Telomerase activation doesn't "give" you cancer, but the lack of telomerase in most of our tissues is an important block to cancer. All cancers must find a way around the problem that telomerase solves - the incremental loss of genetic material with each successive cell division. Telomerase is not necessary or sufficient to cause cancer (they may also end up with cyclized chromosomes), but its control is likely tied to control of cancer.
It's amusing that governments will often tell citizens that invasions of privacy ought to be tolerated since you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.
Rats with 12-h access to HFCS gained significantly more
body weight than animals given equal access to 10% sucrose, even though they consumed the same
number of total calories, but fewer calories from HFCS than sucrose.
So there's some evidence that it's worse for you than an equivalent caloric amount of sucrose (table sugar), rather than being "all the same" as we've been hearing for quite some time. You can sort of justify these results biochemically if you like (the authors do it in their discussion), since sucrose needs one more metabolic step to be broken down than does HFCS, but there are lots of other factors I'm not entirely educated about. Anyway, read the paper. I was on the "HFCS is all good!" bandwagon until I learned a bit more, and now it looks like I was wrong.
That's from last year, and we're just now deploying screening techniques that will fail to find this in every case. We need to actually be secure (and show everyone exactly how draconian that will be), or just accept that bad shit is going to happen and living in fear is a waste. The half-assed security theater put on by the TSA is not making us more secure (body cavity bombs being only one obvious example) and is purely to make us "feel" safe - and to be a giant nuisance.
No domestic flight has been hijacked or otherwise attacked since the entire country (world?) was alerted to the sheer insanity of religious extremists who will not be taking you on a trip to Cuba or Mexico but will instead use your airplane as a giant suicide bomb. Oh, they also locked the pilots' doors.
The calculated dosage is based on an average over your whole body (like any medical imaging would be, but obviously never goes through your whole body - instead it's all in your skin. Shouldn't this be recalculated? Either way, the risk is non-zero, same as the risk for getting killed by a terrorist. The question is, which risk is greater? As a scientist and a skeptic, I'm not at all convinced that bombarding EVERYONE with x-rays is the less harmful option.
More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.... Globally, about 2 billion passengers fly each year, so screening all passengers with backscatter X-ray scans could reasonably be expected to result in about 32 excess cancer deaths per year.
This is assuming of course that the backscatter x-ray works the same way. I'm not a physicist, but at least one professor at UCSF has raised the concern ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20022541-281.html#ixzz155dhfUQO ) that calculating the dosage by averaging over the whole body will give you a false low dose because the radiation is reflected off the skin and so is more concentrated there. Of course there are very intelligent people on both sides of the discussion, but I think it's a moot point regarding risk/benefit because the risks as stated above by experts (even though they may actually be higher) are already greater than the number of people who currently die to terrorism. So, our protective measure results in more deaths per year than does airline terrorism. Again, take all this with a grain of salt because of confounding variables like age and other idiosyncratic factors (will they live long enough to develop cancer? are they more susceptible to cancer due to youth/genetics?), but I'm going to opt for the pat-down to err on the side of caution, as it were.
I thought one of the objectives of the LHC was to generate Big Bang-like conditions in order to determine why there is matter at all - ie, why was there an imbalance at all? With respect to your "halves" hypothesis, I don't rightly know. Seems to me that since photons are massless, there should be no anti-photons (they aren't made of matter, so how could they be made of anti-matter), and since all of our detection relies on detection of photons we are incapable of distinguishing antimatter from a distance. That said, I don't see how a Big Bang could generate neat areas of one or the other - it's an explosion right?
Oh! Unless every galaxy is made of matter or antimatter without any intermingling as a result of random transient "clumps" in the primordium of the universe (like the clumps of oil in an agitated oil-water mixture), while the vacuum in between is the result of a more even distribution of the two. But again, more Big Bang research is required. Science is fun!
Because then you don't have to make glue, and making bacteria is easier than making glue (by "make" I mean "create successive generations of an existing strain" rather than "engineer from scratch") and maybe less toxic.
I would try this stuff but I'm deathly afraid of the TSA. You know how much shit they can put you through? Miss your flight, detainment, additional searches, fines, jail time, no-fly list, etc etc. Forget getting your plane blown up, the risk/reward of goofing off with TSA officials is super not worth it.
Or, those with a ton of money can afford to take chances and bring something new and cool to us. I like to think that Google (and Apple, whether you like them or not) does more of this, but just because Microsoft hasn't, doesn't mean "capitalism" is broken.
