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Perhaps you can inform yourself how to secure an oil tank against leakage in case of a flood. It is surprisingly simlle, a no brainer in fact.

Of course. Perfectly simple. Perfectly simple to secure a 10,000 gallon tank of diesel oil in the face of a 20 foot high cascade of water and debris capable of knocking entire buildings off their foundations. And that after a magnitude 9 earthquake. Totally simple.

Surprised I am to find that wee bits of assorted chemicals were dumped into the environment after the disaster. Most surprised.

No brainer, indeed.

They put me on methylphenedate. Then they put me on Risperdone to control the psychosis induced by methylphenedate. The drugs are horrible. The only thing worse is Prednizone.

Phenotropil is effective in small doses, with fewer and less severe side effects. I did the pharmacology myself, with lots of Googling. Psychosis isn't a side effect--Phenotropil sharply controls, reduces, and prevents dementia--but INSOMNIA sure as hell is!

Okay, I found better drugs. But the drugs still have bad side effects. Let's face it: Insomnia is bad. I have always had delayed sleep phase disorder (self-diagnosis): if I don't rigidly discipline my sleep, any deviation causes me to stay awake. Stay up until 10:30? Become no longer tired, until 1-2am, then sleep until noon--and continue to do this until I somehow fix my sleep cycle, so I can't ever have a night out. On-call fucking sucks. And now, due to further conditioning, I not only can't sleep early, but I can't stay in bed past 7am; I'm sleep-deprived because my body refuses to get more than 4-6 hours of sleep!

I could take sleep drugs. Melatonin no longer works: after some occasional use, it now only works in high doses; and both high doses and chronic use cause my nuts to ache for extended periods, which I thought was just me sleeping on my side or something... until I found out melatonin affects testosterone production and can be bad for the testicles. Whoops. Valerian... I ran through a railroad crossing barrier. Ambien and Allegra I've seen do the same: you're incredibly fucking high, but you feel fine... until you crash into a parked car, or smile and nod while a pedestrian wanders in front of you. Thud.

That doesn't mean drugs are BAD; they're risk. You risk side effects against a disease. Is your ADHD worse than ... potential insomnia? Potential minor psychosis? Psychosis can be MAJOR if you're prone to dementia. Sleep drugs may not ruin your life; out of millions of cases, I know one person who almost died because Ambien affects him for 10 hours and he didn't know that. Of course you should take life-saving drugs, and life-enhancing drugs, if the side effects don't occur or are less bad than your symptoms.

I think we should drop back to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and floatation-REST as our first attempts for ADHD and Aspergers and insomnia. CBT is a particular sticking point in insomnia: bad sleep hygiene is terrible, and parents are horrible parents for forcing their kids into bed. Go to bed even if you're not tired? Fuck you, mom. If you're not asleep in 10 minutes, GET OUT OF BED. Don't do other things in bed. Wake your ass up in the morning; if you're tired, too bad. Get up. When you're sleepy, you'll sleep at night.

So yeah. Let's eject this ADHD magic pill bullshit. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, physical activity, and flotation-REST to start; move up to lighter drugs (lighter side effects, even if less effective), and then into the heavy shit (methylphenedate, adderall, drug cocktails). Throwing methylphenedate down someone's throat as a first option is like launching MIRV nukes three seconds after someone stands and shakes his fist at the UN table.

Did you have reduced liver or renal function?

Here's a little tip:

Ketonic diets make excessive use of liver function to produce the ketone bodies that get substituted in cellular metabolism for glucose.

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

While in normal, healthy people the levels of produced acetone and other biproducts of ketosis are well within the body's ability to safely process and eliminate, renal failure restricts the body's ability to eliminate even normal waste products, such as urea, from the blood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Engaging in a diet that is known to increase the production rate of these compounds, while suffering from a disorder that either 1) affects the liver's ability to even create these bodies as an energy source to begin with, or 2) affects the body's ability to dispose of the resulting reactive waste compounds, is a no-brainer for being a bad idea.

In the first, you can starve to death while eating lots of fat, and in the second you pickle yourself and can severely damage already chronically affected vital organs. (Acetone, one of the metabolites of ketosis, is known to damage kidney function in high concentrations. Reduced renal function results in higher than normal syrum concentrations of metabolites, which would include the acetone produced during ketosis. Many people with impaired renal function are not aware of it.)

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfa...
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline...

Since you may feel perfectly healthy, and have impaired renal function and not even know it, (especially when one considers the risks associated with being obese in relation to renal disorders-- http://jasn.asnjournals.org/co... -- when coupled with the reason why one would engage in a ketogenic diet to begin with) you could very well be making a hidden but malignant condition worse.

Besides, asking your health care provider before doing *ANYTHING* extreme is simply good medicine.

"Race, Evolution and Behaviour"
psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/race_evolution_behavior.pdf

High testosterone prevents civilization:
http://science.slashdot.org/st...

"Serum testosterone levels in healthy young black and white men"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Join the dots for yourself.

Who is the enemy of white people?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

What can we do about it?
http://whitegenocideproject.co...

