I went to the DFWUUG(Dallas/Ft. Worth UNIX User's Group) meeting tonight, where RMS was the keynote speaker. during Q&A he mentioned something about this project, and also the ideal he subscribes to where he believes all non-fiction technical knowledege should be free as in speech. While I think it is a worthy goal to attempt to write a free (as in speech) encyclopedia, it's much more difficult than writing free software. One of the things RMS mentioned tonight was the lack of quality documentation for GNU software; well, an encyclopedia is the mother of documentation, and it also needs to be constantly updated as well. Also, who/how will the correctness of information be verified? Encyclopedic knowledge is not like computer code, there is no litmus test to see if it works or not; computer code either compiles and runs, or it doesn't. It's a tough thing to undertake, both in terms of actually completing and general acceptance, esp. given the free (as in beer) encylopedias already out there i.e. Britannica.com.
since classical genetics has been around for a lot longer than computers and ascii, many classical genetic nomenclature use nortoriously asii-unfriendly symbols. For instance, as many of you know, Drosophila (fruit fly) geneticists can basically name genes anything they want to, and nomenclature to denote specific mutant alleles of genes use all sorts of evil things like subscripts, superscripts, Greek letters, etc etc. In short, it's just a total mess. Similarly, although yeast geneticists do have a standardized nomenclature, it's very ascii-unfriendly, due to things like Greek letters, superscripts, subscripts, etc etc. Nomenclature for mammalian systems such as mouse and humans is even worse, there is basically no standard. for instance some gene names use all CAPS while others only capitalize the first letter, and some use the common three-letter convention plus a number (BMP1, BMP2, BMP3, etc etc), while others use a Drosophila-type naming scheme (e.g., agouti, shaker are mouse mutant names)(there is some uniformity that is given to gene assignments in large sequencing projects, but those are just an alphanumeric sequence, it's not very descriptive).
Constrast this with a relatively more recent model genetic organism, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. Standards were set early whereby all gene names were standardized by basis of their phenotype (eat-4 is a worm with a mutant feeding behavior, unc-6 describes a worm with uncoordinated movement, lin-41 describes a mutant with mutant cell development lineage, etc etc), and is ascii-friendly. As a result, C. elegans people enjoyed standardized and searchable computerized gene databases for much longer than other geneticists in other fields.
I hope that a standard becomes set and rapidly adapted; lab chiefs (to us grad student peons anyway) can often seem like PHB's in IT when it comes to adapting new methods and paradigms.
having Napster is just yet another luxury of our overspending consumerist society. If you absolutely *MUST* have free music, get music that is free from places like mp3.com where the music really *IS* free (as in beer).
ObTopic: Napster can censor whomever they feel like, no one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to download stuff using their software. Besides, Nazis are like child pornographers; they have no redeeming social value whatsoever. Good for them for censoring Nazis.
Is it feasible to determine which genes are common to all life forms currently living on the planet The answer may lead some insight into the question of what is the minimum requirement for life.
IAAG. This question is more philisophical than scientific. Define life first. You can generate self-replicating molecules using themselves as templates using RNA only, under specific in vitro conditions. Is that life? Generally speaking, organisms (i.e., one or more cell, not viruses) adapt to an environmental niche that they occupy and retain what genes they need to survive in that niche. Since each niche is a different microenvironment, all organisms have different genes (evolutionary adaptation).
However, to answer your question somewhat more directly I recall that mycoplasma has the currently known smallest genome of any organism, with 580074 base pairs of DNA, and 483 genes. See The Mycoplasma genetalium Genome Database for more info.
Fugu is useful because of it's small genome size, but genomic information only tells you so much. Imagine not understanding computer code, and someone hands you the source code for the entire Red Hat distro; it's not very useful insofar as understanding how your computer works, unless you understand what the code means.
To truly understand biology you need a model organism that is accessible experimentally. A good model system should have the following traits:
(1) Genetically tractable: basically this means that you can reliably perform matings and score marker genes for mapping.
(2) Easy to culture: can grow large numbers of the organism in a relatively short time for relatively little money.
(3) Easy to manipulate: have the ability to generate both random and targeted mutations, have vectors by which to insert transgenes.
(4) Easy to observe: simple organisms that have transluscent body walls are the best.
