However, when compared to a human operator, it was found that most people miss large patches when they do their vacuuming. It is just hard to remember exactly what areas have been covered (that and the constant urge of doing something more interesting). All in all, it was found that the robot covered a larger fraction of the floor, even if it did not reach all the corners.
So they're basing this model on being better than people too ADHD'd to *remember* which parts of the floor they already vacuumed?-for some reason i'm thinking these aren't the kind of people that're going to have an extra $200 sitting around to spend on a vacuuming robot. i don't know what kind of dope they're smoking but i want some, it deeply bothers me that i can keep track of which parts of the room i vacuumed a few minutes before...
see subject line: I'm pretty sure the unusual request is in the book as well...
i agree with this thread's parent however, that i was horribly disappointed with the movie's portrayal of Gimli, as he's truely a gentleman as JT had written, but the movie did a very poor job of portraying this. The movie also did a fine job of villanizing Boremir (sp?) as well me thinks, especially being that he was supposed to be corrupted by the ring, not sleezy from the get-go...
Maybe you'd be interested in the TOTL STI project (STI= search for terrestrial intelligence) i'm sure if there's any intelligence on earth to be had they'll be the first to know.
i don't disagree (in fact i agree) this was a cp/paste from McNews not my personal words... anyway i mostly wanted the part about BMW's crashtests not burning down any buildings or anything not technicalities McNews infomercials can never seem to get right.:)
here's a cp/paste from the BMW article the first duder posted on this thread:
What about safety?
Safety issues are a major concern for a fuel that's often perceived as more dangerous than others. While hydrogen itself played no part in either catastrophe, it was the fuel in both the Hindenburg and the Challenger.
Wagner says consumers should not fear a hydrogen-powered vehicle.
"Of course there is some risk, but it is comparable to the risk we have with conventional automotive fuels," he said.
BMW conducted numerous crash tests to see what would happen if the hydrogen tank was punctured or damaged. Their engineers report the liquid hydrogen dissipated harmlessly into the air.
i think the point being that it's really not any more dangerous than gasoline, although you're right in that they don't bother talking about how much the hydrogen is pressurized, unless they're keeping it increadibly cold...
Hydrogen is not an energy source. It is a storage medium. All this will do is lull people into a false sense of 'I'm green', when all that's going to happen is a redistribution of the pollutants. So instead of having cars pump out pollutants, power plants will.
This is true but belies the point so i'll ignore all the judgemental preachy-type stuff and just address this: This is a good point, which is why most environmentalists want to ultimately use solar power to bust hydrogen atoms from water... This is better than trying solar-powered cars, or the electric battery-based cars (what do we do with millions of discarded enormous batteries every year?). Personally this is why i like BMW's approach of actually burning hydrogen in a somewhat standard engine as opposed to a lot of other attempts to use H2 to fuel a generator that stores power in a battery. Besides i live in the midwest (Chicago at the moment, but will be going back to North Dakota and Minnesota in a few weeks) i've never been a big fan of battery-car anything for two reasons: batteries don't hold dick when they're cold and they don't give off any heat, when the temp is -40 i like my heat to be "ON" as opposed to "nonexistent."
Besides, increasing the humidity of cities is certainly better than polluting them with Ozone, unburned hydrocarbons, et al. i would rather deal with the problem of it raining a lot than sitting around debating whether or not diesel fumes are contributing to the Asthma epidemic in this country.
What happens if one gets laid off and gets pissed? Having that much hydrogen in a car could sure put a dent in the LA skyline.
please enlighten me, i fail to see your logic, and please don't tell me you're thinking about tritium used to add some 'zip' to nuclear weapons...
Anyone remember those "fly-wheel" cars that were all the hype a few years ago, which involved having a big-ass flywheel spinning at 50k+ RPM mounted in the back of a car, well one of those could certainly do a lot more damage than a tank-full of hydrogen, and i don't remember anyone even mentioning what would happen if someone got into an accident and allowed a 55,000 RPM flywheel to take off down the sidewalk...
I think it's us older Gen-X'ers (1960's) that get it. We've had time to pay off debt and save a little in the bank.
No, it's easy to make that assumption since most of the people posting reasonable comments on this thread have had enough financial experience to have an opinion, while the younger "gen-X'rs" have not.
