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I don't care what the laws of non-U.S. countries are. It's not our job to enforce the laws of other countries

Actually, in some cases US law requires the enforcement for foreign laws (even if those laws are ridiculous).

The Lacey act governs some imports into the USA, and prohibits a number of things. It is also illegal under the Lacey act to import things into the USA in violation of any foreign law.

An importer is obligated to not only know & comply with US laws, but all foreign laws that apply.

And yes, the US has prosecuted people for exactly that.

https://openscholarship.wustl....

https://georgetownlawjournal.o...

I thought it was Washington University which, of course, is in Missouri.

My $0.02:
Probability Theory by E.T. Jaynes If you want to understand AI you need to read this (several times).
The Elements of Statistical Learning Hastie, Trevor, Tibshirani, Robert, Friedman, Jerome
Elements of Information Theory by Thomas M. Cover, Joy A. Thomas
Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow and Yoshua Begino

How can an artificial sweetener that is not absorbed by the body, like sucralose, have any physical effect, unless the brain hates being tricked and is getting even.

Nailed it. From Wash U med school:

The elevated insulin response could be a good thing, she pointed out, because it shows the person is able to make enough insulin to deal with spiking glucose levels. But it also might be bad because when people routinely secrete more insulin, they can become resistant to its effects, a path that leads to type 2 diabetes.

Basically, the part of your digestive tract that identifies incoming sugar and triggers an insulin release can't tell the difference between sugar and sweeteners. That's not a shocker: if our taste buds can be tricked, it's not crazy to imagine that our sugar-detecting circuits are also fallible. When your body is continually flooded with elevated insulin, it becomes resistant to it. Another term for insulin resistance is type 2 (adult onset) diabetes.

Escaping the moon's gravity is the easy part. The moon is in a really high orbit. To get something from the moon to the Earth, you need to either lose enough of your angular momentum to fall

It turns out, however, the higher an orbit is, the easier it is to kill your angular momentum and drop. So the fact that the moon is in a "really high" orbit helps here. You need about 1 km/sec to kill the moon's orbital velocity, actually less than the 2.38 km/sec escape velocity to throw the rock off the surface.

But delta-Vs don't add; energies add. Once your mass driver has gotten your rock to 2.38 km/sec, it only takes another 0.2 km/sec to kill the orbital velocity and make it drop. (Less, if you want to take an indirect trajectory via the "fuzzy boundary", but those take a lot more time).

...and, yes, actually I am a rocket scientist.

...

TL;DR: If it were easy for things from the moon to fall to Earth, the moon would have fallen down already.

In fact, rocks splashed off of the moon actually do hit the earth, of course: http://meteorites.wustl.edu/lu...

Interestingly, when overlaid with other open imagery, such as cloud coverage, the locations of the webcams can be determined & when stitched with all the pictures and video people post from phones, some of that tracking/locating is being done. I had the opportunity to discuss it in depth with Dr Pless a few years back when we were both presenting at a conference. Cool stuff he's got going on. http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~pless...

I don't have a link for the specific article, but Washington University reported that they would have 8 portable cell towers in operation to supplement the usual service ( https://debate.wustl.edu/ ). That compares to the 1992 debate, when they had the phone company install 3500 temporary phone lines and converted athletic building showers into film developing cubicles [1]

sPh

fn1: still the 1904 Olympics gym and locker room at that time with heavy-duty tile everwhere

I'm not anti-gmo

Bullshit.

but to suggest that putting Salmon genes in Tomato plants is the same as just selecting between different offspring is incorrect.

This is exactly why I despise the anti-GMO movement. You and the rest of them keep making up and/or spreading bullshit lies because you have this foolish belief that natural is better and/or you have competing economic interests.

