In epistemically less rigorous contexts, like our everyday lives, testimony is perfectly fine. I am willing to accept that there is water in a bottle I buy from a store simply because it's labelled as being water. What's special about science is that we can crank up the epistemic rigour all the way and (in principle) find out for ourselves whether a claim that is being made is true or false. There are plenty of domains where this is not the case. Religion (which you mentioned) is one, and so are certain social situations (unless you're willing to involve, say, Jerry Springer). In practice we often do end up relying on testimony, but, again, the beauty of science is that I (you (we, as a species)) don't have to.
So, it's kind of like the concept of Free-as-in-Speech in Open Source.
There is far too much code out there for any one of us to examine by themselves. Many of us haven't read through any, yet alone tried compiling any of it. But, even those of us with no programming skill like the idea that it is at least possible for us to do these things, as the limits are set by our own technical skills and available time.
So even though an End User like myself may have no personal understanding of the Source Code I'm using, I still place greater confidence in the trustworthiness of the software I'm using, when I know it is possible for others to do that examination, even if nobody I personally trust has actually has checked that particular piece of code.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it is a game
On the contrary, I think it has a great deal to do with it being a game. One of the problems with online crime involving MMOs, is that it is hard to get people in the real world to acknowledge internet spaceships as serious business; unfortunately this can include law enforcement. So even though hacked and looted accounts can be converted into real currency, it doesn't carry quite the same degree of real-world risk for the criminal.
As a result, an MMO operator may ends up needing better security practices than than an actual "serious" business. For instance, one of the MMORPGs I play offered 2-factor authentication tokens years before any of my bank did -- it was a matter of survival for the company, thanks to incessant attacks that were eroding the player base, combined with credit card fraud that was threatened their ability to do business with their payment processing company.
If these prisoners were serial killers, rapists, murderers and other assorted bad guys, then I fully support using their organs to save lives. I find it poetic justice and a very fitting end for the life of a person who (possibly) killed so many others.
If these prisoners are political prisoners sentenced to death because they were at Tiannamen Square or oppose communism, then I welcome the end of such barbaric policies.
Here's the issue: it would be a remarkable coincidence to find a murderer that just happens to match the tissue type of the local party official's cousin, who is in desperate need of a new liver.
But finding a random prisoner who happens to be a match, and then afterwards absolutely coincidentally discovering that he's connected to some unsolved murder that's been sitting around in the cold case file?
In the past year, I've maybe encountered about 3 patients that actually managed the feat, though. Lifestyle change is a surprisingly difficult thing to implement, even when life and limb are literally at stake.
Only if you had some cheap winmodem. Most decent hardware modems were external.
Actiontec made an excellent 56k internal controller-based modem, I think I still have one in the closet somewhere. I used to recommend it as an upgrade for people with Winmodem-related system stability and connection issues.
I suppose it's a risk management issue - you're extremely unlikely to have a $10M settlement, but if you did you'd be happy to have paid $100K/year for insurance, even though if you averaged the settlements it'd be $5K/year/doctor.
He's not joking. An average OB-Gyn physician's yearly insurance premium can easily exceed $100k/year in high-risk states (although it varies greatly by state, mostly due to differences laws regarding liability and insurance).
When I first started school, I would have agreed with you. Writing and studying from notes on paper just felt more natural, with fewer distractions. However, by the time I was into the second year, the sheer amount of paper becomes a problem. You end up with shelves of binders that are too heavy to move around, and take a lot of effort to keep organized.
OneNote was pretty good, combined with a convertible laptop-tablet PC. I almost never actually used the PC in tablet mode (too chunky, too awkward), but there were occasional times when the digitizer was good for sketching the occasional graph or figure. A caveat however -- OneNote 2003's drivers don't work properly in x64 Windows (and probably never will). There's a work-around, but it has some limitations.
Just about all the fruit/veg you eat is going to have fructose. Are you trying to say eating apples (high in fructose) are harmful?
