Well, "fittest" means a lot more than "best". Fittest is about efficiency as well as ability. A human with 8 foot long legs could run really fast and use little energy, but would be less coordinated, more likely to trip because the nerve impulses would take too long to travel down to the leg to correct posture in time to catch itself from a fall. That's why most long legged animals have four legs (i.e. giraffe, moose, etc., which are all comically uncoordinated).
So a species that is "fittest" may not be the "best" species in an environment. It may simply be the most efficient design. Prevalence of resources is another important factor, an animal cannot be large and reproduce a lot of offspring, or it will destroy its own environment (humans?) and quickly go extinct. Long term success is about equilibrium with the environment, which is why small animals (drosophila, yeast, maybe even as big as cockroaches), are so successful. They exist sparsely and reproduce quickly with short generations, so that the species can easily maintain equilibrium with its environment.
The longer the generational gap and the greater the population, the more easily a species falls out of equilibrium with its environment.
Caffiene helps by dilating blood vessels, supplying the brain with more oxygen, glucose, and most importantly the removal of toxic reactive oxygen species. At least that's what I thought.
Yes, there is a statistical significance between the groups in the study, but not among the population of Thailand. Of the 64,000,000 people in the population of Thailand, 1.5% have HIV. This study used 16,000 volunteers within the population. Only 125 got HIV? That's less than half the rate within the population. I think we need to know more about the subjects in the study to know more about the value of these results. I had no idea there was a 50% placebo effect in HIV treatment!
What I find most interesting is that the HIV viral load was identical between the two groups. You would think that a vaccine would not just prevent HIV, but lower the amount of the virus in the blood. All in all, I find it a confusing study and one worth a good "hmmm" but nothing more until we get follow-up studies or more information about the subjects and groupings.
That's actually a great idea. An exogenous stem cell could be genetically engineered to intrinsically express a pro-apoptotic protein in an undifferentiated state while concurrently expressing a receptor that activates an anti-apoptotic protein. Inject the stem cells along with the signal that activates the receptor and the stem cells can proliferate until they differentiate. If they migrate outside the area that the signal is, the cells automatically die. If they do not differentiate, the cells automatically die. If the cells differentiate, they no long express the pro-apoptotic protein. You're a genius, jameskojiro!
Wish I had some mod-points to give you:-P
Excuse me, but ignorant is something I am not. I am a Neurobiology researcher working specifically on neurodegenerative diseases. Your Google profile to which you have linked in your signature suggests you're unemployed, at least that's what I take "futurist", "gamer", and "slashdot.org commenter" to mean. Failed IT career?
At any rate, stem cells have the potential to endlessly reproduce based on the presence of growth factors. Many forms of cancers and precancerous states are characterized by rapid and uncontrolled expression of growth factors. If a cancer patient with one of these common root causes is introduced to these stem cells, they suddenly will produce a massive tumour at the injection site. Which is exactly the concerns expressed by the research group that is doing this phase 1 safety trial, hence the need for a safety trial.
My research involves delivery methods for introducing growth factors that activate innate progenitor cells to replace cells damaged or lost in neurodegenerative diseases. There is a reason why there is only a miniscule fraction of progenitor and stem cells in the adult human body: because if there are a lot, there is a huge chance that one of these cells will either be mutated by environmental radiation, or a mutation of a nearby cell that causes it to dysregulate expression of hormone signals. It is an evolutionary adaptation to improve fitness.
My homepage is a list of concerns about current political and social trends. It obviously does not reach deep into every issue. I don't have the time to do that. You obviously think you're far superior to everyone else in the world, though, so why bother with me and my 'little' views. It seems that my opinions have so rattled you emotionally that you cannot possibly deal with it without being 'snarky' on the internet. Perhaps you could better spend your time by earning an income, or acquiring amicable social skills.
Stem cells have the potential to reproduce exponentially. Give these stem cells to a patient that has a mutation in growth factor production or secretion, like many cancer or precancerous patients, and you have an unmitigated tumor. I do research with growth factors and development. This, in my opinion, is not a good idea. But those are the problems this research will address. I'll be eager to see the results in two years.
This is security through obscurity, and it's frightening that a government entity relies upon it enough to fine someone for publicly declaring a security flaw. Should Microsoft, Apple, or the Linux Foundation pay a fine every time they patch a security bug, thereby describing how to utilize that bug in all unpatched systems?
