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A scientific fact/tidbit you recently learned that you thought was interesting

adenosine triphosphate synthase

Planigale said:
The answer of course is mitochondria, intracellular organelles that utilise oxygen to generate activated phosphate compounds that are the 'universal' cellular fuel. The interesting thing is that mitochondria are the remnants of intracellular parasites; they are bacteria that infected 'cells'. Their closest living relations are chlamydia.
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It was a surprise to the biochemical community to learn that the way mitochondria do this is to create a proton-motive force: protons are actively transported out of the mitochondria (moving uphill in potential energy). When they come back into the mitochondrial matrix, their movement drives the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate. I like to think of the protons as people and the enzyme ATP synthase like a subway turnstile that rotates as the people move through it. And ATP synthase does in fact rotate.
 
catsmate said:
And how quickly the survival rate is improving. Some years ago when I was being matched for bone marrow harvesting I spoke with an oncologist who was in his fifties then, IIRR, who told me that many forms of leukemia had effective a zero five year survival rate when he was a student, but were now around 85%.
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On the subject of cancer Dr Alice Howarth gives some fascinating and accessible talks on cancer research. I attended one at Barnsley Skeptics in t'Pub. She's one of the founders of Merseyside Skeptics etc. Her blog is one resource at https://dralice.blog/ and there are others.
eta: See also "Skeptics with a K" podcast.
 
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People and businesses are still using floppy discs.

I can understand it from a nostalgia point of view (hell, even vinyl records have made a comeback), but for actual productive work and businesses running important procedures or risky old tech? I just don't get it.

I don't buy any insistence that it's impossible to copy the info or process to a new format. That tech is so old you could probably physically see and move the 1s and 0s from one spot to another. Some kid with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi could probably come up with a replacement in a few days.
 
I don't think anyone suggests it's impossible to copy the data. In most cases it's just old hardware running something. You can't just shove a USB port on something with a 30-year-old embedded OS. Yes, you could probably fake the actual floppy drive with another device, but that doesn't do very much to remove the overall risk of the system. There are usually other hardware pieces necessary that are now difficult to source. The floppy drive is just a nice hook for the article that gives people an idea of the age of the system. I'll bet whatever motherboard that floppy is plugged into is more likely to be a problem if it failed.

And I've known at least one company that already had a "modernization" project to get rid of such stuff that failed. Brought in the new hardware, new software to run on it, and it was just a mess trying to run it. Had to kill the whole project, stay on the old stuff, and plan to try it again (hopefully better) on some future funding cycle.

(They were chip testers, but were off-brand and heavily, heavily customized by the company years in the past. Running for decades probably, but long in the tooth. None of the commercial products seemed to do exactly what they wanted without lots of customization ($$$))

So it wasn't that they were stupid and hadn't thought about the risks of running ancient stuff, but "a kid replacing it in a few days" doesn't work.
 
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Wudang said:
On the subject of cancer Dr Alice Howarth gives some fascinating and accessible talks on cancer research. I attended one at Barnsley Skeptics in t'Pub. She's one of the founders of Merseyside Skeptics etc. Her blog is one resource at https://dralice.blog/ and there are others.
eta: See also "Skeptics with a K" podcast.
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:) :thumbsup:
The history of bone marrow transplantation is fascinating, all down to typing and matching. The first transplant was in 1956, but that involved identical twins.



alfaniner said:
People and businesses are still using floppy discs.

I can understand it from a nostalgia point of view (hell, even vinyl records have made a comeback), but for actual productive work and businesses running important procedures or risky old tech? I just don't get it.

I don't buy any insistence that it's impossible to copy the info or process to a new format. That tech is so old you could probably physically see and move the 1s and 0s from one spot to another. Some kid with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi could probably come up with a replacement in a few days.
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This is bollocks. Windows 11, for example, still supports floppy disks, I have an old USB model that is recognised just fine.
 
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alfaniner said:
Which part?
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The idea that old software can't be migrated to "modern" systems. It it's a media issue then get a specialist to do it, if that's needed, as a one-off cost. Then junk the old systems and avoid paying for support.
That also holds for old embedded systems, for CAM and machine control, you're costing yourself more in support, maintenance and lost opportunities than migration would cost.

If you're operating on old software, e.g. those proprietary '80s databases, then you'll find the DOS ones will work under even current Windows environments. There's a toolkit for the purpose and specialists who are experts in such migrations.

