Firstly, ethylene glycol is the active ingredient in antifreeze, as others have mentioned, not an additive for nefarious purposes. These days there are alternative antifreezes that people can use, but the ethylene glycol variety is not uncommon. Usually companies try to add brightly colored dyes and bittering agents to reduce the likelihood of consumption.
Secondly, one of the few things that would make antifreeze LESS dangerous is... ethanol. Yep. Ethanol competes with ethylene glycol for alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver. Since the dehydrogenated product is the really dangerous part, ethanol prevents transformation into the deadliest form. Back before there was a readily available antidote in veterinary hospitals, the standard of care involved everclear and getting the patient totally sauced.
In TFA: Charles Norris. Because back in the day, he was just a medical examiner. He got the nickname "Chuck" from his ability to punch someone so hard they essentially became very similar to ground chuck.
This could actually be beneficial: getting people with highly communicable diseases "seen" without exposing to a whole bunch of other people in waiting rooms. If they aren't sick, they aren't risking picking up something in a crowded hospital. If they are sick, they aren't going to be giving their funk to anybody or picking up a superinfection on top of their original problem. Empirical treatments like first line antibiotics don't require lab tests in most cases, and can drastically reduce the infectious potential of an affected individual.
To say nothing of the appointments for being prescribed birth control! As long as a woman has had a yearly, a basic interview is usually all a doc needs to prescribe birth control (though some places will want a pregnancy test).
Of course there will be cases that can't be diagnosed by this method, but by using this technology appropriately we could provide people with a service that could improve both their health and the well being of others while reducing some of the burden on in-person services.
Agreed! Many of us doctor chicks are geeky and dig smart guys even if we aren't computer geeky (ditto for the lawyers I know). Also, if you are under 35, the ratio is in the favor of you guys, so chin up. There are more young female MDs and veterinarians than male. In fact, vet schools are graduating at around a 7:1 f:m ratio. I'm pretty certain graduate schools are also putting out more female than male doctors.
Here's how I meet geeks: Martial Arts - I used to do TKD, but I met my best friends in Krav Maga. Find one you like and not only will you improve potential exposure, you'll get in better shape.
Other sports: rock climbing, biking, kayaking... local groups often meet or organize for these. If one interests you, look them up.
Volunteering - what? It's just what it sounds like. More people are volunteering these days with their unplanned time off (layoffs/furloughs).
Mutual friends - know anyone in a grad program? That's likely to be a ticket to a target-rich environment. I know, this isn't as true in tech/engineering/math fields, but a new friend-group is the key to meeting new people.
Classes - if you are working on a degree, remember: stats is the great melting pot. All of the sciences have to take it.
Ren Faires - geeks. Many of them female. Lots of bosoms. Sharp, pointy objects. Things on fire. There are worse ways to spend money.
Online - there's nothing wrong with dating sites as an option. Some are even geek oriented, like soulgeek.com and gk2gk.com:-)
Agreed, but there is no evidence that sex out of estrus is happening here. From TFA: "This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are."
I'm not really seeing how it necessarily implies sex for pleasure. There is nothing in the behavior that cannot be explained by selection pressure for increased number of offspring.
The male gives the female food today and then has the ability to mate with her twice as often in the future, thereby increasing his chances of fathering her offspring.
The female accepts the food from a male capable of hunting and bartering and gains high-value calories that she otherwise would have limited access to (TFA mentions that female chimps have less success hunting). Her offspring are likely to be fitter due to her improved nutrition and the higher chance of being fathered by a fit male.
Many species have behaviors that amount to "I protect/provide food for you long term, and I have better chance of mating with you." Stallions have their mares. Lionesses provide meat to their pride and have the right to the sperm of the the strongest male available: the badass who fended off everyone else.
This article shows a cognizance of the value of a specific act (providing meat) and the acceptance of a long term obligation/bond. Pleasure doesn't need to enter into it.
How dare you be inaccurate in your warning about the timing of a natural disaster? You caused me to be outraged and dismissive on record in the media! Now people think I'm a douchebag, and it's all your fault!
