Is there some thought that the patient's marrow is going to continue to produce cancerous B-cells? It seems that way because otherwise they'd produce a killer-T-cell with a terminator gene, right?
The research group involved has stated they would like to try including a self-destruct mechanism in their modified cells, but they're taking it one step at a time. And, it may very well be that the leukemia is being produced by a "cancer stem cell" that escapes targeting by this approach, or that there are surviving leukemia cells present at a low level. We don't know yet.
It's hard to say, but there's much potential here. Next antigen targets on their list include MAGE-A3 (melanomas, and some lung and other cancers), NY-ESO-1 (some testicular and other cancers), and Mesothelin (mesothelioma, and some ovarian and pancreatic cancers).
It may also be possible to apply this technique to some diseases other than cancer -- AIDS is on the list as well. While HIV normally generates a robust (but ultimately futile) immune response, it may be possible to enhance that normal defense, by using this technique to direct it into a more cell-mediated (as opposed to humoral) response, and also engineering the modfied T-cells to be resistant to HIV infection.
Historically, our techniques for treating cancer can be categorized into three categories: chemotherapeutics/radiation which attack rapidly dividing cells indiscriminately; "magic bullet" chemotherapeutics which exploit specific quirks of a cancer's biology -- a feature that differentiates it from normal cells (the perfect solution, but far too few such exploits are known); and immuno-therapeutics that utilize the body's own defenses. In practice, many techniques combine some aspects from the different approaches.
The immuno-therapeutic approach has a long history, beginning with Coley's Toxins, and there are a few cases where a cancer is naturally immunogenic enough for it to work (for instance, using BCG to evoke a response to certain kinds of bladder cancer). It has been hypothesized that the immune system eliminates most abnormal cells before they become cancerous, but the flip-side of this hypothesis, is that abnormal lineages which do become cancers, would only be able to do so because they gained mutations allowing them to evade or suppress that normal defense. In addition, while certain types of cancer increase in frequency in populations with long-term immune suppression (due to AIDS, organ transplant drugs, or some other acquired or congenital condition), many other types of cancer do not -- suggesting that in those cancer types, the immune system's normal tendency to avoid attacking the self, may alone be sufficient to shield them.
Anyway, what is particularly impressive about this CAR-T (Chimeric Antigen Receptors T-Cell) technique, that has been generating a lot of excitement, is its ability to completely and permanently break immune tolerance -- to the point where it does not need to target some identifiable abnormal feature of the cancer, but can target a completely normal feature of that cancer cell's lineage. In this case, the normal CD-19 receptor is targeted, and results in the entire population of B-Cells being wiped out. The leukemia is a sub-set of this cell population, so it is eliminated as well, with the bonus of a persistent immune response that continually suppresses any survivors. The downside is that the patient is left with no B-Cells to produce antibodies, and thus relies on periodic infusions of IVIG (Intravenous Immunoglobulin, consisting of antibodies pooled from donors) to protect against infection.
It's possible they used a different capsid structure to deliver the payload, and delivered the RNA that way.
They didn't. From what I can tell, it's naked mRNA, stabilized by associating it with Protamines (Arginine-rich nucleoproteins found in sperm, which serve a histone-like function in packing genetic material).
In typical slashdot tradition, I did not read the article; if they are using some other mechanism besides a virus capsid to deliver the RNA, that would indeed be novel.
Or? It could replicate like DUPLICATE STORIES on Slashdot!
The Abstract and Medical Daily link don't give enough information to give me the full story, but this does not appear to be related in any way to the previous Slashdot Self-Boosting vaccine story (using viruses capable of persisting in latency as carriers).
This is a mRNA-based vaccine, of which there are currently no commercially available examples in existence. The vaccine material itself should be degraded and eliminated in very short order, with no self-replication and no persistant "self-boosting" effect; the duration of immunity in humans appears to be merely conjecture on the part of the Medical Daily writers.
A lot of vague marketing-speak in this article. "Deep learning"? The article basically talks about neural networks, just one of the techniques in machine learning.
It's hard to tell from the article, but they probably are trying to refer to Deep Belief Networks, which are a more recent and advanced type of Neural Network, which incorporates many layers:
Deep belief nets are probabilistic generative models that are composed of multiple layers of stochastic, latent variables. The latent variables typically have binary values and are often called hidden units or feature detectors. The top two layers have undirected, symmetric connections between them and form an associative memory. The lower layers receive top-down, directed connections from the layer above. The states of the units in the lowest layer represent a data vector.
