For all practical intents and purposes, places like MIT and other research universities ARE pure research institutions. Faculty at these institutions do not get hired or receive tenure because they are good (or even competent) teachers, they get hired and tenured because they have a good research program. Some may be good teachers, some may enjoy teaching, but it is a relatively small part of professorial evaluation. For that matter, most professors (at any college or university, small or large) will not have had ANY formal teacher training.
Even for fields that do have research-only institutions (e.g. physics at CERN), research-only institutions employ a tiny percentage of all basic researchers, and the vast majority of basic research is conducted at universities.
The actual study contrasts two complex hypotheses on early human populations in Africa. The major points are:
1. (Presented as the current consensus). Early humans lived in a one population in eastern or southern Africa. Around 90,000 years ago, this population splits. One of the daughter groups is the primary source of the Khoisan (a South African ethnic group with many "early" maternal lineages). The other is the source of the out-of-Africa migration 60-70,000 years ago. After the out-of-Africans leave, there is renewed migration between the two African groups.
2. (The new hypothesis proposed in this paper). Early humans split into two largely separate African groups starting around 150,000 years ago. Again, one of these is the primary source of the Khoisan and the other is the source of the out-of-Africans. Again, there is renewed migration between these groups after the out-of-Africans leave. (Also, this second hypothesis requires some limited migration from the Khoisan ancestors to the other group around 90,000 years ago to make the patterning of genetic variation work out).
The data which these hypotheses are trying to account for - in part - is that there is significantly more diversity in maternal lineages in Africa than out. In fact, all of the maternal lineages outside of Africa are a subset of *one* of the African lineages. So any explanation of this has to somehow derive a non-diverse population (the rest of the world) from a very diverse source population (Africans). Both of these hypotheses try to do this in fundamentally the same way (population splits in Africa), but the new paper argues that in order for the pattern to be as it is, a longer time of separation of populations in Africa is required.
There are no new population size estimates in the paper whatsoever. There is no discussion (other than an off-hand mention or two) of population sizes in the paper.
The CNN/Associated Press article is sensationalistic at best and misleading at worst.
And as an aside, whatever the "separate study by researchers at Stanford University" is - I couldn't figure out which one it was in the reference list - it is certainly about *effective* population size, which is _very_ different than census population size. For instance, the long-term effective population size of the entire human species is generally estimated to be around 10,000 *effective* individuals.
Every lab has its own distinct culture, some of which comes from the discipline, some of which comes from the PI (Principal Investigator), and some of which comes from the other people in the lab. I've worked in several academic labs and the culture in each was startlingly different. I'm starting my own lab now, and I imagine it will turn out different from any in my prior experience!
That said, I'll offer some general advice.
1. Unfortunately, there will probably no one whose job it is to set you up. And there are a thousand and one little details that you need to learn. Where is the photocopier? What do I do when the printer runs out of toner? Where do I order this reagent? Where happens when the biohazard is full? And so on. _Politely_ ask the lowest person on the totem pole until you get an answer.
2. There usually is not an official hierarchy, but the unofficial hierarchy generally runs along the lines of PI -> Postdocs -> Graduate Students -> Research Assistants -> Undergraduates -> Others, modified by time of residence and area of expertise.
3. Everyone in academia likes to be asked to offer their opinion. Even if you think you know the answer, you will often learn something by asking a question or two.
4. Nobody likes it when the new guy is a know-it-all. Even if you do actually know it all, wait a little while before letting everyone else know:)
5. Have fun and relax. No one expects you to solve all their research problems in your first week.
6. Also, a lot of academic research time (especially in the type of lab it seems you're going to) is "in front of a screen and a good net connection," albeit with access to a lot more peer-reviewed literature than you've probably had access to in the past.
But you can't ignore the last 100 years of technological history because that's the crux of your argument! (At least your argument as I'm reading it - perhaps I'm creating a strawman).
I take your argument as being that the following three postulates are incompatible:
(1) Technological progress in recorded history (last 10,000 years or so) is impressive.