Must be a European thing. I'm sure nothing like that could ever happen here in the good ol' US of A.
a) Persistent infection with HPV can cause cancer. Gardasil is designed to prevent infection with the 2 of the high risk strains associated with 50% of cervical cancer. Saying that HPV doesn't cause cervical cancer is like saying viruses don't cause colds: not all viruses cause colds, but infection with certain rhinoviruses combined with not clearing them leads to the disease. It's true that most HPV infections are cleared spontaneously, usually withing 2 years. However, almost all cases of cervical cancer require infection with HPV.
b) The evidence that the vaccine increases the risk of lesions is equivocal. One group of the several groups examined had an increase in lesions in the women who already had HPV infections. The treatment group, in that case, was also found to be higher in risk factors for lesions with comparison to the placebo group. Several of the other groups showed no significant increase in lesions. Not saying that it's not possible, but the evidence is weak due to the study being confounded by other risk factor differences and a lack of repeatability. More investigation is required.
c) Cervical cancer is NOT one of the more treatable forms of cancer. It's very PREVENTABLE in many cases with safer sex protocols (though condoms are not as effective in prevention of HPV transmission versus, say, HIV), regular checkups, and treatment of precancerous lesions. Unfortunately it's quite a serious disease to try to treat: even early stages are addressed with a radical hysterectomy in most cases.
Honestly, I'm not sure that Gardasil is the hot thing that everybody thinks, but exaggerating the risks of the vaccine while minimizing the potential danger of the disease scares me. Educating yourself is important. This is the number 2 cancer in women and it's due to an STI. People should know a lot more about it.
Slight correction: HIV is a lentivirus, one of the types of retroviruses. One of the toughest parts of making the link between HIV and AIDS was identifying this virus that could infect a person and then not cause AIDS for years. (Lenti means "slow".) These researchers, politics aside, cracked a very tough problem with tools that would be considered primitive by today's standards.
The discovery led to greater understanding of lentiviruses in general: we now know that cats (FIV), horses (EIA), cattle (BIV), and monkeys, among others all have lentiviruses of their own.
Secondary to that expansion, advances in non-human lentivirus research are providing leverage for new approaches to HIV. There is currently an effective (>80% protective) vaccine for FIV in cats. Ideally, some of those techniques can be successfully modified for an HIV vaccine.
Very cool, thanks! I knew there was something that had been found in some reactor somewhere, but I was too lazy to go see if it was specifically resistant to radicals.
Ah, see, it sounded like you were mocking the researcher for not actually knowing as much as you do about the development of bacterial resistance and natural selection. I now see that you are more upset by the non-specific language that muddies the distinction between the evolution of a strain and the behavior of an individual.
Honestly, though, most people who work with bacteria conflate the the two verbally and expect the listener to parse it out. "Bacteria growing a resistance" already refers to more than one organism, as it's not "bacterium".
I'm willing to give the researcher the benefit of the doubt, though it does allow someone with confusion on the subject to stay confused. Many scientific processes are explained in slightly inaccurate ways to simplify things. Most people think that electrons orbit a nucleus in an orderly manner. I think we all know that's not the case, but it's a useful model for someone at a basic level. I will concede that it is frustrating not to have accuracy, though I don't think making people more accurate would prevent nutjobs from believing in creationism;-)
One thing, however: "That is, after all, how our immune system works"
Our immune system does not "learn". Individual cells randomly produce receptors (or antibodies) through recombination. Those moieties that do not react with self are propagated (selection process) and those that react with a foreign antigen are further propagated (further selection). It's a really interesting instance of selection within an organism, and very similar to natural selection of bacteria.
Actually, radicals cause damage to a lot of things, including DNA, in much the same way radiation does. A bacterium could conceivably be resistant enough to stick around for a while, but not be able to replicate. Thus, it has not produced a resistance that can be passed on, or become as resistant as it "needs to be" in order to successfully produce a resistant strain.
As a strain, a challenge can indeed induce the population to shift to favor a genotype that possesses a resistance, and in successive generations a more efficient resistance (one that, perhaps requires fewer resources or has fewer metabolic side effects). It is fine to use the shorthand "grow a greater resistance" to explain the behavior of the strain's evolution. I'm fairly certain the researcher in question is aware of the rather basic mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and doesn't need a refresher in natural selection just because s/he used a layman-accessible shorthand.
Actually, this material produces hydroxyl radicals, not hydroxide ions. Hydroxyl is not an alkaline substance, it's a potently reactive radical. Often they can form alcohols or bases. It damages cellular components in many of the same ways radiation does, and it does it fairly non-specifically. It would be a very hard resistance for a pathogen to develop. In fact, hydroxyl is already used by the body to kill pathogens. The organisms that survive this defense generally do it by preventing the host's cells from exposing them to the radicals, and not by having a resistance to the radicals themselves. (I'm not aware of any that withstand radicals, but I'm willing to be informed).
What I find interesting is that no one is mentioning that radicals are carcinogenic. This is not something you want to repeatedly expose any of your tissues to. It'll be fine for surfaces and such, but this stuff isn't going to be used for anything in prolonged human contact.
Actually, the article that/. originally posted on this specifically referred to remote software installation that did NOT require hands-on phone snatching shenanigans.
