I am a biologist, and I can tell you that's about the same error rate as other sequencing methods. But, like all things, there are a lot of variables to consider (such as inital sample quality and source) And for any research, sequencing should be repeated and compared (which is done).
The taxes may be higher in Canada, and it is true that healthcare and education costs are lower. However, as an American who goes to university (McGill) in Canada, I can tell you that its far from being a socialist paradise.
You say that infrastructure is crumbling in California, and I think you are probably right (I've only been to California a couple of times). But on the other hand, it is too in Quebec, which has had a spate of lethal collapses in the last couple of years (this being the most recent). Last year a bridge collapsed and killed a person on a busy highway, and the same thing happened several years before that. This spring, a major elevated concrete highway interchange in Montreal (the Turcot Interchange) was closed after the authorities discovered a 1m (!!) deep pothole IN THE BRIDGE. Canadians like to blame the weather, but having grown up in New England, where we get all the same weather, I can assure you that our bridges are not collapsing.
Sure the healthcare is free, and everyone has access, but I'll tell you, having to wait 4 hours to see a doctor (as I have done many times) really sucks.
The public high schools are sufficient, but are not by any means greatly superior to americans. 50% dropout rates are commonplace in many places and years of price freezes on tuition has greatly hindered the ability of universities to fund their students (everything from research to maintenance of buildings has been cut for the last 5 years at my university). Many of the cuts would be unheard of at an American university. My first year undergrad chemistry class was 1500 students.
To be fair, Canada does a lot of things better than the United States. And we do things better than Canada, although I think we could both learn from each other, and I don't mean to repudiate social democracy or universal healthcare. These are certainly things we could use in the US. But to say that Californians are "royally screwed" is uninformed - Canadians are plenty screwed in other ways (that you take for granted in the states).
Lol! PERFECT example of your own short-sightedness. DDT was banned because it was really fucking up PEOPLE - not the "ecosystem." It looks like DDT would be the lesser of two evils now. But are you so sure that these genetically modified mosquitoes are really the lesser of two evils? How do you know that? Are you so sure there aren't any other options?
yet, paradoxically, the number of people dying of malaria since the banning of DDT has drastically increased. Not only that, but DDT was banned not because it was fucking up people, but because it was a probable human carcinogen.
Don't get me wrong, DDT is far from perfect, since it DID fuck up the environment (famously birds) and also loses efficacy over time, but you can't just dismiss its benefits to humanity that quickly. Modern, safer pesticides now cost much more than DDT, which cost pennies per kilogram. The net effect is that the poorest regions of the world, mainly Africa, where 1 million children die a year due to malaria, can't afford the insecticides now that DDT is banned. Its certainly not as cut and dry as you make it out to be, and you would be well served to know a bit more about it. Wikipedia has some good references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt#Effects_on_human_health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt#DDT_use_against_malaria
Its just a matter of breaking down the cell membranes- which are essentially fatty acids with proteins in them, easily dissolved by detergents. Next, separating the DNA from the rest of the cytoplasm, by putting the extract in alcohol.
A more challenging aspect is preparing the extracted DNA for analysis; you have to clone and amplify the DNA in order to make a DNA library, that becomes more expensive. Nevertheless, processes and enzymes to make DNA libraries have been around for at least 30 years.
The hardest, and most interesting part of this new field of Metagenomics, is making sense of all the data, and observing changes in the DNA as the fauna react to the environment around them. But actually getting the DNA out, thats high school biology.
The USA declared independence and is therefore independant of the British legal system. The same goes for Ireland too. do you think the 1801 Union Act still applies there because it predates their constitution?:P
Eh... not quite. The US Constitution took effect in 1789. In fact, in 1801, Thomas Jefferson was president, and he was already the third one (under the new constitution).
The advantage to this software is that it allows you to have a leg up on other MacBook users. As the old addage goes, you dont have to run faster than the bear, just faster than the person running with you.
Approximatly 36 people have died in nuclear power related accidents.
In the year 2004 *alone* 8000 people lost their lives in coal mines.
(this figure is sketchy however, due to chernobyl, which was not a safely built station and due to the fact that the USSR did not initally disclose the details of what had happened. In fact, technicians working at a nuclear station in sweeder were the first to notice something went wrong when their radiation badges indicated high does of radiation).
In junior high. Let me tell you how I dealt with it, to great success.
1. Take all of the hardest classes you can, and do as well as you can in them. I did this in high school, and I rose to the challenge, and succeeded. You may not be motivated to work hard, or remain interested, but thats a personal issue. Shut up and stop whining, and just do well, as best you can.
