So either this device will cost one hell or a lot to run (may even be cheaper to book yourself a room in hospital for the rest of your life) or have the alarms so insensitive that a lot of people die before this fails.
I would add to that the concern about who would set the alarm thresholds and how often they would need to be recalibrated. Conditions change over time, and settings that are applicable one day might not be so the next. An inappropriate alarm setting might cause undue anxiety to a patient who actually warrants less concern.
Viruses, strictly speaking, aren't living organisms, so after all the word mangling that still doesn't fit.
I'm not sure what you mean by this statement. Could you please clarify?
That viruses aren't living organisms doesn't change the fact that Angostura's usage of 'antibiotics' was imprecise, at best:
Since antibiotics are agents that kill bacteria rather than viruses, this paragraph is a non sequitur.
I don't need to rehash a point I made previously. I'll add that I thought it was worthwhile to point out the imprecision of Angostura's language in light of the fact that (s)he was attacking the imprecision of the Reuters article. From the point of view of the "biologically literate," the article was, indeed, bad. Since, however, the general public--not merely the "biologically literate"--was the intended audience, I could not find so much fault with the author.
It should be noted that although you can turn off the Spotlight service itself, using the above mentioned "sudo mdutil -i off/volname" is much better, as you will still be able to find things by filename. Turning off the Spotlight service disables finding completely, by content or filename.
Is this affected at all by use of FileVault?
For example df returns two filesystems: one mounted on "/" and one mounted on my home directory. The total space on each of them differs very slightly (by tens of 512-blocks) but also seems to represent the total space of the hard drive. (N.B.: I have not added any hard drives, nor have I changed the partitioning of the hard drive that came with this PowerBook.)
Say I want to turn off Spotlight for the drive. On which one should I run sudo mdutil -i off volname?
I apologize if I'm being redundant, but as of the time I'm writing this, there are 442 comments when browsing at -1, so I can't guarantee that I haven't missed something.
In any event, I thought it might be helpful to post a link on PubMed to the abstract of the journal article to which the author of the Reuters article seems to be referring. At least, it's coming from the same lab and institution with which Dr. Britton (on his site) mentions having a collaboration. Any other references would be greatly appreciated.
Here's the full text for those who are interested:
1: Antiviral Res. 2005 Apr;66(1):35-8.
Antiviral activity of serum from the American alligator (Alligator
mississippiensis).
Merchant ME, Pallansch M, Paulman RL, Wells JB, Nalca A, Ptak R.
Department of Chemistry, McNeese State University, Box 90455, Lake Charles, LA
70609, USA. mmerchan@mcneese.edu
Serum from wild alligators was collected and tested for antibiotic activity
against three enveloped viruses using cell-based assays. Alligator serum
demonstrated antiviral activities against human immunodeficiency virus type 1
(HIV-1; IC50=0.9%), West Nile virus (WNV; IC50=4.3%), and Herpes simplex virus
type 1 (HSV-1; IC50=3.4%). The inhibitory concentration (IC50) is defined as the
concentration of serum that inhibits 50% of viral activity. The antiviral
effects of the alligator serum were difficult to evaluate at high concentrations
due to the inherent toxicity to the mammalian cells used to assay viral
activities. The TC50 (serum concentration that reduces cell viability to 50%)
values for the serum in the HIV-1, WNV, and HSV-1 assays were 32.8, 36.3 and
39.1%, respectively. Heat-treated serum (56 degrees C, 30 min) displayed IC50
values of >50, 9.8 and 14.9% for HIV-1, WNV and HSV-1 viruses, respectively. In
addition, the TC50 values using heat-treated serum were substantially elevated
for all three assays, relative to untreated serum (47.3 to >50%). Alligator
serum complement activity has been shown to be heat labile under these
conditions. HIV-1 antiviral action was heat-sensitive, and thus possibly due to
the action of serum complement, while the anti-WNV and anti-HSV-1 activities
were not heat labile and thus probably not complement mediated.
Second, these are not antibodies. Croc immune system works primarily through the innate or complement system, which does not involve antibodies. It's a simpler and more primitive immune response than the adaptive immune system that is key for mammals, but the advantage is that it's very direct and hence difficult for bacteria etc to evolve resistance to. It's "primitive" nature may be behind its effectiveness.
