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Gene Silencing is the technique they are using. Gene Silencing http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/ghr/glossary/genesilencing is used while the gene in question is being expressed. It will be a treatment provided to the cat and will not be inheritable.

Gene Silencing is the technique they are using. Gene Silencing http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/ghr/glossary/genesilencing is used while the gene in question is being expressed (i.e., during cell operation). It will be a treatment provided to the cat and will not be inheritable.

He's not for invading Iraq to fight terrorism, though Bush has made that popular.

Yes, had Kerry been in power Hussein would still be in power and most likely close to getting rid of the UN Sanctions against him. That's a powerful platform to run on.

He's not for giving away our Treasury to rich people, though Bush has made that seem popular.

The top 50% pay ~99% of the tax. The top 20% pay 80%. So, strangely, when tax cuts are taken across the board, the people who make the most, get the most back. The "rich" still have the highest tax bracket.

He's not for promoting faith over science or democracy, though Bush throws that to the religious zealots who form his base.

Well, I'm a Catholic (much like your beloved Kerry, although by most definitions he is not a Catholic). The vast majority of citizens in the US disagree with Kerry's positions on partial-birth abortion and public funding for abortions. Bush has not banned stem cell research. There is (minimal) federal funding available for it. And, if there is such an amazing array of medical miracles that can achieved via research in this field, then all the major medical companies will surely see it in their best interests to fund said research.

Do you want some stem cells that qualify for federal funding? Simply go here.

And let's not get into Edwards little "You shall be healed!" speech. Talk about despicable.

Anyways, you seem like any good little leftist. If an issue is brought up that you can't defend, you just attack on another issue.

i couldn't find anything on pressure thresholds, but there is an article talking about how turgor pressure effects plant growth. turgor is a biology term that princeton defines better than i do. i'd imagine that the turgor pressure corresponds to atmospheric pressure in slightly different ratios species-to-species... The article also talks about yield threshold, which i think is just the output of good crop. here is more info on what plants NASA wants to grow for their astronauts ( wheat, rice, lettuce, cabbage, soy, potatoes, and others ) and some issues that they are facing ( one article mentions nuts and fruits are difficult ). too bad NASA is really buries their information...

2) There are no odorants added to the natural gas and so it has no smell to tell you that you have a gas leak. I ended up in the hospital once because of that when a natural gas heater went out and let the room fill with natural gas.

No mercaptan? Ever hear of a natural gas meter ? I would invest in one ...

• WU-Blast
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  Genome Archives
  

• WU-Blast
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  Genome Archives
  

I have a feeling the parent didn't read the story closely enough to decide that the grandparent was wrong.

Nature's phrasing is a bit misleading. Mimivirus, like all other known viruses, requires the protein synthesis machinery of a host cell to reproduce and to carry out the synthesis of the proteins described. (For mimivirus, the hosts are amoebae.) I mean, it's impressively large--it carries a lot of genetic material inside its protein coat, and it's comparable in size to some of the smallest bacteria (mycoplasma)--but it's not alive.

While the Nature blurb says that "it can make about 150 of its own proteins, along with chemical chaperones to help the proteins to fold in the right way. It can even repair its own DNA if it gets damaged, unlike normal viruses", what they mean is that it carries genes that when expressed by the host cell can carry out those functions. The virus, by itself, can't do protein synthesis, so it can't make the proteins that carry out DNA repair or other described functions.

It's very interesting and unusual for a virus to carry genes for these functions--all other known viruses rely on their hosts to provide them, or do without--but it definitely doesn't make the virus alive. The grandparent poster is quite right, and it's made quite clear in the linked PubMed abstract to the original Science article. The Nature piece is in their News section, written by a staff writer. It's not a peer-reviewed article, and the terminology is regrettably confusing.

Since genes consist of only 4 characters, A,C,G and T, its mathematically possible to compress to 25% of the original size but no more, iirc.

Which would be very useful, as genetic data tends to be very bulky. For instace, you might get 40gb or so of sequences weekly from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ that you want to use on your HPC cluster. Imagine if your cluster consists of 100 nodes on a 100Mbps network. That sure adds up the terabytes quickly.

Most of those compounds don't even contain nitrogen, let alone nitrites. The closest call would be fertilizer, where there can be nitrites along nitrates.
On the other hand, while nitrites are still allowed as preservatives and colour fixatives in meat products, they should have been banned long ago. Such accidents are unfortunately still pretty common. 1g is usually considered as a fatal dose.

