Do you mean, in particular, that your dog likes eating cat shit? I've known dogs with this preference, but no interest in dog shit.
Part of the story here is that cat shit is packed with high levels of protein, as their food has a superabundance of protein and they don't absorb it all. [Cats are obligate carnivores and require very high protein diets.]
Dogs can smell protein and enjoy eating it, be it in the form of bacon or cat shit.
Gold nano-particles are not poisonous, as metalic gold is as biologically inert as you get in metals.
Gold ions, on the other hand, are quite toxic.
There is good evidence that bacteria (such as those in the genus Shewanella) actively precipitate gold ions out of solution to form the gold particles/nuggets/etc we find, as a way of dealing with the toxic nature of the free ions.
Funny thing... my dad spent his career designing intersections and the systems which run them...
Those buttons do function. How they function depends on the local traffic control system. Generally the computer controlling the system notes that someone is waiting to cross and alters the timing of upcoming signal events to allow for pedestrians to safely cross.
Your dad was right though, nothing happens immediately when you push the button.
If some municipalities, like New York mentioned in the topic, want to skimp out on public services... then they don't hire competent systems designers and you may indeed end up with placebo buttons.
...for the most part. the standard bee we think of is a domesticated, inbred, tamed animal.
Part of the "killer bee" aggressive behavior is the more aggressive killing/discarding of sick colony members, resulting in improved health of colonies facing disease.
As well, the introduction of wild gene stock which resulted in the "killer bees" brought with it a lot of genetic diversity which in general has been found to be associated with improved health.
One of the motivations of the research which led to the killer bees is that the wild African bee strain was much more robust under the assault of known bee diseases. This is likely due in part to the inbred nature of most domesticated bees and a concommitent decrease in immune system function.
I expect killer bees have generally not cared the slightest about this little plague killiing our bees.
The stress of transport may be a contributing cause. The driving bees all over the countryside is very directly a cause.
One sick colony somewhere doesn't amount to much... but if you then drive that colony all over the country so every other colony also gets exposed, you have yourself a epidemic. This is pretty simple epidemiology and was apparent to be involved from early on (at least by the biology-types I hange out with).
The work identifying a specific virus and a specific fungus is handy because we'll be able to develop specific countermeasures... however, we're still going to be driving the damned bees all over the place spreading potential bee plagues as they go. (Prediction: a decade after this disease is licked, there will be another 'mysterious' bee dieoff and we'll go through the whole cycle again of people wondering why.)
Ok, a point by point rebuttal to this crazy, from an actual practicing molecular biologist.
The orthomolecular biochemists
This word doesn't mean anything in scientific circles. "Orthomolecular" is a relatively new fad term for holistic nutrition/medicine. Examine here for an example.
have a unified theory of cancer and it's reversible now.
There is a unified theory of cancer, it primarily states that living things get cancer in the same way that iron rusts. It is inevitable, as a consequence of the fundamental properties of the system in question. It is not "reversible", a nonsense term in the biological context, and every specific cancer will require a different specific treatment.
Salvesterols
Google "salvesterols", 256 hits. Google "salvestrols", 35400 hits. Neither term is used in chemical/biochemical/molbio literature. The basic concept is that all "diseased cells" have specific enzymes which will convert specific plant-derived salvestrols into poisons, thus killing the bad cells. Evolutionarily, there is no way this would be maintained. The first mutant cell lacking this special enzyme would proliferate and the salvestrol would be of no use. See here for a representative site.
exploit the CYPB1P1 metabolic pathway; the Cytochrome P450-1 enzyme converts them to
There isn't a "CYPB1P1 pathway". CYPB1P1 is an enzyme involved in the oxidative breakdown of a variety of substrates. These enzymes are often used by animals to detoxify minor toxins from food. In the case of Aflotoxin poisoning, these enzymes are responsible for the production of potentially fatal liver damage by modifying the initially neutral compound into a potent mutagen/carcinogen/toxin.
picotannins
The word "picotannins" doesn't exist in the chemical/biological literature, or on the web according to Google. Perhaps you meant tannings at low ("pico") levels? Tannins are plant compoinds and are not synthesized by any known animal metabolic pathways. At low levels, some tannins may have benificial effects on diet. In larger ammounts, they tend to be poisonous to animals not specialized in consuming them. Specialized animals tend to have enzymes in their saliva to bind and inactivate tannins before they can be absorved in the gut.
which selectively, in vivo and in vitro, kill only tumor cells.
Not exactly true, but since technically the chemicals you're speaking of don't exist, I suppose I can't say.
