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Welcome to my Wikipedia user page!
Stephen Chervitz Trutane is my official, legal name though it was originally Stephen Allen Chervitz, as described here. So you might know me as having the surname Trutane or as Chervitz, depending on what era of my life or circle of friends you know me from. I respond to either, so use whichever one you want. For simplicity, you can just call me "Steve".
After Boulder, I shifted directions into the world of genomics (or post-genomics) joining David Botstein's lab (while he was at Stanford) working on the Saccharomyces Genome Database (S. cerevisiae a.k.a. baker's yeast, was the first eukaryote to have it's genome completely sequenced, which happened in April 1996, about 3 months after I started with SGD). While at SGD, I developed lots of Perl modules for working with bioinformatics data and contributed most of this code to the open source BioPerl project, which was just getting started around this time, as noted in the early BioPerl history.
I am no longer actively involved with BioPerl development, but continue to be a fan of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (and open source software for science generally). Other projects I've been involved with include BioDAS, GenoViz, and HCLS projects. I'm on the board of the FGED Society starting in 2002, acting as their secretary and webmaster between 2010 and their dissolution in 2021.
In my spare time, I'm either hanging out with my family, training for or organizingtriathlons, promoting health and fitness, tweeting, contributing to Wikipedia (my stats), or trying to help humanity with the organization I founded, TeamHuman.org. Wikipedia, I feel, is well-aligned with the "promoting a shared understanding" goal of TeamHuman.org.
My Wikipedia story: When I was a kid I used to browse a physical encyclopedia (I think it was a World Book Encyclopedia ca. 1974), reading random pages here and there. One day when I was 13 or 14 years old, I came across a page that changed my life, specifically a section describing molecular biology. It blew me away that we humans have figured out the genetic code, a code that nearly all cells on earth use for creating proteins from DNA. My teachers had never mentioned the topic at all! The rest of my life has essentially been following up on what I stumbled up on that day, pursuing a Ph.D. and then working on genomics for 25 years in the biotech industry.
I've been contributing to English wikipedia sporadically since ca. 2008 and enjoy the feeling that I'm creating a knowledge resource that will be read and augmented by others, and persist over time. Perhaps I will add content that will inspire someone else and alter the course of their life as mine was altered long ago by that static encyclopedia. It almost feels like I'm giving back to the encyclopedia gods that led me to where I am today. Sure, wikipedia has issues, but I have seen it evolve and self-correct over time via community input, keeping up with our evolving state of knowledge in real time -- and it's available worldwide via the internet for free. Awesome.
HCZ has been in the news frequently in '08-'09, such as this report about the problems facing charities in the wake of the economic crisis, featured on front page of WSJ on 26 Jan 2009.
Some trivia: My HCZ wiki article comes in at 36 (out of about 42,000) in a Google search (as of 11 Apr 09). It was 110/38K in Jan '09.
It's an emerging coinage that's fairly common & quite high-specificity, with a growing usage.
A live twitter search for 'pancession' on 2 Aug 2020 found ~80 tweets since 12 Mar 2020, all of which were pandemic/recession-related. It appeared only twice in Twitter prior to 2020.
'Pancession' was noted in an Economist article on neologisms on 27 June 2020, and has been used to refer to the COVID-19 recession in other mediaposts.
Concerns a set of elegant experiments that used universe-scale objects (stars, quasars) to test (and confirm) a quantum-scale phenomenon (quantum entanglement).
War on Cancer (I've greatly expanded this from stub state starting in Oct 2008. Continues to be a work in progress.)
I initially redirected it to Nat'l Cancer Act of '71, then decided it was better to redirect the other way around.
On 2 Oct 2009, I participated in the Lance Armstrong Foundation's "LIVESTRONG Day" by registering a virtual event where did my part to raise cancer awareness by inviting people to the WoC wikipedia page. Not sure if anyone noticed.
