The HPV vaccine has been quite well tested. The FDA requirements for testing before approval are quite stringent. I think what you mean is that it hadn't been in general use for a long period. This is true, but no proof of anything nefarious. Based on the evidence out there now, I'd vaccinate my daughter.
Do you think antibiotics don't cure infections? There are plenty of newer antibiotics that have been developed by these evil drug companies you reference.
As for not curing cancer- that is a lot harder to do than you understand. The cancer cells are essentially your cells, with some mutations to make them escape the usual growth and migration controls. Coming up with a drug that will kill 100% of those cells without causing unacceptable damage to your other, healthy cells is not easy. There is no group of scientists somewhere who know how to do it but are being prevented from doing so by their evil corporate bosses. We just don't know how to do it.
The risk is to the children who are too young to be immunized yet.
For instance, the first MMR shot is usually given at about 1 year.
When my daughter was 11 months old, we had a measles outbreak in my neighborhood in San Diego. The outbreak originated with a family who chose not to vaccinate their kids. They went on vacation to Switzerland, where they ran into some other people who chose not to vaccinate, and were exposed to measles. The original kids came back from their vacation and exposed other kids at their charter school, some of who were also not vaccinated by parental choice. Then someone took a sick kid to a doctor's office without realizing their kid had measles and exposed a bunch more kids, some of whom were too young to be vaccinated yet. From there, the outbreak moved to a day care center and a swim school.
Luckily, my daughter was never exposed. She got her MMR shot on schedule and all was fine in our family. However, at least two other infants caught measles. They recovered, but I imagine they and their families had a really bad week or two. Also, the risk of complications up to and including death are higher in younger children. (As an aside, the death rate from measles in developed countries is about 1 in 1000 cases).
If my daughter HAD been exposed and come down with measles, I would have been very, very angry at the parents who chose not to vaccinate their kids. And if they had explained their beliefs by referencing Jenny McCarthy, I might have been tempted to violence. If you want to take medical advice from some starlet instead of a doctor, fine. But when the consequences of that advice impact MY kids, you've crossed the threshold from misguided to negligent, and I honestly think you should have to answer for your actions.
This may be the case in some companies, but I've been in middle management for awhile now, and I don't think it is universally true. I have ALWAYS been given a chance to help set my department's goals and budget. I also get quite a bit of input into policy. However, I have to justify my recommendations with business needs, not techie reasons.
I think the problem may be that some middle managers may have a clue about the techie stuff but not know how to fit that into the business. It is a bit of an invisible skill- the techies that report to me don't usually even realize it needs to be done. The management that I report to often doesn't realize that some people might not know that they need to do this.
Despite its invisibility, I think the ability to put technical needs into a business context is the most important qualification for my job. Without that, and I get screwy goals and an inadequate budget- which rapidly leads to a disgruntled group and a staff retention problem.
Actually, I arranged a similar thing after the birth of my baby. It was brilliant. I changed jobs for other reasons and had to go back to the normal schedule. I miss my every other Friday off. Sometimes, I took my daughter out of day care and spent the day with her. Sometimes, I sent her to day care like normal and got chores done so that my husband and I could both have more time with our daughter on the weekend.
You already have a lot of people on this thread boasting about how many hours they work. Whatever. I have generally worked 40 hour weeks (or 80 hours every two weeks) my entire career, and I have advanced up the ladder just fine, thank you. I always get good performance reviews and good raises. Working hard and getting a lot done does not require insane work hours, and I have rarely met anyone who could remain productive for all of the insane hours they "worked". Personally, I find I can sustain crazy hours for about two weeks, and I'll do that if I think whatever crisis needs handling is worth it.
Good luck- the system will work for you if you let it.
I can't quite figure out how to reply to this without sounding snarky towards the parent, who clearly has a different view of the field than I do and who am I to say which view is right? But feel I need to say- we're NOT that desperate anymore. The boom in bioinformatics was about 10 years ago now (pause while I shudder at realization that I have been out of grad school for that long....) I work in this area, and have since leaving grad school. When I graduated in 1999, there weren't really any bioinformatics grad programs, and the field was populated by a mix of biologists learning computers, computer types learning biology, and some physicists. Now, there are plenty of grad programs churning our bioinformatics MS and even PhD graduates. The only people I know working in bioinformatics w/o some serious bio background now have either been at it for many, many years or are pretty much pure coders.
However, as one of the previous replies said- there is a career to be made by being the interface between a specialized customer set (in this case, biologists) and the software developers. I've done that quite a bit, and have managed to keep myself employed. But you need to have credibility on both sides- which means a strong bio background (an advanced degree helps) AND an understanding of how software development works (it helps if you've coded).
You could also look at project management. Lots of folks laugh at project managers, but that is usually because they've never worked with a good project manager. Once again, though, I think it helps if you've done some coding, both for credibility with the team and so that you can make reasonable estimates about how long development tasks will take, etc.
Real science has considered this and found quite a bit that argues against this theory, actually. Which is one of the reason why Larry Summers got in so much trouble for his speech. He knew not of what he spoke....
I was about to be annoyed by this, because "tool user" sounds somehow inferior. But once I read your comment, I have to say, you may be on to something. I took a programming class in college and didn't like it, because I didn't care about solving the toy problems the class used. I didn't really learn how to program until I got to grad school and needed to code to solve some problems relevant to me.
So the next level of the question is- why aren't there equal numbers of codeheads of both genders? I don't buy that its just biology.
Actually, the salary differences start at entry-level. No one has ever satisfactorily explained why, although there are lots of theories.