>Really ?

Yes. I provided an example by showing that a disproportional number number of nobel prize winners reside in the US. As another example, take the listing of the top universities in the world . In the top 10, only Oxford exists outside of the US. In the top 25, only 6 are outside of the US. In top 100, the US holds over 50% of the slots. One of the main reasons for this is the ability for the US to draw in the best talent in science and engineering from around the world.

>You mean like stem cell research ?
>Ummm ....

Stem cell research is very active in the US. A simple google search would show you the research centers at NIH and University of Wisconsin-Madison . Even California is floating a $3billion dollar bond to support stem cell research. However, yes, the current ban on the harvesting of embroyonic stem cells is not doing much good to foster research in this area in the US.

>I've always thought it wise to actually do the thinking part *BEFORE* the speaking part.

You obviously think one way and act another.

My favorite protein is the "menage a trois" . But then again i'm a reproductive biologist...

I think you might find anyone who is alergic to it might just die from it, so I think you are wrong in your blanket statement to the safety of this weapon.

It is important to remember the difference between deterministic effects (the minimum dose needed for depilation, skin burns, marrow suppression, death) versus stochastic effects (relative risk increases in cancer). From what I understand, there doesn't seem to be a risk of death, but there may be a relatively increased risk of fatal malignancies in the future.

Personally, for me, the trip would still be worth it (though I would probably bank my sperm). Also, someone can probably help on this, I understand that there are transient increases in ionizing radiation levels, from solar flares, and from some deep space sources that have screwed up satellites from time to time. I don't know if unshielded exposure to these sources would be 'deterministically' fatal.

Your examples are defective to your point for various reasons. Your first link, describing, "Carbon Dioxide Toxicity," refers to a pH imbalance in the blood, caused by carbon dioxide (acidosis). The article does not claim that carbon dioxide is toxic per se, but that a buildup of carbon dioxide concentration results in a chemical imbalance. Note that if your blood contains enough bicarbonate, it will neutralize the pH from acidosis, even with the same amount of carbon dioxide still in your blood.

Your second link gives anectdotes related to suffication, pure and simple. Everything in the Snopes article describes ordinary suffication.

Your third article is similar to your first article.

Carbon monoxide is poisonous, because it chemically bonds to the hemoglobin in our blood. Even the tiniest amount of carbon dioxide has this property, and will proportionately interfere with our body's ability to transport oxygen. In contrast, carbon dioxide is mostly inert, and our bodies have natural regulating defenses to protect against chemical effects (such as acidity caused by carbon dioxide dissolving in water).

Yes, you can die from suffication if there is a high enough concentration of carbon dioxide in your air. No, there is nothing unusual about people falling unconscious very quickly after walking into an unbreathable environment.

In a sealed room you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning before you die of asphyxiation from the lack of oxygen.

No, I don't believe that is correct. If you entered a room with a high concentration of carbon dioxide, you would almost instantly fall unconscious and stop breathing from lack of oxygen. In about 5 minutes, you would normally suffer brain damage from lack of oxygen.

The point isn't that we can't be more efficient. It's that we can't be sufficiently more efficient to make much of a difference compared to what we can gain by taking advantage of nuclear power.

First of all "more efficent" isn't limited to a particular device, it is a combination of things that together will yield a higher efficency overall.

Yes Dorothy, that means changing for example the way we light our apartments, get to work, buy our food, but there is so much energy wasted right now on a day to day basis that we would gain a lot more than you might imagine right now.

Next time you are at your grocery store have a look at where all the vegetables, meats, "frozen dinners" and their ingridients are coming from, and then think about how much energy was used just by transporting all of this around, I am not even talking about processing and such.

If we (as a society) are serious about energy conservation we could do everything (as in standard of living) as we're doing it right now but with less energy and drawing it from different sources.

The big problem with nuclear power isn't that it produces waste. Everything produces waste. Nor is it the danger of meltdown or incorrect storage of fuel. Those things are very local risks, and statistically are sufficiently infrequent that the total 'cost' including lives and property damage, is still much much smaller than coal or oil.

With one huge difference.

When one of your "statistically sufficentily infrequent" accidents occurs the impact will be not quite so small.

Yes, coal and oil burning is poisioning us and the environment, but it is a lot smaller, by making changes now we can get rid of most of it in 10 - 20 years (assuming we have enough oil left).

And more importantly: Countries like China have to make those changes now, they are only now building their infrastructure and can prevent a lot of the mistakes that we have made.

