Armatus

3,568 reputation

1428

bio	website	youtube.com/user/Arm0ry
	location	London, UK / Stuttgart, Germany
	age	22
visits	member for	1 year, 1 month
	seen	8 hours ago
stats	profile views	45

Studying BSc Biomedical Science at Imperial College London.

I have several years worth of experience in

web development (HTML, PHP, CSS, JS, SQL; both raw and using frameworks jQuery and Smarty)

and programming (Windows/C++, Android/Java, Flash/AS3)

as well as some hobbyist experience in design (Inkscape, GIMP, Autodesk 3D).

Active member of the London Hackspace Biohackers whenever time permits; I also love tweaking and meddling but rarely find the time these days (in other words, hacking). Also, laptops don't permit for meddling a lot unfortunately.

	3,568 reputation	bio	website	youtube.com/user/Arm0ry	visits	member for	1 year, 1 month
1428 badges		location	London, UK / Stuttgart, Germany		seen	8 hours ago

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199 Comments

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Jun 12	comment	Transcription factor binding site located in intron Microscopy at such resolutions is possible using atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, but both of these are extremely complex procedures and require the sample to be fixed - i.e. dead.
Jun 8	comment	Same 185th million grandfather? Yes, all currently living humans stem from one ancestor which was also hominid. Much further back, all life probably shares one ancestor.
Jun 7	comment	Why do humans bury their dead? I presume they wouldn't have been able to connect dead bodies with disease (though that's not impossible). So my guess will be something along the lines that seeing dead was an unpleasant stimulus and they figured they can get rid of it by getting it out of sight - under the ground. Or rather more trial-and-error; one randomly buried a dead body and realised it was good and hence the idea was spread and persisted in the population (similarly to how mutations stick around if they improve something; afterall burying the dead is just a meme too).
Jun 7	comment	Intracellular lipid transport I have got access to Cell when I'm on my uni's VPN but it appears I can download the PDF even without access that way. Thanks, very interesting!
May 29	comment	Why does plucking nose hair cause tears in the eyes? It might be an overstimulation of the sneeze reflex neural circuit, which causes tearing instead of sneezing. I do get a feeling similar to the "I'm about to sneeze" along with lacrimation.
May 29	comment	Would my hands sweat this much if I wasn't wearing gloves? Skin produces a basal level of sweat all the time, so as far as makes sense to me, they simply prevent evaporation.
May 29	comment	What causes random long white body hairs? Silly me, thanks for the hint, goes to show the frequency with which a condition is mentioned (or seems to be) doesn't always correlate with its importance.
May 29	comment	What is the function of the RNA primer in DNA replication? "but then replace them with a high fidelity DNA copy of the template strand" - I would suggest adding that at the very end of eukaryote (linear) chromosomes, there will not be any way to replace the RNA primer with DNA and it will hence be removed along with the leftover sDNA end to which it was attached - resulting in telomere shortening.
May 23	comment	Is it possible to gain mutant powers through a genetically modified virus? May I suggest to reword this into something like... "To what extent is science-fiction-like 'super power' gain by genetic modification realistic?" and then apply for reopening? I believe if it's about the scientific basis and knowledge behind them, it might be on-topic.
May 22	comment	How does the immune system distinguish own and foreign antibodies? In this case the real question would be, do foreign antibodies trigger an innate or a specific immune response, or both? If innate, what sort of pathogen pattern do they match? If specific, how are B and T lymphocytes specific to own Abs removed during negative selection (especially seeing as their specific sites could be specific to parts of an Ab antigen binding site)?
May 15	comment	Why aren't organelles considered alive? So very much alike viruses in regards to their being alive or not then. Thanks :)
May 15	comment	What molecules/elements/compounds are in the cardiovascular system? On a broad scale, the same molecules as everywhere else in the body: lipids, carbohydrates, proteins and in much smaller quantities micronutrients such as minerals and vitamins. Blood itself of course is rich in glucose, as well as iron and oxygen or carbondioxide (due to red blood cells).
May 15	comment	If Evolution Is In Progress, Why Fight Extinction? @GoodGravy True, but as I said I think the relevant difference is the extent of manipulation, which is vast for humans. Aside from that, I think it boils down to fear of change.
May 15	comment	Why aren't organelles considered alive? Which genes exactly are you referring to? As far as I'm aware, mitochondria (I don't know about plastids) replicate their genome themselves and perform a process similar to binary fission themselves as well; but under regulation of the "host" cell.
May 15	comment	If Evolution Is In Progress, Why Fight Extinction? Again, invasion may also happen in nature and we are not trying to prevent invasion itself. We are trying to prevent invasion caused (directly or indirectly) by humans, again because we cannot determine the effects it may possibly have on the invaded ecosystems and hence we try to avoid potential problems. The whole idea is that we want to prevent a nature that evolved based on human manipulations.
May 14	comment	If Evolution Is In Progress, Why Fight Extinction? Yes, hence why they're trying to contain invasive species, or at least protect those species they're threatening. Same reason goes for containment of genetically engineered organisms as well.
May 14	comment	If Evolution Is In Progress, Why Fight Extinction? We're not trying to prevent extinction - species go extinct all the time. We're trying to prevent extinction caused by man. One of the big things that sets us apart from other species is how massively we manipulate the environment we live in. Some of those manipulations have a high destructive potential, and we do not understand ecosystems well enough to confidently say that destruction of species caused by us would go without lasting effects that we'd rather avoid.
May 13	comment	Breeding laboratory mice with cancer; how does this work? I could imagine a) they inject a few cancer cells from an in vitro culture which, being cancer cells, find a niche to proliferate; or b) the genes causing the cancer type are known and they produce a local knockout/knockin/knockdown in order to get the cancer started.
May 12	comment	Is it possible to print humans? Any biomaterial scientist working on bone will read this and just think "I wish..." :)
May 8	comment	Why does blood come from mouth when people are shot in the chest area? Here you go, there's many more nice pictures where that came from :)