I was excited to see this story posted and went to check out doubletwist's site. All that they have present is their demo 'agent' which finds a sequence for you. It returns a result in 24 hours. Excuse me? Just about everything they're doing is replicated in free tools like Entrez or BLAST and those return results within a matter of minutes!
Hype, hype, hype. Slashdot needs to get out of the business of publishing other people's press releases for them.
I had LASIK done about about 3 months ago now and have been very happy with the results. I had a very strong prescription (left eye -10.50 +2.50, right eye -10.00 +1.00) and now have 20/15 vision in both eyes. Things definitely look sharper than they ever did with glasses or contacts. It's really great to be able to see my alarm clock, too.
I have experienced one side effect, however. When my pupils are very dilated (at night, for instance) I often get halos and glare around light sources. This is due to the fact that some light still comes in through less corrected portions of the cornea around the edges, because I had such an extreme prescription and have large pupils.
I'm told that this will get somewhat better over the next few months, but may not go away completely. It's something I can adapt to, but it has made driving at night difficult at times. Even with this, I'm happy with the results.
It's not quite as far out as you'd think, but there are many challenges ahead. Firefly luciferase has been expressed in tobacco plants, which bioluminesce when provided with luciferase to the roots. I haven't seen this done beyond small seedlings, though, and there are many concerns. There are huge energy costs to the plants, and they may be toxic side effects from the unexpected proteins.
GFP has also been used to create transgenic plants (and animals!) There are mice, for instance, that produce GFP in every cell in their body. This doesn't require as much energy as GFP is merely fluorescent (and this the fluorophore needs to be excited by external UV light), but this also makes it less attractive for the coolness factor.
The only reason that Apple is able to get away with stunts like this is that they again have no competetion in the Mac market. Jobs knew what he was doing when he revoked the licenses to companies like PowerComputing...he can't play the way he wants to if people actually have a choice.
If a Mac clone vendor was still around, as soon as Apple announced this nonsense they would have offered comparable machines at the original price to anyone who had ordered a G4, and Apple would have no choice but to behave sensably. Instead, they're back to their old "Screw the customer!" selves...a pattern they started to set back with the ][ GS.
Are there any actual computer scientists or linguists involved with this project? Their web site looks like it's either a team of bureaucrats or fifth-graders.
If you download MIT Kerberos 5, it includes GSSFTP which is a Kerberized FTP service. Unless you have a Kerberos infrastructure at your location, however, this may be an excessively complicated solution for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I was excited to see this story posted and went to check out doubletwist's site. All that they have present is their demo 'agent' which finds a sequence for you. It returns a result in 24 hours.
Excuse me? Just about everything they're doing is
replicated in free tools like Entrez or BLAST and those return results within a matter of minutes!
Hype, hype, hype. Slashdot needs to get out of the business of publishing other people's press releases for them.
I had LASIK done about about 3 months ago now and have been very happy with the results. I had a very strong prescription (left eye -10.50 +2.50, right eye -10.00 +1.00) and now have 20/15 vision in both eyes. Things definitely look sharper than they ever did with glasses or contacts. It's really great to be able to see my alarm clock, too.
I have experienced one side effect, however. When my pupils are very dilated (at night, for instance) I often get halos and glare around light sources. This is due to the fact that some light still comes in through less corrected portions of the cornea around the edges, because I had such an extreme prescription and have large pupils.
I'm told that this will get somewhat better over the next few months, but may not go away completely. It's something I can adapt to, but it has made driving at night difficult at times. Even with this, I'm happy with the results.
GFP has also been used to create transgenic plants (and animals!) There are mice, for instance, that produce GFP in every cell in their body. This doesn't require as much energy as GFP is merely fluorescent (and this the fluorophore needs to be excited by external UV light), but this also makes it less attractive for the coolness factor.
If you're interested in this further, I highly recommend the book "Green Fluorescent Protein : Properties, Applications, and Protocols" by Martin Chalfie and Steven Kain (eds.). I've been reading through it quite a bit in lab, and it's a wonderful resource.
Anyway, I wish them luck in their rDNA endeavors, but I agree that they have their work cut out for them.
The only reason that Apple is able to get away with stunts like this is that they again have no competetion in the Mac market. Jobs knew what he was doing when he revoked the licenses to companies like PowerComputing...he can't play the way he wants to if people actually have a choice.
If a Mac clone vendor was still around, as soon as Apple announced this nonsense they would have offered comparable machines at the original price to anyone who had ordered a G4, and Apple would have no choice but to behave sensably. Instead, they're back to their old "Screw the customer!" selves...a pattern they started to set back with the ][ GS.
"enconverter software"? "Inter-Net"?
Are there any actual computer scientists or linguists involved with this project? Their web site looks like it's either a team of bureaucrats or fifth-graders.
If you download MIT Kerberos 5, it includes GSSFTP which is a Kerberized FTP service. Unless you have a Kerberos infrastructure at your location, however, this may be an excessively complicated solution for you.