This contest is an attempt to promote scientific knowledge among community in a fun and interesting way with the help of molecules.

Some people like to travel around the world and tell others stories about what happens outside of our organisms/cells in other countries.

And with “Identify the molecule” contest you can try to travel inside our own organism/cells and cells of the organisms around us.

For more information about this contest read “Identify the molecule” league. Prize: knowledge + 5/10 XRP + 200/400 TMN post.

Prizes/bonuses:

The prize here is

1. knowledge

facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject

[Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, 2010]

That understanding of our own organism and organisms around us is the real prize in the case of this contest. No matter what happens (whether or not you get 5 XRP), you can win (can acquire the knowledge by investigating different sources of information, remembering and using it to your advantage in the future).

2. 5 XRP

3. 200 TMN

Aside from XRP I’d like to add TMN tokens.

For the uninitiated, TMN is the token of TranslateMe project (it’s about combining blockchain technology (NEO in this case) with translation industry).

The reason I’m going to add this token for the prize pool of this contest is not only because I have them, but because this contest is quite scientific, and TranslateMe project might help to solve the “lost” science problem.

For more on this you can read my post regarding TranslateMe (TranslateMe (or Decentralization meets Translation industry). Part 2. The “missing puzzle piece” of scientific ecosystem. General overview) (and other posts of that series).

For more information on crypto-bonuses for this league, please refer to “Identify the molecule” league. Prize: knowledge + 5/10 XRP + 200/400 TMN post.

Consider these tokens as a bonus.

Images and text are the clues for you to guess a riddle (the name of the molecule in this case).

Note that

a) even though this contest is called “Identify the molecule”,

-> molecule (singular)

sometimes it’s not just a molecule which is responsible for a specific function, but rather a complex of molecules.

Example:

cytochrome c oxidase (Complex IV)

is a large transmembrane protein complex… It is the last enzyme in the respiratory electron transport chain of cells located in the membrane.

source

b) some molecules/complexes have different names. For example, other names for cytochrome c oxidase (example above) are

Complex IV (mitochondrial electron transport). Cytochrome a3. Cytochrome aa3. Cytochrome oxidase. Warburg's respiratory enzyme.

source

Any of those names would be a valid entry.

c) Some almost identical molecules are grouped into classes / groups / families.

Example:

Helicases are divided into 6 groups. RecD and Dda molecules belong to helicases group (Superfamily 1 (SF1)). In this case you would need to guess only the name of the group –> Helicase/ Helicases.

d) Some proteins can have different forms – isoforms.

Example:

There’re trypsin 1 and trypsin 2. In this case you would need to guess only the general name – trypsin.

Important

In order to get TMN, you’ll need to have NEO-wallet and provide me your public NEO-address.

If you don’t have it yet, don’t worry, I published a post on how/where to get it (O3 wallet).

Note that NEO-addresses provided by exchanges will not work in this case (+ it's safer NOT to keep your funds on exchanges). It's highly recommended to get O3 wallet.

If there’re no winners on any stage, the prize will be distributed equally among all users who provided any guesses for molecules.

Rules

This contest lasts for 6 days.

Given that I don't see a comments section on Coil, I set up a Telegram group for this league, so that you could leave your reply with the guess there.

Leave your guess (1 guess only) in the Telegram group.

Don’t edit your comment/reply and don’t provide any evidence that your answer is correct.

The first user with the right answer is the winner.

I’ll provide the answer in the Telegram group.

Some of the clues have already been provided in the post.

Additional clues will be given in 2 days (on Monday, January 20, 2020, 20:00 ± 2 minutes UTC) (I’ll update this post).

And the rest of the clues will be provided in 2 more days (on Wednesday, January 22, 2020, 20:00 ± 2 minutes UTC) (I’ll update this post).

The reason is that some people might need less information to make conclusions that the others.

Additional clues will be added at the end of the “Riddle” section before the “Rules” section with “Edited” label.

The winner will be announced in that group (+ I'll publish a detailed review of the riddle after a while) on Friday, January 24, 2020, 20:00 ± 5 minutes UTC, so it's recommended to check that group on the 6th day.

I'll ask to provide me there your XPR-address.

I’ll transfer the tokens (XRP + TMN) (if the winner provides me his/her NEO-address) to the winner on that day (January 24) and add the transaction ID in the Telegram group.

I’m planning to run this contest every week.

So, you should expect to see the 2nd week’s riddle for January on Saturday, January 25, 2019, 20:00 ± 2 minutes UTC.

The riddle goes below.

(Image was taken from PodMiners whitepaper)

With the advent of blockchain technology and bitcoin, a whole world of new possibilities has opened to a lot of areas of our life.

Bitcoin was initially designed to overcome the problems of existing financial system (2008) [1].

Later people realized that it can also benefit other areas of our life.

Podcast and radio industries are not exception.

I’d like to use a biological / evolutionary analogy here.