2. Find projects that interest you, think of things you dont know how to do. You said you like SQL, write some code with php/mysql that does something cool, for example. Or maybe go teach yourself iptables, or C++, or what have you. Think of something you dont know how to do, learn to do it, and stick with it, its work, but in the end its really fun.
3. Try a whole bunch of new things. Join your school's honor society, student council, student government, etc. Join other clubs, and try picking up a new sport. And try as hard as you can at all of these activities. They're all work, hard work, but you are clearly intelligent and good enough to handle it, so just do it. You wont really have another oppurtunity in your life to try all these things.
These three techniques brought me from being just an above average, unmotivated, bored student in junior high to an exceptional motivated and mutlitalented student in hgih school. Your milage may vary, but this has worked for me.
Second, unless the kids signed some kind of legally binding NDA, there is no law which could allow the College Board to prosecute them for any offense at all -- haven't you heard of the fucking First Amendment? Copyright can't stop them, since it is a fact that the answer to question #115 is letter D, and you cannot copyright a fact. And aren't some of these kids under 18 anyway? An NDA can't apply to them, since any contract they enter into is null and void.
Having just come from taking 2 ap tests in the past two days, let me tell you, you have to sign 2 or 3 legal statements saying that you agree not to discuss the test and so on. Second of all, a legal agreement can be entered into by any party, typically people do not enter contracts with minors because there is very little recourse in event of some disaster. However, the AP exams, being prepaid for, are not the same as a "regular" contract, and the collegeboard would not risk any loss by entering a contract with an minor since the tests are prepaid.
as for the copyright portion of their threats, they have plastered all over the tests "unauthorized duplication prohibited". My guess is that theres no way copyrighting a fact would be held up in court, but they probably rape you if you write anything down and try to take it out of the test with you.
The most effective of all their threats, I imagine , is the canceling of score reports. I'd imagine you'd be screwed before a college admissions depart looked at your application for cheating.
But never buy from tiger direct! they have done many bad things to people, myself included (overcharding, damaged merchendise, etc). Same with best buy, except if by damaged merchandise, you mean selling a geforce2 in a raedeon 8500 box (this happened to my friend a couple years ago).
I dont think so, I know that I certinaly dont have a nice TFT.
My compaq presario 1600 laptop has a nice, slow, retro passive matrix display, if you're looking for something to do with your old tfts, give them to me;)
There are, actually, Works with Moz, Firebird, Galeon, Konq, and anything else that does moz plugins. The mplayer-ns plugin. I use it. It works well.
Re: ..when a patient in pain ...
on
Complications
·
· Score: 1
What about when other patients lives are at stake? Antibiotes are a perfect example. I have a close relative as a doctor. From what he tells me, many patients demand antibiots for viral infections (like colds) or cases where they arent nesscary. When the patient takes antibiotics for things that arent there, it fisrt of all, costs everyone a great deal of money (antibiotics are very expensive), and helps bacteria build up resistence to the antibiots, putting many many more lives on the line. Should the patient still choose? The problem is that most patients dont know about these or other similar treatments, because they havent been in school for 12 years learning about these things. However, every patient knows the best way to stay healthy is to live healthy.
As I post this, I'm at a meeting for my schools computer gaming club.
We play a couple games, including some strategy games like Myth II with blood turned off and Tribes one. We are somewhat limited by the hardware we have, but our schools PTO has given us some money to buy games and upgrade our video cards.
We had no problem starting the club, and its a lot of fun with 15 or 16 members.
One of the concerns that the faculty advisors have is of course, blood, and liscencing. We have to buy every game we get so we dont get audited or something horrible like that, and to play an M game we need to turn off blood and get parental permission.
When I joined the club here at my school, I was concerned that we might be shut down for the reasons you mentioned in the question, but its actually not such a big problem.
Re:Why this sounds impossible to me
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 1
>I find if funny how people make pseudo->philosophical research into time travel and >determine that it's not possible. Especially >the "I can't comprehend it so there for it can't >happen".
Did I ever say I don't comprehend it? no (I don't understand it). However, based on what has happened so far regarding time travelers (we've never met one) I'd say that for some reason we cant time travel. Of course, perhaps the popular argument is right, people can't time travel past when the machine was invented, and travel past and just disappear, get lost, or something, but the thing is, we just dont know for sure. I was just making a few little logical consluions. There may be very much mroe to this, but based on what I know, reasearch won't get you more accurate conclusions.
However, I certainly agree with you about trying- it cant hurt to try...what have we got to lose? Except of course something weird happens, and his device works, except he makes a mistake an is the catalyst for an event that destroys earth or something.
