W engineers designed microscopic probes that dip into a fluid sample – saliva, sputum or blood – and apply an electric field within the liquid. That draws particles to concentrate around the surface of the tiny probe. Larger particles hit the tip and swerve away, but DNA-sized molecules stick to the probe and are trapped on the surface.
I read through the entire article link, and didn't learn a whole lot about how it actually performs. The above paragraph was the only technical information included. From what I can see, neither really tests performance against really challenging samples with a lot of crud or difficult-to-extract material. We only have the PR blurb's claim that it's better than a typical Miniprep column.
Ok, from the first paper, we find out what this is really for:
Extracellular DNA is of great interest in the fields of disease diagnostics and environmental molecular biology. Unlike the genomic DNA in normal cells, extracellular DNA is the free DNA released from dead cells. Thus, extracellular DNA circulating in body fluids can be used as an early indicator for various acute diseases such as cancer. For example, the concentration of extracellular DNA for a normal person is 30ng/mL, but the concentration is increased to 300 ng/mL for a cancer patient. When the issue comes to environmental monitoring, extracellular DNA dissolved in lakes and soil is an indicator for environmental quality because the dissolved DNA is generated from cell lysis and excretion. In spite of such a great potential, the study of extracellular DNA is limited by the standard sample preparation methods.
The conventional methods begin with filtering, centrifuging, and collecting DNA from a raw sample. In aggressive experimental protocols, genomic DNA from normal cells is released and mixed with extracellular DNA. In addition, a few hours is required for the sample preparation process, which can degrade and mutate extracellular DNA.6 As a result, the original information of extracellular DNA is partially or completely lost. Therefore, a rapid process that can concentrate extracellular DNA is very important for identifying pathogenic information. This paper presents a size-specific concentration mechanism directly extracting extracellular DNA from a sample mixture using a nanostructured tip. The concentration process is performed with two sequences: (1) an alternating current (AC) electric field is applied to attract DNA and other bioparticles in the vicinity of a nanotip; (2) only the DNA is size-selectively captured onto the nanotip by the combination of dielectrophoresis and capillary action. In the analytical section, the forces involved in the concentration are estimated to investigate the capturing process. An analytical model is presented for capillary induced size-selectivity that is described as the function of the ratio of a particle to a tip diameter.
Basically, this is a special purpose method for concentrating extra-cellular DNA while leaving whole cell material intact. It's not meant to compete against a Miniprep, but analyze a whole different type of sample material; you are trying to fish out what genetic material is already floating around outside of your cells. Really a niche kind of research thing, I don't know if this will make a whole lot of impact, either practically, academically, or economically.
From what I gather from the literature, you are right about the hangover, but wrong about the mixing with alcohol. The blood concentration of the toxic degradation product is lowered when paracetamol is taken with alcohol, probably due to the alcohol successfully competing with cytochrome P450 in the liver, in much the same way that alcohol can be used to treat methanol poisoning (though another enzyme is competed for here).
Stumbled upon a good review of the pharmacology of Acetaminophen-Alcohol interactions (from back in 2000). Apparently it's more complicated than I thought: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2014937/
The interactions between paracetamol and ethanol are complex and many questions remain to be answered. In animals, chronic administration of ethanol causes microsomal enzyme induction with increased toxic metabolic activation of paracetamol and enhanced hepatotoxicity. Conversely, the acute administration of ethanol inhibits the potentially toxic oxidative metabolism of paracetamol and protects against liver damage. This protective effect disappears when the ethanol is eliminated and the time interval between the intake of ethanol and paracetamol is critical.
Although the possibility that chronic alcoholics are at increased risk of paracetamol hepatotoxicity can by no means be excluded, the available evidence does not support claims for a major toxic interaction between ethanol and paracetamol in man.
In contrast to the findings in animals, chronic alcoholics do not produce abnormally increased amounts of the potentially toxic metabolite of paracetamol. There is only modest, short-lived induction of CYP2E1 in chronic alcoholics and it seems that other isoenzymes are primarily responsible for the metabolic activation of paracetamol in man. In keeping with the metabolic data, there is no convincing clinical evidence to support the claims that chronic alcoholics are at increased risk of liver damage either following overdosage of paracetamol or with its therapeutic use. Such evidence as exists is purely anecdotal and similar toxicity has been reported in both circumstances in patients who are not alcoholic.
