Hacker News: harleyk

New comment by harleyk in "Ticker: Don't die of heart disease"

harleyk — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 12:47:23 +0000

A recent report from the American College of Cardiology emphasizes the prediction power of hsCRP:

"High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) is an inexpensive and widely available blood test. While there has been debate within the medical community regarding the utility of hsCRP, this statement details the data confirming its value in clinical decision making in primary and secondary prevention."

https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/journal-scans/2025/...

New comment by harleyk in "AI Antibody Design in 2025"

harleyk — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 21:06:57 +0000

Antibodies are proteins, so why is antibody design not just the same problem as mini-binder design? In most ways they are the same. The main difference is that the CDR loops that drive antibody binding are highly variable and do not benefit directly from evolutionary information the way other binding motifs do. Folding long CDR loops correctly is especially difficult.

Here I'll review the latest antibody design tools.

AI Antibody Design in 2025

harleyk — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 21:06:57 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.booleanbiotech.com/ai-antibody-design-2025

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45418761

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by harleyk in "Bio Hackathon"

harleyk — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 22:26:08 +0000

I'm forming a team to research AI and snake proteins for potential therapeutics. You can read more about our team's proposal on Discord.

https://discord.com/channels/1098625558780317766/12889513553...

Bio Hackathon

harleyk — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 22:26:08 +0000

Article URL: https://hackathon.bio/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41676134

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by harleyk in "The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements"

harleyk — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 23:04:49 +0000

The best writing I have ever done was in the acknowledgements section of my dissertation.

"...For all the experiments I’ve performed and the data I’ve collected, for none have I so unequivocally discovered truth as this: Love is eternal."

https://drum.lib.umd.edu/items/a0d83e35-0382-48b7-9183-c5aef...

AR4 Robotic Arm [video]

harleyk — Mon, 20 May 2024 19:46:29 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJFtruAHXoU

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40419426

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by harleyk in "[dead]"

harleyk — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 22:52:53 +0000

It's hard to be a scientist and to be authentic in our current grant-funding race.

Reimagining the Bioreactor

harleyk — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 15:29:53 +0000

Article URL: https://www.growbyginkgo.com/2023/07/11/reimagining-the-bioreactor/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36696030

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

AI tools are designing new proteins that could transform medicine

harleyk — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 15:17:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02227-y

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36695827

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by harleyk in "Ask HN: Best Resources and Books for a Soon-to-Be-Dad?"

harleyk — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 20:45:12 +0000

Being a dad is wonderful. Congratulations. My fatherhood (parent of four) has changed me in profound ways. The world glows brighter when we have a child with whom to share it.

I’m delighted that you’re searching for information about being the best dad possible. My advice, which has been supported by personal experience and research, is that the relationship with the mother matters. Marry the mother and stay married. More than any other variable, more than any other technique or quality of being a dad, a stable marriage (stable, enduring relationship) is the best quality we can give to our child. It is strong predictor of a child’s success and happiness. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/cohabiting-parents-differ...

New comment by harleyk in "Age-stratified infection fatality rate of Covid-19 in the non-elderly population"

harleyk — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 00:46:32 +0000

This paper is a big deal. I appreciate the laborious efforts the authors underwent to calculate a more accurate infection fatality rate (IFR). The IFR is the number of deaths from a disease divided by the total number of cases. If 10 people die of the disease, and 500 actually have it, then the IFR is [10 / 500], or 2%.

The IFR is different for age-stratified groups. The IFR was calculated before COVID-19 vaccination became widely available.

It's a big deal because it reports a markedly lower COVID-19 IFR than previous studies. The panic may not have been warranted for non-elderly age groups. I read this to also mean that the risks to adolescents did not warrant school closures and for some ages vaccination, even though vaccination risks for this age group were minimal.

"...in many locations excessive hospitalizations may have been driven by irrationally high perceptions of IFR for non-elderly people and they may have caused unnecessary stress and damage to the health care system at large."

The Inside of the Cell

harleyk — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 20:25:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/inside-cell

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29086906

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Acrobatic squirrels learn to leap and land on tree branches without falling

harleyk — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 15:45:15 +0000

Article URL: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6555/697

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28157754

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

NASA's Failure mode and effects analysis

harleyk — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 15:28:16 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analysis

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26875965

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by harleyk in "Arima Model – Guide to Time Series Forecasting in Python"

harleyk — Sun, 23 Jun 2019 12:20:01 +0000

Aileen Neilsen did a 3 hr session discussing timeseries analysis SciPy 2016. Each chapter is a Python Notebook. The ARIMA model figures prominently in chapter 7 Forecasting. I find her session tremendously helpful when analyzing ts data especially her discussion of seasonality. Youtube walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNfxr4BQrLk Github data: https://github.com/AileenNielsen/TimeSeriesAnalysisWithPytho...

The Quick and Dirty Guide to Brining Chicken or Turkey

harleyk — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 02:37:43 +0000

Article URL: https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/quick-and-dirty-guide-to-brining-turkey-chicken-thanksgiving.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18491462

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by harleyk in "Launch HN: Solugen (YC W17) – Plant Sugars to Hydrogen Peroxide"

harleyk — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 22:24:27 +0000

Really happy for Solugen's success and what this means for other biotechs seeking to augment traditional petromethods with enzymatic ones.

Can you help us better understand how you use CRISPR/Cas9 to mutate the protein? Your enzyme is proprietary, sounds like human protein, but mutated in certain positions prob to increase rate, but how do you use Cas9? I assume like other biotechs you purify this single protein using either E. coli or yeast with protein on plasmid. So why use Cas9 instead of site-directed mutagenesis?

The most-cited papers

harleyk — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 19:22:02 +0000

Article URL: http://www.nature.com/news/the-top-100-papers-1.16224?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20141030

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8529278

Points: 101

# Comments: 20