Some google stats on WoC searches as of 2 Oct 09: the WP page is now on the first page of results, though near the bottom. I take this as a sign of progress of my efforts, as the WoC page has usually been quite distant from the top when I've checked earlier this year. Total google WoC hits on 2 Oct 09: 45M (unquoted), 135k (quoted). Update 3 Nov 2009: WoC page is now #2 out of 47.5M total (unquoted) and #3 out of 327K (quoted). Hot topic! Update 13 Nov 2009: WoC page is now #1 out of 52.3M total (unquoted) and #2 out of 142K (quoted -- the previous 327k seems anomalous).
JFW is looking for more authoritative references describing a 'grand unified' theory for how inflammation relates to cancer before putting anything about it in the cancer article.
I think the cancer-inflammation field is rich enough that it deserves its own page & plan to create when I get a chance.
This would avoid provide a common, main article to link to from either cancer or inflammation.
Cancer article is quite big: 96kb as of 12 May 2012
FGED Society (Major re-write, page rename. Formerly known as 'MGED')
Treatment of cancer (my proposal to rename this page from Management of cancer was approved... nearly 7 years after my proposal. I hope there were no cancer patients waiting on that change :o).
Some of my original contribution on Joe's page has since been removed on the basis of being WP:OR or WP:POV. I'm not sure about this removal, since I'm pointing out a coincidental fact between the circumstances of his death and a major theme of the movie he was making when he died. Here's what I said: The road on which Joe died, Highway 1, is akin to Route 66 featured in Cars in the way it "works/moves with the land" (quote from movie). Meandering along the scenic California coastline, Highway 1 is a very much a road where appreciating the journey is as important as reaching one's destination, a theme of Cars. Maybe I'll bring this up on Joe's talk page.
Scat singing(In the "Origin" section, I added the Jelly Roll Morton quote from Alan Lomax interview.)
Not a major edit here, for sure, but I also added a section to his discussion page highlighting Dan's Vietnam War connection and the possible role of PTSD in leading him to his murderous actions -- something I've never heard mentioned, though I haven't read widely here. (This editing done after seeing Milk -- excellent movie, btw).
On Veteran's Day 2010, I launched WhiteMilk.org to spotlight this area. This is my own OR so I wouldn't put it in the article, but might be worth a mention in the discussion.
Crips (Added statement and citations about the roots of gang activity in So Central LA. Important issue and article. Definitely could use expansion.)
The Jedi Code(Found it in one of my son's books I Am A Jedi by Qui-Gon Jinn and saw that it was not in -- or had been deleted from -- the Jedi page.)
OK, the code has been removed once again from the article. Not clear what's the beef. Here's the version of the article with the Jedi code as I added it.
The definitive article about the Jedi Code can be found in Wookiepedia.
My attempt to add the Wookiepedia citation to the Jediism article was reverted as being an unreliable source. However, being a wiki, Wookiepedia's reliability should improve over time, eh?
I still feel that the actual Jedi Code itself should appear in Wikipedia, perhaps on a dedicated page. It could cover alternative versions of the code has it has appeared in different places. One day, when the Force feels strong, I'll attempt it.
This piece can also be counted as a single bar of 15 8, but that is not the most 'reduced' form towards which musical types seem to strive.
It was originally included in the "List of musical works in unusual time signatures" (MWUTS) page but got removed, probably because it lacked a decent citable source describing the time signature.
Researching this has revealed some insight into Wikipedia culture as it seems one Wikipedian decided to maintain the MWUTS page outside of Wikipedia after pushback from other editors regarding the reliability of sources. This person maintained his list at dkap.info/oddtime.php from May 2009 till April 2017. Here the last archived copy of it.
What's the lesson here? If editors feel the need to leave Wikipedia over disputes with other editors, that seems like a bad result indicating a problem with the system. Perhaps the dkap.info author's contribution could have been maintained on a talk page or in his sandbox, or added to the article with a "citation needed" flag. As it is, Wikipedia lost the energy of a knowledgeable person -- an unfortunate outcome.
Btw, there are some interesting works listed on that MWUTS page, such as the progressive metal "Schism" in 6+1⁄2 8 time (which must be an average of the various time changes in that song).
