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Okay. I'm anonymous here. Why not speak freely.

This approach is...questionable.

I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia some years ago. A lifetime of problems, culminating in muscle weakness and fatigue so severe that it looked like I was going to be put in a care facility. There were days I couldn't hold my head up or lift my arms, let alone walk.

You know what? I can end all my suffering in about 20 minutes. Not suicide. Cured. No fatigue. No pain. A little lingering muscle weakness, but nowhere near as bad as it has been. Nothing that couldn't be explained by muscle atrophy.

Cured.

I take Ribose. It's a simple carbohydrate. A sugar. You buy it at vitamin world. A few grams. 20 minutes later, I'm fine.

Research shows 2 out of 3 people with Fibromyalgia get better with Ribose.

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2006.12.857

Whether that's a placebo effect is a good question. The studies were preliminary and not double-blind. Ribose is, after all, literally a sugar pill.

Then again, Ribose is a key intermediate metabolic product, intricately linked to numerous critical cellular functions. (It's the backbone of RNA, closely linked to the backbone of DNA, a crucial component for ATP synthesis, etc.)

Fibromyalgia is a diagnose of exclusion. If your doctor doesn't know why you're ill, and you meet some very general criteria, you're diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.

There's this little known genetic disease called Adenosine Monophosphate Deaminase Deficiency. It's also called Myoadenylate Deaminase Deficiency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_Monophosphate_Deaminase_Deficiency_type_1

It's common as dirt. Millions of people have it. Something like 1%-2% of the European descended population has it. From what I can tell, nearly all of them get diagnosed with Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

It's a simple genetic metabolic defect. Easily treated. No radical diet alterations needed.

Speaking of diet, decades ago I was diagnosed with IBS. I knew I was intolerant of lactose. That was obvious. The other parts weren't so clear cut.

Digging into Merck Manuals, I finally put it together.

http://www.merckmanuals.com/home/digestive_disorders/symptoms_and_diagnosis_of_digestive_disorders/symptoms.html

There are sugars found in some fruits, such as hexitols, sorbitol, mannitol, etc. Their effects are identical to ingesting lactose: Extreme abdominal pain, chronic diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, weakness, and dehydration.

Those fruits and berries you are suggesting would kill me.

Steamed veggies are great. So are meats for that matter. They're yummy. But the calorie content of both is abysmal.

In this land of the chronically overweight, I've been starving to death. Nearly every junk food you see is toxic to me. If it's not lactose contaminated it contains fruit sugars.

And yes, insufficient caloric intake is almost certainly what precipitated my acute symptoms that lead to my fibromyalgia diagnosis.

First and foremost, I need to be able to eat, and absorb, enough calories to survive.

So is this going to kick into the new phase of products that help create resistances like tricloscan does now? And I'm being lazy, there's already a few hundred studies on the links of this. I'm still waiting for people to get it through their head that either we're filthy dirty creatures, living in a filthy dirty environment. And if you're going to sanitize an area, you need to be 100% sure you're getting everything. Otherwise you're simply kicking into darwin mode, and promoting survival instincts for various 'bugs'.

The paper can be found here.

The slant they're putting on it is slightly different. They've noted that in a large proportion of areas on Earth where there is liquid water there isn't necessarily life, so simply searching for liquid water in space isn't necessarily the best way to go about looking for other life or places which would be habitable: you need to bear in mind other factors as well if you want to narrow it down.

Terrestrial life is known to require liquid water, but not all terrestrial water is inhabited. Thus, liquid water is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for life...If the known limits of terrestrial life do not change significantly, these limits represent important constraints on our biosphere and, potentially, on others, since ~4 billion years of evolution have not allowed life to adapt to a large fraction of the volume of Earth where liquid water exists

That's an old 2010 paper.

This paper is called An Extensive Phase Space for the Potential Martian Biosphere (Paywalled, can't find an open copy. It still seems to be in press rather than completely published).

