Poverty in India (and elsewhere) is truly a horrific problem, one I hope becomes a more widely understood issue in the "privileged" world. However, I am curious as to this assertion:
About 35% of the population of India lives below the poverty line. FYI, the poverty line translates to $6 US a year!
World Bank estimates that ~24% of the Indian populace earns less than $1 per day, but $6 per year is orders of magnitude more dire. Now, estimates are estimates, and I am certainly willing to be corrected, but if the situation is so severe that reliable estimates vary by orders of magnitude, I would be interested to know about it.
Regardless, I think that the tremendous opportunity that this tablet may provide for whoever has the chance to make use of it could help the people involved innovate in really exciting ways. I look forward to hearing about the uses the devices are put to, because I know that many of them will be surprising and ingenious. Potentially, those innovations could help other impoverished people if similar programs are initiated in other countries. It sort of reminds me of a digital Heifer International, except that information replicates even faster than rabbits!
War, death, destruction, and draft are by their nature easier to coherently grasp and protest.
Banking policy, tax structure, economical issues, transparency, and corporate regulation are much less easily portrayed. They are not soundbite friendly, but they are still important.
Simplicity does not confer merit; nor does the complexity of a problem negate its validity.
There is irony only if you believe that a banking firm and a production and technology company are equivalent simply because they are both corporations.
A corporation that makes money while producing no product generally does it by providing a valuable service. These protesters object to the fact that banking firms make huge sums of money even if they are precipitating disastrous destabilization of the economy. When these companies' poor practices lead to economical ruin, the bill is payed by taxpayers. They have gamble with our economy, kept the winnings, paid fewer taxes on said bounty than most citizens, and stuck us with the bill when they lost big. They are still earning huge sums of money.
Apple makes good, useful computers. A product. You may debate the relative merit of a Mac's cachet, hipster association, marketing, branding, or fine points of quality, but you cannot deny a simple fact: laptops are useful tools, and Macs are good laptops. I don't own one and never have, but it's not because they aren't useful.
Look, no one reasonable thinks that OWS is fundamentally anti-corporation/communist/socialist. Making money in and of itself isn't bad. However, when making money gives an entity the power to avoid taxes, regulations, debts, or laws there is a problem.
Personally, I want corporations to be able to make money - in the course of providing goods and/or services. Yay for making money! I don't think that they should be able to do so without limits to protect the public or regulations that prevent incentivizing economic instability. They should also pay significant taxes. Not crippling taxes, but not the paltry drips they currently do.
It is human nature that if a person or corporation can do something that makes them money but screws over everybody else, they will do it unless it is unprofitable: pollution, global warming, safety hazards, fuel inefficiency, outsourcing, tax dodging, etc. This is why arguing for deregulation of business is essentially saying: Yes, they will screw over everyone else, but I'm ok with that because they will take care of me. I haven't had any trouble catching pretty clear statements from these OWS folks. They want to focus attention on income and tax inequality, the lack of regulation on destructive corporate practices, and transparency in some obviously corrupt establishments (among other things). They want lawmakers to know that it's important enough to them that they will gather and get arrested to make these points. They want to be seen as a vocal demographic, because vocal demographics tend to vote, organize, mobilize, and support. Those are good traits in a constituency, if you can appeal to them.
Moving a hydrogen in hydrocarbon combustion is different from burning hydrogen. Burn hydrogen: break H-H bond, form H-O bond. Burn hydrocarbon: break C-C and H-C bonds, form C-O and H-O bonds. None of the broken bonds (other than the broken O-O from the O2) are the same.
It's false, as in not true. I don't think he's being maliciously misleading, but it's definitely incorrect.
Yes, of course, because typos and misspellings are a female problem just like bloodstains. One simply cannot believe that a MENSA member might make a typo or not proofread something they wrote.
Do you really think this person doesn't know the difference between sexist and sexiest? (Both of which will not be caught by a spell checker, since they are correctly spelled words.)
BTW I would guess the source of pride is the simple visibility of a contribution to science made by a female team, as "hard science" is traditionally male dominated. It's good to see everyone getting involved: if more capable people work on problems, more solutions will result. Historical exclusion of women reduced the pool of potential scientists to draw from. This is better.
This is a very valid concern. Right now, I just have to take comfort in the fact that the differences between populations are so subtle that a logic switch currently would have trouble differentiating the target group with sufficient specificity.
Of course, this means that someone trying to target one ethnic group is potentially capable of accidentally killing even more people than they think. Like... everyone. The next Holocaust may very well be biological.
Also, it should be possible to vaccinate against these if necessary. Sadly, that would be after the problem has a head start. Ooh, or counterinfect the individual with a gene to produce an exclusion criterion (i.e. whatever the developers put in to keep it from killing their own ethnic group).
But it's easier and cheaper to shoot someone or arrange a car accident. The amount of research, time, money, skill, scientific advancement, and effort needed to create a logic circuit to differentiate between two related individuals is orders of magnitude higher than this experimental protocol, and even more orders of magnitude more expensive than a bullet.
The molecular differences between individuals are both very slight and unbelievably numerous. The only way a logic circuit like this can work is if the differences are very drastic, like in cancer cells. Ethnic targeting, however, could be a very viable concern. I shudder to think.
A DNA profile of a person relies on tiny differences in highly variable areas of code, most of which are in regions that don't code for RNA (the substrate for this logic circuit). In addition, most of the DNA is packed up most of the time, and unavailable to being read.
