Morse Code Used by Human Cells?

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from several universities and drug companies in the U.K. have discovered that our cells are using Morse-like signals to switch genes on and off. The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) write that this discovery may have major implications for the pharmaceutical industry. Better and more efficient drugs would only deliver the signals to our cells that will activate a desired behavior. Sounds like science fiction? Read more for other details, references and pictures."

Comments

Re:Gattaca

[ikkibr]

I dunno where they are, but you got the first reply :/ maybe your cells morse coded the information to your brain and you accessed slashdot just in time to do it :/

The ham radio folks will be happy to hear this...

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Let me guess: One more justification for hanging onto the 5WPM morse requirement, right?

I'll send CQ

[Anonymous Coward]

to my feet in the morning, then QRO to my legs. That will allow me to get QRV and out of bed.

Re:I'll send CQ

[ine8181]

uugh. It took me some research to understand the joke. From Wikipedia,

• QRO : Increase transmitting power. I need to QRO when propagation is poor.
• QRV : Ready to receive. Will you be QRV in the upcoming contest?

Re:I'll send CQ

[Daengbo]

Even years after ending military service, you sent echoes of dit-dit-dit-dah dit-dit-dit-dah dit-dit-dit-dah (VVV) throught my head. Days in the bush listening for messages and relaying...

Re:I'll send CQ

[Daengbo]

Shit! That should be VVVV! I guess I've fogotten everything but the sound.

Aha!

[MutantHamster]

Human cells did it first. I knew that Morse guy was a fraud all along.

Re:Aha!

[sH4RD]

It's prior art! Kill the patent!

subliminal messages...

[jpardey]

...just got a lot more fun

Re:subliminal messages...

[Ham_belony]

Could be a nice pickup line though. Baby, did you get the morse code my body sends you? NO, lets hook-up then.

Binary Code

[oskard]

Morse code is considered binary right? Wouldn't that have been a better comparison?

Awesome though

Re:Binary Code

[parmadil]

Morse code is considered binary right?

Wrong. Since Morse code does not represent all letters with the same number of dashes and dots (as, for example, ASCII does), it in fact needs three possible values -- dash, dot, and separator (a space). Hence, it is not really binary.

Re:Binary Code

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Actually, there are 4 units in morse code, the dash, the dot, the space between letters, and a longer space between words.

Re:Binary Code

[GulagMoosh]

I'm dubious but the idea is interesting. The concept of a chemical signal forcing something to do a binary like signal is intriguing but difficult for me to belive. Proteins typically have a fairly complex receptor site that forbids anything that doesn't match from activating it. A cyclical response with temporal input appears, at first glance, to be questionable.

Re:Binary Code

[lcsjk]

Well, maybe 5 if you count the time between transmissions. Or the time you wait before sending another CQ.

Re:Binary Code

[rxmd]

Actually, there are 4 units in morse code, the dash, the dot, the space between letters, and a longer space between words.

Make that three: interletter space is precisely what delimits dashes and dots, so technically it's a part of the sign (if it comes sooner, it's a dot, otherwise it's a dash). Listing interletter space separately is redundant. Or if you want to consider space a unit of its own, then a longer space is just two or more spaces in a row, so again you're down to three. Longer space between transmissions is the same thing.

Re:Binary Code

[maxwell demon]

Depends on how you look at it. You could consider it a binary code with certain restrictions, like there's either just one, or exactly three ones in a row, and similar for zeroes (1, 3 or 7 zeroes).

So "hello world" would be encoded as

101010100010001011101010001011101010001110111011 10 00000010111011100011101110111000101110100010111010 1000111011101

Re:Binary Code

[jx100]

Well, wouldn't the space between words be made up of some spaces between letters? ..and by that same token, wouldn't a dot equal some dashes with no spaces betwen them.

Re:Binary Code

[tricorn]

"binary" doesn't mean "fixed length". Morse code is quite clearly a binary code, just as SDLC is, or a standard asynch serial connection (with start bits, stop bits, etc). It only depends on two signal levels, hence it is binary. That is also depends on timing of those signals is no different from any other binary communication protocol (which often have restrictions on the allowed bit patterns that can be sent, and can also be variable in number of bits sent - see SDLC, for example, with limits on the number of 1-bits that can be sent in a row, with zero-insertion/deletion when required to satisfy that constraint). Even the timing protocol of Morse is similar to self-clocking asynchronous protocols, with some redundancy built in to allow for a little slop in the "timing signal".

Re:Binary Code

[tootlemonde]

Or if you want to consider space a unit of its own, then a longer space is just two or more spaces in a row

If a longer space is just two or more spaces in row, would a dash not be just two or more dots in a row?

If so, we're back to two units, dot and space.

Re:Binary Code

[rxmd]

Yes. "dot" would actually be the sequence dot space, "dash" the sequence dot dot space, and so on.

Technically, we've got two units anyway, signal and no signal, it's the time distribution that makes it interesting :)

Re:Binary Code

[biobogonics]

Morse code is considered binary right?

Wrong. Since Morse code does not represent all letters with the same number of dashes and dots (as, for example, ASCII does) [snip]

Variable length is the essential. It's like a Huffman encoding where the most frequently used letters have the shortest (and simplest) Morse representations.

Re:Binary Code

[biobogonics]

I'm dubious but the idea is interesting. The concept of a chemical signal forcing something to do a binary like signal is intriguing but difficult for me to belive. Proteins typically have a fairly complex receptor site that forbids anything that doesn't match from activating it. A cyclical response with temporal input appears, at first glance, to be questionable

You are forgetting the concept of a threshold. Let's look at nerve cells. An action potential propagating down a neuron is an all or nothing event. But there may be many nerve cells moderating the sensitivity of a particular neuron to stimuli. In addition, there is a refractory period too. On a macroscopic scale you see periodic behavior all the time - it's called "brain waves".

Re:Binary Code

[shotfeel]

Actually those types of signals are quite common in physiology.

They mention calcium oscillations, which is a common response in several cell types.

Another chemically activated binary signal is the action potential that propagates down nerve and muscle cells.

The cardiac "pacemaker" cells could be considered a "binary" signal whose pace is set by a combination of factors from physical to chemical inputs.

Those are all relatively fast processes compared to what's discussed in the article. On the other end of the spectrum you could argue for cell division. The length of time a cell spends in the "resting state" between divisions is dependent on many factors, including chemical signals from the environment.

There's really nothing new in the idea that cellular process are cyclical, with rate being a function of many inputs. The "news" part seems to be trying to take better advantage of this with pharmaceuticals.

The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[Anonymous Coward]

Roland Piquepaille and Slashdot: Is there a connection?

I think most of you are aware of the controversy surrounding regular Slashdot article submitter Roland Piquepaille. For those of you who don't know, please allow me to bring forth all the facts. Roland Piquepaille has an online journal (I refuse to use the word "blog") located at http://www.primidi.com/. It is titled "Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends". It consists almost entirely of content, both text and pictures, taken from reputable news websites and online technical journals. He does give credit to the other websites, but it wasn't always so. Only after many complaints were raised by the Slashdot readership did he start giving credit where credit was due. However, this is not what the controversy is about.

Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends serves online advertisements through a service called Blogads, located at www.blogads.com. Blogads is not your traditional online advertiser; rather than base payments on click-throughs, Blogads pays a flat fee based on the level of traffic your online journal generates. This way Blogads can guarantee that an advertisement on a particular online journal will reach a particular number of users. So advertisements on high traffic online journals are appropriately more expensive to buy, but the advertisement is guaranteed to be seen by a large amount of people. This, in turn, encourages people like Roland Piquepaille to try their best to increase traffic to their journals in order to increase the going rates for advertisements on their web pages. But advertisers do have some flexibility. Blogads serves two classes of advertisements. The premium ad space that is seen at the top of the web page by all viewers is reserved for "Special Advertisers"; it holds only one advertisement. The secondary ad space is located near the bottom half of the page, so that the user must scroll down the window to see it. This space can contain up to four advertisements and is reserved for regular advertisers, or just "Advertisers". Visit Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends (http://www.primidi.com/) to see it for yourself.

