Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
-
Computational Photography in Science
In the field of imaging there is another branch of image acquisition/analysis/study that is called Computational Photography as distinguished from traditional photography. In traditional photography, with a regular camera, you take a picture of a 3D scene through a camera. This light from the scene is captured as a 2-dimensional representation onto a photo-sensitive surface,…
-
Pharmaceutical targets: Why target validation does not work?
Take an example of failed target validation. Eli Lilly is just one company but this could be true of almost all the pharmaceutical companies. Eli Lilly announced in August 2012, that they have stopped “ongoing clinical studies investigating pomaglumetad methionil, also known as mGlu2/3, for the treatment of patients suffering from schizophrenia” in Phase 3.…
-
Lasers – diffraction based authentication for medical device parts
When a coherent laser hits a surface, the laser light is diffracted in all directions. It is easy to take a laser pointer and do this experiment. The pattern that is emitted is a complex dotted pattern of bright and dark intensities. These intensities appear random but are actually a property of the material and…
-
Are all genes required for fitness – C. elegans as a model?
In gene knockout studies, scientists delete or stop expression of one gene and then check to see if that gene is required. In these studies, if a gene is critical – say for cell division then cells do not divide and the gene is termed essential, the mutations in that gene would be termed lethal…
-
Accelerometers in phones – Which chip in my phone?
Many of the phone today, have accelerometer chips and they all seem to be sourced from a handful of manufacturers. Cell phone manufacturers also change their favorite chip and since each of them have slightly different characteristics, it is likely that they will give different results. Here is a list of Cell phone manufacturers, their…
-
Beetroot for Blood pressure.
It is postulated that the high nitrate content in beetroot is responsible for its ability to reduce the blood pressure. Circulation. 2012 June 12; 125(23): 2922–2932, Hypertension. 2008 March; 51(3): 784–790. The benefit of beetroot juice in reducing the blood pressure is worth cosidering. About 17.6 ounce of juice (3 parts of beetroot and 1…
-
Pharmaceutical biology manufacturing: Sharing costs and Manufacturing capacity
Pharmaceutical companies are thought has rich giants with many resources available to them. However, they optimize manufacturing costs for small molecule chemical entities by outsourcing parts of the manufacturing, forming alliances with chemistry suppliers or basing their operations in low cost countries, like Puerto Rico. This works well for chemistry but for biological entity manufacturing,…
-
Accelerometers in phones – What is it?
There are different kinds of accelerometers in phones. They seem to vary in characteristics in different phones. The accelerometer can be thought up as a device that measures gravity. The way to imagine an accelerometer is that of a ball hung on a spring that is attached to a solid surface (like the phone). As…
-
Innovation – How-to and quantitative measurement
Innovation: Simplistically, innovation has been defined as a creative solution to the problem. However, innovation is 1) Identification of the problem and 2) Definition of the problem. The solution to the problem will occur once the first two steps are complete. An creative person has to be agnostic to the solution and technology since the…
-
Parkinson’s disease – towards an understanding of the cause?
In summer 2012, Krainc’s lab published a paper on the biochemical cause for the link between Gaucher’s disease and Parkinson’s. It is known in the literature that Gaucher’s disease families have a higher incidence of Parkinson’s disease, however the reason was unknown. Gaucher’s disease is an inherited disorder caused by the mutations of the GBA…
Got any book recommendations?