Hey, med school student here. I commented elsewhere on this board:
This [H. Pylori only causing infection] was thought to be true years ago when H. Pylori first got on our radar. Further testing has shown that a very large percentage of people have H. Pylori without problems. Research has demonstrated that stress is a very large factor, along with genetics, diet and infection. The original statement that stress from work may have contributed to the ulcer is a medically valid observation, especially since he's publicly commented on how demanding the movies were.
This was thought to be true years ago when H. Pylori first got on our radar. Further testing has shown that a very large percentage of people have H. Pylori without problems. Research has demonstrated that stress is a very large factor, along with genetics, diet and infection. The original statement that stress from work may have contributed to the ulcer is a medically valid observation, especially since he's publicly commented on how demanding the movies were
While stomach ulcers are very curable, they can often progress to perforation with relatively little warning. We don't know if any doctor or the patient himself are to blame for this progression. Hope he recovers quickly. Then again, I'm an idiot....
As far as we know the bacteria do not directly alter DNA. Rather, like in the condition known as Barrett's Esophagus, hyperplasia and dysplastic changes in the cells occur as a result of ulcers, acid etc. These demands on the cells increase the change of a clonal metaplasia including cancer. Then again, I'm a med school idiot.....
You're misreading the difference between constant costs (overhead) and variable costs (production costs). Volume only works if you can get the variable costs (the costs of producing each item) below the profit of selling each item.
Economies of scale (making each item cheaper to produce by producing more) doesn't work for the Volt: the batteries have a constant cost and making more only makes them MORE expensive if anything. This is because the resources to make them are limited and increasing demand causes prices to increase.
Therefore they can't overcome the cost penalty by making it up in volume. This move only makes sense for GM if the practice and market establishment of selling now will later be useful for them when making the cars is profitable. There's another explanation: the owners of GM are pushing this for political reasons. Considering the rhetoric about making them make cleaner cars when the bailout occurred, it would be a conspiracy theory to NOT believe that the government had a hand in this.
this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While Simon and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery.
Over-sold cognitive dissonance: the mainstay of journalists writing about science.
Then again.... I'm an idiot...
Sadly we scientists are always reinventing the wheel. One lecture in my undergraduate biochemistry class was based entirely on why every assumption in the central dogma was incorrect. Exceptions including RNA changing the expression of DNA, proteins affecting epigenetic changes on DNA, siRNAs and a host of other examples have been long known to science. Scientists keep re-inventing the wheel and journals and editors keep announcing today's latest groundbreaking re-discovery.
Full disclosure: I'm a medical student and researcher and an opponent of a number of forms of IVF stem cell research
I certainly agree that morality is primarily concerned with research driven creation of embryos.
However, myself and a large number of my collages opposed embryonic research. Ignoring valid arguments and charging opponents with being 'hicks' just undercuts your arguments. On the topic of your arguments, certainly some avenues of research would be further if embryonic research was available, but I'm not convinced that we would be better off. For example, the paths of research that produced this discovery in the article are further along precisely because embryonic research has met with ethical concerns.
A good question. The backwards conversion is impossible because the vast majority of blood cells are RBCs (Red Blood Cells or erythrocytes) and these have gotten rid of their nucleus, making them a cellular dead end doomed to destruction in about 120 days.
Also, blood is mostly free water (plasma) and when RBCs are created their progenitor cells divide many times in the production process. Assuming that this process they're using is similar, you're talking about impressive volume multiplication in the conversion from skin to blood.
Great comment. The President's power is supposed to be limited. Even within his own branches he/she has to be a leader and know how to play the game.
The real problem is this: bureaucracies fail to make changes because our current budgetary system allows their budget to only go upward and they know that their jobs are safe despite incompetence. In fact, the building of bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency helps to guarantee their job security. So is the situation hopeless? NO! There are proven methods that have worked in the past.
