It would be insane to remove *all* organic chemistry from the pre-medical required set of courses. I could, however, see why one would question the second half of the year-long course. I'm pretty sure no MD or student will ever need to run into a chemistry lab and synthesize X organic compound (an MD/PhD, maybe, but they're a rare breed).
The value in that second course, however, lies in the understanding of how certain functional groups behave. A medical student WILL need this information to fully grasp how, for example, beta-lactam inhibitors like clavulanic acid can widen the spectrum of other antibiotics like amoxicillin. Or in the future, perhaps understand more specific theories on how free radicals can play a role in diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.
Perhaps a single, more intensive course could be designed. I can't imagine many chemistry departments jumping to the task, though.
Difficulty aside, would it hurt for a future MD to learn to appreciate the art of organic synthesis - if only just as a single element in what will be his or her vast scientific repertoire?
According to the excerpt, Apple owns the drive, not the data on it. IANAL, but they don't have any legal right to distribute your data that's contained on the drive. If they accidentally give someone the drive with the data still on it, then it seems like that could equal a big lawsuit. That's why they'll most likely wipe the drive. If you're that concerned with a middle man digging through your drive, then you probably should have been more careful with 1) signing forms without reading them, and 2) using PCs or notebooks where you'll invalidate any warranties by breaking the case seal.
The article seems somewhat poorly written, but the/. summary says this:
it's actually illegal for automakers to sell these green cars outside of the special states they were designed for
I see no reason why it would be illegal under any state or federal law to sell a car that has super-low emissions. The end of the article implies that the manufacturer doesn't want to sell cars with the low-emissions hardware outside the states with strict emissions laws because 1) it increases the cost of the car, and 2) the manufacturer would have to eat up the cost of this equipment because consumers wouldn't want to pay extra for a feature that has no benefit in terms of gas mileage (and isn't exactly a luxury add-on). Basically the manufacturer eats up the cost in certain states because of the fact that they have stricter emissions laws, and they wouldn't otherwise be able to sell the car at all.
Before we indulge in conspiracy theories (though it appears that it's too late), I think that eyebrows should be raised, but we shouldn't be screaming that the sky is falling. I think this famous quote can't be repeated enough with respect to these kinds of articles: "All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous." (Paracelsus)
The study mentioned in the article was done on yeast cells. We need to do a controlled animal study in which different doses of this chemical are administered. By doing these kinds of studies, we can begin to understand the risk that this chemical poses to us given the most common range of exposure levels. Who knows - maybe we'll begin to see warning labels, or the industry may just switch to another, less hazardous preservative. Until then, calm down, and remember that every ingredient in your food and drinks can be considered toxic in sufficient quantities!
Urine samples are usually done at random. So if you've taken a tablet of someone else's vicodin within the past week or so (and you have no proof of a script stored at a pharmacy), then you're in trouble if you happen to be selected. Most likely, you'd be fired. HR can also force you to submit urine for any reason and at any time. I've had few jobs outside of health care so I'm not sure if all employers are like this now.
Whether or not I agree with it, they say that the fingerprints (and urine samples) are done for the safety of the patients. If they're already looking through your urine, I don't understand the big deal about running your fingerprints, especially since fingerprints are usually not kept on file. I haven't been asked to submit a blood sample for DNA, but to me that seems a little over the top for a programming or finance job. Then again, you can't exactly argue with them - if you refuse, you simply don't get the job. Complaints to people in government probably won't do much at all - hell, our social security numbers weren't supposed to be used for anything else except, well, social security. But now they're used for everything. Imagine, your life and identity stored in a simple, non-secure 9 digit code. But I digress..
The enzyme itself could trigger an immune response and cause anaphylaxis. They would have to find a way to remove the enzyme from the blood that's being given to the patient. Hypothetically you could just stick the patient with epinephrine to counteract the immune response, but then again that would very much narrow down the possibilities for purposes of giving him or her blood in the first place.
The article says "Archives of Environmental Contamination and Technology", and as far as I can tell there's no such journal. Reuters probably made a mistake, and meant "Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology".
At any rate, I couldn't find the study in question. It might not be published yet, so anyone who's really interested can check out this link in a couple weeks. Full text PDFs are available for current volumes.
Exactly what I was thinking, and I'm surprised that it took this long for someone to point this out - considering the number of engineers and engineering students on this site.