Whites are finally waking up. Let's hope it is not too late.

See "Genomic Views of Human History", by Mary-Claire King ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... ) at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... Basically, from examining in excruciating detail the DNA of groups and subgroups, human beings throughout prehistory were considerable more mobile than previously assumed. Essentially, there is more genetic diversity between individuals from the same village than there is between any given 'racial' groups taken as wholes. Because of human mobility ( refugees, war brides, immigration, guest labor, etc.) the genetic distinctions of 'race' become even more indistinct.

You have to be very careful attributing things to genes rather than environment. Testosterone level, since you mentioned it, rises and drop in response to winning or losing in competitions, and increases in response to exercise. The nature of our encounters with others (dominance) and exercise (which depends on job function) are both clearly culturally influenced.

This study may go a long way towards explaining why Blacks never built any significant civilisation in their lands.

"Mean testosterone levels in blacks were 19% higher than in whites, and free testosterone levels were 21% higher. Both these differences were statistically significant. Adjustment by analysis of covariance for time of sampling, age, weight, alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and use of prescription drugs somewhat reduced the differences. After these adjustments were made, blacks had a 15% higher testosterone level and a 13% higher free testosterone level."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... [nih.gov]

Also see:
psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/race_evolution_behavior.pdf

As another researcher in the pharma industry: reread your post. Your entire post is only highlighting how poor of a job pharmaceutical companies do at effectively bringing drugs to market, all while adding the inefficiency of a 20% profit margin.

Emphasis added

Notice that said "bringing drugs to markets," not the basic funding for preliminary basic research into the actual discovery and isolation of the basic drug and/or drug interaction, which continues to be funded (95+%) by the federal governments of the G8 nations.

Then being granted a 18 or 20-years monopoly (from patent file date admittedly, not marketing approval date), if you successfully complete the marketing research without killing too many test participants. Although for any "successful" to "blockbuster" drug the entire pre-approval expense including administration and marketing is more than recouped by double in the first year of sales.*

The cited book ($800 Million Pill) is not the only ones to criticize and rebut the $800 million dollar figure which is oft-touted in the media, actually comes from the DiMasi's 2001 paper The price of innovation: new estimates of drug development costs.. Thought even the Wall Street Journal notes "[f]or instance, only $403 million of Dr. DiMasi's $802 million total are actual out-of-pocket expenses. The rest is an estimated cost of capital -- or the return that investing the money at an 11% rate of return would have earned over time." Non-executives-types would call it fudging the numbers.

* The $800 million pill book by Merrill Goozner.

As another researcher in the pharma industry: reread your post. Your entire post is only highlighting how poor of a job pharmaceutical companies do at effectively bringing drugs to market, all while adding the inefficiency of a 20% profit margin.

Emphasis added

Notice that said "bringing drugs to markets," not the basic funding for preliminary basic research into the actual discovery and isolation of the basic drug and/or drug interaction, which continues to be funded (95+%) by the federal governments of the G8 nations.

Then being granted a 18 or 20-years monopoly (from patent file date admittedly, not marketing approval date), if you successfully complete the marketing research without killing too many test participants. Although for any "successful" to "blockbuster" drug the entire pre-approval expense including administration and marketing is more than recouped by double in the first year of sales.*

The cited book ($800 Million Pill) is not the only ones to criticize and rebut the $800 million dollar figure which is oft-touted in the media, actually comes from the DiMasi's 2001 paper The price of innovation: new estimates of drug development costs.. Thought even the Wall Street Journal notes "[f]or instance, only $403 million of Dr. DiMasi's $802 million total are actual out-of-pocket expenses. The rest is an estimated cost of capital -- or the return that investing the money at an 11% rate of return would have earned over time." Non-executives-types would call it fudging the numbers.

* The $800 million pill book by Merrill Goozner.

Which may go a long way towards explaining why Blacks never built any significant civilisation in their lands.

"Mean testosterone levels in blacks were 19% higher than in whites, and free testosterone levels were 21% higher. Both these differences were statistically significant. Adjustment by analysis of covariance for time of sampling, age, weight, alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and use of prescription drugs somewhat reduced the differences. After these adjustments were made, blacks had a 15% higher testosterone level and a 13% higher free testosterone level."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Also see:
psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/race_evolution_behavior.pdf

You're falling for CNN hype.

Ebola isn't even on the CDC watch list:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

It's deadly if you catch it, but catching it is extremely difficult. It's spread primarily by ingesting the droppings of fruit bats as they forge in human food stocks.
We don't have large fruit bat populations here
Nor do we store our food where bats can get at it.
Even in Africa where conditions are perfect people are rarely catching this disease.
Those treating the infected can catch it as well, but only by ingesting their fluids. Changing bed pans, etc...

Ebola is scary like a shark attack is scary. It's horrifying if it happens to you but it's very unlikely to happen. You don't want to douse yourself in chum and jump in the ocean, but freaking out and never going in the water again is just as irrational.