The scenario you are describing would need to target a population of cells that are rapidly dividing: GI or bone marrow would be ideal. Then it would have to have a logic circuit imbedded in something that can access the genome, a DNA virus for example. After that, it would need to be able to identify a bunch of different locations that add up to a unique profile (this is the tough part) and, if all of them are true, result in a lethal change. That last sentence is the tough bit. Decades, if not centuries, away.
I realize that the abstract doesn't go into a lot of detail, but this is a piece from the introduction of the article that clarifies how this is a true logic circuit relying on 6 specific inputs to classify a cell as belonging to the targeted cell line (in this case, the common research model of HeLa).
Here, we describe such a mechanism, a “classifier” gene circuit that integrates sensory information from a large number of molecular markers to determine whether a cell is in a specific state and, if so, produces a biologically active protein output. Specifically, when transiently expressed inside a cell our classifier ascertains whether the expression profile of six endogenous miRNAs (19) matches a predetermined reference profile characteristic of the HeLa cervical cancer cell line. A match identifies the cell as HeLa and triggers apoptosis .
(Multi-Input RNAi-Based Logic Circuit for Identification of Specific Cancer Cells. Zhen Xie, Liliana Wroblewska, Laura Prochazka, Ron Weiss, and Yaakov Benenson. Science 2 September 2011: 333 (6047), 1307-1311. )
If you can get access through a local library/educational institution, I recommend reading it. It's quite interesting. Very early research, but nevertheless promising. In order to be used, the technique would have to be tailored to the specific cancer a person has, and this will be problematic in cancers that differentiate along multiple lines. (It may kick ass on leukemia, which tends to be very clonal, but not work for an osteolipoma, which has significant variation in cell differentiation.)
1) This is why the logic circuit targets things that are
a) present in cancer cells that are not present in other cells at the same levels and
b) uses a "multi-input" circuit. This means multiple abnormalities present in the same cell. This is common in cancer cells, but not in normal cells. 2) Mammals have apoptotic (killswitch) pathways that can be used that are not present in microbes. The biologist/doctors developing this are likely aware of the importance of a microbiome. However, even if this treatment killed every microbe in the body, a simple transfaunation (microbe transfusion) would solve the problem in the one area that is unlikely to spontaneously repopulate quickly (gut). We are born pretty much sterile, remember. There are worse things than killing off the bugs. One of them is cancer.
Funny thing is, women are the least qualified people to explain what they find attractive and don't find attractive... There's what women want, and there's what women think they want.
"This chick gave me advice, but it turns out it doesn't work on all of them! Stupid girls!"
Uh...yeah, the problem here isn't that women in general don't know what they want, it's that women are people who like different things. And thanks, but I actually am the most qualified person to explain what I do and don't find attractive. However, what I find attractive is not the same as what every woman finds attractive. Some things I like (spicy food, intelligent men) are more commonly shared among other women than others (Snow Crash, geeks).
Isn't it interesting that women always seem to think that men would find dating so much easier if the guys just listened to some female advice?
The original poster generalized that his height made him undatable because women are height-fascists, and short guys can't get dates. This statement is both untrue (short guys date and have relationships all the time) and unhelpful (he can't change his height). My advice did not assume all women are the same: it highlighted that people are enough different that some of them aren't going to rule him out for being short. It also pointed out that labeling women to be superficial is not complimentary and is not constructive to the purpose: he implies he'd like a date, presumably with someone with enough self-worth not to enjoy being branded as shallow simply because she has a vagina. This is not woman-to-man advice, it's basic human stuff.
I found my lovely ChemE, Dr. Who-loving, intelligent geek on a free dating site. He is inches shorter than I am. He was also thrillingly literate in his profile and our email exchanges (I initiated). We shared interests and ideas. It was lovely.
Height is nice, but it's more like good hair than IQ: a bonus, not a value with "above average" as a minimum. I've dated men taller than I am and some who are shorter. Tall is not a requirement. I know several guys who are shorter than average who all have girlfriends or have dated successfully.
If you think that your height is sole the thing keeping women from you, you are classifying your whole dating pool as shallow. It isn't complimentary, and it's demonstrably inaccurate. Your bitterness will not help you get dates, and your insulting view of women will not get you a relationship with a healthy woman.
Women who will disqualify someone just for height are obviously prejudiced in a way that should be a turn-off for you anyway. It's a good weed-out. Focus on improving and highlighting the things that are positive about yourself in order to find the lady that will be interested in you for who you are, what you've accomplished, and how you present yourself, rather than just deciding that all women are shallow and you have no chance.
Also, check your expectations: if you think that a woman you date has to be a super-hottie and a rocket scientist, well, you may want to consider that hot rocket scientist ladies have a much broader field to choose from. I recommend lowering standards to the more achievable: someone you find attractive, finds you attractive, and is smart enough that you enjoy talking with, and someone you share interests and a sense of humor with.
And maybe be a little less obvious about your opinion that women are shallow, irrational creatures.
All of this jumping to racism as a conclusion, and bunches of people trying to explain why black people are probably just worse scientists, and nobody asks a basic question: Did this study control for the reputation of the submitting institution?