First of all, no GMO food that ever makes it to your plate ever has genes from one organism transplanted to another. The "frankenfood" is just another lie that keeps on getting repeated. But it's just that, a lie, usually spread maliciously by people who have an axe to grind against Monsanto, (sometimes they work for the snake oil organic industry who is struggling to compete with inexpensive GMO food) even though Monsanto isn't the only company that produces GMO plants. GMO foods are the result of a study called proteomics, and usually consist of fewer than 200 nucleotides (one pair of AT or GC is a nucleotide) which isn't anywhere near enough to create a full blown gene, let alone being transplanted from another organism.

Second of all, this actually happens in nature all the fucking time. In fact human DNA carries the placenta of some other animal. It permanently ended up in our genome via viral infection. It's a part of one of three full virus genomes embedded into our genome. We have some 100,000 other partial virus genomes embedded into our DNA.

Third of all, no person and no animal has ever gotten sick from GMO food. Ever. Not once. You know what though? Thousands have died and continue to die because they consumed organic food. That is, the organic farming process that produced the food that they consumed was the sole cause of their death. Tens of thousands more have gotten sick from organic food as well.

Sources: (and lots of them)

http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~a...
http://www.cgfi.org/2002/06/th...
http://www.geneticliteracyproj...
http://www.realclearscience.co...
http://www.americanthinker.com...
http://www.science20.com/chall...
http://www.washingtontimes.com...

You know what though? Your stupid little anti-GMO movement doesn't make single a peep about the evils of organic food. Why the fuck do they demand warning labels for GMO food, but they never make any demands for warning labels for organic food?

Explain that one. Why the fuck do we need warning labels for GMO food, but not organic food, when organic food is the only farming process proven to actually kill people?

It was one of the labs we did in this course, so I've seen it first hand: http://classes.engineering.wus...

I like how the anti-GMO crowd comes out and speaks about potential damages, but then ignores the real damages (and deaths) caused by organic food:

http://www.cgfi.org/2002/06/th...
http://www.realclearscience.co...
http://www.americanthinker.com...
http://www.science20.com/chall...
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~a...

We've already had countless cases of people dying and getting sick from organic, and not a single case of anybody dying or getting sick from GMO, in spite of GMO already being consumed in bigger numbers than organic. Meanwhile we're supposed to listen to the food religion about the dangers of GMO.

• Research on In-Class Use of Laptops and Other Devices: Effects on Students' Learning and Attention
• Classroom Laptop Users Distract Others As Well As Themselves
• You’ll Never Learn! Students can’t resist multitasking, and it’s impairing their memory.

My wife is a teacher and every couple of years some numbskulled administrator comes up with another brainstorm that boils down to thinking that throwing some more computers into the mix will fix everything. Of course computers are going to be part of these kids' world, so they need to learn about them, but figuring that kids learn better just because a computer is in front of them is a wrong-headed notion that's not borne out by the research.

Water vapor also has a mean atmospheric residence time of 2 to 20 days. You do something to completely throw water vapor levels off balance, it'll be back to where it was a few weeks later. It can only function as a feedback mechanism; water vapor is limited to fluctuating around a mean. What that mean is depends on the other driving factors in the environment. These are known as forcing. For something to act as forcing, it has to have far longer residence times.

(Note that while on human timescales carbon dioxide is forcing, on geological timescales it's mere feedback. A couple hundred years is nothing compared to, say, Milankovitch cycles)

Truthfully if you want a job in STEM, you NEED to go back and get a STEM degree. There are too many people already out there with degrees in the field that you have no hope unless you get some big favors by some very important people.

Basically, you have no hope anyway-- even with the degree. Don't become a scientist!

Translation:

It's too much for me to actually research this issue, so I will make some shit up about how the prior poster is clearly batshit for pointing out that there are whole classifications of asteroid that are nearly completely pure metal, and that the composition of these objects ranges from 15% iron-nickel alloy to near 100% iron-nickel alloy.

Instead I will focus on how the OP stated that there are asteroids made of solid cold, and focus on how battshit that is! Nevermind that even really old USGS circulars cite the average gold content of meteorites between .0003 PPM and 8.74PPM, with the average gold concentration of earth's crust being between .001 PPM and .006 PPM , which indicates that careful candidate screening would produce far richer old ores than can be obtained here on earth! That's not important! HE'S A SPACE NUTTER!