Firstly the dates of a generation are not clear-cut as generations are defined by generalized beliefs withing groups of people, it is absolutely asinine to say people born before 1976 (or whatever) have this attitude and people born after 1976 have a different attitude, doesn't work like that. the 'Baby Boomers' are the only generation actually defined by when they were born (as opposed to their attitudes) and thus grouped inappropriately. i've read reports of the Generation-X'rs (is this a really stupid fucking name or what?) extend all the way to 1980, which places yours truely as an "X'r" (1979).
So then, as a fellow "X'r" i will disagree with you on this point: i am 23, 6 months away from completing college (PharmD is a 6-year degree) which i started immediately out of high school. i worked my way through college (at one point i had 3 jobs while enrolled in 22 Sr. level credit courses (i believe it was 7 classes)) have $0.00 in debt, and had over $20k put away before the market crash, today i think i have around half of that (yes they are diversified investments: global, national, large cap, mid-cap, small-cap, techies, utilities, etc, etc). i do not come from an "advantaged" family other than that my family works for their money, i am one of three children and my parents have never made more than $40k or $50k per year combined (yes, tehy both worked full-time). The difference between myself and a billion other people my age that are broke and in debt, is that i was not, nor am i, a dumb-ass with my money. There are people with poor financial skills of every generation and age strata within those generations, it's no suprise to me that the majority of slashdotters (my perception anyway) are also fiscally responsible... This isn't bragging from a "high horse" or anything (it sounds kind of conceited now that i look at it), but a representation of how the world works, why some people don't "get it" is absolutely beyond me... If i can "do it" then a lot more people than currently are can too...
What'll really erk your cranks (everyone that's proud of this responsibility) is when the government steps in 40 years down the road and gives all those louts who never saved a penny a bigger pension than they give you. "Why should we give it to you?-you have money." they'll say.
Of course the US population could increase to 500m by that time (economist.com(might be subscription-only, sorry if it is)) so this could offset the babyboomers moving into retirement moreso than EU or Japan, but that's a different debate altogether.
even if its an old and unwanted phone, i'm sure nokia,sony, and so forth will still have an interest in parts
It seems to me that companies should be required to take back certain forms of consumer waste that needs to be disposed of properly. A good example of this is used motor oil, in Minnesota service stations et al are required to accept used motor oil from anyone who feels like giving it to them, on the justification that people would be dumping it in their back yards otherwise.
AFAIK within the next few years the EU will be requiring that all automobile manufacturers assume the cost of recycling/destroying all of their cars sold, when they are no longer driveable... So i think the idea is already around, but just needs a more broad implementation.
To me it seems obvious: if you want to sell something that carries an intrinsic burdon upon the environment/society/etc later on, then you should build the cost of safely getting rid of it into your business plan, and this should be required whether old parts are actually useful or not, and this should apply whether you're an electricity plant or a computer manufacturer.
Do people actually still read and write these things?
You know the interesting thing about this question is that it asserts the idea that blogging is useless, as a pseudo-blogger i would have to disagree with this idea. For me i write a diary and then post it online, which apparently fits the definition of a "notebook blog" (which i was previously unaware of), sure 99% of the time it's an egotistic pile of shit, but 10 years from now i'm going to find it very interesting to go back and read my entries from today. Not too long ago i started transcribing my grandfather's old diary and it's mighty interesting to see his perception of things that are now in the fading past (Vietnam, Nixon, Oil Crisis, and more personally: my mom moving out, me being born, etc etc) i feel i can reasonably assume that what i'm writing now will be no different...
i see the question as similar to: "do people still actually write diaries?" And i think the answer should be obvious... But then again i've never been "down" with "blog culture" so my perception of the whole shebang is probably grossly inaccurate, sure i've surfed through some blogs and yes they were alright to read, although i don't know that i would read them twice. But i've always been under the assumption that people write for themselves and post it for the hell of it as opposed to posting and writing to gain a following of some kind...
Its size was more impressive than Vanguard's intended 3.5-pound payload. In addition, the public feared that the Soviets' ability to launch satellites also translated into the capability to launch ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons from Europe to the U.S.
It's kind of interesting to note, but oftentimes with historical events such as this the context is forgotten. Sputnik's intent was more for the purposes of showcasing the superior soviet rocketry than an endeavor for the good of humanity.
Perhaps the biggest direct effect of Sputnik, aside from the beginning of the "space race," was the development of the ICBM-carrying nuclear submarine, which when stationed under the N Pole could offset the ability of the Soviets to "out-rocket" the Americans, and to this day nuclear submarines remain one of the most important pieces in the mutually-assured destruction game of warfare...
It is unfortunate that science and military might are so often inextricably tied.
So, since I have an over active immune system (allergies and asthma), I should avoid laughing?