The big problem with nuclear power is human psychology. People see something that they know was once used to kill millions, and are acutely aware of the times in which there have been nuclear accidents, and then immediately in their minds assume that every nuclear plant will fail, and that it will fail catastrophically. If you were to ask people (who do not live near a plant of any sort) whether they'd rather live next to a nuclear plant or a coal plant, I have to wonder what they'd say, compared to people who actually do live near either structure. People who live near a nuclear plant are going to have evidence which to them suggests that it is perfectly safe: the fact that they haven't experienced a meltdown or other disaster. Whereas people who have not done so are going to extrapolate based on the few cases they are aware of, which are entirely of the 'bad' variety (since who would make a news report that a nuclear plant operated perfectly this week?).

BTW, this page here lists some nuclear disasters over the past 50 years and even though (excluding Chernobyl) nothing really "bad" has happened I have my doubts.

And even if there would be no "real" danger. Stress in and on itself is a problem:

Several aspects regarding nuclear power plants and works of the chemical industry were assessed by self-report inventories. The inventories included items related to attitudes and mood. Subjects (N = 228) were divided according to living distance to a nuclear power plant (up to 5 km, 5-10 km, 10-15 km), age (18-39 versus 40-59 years) and sex. Results demonstrate different risk perception referring to nuclear power plants and works of the chemical industry. Women and older persons reported more negative attitudes. In addition, the results confirm th

Let me recap the relevant portions of the post you're replying to, since you didn't seem to read it:

1. As of 2003, there has yet to be a single human death officially attributed to plutonium exposure.

2. Alpha radiation does not penetrate the skin.

3. Extremely small particles of plutonium on the order of micrograms have a *small* chance to cause lung cancer if inhaled into the lungs.

This is what happened in and around Chernobyl...

The plutonium fallout from Chernobyl had a nearly negligible effect on the environment. The plutonium released at Chernobyl had a radioactivity of about 2000 Curie. The iodine-131 had a radioactivity of about 47 million Curie. The xenon-133 had a radioactivity of about 175 million Curie.

...this is what happens in Uranium mines...

Since when is there plutonium in uranium mines? Since when is plutonium a naturally occurring element? Right. Idiot.

...this is what happened to Madame Curie...

Marie Curie died of leukemia brought about by prolonged radium exposure. Radium is not plutonium. Radium-226 (the most common isotope) is a gamma emitter. Do you get tired of writing bullshit?

...this is what happened to unburned survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

There was no plutonium in the Hiroshima bomb. There was no significant plutonium fallout at Nagasaki, since it all fissioned. There was significant fallout of radio-isotopes of plutonium, but that's a different story. Your stupidity knows no bounds.

This should be obvious to anyone who's had highschool physics.

Maybe you need a refresher course. And the "maybe" was only added to give the illusion of politeness.

...it is still very nasty stuff, which isn't doesn't become less nasty because of blatant ignorance.

I accept that you are an authority on blatant ignorance, but nuclear science also isn't doesn't become more nasty because of it.

Main Entry: toxic
Pronunciation: 'täk-sik
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or caused by a poison or toxin
2 : affected by a poison or toxin
3 : POISONOUS

Carbon dioxide is toxic.

Your friend has been the victim of job security bullshit. Or, you have. There is no scientific basis to differentiate between toxic waste and waste that is merely "hazardous". CO.2 is toxic. It's that simple. If you have waste CO.2, that's toxic waste. In a sealed room you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning before you die of asphyxiation from the lack of oxygen.

First, let me start saying I believe life begins at the moment of conception, so i don't take *embryonic* stem cell research lightly. What bothers me is that people talk as if there's only one way to produce stem cells, through embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro.

Why other ways of producing stem cells are not beeing actively pursued, researched and advocated?

For instance, there is other kind of stem cells: adult stem cells. These are "found among differentiated cells in a tissue or organ" Of course adult stem cells are rare and embryonic stem cells are a lot easier to grow in culture than adult stem cells since "methods for expanding their numbers in cell culture have not yet been worked out", but both have advantages and disadvantages worth considering.

First, let me start saying I believe life begins at the moment of conception, so i don't take *embryonic* stem cell research lightly. What bothers me is that people talk as if there's only one way to produce stem cells, through embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro.

Why other ways of producing stem cells are not beeing actively pursued, researched and advocated?