Yes, the claim is that he's worked hard. And then you went on a rant claiming that he currently lives very well, and (I guess, because of that) doesn't work hard. Obviously, he no longer has to. So, take his money? Who gets it if he doesn't "deserve" it? In your opinion, do any rich people - like Oprah, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet (all of whom live in comparable luxury) - deserve their money?
He's rich. Of course he leads a rich lifestyle. You're saying that because he benefits from his current wealth he hasn't worked for it, doesn't work for it, and doesn't deserve it? The real question is: does the government deserve the money more?
While Ballmer may not be a corporate superhero from an Ayn Rand fairytale, I have no reason to believe that he did not work for his money, nor have you presented evidence to the contrary. If he has money that he did not inherit, where do you suppose it came from? Did he steal it? Would you mind pointing to some rich people who did work for their money? Of these, which ones deserve to keep their money and which ones deserve to have it taxed away? Or do they all, by virtue of having more money, need to have more taken away?
I thought copyright law was to protect and encourage innovation, not make sure a corporation can hold exclusive moneymaking rights on something created eight decades ago by a man who has since died.
Why does it have to be "stray?" The American People (TM) don't care and it probably won't make it onto any of our news organizations. And if by chance they catch wind of it, here's all the justification you need: "We have protected national security by annihilating a rogue satellite launched by pirates. You know how you hate those guys. Also, here's a video of us blowing it up - it looks awesome."
Actually, I thought instead of Blood Music, with its "thinking cells" when I read this article (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blood_Music).
I was mostly taking issue because the article seems to be ascribing some intent or intelligence over the choices that the bacteria are making, as though they look around at one another and exclaim, "I do say, we appear to be dying from this dose of ampicillin! Does anyone have an appropriate resistance gene on his plasmid?" When in actuality they will respond to stress by gobbling up whatever bits of DNA (either by conjugation with other cells or uptake from the environment) they can find, a strategy that is desperate but pays off for some - who then survive and proliferate with their new resistance genes.
I know it's a bit of nit-picking in an otherwise fascinating and informative article, but this bit about bacteria directing their own evolution is quite unfounded and - I suspect - added to sensationalize a teeny bit.
Bacteria do engage in horizontal gene transfer, and so can shape their own genomes beyond relying on random mutation (which is perfectly reasonable and expected, given that us dumb eukaryotes have even figured out how to do that part pretty well). However, to suggest that the bacteria are making "intentional changes to their heritable scaffolding" with some kind of intelligence is anthropomorphizing a little overmuch, especially with this part: "To suggest that organisms as primitive as bacteria are capable of controlling their own evolution is obviously silly. Isn’t it?" Yes, bacteria can share genetic material and yes, some bits of material (plasmids!) seem developed almost explicitly to do this, but evidence of "intentions" or "control" behind their evolutionary direction is lacking. Bacteria share genes; the ones who pick up successful (eg, antibiotic resistance) genes survive and proliferate. Natural selection favors mobility of these situationally beneficial genes (and, one must note, only when they are beneficial; they otherwise drop rather rapidly out of the population) and the bacteria who harbor them, just like every other living thing on the planet.
Final note: no serious tree of life puts humans at the "apex." To do so is to misunderstand evolutionary theory: we are just as "evolved" as every other extant life form.
I'm confused by your metaphor. When are you accidentally racking up cell phone charges? I'm aware of when I use my phone more than I'm aware of my caloric intake and - later in the night - my bar tab. I'm not sure how to translate the fake high calorie carrot sticks into something pertinent to the cell phone discussion.
I think it's hard to argue that a science/chemistry kit never inspired any kids to becoming scientists. Arguing that a subset of those kids would have gone on to become scientists anyway is irrelevant, and says nothing about the efficacy of the science kits in inspiring children. I don't want just the "really interested" kids to be the ones who end up as scientists; I want to expose everyone to science as much as possible. Bottom line, some kids were inspired by science kits in the past (maybe you believe otherwise), and will be missed in the future. This is a bad thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Telomerase activation doesn't "give" you cancer, but the lack of telomerase in most of our tissues is an important block to cancer. All cancers must find a way around the problem that telomerase solves - the incremental loss of genetic material with each successive cell division. Telomerase is not necessary or sufficient to cause cancer (they may also end up with cyclized chromosomes), but its control is likely tied to control of cancer.
