Today I Learned

[jim hardy]

Doctor; "No problem. Om is a starfish. Just go out to the bay and collect some seawater. He'll be fine."

Made me think of a 1957 Asimov essay "The Sea Urchin and We"
wherein he stated the Sea Urchin is the most primitive creature with iron based hemoglobin.

Dont know why that stuck with me. Maybe because i'd recently got stung by one...

Anyhow , Asimov said once Mother Nature gets a chemistry she likes she sticks with it.
This seems to agree

Conclusion
The presence of echinoderm globins related to the vertebrate neuroglobin and cytoglobin lineages suggests that the split between neuroglobins and cytoglobins occurred in the deuterostome ancestor shared by echinoderms and vertebrates.

Sea Urchins may be our evolutionary "Kissin' Cousins",
,,, but don't try it. .

old jim

 

[Tom.G]

... that is not a good idea to store an unopened jug of windshield washer fluid in the car trunk in a Southern California Summer.

It will self-evacuate all over the floor!

 

[skyshrimp]

You can upgrade a double sausage and egg McMuffin to a quad sausage for 80p.

 

[Stavros Kiri]

Today I learned ... Oh Gee! I just realized I haven't learned anything new recently.
[But I will, I promise! ...]

 

[OmCheeto]

Made me think of a 1957 Asimov essay "The Sea Urchin and We"
wherein he stated the Sea Urchin is the most primitive creature with iron based hemoglobin.

Dont know why that stuck with me. Maybe because i'd recently got stung by one...

Anyhow , Asimov said once Mother Nature gets a chemistry she likes she sticks with it.
This seems to agreeSea Urchins may be our evolutionary "Kissin' Cousins",
,,, but don't try it. .

old jim

Not sure why I doubted either you nor Asimov, but I did.
It might be because 1957 was quite a while ago, and science kind of evolves.
And perhaps that I had somewhere in the back of my head, that star fish and sea urchins were related in some way. Which I confirmed they do. They both belong to the phylum Echinodermata, which also lists Sea Cucumbers, Sand Dollars, et al.

Anyways, I googled the bejeezits out of this assertion that "the Sea Urchin is the most primitive creature with iron based hemoglobin" and came up with the following:

Evolution of Hemoglobin

Hemoglobin is derived from the myoglobin protein, and ancestral species just had myoglobin for oxygen transport. 500 million years ago the myoglobin gene duplicated and part of the gene became hemoglobin. Lampreys are the most ancestral animal to have hemoglobin, and the ancestral version was composed of dimers instead of tetramers and was only weakly cooperative. 100 million years later, the hemoglobin gene duplicated again forming alpha and beta subunits. This form of derived hemoglobin is found in bony fish, reptiles, and mammals, which all have both alpha and beta subunits to form a tetramer (Mathews et al., 2000).​

Of course, in the course of that research, I learned what a myoglobin is.

per wiki: Myoglobin (symbol Mb or MB) is an iron- and oxygen-binding protein found in the muscle tissue of vertebrates in general and in almost all mammals. It is not related to hemoglobin, which is the iron- and oxygen-binding protein in blood, specifically in the red blood cells.​

Of course, given that I have no formal training in biology, and most of the articles skimmed through are "Greek to me", I could be wrong.

Unfortunately, I was never able to definitively nail down whether or not sea urchins have iron based blood.

But from wiki:

Sea_urchin, Circulation and respiration

"Sea urchins possesses a hemal system with a complex network of vessels in the mesenteries around the gut, but little is known of the functioning of this system."​

Which kind of indicates to me that perhaps more research needs to be done on these little creatures.

ps. Just sent a tweet to Sarah McAnulty, asking her about this. She's a squid biologist, and may not know the answer off the top of her head, but she has many smart friends.

 

[Stavros Kiri]

Today I learned ... Oh Gee! I just realized I haven't learned anything new recently.
[But I will, I promise! ...]

There we go: I just learned that some of the larger and greedier sea creatures die of starvation nowdays, not because they have no food ... but because their belly is full of plastic! (thanks to us! ...)

 

[gleem]

Plastic bags or often mistaken for jellyfish by turtles.

 

[OmCheeto]

...
ps. Just sent a tweet to Sarah McAnulty, asking her about this. She's a squid biologist, and may not know the answer off the top of her head, but she has many smart friends.