Fugu doesn't have ANY of these advantages except the small genome, so probably the most use that will come out of it will be as a reference organism. Experimentally, the best model organisms biologists have are:
(1) mice: best characterized mammalian model. you can do targeted mutations and insert transgenes, but random mutagenisis is hard. Histology and embryology is pretty well established, but mice like most mammals are very complex and often studies raise more questions than answer them. Genome sequence note quite complete yet, but getting there.
(2) fruit flies: Drosophila melanogaster is a great model system. The genome is relatively small (about 10^8 base pairs of DNA, and estimated 15,000 genes), but it has all the relavent organs and systems as mammals, and many genes function in the same way. Genome sequence has been completed.
(3) nematodes: Caenorhabditis elegans is also a great model system. Genome size is approx. the same as flies. Has the added advantage of having its entire cell lineage mapped. It only has 1000 or so cells, so it makes a super model organism for studying differentiation. Genome sequence is also complete. Disadvantages is due to divergence from the mammalian branch, it does some things oddly, so not quite as similiar to humans as flies are.
(4) yeast: the bug you use to brew beer, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Single cell eukaryote, in fact the first eukaryote to have its genome completely sequenced. Great organism to work on really basic things like DNA replication and repair, and basic cell biology, but obviously not great if you are interested in Alzheimer's disease or hypertension. OTOH good for studying some kinds of cancers. You can grow a TON of yeast in the lab easily
(5) bacteria: Escherichia coli is ever simpler that yeast because it is a prokaryote, it has no nucleus. But it is good for stufying really basic mechanisms such as protein folding, translation, etc etc. You can grow 10 TONS of E. coli in the lab easily:)
Also, some ppl study Xenopus lavis (African bullfrogs), Danio rio (zebrafish), chickens, rats, among others, but by and large the major model organisms that are studied in a way relavent to medicine are flies, worms, and mice, and yeast and bacteria to a lesser extent. Often different investigators will collaborate with each other in a cross-species manner, and compare results between organisms to look for common themes in common problems.
We do not object to use of [SPAM] to describe [unsolicited commercial e-mail], although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.
(emphasis mine)
it seems that Slashdot ought to have a new spam icon. See http://www.spam.com for more info.
from what I could tell, there is the option to get some kind of expansion card so that it will attach to a cell phone; it seems to come with some sort of PPP dialer so you can login to your ISP and directly upload your photos when you are on the road, rather than downloading them into a laptop first, then uploading to your website/ftp server/whatever. Interesting concept, except I would imagine that cell phone PPP uplinks would be pretty slow. Unless you have airtime to burn, it doesn't seem like a really useful toy.
Wasn't there a story some time ago about someone hacking Doom to run on a digital camera? Now, having a portable Doom terminal that you can hook up to a cell phone and play deathmatch while you are on the road...that might be worth it:)
Oh yeah, ObTroll: it would be cool to make a Beowolf cluster out of these!:P
IANAM (I am not a Malaysian) but I am from Asia, and my first impression is that Malaysia is not a country without troubles. You would think that in terms of priorities things like modernizing infrastructure, improving schools, and increasing the GNP would be more important than teaching people to use the internet. That being said, the boat is supposed to only cost about 200,000 USD, which is not all that much money in the grand scheme of things.
--- Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
KDE 2.0 runs well on crappy hardware
on
KDE 2.0.1 is out
·
· Score: 2
It took me a good 5 evenings to compile the initial KDE 2.0 release on my trusty old P233 with 64 megs of RAM, but it was well worth the effort. It runs acceptably well on this old boxen. The latest HelixGNOME, however, runs quite slowly (not flaming GNOMErs, if you got more hardware oomph, more power to you; I don't:-). Even though I had gotten random app crashes here and there, nothing seriously bad ever happened. I am looking forward to updating to 2.0.1 to fix these minor things; hopefully konqueror will support https by now so I can bank online too. KDE is really starting to show that it can work as an everyday system for everyday people.
John Siracusa, a programmer who has written reviews of Mac OS X for Ars Technica, said that while the new system is more powerful, no one uses the Mac for technical reasons, they use it because of the interface.
