whitequark @whitequark@mastodon.social

features sentences like "Noting that his grand mal seizure was followed by restful sleep, DF sought to duplicate the experience with electroconvulsive therapy."
outstanding paper and outstanding person

Self-management of Fatal Familial Insomnia. Part 2: Case Report https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1781276/

"Maternal kisses are not effective in alleviating minor childhood injuries (boo-boos): a randomized, controlled and blinded study" J Eval Clin Pract. 2015 Dec;21(6):1244-6 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26711672

"Does previous use affect litter box appeal in multi-cat households?"
answer: no. "Results suggest neither malodor nor chemical communication play a role in litter box preferences … removal of physical/visual obstructions as the key factor"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28216119

also: did you know that the idea that humans have a poor sense of smell (compared to e.g. dogs and rodents) is a 19th century myth derived partly from religious politics of the Catholic Church in France
yes seriously
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5512720/

did you know general anesthesia works on plants?
"Mimosa leaves, pea tendrils, Venus flytraps and sundew traps all lost both their autonomous and touch-induced movements after exposure to anaesthetics."
https://academic.oup.com/aob/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aob/mcx155/4722571

the pad dia is 250 µm and the thickness of the underlying copper layer is 70 µm. this sounds like you'd need a microscope but I just drilled the ViP out by eye (but very carefully) to get to the next copper layer (with a trace that's wider than the via dia) and voila it worked!

(I didn't have a stencil or balls and when I went to the nearest electronics market I decided to skip the hassle and just went to a laptop/smartphone repair shop, which gladly did this oddball rework job; these people are always really good at what they do, too)

today I've torn off a pad from a 0.5 mm pitch 0.3 mm ball dia via-in-pad BGA footprint, then repaired it, then had it reballed and soldered, and it worked!

did you know that plants have magnetoreception (and no one is quite sure why)
Arabidopsis thaliana grows slower in low light conditions if you put it into a set of Helmholtz coils and nullify the geomagnetic field https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6032911/

Memristor – The fictional circuit element (2018) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.05982.pdf

from the journal Astrobiology, which I hasn't realized before is an actual discipline and not just something from science fiction https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%22Astrobiology%22%5bjour%5d

Influence on photosynthesis of starlight, moonlight, planetlight, and light pollution https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16916290/

"Ionizing Radiation Changes the Electronic Properties of Melanin and Enhances the Growth of Melanized Fungi" http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000457&_browser=1

"Circulating mitochondrial DAMPs cause inflammatory responses to injury" https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7285/full/nature08780.html
Mitochondria are similar to bacteria, and we have innate immunity that recognizes chunks of bacteria in the bloodstream, and so muscle injury that leaves chunks of mitochondria in bloodstream causes those immunity mechanisms to (mis?)fire and result in additional inflammation.

I found this after a birdsite conversation that involved fumigation with HCN; and now I see why fumigation with agents like HCN, PH₃ and SO₂F₂ makes a lot of sense versus using something milder or more targeted

Emerging Biocide Resistance among Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria: Myth or Reality? A Pilot Study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29962799

alcohol addiction linked to variation of GAT3, GABA reuptake pump, in amygdala
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6395/1321