Live data from Hacker News

Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks

swizec.com

11–20 of 55 posts

Re: Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks

#11

This is all lame, building websites, reading papers. These activities are good in their own stead but they don't help the world or achive something spectacular. Why do people want such quick returns. I give you 2 decades, win me a Noble prize.

> they don't help the world or achive something spectacular

Sure they do.

What if I become really good at summarizing papers for laymen? What if I then start a publishing house for good laymen explanations of science? What if this then leads to the abolishment of all those stupid "Caffeine will give you cancer lololol" articles your mum reads?

Or maybe I'll just learn a lot and use it as an advantage somewhere else.

Or it might inspire people to read more base sources to form informed opinions about things you care about.

And I'm almost certainly not smart and persistent enough for a Nobel Prize.

Re: Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks

#12

Are you planning to reproduce the experiments in every paper too?

Even if he would work full-time on that, it would be impossible to do in most cases. A week is usually not enough time to organize an experiment, especially when you are not experienced in the field.

Re: Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks

#13
post #3

And in turn, you have inspired me to do something similar. I read (to varying degrees of attentiveness) many, many papers per week, but I never write about them other than to take notes, write questions to the authors etc. For the next 52 weeks, I'm gonna try to write a layman's explanation (with some amount of appropriate background) about a paper every week. I suspect these will center around my work, but I also su…

Any interesting papers on your list you do not mind sharing?

First up is "High-resolution reversible folding of hyperstable RNA tetraloops using molecular dynamics simulations" Chen & Garcia (September 16, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1309392110 PNAS September 16, 2013) which is a bit of a cheat because I'm teaching it next week, and I know Alan.

The following week will be; "Oral Treatment Targeting the Unfolded Protein Response Prevents Neurodegeneration and Clinical Disease in Prion-Infected Mice" Moreno et al (Sci Transl Med 9 October 2013: Vol. 5, Issue 206, p. 206ra138

And after that something from Don Cleverland (UCSF)'s lab, as I saw him speak not that long ago and he blew my mind.

That being said, I'd also (probably) take requests!

Re: Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks

#15
You have inspired me to do something similar. Being a college student, I am leaning new things everyday. Well we all learn new things our whole lives. I am working on a startup website and I have decided to code one feature every 2 days. This way I will be learn a lot on web development. Plus this will help me to make my customers HAPPY ! So its a win win.

Re: Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks

#16

This is all lame, building websites, reading papers. These activities are good in their own stead but they don't help the world or achive something spectacular. Why do people want such quick returns. I give you 2 decades, win me a Noble prize.

I am not trying to be snarky, but do you do anything that helps the world and/or achieves something spectacular?

Re: Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks

#17

This is all lame, building websites, reading papers. These activities are good in their own stead but they don't help the world or achive something spectacular. Why do people want such quick returns. I give you 2 decades, win me a Noble prize.

I am not trying to be snarky, but do you do anything that helps the world and/or achieves something spectacular?

Like pay taxes?

Re: Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks

#18

And in turn, you have inspired me to do something similar. I read (to varying degrees of attentiveness) many, many papers per week, but I never write about them other than to take notes, write questions to the authors etc. For the next 52 weeks, I'm gonna try to write a layman's explanation (with some amount of appropriate background) about a paper every week. I suspect these will center around my work, but I also su…

It is said that the best way to learn is to teach.

Re: Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks

#19
When you receive help acheiving your goal from professionals will you state so on your blog or will you, like Dewalt, avoid mentioning that not-quite-flattering fact?

Thanks to the HN detectives some weird jumps in proficiency were found in her code...

Post reply on HN