Well, if you were to chug them down as a supersized glass of apple juice, probably yes. The composition of that juice isn't too much different from a glass of fructose-sweetened soda. A small 8 oz glass of apple juice takes about 3-4 apples or so to make. If you were to eat those three or four apples whole, you'd feel a bit full; probably take you a while to finish them, too. With the bulk and fiber of the apple removed, the equivalent amount in juice can be consumed in minutes -- without satiating your hunger.
When you suck down a super-sized soda, you are consuming the fructose equivalent of bucketfuls of apples (and possibly doing so within the space of a few minutes). It would take an eating-contest champion to physically match that performance using whole fruit.
The privacy concerns are more of a valid issue though. I wouldn't want anyone publishing my parent's genomes, even if they did get my parents' permissions first. Part of that is my genome, so necessarily, part of my DNA would be published with the family name on it.
Let's flip this around. Suppose for some reason there is something interesting about my personal genetic profile, and I want my data to be published (for SCIENCE!), but my estranged adult child is trying to have the publication quashed. Does he have a right to choose happens to my personal data?
How about if his sister disagrees and decides she supports the publication? Maybe she supports it because her kid may share some unusual syndrome I have? How about when my grandchild is someday the only one around to make the decision -- let's say my grandchild leaves no descendants, does he get to make the decision that stands for perpetuity, or does it become moot upon his death?
That said, I have a hard time believing that someone can change the iris but cannot move the eyeball. I think those are fed by the same nerve bundle.
From what the article is describing, I'd have to say this is not an example where you simply have interruption of outgoing "twitch this muscle fiber" signals along a particular tract. As mentioned before by other posters, the Cranial Nerves emerge from the brain prior to where the spinal cord exits (except for CN 11, which is an oddball), so even a completely cut cord will leave them working.
Rather, the damage has occurred at a higher level such that the message isn't being sent in the first place. Trick is, the dilation of the Iris happens to be controlled through sympathetic nerves, rather than motor. So it is being controlled by a different system that apparently is still functioning.
Most of the people that I know that support him honestly assume that he struggled and grew up in the deep south (instead of Hawaii) like them.
Interestingly enough, in Hawaii you can find a particular set of racial stereotypes distinct from the rest of the US, diverging thanks to a combination of geographic distance and unique history and cultural background.
For instance, Portuguese jokes occupy a niche equivalent to that of Polish-jokes in the mainland, and developed thanks to an influx of relatively uneducated laborers which arrived in the 19th century. So while I'm pretty sure there is a black stereotype there as well, it may not be the same as in other parts of the country.
More like obsessive MMORPG players rejoice -- you can actually get up to go to the bathroom without interrupting your multi-hour dungeon raid. No more Poopsocking!
As a lactose intolerant westerner, I can ASSURE you that making cheese from milk does not remove all the lactose. It certainly removes some, but it definitely doesn't remove it all, nor does it make it okay for a lactose intolerant person to eat.
Generally, the harder/sharper the cheese, the less lactose, since it is through time and fermentation that these characteristics are acquired. This assumes the cheese went through normal aging, however -- processed cheeses may gain their flavors via shortcuts which leave the lactose content largely intact.
If the claims are true (60% of a plant's nitrogen requirements, adaptable to most crops), this is absolutely huge. All the research on how legumes manage their symbiotic organisms seemed to point to a long, hard slog in adapting nitrogen fixation to other crops, and now here it is from a naturally occurring organism.
But before I break out the champagne, I'm going to ask whereisthefuckingpaper?
That ensures that in an equilibrium solution it'll be present at much smaller concentration than a fully-hybridized DNA
That's actually one part of the new technique that is a problem -- it's a solution-based reaction. They may or may not be able to tether it to a solid substrate and still have it work (which would be a requirement for implementation in a practical DNA micro-array). I don't have access to the full paper at this moment, so I don't know if the issue was addressed or not.
Typically, hybridization probes rely on match/mismatch similarities between one target strand, and the probe strand; when the difference is a single base pair, your signal/noise ratio can be pretty poor. But while performance is typically poorer than PCR-based assays, they can be faster and easier to run, requiring less sophisticated equipment.