Look into reverse osmosis. Water shortages aren't making headlines like global warming because we have ways to get fresh water out of the ocean if we get that desperate.
Not a lot of ocean here in Oklahoma.
Who says reverse osmosis requires an ocean? Your future source of water might be found in the technological wonder known as "Toilet to Tap".
I do to. But how many remember the dismantling of the Ever-Normal Granary system in the 70's?
In our former system, the Granary system dampened price/supply swings and reduced shortages through government stockpiling in years of plenty. These stockpiles would be sold off during poor harvest, with an over-all neutral balance of grain-in and grain-out. The switchover to subsidized agricultural production solved the problem of shortage in an altogether different fashion -- by stimulating constant over-production. Smaller operations were able to survive the resulting surpluses and price volatility for a few years, until the droughts of the 80's tipped them into crisis -- ultimately resulting in consolidation of farms under large agri-businesses.
Not surprisingly, the two systems are incompatible; attempting to keep both policies in force simultaneously results in things like huge mountains of "Government Cheese".
Thank you for the lengthy and well thought out summary, Mr. Immunology AC.
If you're still around, in your opinion, is this comparable to Glatiramer (Copaxone), another immuno-modulatory MS agent which (maybe) acts through peripheral tolerance mechanisms? Looking at the data on Copaxone, it didn't seem to slow the overall progression of the disease, although it improved several parameters important to patient quality-of-life.
Looks pretty consistent with the kind of view of human consciousness, as forms the core of Peter Watts' "Blindsight".
I just realized that the main charter in Blindsight is named "Siri", same as the Apple search app. Although, considering that his book came out in 2006, it would seem it pre-dates the Apple term.
Maybe he could try his hand at the used video market?
Just as game stores increasingly earn their profits through buybacks and re-sales of used games and console hardware, he could get into the business of purchasing and re-selling used DVD/Blu-ray movies, and maybe used video players as well.
The biggest nuisance to me is the division of the Start search result categories, and that's something I learned to deal with very quickly (an extra keystroke or two).
That's probably my biggest annoyance as well. I also had some trouble getting used to the way the Wireless Network list is organized, and accessing advanced settings for individual wireless networks isn't very intuitive.
Walmart profits on necessity spending. How many cell phone apps fall into that category?
I don't know about the apps, but smartphones themselves are increasingly considered a "necessity".
I've known folks who were unemployed and near broke, yet would do whatever it took to keep paying their overpriced $80/month smartphone plan, even if it meant living on junk-food and borrowing money from friends. The only other thing I've seen that makes people behave that way is tobacco.
I see a lot of criticism of Windows 8, but I don't see a lot of folks that have actually tried to use it with a touch screen device.
I have tried it. It is currently installed on my Lenovo x201t, which was one of the reference TabletPCs used during Win8 development.
When operating in purely touch mode, it is definitely an improvement. Tablet mode was very limited in XP and Win7 (and by "limited", I mean "painful"), but fully usable now. That being said, I feel the visual prompts are too hidden (there should at least be a tutorial mode that gives more clues, and then steps aside once you're familiar enough everything); the interface is not intuitive enough to learn by osmosis. And if a tutorial mode exists, my installation gave no clue of it.
On the flip side, when working in Desktop mode (basically anything that requires more than a trivial amount of text input), I keep reaching for features that have been moved or hidden, and I itch to install ClassicShell or some other add-on. I've been refusing the impulse to do so, to see if it's just a matter or breaking old habits. But after having kept at it for a while, it seems that some Touch-optimized elements of Win8 just simply are not friendly for Keyboard/Mouse users.
The shortage of doctors in the U.S. is due to the AMA cartel's control over university accreditation and corresponding rent-seeking state laws requiring accreditation. The result is speed-exams when you go visit a doctor (or maybe not see the doctor at all, but rather a "nurse practitioner").
As an Osteopathic medical student in the U.S., I just wanted to point out there is a second source for physicians available to you. The AOA has its own system of university accreditation, its own separate schools, and separate board exams, which produces licensed doctors with full practice rights but with the degree of "D.O." instead of "M.D.".
Note: This system exists only in the U.S., and in other countries you have "Osteopaths" which are non-physician practitioners.
