"Also, why are the flush mechanisms so fragile? It seems every house and appartment I have ever lived in had problems with the flushing and fill mechanisms."
When was the last time you remember seeing anyone do *preventive* maintenance on a toilet? It's not something people want to think about. So when things don't work quite right we just ignore it or jiggle the handle while it slowly gets worse and worse until it finally breaks.
BTW, I had to fix one a little while ago, and according to a do-it-yourself book, the most common point of failure is in rubber parts (especially the flapper valve) which degrade and must be periodically replaced. You can get more expensive synthetic ones that will last longer, but over time even those can suffer from deformation that will degrade the seal.
This is very neat. A good way to get rid of all that cow pollution. But when they say they reduce the methane production, aren't they just converting it to CO2(this assumes i am right to this they are burning it in the generator).
Don't forget that just about all the carbon processed by the cow is originally from agricultural products, and that all the carbon in agricultural products is originally atmospheric. So in that sense it's a closed cycle which doesn't emit any excess CO2 (*).
(*) This ignores CO2 from fossil fuels used by agricultural machinery and fertilizer production.
OK, I see some comments about why can't the US just mill the corn to prevent it from being planted. How about we turn this around and say, why can't Zimbabwe mill the corn before distribution, to prevent it from being planted?
The article mentions that they are too poor to afford the $25/ton fee. However, as others have pointed out, up until recently Zimbabwe was a major agricultural exporter. I find it hard to believe that they lack sufficient milling capacity to grind the corn themselves -- unless things really have deteriorated that badly since Mugabe took power.
"from MSNBC: IT IS NOT yet clear whether the mice are smarter -- they were all killed soon after birth"
After taking a look around Sciene Magazine's Website, I found a quote on their Science Now which is worded a little bit differently:
"The mice died soon after birth, so the researchers do not know how the bigger brains would affect their behavior"
This seems to suggest that the mice weren't euthanized -- instead, the modification itself was lethal. However, I couldn't find any confirmation of this in the text of the paper itself (Also on Science's website, requires subscription, though). The gene studied here, B-catenin, is expressed in numerous tissues throughout the developmental process, so I'd be a little surprised if such a major change yielded a viable organism.
...and "E.T. the Extra Terrestrial" (1982) key scene where the film's main human character, 9-year-old Elliott, lured E.T. of the woods with Reese's Pieces...
According to legend, the scene was originally suppose to use M&M's. However, Mars, the candy's manufacturer, refused to allow their name to be used -- and so Hershey's Reese's Pieces ended up being featured instead. According to the link above, sales of Reese's Pieces increased something like 65-85% afterwards.
As for geographic location, which impacts how fast your Discs arrive, RentmyDVD has facilities both California and New Jersey. DVD Barn is based in Arizona, while Dvd Avenue is in Maryland.
I don't think anybody's yet brought up the more important consequences of this legislation (which basically legalises a sort of vigilante justice). Consider the long-running feud the CoS has had over Scientology documents. It's not difficult to imagine this being employed offensively against websites which host disputed materials.
"Human milk has substantially different nutritional profile."
Just FYI, some differences between cow and human milk:
Human milk is much higher in lactose, making it both sweeter and higher in energy content. It is also lower in the protein casien, which give it a softer, more digestible curd. There are also some differences in the ratio of various amino acids and minerals.
I think the real test would be to hook one up to your AV system, pop in an import LD, and see if it can handle dialogue like: "Officer! That adorable moppet has stolen my VF-11 moditransformable Aerotech fighter!"
According to legend, sometime around 1500 AD, a Chinese official named Wan Hu constructed a chair, to which numerous rockets were attached. With this device, Wan Hu intended to ascend to Heaven.
When the rockets were ignited, there was a tremendous flash of flame and thunder. After the smoke cleared, Wan Hu was never seen again, which I suppose means he must have made it.:)
Still, the article mentions that scientists only discovered the lode after stones started turning up in stores.
I suppose if the discovery hadn't been announced, the site would simply have continued to be mined with nobody but the locals any wiser. Eventually, the amount of jade hitting the market would have attracted somebody's attention.