I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating.
This somewhat implies that American scientists do not use metric (along with the comments above saying things along the lines of "if you want to use metric in research, then no one's stopping you"). This couldn't be further from the truth. American scientists have been using metric for decades - open up any scientific journal, methods book, or undergraduate lab manual. The same applies to medicine and engineering. Ever hear of a nurse or pharmacist referring to an iv bag or syringe volume in fractions of a pint? Talk to any American scientist, and the vast majority of them will agree with you on the ridiculousness of the fact that our country still uses imperial measurements.
The question remains - is it fundamentally better? And the only real way to answer that is to give it to people who haven't really been exposed to computers, or who don't have any behavior to un-learn.
The problem with that is that just about everyone has used [the old] Office. Hell, the old interface has been taught to middle schoolers for nearly a decade now.
The universal vaccines focus on a different protein called M2, which has barely changed during the last 100 years.
The main question that comes to my mind is how they can claim that this vaccine will require only a booster shot every 10 years. The drug rimantadine is believed to act by inhibiting the M2 ion channel - however, drug resistance can develop if the M2 gene has a chance to mutate. Presumably, mutations that render "anti-M2" vaccines ineffective are also possible, perhaps not necessarily in the same range of probability (one could argue that mutations are far less likely when the virus is faced with the immune system versus a drug). However - especially at the population level - could placing selective pressure onto the M2 gene lead to resistance faster than the company anticipates? I suppose time (and human trials!) will tell:)
In the presence of the colloidal PVA-Pt as a catalyst and triethanolamine (TEOA) as a sacrificial electron donor, the photosensitized reduction of water to H2 takes place.
My chemistry knowledge isn't really up to the point where I can fully understand the whole abstract, but it sounds like we still need triethanolamine as a source of electrons in order to reduce water to H2. So the energy needed to produce more triethanolamine could put a big dent in the net energy gained from the H2 produced when we're talking about the practical large-scale usefulness of this. Maybe one day we could use another (renewable) electron donor like NADPH, so that we can couple it to another biochemical process like photosynthesis in order to renew our electron donors:)
Immunosuppressants are scary shit, and usually considered an absolute last-resort treatment when the other choice is death. Admittedly, it sounds like this MIGHT be a rather targeted immunosuppressant with fewer side effects than most, but still, it's an immunosuppressant.
Because of the nature of type I diabetes, the only way to cure it is *some* form of immunosuppression. The ideal solution would be to specifically suppress the T cells which are responsible for destroying islet cells. This in itself is technically immunosuppression, and it's also the goal of Faustman's research. We're not talking about "system-wide" immunosuppression, we're talking about killing off the specific T cell population responsible for the autoimmunity. That said, I have two concerns in mind:
1) They have to tread carefully in human trials - even more carefully than what is done with normal pharmaceutical trials. If they screw up the amount of TNF-a produced, there's potential for some major havoc to be inflicted (I'm thinking septic shock). All it takes is one screw up - then the entire project is finished.
2) I'm not really clear on why autoreactive T cells are preferentially targeted. The study is here, but I haven't access:)
My guess is that (in a nutshell) they examined the histology of the eye after transplantation, and made conclusions based what we know of what the normal eye should look like.
Reuters being a popular press outlet, it's understandable that they wouldn't give a quite detailed explanation, but here is a link to the Nature article:
It's not much better than the Reuters bit, but at least it offers a link to the abstract at the bottom (and the full pdf, if you have access to Nature).
I think it depends on the situation. IANAL, but in the US an ISP could conceivably delete logs as long as there is no criminal investigation ongoing. If one was ongoing, then the ISP would be participating in obstruction of justice.
Your first point brings an interesting question: how should they control what target audiences articles are written for? An article about a technical topic can be written in such a way that it's extremely accurate, yet inaccessible to anyone outside of the field. However, if you're in the field, you're: probably in the minority with respect to the entire population of Wikipedia users, and you probably already know much of the subject at hand. So what ends up happening is that these technical articles end up being a circle jerk for "experts" in the field.
Again, good intentions on the part of Wikipedia moderators, but in practice it's another story. This is taken from a meta-Wikipedia article:
When writing technical articles, it is usually the case that a number of technical terms or jargon specific to the subject matter will be presented. These should be defined or at least alternative language provided, so that a non-technical reader can both learn the terms and understand how they are used by scientists.
