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The cause of Kabuki Syndrome
Yesterday, I discovered that the DNA of Andy,
Li-Xia, and I has probably been scanned with the SOLid scanner of Genomic Disorders Nijmegen as part of the search for the
gene (or genes) that cause Kabuki Syndrome, which is the syndrome
that Andy has been diagnosed with on the basis of a clinical
observations. I found the powerpoint presentation Next generation sequencing in research and diagnostics
about the technology being used. On the Kabuki Syndrome Network - Bulletin Board I found the following
statement, which suggests that a research group of the Dept of Pediatrics of the University of Washington in Seattle
has found a candidate gene (Italics mine):
We are currently using a new DNA sequencing technology to look
for the gene that causes Kabuki syndrome and need to collect DNA
samples from as many Kabuki syndrome families (affected individual
and both parents if available) as possible. Testing other families
will confirm that we have the correct gene.
I guess if this is true it will be published in some scientic journal
and when the genetic defect is known, all other research groups around
the world will try to verify the find. There is always the chance that
it is a repeat of the Milunsky story.
P versus NP
Today, I found the article The Status of the P Versus NP Problem on the Communications
of the ACM website, which gives an informal introduction to the P versus NP problem. I also found the paper Poly-logarithmic independence fools AC0 circuits
writen by Mark Braverman
which seems somehow to be related to the problem.
When I searched for Geometrical Algebra (which was mentioned in the ACM
article), I came across the book Geometric Algebra For Computer Science. One of the authors is
Leo Dorst.
I saw that he also plays Go, and when I watched
the Dorst 1k(w)- Blom 1D commentary by Kang Sun Hee 2p part 1of3 video,
I thought I recognized my own voice just right at the start. Later, I
realized that it could very well have been me. The video is uploaded
on May 24, 2007. On May 20, 2007, I
was in Amstelveen joining the one day rapid tournament. I also remember
that there was someone recording an analysis held in the bar. Possibly
I even looked at this analysis for some time.
The Poincaré Conjecture
I just finished reading the book The Poincaré Conjecture
by Donal O'Shea, which I started reading
on May 24, the day I borrowed it from Bert.
I found it an interesting book, although I have to admit that I do not
understand most of the mathematics in the second part of the
book. Whereas in the first chapters, this books tries to explain
the mathematics in great detail at the level of lay persons, it
become harder and harder to follow in the latter chapters. (But
maybe this is typical for books like this, because in the book
Four Colors Suffice the
same happened.) The book also give a lot of background on the
people involved. At some points, maybe a little too much. The
book also has almost forty pages of notes against two hundred
pages of text. A lot of the notes are source references. Some
notes are explainatory and the remaining notes going deeper into
the matter. I wonder if it would not have been better to integrate
the notes in the text, because now you have to keep your finger
at two places of the book all the time.
However, what I found quite disappointing about the book was the
treatment of Gregori Perelman.
The first chapter starts with that Monday, April 7, 2003, where
Perelman talks about his proof at MIT. The book does not say
much about the background of Perelman, less than half a page,
which is less than many other mathematicians mentioned in the
book. Furthermore, the book does not say anything about the
reasons why Perelman did not want to recieve the Fields Medal,
while he did make some clear statements about it. It only says
that Perelman was like Gauss shunning the limelight. It also
does not say much about the controversy around the Cao-Zhu paper.
It fails to mention that Cao and Zhu wrote a second version
in which they acknowledged that there where no gaps in the
papers of Perelman and that they had simply not understood
what he had written. Where the book does go into great detail
to describe how the development of mathematics was influenced
by historical events, if makes no mention of the fact that
Perelman turned his back on mathematics because he felt that
politics has crept in, whereas in the past mathematicians openly
discussed their work and where acknowledging each other.
Watching a game of Go
This evening, Li-Xia and I went to
the university to watch a game of Go.
When we arrived, Rudi and Taco where playing a game, while
Huub was watching them. I was not in the mood to play Go,
and instead watched the game. Li-Xia also looked from a
distances and also read some magazines.
Perelman
On June 8, 2010, 12:10 pm, a short ceremony to honor the award of
the Millennium Prize
to Grigoriy Perelman was held
at the Institut Océanographique,
a short distance from the Institut Henri Poincaré. Perelman did not attend this
meeting to listen to laudations and to collect the price.
According to Ria Novosti, CMI President James Carlson said that he was waiting
for Perelman to decide if he wants the money or not and also said that
the money will be sent to a charity foundation if he does not claim it
within one year.
IParse for Protos
In the past days I worked on analyzing the Pallas Athena Protos .pal files. I based this on the never before
released C++ version of IParse. I developed a
Protos specific scanner. This ZIP file contains
all the code, which has been build and tested with Microsoft Visual C++
6.0 and g++ (GCC) 3.4.4 (cygming special). See the included Readme.txt
file for the details.
