May 19, 2016 at 03:15AM

Today I Learned: 1) ...a bunch of little things about FiveThirtyEight's coverage of Donald Trump, what they got wrong, why, and how they're likely to use that information in the future. I highly recommend reading this article -- it's a good window into the world of a data scientist and how data journalism works (and how it should work). Link here (not behind a paywall for once): http://ift.tt/1WDMvFJ Thanks Asher Rubin! 2) Eukaryotes seem to do a lot more signal multiplexing than prokaryotes. Bacteria tend to have one gene that detects a specific signal, which then turns on some downstream signal amplifier that triggers a cellular response. Eukaryotes have similar systems, but the responses of their detectors respond in much more complex ways, sometimes responding differently to different trigger signals. For instance, a stress response gene might start pulsing in response to ethanol, but turn on and stay highly-expressed in response to low glucose levels. This is a massive simplification, of course, but it's a mostly true one. 3) Bill Nye used to be anti-GMO, and anti-industrialized-farming. I say "used to" because about a year ago, he visited one of Monsanto's laboratories, talked with the scientists there... and now he supports the use of GMO crops. Interesting.