In addition to having more than one typo in the title of the book, the authors also lifted one of the citation anchors "[4]" appearing in the Wikipedia article!
Unattributed use of text like this from Wikipedia is widespread, I suspect. I found other web pages that contained lifted verbiage from the CRO page, such as this.
While a form of flattery, such copying can be problematic when errors are copied from Wikipedia articles. After the errors are fixed in Wikipedia, the untold copies are not. There's no way to track these copies other than by Google searching.
It would be cool to have a way to signal 3rd party websites that the Wikipedia text they copied has been changed, signaling that the copied text may contain an error or other fix.
I also noted the pandemic in the history section of the Cytokine release syndrome article, along with citations for cytokine storms as a cause of death due to COVID-19. The history section of CRS was subsequently (May 2020) moved to the Cytokine storm page.
Cytokines comprise a fascinatingly complex system of immuno-modulators that's a hot topic of biomedical research. Here's a figure (I tweeted via @Awesomics, Nov 2018), that provides a glimpse of this complexity.
I'm skeptical of the electro-chemical claims of how Earthing works, but am a strong believer in the benefits — physical & mental — of going barefoot as much as possible.
For example, the primary biological free radical superoxide (coming from our consumption of oxygen), is negatively charged, and so would repel and not be neutralized by any electrons absorbed into the body thru direct contact with the Earth, as I noted in this tweet (@barefootr = me).
IMHO, health benefits of walking barefoot on various natural surfaces mostly stem from they neural stimulation of our feet which are chock full of pressure-sensitive nerve endings. Walking & running without supportive shoes also improves our overall balance and specific strengthening of our feet, ankles, legs, & hips.
In April 2023, I came across an interesting study that quantitated current flow between the human body and ground, and also looked for evidence in support of some Earthing claims.
The study found a very weak current (<10 nanoamperes) but with no correlation to important body functions such as respiration and heart rate, making it a negative result for the Earthers.
I summarized these findings and added them to the Earthing section of the Energy medicine page, but my contribution was quickly removed, being called "nonsense" without any further explanation. However, I feel this study is relevant to the article.
My impression from this "Energy medicine page experience" is that there's a strong anti-pseudoscience editorial force behind the Energy medicine article. While it's a good thing to be skeptical and not let pseudoscience pass as real science, I think it would be fair to cite peer-reviewed studies of energy medicine-related claims, while pointing out scientific critiques of those studies. As it is, I feel that this sort of balance is lacking.
NOTE: I actually don't have a strong preference to dual license my contributions with CC. I'm fine with Wikimedia All Licensing. The only beef I have with Wikimedia licensing is that adding that template to my user page causes the complete contents of the page to be collapsed under a "More information. Licensing rights" box when using the Wikipedia mobile app. It doesn't behave that way in a web browser, so it may be a bug in the app (as of 9 May 2020). Nevertheless, I don't want to require users to expand a box in order to simply read my page...
Some notable content I've come across in my Wikipedia travels. This is in a completely random order (added to the bottom as I find them), and non-exhaustive. May grow over time... or not.
For the officially curated list of "Wikipedia picks," see the archives of the daily feature article and picture that appear on the Main Page.
Zoom sequence of the Mandelbrot set. Infinitely complex, yet based on simple principles, it took the modern computing era to discover it. Mandelbrot videos: history, sciart.
Rotating single-walled zigzag carbon nanotube from Carbon nanotubes article. Depending on how you look at this, it can appear to be rotating CW or CCW. For an interesting mental exercise, try to make it switch directions.
Teddy Roosevelt's assassination bullet damage, speech and eyeglass case. "As an experienced hunter and anatomist, Roosevelt correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung, and he declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes before completing his speech and accepting medical attention."
Modern colorized version of the Flammarion engraving, originally drawn by an unknown artist. Also featured in the Cosmos article, serving "as a metaphorical illustration of the scientific or mystical quests for knowledge." For an alternative colorized version, see the Western esotericism page.
