What's the point? Are you imitating Alan Sokal? Trying to lure extrordinarily stupid wannabe terrorists into wasting a huge amount of time? Or did you just want to show the world you have way too much time on your hands yourself? Or is it that confusing concept called "humor"?
Tetraethyllead protects the valves by forming a buffer against microweld formation, which is (admittedly subtly) different from providing lubrication. (Yeah, thought I might as well double down on the pedantic nitpickery.)
In 6 years companies are supposed to develop an unleaded engine that will fit in every type of small prop aircraft currently flying? Yeah, not happening.
Don't worry. If, as you speculate, the American industry once again proves too anti-innovative, you can just buy European-made unleaded-ready aircraft engines.
Just like me, the writer of that article is not associated with the pharma industry. He or she is a pharmacist. And don't get me wrong, I don't hold a high opinion about the pharma industry, or any other big industry for the matter - I think they're perfectly capable of doing what you accuse them of. It's just that
- there's a total absence of incriminating evidence
- they have a plausible excuse (raw material shortage)
- the motive for the crime is questionable: as I said, another generic drug manufacturer will quickly take over, and they'll end up having lost their credibility with their customers.
So I feel application of Hanlon's razor - not to mention the "innocent until proven guilty" principle - is appropriate here. Without it, one will be wearing a tin foil hat in no time.
I said "artificially limited". Your example is a relatively recent occurence, and until further information becomes available, the idea that someone is causing this (probably temporary) supply squeeze on purpose is pure speculation.
Your link says: "while manufacturers say they are having problems with raw supply, many in the medical community [who?] see greed as an overriding factor." Even assuming the journalist did consult "many in the medical community" (which is quite an assumption), let me tell you that many in the medical community have no clue how the global markets in chemicals work. It is not commercially viable to produce these kind of tetracyclines from basic bulk chemicals; instead, a complex precursor is isolated from "nature" (typically reactor-grown bacteria) and is converted to the desirable compound in a few simple synthetic steps. There are all kinds of different ways a supply squeeze of the raw material can occur: a manufacturer can go bankrupt, or have its reactors infected, or its government temporarily bans export because they need the raw material domestically, or global demand can skyrocket when a new antibiotic based on the same precursor enters production,... And all the the same things can happen in the next stage of the process; the end products are made by generic drug companies who exclusively produce drugs on which the patent expired. These companies are smaller than the big pharma, competition is fiercer and profit margins smaller, making for a somewhat volatile market. This very same property also ensures that market corrections happen relatively quickly; it takes relatively little time for a competing generic drug company to see an opportunity to make money and start a (well-documented) production process.
TL;DR version: the "problems with raw supply" version of the story seems entirely plausible given the way these markets work. Or to paraphrase Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by the caprices of the market.
Exactly. GP is living 10 years in the past. New examples are popping up on a yearly basis at medicinal chemistry conferences. I've personally witnessed a lead structure coming out of a modeling study that only needed a little experimental validation and optimization to give rise to a drug candidate that is now in clinical trials.
Computer modeling has been badly oversold during the 1980s, resulting in a period of disillusionment in the 1990s. Some people (mostly at non-US academic institution, I'm sad to say) apparently never got over it. To those people: wake up, it's 2013! Computational techniques have become better, and computer power has increased a few orders of magnitude. Equally important, computational medicinal chemists have come to understand there's no free lunch: a simple calculation will yield simplistic results. To get truly predictive results, a labor- and computer-intensive project involving an diverse palette of computational techniques is required, and collaboration with experimentalists is a must. Conversely, any experimentalist who doesn't have a modeling expert among his/her collaborators by now deserves the imminent outsourcing of his/her job to India or China.
That sounds very nice in theory. In reality, competition between drug companies is so fierce that they patent promising ideas as soon as reasonably feasible. Trying to keep a strong drug lead a trade secret is sitting on a time bomb - sooner or later, one of your competitors will patent the idea out of the blue and you lose billions of revenue.