I would caution though, that while normal humans have an enormous amount of extra functional reserve in their livers, this may not be true for chronic alcohol users. Even if the absolute pharmacological toxicity is identical (or even modestly lessened), the same overdose that a non-alcoholic recovers from, could be fatal to someone with pre-existing damage. In addition, the cognitive and psychological impairment produced by alcohol could make both accidental and deliberate mis-use of other drugs more likely.
Serious question - Every now and then I get a headache, or muscle ache, or hurt myself in some way. Regardless of the source of the pain if I take paracetamol I get no noticeable pain relief, it feels exactly like taking a placebo.
Quite possibly -- there is always individual variation in response to substances; I would expect this to be doubly true for a pro-drug that requires further metabolism to activate. Unfortunately, I didn't find much in a quick search just now regarding variability in pain relief with acetaminophen, although there are plenty of studies examining variable responses regarding liver toxicty.
you don't want to leave it too late, nor be in a rush and tap too early...
Yeah, I sometimes tap too early when playing rush decks also, but the more lethal mistake is to wait too long and let things drag out into mid-game, where your deck type loses its natural advantage vs. slower (but more deliberate) deck designs.
You confuse "being a doormat" with "being nice." All those guys who you think are assholes for not treating a girl the way you would? They're treating a girl like the girl is an EQUAL
Have you seen the way girls themselves treat their actual peers/equals (i.e., other girls)? I'd say "asshole" is not an inaccurate way to describe it.
Just a quick walk-through of the first section of the paper:
Cell-based therapies for myelin disorders, such as multiple sclerosis and leukodystrophies, require technologies to generate functional oligodendrocyte progenitor cells. Here we describe direct conversion of mouse embryonic and lung fibroblasts to induced oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (iOPCs) using sets of either eight or three defined transcription factors.
The Slashdot summary and 3rd party source says "skin cells", but the paper indicates the specific cell type used were "mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs)"; specifically, they were MEFs isolated from a transgenic mouse lineage where a specific transactivator had already been engineered into their genome. This transactivator was designed to work together with the introduced Lentivirus vector (a retrovirus, member of the genus to which HIV belongs), carrying the Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cell (OPC) transcription factors. In a later section of the paper, they perform a similar process with "mouse lung fibroblasts" (MLFs), and also test several different combinations of transcription factors.
iOPCs exhibit a bipolar morphology and global gene expression profile consistent with bona fide OPCs. They can be expanded in vitro for at least five passages while retaining the ability to differentiate into multiprocessed oligodendrocytes.
Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Can be expanded into a flock while still retaining duck-ness.
When transplanted to hypomyelinated mice, iOPCs are capable of ensheathing host axons and generating compact myelin. Lineage conversion of somatic cells to expandable iOPCs provides a strategy to study the molecular control of oligodendrocyte lineage identity and may facilitate neurological disease modeling and autologous remyelinating therapies.
Induced OPC cells integrate into their normal niche, insulating neurons (at least at the cellular level). Didn't see much discussion of whether or not it altered the hypomyelinated ("shiver" mouse) phenotype.
It's going to have to been pretty bright to compete with the skyglow present all along the Northeast metropolitan area. I haven't seen the Milky Way in years; the last time it was visible in my neighborhood was about ten years ago, during a region-wide blackout.
Taylor discussed the new trend for graphics card manufacturers to release top quality game bundles registered to the serial number of the card.
Are they already doing this with their current bundles? I just recently bought a Radeon 7770, but wasn't particularly interested in the Far Cry 3 game that came with it, was was planning to sell the coupon to someone who could make better use of it.
Seconding this opinion, Lights of America definitely had some lifespan problems with their CFL bulbs. I've heard claims that (at least in some models) their bulbs were using preheat-type electrodes in Instant Start mode.
On the other hands, I have had great results from Sylvania (one PAR38 fixture in the main hallway lasted ~11 years in heavy use, several hours every day); Philips has also been pretty reliable.
PS: The only feature that would be useful to me in a smartphone would be able to use google maps on the street, but the cost / benefit ratio is too bad on my country (mobile internet - 3G/4G/EDGE/LTE/etc - is a luxury item here).
There are some offline mapping applications for Android, just download the maps on WiFi and use the phone with Data turned off: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android There are also apps out there to help enforce a data-off policy on your phone, to prevent expensive accidental downloads. Basically, you use your Smartphone like a tablet with Wi-Fi (with the side benefit of having voice calls over cellular).
I'm surprised they opted to wipe the compromised machines. North Korea has a long history of earning hard-currency funds through illicit activity (counterfeiting, drug-smuggling, etc). By wiping their targets, they've lost the possibility of using them to turn a fraudulent profit.