I used to agree with you on the long hours being as much a problem for dads as moms. I also used to laugh that maternity leave is treated like a disability here in the US. And then I had a baby. I WAS pretty much disabled for several weeks.
I have a husband who definitely pulls his fair share of the childrearing work- diapers, baths, bedtimes, etc. Still, I'm the only one who could get up in the middle of the night and breastfeed. I was the only one who had to figure out how to pump breastmilk on a cross-country flight for a business trip.
I totally agree that parenthood requires sacrifices from both parents, and would love to see more dads take extended paternity leaves, and more companies accommodate the flexible work schedules that make working parenthood easier. However, simple biology means that the mother NEEDS these things more.
With that said- I am a working mother with an IT-related job, and I haven't had many problems with it. I think one reason is that I waited until I was in relatively senior positions before having the baby. This gave me the ability to ask for the accommodations I needed.
There are studies showing a drop off in interest in math and science among girls as they go into high school. The common explanation is puberty- and no, not because hormones mess with girls' brains, but because of the impact of the desire to be desirable. Girls who are interested in math and science tend to be labeled "smart", which in high school tends to mean "not dateable". And even for a "smart" girl, being considered dateable matters a lot in high school.
Of course, high school guys want dates, too. But some of the "smart" boys in my high school classes (eons ago now) got dates. None of us "smart" girls did. And before you trolls jump on that, it wasn't because we were all ugly- we're all happily married now. And I used to get hit on by guys who didn't know me and so didn't know I had that "smart girl" label.
I doubt high school has changed that much since my day. Actually, I suspect it has only gotten worse, given the female "role models" I see in pop culture these days.
I am very grateful for the very geeky college I went to, which changed me into a science major. I still didn't get that many dates, though- I found that telling a guy my major was a great way to get him to leave me alone. But I got enough to not start lying about my major.
This entire thread is half sad/half funny, because the same old canards about why women don't go into X field are being trotted out. Yes men and women are different, but as one of the previous posters mentioned, not as different as you think. I don't have the time or interest to go through and counter all of these silly arguments. But I did want to say something, in case there are some young geeky women reading this thread and getting more discouraged.
I ended up with a PhD in science and a serious interest in the application of computers in my field. I am now the head of the IT/informatics department at my company. My husband (a programmer) works on a team with several women, one of whom is his boss. He speaks highly of the technical skills of his female colleagues, and he is not an easy programmer to impress.
I know quite a few women working in computer related fields, as programmers, database designers, and managers. None of us got an undergraduate degree in computer science. So really guys, I don't think you can argue that women aren't interested in computers. We are. For whatever reason, we just don't end up in the computer science departments. Look at the departments to figure out what is wrong- don't look at the women. We're just fine the way we are, thank you.
Oh, and I played with BOTH dolls and legos as a kid. So does my 19 month old daughter.
Re:Could You Choose Beta Release Medicine?
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Cure for Cancer?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I went and found someone with a subscription to Nature, and got a hold of the paper. Its actually a short Letter. They don't spend much time on the chemistry, being more interested in the logic. However, they do put their methods in the supplementary materials. They are still a bit vague for my taste, but maybe I've just been out of the wetlab for too long! So take the following with a grain of salt... I'm not really sure I understand their chemistry yet, and I had to stop trying and get back to my real work. (:
It looks to me like their recognition molecules are engineered to include a FokI (restriction enzyme) recognition site. So when the recognition molecule binds to the diagnosis molecule, a dsDNA is created with the FokI site. These causes a portion of the diagnosis molecule to be cleaved.
This can happen with recognition molecules each of the four mRNAs considered to be diagnostic of the type of cancer they are "curing" (prostate cancer). If all four positive recognition molecules are processed, enough DNA is chewed away by FokI to release the drug, which is an antisense ssDNA for MDM2 or another previously studied antisense drug.
They have opposite logic in DNA attached to a drug suppressor (presumably the anti-antisense?), providing additional diagnostic control.
For effective drug administration you need the diagnostic molecule to release its drug, and the drug suppressor molecule NOT to release the suppresor.
What I have yet to figure out is how the recognition molecules are generated when the correct mRNA levels are sensed. The diagnostic state for prostate cancer has two genes downregulated and two genes upregulated. So a positive diagnosis is supposed to occur when the concentration of the first two genes is zero and the concentration of the other two genes is non-zero. But as I said, I haven't yet understood how these inputs are turned into the correct recognition molecules.
All of this work is being done with synthetic DNA and RNA in a test tube.
Re:Could You Choose Beta Release Medicine?
on
Cure for Cancer?
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· Score: 4, Informative
I don't have access to the paper itself (that requires a subscription), but Nature news has a slightly more informative article.
It looks to me like the computer part is single-stranded DNA that base pairs with the mRNA for certain cancer genes. Presumably when a high enough level of these mRNAs is sensed, another DNA molecule is released. This one is supposed to prevent expression of the cancer genes... I'm guessing it is an antisense molecule, but the news article doesn't say. The news article also has no detail on how the drug is released. My guess is its a cleavage event. DNA enzymes capable of self-cleavage have been created in the past.
To me, it looks like the advance here is the "computer" part, not the drug part. And even that is still very much in the pre-clinical realm. The Nature news article says that it only works under particular salt conditions. Also, they haven't looked at how the immune system would respond to these computers. The immune system does respond to some DNA molecules, so that is definitely a concern.
Its interesting work, though. I may have to head over to my local university library and get my hands on the actual paper.
Only sort of true. If you get a PhD in a foreign country, what matters most is who your advisor was and how well you published, not the name of the institution your degree is from. Actually, this is mostly true of American PhDs, too. This is because coursework is a minor part of the PhD (and in fact no part in some countries): the major part is your thesis project, where presumably your advisor influences how much you learn more than the rest of the institution does.