Ironically, China was birthplace of the philosophy known as Legalism:
"The law code must be clearly written and made public. All people under the ruler were equal before the law. Laws should reward those who obey them and punish accordingly those who dare to break them. Thus it is guaranteed that actions taken are systematically predictable. In addition, the system of law ran the state, not the ruler, a statement of rule of law. If the law is successfully enforced, even a weak ruler will be strong."
Even more ironically was that, as a practical philosophy or ruling, Legalism eventually degenerated into a maze of tyrannical and self-contradicting rules, existing only as a tool to enhance the power of the rulers via selective enforcement. Not an uncommon tactic in modern times, but as with many inventions, the Chinese had it first.
Same old ad-ridden screen, except this time the ads were blank placeholders. I reckon nobody wanted to advertise there, since nobody was using the annoying EPG...
Interesting that they didn't even bother to advertise their own Sony products on the EPG. Probably nobody at the company still maintaining the advertising system, to format and schedule the ads.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that as agricultural regions shift poleward even slightly, the amount of arable land favorable to crop-growing will greatly increase.
Cylindrical map projections can be deceiving, those high-latitude areas aren't as big as they look. In addition, the expanding areas are largely dominated by a few relatively well-industrialized nations, while some lower-latitude agricultural regions will shrink; causes would include excessive heat, changes in precipitation, inundation or salt-water infiltration of low-lying land (especially fertile delta areas) or disturbances of flow in glacier-fed rivers (some glaciers will actually grow, but again mostly in upper latitudes).
On the plus side, one of the lower-latitude areas that might benefit would be Saharan Africa, as changing weather patterns may restart the ancient monsoons that once made the desert green. It's not clear whether the net change in arable cropland and production will be positive or not, as it will increase or decrease depending on the degree of warming.
Ah yes, Toshiba and their wonderful legacy support.
The company that dropped all their support info down the memory hole without warning, when they exited the digital camera business back in 2004. All the manuals, software, firmware, and FAQs simply disappeared their site. I discovered this when I had to upgrade the firmware in one of my old cameras to address SD card compatibility issues (at the time it was already technologically obsolete in many ways, but had excellent quality optics). Only place that still had the firmware was a 3rd-party driver site with the flashing procedure instructions written in Chinese. Fortunately, the firmware itself turned out to be in English.
Toshiba eventually re-entered the camera business, but any information from their earlier generation of cameras is gone. If you want any downloads or manuals, Toshiba re-directs you to a third party telephone support service that charges $19.95 for assistance. Actually, that fee might be behind the removal of their laptop manuals as well -- whatever outsourced agency Toshiba dumped their legacy support info to, wants to be paid for that info.
You returned the TV, but you didn't return the shipping. You "consumed" it.
Makes for an interesting loophole when dealing with those online merchants that sell everything for $0.99, but charge an order of magnitude more for shipping and handling.
Once refined, it degrades. Oxidation, bacteria. Algae. Amazing things grow in diesel. You can add preservatives, but these only go so far
I wonder if it would be economical to manufacture a grade of diesel-compatible fuel that doesn't degrade, for purposes of long-term storage. It would consist purely of highly refined aliphatics, leaving no unsaturated bonds available for oxidative attack. Heavy metal content would need to be near-zero as well, as they could function as catalysts for breakdown, or nutrients for microbes. The storage air-space above it would be purged with inert gas or at least desiccated, again to avoid microbial growth.
Essentially, it would be a liquid paraffin similar to medical grade mineral oil (but a bit lighter fraction). Probably cost as much, too.
Remember, Buddhist monks can't have sex with a woman or even touch a woman.
Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. As they came around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross at an intersection.
"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he could no longer restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"
"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"
The initial market will be in the developing world, where 640,000 diesel-powered generators are used to power base stations, chewing through $15 billion worth of fuel per year.
This quote from the company gives the economics away. The monetary savings from the new base station amplifier's efficiency likely do not offset the increased purchase cost -- for stations wired to the grid. So they're selling it as a way of decreasing cost and re-fuel frequency for off-grid stations.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there some thought that the patient's marrow is going to continue to produce cancerous B-cells? It seems that way because otherwise they'd produce a killer-T-cell with a terminator gene, right?