Not entirely true. Do Macs not have superior color calibration capabilities, and thus is the preferred platform for graphics designers? Furthermore, some of use Macs because the PHB uses them (lots of PHBs in academia use Macs).
not only buffer overflows but the fact that Carnivore needs to run as root/administrator. looks like they still have a ways to go before they have a useable system.
really. all that posting stories does is denial of service attack someone's server. the links point to two measly png images. how hard can mirroring that be? it's been said before and it needs to be said again, slashdot editors need to be more considerate and responsible, considering their site's popularity.
Akira is really quite overrated IMO. Artistically its quite stunning, but insofar as the storyline goes I think it leaves quite a bit to be desired. I honestly didn't see the point to it except as a vehicle for gratuitous violence.
Qwest (sp?) Communications slammed our phone account about a month ago. It's a good thing that we use access codes for intl' long distance (better pricing). "Qwest Communications" showed up on our local (Southwestern Bell) phone bill, and upon checking with SWB we discovered that we, in fact, had been slammed. Here are some interesting things I learned from my experience:
(1) insofar as you the consumer are concerned, you are basically fucked. It takes forever on hold with the local telco's customer service line, and all the support grunt can do is file a complaint ticket. According to the grunt I spoke with, the consumer basically has no recourse against the long distance carrier that slams you; SWB investigates the incident and reports it to the FCC, and at best Qwest gets fined by the FCC. All the inconvenience that I was put through is in no way compensated.
(2) Be careful when dealing with your local telco, they will nickel and dime you to death with "carrier switching fees" (5 bucks a pop with SWB) unless you are really careful reading yur bill. For instance, originally I was with AT&T (5 bucks), then I get slammed (another 5 bucks), then I complain about getting slammed and want to switch back to AT&T (another 5 bucks). According to the SWB grunt, **AT&T** is responsible for refending me the carrier switching fees, which is of course ridiculous. Regardless of who is responsible I figure I'm getting overbilled 10 bucks.
(3) AT&T support is not that bad. Their grunt offered to cover the extra 10 bucks by crediting our account, even though logically they were not obligated to do so.
(4) We were on a special promotional plan with AT&T before we were slammed, and due to having to switch back and forth, we lost our promotional discount rate. The bastards!
Bottom line is, you're fucked no matter how you look at it. Sure you could sue them but the way the legal system is set up it's typically not a financially feasible approach.
oh c'mon it's not so bad. Not everyone reads/. every day. I don't mind the repetition that much if only because I may have missed something interesting in the past.
The difference is that when scientists starting publicizing their ideas for the purposes of testing and priority, they also unwittingly tapped into the REAL benefit (to society): knowledge is power. Sure, you can make money off of things that you know that I don't. But that's chump change compared to what we can do if we share what we know. Non-scientific fields have yet to figure this out.
Actually, although it is true that scientists publish their results in peer-reviewed publications available to the general public as well as the scientific community, most scientists I know who compete in a particular field generally hold of on the sharing of data amongst themselves as long as they can to avoid being "scooped" by their colleagues. This is IMHO a major problem concerning the current funding model for publicly funded research grants. The lack of cooperation between researchers, due to the intense competition for research funding, leads to wasted repetition of effort and IMHO generally holds back progress, as well as making science less fun for all involved.
Scientists do share more than industry does; but they could share more than they are.
streaming, downloading, what's the difference? :P
on
Million E-mail March
·
· Score: 1
Boucher said the kind of technology developed by MP3.com and made legal by his bill would allow music buyers to listen to their stored-up songs in their car once satellite Internet access is perfected, in their office or from a friend's computer. The bill would only apply to music that is sent, or "streamed," not music that is downloaded.
This is ridiculous. How I want to listen to an mp3 is my business. What if I'm on a crappy modem link? Does this mean that I'll have to put up with lower quality streaming audio? If I own it, I fucking OWN it. I don't need politicians telling me how I can or cannot use something I OWN.
One reason I'd love to have linuxPPC is because of legacy hardware. Think about it: our lab has a bunch of old 604e's converted to G3 PPC by third party vendor daughterboard upgrades. What are the chances of MacOS X running at a reasonable speed on these boxen, or running at all, for that matter? Very little, I'd venture. LinuxPPC can and does run quite well on these machines, however (except for the lack of decent supported 2-3 button mice, though:P)
(1) proteins are not static structures, they tend to change conformations in response to stimuli like binding to a ligand, or changes in the electrostatic microenvironment around them.