Second law of thermodynamics: anti-entropic processes don't exist.
Also, you don't seem to understand Occam's razor; see the other replies. Now hand in your geek card, thank you very much.
What misinformation? Can you be a bit more specific about what part of my post can be considered misinformation, mister Anonymous Coward who claims to be also a scientist but doesn't appear to be a specialist in the field? For your reference, they did study only the hydrogen atom for which an exact solution has been available for a long while, and I did mention in my post that things could get interesting if they succeed to scale this up. Which falisifies your shameful strawman attack that has me claiming that "experimental science is dead and all things can be done en [sic] silico".
Also, FYI, mister mistery scientist, the field of physics has long conquered and surpassed the domain of chemistry; experiment-driven advancements in physics have moved to the ultra-small and ultra-high-energy stuff. Quantum Mechanics tells us with high certainty which calculations we need to perform to represent ordinary matter at ordinary conditions within any chosen margin of error from experiment. It's just that we don't have the computer power to do this, limiting close-to-exact calculations to tiny molecules at 0K in vacuum. Anything more ambitious is based on very approximate models that need to be verified by experiment. Note, again, that I'm saying exactly the opposite of "experimental science is dead".
Electron correlation effects are no mystery. "Electron correlation" is simply an umbrella term for "everything the Hartree-Fock approximation doesn't capture". Nature doesn't give a damn. As for quantum chemists, they have plenty of other tools at their disposal...
Now this would have been a fundamental breakthrough if it would have been done many decades ago. These days, we have extremely high confidence in our theoretical/computational models of the wavefunction of atoms and molecules. "Just as valuable for developing quantum intuition in the next generation of physicists?" Naah, this stuff has been well-known since before most of us were born.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to belittle this accomplishment - it's all kinds of cool that they pulled off this experiment in the first place, and notwithstanding the huge body of other experimental evidence, it's a beautiful direct confirmation of longstanding quantum mechanics theory. And as mentioned in TFA, provided they can scale this up to larger and less well-understood systems than the hydrogen atom, it might make it possible to obtain unique data on nontrivial materials like molecular wires. The only problem I have is that the Science editor is overselling it a bit; at the end of the day, it's not going to change our quantum mechanical worldview the slightest.
Soon??? The consensus TFA is talking about is one that already made it into university textbooks in the late 1980s to early 1990s. The present "debate" in the US is entirely fabricated, just like the past debates on whether tobacco increases the risk of lung cancer or on whether hydrogenated fatty acids cause coronary heart disease. The strategies used by industry to discredit reputable science are exactly the same.
If anything, it's a disgrace that we're already so late in the game - that 25 years after the facts, the corrupt political system in some countries is still having a passionate debate about whether the scientifically long-established effect is real or not.
DOS wasn't multitasking. Resident in memory? Sure. Running in the background? Not really (in a literate and modern sense at least).
</pedantic nitpick>
You might want to, you know, have a brief look at the summary. It contains such interesting tidbits as
Many politicians, especially in Europe, have used the idea that economic growth is impeded by debt levels above 90% of GDP to justify austerity measures
they did not drag down the cell ranges down properly, excluding Belgium
New Zealand has one year in their sample above 90 percent debt-to-GDP with a growth rate of -7.6.
(Emphasis mine)
Where is the US even mentioned? Since when is New Zealand in Europe? Which article contains the a pilot fish / whale comparison? Also, which parallel universe are you from?
Slashdot Mirror
What's the point? Are you imitating Alan Sokal? Trying to lure extrordinarily stupid wannabe terrorists into wasting a huge amount of time? Or did you just want to show the world you have way too much time on your hands yourself? Or is it that confusing concept called "humor"?
Tetraethyllead protects the valves by forming a buffer against microweld formation, which is (admittedly subtly) different from providing lubrication. (Yeah, thought I might as well double down on the pedantic nitpickery.)