I've met end stage lung cancer patients whose cancer has been rerversed.
This is wonderful news for them and irrelevant to your claims.
I'm not interested in any nay sayers or claims of quckery. I'm just not interested.
It is good to know you've decided you don't need to learn anything about a topic to which you obviously have no expertise, before making potentially life-changing decisions based on that erroneous assumption.
Contact me directly if you need more information or sources; I can point you to (free) biochemists who can explain this much better than I can and offer guidance. It's extremely important to avoid sugar; whereas our cells use atp for energy, cancer cells use sugars directly.
Cancer cells cannot use sugar "directly" in the way you imply, nothing can actually. All cells use ATP for energy, with a minor sprinkling of GTP. Some human cell types (brain/neurons) will only accept sugar from the blood as a food source, while others (muscle/skin/etc) will also accept amino acids, cholesterol, and triglycerides from the blood to use for food. Your liver actually synthesizes sugar (glu
I seem to recall that:
1. The opposite of what you said.
2. There was no such thing.
[What your or I recall does not constitute evidence for the argument.]
There's no denying there are climate changes going around:
1. Calling it man-made is straightforward because there is an explicit proof of causality. We're evaporating the world's stored carbon into the air as CO2, which is easy to prove prevents loss of IR radiation back to space. Thus on the balance, more energy is being retained by the planet. This increased energy is manifest as an increased global temperature and climate shifts. There are some buffering forces at play, but there is no reason to expect they will increase in influence as we continue to pump more CO2 into the air.
2. Calling it warming is precise, as worldwide the planet is warming. However, referring to it as rapid climate change is probably more clear to the majority of people.
3. Agreed. I suspect it is far too late to do anything to avoid dramatic population dislocations for the poorest of our planet. You and I will just have to use our air conditioners a little more each year, so it isn't a big issue (right?).
The reason to not talk about something when the publication is pending is to avoid having your work scooped by another researcher, not due to contract obligations with the journal.
The only time an academic researcher is free to talk about their work is once it has already been published and their name is permanently associated with the results.
I like the phrase, "consuming and endlessly recycling the poop of earlier organisms".
The O2 we need is essentially waste from earlier or concurrent organisms. "Consuming" does imply eating, however, so perhaps it should be trimmed to, "endlessly recycling the poop of earlier organisms".
Water is one of those basic molecules put together by the simple chemistry found before life. How else do you end up with comets and Mars ice caps containing water ice?
goiters are annoying... but the major benefit of iodized salt is the near-elimination of cretinism (the disorder, not the modern use referring to idiots of all stripes).
Salt is a dietary requirement. If you don't get enough salt in your diet, you get sick and die.
Limiting salt levels in foods, rather than an outright ban, might make sense. However, I expect the only result would an increase in the number of people carrying personal salt shakers when they eat out.
Isolating embryonic stem cells is relatively easy and people have been doing so for decades. Isolating adult stem cells is relatively hard and people are still figuring out how to do so.
If we had just waited for adult stem cells to be available, we would have no idea how to do anything with those few types we now know how to produce.
This is why research using embryonic stem cells was/is such a big deal. In the end game, we probably won't be using embryonic stem cells for human medicine, but we're not at that stage yet.
Currently is it used in small amounts on mosquito nets over sleeping areas.
An earlier use of DDT was to spray it on the interior walls where mosquitos rested after feeding. This rapidly led to the evolution of mosquitos which would fly away into the plants outside before resting after a feed.
"On a walk last summer, he ran into one of his few neighbors, a man who lives in a cottage about 100 yards away. During their chat, the man’s cellphone rang, and Segerbäck, 54, was overcome by nausea. Within seconds, he was unconscious."
The guy in the article only develops symptoms of exposure when he realizes he's being exposed. He's a paranoid lunatic to a severe degree. It is probable that medication will help him, but not until he accepts that the problem is internal not external in nature.
a key point... ribozymes, not ribosomes.
Ribozymes are ribonucleic acids with enzymatic activities.
Ribosomes are what our kind of life uses to translate mRNA into peptide sequences.
Slashdot Mirror
You're implying that we biologists have been cloning walking/breathing copies of Henrietta Lacks to disect for our studies?
Cells derived from the tumor which killed her are routinely used. If you think anything more than this has been happening, you are sorely misinformed.
Meh, facebook is just connective tissue; grey matter.
"Grey matter" refers to the nervous tissue you think with. "White matter" refers to nervous tissue primarily consisting of nerve axons.
