[HN Gopher] The Database of Useful Biological Numbers
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       The Database of Useful Biological Numbers
        
       Author : apsec112
       Score  : 46 points
       Date   : 2021-03-25 03:13 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu)
        
       | sva_ wrote:
       | Fascinating.
       | 
       | > Length of neuron from base of spine to big toe-longest cell in
       | human body
       | 
       | > Range <=1 meter
       | 
       | https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?id=104901&...
        
       | hardlianotion wrote:
       | I'm a little sorry I clicked on "Net population change in North
       | American birds"
       | 
       | https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?id=117281&...
        
         | csa wrote:
         | Could someone with knowledge of birds and/or the methodology
         | explain why the confidence intervals for the coasts and Arctic
         | tundra biomes are so wide?
         | 
         | Are those bird populations just that difficult to count or
         | estimate, is the data set just insanely small (if so, why?), or
         | is there some other reason?
        
       | onychomys wrote:
       | Searching for kangaroo ended me up on this pdf table [0] of the
       | percent of lactose in non-domestic mammal milk. Sadly, the table
       | is null on that exact measure, although they do have data on the
       | amount of fat and protein in kangaroo milk.
       | 
       | https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/files/The%20gross%20compo...
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | Reminds me of Prime Curios, which is trivia about prime numbers.
       | https://primes.utm.edu/curios/ They could make an interesting
       | mash-up. Like a Vornoi scale made of prime numbers with the
       | occurrence of biological numbers between them. It's well into the
       | territory of a weird gematria at that point, but in terms of
       | looping people into studying them with trivia, it would be fun.
        
       | data_acquired wrote:
       | This is a more useful resource than one would think. When I
       | switched from studying math to biology, I was surprised that most
       | graduate biology textbooks never provided these basic numbers ---
       | average diffusion time of a protein across a cell, for instance
       | --- which really helps in making back-of-the-envelope
       | calculations.
        
       | EngrRavi wrote:
       | The full database (27 MB) can be downloaded from:
       | https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/resources.aspx
       | 
       | It is a surprisingly simple single excel sheet or a single table
       | with 14,248 rows. I was expecting an SQLite database with
       | multiple relationally linked tables. Anyway the simplicity and
       | the fact that it is a single spreadsheet makes it easy to browse
       | through, and for most rows, a reference is provided.
       | 
       | Note to the maintainers: The last 3-4 entries are spam.
        
       | d0dgercapybara wrote:
       | Cool.
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-25 23:02 UTC)