Monday - long day and a new magnet
I have time scheduled on one of the NMR instruments tomorrow, and am still prepping the sample that I'm going to use... I hope everything works out. So I figure while I'm waiting for my protein to concentrate down, I've got time for a journal entry.
(sounds of trumpets blasting) The 900 MHz NMR spectrometer arrived today and is sitting downstairs in the room with 8 other magnets. This is a pretty big deal as this machine is basically state of the art, and I don't think that there are more than a dozen in the world right now. Here's a little background on NMR magnets for those interested. Generally, the bigger they are, the better. The bigger ones produce a stronger magnetic field, operating at a higher frequency, and represent the professor's huge pen^H^H^H pockets. But seriously, a higher frequency NMR is generally able to study larger molecules than a lower frequency magnet. So this is generally a good thing for the facility. Will I get to use this thing? Probably not, but that's okay. Since the magnets are all superconducting solenoids (the superconducting wire is wrapped around a cylinder, with the field in the middle), the magnets look pretty phallic. By god, we've got a fertility temple downstairs with 9 altars downstairs! Anyhow, enough of that.
Went to a talk about protein structure determination and actually understood stuff - the guy did a very good job of explaining how everything worked for the most part. Basically, he's using a Bayesian model to get the actual probability that a given structure can be derived from a given dataset. I still remembered a little bit of the whole Bayesian thing from AI waaaaay back when.
Hmmm - think it's time to wrap this up, my sample should be done by now.
(sounds of trumpets blasting) The 900 MHz NMR spectrometer arrived today and is sitting downstairs in the room with 8 other magnets. This is a pretty big deal as this machine is basically state of the art, and I don't think that there are more than a dozen in the world right now. Here's a little background on NMR magnets for those interested. Generally, the bigger they are, the better. The bigger ones produce a stronger magnetic field, operating at a higher frequency, and represent the professor's huge pen^H^H^H pockets. But seriously, a higher frequency NMR is generally able to study larger molecules than a lower frequency magnet. So this is generally a good thing for the facility. Will I get to use this thing? Probably not, but that's okay. Since the magnets are all superconducting solenoids (the superconducting wire is wrapped around a cylinder, with the field in the middle), the magnets look pretty phallic. By god, we've got a fertility temple downstairs with 9 altars downstairs! Anyhow, enough of that.
Went to a talk about protein structure determination and actually understood stuff - the guy did a very good job of explaining how everything worked for the most part. Basically, he's using a Bayesian model to get the actual probability that a given structure can be derived from a given dataset. I still remembered a little bit of the whole Bayesian thing from AI waaaaay back when.
Hmmm - think it's time to wrap this up, my sample should be done by now.