User talk:Chris Day

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.	The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022. Useful links on Citizendium Myths and Facts Biology Workgroup How to get started How to Edit The current policy outline Forums for discussion Biology forum News Community blog
User:Chris day/newmessage

I aim to restrict my replies to this talk page....

My hope is to preserve the context of each discussion rather than having them fragmented on mutliple talk pages. So please check back here for replies to messages you leave, thanks. Please sign comments with four tildes ~~~~ This makes it a lot easier to follow the ebb and flow of a discussion with multiple users. Indents are also useful to help track the sequence of replies and can be achieved using colons such as : or ::. Chris Day (Talk) 23:32, 13 November 2006 (CST)

For the benefit of newcomers, I mention that this can easily done by putting the page on one's watchlist, or setting the preferences to do so automatically.DavidGoodman

Lead in homeopathy

It's been suggested (not by me) that the new CZ style might incorprate a short and simple boxed message, and that for this article, that box might contain the text:

"Homeopathy is an Alternative Medicine system that tries to treat illnesses with tiny doses of the drugs that cause the same symptom as the illness. Homeopathy is based on the ideas of Samuel Hahnemann, a 19th century physician who observed that some contemporary medicines evoked symptoms similar to those of the illnesses for which they were prescribed. There is no clear evidence to support the efficacy of homeopathic remedies, and it is likely that the reported effects are placebo effects."

Keeping this here so we can see how it looks if and when style issues advanceGareth Leng 12:25, 9 November 2006 (CST)

That would make more sense. I have been trying to track down the CZ style guide/ideas with no luck. I have seen discussion here and there but nothing concrete. Am I missing something obvious? Chris Day (Talk) 12:31, 9 November 2006 (CST)

Hi Chris, No, you're missing nothing obvious, except that there is the intention to establish a new style on CZ but no firm proposals yet as to what that should be, just some suggestions as to what it might include. One of the initial functions of the pilot I think is to start discussions and experiments with style and layout.

Everything has been moving fast but unevenly; it's still very, very early days.Gareth Leng 06:55, 10 November 2006 (CST)

OK i'll kep my eye open for these discussions. Chris Day (Talk) 16:22, 10 November 2006 (CST)

Thank you Chris for your help. Nancy Sculerati MD 13:04, 24 November 2006 (CST)

Moving pages to avoid piping links

Rather than moving pages or piping links, I would put in redirects on the alternative spellings or capitalisations. The article should reside at the correct name with the correct capitalisation, not the common of most often used name. On the other spellings put in code like # REDIRECT [ [ SomePage ] ] to guide users automatically to the correct page without having to pipe anthing.

That is a good point. I had forgotten that redirects could be used for alternative forms. Chris Day (Talk) 08:30, 1 December 2006 (CST)

?? No idea??Gareth Leng 12:10, 4 December 2006 (CST)

Bacteria

Here's an e.coli on a government site that we could grab, but it is B/W. I'll keep looking for a good color photo. --D. Matt Innis 16:35, 4 December 2006 (CST)

Chris, check out the salmonella picture on the NIH website. It's colorful [1] --D. Matt Innis 14:14, 10 December 2006 (CST)

Chris, could you take a look at these 2 articles?

In Barbara McClintock, I made some changes as per your suggestions and hope that accuracy has been improved. Would you please take a look? Secondly, if you look at my user page (talk) you'll see a reference that David Tribe put in for the first genetic map. I need to correct a mistake I made about that in biology, but I do think that we should try to work in the concept of a genetic map, can you help? thanks, Nancy Sculerati MD 08:19, 10 December 2006 (CST) Please take a look at the biology talk page.Nancy Sculerati MD 12:25, 12 December 2006 (CST)

Biology marathon

Chris, I'm writing a letter to Larry, and then putting it up in Forums- look for it. Meanwhile, I'm going through all the history of article and the discussion to see who contributed. I need that information for the text of the letter. In doing so, I came across a comment you made about a correction you did in the part about proteins (your comment was something like: the proteins were not sequenced, the DNA was). The correction is fine, it's just that your comment made me realize the age difference between us, and how that colors our point of view. When I was an undergraduate back in the 70's, the big news was sequencing proteins, forget about DNA. It was a big deal to figure out the exact amino acid sequence and then laboriously "hand calculate" how they folded and what the exposed sites were and do the experiments that confirmed the structure. Anyway, as much as we may have irritated each other along the way of the biology marathon, I want you to know that when I wrote it was a pleasure to work with people who are kind and bright in my user page- I was very much thinking of you. Nancy Sculerati MD 08:41, 13 December 2006 (CST)

Nancy, Thank you for your kind words, although you may be underestimating my age :) When I was an undergraduate Fred Sanger was still a hot topic, my lecturer believed he could have won three Nobel prizes for his work. And they did not let us forget how lucky we were to be able to use the new dideoxy sequencing, let alone not having to attempt Edman degradation. That said, i worked in a mitochondrial lab for quite a few years and there I did experience the importance and distinction of peptide sequencing. Firstly, to identify the cleaveage point of the mitochondrial import peptide it was critical to determine the peptide sequence of the amino terminal. Secondly, rarely we found discrepancies between the mtcDNA and mtDNA sequences. This was obviously a big deal since it could potentially lead to a different amino acid in the protein. Of course, we later realised that these were not our sequencing errors but rather an observation of the bizarre RNA editing that can occur in the mitochondia. In summary, we always need to be aware of where our sequence comes from, either DNA cDNA or peptide. I think you are correct to suspect that much of this is lost on the new generation of scientists. In fact, recently i had a graduate student who did not recognise the rRNA bands on their northern blot! I was blown away, but should not be surprised since we these topic are barely mentioned in lecture these days.

Anyway i think the team effort made the biology article come out pretty well. I look forward to future collaborations. Actually, I see McClintock is already on standby for number two! Chris Day (Talk) 11:06, 13 December 2006 (CST)