This isn't likely to have much effect on the survival of the Panda species - for one, a peptide is probably fairly easy to synthesize or produce in some other living system via genetic engineering if it is worth doing so.
Most of all, though - this isn't especially new or restricted to Pandas. Peptide cathelicidins are apparently found in every species they've been looked for, including at least some plants. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68054804/ for a summary search on this.
It remains to be seen if this is a particularly potent member of the general class or just another more or less interesting data point.
Not good history there. The Catholic church did execute concordats with fascist Italy and Germany, but these were definitely arm's-length agreements whose only purpose (from the church's side) was to secure some basic operational rights in hostile political environments.
In Italy, the Lateran treaty with Mussolini established the Vatican city-state and closed the book on issues, such as reparation for the seizure of the papal states, going back to 1848.
In Germany, the church was more or less officially in opposition to the state since the Kulturkampf of Bismark. In the face of the much more aggressive ideology of the Nazis, the Church did waffle a bit in signing the Reichskonkordat of 1933, but it can be argued that the terms were the best available. It should be noted that it was only the Catholic-majority areas of Germany that did not endorse Nazi rule in 1932.
In neither case could it be reasonably argued that the church and fascist states were "allies".
I assume you mean something like what happened in South Africa? Of course, nobody was going to miss trading with them so much (quick: name 3 things in your house made in SA. Time's up....). Plus, apartheid was particularly odious to the "great and good" who run things, including especially the media that it was a very popular trade embargo.
The problem with China is not just that they are egregious offenders against the rights of their citizens (including those who'd really rather forgo the privilege, like the Tibetans), but that they have become indispensable to our own financial comfort. This makes any proposal at using trade leverage a non-starter.
So, what makes you think that we aren't (mostly) using monoculture strains now? I don't see this as a compelling argument for that reason - most large agriculture is already monoculture (http://bss.sfsu.edu/fischer/IR%20305/Readings/global.htm). Not that that's a good thing, but it's the way it is because, presumably, it is economically desirable - at least until the next rust fungus or whatever shows up that targets the favored strain(s).
Uh, yes, nonsense. Sorry about the yaws, but for everything else listed there are medications that "work" even if there is no cure, which you didn't specify.
There are two things that work in medicine. Surgery and antibiotics. Everything else treats symptoms or confirms you need either surgery or antibiotics.
This is nonsense, of course. There are a wide variety of medications for diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and a huge number of metabolic/physiological illnesses from Alzheimer's to Yaws (can't think of a "z" disease at the moment).
Stem cell therapies (even using embryo-derived cell lines) are not illegal. However, there are professional and ethical standards of treatment and research protocols that would prohibit this kind of "scientific voodoo" medicine. The sad fact is that this woman was desperate enough to try this snake oil treatment, but it was a serious error in judgment.
We don't know the details of her decision or of the medical issue that she faced. But there is no "policy" issue here; we can't command the science to provide a reliable treatment without careful study. Sadly, this patient either didn't have the time or the patience to wait and paid the price for that.
Also, US law to the contrary, corporations are not real people. Imposing taxes on corporate profits is just a way for the government to "double-dip" on taxing productive activity - tax the corporation and the individuals who profit from their stock holdings. It also makes no sense that US corporate tax rates are higher than almost anywhere else in the developed world.
It seems (from the article) that the draconian punishment of exclusion from all federally-funded programs was not optional, thus necessitating the bogus "whipping-boy" subsidiary. This is stupid law, of the same stripe as large minimal sentences for drug possession and many other politically-motivated examples. That's just our lawmakers pandering to the thirst for vengeance exhibited by many other posters here who seem to want to punish the corporation, as if it exists as a real person.
The fact is that you can't really "punish" a corporation, since it isn't really a person (no matter what the law says on that). Neither can you really tax one since the cost of fines and/or taxes are just passed along in the price of products. Tax the income derived from the investment by the shareholders, by all means, but taxing a corporation's profits just makes it another tax collector and distorts operational and investment decisions.
What we have is bad law - treating corporations as persons for some purposes (and, inconsistently, not for some others), and then the one mandating a stupid punishment for crimes that should be attributed to individuals.
All of this further diminishes the rapidly fading sense of personal responsibility that was once such a defining characteristic of American culture. So long, American republic, it was nice while it lasted.
