This is a little delayed, but I just looked at that paper and don't think their conclusion is very strong. First of all, your extrapolation that enhancing NADH/NAD+ conversion (they measured this in vitro, without cells involved, by the way) means more usable energy for a cell doesn't really make sense. The only way it would is if this was somehow happening only in the Intermembrane space of the mitochondria. The whole point of that step is to put alot of H+ in the intermembrane space so the concentration gradient can be used to power ATP synthase. If it occurred anywhere else in the cell it would be effectively wasting NADH. The authors themselves say that the melanin is localized to the cell membrane and that the reducing (anti-oxidant) activity of melanin is occurring outside the cell.
The purpose of melanin is twofold. 1) It is an anti-oxidant, when UV light, or anything else (e.g. superoxide leaking from the electron transport chain) oxidizes something the melanin reacts with it rather than something critical to cell function (e.g. the cell membrane). 2) It can absorb UV light directly and convert it to heat.
When I see those results I think two things. 1) The radiation is killing off bacterial contamination in the culture dishes. I saw no mention of antibiotics. This leaves more food for the fungus... as long as it can deal with the radiation. Fungus that makes melanin is more resistant to the oxidative stress caused by radiation exposure. 2) The melanin is converting UV radiation into heat locally, thus increasing reaction rates, leading to increased growth.
They also use words like "significant" without backing it with stats. So i think that was a pretty crappy paper. That said, utilizing the heat formed via the melanin-radiation reaction would still be a clever biological trick. This is not my area of expertise though, so if I am wrong please correct me.
I personally wouldn't generalize too much based off second hand observations like you are, but point taken. The thing that stood out to me most was the benefit of more "dealing with actual real people". Also increased physical activity. Replacing internet with reading novels is an interesting situation though. It leans more towards the frantic information consumption is stressful idea you are talking about. Its a kind of ignorance is bliss effect.
Well from the lit it looks like people are doing it... Pulse a high intensity IR beam at sub-picosecond rates then split it and focus the two where you want to "ablate" something (basically put enough photons in a small enough volume so that multiphoton ionization does happen, while avoiding significant thermal effects).
Anyway, if someone believes something based off consensus you are not going to convince them with arguments no matter how confident you act. In my experience the only way is to change their perception of the consensus.
So I think EdFreed's post contained an experts perspective that was informative and useful to the interested reader. Whether or not it would convince ignorant people of their error is irrelevant. They won't listen to people who just tell them they are wrong, and they won't put the effort towards considering details either. The weakness of this way of thinking is that the person is left wide open to manipulation.
I didn't get why you were attacking Ed. Honestly I originally took you for a troll.
Sorry I am just interested in a physicist's perspective. I'll admit that I know little about lasers, etc. I guess here is my basic question: Can I use the principles of two-photon microscopy to cause ionization?
But ionizing radiation would damage the tissue it is passing through and thermal effects cause too much collateral damage. Are you sure theres no way to focus the energy better?
No, the logical extreme would be multiple RF photons hitting the same molecule at the same time thus ionizing it. Also you sound like you need to go to the bathroom or something.
Common ancestry requires transitional forms of life to have existed through the millions of years of supposed biological evolution. Yet the fossil record, our only source of the history of life on Earth, is almost (if not totally) devoid of transitional forms of life that would connect the supposed evolution of amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to birds, etc. This is why Stephen Jay Gould, possibly the leading evolutionist of our time, advanced his âoepunctuated equilibriaâ theory. In this theory, evolution leading to new kinds of organisms occurs over such brief periods of time that it was not captured in the fossil record. Upon reflection, one cannot help but notice that this is not arguing based upon the evidence â" but instead from the lack of evidence.
So... isn't he dismissing "macroevolution" based on lack of evidence?
The man has published work showing that he is either irrational or deceptive, he should be removed from his position before any further damage is done.
I think you're simplifying too much. Its better to quantify things. UV radiation is 1,000,000 times more energetic than radio. So the magic threshold you are talking about spans a factor of a million. Another way to put it is that the cutoff is not arbitrary at all. If you shine light that does not contain photons energetic enough to knock electrons away from their nuclei, it does not matter how long you do it for, or how bright the light is. You will never get ionization. This has been known for 100 years.