(2) Technological progress in prehistory (say 200,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago) is not impressive and appears (by our hindsight standards) to be basically stagnant .
(3) The intellectual capabilities of humans have not changed considerably since 200,000 years ago or so.
However, I don't think that these three postulates are fundamentally different from:
(1a) Technological progress since 1800 is impressive.
(2a) Technological progress prior to 1800 is less impressive and (by our hindsight standards) basically stagnant.
(3a) The intellectual capabilities of humans did not change considerably in 1800.
For me, the two sets of postulates are the same. I do believe that the inflection point needs to be explained, but I don't believe it is unexplainable or unbelievable in either case.
Following the logic you present, we know that human technological advancement over the last 100 years has been orders of magnitude greater than in the previous 5000 years. In fact, one could say that, relative to recent history, the technological advancement of the previous 5000 years was effectively zero. Therefore, our knowledge of the last 5000 years of human history must be wrong because it doesn't make sense from a "historical and technological development standpoint". How is it possible that "human beings as intelligent and creative as we are today failed to have any technological innovation" over 5000 years?
Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.from the Wikipedia
Also, for whatever it's worth, technological advancement may be important to the Slashdot crowd, but it's hardly the most important measure of success for a species. Our ancestors did just fine without PDAs and jet airplanes (they must have done for us to be alive today!). And the jury is still out on whether or not becoming brainy and making tools was a good path to follow for humans. No other extant species on the planet has succeeded with this strategy and we may well cause our own extinction in the not too distant future.
Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size. From the Wikipedia
The original poster's write-up misses the point. It's NOT news that both fossil and genetic evidence points to the development of anatomically modern humans in Africa somewhere in the 100,000 to 200,000 year range, with several important apparently anatomically modern human fossils at the older end of that range.
What is new in this article is the early date for the use of ochre dye, small "complex" tools, and shellfish in the diet which are all taken as evidence for modern-like human cultural behavior at 165,000 years ago.
To date, the most incontrovertible evidence for modern-like cultural behavior dates back to around 45,000 years ago, with some more ambiguous evidence (similar to that presented in the article in question) dating to around 100,000 years ago.
Even if you have no plans to actually program in Lua, you should get this book as an example of how a technical book can and should be written!
While the novice programmer can certainly pick this book up and learn to program (and it is perfectly suited to that), the examples, asides, and discussion in each chapter contain gems for the intermediate to advanced programmer. Everytime I look something up I see a new depth to some language feature or example I didn't see the first time around.
I use Lua because it is incredibly easy to both extend lua with either C or C++ libraries as well as embed lua in my C/C++/ObjC/whatever programs
as fast as you can download my Rails sandbox app Locomotive. Ruby on Rails ready to go with a lighttpd/fastcgi server. It installs all the dependencies in it's own self-contained bundles, so it won't mess with your system at all.
If you want to try Rails out for yourself on Mac, you could be doing it in less than 5 minutes (assuming you're sitting on a fast connection....)
To me, Workgroup Manager is the reason to buy OS X Server (assuming you are running a Mac OS X network with multiple users and OS X clients). It is a nice, zero effort way to manage multiple users and client computers - controlling who can use which client computers and which files/folders will follow them around from computer to computer.
someone at installshield had an entry in some internal company data source using her maiden name (and had used her maiden name nowhere else). she recieved solicitations from wise and got suspicious.
Yes, Celera did do a genome. But the public consortium also did one which is equivalent or better in most scientific terms and vastly superior in one important respect: it is public domain.
While non-profit researchers can obtain free access to Celera's genome data, it is a pain in the ass to deal with their legal department, and the data is viewable in a sub-optimal interface. The public genome is easily and readily available to anyone and everyone with a web browser.
I had nothing to do with the public human genome project, but I use their data every day in my research as do thousands of other researchers. To suggest that the government pissed away money on that project is simply wrong.
It seems clear to me that everyone benefits from the public genome project in particular, and public science in general. Why should we enrich a private company for basic scientific information which is needed by all researchers (both for-profit and non-profit)?