That's not what I said. I was pointing out that he lies about US in a wild and paranoid style designed only to appeal to the prejudices of his base. Just like Hitler and the Jews.
Chavez is not a dictator. He was legitimately and overwhelmingly elected in a fair election, unlike George W Bush (for example).
Read more news (and history) then. Hitler and Mussolini were elected too, you know. Chavez has shut down opposition newspapers, thrown political opponents into jail, supported the leftist-cum-terrorist operations of FARC in Columbia, is best buds with the Castro brothers, etc. All of which adds up to me as dictator-like behavior. He first came to notice after a failed coup attempt in 1992 - and when he did come to power, became one of the leaders of the OPEC cartel, reducing production to boost oil prices.
Plus, he's just a lying SOS and enemy of the US, just on general principles (or lack thereof). Most recently, he accused US of being responsible for the Haiti earthquake ( http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583588,00.html ) using some magical new weapon no one else has heard of. Evidence of the paranoid style and demonization of some "enemy" which is page one of the dictator's handbook.\p>
That's really not all that bad. At a typical rate of 10 cents/KWh that's only about $1.5 per hour to run. Since it only runs when hot water is in use, I suspect most household would use well under 1 hour of hot water a day (10-30 minutes for showers, another < 5 minutes for a laundry, < 5 minutes for a dishwasher,+ misc use).
This is the one branch of fascist thinking that hasn't been officially eradicated or possibly even seriously challenged in Germany. The attitude is that children belong to the state and it goes back a long way - at least to the Kulturkampf in Bismark's time and the origin of Kindergarten as a means to pry children's allegiance away from parents and local culture (especially Catholic).
The essential question is who is really responsible for the children? My answer is the parents - the state makes a lousy surrogate. The kids need to be loved and guided - if the guidance is a bit off, then they can think for themselves later. Parents are often lousy at it, but somehow most parents fumble their way to reasonably well-adjusted kids. Nobody should be empowered to subvert the parent-child bond, except in extreme cases of neglect.
Absolutely correct. There is no useful "tech" fix for education - it's all in the wetware connection between the one giving the instruction and those receiving it; hardware just does not apply.
I really don't mean this as a troll, but, really, do Teacher's colleges (or Education departments) really teach anything significant at all? I was an undergraduate 40 years ago and education majors were not exactly considered the brightest on campus then and, as far as I can tell, still aren't (from my kids in college).
Personally, I believe that when women with intelligence could become anything they wanted, the teaching profession lost its most reliable source of decent practitioners. I hasten to add that I don't think we should turn the clock back on that, but it would be nice if teaching attracted more of the highly competent women that now go into business or other professions. How to do that is another issue and there are serious cultural as well as financial problems to overcome here.
And yes, I will plead guilty to holding the probably sexist notion that intelligent women are better at handling younger children (say before middle school, at least) than equally intelligent men, on average. That's just the way it is (in my not so humble opinion).
Which means precisely nothing. He is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. That doesn't give him any rights at all with respect to avoiding that judgement in the proper jurisdiction.
What educational system are you talking about? Rote memorization was the mainstay of the educational system up until the 60s when we started getting all warm and fuzzy and stopped caring about facts. Rote learning provides the basis for critical thinking (which is best done at the college level) by grounding the individual in facts.
I'm afraid what we've been producing for the past 30 years are students who mostly avoid the hard work of thinking that the hard sciences require and instead go for MBAs to make money as painlessly as possible. That probably has a lot to do with the decline in basic science work, as well.
Re:Success relies on our tendency to get well or d
on
Trick or Treatment
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· Score: 1
Yes, and Medicine has long relied on this. I've read (sorry, no citation) that it wasn't until sometime in mid-19th century that you were statistically better off consulting a physician than not. Of course, that depended greatly on whether the problem was in that limited subset of illnesses they could actually do something about.
But people went to doctors anyway and were regularly bled, purged and given near-poisonous drugs and thanked the good doctor for his attention. Some even survived..
Slashdot Mirror
Most of all, though - this isn't especially new or restricted to Pandas. Peptide cathelicidins are apparently found in every species they've been looked for, including at least some plants. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68054804/ for a summary search on this.
It remains to be seen if this is a particularly potent member of the general class or just another more or less interesting data point.
Bravo - no points to offer, but this is the only intelligent and humane post on this topic I've seen so far. Just had to say it.