Circular representation of the observable universe on a logarithmic scale (featured in Cosmology) by Pablo Carlos Budassi who has more cool works. For a horizontal layout version with annotations: .
Animation describing mechanism of action for poison ivy, poison oak and other plants containing urushiol. Featuring some bad-ass "Mr. T" cells.
Breakdown of Wikipedia's topic areas as of February 2016 from Size of Wikipedia.
15pxBeatboxing demo by SpencerX. Some alien civilizations may communicate this way.
Villarceau circles from a slant cut through a torus. Pro tip: always slice your donuts like this.
Hopf fibration: Villarceau circles on steroids: A stereographic projection of a hypersphere in four-dimensional space to R3, "in which space is filled with nested tori made of linking Villarceau circles."
Unrolling a circle's circumference, illustrating the ratio of circumference to diameter, a.k.a. the irrational & transcendentalconstantπ. The formula for circumference we all know and love "2π r" is just π when the radius is 0.5 as is the case here.
Tension lines of mechanical stress can be visualized in a plastic protractor seen under cross polarized light. Birefringence of the plastic shows colored fringes, a.k.a photoelasticity.
Phrenological mapping of the brain from 1883 - a now largely discredited effort correlate mental functions with specific parts of the brain. See philosophy of mind for a German version. See also Craniometry.
Wormhole travel as envisioned by Les Bossinas for NASA. Traversable wormholes might allow time travel, with some limitations. Image appears on the 'Related Portals' tab of the Science Portal, as well as in the wormhole article.
A geometric visualisation of Bayes' theorem. Bayesian inference has found application in a wide range of activities, including science, engineering, philosophy, medicine, sport, and law.
History of Earth with time-spans of the eons to scale. All of human history probably fits within a single pixel of this plot. Maybe just a half-pixel.
NYTimes story that scooped the 1935 EPR_paradox paper and irritated Albert Einstein who didn't appreciate it appearing before the paper itself. This is why we now have news embargos.
Basic unit of collagen, the main structural protein "glue" that holds our bodies together. Three left-handed procollagen polypeptides coil to form a right-handed triple helical tropocollagen. Collagen defects can lead to genetic diseases like Ehlers–Danlos_syndromes.
Animated GIF of a photographic sequence shot by Eadweard Muybridge in 1887. He recorded movies before there was a proper way to replay the material in motion. Some of his books are still published today, and are used as references by artists, animators, and students of animal and human movement. Featured on Portal:Film.
Scatter plot of the legs (a,b) of the first Pythagorean triples with a and b less than 6000. Interesting how the parabolic patterns and rays naturally emerge.
Broadway, north from Cortlandt & Maiden Lane, New York City, c. 1885–87 showing unsightly telephone and telegraph wires that were among the targets of late nineteenth century agitation for zoning laws.
Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. There are numerous theories that attempt to explain the origin, neurobiology, experience, and function of emotions, but no scientific consensus yet. Pixar's Inside Out associated colors with five emotions (Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust). A paper on color associations to emotions was published one day after Inside Out debuted at Cannes (5/18/15). Also see TV Tropes.
Two cosplayers portraying character from the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise - an iconic Japanese TV series from the mid '90s that has had a significant impact on Japanese popular culture, sparking a rebirth of the anime industry, revitalizing the mecha genre, and making cosplay a worldwide phenomenon.
The cardinal anatomical planes in a human. These planes also apply to specific body parts such as individual limbs and joints. For bipeds and quadrupeds, the orientation of the coronal and transverse planes switch.
Shape of the universe: Different local spatial curvatures of the universe, determined by the density parameter Ω. From top to bottom: spherical universe with Ω > 1, hyperbolic universe with Ω < 1, and a flat universe with Ω = 1. In yoga poses, these would correspond to cat, cow, & tabletop.
In a Möbius strip-shaped universe, an object would be indistinguishable from its own mirror image – this fiddler crab's larger claw switches between left to right with every circulation. It is not impossible that our universe may have this property; see non-orientable wormhole.
