My main point: coral is not efficient. If we take the effort to transplant coral and let it proliferate on the way to a star system, we could also take the effort to create a Neumann machine that will continuously duplicate itself on the way there, creating a couple of million DMS synthesis stations. Whether we use coral or Neumann machines, we are reliant on technology for success anyway. Attaching some synthesis station to a transportation vehicle seems more viable to me, especially when you think of all the machines that have to wine&dine, nurture and cuddle the coral. Furthermore, certain algae and prokaryotes are known to produce more efficiently/of the DMS that is required. Their need for 'cuddling' is slightly less apparent.
I estimate we both go on and on slinging 'facts' at each other about feasibility of coral-terraforming and the success of sex-selection through PGD, but that really is not the issue. Hence my earlier cynical undertone earlier: the original message is lame.
For all we know, we can use DMS-producing coral in the future to boil our eggs without even putting them into water. Or we can plant coral in the sahara to save all africans from certain starvation by generating rain through DMS-generated clouds. Analogy: with all the nice research going on, I think there will be better and more viable options to save the Africans and boil eggs without water.
But no, I don't know whether this can be achieved through one mechanism only. Wait a minute, we can! Drop a thousand eggs on the sahara and let them bake in the sun: salmonella-free and nutritious and no water used..
Apart from "you never know", that's all I'm gonna say for now.:)
...in the end, cloning will find its way, no matter of the ethics involved. Of course, the ethics are important, but if we look at the discussion, we can see how legislations already circumvent (or deny) ethical consideration while they can (theoretically) maintain they ethically have considered the matter.
There are two different discussions important here: 1) how much suffering can we force upon a certain group to 'please' the masses and 2) when do the beings of the first group become entities that can experience suffering as a human being?
The first is a dodgy one and generally, utilitarian views are proliferating here: as long as the sum of 'happiness' is bigger than the sum of suffering (ie happiness increases through the emergence of new technologies), we should be allowed to pursue these goals. Benthamian thinking, as it has been dubbed by some, would for instance allow a judge to hang an innocent man, as long as the net positive result of that hanging (preventing riots for example, Jeremy Bentham was an 18th century philosopher) eventually supercedes the unhappiness of the man sentenced to death. Pleasing the public one might say.
The second point of discussion is indeed about the distinction between a bunch of cells and a human being. Although ethicists have come up with 24 stages of embryo development to make pondering about the acceptability of several techniques more straightforward, many people active within ethics have decided to stay clear of this lengthy discussion and focus on the parents and scientists intentions instead. It is said we are not allowed to solely create embryo's for research purposes, but when an embryo has already 'come into being' it is another case. By law, it is illegal (at least in most European countries) to culture embryos strictly for research ends. However, the thousands of surplus embryo's that come available through in-vitro fertilization and similar assisted reproductive technologies can be wielded for research.
So it seems law-makers already decided to skip the discussion on what is human and what's not and already found ways to please the public, despite of any negative consequences.
We can talk about disputable business in the public and private sector, but the fact remains that there are always some loopholes (especially in medical research) to circumvent ethical enquiry. And while these loopholes are mere legislative, commerce eventually promotes the loopholes to loop-black-holes. With suction, you know...? I hate philosophy.
With the thousands of years, I was referring to the original terraforming message which elaborated on the use of coral to synthesize DMS to form a viable atmosphere with clouds and stuff. Formation of sufficient amounts of coral, if it would be possible altogether (I doubt it), would take thousands of years. Hence the cynical undertone in my message.
- Find planet - Create greenhouse gasses - Wait many years - Make sure there's water and stuff - Wait a couple thousand of years before coral can grown - Hope it's hot enough on the planet to stress out the coral so that it will envelope the whole planet in a shroud of clouds.
Right. Dimethyl Sulfide is a very common solvent that can be wielded by coral for much more direct benefits than creating clouds. And this aerosole forming properties of DMS are already known for quite a long time.
Rather, we can fly in trillions of eggs and somehow let them rot on the planet to get the DMS we want.
And don't try to piss in the canals either! But seriously, since 9/11 politicians in Holland have been trying to take citizen's civil liberties away like mad too. Thankfully our constitution ensures that the more draconian measures the politicians come up with are illegal.
How do they come up with the figure of 37m anyway? It's not like all downloaded mp3's would be bought if there wouldn't be something like the internet.. Old discussion, I know, but isn't it obvious to think the justice department (or industry) just adds up all retail prices of downloaded mp3's? It wouldn't surprise me if the total sum of missed income is in the thousands instead of millions.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I was reading the article. Microsoft most likely won't dominate the smartphone arena, Symbian will. Wouldn't this qualify as a "pervasive non-microsoft platform"?
Believe me, even after one treated patient, there are already resistent bacteria to be found. It's only because of the small numbers those bacteria will not survive.. The immunodeficiency system will take care of them.