Before we talk about money, let's talk about the service that Roland Piquepaille provides in his journal. He goes out and looks for interesting articles about new and emerging technologies. He provides a very brief overview of the articles, then copies a few choice paragraphs and the occasional picture from each article and puts them up on his web page. Finally, he adds a minimal amount of original content between the copied-and-pasted text in an effort to make the journal entry coherent and appear to add value to the original articles. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now let's talk about money. Visit http://www.blogads.com/order_html?adstrip_category =tech&politics= to check the following facts for yourself. As of today, December XX 2004, the going rate for the premium advertisement space on Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends is $375 for one month. One of the four standard advertisements costs $150 for one month. So, the maximum advertising space brings in $375 x 1 + $150 x 4 = $975 for one month. Obviously not all $975 will go directly to Roland Piquepaille, as Blogads gets a portion of that as a service fee, but he will receive the majority of it. According to the FAQ, Blogads takes 20%. So Roland Piquepaille gets 80% of $975, a maximum of $780 each month. www.primidi.com is hosted by clara.net (look it up at http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index. jhtml). Browsing clara.net's hosting solutions, the most expensive hosting service is their Clarahost Advanced (http://www.uk.clara.net/clarahost/advanced.php) priced at £69.99 GBP. This is

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[Anonymous Coward]

What you call "distilling" others would call "blatent plagarism". Roland is a repeated lying plagarist, and you are aparently an unknowning tool of his. Too bad the Slashdot masters don't have the balls to honestly admit what the real relationship between them and Roland really is.

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[gl4ss]

you know how much he is making?

using a hour per day for 1000$ doesn't sound too bad.

the thing is, the guy makes no content of his own, offers no visions of his own, offers no insight of his own. offers no clever linking of information to other types of same kind of information. does stories(CUTS AND PASTES) in 'bulk', submits them to slashdot in bulk. writes boringly. doesn't even focus on any particular area of science, technology or society.

karma be damned, fuck roland - IF THE FUCKING BLOG WOULD BE INTRESTING AS WHOLE ___OTHER___ PEOPLE WOULD FUCKING SUBMIT THE STORIES - JUST MAKE IT INTRESTING, NO NEED TO WHORE YOURSELF.

he could at least have courtesy to submit the stories under fake aliases.

and slashdot: if you pass his stories without blinking - Make him a fucking editor or add custom filtering.

and people with mod points.. mod the grandparent up just for kicks. or me down(it's not like i'd drop from excellent anyways).

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[Anonymous Coward]

And Slashdot should by now be aware (as has been posted many times on their own servers). Remember that by plaigarizing content, a major publication may feel that they are not getting credit for their hard work. We don't condone it when coders do it, so why should it be any different for the editors?

I'd also like to point out the hypocrisy of the Slasdot editors. Should MS be found infringing on OSS code (even if it was done by a contractor), timothy, CmdrTaco and friends are right up there to offer their one-line smackdown with the story submittal. Yet time and time again, they are OK with Roland posting unattributed content on their front page.

For shame, Slashdot. For shame.

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[Stecco]

The point is:
-Are the articles Roland is linking interesting? Yes (maybe).
-Does somebody else on /. link them? I don't know. If no, why /. shouldn't p publish Roland's posts?

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[Cappy Red]

This reads more like an advertisement for the website in question and the man who runs it than anything else. It reads like an advertisement disguised as a complaint, actually.

It doesn't help that you posted the parent comment anonymously, either. If you have a problem, or see a problem, at least have the courage to sign your name to your complaint -- it'll give you a touch more credibility, if nothing else.

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[jdray]

I think the AC that keeps posting these would stop if people would mod him "-1 Redundant" rather than "+1 Informative." How many times do we have to read about Roland?

And, yes, if I were guessing, I'd say it's Roland himself posting an "anti-ad" for his site. But that's just me guessing. I mostly don't care.

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[Shimmer]

He goes out and looks for interesting articles about new and emerging technologies. He provides a very brief overview of the articles, then copies a few choice paragraphs and the occasional picture from each article and puts them up on his web page. Finally, he adds a minimal amount of original content between the copied-and-pasted text in an effort to make the journal entry coherent and appear to add value to the original articles.

I think it's pretty ironic that this "mindless link propagation" is also exactly what Slashdot itself does. If you object to Piquepaille's journal, why not object to Slashdot as well?

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[ccarson]

I believe in rewarding others for their good work. Based on the history of Roland's submissions, I believe he has an eye for good tech articles and I believe he should be rewarded for that.

I believe in rewarding good work because that's how we as readers are better informed of the world and conentional technology.

You need to ask yourself why it's a problem for you to accept good work. You need to ask yourself why you're bitter about Roland? The sooner you figure out this problem in your head, the sooner you'll enjoy life.

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[gl4ss]

if he wants to hold a linkblog, then sure, let him - but now he is just whoring for pageviews.

http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=&query=roland&au thor=&sort=1&op=stories a link to all roland stories, there's no consistency in them. what he does is that he runs a pretty random linkblog -except that he cuts and pastes the articles to his own blog.

look, the guy gets his cut'n'pastes linked to slashdot on regular basis without providing anything extraordinary or even mediocre journalistic talent. he doesn't provide personal insight to the issues so he could just as well just provide the link and skip the cut and paste.

I ENJOY LIFE, sipping down a jolt, getting paid. what i don't enjoy is people who think that they shouldn't complain because magically if they complained about something they wouldnt be enjoying life.. that's like saying that you should accept when someone shits on your doorstep because otherwise you're "not enjoying life"...

make him a fucking editor - let us filter his crap. his articles are SPAM. nothing more. it doesn't really justify spam that it has link to something mildly intresting.

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[ccarson]

look, the guy gets his cut'n'pastes linked to slashdot on regular basis without providing anything extraordinary or even mediocre journalistic talent.

No, you're wrong. He's proven again and again that he has an eye for interesting articles. That's his talent. I'm arguing that it's okay to reward him for that.

what i don't enjoy is people who think that they shouldn't complain because magically if they complained about something they wouldnt be enjoying life

I am in no position to determine if you enjoy life or not. For that, I'm sorry. I see your posts as aggressive and angry. Personally, I've found that happiness comes from serenity. I choose to not be jealous about others such as Roland. I've found that I am more at peace with myself when I live my life without worrying about other people. Roland isn't hurting me. I don't care that he makes money for his talents. Neither should you.

Re:The truth about Roland Piquepaille

[gl4ss]

bleh, i just trash my mouth, it's fun, it gets things changed occasionally. if i wanted passive bliss i'd just pick up a bad drug habit.

but you see, that's how you get things changed, you make a point that something sucks. in this case, that it sucks that roland gets every single article he wants on slashdot - others than editors don't get that normally. it sucks, because his articles could be gathered together with some fancy script wgetting articles and cut'n'pasting text, getting the articles semi randomly from science newssites. earlier he even hid the actual news sources more deeply, but people complained and now at least there's links to the original story in the posts.

slashdot doesn't pretend the stories it links to are it's own - neither should ronald pretend that the content in his blog is his own.

and if i want to be dick about it... the money he's leeching off from blogads could go to some serious blogger with some talent for writing(and opinions of their own).

if he wants to be a slashdot affiliate let him. but make him that damn editor so we're not pretending that he's a regular submitter.

have you ever seen a roland article that was NOT submitted by roland himself? if he ran a truly intresting blog he wouldn't need to bother to whore off.

This boat is obviously sinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

So do cancer sells put out: ... --- ...

Re:This boat is obviously sinking...

[ikkonoishi]

More like ..-. . . -.. / -- . since cancer cells are just normal body cells that don't bother waiting through that pesky interphase thing, and divide as often as they can.

Re:This boat is obviously sinking...

[kaens]

So cancer's name is Anna Nicole Smith?

Re:This boat is obviously sinking...

[elgatozorbas]

LOL. At a later stage they may say ... _._ (SK, Silent Key)

No shit?

[mtrisk]

You mean DNA uses proteins to turn themselves on and off, and they behave in some sort of pattern? Oh wait...that's already been covered by biology for a long time. Perhaps I should start my own blog and report "news" that isn't new at all, sell adverts, and make a ton of money of off slashdot...

Re:No shit?

[shawb]

Well, it's been known that they use a pattern in that the arrangement of base units in a line represents a pattern. AFAIK it has not been general knowledge in the biology community that there is a temporal pattern involved with this activation as well. And DNA turning on and off is a little simplistic, there are such things as rate of transcription, how many simultaneous transcriptions occur, etc.

Re:No shit?

[mikael]

It's known that nature uses reaction-diffusion techniques to generate camouflage patterns for animals. This was noted by Alan Turing. It wouldn't be too surprising to see if this occurred inside cells as well. There's an interesting 3D demo to see what reaction-diffusion equations can do in real-time. Perhaps the pharamceutical companies will have to figure out ways of generating such signalling patterns.

Re:No shit?

[harvardian]

While I am involved in biology, I've never personally encountered temporal transcription regulation. A quick Google Scholar search shows that quite a few examples have been demonstrated: "temporal transcription regulation" search".

The first result, this paper, shows a pretty cool example of a protein changing behavior depending on whether it's exposed in a pulsatile or continuous manner to growth hormone. That's from 1997, so not too recently.

