An experiment with regards to the essay I'm writing.

[Acier]

I'm in high and I get it

I would post something from my Art History classes, but that's too mean

 

[Dok Zombie]

I understand it. I don't think I'd be able to explain it in layman's terms, but I get the point.

I'm supposed to be writing a dissertation myself at this point and I have this for you:

"Free radical initiated auto-oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids has been implicated in numerous human diseases including atherosclerosis and cancer"

That would probably be an easy one. Things get more technical after that.

Jesus o_0

That's pretty grim stuff, something to do with health science?

What's the topic of your dissertation?

 

[DragonsAteMyMarbles]

"...serve as a pattern of substitutions for the ii-V-I progression (supertonic-dominant-tonic) and are noted for the tonally unusual root movement down by major thirds, creating an augmented triad."

I lost just about everyone.

It's true, augmented triads are weird. You wouldn't find them particularly often outside of jazz or Stravinsky-ish stuff. Even then, they'd usually be used either for deliberate discordance or to lead on to another chord.

Here's mine:
"A deficiency of valence-bond theory is its inability to account for carbon's tetravalence. The ground-state configuration of C is 1s22s22px12py1 which suggests that carbon should not be tetravalent, but divalent."

EDIT:

"Free radical initiated auto-oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids has been implicated in numerous human diseases including atherosclerosis and cancer"

And that's why health scientists love antioxidants.

 

[TMAN10112]

I understand it pretty well.

It reminds me of the concept of Objectivism, which can be more then just a little confusing if you're not already familiar with literature that explores it.

Tvtropes has a good page explaining it, but the site appears to hate me right now.

 

[aseelt]

The title which I think I've settled on is:

"Increasing the mono-unsaturated content of cardiolipin in a bid to provide resistance to apoptosis induced by Actinomycin D"

 

[solidstatemind]

Have yet to read any posts that I didn't understand...

Not bragging, just saying that if you're smart, have a reasonable grasp of the English language, and (hopefully) were taught at least a bit abut logic and reasoning, you should be able to at least figure out what topic a single sentence is discussing. Admittedly, with the volume of information these days, that may not always be the case, but... like I said: if you give schoolkids the tools to THINK rather than just memorize and regurgitate information, they should be able to perform an initial analysis on any topic.

 

[aseelt]

Here's mine:
"A deficiency of valence-bond theory is its inability to account for carbon's tetravalence. The ground-state configuration of C is 1s22s22px12py1 which suggests that carbon should not be tetravalent, but divalent."

EDIT:

"Free radical initiated auto-oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids has been implicated in numerous human diseases including atherosclerosis and cancer"

And that's why health scientists love antioxidants.

Okay I got yours: the current theory doesn't explain why carbon can bond up to 4 times, it should only be able to bond twice

As for antioxidants: generally they're a load of bull. They get thrown into the body and don't get targeted where they are actually needed, that's why they tend to be ineffective.

 

[DragonsAteMyMarbles]

Here's mine:
"A deficiency of valence-bond theory is its inability to account for carbon's tetravalence. The ground-state configuration of C is 1s22s22px12py1 which suggests that carbon should not be tetravalent, but divalent."

EDIT:

"Free radical initiated auto-oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids has been implicated in numerous human diseases including atherosclerosis and cancer"

And that's why health scientists love antioxidants.

Okay I got yours: the current theory doesn't explain why carbon can bond up to 4 times, it should only be able to bond twice

As for antioxidants: generally they're a load of bull. They get thrown into the body and don't get targeted where they are actually needed, that's why they tend to be ineffective.

Yeah, mine wasn't particularly brain-taxing - you shouldn't need to be studying science at uni to have a stab at it.
It did remind me why I detest my physical chemistry textbook though - its insistence on long words and rather robotic language makes it rather inaccessible (as opposed to my organic and inorganic textbooks, both of which read like how a relatively human lecturer would talk). Even some of my tutors hate the thing, but it's the best one the university could find.

I have to say, your dissertation sounds a bit more interesting than the conducting-polymer shite I've got lined up for next year.

 

[aseelt]

I'll trade you, conducting polymers sounds more interesting than my stuff at the moment.

 

[Plurralbles]

The task of the writer is to know their audience. That means you can't dumb down the language to make it fit outside of your field unnecessarily or people who you really want to get info to will feel that you dumbed down the material, making them feel insulted and bored.


Also through your later wrting throughout or before you can define a few things.


Someone's taken/taking crap writing courses if they don't get these most basic skills and principles.

 

[Gladion]

Here I am, a foreigner who thought English was a language he had perfectly mastered.

Fuck this.