Probably means someone over there needed a short-term propaganda coup for internal political reasons.
They do put other things in chips besides just computer components
This. ^
I doubt you'll be seeing this on your desktop CPU, where everything can be banged out in the same fab. But suppose it were some telecom specialty chip, you could combine Silicon Carbide Chiplets with Germanium Chiplets with Laser Chiplets, all from different manufacturers.
Read a bit further because plain strontium is not the same as the isotope strontium-90
I specifically pointed this out, starting with the very second word of my reply. The issue specifically addressed was the parent post's comment on "heavy metal poisoning" of sea life, and as such my reply specifically addresses the aspect of chemical (not radioactive) toxicity, as an unlikely issue.
Sounds pretty fucking dangerous to me, and if you're saying heavy metals are not poisonous then again you are full of it, Or are you you going to tell me that nothing lives on the sea floor and it won't get passed up the food chain.
Strontium (the non-radioactive kind) is actually not rare in seawater; per Wikipedia: "The mean strontium content of ocean water is 8 mg/L". There is enough that an unusual class of protozoa, the Acantharea, even uses Strontium Sulfate as the main constituent of its skeleton.
Do you really want a list of all the maintenance fuckups caused by unionised American maintenance companies and groups? Like the unauthorised manner of engine change that ultimately caused the downing of AA 191?
A telling point of the example of AA-191, is that it dates to 1979. I'm not sure that reaching that far back for an incident occurring nearly 34 years ago makes the point intended. Given the amount of time that has passed since something so spectacular has happened, it might even serve as a counterexample as to how successful the current system is as preventing similar incidents.
Then why would the particle be affected differently than the antiparticle? Why wouldn't *both* fall into the black hole equally?
The problem stems from a misconception in your question. Hawking makes no claim that the two are affected differently, and such behavior is not necessary for his model of Hawking radiation; the emission arises from the occasional probability that one of the two virtual particles has the dumb luck to be on a trajectory not intersecting the event horizon.
Although AFAIK, there is also no solid experimental evidence that antimatter is not treated differently by gravity.
That brings up a good point. Cyber False Flag operations are far cheaper and easier to perform than their meat-space equivalents. By escalating from virtual-to-real body counts, you increase the risk your actual attackers must take, but you also increase the your own value as an entity that can be manipulated into doing someone else's dirty work.
I did pay money for it. $20 following integration with my Sprint cellular service (to keep my Google number as a permanent secondary contact), then another $10 for international dialing credit; the modest price has proved to be excellent value for the money.
hasn't been updated in years
I have the same complaint as you, though -- bugs and feature deficiencies which go unfixed for years, with no response from Google. For instance, while you can pay to change your Google Voice number, after integration with Sprint, my secondary contact number apparently cannot be deleted, un-linked, turned off, or changed, ever -- the option to do so disappears. As far as I can tell the only workaround to disentangle myself from it, is to de-integrate from Sprint and start over from a fresh Google account (and pray that the de-integration process doesn't gum up something in the process, as it has many other subscribers).
It's hard to say how much is Google's fault, and how much is Sprint's. In either case, I've heard Google is planning to roll out full Voice integration with additional mobile providers. For everyone's sake, I hope someone has learned some lessons, and the launch will be smoother for them, than it has been for us.
The real reason beer was important was that it was clean water. brewing beer kills off most of the bad things in fresh water supplies.
During the construction of America's Transcontinental Railroad, a similar phenomenon was noted with regards to tea. The Chinese workers would prepare large containers of tea in the morning, then drink it lukewarm throughout the day, as their main source of hydration. And while tea leaf extracts have some antimicrobial properties, it was primarily the boiling process which sanitized the water, reducing the outbreaks of dysentery that were common among other workers.
Slashdot Mirror
W engineers designed microscopic probes that dip into a fluid sample – saliva, sputum or blood – and apply an electric field within the liquid. That draws particles to concentrate around the surface of the tiny probe. Larger particles hit the tip and swerve away, but DNA-sized molecules stick to the probe and are trapped on the surface.
I read through the entire article link, and didn't learn a whole lot about how it actually performs. The above paragraph was the only technical information included. From what I can see, neither really tests performance against really challenging samples with a lot of crud or difficult-to-extract material. We only have the PR blurb's claim that it's better than a typical Miniprep column.