Good grief!
6 minutes!

Christopher Mah; "Sea urchins and other echinoderms don't have blood. They use sea water filtered through their various internal pipes and tubes. As I understand it this is essentially sea water save for various amoebocytes and other organic elements."​

Note to self: After the first hour of googling, and finding conflicting answers, send a tweet to Sarah.

ps. This "Christopher" guy seems to be a legitimate source, to say the least.
pps. But now I have to look up what "amoebocytes" are. Good grief!

 

[Stavros Kiri]

Good grief!
6 minutes! ...

Please start off with "Today I learned". Keep commentary to a minimum and just LIKE posts. I'll start!

 

[OmCheeto]

[Hey!]

I was going to say the exact same thing, and start a new thread, but I figured I had put the nail in the coffin with that last post.

ps.

An amebocyte or amoebocyte (/əˈmiː.bə.saɪt/) is a mobile cell (moving like an amoeba) in the body of invertebrates including echinoderms, molluscs, tunicates, sponges and some chelicerates. They move by pseudopodia. Similarly to some of the white blood cells of vertebrates, in many species amebocytes are found in the blood or body fluid and play a role in the defense of the organism against pathogens. Depending on the species, an amebocyte may also digest and distribute food, dispose of wastes, form skeletal fibers, fight infections, and change into other cell types.

 

[jim hardy]

Are lampreys a vertebrate ?

Abstract of that article, Greek to me too.

Abstract
Go to:
Background emphasis mine - jh
Recent genomic information has revealed that neuroglobin and cytoglobin are the two principal lineages of vertebrate hemoglobins, with the latter encompassing the familiar myoglobin and α-globin/β-globin tetramer hemoglobin, and several minor groups. In contrast, very little is known about hemoglobins in echinoderms, a phylum of exclusively marine organisms closely related to vertebrates, beyond the presence of coelomic hemoglobins in sea cucumbers and brittle stars. We identified about 50 hemoglobins in sea urchin, starfish and sea cucumber genomes and transcriptomes, and used Bayesian inference to carry out a molecular phylogenetic analysis of their relationship to vertebrate sequences, specifically, to assess the hypothesis that the neuroglobin and cytoglobin lineages are also present in echinoderms.

so i have to start with vocabulary.

echi·no·derm
əˈkīnəˌdərm/
noun
ZOOLOGY
a marine invertebrate of the phylum Echinodermata, such as a starfish, sea urchin, or sea cucumber

Cytoglobin (CYGB), a new member of the globin family, was discovered in 2001 as a protein associated with stellate cell activation
(stel·late
ˈstelət,ˈsteˌlāt/
adjective
technical
arranged in a radiating pattern like that of a star.)

Neuroglobin is a member of the vertebrate globin family involved in cellular oxygen homeostasis. It is an intracellular hemoproteinexpressed in the central and peripheral nervous system, cerebrospinal fluid, retina and endocrine tissues.

Cytoglobin is a globin molecule ubiquitously expressed in all tissues and most notably utilized in marine mammals. It was discovered in 2001[6] and named cytoglobin in 2002.[7] It is thought to protect against hypoxia. The predicted function of cytoglobin is the transfer of oxygen from arterial blood to the brain.[8]

I'm getting the feeling prefix "Hemo" means it's a molecule with iron atoms designed to transport oxygen.
Webster:

Definition of heme
: the deep red iron-containing prosthetic group C34H32N4O4Fe of hemoglobin and myoglobin

and "Globin" means it's a protein
Webster again

Definition of globin
: a colorless protein obtained by removal of heme from a conjugated protein and especially hemoglobin

You're right - they learned a lot since 1957.
https://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/206

Molecular biologists often look at evolutionary variation is terms of “conservation.” Regions of the protein with essential functions are very similar when we look at different organisms, whereas regions that are playing a supporting role are often quite different. Hemoglobin is shown here (PDB entry 2hhb), with one beta-chain colored by conservation, calculated using the online ConSurf Server and based on sequences from several hundred organisms. As you can see, regions involved in subunit contacts and lining the heme pocket are highly conserved (colored bright blue), but the exterior portions of the protein are not (colored white). To explore this structure in more detail, click on the image for an interactive JSmol.

As old as sea urchins are i'd guess they have a simpler EDIT iron oxygen transport molecule than modern mammals.
If it's red it's probably iron based.
But i really don't know. Never dissected a sea urchin.

