As a molecular biologist I have to ask: how would that matter? The MDs that have patients don't really need to be thinking about ATPases or the Michaelis–Menten equation. The MDs that are taking basic research and putting it into the field seem to be getting their PhDs which can't be easily faked. And the just regular PhDs are in theory doing the really basic research that involves knowledge of mobio, we don't go to med school or see patients.
The only reason I can see for wanting a premed student to take molecular biology is to add another level of selection to deter the weakest students from becoming doctors.
Interestingly, I've heard that the major that scores the highest on average on the MCAT is actually not premed, biology, or chemistry. Philosophy majors do the best on the MCAT. Granted, there's a lot of self-selection going on there, they probably make up at most 1% of the MCAT takers, and the MCAT is not necessarily an indicator of who will be a good doctor.
China being afraid of a unified Korea, is like the US being afraid of a unified Dutch Antillies.
Well, we don't want them to unify the Caribbean tourism cartel. If they gain control, they'll lower prices, then no one is going to want to go to Hawaii. We might lose our domestic competitive edge on drinks with umbrellas in them.
I'm not seeing the proof though: if that hypothesis was correct, then one would expect that some of the GOP candidates would attempt to gain some votes from the Ron Paul crowd by parroting some of his positions. He's done pretty well, he has enough supporters to really tip the scales.
Instead, they seem to have all decided to completely ignore the issues his supporters hold dear and go after the bible-thumper vote. Newt, Santorum, Romney, or anyone else, do you support small governments, states rights, legalizing marijuana, or ending the patriot act? Well no, but I in favor of the government telling people they can't have abortions or have gay marriage. That's close enough, right?
In my experience, both parties lose touch and experience creeping corruption when in power.
Why did parties come into the equation? Democrats and republicans don't have exclusive rights on being greedy or corrupt. Most corrupt politicians are one of the two, but that's a sampling error. There are, what, two independent congresspeople this year out of about 530?
I think it's a common mistake to think it has anything to do with democrat or republican. Abolish the parties, and you'll still get corruption, you will have just wasted a lot of time.
We shouldn't trust pharmaceuticals, that's for sure. Between the questionably ethical testing in 3rd world countries, the highway robbery, the lobbying to the medical industry to push fairly worthless products, and, oh yeah, their old-fashioned bribery (I mean lobbying) of elected officials to keep their racket going, they are evil. I got laid off from Pfizer two days after Christmas years ago, so I'm not on their side.
Still, I have to point out that basic biological research is a different beast from true medical research. Clinical trials in people are generally very expensive compared to basic research. They take much longer too. Mass producing drugs is not cheap to begin with, and the standards have to be very high for pharmecuticals. 70% purity of a drug you're going to inject into rats to test the effect for basic research like this is acceptable often, but that's hideously impure for something you're going to be putting into people.
The biggest disadvantage pharmecuticals have is liability. No one sues you if one of your lab rats or plates of cells die, this is not the case if someone taking your medicine dies. You need to hire an army of lawyers.
They do have huge costs, and the risks are much higher. Again, they should be scrutinized, but I don't think it's fair to imply that just because a university lab has a result on Alzheimers means that drugs should be cheap.
I've never heard of anything to suggest that Alzheimers can be "caught." A seminar I saw a few years ago on tau suggested that in order to form these aggregates of tau, you need to have a mutated form of it: normal tau does not start clumping up and killing brain cells (not entirely sure I'm remembering that correctly). It's only transmissible between cells which have the same mutant form of the protein. I don't know, maybe it's possible that material from alzheimers patients could make the disease appear sooner in people with the mutant form who would probably develop symptoms later.
The prion protein that is at the heart of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, on the other hand, that appears to be the normal protein misfolding. The diseased proteins seem to convince normal proteins to misfold.
So, as I understand it, the hypothesis is that if you were to inject material from an alzheimer's patient's brain into your brain, for example, the alzheimer's Tau would not cause your tau to start clumping up and would not cause the disease. If you injected brain material from someone suffering from spongiform encephalitis though, the proteins in your brain WOULD be coaxed to start clumping up, causing the disease.
And to apply your suggestion to the point I was trying to make, kicking out students who are disruptive is fine, but should be targeted at the disruptive ones. Banning ALL computers, the distracting ones AND the ones that aren't being used disruptively, that's not good.
This is precious, why have a Constitution if you can 'interpret' it at all, so in reality nothing that government wants to do can be prevented?
Some interpretation is unavoidable, so long as you aren't changing the constitution at all times, and so long as the constitution is of finite length. Problems arise not because you have to interpret the constitution, problems arise when the constitution is interpreted in such a way as to fit what a politician wants to do (as opposed to what a politician tries to do is shaped by what a reasonable interpretation of the constitution would allow.)
