Actually, for the last few years Will Smith has been one of my favourite actors
Especially for the type of roles he's good at. Acting classes for Will Smith... for INDEPENDENCE DAY 2 OR 3? What kind of nonsense is that? Did GP not actually see ID1? It doesn't require acting, it requires big explosions and cheesy one liners. If you go into it expecting an oscar worthy performance, then there is something really wrong with your expectations or the marketing for the movie. This must be the type of guy who watches a porn and gets mad because the actresses break character briefly.
Exercise some self-discipline and keep your pecker in your pocket. No worries about broken or slipped condoms, or being overcome by the moment and not using one.
I'm confused. If one is overcome by the moment and not using a condom, doesn't that imply that self-discipline, and keeping it in a pocket has failed at least once? Your advice seems a little like "Don't be flammable, so that way you won't catch on fire and burn to death."
STDs are a "feature not a bug" situation, a form population control.
Diseases in general are a check on population. Not a "feature" though, at least in an evolutionary sense. Unless your population grows so big, it chokes it's own resources off and the whole population goes extinct, there's not much evolutionary advantage to limiting your numbers, at least not to the individual organism.
On a cellular basis, something like population control has evolved, but that's because when one cell overpopulates (cancer) that dooms all the cells, your melanoma isn't going to hop ship and thrive if it kills you. With individual organisms in a population, there's not much of an advantage: you have fewer kids, your neighbor still has 40, if the whole town starves, they're more likely to survive and pass on their selfish genes, and in good times they still have the advantage. With the disease, if you have 400 animal lines who were susceptible to the disease when their population got too high, and one line that was resistant to the disease, selfish, the disease would itself select for resistance, and within one or two disease wipes (depending on how effective the disease was) the whole population would be resistant.
Humans actually in many ways represent a foolish dead end direction in terms of evolution. We have maybe 4 kids on average? That's not much when compared to even other vertebrates, let alone invertebrates, who vastly outnumber us and have far more diversity, and in terms of evolutionary fitness, the whole multicellular thing was a bad idea. It would only take one measly nuclear apocalypse to wipe us humans out. Cockroaches would come back in a few years, and bacterial numbers would probably barely blip. So no, there's no reason to evolve to limit your own numbers via disease.
Maybe you were talking more philosophically and less evolutionarily...
What's next? 'Lord British holds earth to ransom from his moon fortress!
I don't know, but if I see this guy, I'll be tempted to start an interorbital* war by punching the moon's ambasador. Not that I bear any ill will to the guy, just want to get into the history books.
*I suppose I should learn what type of war I'll be starting, and this is probably a good place to find that out. What would that be called? I mean, besides assault. Intrasolar system war? Intertidal orbit war?
It would be entirely possible to target the RNA sequence to only bind to malignant cells and ignore normal ones.
Yeah but chemotherapy and radiotherapy work the same way. The problem is that the characteristic of cancerous cells they bind to is the fact that they grow fast.
No they don't work the same way. Radiotherapy, and most current gen chemotheraputics, work against all dividing cells. It sounds like these nanoparticles use a specific protein (NOT rna) to bind to the cancer cell, then once inside they cause RNAi (this is where the RNA comes in) to knock down a specific gene transcript.
I obviously don't know the specifics, but if you make a nanoparticle that binds to and is taken up by cells expressing a specific growth factor, that's -not- going to be taken up by all cells. There are a lot of growth factors, and often in cancers, growth factor receptors are expressed far more than they normally are. So the targets are found only on some cell types, and there are hundreds more on the cancer cells than the healthy cells.
Furthermore, you could target individual genes to be knocked down by the RNAi effect, potentially genes that aren't even expressed by the normal cells which are expressing the receptor you're targeting. I'd guess for maximal efficiency, you'd be targeting housekeeping genes that all cells needed, but in principle you could make it a gene that cancer specifically needed.
Both levels of specificity, even if they're not used, are a far cry from "damage every dividing cell and hope you kill the cancer before you kill the dividing tissues the patient needs to survive." And they don't actually use RNA to bind to the cell, they use protein to target the cell and RNA once inside the cell to target the specific gene.... by the way, I am not a molecular cancer biologist.
When animal testing is done in a rational and ethical manner few would oppose it.
Yes, there are -more- people who oppose it when it's unnecessary or cruel, but there are definitely people, such as PeTA, who oppose it on principle, even when it's lifesaving and humane.