Sure, insult me for pointing out your statement was incorrect, if that makes you feel better. It doesn't make you less wrong, though.
Oooh, so hacking is just like corruption then?
Spot on. Though it really saddens me you actually had to explain this. Common sense is in such short supply here...
In 6 years companies are supposed to develop an unleaded engine that will fit in every type of small prop aircraft currently flying? Yeah, not happening.
Don't worry. If, as you speculate, the American industry once again proves too anti-innovative, you can just buy European-made unleaded-ready aircraft engines.
You must be a young bugger.
The main reason for leaded gas in older cars is for the lubrication that it provides.
Wow sir, you must be really old, not knowing how to use wikipedia and stuff...
Just like me, the writer of that article is not associated with the pharma industry. He or she is a pharmacist. And don't get me wrong, I don't hold a high opinion about the pharma industry, or any other big industry for the matter - I think they're perfectly capable of doing what you accuse them of. It's just that
- there's a total absence of incriminating evidence
- they have a plausible excuse (raw material shortage)
- the motive for the crime is questionable: as I said, another generic drug manufacturer will quickly take over, and they'll end up having lost their credibility with their customers.
So I feel application of Hanlon's razor - not to mention the "innocent until proven guilty" principle - is appropriate here. Without it, one will be wearing a tin foil hat in no time.
Additional reading: http://www.theredheadedpharmacist.com/?p=8746
I said "artificially limited". Your example is a relatively recent occurence, and until further information becomes available, the idea that someone is causing this (probably temporary) supply squeeze on purpose is pure speculation.
Your link says: "while manufacturers say they are having problems with raw supply, many in the medical community [who?] see greed as an overriding factor." Even assuming the journalist did consult "many in the medical community" (which is quite an assumption), let me tell you that many in the medical community have no clue how the global markets in chemicals work. It is not commercially viable to produce these kind of tetracyclines from basic bulk chemicals; instead, a complex precursor is isolated from "nature" (typically reactor-grown bacteria) and is converted to the desirable compound in a few simple synthetic steps. There are all kinds of different ways a supply squeeze of the raw material can occur: a manufacturer can go bankrupt, or have its reactors infected, or its government temporarily bans export because they need the raw material domestically, or global demand can skyrocket when a new antibiotic based on the same precursor enters production,... And all the the same things can happen in the next stage of the process; the end products are made by generic drug companies who exclusively produce drugs on which the patent expired. These companies are smaller than the big pharma, competition is fiercer and profit margins smaller, making for a somewhat volatile market. This very same property also ensures that market corrections happen relatively quickly; it takes relatively little time for a competing generic drug company to see an opportunity to make money and start a (well-documented) production process.
TL;DR version: the "problems with raw supply" version of the story seems entirely plausible given the way these markets work. Or to paraphrase Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by the caprices of the market.
Exactly. GP is living 10 years in the past. New examples are popping up on a yearly basis at medicinal chemistry conferences. I've personally witnessed a lead structure coming out of a modeling study that only needed a little experimental validation and optimization to give rise to a drug candidate that is now in clinical trials.
Computer modeling has been badly oversold during the 1980s, resulting in a period of disillusionment in the 1990s. Some people (mostly at non-US academic institution, I'm sad to say) apparently never got over it. To those people: wake up, it's 2013! Computational techniques have become better, and computer power has increased a few orders of magnitude. Equally important, computational medicinal chemists have come to understand there's no free lunch: a simple calculation will yield simplistic results. To get truly predictive results, a labor- and computer-intensive project involving an diverse palette of computational techniques is required, and collaboration with experimentalists is a must. Conversely, any experimentalist who doesn't have a modeling expert among his/her collaborators by now deserves the imminent outsourcing of his/her job to India or China.
Agreed and fixed (it is a wiki).
