“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reminds laboratory staff to use transport media (the liquid that maintains a specimen sample while it is transported to a laboratory) that are compatible with the SARS-CoV-2 testing platforms and the processes used in their laboratory to process samples collected from people who are being tested for SARS-CoV-2. There is a risk of exposure to harmful cyanide gas, a by-product of a reaction between guanidine thiocyanate or similar chemicals and bleach (sodium hypochlorite), when certain transport media are used with an incompatible testing platform or laboratory process. Guanidine thiocyanate may be referred to
‘Why OpsisDx?’ is a blog series written by people part of the Entopsis-verse and offers insights into potential OpsisDxTM addressable medical conditions.
In modern times, cardiovascular disease (CVD) has become just as worrisome as epidemics in the early stages of medicine. Currently, CVD accounts for around 50% of deaths in richer countries, making it an important area for research, therapeutics and diagnostics.
Known cardiovascular risk factors include lipid disorders, high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, diabetes and sedentariness (1). Although these risk factors are broad and encompass many areas, the influence of the microbiome, complex stress responses and psychiatric disorders also
‘Why OpsisDx?’ is a blog series written by people part of the Entopsis-verse and offers insights into potential OpsisDxTM addressable medical conditions.
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one of the most commonly encountered conditions in primary care and gastroenterology clinics. This condition has a prevalence of around 10-15% worldwide and, while this condition is not lethal, patients experience a sharp decline in their quality of life because of how debilitating this condition can be (2). Hallmark symptoms of IBS include changes in bowel habits, abdominal bloating and chronic abdominal discomfort/pain. (1). The etiology of this condition is not fully understood
‘Why OpsisDx?’ is a blog series written by people part of the Entopsis-verse and offers insights into potential OpsisDxTM addressable medical conditions.
Cancer is probably one of the most apprehended conditions in the modern world. Raising to the spotlight in the 20th century and becoming increasingly prevalent while also acquiring higher incidence rates, it is no surprise why this condition has spiked scientists’ interest as well as fueled funding on diagnostics and therapeutics (1). As of 2018, there were 18mil new cases of cancer worldwide, and, around 430K deaths caused by cancer in the pancreas alone (2).
As illustrated by
Here’s a fascinating puzzle by Presh Talwalker. Given an isoceles triangle and an infinite series of circles fit within the triangle as depicted below, what is the sum of circumferences of all the circles? Think about it and when you are ready for answer, read on.
Draw a line down the center of the triangle and through all the circles. This line is the sum of diameters of all the circles and is given by the Pythagoras Theorem. The sum of circumferences is therefore: The puzzle ends here but an even cooler result is implied by the above. If
An interesting story hit the news yesterday about three mysterious individuals at an obscure quant fund who secretly gave away billions of dollars to fund research into diseases such as Huntington’s disease. What they are doing is admirable, not just in terms of leaving a tremendous impact on science but also the manner in which they have gone about their philanthropy, quietly and without fanfare. A legend has grown around the campus of their quant fund, which apparently hires Ph.D.s and computer programmers. One sample interview question was given as: “For any prime number larger than 3, prove that
Today, some of us were playing a game. Everyone contributed to the creation of a bank of questions which included “What kind of music do you like to listen to?” and “What is the strangest thing that you have eaten?”. A script was created to draw from a total of 72 unique questions at random with replacement and no option would be given to pass on questions. The idea was that we would take turns on our birthdays to answer these questions in an up close and personal session. Of course, there was the issue of how many questions one should
Many years ago, I received a sticker from a good friend on Pi Day. It was a commemorative design by the the Maryland Science Center with Pi digits. Upon closer scrutiny, I found two missing digits in the 8th line from the top between 6 and 8. I tried unsuccessfully to mark the spot with an asterisk. A second smudged asterisk at the bottom indicates the missing two digits, ‘79’. It is easy to imaging what had happened. The missing digits are the 99th and 100th digit of Pi and these digits were likely lost during a
We celebrate Pi day with a poem. Why, you ask? Because it puts the PI in PoetIc, and that is your clue. Scroll to the end of the poem if you’d like the answer.
Poe, E. Near a Raven Midnights so dreary, tired and weary. Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore. During my rather long nap – the weirdest tap! An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber’s antedoor. “This”, I whispered quietly, “I ignore”. Perfectly, the intellect remembers: the ghostly fires, a glittering ember. Inflamed by lightning’s outbursts, windows
Today, we take a quick look at two methods for computing pi using your humble PC. These two methods are infinite sums, meaning that the value of the sum approaches pi as you increase the number of terms added. Here they are.
1. Ramanujan’s Formula
2. Plouffe’s spigot formula To save you the calculator work, you can use the following python code to execute both calculations. I have listed the results for 10 iterations of each formula below. from __future__ import division import numpy as np import random import math np.set_printoptions(precision=15) def pi_plouffe(n): return np.cumsum([x for x in[(4./(8.*k+1.) -2./(8.*k+4.)