Only for the very big name institutions (Oxford, Harvard, ETH, MIT, etc.) will the insitution matter more than your advisor. For instance, I'm familiar with the work of some Japanese professors doing interesting bioinformatics and computational biology work, but couldn't tell you the name of their institution.
Maybe the institution matters more for a master's degree, though.
Unrelated (and unsolicited!) advice for the person who asked the original question: you don't really say what your background is, but you mention studying security. From that I assume your background is computers more than biology. You say you want to study bioinformatics. Tha'ts great... bioinformatics needs computer science types. However, wherever you go to study, be sure to get a good background in bio, if you don't already have one, and definitely get some wetlab experience. It will serve you well later.
Also, I haven't seen anyone mention the Fulbright fellowships. They exist to help people study overseas. Also, you can look at the Churchill fellowship if you are interested in studying in the UK. This may be a good choice for your field of choice. The EBI has a good presence in the UK, and would be an excellent place to study bioinformatics.
Good luck! I hope you get to go overseas. Don't worry too much about the pedigree. Just find an interesting project to work on with a good advisor. Science is very international, and your experience living in a different country will definitely be a plus later, as you work with teams of people from many different cultures.
Actually, if I remember correctly, "Do unto others as you would have them do to you" is pretty much what Kant comes up with in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals.
They are platitudes for a reason... there is a certain amount of truth in them.
And frankly, this "they started it" nonsense is also preschool level.
While this is basically true in many cases, it is not the whole story. Think about someone who is 20 pounds overweight, and has been for years.
The previous diet was maintaining weight. The person changes the diet ("goes on a diet"), and loses weight. The person goes back to the original diet... this diet should now maintain the new weight. (A bit of a simplification, because the person's metabolism might have changed due to lost muscle or what not).
So why do people tend to gain weight when they come off a diet? There is quite a bit of evidence that when the person comes of the diet, his or her brain is sending signals to eat MORE than the "pre-diet" amount. Basically, research seems to indicate that the brain is freaked out by the calorie restriction, and is sending out stress signals. Through will power (and by having a plan to follow and a goal to aim for), the person overcomes the effects of these signals while "on the diet". Once the diet is over, the person relaxes, and figures they can eat more normally. Which they can, if all they want is to maintain their new weight. But due to the stress signals, they actually eat more than normal, and gain weight back.
I'm oversimplifying, mostly because I'm not working in this field anymore, and the details like the names of the stress hormones involved are no longer in my memory. But you get the idea. Also, I think most of the research has looked at diets that restrict calories enough to get weight loss of more than a pound/week.
My point is: you are right that diets do not tend to work. In fact, my opinion is that the best way to lose weight is slowly, so that your brain never thinks you are starving (research isn't clear about what rate will work here... it is probably different for different people). But more is going on when someone's weight goes back up after a diet than simply the effect of their previous eating habits.
Obesity can however be described as a cyclical disease, in that the disease state causes worsening of the state after a certain point. It is these people that truly need help. They essentially dug a hole that is too deep for them to climb out of on their own. These are the people who need intervention.
So true! Thank you for saying that... I think its something that those of us who aren't obese have a hard time understanding.
I spent a couple of years studying a class of proteins that might make good anti-obesity drug targets. I went in thinking that obesity wasn't really something that needed pharmaceutical intervention, i.e., that obese people should just eat less and exercise more. But I worked for a biotech company, and I researched what my bosses told me to research.
As I read the obesity research literature, I realized that its far from simple to lose weight. Its obvious what we need to do: burn more calories than we take in. However, it is surprisingly hard to do this, and not because obese people are lazy or unmotivated. Our bodies are essentially optimized to maintain body weight, even when that weight is more than it should be for optimal health. This may make sense from an evolutionary standpoint (we've spent most of our time dealing with food shortages, not overabundance), but it makes it very, very hard for a person to lose weight once they've gained it. This explains the yo-yo dieting effect: when you lose weight, your body is sending out very powerful signals that you are experiencing a food shortage crisis, and need to eat more. This of course makes it hard not to gain the weight back.
I'm working on something else now, but my little foray into obesity research made me very determined to maintain a healthy body weight! It is hard to make the time to exercise, and I like chocolate and beer far too much for my own good... but I know it would be much, much harder to return to a healthy weight than it is to stay there in the first place.
Sorry... I'm trained as a protein biochemist, and I can't help but comment on your post, which is basically correct, but may lead some people to think that viruses can self-replicate and self-assemble outside of the cell.
The reason the viral coat proteins self-assemble is that this is the most thermodynamically favorable state for these proteins in the aqueous environment in which the virus is replicating... i.e., the cell. The proteins have evolved such that their specific amino acid compositions make the assembled state most favorable. I suppose this is a valid analogy to what some nanotechnology research is tryin gto accomplish.
However, the proteins don't copy themselves and then self-assemble. The proteins are translated from the genetic material of the virus (DNA or RNA), and then the proteins self-assemble. The machinery that does this translation is most often provided by the host cell.
This is practically identical to how the cell itself replicates, although on a smaller scale. The genetic material is translated into proteins that can do the work required to make a new cell (copy the DNA, synthesize or import the lipids needed for the membrane, synthesize the proteins needed, and so on).
Sometimes, there are even special proteins called chaperones that help other proteins adopt their "correct" structure. I do not actually know of a case where this happens for viral proteins, but it wouldn't surprise me if one exists.
So... yes, once all the parts are produced, many viruses can self-assemble outside of a cell, as long as the conditions (pH, salt concentration, etc) are such that this is what is thermodynamically most favorable. But to get replication, you need the cell.