Asthma and allergies are a result of type I hypersensitivity reactions which mean they primarily are mediated via IgE, mast cells, and basophils (and therefore histamine), which is very different than plasma cells pumping out antibodies (IgG not IgE), and don't have a whole lot to do with gamma-IFN...
"You could download a million movies a day, and no penalty for it."
Well... as can be expected Jack Valenti has completely missed the scope of the intended legislation. His is an issue of enforcement, whereas this piece of legislation is focused solely upon consumer rights. They are separate issues [almost] entirely, although his industry has generally ignored the latter...
Here are a couple of links with much better information (if you're having trouble with German pages w/ google searches) than the original link in the story.:)
ok, that's a Monty Python, Life of Brian quote, i'm lame, i know...
Anyway, did anyone else find the preoccupation with this insect's mating behavior disturbing? i mean here's an entirely new order of insects, do they talk about what they eat (other than that they're carnivorous), how long they live for, some evolutionary history, where exactly it is that they live, etc, etc. They don't even talk about how many offspring they have after all that mating... Note to boot: cannabalism isn't even uncommon after mating in the arthropod world (although the nutrient thing was interesting, although lacking details)..
"Bunch of inbred trailer trash... all they ever talk about is fuckin'." -Old guy from Green Mile
NP, i just feel bad when i make other people feel bad (innocent people anyway)..
If you're interested here's a breakdown of causes of death by age provided by the CDC, it's actually pretty interesting... starting on page 13 or so: cdc.gov...pdf:)
I've know 2 kids that died of cancer. One of 'em had reached puberty, the other had not.
I'm trying to to loose my cool because this being an emotional issue for me, I take offense at what you said.
i am a bit taken aback by this, what i said was by no means to insinuate that children do not develop cancer, nor surely to offend anyone. i think the key words here are "most cancers" this does not mean the same thing as all cancers. point of fact (US 2000 cancer stastics):
incidence:
male: Prostate (30% of all cancers), Lung (14%), Colon/rectum (11%), Bladder, Melanoma (5%), etc, etc, leukemia (3%),
female: Breast, Lung, Colon, Uterine, etc. etc. (leukemia isn't even listed as one of the most common female cancers)
cancer deaths:
male: Lung(31%), Prostate (11%), Colon(10%), all others equal to or less than 5% (leukemia = 4%)
female: Lung (25%), Breast(15%), Colon(11%), pancreaus (6%), all others less than 5% (leukemia = 4%)
these stastics exclude non-melanoma skin cancers
of cancers Leukemias (especially fast-growing leukemias such as ALL, which are amongst the most easily treated of all cancers, if this be any comfort for you) account for 30% of all childhood cancers (and i think neoplasms represent usually w/i the top 5 childhood killers, while the nation's non-age-adjusted 2nd largest killer only behind heart disease), leukemia is 10 times more common in adults than it is in children...
all and all survival rates are higher in children than they are in adults, many times because of cancers specific to children, but also lending to a better chemotherapeutic/radiation tolerance in children allowing health-care providers to "push the dose..."
while cancer does certainly present in children, the fact remains that children constitute a much smaller cancer population, (even when statistically adjusted for population-size).
as i said before, it was not my intent to offend anyone, but the fact remains that general population trends show that cancer incidence increases with age (possible curtailing of the curve could be accounted for by genetic predispositions of cancer). Also, reember that personal experience is not necessarily indicitive of population trends. And likewise population trends does not necessarily reflect cancer incidence in your particular state, country, neighborhood, family, circle of friends, etc. So my original comment was not direct toward people you know, but toward the greater human condition. i am also painfully aware of the differences between statistics and the effect illnesses have had on my life and my family.
Scientists wonder why the ability to regenerate has not spread more widely through evolution...
...the advanced immune systems of higher life forms may mistake rapidly proliferating cells for cancer and kill them.
i find this a really interesting idea. Especially given that most cancers are not seen until after people are at an age where they generally have children (you've passed your genes on before you die of cancer). If you were to look at our pre-historic counterparts: if their life-expectancy were 20 years old and they had most of their offspring starting at 10-12 (these numbers are mostly guesswork on my part) then i would tend to think that evolutionally being able to regrow lost arms and legs would outweigh the ability to ward off cancer that doesn't strike until they're 25...
This is much the same as the differences between the rates of Progeria and Huntington's disease in people (people with Progeria don't have kids, but people with Huntington's do as the onset isn't until their 40's) even though, they're (apparently) similiar genetic abnormalities (ie in population genetics not taking into accout inheritence, their incidences should be equal)...