That somewhere in the Justice Dept. there's someone throwing a temper tantrum because someone took away their totally illegal advantage?
"Court decisions indicate that USAOs claim not to need probable cause to obtain real-time tracking information. News reports further suggest that some field offices are violating a Department of Justice 'internal recomendation' that 'federal procecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas.'"
Don't make us get probable cause! Probable cause is for losers! And put the bumpers back into my bowling lanes!
I love it when my rights are seen as an inconvenience. (Though it's nice that someone has RECOMMENDED that probable cause be found.)
Seriously, they're law enforcement: finding probable cause IS THEIR JOB.
Longevity in the environment is highly variable depending on the variety of virus in question. Viruses are not parasites. They are literally interruptive self-promoting genetic code. While it is true that most viruses do not survive long without the protection of a host cell (degraded by environmental stressors), influenza in particular and many hardy viruses in general can withstand it for days, weeks, or months. In the random article I most recently read, the figure for influenza survival was as much as 6+ days on non-porous surfaces.
Putting anything in a plastic bag for 3 hours is not going to disinfect it unless some fairly scary chemicals are put in the bag as well (as in cold sterilization).
Plague, by the way, was caused by a bacterium (Yersinia pestis)... or at least that's what the majority of scientific opinion is... (there is another theory involving viruses, but it's not well accepted).
In this case, as others have mentioned, the viral victim is protected from the strain of influenza for a good long while, and that protection will last long after the virus is inactivated. So no worries on the laptop unless it's going to be handed off to someone else. (In that case, pick someone you don't like in the next couple of days).
I also think that the heat of a laptop would tend to decrease the longevity of viral particles on its surfaces, but that's opinion, I haven't looked for a reference.
There's a technology that doesn't sound like it could be misused by local or federal government.
Freedom of assembly isn't really being infringed if Big bro just sends nice officers to "investigate suspicious activity", right?
For everyone's safety, of course.
Could be a fire hazard. Or underaged drinking.
Slashdot Mirror
Firstly, ethylene glycol is the active ingredient in antifreeze, as others have mentioned, not an additive for nefarious purposes. These days there are alternative antifreezes that people can use, but the ethylene glycol variety is not uncommon. Usually companies try to add brightly colored dyes and bittering agents to reduce the likelihood of consumption.
Secondly, one of the few things that would make antifreeze LESS dangerous is... ethanol. Yep.
Ethanol competes with ethylene glycol for alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver. Since the dehydrogenated product is the really dangerous part, ethanol prevents transformation into the deadliest form. Back before there was a readily available antidote in veterinary hospitals, the standard of care involved everclear and getting the patient totally sauced.
In TFA: Charles Norris.
Because back in the day, he was just a medical examiner. He got the nickname "Chuck" from his ability to punch someone so hard they essentially became very similar to ground chuck.
This could actually be beneficial: getting people with highly communicable diseases "seen" without exposing to a whole bunch of other people in waiting rooms.
If they aren't sick, they aren't risking picking up something in a crowded hospital. If they are sick, they aren't going to be giving their funk to anybody or picking up a superinfection on top of their original problem. Empirical treatments like first line antibiotics don't require lab tests in most cases, and can drastically reduce the infectious potential of an affected individual.
To say nothing of the appointments for being prescribed birth control! As long as a woman has had a yearly, a basic interview is usually all a doc needs to prescribe birth control (though some places will want a pregnancy test).
Of course there will be cases that can't be diagnosed by this method, but by using this technology appropriately we could provide people with a service that could improve both their health and the well being of others while reducing some of the burden on in-person services.
A perfect example of using a geek-oriented online network to establish contact with a woman. Well done ;-)
Agreed! Many of us doctor chicks are geeky and dig smart guys even if we aren't computer geeky (ditto for the lawyers I know).
Also, if you are under 35, the ratio is in the favor of you guys, so chin up. There are more young female MDs and veterinarians than male. In fact, vet schools are graduating at around a 7:1 f:m ratio. I'm pretty certain graduate schools are also putting out more female than male doctors.
Here's how I meet geeks:
Martial Arts - I used to do TKD, but I met my best friends in Krav Maga. Find one you like and not only will you improve potential exposure, you'll get in better shape.
Other sports: rock climbing, biking, kayaking... local groups often meet or organize for these. If one interests you, look them up.
Volunteering - what? It's just what it sounds like. More people are volunteering these days with their unplanned time off (layoffs/furloughs).
Mutual friends - know anyone in a grad program? That's likely to be a ticket to a target-rich environment. I know, this isn't as true in tech/engineering/math fields, but a new friend-group is the key to meeting new people.