Get your facts straight, and stop thinking all Americans have last names like "Smith".
The Manhattan Project was staffed by a mix of immigrants and native born Americans. As are most projects in America, a land full of immigrants and descendants of immigrants.
>(Believers in evolution should have fun >explaining why traits that are more pro-survival >are recessive than those that are not.)
I'll bite:
It doesn't have anything to do with evolution. Evolution works by natural selection. The breeding of crop plants works by "assisted selection": people set out to select for specific traits that make the plant more attractive as food.
The traits that promote plant survival aren't necessarily the traits that promote plants people want to eat.
In addition, as explained in the article, we have been breeding these things for years, essentially selecting for the traits we want without regard to whether they are good for plant survival. The trait we selected for decreases insect resistance? No problem, we'll just add more pesticides to the crops.
Of course, I'm oversimplifying a bit. But it sounds like you have a bias against evolution anyway, so I don't think its worth my time to attempt a discussion of the interplay between natural selection and crop breeding.
Some doctors will pretty much refuse to see any work-related injuries. I believe this is due to concern about getting caught up in nasty lawsuits between an employee and the employer whose work environment may or may not have caused the problem.
Furthermore, your average primary care physician may not have the most relevant experience with RSI and may not be up on the latest research.
That's why they funnel you to the worker's comp system. Besides, if the injury was caused by work it SHOULD be paid for by the insurance company insuring your employer against these problems.
I don't know what stigma you are talking about with filing a worker's comp claim. I filed a claim last year, and had no problem with my employer. Nor did I have a problem when I moved to a new employer. In fact, I think a worker's comp claim is supposed to be confidential. I only informed my new employer of the existing problem so that they would provide me with the equipment I need to avoid a relapse. They didn't care, and bought me the trackball and keyboard tray I wanted. No one has said anything about it since my second day of work.
I also tried to go to my primary care physician first, because the original injury predated the job I was at. My doctor didn't want to handle a work-related injury, and my HR director talked some sense into me: they pay the premiums so that their employees can get treated when a problem arises. She told me that their premium would not go up due to the occasional claim.
So I filed the worker's comp claim. In retrospect, I am glad I got rerouted. I really like my regular doctor, but the doctor and physical therapists I dealt with out of the occupational injury department were far more knowledgeable about my injury. With their help, I recovered without having to take an extended leave (the only treatment that had worked during previous flare ups).
Bottom line: the system is there for various reasons. Some are good, some are stupid. But its not necessarily trying to screw you out of treatment, and there is really no reason you shouldn't use it.
I doubt that this is the case here in California where anyone can vote absentee in any election (the mail in ballot is just an absentee ballot), and many people are permanently registered to vote this way in every election.
Please listen to this advice to go to a doctor! bluGill is absolutely right that there are many different things that might be causing your mouse arm pain. I have an injury to the muscle in my forearm that constricts the nerve that runs from my hand up my arm. This is very different from a carpal tunnel inflammation. This difference is important because the stretches that help this condition are completely different from the stretches that help carpal tunnel.
I caused my injury doing mouse-intensive work on a poorly configured workstation (configured for a 6'5" man, not a 5'6" woman). I ignored it and then tried to fix it myself for too long. By the time I went to a doctor, the injury was permanent. It has flared up twice since then, and I know it can flare up again if I am not careful. Don't let this happen to you... flare ups occur exactly when you can't take a long vacation, because the overuse/stress caused by working on a deadline is a prime risk factor for a flare up.
So go to a doctor, find out what's wrong, and take the appropriate steps now.
BTW, I now use a trackball exclusively, and this minimizes my problems. However, this alone doesn't prevent flare ups. The last one occurred even though I was using a trackball.
In my opinion, once you have a flare up, the only thing that allows it to subside is a nice long break from using the computer. Physical therapy can help, but rest is better. Workstation/mouse changes at this point won't help.
The other answers in this thread are all good examples of some reasons why your comment isn't really correct, but there are a few things they miss:
1. Someone is paying for these subscriptions, even if it is not the individual researcher. This is the university or research institute. This money comes from: overhead on grants (your tax dollars), student fees (your tuition), and perhaps some general donations fund (money that could otherwise fund more research or improve facilities). Free to you doesn't really mean free, and isn't even really free to you: your tax dollars and tuition are almost certainly helping fund the subscriptions.
2. Not all scientists work in academic institutions! Scientists who work at a company whose main purpose is research (drug companies, for instance) usually get access via subscriptions paid by their company. Again, someone has to pay for them: this is just another expense that must be offset by income (from drug revenues, for instance). So, as a consumer, you're probably also paying some portion of these researchers' subscription rates, too.
I am a scientist, and I need to keep up on the scientific literature in my field and related fields. I don't work at a company whose main purpose really encompasses my field, so I have to buy my subscriptions individually. I can either pay for them myself, or try to get reimbursed by my company. Right now, the cost is less than $500/year, so I am still paying for them myself. For the things I need less often, I make a trip to the nearby academic library. This is not convenient, really, so I only do this if I *really* want to read a paper. I sometimes wonder what I miss due to my laziness.
3. If you're working as a scientist, I hope news items don't give you all the details you need! Many advances in my field are not newsworthy for a general audience, or even a general scientific audience, and hence not covered by news sources. Besides, I can't evaluate the work if I can't read the original research article.
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The HPV vaccine has been quite well tested. The FDA requirements for testing before approval are quite stringent. I think what you mean is that it hadn't been in general use for a long period. This is true, but no proof of anything nefarious. Based on the evidence out there now, I'd vaccinate my daughter.