He's such a nutter! Hoo boy! See everybody, See me shout it from the rooftop? He's a NUTTER, A NUTTER!

I said it, and said it again, that makes it true! TRUE I SAID! TRUE!

Oh gawd, it's wierd again! The KING space nutter! AND HE'S BRINGING SCIENCE IN ON THIS! OMG! SUPER SPACE NUTTER! SPAAAACE NUUTTTER! (Did I get enough vapid spittle in that?)

Seriously AC- YOU are the one who sounds like the true believer. No amount of plausibility study will ever dislodge your diehard faith that humans will never get off this rock, and because of your faith, you want to sabotage others that lack your convictions, all so you can (Maybe, sorta) get something that you want that is at best equally improbable (A happy future leisure-society utopia, from your own admission) and at worst delusionally impossible (Since you hand-wave away all the consequences of your proposal as being solvable by mystery science, even when real scientists outright say that this is not possible, and that expecting science and technology to just whisk it away is not being realistic, and then have the gall to claim being a realist.)

So go ahead, demonize me some more. Hurl more poorly structured ad hominems my way. Repeating a lie a thousand times does not make it true-- Maybe if you keep huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, and laughing like a hyena on nitrous oxide, you will eventually have a cerebreal embolism and spare us all the misery of your continued postings.

1) PDF version http://devbio.wustl.edu/InfoSo...
2) Commentary, 2004: http://www.jbc.org/content/280...
3) Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

"The Lowry protein assay is a biochemical assay for determining the total level of protein in a solution. The total protein concentration is exhibited by a color change of the sample solution in proportion to protein concentration, which can then be measured using colorimetric techniques. It is named for the biochemist Oliver H. Lowry who developed the reagent in the 1940s. His 1951 paper describing the technique is the most-highly cited paper ever in the scientific literature, cited over 200,000 times."

The method combines the reactions of copper ions with the peptide bonds under alkaline conditions (the Biuret test) with the oxidation of aromatic protein residues. The Lowry method is best used with protein concentrations of 0.01–1.0 mg/mL and is based on the reaction of Cu+, produced by the oxidation of peptide bonds, with Folin–Ciocalteu reagent (a mixture of phosphotungstic acid and phosphomolybdic acid in the Folin–Ciocalteu reaction). The reaction mechanism is not well understood, but involves reduction of the Folin–Ciocalteu reagent and oxidation of aromatic residues (mainly tryptophan, also tyrosine). Experiments have shown that cysteine is also reactive to the reagent. Therefore, cysteine residues in protein probably also contribute to the absorbance seen in the Lowry Assay. [3] The concentration of the reduced Folin reagent is measured by absorbance at 750 nm.[4] As a result, the total concentration of protein in the sample can be deduced from the concentration of Trp and Tyr residues that reduce the Folin–Ciocalteu reagent.

The method was first proposed by Lowry in 1951. The Bicinchoninic acid assay and the Hartree–Lowry assay are subsequent modifications of the original Lowry procedure.

I am a cognitive scientist (Ph.D.) who studies the workings of human memory. The number one thing you can do improve your learning is to QUIZ YOURSELF.

Every time you retrieve some information from memory, you STRENGTHEN that information in your memory, making it easier to retrieve again in the future. So when you study new information, DON'T just re-read it multiple times. Read it, then quiz yourself (try to remember the info on your own), wait a while, quiz yourself some more, quiz yourself again later, etc.

Key terms: "testing effect" or "retrieval practice". For example, here's just one peer-reviewed psychology publication that summarizes relevant scientific research, and some implications for education: Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J.D. (2006). The power of testing memory: Basic research and implications for educational practice. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 181-210. [PDF]

Well there is this PDF from 1999:
http://www.nslc.wustl.edu/courses/Bio3411/woolsey/Archives/2009/Lecture11/Einstein%20Lancet%20'99.pdf

was last year given a visa to teach at the university of Saint Louis.