But... Is file sharing actually making a negative difference on your friend's finances? Is it correct to say that all those people who are downloading her song(s) online would pay for it otherwise? I would suspect that the vast majority of those trading her song(s) would not pay for an entire CD if they had to. (Conversely, of those who have actually bought her CD, how many would not have learned of her music without file sharing? The answer may be zero, I'm just throwing the question out there.)
Pretty much all musicians do not do particularly well financially. This was true before file sharing. It is true now. And it will continue to be true in the RIAA-sponsered post file sharing utopia. Blaming file sharing for a muscician's failure to make money is disingenuous.
How to make money at music is a tough one. But it does not differ fundamentally from the question of how to make money pursuing any kind of art. The struggling painters and sculpters out there are not rolling in the dough because they don't have the worries of thieving online painting-sharers or sculpture-sharers.
ok. i guess i can see your response in context of the post you were writing about.. but your sig is thoroughly confounding me... (really.. not an attack or sarcastic comment here.. just trying to figure out how your sig jibes with your comment - as i assume that it should make sense...)
Personal Observation. I lived in Uganda from 1986 to 1993 and I have family still living there. I traveled throughout the region and I have visited in recent years. The vast majority of pharmaceutical products in East Africa derive from England and India with some Chinese and South African products arriving in recent years. Kenya also has a small pharmaceutical industry, producing basic medicines like aspirin, antacids and chloroquine. Central and West Africa derive most of their medical supplies from France with imports from India, China, and South Africa in recent years.
If you call the building in Sudan the "primary source of vaccines and antibiotics for almost all of Central Africa", this demonstrates nothing but your total ignorance of the political and economic situation in Africa. Sudan does not and has not exported anything of any consequence for 20 years or more.
I will not comment on the total position you have advocated except to say that if you believe that the 'independent' media is any less biased than the normal media you are hopelessly naive.
ok.. i'm down with that.. I don't believe that a knee-jerk response it the way to go..
What to do? what to say? I don't believe there is a good response in any way to this. Bombing the hell out of someone is satisfying, but ultimately worthless.
I guess the only thing that I would say is that we _MUST_ condemn anyone and any group that celebrates this pathetic, barharic act. We must retaliate (not necessarily by bombing) but by emphasizing that we will not promote the goals of those that would fall to these lows..... Terrorists must not find their goals affirmed....
ok.. i'll bite.. you say it is an attack on 'american authority and all that jiz'. (whatever that means).. You phrase this in a way that makes me assume that you mean 'this is an attack on american imperialism; we, as benevolent brits, have nothing to fear'.
Which is the more imperialistic nation through history? Which nation is america's closest foreign policy ally? Which nation is most likely to be emphatically supportive of US foreign actions (whatever they may be)? Which nation is host to the longest running internal dissidency (sp?) outside of the middle east?
Not that I support indescriminant retaliation, however I find it somewhat offensive that anyone would say the equivalent of 'it's what you deserve.'
1. Bush's policy applies only to federal funding (NIH - National Institutes of Health funding basically). It has no impact on private funding. Private biomediacal research is huge is the US.
2. Stem cell lines are innovative not because they are cell lines, but because they are embryonic stem cell lines. Cell lines are central in medical research. No drug or therapy can progress to human trials until its effects in vitro (that is, on cells in a dish) have been assessed. There are hundreds of established, standard cell lines that are used for this purpose.
3. It is totally beyond my comprehension how this debate has come to focus on the destruction of embryos. Embryos are destroyed by the hundreds daily. Many fertility clinics require clients to agree to terms that amount to: 'We will create embryos, implant them within you, and any spares will be destroyed in five years if you don't come back asking for them'. Whether or not federal funds can be used for stem cell research, multitudes of embryos are being destroyed daily. This decision has no impact whatsoever upon that fact. The number of embryos 'destroyed' as a consequence of embryonic stem cell research will never be more than a miniscule proportion of the total number of stem cells destroyed.