Kind of like how the take home message of each religion sounds great on paper. Love thy neighbor? Well, that's just fine. It's when you interpret and distort those well founded principles that you get religious fanatics justifying all manner of atrocities with their religion. Killing prostitutes? Uh, not quite sure how you got that from the ten commandments, or judge not lest ye be judged.
Well then gag them too while you're at it. I'm TAing for a large freshman class right now. The number of students who think it's appropriate to carry on extended conversations during lecture, at almost normal volume, is absurd. Computers may cast a cone of distraction behind if they're too bright, but conversations carry in all directions and actually interfere with the message, not just your attention.
I've started bringing my laptop into meetings. I can take notes, read them, and google background on any concepts I need. A few people look at me strange.
When I've asked the leaders of the meeting if it's alright in advance, they've occasionally said something like "Yes, but don't be checking facebook." Then in the meeting, other people fall asleep. Somehow THAT'S okay, but me checking facebook and remaining conscious would not.
Some people just don't make the realization that if you're throwing a ton of text up on a projector and doing so because you can't write that fast or say it that fast, that's also way too fast for anyone to catch any of it. I'm guessing your professor was afterward lamenting that he didn't get through all he wanted to cover? Also, these days the students actually want a powerpoint. My thesis adviser did an experiment in her class. The students reported that they liked the powerpoint lectures better, but she also noticed that fewer students fell asleep during the chalk talk than the power point. Her sense was that the students at this point were more familiar with powerpoint and liked it better because of that only, not because they actually learned more.
I'm wondering if and when professors will start emulating Salman Khan, of the Khan Academy. Spend about $200 on some type of tablet input device, hook that up to your computer, and you can have the best of both worlds. You can write stuff out on the projector, you can include pictures if need be. Khan is a brilliant lecturer naturally it seems, but the setup he uses could improve a lot of professors as well. I certainly plan on using one in a few years when I have to start lecturing.
The closest I've seen in person is some lecturers who use powerpoint, but then have a switch to a camera over a sheet of paper that they write on.
I think it's -possible- that garage molecular biology research is just around the corner. I wasn't around for the era of kids in their garages with a computer leading to million dollar startups, but it seems to me like it's going to happen with DNA.
Affordable PCR machines, or DIY PCR machines are starting to appear, fully sequenced genomes are of course available freely online. Anyone with half a brain can design primers and amplify DNA, anyone with a little patience can make any construct they want.
At the same time, DNA constructs are commercially available, and it's not too hard to see that the prices are inflated. The FUCCI cell cycle indicator is pretty cool, with a decent microscope, you can watch cell cycles. FUCCI is basically genes found in nature stitched together, but to buy the constructs, you'd need to shell out nearly a thousand dollars (maybe the price has come down, it's been a while since I looked into it.)
This seems like a pretty similar situation to music in the napster area: the path of least resistance to acquiring it is ignoring any copyright protections on this stuff. It's not too terribly complicated to make FUCCI yourself using PCR and some enzymes. I'm aware that copyright law and DNA hasn't been completely settled yet, but it's worth thinking about now in my opinion.
I think there's a real danger that companies who hold copyrights on DNA are going to try to enforce them by taking draconian measures. Something like DRM might be invented for DNA sequences I suppose, but I doubt that would even work as well as DRM on music. Instead what I think they'd do is try to kill off the home biology research field before it starts. And I think they'd point to stuff like this to justify it. "We can't have people building their own PCR machines: THEY'LL MAKE SUPERFLU! So please pass the protect life act, which stipulates that no company shall sell PCR primers for copyrighted DNA sequences."
It's possible I'm buying trouble, and am just overly cynical about corporations using laws to enrich themselves by limiting progress. Still, I'd hate to see biological research be stifled any further by copyright law.
Anyone see the massive irony in this being posted on the internet, run by computers, powered by electricity, declaring that science is "failing us?"
First example in the story: a drug that doctors thought was going to work... didn't... The scientists mixed up what was causing what.
They had a hypothesis and tested it. We can say that the hypothesis was wrong because of what? That's right, because of science.
To imply that science is failing, or we need to reconceptualize "causality," simply because it's difficult... that's idiotic.
Finally, this article falls into a common mistake with science writing: confusing clinical trials with ALL SCIENCE RESEARCH. I do basic biological research. Don't lump me in with clinical researchers, critique their methods, and then say that all science research is messed up.
My thinking was "While these musicians are annoying you, maybe shorten the copyright on them so their grandchildren won't be profiting off of them. Tit for tat."
