If your car drives itself, the 500 mile-human-body-barrier may not be as relevant in 2020. It seems like the driverless car and this battery are slated for a similar timeline.
If this was coming from somewhere else, I would be more swayed by your battery histrionics point. But, IBM does not frequently dish out bullshit results for publicity.
Agreed. I seriously doubt that anyone posting here actually _knows_ much about the current state of missile defense systems. I mean, you may have read a lot on the topic, but are the important details likely to be factually correct in public documents? I doubt it.
I dunno. Seems like if China really wanted to "crack down" on something like rogue stem cell injections into dupes, it could do so. Think cultural revolution, Tiananmen square, one child-policy, internets censorship.
It's fine to be skeptical of new findings. In fact it is healthy, and most good scientists are skeptical about anything new. TFA is an example of healthy skepticism. I am curious about the findings that could not be reproduced by this group- how many of those had already been passed off as weak in the field. This is what scientists do to arrive at consensus - continuous testing. The goal of scientists is to find what is real. Granted it can be affected by human nature and desires, but the profession diligently seeks to limit these effects.
The conservative anti-scientist campaign, as far as I can tell, takes aim at scientists when scientific findings do not favor the political will of the conservative. It ignores what is real in favor of what is desired.
Private enterprise, as much as the left wing hates it, knows when and how to cut research that is a dead end.
Research is the discovery of unknown. One never knows when it will lead to a "dead end". If one knew, then it would not be discovery.
Private enterprise has a goal of solving a problem for profit. This can be quite different from government funded research in an important way because it restricts the potential for discovery.
Excellent points. Another point regarding scientific research in the USA that people miss: It is one of the few things that the USA does really well. Why should it be cut? Cuts undermine an important national strength.
OK- maybe it does not generate revenue in the short term, but in the long run it is NECESSARY for a competitive economy.
The problem is not getting money to build things (big buildings to small urinals). The example of UPenn bldg demonstrates this point quite well. The problem is getting money for other important things needed for the buildings to be useful. maintenance of systems, paying for staff, paying for the researchers. It is much more difficult to satisfy a donor's need to attach a name to those sorts of things, so those sorts of things get underfunded and construction gets overfunded. Perhaps we should propose tattooing donor names onto students?
People (donors) prefer indelibly attaching their names to buildings or monuments and not on a repaired elevator or on maintenance of a building's HVAC or even on a student's stipend. I think this comes down to an ego thing. I agree that it is lame.
I don't get the complaint that the Biology PhD students didn't learn computer programming or high level math. Entering a Biology PhD program, joining a particular PI's lab, and (frequently) the nature of the research project are all choices made by the PhD student. So guess what - If a PhD student CHOOSES a lab/project that does not implement programming or math, then she won't be taught much of it by her PI or program.
Now, complaining about poor pay, long hours, and poor job prospects seem much more legitimate. The people who go on in academia to have their own labs do not do it for the money. Typically, they do it because they love research.
I will agree that the baldness caused by CRF overexpression in mice may be informative and quite interesting. However, the article was centered around a claim of regrowth being "miraculous", which is lame and overblown. Regrowth was achieved by simply inhibiting the genetic trick used to generate baldness. So, I thought the regrowth provided no real insight into the complexities of stress induced baldness.
Yes - they treated mice genetically engineered to overexpress a hormone with an antagonist to the hormone....and then...they see effects of the hormone expression are suppressed. SHOCKER (sarcasm).
Unless you are a human genetically engineered to overexpress CRF, your bald head will not likely benefit from this work.
Um, these bozos are the people who determine if scientific research gets funded through the US budget.
So they have an enormous impact on actual scientific research.
This only works for a techie when engaged with a person willing to listen and (gasp) _think _ about science. For many, science is hard and takes too much work relative to the reward they feel from new understanding.
As a scientist, I am interested in what nobody yet knows. The stuff that is already "known" is no longer a subject of active research and not so interesting.
When I talk to my non-scientist relatives, neighbors, etc about science, I find that they don't truly empathize with this concept. Instead, they have an outlook that scientists should just know how "things" work. This misunderstanding provides just as many difficulties for explaining recent research findings and causes just as many problems as does the use of jargon/technical language.
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If your car drives itself, the 500 mile-human-body-barrier may not be as relevant in 2020. It seems like the driverless car and this battery are slated for a similar timeline.
