"A Malaysian man paying a late-night visit to the toilet has saved about 100 people from being buried in the rubble of their homes, reports say."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6535481.stm
On a completely unrelated note... if you find yourself locked out of your house and looking for a place to drop your head and rest in the middle of the night in Malaysia... don't bother trying to ask homeless malaysians for advice... most of them don't speak english.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Saturday, March 31, 2007
My Wikijourney
Impressed with other folks usage of wikipedia in their blogs - I decided to do my own.
Lets start with a link-trail of my journey :
Firefly -> bioluminescence -> luciferase -> luciferin -> oxidation -> pigment
A couple weekends ago I went down a river to see some fireflies on the river bed... its in the wikipedia article on fireflies actually (the fireflies.. even mentions malaysia) the neat thing about the fireflies here is they blink synchronously ... this is because the male's light is the navigational methods for a female to find her mate. Its kind of like the men gather together and shout as loud as they can all at once 'lets procreate'... Only if people could be like fireflies - > lots of more loving in the world thats for sure.
I wanted to know more about the how. Flying insects is already a remarkable thing. How they store so much energy in such a tiny place to perform milli/micro-aerodynamic maneuvers/mechanical feats that math folks/scientists have wet dreams over is already incredible enough. But they fly and emit light that in a scalable sense would be like a car emitting the light from 1000 football fields (okay thats a big estimation... but I'm sure the idea is right) so how do they do that?
Fireflies have ATP -> the holy grail energy currency for most of 'life'. My own comments of ATP. Why is it remarkable?
Look at where ATP comes from, what ATP works with, and what ATP does.
For example, it does much much much more than just store/transport energy. It also aids in intra/extracellular communication. (wikipedia)
In one word - ATP is versatile.
So back to my question about fireflies. And on to another two fascinating biomolecules. Lucerin and Luciferase. Don't let the funny names fool you. Luciferase is more like the garden of eden. It provides fertile land for luciferin to come, find an ATP molecule, take its energy and produce a beautiful bioflashlight. It needs one more thing in the chemical equation ... oxygen. You can look at oxygen as the handler of electrons (i think) hydrogen is another good handler of electrons... the best is when hydrogen and oxygen get together.. then we have a real party!
So I'm still a bit confused about the process. I've learned a lot of neat stuff but still not answered my question really.
I know that light is produced when an electron in a high energy state travels to a lower energy state. I know there are chemical reactions going on here.
To be honest I still have no f*cking clue. Shti what a waste of time.
Oh well, Imagine a thousand people in times square on new years holding up their hands as flashlights... far fetched? Probably. In the wacky world of science they have actually figured out how to reproduce these molecules in other stuff (not fireflies). I could go on about how this has been useful.. but I won't.
someone made tobacco glow... quite some time ago http://www.bio.net/hypermail/cell-biology/1999-November/011743.html
I suppose the next step is the ganja plant - that would be a real money maker!
Lets start with a link-trail of my journey :
Firefly -> bioluminescence -> luciferase -> luciferin -> oxidation -> pigment
A couple weekends ago I went down a river to see some fireflies on the river bed... its in the wikipedia article on fireflies actually (the fireflies.. even mentions malaysia) the neat thing about the fireflies here is they blink synchronously ... this is because the male's light is the navigational methods for a female to find her mate. Its kind of like the men gather together and shout as loud as they can all at once 'lets procreate'... Only if people could be like fireflies - > lots of more loving in the world thats for sure.
I wanted to know more about the how. Flying insects is already a remarkable thing. How they store so much energy in such a tiny place to perform milli/micro-aerodynamic maneuvers/mechanical feats that math folks/scientists have wet dreams over is already incredible enough. But they fly and emit light that in a scalable sense would be like a car emitting the light from 1000 football fields (okay thats a big estimation... but I'm sure the idea is right) so how do they do that?
Fireflies have ATP -> the holy grail energy currency for most of 'life'. My own comments of ATP. Why is it remarkable?
Look at where ATP comes from, what ATP works with, and what ATP does.
For example, it does much much much more than just store/transport energy. It also aids in intra/extracellular communication. (wikipedia)
In one word - ATP is versatile.
So back to my question about fireflies. And on to another two fascinating biomolecules. Lucerin and Luciferase. Don't let the funny names fool you. Luciferase is more like the garden of eden. It provides fertile land for luciferin to come, find an ATP molecule, take its energy and produce a beautiful bioflashlight. It needs one more thing in the chemical equation ... oxygen. You can look at oxygen as the handler of electrons (i think) hydrogen is another good handler of electrons... the best is when hydrogen and oxygen get together.. then we have a real party!
