Live data from Hacker News

I should have loved biology

jsomers.net

191–200 of 282 posts

Re: I should have loved biology

#191

One of my favourite course I took when studying physics at university was “Biological Nanomachines”. I find it absolutely bizarre that trying to gain a physical intuition for biology is not the norm. Throughout school I hated biology because it really did just feel like rote learning. This is embarrassing but I had such a poor understanding of what a cell was by the end of HS biology that I still had an image in my m…

> “the cell wants to x” is language that we can’t use in a HS classroom If you can’t use language like that you’re giving up on getting anything through to over half of the class. Trying to impart information to people who don’t care and aren’t interested is amazingly hard. Not using agentic framing makes it harder.

I don’t think we should teach wrong things because they are easier. It may be true that it’s easier to teach biology if you gives cells individual agency, but it’s just false

Re: I should have loved biology

#192
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have what I would consider deep knowledge of a system without the ability to manufacture it or modify it. For instance, we have pretty deep knowledge of how the sun or other stars work, but we can’t even begin to dream about creating one, or controlling one. In the same way, we know a lot of how biology works. Obviously nowhere near all of it; but we are far beyond just scratching the surface. It just turns o…

> ow the sun or other stars work, but we can’t even begin to dream about creating one Wolfram didn't answer "how much would a solar mass of hydrogen cost" for me, but it did tell me that the solar mass is 1.988435×10^33 grams, and another search found hydrogen prices [1] in the range of US$ 250 to 1350 per MT ... So just the financing on building another sun is going to be tricky. [1] I know it's not all hydrogen but…

Oof, and you didn't even factor in extra-solar shipping costs. Thats most of the expense, really.

Re: I should have loved biology

#193
post #186

I had been putting off quantum physics and time was running out. I was worried forth semester physics at MIT was going to be tough, but then through some miracle of providence the EE department decided that a solid state chemistry chemistry class plus Into to Biology could be substituted for quantum physics. Because I had already taken a solid state chemistry class, all I had to do was take a basic introductory biolo…

[deleted]

Re: I should have loved biology

#194

There is a large gap between the mechanisms of chemistry and the magic of biology that most people do not see closed until late in their education. It's a real shame that this gap cannot be closed sooner. In undergrad I took a bunch of biology and chemistry classes. It wasn't until I took Biochemistry (a senior level class) that everything came together. The biochemistry class I took was a re-telling of all the stori…

Ironically, this messy approach seems to produce machines that are very resistant to all sorts of damage, while clean engineering designs are not.

Re: I should have loved biology

#195
post #159
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You are riding a bicycle. Explain Oh man, where do I even start? Sensory input from the inner ear to balance, the networks that handle feedback from afferent signals from the periphery, efferent pathways to control motor movement. I don't even know all the details but it's mind bogglingly complex. Do I explain the molecular basis of action potentials? The modulating effects of inhibitory feedback within the networks…

Or the physics of the bicycle itself! It can stay up even without a rider.

It took me a long time to figure out how I made a turn on a bicycle. No, it's not just turning the steering wheel in the direction you want to turn. You actually slightly turn it the other way, then the bike tilts into the turn you want to make, and you turn the steering wheel into the turn to stop the tilt from turning into a crash.

It all happens so subtly, and your body does it perfectly with no input from the brain other than "I want to turn".

Re: I should have loved biology

#196
post #57

There is a large gap between the mechanisms of chemistry and the magic of biology that most people do not see closed until late in their education. It's a real shame that this gap cannot be closed sooner. In undergrad I took a bunch of biology and chemistry classes. It wasn't until I took Biochemistry (a senior level class) that everything came together. The biochemistry class I took was a re-telling of all the stori…

I went through biochem, but didn’t fully understand just how gigantic & complicated proteins are until I started learning about computational protein folding. There’s several levels of abstraction just between rna/ribosomes and functional proteins… that’s one of the most shocking complexities to me, most pieces of life are rather elegant when you come to understand them but it’s hard to imagine how complex proteins e…

The hemoglobin molecule is different for every species, and if you chart changes in the molecule, it forms the same tree as evolutionary biologists had already figured out.

Humans have the most complicated hemoglobin molecule.

