https://t.co/a6yrWK5dqg

Thread for folks looking for roles in biopharma VC. Nearly every week I speak to someone who wants to get into biopharma VC. One high-level theme: even for entry roles, you *generally* need to check the box “understands science” as well as the box “can do basic financial... 1/9

11 BIG IDEAS OF PHYSICS

via @BlasMoros of @LTCWRK

(Thread 👇)

1. Galilean Relativity

We can never fully grasp, define, or understand a system we are part of.

“Distance provides perspective” and wisdom in life is often about perspective.

2. The Laws of Thermodynamics

The study of the large-scale behavior of systems exchanging work and heat with connected systems or their environment.

- The Transitive Law

- The Law of Conservation

- The “Contrast Advantage” Law

- The “Absolute Zero” Law

3. Newton’s Laws of Motion

Describe how objects in the world move and react to forces.

- The Inertia Law: An object at rest, stays at rest

- Force = Mass * Acceleration (F = ma)

- The Law of Reciprocity: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

4. Complexity

A complex system exhibits emergent behavior due to the collective interaction of many individual agents according to simple rules.

Complex systems are sensitive to original conditions, influenced by feedback loops, and buffeted by random outside variables.

November is here, and that means a massive shift is coming. And by "massive" I am of course referring to the redefinition of the kilogram unit of mass that the world has been building up to for more than 100 years. Let me explain:

1/ I've had an unhealthy fascination with metrology (the study of measurement) ever since my 2nd year as a physics major when I took a class devoted to duplicating historic physics experiments, so please indulge me for going into heavy detail (get it?) about the kilogram.

2/ So what actually *defines* a unit of measurement? If you're American, you probably know a mile is 5280 feet and a foot is 12 inches and an inch is 2.54 centimeters etc. But where does this chain of definitions end? Is it turtles all the way down?

3/ It's actually not! For all units (even the imperial units used in America) the answers all end with the Système International (SI) unit definitions established and maintained for over 100 years by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIMP) in France.

4/ At the base of this tower are the SI base units. Just 7 SI base units define every other unit in existence. They are:

Kilogram, kg (mass)
Meter, m (distance)
Second, s (time)
Kelvin, K (temp)
Ampere, A (electric current)
Candela, cd (luminous intensity)
Mole, mol (quantity)

The calamoid palms 🌴 have over 500 species spread across the world, but their higher-level relationships were a bit of a mystery. Until now.

Out today in #MolecularPhylogeneticsAndEvolution:

A robust phylogenomic framework for the calamoid palms https://t.co/JiCbSUlheH

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First some background info, so that you know what we are talking about:

Calamoid palms look a bit like snakes 🐍 (don't they!?!), because their fruits are covered in overlapping scales. And with their often fierce spines, they are equally fearsome. 😱

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They are classified into 17 genera, 10 subtribes and 3 tribes. They have an amazing variety of growth forms, from stemless to climbing to tree habit. 🌱🌴

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But as I said, their relationships have been a bit of a mystery. Here's the varying relationships previous studies found over the last 20 years.

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We tackled this mystery with a phylogenomic approach: we sampled almost a thousand genes (a hundred times more than previous studies!) of 75 species representing all calamoid tribes, subtribes and genera.

The resulting data matrix is pretty massive...

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