If I am not mistaken, and others please correct me if I am wrong, the essential trick here is that the particles are mobile, and thus can make it to the spleen, which is the key to making the spleen think that they (containing myelin antigens) are just debris from dead blood cells and thus not suitable for encoding (antibody) attack. Apparently, the spleen is able to inactivate the encoding of antibodies for materials it contacts directly?
way in. You just have to keep sending the resumes to those guys and jumping through their hoops.
If you are looking at A+ as a way to brush up your general PC internals knowledge and trouble-shooting, I think it couldn't hurt. Though few of us will practice desktop support as our primary focus, those skills are generally the most beneficial next to your primary focus wherever you go.
I once made a friend of a top tier recruiter by agreeing on short notice to join a (very temp) Dell desktop refresh at a small corporate headquarters near where I was living at the time. The lead guy walked out after the first day, and I took over to complete it successfully. After that I got the impression he would find me things, though shortly thereafter I went with something else that went long term.
I never got started in the "glory" (gravy-train) years. Nowadays I get the impression the only way in is to resurrect yourself as a fire-eater when a good pile of suffering and hell fortuitously lands on your doorstep. Seems like the days of the dependably stationed clock-watcher are pretty much over!
whatsoever, presumably the skull sizes would have to be the same? (Unless skull size follows brain size? In which case, how does intelligence track with head size, itself? I wouldn't immediately expect it to.)
Were that so, one would think so much gap would likely result in injury or some other (physical) complications.
I appreciate your putting a figure ("gigabytes") to the quantity of stored genetic info, something I have been curious about, but have been unable to locate at the moment. That sounds about right by my estimation, and also sounds grossly inadequate to store all the information necessary to specify (practically any) multi-cellular organism. The only conceivable way that could work is if there's some kind of monster compression at work. I assume people (embryologists) are looking at genetic mechanisms of anatomical structure determination, but I have been mainly out of the field for a while.
We could go on arguing this forever. My main gripe comes down to many people seeming to approach science these days as though it were the new religion, which violates the whole intent and purpose.
Oh, and your point about what evolutionary theory encompasses seems a bit on the niggling side. Suffice it to say, MODERN (or molecular) evolutionary theory, or the molecular component of evolutionary theory. I know that Darwin came before Watson and Crick.
Oh, and the sperm cell is an interesting example. Here we have a simple organism that is directionally mobile and potentially equipped with chemo receptors for guiding it. That isn't something any simple (ie subject only to diffusion) biomolecule can reasonably be expected to possess. All I can think of in that regard is compartmentalization (ie. cells acting as localized bio-reactors) and driving structure by constituent molecule concentration (ie. Le Chatelier's principle), though that still strikes me as inadequate and wasteful (with regard to something that will ultimately be subject to diffusion).
I don't really believe there is such a thing as "my" or "your" theory, though I Iike to think there might be such a thing as "our" reality. Scientific investigation isn't like some kind of horse race where you bet on the one you like the most or think most likely to win, and until something has been proven I think it is important to admit what you don't know. The religious fanatics who would deny all knowledge are truly a horror, though the purported scientists who lie and misrepresent (or simply botch) what is known (also with their own agendas) aren't much better. In fact, they are worse, because the should, and, indeed, are basically licensed to know better.
Sometimes I do get to feeling a bit put upon by this whole (ie. "human"/life) situation. Take, for example, Okkam's Razor, which is generally extremely sound for nearly all of the natural universe, though I more prefer Heraclitus' "latent structure is master of obvious structure" when it comes to human experience and perception.
Cells have no will. They must be regarded as dumb machines. Where does all the info reside telling them to extend here or to retract there (eg. all the dendrites in the brain)? How many points of manipulation must that be? And all that on a single strand composed of a modest number of repeat units? Evolution definitely appears to have something (truly profound) to it, though there still seems to be some major pieces missing.
Yes, some of that work with quasicrystals is more interesting than all get out!
I can relate to your point about some potential pessimism in my fundamentally questioning the molecular basis of evolution (ie. based on the level of anatomic complexity in relation to the quantity of information able to be stored in the genes). Dawkins himself has said that even if proven, (molecular-based) evolution does not disprove the existence of Creator. It only shows that he covered his tracks. Also, I am reminded of something one of my professors said that was positive (perhaps a bit of an exception for him) and got me to thinking way back when (paraphrasing): "So am I to believe that there are some kind of traffic cops placed at every street corner, telling these molecules where to go?"
Also, those examples you mention are more about "general" building blocks (eg. something which solidifies a type of tissue throughout, or codes for a lone, mobile fluorophore molecule), vs the regulation of tissue structure differentiation.