The suggestion, at least from the blurb, is that this may have been important to the origins of life. And how does it not have much to do with realistic cell membranes? You have a phospholipid bilayer with these things. That's the same thing as cell membranes basically, throw in some proteins (researchers have been adding proteins to artificial bilayers for decades) and you can get them to do exactly the same things that cell membranes do.
It's a bit like saying "This brick wall you've just made out of bricks and mortar is interesting, but it doesn't have a lot to do with realistic brick and mortar walls on houses."
While no researchers will come out and say it, yeah, that's the idea. Building a sexbot is the motivation behind approximately 70% of the RO1 grants from the NIH.
Oh wait, I think I misinterpreted your post. Forget what I just said.
We go through this every election cycle. Stop using music. Just shuffle off the stage. Maybe when you're awkwardly doing so, think about changing music copyright laws if you get elected?
I actually see a higher percentage of what I'd call trolling on slashdot than I do on reddit. Whether it's because reddit by default ranks comments by score and the trolls get buried, or whether it's that slashdotters are more fertile ground for trolling (Someone unfairly criticizing my preferred OS? TO THE BATTLE STATIONS!!!) I don't know.
But I agree with you outside of that. Don't click the links you're not interested in it's really that simple.
The outcome is all the matters and game developers are trying to charge the same price for a single use, non-transferable license as they used to charge for transferable media.
I have a solution: we give them a single-use, non-transferable license to the money we use to buy the game. Pirate the game, mail this guy a voided check. Seems fair to me.
So he's not just some random executive, he's a gamer at heart.
"You didn't buy it, you LICENSED it: the difference is that you can't sell the thing you gave me money for." The soulless execs started using that line a long time ago, and it wasn't convincing. But they kept repeating it, and eventually consumers started swallowing it. The idea that buying a game used is ethically just one step up from piracy is spreading. So I wonder if this Schilling guy is just being greedy or actually feels like he's being wronged here?
Slashdot Mirror
As a molecular biologist I have to ask: how would that matter? The MDs that have patients don't really need to be thinking about ATPases or the Michaelis–Menten equation. The MDs that are taking basic research and putting it into the field seem to be getting their PhDs which can't be easily faked. And the just regular PhDs are in theory doing the really basic research that involves knowledge of mobio, we don't go to med school or see patients.
The only reason I can see for wanting a premed student to take molecular biology is to add another level of selection to deter the weakest students from becoming doctors.
Interestingly, I've heard that the major that scores the highest on average on the MCAT is actually not premed, biology, or chemistry. Philosophy majors do the best on the MCAT. Granted, there's a lot of self-selection going on there, they probably make up at most 1% of the MCAT takers, and the MCAT is not necessarily an indicator of who will be a good doctor.
the late Kim Jong himself put it together using only a paper clip, a mashed potato and a bucket of play-doh
That's misleading. The play-doh was just because he got bored while making the bomb.
China being afraid of a unified Korea, is like the US being afraid of a unified Dutch Antillies.
Well, we don't want them to unify the Caribbean tourism cartel. If they gain control, they'll lower prices, then no one is going to want to go to Hawaii. We might lose our domestic competitive edge on drinks with umbrellas in them.
I'm not seeing the proof though: if that hypothesis was correct, then one would expect that some of the GOP candidates would attempt to gain some votes from the Ron Paul crowd by parroting some of his positions. He's done pretty well, he has enough supporters to really tip the scales.
Instead, they seem to have all decided to completely ignore the issues his supporters hold dear and go after the bible-thumper vote. Newt, Santorum, Romney, or anyone else, do you support small governments, states rights, legalizing marijuana, or ending the patriot act? Well no, but I in favor of the government telling people they can't have abortions or have gay marriage. That's close enough, right?
In my experience, both parties lose touch and experience creeping corruption when in power.
Why did parties come into the equation? Democrats and republicans don't have exclusive rights on being greedy or corrupt. Most corrupt politicians are one of the two, but that's a sampling error. There are, what, two independent congresspeople this year out of about 530?
I think it's a common mistake to think it has anything to do with democrat or republican. Abolish the parties, and you'll still get corruption, you will have just wasted a lot of time.
We shouldn't trust pharmaceuticals, that's for sure. Between the questionably ethical testing in 3rd world countries, the highway robbery, the lobbying to the medical industry to push fairly worthless products, and, oh yeah, their old-fashioned bribery (I mean lobbying) of elected officials to keep their racket going, they are evil. I got laid off from Pfizer two days after Christmas years ago, so I'm not on their side.