Actually, yes. Because of its excellent hardness and durability, Jade makes excellent stone tools -- axe heads, spearpoints, etc. A number of these types of artifacts have been found at Chinese archaeological sites, where they were made up until Jade became more valuable for jewelry and ritual uses.
A find of this size could quite possibly destabilize the balance of power in Neolithic society. I hope Caveman Ogg realizes the military implications of allowing a Jade gap to develop.
"kind of like mistyping a stock ticker? Buying 100 shares of SUN versus SUNW can be pretty pricey (and no, I wouldn't know anything about such an incident. I'll deny it all)."
Depressed prices for heating oil and jet fuel have hit SUN pretty hard, but if gasoline prices rise sharply this summer (which many analysts are expecting), Sunoco could hit $45 or so within the next few months. Plus, they pay 0.25/share in dividends per quarter. Not a bad stock to be in, IMHO.
Even if we ignore the cost of media components such as hormones and growth factors (requirements that can probably be engineered out at our current tech level), there are basic problems with the metabolism of animal tissues (requirements that cannot be engineered out at our current tech level).
Probably the biggest stumbling block is that animal cells lack the ability to synthesize many amino acids, and even some of the ones that can be synthesized require other amino acids as the starting material. So, you end up needing protein to grow protein. From an efficiency standpoint, you'd be much better off just drinking the growth media.
In the case of growth factors (hormones, cytokines, etc), a change in one or two proteins can take care of things. For some growth factors, you can even see this happen spontaneously if you serially passage cells repeatedly. The problem with amino acid requirements is that you'd need to engineer in whole new metabolic pathways, which is much more difficult. Probably one of the most sophisticated examples of putting in a new pathway was in the example of beta carotene synthesis in "golden" rice. This was barely doable with something like three steps. I don't know how many steps would be required to cover all amino acids, but I'm guessing it would be several dozen at least.
A much better idea is to use lower organisms that can manufacture all 20 essential amino acids already. A good example is Quorn, a fungal meat substitute that is already available. To grow Quorn, all you need is water, ammonia, some minerals, and a carbon source such as glucose. The fungus can synthesize all necessary amino acids from carbohydrates, with the ammonia supplying the necessary nitrogen. What's more, it can be grown in a continuous process (as opposed to batch), which you can get a huge amount of a small reactor.
"It would be more like a ban on covalent bonds between carbon and chlorine, which rarely if ever occur in nature and are stable enough to persist for centuries."
Not really true -- halocarbons are actually more common in nature than you think. A number of organisms such as certain fungi and marine algae produce halocarbons containing chlorine, bromine, and iodine. These compounds can range from simple Methyl-type compounds to polycyclic aromatics.
They can also be formed when wood decays in the presence of halogen salts. The lignin portion of wood is basically a polymer of aromatic alcohols, and under the right conditions halogen ions can react to form aromatic halocarbons.
Implications of this research.
on
Pain-free mice
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I'm seeing a lot of "Pain is good/useful" and "Animal experimentation is bad" posts. I believe the implications of this research could be much broader.
In the US, pain has traditionally been undertreated. The reason is that the most effective agents for chronic and severe pain, narcotics, are tightly controlled (for obvious reasons). Doctors which write more prescriptions than average quickly find themselves the object of regulatory scrutiny, while patients who ask for narcotics may be suspected of being addicts.
In recent times, this has started to ease a little bit (especially for Cancer and terminal diseases), however, it's still very much a problem in cases where diagnosing the severity of the pain relies on the patient's own testimony (Such as for many nerve conditions), or where a chronic conditions requires long-term use of painkillers. It's also a problem for minorities and the poor, who especially tend to be undertreated.
The writers of this Nature article have been careful to note that there are no immediate practical applications from this research -- having pain-free mice running around simply isn't all that useful. However, although there were guesses as to the function of DREAM [the protein of interest], as the article states, prior to this work "It was very unpredictable what DREAM would be doing physiologically".
So, now what you have is a target gene and protein in hand, with which you can do things like obtain structural information, or design high-throughput in-vitro screens for drug development. The eventual goal would be something which works as a powerful painkiller, yet does not have any addictive potential -- thus allowing it to be used more freely. And even if this particular target doesn't lead to such a drug, it illuminates another part of the complex, and still poorly understood, process by which we feel pain.