Yep everything is very secret and hush-hush if you don't read. And the antibody cocktail name is ZMab (mab stands for monoclonal antibody) not Zmapp.

A politically incorrect comment to the second link: Black people have on average 15% higher testosterone http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Citation needed.

Animal studies have shown a strong correlation between testosterone and aggression (the opposite of what the GPP asserts). In humans, the data is less conclusive, but tends to show a similar correlation. Wisnoskij's assertion that testosterone makes people friendly and cooperative is not supported by any evidence that I can find.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggression#Testosterone
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2029601
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/testosterone-promotes-agression-aut-12-06-09/

"A pandemic like this is incredibly scary. In every major city in the US we have enough medical beds to support about 1/4 of 1% of the population being sick enough to require hospitalization. If 20% of the population needed medical attention about 19.75% probably wouldn't get any."

So true. And as I suggest in the linked essay an abundance perspective resulting in a basic income and health care for all and investing in true civil defense could help prepare for pandemics:
"Basic income from a millionaire's perspective?"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basi...
"Right now, a profit driven health care system has sized emergency rooms for average needs, and those emergency rooms are often full. With a basic income and more money going on a systematic basis to the health care system, the health care system emergency rooms will no longer be overrun with people there for reasons they could see a doctor for. So, emergency care would be better for millionaires. Millionaires with heart attacks won't be as likely to end up being diverted to far away hospitals because the local hospital emergency room is full. Likewise, emergency rooms might, with more money going to medicine, become sized for national emergencies, not personal emergencies, so they might become vast empty places, with physicians and other health care staff keeping their skills sharp always running simulations, learning more medical information, and/or doing basic medical research, with these people always ready for a pandemic or natural disaster or industrial accident which they had the resources in reserve to deal with. So, millionaires who got sick or injured in a disaster could be sure there was the facilities and expertise nearby to help them, even if most of the rest of the population needed help too at the same time too. In that way, some of this basic income could be funded by money that might otherwise go to the Defense department, because what is better civil defense then investing in a health care system able to to handle national disasters? So, any millionaires who are doctors (many are) would benefit by this plan, because their lives as doctors will become happier and less stressful, both with less paperwork and with more resources."

Instead of empowering more people to be involved in health care, the US medical monopolies have restricted the production of US physicians to keep MD salaries up, which is tremendously short-sighted as well as indirectly cruel. Nonetheless, the internet has been broadening access to DIY subsistence health knowledge (like eating more vegetables and fruits, and getting more vitamin D and adequate iodine, and leading a healthy lifestyle with exercise, good sleep, community, etc.), but not without some downsides as shown by this Dilbert comic...
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/...

For part of the history of how US medicine got this way starting 100 years ago (which included abandoning an emphasis on prevention via lifestyle and nutrition to focus on profitable hands-on "scientific" cures for ailments), see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Poverty often forces people to take on risks they might otherwise avoid (like in the USA driving old rusty cars that will collapse in an accident). To the extent this current Ebola outbreak is based on poached bushmeat and ignorance, any Ebola pandemic is also in a sense a verdict on failed US-pushed global economic/defense policies promoting wealth concentration and which ignored externalities and systemic risks (like the risk of plague as a systemic risk to the marketplace). So, shortsighted global policies have not reduced such risks by helping lift Africans out of material poverty sooner rather than later and instead have pushed many impoverished p

Enough painkillers to stop their breathing, me thinks. And their purpose now is either to recover, and give medical science some info on how to do that, or not recover, and give medical science some info on what experimental drugs / treatments are not going to work. IANAD, but were I in a similar position, I'd be flooding them with retrovirals. Ebola seems to knock out certain interferons (alpha, beta, something, look it up), which allows it to screw up the human body something severe. Since interferon is how the human body stops virii from ravaging a body, I'd make that a priority. I'd basically give them a chemo patient's equivalent of it...and that person would hate it...but they might survive. Here's a link for some light reading on Ebola and Interferon: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... There's more if you google those terms. And yes, we can create interferon.

Perhaps you should try not to switch or twist always what I say.

Where did I do that?

I pointed out that they kill the cells more or less right away

Can you demonstrate that? Additional oxidative stress and/or DNA single and double strand breaks are not necessarily fatal - cells are capable of withstanding a certain amount of both.

Point is: they don't really cause a genetic defect that is spread due to multiplication, in contrast to radioactive elements that get incorporated into the body and may damage surrounding cells DNA for/over a long time.

And that's exactly where you are wrong. Cosmic rays can cause DNA defects and, as best as we know, can cause cancers (assuming LNT). It really doesn't matter if the source of a high-energy particle sits right next to the cell, or is billions of miles away. Also once a radioactive nucleus has decayed, it's done, no more danger from it for that particular cell, assuming there aren't many more nearby (this can happen with concentration, but not everything concentrates - that's what the tissue and radionuclide weighting factors in calculating risk values is used for). In short, from a biological perspective, the source of the high-energy particles is more or less irrelevant as to their effects on living cells. If you claim there to be a fundamental distinction, you must have access to information that the medical and health physics societies don't have and I'd appreciate if you could cite sources for your claims.