Neither count as "connective tissue".
Do you mean, in particular, that your dog likes eating cat shit? I've known dogs with this preference, but no interest in dog shit.
Part of the story here is that cat shit is packed with high levels of protein, as their food has a superabundance of protein and they don't absorb it all. [Cats are obligate carnivores and require very high protein diets.]
Dogs can smell protein and enjoy eating it, be it in the form of bacon or cat shit.
Our planet isn't big enough to have a fusion core.
The sun, yes; Jupiter, maybe; Earth, hell no.
ah, just noticed your username... troll away.
Gold nano-particles are not poisonous, as metalic gold is as biologically inert as you get in metals.
Gold ions, on the other hand, are quite toxic.
There is good evidence that bacteria (such as those in the genus Shewanella) actively precipitate gold ions out of solution to form the gold particles/nuggets/etc we find, as a way of dealing with the toxic nature of the free ions.
That's a good point. I've never been to NYC, but I should have assumed from the various media representations.
Funny thing... my dad spent his career designing intersections and the systems which run them...
Those buttons do function. How they function depends on the local traffic control system. Generally the computer controlling the system notes that someone is waiting to cross and alters the timing of upcoming signal events to allow for pedestrians to safely cross.
Your dad was right though, nothing happens immediately when you push the button.
If some municipalities, like New York mentioned in the topic, want to skimp out on public services... then they don't hire competent systems designers and you may indeed end up with placebo buttons.
"otherwise the same as regular bees"
...for the most part. the standard bee we think of is a domesticated, inbred, tamed animal.
Part of the "killer bee" aggressive behavior is the more aggressive killing/discarding of sick colony members, resulting in improved health of colonies facing disease.
As well, the introduction of wild gene stock which resulted in the "killer bees" brought with it a lot of genetic diversity which in general has been found to be associated with improved health.
One of the motivations of the research which led to the killer bees is that the wild African bee strain was much more robust under the assault of known bee diseases. This is likely due in part to the inbred nature of most domesticated bees and a concommitent decrease in immune system function.
I expect killer bees have generally not cared the slightest about this little plague killiing our bees.
The stress of transport may be a contributing cause. The driving bees all over the countryside is very directly a cause.
One sick colony somewhere doesn't amount to much... but if you then drive that colony all over the country so every other colony also gets exposed, you have yourself a epidemic. This is pretty simple epidemiology and was apparent to be involved from early on (at least by the biology-types I hange out with).
The work identifying a specific virus and a specific fungus is handy because we'll be able to develop specific countermeasures... however, we're still going to be driving the damned bees all over the place spreading potential bee plagues as they go. (Prediction: a decade after this disease is licked, there will be another 'mysterious' bee dieoff and we'll go through the whole cycle again of people wondering why.)
yes, but the point is that most ulcers can simply be cured now.
All it would take is a favorable wind at cruising altitude.
The orthomolecular biochemists
This word doesn't mean anything in scientific circles. "Orthomolecular" is a relatively new fad term for holistic nutrition/medicine. Examine here for an example.
have a unified theory of cancer and it's reversible now.
There is a unified theory of cancer, it primarily states that living things get cancer in the same way that iron rusts. It is inevitable, as a consequence of the fundamental properties of the system in question. It is not "reversible", a nonsense term in the biological context, and every specific cancer will require a different specific treatment.
Salvesterols
Google "salvesterols", 256 hits. Google "salvestrols", 35400 hits. Neither term is used in chemical/biochemical/molbio literature. The basic concept is that all "diseased cells" have specific enzymes which will convert specific plant-derived salvestrols into poisons, thus killing the bad cells. Evolutionarily, there is no way this would be maintained. The first mutant cell lacking this special enzyme would proliferate and the salvestrol would be of no use. See here for a representative site.
exploit the CYPB1P1 metabolic pathway; the Cytochrome P450-1 enzyme converts them to
There isn't a "CYPB1P1 pathway". CYPB1P1 is an enzyme involved in the oxidative breakdown of a variety of substrates. These enzymes are often used by animals to detoxify minor toxins from food. In the case of Aflotoxin poisoning, these enzymes are responsible for the production of potentially fatal liver damage by modifying the initially neutral compound into a potent mutagen/carcinogen/toxin.
picotannins
The word "picotannins" doesn't exist in the chemical/biological literature, or on the web according to Google. Perhaps you meant tannings at low ("pico") levels? Tannins are plant compoinds and are not synthesized by any known animal metabolic pathways. At low levels, some tannins may have benificial effects on diet. In larger ammounts, they tend to be poisonous to animals not specialized in consuming them. Specialized animals tend to have enzymes in their saliva to bind and inactivate tannins before they can be absorved in the gut.
which selectively, in vivo and in vitro, kill only tumor cells.