I find it interesting that the number 1 argument that artists have against napster is that it takes their control of how their art is propagated away from them. This is insane. The artist in the current system has essentially no control - Do I sell my soul or do I not? - Do I aquiesce to everything my label tells me to do or not?
I got into a heated argument with a movie director the other night who was vehemently anti-napster for that very reason. At the same time, he was sitting there, working on a low-budget $500k film and making squat.
The artist is not protected by current laws/standards.
I work as a scientist in (enter buzzword) primate genomics and I am disgusted by the commercialization of the whole thing. I could sell out tomorrow and sign up with a pharmaceutical company and live happily ever after (at least paycheck-wise), but I will not. I can be a loser (pay-wise) academically and live with myself. Artists are apparently incapable of making the same choices....
First off (and I'm not being deliberately snotty here), we're not talking about physics here. Current biology has nowhere near the decimal point accuracy, etc. that modern physics does.
Let's talk about bacteria (since it's a simpler problem - but most applies with minimal changes to studies of other organisms). Let's, furthermore, say I am interested in something like nutrient uptake. There are proteins on the cell surface which are involved in either passing (or not passing) external molecules to the cell interior. It is possible (let's not get into details) to get a good idea as to which surface proteins are involved with passing different classes of external molecules into the cell.
ok then. I have a protein of interest, I have a 'behavior' of interest, what next? believe it or not, the next step is usually trial and error. I induce mutations in the bacterium (by x-raying it or adding some chemical to a culture, etc.) and look for colonies that do weird things vis-a-vis my system of interest (in this case uptake of some particular nutrient - since this is/., let's say caffeine).
As bacteria reproduce like crazy and I have induced mutations in a population of, literally, millions of individual bacteria - there are bound to be some which do funky things as regarding caffeine uptake. I cannot attribute this necessarily to some change in my protein, but I can check the interesting mutants to see if my protein is different from the 'normal' sequence. If it is not - well then, no change in this protein is directly involved in the funky behavior. If it is changed, there is still much more to be done.... because, of course, it may be that some other mutation elsewhere produced the new, funky behaviour, and not my new, improved protein of interest.
One then zeros in on the effect of the changed protein by inserting or otherwise point mutating 'wild-type' bacteria to attempt to determine what effect the changes in sequence have... etc..
of course, having written all this, I realize that I haven't answered the question you asked. And the answer is that biologists, especially molecular types like me, don't predict!
We create mutants and see what happens. You would be astounded at the number of different mouse lineages out there with specific mutations and disease susceptibilities. If something is eventually to be used in humans, you start by seeing what it does to mice, move on to monkeys, then move on to human cells in vitro (cells in a tube, basically), and finally if animals/cells are not dying, etc. move on to trials in humans.
Prediction would be nifty, but even with whole genomes, its just not in the cards for the near future.
As a PhD candidate studying the molecular evolution of African monkeys I use PE Biosystems equipment every day.
I find the Hunkapiller - Gates analogy a little spurious. As mentioned in passing in the NY Times article, the analogy with IBM of the early 80s is a little more appropriate.
PE Bio's equipment is very popular and most labs that sequence use PE equipment. And... unlike Gate's product, Hunkapillar's product is good. PE Bio does have a near monopoly in the sequencer market, but... sequencers from other companies have a reputation of unreliability (this may not be true, this may be in the past, but the perception exists nonetheless). Is it still a monopoly if the best (or perceived best) equipment has the lion's share of the market?
As for the FUD over genetic testing in Katz's editorial . . . Hunkapillar has no control whatsoever over that. The output of sequencers or other genetic analysis machines is fairly useless until analyzed. If this analysis is done on a Windows PC, do we then blame Bill for genetic discrimination . . . or if the analysis is done on a gnu/linux box do we blame RMS or Linus?
Hunkapillar's interest in Celera gives him some control over genetic information . . . but PE Bio sells their machines to anyone and those machines are entirely out of Hunkapillar's control as soon as they leave the factory.