This new technique uses a mechanism that simultaneously evaluates both strands of the target at once (by passing through a cross-shaped intermediate complex). Basically, it's like differential signaling -- a single-point mutation on a dsDNA segment actually produces two detectable and complementary changes, one on each strand.
This is simplifying a bit (leaving out parts like the intermediate step used to generate toe-holds for the multi-way interaction) but that's the best computer analogy I can think of for a Slashdot explanation. It's nothing world-breaking, but it looks something with practical impact, giving a nice boost to a very widely deployed molecular diagnostic technique.
However, #1 shows that the number of reported cases of measles from 2004-2008 was markedly less than in the 1990 time-frame. That's strange. If the coverage level is the same, why would there be 2-3x fewer cases in 2004-2008 when compared to 1990?
Most likely because endemic transmission has been interrupted (in sub-regions of the country; I don't think endemic transmission has been stopped everywhere in the UK). Once that happens, your job gets easier as sporadic outbreaks from outside introduction can be successfully contained by quarantine and emergency ring-vaccination strategies.
Also, the 1990 figure isn't part of an equilibrium, as it happens to match the later coverage figures for a brief moment, but is occurring during a time when you have a rapid change in both coverage and measles incidence. It would be more directly comparable if it were held at some plateau, the way the 2004-2008 coverage hold relatively steady.
If that seems hard to believe, recall that we were told for decades that cigarettes were good for us, with doctors recommending particular brands.
No sir, we were told for decades that cigarettes were good for us, and that cigarettes were bad for us. The message varied depending who you were listening to, the difference stemming from the source's particular agenda.
People choose to selectively listen to the advice they wanted to hear, and this includes doctors. But, note from the wiki-link above that the first pieces of hard evidence against smoking was compiled by doctors.
Surprising. It's a "new low" in the US as far as I'm concerned. If an area is not safe for human habitation, it needs to be closed off.
Are you familiar with, Histoplasmosis? It's a fungal disease, very similar in presentation except the fungus prefers moist environments high in organic matter (like silt deposits or bat guano). Present across large swaths of the Central and Eastern US, but especially common in states bordering the Ohio River valley and the lower Mississippi River. Or Cryptococcus? Yet again, very similar fungal disease, this time worldwide in distribution with no particular geographical preference. How about Blastomycosis? Another rather similar fungal disease, and again common around the Mississippi river, Ohio river valley, and also around the Great Lakes and Wisconsin area. And yes, fatalities in immunocompetent individuals do occur.
And that's just for the fungal diseases that resemble coccidiomycosis. If you're going to have a freak-out over the relatively small numbers of victims this one disease has, crack open an infectious disease textbook -- you'll find most of the U.S. is uninhabitable territory. And don't even get started on tropical countries, it's a miracle anyone manages to survive in those places at all!
"Why don't they tell people?!"
To the general public's "They" has the requirement of being mass media or celebrity spokesperson, and "tell" means sexed-up writing in a lurid manner. The fact that you haven't heard of a particular disease before is because reporters and advocacy groups decided Lyme Disease and West Nile Virus are sexy, while Babesiosis and Ehrlichiosis are not.
This shit has been in textbooks for decades, it's not exactly a secret. Actually, it's more like an anti-secret: the information has always been out there, but people tune it out when the news comes from Health Department guy on PBS.
Sarcasm is very frequently indicated by nuances that aren't transmitted through text. If humans have trouble getting sarcasm out of text, why should an algorithm do any better with the same set of data?
Slashdot Mirror
In epistemically less rigorous contexts, like our everyday lives, testimony is perfectly fine. I am willing to accept that there is water in a bottle I buy from a store simply because it's labelled as being water. What's special about science is that we can crank up the epistemic rigour all the way and (in principle) find out for ourselves whether a claim that is being made is true or false. There are plenty of domains where this is not the case. Religion (which you mentioned) is one, and so are certain social situations (unless you're willing to involve, say, Jerry Springer). In practice we often do end up relying on testimony, but, again, the beauty of science is that I (you (we, as a species)) don't have to.