I think not, I think that's ridiculous. But that quickly brings us to the argument that all software that we rely on should be open source so that we can modify it to fix it ourselves... or the corollary, that all software we rely on should be closed source so it's difficult to find bugs (which is kind of an untrue assumption. I'd rather be in control of how I keep private what I'm trying to keep private. If I don't have control over the means of privacy, I have no privacy at all... I guess I should go delete my FB account).
Your instincts about the issue are right on. These learning processes for aversive stimuli can actually only be used to judge which regions of the brain are intact and thus make a diagnosis about a possible recovery. It's a quality issue, and these kinds of examination procedures being developed in this article will help loved ones make judgment calls.
Holy cow, where did you learn that stuff? From Paul MacLean? None of that reflects anywhere near current neurobiological evidence, let alone terminology! And I think the Neo-Cortex must only exist inside the Matrix, most everyone that's not a loon from the 80s calls it the cerebral cortex, or simply cortex.
The cortex is actually responsible for muscle control and movement patterning, disinhibited in the basal ganglia, through sensory proprioception from the cerebellum. It's all nicely integrated. The cortex has nothing to do with cognition. Although it does store memory I would not consider memory to be the fundamental element of cognition.
At any rate, you are correct in the idea that there is not one core region of processing. For instance, the spinal cord itself is actually a smart cable and does its own processing and reflex computations, so the fact that these patients anticipated a negative stimulus is not in and of itself evidence of cognitive function. Having not read anything but the abstract, if the aversive stimulus was in fact an eye-puff, that is a strong indicator that the brainstem, cerebellum and parts of the cerebral cortex are intact and functioning. If it were a foot stimulus, that says little about the brain. The classic experiment of the hinter-years involving a cat with its brain removed except for the brain stem and spinal cord, and yet the cat possessed the autonomic reflexes required to walk on a treadmill when properly positioned, is evidence of this. However, the article probably goes in depth about how this is viable for fundamental brain function, as is indicated by the abstract.
Actually, I believe the report said it used an electrocardiogram to determine learned behaviour to an aversive eye-puff (meaning that the vegetative patient's sympathetic nervous system was being activated in anticipation of the aversive stimulus). Regardless, the fMRI data from the dead salmon actually indicates what you can get from an MR machine if you set your parameters incorrectly. There are lots of artifacts in an MRI, and the statistics of its output is very complex, but the dead-salmon article's conclusion was about proper parameters being used, not a blanket statement about reliability of MR.
The spinal cord itself is actually a smart cable and does its own processing and reflex computations, so the fact that these patients anticipated a negative stimulus is not in and of itself evidence of cognitive function. Having not read anything but the abstract, if the aversive stimulus was in fact an eye-puff, that is a strong indicator that the brainstem, cerebellum and parts of the cerebral cortex are intact and functioning. If it were a foot stimulus, that says little about the brain. The classic experiment of the hinter-years involving a cat with its brain removed except for the brain stem and spinal cord, and yet the cat possessed the autonomic reflexes required to walk on a treadmill when properly positioned, is evidence of this. However, the article probably goes in depth about how this is viable for fundamental brain function, as is indicated by the abstract.
This is a Renter's issue. If I lease out an office space to people whom I know are dealing cocaine, I get put in prison too unless I notify authorities and cooperate with the investigation. The host being penalized for knowingly hosting a website dealing illegally in IP is analogous. What's the hubbub about? Seems reasonable to me.
No one suggested the host had to take-down the site, the host probably should have notified the IP holder and worked with authorities. It's not the host's responsibility to kick his leasees out of his office space, in fact the host has a legal obligation to not interfere with a leasee's space unless invited in during the terms of the lease. The IP holder has no authority to demand a takedown, only a judge does, but you can cooperate to get to the bottom of the issue instead of being an antisocial asshat that ignores everyone. A simple call a lawyer "I've been notified that a website I host is dealing in illegal items and I'm calling to cooperate with any investigations currently underway or that you will initiate." Not so hard.
If you receive a takedown notice, take it to a lawyer and say you want to cooperate but need to validate the notice, have your lawyer contact the author of the takedown to say you're cooperating but need more information such as patent information or copyright filings. A takedown notice is not a judicial document, you need a judge for that, and if you initiate the judicial process through cooperation no judge will fine you excessively if you unwittingly facilitated the activity. Don't get so paranoid. It's like the internet is filled with twelve year-olds that put MP3s up on their Geocities page to look like a 'cool' technogangsta and don't know what their rights are or how to be a good responsible citizen.