Hence IMHO

Again, your humble opinion doesn't equal research.

even if the 'Sievert norming groups' try hard to find 'equivalent' formulas.

I trust the experts in the field more than your unsubstantiated opinion. You can claim "common knowledge" all day long, but things asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Perhaps you should try not to switch or twist always what I say.

Where did I do that?

I pointed out that they kill the cells more or less right away

Can you demonstrate that? Additional oxidative stress and/or DNA single and double strand breaks are not necessarily fatal - cells are capable of withstanding a certain amount of both.

Point is: they don't really cause a genetic defect that is spread due to multiplication, in contrast to radioactive elements that get incorporated into the body and may damage surrounding cells DNA for/over a long time.

And that's exactly where you are wrong. Cosmic rays can cause DNA defects and, as best as we know, can cause cancers (assuming LNT). It really doesn't matter if the source of a high-energy particle sits right next to the cell, or is billions of miles away. Also once a radioactive nucleus has decayed, it's done, no more danger from it for that particular cell, assuming there aren't many more nearby (this can happen with concentration, but not everything concentrates - that's what the tissue and radionuclide weighting factors in calculating risk values is used for). In short, from a biological perspective, the source of the high-energy particles is more or less irrelevant as to their effects on living cells. If you claim there to be a fundamental distinction, you must have access to information that the medical and health physics societies don't have and I'd appreciate if you could cite sources for your claims.

Hence IMHO

Again, your humble opinion doesn't equal research.

even if the 'Sievert norming groups' try hard to find 'equivalent' formulas.

I trust the experts in the field more than your unsubstantiated opinion. You can claim "common knowledge" all day long, but things asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Perhaps you should try not to switch or twist always what I say.

Where did I do that?

I pointed out that they kill the cells more or less right away

Can you demonstrate that? Additional oxidative stress and/or DNA single and double strand breaks are not necessarily fatal - cells are capable of withstanding a certain amount of both.

Point is: they don't really cause a genetic defect that is spread due to multiplication, in contrast to radioactive elements that get incorporated into the body and may damage surrounding cells DNA for/over a long time.

And that's exactly where you are wrong. Cosmic rays can cause DNA defects and, as best as we know, can cause cancers (assuming LNT). It really doesn't matter if the source of a high-energy particle sits right next to the cell, or is billions of miles away. Also once a radioactive nucleus has decayed, it's done, no more danger from it for that particular cell, assuming there aren't many more nearby (this can happen with concentration, but not everything concentrates - that's what the tissue and radionuclide weighting factors in calculating risk values is used for). In short, from a biological perspective, the source of the high-energy particles is more or less irrelevant as to their effects on living cells. If you claim there to be a fundamental distinction, you must have access to information that the medical and health physics societies don't have and I'd appreciate if you could cite sources for your claims.

Hence IMHO

Again, your humble opinion doesn't equal research.

even if the 'Sievert norming groups' try hard to find 'equivalent' formulas.

I trust the experts in the field more than your unsubstantiated opinion. You can claim "common knowledge" all day long, but things asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

I really love the people who claim that second hand smoke is worse for you than first hand smoke. A person who smokes is getting both first hand smoke and second hand smoke, so the only logical conclusion if those who dont smoke are worse off than those who do is that smoking is actually better for you than not smoking! *

* Yes, I know this claim is based on the fact that there is carbon monoxide in second hand smoke, not from empirical evidence.

If something is a magnitude higher (factor 10x - 30x, as you pointed out), it is not 'comparable' in its effect to the 'original' thing. It is quite a difference whether I drink *one* beer or 10 - 30.

Except that here we're talking about far smaller effects, more in line with 1 drop vs 10-30 drops of beer. Stick to facts and not analogies.

You try to compare stuff that can't be compared. A cosmic ray, a high energy ion, is crossing my body. Along its path it destroys a DNA strand here and there and kills some cells completely. Incorporating a radioactive element into your body is a bit different.

In what significant capacity? Radioactive element decay produces exactly the same kind of particles (high-energy electrons & gammas; high-energy ions being notably absent in fission product decay and mind you, high-energy ions are much more dangerous, so cosmic rays might even win from a danger perspective particle-by-particle).

Yes the 'Sievert modeling guys' try to 'compensate' the different effects to get a 'uniform' threat indicator. Makes no sense IMHO, as all those slightly different forms of radiation have completely different effects.

Your humble opinion on the matter is your right to have, but dismissing the work of researchers and professionals in the field without evidence would at best net you a label of science denier. Unless you can produce good research to substantiate your opinion, it'll remain just that - opinion.

Plutonium e.g. settles in the bone marrow ... the deadly dose for a human is something like 50 nano grams, perhaps 100, don't remember.

This is the problem when you listen to non-scientists like Ralph Nader and even a cursory read of the Wikipedia article on Plutonium's toxicity would have given you tons of references to studies, research and experiments done which essentially debunks this. Plutonium is toxic for sure, but it's nowhere near the levels you assume it is.