It's amusing that governments will often tell citizens that invasions of privacy ought to be tolerated since you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.
http://www.foodpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/HFCS_Rats_10.pdf
Rats with 12-h access to HFCS gained significantly more body weight than animals given equal access to 10% sucrose, even though they consumed the same number of total calories, but fewer calories from HFCS than sucrose.
So there's some evidence that it's worse for you than an equivalent caloric amount of sucrose (table sugar), rather than being "all the same" as we've been hearing for quite some time. You can sort of justify these results biochemically if you like (the authors do it in their discussion), since sucrose needs one more metabolic step to be broken down than does HFCS, but there are lots of other factors I'm not entirely educated about. Anyway, read the paper. I was on the "HFCS is all good!" bandwagon until I learned a bit more, and now it looks like I was wrong.
Whoops. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/28/eveningnews/main5347847.shtml
That's from last year, and we're just now deploying screening techniques that will fail to find this in every case. We need to actually be secure (and show everyone exactly how draconian that will be), or just accept that bad shit is going to happen and living in fear is a waste. The half-assed security theater put on by the TSA is not making us more secure (body cavity bombs being only one obvious example) and is purely to make us "feel" safe - and to be a giant nuisance.
No domestic flight has been hijacked or otherwise attacked since the entire country (world?) was alerted to the sheer insanity of religious extremists who will not be taking you on a trip to Cuba or Mexico but will instead use your airplane as a giant suicide bomb. Oh, they also locked the pilots' doors.
The calculated dosage is based on an average over your whole body (like any medical imaging would be, but obviously never goes through your whole body - instead it's all in your skin. Shouldn't this be recalculated? Either way, the risk is non-zero, same as the risk for getting killed by a terrorist. The question is, which risk is greater? As a scientist and a skeptic, I'm not at all convinced that bombarding EVERYONE with x-rays is the less harmful option.
More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result. ... Globally, about 2 billion passengers fly each year, so screening all passengers with backscatter X-ray scans could reasonably be expected to result in about 32 excess cancer deaths per year.
This is assuming of course that the backscatter x-ray works the same way. I'm not a physicist, but at least one professor at UCSF has raised the concern ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20022541-281.html#ixzz155dhfUQO ) that calculating the dosage by averaging over the whole body will give you a false low dose because the radiation is reflected off the skin and so is more concentrated there. Of course there are very intelligent people on both sides of the discussion, but I think it's a moot point regarding risk/benefit because the risks as stated above by experts (even though they may actually be higher) are already greater than the number of people who currently die to terrorism. So, our protective measure results in more deaths per year than does airline terrorism. Again, take all this with a grain of salt because of confounding variables like age and other idiosyncratic factors (will they live long enough to develop cancer? are they more susceptible to cancer due to youth/genetics?), but I'm going to opt for the pat-down to err on the side of caution, as it were.
The Wikipedia page has a good overview of the conflicting sources regarding the safety of the scanners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray
Mod parent up. The Chinese people know how to have a revolution, the rest of us can't (shouldn't?) do it for them if they don't want it.
I thought one of the objectives of the LHC was to generate Big Bang-like conditions in order to determine why there is matter at all - ie, why was there an imbalance at all? With respect to your "halves" hypothesis, I don't rightly know. Seems to me that since photons are massless, there should be no anti-photons (they aren't made of matter, so how could they be made of anti-matter), and since all of our detection relies on detection of photons we are incapable of distinguishing antimatter from a distance. That said, I don't see how a Big Bang could generate neat areas of one or the other - it's an explosion right?
Oh! Unless every galaxy is made of matter or antimatter without any intermingling as a result of random transient "clumps" in the primordium of the universe (like the clumps of oil in an agitated oil-water mixture), while the vacuum in between is the result of a more even distribution of the two. But again, more Big Bang research is required. Science is fun!
Because then you don't have to make glue, and making bacteria is easier than making glue (by "make" I mean "create successive generations of an existing strain" rather than "engineer from scratch") and maybe less toxic.
I would try this stuff but I'm deathly afraid of the TSA. You know how much shit they can put you through? Miss your flight, detainment, additional searches, fines, jail time, no-fly list, etc etc. Forget getting your plane blown up, the risk/reward of goofing off with TSA officials is super not worth it.
It's not unethical if they volunteer for it. I won't touch the cloning thing though, seems a bit off-topic.