Abstract: We present a comprehensive model of martian pressure-temperature (P-T) phase space and compare it with that of Earth. Martian P-T conditions compatible with liquid water extend to a depth of 310km. We use our phase space model of Mars and of terrestrial life to estimate the depths and extent of the water on Mars that is habitable for terrestrial life. We find an extensive overlap between inhabited terrestrial phase space and martian phase space. The lower martian surface temperatures and shallower martian geotherm suggest that, if there is a hot deep biosphere on Mars, it could extend 7 times deeper than the 5km depth of the hot deep terrestrial biosphere in the crust inhabited by hyperthermophilic chemolithotrophs. This corresponds to 3.2% of the volume of present-day Mars being potentially habitable for terrestrial-like life. Key Words: Biosphere—Mars—Limits of life—Extremophiles—Water. Astrobiology 11, xxx–xxx.,

I'm going to guess they have the same issues as other clones, to wit: shortened telomeres resulting in a shortened Hayflick limit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayflick_limit and therefore a shortened lifespan. Subtract out the age of the dog at the time the samples used for cloning were taken.

I made this same point (to NBC) as a possibility in early 1997 when Dolly the sheep was announced, and it turned out I was correct in my assertion; see this report: http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/15204559950020003

-- Terry

Something like that.... It could be briny salt water or something else...

If there's water, even if it's salty, there are likely bacteria-- there are on Earth:
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/153110701753198927

On hot-button topics, subtlety is lost.

Dear God, you're gay.

... gets you a troll mod.

Dear God, you're gay :-)

... doesn't.

(I know, emoticons are more of a "chick thing" Emotional Expression Online: Gender Differences In Emoticon Use)

Plus, we have no idea how they ranked the narcissism and self-esteem listed in TFA.

You just need to find a better article:

The more prolific the Facebook activity, the lower they rated on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the higher in the Narcissism Personality Inventory.

Or from the published research itself:

After agreeing to participate in this research study, Facebook owners were administered a brief four-part questionnaire. The first section required demographic information, including the participant's age and gender. The second section addressed Facebook activity; it required respondents to indicate the number of times they check their Facebook page per day and the time spent on Facebook per session. The remaining sections assessed two psychological constructs: self-esteem and narcissism.

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was used to measure participant self-esteem. This 10-item test measured self-esteem using a 4-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Example items include “On the whole, I am satisfied with myself” and “I take a positive attitude toward myself.” The original reliability of this scale is 0.72. This measure has gained acceptable internal consistency and test–retest reliability, as well as convergent and discriminant validity.

Narcissism was assessed using the Narcissism Personality Inventory (NPI)-16. The NPI-16 is a shorter, unidimensional measure of the NPI-40. While the 40-item measure revealed an =0.84, the NPI-16 has an =0.72. Despite this discrepancy, the two measures are correlated at r=0.90 (p

And now you know.

Yaz.

So what about Dr. Robert Atkins?

You do realize that Atkins has been roundly criticized in the literature by every nutritional authority, right? The National Academy of Sciences, the AMA, the ADA, the ACS, the AHA, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, the American Kidney Fund, the American College of Sports Medicine, and the National Institutes of Health has all criticized the Atkins plan. See the AtkinsExposed website I linked above.

You can find a handful of people with "Dr." before their name who will tell you than smoking cigarettes is fine and dandy, or with "PhD" afterward who will tell you that climate change is a hoax -- or that 9/11 was a controlled demolition, or that we never went to the moon, or whatever. This does not change the science.

How do you explain the coexistence of malnutrition and obesity within a community?

Malnutrition includes deficiency of micronutrients -- kwashiorkor, for example. Empty calories are cheap calories.

Japanese people also work far harder than most us Westeners, in addition to eating a lot of fish, shellfish, eggs and meat. Their overall sugar consumption is also faaar lower than most so-called "Americanized" societies.

None of which addresses the point that their consumption of carbs is high, putting the lie to the "high carb diets make you fat!" theory. And no, they don't eat a lot of meat -- though the consumption of meat is trending upward, along with the incidence of obesity, heart disease, and all the other fun stuff a high-protein, high-fat diet brings with it.

Yes, their sugar consumption is far lower. Large amounts of sugar are a bad idea, I think we can all agree on that shocking conclusion.

Insulin is pro-inflammatory

No, in fact insulin has an anti-inflammatory effect (see also here.)

Also, what we have done in recorded history has nothing to do with our biology or evolution. The fact is, we've been growing crops for the past ~10.000 years which in evolutionary terms is just barely a blip on the radar. Hunter/gatherers collected fruits and berries when they could and fattened up for winter, but otherwise ate what the hunters brought home. After all, wild carbohydrates aren't exactly "in stock" all year around while meat and fish is.