Do you think antibiotics don't cure infections? There are plenty of newer antibiotics that have been developed by these evil drug companies you reference.
As for not curing cancer- that is a lot harder to do than you understand. The cancer cells are essentially your cells, with some mutations to make them escape the usual growth and migration controls. Coming up with a drug that will kill 100% of those cells without causing unacceptable damage to your other, healthy cells is not easy. There is no group of scientists somewhere who know how to do it but are being prevented from doing so by their evil corporate bosses. We just don't know how to do it.
The risk is to the children who are too young to be immunized yet.
For instance, the first MMR shot is usually given at about 1 year.
When my daughter was 11 months old, we had a measles outbreak in my neighborhood in San Diego. The outbreak originated with a family who chose not to vaccinate their kids. They went on vacation to Switzerland, where they ran into some other people who chose not to vaccinate, and were exposed to measles. The original kids came back from their vacation and exposed other kids at their charter school, some of who were also not vaccinated by parental choice. Then someone took a sick kid to a doctor's office without realizing their kid had measles and exposed a bunch more kids, some of whom were too young to be vaccinated yet. From there, the outbreak moved to a day care center and a swim school.
Luckily, my daughter was never exposed. She got her MMR shot on schedule and all was fine in our family. However, at least two other infants caught measles. They recovered, but I imagine they and their families had a really bad week or two. Also, the risk of complications up to and including death are higher in younger children. (As an aside, the death rate from measles in developed countries is about 1 in 1000 cases).
If my daughter HAD been exposed and come down with measles, I would have been very, very angry at the parents who chose not to vaccinate their kids. And if they had explained their beliefs by referencing Jenny McCarthy, I might have been tempted to violence. If you want to take medical advice from some starlet instead of a doctor, fine. But when the consequences of that advice impact MY kids, you've crossed the threshold from misguided to negligent, and I honestly think you should have to answer for your actions.
This may be the case in some companies, but I've been in middle management for awhile now, and I don't think it is universally true. I have ALWAYS been given a chance to help set my department's goals and budget. I also get quite a bit of input into policy. However, I have to justify my recommendations with business needs, not techie reasons.
I think the problem may be that some middle managers may have a clue about the techie stuff but not know how to fit that into the business. It is a bit of an invisible skill- the techies that report to me don't usually even realize it needs to be done. The management that I report to often doesn't realize that some people might not know that they need to do this.
Despite its invisibility, I think the ability to put technical needs into a business context is the most important qualification for my job. Without that, and I get screwy goals and an inadequate budget- which rapidly leads to a disgruntled group and a staff retention problem.
Actually, I arranged a similar thing after the birth of my baby. It was brilliant. I changed jobs for other reasons and had to go back to the normal schedule. I miss my every other Friday off. Sometimes, I took my daughter out of day care and spent the day with her. Sometimes, I sent her to day care like normal and got chores done so that my husband and I could both have more time with our daughter on the weekend.
You already have a lot of people on this thread boasting about how many hours they work. Whatever. I have generally worked 40 hour weeks (or 80 hours every two weeks) my entire career, and I have advanced up the ladder just fine, thank you. I always get good performance reviews and good raises. Working hard and getting a lot done does not require insane work hours, and I have rarely met anyone who could remain productive for all of the insane hours they "worked". Personally, I find I can sustain crazy hours for about two weeks, and I'll do that if I think whatever crisis needs handling is worth it.
Good luck- the system will work for you if you let it.
I can't quite figure out how to reply to this without sounding snarky towards the parent, who clearly has a different view of the field than I do and who am I to say which view is right? But feel I need to say- we're NOT that desperate anymore. The boom in bioinformatics was about 10 years ago now (pause while I shudder at realization that I have been out of grad school for that long....) I work in this area, and have since leaving grad school. When I graduated in 1999, there weren't really any bioinformatics grad programs, and the field was populated by a mix of biologists learning computers, computer types learning biology, and some physicists. Now, there are plenty of grad programs churning our bioinformatics MS and even PhD graduates. The only people I know working in bioinformatics w/o some serious bio background now have either been at it for many, many years or are pretty much pure coders.
However, as one of the previous replies said- there is a career to be made by being the interface between a specialized customer set (in this case, biologists) and the software developers. I've done that quite a bit, and have managed to keep myself employed. But you need to have credibility on both sides- which means a strong bio background (an advanced degree helps) AND an understanding of how software development works (it helps if you've coded).
You could also look at project management. Lots of folks laugh at project managers, but that is usually because they've never worked with a good project manager. Once again, though, I think it helps if you've done some coding, both for credibility with the team and so that you can make reasonable estimates about how long development tasks will take, etc.
Real science has considered this and found quite a bit that argues against this theory, actually. Which is one of the reason why Larry Summers got in so much trouble for his speech. He knew not of what he spoke....
I was about to be annoyed by this, because "tool user" sounds somehow inferior. But once I read your comment, I have to say, you may be on to something. I took a programming class in college and didn't like it, because I didn't care about solving the toy problems the class used. I didn't really learn how to program until I got to grad school and needed to code to solve some problems relevant to me.
So the next level of the question is- why aren't there equal numbers of codeheads of both genders? I don't buy that its just biology.
Actually, the salary differences start at entry-level. No one has ever satisfactorily explained why, although there are lots of theories.
I used to agree with you on the long hours being as much a problem for dads as moms. I also used to laugh that maternity leave is treated like a disability here in the US. And then I had a baby. I WAS pretty much disabled for several weeks.