For instance, there is other kind of stem cells: adult stem cells. These are "found among differentiated cells in a tissue or organ" Of course adult stem cells are rare and embryonic stem cells are a lot easier to grow in culture than adult stem cells since "methods for expanding their numbers in cell culture have not yet been worked out", but both have advantages and disadvantages worth considering.

1. Antibiotic resistance in GM plants is intentional, an artifact of the manufacturing process (see parent for reference).

2. When bacteria eat DNA, they can incorporate it, mutating without dividing; this is called transformation :

3. DNA from food can linger in the intestines a while.

Given those three facts, the risk and speculation is just that the commensal (normal resident) gut bacteria will take up the antibiotic resistance genes from food, and that pathogenic bacteria will in turn be transformed by the commensals.

In general, I'd love to see more Slashdotters read reading bioscience at PubMed, a service of the (U.S.) National Library of Medicine. There you'll find abstracts of biomed journals, textbooks, genomic and proteomic databases, and free full text of journal articles. Stanford Press's HighWire offers even more free journal articles, as well as all of the abstracts that PubMed indexes.

Perhaps I'm biased, but I think the world needs more nerds to help interpret and synthesize the thousands of pages of biosience research that's being published each week.

-ldg

Liam D. Gray, public health student, former Qualcomm embedded software engineer, BS ECE '95 CMU

1. Antibiotic resistance in GM plants is intentional, an artifact of the manufacturing process (see parent for reference).

2. When bacteria eat DNA, they can incorporate it, mutating without dividing; this is called transformation :

3. DNA from food can linger in the intestines a while.

Given those three facts, the risk and speculation is just that the commensal (normal resident) gut bacteria will take up the antibiotic resistance genes from food, and that pathogenic bacteria will in turn be transformed by the commensals.

In general, I'd love to see more Slashdotters read reading bioscience at PubMed, a service of the (U.S.) National Library of Medicine. There you'll find abstracts of biomed journals, textbooks, genomic and proteomic databases, and free full text of journal articles. Stanford Press's HighWire offers even more free journal articles, as well as all of the abstracts that PubMed indexes.

Perhaps I'm biased, but I think the world needs more nerds to help interpret and synthesize the thousands of pages of biosience research that's being published each week.

-ldg

Liam D. Gray, public health student, former Qualcomm embedded software engineer, BS ECE '95 CMU

And please stop characterizing condoms as non-functional. If you have some scientific data to back up your belief I would love to see it.

Data from a report by the National Institute of Alergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Health and Human Serives.

Summary of HIV info:
"consistent condom use decreased the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission by approximately 85%"

So, no, not non-functional. They also aren't 99.999% effective, as you claim.

The "mutant" gene referred by the article most likely is the CCR5delta32 deletion allele of CCR5. I agree, this is not news. Many of the points made in the article were vague and the discovery itself is nothing novel -- even if they determined the frequency of this allele in the Chinese, this is not a new finding. In Steve O'Brien's Science paper, the frequency of CCR5delta32 in Caucasions is 0.1 (2.8% of exposed uninfected patients were deletion homozygotes). I remember another population study among Koreans to try to determine CCR5delta32's frequency in that population.

Even the statement about putting the "gene" in the vagina or rectum is not new: see microbicides.

Just a word to the wise, news like this will rarely, if ever, scoop a scientific publication in Science or Nature. If the discoveries truly have any scientific merit whatsoever, you'll more likely read about it in these journals or the media commotion stirred by these publications. In other words, unless somewhere in the article is says "results of these studies published in the journal [place name of journal here]," the results have not been peer reviewed. Therefore, "there's nothing to see here, move on."

The "mutant" gene referred by the article most likely is the CCR5delta32 deletion allele of CCR5. I agree, this is not news. Many of the points made in the article were vague and the discovery itself is nothing novel -- even if they determined the frequency of this allele in the Chinese, this is not a new finding. In Steve O'Brien's Science paper, the frequency of CCR5delta32 in Caucasions is 0.1 (2.8% of exposed uninfected patients were deletion homozygotes). I remember another population study among Koreans to try to determine CCR5delta32's frequency in that population.

Even the statement about putting the "gene" in the vagina or rectum is not new: see microbicides.

Just a word to the wise, news like this will rarely, if ever, scoop a scientific publication in Science or Nature. If the discoveries truly have any scientific merit whatsoever, you'll more likely read about it in these journals or the media commotion stirred by these publications. In other words, unless somewhere in the article is says "results of these studies published in the journal [place name of journal here]," the results have not been peer reviewed. Therefore, "there's nothing to see here, move on."

