More Recent Comments

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Monday's Molecule #123: Winners

 
UPDATE: The "molecule" is a normal electrocardiograph (ECG) of a human heartbeat [see Wikipedia: Electrocardiography]. The Nobel Laureate is Willem Einthoven.

There were eight responses in the first hour. The winner is Òscar Reig of Barcelona! This is our first European winner in many months. I guess I'll have to start posting Monday's Molecule much earlier in the day to give Europe a chance. (Australia doesn't get a chance.)

The undergraduate winner is Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto who just became eligible after winning last month. Congratulations to Òscar and Maria.

This week there were four Europeans and one South American in the hunt. Not only do my Canadian friends need to be worried, but the Americans are also being challenged! I even had a correct entry from Singapore. That presents a real challenge when I try to calculate the winning time. Why can't they use the same day we use?



You've probably noticed already that today's "molecule" isn't exactly a molecule. That's OK, you can still try to guess what it is. I want a fairly complete description of what you see here. This is supposed to be easy in order to encourage some new readers to enter the contest. There was no winner last week!!!

There's a Nobel Prize associated with this diagram.

The first person to describe the graph and identify the Nobel Laureate wins a free lunch at the Faculty Club. Previous winners are ineligible for one month from the time they first won the prize.

There are five ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Laura Gerth of the University of Notre Dame, Stefan Tarnawsky of the University of Toronto, Dima Klenchin of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Adam Santoro of the University of Toronto., and Michael Clarkson of Waltham MA (USA).

The Americans have pulled ahead of the Canadians and the rest of the world is being shut out. Where are the Europeans? Are they just stupid or don't any of them stay up late? BTW, I want to thank all those smart Canadians who have been holding back in order to give the rest of the world a chance.

I still have one extra free lunch donated by a previous winner (Michael Clarkson) to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours.






1 comment :

Anonymous said...

Monday's Molecule 123 was neither easy nor hard to guess. Yet it's an privilege to have guessed the right answer, unfortunately I sent my guess late.
Thanks Dr. Larry Moran for that such amazing blogg.
Best regards, sincerely yours,

Obert Marín Sánchez
Lima-Perú