From the Pi article illustrating how the constant π appears naturally in Fourier series of periodic functions. Also appears in Pontryagin duality, an abstract theory of the Fourier transform.
A visual depiction of philosopher John Rawls' hypothetical veil of ignorance, for decision making about how to structure society without knowing what gender, race, wealth, etc. one will have. Rawls claims this will lead people to choose "fair" policies. Open question: has there been any real-world confirmation or sociological experiments to test it?
3D protein structure of the zinc-binding and ATPase/helicase domains of the large tumor antigen hexamer bound to double-stranded DNA (central gray blob). It's a viral protein involved in cancers such as Merkel-cell_carcinoma when it gets mutated during integration of the viral genome into the host genome. Usually these viruses are harmless, but accidents happen.
Junk food poster at a USMC health center with "satirical labels and nutrition facts to explain why junk food can ruin any diet." I unskewed the original image using Graphic Converter.
Pollen from a variety of common plants including sunflower, morning glory, hollyhock, lily, primrose, castor bean. Microscopically magnified x500, so the bean at bottom left corner is ~50 μm long.
Bee hummingbird, endemic to Cuba and the smallest bird in the world. This immature male has yet to develop the iridescent blue plumage of the adult. In one day, the bee hummingbird may visit 1,500 flowers. Zoom in for feather details.
Street art mural in Perú. Historical note: Originally, I featured an image of "Sanithna_in_Cabbagetown" (from Atlanta) but that image was deleted from Wikimedia Commons on 10 March 2023. It was an abstract portrait featured here.
What the Sun looks like really close up -- a high-res photo of its visible surface, a.k.a the photosphere. The grainy appearance comes from convective cells called granules. Temperature is 5,772 K (5,499 °C; 9,930 °F) with a density of 0.2g/m3 (~1/10,000 that of air at sea level).
Birds huddling for warmth to homeostatically maintain their core temperature. Good hi-res, warm-looking feathers.
Antigen processing and presentation inside any nucleated cell in your body. Shows a time sequence starting at 'protein' and proceeding counter-clockwise finishing with 'Peptide on MHC'. If cell is cancerous or infected, the displayed peptide might be abnormal (non-self), activating a T cell which can detect a peptide displayed at 0.1%-1% of the MHC molecules on the cell surface.
Veiðistafur, one of a variety of Icelandic magical staves. This one brings luck in fishing. Includes a subtle smile emoji right in the center.
Original US Constitution, super high-res 59 MB image of page one. Zoom in to see the fine engrossing & flowing cursive by Jacob Shallus who was paid $30 (worth about $900 in today's dollars). Written using iron gall ink which was originally black. Constitution was signed on 17 Sep 1787 -- by everyone except Mr. Shallus.
Polandball characters, from a 2009 Internet meme featuring countries represented as spherical personas that interact in broken English. Featured in the list of Internet phenomena, their popularity stemmed from the ability "to tell short stories of nations in a easily understandable fashion."
The Information security triad. Pleasingly symmetric. The "CIA" in the filename refers not to that CIA but to "Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability". A different version of this image with color, but not quite as good symmetry.
Internet penetration world map: number of users as a % of each country's population as of 2015. Shows a distinct gradient based on latitude with more equatorial countries having lower values. The impact of political divisions in New Guinea also jump out.
Sensorimotor homunculus represented as a 3-D figure.
Map showing the spread of the Black Death in Europe between 1346 and 1353. Interesting geopolitical boundary starting near present day Odesa Ukraine and following the Dnipro River north, following the border between Principality_of_Kiev and the Golden_Horde, across which passage by Christians was prohibited.
Vinicunca the "Mountain of seven colors" in the Andes of Peru. Revealed in the mid-2010s by glacier caps melting due to climate change.
Aristotle proposed a three-part structure for souls of plants, animals, and humans, making humans unique in having all three types of soul. For a good compliation of Aristotle's sayings (and misattributions) see my pages of note.
Coat of arms of Mauritius, an island country in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar, home to ~1.3 million Mauritians.