But getting back to regen/cancer: Of course there would be a fine balance between the two and figuring this out would involve lots of statistics and things my noggen doesn't compute so well, but i do find it interesting that there's so little regeneration in people.
conversely to my first point, since most regeneration would have probably been selected for, to take place before child-bearing age, and as we've advanced culturally and civically (child-bearing age) has markedly increased, and it's doubtful that missing a leg destroys your chances of having offspring if you live with a family in a cottage as opposed to running through savannas away from man-eating beasts and the like, maybe all this makes sense... (did you understand my convoluded run-on sentence?).
If we can find a way to turn on stem cells, maybe the same switch could work to turn off cancer?
Cancer is a very dynamic disease there is not, to the best of my knowledge, any way to just "turn off" cancer cells. The normal lifecycle of groups of cells consists of individual cells that "know" when to divide and when to die (aptoptosis), with cancer, cells may proliferate too rapidly, or cells, normal in all other respects, may simply not know when to apoptose. So there are many different facets of each individual cancer, and each patient with said cancer. For example: while some cancers may respond (by apoptosing) to genetic damage inflicted by cytotoxic chemotherapeutic agents, other cells may benefit from the mutation caused by said damage. Differnet cancers (and differnt populations of cancer cells in the same patient) may be driven by completely different mechanisms, especially as individual tumors evolve and adapt within their host, so again you'd be hard pressed to exact something from stem-cells that would/could just "turn it off."
the term "Cancer" is actually a pretty generic term used to describe hundreds of distinct diseases, much as "Infection" doesn't really tell you the nature of each individual infection (bacterial, viral, fungal, protazoal, parasitic, etc, etc - what kind of bacterial? G-, G+, acid-fast, hemolytic, coagulase +/-, toxin-producing, etc etc.). So when you say "cure cancer" or "turn off cancer" it's like saying "curing infection."
the only major difference I can see is a lack of control in cancer
this, again, is an over-simplification. it's much like saying the only difference i see with infectious disease and commensulistic/symbiotic bacterial colonization (such as your intestinal floura, which can cause infection if cirumstances are such) is that with infection your immune system can't keep them in check and they're in the wrong place, and with colonization this is not the case... or in more Geek terms: "the only difference i see between a PDA and an ULTRA-SPARC machine is that the ULTRA-SPARC box is faster"-it's just a lot more complicated than that...
Does anyone know how much research is going into a link between stem cells and cancer cells?
Contrary (i think) to what you were asking by this question, there is a school of thought that ties the two together. There was a paper published a short while ago which hypothesised that aging is the result of cancer suppression, and the two are almost inseparable. In other words the body's loss of regenarative ability is due to its control of accumulating genetic defects of stem-cells... i had just skimmed the publication and am not sure about its validity, but an interesting idea nonetheless... draw whatever conclusions from this as you like, but as i said i'm not positive of the validity of this report...
Bacteriophages and antibiotics work in pretty much the same way, albeit through different mechanisms: the agent in use attacks the bacteria population present in the patient,
not to mention they'd be highly antigenic (much moreso than the antibiotic haptens people are oft allergic to), which would provide a major problem in repeat-treatment...
damn, didn't see your post before i posted my last one, guess i could do a little more RTFMing before posting eh?:)
It's more likely to be related to the 'growth promoters' fed to cattle. That's a really bad idea.
It is a really bad idea to be sure, but vanco resistance doesn't arise directly from cattle feed, as you'd have to be crazy to put vanco in there as vanco has a 0% oral bioavailability (0% absorbed)... although you're right, if it was in there it would because it's still be in their manure and get sprayed around on crops etc, etc...
Phage is probably short for "Bacteriophage" which is just a virus (it's the one in high-school science books that looks like some sort of a phallic lunar-lander) that infects bacteria. yes bacteriophages do kill bacteria from time to time, but ironically are one of the primary vectors in spreading resistance genes from one bacterium to another... probably not the strain the Russians use though if it's highly bacteriocidal,:)
well although i agree with your spirit, i do not agree with your facts...
vancomycin (an extremely rare antibiotic, used only
in cases of desperation)
this is what vanco is supposed to be, but in fact it is used quite frequently, and is actually gaining popularity given that virtually every major medical centre in the US is now seeing the prevalence of MRSA going through the roof (as MRSA is resistant to pretty much everything except for vanco, linezolid (Zyvox) and dalfopristin/quinupristin (Synercid)). vanco is now the drug of choice in many institituitions until lab sensitivities come back, at which time a patient with a staph infection may be switched to something else or remain on vanco. with infectious disease health care providers simply cannot afford to prescribe nafcillin and wait a day for labs to come back and tell them whether or not the organism is resistant, so they prescribe vanco first and modify later (and you would too if you were on the east coast and 1 in 3 staph infections were nafcillin resistant)...
