ihartley's comments

ihartley | 10 years ago | on: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

Phantom limb is actually an interesting case that may reveal more about idiopathic pain as we study brain/body mapping better. If anyone is interested check out the work of VS Ramachandran, here's a somewhat old article about his work with phantom limb patients: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133026897/v-s-ramachandrans-ta...

His latest work has been investigating body integrity identity disorder which is sort of the opposite of phantom limb: where you feel like a part of you doesn't belong.

I believe this gist of the work is that there is a mapping between our body and our brain (this is what enables one to 'know' where your body is in relation to itself when your eyes are closed) that sometimes is overloaded or malformed and can result in these issues.

ihartley | 10 years ago | on: We Need a Better PC

It could really stand to suck a little less. Based on this thread I went to checkout the Elitebook line and the "View all notebook products" link from the Elitebook line page just goes to a promo for some new one that isn't available yet, and when you go to the shop it just takes you to search results with 217 results for "elitebook"

ihartley | 10 years ago | on: Riddle of cement’s structure is finally solved

Here's the PNAS article that they don't link to in the article for some reason: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/02/04/1520487113.abst...

ihartley | 10 years ago | on: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

While "leaky gut syndrome" as imagined by pseudoscience believers is a little ridiculous, the general idea of chronic low grade inflammation of the intestinal epithelium due to a breakdown of the innate immune system is not. If anyone is interested, checkout out David Artis' work on commensal bacteria on barrier surfaces.

ihartley | 10 years ago | on: Density Based Clustering Toolbox

I'm reading through the paper on DeBaCl right now which might be a little more accessible than the paper you found. I think the gist of it is that Level set trees offer better theoretical guarantees due to other methods being less rigorous with their theory. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.8136v1.pdf

ihartley | 10 years ago | on: Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithms (2014)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon%27s_needle for anyone that's interested.

ihartley | 10 years ago | on: When Disney Got Adult and Trippy

Godfrey Reggio also did Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, which are similar with different themes.

ihartley | 10 years ago | on: When Disney Got Adult and Trippy

Also check out The Music Scene by Blockhead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhheiPTdZCw

ihartley | 10 years ago | on: San Francisco’s Newest Fast Food: Healthy, Cheap and Served by Robots

They still exist in the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO

ihartley | 11 years ago | on: FinderPath

I used to have an Applescript app that I made a default icon in the Finder action bar that would open a new terminal tab and then cd to the path of the Finder window, but they introduced this a few versions ago and I think it works fine: http://lifehacker.com/launch-an-os-x-terminal-window-from-a-...

ihartley | 14 years ago | on: Raspberry Pi: An update for element14/Premier Farnell/Newark customers

This is irritating: I still haven't figured out how to buy one and I "registered my interest" with both of the initial suppliers, neither of whom have contacted me with purchasing info, within hours of the release annoucment.

ihartley | 14 years ago | on: First intelligence gene discovered

According to the abstract on the Nature Genetics paper, they were looking at this SNP in HMGA2: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/SNP/snp_ref.cgi?rs=1078...

ihartley | 14 years ago | on: Your DNA may carry a ‘memory’ of your living conditions in childhood

We actually have flys in our lab that have been selected for living in low oxygen environments (4% O2 vs ~21% O2 in room air) over the course of 32 generations. While that by itself is not particularly impressive, the really interesting part is that these flies can be put back in room air for several generations, and then re-introduced to the 4% O2 environment and still survive, which wild type flys cannot do.

Here's a link to the paper: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...

The relevant info is in the Results and Discussion section.

ihartley | 14 years ago | on: Your DNA may carry a ‘memory’ of your living conditions in childhood

I'm currently involved in research regarding DNA methylation in mice. Epigenetic modification is really interesting and still not very well understood insofar as how the response occurs. These methylation changes may also occur as a response to other environmental stresses later in life as well as childhood, and other epigenetic modifications may be passed to offspring. We should see some very interesting discoveries that change our current ideas of heritability and response to environmental stimuli in the next few years as we're able to better detect the epigenetic factors in a cost effective manner.

ihartley | 14 years ago | on: Repairing a dented tuba with magnets

United Nuclear has super magnets: http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath...

ihartley | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: Does anyone here drive anything exciting?

In the midst of rebuilding + turbo-charging a '85 BMW 635CSi. Daily driver is a '90 325i Convertible. It's quite fun to drive with the top down and I still get 21mpg with a lead foot.

ihartley | 15 years ago | on: Skin cells 'turned into neurons' by US scientists

the paper is here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/full/natu...

ihartley | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: What do you drink?

Water (Probably about 1.5 liters a day) Beer (Cases of Stone IPA from costco are nice) Kombucha and Ginger beer that I brew myself Mexican Coke (Sometimes with whiskey) I try to get iced tea at restaurants (with lemonade if they have it)

ihartley | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: Good Aeron knock-off/alternative?

I have the Zody chair and I have to say it's pretty fantastic. I was going to buy an Aeron, but even with the size C chair, the lip of the seat dug into my thighs. The Zody on the other hand has an adjustable seat pan so I can move it out so the edge is under my knees.

The adjustable arm rests are also pretty cool and nearly worth the price of admission by themselves. They adjust up/down, forward/backward, left/right and rotate around the vertical axis.

ihartley | 15 years ago | on: Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

It's amazing that there aren't many tools for drowning response, and any new technology recieves major pushback from the ineffective incumbents in the space. Check out http://life-safer.com/ they make a throwable, bouyant, foam disk that is significantly more effective than anything else available.