"To those people who say, `My father is alive because of animal experimentation,' I say `Yeah, well, good for you. This dog died so your father could live.' Sorry, but I am just not behind that kind of trade off." -Bill Maher, PeTA celebrity spokesman"
I mean, I'm not sure how many people are part of this "anti-nuclear group." Maybe there are a lot more than PeTA, or maybe they're more effective at effecting change than PeTA. Either way, I don't think the mere existence of an "anti-nuclear group" precludes nuclear power from gaining ground.
The anti-nuclear group will always come up with something to deter nuclear plants from taking off.
Sure, but there are detractors for almost all ideas, good and bad. There are people who hate animal testing. We're still going to continue making sure medicines are safe though. Animal testing is one of the only real ways to do that, like it or not. Furthermore, good ideas don't implement themselves even when there's not vague misgivings about them, as there is with nuclear power. Most people don't know why chernobyl happened, they think it's inherent to nuclear power. That could be changed, it would just require investing in an awareness campaign. I guess that's more investment than anyone is willing to do.
To sum up, I see public ignorance, not an active anti-nuclear group, preventing nuclear power from taking off.
I wonder if this technique could be used for other diseases, e.g. arthritis?
It could be useful for other diseases in which a gene is known to be expressed that you don't want to be expressed. Whether there are known genes which are expressed with arthritis that cause the symptoms, I don't know. Whether this technique will be effective at delivering the RNAi to other cells using other receptors, I don't know, and I'm not sure anyone knows. I gather that they tried this first, they had to have tested this in mice first, I'd expect there would be data on knocking down genes in non-cancerous tissues.
Shorter answer: maybe, but using this to deliver the treatment to your knuckle cells to treat arthritis might not work, and for all I know, the RNAi treatment itself might not be viable for treating arthritis.
Now, however, the second you become an adult in this country you have to pony up money to the government or insurance company, or else you will be fined.
You don't need to buy health insurance, just prove to me that you will never get sick or seek health care that you won't be able to pay for out of pocket, passing the costs onto the rest of us, and you can opt right out of health insurance.
The cheapest route sounds like to get fired from your job, go on welfare to get your food and housing paid for, then get free health care. Who needs to work? That was the plan wasn't it?
That must be why no one works in countries where they have national health care./sarcasm
Hell, Hawaii has universal health care, beautiful weather, and approximately a billion things any sane person would rather do than work. I'd submit to you furthermore that I and many people would prefer to live in a shack in Hawaii than in a mansion in, well, most places. So if your hypothesis is correct, we'd expect Hawaii unemployment to be extremely high, as people don't have any motivation to work if they get free health care.
My hypothesis is that very few people work -only- because their health insurance or food depends on it, most people work their jobs in the hope that they'll be able to thrive. The american dream is not to just live on a handout.
I can see how it would be convinient to believe that people are basically lazy and will stop working if you give them any help. It gives you a sense of superiority some people like, and is a good reason you shouldn't have to pay any taxes. I just don't see the evidence to support that position though.
GP isn't completely wrong though. Tritiated thymidine was commonly used to label cells which were actively taking up DNA and were therefore proliferating. BrdU is more commonly used today. Both are somewhat more convenient than utilizing nuclear bomb tests.
I find the article very interesting given the history of adult neurogenesis. Pasko Rakic, who communicated the paper, was initially very skeptical of those results:
At the time, the new technique of labelling a cell with thymidine to determine the birth date of neurons was used in newborns, since adult animals were not thought to create new neurons. But Altman decided to try the technique with adults. He published several papers in the most reputable scientific journals, claiming that new neurons are formed in the brains of adult rats, cats, and guinea pigs–a discovery that Nottebohm later made with canaries. Because the techniques Altman used were primitive, however, they were open to reasonable doubt. It was a classic example of a discovery made ahead of its time. At first, Altman was ignored, then he was ridiculed, and finally, after failing to receive tenure at M.I.T., he moved to Purdue. With no recognition, he was quickly forgotten. The field almost dried up. A decade later, Michael Kaplan, a researcher at Boston University and later at the University of New Mexico, used an electron microscope to supply more compelling evidence that several parts of the adult brain, including the cortex, also produced neurons. He, too, met resistance from researchers who did not find his work convincing. ("Those may look like neurons in New Mexico,'' Kaplan remembers Rakic saying at the time. "But they don't in New Haven.") Kaplan had published his findings in important journals and even suggested a novel way to test the phenomenon in humans, but he, too, was ignored, and he left the field.
Rakic has admitted he was wrong, and I think his criticisms weren't unfounded. The immunohistochemistry demonstrating they are real neurons, for one thing, adresses some of the major concerns he had with the previous studies. Still, it's interesting: the "novel way" to test it in humans was look at brain sections of people who had been treated for cancer with BrdU, proposed decades ago, at the time it was considered too difficult. The study you cited does that and also uses nuclear tests to further illustrate the point.
there'll come a day when you won't be able to look up man pages on the internet without a web browser with javascript and java enabled.