The "mutant" gene referred by the article most likely is the CCR5delta32 deletion allele of CCR5. I agree, this is not news. Many of the points made in the article were vague and the discovery itself is nothing novel -- even if they determined the frequency of this allele in the Chinese, this is not a new finding. In Steve O'Brien's Science paper, the frequency of CCR5delta32 in Caucasions is 0.1 (2.8% of exposed uninfected patients were deletion homozygotes). I remember another population study among Koreans to try to determine CCR5delta32's frequency in that population.

Even the statement about putting the "gene" in the vagina or rectum is not new: see microbicides.

Just a word to the wise, news like this will rarely, if ever, scoop a scientific publication in Science or Nature. If the discoveries truly have any scientific merit whatsoever, you'll more likely read about it in these journals or the media commotion stirred by these publications. In other words, unless somewhere in the article is says "results of these studies published in the journal [place name of journal here]," the results have not been peer reviewed. Therefore, "there's nothing to see here, move on."

HIV is only twenty-five years old, which certainly isn't enough time for genetic evolution to take place.

Mutations happen all the time - 0.0000000000000214/nucleotide/generation according to these guys . Now multiply that by 3 billion nucleotides in a human, and 70(?) days to replace all the cells in your body. Most of the time, the mtuation is fatal and the cell dies. Most of the rest of the time, it does nothing at all. Once in a while, you get a mutation that is actually beneficial. And once in a while, that mutation happens to occur in gamates, so it actually gets passed on to children. That's clearly what happened in this case.

Anyway white rice is fucking awful for you

Again, it is a staple in Asian diets. Not brown rice, either. And I don't think it's simply a matter of smaller portions or genetics -- when I lived in Asia I didn't notice the portions being significantly smaller than what I eat now. Why wouldn't we see a large amount of diabetes sufferers in the Asian population if white rice was so bad for the human body?

I fixed my propane BBQ

Mmmmm... ribs. You do know that meats wreak havoc on your digestive system, and in large quantities contribute to heart disease (though eating lean meats, as you mention, can avoid this), diabetes and gout.

So you know, I'm a carnivore and always will be. But let's not kid ourselves: if you just ate soy, vegetables and fruits for the rest of your life, you'd probably be much healthier overall (but a lot more miserable).

This could be the right article.

"OBJECTIVES. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review and analysis of the literature regarding human caffeine withdrawal to empirically validate specific symptoms and signs, and to appraise important features of the syndrome."

"CONCLUSIONS. The caffeine-withdrawal syndrome has been well characterized and there is sufficient empirical evidence to warrant inclusion of caffeine withdrawal as a disorder in the DSM and revision of diagnostic criteria in the ICD."

Thanks mainstream media (and Slashdot) for once again misrepresenting, misinterpreting and oversimplifying a scientific study or publication.

Some people would probably think it's boring to read the actual article (J Pharmacol Exp Ther. 1990 Mar;252(3):970-8) or the abstract, but a link could have been in order.

No, the news is not that "coffee is addictive". Duh.

From the abstract:
"A novel drug discrimination procedure was used to study the discriminability and subjective effects of caffeine in seven human volunteers who abstained from dietary sources of caffeine. [...] The present study documents biological activity of caffeine at lower doses than heretofore recognized. The general approach to investigating the effects of low drug doses may have broad application in human psychopharmacology research for characterizing other subtle psychotropic effects."

Funny? Laugh?

I wonder why the Seattle Times and Slashdot found this worthy to mention, at the same time as it's apparently not worthy to understand.

"...Ahhh yes, IT snobiness strikes again. The average person shouldn't have to "give two flying fucks" . The PC industry should get its act togeather and deliver "dumb" terminals that do exactly what people expect them to do. Chances are, you don't know anything about natural gas fittings, but you still use a stove. I don't know anything about generating and containing microwaves, but I still eat frozen burritos..."

No, but you (hopefully) know that natural gas has an additive so that you can smell it in case of a gas leak, and (hopefully) you know enough not to superheat water in your microwave so you dont get scalded.
Folks seem fond of using car analogies as well. Even Ford and Chevy put in idiot lights so you know (albeit perhaps too late) that you're almost out of oil or that you really need to have your engine checked by someone who knows what they're doing.

Ignorance is no excuse for lack of maintenence. IIRC, there was an old commercial (for mufflers?) that had the slogan... "You can pay me now, or you can pay me [more] later". That sort of sums it up.