But if I read this article on clearance, I have to already understand the principle of renal physiology and volume of distribution just to get past the first sentence. If I want to read further, I have to already understand differential equations. Not that this is a huge problem, but it certainly begs the question of whether technical articles should stay technical or if they should be presentable to those who are not in the field. And this is not to say that there aren't articles on Wikipedia that do a very good job of "trickling" down levels of detail in a progressive fashion, starting from very accessible to relatively technical - take this article on rainbows, for example.
E.g., someone with a generic allergy to fur, will still be just as allergic to the Siberian as to any other cat breed. Basically, if holding a rabbit or petting a dog also gives you an allergy, getting a Siberian won't help at all.
I don't know if this new breed addresses this third point, but it IS one area where improvement is possible.
I had a professor that recorded and uploaded every one of his lectures online as well as all of the notes. Lectures were posted immediately after class; notes were posted weeks in advance. It was great for days when I felt like crap and didn't feel that I could make it to class. Also, this class was at 12pm, so sometimes I would skip the class to do some last minute studying for an exam at 2pm.
The lectures were placed into a website whose access was restricted and only students taking the class could access it.
Everyone appreciated being able to download the lectures, not only for the reason of being unable to show up (or in some cases, just not feeling like it) but also to play back a specific point that we missed so that we could clarify it in our own notes.
If you're going to skip class and download the lecture later, then you're still going to end up sitting down, downloading the file, listening to an hour long lecture while taking notes on it. So if you really care about your grade, what's the point of skipping and downloading the lecture later? It's more convenient to just show up to class (or if you don't care about your grade, not show up to class and not download the lecture). It doesn't make sense to label this as a temptation to skip class.
Also, if you use diagrams then audio lectures alone will be of limited help. Granted, the class I took was anatomy, so this point depends on the class I guess.
Finally, unless the class is really easy (or the student is very smart), I doubt that anyone can just sit through 15 hours of continuous lecture and still ace an exam right after.
Parent post hit the nail on the head. I was definitely interested in programming as a kid. It was strictly an interest, not an obsession since I only wrote a few simple C programs. As I went through high school my interests in that area took a dive while my interests in other areas like math and chemistry went up. Semi-long story short, I'm a year away from a BS in a field related to molecular biology.
That said, our interests as kids and teenagers are constantly molded and shaped as time and new experiences pass. I'm not sure why a "decline" in programming interest is really a doom and gloom situation like the diary implies. At my university, it doesn't seem like there's a shortage of computer science majors at all.
When the diary poster mentioned programming in 6th grade, I really doubt that any kind of programming course was required to graduate high school at that time. Word/Excel courses are required (at least it was at my HS), so is that what the diary poster is getting at (application/MS-centric courses)? As far as I know, programming has always been an outside school hobby. Actually, I've heard that lot of high schools are now starting to offer C++ courses. I'd say that's a step up.
There are a lot of posts on here screaming "Orwellian" and such, but suppose these drones don't make it into the mainstream. How long until the resolution and capture speed improves on satellites to the point of making these drones unnecessary?
Slashdot Mirror
It would be insane to remove *all* organic chemistry from the pre-medical required set of courses. I could, however, see why one would question the second half of the year-long course. I'm pretty sure no MD or student will ever need to run into a chemistry lab and synthesize X organic compound (an MD/PhD, maybe, but they're a rare breed).
The value in that second course, however, lies in the understanding of how certain functional groups behave. A medical student WILL need this information to fully grasp how, for example, beta-lactam inhibitors like clavulanic acid can widen the spectrum of other antibiotics like amoxicillin. Or in the future, perhaps understand more specific theories on how free radicals can play a role in diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.
Perhaps a single, more intensive course could be designed. I can't imagine many chemistry departments jumping to the task, though.
Difficulty aside, would it hurt for a future MD to learn to appreciate the art of organic synthesis - if only just as a single element in what will be his or her vast scientific repertoire?
I believe it's an idiom. The meaning of "all but [something]" is "almost [something]".