Slashdot Mirror
For all practical intents and purposes, places like MIT and other research universities ARE pure research institutions. Faculty at these institutions do not get hired or receive tenure because they are good (or even competent) teachers, they get hired and tenured because they have a good research program. Some may be good teachers, some may enjoy teaching, but it is a relatively small part of professorial evaluation. For that matter, most professors (at any college or university, small or large) will not have had ANY formal teacher training.
Even for fields that do have research-only institutions (e.g. physics at CERN), research-only institutions employ a tiny percentage of all basic researchers, and the vast majority of basic research is conducted at universities.
And I have to wonder if the author even read the original peer-reviewed article - which can be found at:
http://www.ajhg.org/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297(08)00255-3
The actual study contrasts two complex hypotheses on early human populations in Africa. The major points are:
1. (Presented as the current consensus). Early humans lived in a one population in eastern or southern Africa. Around 90,000 years ago, this population splits. One of the daughter groups is the primary source of the Khoisan (a South African ethnic group with many "early" maternal lineages). The other is the source of the out-of-Africa migration 60-70,000 years ago. After the out-of-Africans leave, there is renewed migration between the two African groups.
2. (The new hypothesis proposed in this paper). Early humans split into two largely separate African groups starting around 150,000 years ago. Again, one of these is the primary source of the Khoisan and the other is the source of the out-of-Africans. Again, there is renewed migration between these groups after the out-of-Africans leave. (Also, this second hypothesis requires some limited migration from the Khoisan ancestors to the other group around 90,000 years ago to make the patterning of genetic variation work out).
The data which these hypotheses are trying to account for - in part - is that there is significantly more diversity in maternal lineages in Africa than out. In fact, all of the maternal lineages outside of Africa are a subset of *one* of the African lineages. So any explanation of this has to somehow derive a non-diverse population (the rest of the world) from a very diverse source population (Africans). Both of these hypotheses try to do this in fundamentally the same way (population splits in Africa), but the new paper argues that in order for the pattern to be as it is, a longer time of separation of populations in Africa is required.
There are no new population size estimates in the paper whatsoever. There is no discussion (other than an off-hand mention or two) of population sizes in the paper.
The CNN/Associated Press article is sensationalistic at best and misleading at worst.
And as an aside, whatever the "separate study by researchers at Stanford University" is - I couldn't figure out which one it was in the reference list - it is certainly about *effective* population size, which is _very_ different than census population size. For instance, the long-term effective population size of the entire human species is generally estimated to be around 10,000 *effective* individuals.
Every lab has its own distinct culture, some of which comes from the discipline, some of which comes from the PI (Principal Investigator), and some of which comes from the other people in the lab. I've worked in several academic labs and the culture in each was startlingly different. I'm starting my own lab now, and I imagine it will turn out different from any in my prior experience!
:)
That said, I'll offer some general advice.
1. Unfortunately, there will probably no one whose job it is to set you up. And there are a thousand and one little details that you need to learn. Where is the photocopier? What do I do when the printer runs out of toner? Where do I order this reagent? Where happens when the biohazard is full? And so on. _Politely_ ask the lowest person on the totem pole until you get an answer.
2. There usually is not an official hierarchy, but the unofficial hierarchy generally runs along the lines of PI -> Postdocs -> Graduate Students -> Research Assistants -> Undergraduates -> Others, modified by time of residence and area of expertise.
3. Everyone in academia likes to be asked to offer their opinion. Even if you think you know the answer, you will often learn something by asking a question or two.
4. Nobody likes it when the new guy is a know-it-all. Even if you do actually know it all, wait a little while before letting everyone else know
5. Have fun and relax. No one expects you to solve all their research problems in your first week.
6. Also, a lot of academic research time (especially in the type of lab it seems you're going to) is "in front of a screen and a good net connection," albeit with access to a lot more peer-reviewed literature than you've probably had access to in the past.
But you can't ignore the last 100 years of technological history because that's the crux of your argument! (At least your argument as I'm reading it - perhaps I'm creating a strawman).