It's not "IT snobiness", it's the fact that, no matter how much you wish it so, a computer IS NOT an appliance - it's a tool. Just like every other tool, care, simple safety precautions, and maintenence are vital for your safety as well as those around you.

Um, try again. Maybe you need to do a little research. Caffeine indeed has quite a strong flavor, and I will bet you big $$$ to sit down and blind taste test Mountain Dew and No-Caffeine Mountain Dew.

My information comes from direct experience, plus I've seen documented in numerous places that caffeine has a bitter taste.

Where did you get your information? When you call people names, it looks really bad when you don't know what you're talking about.

Thirty seconds with Google produces this from the NIH's National Library of Medicine:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?hold ing=npg&cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11444592& dopt=Abstract

I prefer the taste of caffeinated Dew to non-, but that doesn't vitiate the idea that beverage manufacturers do it to addict their customers.

A 5mW laser does not seem to damage a person's eye even when they look directly into it for 15 minutes (see here for example).

From a distance of what must be miles away, aimed at a moving aircraft, you would need a laser that was orders of magnitude more powerful in order to damage someone's eye. Even with a powerful laser, you'd generally have to look directly into the optical axis to cause serious vision impairment. And while I haven't gotten injured by a laser, the few times I looked into one accidentally, there was little doubt about when it happened or where the light came from.

Even more implausible is the claim in the article that someone would "[continue] to suffer eye pain and deteriorating vision"; laser injuries to the eye do not cause continued deterioration and they do not cause chronic pain (here).

The whole thing strikes me as wildly implausible. As the article above shows, apparently erroneous claims of laser injuries are fairly frequent. A more likely explanation is that someone is lying, perhaps because he wants to retire early or did something else stupid and wants it covered.

A 5mW laser does not seem to damage a person's eye even when they look directly into it for 15 minutes (see here for example).

From a distance of what must be miles away, aimed at a moving aircraft, you would need a laser that was orders of magnitude more powerful in order to damage someone's eye. Even with a powerful laser, you'd generally have to look directly into the optical axis to cause serious vision impairment. And while I haven't gotten injured by a laser, the few times I looked into one accidentally, there was little doubt about when it happened or where the light came from.

Even more implausible is the claim in the article that someone would "[continue] to suffer eye pain and deteriorating vision"; laser injuries to the eye do not cause continued deterioration and they do not cause chronic pain (here).

The whole thing strikes me as wildly implausible. As the article above shows, apparently erroneous claims of laser injuries are fairly frequent. A more likely explanation is that someone is lying, perhaps because he wants to retire early or did something else stupid and wants it covered.

This has been debated for a while, but recent studies have borne out the idea that class IIIa lasers, up to 5mW, don't cause permanent injury to the retina.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1111526 6

Class IIIa (>5mW) 532nm green laser pointer (ThinkGeek)

Class IIIb (>15mW) 532nm green laser pointer (MegaLaser)

Class IIIb 200mW handheld green laser (Information Unlimited)

It's even possible to get small, portable Class IV (potential instant severe eye damage, even from diffuse or reflected beams; this is the class of laser which also includes burning and cutting beams) lasers:

Various Class IV portable lasers, including a small battery powered 2W diode laser (Information Unlimited)

The front windows of a commercial aircraft and objects in the cockpit could easily reflect and refract a beam from the ground in ways that would be at a minimum very distracting and unsafe, and potentially damaging to eyesight.

Information about laser classes.

Well, I did a quick search on google and lots of stuff came up, with data supporting your side of the argument and mine. This didn't really surprise me, since studies sponsored by pro-contraceptive groups always showed no increased risk or decreased risk, whereas studies sponsored by anti-contraceptive groups seemed to show the opposite.

One link that was particularly informative was the Oral Contraceptives and Cancer Risk page at the National Cancer Institute. Essentially, they maintain that there is a statistically significant correlation between higher rates of breast cancer and long term oral contraceptive use (which I didn't know, so I'm glad you had me looking for references.) The correlation is clear enough that a causal relationship appears to be accepted by most researchers in the field, but there is more recent data that disputes this (the article discusses it).

On the other side, there is a significant decrease in the risk of ovarian cancer, for reasons unknown. Again, causality seems apparent, as the data remains consistent when varying other factors that might have been key, such as race, rate of birth, etc. The pill also reduces the risk of endometrial cancers to a significant degree.