So, it's kind of like the concept of Free-as-in-Speech in Open Source.
There is far too much code out there for any one of us to examine by themselves. Many of us haven't read through any, yet alone tried compiling any of it. But, even those of us with no programming skill like the idea that it is at least possible for us to do these things, as the limits are set by our own technical skills and available time.
So even though an End User like myself may have no personal understanding of the Source Code I'm using, I still place greater confidence in the trustworthiness of the software I'm using, when I know it is possible for others to do that examination, even if nobody I personally trust has actually has checked that particular piece of code.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it is a game
On the contrary, I think it has a great deal to do with it being a game. One of the problems with online crime involving MMOs, is that it is hard to get people in the real world to acknowledge internet spaceships as serious business; unfortunately this can include law enforcement. So even though hacked and looted accounts can be converted into real currency, it doesn't carry quite the same degree of real-world risk for the criminal.
As a result, an MMO operator may ends up needing better security practices than than an actual "serious" business. For instance, one of the MMORPGs I play offered 2-factor authentication tokens years before any of my bank did -- it was a matter of survival for the company, thanks to incessant attacks that were eroding the player base, combined with credit card fraud that was threatened their ability to do business with their payment processing company.
MS does have some good products.
Yeah, love their Optical Mouse devices. Too bad about the rest of their product portfolio.
If these prisoners were serial killers, rapists, murderers and other assorted bad guys, then I fully support using their organs to save lives. I find it poetic justice and a very fitting end for the life of a person who (possibly) killed so many others.
If these prisoners are political prisoners sentenced to death because they were at Tiannamen Square or oppose communism, then I welcome the end of such barbaric policies.
Here's the issue: it would be a remarkable coincidence to find a murderer that just happens to match the tissue type of the local party official's cousin, who is in desperate need of a new liver.
But finding a random prisoner who happens to be a match, and then afterwards absolutely coincidentally discovering that he's connected to some unsolved murder that's been sitting around in the cold case file?
Might turn out to be remarkably more likely.
Most heart disease is curable by diet...
In theory, so is recently-onset Type-2 Diabetes.
In the past year, I've maybe encountered about 3 patients that actually managed the feat, though. Lifestyle change is a surprisingly difficult thing to implement, even when life and limb are literally at stake.
Only if you had some cheap winmodem. Most decent hardware modems were external.
Actiontec made an excellent 56k internal controller-based modem, I think I still have one in the closet somewhere. I used to recommend it as an upgrade for people with Winmodem-related system stability and connection issues.
I suppose it's a risk management issue - you're extremely unlikely to have a $10M settlement, but if you did you'd be happy to have paid $100K/year for insurance, even though if you averaged the settlements it'd be $5K/year/doctor.
He's not joking. An average OB-Gyn physician's yearly insurance premium can easily exceed $100k/year in high-risk states (although it varies greatly by state, mostly due to differences laws regarding liability and insurance).
pen and paper
When I first started school, I would have agreed with you. Writing and studying from notes on paper just felt more natural, with fewer distractions. However, by the time I was into the second year, the sheer amount of paper becomes a problem. You end up with shelves of binders that are too heavy to move around, and take a lot of effort to keep organized.
OneNote was pretty good, combined with a convertible laptop-tablet PC. I almost never actually used the PC in tablet mode (too chunky, too awkward), but there were occasional times when the digitizer was good for sketching the occasional graph or figure. A caveat however -- OneNote 2003's drivers don't work properly in x64 Windows (and probably never will). There's a work-around, but it has some limitations.
Just about all the fruit/veg you eat is going to have fructose. Are you trying to say eating apples (high in fructose) are harmful?
Well, if you were to chug them down as a supersized glass of apple juice, probably yes. The composition of that juice isn't too much different from a glass of fructose-sweetened soda. A small 8 oz glass of apple juice takes about 3-4 apples or so to make. If you were to eat those three or four apples whole, you'd feel a bit full; probably take you a while to finish them, too. With the bulk and fiber of the apple removed, the equivalent amount in juice can be consumed in minutes -- without satiating your hunger.