The Bugatti Veyron can hit 253 mph.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWJj8pAUu5k
According to the excerpt, Apple owns the drive, not the data on it. IANAL, but they don't have any legal right to distribute your data that's contained on the drive. If they accidentally give someone the drive with the data still on it, then it seems like that could equal a big lawsuit. That's why they'll most likely wipe the drive. If you're that concerned with a middle man digging through your drive, then you probably should have been more careful with 1) signing forms without reading them, and 2) using PCs or notebooks where you'll invalidate any warranties by breaking the case seal.
I see no reason why it would be illegal under any state or federal law to sell a car that has super-low emissions. The end of the article implies that the manufacturer doesn't want to sell cars with the low-emissions hardware outside the states with strict emissions laws because 1) it increases the cost of the car, and 2) the manufacturer would have to eat up the cost of this equipment because consumers wouldn't want to pay extra for a feature that has no benefit in terms of gas mileage (and isn't exactly a luxury add-on). Basically the manufacturer eats up the cost in certain states because of the fact that they have stricter emissions laws, and they wouldn't otherwise be able to sell the car at all.
Before we indulge in conspiracy theories (though it appears that it's too late), I think that eyebrows should be raised, but we shouldn't be screaming that the sky is falling. I think this famous quote can't be repeated enough with respect to these kinds of articles: "All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous." (Paracelsus)
The study mentioned in the article was done on yeast cells. We need to do a controlled animal study in which different doses of this chemical are administered. By doing these kinds of studies, we can begin to understand the risk that this chemical poses to us given the most common range of exposure levels. Who knows - maybe we'll begin to see warning labels, or the industry may just switch to another, less hazardous preservative. Until then, calm down, and remember that every ingredient in your food and drinks can be considered toxic in sufficient quantities!
Yeah, for nearly all jobs in health care you're required to do:
- Fingerprinting (criminal background check)
- Urine sample (check for drugs/drug metabolites)
- Credit check
- Reference check
Urine samples are usually done at random. So if you've taken a tablet of someone else's vicodin within the past week or so (and you have no proof of a script stored at a pharmacy), then you're in trouble if you happen to be selected. Most likely, you'd be fired. HR can also force you to submit urine for any reason and at any time. I've had few jobs outside of health care so I'm not sure if all employers are like this now.
Whether or not I agree with it, they say that the fingerprints (and urine samples) are done for the safety of the patients. If they're already looking through your urine, I don't understand the big deal about running your fingerprints, especially since fingerprints are usually not kept on file. I haven't been asked to submit a blood sample for DNA, but to me that seems a little over the top for a programming or finance job. Then again, you can't exactly argue with them - if you refuse, you simply don't get the job. Complaints to people in government probably won't do much at all - hell, our social security numbers weren't supposed to be used for anything else except, well, social security. But now they're used for everything. Imagine, your life and identity stored in a simple, non-secure 9 digit code. But I digress..
The enzyme itself could trigger an immune response and cause anaphylaxis. They would have to find a way to remove the enzyme from the blood that's being given to the patient. Hypothetically you could just stick the patient with epinephrine to counteract the immune response, but then again that would very much narrow down the possibilities for purposes of giving him or her blood in the first place.
The article says "Archives of Environmental Contamination and Technology", and as far as I can tell there's no such journal. Reuters probably made a mistake, and meant "Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology".
At any rate, I couldn't find the study in question. It might not be published yet, so anyone who's really interested can check out this link in a couple weeks. Full text PDFs are available for current volumes.
Here's a link to the abstract from the original paper:
3 1
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/4/13
This somewhat implies that American scientists do not use metric (along with the comments above saying things along the lines of "if you want to use metric in research, then no one's stopping you"). This couldn't be further from the truth. American scientists have been using metric for decades - open up any scientific journal, methods book, or undergraduate lab manual. The same applies to medicine and engineering. Ever hear of a nurse or pharmacist referring to an iv bag or syringe volume in fractions of a pint? Talk to any American scientist, and the vast majority of them will agree with you on the ridiculousness of the fact that our country still uses imperial measurements.