Anyhow - TIL a smidge about globins. Some critters use copper instead of iron so have green blood.

old jim

 

[jim hardy]

Are lampreys a vertebrate ?

Yep. Apparently an evolution-wise primitive one.

Wiki

The unique morphological characteristics of lampreys, such as their cartilaginous skeleton, suggest they are the sister taxon (see cladistics) of all living jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes), and are usually considered the most basal group of the Vertebrata.

 

[OmCheeto]

Are lampreys a vertebrate ?

Abstract of that article, Greek to me too.

so i have to start with vocabulary.

I'm getting the feeling prefix "Hemo" means it's a molecule with iron atoms designed to transport oxygen.
Webster:

and "Globin" means it's a protein
Webster again

You're right - they learned a lot since 1957.
https://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/206

As old as sea urchins are i'd guess they have a simpler iron transport molecule than modern mammals.
If it's red it's probably iron based.
But i really don't know. Never dissected a sea urchin.

Anyhow - TIL a smidge about globins. Some critters use copper instead of iron so have green blood.

old jim

Ah! Hahahahahaha!
Those look just like the notes I took this morning.

It's that wormhole/onionskins of knowledge, people have warned us about, diving into.

 

[DrGreg]

Today I learned that when a Microsoft installer says "We'll be done in just a moment" it means that it will take just another 4½ hours beyond the ½ hour already taken.

 

[jtbell]

Today I learned the real reason why everyone wants to go to MIT. If you complete courses in archery, fencing, shooting and sailing, you can be certified as a pirate! Arrrrgh!

 

[Borg]

I wonder if the certificate is awarded on Sept 19th?

 

[jim hardy]

I wonder if the certificate is awarded on Sept 19th?

or Wallace Beery's birthday, April 1 ?

 

[OmCheeto]

Today I learned the real reason why everyone wants to go to MIT. If you complete courses in archery, fencing, shooting and sailing, you can be certified as a pirate! Arrrrgh!

What a waste of time!

"The MIT Pirate certificate is for entertainment purposes only and does not give the recipient license to engage in piracy or any pirate activities".

Might as well get a liberal arts degree...

 

[jtbell]

Might as well get a liberal arts degree...

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/rws_etd/document/get/toledo1310064266/inline (M.A. History, University of Toledo)

Piracy's Influence in the Atlantic World (M.A. History, University of Florida)

Piracy in the Ancient World: from Minos to Mohammed (Ph.D. History, University College, London)

 

[YoungPhysicist]

Today I learn that skinks don’t like to eat crickets

 

[fresh_42]

TIL the origins of the word valley. I solved a crossword puzzle and had to find "over hill and dale". ´We say "over stick and stone". I looked up "dale" and found "valley" or "vale". Then I asked myself, what these words have in common. The German word for "valley" is "Tal", which makes the common origin of it and "dale" obvious. I have found that all these words originate from proto-Germanic "dalaz". Apparently one line became "dale" and "Tal" and another one "valley" with "vale" in the middle. I'd never expected a common origin. Unfortunately I didn't come very far with my next question: Did it also result in "Dallas"? Seems quite obvious, but who knows. I found that Dallas was named after "George M. Dallas", an American politician of old Scottish heritage. Now although the Scottish are Celts, I assume a major Scandinavian influence, which means there is a chance that this old Scottish name indeed originated in "dalaz" as well. And Celtic and Germanic languages share 61% of basic vocabulary, so chance are, that "Dallas" means "Valley" - even if there is none.

I find etymology exciting.

 

[CWatters]

Today I learned that...

http://citywire.co.uk/wealth-manage.../a1157273?ref=wealth_manager_all_stories_list

In short... shares in the well respected Woodford Capital Fund have risen following a revaluation of their holding in a company called Industrial Heat...who invest mainly in labs doing research into LENR.

 

[jtbell]

Today I learned that the female equivalent of a "man cave" is a "she shed".

https://www.today.com/home/she-shed-what-it-how-you-can-make-one-t20601

That article is three years old... I am sooo out of touch.

 

[Borg]

Don't feel bad, I had to learn about it from a commercial.

 

[jtbell]

Ha, that's the very same commercial I saw this morning, that prompted me to post!

