the description of the "Arindam Kumar Chatterjee" youTube channel:
Theoretical/mathematical physics at the graduate level and above. This is NOT a popular science channel. Here you find real theoretical physicists doing real theoretical physics. We think it is important for people to get a taste of the real deal, and for aspiring theoretical physicists to see what they are working towards, i.e., to provide the public with something beyond the ubiquitous Michio Kaku and Brian Cox.
One thing must be said however: there seems to be an actual bias against researchers tho try to create vulgarization material: How To Get Tenure at a Major Research University by Sean Carroll (2011), and that is terrible.
There is often more value in a tutorial by a beginner who is trying to fully learn and explain a subject, than by an expert who is trying to "dumb it down" too much.
This is a porn style defined by Ciro Santilli as:
Ciro believes that this is an interesting type of pornography, as it feels more natural and humane than all the horrible trash that comes out of horrendous professional mainstream porn industry.
Yes, it could go down the YouTube/Instagram alley, and lead the vloggers to do things they wouldn't normally do because of the audience. But who is to say that Ciro Santilli doesn't do the same on Stack Overflow to some extent?
That type of porn requires some big courage to make. Or balls if you will. Kudos to those creators, as it is so taboo it could greatly impact their future job prospects.
The travel sex vlog appears to be the most popular way to do it. Presuamably the reason being that you would not be able to interact with people in a normal job, so to keep things interesting you need to go to some random places.
Examples:
- lunaokko.com/social-media/ Luna Okko. French sex vlogger, basically a super normal travel vlog with sex scenes with her boyfriend added in, see e.g. the series "Luna's Journey".Perhaps the travel porn vlog is the simplest way to do it. A sex vlog is much like a cooking flog in some way, except it is hard to get new ingredients, so changing the scenery is the easiest way to get some diversity.Some day some nymphomaniac should actually make a sex vlog fucking a different man each time, that would be amazing, even from a scientific point of view, so we can see how different men fuck, a bit like an open version of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Sex.2022 interview: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGcWrpXXtuQ
- twitter.com/JamesWithLola also a travel sex vlog, also French. Hum.
All pages below are from the second edition from 2018. It seems that there weren't any changes in the text, the updated preface mentions
As it happens, nearly 15 years have passed since the 1st edition of Power, Sex, Suicide was published, and I am resisting the temptation to make any lame revisions. Some say that even Darwin lessened the power of his arguments in the Origin of Species through his multiple revisions, in which he dealt with criticisms and sometimes shifted his views in the wrong direction. I prefer my original to speak for itself, even if it turns out to be wrong.
This is partly addressed in the preface of the second edition from 2018.
Central thesis:
- there are two sexes because of mitochondria
- the acquisition of mitochondria was one of the most important steps in the evolution of eukaryotes.There are no known eukaryotes which never had mitochondria. Having mitochondria appears to be a requisite for being an eukaryote.Contrast this for example with multicellularity, which is highly polyphyletic.
- Apoptosis is largely regulated by mitochondria
- there are two main theories for how the mitochondria endosymbiosis started:
- parsitic hypothesis of mitochondrial endosymbiosis: a parasitic option rather than cooperative
- hydrogen hypothesis: a cooperative option rather than parasitic
Smaller points:
- 10% of our body weight (dry presumably?) is mitochondria. Also quoted at: www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/mighty_mitochondria. TODO confirm.
- eukaryotes can do phatocytosis due to their cytoskeleton
- paints a colorful picture of Peter Mitchell. Some Wikipedia edits are warranted!
- it is hard for complex organisms to evolve because longer DNA means longer replication time
- cancer is natural selection gone wrong
- multicellular organisms are not utopias where every cell lives happily. Rather, they are dictatorships, where any dissident is forced to commit seppuku. Lu Xun's petition quote comes to mind.
Nitpicks:
- the book calls ATP synthase "ATPase" in several points, which is confusing because -ase means "something that breaks", and in 2020 parlance, there are ATPases which actually break ATP: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATPase. The book itself acknowledges that on page 135:
The ATPase is freely reversible. Under some circumstances it can go into reverse, whereupon it splits ATP, and uses the energy released to pump protons up the drive shaft, back across the membrane against the pressure of the reservoir. In fact the very name ATPase (rather than ATP synthase) signifies this action, which was discovered first. This bizarre trait hides a deep secret of life, and we’ll return to it in a moment.
Some criticisms:
- some of the later chapters are a bit more boring, like the stuff about warm-blooded animals. Perhaps is it that Ciro Santilli is more interested in the molecular aspects than macro
- the author talks about some very recent research at the time. While this does highlight his expertise, some of the points mentioned might still be in a state of flow. This is acknowledged by the author himself on the 2018 updated preface however.
Princeton Application Repository for Shared-Memory Computers Updated 2025-04-18 +Created 2024-07-29
Generally, prizes that pay big lumps of money to well established individuals are a bit useless, it would be better to pay smaller sums to struggling beginners in the field, of which there are aplenty.