When you suck down a super-sized soda, you are consuming the fructose equivalent of bucketfuls of apples (and possibly doing so within the space of a few minutes). It would take an eating-contest champion to physically match that performance using whole fruit.
Well, I guess this story, like the cell line, is infinitely replicating.
So in other words, are you suggesting that Dupes are the cancer that is killing Slashdot? :P
The privacy concerns are more of a valid issue though. I wouldn't want anyone publishing my parent's genomes, even if they did get my parents' permissions first. Part of that is my genome, so necessarily, part of my DNA would be published with the family name on it.
Let's flip this around. Suppose for some reason there is something interesting about my personal genetic profile, and I want my data to be published (for SCIENCE!), but my estranged adult child is trying to have the publication quashed. Does he have a right to choose happens to my personal data?
How about if his sister disagrees and decides she supports the publication? Maybe she supports it because her kid may share some unusual syndrome I have? How about when my grandchild is someday the only one around to make the decision -- let's say my grandchild leaves no descendants, does he get to make the decision that stands for perpetuity, or does it become moot upon his death?
That said, I have a hard time believing that someone can change the iris but cannot move the eyeball. I think those are fed by the same nerve bundle.
From what the article is describing, I'd have to say this is not an example where you simply have interruption of outgoing "twitch this muscle fiber" signals along a particular tract. As mentioned before by other posters, the Cranial Nerves emerge from the brain prior to where the spinal cord exits (except for CN 11, which is an oddball), so even a completely cut cord will leave them working.
Rather, the damage has occurred at a higher level such that the message isn't being sent in the first place. Trick is, the dilation of the Iris happens to be controlled through sympathetic nerves, rather than motor. So it is being controlled by a different system that apparently is still functioning.
Most of the people that I know that support him honestly assume that he struggled and grew up in the deep south (instead of Hawaii) like them.
Interestingly enough, in Hawaii you can find a particular set of racial stereotypes distinct from the rest of the US, diverging thanks to a combination of geographic distance and unique history and cultural background.
For instance, Portuguese jokes occupy a niche equivalent to that of Polish-jokes in the mainland, and developed thanks to an influx of relatively uneducated laborers which arrived in the 19th century. So while I'm pretty sure there is a black stereotype there as well, it may not be the same as in other parts of the country.
More like obsessive MMORPG players rejoice -- you can actually get up to go to the bathroom without interrupting your multi-hour dungeon raid. No more Poopsocking!
As a lactose intolerant westerner, I can ASSURE you that making cheese from milk does not remove all the lactose. It certainly removes some, but it definitely doesn't remove it all, nor does it make it okay for a lactose intolerant person to eat.
Generally, the harder/sharper the cheese, the less lactose, since it is through time and fermentation that these characteristics are acquired. This assumes the cheese went through normal aging, however -- processed cheeses may gain their flavors via shortcuts which leave the lactose content largely intact.
If the claims are true (60% of a plant's nitrogen requirements, adaptable to most crops), this is absolutely huge. All the research on how legumes manage their symbiotic organisms seemed to point to a long, hard slog in adapting nitrogen fixation to other crops, and now here it is from a naturally occurring organism.
But before I break out the champagne, I'm going to ask whereisthefuckingpaper?
Amazing that you have time to think of anything else, actually.
I read your post imagining it was being spoken using Vizzini's voice. Much more amusing that way.
That ensures that in an equilibrium solution it'll be present at much smaller concentration than a fully-hybridized DNA
That's actually one part of the new technique that is a problem -- it's a solution-based reaction. They may or may not be able to tether it to a solid substrate and still have it work (which would be a requirement for implementation in a practical DNA micro-array). I don't have access to the full paper at this moment, so I don't know if the issue was addressed or not.
