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New Imaging Sheds Light On Basic Building Blocks of Life
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the UK's national synchrotron facility are studying the structure of Containment Level 3 pathogens such as Aids, Flu and Hepatitis. They use high intensity X-Rays to study the atomic and molecular structure of pathogens too small to be examined under a microscope. This leads to a greater understanding of how they work. They have already produced results on the hand, foot and mouth virus. This is the first time Level 3 pathogens have been imaged in this way."
http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/101/motm.do?momID=20
The causes of foot in mouth disease are too complex.
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Strange that this reads like a PR puff piece..
Quantum Mechanics explains Physics (but nobody really knows why).
Physics explains Chemistry
Chemistry explains Biology
All of biology (indeed, all of life) is created from an infinite number of configurations of the same small number of building blocks.
Like Mexican cooking.
We have a reasonably good idea of how the basic building blocks work. We could build nucleotide sequences which would lead to proteins of our choice. What we don't know shite about really is the secondary, tertiary, etciary environment in which these things interact. It's like the difference between knowing how to print a dollar bill and understanding the US economy.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
AIDS(which, while nasty, is pretty stubbornly fluid-borne) shares a containment level with the flu(which, while merely annoying, cuts a broad and temporary swath through the population pretty much every time somebody gets the winter sniffles)? Are 'containment levels' based much less on ease of transmission than the name would suggest?
I think the term you are looking for (for the "philosophy-literate") is Supervenience.
One thing you'll discover investigating that is that your hierarchical arrangement does not necessarily apply, so thinking it universally does can be more of an indicator of scientific illiteracy, rather than literacy.
For example, the constituent atoms of paper money do not determine, and one cannot infer from that, the higher-order property of the money's value (as this is dependent on extrinsic factors, such as the economy). Assuming a universal to reality automatically because it is a premise useful to science, is an epistemological error.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
At a facility whose first stage was opened in 2007? They were going to start on the timetable you suggested; but they couldn't find enough researchers with 10 or more years experience working at the UK national synchrontron facility...
What do you guys think?
Rambling and somewhat trite, but your heart appears to be in the right place so do keep it up.
Give some thought to looking more closely at a particular branch of science; you might find it much more rewarding to get answers to smaller questions than to philosophise endlessly on the big ones.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
What do you guys think?
We think you should spend less time doing drugs and more time paying attention in class.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It seems that this summary is suggesting that AIDS, Flu and Hepatitis are the basic building blocks of life. What biology class did samzenpus take?
How about doing drugs in class? Helped me survive high school, anyway . . .
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I may very well be missing the point you're trying to make here, but there seems to be a disconnect between the example you use, and what the post is about.
Money today, seems to me like an abstraction layer between people and the economy at large.
There are no abstraction layers in nature. Form *IS* function, if you want to be pithy about it.
This is the reason there are >88'000 macromolecular structures deposited in data banks; it's been shown over and over again to be very useful information. http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/statistics/contentGrowthChart.do?content=total&seqid=100
Really. Okay, show me the form of the function of "freedom" (the specific atoms will do, and note that "freedom" here does -not- mean "assumed atoms broadly inferred by EEG readings correlating with a particular selected individual contemplating 'freedom'"--I don't mean that, I mean freedom) as it applies to its presence in biological entities, or deny that "freedom" has functional effect on biology.
This is a much older, much less tractable problem than your aphorism would suggest.
That is not to say biological structures do not have effects and are not scientifically useful to know, it was specifically the assumption of the universality of supervenience I was commenting on.
To put it another way, which of these statements is true?
1. The behavior and nature of all systems are exhaustively determined by their constituent parts.
2. Molecules are purely physical entities, interacting only with other physical entities by physical means.
3. People are constituted of molecules.
4. People have mental states constituted of mental concepts, such as "happiness".
5. No mental concept can be logically derived from any purely physical description.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
AIDS is specific to the immune system deficiency caused by HIV. While lupus and many other things cause immune system deficiencies, they are not referred to as AIDS.
No, 5 is also true. Your description of "caused by" is irrelevant to "logically derived", which is to say, being able to say -therefore- (mental concept) -given- (specific physical description). The state, however, is simply not the concept, as I thought I had made even clearer than is manifestly obvious. "The next prime in the series 2, 3, 5, 7..." does not have as its correct answer an EEG of someone contemplating the problem. The answer is a number. The biochemical activity is not a number. Simple.
"The mountains of evidence" simply say the the brain in involved in the process of cognition around the concept, and nothing else.
And no, "freedom" is what it means, which you can refer to the dictionary to determine. It is not defined by your dubious redefinition, and again that the brain is necessary in utilizing it does not address the issue.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
To correct my wording for precision, that should read "5 is also plausible". Which are -true- is the dilemma at the core of the Mind-Body Problem.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
This article is about viruses, last time I checked they make you sick. How does this relate to the building blocks of life?
And Theology explains Economics.
Economics is a belief system far beyond the capability of ordinary religious people, and even beyond the capability of quantum physicists.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!