Molecular Monday: The Answers

Yesterday I posted a bit of a quiz. I really shouldn't do these things unless I have a bigger readership, but you never know when a stray will come by and maybe post something. :)

If anybody has been following along at home, the answers are:

I was actually shocked by the similarity between Adderal and Methamphetamine. I mean, I know Adderal is an amphetamine, because that's what the generic comes in as, but meth?

But, that's just a digression, the interesting part (and why there is such a tight control on ADHD medication) is the portion of the structures in blue: Both match dopamine in their basic structure. If you don't know what dopamine is, it's essentially the neurotransmitter related to pleasure and addiction. Most (if not all) addictive substances do something with dopamine.

Now, this is my guess as to why Adderal affects ADHD in the way it does: People with ADHD need constant stimulation, doing something stimulating releases dopamine, and those who have ADHD either don't produce enough, or aren't sensitive enough to the neurotransmitter. Enter the stimulant: By mimicking dopamine the drug fools the brain into thinking it has enough, allowing the user to feel stimulated and granting better concentration and focus.

Amphetamines are not without side effects, though, in addition to allowing better focus, taking the medication late in the day can make it difficult to sleep, it also increases heart rate and causes dry mouth; but, the medication works well for me and has made a huge impact on my life, so I'll stick with it, similarity to street drugs notwithstanding.

Molecular Monday: Guess These Molecules

So, this is just a quick quiz; identify these molecules:

Hint: One is an essential neurotransmitter, one is an illegal street drug, and one is a treatment for ADHD. Which one is which, and what are they called?

Chemistry Library: Using CIE lib and spectral data together

I've been working on a coding project in my spare time to do various computational things with Chemistry. One of the requirements being that I have a rather complete data set to work with, which includes-- among other things-- The complete spectra of every element possible in the periodic table in all of the various ionization states. This is a result of using CIE Lib to display the spectral power distribution of the line spectrum of the element Neon:

Click on the image for a larger size

Each spectrum is displayed in ascending ionization levels from top to bottom with the topmost line depicting the standard observer, so the neutral Neon atom is at the top, then singly ionized and so-forth. I've seen lots of graphical representations of spectra on the web, and I think I know why Neon seems so weird: They all show the singly-ionized atom, rather  than the neutral atom.

One item to note: In the full-size image, you may notice that the spectral lines are a bit thick, this is because the rendering method used in this application is to sweep the extremes of the visual spectrum and getting a value within a certain tolerance, the other way to render would be to just draw the spectral lines in order, which would give a much more crisp and accurate result. Maybe I'll do that on the next post!

CIE Library: Illuminants

And, here's an image of what the illuminants look like using the 1964 observer:

Just a couple quick notes about this image: The spectra are rendered using a gamma of 1.8, which seems to work best, aesthetically, however, I do think they're meant to be rendered with a linear gamma. The first is the standard observer, second is CIE Illuminant A, and the third is D65, after that are the fluorescent illuminants, F1-F12 the first 6 are standard fluorescent illumination the next 3 are high CRI illuminants, and the final 3 are described as three band illuminants.

You'll note in all of the fluorescent samples that the light has strong peaks in the green and blue ranges, and with the exception of the 3-band examples, they all have a relatively weak yellow peak.

The high-cri examples do a little better than the standard fluorescent ones, but not much. I imagine you'd get less metameric failure with that lighting. This also explains the green cast in camera images recorded under fluorescent lighting conditions. It appears F3 and F4 maybe "warm white" while the rest are cool white.

CIE library: The Observers

First, this is not official CIE anything (except the data for standard observer, white points, and illumination sources)

As a test, I wrote a quick program to draw the standard observers from 250nm to 750nm on a window and compare the two, the top observer is the 1964 10° data, the bottom observer is the 1931 2° data. This is approximately how you perceive the spectrum. The colors have been converted from the CIEXYZ color space to the sRGB color space, and have been mapped using a source gamma of 1.8, which is likely incorrect, but gives a nice display for me.

This was a quickie, and I'm sure I could get a better rendering, but that wasn't the focus of this exercise. and yes, I realize that 250-750 is way overkill for these, but this gets into all of the UV and Near IR ranges common in such sources as sunlight.

Real Work Conversations

The other day, I was showing a coworker a REST api that I recently discovered and had been playing around with. I got a bit excited and lapsed into Previous-to-previous-employerspeak, and pronounced url like "Earl". This follows:

cw: The what?

me: Earl... sorry, a pronunciation that I got from a former job, I mean U R L.

cw: Don't ever do that again.

me: (laughs)

Molecular Mondays: Sodium Carbonate

Just a new "feature" I've been thinking of. I'm kicking it off with something rather mundane, but a bit interesting to me.

You have 2 very closely related compounds: Sodium Carbonate and Sodium Bicarbonate. A modern name for Sodium Bicarbonate is Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate.

So, structurally sodium carbonate looks a bit like this (actually there should be 2 Na⁺ ions):

And Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate is subtly different:

Can you spot the difference?

Sodium carbonate is a stronger base than sodium hydrogen carbonate, and it's all due to the hydrogen tacked to one of the oxygens. Adding another hydrogen makes it an acid:

Which is formed when carbon dioxide is dissolved in water:

Oh, and incidentally, the bi in bicarbonate has to do with the fact that the carbonate ion is attached both to the sodium and hydrogen.