Ah, bad anthropology rears its head again. First, our existence as hunter-gatherers was a blip in evolutionary terms; our digestive metabolism remains mostly the same as our primarily herbivorous primate ancestors and our primarily herbivorous chimp and gorilla cousins. (Yes, chimps eat some flesh -- mostly insects; that does not change the fact that they are primarily herbivorous.) Second, carbohydrates are indeed in stock all year round in the areas where we evolved -- what do you think those animals our ancestors were hunting were eating? Not just fruits, but roots, tubers, seeds, nuts, leaves...we've been eating grains for 20,000, perhaps even 100,000, years, well before the Neolithic revolution.

The idea that our paleolithic ancestors were mostly hunters is not based on good evidence, but on "me mighty hunter!" mythology. Contemporary hunter-gathers get the bulk of their nutrition from plant foods.

But finally, the evolutionary tale tells us jack shit about what makes for a healthy diet . Evolutio

Your link suggests that resistance to disinfectants and antibiotics may go hand-in-hand. However it still seems like a stretch to suggest livestock would develop and retain antibiotic resistance without the use of antibiotics, due solely to disinfectant use by their handlers.

I'm not suggesting that disinfectants cause antibiotic resistance, but that antibiotic resistance genes can have beneficial effects for the bacteria outside of antibiotic resistance. When that is the case, removal of the selective pressure provided by antibiotics will not result in the resistant bacteria operating at a competitive disadvantage, so there is no selective pressure to make the genes go away.

The antibiotics used for growth promotion and for treating diseases, are in many cases the same drug, with only the dosage being different. As you point out, those drugs that are used for disease treatment and not prophylaxis/growth-promotion are used MORE heavily in the wake of the ban because of increased disease outbreaks. In those cases, the ban has actually done more damage than good to the stated goal of reducing antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The net result of the ban has been an increase in total tons of antibiotics used/year for agriculture, and a shift in the families used toward those related to those most important to human medicine, and no measurable decrease in resistance in the wake of the ban. It's time to reconsider the ban, but instead they are talking about banning more antibiotics and a couple of US Representatives are pushing to get an EU style ban even with all of the evidence that it has not beneficial effects, only negative ones. That can only be described as a leap of faith into a pit of cobras, IMO.

Some citations:
Vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE) still persist in slaughtered poultry in Hungary 8 years after the ban on avoparcin

A longitudinal study to assess the persistence of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREF) on an intensive broiler farm in the United Kingdom

Prevalence and Mechanism of Resistance against Macrolides, Lincosamides, and Streptogramins among Enterococcus faecium Isolates from Food-Producing Animals and Hospital Patients in Belgium

Reminds me of the same business with Hydrogen Sulfide and Nitric Oxide... The former being found to increase the lifespan and health of nematodes and also to prevent organ rejection and cell death after traumatic injury. The latter was developed into non-inhaled treatments that act on the vascular system... Viagra for instance. That's a long way from rotten eggs and laughing gas. http://www.physorg.com/news115924695.html http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ars.2009.2882

Surely a study like this is not funded by the organic food industry?

Do you think that junk food, including candy, can't be produced organically? Come into my kitchen...

"Organic" refers to how it's grown and produced, not how nutritious is is (other than that it is more likely to lack "negatively nutritious" contamination by pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, etcetera).

Anyway, there's nothing new about associating crime with poor nutrition (the article is a bit pop science sensationalistic but is a good summary, see here and here and here for some of the studies):

Stephen Schoenthaler, a criminal-justice professor at California State University in Stanislaus, has been researching the relationship between food and behaviour for more than 20 years He has proven that reducing the sugar and fat intake in our daily diets leads to higher IQs and better grades in school. When Schoenthaler supervised a change in meals served at 803 schools in low-income neighbourhoods in New York City, the number of students passing final exams rose from 11 percent below the national average to five percent above. He is best known for his work in youth detention centers. One of his studies showed that the number of violations of house rules fell by 37 percent when vending machines were removed and canned food in the cafeteria was replaced by fresh alternatives. He summarizes his findings this way: "Having a bad diet right now is a better predictor of future violence than past violent behaviour."

