Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a worldwide health problem, with only a tiny proportion of the risk linked to known risk factors. Despite breakthroughs in therapeutics, the risk of CVD remains high, indicating the presence of other unidentified variables. Niacin (vitamin B3) is critical in CVD treatment but physicians in the past have speculated that niacin lacking could be a predisposing factor…

[Click here for a PDF version of this post] I started reviewing a book draft that mentions the adjoint in passing, but I’ve forgotten what I knew about the adjoint (not counting self-adjoint operators, which is different.) I do recall that adjoint matrices were covered in high school linear algebra (now 30+ years ago!), but never really used after that. It appears that the basic property of the…

Schizophrenia abacus: should we look at the amino-words rather than gene numbers?

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder characterized by delusions, auditory hallucinations, and paranoid thoughts. Its symptoms can be classified as “positive” or “negative”. “Positive symptoms” refer to those that are typical of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. These can include hallucinations, delusions, and disturbed thoughts. “Negative symptoms”, on the other hand, are disruptions of…