Meh. I'm only interested in the WOman pages. Not saying it's wrong though. I mean, I don't see the attraction, especially to guys on 4chan or slashdot, but I guess you have a type...
Sounds like the filler episodes in anime, when they've already make all the current manga into anime, but want to make more anime something anyway. And we all know how great those are.
For those of you not familiar with anime, that last part was sarcasm. Filler episodes are utterly craptastic. In that case, because the story continues on as if nothing significant happened in the time the filler is showing, any plot or character development has to be disposable. Nothing happens.
Same thing here. What could happen in the sequel to the hobbit? Spoiler: none of the characters that are in lord of the rings will die in the prequel, wheras any characters they introduce will die before the events in lord of the rings or will have to come up with some reason they're insignificant for lord of the rings.
Though now that I think a little more, a spam attack on your eyeballs could be troubling...
Yes, you'd have to [shivers] take off your contacts!
I kid, yes it would be troubling in situations like driving, doing surgery, or doing surgery while driving, all of which could be helped by these things conceivably.
He should create an inventory of the parts of the rover and rent out custody of individual pieces on monthly subscription to those who want bragging rights to "having" something on the moon.
Slashdot Mirror
WTF? If you wear a condom you can't reproduce!
But would you be able to feel the whoosh?
(Yes, I'm aware, and was mocking GP for suggesting that having unprotected sex could qualify one for the darwin awards
Actually, for the last few years Will Smith has been one of my favourite actors
Especially for the type of roles he's good at. Acting classes for Will Smith... for INDEPENDENCE DAY 2 OR 3? What kind of nonsense is that? Did GP not actually see ID1? It doesn't require acting, it requires big explosions and cheesy one liners. If you go into it expecting an oscar worthy performance, then there is something really wrong with your expectations or the marketing for the movie. This must be the type of guy who watches a porn and gets mad because the actresses break character briefly.
Exercise some self-discipline and keep your pecker in your pocket. No worries about broken or slipped condoms, or being overcome by the moment and not using one.
I'm confused. If one is overcome by the moment and not using a condom, doesn't that imply that self-discipline, and keeping it in a pocket has failed at least once? Your advice seems a little like "Don't be flammable, so that way you won't catch on fire and burn to death."
STDs are a "feature not a bug" situation, a form population control.
Diseases in general are a check on population. Not a "feature" though, at least in an evolutionary sense. Unless your population grows so big, it chokes it's own resources off and the whole population goes extinct, there's not much evolutionary advantage to limiting your numbers, at least not to the individual organism.
On a cellular basis, something like population control has evolved, but that's because when one cell overpopulates (cancer) that dooms all the cells, your melanoma isn't going to hop ship and thrive if it kills you. With individual organisms in a population, there's not much of an advantage: you have fewer kids, your neighbor still has 40, if the whole town starves, they're more likely to survive and pass on their selfish genes, and in good times they still have the advantage. With the disease, if you have 400 animal lines who were susceptible to the disease when their population got too high, and one line that was resistant to the disease, selfish, the disease would itself select for resistance, and within one or two disease wipes (depending on how effective the disease was) the whole population would be resistant.
Humans actually in many ways represent a foolish dead end direction in terms of evolution. We have maybe 4 kids on average? That's not much when compared to even other vertebrates, let alone invertebrates, who vastly outnumber us and have far more diversity, and in terms of evolutionary fitness, the whole multicellular thing was a bad idea. It would only take one measly nuclear apocalypse to wipe us humans out. Cockroaches would come back in a few years, and bacterial numbers would probably barely blip. So no, there's no reason to evolve to limit your own numbers via disease.
Maybe you were talking more philosophically and less evolutionarily...
On the one hand, if you're playing around without wearing a condom, then you're a Darwin Award.
You heard it here first on slashdot, folks: a claim that unprotected sex will lead to natural selection AGAINST you for that behavior.
I have to agree that if we all don't use condoms, that will definitely cause the extinction of the human race.
What's next? 'Lord British holds earth to ransom from his moon fortress!
I don't know, but if I see this guy, I'll be tempted to start an interorbital* war by punching the moon's ambasador. Not that I bear any ill will to the guy, just want to get into the history books.
*I suppose I should learn what type of war I'll be starting, and this is probably a good place to find that out. What would that be called? I mean, besides assault. Intrasolar system war? Intertidal orbit war?
It would be entirely possible to target the RNA sequence to only bind to malignant cells and ignore normal ones.