CareerSpammer

Received this happy pile-o-bullshit from CarreerBuilder, despite the fact that I have found a job, and have thus closed my resume, some still prefer to spam my e-mail with this. Lets do a blow-by-blow teardown of this spam. 

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Dear Jobseeker,

We have recently reviewed your resume on CareerBuilder.com and have decided to contact you with a rare job opportunity.

If you actually took one freaking look at my resume you'd realize very quickly just how utterly irrelevant the rest of your spam would be.  Either that, or your reading comprehension is so lacking you really belong in the 3rd grade, and not running a "recruitment" firm.

What we are looking for

Our company is currently hiring responsible and motivated individuals to help us improve our financial system and increase our cash flow. We are committed to improve ourselves and we value honesty and responsibility for which we reward our employees financially in a productive long-term employment.

What we offer

     New income system: commissions without sales
     Very attractive income based on a standard salary plus commissions and bonuses with each order [emphasis mine]

Did you mistake a resume for a technical person for that of a sales drone? It's a common mistake, I can understand...

     No fees ever required

Oh, good to know I won't have to pay you to have such a wonderful job

     You can start immediately
     Net income up to $95,000 per year
     You can work part-time or full-time

 Red Flags! This is how i know you're a spammer:

"You can start Immediately" translates to "we have no screening process and need warm bodies that will hopefully take orders for us."

"Net Income up to $95,000 per year" translates to "You'll be lucky to make $100 per year, but we're not gonna tell you that, 'cuz the more people you rope in, the more you can make, amwayiright?


"You can work part-time or full-time" translates to "Really, we couldn't give a rats ass. If you're at least half-intelligent you'll realize this is a golden opportunity you shouldn't toss your day job for. We know this, so we're desperate enough to take on part-timers to take orders.

     Flexible vacations/holidays - you choose how much and when to work or have time off

Not necessarily a red flag, but shows desperation; what this really means is "We're desperate enough. if you decide to take a 6 month "vacation" while you're flipping burgers at Micky-D's we'll understand, after all, it's a much higher paying job that what we have to offer.

     Job for a large and stable company which means higher financial security

Seriously, Amway, is that you?

What is required?

     Microsoft Office (Word) - basic knowledge
     Access to the Internet and e-mail

"We don't require much. Can you breathe without drooling? No? Well you're hired anyway!"

     Good level of work ethics

Not really a hard requirement, after all you can set your own hours. So long as you actually get something right once in a while, we'll cling to you desperately.

     Will to learn and perform tasks in a timely fashion
     U.S. resident or green card holder
     You are not required to quit your current job.

You're consuming oxygen, right? Great! you're hired! Enjoy your new career in telemarketing!

Obligations and responsibilities

     Dedication in helping our company’s financial system and improving our business
     Perform various basic financial tasks
     Provide regular reports and updates on your orders and their status

By "helping our company's financial system" we mean hard selling to people who never wanted our crappy products in the first place.

"Perform various basic financial tasks" Can you do order data entry and take people's credit card numbers without stealing too many of them? Great! you're an excellent fit!

We are also offering the possibility of advancement inside our company for the more dedicated and ambitious employees. During the initial stage of this new job you will receive and depend upon precise instructions as well as help from our Support Department. Qualified candidates will be offered flexible schedules of work, competitive salary, bonuses and other benefits. Company covers all expenses needed to perform this job.

 Ready to climb the pyramid? We have some double-diamond(tm) opportunities waiting for you!

This job entails only a few hours of work per week so you will be able to plan your work schedule with ease.

In other words, we warned you: "Don't quit your day job"; now our asses are covered.

Looking forward to working with you, reply to this e-mail if you are interested.

Oh, and if you reply, thanks for helping us update our spam database. We need to confirm you e-mail is valid so our inbox on the crusty server at an undisclosed location somewhere in the Philippines  stops flooding with invalid address messages. You're helping our spamming operations become more efficient and irritating.

Human Resources

Cute... They think they're people.

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What annoys me most, I think, is the total lack of regard for the job seeker's skills and desires. It would be a cold day before I even considered something like this. Also, did the author of this message even notice when they were "reviewing" my resume that I had flagged myself as unavailable for hire because I found a job? Or did they harvest my account name from the system before they did that?

In short: No. I don't even consider opportunities like this for a second. They have demonstrated utter contempt for the potential "employee" --and I use that word loosely --by offering something that doesn't even remotely match their skill set or interests.

Discovery Reality Shows

So, taking a cue from Michael Mock's blog, I'm creating a pitch-list for programming shows that the discovery networks could air:

• Storm Chasers: Coders on the Road - A group of software developers join forces with one of the storm chasing teams and code up analysis software on the fly for their instruments.
• Industrial Refinery Programmers - Software engineers working on control systems in a refinery. What could go wrong?
• Timber Mill Coders - A group of programmers on a tecnical support mission to service the automated equipment used to cut various wood sizes (a spin-off of Extreme Loggers)
• ER: Code Blue - Programmers race against the clock to fix software bugs in life support equipment.

What's wrong with this diagram?

Take a look at the following image:

Source: NCBI PubChem database

I'm relatively certain there's something wrong here. Can you guess where the problem is? Answer after the jump.