(2) many proteins don't like to fold in isolation, they require the presence of other proteins that they naturally interact with.
(3) protein sequence is linear (so-called primary structure); while local structural details may be predictable with some reliability (the so-called secondary structure, things like alpha helices and beta sheets), ultimately it is the final 3D fold with long range interactions (tertiary and higher structures) that form the final structure. You can imagine that the longer the protein, the harder it is to fold, due to the increased number of potential tertiary interactions.
determination of the structure of a protein, and even relatively large protein complexes is not as technically challenging as it used to be for biophysicists these days. Tom Steitz's group at Yale has managed to crystalize and solve the structure of the large ribosomal subunit (a **HUGE** molecule as far as the average biological molecular complex goes) at 2.4 angstrom resolution, which in itself is a monumental feat. I would not be surprised if Steitz is in contention for the Nobel prize for this work.
The holy grail is eventually being able to reverse engineer a protein or ligand that is able to bind to part of a particular protein, using rational design. This is much harder than solving a structure. Pharmaceutical companies would love to be able to design this type of molecule for use as designer drugs, since it would take away much of the cost of R&D through trial and error. Big companies such as Merck basically screen for drugs the way Thomas Edison used to test materials; by having a warehouse full of stuff and testing it all.
What we need to do now is harness DNA's ability to reproduce itself. Imagine, a circuit that can actually change it's physical wiring to handle new conditions and/or optimize itself...
DNA does not replicate itself, enzymes called DNA polymerases are required for DNA replication. Some specially-engineered RNA molecules can self-replicate, but that reaction is extremely inefficient.
Granholm added: "In the future, any hacking, regardless of the amount of financial damage it causes, will be a felony. A vandal is a vandal whether you are a virtual vandal putting graffiti on a web site or a real world vandal putting graffiti on a wall. Both are illegal. And using a computer to break into a company from the comfort of your living room is just as illegal as using a hammer to break down that company's front door. Because the Internet makes the crime easier doesn't mean that it makes it right. These are the first hacking charges in this state; you can bet that they won't be the last."
This is an honest question: is vandalism a felony or misdemeanor? If it is the latter, you'd think that based on this prosecutor's line of logic that "virtual vandalism" ought to be a misdemeanor, too. OTOH, if it's a felony, then why are there specific resources devoted to "virtual vandalism" when physical vandalism is still a real problem in many areas?
. It seems a little nitpicky to me- you'd have to be doing some serious binary newsgroup stuff to have 128kb/s be an issue. Given how much more easily available pron is on the web, I'm not sure there there are many people would notice or care about this
dude, UseNet is THE PLACE for pr0n. sure there is a lot of pr0n on the web but there are too many banner adds, and more often than not they ask you for your credit card number. On usenet there are some serious sickos who upload gigs of video that you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere. dedicated pr0n surfers will get themselves a decent newsfeed and broadband.
you can't. What I guess they are doing is looking for alterations in gene expression patterns that are beneficial to an anti-cancerous state. For instance, some genes called oncogenes are known to be tumerogenic. If a particular drug is able to shut down a network of genes that are known to be involved in oncogene regulation, then it may be a candidate as a cancer treatment drug. I'm just guessing here since their webpage is a bit dumbed down, and the scenario is a bit simplified, but that's the general idea.
as an aside, the data collected for this analysis is probably based on microarrays, or gene chips as they are sometimes called. This type of technology will benefit greatly from the human genome project and the genome sequencing efforts of other organisms.
the problem with this approach is that too little is known about the biology of the system to make discoveries using this technology really useful. what will probably happen is that a few drugs screened in this method will be tkaen to clinical trial, then canned after a few years after clinical problems (no/little effectiveness, toxicity, side effects).
OK, found the info. they are doing data analysis from presumably microarray data of gene expression patterns in cancerous cell lines. this makes sense in that microarray data analysis is computationally intensive, but I still think this approach from a biology point of view is suspect. I mean, so little is known about gene functions that an analysis of alterations in expression patterns is not very useful. an analogy is, let's say you have a map of all the roads in the USA. You see things (vehicles) traveling back and forth on these roads and you see patterns of movement (rush hour), and you set up a distributed computing system to try and figure out why there are earthquakes in Los Angeles and how to prevent them. There is just not enough understanding of the system, IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
That being said, I would love to see it work :)
Constrast this with a relatively more recent model genetic organism, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. Standards were set early whereby all gene names were standardized by basis of their phenotype (eat-4 is a worm with a mutant feeding behavior, unc-6 describes a worm with uncoordinated movement, lin-41 describes a mutant with mutant cell development lineage, etc etc), and is ascii-friendly. As a result, C. elegans people enjoyed standardized and searchable computerized gene databases for much longer than other geneticists in other fields.