Iodine accumulates mainly in the thyroid, causing cancer there. It seems you can prevent that with high doses of Iodine intake, and Thyroid cancer seems relatively easy to treat and surviving rates are high.

I-131 is the primary problem child in inadvertent radiation releases, since there's plenty of it (~3% fission yield), it's highly mobile, it's intensely radioactive and easily bioaccumulates as you describe. After a few weeks, though, it decays away completely into stable Xe-131. There is also I-129, however its radiotoxicity is billions of times lower than I-131, so it's not really much of a problem once diluted.

Cesium accumulates in bones and sinew ... I assume in muscles as well.

Correct. Add Sr-90 to that.

So, your 10x - 30x increase of radiation versus 'normal' background level still simply measures what you can count with a geiger counter. It does not take into account what happens if you inhale some dust on a dry summer day ... perhaps working in a field with your shirt of covert with sweat when the dust accumulates on your skin.

Not correct. Sieverts are units of committed dose and all of the factors you mention have been considered in its calculation. Geiger counters just measure counts - disintegrations per second. To get a Sievert measurement what we do is we measure counts, then we take samples and employ systems such as mass spectrometry and gamma ray spectrometry to measure the exact radionuclides present and their proportions. These are then combined wit

I'm the last author on the paper and it was discovered in my bioinformatics lab in the CS department at SDSU ...

It was named after our analysis software, crAss (cross assembly) for comparing DNA sequences from different samples (called metagenomics). Here is the crAss article that was published in 2012. Everyone else had missed this virus that was in their DNA samples, most of which have been published (many in high profile journals like Science and Nature). However, it wasn't until we used crAss that we recognized the virus was abundant and everywhere. When we looked at the NCBI database of nucleotide sequences the virus is there and scientists had seen it before in fragments but not been able to piece it together to a whole genome.

We only find the phage in poo samples (they usually call them fecal samples...) from people (oh, and very occasionally on the skin of people, but we suspect they don't have great hygiene). We haven't been able to find it anywhere else that we have looked, and so we don't know what its range is beyond the intestine.

This is one of those situations where the computational biology is really driving the question and the biologists. You often head that bioinformatics is just a support science for "real biology" - that's not true. In this case, based on the questions the bioinformatics group came up with, the biology was supporting the bioinformatics analysis. The biologists were able to determine that the assembly of DNA fragments was correct, and confirm, using PCR, that it is indeed a whole genome.

We (and others) are working on isolating the phage and designing experiments to test exactly what it does in our guts. That doesn't mean we can't speculate!

A couple of answers to comments:
1. Everyone (including the scientists that write grants and papers) confuses gut and fecal samples (sometimes deliberately). To be clear, almost all the samples we have are feces because it is everyone has it, it is easy to get, and everyone seems to want to share it. To get samples other than feces you need surgery, and so the non-fecal samples tend to be associated with other issues that require surgical intervention (and thus are complicated).
2. Noriko (Nori) Cassman is a graduate student (and so doesn't have tenure yet)
3. We were not responsible for the wikipedia page (or the twitter account)
4. phages are viruses that attack bacteria only. There is no evidence or suggestion that this virus does anything to human cells.

I'm the last author on the paper and it was discovered in my bioinformatics lab in the CS department at SDSU ...

It was named after our analysis software, crAss (cross assembly) for comparing DNA sequences from different samples (called metagenomics). Here is the crAss article that was published in 2012. Everyone else had missed this virus that was in their DNA samples, most of which have been published (many in high profile journals like Science and Nature). However, it wasn't until we used crAss that we recognized the virus was abundant and everywhere. When we looked at the NCBI database of nucleotide sequences the virus is there and scientists had seen it before in fragments but not been able to piece it together to a whole genome.

We only find the phage in poo samples (they usually call them fecal samples...) from people (oh, and very occasionally on the skin of people, but we suspect they don't have great hygiene). We haven't been able to find it anywhere else that we have looked, and so we don't know what its range is beyond the intestine.

This is one of those situations where the computational biology is really driving the question and the biologists. You often head that bioinformatics is just a support science for "real biology" - that's not true. In this case, based on the questions the bioinformatics group came up with, the biology was supporting the bioinformatics analysis. The biologists were able to determine that the assembly of DNA fragments was correct, and confirm, using PCR, that it is indeed a whole genome.

We (and others) are working on isolating the phage and designing experiments to test exactly what it does in our guts. That doesn't mean we can't speculate!

A couple of answers to comments:
1. Everyone (including the scientists that write grants and papers) confuses gut and fecal samples (sometimes deliberately). To be clear, almost all the samples we have are feces because it is everyone has it, it is easy to get, and everyone seems to want to share it. To get samples other than feces you need surgery, and so the non-fecal samples tend to be associated with other issues that require surgical intervention (and thus are complicated).
2. Noriko (Nori) Cassman is a graduate student (and so doesn't have tenure yet)
3. We were not responsible for the wikipedia page (or the twitter account)
4. phages are viruses that attack bacteria only. There is no evidence or suggestion that this virus does anything to human cells.