Why this sounds impossible to me
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 1
This sounds impossible for one simple reason... we have never been visited by a time traveler.
To me, that means one of four things:
1. Time travel is not possible
2. The people who have time travel don't come back to ancient earth
3. Time travel is possible, but the human race was destroyed before we could figure it out.
Personally, I think that time travel is not possible. What historian would not want the opportunity to go back, and wittness a key battle, or event? Even if in the future some kind of "time travel treaty" was reached, and people aggreed not to travel back to earlier time periods, I think that someone somewhere would get their hands on an illict device and come back and take out someone they dont like.
thats why I think this guy will inevitably fail. Just my $0.02.
I disagree.
Just becasue a country dosent have donres does not mean that drones cant be used.
In WW2 and 1,there are tons of pictures of soldier stroming the enmey trenches, etc etc etc. In WW2 the army went to normandy, and shot the people or guns defending it. So why couldnt drones do the same? Drones could be deployed in afghanistan, to especially to caves, to search for people. They could be used to shoot taliban members, and if controlled remotely, to gaurd disseized persons. why would any real people be needed to fight this?
Saying drones had defeated another nation's army of drones, drones could be used to capture/kill the leaders, and to take out remaining drone control personal or people.
About your comment on the US seigeing the iraqi's... thats not accurate. We surrounded them, and in the matter of a short period, we casued them to surrender, or what have you. A Siege is defined as a lengthy operation, whereas the bulk of the gulf war too place in around a week.
If your interested in the tactics that Gen. Shwarknopf (or however you spell his name) used, then I suggest you do some reading about the Gerneral Hannibal. He was from Carthage, and used the same formations and ground troop strategys that we used in the Gulf War. He fought his war around 100 bc, tho, agains the Romans.
A while back (sometime in the 50's, I think) the War Powers Act was passed. The War Powers Act allows the president to send forces into a situation for a maximum of 60 days, and from that point on he must get approval from congress. He must also provide a written statment if American Troops are put in danger.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a biologist, and I can tell you that's about the same error rate as other sequencing methods. But, like all things, there are a lot of variables to consider (such as inital sample quality and source) And for any research, sequencing should be repeated and compared (which is done).
The taxes may be higher in Canada, and it is true that healthcare and education costs are lower. However, as an American who goes to university (McGill) in Canada, I can tell you that its far from being a socialist paradise.
You say that infrastructure is crumbling in California, and I think you are probably right (I've only been to California a couple of times). But on the other hand, it is too in Quebec, which has had a spate of lethal collapses in the last couple of years (this being the most recent). Last year a bridge collapsed and killed a person on a busy highway, and the same thing happened several years before that. This spring, a major elevated concrete highway interchange in Montreal (the Turcot Interchange) was closed after the authorities discovered a 1m (!!) deep pothole IN THE BRIDGE. Canadians like to blame the weather, but having grown up in New England, where we get all the same weather, I can assure you that our bridges are not collapsing.
Sure the healthcare is free, and everyone has access, but I'll tell you, having to wait 4 hours to see a doctor (as I have done many times) really sucks.
The public high schools are sufficient, but are not by any means greatly superior to americans. 50% dropout rates are commonplace in many places and years of price freezes on tuition has greatly hindered the ability of universities to fund their students (everything from research to maintenance of buildings has been cut for the last 5 years at my university). Many of the cuts would be unheard of at an American university. My first year undergrad chemistry class was 1500 students.
To be fair, Canada does a lot of things better than the United States. And we do things better than Canada, although I think we could both learn from each other, and I don't mean to repudiate social democracy or universal healthcare. These are certainly things we could use in the US. But to say that Californians are "royally screwed" is uninformed - Canadians are plenty screwed in other ways (that you take for granted in the states).
yet, paradoxically, the number of people dying of malaria since the banning of DDT has drastically increased. Not only that, but DDT was banned not because it was fucking up people, but because it was a probable human carcinogen.
Don't get me wrong, DDT is far from perfect, since it DID fuck up the environment (famously birds) and also loses efficacy over time, but you can't just dismiss its benefits to humanity that quickly. Modern, safer pesticides now cost much more than DDT, which cost pennies per kilogram. The net effect is that the poorest regions of the world, mainly Africa, where 1 million children die a year due to malaria, can't afford the insecticides now that DDT is banned. Its certainly not as cut and dry as you make it out to be, and you would be well served to know a bit more about it. Wikipedia has some good references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt#Effects_on_human_health
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt#DDT_use_against_malaria
Extracting DNA is actually a somewhat trivial process, easily done at home with common household products.