Found a couple of papers that might be more relevant:
Size-Specific Concentration of DNA to a Nanostructured Tip Using Dielectrophoresis and Capillary Action (Has downloadable PDF)
Nanotips for single-step preparation of DNA for qPCR analysis (Paywall)
Ok, from the first paper, we find out what this is really for:
Extracellular DNA is of great interest in the fields of disease diagnostics and environmental molecular biology. Unlike the genomic DNA in normal cells, extracellular DNA is the free DNA released from dead cells. Thus, extracellular DNA circulating in body fluids can be used as an early indicator for various acute diseases such as cancer. For example, the concentration of extracellular DNA for a normal person is 30ng/mL, but the concentration is increased to 300 ng/mL for a cancer patient. When the issue comes to environmental monitoring, extracellular DNA dissolved in lakes and soil is an indicator for environmental quality because the dissolved DNA is generated from cell lysis and excretion. In spite of such a great potential, the study of extracellular DNA is limited by the standard sample preparation methods.
The conventional methods begin with filtering, centrifuging, and collecting DNA from a raw sample. In aggressive experimental protocols, genomic DNA from normal cells is released and mixed with extracellular DNA. In addition, a few hours is required for the sample preparation process, which can degrade and mutate extracellular DNA.6 As a result, the original information of extracellular DNA is partially or completely lost. Therefore, a rapid process that can concentrate extracellular DNA is very important for identifying pathogenic information. This paper presents a size-specific concentration mechanism directly extracting extracellular DNA from a sample mixture using a nanostructured tip. The concentration process is performed with two sequences: (1) an alternating current (AC) electric field is applied to attract DNA and other bioparticles in the vicinity of a nanotip; (2) only the DNA is size-selectively captured onto the nanotip by the combination of dielectrophoresis and capillary action. In the analytical section, the forces involved in the concentration are estimated to investigate the capturing process. An analytical model is presented for capillary induced size-selectivity that is described as the function of the ratio of a particle to a tip diameter.
Basically, this is a special purpose method for concentrating extra-cellular DNA while leaving whole cell material intact. It's not meant to compete against a Miniprep, but analyze a whole different type of sample material; you are trying to fish out what genetic material is already floating around outside of your cells. Really a niche kind of research thing, I don't know if this will make a whole lot of impact, either practically, academically, or economically.
From what I gather from the literature, you are right about the hangover, but wrong about the mixing with alcohol. The blood concentration of the toxic degradation product is lowered when paracetamol is taken with alcohol, probably due to the alcohol successfully competing with cytochrome P450 in the liver, in much the same way that alcohol can be used to treat methanol poisoning (though another enzyme is competed for here).
Stumbled upon a good review of the pharmacology of Acetaminophen-Alcohol interactions (from back in 2000). Apparently it's more complicated than I thought:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2014937/
The interactions between paracetamol and ethanol are complex and many questions remain to be answered. In animals, chronic administration of ethanol causes microsomal enzyme induction with increased toxic metabolic activation of paracetamol and enhanced hepatotoxicity. Conversely, the acute administration of ethanol inhibits the potentially toxic oxidative metabolism of paracetamol and protects against liver damage. This protective effect disappears when the ethanol is eliminated and the time interval between the intake of ethanol and paracetamol is critical.
Although the possibility that chronic alcoholics are at increased risk of paracetamol hepatotoxicity can by no means be excluded, the available evidence does not support claims for a major toxic interaction between ethanol and paracetamol in man.
In contrast to the findings in animals, chronic alcoholics do not produce abnormally increased amounts of the potentially toxic metabolite of paracetamol. There is only modest, short-lived induction of CYP2E1 in chronic alcoholics and it seems that other isoenzymes are primarily responsible for the metabolic activation of paracetamol in man. In keeping with the metabolic data, there is no convincing clinical evidence to support the claims that chronic alcoholics are at increased risk of liver damage either following overdosage of paracetamol or with its therapeutic use. Such evidence as exists is purely anecdotal and similar toxicity has been reported in both circumstances in patients who are not alcoholic.
I would caution though, that while normal humans have an enormous amount of extra functional reserve in their livers, this may not be true for chronic alcohol users. Even if the absolute pharmacological toxicity is identical (or even modestly lessened), the same overdose that a non-alcoholic recovers from, could be fatal to someone with pre-existing damage. In addition, the cognitive and psychological impairment produced by alcohol could make both accidental and deliberate mis-use of other drugs more likely.