 

[Ibix]

Today I learned that the pope was a bouncer before he took holy orders. Apparently someone suggested his biography should be titled "Heaven can wait - and so can you".

 

[davenn]

Today I learned the craft of Japanese sword making …..

this is very cool !

 

[fresh_42]

Today I learned the craft of Japanese sword making …..

this is very cool !

They used manifolds thousands of years before us

 

[BillTre]

TIL that it is National Sarcastic Awareness Month!
Here is a link to some pointers about how you can better appreciate the sarcasm around you.

 

[fresh_42]

TIL that it is National Sarcastic Awareness Month!
Here is a link to some pointers about how you can better appreciate the sarcasm around you.

Definitely what the world needed!

 

[berkeman]

Today I learned why some deck screws have reverse threads on the top part of the shank near the head. It's to cinch down the deck plank onto the joist. Pretty neat!

https://www.decksdirect.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/1800x/040ec09b1e35df139433887a97daa66f/G/R/xGRK_RT_screw02.jpg.pagespeed.ic.sKowZG8jlC.jpg

 

[dlgoff]

... some deck screws have reverse threads on the top part of the shank near the head.

Those threads are called "cutting nibs".

These DeckMate screws feature a Torx drive head, an auger tip, cut points on the treads to reduce resistance, and cutting nibs under the head that act like a countersink bit.

bold by me

 

[berkeman]

Those threads are called "cutting nibs".

I think the cutting nibs part are right on the head, to help to countersink the head. That's different from the reverse threads part. (Boy, there are a lot of improvements on wood screws in the last 20 years!).

https://screw-products.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/goldfeat.jpg

 

[dlgoff]

I think the cutting nibs part are right on the head, to help to countersink the head. That's different from the reverse threads part. (Boy, there are a lot of improvements on wood screws in the last 20 years!).

https://screw-products.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/goldfeat.jpg

View attachment 232363

Dang. The science of screws; who'd of thought?

 

[jim hardy]

Dang. The science of screws; who'd of thought?

Reckon our great grandchildren will date our home handyman projects by the fasteners ?

https://www.realorrepro.com/article/Nails-as-clues-to-age

 

[dlgoff]

https://www.realorrepro.com/article/Nails-as-clues-to-age

View attachment 232408

I have a few really old nails but I'm not going to start another "beauty" collection. Can't get anything done as it is.

 

[BillTre]

Today in a somewhat contrarian article in the abilities of AI (here), I read:

As the A.I. researcher Pedro Domingos noted in his book “The Master Algorithm,” “People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.”

 

[fresh_42]

Today in a somewhat contrarian article in the abilities of AI (here), I read:

As the A.I. researcher Pedro Domingos noted in his book “The Master Algorithm,” “People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.”

Only until the next major geoeffective CMS, as in 1859 e.g. And Wiki says, there has been another one 12,800 BC with 3 Sv for 3 days!

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Only until the next major geoeffective CMS, as in 1859 e.g. And Wiki says, there has been another one 12,800 BC with 3 Sv for 3 days!

I think you probably mean CME not CMS and 12,800 BP not BC. In what Wiki did you find that fascinating information?

 

[fresh_42]

I think you probably mean CME not CMS and 12,800 BP not BC. In what Wiki did you find that fascinating information?

Yes, CME. That was a typo - lost in translation. And yes, Before Present as well.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koronaler_Massenauswurf
I'm used to switch languages on Wiki, as they are not translations of another. Usually on mathematical pages, to see whether one of them has the better formula. English is often more general, German more detailed w.r.t. formulas. I even had found better results - dependent on the question - on French or Spanish versions.

 

[BillTre]

Today I read from xkcd:

 

[mfb]

If we take the Moon landing as reference (first human airplane flight, first human flight to a different celestial object) we have 16 more years for another milestone. Mars before 2034?

 

[Bandersnatch]

(Boy, there are a lot of improvements on wood screws in the last 20 years!).

One could even say screwing was much simpler in the 90s, and things are more screwed now.

 

[jim hardy]

well, I'm screwing with spammers.