Re:No shit?

[the gnat]

My sense is that this can (theoretically) be explained pretty well based on physical chemistry, e.g. the kinetics and binding constants of each reaction involved. The timing of complex animal development is fairly precise, and that's just a giant transcription factor cascade that's both temporally and spatially localized in an embryo. There are all sorts of weird interactions that govern how long a signal persists, usually in the form of feedback regulation and antagonistic pathways

Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[Cryofan]

....we really don't know all that much YET about biology and about how the universe works. We will someday, but as of today, science and medicine is rather "oversold", meaning we have been led to believe that it is more capable than it really is. And this story is a perfect example of that. A major signaling pathway that we were not even aware. Children at play, even still.....

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[harvardian]

There's nothing in that press release to convince me that a "major signaling pathway" has been discovered. There was just an overblown analogy; no science was explained.

And maybe you think biology is "oversold" because you don't know anything about it. Does anybody in your family take a statin (for lowering cholesterol levels)? If so, you should know that amazingly little details have been worked out about why those drugs work, down to the proteins that sit on the endoplasmic reticulum that are involved in cholesterol metabolism regulation, and the enzymes that interact with them. We know how that regulatory pathway eventually trickles down to interaction with DNA via transcription factors.

Maybe you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you out of ignorance.

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[SilverspurG]

If so, you should know that amazingly little details have been worked out about why those drugs work

It's actually a little bit more hazy than that. We work out the details when developing the individual molecules, but we really stop back-checking validity once we get to whole animal models.

For example, in angiogenesis, we're targeting (typically) VEGF receptors or the proteins which interact with the VEGF receptor on the inside of the cell wall. We demonstrate a molecule which effectively inhibits the targeted enzyme in a petri dish assay, then we demonstrate that a particular cell line is inhibited in producing the proteins necessary to form endothelial lining...

Then we put the molecule in rats and, if the tumor goes down, we win. If the tumor doesn't go down, we lose. If the tumor goes down, however, we don't really bother checking if it was really a result of inhibited angiogenesis or if the overall mechanism turned out to be targeted apoptosis.

I made my group leader REAL angry one time by pointing that out. He told me to go back to school.

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[mt v2.7]

I did some with someone who was doing some leading-edge research into Gene Regulation and Protien Signaling. She is extremely amazed at how much we don't know. :)

But that's not to say that it's useless at all. Even knowing that one protien contributes to a chain allows you to inhibit it and stop the chain; it's just saying that there's ALOT left we have to learn.

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[btavshan]

Contrary to the belief of some on this forum, this "major pathway" is already relatively well understood (it helps to refer to the actual research article published in the refereed journal when trying to understand these things). The pathway the article refers to is the NF-kB transcription factor pathway, which has been known about for roughly a decade, and was already known to control key aspects of cellular immunity. The novel part is the idea that these different "temporal oscillations" of this transcription factor cause different genes to be expressed...and this isn't even that novel. The professor in the lab next to mine published a similar paper in science 2 years ago (Science 298, 1241 (2002))

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I suppose our wonderful understanding of statins would allow us to know about and avoid side effects like increased depression due to the suppression of essential lipids in the brain? Oh that's right, we only started to get a fucking clue after the fact. The parent poster is dead on, most people have way too inflated an opinion of modern medicine.

We've come a long way, but we're still ages away from having an engineer's level of understanding of the human body.

The mistake people in medicine make is taking this observation as a criticism or an insult. It's neither of those, it's just a caution to avoid putting to much blind faith in our current level of understanding and being open to progress as it comes.

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[btavshan]

Nonetheless, it is an excellent example of how the press can so grossly distort a story as to render it utterly unrecognizeable. I'm a researcher in the area, and I had no idea what they were referring to until I saw in fine print the reference to the article..."morse code" is a ridiculously strained analogy. It's definitely like a form of language, but most people wouldn't understand that it's the "pulsed" nature of morse code that they're trying to stress in analogy.

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[randallpowell]

But one thing we certainly know is that the evolution theory is true.

But one thing we certainly know is that the creation theory is true.

Creationism = Christian believe that god created the universe in 6 days and made humans out of dirt. Can't be proven nor disproven so not a theory.

Evolution = theory that explains how species change over time.

How does one fight over a theory and a belief when one has evidence and the other has a badly translated book?

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[FleaPlus]

We will someday, but as of today, science and medicine is rather "oversold", meaning we have been led to believe that it is more capable than it really is.

I assure you that this is because of how the media reports things, and not because of the scientists themselves. Talk to just about any scientist, and one of the first things they'll emphasize is how much is left to discover. For many scientists, the frequency of surprises in the field is a big reason for why they're scientists in the first place. A typical phrase for scientists is that "a discovery usually raises more questions than it solves."

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[Jugalator]

Hopefully, we will all soon realize that... ....we really don't know all that much YET about biology and about how the universe works.

What do you mean "soon"?

Most serious researchers understand this already.

That's probably what they love too, and what motivates them.

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[DrMrLordX]

I would be more worried about liver damage when taking statins than depression.

But then, that's just me . . .

Re:Hopefully, we will all soon realize that...

[tuggy]

actually.. it is not.
despite its being teached in schools and so on, it has lots of "mistakes" which the scientist are not able to explain... but as they dont have any better theories.. we still keep learning the same one.

Re:Nokia

[ikkibr]

Do that means I have High IQ? I can't find a place to turn my sms tone up. It's allways on the vibracall mode

here come the quacks...

[nblender]

"Get this 3 CD set of healing tracks! Just play it on any stereo to cure cancer, diabetes, and hemmorhoids!"

What they are saying

[Anonymous Coward]

... --- -.-.

S.O.C. Save Our Cells...

From IP claims.

Hurray

[spac3manspiff]

So our cells do talk in binary!

Wtf is this press release saying?

[harvardian]

The number of 'dots and dashes' being used by each signal could have different purposes, all of which could be modified by a drug.

Alright, I work in a chemical biology lab, and I don't know wtf this is supposed to mean. It's common for proteins to have their localization controlled by phosphorylation (i.e., a transcription factor, which is a protein that turns a gene on when bound to DNA, can only get into the nucleus to do its job depending on whether it's been phosphorylated or not). But what does "signal" mean in this context? The press release doesn't offer any scientific details.

This is really just all hype until they can make a claim beyond vague analogies. So why does this make the front page of Slashdot?

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[Anonymous Coward]

So why does this make the front page of Slashdot?

To promote the "works" of Roland Piquepaille, Slashdot's favorite plagarist and clickbait whore. What you need to realize is that any Slashdot "story" posted by Roland is nothing more than a clickbait submission to Roland's "blog", where he gets revenue for click hits. Roland is a known plagarist and thief, so it doesn't matter what the content really is, as long as people click.

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[gardyloo]

This is really just all hype until they can make a claim beyond vague analogies. So why does this make the front page of Slashdot?

Because Roland posted it.

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[SilverspurG]

I'm not sure what the breakthrough is, either.

I think they're attempting to formalize, in the media, the concept that there are cyclical patterns in upregulation and downregulation of particular processes. This isn't really surprising. Cells go through life cycles and they function as steady state machines, just like computers do. It's not a surprise that there are some basic pathways which get up and downregulated on a regular basis.

Where do I see this going? Currently biochemistry maps all sorts of cellular pathways based on pharmacological application: apoptosis, necrosis, endothelial growth, or a particular process in cells such as the liver for diabetes treatments. Perhaps this is a forefront article that some researchers are beginning to put enough of those pathways together to the point where they can start to mine the database and find out which pathways are truly "key interactions" and which pathways only looked good.

Vague analogy: like mapping root-servers as opposed to studying the BIND cache of a mid-sized ISP nameserver.

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[gardyloo]

Vague analogy: like mapping root-servers as opposed to studying the BIND cache of a mid-sized ISP nameserver.

THANK YOU for putting the word "vague" in there. I consider myself a pretty major nerd, and I was about to go blow the back of my head off because I have no idea what the fuck you just said. HHOS

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[Steffan]

This is really just all hype until they can make a claim beyond vague analogies. So why does this make the front page of Slashdot?

You're new here, aren't you?

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[whovian]

I can't see the breakthrough either. IOW, biochemistry at its core is about cycles of reactions. The products of one reaction become the ingredients for the next, and eventually the system returns to the original state. Call it a limit cycle (see: physics) or an oscillatory reaction (see: chemistry), but it's applied to biology. Calling this Morse code is simply media sensationalization.

Just think of it. Roughly speaking, life is a nonequilibrium steady state, but death is equilibrium.

