mirastudiesphysics

[mirastudiesphysics]

4/100 Days of Productivity

I finished my math assignment with a whole day to spare as it’s due tonight. This morning I had a math tutorial. My tutor is incredible she makes everything (logarithms) so simple and easy to follow. Now I get to spend the rest of the day studying for my ecology mid term and grocery shopping.

[mirastudiesphysics]

01.05.2025—happy May!! trying to make some headway with this literature review for my PhD, it’s a big project

[mirastudiesphysics]

seeing my supervisor's cursor pop up in my overleaf doc & hearing the first two notes in the Jaws theme

[mirastudiesphysics]

may 1, 2025.

officially finished the spring term :>

I have a little more than a week until summer term starts and I’ll be taking intro to chemistry and continuing my piano lessons. I’ve also been volunteering at a plant nursery over the past month and I might also continue that through the summer :}

[mirastudiesphysics]

once these 15 million different stressful situations resolve themselves I’m gonna be so normal again. I can be normal and not exhausted

[mirastudiesphysics]

26.04.2025 // 12/30: Finished the first lection of my literary anthropology course today and collected possible ideas for a paper. Still have to make notes though but that's something for another week. Now it's time to rest a bit.

[mirastudiesphysics]

I currently work for our campus herbarium, which has been really fun! Getting to see how we archive plant material to keep it for decades is so cool.

I’ve started pressing in my own time to make a personal herbarium and it’s lots of fun.

[mirastudiesphysics]

I accidentally found a great textbook on quantum chem: it's called Quantum Chemistry & Spectroscopy by Thomas Engel (and it's available as a pdf if you just google the title and author) and it might just be the best quantum chem textbook I've ever used. Def recommend it for anyone who's interested. I'm obviously not objective anymore, but I think all you really need to understand it is some basic calculus, very basic linear algebra, and like solid high school math + chem + physics. If I'm wrong you can come shout at me ❤️‍🩹

[mirastudiesphysics]

I accidentally found a great textbook on quantum chem: it's called Quantum Chemistry & Spectroscopy by Thomas Engel (and it's available as a pdf if you just google the title and author) and it might just be the best quantum chem textbook I've ever used. Def recommend it for anyone who's interested. I'm obviously not objective anymore, but I think all you really need to understand it is some basic calculus, very basic linear algebra, and like solid high school math + chem + physics. If I'm wrong you can come shout at me ❤️‍🩹

[mirastudiesphysics]

Today, as a demonstration of my supreme powers, I have successfully transformed 4 hours' worth of work into 10 hours' worth of work. The outcome is literally no different from what it would've been otherwise, but I sat down at my work desk at 8 am and it's now 6 pm.

[mirastudiesphysics]

| 4 may 2025 |

D-1 to finals... it's raining today but I saw these pretty flowers on the way to the library :)

[mirastudiesphysics]

2025-05-05

Goals for this week:

FPGA HW 8 (seen above, hate)

FPGA project: write outline and goals

FPGA project: simulate galaxy images data with Gaussians

FPGA project: simulate and add noise to galaxy images (reach)

FPGA project: detect simulated galaxy peaks (reach)

Research: implement multiple image bands in detection output

Research: run detection/shear on two bands

Research: calibrate shear (VERY reach)

Life: call bank about credit card

Trying to get as much done as I can before leaving for vacation in the woods in two weeks.

[mirastudiesphysics]

Ok but it's kind of ridiculous that on top of my final assignments being due at the end of the week (normal finals week), we're supposed to work on our final project for another 1-2 months. Excuse me? Once I have the grade in I'm done. I have a conference to organize (in July) and my part of a research project to work on that's due (in July). Plus a big fancy telescope coming online soon (also in July)! You're kidding me?

[mirastudiesphysics]

"Tim Friede’s YouTube channel is home to a collection of videos depicting the Wisconsin-native truck mechanic subjecting himself to purposeful snake bites, blood slowly dripping down his arms.

For the past 20 years, Friede has been one of the most notorious “unconventional” medical researchers, undergoing over 200 bites from the world’s deadliest snakes — and more than four times as many — 850 — venomous injections. 