 

[atalanta]

The title which I think I've settled on is:

"Increasing the mono-unsaturated content of cardiolipin in a bid to provide resistance to apoptosis induced by Actinomycin D"

Uh, lessee -- cardiolipin I'm guessing has to do with membranes of some kind; increasing the number of hydrocarbon chains with a single double bond in said membrane-y thing helps defend the cell against an antibiotic that causes programmed cell death.

"A deficiency of valence-bond theory is its inability to account for carbon's tetravalence. The ground-state configuration of C is 1s22s22px12py1 which suggests that carbon should not be tetravalent, but divalent."

...so I should know this really well but I don't. Uh, okay -- valence bond theory and molecular orbital theory have to do with the location and behaviour of electrons. You're saying that valence bond theory doesn't explain why the orbitals of carbon form the shape that they do (which, in turn, defines the geometry of the bonds carbon forms). The bit in the middle describes which orbitals of carbon are filled with electrons; the pattern of the filled orbitals implies carbon shouldn't be forming 4-bond tetrahedrons, but rather 2-bond thingies, like oxygen does.

 

[ModsDeleteThisAccountPlease]

If the semi-diameter of a sphere of the same density as the Sun were to exceed that of the Sun in the proportion of 500 to 1, a body falling from an infinite height towards it would have acquired at its surface greater velocity than that of light, and consequently supposing light to be attracted by the same force in proportion to its vis inertiae, with other bodies, all light emitted from such a body would be made to return towards it by its own proper gravity.
?John Michell

Curvature

Solutions to the equations of general relativity or another theory of gravity (such as supergravity), often result in encountering points where the metric blows up to infinity. However, many of these points are in fact completely regular. Moreover, the infinities are merely a result of using an inappropriate coordinate system at this point. Thus, in order to test whether there is a singularity at a certain point, one must check whether at this point diffeomorphism invariant quantities (i.e. scalars) become infinite. Such quantities are the same in every coordinate system, so these infinities will not "go away" by a change of coordinates.

An example is the Schwarzschild solution that describes a non-rotating, uncharged black hole. In coordinate systems convenient for working in regions far away from the black hole, a part of the metric becomes infinite at the event horizon. However, spacetime at the event horizon is regular. The regularity becomes evident when changing to another coordinate system (such as the Kruskal coordinates), where the metric is perfectly smooth. On the other hand, in the center of the black hole, where the metric becomes infinite as well, the solutions suggest singularity exists. The existence of the singularity can be verified by noting that the Kretschmann scalar or square of the Riemann tensor, RμνρσRμνρσ, which is diffeomorphism invariant, is infinite. While in a non-rotating black hole the singularity occurs at a single point in the model coordinates, called a "point singularity", in a rotating black hole, also known as a Kerr black hole, the singularity occurs on a ring (a circular line), defined as a "ring singularity". Such a singularity may also theoretically become a wormhole.[1]

More generally, a spacetime is considered singular if it is geodesically incomplete, meaning that there are freely-falling particles whose motion cannot be determined at a finite time at the point of reaching the singularity. For example, any observer below the event horizon of a nonrotating black hole would fall into its center within a finite period of time. The simplest Big Bang cosmological model of the universe contains a causal singularity at the start of time (t=0), where all timelike geodesics have no extensions into the past. Extrapolating backward to this hypothetical time 0 results in a universe of size 0 in all spatial dimensions, infinite density, infinite temperature, and infinite space-time curvature.
[edit] Conical

A conical singularity occurs when there is a point where the limit of every diffeomorphism invariant quantity is finite. In which case, spacetime is not smooth at the point of the limit itself. Thus, spacetime looks like a cone around this point, where the singularity is located at the tip of the cone. The metric can be finite everywhere if a suitable coordinate system is used.

An example of such a conical singularity is a cosmic string.
[edit] Naked
Main article: Naked singularity

Until the early 1990s, it was widely believed that general relativity hides every singularity behind an event horizon, making naked singularities impossible. This is referred to as the cosmic censorship hypothesis. However, in 1991 Shapiro and Teukolsky performed computer simulations of a rotating plane of dust that indicated that general relativity might allow for "naked" singularities. What these objects would actually look like in such a model is unknown. Nor is it known whether singularities would still arise if the simplifying assumptions used to make the simulation were removed.

Both from Wikipedia.

 

[aseelt]

The title which I think I've settled on is:

"Increasing the mono-unsaturated content of cardiolipin in a bid to provide resistance to apoptosis induced by Actinomycin D"

Uh, lessee -- cardiolipin I'm guessing has to do with membranes of some kind; increasing the number of hydrocarbon chains with a single double bond in said membrane-y thing helps defend the cell against an antibiotic that causes programmed cell death.