Copper engraving print from 1569 called "Humani Victus Instrumenta: Ars Coquinaria" associated with the series on Cyborgs including related topics such as Cyberspace.
The observed deflection of an object due to the Coriolis force is called the Coriolis effect. In a reference frame with counterclockwise rotation (such as in the Earth's northern hemisphere), the effect causes a rightward deflection of an object's motion (shown here). In a frame with clockwise rotation (Southern hemisphere), the force would cause a leftward deflection.
A Foucault pendulum indirectly reveals the Coriolis effect caused by Earth's rotation. The green trace shows the path of the pendulum bob over the ground (a rotating reference frame). When in Paris, visit the Musée_des_Arts_et_Métiers to see Léon_Foucault's original 1851 pendulum bob which was damaged in 2010 when its suspension cable snapped.
"The Blue Marble" Earth pic from about 18K miles away taken on 7 Dec 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew en route to the Moon. It has become one of the most reproduced and widely distributed photos in existence. To the astronauts, the Earth had the appearance and size of a glass marble. Appears in ~29k wikipedia pages as of 29 Mar 2024.
On the subject of tragic deaths, I detected a hint of triskaidekaphobia creeping into the description of Nodar Kumaritashvili's luge death. The wikipedia article on 7/24/16 claimed he crashed on his 13th run from the men's start of the Whistler luge course, but the cited source indicates he had taken 15 runs from the men's start before his crash. Fixed on 10 Aug 2016.
Also notable death-wise: List of selfie-related injuries and deaths. Table is large and growing (n=179 on 26 Jan 2020; n=139 on 24 Nov 2017). C'mon folks, don't risk it!
SGR 1806-20 - "A starquake [on this magnetar] ... released more energy in one-tenth of a second (1.3×1039J) than our sun has released in 100,000 years".
Lets hope this doesn't ever happen w/in 3 parsecs of Earth :-O
Psalter world map - "mysterious as parts of the world once marked with sea monsters and dragons by 13th-century mapmakers."ref
Canine cancer detection - Putting man's best friend's sniffer to medical use: "dogs can detect some substances in the region of parts per trillion..."
Talk page of Mansplaining - Amazing the amount of collective energy spent here. Probably no mansplaining taking place there, since most Wikipedians are men, you know ;).
Q: How does a mainsplainer get his water? A: Well, actually...
Nu metal - amazing amount of vitriol in the "Criticism and controversy" section, harkening the disco sucks backlash of the previous generation, and even ragtime backlash at the beginning of the 20th century, which got slammed both coming and going.
Brouhaha - used to have its own Wikipedia page, but got moved to wiktionary in December 2021. Original brouhaha article had some colorful examples and a see also link to tempest in a teacup.
Notable numbers: 4294967295 and 2147483647 (number) - How many numbers have their own wikipedia pages? Is that question even answerable?
(twelfth root of two), the ratio of the distances of two consecutive frets to the bridge of a stringed instrument (approx 1.059463).
More technically: it's an algebraic irrational number representing the frequency ratio (musical interval) of a semitone in twelve-tone equal temperament.
RMS Titanic - Sank on Tax Day 1912 (the year before US federal income taxes actually started), and many died as a result of insufficient lifeboat passenger capacity stemming from "outdated maritime safety regulations."
Good example of what can happen when an industry moves faster than our ability to regulate it.
Subsequent maritime disasters with major fatalities, SS Eastland in 1915 and RMS Empress of Ireland in 1914, stemmed from regulatory over-correction in the 'wake' of the Titanic disaster.
Though the mechanism of how these helminths modulate the immune response, is unknown.
Matthew 5:5, the third of the Beatitudes ("blessed are the meek..."), contains an interesting linguistic note regarding the Greek word typically translated as 'meek':
it is not suggesting weakness but instead the way power is handled.
It is "strength under control". The English language does not have a word that translates conveying both gentleness and power together.
Makes one wonder how many other original terms used in the Bible are difficult to translate.