Its just a matter of breaking down the cell membranes- which are essentially fatty acids with proteins in them, easily dissolved by detergents. Next, separating the DNA from the rest of the cytoplasm, by putting the extract in alcohol.
A more challenging aspect is preparing the extracted DNA for analysis; you have to clone and amplify the DNA in order to make a DNA library, that becomes more expensive. Nevertheless, processes and enzymes to make DNA libraries have been around for at least 30 years.
The hardest, and most interesting part of this new field of Metagenomics, is making sense of all the data, and observing changes in the DNA as the fauna react to the environment around them. But actually getting the DNA out, thats high school biology.
My professor just cited wikipedia today in a lecture (a biology class). The article he mentioned was "really good" according to him.
Heh. I guess thats what happens when I read slashdot before my morning coffee!
The USA declared independence and is therefore independant of the British legal system. The same goes for Ireland too. do you think the 1801 Union Act still applies there because it predates their constitution? :P
Eh... not quite. The US Constitution took effect in 1789. In fact, in 1801, Thomas Jefferson was president, and he was already the third one (under the new constitution).
The advantage to this software is that it allows you to have a leg up on other MacBook users. As the old addage goes, you dont have to run faster than the bear, just faster than the person running with you.
Its worth pointing out that this case happened in Trois-riviers, Quebec, Canada, a province which uses french-derived civil law.
I've heard they're down in the US now. Being from New Hampshire, we didnt have any, so that was kind of a disappointment.
However, I think the thing that makes canada unique is the ratio of people to tim hortons, Canada has the US beat there no question.
I would argue that the united states has a much better healthcare system, based on my experiences so far with canadian facilities.
Tim Hortons though, its fantastic.
Approximatly 36 people have died in nuclear power related accidents. In the year 2004 *alone* 8000 people lost their lives in coal mines. (this figure is sketchy however, due to chernobyl, which was not a safely built station and due to the fact that the USSR did not initally disclose the details of what had happened. In fact, technicians working at a nuclear station in sweeder were the first to notice something went wrong when their radiation badges indicated high does of radiation).
In junior high. Let me tell you how I dealt with it, to great success.
1. Take all of the hardest classes you can, and do as well as you can in them. I did this in high school, and I rose to the challenge, and succeeded. You may not be motivated to work hard, or remain interested, but thats a personal issue. Shut up and stop whining, and just do well, as best you can.
2. Find projects that interest you, think of things you dont know how to do. You said you like SQL, write some code with php/mysql that does something cool, for example. Or maybe go teach yourself iptables, or C++, or what have you. Think of something you dont know how to do, learn to do it, and stick with it, its work, but in the end its really fun.
3. Try a whole bunch of new things. Join your school's honor society, student council, student government, etc. Join other clubs, and try picking up a new sport. And try as hard as you can at all of these activities. They're all work, hard work, but you are clearly intelligent and good enough to handle it, so just do it. You wont really have another oppurtunity in your life to try all these things.
These three techniques brought me from being just an above average, unmotivated, bored student in junior high to an exceptional motivated and mutlitalented student in hgih school. Your milage may vary, but this has worked for me.
Second, unless the kids signed some kind of legally binding NDA, there is no law which could allow the College Board to prosecute them for any offense at all -- haven't you heard of the fucking First Amendment? Copyright can't stop them, since it is a fact that the answer to question #115 is letter D, and you cannot copyright a fact. And aren't some of these kids under 18 anyway? An NDA can't apply to them, since any contract they enter into is null and void.
Having just come from taking 2 ap tests in the past two days, let me tell you, you have to sign 2 or 3 legal statements saying that you agree not to discuss the test and so on. Second of all, a legal agreement can be entered into by any party, typically people do not enter contracts with minors because there is very little recourse in event of some disaster. However, the AP exams, being prepaid for, are not the same as a "regular" contract, and the collegeboard would not risk any loss by entering a contract with an minor since the tests are prepaid.
as for the copyright portion of their threats, they have plastered all over the tests "unauthorized duplication prohibited". My guess is that theres no way copyrighting a fact would be held up in court, but they probably rape you if you write anything down and try to take it out of the test with you.
The most effective of all their threats, I imagine , is the canceling of score reports. I'd imagine you'd be screwed before a college admissions depart looked at your application for cheating.
Pricewatch! its the best. pricewatch.
Froogle is pretty good too.
But never buy from tiger direct! they have done many bad things to people, myself included (overcharding, damaged merchendise, etc). Same with best buy, except if by damaged merchandise, you mean selling a geforce2 in a raedeon 8500 box (this happened to my friend a couple years ago).