Prokaryotic drug resistancy is inevitable in the end: the only way to avoid resistance is not by attacking vulnerable molecules or metabolic pathways the microbes use, but by enhancing the human immunodeficiency system in a certain way. Using cocktails of antibiotics can help as well, but you'll have a more dangerous strain in the end if it goes wrong..
Armamentarium: the collection of treatments available for a particular condition. An armament would be one of these treatments.
I am a medical scientist, and the last thing I wanted to imply is that medical science is a bad thing.. The only thing I wanted to make clear is that we don't have to rush all the time and that we have to think twice about consequences of our actions.. The first, sometimes most drastic way to get rid of a problem isn't always the best, especially in the long term.
Believe me, some of the best sound engineers are working for Britney, so her music would make the difference more noticeable - Oh, you mean Britney fans..:)
There's an old article discussing the possibilities of this experiment.
If there's one thing I learned, it's the fact that humans tend to forget the complexity and interdependence of ecosystems; research must be done to map and investigate the relationship of the malaria pathogen with other organisms. This may sound crude, but in a way diseases can keep a balance in nature. If the human population keeps growing and searching for ways to fight diseases, they'll get back at us. Think of MRSA for example; all we need is time and enough administered vancomycin (our last resort against several multiple resistant bacteria) to induce complete resistance of pathogens against current antibiotics.
A guy edited some GTA3 config-files and found a server entry and a ping entry. There's not much info, but you can find it on this site. This could mean the guys at Rock* were too lazy to remove it, or they left the possibility open to play multiplayer games in the future.
I'm a biologist myself, but the concept of nanomotors eludes me. As I listen to the term 'nanomotor', I think of a new tiny apparatus capable of moving itself (and cargo) to a destination. This is mentioned in the article as well, but hybridization (binding of DNA and a target) and diffusion could do the job as well.. What is that special property of hinging DNA that can improve medicine research/efficiency?
Scientists have been pretty busy with studying the effect vulcano-eruptions have on the climate. Couldn't it be possible all the dust and smoke of the WTC, Pentagon and crashed plane have a similar effect to a lesser extent?
but it does sound a bit precarious to mess around with a bug that could easily be resistant to some of our most effective drug treatments
This bug is not the only one resistant to these antibiotics: most antibiotics are far more effective on one specific subclass of bacteria and leave other bacterial cells intact. The subclass depends in almost all cases on morphological differences that can be seen by staining or directly with a microscope.
Penicillin for example is far more effective to Gram-positive bacteria than Gram-negative bacteria. The difference between those two is that Gram-positive bacteria have far more peptidoglycan (the substance Penicillin reacts with) in its membrane than Gram-negative. Therefore only classes of bacteria with a threedimensional network of peptidoglycan in their membrane are targeted with penicillin.. It's not like this bug described above is more dangerous because it's not affected by its own secreted antibiotic.
..here in Holland. A fellow UPC-customer wrote a program called FuckUPC; uploadmax was uncapped and went from 16KBps to 300KBps! UPC applied a patch and doesn't seem to work anymore. So maybe the fun is over before you know it. If a lot of people are going to use it, providers will find out in the end. As far as I can see, the program is basically the same as FuckUPC(?):
-ARP your own IP adress with MAC of cablemodem
-ARP private IP (10.10.10.1) with MAC of cablemodem
-Set your gateway as 10.10.10.1
-Redefine routing table (netmask 255.255.255.0)
Seems pretty straightforward..
Re:Who'd have guessed that the...
on
Mini Microbes
·
· Score: 1
Although Alien Life is by far the most fascinating subject, I think there are better ways of enhancing your CPU's nobility. Folding@home and Genome@home are not as user-friendly as Seti@home, but the derived information will be much more applicable, both to mankind and the researchers who publish the article. By the way, I'm not a standford student/employee..:)
Isn't there a fair possibility there are even cooler dwarfs out there? I mean, increasing exposure time is one thing, but if the amount of emitted energy by a star is very small, we should increase resolution to spot it.
I just can't believe the researchers were capable of spotting EVERY white dwarf, especially the ones that emit the smallest amount of energy.
When I saw this story the first time on television, I was wondering what the other countries that are working on the ISS thought about it. Wouldn't they expect every contributing country to send their most capable astronauts instead if an 'amateur'? I mean, it's a prestigious project and the chance of going something wrong should be minimized.. Sending an internet-tycoon who just read 'Russian for dummies' and 'Zero gravity engineering for dummies' is not the smartest move, i guess..