There are a number of other cancers that are positively correlated with OC use. These include cervical cancer and certain types of liver tumors. However, the increase is either not significant enough statistically to warrant worry, or is widely believed to be non-causal: for example, due to the higher likelyhood of women on OCs having non-barrier-method sex (without condoms, etc), there is a higher rate of HPV infection among women that are on the pill. HPV is a leading cause of cervical cancer, so it is unclear whether increased cervical cancer is caused by the pill directly, or simply as a side effect of higher HPV infection rates.

Now, ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer are nothing to laugh about, and the fact that the pill reduces these is a very good thing (and it reduces them very significantly, the numbers are in the referenced link). However, breast cancer is the most common and dangerous cancer for women, so an increased rate of breast cancer is nothing to write off, either. As the article points out, though, frequent screening (breast exams, mammograms, and the like) can catch most breast cancers early and should be practiced by all women regardless (especially as they get older).

It is my opinion (of course I may be biased here) that the pill has, more than anything else, been a force of liberation for women everywhere. The pill has allowed women to have sex like men; this (while frightening if you want to preserve the status quo) has had the net effect of reducing objectification of women, increasing objectification of men, and generally promoting equality of the sexes. It's beneficial effects with regard to women's menstrual problems can't be ignored, either.

Still, the breast cancer link is interesting. Worth pointing out, certainly, to anyone thinking about the pill. Read the link, though, it's interesting (and seems unbiased).

At last, the Big Rock Candy Mountain has been found!

Now, how do they find a boxcar headed that way?

India does account for ~1/3 of the global tuberculosis cases. [pdf] . However, the prevention scheme in India has been largely a success.

Oh, Alexander Fleming? where art thou now?

Also, on a personal note, I tested positive for the Mantoux TB skin test as part of my college health requirements in the US because I grew up in an Eastern European country where I had a TB vaccine administered as a child. As the referenced article states:

Today is the most fortuitous time ever realized to develop effective TB vaccines.

You beat me to it.

For those who don't know what we're talking about, here's some hard medical facts. They even have a picture of it, including the baby, for whatever reason.

(Those who might be offended by babies, their excretia, or their body parts should avoid clicking the link.)

True, the earliest studies finding beneficial effects of alcohol consumption did note those effects in drinkers of (predominantly red) wine. This link was drawn due to the so-called "French Paradox", where despite regular consumption of foods associated with cardiovascular problems the French people had a low incidence of heart disease.

Hypothesizing that antioxidants in red wine might provide some cardioprotective effect, researchers indeed found a link between red wine consumption and reduced risk of heart disease. However, since virtually all consumers of alcohol in France are exposed to at least some red wine as part of that alcohol consumption, it wasn't possible to separate out the effects of different types of alcohol.

More recent large-scale, prospective studies have broken down their results by type. Both the Rotterdam study of dementia and the PRIME study of coronary heart disease found no statistically significant difference between the effects of beer, wine, and spirits. (The Rotterdam study also broke out fortified wines--ports and sherries--as an additional separate category, also with no significant difference.)

To my knowledge, nobody has done any sort of large-scale, controlled human study of the effects of the consumption of pure ethanol. This is because nobody drinks straight ethanol, so it's hard to get a good study group. I would argue that the 'spirits' category in the above studies might come close.

I quite agree that in large doses alcohol is an acute poision, and that drinking to excess can lead to chronic liver problems, coronary illness, and neurological disoders. On the other hand, I suspect that moderate consumption of ethanol is harmless and probably beneficial for most people since the studies cited above (among others, PubMed is your friend) found benefits across all types of beverages. A little cod liver oil can eliminate vitamin deficiencies and provide beneficial fatty acids. An excess of cod liver oil can severely harm you through vitamin A or D poisoning. The dose makes the poison, as they say.

True, the earliest studies finding beneficial effects of alcohol consumption did note those effects in drinkers of (predominantly red) wine. This link was drawn due to the so-called "French Paradox", where despite regular consumption of foods associated with cardiovascular problems the French people had a low incidence of heart disease.

Hypothesizing that antioxidants in red wine might provide some cardioprotective effect, researchers indeed found a link between red wine consumption and reduced risk of heart disease. However, since virtually all consumers of alcohol in France are exposed to at least some red wine as part of that alcohol consumption, it wasn't possible to separate out the effects of different types of alcohol.

More recent large-scale, prospective studies have broken down their results by type. Both the Rotterdam study of dementia and the PRIME study of coronary heart disease found no statistically significant difference between the effects of beer, wine, and spirits. (The Rotterdam study also broke out fortified wines--ports and sherries--as an additional separate category, also with no significant difference.)