This is simply how the brain works. You perform a task repeatedly and the neurons that are firing become more efficient and form a stronger connection, project more axons and dendrites, and generally do what they're supposed to.
Basically they did an MRI scan of girls before the study, then scanned them again after they had played Tetris for three months and their brain showed increased density rostral to the central sulcus, which is the region responsible for complex movements of the fingers and hands (based on the rough rendering at the top of TFA).... Great. More money being spend on useless research. We all already know the brain adapts and improves itself. How about a study on drugs to increase that improvement, say while I'm study for my Neuroanatomy gross lab.
Where do I go to get funding to do stupid stuff like this? I have an MR machine, I have 3-months to kick back and travel the world giving 10 minute seminars while my research subjects regulate themselves. Please, someone tell me what I must do.
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LOL, I am at a loss. I'd mod you Funny if your comment wasn't so Insightfu, or should I say Informative.
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Exactly. In fact, plasmodium does not compute optimal distances, it has no senses to detect objects at a distance. It detects chemical concentration gradients and moves to or from higher concentrations of chemicals it likes or dislikes. It does not compute. In fact, if you've ever seen one move, it wriggles around a lot. It has to, in order to detect its immediate environment.
So we have a Scientific American article telling us that Obsessive Compulsive people (a trait shared among those clinically depressed) are obsessive and compulsive? Holy crap! I knew that the grant stimulus was handing out money like a paedophile hands out candy, but I had no idea... I need to get me some of that!
(Yes yes, I'm trivializing the findings and I'm sure/hope there is much more to it than that, but that's the kind of comment you get from a guy who only read the summary)
What seems most interesting about this discovery is any possible evolutionary links. The common yard lizard in the southern USA (Florida, Texas, 'Bama, Georgia) loses its tail when attacked. Some starfish will break off a limb as a decoy. Many other examples across the phyla, kingdoms and classes.
Has the ability to lose a limb and regenerate evolved multiple times? Is this an evolutionarily ancient and common ability that humans have lost? Or these species linked on some crooked branch and our tree description is just totally screwed up?
I think those are the real questions this article raises.
Well right now we "force" people to get educated by calling them truants if they don't. Forcing them to be educated would be going to their house and forcibly kidnapping them, and even at that you cannot force the information into their brain (regardless of Matrix theorists, I doubt we'll be able to realign someone's cerebral cortex at will via a computer link any time in the forseeable future).
That's exactly the point: it's IMPOSSIBLE to FORCE someone to do something.
You can force them to spend their money a certain way, by taxing them 100%, but they can still try to avoid it, or move out of the country. This is why socialism is impossible: it amounts to punishing those who make the right choices to reward those who make the wrong choices... and those people who made the wrong choice are just going to keep on making more of them meaning taking away more resources from those who make the right choices. It's ludicrous!
"We can dismiss the parents"... the parents were children of some other nitwit parents, you can't blame anyone under your criteria, so how about just not blaming anyone? Or better yet, blame yourself for not going out there and educating these poor people.
Unfortunately, these poor and uneducated people are poor or uneducated by choice. How often do you see a shanty with a DirecTV dish and a new Silverado out front? They are everywhere in Kentucky and Tennessee, West Virginia and northern Alabama. These people make choices about what is important.
How many of you remember that nitwit in your classes that never did any work? Maybe he/she compensated by acting like a jerk or by acting pompous. You cannot force people to make different choices just because you know they're better, you can't control everyone's lives. All you can do is give them the opportunity to work for themselves, and when they take that opportunity and lease a new pick-up truck instead of buying healthcare for their family you can't go out an penalize the well-to-do because this asshat has different priorities.
How many of you have worked a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter? There are plenty of hungry and homeless that have just had a shitty hand of cards and needs a helping hand, but for every one of those there's 15 that are just taking advantage of the system for free stuff. And for each one of those 15 taking advantage of charity, there's another 2 that are choosing to steal not from charities but from the penitentiary by getting free food and a room for a minimal crime, because it's easier than begging for food. For every 1 person that needs help, another 45 are just taking advantage. That one person that truly needs help won't know that they can get free healthcare from the government if it ever passes because they don't have a TV, or live in a rural area where access to healthcare means driving for 2 hours.