He did it all in the name of science.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 100,000 people are killed by snake bites each year, with countless more being disabled by the venom of the deadly reptiles. 

While life-saving anti-venom is available, very few countries actually have the capacity to produce it properly, given that most bites occur in remote and rural areas, and anti-venom requires arduous sourcing and accuracy. 

But Friede’s blood is now full of antibodies, following decades of strategic exposure to the neurotoxins of mambas, cobras, and other lethal slithering critters.

His blood is now the source material researchers are using to develop an anti-venom capable of neutralizing a broad spectrum of snake bites...

Friede started this hobby — which he is indeed adamant no one else tries at home — out of sheer curiosity in childhood. After playing with harmless garter snakes in his youth, he began keeping more dangerous species of snakes as pets. At one point, he had 60 of them in his home basement.

In 1999, he began extracting venom from his snakes, drying it, diluting it, and injecting himself with tiny doses — keeping meticulous records as he went.

He had one major hospitalization in 2001, when he was paralyzed and in a coma for four days. But instead of giving up, he doubled down. 

“In hindsight, I’m glad it happened,” Friede told The Times. “I never made another mistake.”

Jacob Glanville, an immunologist and founder of biotech company Centivax, stumbled on Friede’s videos.

Now, Friede is the director of herpetology at Centivax and serves as something of a “human lab” to Glanville.

“For a period of nearly 18 years, [Tim] had undertaken hundreds of bites and self-immunizations with escalating doses from 16 species of very lethal snakes that would normally a kill a horse,” Glanville told The Guardian.

“It blew my mind. I contacted him because I thought if anyone in the world has these properly neutralizing antibodies, it’s him.”

To develop the new anti-venom, Glanville and his fellow researchers identified 19 of the world’s deadliest snakes — in the elapid family — which kill their prey by injecting neurotoxins into their bloodstream, paralyzing muscles (including the big, important ones, like the heart and lungs).

The trouble is, each species in the elapid family has a slightly different toxin, meaning they would each require their own anti-venom.

But Friede’s blood contains certain fragments of each of these toxins; protein molecules seen across the various species. Because of his decades of service to science, his blood also contains the antibodies required to neutralize these toxins, preventing them from sticking to human cells and causing harm.

Combining the antibodies LNX-D09, SNX-B03, and a small molecule called varespladib that inhibits venom toxins, Centivax has successfully created a treatment effective against the entire range of 19 species’ toxins.

Their work, which was recently published in the journal Cell, will soon be tested outside of the lab. 

Trials will start with using the serum to treat dogs admitted to Australian veterinary clinics for snake bites. Assuming that goes well, the next step will be to administer human tests.

Researchers also believe that because the serum stems from a human, this should also lower the risk of allergic reactions when being administered to other people. 

“The final product would be a single, pan-anti-venom cocktail,” Professor Peter Kwong of Columbia University, a senior author of the study, told The Times.

Or, he added, they could make two: “One that is for the elapids, and another that is for the viperids, because some areas of the world only have one or the other.”

As for Friede, he maintains his affinity for snakes, though his last bite was in November 2018, when he said “enough is enough,” according to The New York Times.

By then, he had certainly done enough. His pursuit of immunity could feasibly save countless lives.

“I’m really proud that I can do something in life for humanity,” Friede told The New York Times, “to make a difference for people that are 8,000 miles away, that I’m never going to meet, never going to talk to, never going to see, probably.”

-via GoodGoodGood, May 2, 2025

[mirastudiesphysics]

02.04.2025

Got a new job! I have to do some machine maintenance so I´m writing notes about that.

[mirastudiesphysics]

Eschewing my final assignments for a bit to paint because if I don't create something in the next hour I think I'll chew through my laptop.

[mirastudiesphysics]

Unstoppable force-carrying particles can't interact with immovable matter by definition.

Unstoppable Force and Immoveable Object [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[An arrow pointing to a trapezoid. The arrow is labelled "unstoppable force" and the trapezoid "immoveable object".]

[The arrow is transposed on top of the trapezoid with the overlapped area lightened to indicate the arrow is passing through the trapezoid.]

[The arrow is now on the other side of the trapezoid.]

[Caption:] I don't see why people find this scenario to be tricky.