This linguistic note was originally included in the 'Analysis' section of the Matthew 5:5 article until 14 June 2021. I moved it into the interpretation section on 8 Oct 2023.
Flagged as "appears to contradict itself on whether the escape attempt succeeded or failed." The U.S. Marshals Service investigation remains open to this day.
DevOps - Riddled with many editorial flags, mostly "unreliable source" or "citation needed".
'DevOps' means different things to different people in the industry and there is apparently no definitive authority on the topic.
Irony here is that many Wikipedians would probably describe their day jobs as being in devops, I would bet.
Linguistic interest: The words "yesterday" and "tomorrow" both translate to the same word in Hindi: कल ("kal"), meaning "[one] day remote from today." The ambiguity is resolved by verb tense.
Quantum entanglement could possibly be the ultimate source of the arrow of time.
Regarding the possibility of time travel, a traversable wormhole could provide a way, with some limitations. See my 'Images of Note' section for an artistic conception of wormhole travel.
Ineos 1:59 Challenge - Kipchoge's successful achievement of a sub-2-hour marathon is not recognized as an official world record, but did make it into the Guinness World Records.
How long before he or someone else makes it official? Could depend on the legalization of high-tech running shoes like he used.
Nike's 'AlphaFly' shoes like Eliud used are banned, but Nike's new 'VaporFly' shoes are officially legal.
Superoxide dismutase - My favorite enzyme as it plays a vital role in antioxidant defense in nearly all living cells exposed to oxygen.
It's the most catalytically efficient enzyme known with a reaction rate that is limited only by how fast the reactants can diffuse (kcat/KM = ~7 x 109 M−1s−1).
It's a metalloprotein that relies on interesting metal ions for catalysis: Cu-Zn, Mn, Fe, or Ni(underscoring the importance of a diverse, micronutrient-rich diet).
It's so important for life that the human genome has three different versions of it, customized for different cellular locales: cytoplasmic (SOD1), mitochondrial (SOD2), and extracellular (SOD3).
Mutations in SOD genes are implicated in notable diseases, such as Lou Gehrig's disease.
An interesting research question is whether supercentenarians have protective levels of SOD proteins, or SOD genetic variants, or SOD-regulatory gene variants.
A July 2020 study from Japan (open access) that looked at a number of relevant biomarkers (protein levels) did not find significant association of extracellular (EC) SOD3 with the super-old.
Note that they excluded individuals with the SOD3 R213G variant which is associated with high plasma levels of EC-SOD and an elevated risk for incidental ischemic heart disease, so there is a connection between SOD levels and cardiovascular health, but it's not a simple "more is better" relationship.
Also see this July 2000 Italian study that tested for genetic markers associated with longevity (it's also OA). It looked at SOD1 and SOD2 and did not find any significant associations. Also covers the importance of correcting for multiple hypothesis testing.
Protocadherins - a.k.a "Pcdhs" = neural adhesion proteins, thought to provide an address code system for the developing nervous system.
"different subsets of Pcdhs genes are differentially expressed in individual neurons, a vast cell surface diversity may arise from this combinatorial expression... Pcdhs may provide a synaptic-address code for neuronal connectivity or a single-cell barcode for self-recognition/self-avoidance.
The Pcdh genes have an interesting "locus region" organization akin to the T-cell & B-cell receptor genes, which also depend on combinatorial complexity for their function. For example PCDHA@.
Ubiquitously expressed in the brain (among other tissues), they play a big role in building the human brain -- the most advanced machine in the known universe. Keep an eye on these guys!
Scot Halpin - "who sojourned into the realm of the gods and returned anointed."
The 19yo from Iowa who answered Pete Townshend's call at the Cow Palace in 1973 after Keith Moon had trouble maintaining consciousness: ''"Can anybody here play the drums? I mean somebody good!"
The Who paid tribute to him after he passed away in 2008.
Quite a litany of negative lingo. Likely outweighs the set of positive terms for people -- is there even such a category?