I was disappointed (as always) that each party didn't consider their best options in presidential primaries. Romney (R) and Richardson (D) had demonstrated that they knew how to shrink state budgets and trim bureaucracy. Yes, such tools exist: hiring freezes, retrograde budgets (go back to 2008 levels etc.), outsourcing to contractors, shifting responsibilities to less bloated departments (shell game), borrowing effective systems straight from other states (helped my state's education system greatly) , and a host of other methods that work. Hopefully we'll be able to trim the really big problems: pensions, entitlements, and bureaucratic inefficiency but this will require a return to the methods that have worked in the past.
The fire-department in question was a social program, just not administered correctly. They're already spread their coverage area in a response to the backlash. This is an example of what you get from poorly administered socialism, which is the most common type.
Yes, coronary disease is a big problem and yes it's the major killer in the US but it isn't the major killer worldwide, just in developed nations. You'll notice on the first link that cancer is still way up on causes of death in the US and, despite your claims to the contrary, I can assure that now in my second year of medical school that coronary syndromes are a major focus in medical education and research.
The work these scientists did is certainly not the first implementation of this idea but it's quite worth the investment. Stenting is not a miracle cure and likely wont ever be; it's just delaying the inevitable. The only powerful approach to reducing heart related deaths is prevention and education; even then, most deaths due to 'old age' are written up as heart related deaths so they'll keep going up as we get better at fighting the world's real number one killer: simple infections.
You're completely right about the sweetness. Glucose is really not very sweet (less than sucrose or fructose) and besides that, it's expensive to isolate and it doesn't solve the real problem: overconsumption. HFCS is very cheap in contrast and you don't have to use as much of it.
If you're going to attack HFCS for making people healthy, the fructose part is not a good reason. However, the inexpensive nature of the product does potentially encourage overconsumption which is well documented as a health problem in the United States
The peer review system is great for regulation, standardization and unification. However, all scientists that I've worked with/researched with/spoken with much about this topic admit that the system can be annoyingly flawed by group think and conformity. One bad apple ruins the bunch, right?
The good news? While this part of the scientific community is not immune to problems, the slack is picked up elsewhere: As long as methods, data and results are transparent, reproducible and published we can actually have quality science.
I often speak to people about scientific research and they're shocked that it's not full proof. This is kind of like buying software (perhaps even a Microsoft product) and finding that it's not perfect. Science is done by committee and progresses slowly. "If we know what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research" ~Albert Einstein
You understand the difference between a mixture and a compound, don't you? And that these compounds can have radically different properties to the elements they're made up from?
I mean, that was something we learned in chemistry class at the age of about 10.
Wow. I very much doubt you had studied saccharide chemistry by 4th/5th grade. The bizarre thing is that you're SO wrong yet SO confident in what you're saying. The body breaks down the sucrose anyway, so your statement that the properties are radically different is, in this case, false. You understand the differene between a mixture and a compound, don't you?
So, I've studied biochem undergrad and medicine in medical school. Just sayin' this to back my next statement
Everything you said in your comment is completely false except that which concerned the liver. No, syrup is not chemically different from granulated sugar. No, hydrolysis is not limited, in fact, you don't get ANY sucrose absorbed without this process that moves to completion. And also, sucrose is often used in commercial drinks and dissolves just fine without granular texture.
I'm constantly amazed as I read comments here how so many people are either making up 'science' as they go or repeating things that someone else made up. It's amazing.
A large majority of your gastric juices are enzymes.
False, you're thinking of pancreatic secretions that come in after the stomach in the duodenum. The stomach does produce some enzymes but mainly acid.
Not all enzymes solve in acidic solutions.
True, but the vast majority do and few are designed to survive such low pH as the stomach produces. Honestly, since we produce sucrase I don't care if some of it survives in the final HFCS product, and I doubt that much does.
High fructose corn syrup != fructose. HFC doesn't exist in nature, fructose does.
Yeah, that's almost entirely not true. You body does the same reaction when digesting sucrose that is used to make HFCS. It might not exist before your duodenum but as soon as it gets there it turns into the same thing. Naturally. Transfats (you're right) are avoided in nature. Fructose sugars? Common place.