Recent research showed similar conclusions. Bernard Gesch, physiologist at the University of Oxford, decided to test the anecdotal clues in the most thorough study so far in this field. In a prison for men between the ages of 18 and 21 in England's Buckinghamshire, 231 volunteers were divided into two groups: One was given nutrition supplements along with their meals that contained our approximate daily needs for vitamins, minerals and fatty acids; the other group got placebos. Neither the prisoners, nor the guards, nor the researchers at the prison knew who took fake supplements and who got the real thing.

The researchers then tallied the number of times the participants violated prison rules, and compared it to the same data that had been collected in the months leading up to the nutrition study. The prisoners given supplements for four consecutive months committed an average of 26 percent fewer violations compared to the preceding period. Those given placebos showed no marked change in behaviour. For serious breaches of conduct, particularly the use of violence, the number of violations decreased 37 percent for the men given nutrition supplements, while the placebo group showed no change.

But if there was salt in the water, there was probably also life in that water. Life living in the salty water making it saltier by pissing in it every single day.

The thinking that brines may keep the water on Mars from freezing is not a new conclusion-- here ( http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/153110701753198927?cookieSet=1&journalCode=ast ) is a discussion of the concept from a few years back.

And, of course, the fact that the Opportunity rover found the Meridiani Planum site to be covered with evaporite deposits (mostly sulfate salts) contributes a lot...

Why would we expect comets or asteroids to carry organics?

Because we know that they do.

Some meteorites, the carbonaceous chondrites, are chock full of organic material. They came from some asteroid or asteroids. Organic materials seem especially common in the outer part of the main asteroid belt.

Comets have been found to have all sorts of organic materials in them.

Note that organic just means that it contains carbon compounds, not that it was produced by living things.

It seems to me though, that this is a massive discovery and a huge step forward in technology. So why is the only publication that they list a multimedia presentation on, The Age? Shouldn't Science and Nature be all over this? At least it should be in the Journal of Tissue Engineering.

In fact, Creation vision

Nothing -> God -> universe -> life

Big Bang/Evolutionary vision:

Nothing -> universe -> life

So, according to Occam's razor, the second option is the one that should be chosen, requiring less assumptions.

Moreover to answer the root post, from Cyanide you can synthesize nucleotide bases

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2006.0112

talking about antithesis of life...

Salt on Mars has been a topic of interest for a while-- I wrote about the implications of Martian salt for Astrobiology a couple of years back, in an article in Astrobiology

it doesnt have to be tidally locked and show the same side to the star all the time, it can be like Mercury, in spin-orbit resonance with the star. Mercury rotates exactly 3 times for every 2 revolutions around the sun.
Theres a few very interesting papers out on the issue of red dwarf planet habitability http://www.liebertonline.com/toc/ast/7/1?cookieSet =1
In short, conclusion is that previous scepticisms about their habitability are currenty not well founded, and that to the best of our current knowledge on the matter, they may indeed be perfectly habitable.
Im not sure of this particular planet, though, its a little hot, Im not sure how the team got to the conclusion its not a Super-Venus, rather than a Super-Earth...

A Reappraisal of The Habitability of Planets around M Dwarf Stars
Feb 2007, Vol. 7, No. 1 : 30 -65
Astrobiology

ABSTRACT:

