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User: somnolent49

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  1. Re:Doesn't this sound like... on Hacking With Synthetic Biology · · Score: 1

    The advances necessary to miniaturize and mass produce a DNA fab for home use really aren't as far off as they seem. It'll really only be at most 10-20 generations, and we all know how quickly machine generations iterate.

  2. Re:Sounds like razors on Triple Helix — Designing a New Molecule of Life · · Score: 2, Funny

    What part of this don't you understand? If two helixes are good, and three helixes are better, obviously five helixes would make us the best fucking dna that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the dna game by clinging to the two-helix industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, five helixes is the biggest chance of all. Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my ass with it. They don't tell me what to inventâ"I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick two more helixes in there. I don't care how. Make the helixes so thin they're invisible. Put some on the RNA. I don't care if they have to cram the fifth Helix in perpendicular to the other four, just do it!

  3. Re:That Old Mr. Show bit on How NASA Will Bomb the Moon To Find Water · · Score: 1

    Don't bomb our moon, bro!

  4. Re:What do they expect from this.. on Web-Crawling Program Spots Disease Outbreaks · · Score: 1

    Just because a doctor doesn't live in the first world, doesn't mean he's somehow incapable of reporting it.

    More to the point, internet based tracking has already proven it's worth in the SARS outbreak. The first clusters of what came to be known as SARS cases were located by GPHIN, and reported to the WHO, who didn't themselves issue a report on SARS for weeks.

    What's needed now is development of this infrastructure, with doctor's everywhere in the world reporting infectious diseases, web crawlers sifting through the incredible new information networks which are springing up, and the ability to immediately inform the WHO and the governments of affected countries of the outbreaks. Pandemics follow exponential growth, so catching it a week or two earlier could make the difference between relatively small, contained outbreaks, and global catastrophe.

    As to your point about third world countries not having internet access, it's completely false. People may not have computers in their households, or even in their villages, but most significant population centers have cheap internet access, and that penetration is only going to increase.

    With the increase in globalization and travel, the earth is in greater danger of major pandemic than ever, and the damage would be absolutely catastrophic to the economy, let alone the hundreds of millions who would die. Early reporting is our only defense against that threat, and the internet is the greatest tool for the dissemination of information the world has ever seen. Let's take advantage of it.

  5. Re:We're seeing no such thing. on FBI Fights Testing For False DNA Matches · · Score: 1

    That's interesting. I love seeing ways in which my brain's lack of understanding for basic statistics make me come to the wrong conclusion.

    So, increasing the group size from the 6 million people in the CODIS database to the 300 million people in the united states gives 300million squared, or 90 quadrillion, divided by 113 billion, to give 796,460 people who have a match with someone else in the United States. That's about a one in 377 chance of matching, per person.

    Going up to the entire population of the earth, we see that the chances are one in 18 to have a match.

    Those results are simply staggering. The genetic database needs a huge restructuring and increase in accuracy, because right now it's far too unreliable.

    If I made any mistakes in my calculations, please let me know.

  6. Re:Fears? on Researchers Improve Solar Cell Performance · · Score: 1

    This isn't quite true. What is true is that more becquerel's are released into the environment from coal waste, because it's more abundant and barely regulated.

  7. Re:Government should not be involved at all on Where To Draw the Line With Embryo Selection? · · Score: 1

    we need to be careful what we throw away, or eliminate from the human genome by conscious choice.

    Just because the genes aren't being expressed in the population doesn't mean we can't preserve them. Now that we have the ability to read the genetic code at a staggeringly fast rate, creating a wikipedia for genes is pretty easy, and scientists are already starting to collect the data for it.

  8. Re:Government should not be involved at all on Where To Draw the Line With Embryo Selection? · · Score: 1

    You aren't really suggesting that the best way to store genetic information is in living organisms, are you? Mutation and sexual selection destroy significant chunks of genetic information every generation, making in vivo storage not just impractical, but downright ludicrous. An open, digital library of genetic information would be a far more sensible archive.