Life expectancy will continually go up, there are biomedical advances daily that are finding our to increase the rate of DNA repair, or preventing oxidative damage. Nutritional sciences is finding the foods that are best for us. My children's children might be able to see a Preventive care physician on a regular basis and not ever have to die from old age, we have the ability to make that kind of incremental advance. National life expectancy is a social issue, and every socialist that has tried has discovered that society cannot be controlled. All we can do is give people the opportunities and incentives to live in a manner that is best for everyone as a sum. Quit trying to micromanage, the complexity of such a system will only ensure its collapse.
What are they going to do with the info anyway? I doubt they're going to send out a suit to every GPS coordinate that was embedded in every crash report. It is not a real time GPS tracking, it's periodic coordinates. My account already has my address, phone number (duh), social security number, and bank/credit/debit account number. So what if Palm's bug squad gets a hex dump of my GPS coordinates when an app crashes? What more can they do with that than what information they already have on me? How can they monetize a GPS coordination any more than an address and phone number?
Sure I don't want them to have that information, but I'd prefer them to not have any information. Unfortunately, I can't build my own infrastructure, and I'm willing to sacrifice some of that information to get that convenience. Besides which, I have a concealed weapons permit. Thank god for Ted Nugent:-P
But really, why should I care about a periodic GPS coordinate transmission when they already have access to my home, my phone, and my money? Let's get some perspective.
I think the power of the human brain comes not from raw processing power (which is still superior to current CPUs, the human brain is capable of around 65 independent processes at once, although at a lower frequency than a CPU according to research), but the power of the human brain comes from its ability to adapt and grow. A single neuron can be used for multiple different pathways, and can spontaneously change function in a "soft-wired" sort of way: plasticity. It also has the ability to produce additional neurons, expand them to different regions, and rework around disfunctional regions.
These attributes are difficult to replicate at a reasonable size with current technology. This is not to say we will never have the capability to fully replicate the human brain, but adaptability of the physical structure of the human brain is a trait that we cannot current replicate in physical silico. I am hopeful that we will have simulated brains within the next decade... but physical brains are a long way away. But these are still important practical and philosophical questions that need to be answered. Are our children slaves to us because we produced them? Should machines be? Does consciousness mandate rights... responsibilities? My personal opinion is yes.
This is how all discoveries are made and patented in medical science. At first, the idea that a specific metabolite present in the blood is not obvious for many reasons: a) how will the substance be metabolized by the body, ie what actually are the metabolites, b) perhaps the liver degrades it to quickly to be detected, c) perhaps it is excreted too quickly to show up anywhere in the system. d) does a specific organ soak up all of the metabolite? e) and etc.
At first, these are all valid questions with non-obvious answers. But as medical science progresses it becomes extremely obvious how works the process governing the patented information, it gets added to text books, professors lecture on it, fad homeopathic remedies regarding it crop up, and it enters into public knowledge. This is the real question that this patent case brings up... with ever higher fidelity tests and the acceleration of experimental result acquisition and analysis, with the more knowledge we acquire, does a patent suddenly become defunct? The answer is no, of course not. The patent holder spent their R&D learning how to take advantage of what was at that time a non-obvious thing, and patented it so exactly this would not happen: someone else later finds the same thing and utilizes it. What's the point of a patent if it's no good simply because someone else figures out how to do the same thing independently? That is exactly what a patent protects. Particular cases like this make the patent process sound silly, but this is exactly why patents exist.
Aren't we all deterministic automotons governed by the laws of physics? How can free will exist? I think many religious followers are the first to try to claim that free will caused humanity's fall and the subsequent assholishness of people. As a neuroscientist, I don't believe in free will, but that doesn't negate the concepts of responsibility. David Hume, an early Anglo philosopher put it simply that the idea of cause-and-effect necessitates determinism, so free will (reacting to something according to your past experience) is actually determinism.
If you believe in a God and an afterlife, then what does it matter if God helps people now? The idea the God should do good things is just an excuse for Christians to be bad people.
Religion is simply a social construct that provides a community with a reason to be altruistic, altruism being the bond that makes society possible. The trouble arises when individuals turn that tool upside down and start to pervert it into an "us v them" mindset. That was the genius of Jesus and particularly Paul of Tarsus who founded a religion inclusive of all of humanity... or Buddha... or Krishna... or any number of other loving religious iconoclasts or revolutionaries.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, "fittest" means a lot more than "best". Fittest is about efficiency as well as ability. A human with 8 foot long legs could run really fast and use little energy, but would be less coordinated, more likely to trip because the nerve impulses would take too long to travel down to the leg to correct posture in time to catch itself from a fall. That's why most long legged animals have four legs (i.e. giraffe, moose, etc., which are all comically uncoordinated).