Not good history there. The Catholic church did execute concordats with fascist Italy and Germany, but these were definitely arm's-length agreements whose only purpose (from the church's side) was to secure some basic operational rights in hostile political environments.
In Italy, the Lateran treaty with Mussolini established the Vatican city-state and closed the book on issues, such as reparation for the seizure of the papal states, going back to 1848.
In Germany, the church was more or less officially in opposition to the state since the Kulturkampf of Bismark. In the face of the much more aggressive ideology of the Nazis, the Church did waffle a bit in signing the Reichskonkordat of 1933, but it can be argued that the terms were the best available. It should be noted that it was only the Catholic-majority areas of Germany that did not endorse Nazi rule in 1932.
In neither case could it be reasonably argued that the church and fascist states were "allies".
Who is this ingenious "Kung Fu Monkey" that I may subscribe to his newsletter?
Thanks for the cough-inducing guffaw..
I assume you mean something like what happened in South Africa? Of course, nobody was going to miss trading with them so much (quick: name 3 things in your house made in SA. Time's up....). Plus, apartheid was particularly odious to the "great and good" who run things, including especially the media that it was a very popular trade embargo.
The problem with China is not just that they are egregious offenders against the rights of their citizens (including those who'd really rather forgo the privilege, like the Tibetans), but that they have become indispensable to our own financial comfort. This makes any proposal at using trade leverage a non-starter.
So, what makes you think that we aren't (mostly) using monoculture strains now? I don't see this as a compelling argument for that reason - most large agriculture is already monoculture (http://bss.sfsu.edu/fischer/IR%20305/Readings/global.htm). Not that that's a good thing, but it's the way it is because, presumably, it is economically desirable - at least until the next rust fungus or whatever shows up that targets the favored strain(s).
Uh, yes, nonsense. Sorry about the yaws, but for everything else listed there are medications that "work" even if there is no cure, which you didn't specify.
There are two things that work in medicine. Surgery and antibiotics. Everything else treats symptoms or confirms you need either surgery or antibiotics.
This is nonsense, of course. There are a wide variety of medications for diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and a huge number of metabolic/physiological illnesses from Alzheimer's to Yaws (can't think of a "z" disease at the moment).
Mod parent up as informative amongst a raft of uninformed half-baked opinion.
Stem cell therapies (even using embryo-derived cell lines) are not illegal. However, there are professional and ethical standards of treatment and research protocols that would prohibit this kind of "scientific voodoo" medicine. The sad fact is that this woman was desperate enough to try this snake oil treatment, but it was a serious error in judgment.
We don't know the details of her decision or of the medical issue that she faced. But there is no "policy" issue here; we can't command the science to provide a reliable treatment without careful study. Sadly, this patient either didn't have the time or the patience to wait and paid the price for that.
Also, US law to the contrary, corporations are not real people. Imposing taxes on corporate profits is just a way for the government to "double-dip" on taxing productive activity - tax the corporation and the individuals who profit from their stock holdings. It also makes no sense that US corporate tax rates are higher than almost anywhere else in the developed world.
In fact, they didn't. Most of the oil development contracts made last year in Iraq went to EU and Chinese companies. That "Blood for Oil" mantra was mostly BS. See http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/168-general/48444-did-big-oil-win-the-war-in-iraq.html
It seems (from the article) that the draconian punishment of exclusion from all federally-funded programs was not optional, thus necessitating the bogus "whipping-boy" subsidiary. This is stupid law, of the same stripe as large minimal sentences for drug possession and many other politically-motivated examples. That's just our lawmakers pandering to the thirst for vengeance exhibited by many other posters here who seem to want to punish the corporation, as if it exists as a real person.
The fact is that you can't really "punish" a corporation, since it isn't really a person (no matter what the law says on that). Neither can you really tax one since the cost of fines and/or taxes are just passed along in the price of products. Tax the income derived from the investment by the shareholders, by all means, but taxing a corporation's profits just makes it another tax collector and distorts operational and investment decisions.
What we have is bad law - treating corporations as persons for some purposes (and, inconsistently, not for some others), and then the one mandating a stupid punishment for crimes that should be attributed to individuals.
All of this further diminishes the rapidly fading sense of personal responsibility that was once such a defining characteristic of American culture. So long, American republic, it was nice while it lasted.