Slashdot Mirror
My main point: coral is not efficient. If we take the effort to transplant coral and let it proliferate on the way to a star system, we could also take the effort to create a Neumann machine that will continuously duplicate itself on the way there, creating a couple of million DMS synthesis stations. Whether we use coral or Neumann machines, we are reliant on technology for success anyway. Attaching some synthesis station to a transportation vehicle seems more viable to me, especially when you think of all the machines that have to wine&dine, nurture and cuddle the coral. Furthermore, certain algae and prokaryotes are known to produce more efficiently/of the DMS that is required. Their need for 'cuddling' is slightly less apparent. I estimate we both go on and on slinging 'facts' at each other about feasibility of coral-terraforming and the success of sex-selection through PGD, but that really is not the issue. Hence my earlier cynical undertone earlier: the original message is lame. For all we know, we can use DMS-producing coral in the future to boil our eggs without even putting them into water. Or we can plant coral in the sahara to save all africans from certain starvation by generating rain through DMS-generated clouds. Analogy: with all the nice research going on, I think there will be better and more viable options to save the Africans and boil eggs without water. But no, I don't know whether this can be achieved through one mechanism only. Wait a minute, we can! Drop a thousand eggs on the sahara and let them bake in the sun: salmonella-free and nutritious and no water used.. Apart from "you never know", that's all I'm gonna say for now. :)
...in the end, cloning will find its way, no matter of the ethics involved. Of course, the ethics are important, but if we look at the discussion, we can see how legislations already circumvent (or deny) ethical consideration while they can (theoretically) maintain they ethically have considered the matter. There are two different discussions important here: 1) how much suffering can we force upon a certain group to 'please' the masses and 2) when do the beings of the first group become entities that can experience suffering as a human being? The first is a dodgy one and generally, utilitarian views are proliferating here: as long as the sum of 'happiness' is bigger than the sum of suffering (ie happiness increases through the emergence of new technologies), we should be allowed to pursue these goals. Benthamian thinking, as it has been dubbed by some, would for instance allow a judge to hang an innocent man, as long as the net positive result of that hanging (preventing riots for example, Jeremy Bentham was an 18th century philosopher) eventually supercedes the unhappiness of the man sentenced to death. Pleasing the public one might say. The second point of discussion is indeed about the distinction between a bunch of cells and a human being. Although ethicists have come up with 24 stages of embryo development to make pondering about the acceptability of several techniques more straightforward, many people active within ethics have decided to stay clear of this lengthy discussion and focus on the parents and scientists intentions instead. It is said we are not allowed to solely create embryo's for research purposes, but when an embryo has already 'come into being' it is another case. By law, it is illegal (at least in most European countries) to culture embryos strictly for research ends. However, the thousands of surplus embryo's that come available through in-vitro fertilization and similar assisted reproductive technologies can be wielded for research. So it seems law-makers already decided to skip the discussion on what is human and what's not and already found ways to please the public, despite of any negative consequences. We can talk about disputable business in the public and private sector, but the fact remains that there are always some loopholes (especially in medical research) to circumvent ethical enquiry. And while these loopholes are mere legislative, commerce eventually promotes the loopholes to loop-black-holes. With suction, you know...? I hate philosophy.
With the thousands of years, I was referring to the original terraforming message which elaborated on the use of coral to synthesize DMS to form a viable atmosphere with clouds and stuff. Formation of sufficient amounts of coral, if it would be possible altogether (I doubt it), would take thousands of years. Hence the cynical undertone in my message.
Recipe for terraforming:
- Find planet
- Create greenhouse gasses
- Wait many years
- Make sure there's water and stuff
- Wait a couple thousand of years before coral can grown
- Hope it's hot enough on the planet to stress out the coral so that it will envelope the whole planet in a shroud of clouds.
Right. Dimethyl Sulfide is a very common solvent that can be wielded by coral for much more direct benefits than creating clouds. And this aerosole forming properties of DMS are already known for quite a long time.
Rather, we can fly in trillions of eggs and somehow let them rot on the planet to get the DMS we want.
well you're right, windows does require a lot of tweaking before I even get around to installing apps...
2nd that, i love irfanview, i really prefer it to acdsee ... learn to use it with keyboard shortcuts though!!
And don't try to piss in the canals either! But seriously, since 9/11 politicians in Holland have been trying to take citizen's civil liberties away like mad too. Thankfully our constitution ensures that the more draconian measures the politicians come up with are illegal.
How do they come up with the figure of 37m anyway? It's not like all downloaded mp3's would be bought if there wouldn't be something like the internet.. Old discussion, I know, but isn't it obvious to think the justice department (or industry) just adds up all retail prices of downloaded mp3's? It wouldn't surprise me if the total sum of missed income is in the thousands instead of millions.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I was reading the article. Microsoft most likely won't dominate the smartphone arena, Symbian will. Wouldn't this qualify as a "pervasive non-microsoft platform"?