I hope that a standard becomes set and rapidly adapted; lab chiefs (to us grad student peons anyway) can often seem like PHB's in IT when it comes to adapting new methods and paradigms.
This discussion should be over pretty soon :)
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
ObTopic: Napster can censor whomever they feel like, no one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to download stuff using their software. Besides, Nazis are like child pornographers; they have no redeeming social value whatsoever. Good for them for censoring Nazis.
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
Is it feasible to determine which genes are common to all life forms currently living on the planet The answer may lead some insight into the question of what is the minimum requirement for life.
IAAG. This question is more philisophical than scientific. Define life first. You can generate self-replicating molecules using themselves as templates using RNA only, under specific in vitro conditions. Is that life? Generally speaking, organisms (i.e., one or more cell, not viruses) adapt to an environmental niche that they occupy and retain what genes they need to survive in that niche. Since each niche is a different microenvironment, all organisms have different genes (evolutionary adaptation).
However, to answer your question somewhat more directly I recall that mycoplasma has the currently known smallest genome of any organism, with 580074 base pairs of DNA, and 483 genes. See The Mycoplasma genetalium Genome Database for more info.
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
To truly understand biology you need a model organism that is accessible experimentally. A good model system should have the following traits:
(1) Genetically tractable: basically this means that you can reliably perform matings and score marker genes for mapping.
(2) Easy to culture: can grow large numbers of the organism in a relatively short time for relatively little money.
(3) Easy to manipulate: have the ability to generate both random and targeted mutations, have vectors by which to insert transgenes.
(4) Easy to observe: simple organisms that have transluscent body walls are the best.
Fugu doesn't have ANY of these advantages except the small genome, so probably the most use that will come out of it will be as a reference organism. Experimentally, the best model organisms biologists have are:
(1) mice: best characterized mammalian model. you can do targeted mutations and insert transgenes, but random mutagenisis is hard. Histology and embryology is pretty well established, but mice like most mammals are very complex and often studies raise more questions than answer them. Genome sequence note quite complete yet, but getting there. :)
(2) fruit flies: Drosophila melanogaster is a great model system. The genome is relatively small (about 10^8 base pairs of DNA, and estimated 15,000 genes), but it has all the relavent organs and systems as mammals, and many genes function in the same way. Genome sequence has been completed.
(3) nematodes: Caenorhabditis elegans is also a great model system. Genome size is approx. the same as flies. Has the added advantage of having its entire cell lineage mapped. It only has 1000 or so cells, so it makes a super model organism for studying differentiation. Genome sequence is also complete. Disadvantages is due to divergence from the mammalian branch, it does some things oddly, so not quite as similiar to humans as flies are.
(4) yeast: the bug you use to brew beer, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Single cell eukaryote, in fact the first eukaryote to have its genome completely sequenced. Great organism to work on really basic things like DNA replication and repair, and basic cell biology, but obviously not great if you are interested in Alzheimer's disease or hypertension. OTOH good for studying some kinds of cancers. You can grow a TON of yeast in the lab easily
(5) bacteria: Escherichia coli is ever simpler that yeast because it is a prokaryote, it has no nucleus. But it is good for stufying really basic mechanisms such as protein folding, translation, etc etc. You can grow 10 TONS of E. coli in the lab easily
Also, some ppl study Xenopus lavis (African bullfrogs), Danio rio (zebrafish), chickens, rats, among others, but by and large the major model organisms that are studied in a way relavent to medicine are flies, worms, and mice, and yeast and bacteria to a lesser extent. Often different investigators will collaborate with each other in a cross-species manner, and compare results between organisms to look for common themes in common problems.
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
We do not object to use of [SPAM] to describe [unsolicited commercial e-mail], although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.
(emphasis mine)
it seems that Slashdot ought to have a new spam icon. See http://www.spam.com for more info.