Not exactly true, but since technically the chemicals you're speaking of don't exist, I suppose I can't say.
I've met end stage lung cancer patients whose cancer has been rerversed.
This is wonderful news for them and irrelevant to your claims.
I'm not interested in any nay sayers or claims of quckery. I'm just not interested.
It is good to know you've decided you don't need to learn anything about a topic to which you obviously have no expertise, before making potentially life-changing decisions based on that erroneous assumption.
Contact me directly if you need more information or sources; I can point you to (free) biochemists who can explain this much better than I can and offer guidance. It's extremely important to avoid sugar; whereas our cells use atp for energy, cancer cells use sugars directly.
Cancer cells cannot use sugar "directly" in the way you imply, nothing can actually. All cells use ATP for energy, with a minor sprinkling of GTP. Some human cell types (brain/neurons) will only accept sugar from the blood as a food source, while others (muscle/skin/etc) will also accept amino acids, cholesterol, and triglycerides from the blood to use for food. Your liver actually synthesizes sugar (glu
I seem to recall that:
1. The opposite of what you said.
2. There was no such thing.
[What your or I recall does not constitute evidence for the argument.]
There's no denying there are climate changes going around:
1. Calling it man-made is straightforward because there is an explicit proof of causality. We're evaporating the world's stored carbon into the air as CO2, which is easy to prove prevents loss of IR radiation back to space. Thus on the balance, more energy is being retained by the planet. This increased energy is manifest as an increased global temperature and climate shifts. There are some buffering forces at play, but there is no reason to expect they will increase in influence as we continue to pump more CO2 into the air.
2. Calling it warming is precise, as worldwide the planet is warming. However, referring to it as rapid climate change is probably more clear to the majority of people.
3. Agreed. I suspect it is far too late to do anything to avoid dramatic population dislocations for the poorest of our planet. You and I will just have to use our air conditioners a little more each year, so it isn't a big issue (right?).
The reason to not talk about something when the publication is pending is to avoid having your work scooped by another researcher, not due to contract obligations with the journal.
The only time an academic researcher is free to talk about their work is once it has already been published and their name is permanently associated with the results.
I like the phrase, "consuming and endlessly recycling the poop of earlier organisms".
The O2 we need is essentially waste from earlier or concurrent organisms. "Consuming" does imply eating, however, so perhaps it should be trimmed to, "endlessly recycling the poop of earlier organisms".
Oxygen, yes. Water, no.
Water is one of those basic molecules put together by the simple chemistry found before life. How else do you end up with comets and Mars ice caps containing water ice?
Is there a website or something where someone might be able to read more of this?
goiters are annoying... but the major benefit of iodized salt is the near-elimination of cretinism (the disorder, not the modern use referring to idiots of all stripes).
Salt is a dietary requirement. If you don't get enough salt in your diet, you get sick and die. Limiting salt levels in foods, rather than an outright ban, might make sense. However, I expect the only result would an increase in the number of people carrying personal salt shakers when they eat out.
Isolating embryonic stem cells is relatively easy and people have been doing so for decades. Isolating adult stem cells is relatively hard and people are still figuring out how to do so.
If we had just waited for adult stem cells to be available, we would have no idea how to do anything with those few types we now know how to produce.
This is why research using embryonic stem cells was/is such a big deal. In the end game, we probably won't be using embryonic stem cells for human medicine, but we're not at that stage yet.
Currently is it used in small amounts on mosquito nets over sleeping areas.
An earlier use of DDT was to spray it on the interior walls where mosquitos rested after feeding. This rapidly led to the evolution of mosquitos which would fly away into the plants outside before resting after a feed.
"On a walk last summer, he ran into one of his few neighbors, a man who lives in a cottage about 100 yards away. During their chat, the man’s cellphone rang, and Segerbäck, 54, was overcome by nausea. Within seconds, he was unconscious."
The guy in the article only develops symptoms of exposure when he realizes he's being exposed. He's a paranoid lunatic to a severe degree. It is probable that medication will help him, but not until he accepts that the problem is internal not external in nature.
interesting, given that opiates are poison in "very high doses".
a key point... ribozymes, not ribosomes. Ribozymes are ribonucleic acids with enzymatic activities. Ribosomes are what our kind of life uses to translate mRNA into peptide sequences.