For Her Scientist Husband, an Architect Creates a Boldly Contemporary Retreat

December 26, 2024

A private study

QT:{{”
asked her to design a studio for him on their weekend property in upstate New York….studio, intended solely as his private refuge for reading, writing and thinking, she wanted the structure to be as open to its setting as possible. Located near a cliff above a large pond, it is surrounded by woodland and meadows.
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For Her Scientist Husband, an Architect Creates a Boldly Contemporary Retreat

Source: Architectural Digest
A Refuge in the Woods

https://search.app/tJbWRrM6C1mUKBN28


Study reveals unique molecular machinery of woman who can’t feel pain | UCL News – UCL – University College London

December 26, 2024

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/may/study-reveals-unique-molecular-machinery-woman-who-cant-feel-pain


A World Without Pain | The New Yorker

December 26, 2024

Levy, A. (2020, January 6). A world without pain. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/a-world-without-pain

QT:{{”
“When I met Jo for the first time, I was just struck by her,” Cox, an affable forty-year-old with a scruffy beard, told me, one afternoon in his lab at U.C.L. …This imperviousness to pain is what makes her distinct from everyone else with a FAAH mutation. They, like even the most committed stoners, can still get hurt.

Cameron had the same FAAH mutation that many other people have—but there had to be something else at play. The scientists started their inquiry by isolating DNA from her blood, and then analyzing the protein-coding subset of her genome—the part that’s traditionally considered to be significant. “We didn’t really find anything,” Cox said. “So we decided, O.K., why don’t we look across the whole genome for bits that are deleted or duplicated? And, at the time, this new chip was just available, which enabled us to scan the whole genome and look for deletions”—snippets missing from her genetic code. “It was a lucky strike: we found that there was this deletion. But it was distinct from FAAH. It was away from FAAH, just downstream.”

The scientists noticed that the right edge of the deletion overlapped “a gene that was annotated as a pseudogene,” Cox said, and frowned. “Which is a term I don’t like.” A pseudogene is what’s been thought of as genetic detritus—a copy of a gene that’s just sitting there, not doing anything productive. One biochemist I spoke to likened a pseudogene to a rusted-out car you stumble on in the forest—only, in Cameron’s case, they put a key in the ignition and the car turned on. “To call it a pseudogene is misleading, because this is a gene that is expressed—it makes a product, a sequence in the DNA,” Cox said, with excitement. “It’s a real fascinating class of genes which have been severely overlooked in genetics until very recently.” Cox and his colleagues named this particular pseudogene—“It’s nicer to call it a gene,” he insisted—FAAH OUT. “It was a wordplay, really,” he said sheepishly. “The challenge now is to understand what it’s doing. Jo is the first person in the world that we know of with this.”

Cameron’s case is important in genetics, partly because it may supply evidence that pseudogenes are more significant than they were previously thought to be.
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Limits to economic growth | Nature Physics

December 24, 2024

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01652-6

Murphy, T. W. (2022). Limits to economic growth. Nature Physics, 18(8), 844–847. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01652-6


Bloom’s 2 sigma problem – Wikipedia

December 24, 2024

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem


Rough Diamonds on Netflix

December 22, 2024

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_Diamonds_(2023_TV_series)


E Haven Ride

December 22, 2024

01:21
22.7 km
16.8 km/h
130 m
130 m

https://www.komoot.com/tour/1670638645?share_token=azdbj4lloV5B6OKHUeBnHcbrnswtKJ73dSq67Kb18TNnWUBN3N&ref=

26′ back from E Haven-Branford bridge to 61yo

32′ going there


The persistence of smoke VOCs indoors: Partitioning, surface cleaning, and air cleaning in a smoke-contaminated house | Science Advances

December 22, 2024

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh8263

QT:{{”
Many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) persisted days following the smoke injection, providing a longer-term exposure pathway for humans….These rates imply that vapor pressure controls partitioning behavior and that house ventilation plays a minor role in removing smoke VOCs. However, surface cleaning activities (vacuuming, mopping, and dusting) physically removed surface reservoirs and thus reduced indoor smoke VOC concentrations more effectively than portable air cleaners and more persistently than window opening.
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El Salvador Adopted Bitcoin as an Official Currency; Salvadorans Mostly Shrugged | Yale Insights

December 22, 2024

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/el-salvador-adopted-bitcoin-as-an-official-currency-salvadorans-mostly-shrugged


How to Sleep on an Airplane – The New York Times

December 22, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/well/sleep-tips-long-flights.html