I think one of the biggest problems with the article was that it made you sound like you were saying that humans do not also have the complement system. Specifically, the author of the article writes,
Britton said the crocodile immune system worked differently from the human system by directly attacking bacteria immediately an infection occurred in the body.
Scientists in Australia's tropical north are collecting blood from crocodiles in the hope of developing a powerful antibiotic for humans, after tests showed that the reptile's immune system kills the HIV virus.
Since antibiotics are agents that kill bacteria rather than viruses, this paragraph is a non sequitur.
a soluble substance derived from a mold or bacterium that inhibits the growth of other microorganisms.
relating to such an action
Antibiosis is further defined (also from Stedman's) as
an association of two organisms which is detrimental to one of them, in contrast to probiosis.
production of an antibiotic by bacteria or other organisms inhibitory to other living things, especially among soil microbes
The problem with the statement from the above post is twofold:
Antibiotics, strictly speaking, kill living organisms, not just bacteria. Antibacterials are what specifically kill bacteria.
A non sequitur is "1. an inference that does not follow from the premises; specifically : a fallacy resulting from a simple conversion of a universal affirmative proposition or from the transposition of a condition and its consequent; and
2. a statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from anything previously said." The post above is not correct in the use of that term, since the quotation is the first sentence of the article. The statement may be inaccurate, strictly speaking, but it is not a non sequitur.
Let's keep going...
Similarly, the phrase
However, the crocodile's immune system may be too powerful for humans makes no sense scientifically. What part of the immune system are we talking about? "too powerful" in what sense?
I must admit that I could not find much of a problem with that individual line from the Reuters article. Think about graft-versus-host (GVH) disease. One might imagine a similar event taking place. I must admit that I am speculating here, but on the surface it seems plausible. It depends on which components the researchers intend to use. If it were simply crocodilian antibodies, then maybe the scenario I mentioned is less likely (GVH requires more components of the immune system than just antibodies), and the greater problem would be serum sickness but I don't know. If anyone has specific knowledge of crocodilian (or reptilian, in general) immune function, sharing such knowledge would be appreciated.
I am a little surprised that, with all the fault found with the article, no comment was made on what (in my opinion) is the most inaccurate and misleading statement of the entire article:
Britton said the crocodile immune system worked differently from the human system by directly attacking bacteria immediately an infection occurred in the body.
Maybe the crocodile's immune system works differently from the human's immune system, but it cannot be simply by virtue of having a mechanism for raising immediate countermeasures after a successful infection. In humans, among others, that job is carried out by th
That their devised strategy worked on a single human subject is cause for optimism, and nothing more. That work has not been published (that I could find), so there is no way to properly assess the result.
Actually, I think it has: J Clin Res 2005; 8: 9-13.
Here's the abstract:
Bru A, Albertos S, Garcia-Hoz F, Bru I. Regulation of neutrophilia by granulocyte colony-stimulating factor: a new cancer therapy that reversed a case of terminal hepatocellular carcinoma. J Clin Res 2005; 8: 9-13
This work reports the possible cure of a 56-year-old patient with advanced hepatocarcinoma. Intense peritumoral neutrophilia was achieved by administering granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), an experimental treatment based on the theory of universal tumour dynamics. After the first 8-week cycle of treatment, the patient's alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) levels were reduced to normal and his general condition improved sufficiently to allow him to return to work. Following a second cycle of treatment, administered because of doubt regarding the tumoral or inflammatory nature of the now smaller liver mass, the patient's AFP levels remained normal and he continued to enjoy good general health.
One caveat I must add is that I haven't read the full article. It seems that my institution doesn't provide online access to this journal, which might allow me to find answers to some questions:
How long was the followup time?
By how much was the tumor size reduced?
How else is the patient being monitored (beyond AFP, which is a measure of a protein product of some tumors)?