Let's face it: The institutions in this country with the best reputations are in the northeast and northern California, with some in the upper midwest. I'm not saying that other schools don't do good science, I'm saying there are concentrations of schools with histories of having very good images, particularly with the NIH. You know what they lack? Lots of black students, who tend to be more represented in HBCUs and universities in the South, which often don't have the illustrious reps of some of the other schools. (I say this as someone who has been to both well-regarded NE schools and large southern universities.)
From TFA:
There were fewer total applications from blacks (27%) at institutions receiving the most NIH funding (the top 1 to 30) compared with whites (33%, P less than.05) but a similar number at institutions ranked 31 to 100 in amount of NIH funding awarded (table S11) (13). Applications from white investigators were more likely to be associated with a previous NIH RPG or K award (78%) compared with blacks (69%), Asians (73%), and Hispanics (70%) (P less than.001).
There may be racism here, but until they really delve into the inter-institutional snobbery, I think the conclusion of specific anti-black is missing a key step.
...but as an aside, any velocity straight up without a sustaining acceleration will eventually come back down.
No, escape velocity is an initial speed that will "escape" without a need for additional acceleration. You can escape a gravitational effect without achieving escape velocity as long as you have some form of continuous propulsion providing acceleration, but the definition of escape velocity itself assumes no additional acceleration.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that without Alan Turing, Europe as we know it might not exist.
Ftfy. Cracking the Enigma code was a huge deal, and may have made the difference between the outcome seen in history (a terrible war, but one that Nazis eventually lost) and a horrific alternative with a crippling invasion of England and failure of many of the Allied powers' anti-Nazi offensives. Even a delay in the cracking could have been disastrous. It's possible that the Bletchley team would have cracked Enigma without Turing, but that delay might well have lost the war. Huzzah! Geeks save the world! (And then, in Turing's case, are hounded to chemical castration and suicide for being gay. Thanks, man!)
I completely agree. Drugs classes that are important for fighting human (and even animal) bacterial infections should be under intense scrutiny, and most of them should NOT be used as feed additives. While this is usually the case already, pressure needs to be kept up to make sure that doesn't change in the pursuit of the almighty dollar. It's all about recognizing that not all antibiotics are equal, and the current feed use has benefits. Resistance is a hugely important issue, and that's why I like the idea of this question being answered with scientific data in as unemotional a setting as possible.
No, the opposite is the fact. With high doses more or less all bacteria get killed and the surviving ones are very likely killed by the immune system. Also I don't see why you believe you would need more human like forms.
With higher doses, you hope all the bacteria die because fighting an established infection is much more difficult, and higher doses put much more selection pressure on the bacterial population. If you slightly underdose or don't treat for quite long enough, you are going to have a resistant population in an animal whose immune system is already weakened by disease. That is a risk that needs to be evaluated and compared to the risks associated with prophylactic/feed additive antibiotics.
Also I don't see why you believe you would need more human like forms.
I don't "believe" it. I know it. I'm a veterinarian. The most common feed additive drugs are not the same ones used to treat bacterial infections for the disease cattle most commonly get in meat operations: pneumonia and enteritis. Those diseases are going to be treated with "bigger guns", drugs that are more important to humans and are in completely different classes from the typical feed additives. These are not the drugs you want to need to use. Using those "big gun" classes greatly increases the likelihood of resistance to the important antibiotics.
Why do you think in europe giving antibiotica as food additions is prohibited? Because we are idiots?
Of course not. I think resistance is a valid concern, but when decisions are made without data, especially by politicians and enthusiastic concerned people, well-intentioned and reasonable-sounding mistakes can happen. Honestly, I'm grateful that someone tried it. The data coming out don't support that the ban is an improvement, but there is now information to base future decision-making on. Ideally, we'll see restrictions that ensure important drugs are not used irresponsibly (I would freak out if someone wanted to put quinolones in animal feed, for example), and animals are kept humanely with as little disease as we can manage.
Allow me to clarify: Sub-therapeutic (feed-additive dosage) is distinct from therapeutic but insufficient. Your description is accurate for the latter.
The doses used in feed additives are very low, as coccidiostatic agents rather than bacteriocidal. If you are trying to treat a disease, rather than prevent loss from parasitic damage, drugs are used at a much higher level, either at bacteriostatic or bacteriocidal concentrations (depending on the agents, organ system, method of action of the drug and many other factors). In cases where one is trying to treat an established infection, you are correct, using insufficient dose or duration puts heavy selection pressure on the infectious organism, greatly increasing the likelihood that a resistant mutant will survive and propagate.
Currently there isn't much, if any, data to support that the very low levels used in feed additives cause resistant pathogens. In theory, they COULD, which is why the matter needs to be investigated. However, at this time, it seems as if the low-level feed additives are too low to provide sufficient selection pressure to cause a resistant pathogen to develop.
The studies done on areas where feed additives have been banned have shown more sick animals and higher antibiotic dosages being used overall. Perhaps you can see how this situation is even more likely to generate the selection pressures that drive resistance.
For sure, the doses and drugs used in this practice need to be investigated for risk for pathogen resistance, but relying on data rather than assumptions is key.
Okay, the most common feed-additive drug is monensin. When was the last time you or anyone you know were treated for a bacterial infection by anything remotely similar? Not really a fair question, you probably have no clue, and it'd be anecdotal anyway. But look into it. See what human applications of similar drugs are. Many of the prophylactic feed additives were never important human antibiotics or are drugs who were abandoned for human use as better things came along (or as patient-induced resistance arose in the bacteria they had been treating).