You might want to revise your facts.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
Mice gengineered to be germ free were fed drinking water from public sources. Within the life span of the mice, they developed GI tract bacteria that were ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SPECIES.

Hell, Galapagos Finches evolved different heritable beak differences in http://www.plosgenetics.org/ar...
http://rspb.royalsocietypublis...

Predicted the 1960's (Kerr-induced self-focusing: http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab... ), and it was a big part of SDI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... and was again applied to space-to-ground weapons systems in 2009: http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab...

It was ale demonstrated at LLNL in 2009: http://www.researchgate.net/pu... and 2010: http://www.researchgate.net/pu...

What's new about this one is that they've renamed the tunnel as the desired artifact, rather than describing it in beams going down the tunnel.

We have had the ability for quite some time to synthesize viruses from scratch (the first report in the scientific literature came from the laboratory of poliovirus from scratch, published in 2002). So, there is no reason to keep smallpox stocks around because we can just synthesize the virus if we need it. While this technology means that anyone with sufficient resources could download the (publically available smallpox genome, and synthesize it, the same technology also enables scientists to more rapidly generate vaccines without having to start with a physical sample of the virus.

"It has been suggested that CRISPR interference systems in prokaryotes are analogous to eukaryotic RNA interference systems, although none of the protein components are orthologous.[58]"

exercising and losing a significant amount of weight.

Nope.

When it comes to rape, confidential studies usually reveal the most disturbing information

Believe it or not, most people aren't comfortable talking bout rape and sexual harassment with authority figures. Neither A) talking about sex with an authority figure you hardly know in a society where that's the most private matter of all, nor B) talking about something that traumatized you at all (let alone talking with someone you hardly know about it), are easy matters. The combination of the two is far worse. And the fact that as a general rule nothing good will come of it, and to the contrary a lot of bad will come back to you if you speak up, is just even more encouragement to keep your mouth shut. As a consequence, most rapes remain personal affairs with no consequences to the perpetrator. Disturbingly common personal affairs.

Silica is a well known carcinogen. http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/r... Our lab will not be messing with that shit, we will be looking for something safer! And if silica was in commercial batteries think how many members of the public might be exposed.

"The NIH invests nearly $30.1* billion annually in medical research for the American people."
http://www.nih.gov/about/budge... ...and they spend $1,000 Bn on a fleet of planes to kill Arabs for Israel.

Why do you think the link is broken?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... works fine by me, here is the Abstract:

[...]Stimulation of the claustral electrode reproducibly resulted in a complete arrest of volitional behavior, unresponsiveness, and amnesia without negative motor symptoms or mere aphasia. The disruption of consciousness did not outlast the stimulation and occurred without any epileptiform discharges.[...]

These studies clearly demonstrate that the Cl is richly innervated with a wide and diverse array of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. Lesion, stimulation and recording experiments demonstrate that the functional and physiologic capacity of the Cl is quite robust. A recurring theme of claustral function appears to be its involvement in sensorimotor integration. This may be expected of the Cl, given the degree of heterotopic, heterosensory convergence and its interconnectivity with the key subcortical nuclei and sensory cortical areas. The Cl remains a poorly understood and under investigated nucleus.

It makes sense that a major loss of function is associated with interrupting the Claustrum - but there are several nuclii in the brain - the Hippocampus being one. Claiming it is the 'one true center of consciousness' in the brain doesn't account for the countless studies which reveal just how complex the operation of our neural networks actually are, and may be premature.

References

1. [1]The claustrum: a historical review of its anatomy, physiology, cytochemistry and functional significance. Edelstein LR1, Denaro FJ.

It is indeed, although it's probably not a physical activity that would be considered to improve your physical fitness.

This is why "normal" people hate nerds & geeks.

Obviously, 12oz curls are a physical activity, but no one in their right, non-Aspergers minds actually calls it a "physical activity" in the sense used by everyone except pedantic ass-wipes. (No, that is not an ad hominem attack, because I have facts and definitions on my side.

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/phys/ Physical activity is any body movement that works your muscles and requires more energy than resting.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sport an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/sport An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others

I don't have the exact numbers

Right, because there are no numbers showing what you are hoping can be pulled out of your arse.

He died of heart problems. If you read the health effects they are claiming many of them seem just normal for a older person at that time. The rest might could also have been caused by chemical issues more than radiation. Heavy metals are for a large part things you want to avoid putting into your body.

For people who are interested in this sort of thing, the TOXNET entry for americium contains a number of excerpts from published work about the case, medical follow up, and eventual autopsy results. The first six case report entries on that page all involve publications involving McC|uskey; look for entries that refer specifically to "US Transuranium Registry (USTUR) Case 246". Because americium is an alpha emitter that principally deposits in bone, it is the bone and bone marrow that are most affected by exposure, and which show the most lasting (and ongoing) damage.