By the way, what's so wonderful about the word 'naturally' that gets people so gaga?
Then again, I'm an idiot....
While it is accurate to say that having 'fructose' in the name of the product can be more precise, you've got the chemistry ALL wrong.
You've said that:
Corn syrup, as it comes out of the plant, does not contain significant amounts of fructose. It is basically glucose syrup.
High fructose corn syrup, by contrast, is corn syrup in which much of the glucose has been enzymatically converted into fructose.
Yeah, also just plain false. The fructose is released from the sucrose, not converted. That would be a redox reaction which is not occurring. In fact, you body does the same reaction when digesting sucrose. You don't know the chemistry. In my biochem classes we would laugh at the people afraid of HFCS.
Then again, I'm an idiot....
Thank you, someone actually referencing scientific understanding in this discussion instead of repeating unfounded concerns!
Then again, I'm an idiot...
Also: Kentucky Fried Chicken successfully pushed to be known as just "KFC" because of the stigma surrounding the word "fried."
Yeah, that's not true. They were being forced to change their name or pay up. People go to KFC to eat fried chicken and for those people (me included every other month or so) the wording likely doesn't make that big a difference.
Then again, I'm an idiot....
He wasn't saying that they formed spores, RTFC. He was saying, rightfully so, that this microbe might not be useful if it, LIKE spore forming bacteria, 'shrivel[s] up and go[es] into stasis'.
The article mentions that the formation between cells might be what allows survival. This survival method, much like the hibernation-like spore stage, probably means that the organism can't do much of anything. This is an important limitation that fuzzy was talking about.
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This [H. Pylori only causing infection] was thought to be true years ago when H. Pylori first got on our radar. Further testing has shown that a very large percentage of people have H. Pylori without problems. Research has demonstrated that stress is a very large factor, along with genetics, diet and infection. The original statement that stress from work may have contributed to the ulcer is a medically valid observation, especially since he's publicly commented on how demanding the movies were.
Then again, I'm a medical school idiot.....
Then again, I'm a medical school idiot.....
While stomach ulcers are very curable, they can often progress to perforation with relatively little warning. We don't know if any doctor or the patient himself are to blame for this progression. Hope he recovers quickly. Then again, I'm an idiot....
As far as we know the bacteria do not directly alter DNA. Rather, like in the condition known as Barrett's Esophagus, hyperplasia and dysplastic changes in the cells occur as a result of ulcers, acid etc. These demands on the cells increase the change of a clonal metaplasia including cancer. Then again, I'm a med school idiot .....
You're misreading the difference between constant costs (overhead) and variable costs (production costs). Volume only works if you can get the variable costs (the costs of producing each item) below the profit of selling each item.
Economies of scale (making each item cheaper to produce by producing more) doesn't work for the Volt: the batteries have a constant cost and making more only makes them MORE expensive if anything. This is because the resources to make them are limited and increasing demand causes prices to increase.
Therefore they can't overcome the cost penalty by making it up in volume. This move only makes sense for GM if the practice and market establishment of selling now will later be useful for them when making the cars is profitable. There's another explanation: the owners of GM are pushing this for political reasons. Considering the rhetoric about making them make cleaner cars when the bailout occurred, it would be a conspiracy theory to NOT believe that the government had a hand in this.
Then again.... I'm an idiot.....
this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While Simon and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery.
Over-sold cognitive dissonance: the mainstay of journalists writing about science. Then again.... I'm an idiot...
Sadly we scientists are always reinventing the wheel. One lecture in my undergraduate biochemistry class was based entirely on why every assumption in the central dogma was incorrect. Exceptions including RNA changing the expression of DNA, proteins affecting epigenetic changes on DNA, siRNAs and a host of other examples have been long known to science. Scientists keep re-inventing the wheel and journals and editors keep announcing today's latest groundbreaking re-discovery.
Then again.... I'm an idiot.....