Bookshops
Today, I went into the city with Li-Xia.
After having done some groceries on the open-air market and
having looked at some camera's at Media Markt, we visited some bookshops.
First we brought a short visit to bookshop "Boekenvoordeel". When we
walked across the "Oude Markt" (old market) square, the Soccer World Cup match
between the Netherlands and Japan just started. At bookshop De Slegte they gave a 11% discount on all books. I looked
at some books, but I did not buy anything.
Next we went to bookshop Broekhuis
where we first had a look at the exhibition on the third floor. I looked
at some books by Tijn Touber about enlightenment, but did not buy any.
When we walked past bookshop Kruimeltje
we saw that it was closed due to the Soccer World Cup match.
In the book section of Bijenkorf, I
looked at the 50%-off section. First I found Onmisbaar Chinees
by Kees and Jan 't Hart (ISBN 9789021434469, € 2.50). It is a
dictionary for Dutch people going to the Olympic games in China in 2008.
I am going to bring it with me to China.
It is quite a funny book, so I decided to buy it. Next I found Dagboek 1967
by Jan Wolkers (ISBN 9789023440406, € 9.25). Then at 14:40
it was announced that the score was 1-0 for the Netherlands. When at 14:56:40,
I paid for the two books, I also got the book Onmacht by Charles
den Tex (ISBN 9789059651081) as a present because it is the week of the thriller.
Vaccination shots
This morning, Li-Xia and I
got our vaccination shots for our trip to China. We got Havrix 1440 1 ml vaccine
against Hepatitis A and Typherix 0.5 ml typhoid
against typhoid. Li-Xia also got the last of three DTP
(diphtheria, tetanus, and poliomyelitis) shot. She got
these because there are no record for her getting these
vaccines as a child in China. I had to pay € 222.30,
which will be refunded by our healt insurance.
Portret picture
This morning, we went into the city with the four
of us. First Annabel and
Andy had a haircut at
Knip&Go.
Next we went to photographer Charles Kuiper. I never
went inside his shop, but Annabel had her pass photo
taken there once. Quite funny shop. Kind of a mess
inside. He was walking on his socks. But when he helped
another customer, it was clear that he was very knowledgable.
We asked for a portret picture of Annabel and Andy to
bring with us when we go to China
this summer. The pictures where taken inside a kind
of closet with all black walls. He took about three
pictures and we looked at them on the computer. He
selected one, but I felt that Andy looked slightly
up. Then he took another serie of about eight pictures,
but non looked really good. Then looking at the pictures,
I had to agree with him, the one picture he had selected
was the best. I also realized that it was quite typical
for Andy to look the way he looked, so, also in that
sense it was the best picture.
At a toy shop we bought some Lego toy for the son of my brother-in-law.
Annabel found one for which the price had been reduced
about 30%. It is quite a big box. I also bought a small
digital travel alarm clock by Xiron.
Infinite grid coverings
At page 69 of the magazine Kampioen, number 4, april 2010, I found a picture take
inside Verkade Fabriek
in 's-Hertogenbosch, which shows a wall with colorful tiles.
At some moment I got the impression that the tiles with the
same colour formed grids running in different directions.
When I looked closer, this appeared not to be the case. But
it started making me think about the possibility of this.
An infinite regular tiling of the grid can be described
with the tupple (a, b, c, d, e, f),
meaning that for each k and l there is a tile
at the coordinate (a+kc+le, b+kd+lf).
The question is if there exists combinations of such tupples
that cover the infinite grid completely. Of course, there are
some trivial combinations, such as the combination existing
from the tupple (0,0,1,0,0,1). What, if you apply the
restriction that c=f and d=-e and
state the values of c and d must be different
for all tupples (when divided by their greatest-common-divisor)?
Maybe it is only possible with an infinite set of tupples.
An interesting puzzle.
Picogen
I downloaded picogen and
generated my first image by simply following the tutorial and
trying out somethings by myself. Some changes caused the program
to crash, probably because the height map returned illegal values.
Interesting program to play with.
Infinite grid coverings
The Infinite grid coverings are
maybe not so infinite after all. For every finite subset of infinite
regular tilings, there is a finite rectangle in which all of
the tilings are repeating. The minimum size of the rectangle
can be calculated by taking the smallest-common-multiplier
of the repeating sizes of the tilings in the given direction,
which relatively simple to calculate. The other way around,
given a rectangle, it is also relatively easy to find the
whole set of finite regular tilings that 'fit inside' the
rectangle. And then one can simply reduce it to an Exact Cover problem. Additional restrictions can also
be formulated by extending the Exact Cover with some addition
columns and rows.
This months interesting links
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Monday, June 28, 2010