"...Eight yrs after a 64-year old man was exposed to americium-241 in a chemical explosion/, leukopenia was evaluated by a hematologist. Diagnosis of a possible hypoproliferative, myeloproliferative, or myelodysplastic syndrome was considered...."

"...The bone marrow of /USTUR Case 246/ had been substantially damaged by alpha-irradiation from americium, principally on the bone surfaces. A ... finding was a marked decrease in bone marrow cellularity associated with dilatation of blood sinusoids. The severity of these effects varied according to site and was greatest in the vertebral body, where the marrow was almost acellular, and least in the clavicle. In addition, extensive peritrabecular marrow fibrosis was present in some bones, including the rib and clavicle. ... Fibrosis is a common observation in bones irradiated by bone-seeking radionuclides and has been linked to bone sarcoma induction...."

"...The bones examined were the patella, clavicle, sternum, rib, vertebral body and ossified thyroid cartilage; all showed evidence of radiation damage. The cellularity of most bones was reduced, and little evidence of recent active bone remodeling was seen in any bone other than the vertebra, as concluded from the redistribution of the americium in the vertebral body. In several bones, the architecture was disrupted, with woven bone, abnormal appositional bone deposits, bizarre trabecular structures and marked peritrabecular fibrosis. Growth arrest lines were common. When compared with trabecular bone modeling, that of cortical bone in the rib appeared less disrupted. Overall, the results obtained are consistent with those observed in dogs at a similar level of actinide intake...."

In other words, he was 'lucky' that this accident occurred when he was in his mid-sixties, and that he managed to die of heart disease in his mid-seventies. If the patient had been forty years old instead, he likely would have been looking at a cancer of either the bone (an osteosarcoma or some such, and probably at multiple sites if he lived long enough) or the blood-forming cells (leukemia of some sort).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
"This was a 4-y, population-based, double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial. The primary outcome was fracture incidence, and the principal secondary outcome was cancer incidence."

Eating a lots of vegetables and fruits and mushrooms can also reduce cancer risk (see Dr. Joel Fuhrman's summary works like "Eat To Live" with many references). I've found by eating more fruits and vegetables that my skin tone has changed from pale to having more color (even in winter). Adequate iodine can also help prevent cancer.

Reducing risk of incidence is not the same as cure though. Sorry to hear about you father getting cancer. Once you get cancer, everything is iffy, so cancer is best avoided preventatively. Fasting may also help in some cancer situations, and it also helps with chemotherapy by protecting cells from the toxic chemicals (since fasting seems to causes many normal cells to go into a safe survival mode but cancer cells generally do not). And eating better may hope prevent recurrence. In general, the human body is always developing cancerous cells, but generally they are dealt with by the immune system. So boosting the immune system could help with some cancers and there are many ways to do that -- but again, it is all iffy once cancer is established.

See also for other ideas:
http://science-beta.slashdot.o...

I agree supplements and natural sunlight are probably better choices than tanning beds --although there may still be unknowns about how the skin reacts to sun or tanning beds and produces many compounds vs. supplements. I also agree conventional tanning beds are not tuned to give lots of vitamin D.That is unfortunate, even if they produce some. See also about other tanning choices (and supplement suggestions):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org...
"If you choose to use a tanning bed, the Vitamin D Council recommends using the same common sense you use in getting sunlight. This includes:
Getting half the amount of exposure that it takes for your skin to turn pink.
Using low-pressure beds that has good amount of UVB light, rather than high-intensity UVA light."

BTW, if you look into chemotherapy for cancer, for many cancers you'll find it is of questionable value relative to the costs both in money and suffering, where is on average may add at most a couple months of life on average if that. Chemotherapy can apparently even sometimes make cancer worse:
http://www.nydailynews.com/lif...
"The scientists found that healthy cells damaged by chemotherapy secreted more of a protein called WNT16B which boosts cancer cell survival."

It's hard to know who to trust regarding medical research results or interpretations:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-j...
"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. (Marcia Angell)"

Good luck sorting it all out. I've suggested creating better tools for medical sensemaking, but still not time to work on them...

So I went to this page:

Link

How is a "suicide rank" a meaningful measure? If you have 50 states, one will rank #1 and one will rank #50 (bfd). Digging deeper, we at least see the difference between #1 and #10:

1. Alaska: 22.1 suicides per 100,000
10. Oregon: 15.2 suicides per 100,000

I couldn't quickly decipher from the 100+ page PDF what #50 is.

Here is another page that attempts to take the rare, tragic event of suicide and needlessly adds contrast to universal problems:

link

The dark blood-red (R) states are in the category of 14.19 - 20.08.
The light happy-white (D) states are in the category of 5.23 - 10.70.

Consider that the two sharpest contrasts of color are divided by 14.19 (in the blood-red states) and 10.70 (in the happy-white states).

I dare say you are a party to statistical manipulation and not helping very much.

>The CDC's figures for liver disease deaths do not separate cirrhosis from other causes of liver disease.

Like sugar and grains.
http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov...

Sugar: The Bitter Truth

>The CDC's figures for liver disease deaths do not separate cirrhosis from other causes of liver disease.