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[reverseengineer]

From what I can glean from the information, I guess the idea is that there are certain biochemical signaling pathways which depend on the frequency pattern of a messenger molecule interacting with a target, rather than a simple off/on response. As was demonstrated by the experiment's use of tumor necrosis factor, I'd think the area where something like that would come into play would be apoptosis. The default program for your cells is "kill thyself," and that only gets changed if your cells receive signals that tell them to survive. A frequency-based signal could be a good way to determine if a cell is functioning normally- send a simple signal to a damaged cell, and it still might answer back fine. Send a more complex "coded" signal, though, and the appropriate cellular machinery to interpret the pattern may no longer be in place. If the coded message was necessary for survival, the damaged cell would hopefully then commit seppuku.

But as they suggest in the article, the same signaling molecule could conceivably be used for several coded signals, so caution would be needed with a drug that targets a signaling pathway which overlaps with others. However, there are plenty of more mundane signaling pathways where signaling molecules are used for many functions- molecules like cAMP and cGMP (one of the side effects of Viagra is transient blue-green color blindness, the result of cyclic GMP being the messenger molecule in two very different systems), calcium ions (mentioned in the article). Also, cell signals often trigger cascades of intracellular signals (like the protein phosphorylations parent mentions) that multiply the effect and spread it to a variety of cellular functions. That sort of thing has been known for awhile though. It's hard to say what's really meant by this terrible article- I read the press release, I read the "article"- which is not a journal article but rather a short blurb in a biotech industry council magazine- no useful details there, either.

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[SilverspurG]

That's no different than saying that more light will cause a plant to grow faster. Or more sugar will raise the glycolytic cycle.

It is true that pharmacologists haven't done much experimenting with "take this pill once a day, this one once every other day, and this one once a week" but that's not because no one's thought about it. It's mostly because running the FDA trials to get approval for a multicomponent regimen are nearly impossible in terms of resources. Even pharmaceutical cocktails typically start with one drug that was approved 20 years ago, and another which was tested with it 5 years ago, and some new additive.

There is a rudimentary form of this going on. It's testing at different dosage levels. 5 mg, 10 mg, 100 mg, 500 mg. Pharmacology, specifically in ADME research, focuses quite closely on the cyclical rise and fall of the active ingredient's concentration in and around the cellular tissue of interest.

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[SilverspurG]

I guess the idea is that there are certain biochemical signaling pathways which depend on the frequency pattern of a messenger molecule interacting with a target, rather than a simple off/on response

That's why this isn't a surprise. Once people are past introductory courses in biology and biochemistry they shouldn't think it's an on/off response. If they do, they should have failed.

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[statusbar]

What about the continuously changing cyclic pattern of hormone amounts used in birth control pills?

--jeff++

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[SilverspurG]

You'd be a little bit frightened if you studied the history of FDA approved birth control treatments. Basically, when dealing with birth control treatments, pharma companies have carte blanche as long as it works and not too many women complain.

Take a cancer treatment. If a cancer treatment were like a birth control regimen, and the patient started complaining of side effects, the doctor would say,"Quit taking it."

I guess it's because it's considered a voluntary medication. Being "female" hasn't been marked as a medical ailment... at least not yet.

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[SpeleoNut]

If you have access to Science it looks like some of this work was published last October. I haven't read through it properley but the abstract looks like it is the same http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/306 /5696/704

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[reverseengineer]

I just posted: As was demonstrated by the experiment's use of tumor necrosis factor

I'm a dork- wrong TNF- it was transcription factor nuclear factor- this is what happens when you're out of the biochem game for too long. In my defense, I only found this out by looking up the Science article mentioned by another poster; these are the sorts of critical details the submitted articles lack. Also, it thankfully doesn't change my point about apoptosis.

Trying to head off the flames,
-reverseengineer

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[btavshan]

It actually refers to an intelligent, scholarly article. Try Science vol 306, p704 (2004)

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[harvardian]

I see I should've done my homework first, but hoo the linked article sure mangled and overhyped the message. This is a very cool example of a complex network of transcriptional regulation.

Is it too much to ask from the editors of a major website like Slashdot to point us to scholarly sources of this information? Or at least something better than the crap we got this time?

Re:Wtf is this press release saying?

[lazy genes]

Maybe its just sidechains locking and unlocking . They mention its during chemical changes.

Wait til spammers get this...

[daeg]

Imagine getting thousands of e-mails per day advertising this stuff.

Gain 6 extra inches over night, naturally! Just buy our cellular message replicator and play our CD. By morning, you'll have a big one!

or

Bad sex life? Turn your wife into a sexual deviant using these customizable tracks! BONUS track instills her to clean AND bring you beer! only $39.95!

Re:Wait til spammers get this...

[gardyloo]

Bad sex life? Turn your wife into a sexual deviant using these customizable tracks! BONUS track instills her to clean AND bring you beer! only $39.95!

Yeah, but... goddamn! What if it works?!?

Re:Wait til spammers get this...

[Talinom]

By morning, you'll have a big one!

That might not be such a good idea if your wife listens to it.

Re:Wait til spammers get this...

[Ham_belony]

Can you imagine how big her sweet spot would be? Try to miss it after that ;)

Re:Nokia

[tuxter]

No, it just means you are not a mobile phone (Cell phone) wanker.... they do still exist.

lame -.. ness ..- filter ....

[Doc Ruby]

So a geneticist's lame metaphor for any "pattern of signals", Morse code, goes over a journalist's head, and makes it to the Slashdot homepage. If only we cell megacolonies were smart enough to decipher these patterns of signals, we might actually get meaningful insights into the infomechanics of DNA.

Re:lame -.. ness ..- filter ....

[Doc Ruby]

Slashdot's lameness filter thinks Morse code in the Subject "looks too much like ASCII art", until it's got more 65char122. The rest is my summary of the rest of my post.

cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[Cryofan]

we still have a way to go.

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[I Be Hatin']

Right... that was his point. Everyone acknowledges that we still have a way to go... so how is science "oversold" (as you originally claimed)?

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[harvardian]

I agree with you on that. I just felt you were giving my profession a cheap shot based on a very shoddy press release, and had to say something.

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[poopdeville]

I think the grandparent was referring to the shoddiness of the press release.

I'm a math guy, and I've studied quite a bit of physics, so it always kills me to watch or read popular accounts of mathematician/physicst 's work. They try to boil down very complex topics so that the layman can understand them. But they fail miserably -- often, they're either too complicated for the layman to understand or so vague as to be truisms. And they're still factually incorrect.

Nova is a particularly bad example of this. Take the Fermat's Last theorem episode. This is a topic that only a couple dozen mathematicians in the world actually understand, but in their infinite hubris, Nova tried to compress it into an hour episode! Their Superstrings episode was a similar debacle.

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[myowntrueself]

Absolutely.

I once studied genetic algorithms and I thought to myself 'hmm there are so many ways that I could implement a genetic algorithm, endless ways. I wonder how nature does it' and went on to study cell biology and genetics.

Coming from computer science, I can tell you it was a humbling experience. We think we are so clever with our electronics and silicon chips and technology, but any living cell is far more amazingly... actually its hard to quantify in exactly what department they excel in, energy efficiency, massive parallelism, sophisticated encoding systems you name it.

And living cells are so much more than genes and proteins.

If some Mr Smartypants Biologist wants to say that we understand biology and we arn't like naive kids they are welcome to try but there are major problems in our understanding of some very basic mechanics of biology. It looks for all the world like a little machine down there... they talk about 'cargo vesicles'

Like oh I don't know how about a theory on how the right transfer RNA actually finds its way -- how it actually moves through the cytoplasm -- to the right ribosome at the right time to plug the amino acid in (which presumably it picked up and carried here from somewhere else), and *don't* try to tell me its 'brownian motion' because thats no better than a conspiracy theory.

If its supposed to be like a little machine, its got to be explainable in a deterministic way. Otherwise its magic.

I have no problem with magic (see my sig), but its nice if you admit to it rather than pretending its science.

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[dmaxwell]

Let's assume that laymen can at least correctly grasp broad outlines. Does anyone do a good job of laying them out?

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[lcsjk]

What causes all that magnetism? Why do two masses attract each other? Why am I smarter than I seem?

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[poopdeville]

The short answer is: No.

The long answer is: People can obviously correctly grasp broad outlines. The problem is that, in mathematics anyway, the broad outline is the mathematics. This is woefully imprecise. Let's see if I can successfully clarify.

Consider Fermat's Last theorem and the introductory exposition here. Notice that to understand, in broad strokes, the content (not even the method!) of the proof, you have to understand elliptic curves, elliptic functions, zeta functions, L-functions, galois groups and their matrix representations over p-adic rings. The properties of objects in each of these topics are essential to the proof, and seeing as the proof is in some sense a description of "how these objects interact," any description that fails to include one of these fields is going to be inadequate even for framing a broad outline. Even if the idea that lead to Wile's final proof was simple, one needs all of this machinery to even comprehend what it means.