Classes - if you are working on a degree, remember: stats is the great melting pot. All of the sciences have to take it.
Ren Faires - geeks. Many of them female. Lots of bosoms. Sharp, pointy objects. Things on fire. There are worse ways to spend money.
Online - there's nothing wrong with dating sites as an option. Some are even geek oriented, like soulgeek.com and gk2gk.com :-)
Good luck!
Kali
Agreed, but there is no evidence that sex out of estrus is happening here.
From TFA: "This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are."
I'm not really seeing how it necessarily implies sex for pleasure. There is nothing in the behavior that cannot be explained by selection pressure for increased number of offspring.
The male gives the female food today and then has the ability to mate with her twice as often in the future, thereby increasing his chances of fathering her offspring.
The female accepts the food from a male capable of hunting and bartering and gains high-value calories that she otherwise would have limited access to (TFA mentions that female chimps have less success hunting). Her offspring are likely to be fitter due to her improved nutrition and the higher chance of being fathered by a fit male.
Many species have behaviors that amount to "I protect/provide food for you long term, and I have better chance of mating with you." Stallions have their mares. Lionesses provide meat to their pride and have the right to the sperm of the the strongest male available: the badass who fended off everyone else.
This article shows a cognizance of the value of a specific act (providing meat) and the acceptance of a long term obligation/bond. Pleasure doesn't need to enter into it.
How dare you be inaccurate in your warning about the timing of a natural disaster? You caused me to be outraged and dismissive on record in the media! Now people think I'm a douchebag, and it's all your fault!
Must be a European thing. I'm sure nothing like that could ever happen here in the good ol' US of A.
a) Persistent infection with HPV can cause cancer. Gardasil is designed to prevent infection with the 2 of the high risk strains associated with 50% of cervical cancer. Saying that HPV doesn't cause cervical cancer is like saying viruses don't cause colds: not all viruses cause colds, but infection with certain rhinoviruses combined with not clearing them leads to the disease. It's true that most HPV infections are cleared spontaneously, usually withing 2 years. However, almost all cases of cervical cancer require infection with HPV.
b) The evidence that the vaccine increases the risk of lesions is equivocal. One group of the several groups examined had an increase in lesions in the women who already had HPV infections. The treatment group, in that case, was also found to be higher in risk factors for lesions with comparison to the placebo group. Several of the other groups showed no significant increase in lesions. Not saying that it's not possible, but the evidence is weak due to the study being confounded by other risk factor differences and a lack of repeatability. More investigation is required.
c) Cervical cancer is NOT one of the more treatable forms of cancer. It's very PREVENTABLE in many cases with safer sex protocols (though condoms are not as effective in prevention of HPV transmission versus, say, HIV), regular checkups, and treatment of precancerous lesions. Unfortunately it's quite a serious disease to try to treat: even early stages are addressed with a radical hysterectomy in most cases.
Honestly, I'm not sure that Gardasil is the hot thing that everybody thinks, but exaggerating the risks of the vaccine while minimizing the potential danger of the disease scares me. Educating yourself is important. This is the number 2 cancer in women and it's due to an STI. People should know a lot more about it.
Slight correction:
HIV is a lentivirus, one of the types of retroviruses. One of the toughest parts of making the link between HIV and AIDS was identifying this virus that could infect a person and then not cause AIDS for years. (Lenti means "slow".) These researchers, politics aside, cracked a very tough problem with tools that would be considered primitive by today's standards.
The discovery led to greater understanding of lentiviruses in general: we now know that cats (FIV), horses (EIA), cattle (BIV), and monkeys, among others all have lentiviruses of their own.
Secondary to that expansion, advances in non-human lentivirus research are providing leverage for new approaches to HIV. There is currently an effective (>80% protective) vaccine for FIV in cats. Ideally, some of those techniques can be successfully modified for an HIV vaccine.
Very cool, thanks!
I knew there was something that had been found in some reactor somewhere, but I was too lazy to go see if it was specifically resistant to radicals.
Glad to have the linky :-)
Ah, see, it sounded like you were mocking the researcher for not actually knowing as much as you do about the development of bacterial resistance and natural selection. I now see that you are more upset by the non-specific language that muddies the distinction between the evolution of a strain and the behavior of an individual.
