Hey there, everyone! I’m excited to announce that the upcoming Science Chat will be next week on Tuesday, July 18th at 8:15pm GMT (1:15pm, Pacific Time Zone). If you have questions for our developers/scientists it would be helpful to post them right here so the team can review them in advance. If we aren’t able to answer all your questions in the given time, we will attempt to get a blog post up soon with answers. We are looking forward to chatting with you all!
Date: Tuesday, July 18th, 2017
Time: 8:15-9:15pm GMT; 1:15-2:15pm Pacific Time Zone
Location: #veteran, IRC
Time Converter: http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/
Puzzle 1387b had a very strange molecule at segment 30. I'm not even sure if it qualifies as ligand, since it's spliced into the backbone just like one of the 20 usual suspects.
Among the odd features of segment 30 was a "shy" hydrogen that seemed to have an unlikely position.
What does segment 30 represent?
Regarding 1387b are there any updates on whether the designs foldit players made seem to fold as designed in the lab, and if so, do they seem to bind to the hemagglutinin?
Is there any way to check whether the predictions made by foldit players are close to the native fold or not? If so, what are the results?
Also, how come the contact map on this puzzle seemed so "chaotic/random" and how come it differs quite a lot from the contact map predicted by raptorx (see http://raptorx.uchicago.edu/ContactMap/myjobs/83006813_233351/ ).
Are there any plans to refine the camera and dragging controls? Normally in editor/sandbox games that work in 3D, having some sort of axis alignment to dragging tools or camera really helps. Spore has really great examples of multiple 'thing' editors that give the player lots of tools to precisely (but more importantly, without frustration in 3D space) move little bits of their creation as they see fit. In other sandbox editors, player perspective is controlled in a 1st person fashion, with WASD+mouse aiming.
I ask this because in my "Sock's Lab" streams (https://www.twitch.tv/s0ckrates) there's a good example of controls getting in the way. Every time I wanted to drag some rubber bands out into 3D space, it is such an inconvenience to spend 5 minutes dragging the camera, repositioning, dragging the camera again, only to find out my molecule blows up in my face when I hit W because I dragged the rubber band into the foreground/background/molecule somehow and it snapped-to. If I just had little axis arrows at the tip of the rubber band that I could simply drag and slide it along an axis, that would already make it so much easier and smoother to get my rubber band to where I need it to go without accidentally sabotaging my entire conformation.
Controls are an important part of any game, and can be the difference between people continuing to play or stopping altogether. I would even go so far as to say Foldit could be a really nifty VR game…
In a paper from 2011, players found the structure of an HIV protein. We don't seem to repeat this success. Are we less accurate with our recipes? or don't you need us anymore for such kind of work?
Any development on the Programmer side?
Are the Drug Design puzzles coming?
Listening to a TED Talk on neuroscience where the neuroscientist was saying that variability can really bother scientists. Surmising that the ideal loop database intent is to limit the set of loops, I was wondering if the intention of that set (and the filters) is meant to limit the variability by a) excluding a larger set of loops that could make Rossman or Koga +Koga folds, and b) limiting the sheet and helix segment totals; (and perhaps the other filters) are also meant to drive the data in the direction of the types of structures that fit the scientists' theories (I realize this may be an error in my thinking). SO here's my question: Wondering if the loop, helix, sheet, and filter limitations might actually be introducing a “bias”…. and if expanding the library and changing limitations of the structure might actually produce more meaningful data. (after an initial period of relative chaos from a database standpoint)
(Here's why I had this thought: Using the brain example, the neuroscientist was saying how there was much variability between people’s brains and how they worked, and that variability was driving the scientists crazy… until they realized that was, if I interpreted her talk correctly, exactly that variability that might hold the answers as to why recovery from things like strokes was so difficult - they had limited themselves by thinking that the “ideal” brain science would produce cut and dried results… which it doesn’t … and the strategies for dealing with learning or with recovery from brain damage have been limited by that older - and as they see it now incorrect- view.)
Do you have any preliminary results from design puzzles 1306 and beyond?