I take your argument as being that the following three postulates are incompatible:
(1) Technological progress in recorded history (last 10,000 years or so) is impressive.
(2) Technological progress in prehistory (say 200,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago) is not impressive and appears (by our hindsight standards) to be basically stagnant .
(3) The intellectual capabilities of humans have not changed considerably since 200,000 years ago or so.
However, I don't think that these three postulates are fundamentally different from:
(1a) Technological progress since 1800 is impressive.
(2a) Technological progress prior to 1800 is less impressive and (by our hindsight standards) basically stagnant.
(3a) The intellectual capabilities of humans did not change considerably in 1800.
For me, the two sets of postulates are the same. I do believe that the inflection point needs to be explained, but I don't believe it is unexplainable or unbelievable in either case.
Following the logic you present, we know that human technological advancement over the last 100 years has been orders of magnitude greater than in the previous 5000 years. In fact, one could say that, relative to recent history, the technological advancement of the previous 5000 years was effectively zero. Therefore, our knowledge of the last 5000 years of human history must be wrong because it doesn't make sense from a "historical and technological development standpoint". How is it possible that "human beings as intelligent and creative as we are today failed to have any technological innovation" over 5000 years?
Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size. from the Wikipedia
Also, for whatever it's worth, technological advancement may be important to the Slashdot crowd, but it's hardly the most important measure of success for a species. Our ancestors did just fine without PDAs and jet airplanes (they must have done for us to be alive today!). And the jury is still out on whether or not becoming brainy and making tools was a good path to follow for humans. No other extant species on the planet has succeeded with this strategy and we may well cause our own extinction in the not too distant future.
The original poster's write-up misses the point. It's NOT news that both fossil and genetic evidence points to the development of anatomically modern humans in Africa somewhere in the 100,000 to 200,000 year range, with several important apparently anatomically modern human fossils at the older end of that range.
What is new in this article is the early date for the use of ochre dye, small "complex" tools, and shellfish in the diet which are all taken as evidence for modern-like human cultural behavior at 165,000 years ago.
To date, the most incontrovertible evidence for modern-like cultural behavior dates back to around 45,000 years ago, with some more ambiguous evidence (similar to that presented in the article in question) dating to around 100,000 years ago.
Even if you have no plans to actually program in Lua, you should get this book as an example of how a technical book can and should be written!
While the novice programmer can certainly pick this book up and learn to program (and it is perfectly suited to that), the examples, asides, and discussion in each chapter contain gems for the intermediate to advanced programmer. Everytime I look something up I see a new depth to some language feature or example I didn't see the first time around.
I use Lua because it is incredibly easy to both extend lua with either C or C++ libraries as well as embed lua in my C/C++/ObjC/whatever programs
If you want to try Rails out for yourself on Mac, you could be doing it in less than 5 minutes (assuming you're sitting on a fast connection....)
Cheers,
ryanTo me, Workgroup Manager is the reason to buy OS X Server (assuming you are running a Mac OS X network with multiple users and OS X clients). It is a nice, zero effort way to manage multiple users and client computers - controlling who can use which client computers and which files/folders will follow them around from computer to computer.
Wouldn't you like to touch my real box, baby? ;)
basically because of a honeytoken like entity
someone at installshield had an entry in some internal company data source using her maiden name (and had used her maiden name nowhere else). she recieved solicitations from wise and got suspicious.
now installshield is sueing the hell out of wise, see this article, and this news release
Yes, Celera did do a genome. But the public consortium also did one which is equivalent or better in most scientific terms and vastly superior in one important respect: it is public domain.
While non-profit researchers can obtain free access to Celera's genome data, it is a pain in the ass to deal with their legal department, and the data is viewable in a sub-optimal interface. The public genome is easily and readily available to anyone and everyone with a web browser.
I had nothing to do with the public human genome project, but I use their data every day in my research as do thousands of other researchers. To suggest that the government pissed away money on that project is simply wrong.
It seems clear to me that everyone benefits from the public genome project in particular, and public science in general. Why should we enrich a private company for basic scientific information which is needed by all researchers (both for-profit and non-profit)?