Serious question - Every now and then I get a headache, or muscle ache, or hurt myself in some way. Regardless of the source of the pain if I take paracetamol I get no noticeable pain relief, it feels exactly like taking a placebo.
Quite possibly -- there is always individual variation in response to substances; I would expect this to be doubly true for a pro-drug that requires further metabolism to activate. Unfortunately, I didn't find much in a quick search just now regarding variability in pain relief with acetaminophen, although there are plenty of studies examining variable responses regarding liver toxicty.
"no one who has joined the 4-year-old company has ever left..."
...the CEO said as he glared ominously at the interviewer then laughed manically. "No one."
you don't want to leave it too late, nor be in a rush and tap too early...
Yeah, I sometimes tap too early when playing rush decks also, but the more lethal mistake is to wait too long and let things drag out into mid-game, where your deck type loses its natural advantage vs. slower (but more deliberate) deck designs.
You confuse "being a doormat" with "being nice." All those guys who you think are assholes for not treating a girl the way you would? They're treating a girl like the girl is an EQUAL
Have you seen the way girls themselves treat their actual peers/equals (i.e., other girls)? I'd say "asshole" is not an inaccurate way to describe it.
Google FIber: The cure for a constipated telecom monopoly. No, seriously -- just one dose, and entrenched ISPs start running :)
Just a quick walk-through of the first section of the paper:
Cell-based therapies for myelin disorders, such as multiple sclerosis and leukodystrophies, require technologies to generate functional oligodendrocyte progenitor cells. Here we describe direct conversion of mouse embryonic and lung fibroblasts to induced oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (iOPCs) using sets of either eight or three defined transcription factors.
The Slashdot summary and 3rd party source says "skin cells", but the paper indicates the specific cell type used were "mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs)"; specifically, they were MEFs isolated from a transgenic mouse lineage where a specific transactivator had already been engineered into their genome. This transactivator was designed to work together with the introduced Lentivirus vector (a retrovirus, member of the genus to which HIV belongs), carrying the Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cell (OPC) transcription factors.
In a later section of the paper, they perform a similar process with "mouse lung fibroblasts" (MLFs), and also test several different combinations of transcription factors.
iOPCs exhibit a bipolar morphology and global gene expression profile consistent with bona fide OPCs. They can be expanded in vitro for at least five passages while retaining the ability to differentiate into multiprocessed oligodendrocytes.
Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Can be expanded into a flock while still retaining duck-ness.
When transplanted to hypomyelinated mice, iOPCs are capable of ensheathing host axons and generating compact myelin. Lineage conversion of somatic cells to expandable iOPCs provides a strategy to study the molecular control of oligodendrocyte lineage identity and may facilitate neurological disease modeling and autologous remyelinating therapies.
Induced OPC cells integrate into their normal niche, insulating neurons (at least at the cellular level). Didn't see much discussion of whether or not it altered the hypomyelinated ("shiver" mouse) phenotype.
It's going to have to been pretty bright to compete with the skyglow present all along the Northeast metropolitan area. I haven't seen the Milky Way in years; the last time it was visible in my neighborhood was about ten years ago, during a region-wide blackout.
Taylor discussed the new trend for graphics card manufacturers to release top quality game bundles registered to the serial number of the card.
Are they already doing this with their current bundles? I just recently bought a Radeon 7770, but wasn't particularly interested in the Far Cry 3 game that came with it, was was planning to sell the coupon to someone who could make better use of it.
worst was Lights of America
Seconding this opinion, Lights of America definitely had some lifespan problems with their CFL bulbs. I've heard claims that (at least in some models) their bulbs were using preheat-type electrodes in Instant Start mode.
On the other hands, I have had great results from Sylvania (one PAR38 fixture in the main hallway lasted ~11 years in heavy use, several hours every day); Philips has also been pretty reliable.
PS: The only feature that would be useful to me in a smartphone would be able to use google maps on the street, but the cost / benefit ratio is too bad on my country (mobile internet - 3G/4G/EDGE/LTE/etc - is a luxury item here).
There are some offline mapping applications for Android, just download the maps on WiFi and use the phone with Data turned off: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android
There are also apps out there to help enforce a data-off policy on your phone, to prevent expensive accidental downloads. Basically, you use your Smartphone like a tablet with Wi-Fi (with the side benefit of having voice calls over cellular).
I'm surprised they opted to wipe the compromised machines. North Korea has a long history of earning hard-currency funds through illicit activity (counterfeiting, drug-smuggling, etc). By wiping their targets, they've lost the possibility of using them to turn a fraudulent profit.