Can the exact energy required to ionize a molecule be affected by factors such as the solvent and interaction with other molecules around it? Yes. This difference will not be by a factor of 1,000,000 though.
Could there be damage due to non-ionizing effects of the radiation? Yes.
But is the damage due to non-ionizing radiation significantly more than the damage a cell causes to itself during day to day living? Probably not. A normal cell repairs around 250,000 dna lesions per day (or 10,000 per hour, or 200 per minute). It is capable of repairing closer to 1,500 dna lesions per minute.
For reference, one hour of bright sun exposure causes about 80,000 dna lesions (1,300 per minute) and skin cells can take about 15 minutes of this before they start killing themselves off rather than trying to repair. So if you look up how many dna lesions occur in RF treated cells now you will have something to compare to.
As to whether we should keep paying for these huge epidemiological studies without any proposed mechanism:
Yes, ethanol is not just for drinking, but can also be used as a fuel and chemical reagent. Producing more alcohol resistant yeast is a multimillion (if not billion) dollar industry. There are various ways microorganisms can develop resistance to alcohol. Increase membrane stability (eg increase cholesterol content), increase the ability to cope with oxidation stress (upregulate heat shock proteins, DNA repair enzymes, anti-oxidant producing enzymes), increase the ability to turn alcohol into something less noxious (upregulate alcohol and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase enzymes). We are past the selective breeding stage and now looking at selectively mutating certain genes. This also has applications in the biomedical field in terms of increasing cell survival under oxidizing conditions (e.g. salvage more brain tissue after a stroke).
It'll be like a tourist attraction with this dude as the guide. Go to 47th street and look for gold in the gutter while your gf looks at shoes and necklaces or whatever.
I actually heard a blurb on a "conservative" radio station today that referred to them as "a hacking group devoted to exposing security flaws." So the narrative is changing. Then again I also heard a blurb a couple weeks ago talking about K2 like it was a new thing when its been around for a decade and already outlawed in a few states.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a little delayed, but I just looked at that paper and don't think their conclusion is very strong. First of all, your extrapolation that enhancing NADH/NAD+ conversion (they measured this in vitro, without cells involved, by the way) means more usable energy for a cell doesn't really make sense. The only way it would is if this was somehow happening only in the Intermembrane space of the mitochondria. The whole point of that step is to put alot of H+ in the intermembrane space so the concentration gradient can be used to power ATP synthase. If it occurred anywhere else in the cell it would be effectively wasting NADH. The authors themselves say that the melanin is localized to the cell membrane and that the reducing (anti-oxidant) activity of melanin is occurring outside the cell.
The purpose of melanin is twofold.
1) It is an anti-oxidant, when UV light, or anything else (e.g. superoxide leaking from the electron transport chain) oxidizes something the melanin reacts with it rather than something critical to cell function (e.g. the cell membrane).
2) It can absorb UV light directly and convert it to heat.
When I see those results I think two things.
1) The radiation is killing off bacterial contamination in the culture dishes. I saw no mention of antibiotics. This leaves more food for the fungus... as long as it can deal with the radiation. Fungus that makes melanin is more resistant to the oxidative stress caused by radiation exposure.
2) The melanin is converting UV radiation into heat locally, thus increasing reaction rates, leading to increased growth.
They also use words like "significant" without backing it with stats. So i think that was a pretty crappy paper. That said, utilizing the heat formed via the melanin-radiation reaction would still be a clever biological trick. This is not my area of expertise though, so if I am wrong please correct me.
Like what?
What if the rocket blows up?
I personally wouldn't generalize too much based off second hand observations like you are, but point taken. The thing that stood out to me most was the benefit of more "dealing with actual real people". Also increased physical activity. Replacing internet with reading novels is an interesting situation though. It leans more towards the frantic information consumption is stressful idea you are talking about. Its a kind of ignorance is bliss effect.
I'm not saying I disagree, but whats the value you see in this depth?
Well from the lit it looks like people are doing it... Pulse a high intensity IR beam at sub-picosecond rates then split it and focus the two where you want to "ablate" something (basically put enough photons in a small enough volume so that multiphoton ionization does happen, while avoiding significant thermal effects).
Anyway, if someone believes something based off consensus you are not going to convince them with arguments no matter how confident you act. In my experience the only way is to change their perception of the consensus.