The research group involved has stated they would like to try including a self-destruct mechanism in their modified cells, but they're taking it one step at a time. And, it may very well be that the leukemia is being produced by a "cancer stem cell" that escapes targeting by this approach, or that there are surviving leukemia cells present at a low level. We don't know yet.
What's the end game for this type of treatment
It's hard to say, but there's much potential here. Next antigen targets on their list include MAGE-A3 (melanomas, and some lung and other cancers), NY-ESO-1 (some testicular and other cancers), and Mesothelin (mesothelioma, and some ovarian and pancreatic cancers).
It may also be possible to apply this technique to some diseases other than cancer -- AIDS is on the list as well. While HIV normally generates a robust (but ultimately futile) immune response, it may be possible to enhance that normal defense, by using this technique to direct it into a more cell-mediated (as opposed to humoral) response, and also engineering the modfied T-cells to be resistant to HIV infection.
every game has been professionally cleaned and tested.
Man, it must have taken forever to personally blow on all those cartridges.
I am not a doctor, but I am a med student. :)
Historically, our techniques for treating cancer can be categorized into three categories: chemotherapeutics/radiation which attack rapidly dividing cells indiscriminately; "magic bullet" chemotherapeutics which exploit specific quirks of a cancer's biology -- a feature that differentiates it from normal cells (the perfect solution, but far too few such exploits are known); and immuno-therapeutics that utilize the body's own defenses. In practice, many techniques combine some aspects from the different approaches.
The immuno-therapeutic approach has a long history, beginning with Coley's Toxins, and there are a few cases where a cancer is naturally immunogenic enough for it to work (for instance, using BCG to evoke a response to certain kinds of bladder cancer). It has been hypothesized that the immune system eliminates most abnormal cells before they become cancerous, but the flip-side of this hypothesis, is that abnormal lineages which do become cancers, would only be able to do so because they gained mutations allowing them to evade or suppress that normal defense. In addition, while certain types of cancer increase in frequency in populations with long-term immune suppression (due to AIDS, organ transplant drugs, or some other acquired or congenital condition), many other types of cancer do not -- suggesting that in those cancer types, the immune system's normal tendency to avoid attacking the self, may alone be sufficient to shield them.
Anyway, what is particularly impressive about this CAR-T (Chimeric Antigen Receptors T-Cell) technique, that has been generating a lot of excitement, is its ability to completely and permanently break immune tolerance -- to the point where it does not need to target some identifiable abnormal feature of the cancer, but can target a completely normal feature of that cancer cell's lineage. In this case, the normal CD-19 receptor is targeted, and results in the entire population of B-Cells being wiped out. The leukemia is a sub-set of this cell population, so it is eliminated as well, with the bonus of a persistent immune response that continually suppresses any survivors. The downside is that the patient is left with no B-Cells to produce antibodies, and thus relies on periodic infusions of IVIG (Intravenous Immunoglobulin, consisting of antibodies pooled from donors) to protect against infection.
It's possible they used a different capsid structure to deliver the payload, and delivered the RNA that way.
They didn't. From what I can tell, it's naked mRNA, stabilized by associating it with Protamines (Arginine-rich nucleoproteins found in sperm, which serve a histone-like function in packing genetic material).
In typical slashdot tradition, I did not read the article; if they are using some other mechanism besides a virus capsid to deliver the RNA, that would indeed be novel.
Or? It could replicate like DUPLICATE STORIES on Slashdot!
The Abstract and Medical Daily link don't give enough information to give me the full story, but this does not appear to be related in any way to the previous Slashdot Self-Boosting vaccine story (using viruses capable of persisting in latency as carriers).
This is a mRNA-based vaccine, of which there are currently no commercially available examples in existence. The vaccine material itself should be degraded and eliminated in very short order, with no self-replication and no persistant "self-boosting" effect; the duration of immunity in humans appears to be merely conjecture on the part of the Medical Daily writers.
A lot of vague marketing-speak in this article. "Deep learning"? The article basically talks about neural networks, just one of the techniques in machine learning.
It's hard to tell from the article, but they probably are trying to refer to Deep Belief Networks, which are a more recent and advanced type of Neural Network, which incorporates many layers:
Deep belief nets are probabilistic generative models that are composed of multiple layers of stochastic, latent variables. The latent variables typically have binary values and are often called hidden units or feature detectors. The top two layers have undirected, symmetric connections between them and form an associative memory. The lower layers receive top-down, directed connections from the layer above. The states of the units in the lowest layer represent a data vector.