As you probably know, one of the most important steps in the evolution of life is the moment when life forms began to inhabit the land. That new environment provided some benefits and drawbacks for the life forms.

Just like that, blockchain technology is the new context/environment, which allows to solve some problems of existing industries.

It helps to flip the script in podcast and radio industries as well.

Among benefits of blockchain technology are transparency, reliability, monetization, security, fraud prevention, just to name a few.

That new environment is exactly what’s needed for podcast and radio industries.

PodMiners is the next step of evolution of podcast / radio industry.

In 2001, Apple launched the first handheld digital audio (MP3) player, the iPod. This had 5GB memory, was about the size of a packet of playing cards and had the ability to ‘put 1000 songs in your pocket’

source [2]

The term 'podcast' was coined in 2004 to refer to audio files downloaded automatically using Real Simple Syndication software and played on Apple's iPod™. This term is a combination of the words ‘pod’ and ‘broadcast’.

source [3]

Helpful resource for people with some physical disabilities

What I like about podcasts / radio is that audio-version of content can be used by people with some physical disabilities, especially visually-impared individuals.

And according to World Health Organization

Globally, it is estimated that approximately 1.3 billion people live with some form of vision impairment.
With regards to distance vision, 188.5 million people have mild vision impairment, 217 million have moderate to severe vision impairment, and 36 million people are blind (1).

source [5]

And PodMiners is going to be of great help to these people as it’ll provide a lot of educational materials in different languages. By the way, PodMiners partnered with TranslateMe (organization which tries to combine translation industry with blockchain with the ultimate goal to translate the Internet by combining machine and human power). That partnership will allow PodMiners to translate their transcripts into more than 6,000 languages.

Popularity of podcasts

What’s clear is that more and more people nowadays produce and use podcasts.

number of podcast series calculated by Morgan (not shown here) appear broadly similar to the trends shown in figure 1a, i.e. displaying distinct linear growth up to 2010, and exponential growth thereafter.

source [6]

(Image source)

In 2006, only 22 percent of the adult population in the United States was aware of this term, but this figure rose to 70 percent in 2019, highlighting the increasing popularity of podcasting in the United States. In fact, as of 2019, there were an estimated 86 million podcast listeners in the U.S., a number which is forecast to grow to around 132 million by 2022

source [4]

Also, there’s a growth on the podcast ad spending. In 2018, the ad spending was 295 Million USD and expected to increase up to 395 Million USD by 2020.

whitepaper

Problems of traditional podcast / radio industry and their solutions according to PodMiners vision

In a nutshell, PodMiners solves existing problems of traditional radio/podcast industry by leveraging benefits of the blockchain technology mentioned earlier.

Our vision at PodMiners is to have a transparent product and service ecosystem for the global community with the ability to track the content ownership, reward content creators and end the ad frauds within the advertisement industry.

whitepaper

In this series of posts (Mnemonics experiments/Mnemonics experiments (Memory Palace)) you’ll see mostly experiments about Memory Palace technic whereby we encode some information into images and place it onto the places.

For more information you can read previous posts (”Mnemonics (Memory Palace) experiments. #1 “Superpower” of the Liver. The memorization approach powered by Jackie Chan’s work” and “Mnemonics (Memory Palace) experiments. Introduction”)

But today's experiment is not strictly speaking about the Memory Palace technic per se. It is going to be about encoding information regarding the evolution of cardiovascular system into musical instruments and arranging them accordingly into orchestras (we are not going to place them to the places we/I know). So, I’d say that it is partially about the Memory Palace technic. This post is an attempt to describe the heart as an orchestra (literally) and consider the evolution of this organ through the ages.

The modern orchestra looks something like this

(Photoes are from Pixabay (CC0 Creative Commons)(harp, flute, violoncello, violin and conductor), Icon Wanted (CC Attribution 3.0 Unported) (triangle and drum) and Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) (trumpet))

Evolution

1. Annelida (think of an earthworm) (presumably they appeared near 600-500 million years ago)

These organisms are the first who have a closed circulatory system.

The reason is that unlike their ancestors they have a coelom [2].

Coelom – the principal body cavity in most animals, located between the intestinal canal and the body wall [4]

So, it wouldn’t be easy to deliver gas to the inner parts of their body without the circulatory system.

Their heart is a complex of ventral and dorsal aortas.

So their circulatory system could be represented like this (you could think of the grey background as the music produced by this orchestra (blood) (well, in this case it’s just a duet yet (flute resembles vessels)))

2. Arthropoda (think of a crayfish or any insect)

These organisms have an open circulatory system (which means their blood flows not only through the vessels but it also goes into some parts of their body) which consists of dorsal anterior and posterior vessels and a tubular heart (represented by a percussion instrument – drum) with an intrinsic pacemaker system (it is represented by a conductor) [2].

All of the following groups also have this pacemaker system [3].

Pacemaker system (also known as sinoatrial (SA) node) is a group of special cells which activate other parts of the heart so that it has a correct rhythm [1]

The blood goes to their heart through a pericardial sinus and goes out of it with the help of anterior and posterior vessels.