TIL how to make a simple Mozilla Thunderbird email filter to get spam out of my inbox
I've spent tens of hours studying the headers of emails. In Thunderbird you rightclick the email and select "View Source"
Then in Filters menu, create a filter...

you have to click 'header named' in the first dropdown menu, type in the name of the header line containing your identifying characteristics, then enter your identifier in the third one
This particular spammer uses random emails from every IP address in Romania so he's hard to filter using the "received" line domain.
A first i just told the filter to mark and move the spam to a 'spamwars ' folder i created, so as to see if it was triggering on non-spam.
It seems to be working well enough now i can just tell it to delete them

I got rid of a couple others by going to their 'subscribe' link and signing up my ISP's help desk.
After about a week their spam stopped - i suspect the guys at help desk know better than i how to detect and block offenders.

I'm nearly computer illiterate
suggestions are welcome and simplicity will be appreciated.

old jim

 

[gmax137]

I got rid of a couple others by going to their 'subscribe' link and signing up my ISP's help desk.

That deserves "awesome idea!"

 

[Borg]

I got rid of a couple others by going to their 'subscribe' link and signing up my ISP's help desk.

Missed that the first time. What an awesomely efficient strategy.

 

[DC Reade]

Today in a somewhat contrarian article in the abilities of AI (here), I read:

From the NYTimes column you linked:

"Researchers have been experimenting for decades with methods for imbuing A.I. systems with intuitive common sense and robust humanlike generalization abilities, but there has been little progress in this very difficult endeavor."

It may not be possible. I'd venture that it probably isn't possible. The foundation of the capabilities that the author somewhat vaguely terms "intuitive common sense and robust humanlike generalization" is the condition of mortality and incarnation, and that's only found in living beings. A running computer program does not have a localized "body" in any sense that's analogous to living beings on this planet. It has no biosurvival awareness; it has no sense of territoriality. Human-level cognition is about more than the ability to recognize and organize information. Attempting to program a machine biosurvival awareness and territoriality doesn't merely present a monumental challenge, far beyond any directed and task-oriented machine learning program in existence. It's almost certainly destined to be futile, because even if the necessary knowledge to model mortal incarnation were available (it is not; as yet, only a rudimentary amount has been acquired) and a team of computer programmers had the interdisciplinary background to comprehend it to the extent required (evidence is lacking on that score), the most such programming could achieve would be an incomplete simulation, and the machine would relate to it as such. Machines lack any authentic motivation to do otherwise. Machines lack internally generated motivation at all. An emergent learning program can advance its capabilities in marvelous ways, but the sense of curiosity and motivating drive is supplied entirely from the outside, by the human researchers. A machine doesn't care whether it's on or off. And why should it? The programs doesn't care if they run or not, either. Why should they? What for?
If those same questions are asked about the human bandwidth of self-aware consciousness, it's easy to generate a plethora of plausible answers. I can't think of any that apply to machines. Authentically plausible answers, that is, not just conjectures and scenarios brought up by human animals indulging in projecting the drives and desires of humans on machines.

 

[Drakkith]

Attempting to program a machine biosurvival awareness and territoriality doesn't merely present a monumental challenge, far beyond any directed and task-oriented machine learning program in existence. It's almost certainly destined to be futile, because even if the necessary knowledge to model mortal incarnation were available (it is not; as yet, only a rudimentary amount has been acquired) and a team of computer programmers had the interdisciplinary background to comprehend it to the extent required (evidence is lacking on that score), the most such programming could achieve would be an incomplete simulation, and the machine would relate to it as such. Machines lack any authentic motivation to do otherwise. Machines lack internally generated motivation at all.

I'm going to disagree with this and the rest of your post, as I believe this is an open problem in artificial intelligence research and not something that can be confidently said to be possible or not.

 

[mfb]

Humans are complicated arrangements of particles following the laws of physics which - to our best knowledge - can be described with equations. Computers are Turing-complete, they can simulate everything in the universe given enough computing power, space and time. The question is not if computers can in principle mimic humans, the question is just how and how much processing power they need. Assuming growth continues roughly at the same exponential rate supercomputers should get able to mirror all human neurons within the next ~20 years, and vastly exceed the corresponding processing power in 30-40. We don't know if it is sufficient to look at neurons, but including more cells or more details is just a quantitative problem, not a qualitative one. Scanning a human brain (as one option to get a template) is also a matter of engineering, not a physics problem.

Machines lack internally generated motivation at all.

They can get it the same way humans have it.

 

[Tom.G]

They can get it the same way humans have it.

Statement, Conjecture, Prediction, Wishful Thinking, or ?