Re: I should have loved biology

#197
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two questions I really remember from my neuroscience grad program are: "You discover a mouse that can sense radiation. How does it do it?" "You are riding a bicycle. Explain." We had to do it in 2 pages, NSF grant rules on spacing and margins.

>You are riding a bicycle. Explain Oh man, where do I even start? Sensory input from the inner ear to balance, the networks that handle feedback from afferent signals from the periphery, efferent pathways to control motor movement. I don't even know all the details but it's mind bogglingly complex. Do I explain the molecular basis of action potentials? The modulating effects of inhibitory feedback within the networks…

Hold my beer...

Assume an experienced rider, as learning is different.

Intention is set, requiring the basal ganglia and fore brain and either a notion of free will, determinism, or whatever you fancy. The area ahead is scanned and mapped for a clear path via retina- optic nerve - visual cortex and particularly the dorsal parietal pathway. Initial organised motor signal sequences originate in pre and pre pre motor areas, hitting motor strip of the brain, particularly those homoncular areas corresponding to legs, arms and torso. Basal ganglia loops prime these circuits into action and help maintain their engagement. Activated motor strip neurons pass through the internal capsule, down the pyramidal tracts, the spinal cord, and meet a lower motor neuron in the anterior horn, which then carries the baton and traverses out if the cord (still the central nervous system) into the body and to the final destination: a muscle. Electrical depolarisation along the axon hops rapidly between nodes of ranvier, enabled by insulation myelination. At the terrminal synaptic bouton lower motor neurons branch across a muscle body. Each neurons innervated patch is a motor unit; multiple combine into a motor pool. Depolarisation triggers fusion of vesicles to the membrane endplate and release of acetylcholine into the thin synapse. Rapid diffusion moves thr snall molecukes to the muscle membrane, the sarcolemma, who then bind to the membrane spanning Nm nicotinic receptors which open and allow a rapid flooding of sodium into the muscle cell syncitium and efflux of potassiun into the extra cellular matrix. Depolarisation of that muscle allows further calcium released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum to activate protein machinery; myosin and actin run across each other and fibres contract. With enough activity concentric movement is achieved across the associated joint. In a manner similar to walking, various spinal reflexes and the spinal locomotor pattern generator create a local, fast framework for actualisation of the impulses. Feed back on state of the musculature ascends the spine via dorsal root ganglia and the dorsal horn. Amongst these are proprioceptive afferents, rapidly feeding back state of tension in muscle fibres from golgi tendon organs along highly myelinated type 1a fibres. These signals pass into the cerebellum where they are co processed with signals from the eyes and vestibular system. The cerebellum modulates the intensity of descending motor activity by comparing expected to perceived muscle state. It also orchestrates balance by integrating general body state, visual cues and vestibular information. In this way the small and large oscillations of riding the bike are maintained and constrained into an orderly process.

Experienced riders can dedicate higher function, i.e Executive frontal areas to other tasks, or to refined modulation of thr task to overcome specific issues. Beginners must use all their frontal powers to focus attention on the task, painstakingly sequence actions, and reflect on the numerous errors and their consequences. Learning is slow, multi system, and largely independent of autobiographical memory.

Re: I should have loved biology

#199
post #181

Weird seeing this. I was a natural at biology didn't even have to study and aced any exam to the point where kids would let me cheat on other exams so long as they cheat off of me on biology (not proud if it now but "everybody did it then"). I didn't pursue anything related to it because it just wasn't my personality. I hated hospitals or touching body parts or even talking to random people. And I hated school with a…

Holy shit this sounds me!

Re: I should have loved biology

#200

I'd even claim that we don't really fully understand how computer systems work anymore. Let me explain. When someone creates a new system, we could argue they have a complete understanding of it, since they build everything from the "ground up". Although even then, they use a particular level of abstraction - not necessarily needing to understand how third-party libraries work, or how it all translates to machine cod…

You do not need to know every implementation detail down the stack, just the the general concepts behind it all. But in case you do need to know a specific part of the stack very thoroughly, you can just read the source code and come up with an understanding quite soon.

That is not the case with biology, if you want to know a part of the stack thoroughly, you in essence have to come up with the "source code" your self.

Post reply on HN