Or, those with a ton of money can afford to take chances and bring something new and cool to us. I like to think that Google (and Apple, whether you like them or not) does more of this, but just because Microsoft hasn't, doesn't mean "capitalism" is broken.
Yes, the claim is that he's worked hard. And then you went on a rant claiming that he currently lives very well, and (I guess, because of that) doesn't work hard. Obviously, he no longer has to. So, take his money? Who gets it if he doesn't "deserve" it? In your opinion, do any rich people - like Oprah, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet (all of whom live in comparable luxury) - deserve their money?
He's rich. Of course he leads a rich lifestyle. You're saying that because he benefits from his current wealth he hasn't worked for it, doesn't work for it, and doesn't deserve it? The real question is: does the government deserve the money more?
While Ballmer may not be a corporate superhero from an Ayn Rand fairytale, I have no reason to believe that he did not work for his money, nor have you presented evidence to the contrary. If he has money that he did not inherit, where do you suppose it came from? Did he steal it? Would you mind pointing to some rich people who did work for their money? Of these, which ones deserve to keep their money and which ones deserve to have it taxed away? Or do they all, by virtue of having more money, need to have more taken away?
I thought copyright law was to protect and encourage innovation, not make sure a corporation can hold exclusive moneymaking rights on something created eight decades ago by a man who has since died.
You only think that because your brain is different from theirs.
Why does it have to be "stray?" The American People (TM) don't care and it probably won't make it onto any of our news organizations. And if by chance they catch wind of it, here's all the justification you need: "We have protected national security by annihilating a rogue satellite launched by pirates. You know how you hate those guys. Also, here's a video of us blowing it up - it looks awesome."
Actually, I thought instead of Blood Music, with its "thinking cells" when I read this article (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blood_Music).
I was mostly taking issue because the article seems to be ascribing some intent or intelligence over the choices that the bacteria are making, as though they look around at one another and exclaim, "I do say, we appear to be dying from this dose of ampicillin! Does anyone have an appropriate resistance gene on his plasmid?" When in actuality they will respond to stress by gobbling up whatever bits of DNA (either by conjugation with other cells or uptake from the environment) they can find, a strategy that is desperate but pays off for some - who then survive and proliferate with their new resistance genes.
I know it's a bit of nit-picking in an otherwise fascinating and informative article, but this bit about bacteria directing their own evolution is quite unfounded and - I suspect - added to sensationalize a teeny bit.
Bacteria do engage in horizontal gene transfer, and so can shape their own genomes beyond relying on random mutation (which is perfectly reasonable and expected, given that us dumb eukaryotes have even figured out how to do that part pretty well). However, to suggest that the bacteria are making "intentional changes to their heritable scaffolding" with some kind of intelligence is anthropomorphizing a little overmuch, especially with this part: "To suggest that organisms as primitive as bacteria are capable of controlling their own evolution is obviously silly. Isn’t it?" Yes, bacteria can share genetic material and yes, some bits of material (plasmids!) seem developed almost explicitly to do this, but evidence of "intentions" or "control" behind their evolutionary direction is lacking. Bacteria share genes; the ones who pick up successful (eg, antibiotic resistance) genes survive and proliferate. Natural selection favors mobility of these situationally beneficial genes (and, one must note, only when they are beneficial; they otherwise drop rather rapidly out of the population) and the bacteria who harbor them, just like every other living thing on the planet.
Final note: no serious tree of life puts humans at the "apex." To do so is to misunderstand evolutionary theory: we are just as "evolved" as every other extant life form.
Sincerely,
A Pedantic Biologist
I'm confused by your metaphor. When are you accidentally racking up cell phone charges? I'm aware of when I use my phone more than I'm aware of my caloric intake and - later in the night - my bar tab. I'm not sure how to translate the fake high calorie carrot sticks into something pertinent to the cell phone discussion.
Can the government also mandate that someone text me when I've eaten too much or when I spend too much money at a bar?
I think it's hard to argue that a science/chemistry kit never inspired any kids to becoming scientists. Arguing that a subset of those kids would have gone on to become scientists anyway is irrelevant, and says nothing about the efficacy of the science kits in inspiring children. I don't want just the "really interested" kids to be the ones who end up as scientists; I want to expose everyone to science as much as possible. Bottom line, some kids were inspired by science kits in the past (maybe you believe otherwise), and will be missed in the future. This is a bad thing.