So a species that is "fittest" may not be the "best" species in an environment. It may simply be the most efficient design. Prevalence of resources is another important factor, an animal cannot be large and reproduce a lot of offspring, or it will destroy its own environment (humans?) and quickly go extinct. Long term success is about equilibrium with the environment, which is why small animals (drosophila, yeast, maybe even as big as cockroaches), are so successful. They exist sparsely and reproduce quickly with short generations, so that the species can easily maintain equilibrium with its environment.
The longer the generational gap and the greater the population, the more easily a species falls out of equilibrium with its environment.
Caffiene helps by dilating blood vessels, supplying the brain with more oxygen, glucose, and most importantly the removal of toxic reactive oxygen species. At least that's what I thought.
Yes, there is a statistical significance between the groups in the study, but not among the population of Thailand. Of the 64,000,000 people in the population of Thailand, 1.5% have HIV.
This study used 16,000 volunteers within the population. Only 125 got HIV? That's less than half the rate within the population. I think we need to know more about the subjects in the study to know more about the value of these results. I had no idea there was a 50% placebo effect in HIV treatment!
What I find most interesting is that the HIV viral load was identical between the two groups. You would think that a vaccine would not just prevent HIV, but lower the amount of the virus in the blood. All in all, I find it a confusing study and one worth a good "hmmm" but nothing more until we get follow-up studies or more information about the subjects and groupings.
That's actually a great idea. An exogenous stem cell could be genetically engineered to intrinsically express a pro-apoptotic protein in an undifferentiated state while concurrently expressing a receptor that activates an anti-apoptotic protein. Inject the stem cells along with the signal that activates the receptor and the stem cells can proliferate until they differentiate. If they migrate outside the area that the signal is, the cells automatically die. If they do not differentiate, the cells automatically die. If the cells differentiate, they no long express the pro-apoptotic protein. :-P
You're a genius, jameskojiro! Wish I had some mod-points to give you
Excuse me, but ignorant is something I am not. I am a Neurobiology researcher working specifically on neurodegenerative diseases. Your Google profile to which you have linked in your signature suggests you're unemployed, at least that's what I take "futurist", "gamer", and "slashdot.org commenter" to mean. Failed IT career?
At any rate, stem cells have the potential to endlessly reproduce based on the presence of growth factors. Many forms of cancers and precancerous states are characterized by rapid and uncontrolled expression of growth factors. If a cancer patient with one of these common root causes is introduced to these stem cells, they suddenly will produce a massive tumour at the injection site. Which is exactly the concerns expressed by the research group that is doing this phase 1 safety trial, hence the need for a safety trial.
My research involves delivery methods for introducing growth factors that activate innate progenitor cells to replace cells damaged or lost in neurodegenerative diseases. There is a reason why there is only a miniscule fraction of progenitor and stem cells in the adult human body: because if there are a lot, there is a huge chance that one of these cells will either be mutated by environmental radiation, or a mutation of a nearby cell that causes it to dysregulate expression of hormone signals. It is an evolutionary adaptation to improve fitness.
My homepage is a list of concerns about current political and social trends. It obviously does not reach deep into every issue. I don't have the time to do that. You obviously think you're far superior to everyone else in the world, though, so why bother with me and my 'little' views. It seems that my opinions have so rattled you emotionally that you cannot possibly deal with it without being 'snarky' on the internet. Perhaps you could better spend your time by earning an income, or acquiring amicable social skills.
Stem cells have the potential to reproduce exponentially. Give these stem cells to a patient that has a mutation in growth factor production or secretion, like many cancer or precancerous patients, and you have an unmitigated tumor. I do research with growth factors and development. This, in my opinion, is not a good idea.
But those are the problems this research will address. I'll be eager to see the results in two years.
This is security through obscurity, and it's frightening that a government entity relies upon it enough to fine someone for publicly declaring a security flaw. Should Microsoft, Apple, or the Linux Foundation pay a fine every time they patch a security bug, thereby describing how to utilize that bug in all unpatched systems?
... or the corollary, that all software we rely on should be closed source so it's difficult to find bugs (which is kind of an untrue assumption. I'd rather be in control of how I keep private what I'm trying to keep private. If I don't have control over the means of privacy, I have no privacy at all ... I guess I should go delete my FB account).