So let's say we stop using these antibiotics. More animals get sick, they have established infections (already seen in countries that ban feed-abx). It takes massively higher doses to treat them, because the animal is sick and there's a serious infection happening. It also requires drugs that are more similar to human medications. Can you see that this may be an important source of resistance? How important, I don't know, but I would like that to be a question addressed before we go willy-nilly changing this system. I don't want to trade a potential source of resistance (antibiotics in feed) for an even bigger problem.
I want data-based evaluations of risk and benefit. How terribly moronic and trollish of me.
1. The number one most common anti-microbial in cattle feed is monensin, an ionophore. This entire class of drugs is nearly exclusively used in animals as a coccidiostat (anti-protozoal). (Some antifungal use in humans, I believe.) The reason it's so useful as a feed additive is that it reduces parasitism by a class of organisms that affect the GI tract. GI tract works better and the animal isn't expending energy to fight the organism. 2. In the real world, as you say, reducing stock density puts producers out of business. You are saying we should just not use a tool that prevents disease and improves feed efficiency, then further reduce efficiency by reducing throughput. The viability of this option is questionable. It would be lovely, but it would have to be paid for, either subsidized directly by the government or by an increase cost to the consumer. Increasing the cost to the consumer may not even work, because people will find out very quickly how easy it is to reduce meat consumption if it becomes very expensive. I'm comfortable with reduced meat consumption, and comfortable with large sections of the industry going under to reduce stock density, but let's not pretend that this is an easy sell and an obvious solution. It's a grand-scale industry overhaul. 3. "It's never been shown not to". You realize how unhelpful that phrase is, right? All I would like is for there to be an evaluation of actual risk. It doesn't have to be 100% accurate, but a good estimate would be nice. Reasonable evidence of feed antibiotics significantly contributing to the resistance of a human pathogen - or even an economically significant veterinary pathogen - should be explored. After that, it's pretty much a cost/benefit thing. 4. While I admit that other causes of resistance does not mean this one should not be investigated, the scale of human antibiotic abuse is a valid reference point when trying to prioritize resources. It also should be considered for perspective. 5. Listed as a counterpoint because there is a valid economic benefit to the current practice, and changing the status quo should be based on evidence of risk or cost that outweighs benefit. Perhaps it's venal and idiotic to want cheap animal protein, but what are the benefits? I could digress into the benefits of early childhood nutrition on brain development and school performance, but I bet you're familiar with the talking points.
I just want there to be evidence brought forth and thoroughly evaluated. Antibiotics aren't necessarily evil, and abolishing the low-level prophylaxis has actual costs. The kinds of bugs that grow in animals that aren't feed-treated may pose a higher risk to human health, as they are often bacteria that can transmit to humans more easily, and they get treated after the infection is established, bumping up the likelihood of developing resistance.
Personally, I don't eat much meat; I try to find humanely raised stuff when I do. I think improving the quality of life for animals in the agricultural industry should be a goal of responsible consumers. I agree that reducing stock density would both improve quality of life and reduce the rate of infectious disease, and I'm willing to pay more for the meat from those situations. All I want from this discussion is for people to rely more on data and actual, demonstrated risk rather than FUD.
I support fact finding, it might bring up a few important counterpoints that often get overlooked in popular media articles. For example: 1. The drugs commonly used for animal feed additives are not the same ones used by people. Frequently they are different classes and often different generations of drugs. Basically, many of these are the drugs whose usefulness in treating humans was either burned through long ago (by human usage) or never established. 2. In European countries where laws similar to this proposal have already been carried out, veterinary antibiotics are only used after animals are sick. Overall, however, more animals become ill, more drugs end up being used at a population level, and more important classes of antibiotics are brought out to deal with the sick animals, raising the likelihood of resistance to drugs humans actually use. (Data are from, I believe, the Netherlands if you wish to look it up.) 3. Sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics as animal feed additives have never been shown to produce resistant human pathogens. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it raises the importance of relying on data rather than fears. 4. Poor compliance of patients and over-prescription of antimicrobials by physicians is frequently cited as the most important source of antibiotic-induced resistance in bacteria. If the aim is to reduce resistance, this is a big target. It doesn't negate the importance of investigating feed additives, but this issue is of questionable importance in overall resistance concerns. 5. Sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics have a proven effect on improving feed conversion, which basically means efficiency. It's an important economic consideration.
I would really appreciate a fact-based assessment of the risks and rewards of this practice. We know it saves money as a feed conversion booster, but if it is a serious risk for developing resistance to drugs used to treat people, we should stop. So far, the evidence I've seen has not supported the position. Arguments tend to stem from how "obvious" the expected results of low-level antibiotic exposure in animals ("it will cause resistance!") or the "fact" that exposing animals to antibiotics is bad because they are intrinsically bad ("chemicals! pesticides! antibiotics! hormones!"). If we are going to make a change that we know will cost money, we should have good data on what benefits we hope to gain or risks we aim to reduce. Calling for evidence-based decision-making is not a bad thing.
I'm all for improving the healthiness of meat and reducing the development of antibiotic resistance, but data are needed to support that this regulation will have the desired results.
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I have ADD and drive my manual transmission just fine, you insensitive clod!
Poverty in India (and elsewhere) is truly a horrific problem, one I hope becomes a more widely understood issue in the "privileged" world. However, I am curious as to this assertion:
About 35% of the population of India lives below the poverty line. FYI, the poverty line translates to $6 US a year!