Think of it in terms of scale. Sodium and chloride ions, and even regularly shaped protein globs, or cannon balls for that matter, stack very nicely to make a regular, 3-d repeat ("crystal") structure, and that same principle (ie. essentially "things stacking nicely") is posited to explain how biomolecules (eg. dna-encoded proteins) eventually join together to form anatomical (or even cellular-level) structures.
However, if you move very far way, for example, 1000 feet over a (regularly arranged) swimming pool full of bowling balls, it will look like just a glob. In fact, the only macroscopic products of large crystals which come to mind would be fracture planes, which are visible to the eye, though quintessentially simple (ie. a plane) in structure.
So, regarding bio systems, how do all those biomolecules just (through random diffusion) stack themselves together to make structures which are enormously larger than the dimension of the building blocks themselves?
Thanks for the reply. Yes, I think that is the general idea, but where does that information originate, so that each unique cell, and each unique biomolecule within each cell, can orient itself correctly? The genes, themselves, which would only seem to know how to encode what will eventually become free-floating proteins, wouldn't seem to contain that additional info. All the genetic information is contained within every cell, and I find it hard to believe that it could encode all the complexity, which increases like a nested exponential, at least not without some kind of massive compression mechanism.
Thanks, I will check that book. I started out as a biologist and am kind of glad I got out when I did. I wasn't too confident that most molecular biologists I encountered were actually realistic about the complexity of their systems, though I didn't even pursue it at the gradual level, opting instead for simpler material science systems. I was never too convinced that most researchers claiming to have identified a set of genes/markers or what have you in connection with some trait or condition had actually discovered anything, but still they keep on publishing in great volumes, almost seeming to make matters worse.
Btw, the subject of embryology, which I was fortunately exposed to, makes an admirable introduction to the process of cellular/tissue differentiation, and that was 25 years ago for me.
of proteins leads to structural determination of organisms, taking place through a process of molecular recognition and self-assembly (following standard thermodynamic principles of minimizing the surface free energy of the constituent molecules).
However, when this occurs in a simple crystalline material, it appears amorphous at a scale about 3 or 4 orders of magnitude larger than the constituent molecules. Thus, how can this same process suffice to create biological structures often 10 or more orders of magnitude larger than the constituent molecules?
of patenting the "what" as opposed to the "how". (One click purchasing is a good example of a "what".)
Furthermore, due to the inherent flexibility of the (software) medium, patents used validly are largely inapplicable, because there is always many ways something can be done. I think software companies need to find ways to try to live with that, rather than perverting the legal protection of patenting.
Oh, and this article looks like mainly a hook to hawk more gizmos.
to overcome their obstacles, or reconcile themselves to living their lives as parasites (which imo would include a significant portion of business hacks). There really are no other options.
Nope. Ayn Rand is the only one who effectively tackled post-industrial America. She only lacked poor editing on Atlas. She understandably probably got to a point where she couldn't trust anyone enough for that.
Bukowski short stories. Shakespeare Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. Aeschylus Oresteia. Hippolytus (Murray transl.) Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged (excerpts). The Stranger. Canterbury Tales (Wife of Bath). The Idiot. Chekov. The Jungle. Short Happy Life of Francis Maccomber.
What if qualification level correlated with gender? Your statement appears to assume it doesn't.
Re:what does that idiotic red banner mean?
on
Sexism In Science
·
· Score: 1
Thanks for the info. Looks like they recently went down, though!:)
Re:what does that idiotic red banner mean?
on
Sexism In Science
·
· Score: 1
What I was really referring to was not the study's being flame baiting, but, rather/.'s sexism label.
From your valid point of this possibly being valid science, the/. title "Sexism and Science" is straight up flame baiting. Where the hell do they come off? It's that old inability to say things which, though true, are not politically correct. I did not see any effort to determine whether the study subjects were assessed for (unfair) bias. Without unfair bias, there can be no finding of sexism, only discrimination, and discrimination without unfair bias isn't wrong, it is laudable.
what does that idiotic red banner mean?
on
Sexism In Science
·
· Score: 0
...ear plugs almost continuously. I have found the "Quite, Please!" brand of white foam to be the best (~only effective) ones.
Though I am not formally diagnosed, based on their receptions I suspect that many former employees would consider this a technicality.:) (Which is fine, because I generally thought the same of them. Note: my main work place challenges include some level of ADD, largely inhibiting my verbal cognitive and speaking skills, though this does seem to have improved somewhat over time.) I have found discipline the key element to both coding and interpersonal success. I have found the need to pretty much stone-wall (feign either obliviousness or complete unwillingness to enter into) any standard workplace provocations or psychological games or intrigue. I seem to have a history of inheriting the most perversely ill- conceived and implemented projects. I allow myself all the time such monstrosities should conceivably merit, including ample mental decompression and recuperation (eg. reading slashdot).