The issue in physics is similar, but distinct. Equations are one thing, and anyone can write a story about a physicist staring at a peice of paper and yelling "Eureka!" But giving these equations physical meaning is another. It is becoming more and more common for physical meanings to be given in terms of complex mathematical constructs, and for the expositor, we're back at the trouble above.

That said, magazines like Scientific American and shows like Nova do make people interested in mathematics, if only because they're so incomplete. And they can serve as an introductory guide to the literature. But their value as informative sources is nil.

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[myowntrueself]

yeah it applies to physics too but I know a lot less about that and I do try not to talk complete shit.

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[kaens]

If its supposed to be like a little machine, its got to be explainable in a deterministic way

Who said it was supposed to be like a little machine?

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[koekepeer]

"If its supposed to be like a little machine, its got to be explainable in a deterministic way. Otherwise its magic. I have no problem with magic (see my sig), but its nice if you admit to it rather than pretending its science."

two things:
- determinism is waaaaaaaaaaaaay outdated.
- magic is just a word to explain things we don't understand. like god, or mother nature, or fate.

science is not about absolutes**. anyone who got that wrong didn't pay attention during philosophy of science courses... read some bertrand russell or something.

**if you want that, get into religion.

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[Hognoxious]

- magic is just a word to explain things we don't understand. like god, or mother nature, or fate.

I always thought magic was indistinguishable from a sufficiently rigged demo.

Re:cures for cancer, heart disease, aging?

[myowntrueself]

sorry, whats anything got to do with 'intelligent creator'?

For what its worth I believe that the sum total of existance is, collectively, intelligent.

Cell Signals

[loid_void]

Dit-Da, Dit-Da-Dit!

Re:Roland Piquepaille IS A LYING PLAGARIST!

[mabinogi]

You know, plagarism, whilst certainly immoral, is not actually a crime.

Some plagarism (and probably the sort that Roland is accused of) constitutes a copyright infringement, which _is_ a crime, but plagarism in itself is not.

Personally I think all you're overreacting a bit.
OK, so the guy is scum - take a deep breath, avoid clicking on links that take you to his site, and move on to the next article - you'll live longer.

Everyone who replies to this article...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Is just letting that turd Roland Piquepaille get more publicity for his blog. We need a slashdot boycott of these artciles, somehow. While we can't not reply (if we do, some loser or another will just reply anyway), maybe we can drown it out with comments that are uniform enough to get Taco's attention.

I propose everyone comment (whether at thread root or in reply) with a subject of "Stop the Roland Piquepaille assfest now!" and a body of the same. If out of 150 comments, 80 or 90 of them were these, would they not at least give it some consideration?

Re:Everyone who replies to this article...

[jezmund]

I agree. This is utter drivel. The articles are completely lacking in details. Assumedly, the pictures show p65/RelA shuttling in and out of the nucleus, although it's not completely clear that these are even the same field. The conditions are completely unknown - what amount of TNF-alpha are they using? Is it supposed to be continuous application? It doesn't seem likely that a single hose of TNF-alpha would last 7 hours, though I suppose it's possible. Most importantly, however, what is the biological outcome they are measuring that suggests "morse code" is occurring? Essentially the results (taken at face value) show that p65 is going in and out of the nucleus following some form of TNF-alpha stimulation. So what evidence do they have that suggests the oscillation itself is encoding a biological message? In these articles, none that I can find. Additionally, you'll notice both links are to BBSRC articles. The BBSRC seems to be a biotech industry consortium hype-machine. I'm guessing the original Science article has some better information, but what is provided here is essentially useless.

Re:Everyone who replies to this article...

[newr00tic]

[...]
Is just letting that turd Roland Piquepaille get more publicity for his blog. We need a slashdot boycott of these artciles[sic], somehow.
[...]

If we choose to take a peek at his 'resume',
http://www.primidi.com/personalinfo/cven.html
-somewhere down the line-, it says:

(COMMUNICATION SKILLS) - "Animation of international groups (including remote individuals)" ...

Not surprising really

[WindBourne]

Lifes keeps things simple, but tries to build in some level of protection. Think of our protocols. Which ones succeed? Almost, always the simple stuff. Then think about the body. mostly 4 bases for DNA, same for RNA. Likewise, some 20-30 Amino Acids, from which all proteins get built. Life is nothing but simple with some very interesting glue.

Another Roland Piquepaille blog post?

[jdgeorge]

Perhaps this is a bit off-topic, but...

Various posts have appeared recently concerning the frequent appearance of articles like this one, submitted by Roland Piquepaille, containing links to what appears to be sparsely annotated collection text and images copied from other sources.

It appears that Roland is successfully using Slashdot to generate advertising revenue for this "blog" (which sadly seems to have marginally higher editing standards than Slashdot itself). Perhaps he should be formally added to the Slashdot staff and made an editor instead of paying him informally in this way.

The result might be improved Slashdot editing, and fewer links to a mediocre blog.

Re:Another Roland Piquepaille blog post?

[rainwalker]

Perhaps he should be formally added to the Slashdot staff and made an editor instead of paying him informally in this way.

You suggest rewarding him for spamming us?

You consider being a slashdot editor a reward?!

Re:Another Roland Piquepaille blog post?

[gl4ss]

cut'n'paste journalism + blog ads + traffic(this is where slashdot comes in) = $

he should be added as editor. so he could be filtered.

the journal he runs is pretty much useless, and the guy himself runs so different stories there that it's pretty obvious that he doesn't know jack about the stuff he's cut'n'pasting.

Re:Another Roland Piquepaille blog post?

[88NoSoup4U88]

How about you just -not- click any links that are submitted by Ronald Piquepaille?

-Every- goddamn time the guy posts something, it is met by the same responses (mostly done by AC though) , acting as if getting revenue from ads is the worst thing around.

Just in case you did not notice ; Slashdot has more or less the same function, as being an outlet (ALSO relying on add-revenue) to expose articles on other sites : When is the time you gonna complaint about this ?

When you have a problem with Piquepaille's posts ; Just don't read them, thus not giving him any ad-revenues.

Re:Another Roland Piquepaille blog post?

[jdgeorge]

When you have a problem with Piquepaille's posts ; Just don't read them, thus not giving him any ad-revenues.

That's a fair comment; though this is the first click I've ever made to his blog.

However, I wasn't entirely joking about the suggestion of formally adding him to the Slashdot staff. He actually does a better job of exactly what the Slashdot editors are supposed to do.

There's a SF story about this

[sakusha]

Stanislav Lem wrote a story about bacteria communicating in Morse. I vaguely remember it, a scientist noticed the resemblance between the dots and bars of bacteria growing on a petri dish, so he mutated bacteria until it was capable of spelling out morse code and communicating in words. Alas I don't remember the whole story, or the title, anyone remember it?

w000000t

[russint]

I hope this will lead to new safer and better recreational drugs as well.

Morse code eh?

[fireman sam]

I thought I could hear "dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot" coming from my liver on new years eve.

We're doooomed

[Anonymous Coward]

When BPL comes in, those cells aren't going to be able to hear each other anymore.

Stop the Roland Piquepaille nightmare!

[Anonymous Coward]

For christ's sake, if I read another ad for this asshole's fucking blog _where he doesn't even actually write any of the fucking content_, it'll be too fucking soon. Why the fuck do the editors insist on promoting this no-talent assclown?

Dammit, it took fucking _forever_ for Katz to go away. Not fucking looking forward to doing that again, but looks like we're right back to it.

Re:Stop the Roland Piquepaille nightmare!

[BarryNorton]

if I read another ad for this asshole's fucking blog _where he doesn't even actually write any of the fucking content_, it'll be too fucking soon

Couldn't agree more. This time rather than ripping content from the New Scientist, he's ripping it from a publication he doesn't even know the name of: it's not 'Business' (what the hell kinda sense would that make? it's about bio-sciences!), it's 'BBSRC Business'!

Also Known As

[boatboy]

The Force

Incidentally

[tuxter]

The other message tone, special or whatever it is, is actually Nokias slogan in Morse.

A real reference

[monocyte]

Diappointingly, none of these links actually included any sort of reference to the scientific literature. Luckily, it was pretty easy to find one: "Oscillations in NF-kappaB signaling control the dynamics of gene expression", Science. 2004 Oct 22;306(5696):704-8. You can find the abstract on pubmed, and if you or your institution happens to have a subscription to Science you can read it online. Looking at the abstract, it seems like the morse code analogy is not very accurate: gene transcription is dependent on oscillation frequency of a transcription factor, but there doesn't seem to be any encoding in the signal in the manner of morse code.