I think not, I think that's ridiculous. But that quickly brings us to the argument that all software that we rely on should be open source so that we can modify it to fix it ourselves
Your instincts about the issue are right on. These learning processes for aversive stimuli can actually only be used to judge which regions of the brain are intact and thus make a diagnosis about a possible recovery. It's a quality issue, and these kinds of examination procedures being developed in this article will help loved ones make judgment calls.
Holy cow, where did you learn that stuff? From Paul MacLean? None of that reflects anywhere near current neurobiological evidence, let alone terminology! And I think the Neo-Cortex must only exist inside the Matrix, most everyone that's not a loon from the 80s calls it the cerebral cortex, or simply cortex.
The cortex is actually responsible for muscle control and movement patterning, disinhibited in the basal ganglia, through sensory proprioception from the cerebellum. It's all nicely integrated. The cortex has nothing to do with cognition. Although it does store memory I would not consider memory to be the fundamental element of cognition.
At any rate, you are correct in the idea that there is not one core region of processing. For instance, the spinal cord itself is actually a smart cable and does its own processing and reflex computations, so the fact that these patients anticipated a negative stimulus is not in and of itself evidence of cognitive function. Having not read anything but the abstract, if the aversive stimulus was in fact an eye-puff, that is a strong indicator that the brainstem, cerebellum and parts of the cerebral cortex are intact and functioning. If it were a foot stimulus, that says little about the brain. The classic experiment of the hinter-years involving a cat with its brain removed except for the brain stem and spinal cord, and yet the cat possessed the autonomic reflexes required to walk on a treadmill when properly positioned, is evidence of this. However, the article probably goes in depth about how this is viable for fundamental brain function, as is indicated by the abstract.
Actually, I believe the report said it used an electrocardiogram to determine learned behaviour to an aversive eye-puff (meaning that the vegetative patient's sympathetic nervous system was being activated in anticipation of the aversive stimulus). Regardless, the fMRI data from the dead salmon actually indicates what you can get from an MR machine if you set your parameters incorrectly. There are lots of artifacts in an MRI, and the statistics of its output is very complex, but the dead-salmon article's conclusion was about proper parameters being used, not a blanket statement about reliability of MR.
The spinal cord itself is actually a smart cable and does its own processing and reflex computations, so the fact that these patients anticipated a negative stimulus is not in and of itself evidence of cognitive function. Having not read anything but the abstract, if the aversive stimulus was in fact an eye-puff, that is a strong indicator that the brainstem, cerebellum and parts of the cerebral cortex are intact and functioning. If it were a foot stimulus, that says little about the brain. The classic experiment of the hinter-years involving a cat with its brain removed except for the brain stem and spinal cord, and yet the cat possessed the autonomic reflexes required to walk on a treadmill when properly positioned, is evidence of this. However, the article probably goes in depth about how this is viable for fundamental brain function, as is indicated by the abstract.
Yes, by adding aliphatic hydrocarbons to the core metal ion. (Except it's liquid to heavy)
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" - Charles Darwin, 1871
That and because Dave Ramsey is frickin' awesome like Chuck Norris.
This is a Renter's issue. If I lease out an office space to people whom I know are dealing cocaine, I get put in prison too unless I notify authorities and cooperate with the investigation. The host being penalized for knowingly hosting a website dealing illegally in IP is analogous. What's the hubbub about? Seems reasonable to me.
No one suggested the host had to take-down the site, the host probably should have notified the IP holder and worked with authorities. It's not the host's responsibility to kick his leasees out of his office space, in fact the host has a legal obligation to not interfere with a leasee's space unless invited in during the terms of the lease. The IP holder has no authority to demand a takedown, only a judge does, but you can cooperate to get to the bottom of the issue instead of being an antisocial asshat that ignores everyone. A simple call a lawyer "I've been notified that a website I host is dealing in illegal items and I'm calling to cooperate with any investigations currently underway or that you will initiate." Not so hard.
If you receive a takedown notice, take it to a lawyer and say you want to cooperate but need to validate the notice, have your lawyer contact the author of the takedown to say you're cooperating but need more information such as patent information or copyright filings. A takedown notice is not a judicial document, you need a judge for that, and if you initiate the judicial process through cooperation no judge will fine you excessively if you unwittingly facilitated the activity. Don't get so paranoid. It's like the internet is filled with twelve year-olds that put MP3s up on their Geocities page to look like a 'cool' technogangsta and don't know what their rights are or how to be a good responsible citizen.