It seems like their basic strategy is to stimulate an intense immune response locally to destroy the tumor. Can anyone explain to me why they were interested in stimulating neutrophils? According to my understanding, neutrophils are more important in the response to bacteria. Why not stimulate T cells, the effectors of cellular immunity (used primarily in fighting off viruses, cancer, TB, etc.)?
I know that this will be buried since this story is already a day and a half old, but I figure this, too needs to be said.
Out of that 2.2 million people, somewhere near 700,000 are in jail from possession, use or distribution of marijuana.
That's just wrong, even according to the site which the above poster quotes. Here's the relevant lines:
There were more than 700,000 marijuana arrests in the United States in 1997...Calculations based on recent BJS reports suggest that, at any one time, 59,300 prisoners charged with or convicted of violating marijuana laws (3.3% of the total incarcerated population) are behind bars, at a total cost to taxpayers of some $1.2 billion per year.
Okay, so to review:
The 700,000 number is the number of arrests, not those incarcerated.
The actual number, based on the estimates, is much smaller.
Also keep in mind that this number is from a 1997study. I don't know what the current numbers are, but they may or may not be different.
And what of daily housekeeping of the government? Do you expect/want to know about the boring technicalities of how our health care system works? Even if you do
does the majority of the American public ? On a vast majority of issues that answer is NO.
Truer words were never spoken. Seriously, though, I'd have to agree with this comment. I certainly have no intention of spending all my time doing the duties of a professional lawmaker, and not getting paid for it. I'm not naive, either--I know that lawmakers can be bought, and I'm sure not all of them are as careful about their work as they probably should be. But does that mean I want their job? Of course, not!
What scares me the most is that enough people may just want to do this, and chaos may ensue. Someone else in this thread proposed a brief questionnaire to test whether the voter is making an informed decision, but this brings with it a whole host of other concerns. Who's going to write the questions? What is considered an 'informed decision'? How does anyone really know the ramifications of a proposed piece of legislation before it's enacted? There are too many questions about such a system to suit my fancy. I don't know if mob rule would result from a more electronic democratic process, but I don't know if I'm ready to find out, either.
The great potential of this site is that it allows one to focus on particular areas or issues that are important to them. Whether they are regulations on medical billing, national do not call lists, or what have you, it doesn't matter--I don't think anyone could or would want to comment on everything out there. Sure, some items are more sexy than others (highway regulations just don't get me up in the morning), but with enough eyeballs out there, I can't imagine that anything would go completely unnoticed.
Finally, if any of you haven't read them yet, I recommend this series of Economist articles discussed in this Slashdot thread.
...before I even started reading the article entitled, "No hiding place", Economist.com set five cookies and insight.com tried to set one. Then I read the first three sentences of the article:
THE next time you are on the internet, try an experiment. Change the default setting for "cookies" in your web browser from "accept" to "prompt", or "warn", or whatever equivalent is offered, then browse the web for a few minutes. You will soon be bombarded with messages telling you that almost every website you visit is trying to plant cookies--small text files that collect information about your browsing habits--on your computer.
Sometimes it's an honest mis-statement or a result of unstated assumptions. Sometimes it's a blatant lie.
That seems like a reasonable thing to say. Then we get to...
such as politicians, CEOs, doctors, and the mainstream media. All, interestingly enough, of these sources have egos the size of Texas and consciences the size of Guam.
I'm still trying to figure out where that statement falls in between honest mis-statement and blatant lie.:-) Do you really believe what you're saying, or are you exaggerating to make some kind of point? How many politicians, CEO's or doctors do you actually know? Do you speak from experience, or are you just making misleading statements based on false assumptions, just like the people you lament?
Contrast that to the DSL front, where I have the choice of many companies. I get a static IP, good speed, Linux supported, etc. because that's what I looked for when I subscribed.
...except for the fact that DSL has NEVER been available in my area, and it doesn't look like there are plans to fix that any time soon. So, what other broadband options do I have besides cable? I'm serious. Let me know, so I can switch.
Repeating the pledge, every day in school, over and over, seems an awfully lot like an attempt to indoctrinate children, instead of educating them.