Morse Code with body cells?

[muntumbomoklik]

I don't really know about that, but with the right serving of beans I know that I can do a low-octave morse code imitation with my rectal cells....

Re:Morse Code with body cells?

[Ham_belony]

When consuming sufficient amounts of beer, I can send morse code using either ends cells

Look at where it was published

[espressojim]

the cover story of the January 2005 issue of Business.

Any "science" discovery published outside of peer review journals isn't worth reading. If I see info about this in a peer reviewed journal, I'll get the following:

a) The data, or references to it.
b) The *real* methodology behind generating the data
c) The analysis methods used to come to their conclusion, along with important statistics like confidence invervals around there data.

If this is a REAL discovery, then the scientists would publish in a true journal, instead of publishing somewhere else and risk getting 'scooped', when someone else replicates their tests and writes it up the correct way. ...*sigh*...Back to searching for signals of selection in the genome....

Re:Look at where it was published

[btavshan]

It DOES refer to a scholarly article, but that's in the fine print. Try Science vol 306, p704 (2004)

OBTW... We have a name...

[DrunkenTerror]

"Legion."

An oscillating reaction

[blueish yellow]

This has nothing to do with Morse code or communication between cells. It's a press release for a paper on an oscillating biochemical reaction within cells.

Insecure

[looneyboy784]

you woulthink something as advanced as our bodies would use a code a little harder to break such as rot13 or number letter substution maby even pig latin

Re:Insecure

[Creepy Crawler]

---Of course, the advantage to having an easy to break code is that the human genome project would be a lot harder if our DNA were protected by some kind of strong encryption.

Heh, it is. Why you think it's sooo hard to determine? Every set has a different code, and with multiple millions of prereqs adjustine each code.. You think a newbie playing with vsual basic creates "spaghetti code" ? heh heh

Re:The ham radio folks will be happy to hear this.

[JJahn]

In case anyone here is wondering, you can get the basic amateur radio license without having any knowledge of Morse code. You need the 5WPM morse code for the more advanced licenses that open up more frequencies and higher power, especially the HF ones.

Re:The ham radio folks will be happy to hear this.

[ThisIsFred]

Yeah, but where's the fun in doing only the bare minimum? I remember when 13 wpm was a reasonable expectation. But hey, you're losing out if you don't learn it. You can transmit and receive further and on less power with CW.

Doesn't anyone like a challenge anymore? It is all about buying multi-thousand-dollar Japanese rigs, prefab antennas and high-power amps? Where's the fun in that? You might as well just get a mobile phone.

Oh Good!

[rubberbando]

Now that we know how to communicate with them...

Could someone convert the following messages to morris code for me?

To my head hair follicles: START GROWING AGAIN!

To my back, ear, and nose hair follicles : STOP GROWING SO MUCH!

All your code are belong to us.

[i41Overlord]

This just in:

A major pharmaceutical company has patented the "morse code" used by cells to communicate. Such communication codes are now registered as a proprietary protocol belonging to the company. You have no chance to survive make your time.

I see...

[jpardey]

I won't trust Ronald, because I trust you!
Could you post a link or something?

Re:Gattaca

[Scrameustache]

you got the first reply

I also got a mystery "-1" mod : )

I guess, er... the editors didn't like Gattaca?

Ha!

[turdblossom]

When I'm working in the lab I make sure I get all my information about the State of the Art from business journals.

Re:The ham radio folks will be happy to hear this.

[kosmicki]

I've been thinking about getting into ham radio, any ideas where to start getting info? (I've hit google, almost too much info) My life is too busy right at the moment, but I know I just want some really basic equipment, nothing too fancy to start. Have the fun be the experence and not just the equipment :)

Pants!

[LoudMusic]

All this time it was Morse Code ... and I tried buying girls beer to switch their jeans off.

Bad Analogy

[SRain315]

The signalling system the article describes is much more like Port-Knocking than Morse Code. (Transcription Factors = Ports. Extend analogy as required.)

And it'll be just as hard to figure out. Imagine an internet or two. Now try to identify the port-knocking codes. Now develop a mechanism to emulate/reproduce them.

At least the Developer is on vacation - and we have the source code...

But I'm guessing that I won't live to be 1000 after all.

I knew this

[silverz]

This explains why sometimes I hear these beeps in my head!

Yar

[ElectusUnum]

You say morse code, I hear binary.

Sorry state of modern medicine

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

We also know that statins cause muscle damage, kidney damage, liver damage, heart damage (how ironic - look up statin-induced cardiomyopathy), metabolic damage and brain damage. Leaving people weak, sick, tired, forgetful, confused and dull and sometimes demented or dead.

We know statins interfere with vital steps in producing testosterone, estrogen (good bye sex drive, etc) and other vital hormones, and deplete CoQ10, which is crucial for cellular energy metabolism.

Yet we force these drugs down the throats of many people who either would have never even gotten heart disease from their cholesterol level, or those in which the statin does not prevent the heart disease. In other words, most people would have ended up eith getting heart disease, or not getting it, in spite of the drug. And we ignore inflammation and C-reactive protein levels (though this is changing, just like with ulcers and bacteria, the truth EVENTUALLY comes out) and harp on cholesterol, yet half of heart attack victims have normal levels.

Meanwhile the government is pushng that ridiculous food pyramid, with its over-emphasis on grains and causing carbohydrate overload without being balanced by proteins and fat (the 4 food groups were better - much less diabetes when that was popular - and type 2 was NEVER seen in kids back then, even the fat ones), perhaps THAT is why diabetes and heart disease are killing more people each week than died on September 11, 2001 and maiming countless others. Well, at least the grain industry will be healthy, even if we aren't.

Diabetes, dementia and congestive heart failure are growing extremely fast, much much faster than the Gross National Product.

Re:Sorry state of modern medicine

[harvardian]

I just picked a popular drug to illustrate that the field of molecular biology sometimes knows an impressive (to me) level of detail about some things.

But, to address what you say -- I wholeheartedly agree, contrary to what it may seem like in my initial post, that drugs are often misused. But sometimes they're not. Yes, CRP should've been the focus of more research, but in the meantime, statins are not as awful as you make them sound. My uncle recently had a stent inserted into a major artery -- he had very high cholesterol levels and artery blockage. Without surgery, he would have been dead within a year. And yes, statins have negative side effects like every drug, but I'm not unhappy that he's taking them. His cholesterol levels have significantly reduced, his heart is much healthier, and he's being monitored for the problems you mention by his doctor.

As a side note, I refuse to take even Tylenol, since I don't want to mess up my body as long as it's mostly working. Seeing what's happening with Aleve reinforces this decision. But that doesn't mean that biology is in the dark ages, or even that it's "overblown". Even though medicine isn't perfect yet, I'm very encouraged by the rate of progress in molecular biology, and I have strong hopes for the future.

Re:Sorry state of modern medicine

[Reservoir Penguin]

Exactly! Thats why my entirei family switched to homeopathy 7 eers ago and never been healthier. Medicine is still in the "just enough knowledge to be dangerous" stage.

Re:Sorry state of modern medicine

[Daengbo]

this was a joke, right? You just describe homeopathy...

Re:Sorry state of modern medicine

[salesgeek]

Meanwhile the government is pushng that ridiculous food pyramid, with its over-emphasis on grains and causing carbohydrate overload without being balanced by proteins and fat (the 4 food groups were better - much less diabetes when that was popular - and type 2 was NEVER seen in kids back then, even the fat ones)

Diabetes is a huge problem right now. So are stress injuries caused by hauling around an oversized carcas. When you look at your health insurance bill, think this:

This bill costs me 40% more than it should because people don't eat right.

It cost another 20% more becaus people won't get in the gym.

Stop the Roland Piquepaille assfest now!

[ChowyChow]

Stop the Roland Piquepaille assfest now!

Yea those are pretty damn annoying, overhyped shit.

Re:I'm getting tired of the same old story

[Dunbal]

"The health industry has not advanced that much in my 30 years"

Actually that's not a correct statement. I assume that you don't work in the health industry, otherwise you would realize just how much it has advanced. Perhaps your source (the press) is to blame, as the visible "threats" of AIDS, Cancer, etc still remain.

The fact is that people still die, and will still continue to die from something. However consider:

- HIV research has given us insight on how ALL virii work, and we now have a whole new class of medications - antiretrovirals, that did not exist 30 years ago. People can now live many years with HIV without developing AIDS. Of course the medication "cocktail" is not perfect by any means.

- The mortality/morbidity from an acute ischaemic event (heart attack, stroke, etc) has diminished considerably in the past 30 years due to thrombolytic therapy.