He is still listed as faculty at Washington University in St. Louis http://german.wustl.edu/people/trojanow_ilja

FWIW, That institution is one of the top research university's internationally (Ivy-league). It's not to be confused with the University of Missouri, St. Louis (a state school), or Saint Louis University (a Jesuit school). All three are, however, very fine institutions.

Digging through the Supreme Court Database, this happened exactly once before (Scalia, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Ginsberg all agreeing in dissent). It happened in Williams v. Illinois, which was interestingly also a DNA testing case. The question at the time was "Whether a state rule of evidence allowing an expert witness to testify about the results of DNA testing performed by non-testifying analysts, where the defendant has no opportunity to confront the actual analysts, violates the Confrontation Clause." The majority held that it did not violate the confrontation clause, with these four justices in dissent.

You could try playing with a visual network simulator, which should make things easier to understand (and experiment with). This page seems have a nice overview and some screenshots to get you started. Have fun!

Your graph sucks. Hard.

For one, that graph has no scale on the vertical axis. That alone makes it completely worthless. For two, that's delta-T, not absolute temperature. Why not compare delta-T to delta-CO2? For three, those curves are far too smooth. As you can see in the above chart, actual data is pretty damn noisy.

Honestly, you're right that there are long-term trends that we can't do shit about. We really don't give a shit about the climate over a period of hundreds of millions of years. The Earth will adjust, humanity and co. will literally evolve over those time scales. It's the current rate of change that has everyone worried, because CO2 has spiked on a scale normally associated with the larger volcanic eruptions the planet has seen. These volcanic events have also been associated with mass extinction events with a high degree of correlation.[pdf, highly interesting]

Troll with data next time. Or at least a graph that has both axes labeled.

A meteor this big probably didn't vaporize: if you live in the area you should be on the lookout for pieces on the ground.

I hesitate to say this, because it's a large area with a lot of ordinary rocks lying around, so there's going to be a huge number of not-actually-a-meteorite finds. This site http://meteorites.wustl.edu/what_to_do.htm gives the basics on figuring out if you've found a meteorite or not.

This meteor appears to be bigger than the one that came down over Chicago in 2003: quite a few large pieces were found then. But it's much easier to find meteorites in urban areas.

This research has been going on since at least 2003.

(Note: don't bother clicking the URL at the bottom of the page -- it's currently 403. I did send the webmaster an email about it.)

So the submission links to a blog? And no images! Oh, my.

Here is a link to a research paper -- with images! Multiscale photoacoustic microscopy and computed tomography

This research has been going on since at least 2003.

(Note: don't bother clicking the URL at the bottom of the page -- it's currently 403. I did send the webmaster an email about it.)

So the submission links to a blog? And no images! Oh, my.

Here is a link to a research paper -- with images! Multiscale photoacoustic microscopy and computed tomography

Take the article with a grain of salt, as you would his others.

Don't Become a Scientist. It isn't worth it.

If I recall correctly (I really should start keeping an orderly list of sources) that has been investigated. When they develop GE lines, they obviously want to breed the trait into the best hybrid lines, so it can be hard to separate that if you're looking at the whole of agriculture (as opposed to comparing a GE and isogenic non-GE line in a controlled study). In developed countries, this is actually rather small (though still present and meaningful), only something like 4%. Of course, that is because we spray pesticides in developed countries, so making something resistant to those insects obviously isn't going to increase the yield by much. Of course, raising yield in that case really wasn't even the point. It is pretty nice to avoid having to spray so much. In developing countries the story is different. There they aren't spraying as much because they can't afford as much. The yield gains there are quite sizable.

Also, the crops are made to be tolerant of herbicides, not pesticides. The main one, glyphosate, is no longer patented. The patent expired a while ago. Anyone can produce it now. It isn't a coincidence that both those crops and that herbicide were developed by the same company, no, but I don't see anything exceptionally wrong with the company doing that. No one was locked in, since the herbicide doesn't persist in the soil very long it could still be used with a rotation of non-GE crops, meaning the farmers were free to change seed vendors after a season if the so choose. Its just that doing so would mean they would have to go back to harder, more costly (both to them and the environment) weed control methods, so the herbicide tolerant varieties remain popular. If a company sells a superior producing that the product is often used.