This is simply how the brain works. You perform a task repeatedly and the neurons that are firing become more efficient and form a stronger connection, project more axons and dendrites, and generally do what they're supposed to.
... Great. More money being spend on useless research. We all already know the brain adapts and improves itself. How about a study on drugs to increase that improvement, say while I'm study for my Neuroanatomy gross lab.
Basically they did an MRI scan of girls before the study, then scanned them again after they had played Tetris for three months and their brain showed increased density rostral to the central sulcus, which is the region responsible for complex movements of the fingers and hands (based on the rough rendering at the top of TFA).
Where do I go to get funding to do stupid stuff like this? I have an MR machine, I have 3-months to kick back and travel the world giving 10 minute seminars while my research subjects regulate themselves. Please, someone tell me what I must do.
LOL, I am at a loss. I'd mod you Funny if your comment wasn't so Insightfu, or should I say Informative.
Exactly. In fact, plasmodium does not compute optimal distances, it has no senses to detect objects at a distance. It detects chemical concentration gradients and moves to or from higher concentrations of chemicals it likes or dislikes. It does not compute. In fact, if you've ever seen one move, it wriggles around a lot. It has to, in order to detect its immediate environment.
What is the point of this article?
So we have a Scientific American article telling us that Obsessive Compulsive people (a trait shared among those clinically depressed) are obsessive and compulsive? Holy crap! I knew that the grant stimulus was handing out money like a paedophile hands out candy, but I had no idea ... I need to get me some of that!
(Yes yes, I'm trivializing the findings and I'm sure/hope there is much more to it than that, but that's the kind of comment you get from a guy who only read the summary)
What seems most interesting about this discovery is any possible evolutionary links. The common yard lizard in the southern USA (Florida, Texas, 'Bama, Georgia) loses its tail when attacked. Some starfish will break off a limb as a decoy. Many other examples across the phyla, kingdoms and classes.
Has the ability to lose a limb and regenerate evolved multiple times? Is this an evolutionarily ancient and common ability that humans have lost? Or these species linked on some crooked branch and our tree description is just totally screwed up?
I think those are the real questions this article raises.
Well right now we "force" people to get educated by calling them truants if they don't. Forcing them to be educated would be going to their house and forcibly kidnapping them, and even at that you cannot force the information into their brain (regardless of Matrix theorists, I doubt we'll be able to realign someone's cerebral cortex at will via a computer link any time in the forseeable future).
... and those people who made the wrong choice are just going to keep on making more of them meaning taking away more resources from those who make the right choices. It's ludicrous!
That's exactly the point: it's IMPOSSIBLE to FORCE someone to do something.
You can force them to spend their money a certain way, by taxing them 100%, but they can still try to avoid it, or move out of the country. This is why socialism is impossible: it amounts to punishing those who make the right choices to reward those who make the wrong choices
"We can dismiss the parents" ... the parents were children of some other nitwit parents, you can't blame anyone under your criteria, so how about just not blaming anyone? Or better yet, blame yourself for not going out there and educating these poor people.
Unfortunately, these poor and uneducated people are poor or uneducated by choice. How often do you see a shanty with a DirecTV dish and a new Silverado out front? They are everywhere in Kentucky and Tennessee, West Virginia and northern Alabama. These people make choices about what is important.
How many of you remember that nitwit in your classes that never did any work? Maybe he/she compensated by acting like a jerk or by acting pompous. You cannot force people to make different choices just because you know they're better, you can't control everyone's lives. All you can do is give them the opportunity to work for themselves, and when they take that opportunity and lease a new pick-up truck instead of buying healthcare for their family you can't go out an penalize the well-to-do because this asshat has different priorities.
How many of you have worked a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter? There are plenty of hungry and homeless that have just had a shitty hand of cards and needs a helping hand, but for every one of those there's 15 that are just taking advantage of the system for free stuff. And for each one of those 15 taking advantage of charity, there's another 2 that are choosing to steal not from charities but from the penitentiary by getting free food and a room for a minimal crime, because it's easier than begging for food. For every 1 person that needs help, another 45 are just taking advantage. That one person that truly needs help won't know that they can get free healthcare from the government if it ever passes because they don't have a TV, or live in a rural area where access to healthcare means driving for 2 hours.