- The mortality of ANY surgical procedure is way down from 30 years ago thanks to new monitoring techniques and new, safer anaesthetics.

- Great strides have been made in developing preventative medicine, something that didn't exist 30 years ago. Only most people don't listen, and continue to eat their junk food, smoke, and/or lead sedentary lifestyles.

- A whole slew of non invasive or minimally invasive techniques have been developped: CT scan, MRI, PET, ultrasound, endoscopic procedures, intravascular procedures, etc.

Your frustration at medicine's inability to find a "cure" for a limited set of diseases does not mean that no progress has been made. Only that you are looking in the wrong direction, and therefore can't see it. But I do agree that there is always room for improvement.

Cosmic Serpent

[dfn_deux]

This is one of the conclusions that was suggested in "Cosmic Serpent" by Jeremy Narby. Interstingly, the book is about how the native peoples of South America use psychadelic shamanism to form a picture of reality and how much of what they describe as having been learned while in drug induced states has later (much later) been discovered through advanced western science. Fer instance some South American shaman claim to able to see the shape of dna inside a plant or animal while on ayahuasca and further more they then describe how flashing lights between cells communicate different information at a cellular level. It is a very interesting read and has created quite a stir in my circle of friends that has read it.

Excuse me for being Stupid

[DarkKnightRadick]

But isn't Morse Code just symbolic binary?

01 .-

Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it??

Re:Excuse me for being Stupid

[SharpFang]

Not exactly. Pause between chars, space are encoded as longer dealys. You can distinguish .- .- from .-.- but a byte can contain only 0101, no spaces between bits.

Re:Excuse me for being Stupid

[DarkKnightRadick]

hrm. But at the speeds neurons talk to each other, is that space really so significant as to not be binary? I'm not talking about computer bits and bytes, just pure binary. Remember, the human computer works much differently then the silicon and metal (I use metal generically, knowing that copper, gold, silver and other good conductors are used) ones.

Re:Excuse me for being Stupid

[SharpFang]

No idea about the "bio-morse". I just told you about the "standard morse code".
Variable length chars can be still encoded as bit stream - using i.e. the huffman algorithm.
Say, you have 7-char set ABCDEFG where chars appear in proportions: 25%:25%:20%:10%:10%:5%:5% - split by probablity, roughly in half, one half "more frequent", the other "less" - assigning each branch a bit value:

AB - 0, CDEFG -1.

Porceed recursively appending new "split ID bits" till you have separate characters:

(0)0 - A, (0)1 - B, (1)0 - CD, (1)1 - EFG
(00) - A, (01) - B, (10)0 - C, (10)1 - D, (11)0 - E, (11)1 - FG
(00) - A, (01) - B, (100) - C, (101) - D, (110) - E, (111)0 - F, (111)1-G

Ready table:
00 - A, 01 - B, 100 - C, 101 - D, 110 - E, 1110 - F, 1111-G

Now you can write a continuous binary stream and as long as you know the offset of the first character and the above table, you can "decompress" it without need for any spaces - you just read till you reach one of "legal combinations" and cut at it.
10111000101011101101110
101 - D
110 - E
00 - A ....
Unfortunately "Morse Code" isn't "complete" in the above sense - you can't arbitrarily concatenate its characters - "eee" would be equivalent to "s" etc.
The problem with the above is that you can't tap in the middle of the stream, without knowing start position of a character, and one bit lost garbles whole stream.

Re:Excuse me for being Stupid

[DarkKnightRadick]

Okay, I understand (somewhat) what you're doing and saying.

Unfortunately "Morse Code" isn't "complete" in the above sense - you can't arbitrarily concatenate its characters - "eee" would be equivalent to "s" etc.
The problem with the above is that you can't tap in the middle of the stream, without knowing start position of a character, and one bit lost garbles whole stream.

Now, the above statement could explain to some degree genetic variations (good and bad). One bit is lost, the whole stream is garbled, and you come up with something other then what you wanted.

Or am I just reading too much into this?

Re:Excuse me for being Stupid

[SharpFang]

Can't tell you. I didn't even RTFA ;)

Re:Excuse me for being Stupid

[DarkKnightRadick]

Don't feel bad, I didn't either. ;p

Re:The ham radio folks will be happy to hear this.

[kees]

That depends on where you live, actually. In the Netherlands (where I am from), local clubs provide training/courses. If you speak Dutch, check out www.vrza.nl and www.veron.nl. If you are state-side, the ARRL takes care of that; www.arrl.org for more info.

On the other hand, if you already have basic skills in electronics, chances are that you do not need club training, but you can go straight to the exam. However, you say that you are in to the social aspects of it, and that is where local training is strong at. You'll meet all kinds of beer (uhm... people) and you'll be up and running in no-time.

This is what I did in '96, and passed first try. A couple of years later, I did my 12 WPM code requirement and I am now PA5KL (cept class 1).

As far as where to get equipment: again it depends on where you are. Here in .nl, most stores have changed to internet outlets only. Ebay has a lot of stuff at any time too.

-Kees

Sounds like science fiction?

[KristoferP]

Well, it's a bit of science and then the journalists added a huge slab of fiction, so yeah, it does sound like science fiction.

the placebo effect

[Ludo.Sanders]

Little Off topic but, What do you ppl see the future of drugs, I mean related to the placebo effect.

More like

[kaens]

Xenocide.

But anyway, as far as all this Roland shit goes, Slashdot sold out a long time ago, people. Fuck it.
Maybe, just maybe the people who ran the site figured out that they could do whatever they wanted, and they'd still be rolling in the page hits.

I mean think about the amount of traffic that pours through this site everyday. This is a site that has a reputation for bringing down servers from mass amount of click-through traffic, and that's just the people who even bother to RTFA. I rarely if ever do, myself seeing as most of the articles don't interest me for shit.

I say we just ignore the articles entirely, and just start talking about whatever the fuck we want to. It's not like we pay to see this site (at least I don't)

Oh wait, everyone is already doing that, barely keeping on-article topic if at all. Good, because theres almost always people here that know more about the topic the article was written on than the authors of said shitty articles.

Don't read the articles, block the ads, and just start talking about whatever comes to your head when you read the article summary. That's what /. is for.

If you are a paying member of the site...I'm assuming you have the money to throw around. The incentive to pay to be a member(OOH I CAN SEE THE ARTICLES SOONER) is pretty much counter-productive to what I come here for anyhow.

Re:Nokia

[Daengbo]

What signal turns on the second f in "off?" You might want to make that your ringtone or something...

I knew it!

[seth1334]

So that's what that pounding noise is after a hard night out drinking.. "S O S" "S O S"

Patents?

[t_allardyce]

And if morse code == binary, then thanks to software patents the human race's ability to use this will be limited to what a few drug companies decide.

Link to Original Article

[stiggle]

The original article (without ads)

http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/media/pressreleases/05_01_1 0_cell_morse_code.html

Media Releases
10 January 2005
A Morse code for human cells

Morse code is a simple, effective and clear method of communication and now scientists believe that cells in our body may also be using patterns of signals to switch genes on and off. The discovery may have major implications for the pharmaceutical industry as the signalling molecules that are targeted by drugs may have more than one purpose. The number of 'dots and dashes' being used by each signal could have different purposes, all of which could be modified by a drug.

The researchers, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and working at the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester and the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital, in collaboration with scientists at AstraZeneca and Pfizer, have studied transcription factors, the signalling molecules inside cells that activate or deactivate genes. They found that the strength of the signal is less important than the dynamic frequency pattern that is used.

Professor Michael White of the Centre for Cell Imaging at Liverpool and leader of the research group said, "The timing of the repeating signal is essential for its interpretation. It seems that cells may read the oscillations in level of transcription factors in a similar way to Morse code."

The researchers focused on the response of a transcription factor involved in controlling the crucial processes of cell division and cell death. They found that the dynamics of the signalling molecule resemble the changes in calcium levels that encode other messages in cells. The results suggest how common signalling molecules could convey different messages through different frequencies.

Professor Douglas Kell, who sits on BBSRC Council and is a member of the research team, said, "This raises new challenges for drug designers. It appears that simply aiming to knock down signalling molecules with drugs, as many people are trying to do, may have weak or even undesirable effects as a range of signals could be cancelled out. It is going to be important in the future to decode the Morse-like messages from the molecules to make sure that only the desired effects are blocked."

Professor Julia Goodfellow, BBSRC Chief Executive, said, "This research is an example of a multi-disciplinary approach producing vitally important results. By combining expertise in cell biology, chemistry, mathematical modelling and bio-imaging the research team have discovered this coded signal that is going to inform the development of better, more effective drugs."