So their heart could be illustrated like this

3. Fishes

Their heart is represented by the atrium (represented by a percussion instrument – triangle) and the ventricle (drum). The blood flows through the venous system into it (through the sinus venosus) and then goes into the ventral aorta.

Arteries – those vessels that go out of the heart.

Veins – those vessels that enter the heart.

So the heart of fishes could be represented like this

4. Amphibians (think of frogs)

The vertebrate heart develops from four embryological enlargements of a ventral aorta [2]

The heart of these organisms consists of two atria (which are divided with the septum) and the ventricle. They have lungs. There are two circuits (pulmonary and systemic). Amphibians exchange gas not only with the help of the lungs but also with the skin (so it’s their second respiratory organ). The blood oxygenated with the help of their skin goes into the right atrium and mixes with the blood entering the left atrium from the lungs. The pacemaker system is located in the right atrium (all of the following groups have it in the right atrium as well). So their heart could be illustrated like this

5. Reptiles (think of lizards)

Again, their heart has two completely separated atria and one ventricle (but crocodilians have completely divided ventricles). So the blood again mixes in the ventricle and goes from there into systemic and pulmonary arteries.

Their heart has an atrioventricular valve which prevents the oxygenated and less oxygenated blood from mixing.

So their heart could be represented like this

Where red is oxygenated blood, blue – less oxygenated blood and pink is a mixed blood [2].

6. Birds heart is similar to that of mammals

7. Human

We have two atria and ventricles so our heart could be represented like this

(The image above (which served as the header image as well) was created by me with the help of PyMol (open-source tool for molecules visualization/exploration))

The purpose of this series of posts is to demonstrate the power/beauty of bioinformatics (I’m just an amateur, though).

There’re 2 terms, most biologists are familiar with, namely “In vivo” and “In vitro”.

“In vitro” is used to describe the studies of living/dead organisms done outside of their normal context/environment (like in test-tubes).

“In vivo” is used to describe the studies of living organisms done in their normal context/environment.

And with the advent of computers one more term was introduced –> “In silico”.

“In silico” is used to describe experiments done with biological data with the help of computer power.

[2, 3, 4]

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field of study, taking advantage of mathematics, statistics, computer science, computational linguistics and some others [1].

And the purpose is to help scientists to understand biological data.

All you need to do “In silico” experiments is your desire, internet-connection and computer.

With biochemistry/molecular biology moving forward, a huge amount of data was collected. This was one of the impulses for bioinformatics development. Not only we have nowadays a huge amount of information about protein/DNA/RNA sequences, but we also have a huge amount of literature. And it’s impossible to read all that and to investigate all that biochemical information manually.

(The image above was created by me with the help of Clustal Omega and Paint)

Even though we see “informatics” in “bioinformatics”, you don’t need to be a programmer to do bioinformatics (but that might be useful). For all those biological data stored on serves a huge amount of web-tools was developed. One of the central resource for bioinformatics knowledge is National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).

It’s hard to describe the whole range of opportunities bioinformatics gives to its users.

With bioinformatics there’s no need to waste a lot of resources to carry out lots of those experiments done in test-tubes, which saves us a lot of reagents and, most importantly, bioinformatics saves us a lot of time.

Now, that you know how this memory palace approach works and when we figured out what is a mental stage (see Introduction post of this series), let’s talk about images for our example (functions of the liver).

Images

I’ll be using some characters from the animated television series “Jackie Chan Adventures” (2000).

It’s great if you watched them too. If not, then here is a short description:

“Jackie Chan Adventures” tells us about an amateur archaeologist who is a good fighter. He has an uncle and a niece. Once he found a magical talisman. And actually after that his adventures began because there are some other guys – the criminal gang “Dark Hand” – who want to get this and other talismans as well to give them to the demon Shendu so that this creature could get a super-power. Well, actually talismans are what we need. They are magical (remember that images should be unusual?). We have ready-to-use images of them from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0 license and Public Domain). All these talismans (which are actually twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac) have different power:

Rat. With this talisman you can make inanimate objects alive;

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Rat.svg), Public Domain)

Ox. This one gives its owner a super Strength;

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Ox.svg), Public Domain)

Tiger. It helps the owner to find the balance of Yin and Yang;

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Tiger.svg), Public Domain)

Rabbit. With this the owner have a super-speed;

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Rabbit.svg), Public Domain)

Dragon. Gives its holder an ability to generate fire

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Dragon.svg), CC BY-SA 3.0, Angelus, No changes were made)

Snake. Gives you an ability to become invisible;

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Snake.svg), Public Domain)

Horse. It helps to repair something (or someone);

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Horse.svg), Public Domain)

Sheep. With the help of this talisman we can remove the soul from the body;

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Goat.svg), Public Domain)

Monkey. It gives its owner an opportunity to change anything into animals;

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Monkey_2.svg), CC BY-SA 3.0, Angelus, No changes were made)

Rooster. Gives you the power of levitation.