"In order to send information through my body, you are required to accept my "Body Pass-through Usage Agreement", which simply states that you completely and instantly transfer all copyrights and ownership on that material to me (If they don't like that, all they have to do is to stop sending thier radio waves through me)."
Umm... Does this provision only apply to radio waves currently in the state of passing through your body?
Because, if this is so, just let me know where to stick this antenna.:P
Just wanted to add a comment on the use of fish in testing water. When discharging waste water, whether from municipal or industrial treatment plants, there are requirements that certain types of tests be performed.
These assays are designed to measure some specific parameter or contaminant in the water, using the usual techniques of analytical chemistry.
However, after testing for specific contaminants, some facilities will then do a "canary in a coal mine" assay, rearing fish in the water to check for overall health. The species used might vary, but will usually be commercially available fish that can breed easily in captivity, so many kinds of common aquarium fish are used, of which the zebrafish is one example. Another bonus of using zebrafish is that the this species of fish is considered a "standard" laboratory animal, like rats and mice, and so the genetics and physiology of the fish has been studied in detail.
Rather than releasing these fish into the wild, I got the impression that these genetically engineered fish would be used to augment this last type of testing in the laboratory, since the fluorescent indicators could be linked to more specific indicators of some aspect of the fish's health.
Slashdot Mirror
"Also, why are the flush mechanisms so fragile? It seems every house and appartment I have ever lived in had problems with the flushing and fill mechanisms."
When was the last time you remember seeing anyone do *preventive* maintenance on a toilet? It's not something people want to think about. So when things don't work quite right we just ignore it or jiggle the handle while it slowly gets worse and worse until it finally breaks.
BTW, I had to fix one a little while ago, and according to a do-it-yourself book, the most common point of failure is in rubber parts (especially the flapper valve) which degrade and must be periodically replaced. You can get more expensive synthetic ones that will last longer, but over time even those can suffer from deformation that will degrade the seal.
This is very neat. A good way to get rid of all that cow pollution. But when they say they reduce the methane production, aren't they just converting it to CO2(this assumes i am right to this they are burning it in the generator).
Don't forget that just about all the carbon processed by the cow is originally from agricultural products, and that all the carbon in agricultural products is originally atmospheric. So in that sense it's a closed cycle which doesn't emit any excess CO2 (*).
(*) This ignores CO2 from fossil fuels used by agricultural machinery and fertilizer production.
OK, I see some comments about why can't the US just mill the corn to prevent it from being planted. How about we turn this around and say, why can't Zimbabwe mill the corn before distribution, to prevent it from being planted?
The article mentions that they are too poor to afford the $25/ton fee. However, as others have pointed out, up until recently Zimbabwe was a major agricultural exporter. I find it hard to believe that they lack sufficient milling capacity to grind the corn themselves -- unless things really have deteriorated that badly since Mugabe took power.
"from MSNBC: IT IS NOT yet clear whether the mice are smarter -- they were all killed soon after birth"
After taking a look around Sciene Magazine's Website, I found a quote on their Science Now which is worded a little bit differently:
"The mice died soon after birth, so the researchers do not know how the bigger brains would affect their behavior"
This seems to suggest that the mice weren't euthanized -- instead, the modification itself was lethal. However, I couldn't find any confirmation of this in the text of the paper itself (Also on Science's website, requires subscription, though). The gene studied here, B-catenin, is expressed in numerous tissues throughout the developmental process, so I'd be a little surprised if such a major change yielded a viable organism.
I'd like to see this guy go up against a Lego Machine Gun.
I imagine the outcome would be similar to a Civ III game, after you fall out of the tech trading circle.
...and "E.T. the Extra Terrestrial" (1982) key scene where the film's main human character, 9-year-old Elliott, lured E.T. of the woods with Reese's Pieces...
According to legend, the scene was originally suppose to use M&M's. However, Mars, the candy's manufacturer, refused to allow their name to be used -- and so Hershey's Reese's Pieces ended up being featured instead. According to the link above, sales of Reese's Pieces increased something like 65-85% afterwards.