So I'm still a bit confused about the process. I've learned a lot of neat stuff but still not answered my question really.
I know that light is produced when an electron in a high energy state travels to a lower energy state. I know there are chemical reactions going on here.
To be honest I still have no f*cking clue. Shti what a waste of time.
Oh well, Imagine a thousand people in times square on new years holding up their hands as flashlights... far fetched? Probably. In the wacky world of science they have actually figured out how to reproduce these molecules in other stuff (not fireflies). I could go on about how this has been useful.. but I won't.
someone made tobacco glow... quite some time ago http://www.bio.net/hypermail/cell-biology/1999-November/011743.html
I suppose the next step is the ganja plant - that would be a real money maker!
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Out of all the Hair Brained Applications I think this takes the Cake
Before I go on, I feel I should explain what sparked this rant is my readings in wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence
In the middle of my muddled research during my ever seeming further days of engineering undergrad, I (mostly ammused) would (every once in a while) come across some researcher's paper in Kalamazoo that listed sci-fi type possibilities for their oh so important research. Keep in mind my specialisation was in nanotechnology and not a more established discipline (such as civil, chemical, materials, etc... )
Although I did enjoy the chuckles produced from reading these hair brained schemes to stop global warming, control the mind, store hydrogen, kill cancer cells and trust me the list could go on forever...
I did reach a level of frustration at times. The amount of papers trying to make the bold claim that studying the crystallization of diatomaceous earth at the bottom of our ocean's will lead to great new discoveries / methods in the opto-electronic community is astounding and preposterous. I would usually find these hairbrained claims in the abstract tricking the unsupposing reader to read on. Unfortunately, for some reason, potential applications don't have to be qualified in the abstract and usually left it up to the citation to elaborate. Even more frustrating, the more hair brained the scheme, the more impossible it would become to actually get an explanation. I often found my search would go something like this (depending on how desired the explanation was) -
1. Search for citations.
2. Referred to other citations.
3. Search for new citations.
4. Either didn't find them or (even worse) referred back to original paper (the cyclic citation effect!)
5. Knee deep in the muddled middle of this citation mess, I would decide to take a break and go joke around with my roommates, get some warm milk + cookies, and (eventually) go back to the grinding board.
So you may be asking, why why why am I reading about Aaron's rant 'back in the day when I was a youngster I used to walk three miles wearing snow shoes' ...... because I thought I might try and give you a nice chuckle (if you are still in uni... and in the muddle of it.. or if you are out of uni. and missing the muddle)
Go back to the wikipedia article I refered to :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence
Check out the biotechnology section - non-electric christmas trees! The person who wrote this article must have had way too much fun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence
In the middle of my muddled research during my ever seeming further days of engineering undergrad, I (mostly ammused) would (every once in a while) come across some researcher's paper in Kalamazoo that listed sci-fi type possibilities for their oh so important research. Keep in mind my specialisation was in nanotechnology and not a more established discipline (such as civil, chemical, materials, etc... )
Although I did enjoy the chuckles produced from reading these hair brained schemes to stop global warming, control the mind, store hydrogen, kill cancer cells and trust me the list could go on forever...
I did reach a level of frustration at times. The amount of papers trying to make the bold claim that studying the crystallization of diatomaceous earth at the bottom of our ocean's will lead to great new discoveries / methods in the opto-electronic community is astounding and preposterous. I would usually find these hairbrained claims in the abstract tricking the unsupposing reader to read on. Unfortunately, for some reason, potential applications don't have to be qualified in the abstract and usually left it up to the citation to elaborate. Even more frustrating, the more hair brained the scheme, the more impossible it would become to actually get an explanation. I often found my search would go something like this (depending on how desired the explanation was) -
1. Search for citations.
2. Referred to other citations.
3. Search for new citations.
4. Either didn't find them or (even worse) referred back to original paper (the cyclic citation effect!)
5. Knee deep in the muddled middle of this citation mess, I would decide to take a break and go joke around with my roommates, get some warm milk + cookies, and (eventually) go back to the grinding board.
So you may be asking, why why why am I reading about Aaron's rant 'back in the day when I was a youngster I used to walk three miles wearing snow shoes' ...... because I thought I might try and give you a nice chuckle (if you are still in uni... and in the muddle of it.. or if you are out of uni. and missing the muddle)
Go back to the wikipedia article I refered to :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence
Check out the biotechnology section - non-electric christmas trees! The person who wrote this article must have had way too much fun.
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