Typically, hybridization probes rely on match/mismatch similarities between one target strand, and the probe strand; when the difference is a single base pair, your signal/noise ratio can be pretty poor. But while performance is typically poorer than PCR-based assays, they can be faster and easier to run, requiring less sophisticated equipment.
This new technique uses a mechanism that simultaneously evaluates both strands of the target at once (by passing through a cross-shaped intermediate complex). Basically, it's like differential signaling -- a single-point mutation on a dsDNA segment actually produces two detectable and complementary changes, one on each strand.
This is simplifying a bit (leaving out parts like the intermediate step used to generate toe-holds for the multi-way interaction) but that's the best computer analogy I can think of for a Slashdot explanation. It's nothing world-breaking, but it looks something with practical impact, giving a nice boost to a very widely deployed molecular diagnostic technique.
However, #1 shows that the number of reported cases of measles from 2004-2008 was markedly less than in the 1990 time-frame. That's strange. If the coverage level is the same, why would there be 2-3x fewer cases in 2004-2008 when compared to 1990?
Most likely because endemic transmission has been interrupted (in sub-regions of the country; I don't think endemic transmission has been stopped everywhere in the UK). Once that happens, your job gets easier as sporadic outbreaks from outside introduction can be successfully contained by quarantine and emergency ring-vaccination strategies.
Also, the 1990 figure isn't part of an equilibrium, as it happens to match the later coverage figures for a brief moment, but is occurring during a time when you have a rapid change in both coverage and measles incidence. It would be more directly comparable if it were held at some plateau, the way the 2004-2008 coverage hold relatively steady.
If that seems hard to believe, recall that we were told for decades that cigarettes were good for us, with doctors recommending particular brands.
No sir, we were told for decades that cigarettes were good for us, and that cigarettes were bad for us. The message varied depending who you were listening to, the difference stemming from the source's particular agenda.
People choose to selectively listen to the advice they wanted to hear, and this includes doctors. But, note from the wiki-link above that the first pieces of hard evidence against smoking was compiled by doctors.
One bit was changed 10,000 times with 10,000 patches.
And its sequence coincidentally is a serial encoding of the text for a yummy chocolate chip cookie recipe :)
Surprising. It's a "new low" in the US as far as I'm concerned. If an area is not safe for human habitation, it needs to be closed off.
Are you familiar with, Histoplasmosis? It's a fungal disease, very similar in presentation except the fungus prefers moist environments high in organic matter (like silt deposits or bat guano). Present across large swaths of the Central and Eastern US, but especially common in states bordering the Ohio River valley and the lower Mississippi River. Or Cryptococcus? Yet again, very similar fungal disease, this time worldwide in distribution with no particular geographical preference. How about Blastomycosis? Another rather similar fungal disease, and again common around the Mississippi river, Ohio river valley, and also around the Great Lakes and Wisconsin area. And yes, fatalities in immunocompetent individuals do occur.
And that's just for the fungal diseases that resemble coccidiomycosis. If you're going to have a freak-out over the relatively small numbers of victims this one disease has, crack open an infectious disease textbook -- you'll find most of the U.S. is uninhabitable territory. And don't even get started on tropical countries, it's a miracle anyone manages to survive in those places at all!
"Why don't they tell people?!"
To the general public's "They" has the requirement of being mass media or celebrity spokesperson, and "tell" means sexed-up writing in a lurid manner. The fact that you haven't heard of a particular disease before is because reporters and advocacy groups decided Lyme Disease and West Nile Virus are sexy, while Babesiosis and Ehrlichiosis are not.
This shit has been in textbooks for decades, it's not exactly a secret. Actually, it's more like an anti-secret: the information has always been out there, but people tune it out when the news comes from Health Department guy on PBS.
I anxiously await Intel's new "Oregon Trail" CPU.
Might be a long wait, I heard a bunch of their engineers mysteriously died of dysentery while working on the design.
Sarcasm is very frequently indicated by nuances that aren't transmitted through text. If humans have trouble getting sarcasm out of text, why should an algorithm do any better with the same set of data?