Here's a couple more places that have Anime as a listed genre:
Rent my DVD
DVD Avenue
DVD Barn
As for geographic location, which impacts how fast your Discs arrive, RentmyDVD has facilities both California and New Jersey. DVD Barn is based in Arizona, while Dvd Avenue is in Maryland.
I don't think anybody's yet brought up the more important consequences of this legislation (which basically legalises a sort of vigilante justice). Consider the long-running feud the CoS has had over Scientology documents. It's not difficult to imagine this being employed offensively against websites which host disputed materials.
"Human milk has substantially different nutritional profile."
Just FYI, some differences between cow and human milk:
Human milk is much higher in lactose, making it both sweeter and higher in energy content. It is also lower in the protein casien, which give it a softer, more digestible curd. There are also some differences in the ratio of various amino acids and minerals.
Here's a simulated preview of a force feedback pong simulation:
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
etc...
Sounds a lot like Chinese water torture to me.
"I wonder why so many people choose teddy bears for their projects."
You know, you just gave me a great idea for a teddy bear battlebot...
"On the issue of mouse droppings, you need to edit the video configuration and set XV_BUG_PS2FIX on in the Xconfig file."
:)
Or you could just sweep 'em up, and set out a couple of baited traps.
I think the real test would be to hook one up to your AV system, pop in an import LD, and see if it can handle dialogue like:
"Officer! That adorable moppet has stolen my VF-11 moditransformable Aerotech fighter!"
According to legend, sometime around 1500 AD, a Chinese official named Wan Hu constructed a chair, to which numerous rockets were attached. With this device, Wan Hu intended to ascend to Heaven.
:)
When the rockets were ignited, there was a tremendous flash of flame and thunder. After the smoke cleared, Wan Hu was never seen again, which I suppose means he must have made it.
Still, the article mentions that scientists only discovered the lode after stones started turning up in stores.
I suppose if the discovery hadn't been announced, the site would simply have continued to be mined with nobody but the locals any wiser. Eventually, the amount of jade hitting the market would have attracted somebody's attention.
"Does Jade have any industrial/commercial uses?"
Actually, yes. Because of its excellent hardness and durability, Jade makes excellent stone tools -- axe heads, spearpoints, etc. A number of these types of artifacts have been found at Chinese archaeological sites, where they were made up until Jade became more valuable for jewelry and ritual uses.
A find of this size could quite possibly destabilize the balance of power in Neolithic society. I hope Caveman Ogg realizes the military implications of allowing a Jade gap to develop.
"kind of like mistyping a stock ticker? Buying 100 shares of SUN versus SUNW can be pretty pricey (and no, I wouldn't know anything about such an incident. I'll deny it all)."
Depressed prices for heating oil and jet fuel have hit SUN pretty hard, but if gasoline prices rise sharply this summer (which many analysts are expecting), Sunoco could hit $45 or so within the next few months. Plus, they pay 0.25/share in dividends per quarter. Not a bad stock to be in, IMHO.
Disclosure: Long SUN.
Even if we ignore the cost of media components such as hormones and growth factors (requirements that can probably be engineered out at our current tech level), there are basic problems with the metabolism of animal tissues (requirements that cannot be engineered out at our current tech level).
Probably the biggest stumbling block is that animal cells lack the ability to synthesize many amino acids, and even some of the ones that can be synthesized require other amino acids as the starting material. So, you end up needing protein to grow protein. From an efficiency standpoint, you'd be much better off just drinking the growth media.
In the case of growth factors (hormones, cytokines, etc), a change in one or two proteins can take care of things. For some growth factors, you can even see this happen spontaneously if you serially passage cells repeatedly. The problem with amino acid requirements is that you'd need to engineer in whole new metabolic pathways, which is much more difficult. Probably one of the most sophisticated examples of putting in a new pathway was in the example of beta carotene synthesis in "golden" rice. This was barely doable with something like three steps. I don't know how many steps would be required to cover all amino acids, but I'm guessing it would be several dozen at least.