Life expectancy will continually go up, there are biomedical advances daily that are finding our to increase the rate of DNA repair, or preventing oxidative damage. Nutritional sciences is finding the foods that are best for us. My children's children might be able to see a Preventive care physician on a regular basis and not ever have to die from old age, we have the ability to make that kind of incremental advance. National life expectancy is a social issue, and every socialist that has tried has discovered that society cannot be controlled. All we can do is give people the opportunities and incentives to live in a manner that is best for everyone as a sum. Quit trying to micromanage, the complexity of such a system will only ensure its collapse.
What are they going to do with the info anyway? I doubt they're going to send out a suit to every GPS coordinate that was embedded in every crash report. It is not a real time GPS tracking, it's periodic coordinates. My account already has my address, phone number (duh), social security number, and bank/credit/debit account number. So what if Palm's bug squad gets a hex dump of my GPS coordinates when an app crashes? What more can they do with that than what information they already have on me? How can they monetize a GPS coordination any more than an address and phone number?
:-P
Sure I don't want them to have that information, but I'd prefer them to not have any information. Unfortunately, I can't build my own infrastructure, and I'm willing to sacrifice some of that information to get that convenience. Besides which, I have a concealed weapons permit. Thank god for Ted Nugent
But really, why should I care about a periodic GPS coordinate transmission when they already have access to my home, my phone, and my money? Let's get some perspective.
I think the power of the human brain comes not from raw processing power (which is still superior to current CPUs, the human brain is capable of around 65 independent processes at once, although at a lower frequency than a CPU according to research), but the power of the human brain comes from its ability to adapt and grow. A single neuron can be used for multiple different pathways, and can spontaneously change function in a "soft-wired" sort of way: plasticity. It also has the ability to produce additional neurons, expand them to different regions, and rework around disfunctional regions.
... but physical brains are a long way away. But these are still important practical and philosophical questions that need to be answered. Are our children slaves to us because we produced them? Should machines be? Does consciousness mandate rights ... responsibilities? My personal opinion is yes.
These attributes are difficult to replicate at a reasonable size with current technology. This is not to say we will never have the capability to fully replicate the human brain, but adaptability of the physical structure of the human brain is a trait that we cannot current replicate in physical silico. I am hopeful that we will have simulated brains within the next decade
This is how all discoveries are made and patented in medical science. At first, the idea that a specific metabolite present in the blood is not obvious for many reasons:
... with ever higher fidelity tests and the acceleration of experimental result acquisition and analysis, with the more knowledge we acquire, does a patent suddenly become defunct?
a) how will the substance be metabolized by the body, ie what actually are the metabolites, b) perhaps the liver degrades it to quickly to be detected, c) perhaps it is excreted too quickly to show up anywhere in the system. d) does a specific organ soak up all of the metabolite? e) and etc.
At first, these are all valid questions with non-obvious answers. But as medical science progresses it becomes extremely obvious how works the process governing the patented information, it gets added to text books, professors lecture on it, fad homeopathic remedies regarding it crop up, and it enters into public knowledge.
This is the real question that this patent case brings up
The answer is no, of course not. The patent holder spent their R&D learning how to take advantage of what was at that time a non-obvious thing, and patented it so exactly this would not happen: someone else later finds the same thing and utilizes it. What's the point of a patent if it's no good simply because someone else figures out how to do the same thing independently? That is exactly what a patent protects. Particular cases like this make the patent process sound silly, but this is exactly why patents exist.
Aren't we all deterministic automotons governed by the laws of physics? How can free will exist? I think many religious followers are the first to try to claim that free will caused humanity's fall and the subsequent assholishness of people. As a neuroscientist, I don't believe in free will, but that doesn't negate the concepts of responsibility. David Hume, an early Anglo philosopher put it simply that the idea of cause-and-effect necessitates determinism, so free will (reacting to something according to your past experience) is actually determinism.
... or Buddha ... or Krishna ... or any number of other loving religious iconoclasts or revolutionaries.
If you believe in a God and an afterlife, then what does it matter if God helps people now? The idea the God should do good things is just an excuse for Christians to be bad people.
Religion is simply a social construct that provides a community with a reason to be altruistic, altruism being the bond that makes society possible. The trouble arises when individuals turn that tool upside down and start to pervert it into an "us v them" mindset. That was the genius of Jesus and particularly Paul of Tarsus who founded a religion inclusive of all of humanity