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
Wasn't there a story some time ago about someone hacking Doom to run on a digital camera? Now, having a portable Doom terminal that you can hook up to a cell phone and play deathmatch while you are on the road...that might be worth it :)
Oh yeah, ObTroll: it would be cool to make a Beowolf cluster out of these! :P
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
IANAM (I am not a Malaysian) but I am from Asia, and my first impression is that Malaysia is not a country without troubles. You would think that in terms of priorities things like modernizing infrastructure, improving schools, and increasing the GNP would be more important than teaching people to use the internet. That being said, the boat is supposed to only cost about 200,000 USD, which is not all that much money in the grand scheme of things.
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
It took me a good 5 evenings to compile the initial KDE 2.0 release on my trusty old P233 with 64 megs of RAM, but it was well worth the effort. It runs acceptably well on this old boxen. The latest HelixGNOME, however, runs quite slowly (not flaming GNOMErs, if you got more hardware oomph, more power to you; I don't :-). Even though I had gotten random app crashes here and there, nothing seriously bad ever happened. I am looking forward to updating to 2.0.1 to fix these minor things; hopefully konqueror will support https by now so I can bank online too. KDE is really starting to show that it can work as an everyday system for everyday people.
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
Not entirely true. Do Macs not have superior color calibration capabilities, and thus is the preferred platform for graphics designers? Furthermore, some of use Macs because the PHB uses them (lots of PHBs in academia use Macs).
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
not only buffer overflows but the fact that Carnivore needs to run as root/administrator. looks like they still have a ways to go before they have a useable system.
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
really. all that posting stories does is denial of service attack someone's server. the links point to two measly png images. how hard can mirroring that be? it's been said before and it needs to be said again, slashdot editors need to be more considerate and responsible, considering their site's popularity.
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
Akira is really quite overrated IMO. Artistically its quite stunning, but insofar as the storyline goes I think it leaves quite a bit to be desired. I honestly didn't see the point to it except as a vehicle for gratuitous violence.
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
(1) insofar as you the consumer are concerned, you are basically fucked. It takes forever on hold with the local telco's customer service line, and all the support grunt can do is file a complaint ticket. According to the grunt I spoke with, the consumer basically has no recourse against the long distance carrier that slams you; SWB investigates the incident and reports it to the FCC, and at best Qwest gets fined by the FCC. All the inconvenience that I was put through is in no way compensated.
(2) Be careful when dealing with your local telco, they will nickel and dime you to death with "carrier switching fees" (5 bucks a pop with SWB) unless you are really careful reading yur bill. For instance, originally I was with AT&T (5 bucks), then I get slammed (another 5 bucks), then I complain about getting slammed and want to switch back to AT&T (another 5 bucks). According to the SWB grunt, **AT&T** is responsible for refending me the carrier switching fees, which is of course ridiculous. Regardless of who is responsible I figure I'm getting overbilled 10 bucks.
(3) AT&T support is not that bad. Their grunt offered to cover the extra 10 bucks by crediting our account, even though logically they were not obligated to do so.
(4) We were on a special promotional plan with AT&T before we were slammed, and due to having to switch back and forth, we lost our promotional discount rate. The bastards!
Bottom line is, you're fucked no matter how you look at it. Sure you could sue them but the way the legal system is set up it's typically not a financially feasible approach.
Actually, although it is true that scientists publish their results in peer-reviewed publications available to the general public as well as the scientific community, most scientists I know who compete in a particular field generally hold of on the sharing of data amongst themselves as long as they can to avoid being "scooped" by their colleagues. This is IMHO a major problem concerning the current funding model for publicly funded research grants. The lack of cooperation between researchers, due to the intense competition for research funding, leads to wasted repetition of effort and IMHO generally holds back progress, as well as making science less fun for all involved.
Scientists do share more than industry does; but they could share more than they are.
This is ridiculous. How I want to listen to an mp3 is my business. What if I'm on a crappy modem link? Does this mean that I'll have to put up with lower quality streaming audio? If I own it, I fucking OWN it. I don't need politicians telling me how I can or cannot use something I OWN.
(1) proteins are not static structures, they tend to change conformations in response to stimuli like binding to a ligand, or changes in the electrostatic microenvironment around them.
(2) many proteins don't like to fold in isolation, they require the presence of other proteins that they naturally interact with.