Probably means someone over there needed a short-term propaganda coup for internal political reasons.
They do put other things in chips besides just computer components
This. ^
I doubt you'll be seeing this on your desktop CPU, where everything can be banged out in the same fab. But suppose it were some telecom specialty chip, you could combine Silicon Carbide Chiplets with Germanium Chiplets with Laser Chiplets, all from different manufacturers.
Read a bit further because plain strontium is not the same as the isotope strontium-90
I specifically pointed this out, starting with the very second word of my reply. The issue specifically addressed was the parent post's comment on "heavy metal poisoning" of sea life, and as such my reply specifically addresses the aspect of chemical (not radioactive) toxicity, as an unlikely issue.
Purple or green?
Zip and then buckle, or buckle and then zip?
Wanna talk socks?
With a machine!
You know, if I throw in a Fixed-width font, this thread feels just like I'm back in the good old days of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.
So, returning to the subject of D*cks...
Sounds pretty fucking dangerous to me, and if you're saying heavy metals are not poisonous then again you are full of it, Or are you you going to tell me that nothing lives on the sea floor and it won't get passed up the food chain.
Strontium (the non-radioactive kind) is actually not rare in seawater; per Wikipedia: "The mean strontium content of ocean water is 8 mg/L". There is enough that an unusual class of protozoa, the Acantharea, even uses Strontium Sulfate as the main constituent of its skeleton.
Do you really want a list of all the maintenance fuckups caused by unionised American maintenance companies and groups? Like the unauthorised manner of engine change that ultimately caused the downing of AA 191?
A telling point of the example of AA-191, is that it dates to 1979. I'm not sure that reaching that far back for an incident occurring nearly 34 years ago makes the point intended. Given the amount of time that has passed since something so spectacular has happened, it might even serve as a counterexample as to how successful the current system is as preventing similar incidents.
Then why would the particle be affected differently than the antiparticle? Why wouldn't *both* fall into the black hole equally?
The problem stems from a misconception in your question. Hawking makes no claim that the two are affected differently, and such behavior is not necessary for his model of Hawking radiation; the emission arises from the occasional probability that one of the two virtual particles has the dumb luck to be on a trajectory not intersecting the event horizon.
Although AFAIK, there is also no solid experimental evidence that antimatter is not treated differently by gravity.
This is why we make you take off your shoes.
Guessing that the Underwear Bomber explains why we have nude-o-scopes, too.
Sure going to be fun when the dreaded "Rectal Bomber" finally makes his move.
Is that where you set two IDE hard drives both to Master and see which one wins?
Two Drives Enter! One Drive Leaves!
zombies
That brings up a good point. Cyber False Flag operations are far cheaper and easier to perform than their meat-space equivalents. By escalating from virtual-to-real body counts, you increase the risk your actual attackers must take, but you also increase the your own value as an entity that can be manipulated into doing someone else's dirty work.
Shoop Da Whoop: Imma Chargin' MALAYSIA!
I would have paid money for it
I did pay money for it. $20 following integration with my Sprint cellular service (to keep my Google number as a permanent secondary contact), then another $10 for international dialing credit; the modest price has proved to be excellent value for the money.
hasn't been updated in years
I have the same complaint as you, though -- bugs and feature deficiencies which go unfixed for years, with no response from Google. For instance, while you can pay to change your Google Voice number, after integration with Sprint, my secondary contact number apparently cannot be deleted, un-linked, turned off, or changed, ever -- the option to do so disappears. As far as I can tell the only workaround to disentangle myself from it, is to de-integrate from Sprint and start over from a fresh Google account (and pray that the de-integration process doesn't gum up something in the process, as it has many other subscribers).
It's hard to say how much is Google's fault, and how much is Sprint's. In either case, I've heard Google is planning to roll out full Voice integration with additional mobile providers. For everyone's sake, I hope someone has learned some lessons, and the launch will be smoother for them, than it has been for us.
The real reason beer was important was that it was clean water. brewing beer kills off most of the bad things in fresh water supplies.
During the construction of America's Transcontinental Railroad, a similar phenomenon was noted with regards to tea. The Chinese workers would prepare large containers of tea in the morning, then drink it lukewarm throughout the day, as their main source of hydration. And while tea leaf extracts have some antimicrobial properties, it was primarily the boiling process which sanitized the water, reducing the outbreaks of dysentery that were common among other workers.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tcrr-cprr/