I have a husband who definitely pulls his fair share of the childrearing work- diapers, baths, bedtimes, etc. Still, I'm the only one who could get up in the middle of the night and breastfeed. I was the only one who had to figure out how to pump breastmilk on a cross-country flight for a business trip.
I totally agree that parenthood requires sacrifices from both parents, and would love to see more dads take extended paternity leaves, and more companies accommodate the flexible work schedules that make working parenthood easier. However, simple biology means that the mother NEEDS these things more.
With that said- I am a working mother with an IT-related job, and I haven't had many problems with it. I think one reason is that I waited until I was in relatively senior positions before having the baby. This gave me the ability to ask for the accommodations I needed.
There are studies showing a drop off in interest in math and science among girls as they go into high school. The common explanation is puberty- and no, not because hormones mess with girls' brains, but because of the impact of the desire to be desirable. Girls who are interested in math and science tend to be labeled "smart", which in high school tends to mean "not dateable". And even for a "smart" girl, being considered dateable matters a lot in high school.
Of course, high school guys want dates, too. But some of the "smart" boys in my high school classes (eons ago now) got dates. None of us "smart" girls did. And before you trolls jump on that, it wasn't because we were all ugly- we're all happily married now. And I used to get hit on by guys who didn't know me and so didn't know I had that "smart girl" label.
I doubt high school has changed that much since my day. Actually, I suspect it has only gotten worse, given the female "role models" I see in pop culture these days.
I am very grateful for the very geeky college I went to, which changed me into a science major. I still didn't get that many dates, though- I found that telling a guy my major was a great way to get him to leave me alone. But I got enough to not start lying about my major.
This entire thread is half sad/half funny, because the same old canards about why women don't go into X field are being trotted out. Yes men and women are different, but as one of the previous posters mentioned, not as different as you think. I don't have the time or interest to go through and counter all of these silly arguments. But I did want to say something, in case there are some young geeky women reading this thread and getting more discouraged.
I ended up with a PhD in science and a serious interest in the application of computers in my field. I am now the head of the IT/informatics department at my company. My husband (a programmer) works on a team with several women, one of whom is his boss. He speaks highly of the technical skills of his female colleagues, and he is not an easy programmer to impress.
I know quite a few women working in computer related fields, as programmers, database designers, and managers. None of us got an undergraduate degree in computer science. So really guys, I don't think you can argue that women aren't interested in computers. We are. For whatever reason, we just don't end up in the computer science departments. Look at the departments to figure out what is wrong- don't look at the women. We're just fine the way we are, thank you.
Oh, and I played with BOTH dolls and legos as a kid. So does my 19 month old daughter.
I went and found someone with a subscription to Nature, and got a hold of the paper. Its actually a short Letter. They don't spend much time on the chemistry, being more interested in the logic. However, they do put their methods in the supplementary materials. They are still a bit vague for my taste, but maybe I've just been out of the wetlab for too long! So take the following with a grain of salt... I'm not really sure I understand their chemistry yet, and I had to stop trying and get back to my real work. (:
It looks to me like their recognition molecules are engineered to include a FokI (restriction enzyme) recognition site. So when the recognition molecule binds to the diagnosis molecule, a dsDNA is created with the FokI site. These causes a portion of the diagnosis molecule to be cleaved.
This can happen with recognition molecules each of the four mRNAs considered to be diagnostic of the type of cancer they are "curing" (prostate cancer). If all four positive recognition molecules are processed, enough DNA is chewed away by FokI to release the drug, which is an antisense ssDNA for MDM2 or another previously studied antisense drug.
They have opposite logic in DNA attached to a drug suppressor (presumably the anti-antisense?), providing additional diagnostic control.
For effective drug administration you need the diagnostic molecule to release its drug, and the drug suppressor molecule NOT to release the suppresor.
What I have yet to figure out is how the recognition molecules are generated when the correct mRNA levels are sensed. The diagnostic state for prostate cancer has two genes downregulated and two genes upregulated. So a positive diagnosis is supposed to occur when the concentration of the first two genes is zero and the concentration of the other two genes is non-zero. But as I said, I haven't yet understood how these inputs are turned into the correct recognition molecules.
All of this work is being done with synthetic DNA and RNA in a test tube.
I don't have access to the paper itself (that requires a subscription), but Nature news has a slightly more informative article.
It looks to me like the computer part is single-stranded DNA that base pairs with the mRNA for certain cancer genes. Presumably when a high enough level of these mRNAs is sensed, another DNA molecule is released. This one is supposed to prevent expression of the cancer genes... I'm guessing it is an antisense molecule, but the news article doesn't say. The news article also has no detail on how the drug is released. My guess is its a cleavage event. DNA enzymes capable of self-cleavage have been created in the past.
To me, it looks like the advance here is the "computer" part, not the drug part. And even that is still very much in the pre-clinical realm. The Nature news article says that it only works under particular salt conditions. Also, they haven't looked at how the immune system would respond to these computers. The immune system does respond to some DNA molecules, so that is definitely a concern.
Its interesting work, though. I may have to head over to my local university library and get my hands on the actual paper.
Oops! sorry. I mean tthe *Marshall* fellowship for study in the UK.
Only sort of true. If you get a PhD in a foreign country, what matters most is who your advisor was and how well you published, not the name of the institution your degree is from. Actually, this is mostly true of American PhDs, too. This is because coursework is a minor part of the PhD (and in fact no part in some countries): the major part is your thesis project, where presumably your advisor influences how much you learn more than the rest of the institution does.
Only for the very big name institutions (Oxford, Harvard, ETH, MIT, etc.) will the insitution matter more than your advisor. For instance, I'm familiar with the work of some Japanese professors doing interesting bioinformatics and computational biology work, but couldn't tell you the name of their institution.