Cookie for you, however I'm reducing the amount of chocolate chips on account of all the "thingies" written.

EDIT:

*SNIP*

Well that's just cheating. I'll have to go to simple-wikipedia to make sense of some of that.

 

[stone0042]

I understand the gist of the statement, but not the minute details

 

[TSED]

"...serve as a pattern of substitutions for the ii-V-I progression (supertonic-dominant-tonic) and are noted for the tonally unusual root movement down by major thirds, creating an augmented triad."

I lost just about everyone.

Nope. Music theory ftw. I'm a little lost as to why they felt the need to point out the base of the triad in the progression, though.



On modernism: Makes sense to me, but I'm an English student. Haven't gotten to looking at any modernism, but still.

My own contribution:

Spoiler

"The idea that equal respect is due to all human beings is the basis for the universalization principle. We can formulate this principle as a moral standard of the ethics of respect for most persons in the following way:

MS 1: An action is right if you can consent to everyone's adopting the moral rule presupposed by the action.

Like rule utilitarianism, this standard focuses on the evaluation of rules rather than individual actions. If we look only at actions, how can we determine whether our action is the same as the one we are willing to have others follow?"

 

[DragonsAteMyMarbles]

"A deficiency of valence-bond theory is its inability to account for carbon's tetravalence. The ground-state configuration of C is 1s22s22px12py1 which suggests that carbon should not be tetravalent, but divalent."

...so I should know this really well but I don't. Uh, okay -- valence bond theory and molecular orbital theory have to do with the location and behaviour of electrons. You're saying that valence bond theory doesn't explain why the orbitals of carbon form the shape that they do (which, in turn, defines the geometry of the bonds carbon forms). The bit in the middle describes which orbitals of carbon are filled with electrons; the pattern of the filled orbitals implies carbon shouldn't be forming 4-bond tetrahedrons, but rather 2-bond thingies, like oxygen does.

Quite right. It's easy enough to get around when you think about promotion, molecular orbitals and hybridisation.
As you probably know, divalent carbon compounds do actually exist - they're crazy reactive and prone to explosion when isolated, but you can bottle them. Not a good idea, mind.

I'll trade you, conducting polymers sounds more interesting than my stuff at the moment.

Conducting polymers are fun to begin with, but once you get into serious detail, messing about with solitons and polarons and stuff, it makes your brain want to escape.

 

[mattman106]

First a minor disclaimer, I really don't intend this post as some sort of arrogant "look at all the big words I know" sort of thing, I'm genuinely interested in peoples opinions.

Basically I'm sat writing an essay about the James Joyce novel "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and Modernism in general and it got me thinking. When I see notes or essays written by/for people studying something I have no idea about they might as well be written in Greek for all I can understand them, like if I go into a classroom/lecture theatre and notes from the previous lecture are still on the board, I usually have absolutely no idea what they are about.

So basically my point is this, the following is an extract from a textbook I'm using, to me (and my friends studying the same course) this makes perfect sense, what I want to know is, does anyone who isn't in the same position as me (a final year English literature student) understand it?

"Modernism is associated with attempts to render human subjectivity in ways more real than realism: to represent consciousness, perception, emotion, meaning and the individual?s relation to society through interior monologue, stream of consciousness, tunnelling, defamiliarisation, rhythm and irresolution."

Also, can you post anything, be it a scientific terminology or a mathematical problem etc... that you don't think anyone else will understand?

It makes a certain amount of sense to me. I have no idea what tunneling onward are though. I get the gist but the finer points are lost on me. So broadly yes but not enough to really appreciate the true impact and deeper aims of Modernism.

 

[atalanta]

"...serve as a pattern of substitutions for the ii-V-I progression (supertonic-dominant-tonic) and are noted for the tonally unusual root movement down by major thirds, creating an augmented triad."

I lost just about everyone.

Oh hey I missed this one.

[Something omitted from the sentence] can be swapped for the usual minor 2-chord - major 5-chord - 1-chord progression (the numbers refer to the scale degree -- if this were in C major, it'd be a D-minor chord, followed by G-major and C-major). The roots now form an two major thirds (the upper note is four half-steps from the lower note), which ultimately forms an augmented triad (a major chord with a raised fifth).

I feel like that didn't help clarify the original post at all. Oh, well.

 

[Firenz]

I understand the gist of the statement, but not the minute details

I second this.

"the offset roots and oblique crown of the lower P4 of Orrorin tugenensis" was one of the joyful phrases I've just had to read.

Not fun... especially as I know nothing about dentistry and am struggling to bring my anatomy up to scratch (P4 is a tooth... think it's a premolar.