But... Is file sharing actually making a negative difference on your friend's finances? Is it correct to say that all those people who are downloading her song(s) online would pay for it otherwise? I would suspect that the vast majority of those trading her song(s) would not pay for an entire CD if they had to. (Conversely, of those who have actually bought her CD, how many would not have learned of her music without file sharing? The answer may be zero, I'm just throwing the question out there.)
Pretty much all musicians do not do particularly well financially. This was true before file sharing. It is true now. And it will continue to be true in the RIAA-sponsered post file sharing utopia. Blaming file sharing for a muscician's failure to make money is disingenuous.
How to make money at music is a tough one. But it does not differ fundamentally from the question of how to make money pursuing any kind of art. The struggling painters and sculpters out there are not rolling in the dough because they don't have the worries of thieving online painting-sharers or sculpture-sharers.
ok. i guess i can see your response in context of the post you were writing about.. but your sig is thoroughly confounding me... (really.. not an attack or sarcastic comment here.. just trying to figure out how your sig jibes with your comment - as i assume that it should make sense...)
Hmm, do you have a source on that?
Personal Observation. I lived in Uganda from 1986 to 1993 and I have family still living there. I traveled throughout the region and I have visited in recent years. The vast majority of pharmaceutical products in East Africa derive from England and India with some Chinese and South African products arriving in recent years. Kenya also has a small pharmaceutical industry, producing basic medicines like aspirin, antacids and chloroquine. Central and West Africa derive most of their medical supplies from France with imports from India, China, and South Africa in recent years.
If you call the building in Sudan the "primary source of vaccines and antibiotics for almost all of Central Africa", this demonstrates nothing but your total ignorance of the political and economic situation in Africa. Sudan does not and has not exported anything of any consequence for 20 years or more.
I will not comment on the total position you have advocated except to say that if you believe that the 'independent' media is any less biased than the normal media you are hopelessly naive.
ok.. i'm down with that.. I don't believe that a knee-jerk response it the way to go..
What to do? what to say? I don't believe there is a good response in any way to this. Bombing the hell out of someone is satisfying, but ultimately worthless.
I guess the only thing that I would say is that we _MUST_ condemn anyone and any group that celebrates this pathetic, barharic act. We must retaliate (not necessarily by bombing) but by emphasizing that we will not promote the goals of those that would fall to these lows..... Terrorists must not find their goals affirmed....
ok.. i'll bite.. you say it is an attack on 'american authority and all that jiz'. (whatever that means).. You phrase this in a way that makes me assume that you mean 'this is an attack on american imperialism; we, as benevolent brits, have nothing to fear'.
Which is the more imperialistic nation through history? Which nation is america's closest foreign policy ally? Which nation is most likely to be emphatically supportive of US foreign actions (whatever they may be)? Which nation is host to the longest running internal dissidency (sp?) outside of the middle east?
Not that I support indescriminant retaliation, however I find it somewhat offensive that anyone would say the equivalent of 'it's what you deserve.'
1. Bush's policy applies only to federal funding (NIH - National Institutes of Health funding basically). It has no impact on private funding. Private biomediacal research is huge is the US.
2. Stem cell lines are innovative not because they are cell lines, but because they are embryonic stem cell lines. Cell lines are central in medical research. No drug or therapy can progress to human trials until its effects in vitro (that is, on cells in a dish) have been assessed. There are hundreds of established, standard cell lines that are used for this purpose.
3. It is totally beyond my comprehension how this debate has come to focus on the destruction of embryos. Embryos are destroyed by the hundreds daily. Many fertility clinics require clients to agree to terms that amount to: 'We will create embryos, implant them within you, and any spares will be destroyed in five years if you don't come back asking for them'. Whether or not federal funds can be used for stem cell research, multitudes of embryos are being destroyed daily. This decision has no impact whatsoever upon that fact. The number of embryos 'destroyed' as a consequence of embryonic stem cell research will never be more than a miniscule proportion of the total number of stem cells destroyed.