Still, I have to point out that basic biological research is a different beast from true medical research. Clinical trials in people are generally very expensive compared to basic research. They take much longer too. Mass producing drugs is not cheap to begin with, and the standards have to be very high for pharmecuticals. 70% purity of a drug you're going to inject into rats to test the effect for basic research like this is acceptable often, but that's hideously impure for something you're going to be putting into people.
The biggest disadvantage pharmecuticals have is liability. No one sues you if one of your lab rats or plates of cells die, this is not the case if someone taking your medicine dies. You need to hire an army of lawyers.
They do have huge costs, and the risks are much higher. Again, they should be scrutinized, but I don't think it's fair to imply that just because a university lab has a result on Alzheimers means that drugs should be cheap.
I've never heard of anything to suggest that Alzheimers can be "caught." A seminar I saw a few years ago on tau suggested that in order to form these aggregates of tau, you need to have a mutated form of it: normal tau does not start clumping up and killing brain cells (not entirely sure I'm remembering that correctly). It's only transmissible between cells which have the same mutant form of the protein. I don't know, maybe it's possible that material from alzheimers patients could make the disease appear sooner in people with the mutant form who would probably develop symptoms later.
The prion protein that is at the heart of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, on the other hand, that appears to be the normal protein misfolding. The diseased proteins seem to convince normal proteins to misfold.
So, as I understand it, the hypothesis is that if you were to inject material from an alzheimer's patient's brain into your brain, for example, the alzheimer's Tau would not cause your tau to start clumping up and would not cause the disease. If you injected brain material from someone suffering from spongiform encephalitis though, the proteins in your brain WOULD be coaxed to start clumping up, causing the disease.
Let's not test those hypotheses though...
And to apply your suggestion to the point I was trying to make, kicking out students who are disruptive is fine, but should be targeted at the disruptive ones. Banning ALL computers, the distracting ones AND the ones that aren't being used disruptively, that's not good.
Who has time to judge each story from each source independently though? Judging the source saves time if the source is usually wrong.
This is precious, why have a Constitution if you can 'interpret' it at all, so in reality nothing that government wants to do can be prevented?
Some interpretation is unavoidable, so long as you aren't changing the constitution at all times, and so long as the constitution is of finite length. Problems arise not because you have to interpret the constitution, problems arise when the constitution is interpreted in such a way as to fit what a politician wants to do (as opposed to what a politician tries to do is shaped by what a reasonable interpretation of the constitution would allow.)
Kind of like how the take home message of each religion sounds great on paper. Love thy neighbor? Well, that's just fine. It's when you interpret and distort those well founded principles that you get religious fanatics justifying all manner of atrocities with their religion. Killing prostitutes? Uh, not quite sure how you got that from the ten commandments, or judge not lest ye be judged.
Well then gag them too while you're at it. I'm TAing for a large freshman class right now. The number of students who think it's appropriate to carry on extended conversations during lecture, at almost normal volume, is absurd. Computers may cast a cone of distraction behind if they're too bright, but conversations carry in all directions and actually interfere with the message, not just your attention.
I've started bringing my laptop into meetings. I can take notes, read them, and google background on any concepts I need. A few people look at me strange.
When I've asked the leaders of the meeting if it's alright in advance, they've occasionally said something like "Yes, but don't be checking facebook." Then in the meeting, other people fall asleep. Somehow THAT'S okay, but me checking facebook and remaining conscious would not.
Some people just don't make the realization that if you're throwing a ton of text up on a projector and doing so because you can't write that fast or say it that fast, that's also way too fast for anyone to catch any of it. I'm guessing your professor was afterward lamenting that he didn't get through all he wanted to cover? Also, these days the students actually want a powerpoint. My thesis adviser did an experiment in her class. The students reported that they liked the powerpoint lectures better, but she also noticed that fewer students fell asleep during the chalk talk than the power point. Her sense was that the students at this point were more familiar with powerpoint and liked it better because of that only, not because they actually learned more.
I'm wondering if and when professors will start emulating Salman Khan, of the Khan Academy. Spend about $200 on some type of tablet input device, hook that up to your computer, and you can have the best of both worlds. You can write stuff out on the projector, you can include pictures if need be. Khan is a brilliant lecturer naturally it seems, but the setup he uses could improve a lot of professors as well. I certainly plan on using one in a few years when I have to start lecturing.
The closest I've seen in person is some lecturers who use powerpoint, but then have a switch to a camera over a sheet of paper that they write on.
I think it's -possible- that garage molecular biology research is just around the corner. I wasn't around for the era of kids in their garages with a computer leading to million dollar startups, but it seems to me like it's going to happen with DNA.