A much better idea is to use lower organisms that can manufacture all 20 essential amino acids already. A good example is Quorn, a fungal meat substitute that is already available. To grow Quorn, all you need is water, ammonia, some minerals, and a carbon source such as glucose. The fungus can synthesize all necessary amino acids from carbohydrates, with the ammonia supplying the necessary nitrogen. What's more, it can be grown in a continuous process (as opposed to batch), which you can get a huge amount of a small reactor.
"...so I would write of priests and monks and Minbari..."
BTW, something that fits in with the religious examples used in his comments, the word Minbari comes from minbar, the pulpit in a mosque.
"It would be more like a ban on covalent bonds between carbon and chlorine, which rarely if ever occur in nature and are stable enough to persist for centuries."
Not really true -- halocarbons are actually more common in nature than you think. A number of organisms such as certain fungi and marine algae produce halocarbons containing chlorine, bromine, and iodine. These compounds can range from simple Methyl-type compounds to polycyclic aromatics.
They can also be formed when wood decays in the presence of halogen salts. The lignin portion of wood is basically a polymer of aromatic alcohols, and under the right conditions halogen ions can react to form aromatic halocarbons.
"I don't make fun of people who live in New York, even if "York" is a pretty stupid sounding word."
Hey, York, Pennsylvania, was (briefly) the capital of the United States, and they make great Peppermint patties.
I'm seeing a lot of "Pain is good/useful" and "Animal experimentation is bad" posts. I believe the implications of this research could be much broader.
In the US, pain has traditionally been undertreated. The reason is that the most effective agents for chronic and severe pain, narcotics, are tightly controlled (for obvious reasons). Doctors which write more prescriptions than average quickly find themselves the object of regulatory scrutiny, while patients who ask for narcotics may be suspected of being addicts.
In recent times, this has started to ease a little bit (especially for Cancer and terminal diseases), however, it's still very much a problem in cases where diagnosing the severity of the pain relies on the patient's own testimony (Such as for many nerve conditions), or where a chronic conditions requires long-term use of painkillers. It's also a problem for minorities and the poor, who especially tend to be undertreated.
The writers of this Nature article have been careful to note that there are no immediate practical applications from this research -- having pain-free mice running around simply isn't all that useful. However, although there were guesses as to the function of DREAM [the protein of interest], as the article states, prior to this work "It was very unpredictable what DREAM would be doing physiologically".
So, now what you have is a target gene and protein in hand, with which you can do things like obtain structural information, or design high-throughput in-vitro screens for drug development. The eventual goal would be something which works as a powerful painkiller, yet does not have any addictive potential -- thus allowing it to be used more freely. And even if this particular target doesn't lead to such a drug, it illuminates another part of the complex, and still poorly understood, process by which we feel pain.
"In order to send information through my body, you are required to accept my "Body Pass-through Usage Agreement", which simply states that you completely and instantly transfer all copyrights and ownership on that material to me (If they don't like that, all they have to do is to stop sending thier radio waves through me)."
:P
Umm... Does this provision only apply to radio waves currently in the state of passing through your body?
Because, if this is so, just let me know where to stick this antenna.
Just wanted to add a comment on the use of fish in testing water. When discharging waste water, whether from municipal or industrial treatment plants, there are requirements that certain types of tests be performed.
These assays are designed to measure some specific parameter or contaminant in the water, using the usual techniques of analytical chemistry.
However, after testing for specific contaminants, some facilities will then do a "canary in a coal mine" assay, rearing fish in the water to check for overall health. The species used might vary, but will usually be commercially available fish that can breed easily in captivity, so many kinds of common aquarium fish are used, of which the zebrafish is one example. Another bonus of using zebrafish is that the this species of fish is considered a "standard" laboratory animal, like rats and mice, and so the genetics and physiology of the fish has been studied in detail.
Rather than releasing these fish into the wild, I got the impression that these genetically engineered fish would be used to augment this last type of testing in the laboratory, since the fluorescent indicators could be linked to more specific indicators of some aspect of the fish's health.
What happens if these fish escape in the wild and change the ecological balance in the ocean?
Zebrafish (Brachydanio rerio) are unlikely to do anything in the ocean except die. They are freshwater fish.