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Rooster.svg), CC BY-SA 3.0, Angelus, No changes were made)

Dog. Gives immortality.

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Dog_2.svg), CC BY-SA 3.0, Angelus, No changes were made)

Pig. With this talisman you can emit heat energy with your eyes;

(Wikipedia#/media/File:Boar.svg), CC BY-SA 3.0, Angelus, No changes were made)

Well, we have images.

Well, first of all I want to pay your attention to the name liver = live + r, which stresses the importance of this organ.

The organs we’ll be talking about (the liver and gallbladder) are shown below:

(J. GORDON BETTS, TYLER JUNIOR COLLEGE et al. Anatomy and Physiology, OpenStax, ISBN-10: 1-947172-04-2, 2013. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0))

The liver produces bile which is stored in the gallbladder and excreted into duodenum when needed.

Now I need to say that all liver functions are interconnected (I mean that it’s not easy to isolate them), and different authors define these functions slightly differently. These names of the functions have been given by humans and for humans for the sake of convenience.

The liver functions can be divided into two groups:

Functions that aren’t related to digestion:

1) Detoxification

The liver serves as a barrier for xenobiotics (substances that aren’t used in the organism neither for energy production nor for building of the organism tissues; drugs for example). Hydrophilic xenobiotics (those which can be mixed with water) are excreted out of the organism with urine. Hydrophobic xenobiotics (those which can’t be mixed with water) might stay in tissues and form complexes with proteins or lipids leading to cell functions dysfunctions.

The idea here is to make hydrophobic xenobiotics more hydrophilic. This process happens in two phases which are catalysed by different catalysts (enzymes):

a) OH – group is added to the xenobiotic (RH):

RH + OH – => R-OH –

b) Conjugation. A special role at this step play enzymes called Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) which use a tripeptide glutathione (GSH):

R + GSH => GSHR (it’s just one of the possible mechanisms)

Then xenobiotics could be excreted with some of the final products of the digestion process [1].

2) Deposition

The liver serves as a storage for some substances (for example glycogen, vitamin A, D);

The level of glucose (the key source of energy for different organisms) in blood must be maintained at a specific level. Glucose can be stored in the form of glycogen (polymer which consists of monomers (glucose)). This glycogen can be decomposed to glucose and is used to maintain the blood glucose at a constant level [5].

This glycogen looks like

(Wikipedia, Häggström, Mikael (2014). “Medical gallery of Mikael Häggström 2014”. WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.008. ISSN 2002-4436. Public Domain)

3) Immunological

Liver has a macrophage system (a group of cells which are able to eliminate old red blood cells and bacteria); [2].

4) Metabolic

A lot of different substances are synthesized in the liver: cholesterol, ketone bodies, fatty acids, fats, some plasma proteins (like albumin), urea, angiotensinogen…;

I’ll just talk here about two examples.

As a result of proteins metabolism ammonia is produced. Ammonia is a toxic substance for cells (especially for nerve cells). This ammonia mostly detoxified by transformation into urea which is excreted with urine.

Albumin is the key human blood plasma protein. I guess you have already saw it a lot of times when you boiled the chickens eggs and ate them. This is that famous white substance surrounding the egg yolk. This albumin serves as a “bus” in human blood as it transports a lot of other substances (water, hormones…)

Digestion-related function

5) Production and excretion of the bile (a dark green substance that helps to digest fats for example) [1]

Other functions

6) Well, I guess that we can also add one more function – liver regeneration [3].

So, I didn’t mention all the liver functions, but I guess we have enough (6 functions) for the purposes of the post.

Now we have images as well as functions. And all we need to do is to code these functions into those images (talismans in our case).

The procedure will look as follows:

• we remember some information about the specific liver function placing it onto the stage;

• we recall talismans and place them onto that mental stage.

Basically, the only question we need to answer is: “Is there something similar between this function and that talisman?”. If yes, then we capture this association and begin the procedure again looking for the next association.

Well, I won’t present you all that process of finding similarities visually, but I’ll give you the final result and a little description.

Well, let’s see.

Functions that aren’t related to digestion:

1) Detoxification

“Is there something similar between the function and that talisman?”

We have a Monkey talisman which gives its owner an ability to MODIFY anything into animals. It reminds the function (in the liver xenobiotics are detoxified by the chemical MODIFICATION, right?).

2) Deposition

“Is there something similar between the function and that talisman?”

I’ve mentioned above that glycogen can be used to maintain the blood glucose at a constant level (to give the glucose level a BALANCE). And we know the Tiger talisman is responsible for giving its owner the BALANCE.

3) Immunological

“Is there something similar between the function and that talisman?”

We have a Sheep talisman which gives its owner an ability to REMOVE THE SOUL from the body.

We know that the liver has cells which can eliminate old red blood cells and bacteria. So, we can say that these cells can, metaphorically speaking, REMOVE THE SOUL of bacteria (by killing them) from the body.