Affordable PCR machines, or DIY PCR machines are starting to appear, fully sequenced genomes are of course available freely online. Anyone with half a brain can design primers and amplify DNA, anyone with a little patience can make any construct they want.
At the same time, DNA constructs are commercially available, and it's not too hard to see that the prices are inflated. The FUCCI cell cycle indicator is pretty cool, with a decent microscope, you can watch cell cycles. FUCCI is basically genes found in nature stitched together, but to buy the constructs, you'd need to shell out nearly a thousand dollars (maybe the price has come down, it's been a while since I looked into it.)
This seems like a pretty similar situation to music in the napster area: the path of least resistance to acquiring it is ignoring any copyright protections on this stuff. It's not too terribly complicated to make FUCCI yourself using PCR and some enzymes. I'm aware that copyright law and DNA hasn't been completely settled yet, but it's worth thinking about now in my opinion.
I think there's a real danger that companies who hold copyrights on DNA are going to try to enforce them by taking draconian measures. Something like DRM might be invented for DNA sequences I suppose, but I doubt that would even work as well as DRM on music. Instead what I think they'd do is try to kill off the home biology research field before it starts. And I think they'd point to stuff like this to justify it. "We can't have people building their own PCR machines: THEY'LL MAKE SUPERFLU! So please pass the protect life act, which stipulates that no company shall sell PCR primers for copyrighted DNA sequences."
It's possible I'm buying trouble, and am just overly cynical about corporations using laws to enrich themselves by limiting progress. Still, I'd hate to see biological research be stifled any further by copyright law.
You say that, and yet I believe we were promised flying cars. I WANT MY FLYING CAR GODDAMMIT! Clear failure of science there.
That article could have been a whole lot shorter come to think of it.
Anyone see the massive irony in this being posted on the internet, run by computers, powered by electricity, declaring that science is "failing us?"
First example in the story: a drug that doctors thought was going to work... didn't... The scientists mixed up what was causing what.
They had a hypothesis and tested it. We can say that the hypothesis was wrong because of what? That's right, because of science.
To imply that science is failing, or we need to reconceptualize "causality," simply because it's difficult... that's idiotic.
Finally, this article falls into a common mistake with science writing: confusing clinical trials with ALL SCIENCE RESEARCH. I do basic biological research. Don't lump me in with clinical researchers, critique their methods, and then say that all science research is messed up.
Although in Newt's case, "holes" should be added to that quote.
My thinking was "While these musicians are annoying you, maybe shorten the copyright on them so their grandchildren won't be profiting off of them. Tit for tat."
The suggestion, at least from the blurb, is that this may have been important to the origins of life. And how does it not have much to do with realistic cell membranes? You have a phospholipid bilayer with these things. That's the same thing as cell membranes basically, throw in some proteins (researchers have been adding proteins to artificial bilayers for decades) and you can get them to do exactly the same things that cell membranes do.
It's a bit like saying "This brick wall you've just made out of bricks and mortar is interesting, but it doesn't have a lot to do with realistic brick and mortar walls on houses."
Who you tryin to get crazy with, doctor? Don't you know I'm loco?
Fuck artificial life forms
While no researchers will come out and say it, yeah, that's the idea. Building a sexbot is the motivation behind approximately 70% of the RO1 grants from the NIH.
Oh wait, I think I misinterpreted your post. Forget what I just said.
We go through this every election cycle. Stop using music. Just shuffle off the stage. Maybe when you're awkwardly doing so, think about changing music copyright laws if you get elected?
I actually see a higher percentage of what I'd call trolling on slashdot than I do on reddit. Whether it's because reddit by default ranks comments by score and the trolls get buried, or whether it's that slashdotters are more fertile ground for trolling (Someone unfairly criticizing my preferred OS? TO THE BATTLE STATIONS!!!) I don't know.
But I agree with you outside of that. Don't click the links you're not interested in it's really that simple.
The outcome is all the matters and game developers are trying to charge the same price for a single use, non-transferable license as they used to charge for transferable media.
I have a solution: we give them a single-use, non-transferable license to the money we use to buy the game. Pirate the game, mail this guy a voided check. Seems fair to me.
So he's not just some random executive, he's a gamer at heart.
"You didn't buy it, you LICENSED it: the difference is that you can't sell the thing you gave me money for." The soulless execs started using that line a long time ago, and it wasn't convincing. But they kept repeating it, and eventually consumers started swallowing it. The idea that buying a game used is ethically just one step up from piracy is spreading. So I wonder if this Schilling guy is just being greedy or actually feels like he's being wronged here?