World Bank estimates that ~24% of the Indian populace earns less than $1 per day, but $6 per year is orders of magnitude more dire. Now, estimates are estimates, and I am certainly willing to be corrected, but if the situation is so severe that reliable estimates vary by orders of magnitude, I would be interested to know about it.
Regardless, I think that the tremendous opportunity that this tablet may provide for whoever has the chance to make use of it could help the people involved innovate in really exciting ways. I look forward to hearing about the uses the devices are put to, because I know that many of them will be surprising and ingenious. Potentially, those innovations could help other impoverished people if similar programs are initiated in other countries. It sort of reminds me of a digital Heifer International, except that information replicates even faster than rabbits!
Also, viruses can be DNA or RNA.
War, death, destruction, and draft are by their nature easier to coherently grasp and protest.
Banking policy, tax structure, economical issues, transparency, and corporate regulation are much less easily portrayed. They are not soundbite friendly, but they are still important.
Simplicity does not confer merit; nor does the complexity of a problem negate its validity.
There is irony only if you believe that a banking firm and a production and technology company are equivalent simply because they are both corporations.
A corporation that makes money while producing no product generally does it by providing a valuable service. These protesters object to the fact that banking firms make huge sums of money even if they are precipitating disastrous destabilization of the economy. When these companies' poor practices lead to economical ruin, the bill is payed by taxpayers. They have gamble with our economy, kept the winnings, paid fewer taxes on said bounty than most citizens, and stuck us with the bill when they lost big. They are still earning huge sums of money.
Apple makes good, useful computers. A product. You may debate the relative merit of a Mac's cachet, hipster association, marketing, branding, or fine points of quality, but you cannot deny a simple fact: laptops are useful tools, and Macs are good laptops. I don't own one and never have, but it's not because they aren't useful.
Look, no one reasonable thinks that OWS is fundamentally anti-corporation/communist/socialist. Making money in and of itself isn't bad. However, when making money gives an entity the power to avoid taxes, regulations, debts, or laws there is a problem.
Personally, I want corporations to be able to make money - in the course of providing goods and/or services. Yay for making money! I don't think that they should be able to do so without limits to protect the public or regulations that prevent incentivizing economic instability. They should also pay significant taxes. Not crippling taxes, but not the paltry drips they currently do.
It is human nature that if a person or corporation can do something that makes them money but screws over everybody else, they will do it unless it is unprofitable: pollution, global warming, safety hazards, fuel inefficiency, outsourcing, tax dodging, etc.
This is why arguing for deregulation of business is essentially saying: Yes, they will screw over everyone else, but I'm ok with that because they will take care of me.
I haven't had any trouble catching pretty clear statements from these OWS folks. They want to focus attention on income and tax inequality, the lack of regulation on destructive corporate practices, and transparency in some obviously corrupt establishments (among other things). They want lawmakers to know that it's important enough to them that they will gather and get arrested to make these points. They want to be seen as a vocal demographic, because vocal demographics tend to vote, organize, mobilize, and support. Those are good traits in a constituency, if you can appeal to them.
Moving a hydrogen in hydrocarbon combustion is different from burning hydrogen. Burn hydrogen: break H-H bond, form H-O bond. Burn hydrocarbon: break C-C and H-C bonds, form C-O and H-O bonds. None of the broken bonds (other than the broken O-O from the O2) are the same.
It's false, as in not true. I don't think he's being maliciously misleading, but it's definitely incorrect.
Yes, of course, because typos and misspellings are a female problem just like bloodstains.
One simply cannot believe that a MENSA member might make a typo or not proofread something they wrote.
Do you really think this person doesn't know the difference between sexist and sexiest? (Both of which will not be caught by a spell checker, since they are correctly spelled words.)
BTW I would guess the source of pride is the simple visibility of a contribution to science made by a female team, as "hard science" is traditionally male dominated. It's good to see everyone getting involved: if more capable people work on problems, more solutions will result. Historical exclusion of women reduced the pool of potential scientists to draw from. This is better.
This is a very valid concern. Right now, I just have to take comfort in the fact that the differences between populations are so subtle that a logic switch currently would have trouble differentiating the target group with sufficient specificity.
Of course, this means that someone trying to target one ethnic group is potentially capable of accidentally killing even more people than they think. Like... everyone. The next Holocaust may very well be biological.
Also, it should be possible to vaccinate against these if necessary. Sadly, that would be after the problem has a head start.
Ooh, or counterinfect the individual with a gene to produce an exclusion criterion (i.e. whatever the developers put in to keep it from killing their own ethnic group).
But it's easier and cheaper to shoot someone or arrange a car accident. The amount of research, time, money, skill, scientific advancement, and effort needed to create a logic circuit to differentiate between two related individuals is orders of magnitude higher than this experimental protocol, and even more orders of magnitude more expensive than a bullet.
The molecular differences between individuals are both very slight and unbelievably numerous. The only way a logic circuit like this can work is if the differences are very drastic, like in cancer cells. Ethnic targeting, however, could be a very viable concern. I shudder to think.
A DNA profile of a person relies on tiny differences in highly variable areas of code, most of which are in regions that don't code for RNA (the substrate for this logic circuit). In addition, most of the DNA is packed up most of the time, and unavailable to being read.