Seriously, though, I think we need a poll. How many of you out there, who went through the U.S. school system and had to repeat the pledge every day, actually ever understood what you meant? Even after it was explained to you (if it ever was), did you REALLY understand it, or were you just able to repeat what you were told about it? maybe it's because I'm only of moderate intelligence, but I certainly didn't entirely grasp the symbolism concept when I was in grade school.
As far as I'm concerned, I wasn't planning on buying the albums of any of the songs that I may have downloaded. The ONE time I did hear something amazing, guess what? I went out and bought the CD. And for the other times, it was nice to have a much more convenient way of confirming that it was crap.:-)
But Ma Smith isn't going to read the manual, she will try to install AOL and it won't work. She will then proclaim that these Wal-Mart computers suck as will all of those like her.
Oh, come on. When was the last time you cared what 'Ma Smith' or 'all of those like her' think?
...if it weren't for someone (I'm assuming) breaking the linking policy, I wouldn't have been able to find out about their wonderful fleece pullover. Think of all the money NPR could be losing!
Seriously, though...if valid, how far could this extend? If I need to ask their permission to link to them, would I also need to ask their permission to tell other people about the site?
Like there are basketball players who play for the love of the game (i.e., Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird), and then there's the guys who play and its all about themselves and making money (i.e., Allen Iverson and Latrell Sprewell).
Hell, if I could play as well as Jordan et al. (and therefore have earning potential equal to theirs), I'd regard basketball as highly as you claim they do! As it is, I think they're motivated a lot more by money than you may be willing to admit. Does anyone deserve that much for playing a game?
This is it: the solution to the problem of software liability vs. free software. For big companies like Microsoft, there will be two choices: take responsibility for bugs and failures (read: bugs get fixed) or open the source (read: bugs get fixed). That's a win-win situation.
For free software, the worst case is that this would kill off binary distributions. Red Hat et al might just get insurance and go on as usual, but LFS, Gentoo, etc. will definitely become much more popular.
So...then are you saying the solution would be to distribute everything as source? I wonder what that may do to the whole movement to make things more 'user-friendly'. Then I guess the next question would be how important is that...
Slashdot Mirror
That viruses aren't living organisms doesn't change the fact that Angostura's usage of 'antibiotics' was imprecise, at best:
I don't need to rehash a point I made previously. I'll add that I thought it was worthwhile to point out the imprecision of Angostura's language in light of the fact that (s)he was attacking the imprecision of the Reuters article. From the point of view of the "biologically literate," the article was, indeed, bad. Since, however, the general public--not merely the "biologically literate"--was the intended audience, I could not find so much fault with the author.For example df returns two filesystems: one mounted on "/" and one mounted on my home directory. The total space on each of them differs very slightly (by tens of 512-blocks) but also seems to represent the total space of the hard drive. (N.B.: I have not added any hard drives, nor have I changed the partitioning of the hard drive that came with this PowerBook.)
Say I want to turn off Spotlight for the drive. On which one should I run sudo mdutil -i off volname ?
I apologize if I'm being redundant, but as of the time I'm writing this, there are 442 comments when browsing at -1, so I can't guarantee that I haven't missed something.
In any event, I thought it might be helpful to post a link on PubMed to the abstract of the journal article to which the author of the Reuters article seems to be referring. At least, it's coming from the same lab and institution with which Dr. Britton (on his site) mentions having a collaboration. Any other references would be greatly appreciated.
Here's the full text for those who are interested:
Thanks for the response!
I think one of the biggest problems with the article was that it made you sound like you were saying that humans do not also have the complement system. Specifically, the author of the article writes, Were you misquoted in your comments?Let's take this a step further.
The definition of 'antibiotic' (taken from Stedman's Concise Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions, Illustrated 4th ed. ) is as follows:
Antibiosis is further defined (also from Stedman's) as
The problem with the statement from the above post is twofold:
Let's keep going...
I must admit that I could not find much of a problem with that individual line from the Reuters article. Think about graft-versus-host (GVH) disease. One might imagine a similar event taking place. I must admit that I am speculating here, but on the surface it seems plausible. It depends on which components the researchers intend to use. If it were simply crocodilian antibodies, then maybe the scenario I mentioned is less likely (GVH requires more components of the immune system than just antibodies), and the greater problem would be serum sickness but I don't know. If anyone has specific knowledge of crocodilian (or reptilian, in general) immune function, sharing such knowledge would be appreciated.