4) Metabolic

“Is there something similar between the function and that talisman?”

I’ve mentioned above that with the Pig talisman you can emit, or Produce, heat energy with your eyes.

And this function is about Producing different substances.

Digestion-related function

5) Bile production/excretion (a dark green substance that helps to digest fats)

Is there something similar between the function and that talisman?”

As we know the Dragon talisman gives its holder an ability to generate, or PRODUCE/EXCRETE, fire.

And we know that the liver PRODUCE/EXCRETE the bile, right?

Other functions

6) Liver regeneration

Is there something similar between the function and that talisman?

I’ve mentioned above that the Horse talisman helps you REPARE something (or someone). And we know that the liver has an ability for self-REPARing

As you’ve noticed there’s the “”Superpower” of the Liver” (SUPERPOWER) phrase in the title of the post. I guess that we could say that having all those talismans the Liver has the “Superpower” (recall people who drink alcohol, and that their liver is usually able to withstand all that anti-liver behaviour (well, for some limited amount of time, of course ))).

Well, I understand that we’ve used only 6 talismans but we have 12. The purpose of this post is just to give you an idea of the Memory Palace approach though, so we’ll move on to the next step.

The next step is to place our images onto the stage.

In 2015 Alex Mullen (28 years old as of 2020) became the first who was able to memorize 3029 digits in a discipline called “60 Minute/Hour Numbers” of the World Memory Championships [1]. He also has other records in some other disciplines [2].

How is that even possible?

Do you need to have a Savant syndrome like Kim Peek who could recall the content of 12,000 books in great detail and read two pages simultaneously?

Well, to demonstrate Kim Peek’s level of memorization I guess you do )

The good news is that according to the results of one study you don’t need to have extraordinary intellectual capabilities or special structural brain characteristics to demonstrate the results achieved on the World Memory Championships. You rather need to be aware of the special memorization strategy [3].

Alex Mullen uses the special strategy to memorize the information. It’s not a magic and is not a secret (well, I guess he has some secrets, though). You can visit his website where he’s trying to explain the Memory Palace technique by examples (like “How to Use Memory Palaces to Learn Pharmacology: Tetracyclines…”)

So, this technique is called the method of loci (places), also known as the Memory Palace technique or “images and loci” method.

History and

According to “The Art of Memory” book by Frances A. Yates this method has been invented in Ancient Greece.

And the story is as follows:

Once upon a time the poet Simonides performed a poem in honour of the host of the banquet he was invited to. But the part of that poem was performed in honour of two gods. And the host told him that he could pay this poet only a half of the initially promised sum and that he should get the other half from those gods. After that the poet was informed that two people were waiting for him outside of the hall where the banquet took place. And Simonides came out. Then the roof of the hall fell down and this poet was the only one who survived. The damages to the bodies were so severe that nobody of the relatives were able to recognise the people except for Simonides. He was able to remember the places the guests and the host were sitting. That was the moment when he realized that orderly arrangement is what’s needed for a great memory [8].

This series of posts is an attempt to give you some examples of the Memory Palace technique and to check if it really works.

If it’s the first time you hear about this technique, then I’m almost sure that all of the above and below should sound a little bit crazy to you, but I hope that by the end of the post you will get the point of this approach.

Well, there are basically two steps to apply the Memory Palace technique:

1. we need to encode the information about the liver functions into images (in the case with Simonides images were people);

2. we need to place those images into places we know (in the case with Simonides places were locations where host and guests were sitting);

What will be describe below is based on my experience (I’ll be using images and places that I know). So, if you want to try the Memory Palace technique, you’ll need to use your own images and places.

Well, now I need to say that if you are for example a biochemist and you are working at a laboratory, then you know that every procedure/method in there has its own protocol (sequence of actions). There are a lot of books about mnemotechnics but there’s no a unique protocol to use the Memory Palace technique because we are all different. So, you’ll need to adjust this approach to your needs and capabilities.

There are some general requirements for the images and places, though.

The images should be unusual (like the characters of an anime for example) and do unusual actions.

The places should be familiar to you (real) (for example, you could use your school/college/university/stadium as the Palace to place the images).

Now I suggest you to imagine an apple.

Where have that image just appeared?

We’ll find out soon.

Physiological/psychological basics

Now I need to talk about prefrontal cortex.

(image source, CC BY-SA 2.1 jp, no changes were made)

I’ll describe some ideas given by David Rock in his book “Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long” according to which prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain located behind your forehead which is actually responsible for thinking things through. According to Amy Arnsten (professor of neurobiology, Yale Medical School), who David Rock referred to in his book, it’s the place where we hold the thoughts generated by ourselves (rather than thoughts generated with the help of senses). David Rock suggests us to think of this cortex as a small theatre stage. Thoughts are actors on that stage. So, we suppose that the apple I was asking you to think about earlier is placed on that mental stage (working memory, or I guess we also could think of it like an RAM (Random Access Memory) of your computer) [4].