Maybe the institution matters more for a master's degree, though.
Unrelated (and unsolicited!) advice for the person who asked the original question: you don't really say what your background is, but you mention studying security. From that I assume your background is computers more than biology. You say you want to study bioinformatics. Tha'ts great... bioinformatics needs computer science types. However, wherever you go to study, be sure to get a good background in bio, if you don't already have one, and definitely get some wetlab experience. It will serve you well later.
Also, I haven't seen anyone mention the Fulbright fellowships. They exist to help people study overseas. Also, you can look at the Churchill fellowship if you are interested in studying in the UK. This may be a good choice for your field of choice. The EBI has a good presence in the UK, and would be an excellent place to study bioinformatics.
Good luck! I hope you get to go overseas. Don't worry too much about the pedigree. Just find an interesting project to work on with a good advisor. Science is very international, and your experience living in a different country will definitely be a plus later, as you work with teams of people from many different cultures.
Actually, if I remember correctly, "Do unto others as you would have them do to you" is pretty much what Kant comes up with in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals.
They are platitudes for a reason... there is a certain amount of truth in them.
And frankly, this "they started it" nonsense is also preschool level.
>Tell me who got the better treatment.
Off-topic and feeding the trolls, but I don't care. I'm sick of this argument.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
Geez. We learned this stuff in preschool.
And yes, I am an American. And I'm staying here to vote against the people who think like you.
While this is basically true in many cases, it is not the whole story. Think about someone who is 20 pounds overweight, and has been for years.
The previous diet was maintaining weight. The person changes the diet ("goes on a diet"), and loses weight. The person goes back to the original diet... this diet should now maintain the new weight. (A bit of a simplification, because the person's metabolism might have changed due to lost muscle or what not).
So why do people tend to gain weight when they come off a diet? There is quite a bit of evidence that when the person comes of the diet, his or her brain is sending signals to eat MORE than the "pre-diet" amount. Basically, research seems to indicate that the brain is freaked out by the calorie restriction, and is sending out stress signals. Through will power (and by having a plan to follow and a goal to aim for), the person overcomes the effects of these signals while "on the diet". Once the diet is over, the person relaxes, and figures they can eat more normally. Which they can, if all they want is to maintain their new weight. But due to the stress signals, they actually eat more than normal, and gain weight back.
I'm oversimplifying, mostly because I'm not working in this field anymore, and the details like the names of the stress hormones involved are no longer in my memory. But you get the idea. Also, I think most of the research has looked at diets that restrict calories enough to get weight loss of more than a pound/week.
My point is: you are right that diets do not tend to work. In fact, my opinion is that the best way to lose weight is slowly, so that your brain never thinks you are starving (research isn't clear about what rate will work here... it is probably different for different people). But more is going on when someone's weight goes back up after a diet than simply the effect of their previous eating habits.
Obesity can however be described as a cyclical disease, in that the disease state causes worsening of the state after a certain point. It is these people that truly need help. They essentially dug a hole that is too deep for them to climb out of on their own. These are the people who need intervention.
So true! Thank you for saying that... I think its something that those of us who aren't obese have a hard time understanding.
I spent a couple of years studying a class of proteins that might make good anti-obesity drug targets. I went in thinking that obesity wasn't really something that needed pharmaceutical intervention, i.e., that obese people should just eat less and exercise more. But I worked for a biotech company, and I researched what my bosses told me to research.
As I read the obesity research literature, I realized that its far from simple to lose weight. Its obvious what we need to do: burn more calories than we take in. However, it is surprisingly hard to do this, and not because obese people are lazy or unmotivated. Our bodies are essentially optimized to maintain body weight, even when that weight is more than it should be for optimal health. This may make sense from an evolutionary standpoint (we've spent most of our time dealing with food shortages, not overabundance), but it makes it very, very hard for a person to lose weight once they've gained it. This explains the yo-yo dieting effect: when you lose weight, your body is sending out very powerful signals that you are experiencing a food shortage crisis, and need to eat more. This of course makes it hard not to gain the weight back.
I'm working on something else now, but my little foray into obesity research made me very determined to maintain a healthy body weight! It is hard to make the time to exercise, and I like chocolate and beer far too much for my own good... but I know it would be much, much harder to return to a healthy weight than it is to stay there in the first place.
Chill out dude. I didn't mean to insult you. I just thought that in the context of the rest of the thread, someone might misinterpret what you said.
I won't even respond to the other snotty comments, because I see no need to get in a flame war when we probably both agree on the science.
Sorry... I'm trained as a protein biochemist, and I can't help but comment on your post, which is basically correct, but may lead some people to think that viruses can self-replicate and self-assemble outside of the cell.
The reason the viral coat proteins self-assemble is that this is the most thermodynamically favorable state for these proteins in the aqueous environment in which the virus is replicating... i.e., the cell. The proteins have evolved such that their specific amino acid compositions make the assembled state most favorable. I suppose this is a valid analogy to what some nanotechnology research is tryin gto accomplish.
However, the proteins don't copy themselves and then self-assemble. The proteins are translated from the genetic material of the virus (DNA or RNA), and then the proteins self-assemble. The machinery that does this translation is most often provided by the host cell.
This is practically identical to how the cell itself replicates, although on a smaller scale. The genetic material is translated into proteins that can do the work required to make a new cell (copy the DNA, synthesize or import the lipids needed for the membrane, synthesize the proteins needed, and so on).
Sometimes, there are even special proteins called chaperones that help other proteins adopt their "correct" structure. I do not actually know of a case where this happens for viral proteins, but it wouldn't surprise me if one exists.
