Last week I introduced you to my escape room/dungeon crawling/superhero training simulation and a few basic results. I don't want to keep all the fun for myself, so now it's your turn. I like being able to program so I can make little models and simulations and get "hands-on" with equations and abstract concepts. Some people can look at an equation and understand how changing different parameters will change the results. If there are just two variables, a graph might work. But if there are additional variables or … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Learning by Simulating
let's learn evolutionary biology together
Science Corner: Life Finds a Way Out
What do you with a biologist who isn't great with living things? In the lab, I tended to kill what needed to stay alive and cultivate contaminating microbes in places that needed to be sterile. Fortunately, I have a knack for getting computers to do what I want. And since evolution has an exploration-with-feedback problem-solving method at its core, it adapts well to computers. Computer scientists, engineers, designers and even artists and musicians have employed problem-solving techniques inspired by biological … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Life Finds a Way Out
Science Corner: Unlocking Immunity
As you read this, millions of people around the world are making antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. None of those people were born with a gene for those specific antibodies. Yet in just a couple of weeks following exposure to the virus--or now, one of its proteins via a vaccine--their immune systems can make antibodies that bind tightly and very specifically to the outside of the coronavirus, inhibiting its ability to infect their cells. The close and unique match between antibody and antigen has been compared to the fit of … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Unlocking Immunity