Believe me, even after one treated patient, there are already resistent bacteria to be found. It's only because of the small numbers those bacteria will not survive.. The immunodeficiency system will take care of them. Prokaryotic drug resistancy is inevitable in the end: the only way to avoid resistance is not by attacking vulnerable molecules or metabolic pathways the microbes use, but by enhancing the human immunodeficiency system in a certain way. Using cocktails of antibiotics can help as well, but you'll have a more dangerous strain in the end if it goes wrong.. Armamentarium: the collection of treatments available for a particular condition. An armament would be one of these treatments.
This site gives insight in the ecosystem of the booth babe: morphology, pick order, behaviour and that sort of things..
I am a medical scientist, and the last thing I wanted to imply is that medical science is a bad thing.. The only thing I wanted to make clear is that we don't have to rush all the time and that we have to think twice about consequences of our actions.. The first, sometimes most drastic way to get rid of a problem isn't always the best, especially in the long term.
they listen to Britney Spears for goodness sake!
:)
Believe me, some of the best sound engineers are working for Britney, so her music would make the difference more noticeable - Oh, you mean Britney fans..
There's an old article discussing the possibilities of this experiment.
If there's one thing I learned, it's the fact that humans tend to forget the complexity and interdependence of ecosystems; research must be done to map and investigate the relationship of the malaria pathogen with other organisms. This may sound crude, but in a way diseases can keep a balance in nature. If the human population keeps growing and searching for ways to fight diseases, they'll get back at us. Think of MRSA for example; all we need is time and enough administered vancomycin (our last resort against several multiple resistant bacteria) to induce complete resistance of pathogens against current antibiotics.
A guy edited some GTA3 config-files and found a server entry and a ping entry. There's not much info, but you can find it on this site. This could mean the guys at Rock* were too lazy to remove it, or they left the possibility open to play multiplayer games in the future.
I'm a biologist myself, but the concept of nanomotors eludes me. As I listen to the term 'nanomotor', I think of a new tiny apparatus capable of moving itself (and cargo) to a destination. This is mentioned in the article as well, but hybridization (binding of DNA and a target) and diffusion could do the job as well.. What is that special property of hinging DNA that can improve medicine research/efficiency?
..would be soundwaves in my opinion. Bring a X terawatt soundsystem in orbit and play the latest Shakira song. Devastating effect..
Scientists have been pretty busy with studying the effect vulcano-eruptions have on the climate. Couldn't it be possible all the dust and smoke of the WTC, Pentagon and crashed plane have a similar effect to a lesser extent?
A query on Pubmed returns 491 results. It seems that at least some scientists regard Halitosis as a medical term/phenomenon.
but it does sound a bit precarious to mess around with a bug that could easily be resistant to some of our most effective drug treatments
This bug is not the only one resistant to these antibiotics: most antibiotics are far more effective on one specific subclass of bacteria and leave other bacterial cells intact. The subclass depends in almost all cases on morphological differences that can be seen by staining or directly with a microscope. Penicillin for example is far more effective to Gram-positive bacteria than Gram-negative bacteria. The difference between those two is that Gram-positive bacteria have far more peptidoglycan (the substance Penicillin reacts with) in its membrane than Gram-negative. Therefore only classes of bacteria with a threedimensional network of peptidoglycan in their membrane are targeted with penicillin.. It's not like this bug described above is more dangerous because it's not affected by its own secreted antibiotic.
..here in Holland. A fellow UPC-customer wrote a program called FuckUPC; uploadmax was uncapped and went from 16KBps to 300KBps! UPC applied a patch and doesn't seem to work anymore. So maybe the fun is over before you know it. If a lot of people are going to use it, providers will find out in the end. As far as I can see, the program is basically the same as FuckUPC(?):
-ARP your own IP adress with MAC of cablemodem
-ARP private IP (10.10.10.1) with MAC of cablemodem
-Set your gateway as 10.10.10.1
-Redefine routing table (netmask 255.255.255.0)
Seems pretty straightforward..
It's called Cy3-labeling..
Although Alien Life is by far the most fascinating subject, I think there are better ways of enhancing your CPU's nobility. Folding@home and Genome@home are not as user-friendly as Seti@home, but the derived information will be much more applicable, both to mankind and the researchers who publish the article. By the way, I'm not a standford student/employee.. :)
Isn't there a fair possibility there are even cooler dwarfs out there? I mean, increasing exposure time is one thing, but if the amount of emitted energy by a star is very small, we should increase resolution to spot it.
I just can't believe the researchers were capable of spotting EVERY white dwarf, especially the ones that emit the smallest amount of energy.
When I saw this story the first time on television, I was wondering what the other countries that are working on the ISS thought about it. Wouldn't they expect every contributing country to send their most capable astronauts instead if an 'amateur'? I mean, it's a prestigious project and the chance of going something wrong should be minimized.. Sending an internet-tycoon who just read 'Russian for dummies' and 'Zero gravity engineering for dummies' is not the smartest move, i guess..