Full disclosure: I'm a medical student and researcher and an opponent of a number of forms of IVF stem cell research
I certainly agree that morality is primarily concerned with research driven creation of embryos.
However, myself and a large number of my collages opposed embryonic research. Ignoring valid arguments and charging opponents with being 'hicks' just undercuts your arguments. On the topic of your arguments, certainly some avenues of research would be further if embryonic research was available, but I'm not convinced that we would be better off. For example, the paths of research that produced this discovery in the article are further along precisely because embryonic research has met with ethical concerns.
Then again.... I'm an idiot.......
A good question. The backwards conversion is impossible because the vast majority of blood cells are RBCs (Red Blood Cells or erythrocytes) and these have gotten rid of their nucleus, making them a cellular dead end doomed to destruction in about 120 days.
Also, blood is mostly free water (plasma) and when RBCs are created their progenitor cells divide many times in the production process. Assuming that this process they're using is similar, you're talking about impressive volume multiplication in the conversion from skin to blood.
Then again.... I'm an idiot .....
Great comment. The President's power is supposed to be limited. Even within his own branches he/she has to be a leader and know how to play the game.
The real problem is this: bureaucracies fail to make changes because our current budgetary system allows their budget to only go upward and they know that their jobs are safe despite incompetence. In fact, the building of bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency helps to guarantee their job security. So is the situation hopeless? NO! There are proven methods that have worked in the past.
I was disappointed (as always) that each party didn't consider their best options in presidential primaries. Romney (R) and Richardson (D) had demonstrated that they knew how to shrink state budgets and trim bureaucracy. Yes, such tools exist: hiring freezes, retrograde budgets (go back to 2008 levels etc.), outsourcing to contractors, shifting responsibilities to less bloated departments (shell game), borrowing effective systems straight from other states (helped my state's education system greatly) , and a host of other methods that work. Hopefully we'll be able to trim the really big problems: pensions, entitlements, and bureaucratic inefficiency but this will require a return to the methods that have worked in the past.
then again, I'm an idiot.......
The fire-department in question was a social program, just not administered correctly. They're already spread their coverage area in a response to the backlash. This is an example of what you get from poorly administered socialism, which is the most common type.
Yes, coronary disease is a big problem and yes it's the major killer in the US but it isn't the major killer worldwide, just in developed nations. You'll notice on the first link that cancer is still way up on causes of death in the US and, despite your claims to the contrary, I can assure that now in my second year of medical school that coronary syndromes are a major focus in medical education and research.
The work these scientists did is certainly not the first implementation of this idea but it's quite worth the investment. Stenting is not a miracle cure and likely wont ever be; it's just delaying the inevitable. The only powerful approach to reducing heart related deaths is prevention and education; even then, most deaths due to 'old age' are written up as heart related deaths so they'll keep going up as we get better at fighting the world's real number one killer: simple infections.
Then again, I'm an idiot ......
You're completely right about the sweetness. Glucose is really not very sweet (less than sucrose or fructose) and besides that, it's expensive to isolate and it doesn't solve the real problem: overconsumption. HFCS is very cheap in contrast and you don't have to use as much of it.
If you're going to attack HFCS for making people healthy, the fructose part is not a good reason. However, the inexpensive nature of the product does potentially encourage overconsumption which is well documented as a health problem in the United States
Then again, I'm an idiot.....
The peer review system is great for regulation, standardization and unification. However, all scientists that I've worked with/researched with/spoken with much about this topic admit that the system can be annoyingly flawed by group think and conformity. One bad apple ruins the bunch, right?
The good news? While this part of the scientific community is not immune to problems, the slack is picked up elsewhere: As long as methods, data and results are transparent, reproducible and published we can actually have quality science.
I often speak to people about scientific research and they're shocked that it's not full proof. This is kind of like buying software (perhaps even a Microsoft product) and finding that it's not perfect. Science is done by committee and progresses slowly. "If we know what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research" ~Albert Einstein
Then again, I'm an idiot....
You understand the difference between a mixture and a compound, don't you? And that these compounds can have radically different properties to the elements they're made up from?