Though your condition might gain you some consideration, if you get to feeling overwhelmed, they can instinctively, unconsciously come swarming after you. In the end the onus is always on you to control your response and maintain your mental equilibrium. I have come to view many "normal" people as actually deranged along highly standardized lines. Time will tell...
After working for a number of "dud" companies, finally joining an extremely ambitious, motivated one highly prioritizing technical excellence, and being given meaty, challenging projects seemed to fundamentally improve my over-all productivity and general state of mind.
It doesn't appear to be actual patch clamping the researchers are referring to. As the wikipedia page states, this seems to be more of a form of (whole) intracellular recording. (See my detail below.) Good for characterizing neural networks and behaviors vs. rigorous ion current measurement.
sounds like quite an achievement, but I was similarly interested by the way the term "patch clamp", and, specifically, the "clamp" part appears to have diverged from its original meaning.
When I first learned about neural "voltage clamp" in college, it was a way to maintain a constant voltage across a neural membrane, which is otherwise normally altered by a trans-membrane conduction event. That is, a current is passed in/out of the cell during a conduction event to compensate for it, thus maintaining or "clamping" the voltage constant. This allows for more rigorous quantification of ion channel currents than is possible under varying voltage conditions. As applied by these researchers, the term must refer to the phenomenon of the membrane patch being "clamped" to the pipette tip (ie. via suction), which, though perhaps of some interest is not as interesting, I think, as the original meaning.
The linked wikipedia article, referring to "whole cell recording" or "whole cell patch" (as a form of simple intracellular recording with its advantages and disadvantages over same) seems fundamentally accurate, whereas the abstract referencing "whole cell patch clamping" seems somewhat misleading. Intracellular recording is about events at the cell level (eg. action potential), whereas (patch) voltage clamp is about ion currents, whether at the single or multiple (ie. membrane) channel level . And I did the intracellular recording in college under a dissection scope with a pulled glass electrode in a micro-manipulator, and I can attest to its difficulties.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and then you know they'd have you on the books forever!
Agreed. It really comes form inside. And some of the "attractive" ones start to look ugly after a while! :)
If I am not mistaken, and others please correct me if I am wrong, the essential trick here is that the particles are mobile, and thus can make it to the spleen, which is the key to making the spleen think that they (containing myelin antigens) are just debris from dead blood cells and thus not suitable for encoding (antibody) attack. Apparently, the spleen is able to inactivate the encoding of antibodies for materials it contacts directly?
way in. You just have to keep sending the resumes to those guys and jumping through their hoops.
If you are looking at A+ as a way to brush up your general PC internals knowledge and trouble-shooting, I think it couldn't hurt. Though few of us will practice desktop support as our primary focus, those skills are generally the most beneficial next to your primary focus wherever you go.
I once made a friend of a top tier recruiter by agreeing on short notice to join a (very temp) Dell desktop refresh at a small corporate headquarters near where I was living at the time. The lead guy walked out after the first day, and I took over to complete it successfully. After that I got the impression he would find me things, though shortly thereafter I went with something else that went long term.
I never got started in the "glory" (gravy-train) years. Nowadays I get the impression the only way in is to resurrect yourself as a fire-eater when a good pile of suffering and hell fortuitously lands on your doorstep. Seems like the days of the dependably stationed clock-watcher are pretty much over!
whatsoever, presumably the skull sizes would have to be the same? (Unless skull size follows brain size? In which case, how does intelligence track with head size, itself? I wouldn't immediately expect it to.)
Were that so, one would think so much gap would likely result in injury or some other (physical) complications.
Until some stupid with a flare gun, burned the place to the ground!
(which was later fortuitously extinguished by said tsunami)
I appreciate your putting a figure ("gigabytes") to the quantity of stored genetic info, something I have been curious about, but have been unable to locate at the moment. That sounds about right by my estimation, and also sounds grossly inadequate to store all the information necessary to specify (practically any) multi-cellular organism. The only conceivable way that could work is if there's some kind of monster compression at work. I assume people (embryologists) are looking at genetic mechanisms of anatomical structure determination, but I have been mainly out of the field for a while.
We could go on arguing this forever. My main gripe comes down to many people seeming to approach science these days as though it were the new religion, which violates the whole intent and purpose.