Yeah but chemotherapy and radiotherapy work the same way. The problem is that the characteristic of cancerous cells they bind to is the fact that they grow fast.
No they don't work the same way. Radiotherapy, and most current gen chemotheraputics, work against all dividing cells. It sounds like these nanoparticles use a specific protein (NOT rna) to bind to the cancer cell, then once inside they cause RNAi (this is where the RNA comes in) to knock down a specific gene transcript.
I obviously don't know the specifics, but if you make a nanoparticle that binds to and is taken up by cells expressing a specific growth factor, that's -not- going to be taken up by all cells. There are a lot of growth factors, and often in cancers, growth factor receptors are expressed far more than they normally are. So the targets are found only on some cell types, and there are hundreds more on the cancer cells than the healthy cells.
Furthermore, you could target individual genes to be knocked down by the RNAi effect, potentially genes that aren't even expressed by the normal cells which are expressing the receptor you're targeting. I'd guess for maximal efficiency, you'd be targeting housekeeping genes that all cells needed, but in principle you could make it a gene that cancer specifically needed.
Both levels of specificity, even if they're not used, are a far cry from "damage every dividing cell and hope you kill the cancer before you kill the dividing tissues the patient needs to survive." And they don't actually use RNA to bind to the cell, they use protein to target the cell and RNA once inside the cell to target the specific gene. ... by the way, I am not a molecular cancer biologist.
I was talking about the buying of our debt.
Threaten anyone and every one to fall in line like the tyrants citizen citizens and encroach on others sovereignty.
Sounds an awful lot like you're talking about China there except for the last gasp and dying empire parts.
Imperialist America strikes again!
Aw, someone's mad because -their- empire's evil plans aren't making it onto slashdot...
When animal testing is done in a rational and ethical manner few would oppose it.
Yes, there are -more- people who oppose it when it's unnecessary or cruel, but there are definitely people, such as PeTA, who oppose it on principle, even when it's lifesaving and humane.
"To those people who say, `My father is alive because of animal experimentation,' I say `Yeah, well, good for you. This dog died so your father could live.' Sorry, but I am just not behind that kind of trade off." -Bill Maher, PeTA celebrity spokesman"
I mean, I'm not sure how many people are part of this "anti-nuclear group." Maybe there are a lot more than PeTA, or maybe they're more effective at effecting change than PeTA. Either way, I don't think the mere existence of an "anti-nuclear group" precludes nuclear power from gaining ground.
The anti-nuclear group will always come up with something to deter nuclear plants from taking off.
Sure, but there are detractors for almost all ideas, good and bad. There are people who hate animal testing. We're still going to continue making sure medicines are safe though. Animal testing is one of the only real ways to do that, like it or not. Furthermore, good ideas don't implement themselves even when there's not vague misgivings about them, as there is with nuclear power. Most people don't know why chernobyl happened, they think it's inherent to nuclear power. That could be changed, it would just require investing in an awareness campaign. I guess that's more investment than anyone is willing to do.
To sum up, I see public ignorance, not an active anti-nuclear group, preventing nuclear power from taking off.
I wonder if this technique could be used for other diseases, e.g. arthritis?
It could be useful for other diseases in which a gene is known to be expressed that you don't want to be expressed. Whether there are known genes which are expressed with arthritis that cause the symptoms, I don't know. Whether this technique will be effective at delivering the RNAi to other cells using other receptors, I don't know, and I'm not sure anyone knows. I gather that they tried this first, they had to have tested this in mice first, I'd expect there would be data on knocking down genes in non-cancerous tissues.
Shorter answer: maybe, but using this to deliver the treatment to your knuckle cells to treat arthritis might not work, and for all I know, the RNAi treatment itself might not be viable for treating arthritis.
Income taxes: Only if you earn money
Auto insurance: Only if you drive a car
Property taxes: Only if you own property
Now, however, the second you become an adult in this country you have to pony up money to the government or insurance company, or else you will be fined.
You don't need to buy health insurance, just prove to me that you will never get sick or seek health care that you won't be able to pay for out of pocket, passing the costs onto the rest of us, and you can opt right out of health insurance.
The cheapest route sounds like to get fired from your job, go on welfare to get your food and housing paid for, then get free health care. Who needs to work? That was the plan wasn't it?
That must be why no one works in countries where they have national health care. /sarcasm
Hell, Hawaii has universal health care, beautiful weather, and approximately a billion things any sane person would rather do than work. I'd submit to you furthermore that I and many people would prefer to live in a shack in Hawaii than in a mansion in, well, most places. So if your hypothesis is correct, we'd expect Hawaii unemployment to be extremely high, as people don't have any motivation to work if they get free health care.