So... yes, once all the parts are produced, many viruses can self-assemble outside of a cell, as long as the conditions (pH, salt concentration, etc) are such that this is what is thermodynamically most favorable. But to get replication, you need the cell.
Yes, it does.
He was born in Manhattan.
Get your facts straight, and stop thinking all Americans have last names like "Smith".
The Manhattan Project was staffed by a mix of immigrants and native born Americans. As are most projects in America, a land full of immigrants and descendants of immigrants.
This whole debate is silly.
>(Believers in evolution should have fun >explaining why traits that are more pro-survival >are recessive than those that are not.)
I'll bite:
It doesn't have anything to do with evolution. Evolution works by natural selection. The breeding of crop plants works by "assisted selection": people set out to select for specific traits that make the plant more attractive as food.
The traits that promote plant survival aren't necessarily the traits that promote plants people want to eat.
In addition, as explained in the article, we have been breeding these things for years, essentially selecting for the traits we want without regard to whether they are good for plant survival. The trait we selected for decreases insect resistance? No problem, we'll just add more pesticides to the crops.
Of course, I'm oversimplifying a bit. But it sounds like you have a bias against evolution anyway, so I don't think its worth my time to attempt a discussion of the interplay between natural selection and crop breeding.
Some doctors will pretty much refuse to see any work-related injuries. I believe this is due to concern about getting caught up in nasty lawsuits between an employee and the employer whose work environment may or may not have caused the problem.
Furthermore, your average primary care physician may not have the most relevant experience with RSI and may not be up on the latest research.
That's why they funnel you to the worker's comp system. Besides, if the injury was caused by work it SHOULD be paid for by the insurance company insuring your employer against these problems.
I don't know what stigma you are talking about with filing a worker's comp claim. I filed a claim last year, and had no problem with my employer. Nor did I have a problem when I moved to a new employer. In fact, I think a worker's comp claim is supposed to be confidential. I only informed my new employer of the existing problem so that they would provide me with the equipment I need to avoid a relapse. They didn't care, and bought me the trackball and keyboard tray I wanted. No one has said anything about it since my second day of work.
I also tried to go to my primary care physician first, because the original injury predated the job I was at. My doctor didn't want to handle a work-related injury, and my HR director talked some sense into me: they pay the premiums so that their employees can get treated when a problem arises. She told me that their premium would not go up due to the occasional claim.
So I filed the worker's comp claim. In retrospect, I am glad I got rerouted. I really like my regular doctor, but the doctor and physical therapists I dealt with out of the occupational injury department were far more knowledgeable about my injury. With their help, I recovered without having to take an extended leave (the only treatment that had worked during previous flare ups).
Bottom line: the system is there for various reasons. Some are good, some are stupid. But its not necessarily trying to screw you out of treatment, and there is really no reason you shouldn't use it.
I doubt that this is the case here in California where anyone can vote absentee in any election (the mail in ballot is just an absentee ballot), and many people are permanently registered to vote this way in every election.
Please listen to this advice to go to a doctor! bluGill is absolutely right that there are many different things that might be causing your mouse arm pain. I have an injury to the muscle in my forearm that constricts the nerve that runs from my hand up my arm. This is very different from a carpal tunnel inflammation. This difference is important because the stretches that help this condition are completely different from the stretches that help carpal tunnel.
I caused my injury doing mouse-intensive work on a poorly configured workstation (configured for a 6'5" man, not a 5'6" woman). I ignored it and then tried to fix it myself for too long. By the time I went to a doctor, the injury was permanent. It has flared up twice since then, and I know it can flare up again if I am not careful. Don't let this happen to you... flare ups occur exactly when you can't take a long vacation, because the overuse/stress caused by working on a deadline is a prime risk factor for a flare up.
So go to a doctor, find out what's wrong, and take the appropriate steps now.
BTW, I now use a trackball exclusively, and this minimizes my problems. However, this alone doesn't prevent flare ups. The last one occurred even though I was using a trackball.
In my opinion, once you have a flare up, the only thing that allows it to subside is a nice long break from using the computer. Physical therapy can help, but rest is better. Workstation/mouse changes at this point won't help.
The other answers in this thread are all good examples of some reasons why your comment isn't really correct, but there are a few things they miss:
1. Someone is paying for these subscriptions, even if it is not the individual researcher. This is the university or research institute. This money comes from: overhead on grants (your tax dollars), student fees (your tuition), and perhaps some general donations fund (money that could otherwise fund more research or improve facilities). Free to you doesn't really mean free, and isn't even really free to you: your tax dollars and tuition are almost certainly helping fund the subscriptions.
2. Not all scientists work in academic institutions! Scientists who work at a company whose main purpose is research (drug companies, for instance) usually get access via subscriptions paid by their company. Again, someone has to pay for them: this is just another expense that must be offset by income (from drug revenues, for instance). So, as a consumer, you're probably also paying some portion of these researchers' subscription rates, too.
I am a scientist, and I need to keep up on the scientific literature in my field and related fields. I don't work at a company whose main purpose really encompasses my field, so I have to buy my subscriptions individually. I can either pay for them myself, or try to get reimbursed by my company. Right now, the cost is less than $500/year, so I am still paying for them myself. For the things I need less often, I make a trip to the nearby academic library. This is not convenient, really, so I only do this if I *really* want to read a paper. I sometimes wonder what I miss due to my laziness.
3. If you're working as a scientist, I hope news items don't give you all the details you need! Many advances in my field are not newsworthy for a general audience, or even a general scientific audience, and hence not covered by news sources. Besides, I can't evaluate the work if I can't read the original research article.