Stable, hydrogen-burning, M dwarf stars make up about 75% of all stars in the Galaxy. They are extremely long-lived, and because they are much smaller in mass than the Sun (between 0.5 and 0.08 MSun), their temperature and stellar luminosity are low and peaked in the red. We have re-examined what is known at present about the potential for a terrestrial planet forming within, or migrating into, the classic liquid-surface-water habitable zone close to an M dwarf star. Observations of protoplanetary disks suggest that planet-building materials are common around M dwarfs, but N-body simulations differ in their estimations of the likelihood of potentially habitable, wet planets that reside within their habitable zones, which are only about one-fifth to 1/50th of the width of that for a G star. Particularly in light of the claimed detection of the planets with masses as small as 5.5 and 7.5 MEarth orbiting M stars, there seems no reason to exclude the possibility of terrestrial planets. Tidally locked synchronous rotation within the narrow habitable zone does not necessarily lead to atmospheric collapse, and active stellar flaring may not be as much of an evolutionarily disadvantageous factor as has previously been supposed. We conclude that M dwarf stars may indeed be viable hosts for planets on which the origin and evolution of life can occur. A number of planetary processes such as cessation of geothermal activity or thermal and nonthermal atmospheric loss processes may limit the duration of planetary habitability to periods far shorter than the extreme lifetime of the M dwarf star. Nevertheless, it makes sense to include M dwarf stars in programs that seek to find habitable worlds and evidence of life. This paper presents the summary conclusions of an interdisciplinary workshop (http://mstars.seti.org) sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Institute and convened at the SETI Institute. Key Words: Planets--Habitability--M dwarfs-Stars. Astrobiology 7, 30-65. M dwarf star. Observations of protoplanetary disks suggest that planet-building materials are common around M dwarfs, but N-body simulations differ in their estimations of the likelihood of potentially habitable, wet planets that reside within their habitable zones, which are only about one-fifth to 1/50th of the width of that for a G star. Particularly in light of the claimed detection of the planets with masses as small as 5.5 and 7.5 MEarth orbiting M stars, there seems no reason to exclude the possibility of terrestrial planets. Tidally locked synchronous rotation within the narrow habitable zone does not necessarily lead to atmospheric collapse, and active stellar flaring may not be as much of an evolutionarily disadvantageous factor as has previously been supposed. We conclude that M dwarf stars may indeed be viable hosts for planets on which the origin and evolution of life can occur. A number of planetary processes such as cessation of geother mal activity or thermal and nonthermal atmospheric loss processes may limit the duration of planetary habitability to periods far shorter than the extreme lifetime of t

I for one welcome our artificial meat overlords.

The original review article with far more information is free to download:
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ten.2 005.11.659

The main obstacle to making this viable for large-scale production is not the cells or scaffolding, but the media. What and how much does one have feed this artificial meat to make it grow? Most cell culture systems rely on blood serum, typically from newborn or fetal cows for all of the embryonic growth factors and nutrients needed to ensure rapid cell division. What is most impressive about these advances in myoblast cell culture is the use of serum-free growth media. One lab even supported growth with maitake mushroom extract!

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/t en.2005.11.659

For even more "meaty" information, check out this research paper by McKay and Marinova from 2001, titled "The Physics, Biology, and Environmental Ethics of Making Mars Habitable".

Unfortunately, I don't think Marinova's latest paper on this is publically available on the internet.

Here is the abstract of the article:

Lavert, PH et al. A Preliminary Study of Intravenous Surfactants in Paraplegic Dogs: Polymer Therapy in Canine Clinical SCI. Journal of Neurotrauma. December 2004, Vol. 21, No. 12, Pages 1767-1777

Hydrophilic polymers, both surfactants and triblock polymers, are known to seal defects in cell membranes. In previous experiments using laboratory animals, we have exploited this capability using polyethylene glycol (PEG) to repair spinal axons after severe, standardized spinal cord injury (SCI) in guinea pigs. Similar studies were conducted using a related co-polymer Poloxamer 188 (P 188). Here we carried out initial investigations of an intravenous application of PEG or P 188 (3500 Daltons, 30% w/w in saline; 2 mL/kg I.V. and 2 mL/kg body weight or 300 mL P 188 per kg, respectively) to neurologically complete cases of paraplegia in dogs. Our aim was to first determine if this is a clinically safe procedure in cases of severe naturally occurring SCI in dogs. Secondarily, we wanted to obtain preliminary evidence if this therapy could be of clinical benefit when compared to a larger number of similar, but historical, control cases. Strict entry criteria permitted recruitment of only neurologically complete paraplegic dogs into this study. Animals were treated by a combination of conventional and experimental techniques within 72 h of admission for spinal trauma secondary to acute, explosive disk herniation. Outcome measures consisted of measurements of voluntary ambulation, deep and superficial pain perception, conscious proprioception in hindlimbs, and evoked potentials (somatosensory evoked potentials [SSEP]). We determined that polymer injection is a safe adjunct to the conventional management of severe neurological injury in dogs. We did not observe any unacceptable clinical response to polymer injection; there were no deaths, nor any other problem arising from, or associated with, the procedures. Outcome measures over the 68-week trial were improved by polymer injection when compared to historical cases. This recovery was unexpectedly rapid compared to these comparator groups. The results of this pilot trial provides evidence consistent with the notion that the injection of inorganic polymers in acute neurotrauma may be a simple and useful intervention during the acute phase of the injury.

Eponymous Mallard. "It it quacks like a duck, it may be the Eponymous Mallard."