The amount of the actors you can hold on that stage is limited. Do you remember that magical number seven? [5]. It’s the number of actors you can hold on that stage at the same time. Well, more recent study revealed that this number is more like four and depends on the complexity of the idea (it’s easier to hold four numbers than, let’s say, four sentences) [6].

So, the ideas you are thinking are placed on the mental stage which I’ll illustrate as follows:

(the image above was created by me)

And you can replace those ideas with the new ones when you remember them. You see those potential ideas at the bottom of the image on the chairs (just the first row) in the form of yellow lightnings.

Very Important!

I believe that books about mnemonics belong to the unusual type of books. I know some people who were reading some unusual books, and they are now in a psychoneurological hospital (funny house). So, such books should be used without a fanaticism. You could train this Memory Palace technique for example at home but not when you, let’s say, cross the street. It’s important to remember about reality. And mnemotechnics requires to change real places and use unusual images with the help of your imagination, right?

So be careful (without a fanaticism).

Do you remember?

Because building a dream from your memory is the easiest way to lose your grasp on what's real and what is a dream

(Leonardo DiCaprio (“Inception”, 2010))

(Pixabay)

I guess in the context of this post we need to change that “...building a dream from your memory” phrase into “...building the Memory Palace from your memory” and “…what is a dream” phrase into “what is generated by your imagination”.

(image (which served as the header image as well) source)

In this post I present you WARPS (Whole Aircraft Rescue Parachute System) developed by BRS (Ballistic Recovery Systems, Inc.).

The company was founded by Boris Popov in 1980. In 1975 he survived after falling from 120 m height with hang glider. That inspired him to build such a system.

This system is a type of ballistic parachute system (the one that is ejected with the help of small explosion (similar to ejection seat)). It’s usually attached to light aircrafts (with takeoff weight of 5,670 kg or less) and hang gliders [1, 2, 3].

Ballistic means relating to ballistics

the science of projectiles and firearms

(Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd Edition, 2010; Oxford University Press 2010)

The first WARPS became available in 1982. And you see that this series of posts is about innovations.

I intentionally mentioned in the previous post of this series that an innovation is simply

a new method, idea, product, etc.

(Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd Edition, 2010; Oxford University Press 2010)

So, innovation isn’t about the age. Aforementioned parachute systems haven’t been improved drastically since that time (1980-1982). Thus, I consider such parachute systems as innovations (hope you agree with me).

Two main components of such system is parachute itself (obviously) and a rocket (which helps to open parachute within seconds).

The basic principle is that this system works as a handbrake, but for aircrafts.

Here’s an amazing demonstration of this system (I suggest you to watch beginning from the 2nd minute)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzh0gGj1zog

For detailed explanation from the founder...

Note that after landing the aircraft got on fire after a while. Just imagine if this happened in the air. That parachute system would be useless (the pilot would die/burn in the air). And this wouldn’t happen in the case of ejection seat usage.

Pilots launch these systems by pulling a special deployment handle (I guess pilots could be ejected accidentally sometimes, if buttons were used instead).

Tests have shown that a 12 year old girl can activate the deployment handle.

source

I hope it wasn’t young Lucia Rijker (“The Most Dangerous Woman in the World”).

BRS parachute systems are designed mostly to two types of aircraft, namely Cirrus SR20/Cirrus SR22 and Cessna 172 (the most successful aircraft in the history of humanity btw (more than 44,000 aircrafts built since 1956)) / Cessna 182. The systems have been installed on more than 35,000 aircrafts [4, 5].

WARPS weights near 80 pounds (1 pound = 0.4536 kg) and can be installed in 40-45 hours (for more information go to FAQ).

One more video to watch the system in action…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQyrPVIIQdE

The following image shows fatal accidents rates reduction achieved with the help of WARPSs (for aforementioned Cirrus (blue polygonal line)).

source

For detailed explanation from the founder...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDg194Ry8iU&feature=emb_logo

Those systems seem as cool and effective solution. But BRS official web-site says that

403 LIVES SAVED SO FAR

source

… since 1982…

This contest is an attempt to promote scientific knowledge among community in a fun and interesting way with the help of molecules.

Some people like to travel around the world and tell others stories about what happens outside of our organisms/cells in other countries.

And with “Identify the molecule” contest you can try to travel inside our own organism/cells and cells of the organisms around us.

For more information about this contest read “Identify the molecule” league. Prize: knowledge + 5/10 XRP + 200/400 TMN post.

Prizes/bonuses:

The prize here is

1. knowledge

facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject [Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, 2010]

That understanding of our own organism and organisms around us is the real prize in the case of this contest. No matter what happens (whether or not you get 5 XRP), you can win (can acquire the knowledge by investigating different sources of information, remembering and using it to your advantage in the future).

2. 5 XRP

3. 200 TMN

Aside from XRP I’d like to add TMN tokens.

For the uninitiated, TMN is the token of TranslateMe project (it’s about combining blockchain technology (NEO in this case) with translation industry).