I thought the claimed reduction in use of pesticides with GM crops was widely questioned

Well, it is widely questioned, just not by anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. There's plenty of info on the subject, and strangely the only ones disputing that are either some organic woo-mongering organization or outright quacks, and usually their evidence is pretty flimsy. They claim that GE crops, with an anti-insect protein, require higher pesticide usage? Even if the GE protein was totally ineffective (which is false) how the heck does the addition of that extra protein make the crops need more pesticides? That doesn't even make sense. Well, not scientifically, but if you think genetic engineering is some magical black box with crazy Hollywood effects, then it must be perfectly rational. GE crops have actually reduced pesticides so much in some places that non-target insects (that is to say, non-lepidopterans, as only they are effected by the currently used pest resistance trait) that were once controlled by broad-spectrum pesticides have for the first time become pests. The claim that GE crops increase pesticide use, sorry, absolute bullshit.

Now, two points of clarity, first, they have promoted an increase in use of certain herbicides. The Round-Up Ready ones, obviously, go hand in hand with an increase in Round-Up, and Liberty Link with Liberty. This sounds like a pretty good argument against them, until you consider that they do this at the benefit of replacing other, more environmentally harmful herbicides (as well as promoting no-till practices). Yes, spraying herbicides is bad, but this isn't a case of choice 1 vs the ideal, it is realistic choice 1 vs realistic choice 2, and for better or worse, the herbicide resistant ones, for all the ill will they get, come out on top. The other caveat is that, yes, some insects have developed resistance to the insect resistant GE trait. Ironically, anti-GE groups are quick to point this out, but (since they know bugger all about population genetics) don't understand that this is evidence that the GE trait is working. You don't create population shifts without selection pressure, and you don't get selection pressure by not working. If this resistance becomes widespread, the GE plants still will not need more pesticides, but they will lose the advantages they provide, which would be bad. It should be noted that this is not the fault of the plants themselves, rather, management practices, and over-reliance on a single trait, and also, that such instances are not unique to GE crops. Selection pressure is selection pressure and evolution doesn't care where it came from. Problems of resistance have happened before, and will happen again, GE or not.

The notion that people are against GE crops for patent reasons is a good one, but considering how how many plants are patented that go unprotested, it cannot be entirely true, though I'm sure it plays a role for those who know bugger all about plant breeding (which accurately describes most people who oppose GE crops). Lots of plants are under patent, and I don't see anyone complaining about them. when the Honeycrisp apple or Flavor Grenade Pluot came out, no one cared that they were patented (Honeycrisp's has since expired btw, and the royalties the breeders received from it went on to create my personal favorite apple variety, Snow Sweet, which is also patented). When the USDA announced the HoneySweet plum, or when Okanagan Specialty Fruits announced the Arctic apple, people did, and when they're released, you can bet there'll be backlash. Why, when they were pretty much the same things, and both under patent (though the HoneySweet might be free to prop

Basic, and worth reading is Raj Jain's 1992 paper.

Yes they are, because higher yield is a myth

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong I could dig up more from my bookmarks, but it's late here and you get the point. You might be thinking of the study titled 'Failure to Yield' a study claiming that GMOs actually had lesser yield (although it was based on data showing an increase). Actually, yield gains in developed countries are relatively low, only like 3-5%. But that is because pesticides already pushed yields to the limit. If you replace pesticides with resistant GMOs, it isn't that much difference (but make no mistake there still is a difference). Where Bt GMOs really shine is in developing countries where they might not always have access to pesticides. There, the difference can be dramatic. And of course in the case of viral resistant GMOs or fungal resistant GMOs they can make the difference between an industry continuing to exist or disappearing (without GMOs there would be no Hawaiian papaya industry and I've read some very promising information about GMOs with anti-fungal proteins).

the plants are killing insects indiscriminately (see honeybees)

The cry proteins used in the Bt GMOs are actually very specific, much more so than the pesticides they replaced. Do you have any evidence (besides some anti-GMO nutter's rantings) that Bt plants are in any way responsible for CCD, which need I remind you occures even in countries where GM crops are banned?