To my knowledge, nobody has done any sort of large-scale, controlled human study of the effects of the consumption of pure ethanol. This is because nobody drinks straight ethanol, so it's hard to get a good study group. I would argue that the 'spirits' category in the above studies might come close.

I quite agree that in large doses alcohol is an acute poision, and that drinking to excess can lead to chronic liver problems, coronary illness, and neurological disoders. On the other hand, I suspect that moderate consumption of ethanol is harmless and probably beneficial for most people since the studies cited above (among others, PubMed is your friend) found benefits across all types of beverages. A little cod liver oil can eliminate vitamin deficiencies and provide beneficial fatty acids. An excess of cod liver oil can severely harm you through vitamin A or D poisoning. The dose makes the poison, as they say.

The Rotterdam prospective study of 5395 individuals (6 year study, 99.7% participant followup) found that incidence of dementia was significantly reduced in moderate drinkers, even after controlling for "age, sex, systolic blood pressure, education, smoking, and body-mass index". There was "no evidence that the relation between alcohol and dementia varied by type of alcoholic beverage."

Link is to the abstract on PubMed, the original citation is Ruitenberg A et al. "Alcohol consumption and risk of dementia: the Rotterdam Study." Lancet 359(9303):281-6 (2002). The full text is here.

This article should be taken with a grain of salt. First of all, it's about as minor a medical discovery as you could find, in terms of potential impact of the study, where it was published, etc. (makes me wonder if the submitter was an author). There was a massive article on a similar topic in the New England Journal of Medicine last year, which actually studied actual humans and their actual outcomes (link here) that didn't make it onto slashdot, and proved essentially the same thing. This is just talking about a lab proof about antioxidants, which are currently only one theory as to why alcohol is good for you. In other words, this is nice to know, but doesn't prove anything we didn't already know.

I'm a doc but don't hold me to any details. :)

I remember the story differently... I thought it was transplanted organs, but looking through the journals it looks like we are both right. Hmmm...

Here is some quotes I can find:
"Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease is one of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) that has been transmitted between humans and chimpanzees by electroencephalogram electrodes, previously 'sterilized' using ethanol and formaldehyde." -- J Hosp Infect. 2004 Sep;58(1):78-80

It can be spread through blood transfusions...

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease following corneal transplantation Same article

Davak

I'm a Mormon, but that still doesn't answer my question. Does he read a lot? Has he studied jeopardy for years and years preparing? Or has he just worked hard to get a good education and memorize lots of facts not really important to every day life? Scientifically Mormons have just been shown to have less cancer and better health, and Mormon men generally do have more education than non-Mormon men.

ado has been the maintainer of the time zone data base ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ for years, almost certainly largely a thankless task. How else would we know what time it is? He also contributed to grep. He is also a genuinely good and modest person.

Should you wish to publicly comment, here is a cached/Coralized link to the article on the NIH site to save your taxpayer bandwidth:

http://grants1.nih.gov.nyud.net:8090/grants/guide/ notice-files/NOT-OD-04-064.html

For those who fear cached nastiness, here's the original link:

http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/N OT-OD-04-064.html

You are quite naive, Sir. There is a finite amount of reserch facilities and personell available, not to mention top scientific talent. If you put them to work on viagras of the world, very few remain to do anything else.

Speaking as research pharmacologist who sits on the admissions committee of an academic Pharmacology Dept., this is nonsense. We are nowhere close to depleting the worldwide reserves of talented people interested in doing biomedical research. If you fund it, they will come.

You mean in marketing? Yes, Pfizer does research but its research budget is but a fraction of its marketing budget. Just like most drug companies. The point is that Pfizer and the rest of them are ill equipped and have too many conflicts of interest to be allowed to be in charge of such critical thing like medical research.

Think about this for a moment. Do you really imagine that companies invest in marketing to throw money away? Marketing makes money, by increasing sales. That's why they do it. More sales means more money to invest in research.

It is not frivolous for what it cures. It is frivolous for the amount of resources (from Pfizer and all the competitors in mad rush to replicate something like it) that it consumes when compared to the severity of the ills that it addresses. It is an example of profit motive being superior to anything else.

No, it is an example of the profit motive leading people to serve the public interest in spite of themselves. Because the fundamental vascular and biochemical mechanisms that make Viagra work turn out to be critical for understanding things like heart disease and stroke .