Back in '04 I was on a T&T project where the "mission critical" database was handed to me on a 5.25" diskette. Once I got the files off the disk, the setup offered the classis CGA, EGA or Hercules graphics modes :rolleyes:.
It took a couple of hours to get it working under Windows, including printer redirect.
 
catsmate said:
The idea that old software can't be migrated to "modern" systems. It it's a media issue then get a specialist to do it, if that's needed, as a one-off cost. Then junk the old systems and avoid paying for support.
That also holds for old embedded systems, for CAM and machine control, you're costing yourself more in support, maintenance and lost opportunities than migration would cost.
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It's good advice, but all too often old machinery uses interface cards that don't work in modern computers. The cards are undocumented and in many cases their manufacturers have long gone out of business. And often these cards are controlling multimillion-dollar machines.

If you're operating on old software, e.g. those proprietary '80s databases, then you'll find the DOS ones will work under even current Windows environments. There's a toolkit for the purpose and specialists who are experts in such migrations.
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I have a copy of Nutshell, a database from Leading Edge Software on 5¼" diskettes, copyright 1984. I don't think it will run on anything past Windows 7. (But see my note on DOSBOX below.)

Back in '04 I was on a T&T project where the "mission critical" database was handed to me on a 5.25" diskette. Once I got the files off the disk, the setup offered the classic CGA, EGA or Hercules graphics modes :rolleyes:.
It took a couple of hours to get it working under Windows, including printer redirect.
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That was 20 years ago, and modern Windows versions no longer supports DOS mode programs. (Or if they do, it's in the premium priced Windows versions.) You might be able to use a DOS emulator such as DOSBOX, but it's geared toward DOS games.

ETA: 32 bit versions of Windows 8 and 10 can run DOS programs, but the 64 bit versions won't. Windows 11 is 64 bits only, so it can't run DOS programs.

I once did a source code port of a 1980s era DOS point of sale system to Linux. (This, of course, is different from getting a DOS era program to run under DOSBOX.) It was a challenge:
  • Migrate a user-written windowing system to ncurses
  • Rewrite the database layer to migrate from a proprietary (and no longer available) database to MySQL
  • Migrate direct printer output to use CUPS
  • Migrate DOS drive letters to Linux paths
  • Account for the fact in Linux file names are case-sensitive
  • Account for the fact in DOS '\' is a path separator but in Linux it has a special use
  • Migrate DOS directory handling functions to Linux
  • Replace DOS BIOS calls with Linux functions
  • Migrate from a proprietary sort/merge program to use the Unix qsort() function
  • Migrate from a proprietary archive program (PAK) to zip
  • Compiler differences: different sizes of int, and the fact modern processors can mark memory areas read-only
 
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And sometimes it's not migrated because it's a bear situation
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't.”

Too many places with financial, manpower or time constraints are too busy having their heads bumped to have the time to think.
 
Zombie cicadas

Chris_Halkides said:
There is a fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, that turns a species of ants or certain other insects into zombies (sort of). Hypoxanthine, sphingosine, and guanidinobutyric acid (which is similar in structure to gamma-aminobutyric acid) are among the compounds that may be part of how the fungus controls the ant's brain. I have never seen The Last of Us, but this is the fungus that inspired it.
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Not just ants but also cicadas can be infected by a fungus. An infected cicada becomes hyper sexual, which apparently spreads the infection.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Not just ants but also cicadas can be infected by a fungus. An infected cicada becomes hyper sexual, which apparently spreads the infection.
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To be sure, when an adult cicada comes out of the ground every 13-17 years, its only purpose in life is to mate. IOW, they are all hyper sexual anyway at that stage of life. I'm not sure it's the fungus that causes them to become hyper sexual.

It's a bit like salmon when they go up the river to spawn. They go there for one reason only: to lay their eggs, fertilize them and then die.
 
Puppycow said:
To be sure, when an adult cicada comes out of the ground every 13-17 years, its only purpose in life is to mate. IOW, they are all hyper sexual anyway at that stage of life. I'm not sure it's the fungus that causes them to become hyper sexual.

It's a bit like salmon when they go up the river to spawn. They go there for one reason only: to lay their eggs, fertilize them and then die.
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It makes me wonder, what's their purpose otherwise? Worm food? Even coming above ground that rarely, it's not very efficient for species that feed on them.
 
the private lives of cicadas

From CBS News: "'So, males for example, they'll continue to try and mate with females — unsuccessfully, because again, their back end is a fungus [their genitals have fallen off]. But they'll also pretend to be females to get males to come to them'...Usually, male cicadas will let out a loud humming sound to attracted female cicadas and the female will flick her wings to signal she wants to mate. But the fungus has males flicking their wings like females to attract males and in turn, infect them, [Associate Professor Matthew] Kasson says."
 
Elsewhere in the realm of parasites altering host behavior, there's a type of crab that normally hides as much as it can but, when infected, "dances" out in the open, which gets it eaten by the parasite's next host.
 
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