The main question that comes to my mind is how they can claim that this vaccine will require only a booster shot every 10 years. The drug rimantadine is believed to act by inhibiting the M2 ion channel - however, drug resistance can develop if the M2 gene has a chance to mutate. Presumably, mutations that render "anti-M2" vaccines ineffective are also possible, perhaps not necessarily in the same range of probability (one could argue that mutations are far less likely when the virus is faced with the immune system versus a drug). However - especially at the population level - could placing selective pressure onto the M2 gene lead to resistance faster than the company anticipates? I suppose time (and human trials!) will tell
1) They have to tread carefully in human trials - even more carefully than what is done with normal pharmaceutical trials. If they screw up the amount of TNF-a produced, there's potential for some major havoc to be inflicted (I'm thinking septic shock). All it takes is one screw up - then the entire project is finished.
2) I'm not really clear on why autoreactive T cells are preferentially targeted. The study is here, but I haven't access
My guess is that (in a nutshell) they examined the histology of the eye after transplantation, and made conclusions based what we know of what the normal eye should look like.
Reuters being a popular press outlet, it's understandable that they wouldn't give a quite detailed explanation, but here is a link to the Nature article:
http://ww w.nature.com/news/2006/061106/full/061106-10.html
It's not much better than the Reuters bit, but at least it offers a link to the abstract at the bottom (and the full pdf, if you have access to Nature).
I think it depends on the situation. IANAL, but in the US an ISP could conceivably delete logs as long as there is no criminal investigation ongoing. If one was ongoing, then the ISP would be participating in obstruction of justice.
Again, good intentions on the part of Wikipedia moderators, but in practice it's another story. This is taken from a meta-Wikipedia article:
But if I read this article on clearance, I have to already understand the principle of renal physiology and volume of distribution just to get past the first sentence. If I want to read further, I have to already understand differential equations. Not that this is a huge problem, but it certainly begs the question of whether technical articles should stay technical or if they should be presentable to those who are not in the field. And this is not to say that there aren't articles on Wikipedia that do a very good job of "trickling" down levels of detail in a progressive fashion, starting from very accessible to relatively technical - take this article on rainbows, for example.
I had a professor that recorded and uploaded every one of his lectures online as well as all of the notes. Lectures were posted immediately after class; notes were posted weeks in advance. It was great for days when I felt like crap and didn't feel that I could make it to class. Also, this class was at 12pm, so sometimes I would skip the class to do some last minute studying for an exam at 2pm.
The lectures were placed into a website whose access was restricted and only students taking the class could access it.
Everyone appreciated being able to download the lectures, not only for the reason of being unable to show up (or in some cases, just not feeling like it) but also to play back a specific point that we missed so that we could clarify it in our own notes.
If you're going to skip class and download the lecture later, then you're still going to end up sitting down, downloading the file, listening to an hour long lecture while taking notes on it. So if you really care about your grade, what's the point of skipping and downloading the lecture later? It's more convenient to just show up to class (or if you don't care about your grade, not show up to class and not download the lecture). It doesn't make sense to label this as a temptation to skip class.
Also, if you use diagrams then audio lectures alone will be of limited help. Granted, the class I took was anatomy, so this point depends on the class I guess.
Finally, unless the class is really easy (or the student is very smart), I doubt that anyone can just sit through 15 hours of continuous lecture and still ace an exam right after.
I was thinking the same. If I invented this thing I would sell one to every casino in existence.
Parent post hit the nail on the head. I was definitely interested in programming as a kid. It was strictly an interest, not an obsession since I only wrote a few simple C programs. As I went through high school my interests in that area took a dive while my interests in other areas like math and chemistry went up. Semi-long story short, I'm a year away from a BS in a field related to molecular biology.
That said, our interests as kids and teenagers are constantly molded and shaped as time and new experiences pass. I'm not sure why a "decline" in programming interest is really a doom and gloom situation like the diary implies. At my university, it doesn't seem like there's a shortage of computer science majors at all.
When the diary poster mentioned programming in 6th grade, I really doubt that any kind of programming course was required to graduate high school at that time. Word/Excel courses are required (at least it was at my HS), so is that what the diary poster is getting at (application/MS-centric courses)? As far as I know, programming has always been an outside school hobby. Actually, I've heard that lot of high schools are now starting to offer C++ courses. I'd say that's a step up.
Here's a link to the paper from Neuron.
There are a lot of posts on here screaming "Orwellian" and such, but suppose these drones don't make it into the mainstream. How long until the resolution and capture speed improves on satellites to the point of making these drones unnecessary?
Heh, I'm assuming you're an engineering major...for the sciences (mostly biology and physics, less so for chemistry) take away 20k for each of those.