That sounds very nice in theory. In reality, competition between drug companies is so fierce that they patent promising ideas as soon as reasonably feasible. Trying to keep a strong drug lead a trade secret is sitting on a time bomb - sooner or later, one of your competitors will patent the idea out of the blue and you lose billions of revenue.
Course, now they've figured out to just limit supply for common diseases and then let everyone bid for what little they make.
WTF are you talking about? Care to give an example of a drug of which the patent expired and the supply of which is artificially limited?
Second law of thermodynamics: anti-entropic processes don't exist.
Also, you don't seem to understand Occam's razor; see the other replies. Now hand in your geek card, thank you very much.
What misinformation? Can you be a bit more specific about what part of my post can be considered misinformation, mister Anonymous Coward who claims to be also a scientist but doesn't appear to be a specialist in the field? For your reference, they did study only the hydrogen atom for which an exact solution has been available for a long while, and I did mention in my post that things could get interesting if they succeed to scale this up. Which falisifies your shameful strawman attack that has me claiming that "experimental science is dead and all things can be done en [sic] silico".
Also, FYI, mister mistery scientist, the field of physics has long conquered and surpassed the domain of chemistry; experiment-driven advancements in physics have moved to the ultra-small and ultra-high-energy stuff. Quantum Mechanics tells us with high certainty which calculations we need to perform to represent ordinary matter at ordinary conditions within any chosen margin of error from experiment. It's just that we don't have the computer power to do this, limiting close-to-exact calculations to tiny molecules at 0K in vacuum. Anything more ambitious is based on very approximate models that need to be verified by experiment. Note, again, that I'm saying exactly the opposite of "experimental science is dead".
Electron correlation effects are no mystery. "Electron correlation" is simply an umbrella term for "everything the Hartree-Fock approximation doesn't capture". Nature doesn't give a damn. As for quantum chemists, they have plenty of other tools at their disposal...
I didn't say you said that.
...or was it?
Now this would have been a fundamental breakthrough if it would have been done many decades ago. These days, we have extremely high confidence in our theoretical/computational models of the wavefunction of atoms and molecules. "Just as valuable for developing quantum intuition in the next generation of physicists?" Naah, this stuff has been well-known since before most of us were born.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to belittle this accomplishment - it's all kinds of cool that they pulled off this experiment in the first place, and notwithstanding the huge body of other experimental evidence, it's a beautiful direct confirmation of longstanding quantum mechanics theory. And as mentioned in TFA, provided they can scale this up to larger and less well-understood systems than the hydrogen atom, it might make it possible to obtain unique data on nontrivial materials like molecular wires. The only problem I have is that the Science editor is overselling it a bit; at the end of the day, it's not going to change our quantum mechanical worldview the slightest.
I speculate GP was trying to be funny. Or maybe just trolling.
Soon??? The consensus TFA is talking about is one that already made it into university textbooks in the late 1980s to early 1990s. The present "debate" in the US is entirely fabricated, just like the past debates on whether tobacco increases the risk of lung cancer or on whether hydrogenated fatty acids cause coronary heart disease. The strategies used by industry to discredit reputable science are exactly the same.
If anything, it's a disgrace that we're already so late in the game - that 25 years after the facts, the corrupt political system in some countries is still having a passionate debate about whether the scientifically long-established effect is real or not.
And all this time I thought the ROM BIOS wasn't an operating system....
DOS wasn't multitasking. Resident in memory? Sure. Running in the background? Not really (in a literate and modern sense at least).
</pedantic nitpick>
You might want to, you know, have a brief look at the summary. It contains such interesting tidbits as
Many politicians, especially in Europe, have used the idea that economic growth is impeded by debt levels above 90% of GDP to justify austerity measures
they did not drag down the cell ranges down properly, excluding Belgium
New Zealand has one year in their sample above 90 percent debt-to-GDP with a growth rate of -7.6.
(Emphasis mine)
Where is the US even mentioned? Since when is New Zealand in Europe? Which article contains the a pilot fish / whale comparison? Also, which parallel universe are you from?