Author: grant

What is Endocrinology

A lot of papers on endometriosis that talk about measurements are talking about hormones. Reading about the study of those chemicals and mechanisms lead me to read Wikipedia’s article on the topic. These were the main high level points from the introductory paragraph:

  • “is a branch of biology and medicine dealing with the endocrine system, its diseases, and its specific secretions called hormones”
  • and it’s mechanisms: “the coordination of metabolism, respiration, excretion, movement, reproduction, and sensory perception depend on chemical cues, substances synthesized and secreted by specialized cells.”
  • “is concerned with the study of the biosynthesis, storage, chemistry, and physiological function of hormones and with the cells of the endocrine glands and tissues that secrete them.”
  • “The endocrine system consists of several glands, all and in different parts of the body, that secrete hormones directly into the blood rather than into a duct system. Hormones have many different functions and modes of action; one hormone may have several effects on different target organs, and, conversely, one target organ may be affected by more than one hormone.”
  • “In the original 1902 definition by Bayliss and Starling, they specified that, to be classified as a hormone, a chemical must be produced by an organ, be released (in small amounts) into the blood, and be transported by the blood to a distant organ to exert its specific function. This definition holds for most “classical” hormones, but there are also paracrine mechanisms (chemical communication between cells within a tissue or organ), autocrine signals (a chemical that acts on the same cell), and intracrine signals (a chemical that acts within the same cell)”

Comments on ENDOMETRIOSIS: EMERGING RESEARCH AND INTERVENTION STRATEGIES

Endometriosis is an interesting disease. Wiley publishes the proceedings of a conference on endometriosis entitled “ENDOMETRIOSIS: EMERGING RESEARCH AND INTERVENTION STRATEGIES” here. The proceedings cover a breadth and depth of topics that were all very interesting.
Here are the things that really jumped out at me:

  • Endometrium are likely to be present outside the uterus of most women; but not all of them have pain. Pain is the thing that makes it a disease from which women suffer.
  • Research demonstrates a impact in fertility of primates; but not humans.
  • The definition of stages of the disease depends on the depth of which the endometrium have penetrated the tissue. This is surprising because it has nothing to do with the amount of pain suffered.
  • The menstrual cycle itself is an amazing thing.
  • A vicious circle occurs where endometrium begin to “fuel their own fire”.
  • The immune system’s failure to “clean up” ectopic endometrium is part of the problem.
  • There are number of things that can be measured in regards to the disease and it’s process.
  • The disease has traits of an auto-immune disease; and women with it are more likely to have other auto-immune diseases.

The papers within that report are the first research I’ve ever read on the topic.

NexJ Scheme

NexJ Scheme is an open source project providing an efficient and powerful interpreter for the programming language Scheme that executes in a Java virtual machine.

Today I was sort of shocked to learn that there is another implementation besides SISC and Kawa that runs on Java!
There wasn’t even an announcement for NexJ on comp.lang.scheme and NexJ has been around for two years :(! Rather it was mentioned on scheme-reports this week.

Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid

Tarsnap is a secure online backup service for BSD, Linux, OS X, Solaris, Cygwin, and can probably be compiled on many other UNIX-like operating systems. The Tarsnap client code provides a flexible and powerful command-line interface which can be used directly or via shell scripts.

The design of Tarsnap was guided by the following four principles:
Security: Backups should be secure against attackers ranging from “script kiddies” up to major world governments, even if they can compromise the systems on which the backups are being stored. Backups are supposed to be a tool for mitigating damage — not a potential vulnerability to worry about!
Flexibility: Backups should be flexible and convenient. When you decide you want to create an archive, you should be able to store in it whatever files you want; if you decide that you want to delete an archive, you should be able to do it whenever you want, without impacting other archives; and there should be no arbitrary limits on how many archives you have stored, how often you can create new archives, or how long you can keep them for.
Efficiency: Backups should be efficient, using a minimal amount of storage and bandwidth. If you archive the same file twice, it should still only be uploaded and stored once; likewise, if you move, rename, copy, or make small changes to a file (e.g., adding a small amount of new data to the end of a log file or mail spool) you should never need to re-upload the entire file.
Utility: Backups should be provided as a utility, with linear (i.e., per-GB) pricing. Forcing people to figure out ahead of time how much data they want to back up so that they can sign up for the right “plan” is dumb, and having some customers subsidize other customers is inherently unfair.

— tarsnap website
Looks like an interesting service.

How one class brought SICP back at MIT

Zombie-like, 6.001 rises from the dead to threaten students again. Unlike a zombie, though, it’s moving quite a bit faster than it did the first time. Like the original, don’t walk into the class expecting that it will teach you Scheme; instead, it attempts to teach thought patterns for computer science, and the structure and interpretation of computer programs. Three projects will be assigned and graded. Prereq: some programming experience; high confusion threshold.

(via MIT via keegan via planethaskell)

How to Take a Calculus Test

Show what you know.
Don’t invent new math.
Don’t contradict yourself.
Do the easy questions first.
If you don’t know how to do a problem, start by writing down relevant things that you know are true in general.
Break difficult problems into manageable pieces.
Know what a function is, and know what things are functions.
If you aren’t taking a derivative, it’s probably wrong. (see the explanation below)
If you’re doing obscene amounts of computation, it’s probably wrong.
Don’t care about the final answer.

(via Jeremy)

Version Control in Dolphin Smalltalk

If you’ve ever wondered how to do version control in a Smalltalk system then check out these videos that Andy Bower recorded for our benefit:
Sts Setup: http://bit.ly/StsSetup
Sts Projects: http://bit.ly/StsProjects
Sts Changes: http://bit.ly/StsPkgChanges
Sts Project Changes: http://bit.ly/StsProjChanges
Sts Community Repository: http://bit.ly/StsCommRepo
(lost the source)