Oh, and your point about what evolutionary theory encompasses seems a bit on the niggling side. Suffice it to say, MODERN (or molecular) evolutionary theory, or the molecular component of evolutionary theory. I know that Darwin came before Watson and Crick.
Oh, and the sperm cell is an interesting example. Here we have a simple organism that is directionally mobile and potentially equipped with chemo receptors for guiding it. That isn't something any simple (ie subject only to diffusion) biomolecule can reasonably be expected to possess. All I can think of in that regard is compartmentalization (ie. cells acting as localized bio-reactors) and driving structure by constituent molecule concentration (ie. Le Chatelier's principle), though that still strikes me as inadequate and wasteful (with regard to something that will ultimately be subject to diffusion).
I don't really believe there is such a thing as "my" or "your" theory, though I Iike to think there might be such a thing as "our" reality. Scientific investigation isn't like some kind of horse race where you bet on the one you like the most or think most likely to win, and until something has been proven I think it is important to admit what you don't know. The religious fanatics who would deny all knowledge are truly a horror, though the purported scientists who lie and misrepresent (or simply botch) what is known (also with their own agendas) aren't much better. In fact, they are worse, because the should, and, indeed, are basically licensed to know better.
Sometimes I do get to feeling a bit put upon by this whole (ie. "human"/life) situation. Take, for example, Okkam's Razor, which is generally extremely sound for nearly all of the natural universe, though I more prefer Heraclitus' "latent structure is master of obvious structure" when it comes to human experience and perception.
Cells have no will. They must be regarded as dumb machines. Where does all the info reside telling them to extend here or to retract there (eg. all the dendrites in the brain)? How many points of manipulation must that be? And all that on a single strand composed of a modest number of repeat units? Evolution definitely appears to have something (truly profound) to it, though there still seems to be some major pieces missing.
Yes, some of that work with quasicrystals is more interesting than all get out!
I can relate to your point about some potential pessimism in my fundamentally questioning the molecular basis of evolution (ie. based on the level of anatomic complexity in relation to the quantity of information able to be stored in the genes). Dawkins himself has said that even if proven, (molecular-based) evolution does not disprove the existence of Creator. It only shows that he covered his tracks. Also, I am reminded of something one of my professors said that was positive (perhaps a bit of an exception for him) and got me to thinking way back when (paraphrasing): "So am I to believe that there are some kind of traffic cops placed at every street corner, telling these molecules where to go?"
Also, those examples you mention are more about "general" building blocks (eg. something which solidifies a type of tissue throughout, or codes for a lone, mobile fluorophore molecule), vs the regulation of tissue structure differentiation.
Think of it in terms of scale. Sodium and chloride ions, and even regularly shaped protein globs, or cannon balls for that matter, stack very nicely to make a regular, 3-d repeat ("crystal") structure, and that same principle (ie. essentially "things stacking nicely") is posited to explain how biomolecules (eg. dna-encoded proteins) eventually join together to form anatomical (or even cellular-level) structures.
However, if you move very far way, for example, 1000 feet over a (regularly arranged) swimming pool full of bowling balls, it will look like just a glob. In fact, the only macroscopic products of large crystals which come to mind would be fracture planes, which are visible to the eye, though quintessentially simple (ie. a plane) in structure.
So, regarding bio systems, how do all those biomolecules just (through random diffusion) stack themselves together to make structures which are enormously larger than the dimension of the building blocks themselves?
Thanks for the reply. Yes, I think that is the general idea, but where does that information originate, so that each unique cell, and each unique biomolecule within each cell, can orient itself correctly? The genes, themselves, which would only seem to know how to encode what will eventually become free-floating proteins, wouldn't seem to contain that additional info. All the genetic information is contained within every cell, and I find it hard to believe that it could encode all the complexity, which increases like a nested exponential, at least not without some kind of massive compression mechanism.
Thanks, I will check that book. I started out as a biologist and am kind of glad I got out when I did. I wasn't too confident that most molecular biologists I encountered were actually realistic about the complexity of their systems, though I didn't even pursue it at the gradual level, opting instead for simpler material science systems. I was never too convinced that most researchers claiming to have identified a set of genes/markers or what have you in connection with some trait or condition had actually discovered anything, but still they keep on publishing in great volumes, almost seeming to make matters worse. Btw, the subject of embryology, which I was fortunately exposed to, makes an admirable introduction to the process of cellular/tissue differentiation, and that was 25 years ago for me.
of proteins leads to structural determination of organisms, taking place through a process of molecular recognition and self-assembly (following standard thermodynamic principles of minimizing the surface free energy of the constituent molecules).