I am a little surprised that, with all the fault found with the article, no comment was made on what (in my opinion) is the most inaccurate and misleading statement of the entire article:
Maybe the crocodile's immune system works differently from the human's immune system, but it cannot be simply by virtue of having a mechanism for raising immediate countermeasures after a successful infection. In humans, among others, that job is carried out by th
Actually, I think it has: J Clin Res 2005; 8: 9-13.
Here's the abstract:
One caveat I must add is that I haven't read the full article. It seems that my institution doesn't provide online access to this journal, which might allow me to find answers to some questions:
It seems like their basic strategy is to stimulate an intense immune response locally to destroy the tumor. Can anyone explain to me why they were interested in stimulating neutrophils? According to my understanding, neutrophils are more important in the response to bacteria. Why not stimulate T cells, the effectors of cellular immunity (used primarily in fighting off viruses, cancer, TB, etc.)?
It's been months since I've had to sign in...
I know that this will be buried since this story is already a day and a half old, but I figure this, too needs to be said.
That's just wrong, even according to the site which the above poster quotes. Here's the relevant lines:
Okay, so to review:
That's all for now...
Truer words were never spoken. Seriously, though, I'd have to agree with this comment. I certainly have no intention of spending all my time doing the duties of a professional lawmaker, and not getting paid for it. I'm not naive, either--I know that lawmakers can be bought, and I'm sure not all of them are as careful about their work as they probably should be. But does that mean I want their job? Of course, not!
What scares me the most is that enough people may just want to do this, and chaos may ensue. Someone else in this thread proposed a brief questionnaire to test whether the voter is making an informed decision, but this brings with it a whole host of other concerns. Who's going to write the questions? What is considered an 'informed decision'? How does anyone really know the ramifications of a proposed piece of legislation before it's enacted? There are too many questions about such a system to suit my fancy. I don't know if mob rule would result from a more electronic democratic process, but I don't know if I'm ready to find out, either.
The great potential of this site is that it allows one to focus on particular areas or issues that are important to them. Whether they are regulations on medical billing, national do not call lists, or what have you, it doesn't matter--I don't think anyone could or would want to comment on everything out there. Sure, some items are more sexy than others (highway regulations just don't get me up in the morning), but with enough eyeballs out there, I can't imagine that anything would go completely unnoticed.
Finally, if any of you haven't read them yet, I recommend this series of Economist articles discussed in this Slashdot thread.
have helped = perfect
had helped = pluperfect
Somehow, it's not surprising that verb tenses could get confused like this in translation. Lighten up a little.
"...Me fail English? That's unpossible..."
:-)
That seems like a reasonable thing to say. Then we get to...
I'm still trying to figure out where that statement falls in between honest mis-statement and blatant lie. :-) Do you really believe what you're saying, or are you exaggerating to make some kind of point? How many politicians, CEO's or doctors do you actually know? Do you speak from experience, or are you just making misleading statements based on false assumptions, just like the people you lament?
...that I share a birthday with Code Red? :-)
Seriously, though, I think we need a poll. How many of you out there, who went through the U.S. school system and had to repeat the pledge every day, actually ever understood what you meant? Even after it was explained to you (if it ever was), did you REALLY understand it, or were you just able to repeat what you were told about it? maybe it's because I'm only of moderate intelligence, but I certainly didn't entirely grasp the symbolism concept when I was in grade school.
Or am I the only idiot here like that? :-)
As far as I'm concerned, I wasn't planning on buying the albums of any of the songs that I may have downloaded. The ONE time I did hear something amazing, guess what? I went out and bought the CD. And for the other times, it was nice to have a much more convenient way of confirming that it was crap. :-)
...if it weren't for someone (I'm assuming) breaking the linking policy, I wouldn't have been able to find out about their wonderful fleece pullover. Think of all the money NPR could be losing! Seriously, though...if valid, how far could this extend? If I need to ask their permission to link to them, would I also need to ask their permission to tell other people about the site?