If this was coming from somewhere else, I would be more swayed by your battery histrionics point. But, IBM does not frequently dish out bullshit results for publicity.
Agreed. I seriously doubt that anyone posting here actually _knows_ much about the current state of missile defense systems. I mean, you may have read a lot on the topic, but are the important details likely to be factually correct in public documents? I doubt it.
I dunno. Seems like if China really wanted to "crack down" on something like rogue stem cell injections into dupes, it could do so. Think cultural revolution, Tiananmen square, one child-policy, internets censorship.
It's fine to be skeptical of new findings. In fact it is healthy, and most good scientists are skeptical about anything new. TFA is an example of healthy skepticism. I am curious about the findings that could not be reproduced by this group- how many of those had already been passed off as weak in the field. This is what scientists do to arrive at consensus - continuous testing. The goal of scientists is to find what is real. Granted it can be affected by human nature and desires, but the profession diligently seeks to limit these effects. The conservative anti-scientist campaign, as far as I can tell, takes aim at scientists when scientific findings do not favor the political will of the conservative. It ignores what is real in favor of what is desired.
shucks, i have no mod points left +1
I suppose we should develop a doomsday dog that explodes upon detecting fluorescence of a glow dog.
YAWN. too bad you are correct.
Private enterprise, as much as the left wing hates it, knows when and how to cut research that is a dead end.
Research is the discovery of unknown. One never knows when it will lead to a "dead end". If one knew, then it would not be discovery.
Private enterprise has a goal of solving a problem for profit. This can be quite different from government funded research in an important way because it restricts the potential for discovery.
Excellent points. Another point regarding scientific research in the USA that people miss: It is one of the few things that the USA does really well. Why should it be cut? Cuts undermine an important national strength. OK- maybe it does not generate revenue in the short term, but in the long run it is NECESSARY for a competitive economy.
The problem is not getting money to build things (big buildings to small urinals). The example of UPenn bldg demonstrates this point quite well. The problem is getting money for other important things needed for the buildings to be useful. maintenance of systems, paying for staff, paying for the researchers. It is much more difficult to satisfy a donor's need to attach a name to those sorts of things, so those sorts of things get underfunded and construction gets overfunded. Perhaps we should propose tattooing donor names onto students?
People (donors) prefer indelibly attaching their names to buildings or monuments and not on a repaired elevator or on maintenance of a building's HVAC or even on a student's stipend. I think this comes down to an ego thing. I agree that it is lame.
I don't get the complaint that the Biology PhD students didn't learn computer programming or high level math. Entering a Biology PhD program, joining a particular PI's lab, and (frequently) the nature of the research project are all choices made by the PhD student. So guess what - If a PhD student CHOOSES a lab/project that does not implement programming or math, then she won't be taught much of it by her PI or program. Now, complaining about poor pay, long hours, and poor job prospects seem much more legitimate. The people who go on in academia to have their own labs do not do it for the money. Typically, they do it because they love research.
I will agree that the baldness caused by CRF overexpression in mice may be informative and quite interesting. However, the article was centered around a claim of regrowth being "miraculous", which is lame and overblown. Regrowth was achieved by simply inhibiting the genetic trick used to generate baldness. So, I thought the regrowth provided no real insight into the complexities of stress induced baldness.
Yes - they treated mice genetically engineered to overexpress a hormone with an antagonist to the hormone. ...and then...they see effects of the hormone expression are suppressed. SHOCKER (sarcasm).
Unless you are a human genetically engineered to overexpress CRF, your bald head will not likely benefit from this work.
Um, these bozos are the people who determine if scientific research gets funded through the US budget. So they have an enormous impact on actual scientific research.
Shinya Yamanaka - He found a way to turn your skin cells into stem cells. pretty cool, possibly hero-ish.
This only works for a techie when engaged with a person willing to listen and (gasp) _think _ about science. For many, science is hard and takes too much work relative to the reward they feel from new understanding.
As a scientist, I am interested in what nobody yet knows. The stuff that is already "known" is no longer a subject of active research and not so interesting. When I talk to my non-scientist relatives, neighbors, etc about science, I find that they don't truly empathize with this concept. Instead, they have an outlook that scientists should just know how "things" work. This misunderstanding provides just as many difficulties for explaining recent research findings and causes just as many problems as does the use of jargon/technical language.