ENDS
Contacts

Matt Goode , BBSRC Media Office

Tel: 01793 413299, E-mail: matt.goode@bbsrc.ac.uk

Professor Michael White, University of Liverpool

E-mail: m.white@liv.ac.uk

Professor Douglas Kell, University of Manchester

E-mail: dbk@man.ac.uk

Notes to Editors

This research features in the January 2005 issue of Business, the quarterly magazine of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

The researchers used cultured cells, which had been modified to carry fluorescent proteins or a gene for bioluminescence which enabled them to visualise events in the cell.

The signalling molecule focused on was NF-kappa B which is a transcription factor involved in cell death and cell division.

The collaborative research was conducted by scientists at the Universities of Manchester, Liverpool , The Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital and the pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer.

About BBSRC

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is the UK funding agency for research in the life sciences. Sponsored by Government, BBSRC annually invests around £300 million in a wide ran

Not necessarily wave or morse pattern.

[ebyrob]

Hey, but now it's not just some sort of pattern, it's some sort of WAVE pattern!

Given Fourier's theorems, is there any other kind of time-varying pattern?

I mean... if they just now figured out that this is a dynamic system, then we have a looooong road till we understand this stuff much at all.

What happens when you die?

[af4oo]

What happens when you die? ...-.-

S25.5 morse requirement was dropped in 2003

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Morse requirements are now left up to individual nations to decide for themselves, and many have removed the requirement completely.

As an Extra class, I passed a morse test....

[Ellis D. Tripp]

but I STILL have a problem with it being a REQUIREMENT to get a license in this day and age.

Yes, CW is useful for weak signal work, and could theoretically be helpful in an emergency situation where nothing else was available (sending morse by tapping 2 wires together, etc...). But outside of the amateur service (and the occasional automated ID system), it simply isn't used anymore.

A much better argument could be made for OTHER practical radio skills that have much more widespread application nowadays, and help support the basis and purpose of the amateur service. How about requiring prospective hams to be able to solder a PL-259 plug onto a length of coax? Or read a schematic? Identify a group of assorted electronic components? Or use a multimeter? Or build a simple wire dipole antenna?

Any of these skills would serve as a suitable "lid filter", and together with NOT PUBLISHING THE ACTUAL EXAM QUESTION POOL could go a long way toward reversing the trend toward "appliance operators" that has been destroying the service since commercial SSB gear became available.

In an emergency, a ham who knows enough electronic theory and practice to jury-rig a station onto the air would be a LOT more useful than an appliance operator who can pound brass at 20 WPM.

Re:As an Extra class, I passed a morse test....

[VAXcat]

Morse code is still used for identifying VOR and NDB beacons in aviation. Being able to ident them just by listening, rather than having to look up the dots & dashes cheat sheet on the aviation sectional can really help to reduce the cockpit workload, especially when you're lost, or can easily get lost if you misidentify one.

Re:As an Extra class, I passed a morse test....

[ThisIsFred]

A much better argument could be made for OTHER practical radio skills that have much more widespread application nowadays, and help support the basis and purpose of the amateur service. How about requiring prospective hams to be able to solder a PL-259 plug onto a length of coax? Or read a schematic? Identify a group of assorted electronic components? Or use a multimeter? Or build a simple wire dipole antenna?

My insistence on a minimum amount of keying skill doesn't exlude what you're talking about here. In other words, I completely agree with your proposed requirements as well. Shouldn't a good test for an aspiring licensee for a "higher" class of license include reading a simple schematic and building a functioning radio device from it? Even if it's just a receiver.

I think the CW requirement was reduced due to lower numbers of license applicants, not simply because it was obsolete. Therein lies the problem with your grand plans and mine: Although the greater requirements are entirely practical, and provably so, it would probably be too much trouble for volunteer testers to administer, and since the current crop of "appliance operators" (I love your term) are simply there to push buttons, such extensive testing would probably kill the hobby in a couple decades.

In an emergency, a ham who knows enough electronic theory and practice to jury-rig a station onto the air would be a LOT more useful than an appliance operator who can pound brass at 20 WPM.

Hmm, I don't see how you can separate the two. Your best bet for "getting out" with a low-power ad hoc transmitter is to use CW. I've seen some simple AM projects, but not that simple.

Anyway, call me irrational, but I think the elimination of testing one of the core skills in amateur radio marks the beginning of the end for this hobby. Everything is VHF/UHF appliances with all the bells and whistles. That isn't interesting to me, and doesn't strike me as keeping with Hams' resourceful spirit of the past. I can no longer find any decent VHF/UHF AM/SSB kits, and I think that's a bad sign. I particularly enjoy building antennas, and I got a blank stare from a fellow Ham when I questioned why he put down so much money for a prefab one.

Well, thanks for being my audience, I feel a little better now that I've vented my frustrations. :o)

Correct Eating

[tilleyrw]

The second posting, when I read this blog, mentioned the USDA Food Pyramid and eating the correct proportions of food types (protein, carbohydrates, etc.).

I call bullshit on all of the above!

Great apes, the closest relative to humans on this planet, consume only raw fruits, vegetables (mostly leaves), and a small amount of meat.

The human digestive system is no different from the digestive tract of a Bonobo gorilla. Read the book, "Eat To Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. You will discover a method of eating that can last a lifetime and will enable you to live at your individual bodyweight. (For most of us, this means you will reduce! Often, significant weight reduction will occur.)

Personally, I have reduced by over thirty (30) pounds over six months, simply by changing the foods that I consume. Raw fruit and vegetables are the majority of my diet. Little or no processed foods.

Learn how your body truly works. Give up such things as Atkins food sorting, calorie counting, ensuring you are in ketosis, etc. and eat as Nature wants you to eat. Was there processed food such as breads, cakes, and Atkins diet bars 10,000 yearsr ago? No, and humanity survived quite well, thank you.

This has been a simple rant by none other than your lovable tilleyrw. Peace out.

messages versus content

[SolemnDragon]

Scientists have been able to "turn off" diabetes in mice for ten years now.

This has not yet turned into a viable, universal treatment option yet.

It might not ever. It might. We accept that the limits of medicine are really the limits of our ability to understand the human body's complexity, and the limits of our ability to functionally apply what little we do know.

I've got a vested interest in this, with a couple of issues to wait for a cure for. One has a specific genetic component that sits right next to the diabetes 'switch.' Like diabetes, it can switch on at any point in the lifespan. We know that a lot of things can trigger sudden expression of diseases- illness, strain on the system, even viral activity. There are a lot of things that can make us sick, and it's possible that there are going to be a lot of ways to make us well, one of them being finding out how to turn a disease off, how to make it no longer expressed.

How do we know that hitting that switch for diabetes won't result in hypoglycemia, with too much insulin? That turning off the process that results in an autoimmune problem won't leave us dying of common colds? We don't, but we look at the most obvious flaws first, and aim to correct what we know is causing a problem. From there, we work with what we've got.

These are real issues, and they are being explored. I do not want to be among the first test subjects, but i don't have as much at stake as the people likely to be the first volunteers. I do look forward to a cure in my lifetime, and while i don't follow the blog in question, this particular bit of scientific discussion is neither the beginning nor the end of this line of scientific exploration, and i strongly urge people with genetic ailments to stay on top of the subject through some of the more reputable scientific journals, because we may be seeing the beginnings of viable treatments in the not-too-too-distant (think 'next decade') future.

Stop the Roland Piquepaille assfest now!

[longsensual]

Stop the Roland Piquepaille assfest now!

Re:Hint: 12 fingered pianist.

[rbarreira]

Morse code spam... for the first time? :P

Re:Gattaca

[Scrameustache]

The pianist in Gattaca had 12 fingers, you said 6, you must have been thinking of each hand.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Re:More like

[Scrameustache]

Xenocide.

Admitadly, I've been trying to forget that book, so you'll have to help me out.

How was Xenocide more related to biotech than Gattaca?

Re:More like

[kaens]

I was thinking of the morse-codish language the descaloda had. It's the first thing that popped into my head when morse-code and cells came together in a sentence. More so than gattaca....I don't know I haven't seen Gattaca. I said more like because....well...I don't know. Just because.

Re:More like

[Scrameustache]

I was thinking of the morse-codish language the descaloda had. It's the first thing that popped into my head when morse-code and cells came together in a sentence. More so than gattaca....I don't know I haven't seen Gattaca.

Ahhh... yeah... vague recollections... : )

Anyway: SEE GATTACA!

It's excellent hard sci-fi that even non-sci-fi lovers can enjoy. Nothing unbelievable, good acting, excellent aesthetics, and it's a great story about humanity and perseverance. I highly recommend it.