PAM Dirac
banner
pam-dirac.bsky.social
PAM Dirac
@pam-dirac.bsky.social
PhD chemist retired after 40+ years in cancer research. Spend my time now doing astronomy, growing grapes, and making wine. Occasionally hang out at Balloon Juice.

Waving Free Vineyard
https://wavingfree.smugmug.com/Vineyard/2019/Overview2019/n-wbgjbw
The AAVSO has created a smart telescope working group to investigate the ways in which such telescopes could provide useful information and how to make the gathering and submission of such information as easy as possible for the user. See Munkascy abstract at www.aavso.org/114/annual-m...
Home | aavso
www.aavso.org
January 9, 2026 at 3:55 PM
We moved away from PG County and didn't find a source for Sequel until 2023. We went on a cruise and spent a lovely day in Seattle before boarding with a distant cousin who took us to the Long Shadow tasting room. We were able to sign up for the Wine Club and now we have it shipped to us 😍
January 7, 2026 at 8:40 PM
I was introduced to this wine in about 2005 by the late, great Mike Tilch of Silesia Liquors in Fort Washington, MD. I walked in one day and he said, "you are going to buy this wine and take it home and drink it now. It is perfect for you and your bride right now". He was right, as usual. RIP Mike.
January 7, 2026 at 8:37 PM
I had a high school teacher that once said of the recently graduated who still hung around the school, "Forgotten, but not gone".
January 1, 2026 at 10:32 PM
There is also a similar project based in Europe called ExoClock. www.exoclock.space
ExoClock
ExoClock is a project to monitor the ephemerides of transiting exoplanets. Everyone with a telescope and a CCD camera can participate!
www.exoclock.space
December 27, 2025 at 3:38 PM
If you get interested in this enough to do on a regular basis, you might consider contributing to Exoplanet Watch. science.nasa.gov/citizen-scie...
Exoplanet Watch Overview - NASA Science
Who we are: A NASA citizen science project, sponsored by NASA's Universe of Learning, we help anyone explore exoplanets at any level, from
science.nasa.gov
December 27, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Was just up to Damiani last month. They have a lot of good stuff. Of course most of the wineries around Seneca have lots of good stuff. We used to go up almost every year but got out of the habit when Covid hit. Time to get back in the habit.
December 18, 2025 at 11:23 PM
Even if (1) is valid does the new prosecutor dump all of Halligan's other bullshit and if so does the whole indictment get no billed or do they pretend that they can repeat all the bullshit and get away with it?
December 2, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Not that any of drumpf's decisions could be called well thought out, but I would guess "I turned a -20 swing into a -15 swing" wouldn't exactly be an effective rallying cry. It's likely a panic move to just get a win and never speak of the margin.
December 2, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Tapestry - Carole King www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR5T...
Carole King - Tapestry (Official Audio)
YouTube video by CaroleKingVEVO
www.youtube.com
November 17, 2025 at 10:34 PM
Protein structure is really useful in discovering and developing chemical leads. Most estimates I've seen put lead discovery at 2-3% of the the time and expense of drug discovery, so even if you reduce this part to zero, you don't make a radical change in the cost and time of finding new drugs.
November 17, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Right, which is all I said in the first place. I'm retired now, but I spent about 30 years in drug discovery and I saw a lot new techniques come in with a lot of hype. A lot of them turned out to be useful, but none hugely changed the basic challenge of drug discovery.
November 17, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Did you even read the link?

Quote:
On the other hand, most scientists report that despite the dramatic development of deep learning-based technologies for structural prediction, there are strong limitations when it comes to their application to drug discovery problems.
November 17, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Not everyone in the field is impressed. See www.science.org/content/blog...

Quote:
For now, I am not convinced that issuing press releases about your compounds that talk about their discovery through AI techniques is sufficient to expect greater things from them.

Also check the comments.
AI Drugs So Far
www.science.org
November 17, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Significantly exaggerated. Especially the impact on drug discovery. See www.science.org/content/blog....

Quote:
There was a lot of hype at first about how drug discovery was going to take this huge leap forward, ... , but that's very much overstated for a number of reasons.
The 2024 Chemistry Nobel: Computational Protein Design
www.science.org
November 17, 2025 at 1:26 PM