Like sugar and grains.
http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov...

I didn't make the case he was referring to nor did he provide crushing evidence of anything when the majority of evidence contradicts his claims. He's fucking incoherent. The modern Standford-Binet doesn't even work like he claims and along with the WAIS is very well regarded. They're used to identify mental disability for legal purposes. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Except that bleach resistance is starting to show up in cholera.

Yikes.

It's because the Republicans won't let them work on that research.

The National Institutes of Health - the single largest government sponsor of biomedical research in the world - spends
approximately $3 billion per year on AIDS research. That's about 10% of their entire budget. In comparison, they currently spend about $5.5 billion per year on cancer, which affects vastly more Americans than AIDS, and also kills more in wealthy countries (because AIDS patients - or their insurers - can afford the treatments that enable long-term survival with low viral load). Due to federal budget issues, both funding pools have declined since 2010, but AIDS research only slightly - cancer funding is significantly lower.

As for treating the cure versus the symptoms, it is extraordinarily difficult to "cure" viral infections with drugs, and HIV has proven to be incredibly difficult to vaccinate against.

So why is there such a disparity between Google & Yahoo's female proportions? Seriously, none of this shit passes the smell test. Women don't want to do this. Black people don't like doing that. It's utter bullshit from top to bottom. It's not nice to admit there is a massive fucking problem here but the first step really is admitting it.

And you add to the stink. We hear much about the disparity in numbers based on gender. Okay.But as to the stinky stuff, why do we not get very much in the way of applications based on gender.

Enter the politics. Enter bias. Enter Barbie, destroyer of women.

Are you outraged by this? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Probably not, I would guess.

But you know, I'm not all that outraged. Only annoyance is the people that find the tech fields the domain of testosterone fueled male bigots, as biased against females, as old Colonel Massa, rocking on the veranda down at the plantation, and quoting Biblical text in support of his keeping slaves.

Is it really? Where I worked, the Tech guys, and gals were much like everyone else, with the exception of being a bit shy (possibly my bias, because I'm not) But they were married like the rest of the workforce, and aside from that, the main difference was in manner of thinking and speaking tech-speak.

The women IT folks really hated the "Barbie- destroyer of women" outlook, employed by the crypto-feminists, where a plastic doll, or the toys, or a negative remark will scar the poor girl, sending her into a lifelong downward spiral of body dismorphia, and inability to work in a tech field.

What I have found is this:

Women who prevail and succeed have a property similar to many men. They know what they want to do, and do not care what society, or Barbie, or fashion magazines think. And they are willing to do what it takes. My wife, the model of an Alpha female, is this way. The successful female techs, engineers, and scientists where I worked were this way.

Which is why after spending a good bit of my time trying to recruit young women into the tech fields, I've decided that if you are going to blame men, women are not completely blameless. If females are to be adequately represented in the field, they will have to have interest, pursue that interest, and apply for the jobs.

Another one of these drugs is NAC (n-acetylcystein) which is sold as an OTC expectorant in some countries (not in the US for some reason):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Not the original poster, but here you go...

What aspects of autism predispose to talent?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Talent in autism: hyper-systemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Enhanced perception in savant syndrome: patterns, structure and creativity.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

The savant syndrome: intellectual impairment and exceptional skill.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Comparing the intelligence profiles of savant and nonsavant individuals with autistic disorder
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

Not the original poster, but here you go...

What aspects of autism predispose to talent?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Talent in autism: hyper-systemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Enhanced perception in savant syndrome: patterns, structure and creativity.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

The savant syndrome: intellectual impairment and exceptional skill.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Comparing the intelligence profiles of savant and nonsavant individuals with autistic disorder
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

Not the original poster, but here you go...

What aspects of autism predispose to talent?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Talent in autism: hyper-systemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Enhanced perception in savant syndrome: patterns, structure and creativity.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

The savant syndrome: intellectual impairment and exceptional skill.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Comparing the intelligence profiles of savant and nonsavant individuals with autistic disorder
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

Not the original poster, but here you go...

What aspects of autism predispose to talent?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Talent in autism: hyper-systemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Enhanced perception in savant syndrome: patterns, structure and creativity.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

The savant syndrome: intellectual impairment and exceptional skill.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Comparing the intelligence profiles of savant and nonsavant individuals with autistic disorder
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

I'm not saying you should eat stinking fish oil tablets, but them stinking should not affect their effect on the body.

Citation please? What makes you so confident that's true? Fish oil oxidizes easily.

The smell is at least partly due to oxidation: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Effects of oxidized fish oil:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (affects lipid profile)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (but does not affect oxidative stress markers)
See also:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (fish oil easily oxidized)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

I'm not saying you should eat stinking fish oil tablets, but them stinking should not affect their effect on the body.

Citation please? What makes you so confident that's true? Fish oil oxidizes easily.

The smell is at least partly due to oxidation: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Effects of oxidized fish oil:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (affects lipid profile)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (but does not affect oxidative stress markers)
See also:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (fish oil easily oxidized)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...