Honestly, though, most people who work with bacteria conflate the the two verbally and expect the listener to parse it out. "Bacteria growing a resistance" already refers to more than one organism, as it's not "bacterium". ;-)
I'm willing to give the researcher the benefit of the doubt, though it does allow someone with confusion on the subject to stay confused. Many scientific processes are explained in slightly inaccurate ways to simplify things. Most people think that electrons orbit a nucleus in an orderly manner. I think we all know that's not the case, but it's a useful model for someone at a basic level. I will concede that it is frustrating not to have accuracy, though I don't think making people more accurate would prevent nutjobs from believing in creationism
One thing, however:
"That is, after all, how our immune system works"
Our immune system does not "learn". Individual cells randomly produce receptors (or antibodies) through recombination. Those moieties that do not react with self are propagated (selection process) and those that react with a foreign antigen are further propagated (further selection). It's a really interesting instance of selection within an organism, and very similar to natural selection of bacteria.
Actually, radicals cause damage to a lot of things, including DNA, in much the same way radiation does. A bacterium could conceivably be resistant enough to stick around for a while, but not be able to replicate. Thus, it has not produced a resistance that can be passed on, or become as resistant as it "needs to be" in order to successfully produce a resistant strain.
As a strain, a challenge can indeed induce the population to shift to favor a genotype that possesses a resistance, and in successive generations a more efficient resistance (one that, perhaps requires fewer resources or has fewer metabolic side effects). It is fine to use the shorthand "grow a greater resistance" to explain the behavior of the strain's evolution. I'm fairly certain the researcher in question is aware of the rather basic mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and doesn't need a refresher in natural selection just because s/he used a layman-accessible shorthand.
Actually, this material produces hydroxyl radicals, not hydroxide ions. Hydroxyl is not an alkaline substance, it's a potently reactive radical. Often they can form alcohols or bases. It damages cellular components in many of the same ways radiation does, and it does it fairly non-specifically. It would be a very hard resistance for a pathogen to develop. In fact, hydroxyl is already used by the body to kill pathogens. The organisms that survive this defense generally do it by preventing the host's cells from exposing them to the radicals, and not by having a resistance to the radicals themselves. (I'm not aware of any that withstand radicals, but I'm willing to be informed).
What I find interesting is that no one is mentioning that radicals are carcinogenic. This is not something you want to repeatedly expose any of your tissues to. It'll be fine for surfaces and such, but this stuff isn't going to be used for anything in prolonged human contact.
Thanks, I appreciate the info. I'd mod you up if i were cool enough ;-)
Do you happen to have a link on the corrected info?
Actually, the article that /. originally posted on this specifically referred to remote software installation that did NOT require hands-on phone snatching shenanigans.
That somewhere in the Justice Dept. there's someone throwing a temper tantrum because someone took away their totally illegal advantage?
"Court decisions indicate that USAOs claim not to need probable cause to obtain real-time tracking information. News reports further suggest that some field offices are violating a Department of Justice 'internal recomendation' that 'federal procecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas.'"
Don't make us get probable cause! Probable cause is for losers! And put the bumpers back into my bowling lanes!
I love it when my rights are seen as an inconvenience. (Though it's nice that someone has RECOMMENDED that probable cause be found.)
Seriously, they're law enforcement: finding probable cause IS THEIR JOB.
Actually, viruses need a cell to REPLICATE. They are kept quite handily in several non-cellular media, as in the kinds used for modified live virus vaccines. Some lyophilized (freeze-dried) MLV vaccines are tested and labeled to have a shelf life of 24 months, and their liquid formulations are rated up to 5 years. (link is a is .doc)
Longevity in the environment is highly variable depending on the variety of virus in question. Viruses are not parasites. They are literally interruptive self-promoting genetic code.
While it is true that most viruses do not survive long without the protection of a host cell (degraded by environmental stressors), influenza in particular and many hardy viruses in general can withstand it for days, weeks, or months. In the random article I most recently read, the figure for influenza survival was as much as 6+ days on non-porous surfaces.
Putting anything in a plastic bag for 3 hours is not going to disinfect it unless some fairly scary chemicals are put in the bag as well (as in cold sterilization).
Plague, by the way, was caused by a bacterium (Yersinia pestis)... or at least that's what the majority of scientific opinion is... (there is another theory involving viruses, but it's not well accepted).
In this case, as others have mentioned, the viral victim is protected from the strain of influenza for a good long while, and that protection will last long after the virus is inactivated. So no worries on the laptop unless it's going to be handed off to someone else. (In that case, pick someone you don't like in the next couple of days).
I also think that the heat of a laptop would tend to decrease the longevity of viral particles on its surfaces, but that's opinion, I haven't looked for a reference.
There's a technology that doesn't sound like it could be misused by local or federal government. Freedom of assembly isn't really being infringed if Big bro just sends nice officers to "investigate suspicious activity", right? For everyone's safety, of course. Could be a fire hazard. Or underaged drinking.