The scenario you are describing would need to target a population of cells that are rapidly dividing: GI or bone marrow would be ideal. Then it would have to have a logic circuit imbedded in something that can access the genome, a DNA virus for example. After that, it would need to be able to identify a bunch of different locations that add up to a unique profile (this is the tough part) and, if all of them are true, result in a lethal change. That last sentence is the tough bit. Decades, if not centuries, away.
I realize that the abstract doesn't go into a lot of detail, but this is a piece from the introduction of the article that clarifies how this is a true logic circuit relying on 6 specific inputs to classify a cell as belonging to the targeted cell line (in this case, the common research model of HeLa).
Here, we describe such a mechanism, a “classifier” gene circuit that integrates sensory information from a large number of molecular markers to determine whether a cell is in a specific state and, if so, produces a biologically active protein output. Specifically, when transiently expressed inside a cell our classifier ascertains whether the expression profile of six endogenous miRNAs (19) matches a predetermined reference profile characteristic of the HeLa cervical cancer cell line. A match identifies the cell as HeLa and triggers apoptosis .
(Multi-Input RNAi-Based Logic Circuit for Identification of Specific Cancer Cells. Zhen Xie, Liliana Wroblewska, Laura Prochazka, Ron Weiss, and Yaakov Benenson. Science 2 September 2011: 333 (6047), 1307-1311. )
If you can get access through a local library/educational institution, I recommend reading it. It's quite interesting. Very early research, but nevertheless promising.
In order to be used, the technique would have to be tailored to the specific cancer a person has, and this will be problematic in cancers that differentiate along multiple lines. (It may kick ass on leukemia, which tends to be very clonal, but not work for an osteolipoma, which has significant variation in cell differentiation.)
A valid concern. I think dosing may address that though. There is no reason to give a dose high enough to kill every cancer cell at once.
1) This is why the logic circuit targets things that are
a) present in cancer cells that are not present in other cells at the same levels and
b) uses a "multi-input" circuit. This means multiple abnormalities present in the same cell. This is common in cancer cells, but not in normal cells.
2) Mammals have apoptotic (killswitch) pathways that can be used that are not present in microbes. The biologist/doctors developing this are likely aware of the importance of a microbiome. However, even if this treatment killed every microbe in the body, a simple transfaunation (microbe transfusion) would solve the problem in the one area that is unlikely to spontaneously repopulate quickly (gut). We are born pretty much sterile, remember. There are worse things than killing off the bugs. One of them is cancer.
Funny thing is, women are the least qualified people to explain what they find attractive and don't find attractive... There's what women want, and there's what women think they want.
"This chick gave me advice, but it turns out it doesn't work on all of them! Stupid girls!"
Uh...yeah, the problem here isn't that women in general don't know what they want, it's that women are people who like different things.
And thanks, but I actually am the most qualified person to explain what I do and don't find attractive. However, what I find attractive is not the same as what every woman finds attractive. Some things I like (spicy food, intelligent men) are more commonly shared among other women than others (Snow Crash, geeks).
Isn't it interesting that women always seem to think that men would find dating so much easier if the guys just listened to some female advice?
The original poster generalized that his height made him undatable because women are height-fascists, and short guys can't get dates. This statement is both untrue (short guys date and have relationships all the time) and unhelpful (he can't change his height). My advice did not assume all women are the same: it highlighted that people are enough different that some of them aren't going to rule him out for being short. It also pointed out that labeling women to be superficial is not complimentary and is not constructive to the purpose: he implies he'd like a date, presumably with someone with enough self-worth not to enjoy being branded as shallow simply because she has a vagina. This is not woman-to-man advice, it's basic human stuff.
I found my lovely ChemE, Dr. Who-loving, intelligent geek on a free dating site. He is inches shorter than I am.
He was also thrillingly literate in his profile and our email exchanges (I initiated). We shared interests and ideas. It was lovely.
Height is nice, but it's more like good hair than IQ: a bonus, not a value with "above average" as a minimum. I've dated men taller than I am and some who are shorter. Tall is not a requirement. I know several guys who are shorter than average who all have girlfriends or have dated successfully.
If you think that your height is sole the thing keeping women from you, you are classifying your whole dating pool as shallow. It isn't complimentary, and it's demonstrably inaccurate. Your bitterness will not help you get dates, and your insulting view of women will not get you a relationship with a healthy woman.
Women who will disqualify someone just for height are obviously prejudiced in a way that should be a turn-off for you anyway. It's a good weed-out. Focus on improving and highlighting the things that are positive about yourself in order to find the lady that will be interested in you for who you are, what you've accomplished, and how you present yourself, rather than just deciding that all women are shallow and you have no chance.
Also, check your expectations: if you think that a woman you date has to be a super-hottie and a rocket scientist, well, you may want to consider that hot rocket scientist ladies have a much broader field to choose from. I recommend lowering standards to the more achievable: someone you find attractive, finds you attractive, and is smart enough that you enjoy talking with, and someone you share interests and a sense of humor with.
And maybe be a little less obvious about your opinion that women are shallow, irrational creatures.
All of this jumping to racism as a conclusion, and bunches of people trying to explain why black people are probably just worse scientists, and nobody asks a basic question:
Did this study control for the reputation of the submitting institution?