Look into reverse osmosis. Water shortages aren't making headlines like global warming because we have ways to get fresh water out of the ocean if we get that desperate.
Not a lot of ocean here in Oklahoma.
Who says reverse osmosis requires an ocean? Your future source of water might be found in the technological wonder known as "Toilet to Tap".
I remember farm aid.
I do to. But how many remember the dismantling of the Ever-Normal Granary system in the 70's?
In our former system, the Granary system dampened price/supply swings and reduced shortages through government stockpiling in years of plenty. These stockpiles would be sold off during poor harvest, with an over-all neutral balance of grain-in and grain-out. The switchover to subsidized agricultural production solved the problem of shortage in an altogether different fashion -- by stimulating constant over-production. Smaller operations were able to survive the resulting surpluses and price volatility for a few years, until the droughts of the 80's tipped them into crisis -- ultimately resulting in consolidation of farms under large agri-businesses.
Not surprisingly, the two systems are incompatible; attempting to keep both policies in force simultaneously results in things like huge mountains of "Government Cheese".
Thank you for the lengthy and well thought out summary, Mr. Immunology AC.
If you're still around, in your opinion, is this comparable to Glatiramer (Copaxone), another immuno-modulatory MS agent which (maybe) acts through peripheral tolerance mechanisms? Looking at the data on Copaxone, it didn't seem to slow the overall progression of the disease, although it improved several parameters important to patient quality-of-life.
Looks pretty consistent with the kind of view of human consciousness, as forms the core of Peter Watts' "Blindsight".
I just realized that the main charter in Blindsight is named "Siri", same as the Apple search app. Although, considering that his book came out in 2006, it would seem it pre-dates the Apple term.
Maybe he could try his hand at the used video market?
Just as game stores increasingly earn their profits through buybacks and re-sales of used games and console hardware, he could get into the business of purchasing and re-selling used DVD/Blu-ray movies, and maybe used video players as well.
The biggest nuisance to me is the division of the Start search result categories, and that's something I learned to deal with very quickly (an extra keystroke or two).
That's probably my biggest annoyance as well. I also had some trouble getting used to the way the Wireless Network list is organized, and accessing advanced settings for individual wireless networks isn't very intuitive.
Walmart profits on necessity spending. How many cell phone apps fall into that category?
I don't know about the apps, but smartphones themselves are increasingly considered a "necessity".
I've known folks who were unemployed and near broke, yet would do whatever it took to keep paying their overpriced $80/month smartphone plan, even if it meant living on junk-food and borrowing money from friends. The only other thing I've seen that makes people behave that way is tobacco.
Bravo, you both understand and fail to understand something at the same time!
Oh my gosh, he's in a quantum-super-imposed state of consciousness!
I haven't seen that one before.
Damn it, now you've observed him and collapsed his waveform. I bet you enjoy killing boxed cats in your spare time, too.
I see a lot of criticism of Windows 8, but I don't see a lot of folks that have actually tried to use it with a touch screen device.
I have tried it. It is currently installed on my Lenovo x201t, which was one of the reference TabletPCs used during Win8 development.
When operating in purely touch mode, it is definitely an improvement. Tablet mode was very limited in XP and Win7 (and by "limited", I mean "painful"), but fully usable now. That being said, I feel the visual prompts are too hidden (there should at least be a tutorial mode that gives more clues, and then steps aside once you're familiar enough everything); the interface is not intuitive enough to learn by osmosis. And if a tutorial mode exists, my installation gave no clue of it.
On the flip side, when working in Desktop mode (basically anything that requires more than a trivial amount of text input), I keep reaching for features that have been moved or hidden, and I itch to install ClassicShell or some other add-on. I've been refusing the impulse to do so, to see if it's just a matter or breaking old habits. But after having kept at it for a while, it seems that some Touch-optimized elements of Win8 just simply are not friendly for Keyboard/Mouse users.
The shortage of doctors in the U.S. is due to the AMA cartel's control over university accreditation and corresponding rent-seeking state laws requiring accreditation. The result is speed-exams when you go visit a doctor (or maybe not see the doctor at all, but rather a "nurse practitioner").