So I think EdFreed's post contained an experts perspective that was informative and useful to the interested reader. Whether or not it would convince ignorant people of their error is irrelevant. They won't listen to people who just tell them they are wrong, and they won't put the effort towards considering details either. The weakness of this way of thinking is that the person is left wide open to manipulation.
I didn't get why you were attacking Ed. Honestly I originally took you for a troll.
Sorry I am just interested in a physicist's perspective. I'll admit that I know little about lasers, etc. I guess here is my basic question: Can I use the principles of two-photon microscopy to cause ionization?
Just a yes or no is fine.
But ionizing radiation would damage the tissue it is passing through and thermal effects cause too much collateral damage. Are you sure theres no way to focus the energy better?
What if I wanted it to happen? Like as a noninvasive way to burn out a tumor without damaging the intervening tissue.
No, the logical extreme would be multiple RF photons hitting the same molecule at the same time thus ionizing it. Also you sound like you need to go to the bathroom or something.
So... isn't he dismissing "macroevolution" based on lack of evidence? The man has published work showing that he is either irrational or deceptive, he should be removed from his position before any further damage is done.
Uh, yes it can.
So you agree they should be studying pathways rather than doing epidemiological studies?
I think you're simplifying too much. Its better to quantify things. UV radiation is 1,000,000 times more energetic than radio. So the magic threshold you are talking about spans a factor of a million. Another way to put it is that the cutoff is not arbitrary at all. If you shine light that does not contain photons energetic enough to knock electrons away from their nuclei, it does not matter how long you do it for, or how bright the light is. You will never get ionization. This has been known for 100 years.
Can the exact energy required to ionize a molecule be affected by factors such as the solvent and interaction with other molecules around it?
Yes. This difference will not be by a factor of 1,000,000 though.
Could there be damage due to non-ionizing effects of the radiation?
Yes.
But is the damage due to non-ionizing radiation significantly more than the damage a cell causes to itself during day to day living?
Probably not. A normal cell repairs around 250,000 dna lesions per day (or 10,000 per hour, or 200 per minute). It is capable of repairing closer to 1,500 dna lesions per minute.
For reference, one hour of bright sun exposure causes about 80,000 dna lesions (1,300 per minute) and skin cells can take about 15 minutes of this before they start killing themselves off rather than trying to repair.
So if you look up how many dna lesions occur in RF treated cells now you will have something to compare to.
As to whether we should keep paying for these huge epidemiological studies without any proposed mechanism:
http://xkcd.org/882/
http://xkcd.com/925/
Thats a strange way of looking at things.
What if there's 5 companies. Company A sells 100 computers a year, Company B sells 70. Company C sells 2. Companies D and E both sell 1.
Would you say Company C is a "far cry" from A and B?
There are green lines and empty white everywhere taking up space
My mom said the exact same thing.
Yes, ethanol is not just for drinking, but can also be used as a fuel and chemical reagent. Producing more alcohol resistant yeast is a multimillion (if not billion) dollar industry. There are various ways microorganisms can develop resistance to alcohol. Increase membrane stability (eg increase cholesterol content), increase the ability to cope with oxidation stress (upregulate heat shock proteins, DNA repair enzymes, anti-oxidant producing enzymes), increase the ability to turn alcohol into something less noxious (upregulate alcohol and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase enzymes). We are past the selective breeding stage and now looking at selectively mutating certain genes. This also has applications in the biomedical field in terms of increasing cell survival under oxidizing conditions (e.g. salvage more brain tissue after a stroke).
Here is the abstract by the way:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/am200324f
It'll be like a tourist attraction with this dude as the guide. Go to 47th street and look for gold in the gutter while your gf looks at shoes and necklaces or whatever.
You could say its a work of art
I wonder if thatd be legal to have. Like in your own home.
I actually heard a blurb on a "conservative" radio station today that referred to them as "a hacking group devoted to exposing security flaws." So the narrative is changing. Then again I also heard a blurb a couple weeks ago talking about K2 like it was a new thing when its been around for a decade and already outlawed in a few states.
They could inadvertently ruin the life of a quadriplegic or something..
I meant someone speaking for the white house, not some guy on the internet. Maybe I just missed it.
If thats true why isn't anyone telling us?