Also, familiarize yourself with terminator gene

I've done genetic engineering before, so I'm already pretty familiar with that thanks. Terminator technology was developed to prevent unwanted gene transfer. You know, that thing the anti-GMO groups are always complaining about. ISo, a safeguard to prevent that would make them happy, right? Ha! These people are harder to please than anti-vaxxers. They just put a nasty spin on it and freaked out even more! In other words, damned if you do and damned if you don't.I know what you (the agricultural layman) must be thinking: how horrible to keep farmers from saving seed. But you miss something very important: no one really does that anyway (besides those growing heirloom crops, the smae people the terminator gene would protect). Back in the early 1900's pretty much every farmer realized that if you use hybrids, superior crops but whose seeds do not possess genetic uniformity (making them unsuitable for seed saving), you could get higher yields. The gain was so much that it justified the cost of buying new seed every year. So, ever since then, farmers bought their seed from seed companies. Almost a hundred years later, GMOs get the blame. Makes no sense, but that's the anti-GMO movement for you. As an aside, some people are working on GMOs with apomixis traits, meaning the seeds are basically clones and as such the hybrid vigor would be preserved thus eliminating the need for seed vendors. But anyway, the terminator trait, despite the ill will directed toward it, is more misunderstood than dangerous. Course you could say the same thing of every other GM crop.

Seems that I spoke a bit too soon, the aggregate bandwidth is 5-70 Mbps according to this page. There are probably still use cases where it is preferrable to other types of connections.

Not quite the same thing, but closer: http://meteorites.wustl.edu/abstracts/lpsc42/a_l11j02.pdf

That would mean only the established big players can compete/produce.

Not even close. Big established players only can compeat today. It won't take long for a new, smaller, player to be slapped with a lawsuit from those established big players today. Without an army of lawyers it's difficult if not impossible to wade through the patent mine field, and what small business can afford such an army of attorneys?

Because if I invent something with a 10M budget and start producing it, they easily can take my invention and produce it cheaper

Again not quite. As the inventor you have first mover advantage. Big players can take years to turn around and produce something. Big players don't turn on a dime. And if you haven't made improvements in your product by the tyme your competition releases it's own compeating product then you're not progressing.

What would be the point then for me to invent anything?

If the above do not work for you then there's these things called trade secrets. Fabrication businesses already exist that will build or manufacture other businesses products on contract. The Taiwanese business Foxconn builds computers and other electronics for others, Apple contracted with Foxconn to make iPads, iPhones, and iPods. Trade secrets, and contracts, prevent Foxconn from making these and selling them as their own products. I as an inventor could go to Foxconn or another fabricator, have them sign an NDA or Non-disclosure Agreement, and ask them if they can manufacture my product. Then if Foxconn started to sell my invention as their own product I have good grounds to sue and believe I can win.

Now I may not have enough money to file a lawsuit myself but I could find an investor would does have deep pockets. Or better yet again with signed NDAs I can show my invention to angel investors or business incubators. With their assistance I can start manufacturing my product myself.

And all that ignores why patents are granted, yes patents are granted and not a right. According to the Constitution of the USA patents are meant "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". However economic studies have shown patents impede progress. Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation. Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy.

Falcon

http://raines.wustl.edu/~anthro/articles/jensen2005intellectual.pdf

Software doesn't have twice the protection as other things.

My argument may be incorrect but so is yours. Patents are not needed. Many Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy. If you disagree with this, argue with economic studies or facts not your opinion.

Way to move the goalposts there. Your previous post was "software is protected by copyright, and therefore doesn't need patent protection." Now, having conceded that that's clearly incorrect, you're now insisting that I should debate economics and that by failing to do so, I'm just arguing my opinion?
Opinion? Excuse me, but we were talking about scope of coverage of different laws. If you want to change the topic to a different area, don't be a dick about it.