The most important part about prizes should not be the money, nor the recognition, but rather explaining better what the laureates did. In this, most prizes fail. Thus Ciro Santilli's project idea: Project to explain each Nobel Prize better.
Crazy overlaps with Ciro Santilli's OurBigBook Project, Wikipedia states:
Administrators of Project Xanadu have declared it superior to the World Wide Web, with the mission statement: "Today's popular software simulates paper. The World Wide Web (another imitation of paper) trivialises our original hypertext model with one-way ever-breaking links and no management of version or contents.
Strongly against giving answer to problem sets... sad, as of 2024: promys-europe.org/students/faq (archive):and:It does not seem to be the case for the American version however after a quick look: promys.org/programs/promys/for-students/faq/. Sad to see.
When do I get the solutions to the problems on the problem sets?When you discover them for yourself: on your own or collaborating with other students. Returning students and counsellors and faculty will support and encourage you, but not by giving you the answers (hint: they don't even give hints). What PROMYS Europe does is offer you the tools and structure to enable you to be a creative mathematician.
What rules are there at PROMYS Europe?
Also participants are strongly forbidden from sharing the problem sheets with anyone from outside the program. Ciro Santilli asked a participant face to face if he could take a look, but was told that they are not allowed to share it. So it is a very clear and strict order. Truly sad.
Ciro Santilli got his hands on this one. But he was unable to obtain the others. Solving them here would also pose a serious DMCA risk, so perhaps it's just not worth it.
It is fucking annoying!
- www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/pn21dn/have_to_log_in_every_time_i_restart_the_browser/
- www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/6qwm9w/automatic_login_to_protonmail_from_browser/
- protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/48228635-mail-proton-me-should-automatically-login-to-last
Not just on browser close. Whenever Ciro Santilli pastes proton.me/ on the browser bar and click enter. Chromium 123.
More precisely: pasting mail.proton.me on the browser bar redirects to account.proton.me/switch each time. From there, selecting different accounts leads to different mail.proton.me/u/<UID>/inbox, e.g. mail.proton.me/u/41/inbox is my main one. If I paste mail.proton.me/u/41/inbox on the browser, then it works directly.
Answers by Ciro Santilli:
- unix.stackexchange.com/questions/9711/what-is-the-proper-way-to-manage-multiple-python-versions/556519#556519
- stackoverflow.com/questions/10960805/apt-get-install-for-different-python-versions/59268046#59268046
- askubuntu.com/questions/682869/how-do-i-install-a-different-python-version-using-apt-get/1195153#1195153
- "inside project" question:
- stackoverflow.com/questions/2547554/multiple-python-versions-on-the-same-machine/79448734#79448734
- www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/comments/uf4i6w/comment/mdfuyrj/
If Ciro Santilli ever becomes rich, he's going to solve this with: website front-end for a mathematical formal proof system, promise.
Great way to understand how operating systems work, which Ciro Santilli used extensively in his Linux Kernel Module Cheat.
Ciro Santilli has some good related articles listed under: Section "The best articles by Ciro Santilli".
This paper appears to calculate the Schrödinger equation solution for the hydrogen atom.
TODO is this the original paper on the Schrödinger equation?
Published on Annalen der Physik in 1926.
Open access in German at: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/andp.19263840404 which gives volume 384, Issue 4, Pages 361-376. Kudos to Wiley for that. E.g. Nature did not have similar policies as of 2023.
This paper may have fallen into the public domain in the US in 2022! On the Internet Archive we can see scans of the journal that contains it at: ia903403.us.archive.org/29/items/sim_annalen-der-physik_1926_79_contents/sim_annalen-der-physik_1926_79_contents.pdf. Ciro Santilli extracted just the paper to: commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AQuantisierung_als_Eigenwertproblem.pdf. It is not as well processed as the Wiley one, but it is of 100% guaranteed clean public domain provenance! TODO: hmmm, it may be public domain in the USA but not Germany, where 70 years after author deaths rules, and Schrodinger died in 1961, so it may be up to 2031 in that country... messy stuff. There's also the question of wether copyright is was tranferred to AdP at publication or not.
Quantum is getting hot in 2019, and even Ciro Santilli got a bit excited: quantum computing could be the next big thing.
No useful algorithm has been economically accelerated by quantum yet as of 2019, only useless ones, but the bets are on, big time.
To get a feeling of this, just have a look at the insane number of startups that are already developing quantum algorithms for hardware that doesn't/barely exists! quantumcomputingreport.com/players/privatestartup (archive). Some feared we might be in a bubble: Are we in a quantum computing bubble?
To get a basic idea of what programming a quantum computer looks like start by reading: Section "Quantum computing is just matrix multiplication".
Some people have their doubts, and that is not unreasonable, it might truly not work out. We could be on the verge of an AI winter of quantum computing. But Ciro Santilli feels that it is genuinely impossible to tell as of 2020 if something will work out or not. We really just have to try it out and see. There must have been skeptics before every single next big thing.