I mean, that was something we learned in chemistry class at the age of about 10.
Wow. I very much doubt you had studied saccharide chemistry by 4th/5th grade. The bizarre thing is that you're SO wrong yet SO confident in what you're saying. The body breaks down the sucrose anyway, so your statement that the properties are radically different is, in this case, false. You understand the differene between a mixture and a compound, don't you?
The again, I'm an idiot....
Do my eyes deceive me? Someone talking about GLUT transporters while understanding the chemistry? You've restored my faith.
The big thing to remember is that HFCS has substantially the same content as sucrose, just broken down.
Then again, I'm an idiot......
So, I've studied biochem undergrad and medicine in medical school. Just sayin' this to back my next statement
Everything you said in your comment is completely false except that which concerned the liver. No, syrup is not chemically different from granulated sugar. No, hydrolysis is not limited, in fact, you don't get ANY sucrose absorbed without this process that moves to completion. And also, sucrose is often used in commercial drinks and dissolves just fine without granular texture.
I'm constantly amazed as I read comments here how so many people are either making up 'science' as they go or repeating things that someone else made up. It's amazing.
Then again, I'm an idiot.....
A large majority of your gastric juices are enzymes.
False, you're thinking of pancreatic secretions that come in after the stomach in the duodenum. The stomach does produce some enzymes but mainly acid.
Not all enzymes solve in acidic solutions.
True, but the vast majority do and few are designed to survive such low pH as the stomach produces. Honestly, since we produce sucrase I don't care if some of it survives in the final HFCS product, and I doubt that much does.
Then again, I'm an idiot....
it metabolizes completely differently with differing metabolic effects on you.
This statement is false. Just plain false. You can believe me, get a biochem degree and then agree with me, or just do some research.
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." ~Mark Twain
Then again, I'm an idiot.....
High fructose corn syrup != fructose. HFC doesn't exist in nature, fructose does.
Yeah, that's almost entirely not true. You body does the same reaction when digesting sucrose that is used to make HFCS. It might not exist before your duodenum but as soon as it gets there it turns into the same thing. Naturally. Transfats (you're right) are avoided in nature. Fructose sugars? Common place.
By the way, what's so wonderful about the word 'naturally' that gets people so gaga? Then again, I'm an idiot....
You've said that:
Corn syrup, as it comes out of the plant, does not contain significant amounts of fructose. It is basically glucose syrup.
Yeah, that's just plain false. Sucrose is half fructose, so that's 'significant'.
High fructose corn syrup, by contrast, is corn syrup in which much of the glucose has been enzymatically converted into fructose.
Yeah, also just plain false. The fructose is released from the sucrose, not converted. That would be a redox reaction which is not occurring. In fact, you body does the same reaction when digesting sucrose. You don't know the chemistry. In my biochem classes we would laugh at the people afraid of HFCS.
Then again, I'm an idiot....
Thank you, someone actually referencing scientific understanding in this discussion instead of repeating unfounded concerns! Then again, I'm an idiot...
Also: Kentucky Fried Chicken successfully pushed to be known as just "KFC" because of the stigma surrounding the word "fried."
Yeah, that's not true. They were being forced to change their name or pay up. People go to KFC to eat fried chicken and for those people (me included every other month or so) the wording likely doesn't make that big a difference. Then again, I'm an idiot....
Hate on Apple for having the feature while Amazon can't/doesn't or hate on litigious media groups for selective lawsuits?
Two very touchy topics in the /. world!
Me? Oh, I don't discriminate.... I hate everyone! Then again... I'm an idiot ....
He wasn't saying that they formed spores, RTFC. He was saying, rightfully so, that this microbe might not be useful if it, LIKE spore forming bacteria, 'shrivel[s] up and go[es] into stasis'.
The article mentions that the formation between cells might be what allows survival. This survival method, much like the hibernation-like spore stage, probably means that the organism can't do much of anything. This is an important limitation that fuzzy was talking about.