That's not what I said. I was pointing out that he lies about US in a wild and paranoid style designed only to appeal to the prejudices of his base. Just like Hitler and the Jews.
Chavez is not a dictator. He was legitimately and overwhelmingly elected in a fair election, unlike George W Bush (for example).
Read more news (and history) then. Hitler and Mussolini were elected too, you know. Chavez has shut down opposition newspapers, thrown political opponents into jail, supported the leftist-cum-terrorist operations of FARC in Columbia, is best buds with the Castro brothers, etc. All of which adds up to me as dictator-like behavior. He first came to notice after a failed coup attempt in 1992 - and when he did come to power, became one of the leaders of the OPEC cartel, reducing production to boost oil prices.
See http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/presidentsofsouthamerica/p/09HChavez.htm - a generally sympathetic view of him as a leftist reformer, but his dictatorial aspirations are clear.
Plus, he's just a lying SOS and enemy of the US, just on general principles (or lack thereof). Most recently, he accused US of being responsible for the Haiti earthquake ( http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583588,00.html ) using some magical new weapon no one else has heard of. Evidence of the paranoid style and demonization of some "enemy" which is page one of the dictator's handbook.\p>
No such law - just custom, nearly universally observed, but there are exceptions.
I note the parent post did not mention antibiotics, but just killing bacteria. Which Pasteur did pioneer, thus the term "Pasteurization".
That's really not all that bad. At a typical rate of 10 cents/KWh that's only about $1.5 per hour to run. Since it only runs when hot water is in use, I suspect most household would use well under 1 hour of hot water a day (10-30 minutes for showers, another < 5 minutes for a laundry, < 5 minutes for a dishwasher,+ misc use).
You don't have any teen-aged daughters, do you?
This is the one branch of fascist thinking that hasn't been officially eradicated or possibly even seriously challenged in Germany. The attitude is that children belong to the state and it goes back a long way - at least to the Kulturkampf in Bismark's time and the origin of Kindergarten as a means to pry children's allegiance away from parents and local culture (especially Catholic).
The essential question is who is really responsible for the children? My answer is the parents - the state makes a lousy surrogate. The kids need to be loved and guided - if the guidance is a bit off, then they can think for themselves later. Parents are often lousy at it, but somehow most parents fumble their way to reasonably well-adjusted kids. Nobody should be empowered to subvert the parent-child bond, except in extreme cases of neglect.
Absolutely correct. There is no useful "tech" fix for education - it's all in the wetware connection between the one giving the instruction and those receiving it; hardware just does not apply.
I really don't mean this as a troll, but, really, do Teacher's colleges (or Education departments) really teach anything significant at all? I was an undergraduate 40 years ago and education majors were not exactly considered the brightest on campus then and, as far as I can tell, still aren't (from my kids in college).
Personally, I believe that when women with intelligence could become anything they wanted, the teaching profession lost its most reliable source of decent practitioners. I hasten to add that I don't think we should turn the clock back on that, but it would be nice if teaching attracted more of the highly competent women that now go into business or other professions. How to do that is another issue and there are serious cultural as well as financial problems to overcome here.
And yes, I will plead guilty to holding the probably sexist notion that intelligent women are better at handling younger children (say before middle school, at least) than equally intelligent men, on average. That's just the way it is (in my not so humble opinion).
Which means precisely nothing. He is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. That doesn't give him any rights at all with respect to avoiding that judgement in the proper jurisdiction.
What educational system are you talking about? Rote memorization was the mainstay of the educational system up until the 60s when we started getting all warm and fuzzy and stopped caring about facts. Rote learning provides the basis for critical thinking (which is best done at the college level) by grounding the individual in facts. I'm afraid what we've been producing for the past 30 years are students who mostly avoid the hard work of thinking that the hard sciences require and instead go for MBAs to make money as painlessly as possible. That probably has a lot to do with the decline in basic science work, as well.
Yes, and Medicine has long relied on this. I've read (sorry, no citation) that it wasn't until sometime in mid-19th century that you were statistically better off consulting a physician than not. Of course, that depended greatly on whether the problem was in that limited subset of illnesses they could actually do something about. But people went to doctors anyway and were regularly bled, purged and given near-poisonous drugs and thanked the good doctor for his attention. Some even survived..