(3) protein sequence is linear (so-called primary structure); while local structural details may be predictable with some reliability (the so-called secondary structure, things like alpha helices and beta sheets), ultimately it is the final 3D fold with long range interactions (tertiary and higher structures) that form the final structure. You can imagine that the longer the protein, the harder it is to fold, due to the increased number of potential tertiary interactions.
determination of the structure of a protein, and even relatively large protein complexes is not as technically challenging as it used to be for biophysicists these days. Tom Steitz's group at Yale has managed to crystalize and solve the structure of the large ribosomal subunit (a **HUGE** molecule as far as the average biological molecular complex goes) at 2.4 angstrom resolution, which in itself is a monumental feat. I would not be surprised if Steitz is in contention for the Nobel prize for this work.
The holy grail is eventually being able to reverse engineer a protein or ligand that is able to bind to part of a particular protein, using rational design. This is much harder than solving a structure. Pharmaceutical companies would love to be able to design this type of molecule for use as designer drugs, since it would take away much of the cost of R&D through trial and error. Big companies such as Merck basically screen for drugs the way Thomas Edison used to test materials; by having a warehouse full of stuff and testing it all.
That being said, it's still a cool project :)
You wrote:
What we need to do now is harness DNA's ability to reproduce itself. Imagine, a circuit that can actually change it's physical wiring to handle new conditions and/or optimize itself...
DNA does not replicate itself, enzymes called DNA polymerases are required for DNA replication. Some specially-engineered RNA molecules can self-replicate, but that reaction is extremely inefficient.
Granholm added: "In the future, any hacking, regardless of the amount of financial damage it causes, will be a felony. A vandal is a vandal whether you are a virtual vandal putting graffiti on a web site or a real world vandal putting graffiti on a wall. Both are illegal. And using a computer to break into a company from the comfort of your living room is just as illegal as using a hammer to break down that company's front door. Because the Internet makes the crime easier doesn't mean that it makes it right. These are the first hacking charges in this state; you can bet that they won't be the last."
This is an honest question: is vandalism a felony or misdemeanor? If it is the latter, you'd think that based on this prosecutor's line of logic that "virtual vandalism" ought to be a misdemeanor, too. OTOH, if it's a felony, then why are there specific resources devoted to "virtual vandalism" when physical vandalism is still a real problem in many areas?
Not to say this isn't a good thing, however.
You said:
. It seems a little nitpicky to me- you'd have to be doing some serious binary newsgroup stuff to have 128kb/s be an issue. Given how much more easily available pron is on the web, I'm not sure there there are many people would notice or care about this
dude, UseNet is THE PLACE for pr0n. sure there is a lot of pr0n on the web but there are too many banner adds, and more often than not they ask you for your credit card number. On usenet there are some serious sickos who upload gigs of video that you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere. dedicated pr0n surfers will get themselves a decent newsfeed and broadband.
you can't. What I guess they are doing is looking for alterations in gene expression patterns that are beneficial to an anti-cancerous state. For instance, some genes called oncogenes are known to be tumerogenic. If a particular drug is able to shut down a network of genes that are known to be involved in oncogene regulation, then it may be a candidate as a cancer treatment drug. I'm just guessing here since their webpage is a bit dumbed down, and the scenario is a bit simplified, but that's the general idea.
as an aside, the data collected for this analysis is probably based on microarrays, or gene chips as they are sometimes called. This type of technology will benefit greatly from the human genome project and the genome sequencing efforts of other organisms.
the problem with this approach is that too little is known about the biology of the system to make discoveries using this technology really useful. what will probably happen is that a few drugs screened in this method will be tkaen to clinical trial, then canned after a few years after clinical problems (no/little effectiveness, toxicity, side effects).
OK, found the info. they are doing data analysis from presumably microarray data of gene expression patterns in cancerous cell lines. this makes sense in that microarray data analysis is computationally intensive, but I still think this approach from a biology point of view is suspect. I mean, so little is known about gene functions that an analysis of alterations in expression patterns is not very useful. an analogy is, let's say you have a map of all the roads in the USA. You see things (vehicles) traveling back and forth on these roads and you see patterns of movement (rush hour), and you set up a distributed computing system to try and figure out why there are earthquakes in Los Angeles and how to prevent them. There is just not enough understanding of the system, IMHO.