Would a maglev train really be back on track?
I dont think so, I know that I certinaly dont have a nice TFT.
;)
My compaq presario 1600 laptop has a nice, slow, retro passive matrix display, if you're looking for something to do with your old tfts, give them to me
There are, actually, Works with Moz, Firebird, Galeon, Konq, and anything else that does moz plugins. The mplayer-ns plugin. I use it. It works well.
What about when other patients lives are at stake? Antibiotes are a perfect example. I have a close relative as a doctor. From what he tells me, many patients demand antibiots for viral infections (like colds) or cases where they arent nesscary. When the patient takes antibiotics for things that arent there, it fisrt of all, costs everyone a great deal of money (antibiotics are very expensive), and helps bacteria build up resistence to the antibiots, putting many many more lives on the line. Should the patient still choose? The problem is that most patients dont know about these or other similar treatments, because they havent been in school for 12 years learning about these things. However, every patient knows the best way to stay healthy is to live healthy.
As I post this, I'm at a meeting for my schools computer gaming club.
We play a couple games, including some strategy games like Myth II with blood turned off and Tribes one. We are somewhat limited by the hardware we have, but our schools PTO has given us some money to buy games and upgrade our video cards.
We had no problem starting the club, and its a lot of fun with 15 or 16 members.
One of the concerns that the faculty advisors have is of course, blood, and liscencing. We have to buy every game we get so we dont get audited or something horrible like that, and to play an M game we need to turn off blood and get parental permission.
When I joined the club here at my school, I was concerned that we might be shut down for the reasons you mentioned in the question, but its actually not such a big problem.
Our school's webiste is here.
>I find if funny how people make pseudo->philosophical research into time travel and >determine that it's not possible. Especially >the "I can't comprehend it so there for it can't >happen".
Did I ever say I don't comprehend it? no (I don't understand it). However, based on what has happened so far regarding time travelers (we've never met one) I'd say that for some reason we cant time travel. Of course, perhaps the popular argument is right, people can't time travel past when the machine was invented, and travel past and just disappear, get lost, or something, but the thing is, we just dont know for sure. I was just making a few little logical consluions. There may be very much mroe to this, but based on what I know, reasearch won't get you more accurate conclusions.
However, I certainly agree with you about trying- it cant hurt to try...what have we got to lose? Except of course something weird happens, and his device works, except he makes a mistake an is the catalyst for an event that destroys earth or something.
This sounds impossible for one simple reason... we have never been visited by a time traveler.
To me, that means one of four things:
1. Time travel is not possible
2. The people who have time travel don't come back to ancient earth
3. Time travel is possible, but the human race was destroyed before we could figure it out.
Personally, I think that time travel is not possible. What historian would not want the opportunity to go back, and wittness a key battle, or event? Even if in the future some kind of "time travel treaty" was reached, and people aggreed not to travel back to earlier time periods, I think that someone somewhere would get their hands on an illict device and come back and take out someone they dont like.
thats why I think this guy will inevitably fail. Just my $0.02.
I disagree. Just becasue a country dosent have donres does not mean that drones cant be used.
In WW2 and 1,there are tons of pictures of soldier stroming the enmey trenches, etc etc etc. In WW2 the army went to normandy, and shot the people or guns defending it. So why couldnt drones do the same? Drones could be deployed in afghanistan, to especially to caves, to search for people. They could be used to shoot taliban members, and if controlled remotely, to gaurd disseized persons. why would any real people be needed to fight this?
Saying drones had defeated another nation's army of drones, drones could be used to capture/kill the leaders, and to take out remaining drone control personal or people.
About your comment on the US seigeing the iraqi's... thats not accurate. We surrounded them, and in the matter of a short period, we casued them to surrender, or what have you. A Siege is defined as a lengthy operation, whereas the bulk of the gulf war too place in around a week.
If your interested in the tactics that Gen. Shwarknopf (or however you spell his name) used, then I suggest you do some reading about the Gerneral Hannibal. He was from Carthage, and used the same formations and ground troop strategys that we used in the Gulf War. He fought his war around 100 bc, tho, agains the Romans.
We are not technicly at war, but we are.
A while back (sometime in the 50's, I think) the War Powers Act was passed. The War Powers Act allows the president to send forces into a situation for a maximum of 60 days, and from that point on he must get approval from congress. He must also provide a written statment if American Troops are put in danger.
I've heard some bad reviews from users of @home. Apperntly, the tech support is the only way to contact the sysadmins.
It must be very hard for normal users.