Software doesn't have twice the protection as other things.

My argument may be incorrect but so is yours. Patents are not needed. Many Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy. If you disagree with this, argue with economic studies or facts not your opinion.

Falcon

is "would this happen without patents".

I can agree on that. And science studies have shown that progress would "happen" without patents; Promoting Intellectual Discovery: Patents Versus Markets.

Drugs simply won't happen without patents

But, besides the above science link, I totally disagree with this. There are alternatives to pharmaceutical patents. Governments fund drug reseach too. The US's National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars developing and testing Taxol, a drug used to treat breast and other cancers. The NCI then sold all the exclusive rights to the use of the research for FDA approval to Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). How much did BMS pay? A fraction of NCI's costs. Add how much money did BMS make? In 2000, BMS bought the rights in 1988-9, BMS made almost $1 Billion. Besides that, answering the question Do drug companies do more marketing or research? is answered as thus: Drug industry spends nearly twice as much on marketing than on research and development. Beyond that, Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy. Thomas Jefferson once said "inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

Falcon

I also give three cheers for Jaynes... I have the habit of giving books to my friends if I think they'd be interesting or useful, and I've dropped a several hundred dollars on re-buying Jaynes. There used to be a 'pre-print' version of the book available, but that source now seems to be down to a few chapters due to copyright issues, although his papers are still there.

With regard to the human brain however, it is (very) unlikely that Bayes' rule is actually computed in any sense of the word. Bayes requires at least one neuron with a global scope (ie. a grandmother cell) to compute the posterior, which is biologically implausible.

In 1992, Jain explained why more speed and more memory won't ease the need of better congestion control mechanisms for TCP. The problem becomes "who has the larger pipes" and the so called buffer bloating will start moving towards the guys with the smaller pipes (reason why, the author now claims it's highly noticeable on the customer side, where the bandwidth is limited by their subscription to the ISP)

Perhaps, the wikipedia article about Random Early Detection, may help to understand the issue. RED (proposed by Floyd and Jacobson, the latter cited in the article posted) was proposed in 1983 to overcome this issue, along with Explicit Congestion Notification (a mechanism to mark packets instead of dropping them). ECN was implemented only until Windows Vista (and wasn't enabled by default), which made complicated to actually take advantage of such schemes.

Many mechanisms have been proposed (Even I'm proposing one), yet, the Internet Service providers have been throwing more hardware and the manufacturers have been working on increased speeds and memory rather than focus on the problem of TCP's congestion control mechanisms (which was set as a precedent problem in 1992 by Jain's paper: Myths about congestion in high speed networks), unluckily, well, nobody enables their WRED (Cisco's proprietary mechanism) or implement any other algorithm. And so, almost 30 years later, people is realizing that this may be an issue.

If the opponents of software patentability had a strong case that software patents really do a lot of harm and cause a lot of economic suffering (companies going out of business, having to lay off large numbers of people etc.), politicians would certainly act.

Like the economists who have studied the economics of patents and concluded they do not help?

Falcon

nor have I looked at the patents in question, and for the most part do not agree with software patents (software should only be protected by copyright, imo), but I do find hardware patents to be valid. If some one invents a true new technology, and patents it, he is in the right to sue anyone that attempts to profit on their invention without permissions.

BS! Neither hardware nor software patents should be granted. All they do is hold back progress. Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy. Let’s just shut down all progress using copyright and patent. Actually I do support copyrights, but only for 5 to 7 years max. None of this "Life plus 50 year" BS!

Falcon

http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/did/20thcent/index.htm

Although from the video it does look like shes smiling/talking to the device?

It appears to me after doing a 5 minute google search, that this appears to be a French Electric "Camera" as seen in the middle of this page.

Someone figured out how to make the phone actually work with an internal antenna.

Except portable radios have had internal antennas since the 1970s and least and they worked. Except Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy. Study: Free Markets Superior to Patent Monopolies.