Here's a few positive terms to get the ball rolling: mensch (but not gutmensch), saint, gentleman and a scholar, samaritan, dear, star, savior, treasure, go-to guy, right-hand-man, angel, up-standing citizen.
Social justice warrior (SJW) has an interesting history: it started out positive in the 1990s, then became a pejorative in 2011 as a result of social media activity (Twitter).
Both films came out in 1956 (March and July, respectively), making '56 as a pivotal transition point for American popular music genres: the rise of Rock and roll and the demise of the "swingin' pop jazz" crooners.
Bing Crosby may have been the first person to utter the phrase "rock and roll" in a film when he sang that Cole Porter lyric in the High Society number "Now You Has Jazz" (noted in the High Society article).
Another connection: Bing's last American concert happened on the day the King of Rock and Roll passed away (8/16/77). Bing himself passed away two months later after playing 18 holes of golf in Spain.
Amazing that with only second-hand inspiration, the two were able to write "'a song that reflects the charisma of baseball,' a song that makes the game even more magical and allows you, the young or the old observer, to raise up your voice and become part of it." -Harry Caray & the Library of Congress.
John Fogerty had a similar non-connection to the "bayou/swamp rock" music he composed with CCR, having been born & raised in the East Bay, some 2000 miles away from Louisiana.
Julia Child, famous French cuisine chef, author, and TV personality despite having been born & raised in California and becoming interested in cooking only in her mid-to-late 30s. Her "drive and inherent cheerfulness" (noted during her WWII service) undoubtedly contributed to her later success.
Shows that if the right spirit moves you, that can be good enough!
AIDS denialism Misinformation/conspiracy theory predated the Internet and refuses to die despite over 3 decades of scientific & medical evidence to the contrary.
The AIDS denialism - community section notes a 2012 article on "The social and symbolic power of AIDS denialism" that describes how these movements become entrenched, with HIV/AIDS denialists filling one of four distinct roles. A playbook for conspiracy theorists. Wikipedia to the rescue?
Flat Earth is probably the grandaddy of all conspiracy theories, surviving centuries despite direct, visible proof (looking at Earth from space — assuming you're not a Moon landing conspiracist).
Social media is flagged as driver.
Collagen, the structural protein "glue" that holds our bodies together, deserves many kudos:
It's the most abundant protein in mammals, accounting for 25% to 35% of whole-body protein content.
Has an interesting protein structure: three left-handed procollagen polypeptides coil together forming a right-handed triple helical tropocollagen which themselves bind together to form a fibril and those come together to form a collagen fibre.
An image of procollagen is featured in my "Images of note".
The Main Page on 5-6 Mar 2021 claimed "that the proposers of the imprinted brain hypothesis, which claims that autistic and schizotypal traits are opposites, had no background in behavioural genetics before proposing it," - but I don't see any such claim in the article.
CJ page says: "Culture jams are also being integrated into the university classroom." But I wonder if there are any university-level courses on the subject? Would be a popular class.
Notes that "street art may be deemed culture jamming, artistic appropriation, vandalism, or even all three."
Fremdscham - A.k.a. "vicarious embarrassment" that is often seen as an opposite to schadenfreude.
Embarrassment, like other emotions, can be contagious - you can get it from observing the embarrassing actions of another person.
The embarrassment article features a great "vintage family photo" ca. 1940s or 50s with a "father expressing embarrassment or dismay as his son takes a badly timed bathroom break."
Universal systems principles: concepts or phenomena with broad applicability across diverse disciplines:
Limelight - cool use of it during the American Civil War by Union forces to illuminate artillery target at night while simultaneously blinding Confederate gunners and riflemen.
I was suspicious of it being a misattribution since the English seemed very clean & modern, as noted by Caelan Huntress: "Greek doesn’t often translate so poetically into English, and never uniformly."
I guess it's not a major misattribution. It's just a paraphrasing of something Aristotle actually wrote: "virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions."
Alphabetical, but definitely not an exhaustive list here. There are tons of notable Wikipedians out there. What follows is a teensy list of a few folks that just happened to catch my attention for one reason or another.
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