Hmm... it appears that the unemployment there is well below the national average. That seems inconsistent with your hypothesis.
My hypothesis is that very few people work -only- because their health insurance or food depends on it, most people work their jobs in the hope that they'll be able to thrive. The american dream is not to just live on a handout.
I can see how it would be convinient to believe that people are basically lazy and will stop working if you give them any help. It gives you a sense of superiority some people like, and is a good reason you shouldn't have to pay any taxes. I just don't see the evidence to support that position though.
GP isn't completely wrong though. Tritiated thymidine was commonly used to label cells which were actively taking up DNA and were therefore proliferating. BrdU is more commonly used today. Both are somewhat more convenient than utilizing nuclear bomb tests.
I find the article very interesting given the history of adult neurogenesis. Pasko Rakic, who communicated the paper, was initially very skeptical of those results:
At the time, the new technique of labelling a cell with thymidine to determine the birth date of neurons was used in newborns, since adult animals were not thought to create new neurons. But Altman decided to try the technique with adults. He published several papers in the most reputable scientific journals, claiming that new neurons are formed in the brains of adult rats, cats, and guinea pigs–a discovery that Nottebohm later made with canaries. Because the techniques Altman used were primitive, however, they were open to reasonable doubt. It was a classic example of a discovery made ahead of its time. At first, Altman was ignored, then he was ridiculed, and finally, after failing to receive tenure at M.I.T., he moved to Purdue. With no recognition, he was quickly forgotten. The field almost dried up. A decade later, Michael Kaplan, a researcher at Boston University and later at the University of New Mexico, used an electron microscope to supply more compelling evidence that several parts of the adult brain, including the cortex, also produced neurons. He, too, met resistance from researchers who did not find his work convincing. ("Those may look like neurons in New Mexico,'' Kaplan remembers Rakic saying at the time. "But they don't in New Haven.") Kaplan had published his findings in important journals and even suggested a novel way to test the phenomenon in humans, but he, too, was ignored, and he left the field.
source
Rakic has admitted he was wrong, and I think his criticisms weren't unfounded. The immunohistochemistry demonstrating they are real neurons, for one thing, adresses some of the major concerns he had with the previous studies. Still, it's interesting: the "novel way" to test it in humans was look at brain sections of people who had been treated for cancer with BrdU, proposed decades ago, at the time it was considered too difficult. The study you cited does that and also uses nuclear tests to further illustrate the point.
Or maybe a "biker gang god." Or maybe they teamed up, since I don't really see one god doing covering both.
there'll come a day when you won't be able to look up man pages on the internet without a web browser with javascript and java enabled.
Meh. I'm only interested in the WOman pages. Not saying it's wrong though. I mean, I don't see the attraction, especially to guys on 4chan or slashdot, but I guess you have a type...
Are all car manufacturers that don't implement Mercedes new radar-guided emergency braking systems now liable when drivers rear end someone?
Oh God no, don't say things like that! An ambulance chaser is going to read that, and within a year, you won't be able to buy a car for less than 30k!
Don't let mommy brush your hair when she's mad at daddy.
Maybe they can make amends by getting together and doping more civilians up with LSD.
You realize that the object is only 1 micrometer, and the cloak only 300nm,
but here you go (photo) --> [ ]
Gasp! INVISIBLE nanobot army! Transparent goo!
Sounds like the filler episodes in anime, when they've already make all the current manga into anime, but want to make more anime something anyway. And we all know how great those are.
For those of you not familiar with anime, that last part was sarcasm. Filler episodes are utterly craptastic. In that case, because the story continues on as if nothing significant happened in the time the filler is showing, any plot or character development has to be disposable. Nothing happens.
Same thing here. What could happen in the sequel to the hobbit? Spoiler: none of the characters that are in lord of the rings will die in the prequel, wheras any characters they introduce will die before the events in lord of the rings or will have to come up with some reason they're insignificant for lord of the rings.
Get back to us when you have some sorta prototype.
I think you're in the wrong part of the internet. This is news for nerds. Really cool tech, even if it might turn out to be vaporware, qualifies.
Though now that I think a little more, a spam attack on your eyeballs could be troubling...
Yes, you'd have to [shivers] take off your contacts!
I kid, yes it would be troubling in situations like driving, doing surgery, or doing surgery while driving, all of which could be helped by these things conceivably.
He should create an inventory of the parts of the rover and rent out custody of individual pieces on monthly subscription to those who want bragging rights to "having" something on the moon.
I'd buy THAT for a dollar!