theideasmith

Spinoza understood thought and extension were unified. A change in extension is a change in thought and vv.

I found this paper a while ago and have it on my list of things to model: http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Chen99.pdf.

Ultimately, we could have a full gene-expression-as-a-dynamical-system model which we could perturb and use to study the dynamical features of genetic networks.

Anyone interested in this stuff?

Hi HN. I'm a relatively new coder so I have only just begun to play around with more sophisticated issues like running code on clusters, networking (ports and stuff like that).

I was hoping someone could kindly explain what a task queue is used for. If I understand it correctly, a task queue would be used for running automation code that is written during the development of a python project? But that doesn't sound right.

Can someone please tell me what a "task queue for python" means in context

This would be about 100x cooler if there was an environment you could fly through and not just empty grass.

I'm an undergrad doing some neuroscience research; I think the existence of such tools are essential to progress. As soon as you can start doing CompBio on the web, more people (i.e. students, non scientist programmers) will be encouraged to start playing around which will lead to more progress in our understanding of complex biology, and spur the people's excitement about recent progress in the field. The beautiful thing about code is that it is tremendously empowering – your writing a computational biology library for the web will empower individuals to get into computational biology. Furthermore, it will enable individuals to write blog posts with live JS examples, etc all to further broader progress. Lastly, I'm sure it will a learning experience for you too (albeit probably of much lower magnitude than a PhD). I say do it!

Thanks for your explanation. So what this really does is enable one to train code using machine learning techniques such as gradient descent, traversing a code-space instead of traversing a space of numbers?

Does this only work for mathematical programs? I don't understand how this would work for more general computations, involving loops, writes to files, etc.

so what does it actually mean to differentiate a program?

This looks really interesting but I just don't understand it. Can someone with more expertise explain in layman's terms what this paper is about?

It is very important this research was shared. However, the very difficult and likely impossible part is to actually change the emotional and interpersonal ethos of society. Given the very intangible nature of the problem, no one in power will care enough to initiate a national program to motivate such social change. Therefore, it must come from us, the people. We ought to stand to the call and do something of value to nudge society towards a more interactive state.

How do we bypass cognitive limits?

Can we offload rationality to our subconscious without allowing ourselves to succumb to heuristics? What are some strategies we can use for relying less on heuristics and more on logic?

How can we avoid perceptual errors which influence our judgement?

etc.

I saw this a while ago too: http://unisonweb.org/2015-05-07/about.html#post-start

Also you can try asking this question on Quora if this HN thread and researchgate doesn't get anywhere.

I'm a college freshman now and I wish my middle and elementary school teachers were as devoted to their students as you seem to be. I would suggest going to ResearchGate.com where a lot of scientists and grad students hang out. It's likely you'll be able to find one there who would be interested in helping them out.

Here's a standard Topology textbook which will get you up to speed on manifolds: http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~aar/papers/munkres2.pdf

And here's Schroedinger's Space-Time Structure which has an intro to tensors: http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/schrodinger-st-struc...

Parag Khanna: global connectivity and urban meccas: http://www.paragkhanna.com/

This is awesome – I've been passively looking for someone to do this and finally you have. I'll have to take a longer look at it (and respond in more breadth/depth), but great work and good luck with your thesis!

The website is down now. For those who want to check it out, here's the link: https://web.archive.org/web/20160518173022/https://home.goog...

Kudos to you guys! Your website is magical and extremely well done. Instead of giving a whole load of talk you let me experience just how powerful Finch is the moment I arrive (and I understand this is only a beta version).

I can see so many reasons for this to be revolutionary to web publishing/design.

Good luck!

Why not?

I happen to be in 10th grade in the USA and really love math - and using it to solve applied problems - but the math taught in school is formulaic and mechanical. We aren't encouraged when we start asking questions not covered by the curriculum or congratulated when we answer them ourselves.

It would be really nice if we had more teachers like the one in this article. I'm sure many more articles would be written then.

You've got some other awesome visualizations

Here is another cool one http://bl.ocks.org/newby-jay/767c5ffdbbe43b65902f

Not yet.

My face lit up when I found this paper after beginning balancing chemical equations in my 10th grade chemistry class this morning - so I thought I share it with HN.

That's a good idea; though I should have said something more general to make it clear that I am referring to the overall bad design of the site.

1) You should definitely leverage your existing networks 2) If you keep your email concise and to the point (read up about cold-emailing people), then most will respond. There is nothing wrong with seeking new opportunities and if people are disturbed they just won't answer you. It seems you are afraid of what other people think. Don't be. be confident and trust your intuition.

You seriously need to change the font.

Because you are not currently living in the US (implied by "I'm not American") you won't be able to go to tech gatherings and develop inside relationships with companies.

I suggest you gather a list of companies you want to intern at and send emails to all of them. Send emails to the founders and to specific people within the company, not a generic company wide email address. This ensure your communication is personal.

Some are bound to respond, and of those that respond some will offer you an interview and of those you can get an internship. Unless you have your eyes set on a specific company - which it seems like you don't - go broad.

This will solve many problems and help make things easier for scientists and programmers. I don't want to say this negatively - just for constructive criticism - that the syntax of Cuneiform is quite ugly to look at. Many of the syntax design choices feel arbitrary such as the \{ and \} encapsulating functions, the need to write deftask to define a function and the really ugly function signature syntax. I mean it is almost as ugly as Perl.

Please consider this issue.