The reason I’m going to add this token for the prize pool of this contest is not only because I have them, but because this contest is quite scientific, and TranslateMe project might help to solve the “lost” science problem.

For more on this you can read my post regarding TranslateMe (TranslateMe (or Decentralization meets Translation industry). Part 2. The “missing puzzle piece” of scientific ecosystem. General overview) (and other posts of that series).

For more information on crypto-bonuses for this league, please refer to “Identify the molecule” league. Prize: knowledge + 5/10 XRP + 200/400 TMN post.

Consider these tokens as a bonus.

Images and text are the clues for you to guess a riddle (the name of the molecule in this case).

Note that

a) even though this contest is called “Identify the molecule”,

-> molecule (singular)

sometimes it’s not just a molecule which is responsible for a specific function, but rather a complex of molecules.

Example:

cytochrome c oxidase (Complex IV)

is a large transmembrane protein complex… It is the last enzyme in the respiratory electron transport chain of cells located in the membrane.

source

b) some molecules/complexes have different names. For example, other names for cytochrome c oxidase (example above) are

Complex IV (mitochondrial electron transport). Cytochrome a3. Cytochrome aa3. Cytochrome oxidase. Warburg's respiratory enzyme.

source

Any of those names would be a valid entry.

c) Some almost identical molecules are grouped into classes / groups / families.

Example:

Helicases are divided into 6 groups. RecD and Dda molecules belong to helicases group (Superfamily 1 (SF1)). In this case you would need to guess only the name of the group –> Helicase/ Helicases.

d) Some proteins can have different forms – isoforms.

Example:

There’re trypsin 1 and trypsin 2. In this case you would need to guess only the general name – trypsin.

Important

In order to get TMN, you’ll need to have NEO-wallet and provide me your public NEO-address.

If you don’t have it yet, don’t worry, I published a post on how/where to get it (O3 wallet).

Note that NEO-addresses provided by exchanges will not work in this case (+ it's safer NOT to keep your funds on exchanges). It's highly recommended to get O3 wallet.

If there’re no winners on any stage, the prize will be distributed equally among all users who provided any guesses for molecules.

Rules

This contest lasts for 6 days.

Given that I don't see a comments section on Coil, I set up a Telegram group for this league, so that you could leave your reply with the guess there.

Leave your guess (1 guess only) in the Telegram group.

Don’t edit your comment/reply and don’t provide any evidence that your answer is correct.

The first user with the right answer is the winner.

I’ll provide the answer in the Telegram group.

Some of the clues have already been provided in the post.

Additional clues will be given in 2 days (on Monday, January 13, 2020, 20:00 ± 2 minutes UTC) (I’ll update this post).

And the rest of the clues will be provided in 2 more days (on Wednesday, January 15, 2020, 20:00 ± 2 minutes UTC) (I’ll update this post).

The reason is that some people might need less information to make conclusions that the others.

Additional clues will be added at the end of the “Riddle” section before the “Rules” section with “Edited” label.

The winner will be announced in that group (+ I'll publish a detailed review of the riddle after a while) on Friday, January 17, 2020, 20:00 ± 5 minutes UTC, so it's recommended to check that group on the 6th day.

I'll ask to provide me there your XPR-address.

I’ll transfer the tokens (XRP + TMN) (if the winner provides me his/her NEO-address) to the winner on that day (January 17) and add the transaction ID in the Telegram group.

I’m planning to run this contest every week.

So, you should expect to see the 2nd week’s riddle for January on Saturday, January 18, 2019, 20:00 ± 2 minutes UTC.

The riddle goes below.

I’ll be speaking to you using language, because I can. This is one of these magical abilities that we humans have. We can transmit really complicated thoughts to one another

Lera Boroditsky

Introduction

This post is a part of the series of posts where I’m gonna share my journey with TranslateMe.

I joined their community several months ago, and I’m just a general user there.

Disclaimer

Just like TranslateMe project is the work in progress, this series of posts is the work in progress as well, which means that the information provided here might change after a while (because my understanding of this project might change after a while as well). In my posts I’ll try to provide my understanding of this project, TranslateMe solutions and what impact all that stuff could have on translation industry and humanity. As for now, I really like the project, and the ultimate goal of all these posts is to provide constructive criticism (as opposed to destructive criticism)/share information about this project with people to help to improve somehow that project a little bit. For more reliable information you definitely should go to their website / read whitepaper / do your own research/experiments / talk with the team (which is highly polite and responsive talking with users on their Telegram group) (I’ll provide the links about TranslateMe at the end of this post).

So…

I found out about Steemit in June, 2018. Also I’m interested in linguistics/translation (non-expert). Once I intentionally began to search for something like “decentralization blockchain translation”. I was hoping to find a solution which is something like Steemit but for translators (I know about that DaVinci project and I’m not gonna talk about it in my posts). What I found out in autumn (2018) is that there’s a project called Langpie. And it turned out that it was an ICO (initial coin offering) scam. And yes (of course/no doubts/it’s obvious) the guys behind it were Russians ).