You are calling Viagra one of the greatest scientific developments of the past 50 years??
I find it interesting that the number 1 argument that artists have against napster is that it takes their control of how their art is propagated away from them. This is insane. The artist in the current system has essentially no control - Do I sell my soul or do I not? - Do I aquiesce to everything my label tells me to do or not?
I got into a heated argument with a movie director the other night who was vehemently anti-napster for that very reason. At the same time, he was sitting there, working on a low-budget $500k film and making squat.
The artist is not protected by current laws/standards.
I work as a scientist in (enter buzzword) primate genomics and I am disgusted by the commercialization of the whole thing. I could sell out tomorrow and sign up with a pharmaceutical company and live happily ever after (at least paycheck-wise), but I will not. I can be a loser (pay-wise) academically and live with myself. Artists are apparently incapable of making the same choices....
Alrighty then....
First off (and I'm not being deliberately snotty here), we're not talking about physics here. Current biology has nowhere near the decimal point accuracy, etc. that modern physics does.
Let's talk about bacteria (since it's a simpler problem - but most applies with minimal changes to studies of other organisms). Let's, furthermore, say I am interested in something like nutrient uptake. There are proteins on the cell surface which are involved in either passing (or not passing) external molecules to the cell interior. It is possible (let's not get into details) to get a good idea as to which surface proteins are involved with passing different classes of external molecules into the cell.
ok then. I have a protein of interest, I have a 'behavior' of interest, what next? believe it or not, the next step is usually trial and error. I induce mutations in the bacterium (by x-raying it or adding some chemical to a culture, etc.) and look for colonies that do weird things vis-a-vis my system of interest (in this case uptake of some particular nutrient - since this is /., let's say caffeine).
As bacteria reproduce like crazy and I have induced mutations in a population of, literally, millions of individual bacteria - there are bound to be some which do funky things as regarding caffeine uptake. I cannot attribute this necessarily to some change in my protein, but I can check the interesting mutants to see if my protein is different from the 'normal' sequence. If it is not - well then, no change in this protein is directly involved in the funky behavior. If it is changed, there is still much more to be done.... because, of course, it may be that some other mutation elsewhere produced the new, funky behaviour, and not my new, improved protein of interest.
One then zeros in on the effect of the changed protein by inserting or otherwise point mutating 'wild-type' bacteria to attempt to determine what effect the changes in sequence have... etc..
of course, having written all this, I realize that I haven't answered the question you asked. And the answer is that biologists, especially molecular types like me, don't predict!
We create mutants and see what happens. You would be astounded at the number of different mouse lineages out there with specific mutations and disease susceptibilities. If something is eventually to be used in humans, you start by seeing what it does to mice, move on to monkeys, then move on to human cells in vitro (cells in a tube, basically), and finally if animals/cells are not dying, etc. move on to trials in humans.
Prediction would be nifty, but even with whole genomes, its just not in the cards for the near future.
I find the Hunkapiller - Gates analogy a little spurious. As mentioned in passing in the NY Times article, the analogy with IBM of the early 80s is a little more appropriate.
PE Bio's equipment is very popular and most labs that sequence use PE equipment. And... unlike Gate's product, Hunkapillar's product is good. PE Bio does have a near monopoly in the sequencer market, but... sequencers from other companies have a reputation of unreliability (this may not be true, this may be in the past, but the perception exists nonetheless). Is it still a monopoly if the best (or perceived best) equipment has the lion's share of the market?
As for the FUD over genetic testing in Katz's editorial . . . Hunkapillar has no control whatsoever over that. The output of sequencers or other genetic analysis machines is fairly useless until analyzed. If this analysis is done on a Windows PC, do we then blame Bill for genetic discrimination . . . or if the analysis is done on a gnu/linux box do we blame RMS or Linus?
Hunkapillar's interest in Celera gives him some control over genetic information . . . but PE Bio sells their machines to anyone and those machines are entirely out of Hunkapillar's control as soon as they leave the factory.