Let's face it: The institutions in this country with the best reputations are in the northeast and northern California, with some in the upper midwest. I'm not saying that other schools don't do good science, I'm saying there are concentrations of schools with histories of having very good images, particularly with the NIH. You know what they lack? Lots of black students, who tend to be more represented in HBCUs and universities in the South, which often don't have the illustrious reps of some of the other schools. (I say this as someone who has been to both well-regarded NE schools and large southern universities.)
From TFA:
There were fewer total applications from blacks (27%) at institutions receiving the most NIH funding (the top 1 to 30) compared with whites (33%, P less than .05) but a similar number at institutions ranked 31 to 100 in amount of NIH funding awarded (table S11) (13). Applications from white investigators were more likely to be associated with a previous NIH RPG or K award (78%) compared with blacks (69%), Asians (73%), and Hispanics (70%) (P less than .001).
There may be racism here, but until they really delve into the inter-institutional snobbery, I think the conclusion of specific anti-black is missing a key step.
...but as an aside, any velocity straight up without a sustaining acceleration will eventually come back down.
No, escape velocity is an initial speed that will "escape" without a need for additional acceleration. You can escape a gravitational effect without achieving escape velocity as long as you have some form of continuous propulsion providing acceleration, but the definition of escape velocity itself assumes no additional acceleration.
Hey! Some of us saw that Natalie Portman movie!
"Destroy Facebook servers. People make real friends while rioting in the streets."
Somebody took the demotivational meme a bit too seriously.
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/daa/
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that without Alan Turing, Europe as we know it might not exist.
Ftfy.
Cracking the Enigma code was a huge deal, and may have made the difference between the outcome seen in history (a terrible war, but one that Nazis eventually lost) and a horrific alternative with a crippling invasion of England and failure of many of the Allied powers' anti-Nazi offensives. Even a delay in the cracking could have been disastrous. It's possible that the Bletchley team would have cracked Enigma without Turing, but that delay might well have lost the war. Huzzah! Geeks save the world! (And then, in Turing's case, are hounded to chemical castration and suicide for being gay. Thanks, man!)
I completely agree. Drugs classes that are important for fighting human (and even animal) bacterial infections should be under intense scrutiny, and most of them should NOT be used as feed additives. While this is usually the case already, pressure needs to be kept up to make sure that doesn't change in the pursuit of the almighty dollar. It's all about recognizing that not all antibiotics are equal, and the current feed use has benefits. Resistance is a hugely important issue, and that's why I like the idea of this question being answered with scientific data in as unemotional a setting as possible.
No, the opposite is the fact. With high doses more or less all bacteria get killed and the surviving ones are very likely killed by the immune system. Also I don't see why you believe you would need more human like forms.
With higher doses, you hope all the bacteria die because fighting an established infection is much more difficult, and higher doses put much more selection pressure on the bacterial population. If you slightly underdose or don't treat for quite long enough, you are going to have a resistant population in an animal whose immune system is already weakened by disease. That is a risk that needs to be evaluated and compared to the risks associated with prophylactic/feed additive antibiotics.
Also I don't see why you believe you would need more human like forms.
I don't "believe" it. I know it. I'm a veterinarian. The most common feed additive drugs are not the same ones used to treat bacterial infections for the disease cattle most commonly get in meat operations: pneumonia and enteritis. Those diseases are going to be treated with "bigger guns", drugs that are more important to humans and are in completely different classes from the typical feed additives.
These are not the drugs you want to need to use. Using those "big gun" classes greatly increases the likelihood of resistance to the important antibiotics.
Why do you think in europe giving antibiotica as food additions is prohibited? Because we are idiots?
Of course not. I think resistance is a valid concern, but when decisions are made without data, especially by politicians and enthusiastic concerned people, well-intentioned and reasonable-sounding mistakes can happen.
Honestly, I'm grateful that someone tried it. The data coming out don't support that the ban is an improvement, but there is now information to base future decision-making on. Ideally, we'll see restrictions that ensure important drugs are not used irresponsibly (I would freak out if someone wanted to put quinolones in animal feed, for example), and animals are kept humanely with as little disease as we can manage.
Allow me to clarify: Sub-therapeutic (feed-additive dosage) is distinct from therapeutic but insufficient. Your description is accurate for the latter.
The doses used in feed additives are very low, as coccidiostatic agents rather than bacteriocidal. If you are trying to treat a disease, rather than prevent loss from parasitic damage, drugs are used at a much higher level, either at bacteriostatic or bacteriocidal concentrations (depending on the agents, organ system, method of action of the drug and many other factors). In cases where one is trying to treat an established infection, you are correct, using insufficient dose or duration puts heavy selection pressure on the infectious organism, greatly increasing the likelihood that a resistant mutant will survive and propagate.
Currently there isn't much, if any, data to support that the very low levels used in feed additives cause resistant pathogens. In theory, they COULD, which is why the matter needs to be investigated. However, at this time, it seems as if the low-level feed additives are too low to provide sufficient selection pressure to cause a resistant pathogen to develop.
The studies done on areas where feed additives have been banned have shown more sick animals and higher antibiotic dosages being used overall. Perhaps you can see how this situation is even more likely to generate the selection pressures that drive resistance.
For sure, the doses and drugs used in this practice need to be investigated for risk for pathogen resistance, but relying on data rather than assumptions is key.