So, I continued to search for “decentralization blockchain translation” with Google. And in February I found out about TranslateMe, which I think was exactly was I was looking for.

So, let’s come to the point.

TranslateMe is a legal entity from Mauritius (Republic of Mauritius).

At the same time the TranslateMe team use TranslateMe term to denote

a network of people and machines

whitepaper

And looks like by TranslateMe they also denote their unique algorithm to do translation.

Basically,

TranslateMe = Neural Machine Translation (NMT) + computing power + human input

The best thing about Neural Machine Translation is that the system can learn, and easily improve upon previous translations, if given corrections.

source

And all that stuff somehow is powered by the blockchain, which in this case is NEO (no, this has nothing to do with “The Matrix” and Thomas Anderson (aka Neo)).

TMN (TranslateMe Token)

is a digital, crypto-graphic, NEP-5 compatible, utility token that provides access to TranslateMe’s translation platforms

whitepapper

NEP – NEO Enhancement Protocol.

This token is going to be used to reward users for their contributions on TranslateMe Chat App as well as on other TranlsateMe solutions (rewards for translators…).

Blockchain

I’m not gonna provide here detailed explanation of the benefits of the blockchain (I think you know that much better than me). To understand the benefits of the blockchain in the context of this project please visit TranslateMe web-site where you’ll find the links to their Medium posts (“The Ideal Combination of AI, Blockchain Technology and Human Input”, …).

According to their website TranslateMe solutions include (at least):

• TranslateMe Chat App

• TranslateMe Freelancer

• TranslateMe Menu

• TranslateMe Docs

And they will provide developers an API (application programming interface). So, as far as I understand, just like Facebook and VK provide developers their APIs, which allow us to kind of build those websites functionalities into our own websites, platforms which deal with translation could build TranslateMe functionalities to facilitate/improve/reduce costs of their translation process.

(I’ll be talking about that chat application in the next part. Here I’d wanna discuss some general questions).

Why is that translation industry so important?

Let’s just imagine that all people all over the world know English. In this case there’s no need for translation. Just like

no plastics makers => no plastics pollution (well, I understand that we already have enough)

no different languages => no translation industry

Because there’ll be nothing to translate )

But, as you know, there is a huge amount of plastics dispersed all over the world, and we also have a lot of languages.

In the next post (Part 1.) of this series devoted to TranslateMe Chat App, you’ll see that TranslateMe uses English as an intermediate between languages. I mean that when you leave there a message (in Spanish in the next example), then for the person who wants to see that in Russian happens something like:

Spanish (original message) –> machine-generated English –> machine-generated Russian

So, my question is why not just teach all people all over the world English, so that they could use it and communicate. Possibly, it would even be cheaper than all that translation industry.

In order to live, all organisms all over the world need something to eat and something to excrete.

Human is not an exception.

What’s cool is that the waste from some organisms might serve as food for others (think of “food chains”).

That’s the basis of activated sludge process. It’s a traditional method of wastewater treatment with the help of microorganisms.

What you see below is actually a wastewater treatment plant (developed by Organica).

(image (which served as the header image as well) source)

It’s very different from something like

(source)

i.e. traditional wastewater treatment plant, where microorganisms absorb our waste, then they get filtered, and we get relatively clean water.

These facilities usually occupy huge areas (sometimes with arable land) and must be located far away from residential areas (because they are quite unappealing with unpleasant odour).

And

more than 90% of global treatment costs are not actually going towards the treatment of the water, but rather in the sewer network.

source

That’s why Organica came up with an idea of integration of wastewater treatment facilities into residential areas by combining

Nature

Technology

Architecture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEVdGvAWm0U

Organica started to function as a company building traditional wastewater treatment plants in 1998.

It introduced its innovation (Food Chain Reactor (FCR)) in 2007.

What you see on the first image of this post is just “the upper part of an iceberg”.

This part is visually-appealing.

Organica facility in Hainan Island (China) is located directly inside a traffic circle. Drivers pass the Hainan Island facility daily, without realizing it is a wastewater treatment facility

(source – video above)

(source – video above)

The “magic” happens in the “lower part of an iceberg”.

(source)

Organica drastically increased the area of habitat for organisms by providing plant roots and artificial root structures (“engineered supporting media” on the image).

This is similar to what happens with neocortex of our brains. It has deep grooves and ridges, which helps to increase the surface area greatly.

The root structures in turn provide an ideal habitat for a thriving ecosystem – both larger (2-4x greater active biomass per cubic meter of reactor volume) and more diverse (3-4x greater species diversity) than the biology found in typical conventional activated sludge based systems.

source

This helped to increase the diversity of organisms capable to process our waste a lot

substantial increase in the diversity of microorganisms present in the system (3000 species vs. 600-800 in Activated Sludge)

source

(source – video below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJhowsEvgTE&feature=emb_logo