Falcon

I must admit it is frustrating to see this kind of potential treatment stagger through clinical trials when people like me have little to nothing to lose. I have 3 young children so I actually have reason to try and prolong the inevitable.

Read the program description again. This device is FDA-approved. If it would benefit your condition, and you could afford it, you could go to WUSL for treatment. http://plexus.wustl.edu/surgery/neuro/website.nsf/WV/0800D693FDE25183862577A60063101C?OpenDocument

This would be appropriate for a tumor that can't be removed by any other method, and that can be removed by this device.

this text is better in that it explains that first, a hole is drilled in the scull, then MRI is used to image the brain and these images help to insert a probe that's similar to a pencil in shape into the tumor through the brain, so it looks like this will go through other brain tissue first, and then this device discharges what basically amounts to heat and cooks the tumor.

The same is already done in the clinic using an RF probe to induce localized heating. Gamma knives (see the plethora of other comments) do the same by concentrated radiation damage, although the MRI is done beforehand (and a CT ... I once asked a neurosurgeon I work with why use both, and he replied that neither method is as accurate as one might hope, so they combine techniques to reduce measurement errors).

It is a better article, mostly because it doesn't have the gushing enthusiasm of the Endgaget story (Technology nyphomaniac: Never met a technology I didn't immediately fall in love with.)

I used to write about medical lasers for a few years, and I learned one important lesson:

Don't believe it until they have a randomized, controlled trial that shows patients who get the laser treatment actually do better than the patients who don't. (It doesn't do any good to remove a tumor if the tumor comes back right away.) A lot of laser treatments didn't look too good after the controlled trials.

(It is true that there are some procedures that are so rare that they can't do a randomized controlled trial.)

This system looks like it might be useful in certain not-too-common situations where you can't reach the tumor with anything else. It's like, when you're working on a car, having an offset screwdriver that can reach a blind screw that's hard to reach any other way. It's FDA approved for brain surgery so it passed some kind of review.

There are other ways of doing it. Notice that WUSL also offers a gamma knife http://plexus.wustl.edu/surgery/neuro/website.nsf/WV/23077ADDD22341B28625729F00713CFC which focuses 201 radiation sources on a small spherical target. Brain surgeons are clever.

A lot of times, a $50 cautery can do just as good a job as a $100,000 laser.

This isn't rocket science.

The fundamental problem is, sadly, those cancers they mentioned are inevitably fatal, within 6 months to a few years. The main purpose of surgery is to make your last few years more comfortable, like when they remove a tumor that's near the optic nerve threatening to make you blind. There are some benign brain tumors that can be cured, though. "Benign" is a relative term when something's growing in your brain. You want to get it out.

this text is better in that it explains that first, a hole is drilled in the scull, then MRI is used to image the brain and these images help to insert a probe that's similar to a pencil in shape into the tumor through the brain, so it looks like this will go through other brain tissue first, and then this device discharges what basically amounts to heat and cooks the tumor.

The entire point of IP is to encourage social and cultural development through the protection of initial investment. The fashion industry demonstrates what happens when IP is weakened or non-existant - a disincentive to create and develop and a thriving copy-culture.

Now that's an interesting point. Let me ask you, what's the downside in software development? A good software developer should copy as much as possible — yes, legally, from good sources, etc. The whole point to code reuse is that one guy does it right and everyone can use that "best" solution instead of reinventing a slightly less round wheel.

I believe that a good programmer should feel a disincentive to create. That's something which took me years to learn as a young programmer. I've lost track of the number of times I wrote quick-n-dirty linked lists because that was less work than learning the interfaces to existing solutions. I was wrong, and eventually I figured it out. What's wrong with encouraging programmers to figure it out earlier?

I'm not advocating zero copyright for source code, but a greatly reduced term seems perfectly fine with me. Although there are some strong economics ideas that we don't even need copyright to have a thriving open source community. See, E.g., Michele Boldrin and David Levine's paper on Market Structure and Property Rights in Open Source Industries (PDF).