Okay, the most common feed-additive drug is monensin. When was the last time you or anyone you know were treated for a bacterial infection by anything remotely similar? Not really a fair question, you probably have no clue, and it'd be anecdotal anyway. But look into it. See what human applications of similar drugs are. Many of the prophylactic feed additives were never important human antibiotics or are drugs who were abandoned for human use as better things came along (or as patient-induced resistance arose in the bacteria they had been treating).
So let's say we stop using these antibiotics. More animals get sick, they have established infections (already seen in countries that ban feed-abx). It takes massively higher doses to treat them, because the animal is sick and there's a serious infection happening. It also requires drugs that are more similar to human medications. Can you see that this may be an important source of resistance? How important, I don't know, but I would like that to be a question addressed before we go willy-nilly changing this system. I don't want to trade a potential source of resistance (antibiotics in feed) for an even bigger problem.
I want data-based evaluations of risk and benefit. How terribly moronic and trollish of me.
1. The number one most common anti-microbial in cattle feed is monensin, an ionophore. This entire class of drugs is nearly exclusively used in animals as a coccidiostat (anti-protozoal). (Some antifungal use in humans, I believe.) The reason it's so useful as a feed additive is that it reduces parasitism by a class of organisms that affect the GI tract. GI tract works better and the animal isn't expending energy to fight the organism.
2. In the real world, as you say, reducing stock density puts producers out of business. You are saying we should just not use a tool that prevents disease and improves feed efficiency, then further reduce efficiency by reducing throughput. The viability of this option is questionable. It would be lovely, but it would have to be paid for, either subsidized directly by the government or by an increase cost to the consumer. Increasing the cost to the consumer may not even work, because people will find out very quickly how easy it is to reduce meat consumption if it becomes very expensive. I'm comfortable with reduced meat consumption, and comfortable with large sections of the industry going under to reduce stock density, but let's not pretend that this is an easy sell and an obvious solution. It's a grand-scale industry overhaul.
3. "It's never been shown not to". You realize how unhelpful that phrase is, right? All I would like is for there to be an evaluation of actual risk. It doesn't have to be 100% accurate, but a good estimate would be nice. Reasonable evidence of feed antibiotics significantly contributing to the resistance of a human pathogen - or even an economically significant veterinary pathogen - should be explored. After that, it's pretty much a cost/benefit thing.
4. While I admit that other causes of resistance does not mean this one should not be investigated, the scale of human antibiotic abuse is a valid reference point when trying to prioritize resources. It also should be considered for perspective.
5. Listed as a counterpoint because there is a valid economic benefit to the current practice, and changing the status quo should be based on evidence of risk or cost that outweighs benefit. Perhaps it's venal and idiotic to want cheap animal protein, but what are the benefits? I could digress into the benefits of early childhood nutrition on brain development and school performance, but I bet you're familiar with the talking points.
I just want there to be evidence brought forth and thoroughly evaluated. Antibiotics aren't necessarily evil, and abolishing the low-level prophylaxis has actual costs. The kinds of bugs that grow in animals that aren't feed-treated may pose a higher risk to human health, as they are often bacteria that can transmit to humans more easily, and they get treated after the infection is established, bumping up the likelihood of developing resistance.
Personally, I don't eat much meat; I try to find humanely raised stuff when I do. I think improving the quality of life for animals in the agricultural industry should be a goal of responsible consumers. I agree that reducing stock density would both improve quality of life and reduce the rate of infectious disease, and I'm willing to pay more for the meat from those situations. All I want from this discussion is for people to rely more on data and actual, demonstrated risk rather than FUD.
I support fact finding, it might bring up a few important counterpoints that often get overlooked in popular media articles.
For example:
1. The drugs commonly used for animal feed additives are not the same ones used by people. Frequently they are different classes and often different generations of drugs. Basically, many of these are the drugs whose usefulness in treating humans was either burned through long ago (by human usage) or never established.
2. In European countries where laws similar to this proposal have already been carried out, veterinary antibiotics are only used after animals are sick. Overall, however, more animals become ill, more drugs end up being used at a population level, and more important classes of antibiotics are brought out to deal with the sick animals, raising the likelihood of resistance to drugs humans actually use. (Data are from, I believe, the Netherlands if you wish to look it up.)
3. Sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics as animal feed additives have never been shown to produce resistant human pathogens. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it raises the importance of relying on data rather than fears.
4. Poor compliance of patients and over-prescription of antimicrobials by physicians is frequently cited as the most important source of antibiotic-induced resistance in bacteria. If the aim is to reduce resistance, this is a big target. It doesn't negate the importance of investigating feed additives, but this issue is of questionable importance in overall resistance concerns.
5. Sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics have a proven effect on improving feed conversion, which basically means efficiency. It's an important economic consideration.
I would really appreciate a fact-based assessment of the risks and rewards of this practice. We know it saves money as a feed conversion booster, but if it is a serious risk for developing resistance to drugs used to treat people, we should stop. So far, the evidence I've seen has not supported the position. Arguments tend to stem from how "obvious" the expected results of low-level antibiotic exposure in animals ("it will cause resistance!") or the "fact" that exposing animals to antibiotics is bad because they are intrinsically bad ("chemicals! pesticides! antibiotics! hormones!"). If we are going to make a change that we know will cost money, we should have good data on what benefits we hope to gain or risks we aim to reduce. Calling for evidence-based decision-making is not a bad thing.
I'm all for improving the healthiness of meat and reducing the development of antibiotic resistance, but data are needed to support that this regulation will have the desired results.