As an Osteopathic medical student in the U.S., I just wanted to point out there is a second source for physicians available to you. The AOA has its own system of university accreditation, its own separate schools, and separate board exams, which produces licensed doctors with full practice rights but with the degree of "D.O." instead of "M.D.".
Note: This system exists only in the U.S., and in other countries you have "Osteopaths" which are non-physician practitioners.
Ironically, China was birthplace of the philosophy known as Legalism:
"The law code must be clearly written and made public. All people under the ruler were equal before the law. Laws should reward those who obey them and punish accordingly those who dare to break them. Thus it is guaranteed that actions taken are systematically predictable. In addition, the system of law ran the state, not the ruler, a statement of rule of law. If the law is successfully enforced, even a weak ruler will be strong."
Even more ironically was that, as a practical philosophy or ruling, Legalism eventually degenerated into a maze of tyrannical and self-contradicting rules, existing only as a tool to enhance the power of the rulers via selective enforcement. Not an uncommon tactic in modern times, but as with many inventions, the Chinese had it first.
Same old ad-ridden screen, except this time the ads were blank placeholders. I reckon nobody wanted to advertise there, since nobody was using the annoying EPG...
Interesting that they didn't even bother to advertise their own Sony products on the EPG. Probably nobody at the company still maintaining the advertising system, to format and schedule the ads.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that as agricultural regions shift poleward even slightly, the amount of arable land favorable to crop-growing will greatly increase.
Cylindrical map projections can be deceiving, those high-latitude areas aren't as big as they look. In addition, the expanding areas are largely dominated by a few relatively well-industrialized nations, while some lower-latitude agricultural regions will shrink; causes would include excessive heat, changes in precipitation, inundation or salt-water infiltration of low-lying land (especially fertile delta areas) or disturbances of flow in glacier-fed rivers (some glaciers will actually grow, but again mostly in upper latitudes).
On the plus side, one of the lower-latitude areas that might benefit would be Saharan Africa, as changing weather patterns may restart the ancient monsoons that once made the desert green. It's not clear whether the net change in arable cropland and production will be positive or not, as it will increase or decrease depending on the degree of warming.
Ah yes, Toshiba and their wonderful legacy support.
The company that dropped all their support info down the memory hole without warning, when they exited the digital camera business back in 2004. All the manuals, software, firmware, and FAQs simply disappeared their site. I discovered this when I had to upgrade the firmware in one of my old cameras to address SD card compatibility issues (at the time it was already technologically obsolete in many ways, but had excellent quality optics). Only place that still had the firmware was a 3rd-party driver site with the flashing procedure instructions written in Chinese. Fortunately, the firmware itself turned out to be in English.
Toshiba eventually re-entered the camera business, but any information from their earlier generation of cameras is gone. If you want any downloads or manuals, Toshiba re-directs you to a third party telephone support service that charges $19.95 for assistance. Actually, that fee might be behind the removal of their laptop manuals as well -- whatever outsourced agency Toshiba dumped their legacy support info to, wants to be paid for that info.
You returned the TV, but you didn't return the shipping. You "consumed" it.
Makes for an interesting loophole when dealing with those online merchants that sell everything for $0.99, but charge an order of magnitude more for shipping and handling.
Once refined, it degrades. Oxidation, bacteria. Algae. Amazing things grow in diesel. You can add preservatives, but these only go so far
I wonder if it would be economical to manufacture a grade of diesel-compatible fuel that doesn't degrade, for purposes of long-term storage. It would consist purely of highly refined aliphatics, leaving no unsaturated bonds available for oxidative attack. Heavy metal content would need to be near-zero as well, as they could function as catalysts for breakdown, or nutrients for microbes. The storage air-space above it would be purged with inert gas or at least desiccated, again to avoid microbial growth.
Essentially, it would be a liquid paraffin similar to medical grade mineral oil (but a bit lighter fraction). Probably cost as much, too.
Remember, Buddhist monks can't have sex with a woman or even touch a woman.
Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. As they came around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross at an intersection.
"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he could no longer restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"
"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"
The initial market will be in the developing world, where 640,000 diesel-powered generators are used to power base stations, chewing through $15 billion worth of fuel per year.
This quote from the company gives the economics away. The monetary savings from the new base station amplifier's efficiency likely do not offset the increased purchase cost -- for stations wired to the grid. So they're selling it as a way of decreasing cost and re-fuel frequency for off-grid stations.