However, when this occurs in a simple crystalline material, it appears amorphous at a scale about 3 or 4 orders of magnitude larger than the constituent molecules. Thus, how can this same process suffice to create biological structures often 10 or more orders of magnitude larger than the constituent molecules?
of patenting the "what" as opposed to the "how". (One click purchasing is a good example of a "what".)
Furthermore, due to the inherent flexibility of the (software) medium, patents used validly are largely inapplicable, because there is always many ways something can be done. I think software companies need to find ways to try to live with that, rather than perverting the legal protection of patenting.
Oh, and this article looks like mainly a hook to hawk more gizmos.
to overcome their obstacles, or reconcile themselves to living their lives as parasites (which imo would include a significant portion of business hacks). There really are no other options.
Nope. Ayn Rand is the only one who effectively tackled post-industrial America. She only lacked poor editing on Atlas. She understandably probably got to a point where she couldn't trust anyone enough for that.
Bukowski short stories. Shakespeare Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. Aeschylus Oresteia. Hippolytus (Murray transl.) Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged (excerpts). The Stranger. Canterbury Tales (Wife of Bath). The Idiot. Chekov. The Jungle. Short Happy Life of Francis Maccomber.
What if qualification level correlated with gender? Your statement appears to assume it doesn't.
Thanks for the info. Looks like they recently went down, though! :)
What I was really referring to was not the study's being flame baiting, but, rather /.'s sexism label.
/. title "Sexism and Science" is straight up flame baiting. Where the hell do they come off? It's that old inability to say things which, though true, are not politically correct. I did not see any effort to determine whether the study subjects were assessed for (unfair) bias. Without unfair bias, there can be no finding of sexism, only discrimination, and discrimination without unfair bias isn't wrong, it is laudable.
From your valid point of this possibly being valid science, the
Is this flame bait?
these "floatable" hard drives for (covered previously on slashdot) skateboards will now be able to "catch some rad air"? :)
...ear plugs almost continuously. I have found the "Quite, Please!" brand of white foam to be the best (~only effective) ones.
:) (Which is fine, because I generally thought the same of them. Note: my main work place challenges include some level of ADD, largely inhibiting my verbal cognitive and speaking skills, though this does seem to have improved somewhat over time.) I have found discipline the key element to both coding and interpersonal success. I have found the need to pretty much stone-wall (feign either obliviousness or complete unwillingness to enter into) any standard workplace provocations or psychological games or intrigue. I seem to have a history of inheriting the most perversely ill- conceived and implemented projects. I allow myself all the time such monstrosities should conceivably merit, including ample mental decompression and recuperation (eg. reading slashdot).
Though I am not formally diagnosed, based on their receptions I suspect that many former employees would consider this a technicality.
Though your condition might gain you some consideration, if you get to feeling overwhelmed, they can instinctively, unconsciously come swarming after you. In the end the onus is always on you to control your response and maintain your mental equilibrium. I have come to view many "normal" people as actually deranged along highly standardized lines. Time will tell...
After working for a number of "dud" companies, finally joining an extremely ambitious, motivated one highly prioritizing technical excellence, and being given meaty, challenging projects seemed to fundamentally improve my over-all productivity and general state of mind.
...on one of their key jurors!
It doesn't appear to be actual patch clamping the researchers are referring to. As the wikipedia page states, this seems to be more of a form of (whole) intracellular recording. (See my detail below.) Good for characterizing neural networks and behaviors vs. rigorous ion current measurement.
sounds like quite an achievement, but I was similarly interested by the way the term "patch clamp", and, specifically, the "clamp" part appears to have diverged from its original meaning.
When I first learned about neural "voltage clamp" in college, it was a way to maintain a constant voltage across a neural membrane, which is otherwise normally altered by a trans-membrane conduction event. That is, a current is passed in/out of the cell during a conduction event to compensate for it, thus maintaining or "clamping" the voltage constant. This allows for more rigorous quantification of ion channel currents than is possible under varying voltage conditions. As applied by these researchers, the term must refer to the phenomenon of the membrane patch being "clamped" to the pipette tip (ie. via suction), which, though perhaps of some interest is not as interesting, I think, as the original meaning.
The linked wikipedia article, referring to "whole cell recording" or "whole cell patch" (as a form of simple intracellular recording with its advantages and disadvantages over same) seems fundamentally accurate, whereas the abstract referencing "whole cell patch clamping" seems somewhat misleading. Intracellular recording is about events at the cell level (eg. action potential), whereas (patch) voltage clamp is about ion currents, whether at the single or multiple (ie. membrane) channel level . And I did the intracellular recording in college under a dissection scope with a pulled glass electrode in a micro-manipulator, and I can attest to its difficulties.