furthermore: vancomycin resistance can come from serendipity,
from vancomycin exposure, or from a mechanism which
creates a much broader resistance to a class of
antibiotics which includes vancomycin, subsequent
to exposure to other antibiotics in that class
there are currently no antibiotics on the market in use with the same mechanism of action (MOA) of vanco (which is a glycopeptide cell wall inhibitor). the Penicillins/cephalosporins are cell wall inhibitors of a different nature, and do not promote resistance to vancomycin directly, although ceftazidime (Fortaz) independently causes an increased incidence of VRE (Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus (not the same as staph a)) for reasons unbeknownst to the medical/research community. Likewise aminoglycosides, flouroquinolones, macrolides, et al. also do not increase the incidence of vancomycin resistance in and of themselves. however all of these compounds increase the selective pressure on organisms, thus favoring strains that more easily acquire resistance than their counterparts... But contrary to your point most of the time when you hear about cross-resistance they're talking about resistances to drugs in the same class or with the same mechanism of action such as all beta-lactams (pens & cephs), all aminiglycocydes (gent, tobra, amikacin), all flouroquinolones (levofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, gatifloxacin, etc) and the like, but this isn't something that normally happens with outliers such as vanco, zyvox, synercid, rifampin, etc.
just as an aside (but of interest), the CDC labels VISA/GISA as staph a with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of vanco to be greater than 8mcg/mL, and VRSA to be greater than 32mcg/mL. When one does pharmacokinetic dosing for vanco, by the book one looks for a peak serum vanco concentration of 20-40mcg/mL, and a trough of 5-15mcg/mL (usually broken down to 5-10 for normal infections and 10-15 for serious concentrations.) But in real life people don't even look at the peaks (it doesn't improve outcomes and costs too much to do if it doesn't help), just the troughs, and as you probably know vancomycin is a time-dependent killer (like the beta-lactams (with the exception of the carbapenems of course) and macrolides) so a range of 8-32mcg/mL for an intermediate strain won't necessarily tell you if it will work in a clinic, especially since many infections are in areas with poor circulation (necrosed tissue etc) in which the drug levels won't be anything near what they are in the plasma (due to poor tissue perfusion). And thus the distinction between VRSA and VISA/GISA are more of scientific/epidemiological significance than of actual clinical significance (especially if you've only got a vanco peak of 20mcg/mL and your MIC is 25 for the strain). And if you're just looking for hard-to-treat cases of Staph a, then this news is nothing new...
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm... they must not have computers where they're from...
-tid242
So they're basing this model on being better than people too ADHD'd to *remember* which parts of the floor they already vacuumed?-for some reason i'm thinking these aren't the kind of people that're going to have an extra $200 sitting around to spend on a vacuuming robot. i don't know what kind of dope they're smoking but i want some, it deeply bothers me that i can keep track of which parts of the room i vacuumed a few minutes before...
-tid242
i agree with this thread's parent however, that i was horribly disappointed with the movie's portrayal of Gimli, as he's truely a gentleman as JT had written, but the movie did a very poor job of portraying this. The movie also did a fine job of villanizing Boremir (sp?) as well me thinks, especially being that he was supposed to be corrupted by the ring, not sleezy from the get-go...
-tid242
Maybe you'd be interested in the TOTL STI project (STI= search for terrestrial intelligence) i'm sure if there's any intelligence on earth to be had they'll be the first to know.
-tid242
cheers.
-tid242
What about safety?
Safety issues are a major concern for a fuel that's often perceived as more dangerous than others. While hydrogen itself played no part in either catastrophe, it was the fuel in both the Hindenburg and the Challenger.
Wagner says consumers should not fear a hydrogen-powered vehicle.
"Of course there is some risk, but it is comparable to the risk we have with conventional automotive fuels," he said.
BMW conducted numerous crash tests to see what would happen if the hydrogen tank was punctured or damaged. Their engineers report the liquid hydrogen dissipated harmlessly into the air.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/03/16/hydro gen.cars/
i think the point being that it's really not any more dangerous than gasoline, although you're right in that they don't bother talking about how much the hydrogen is pressurized, unless they're keeping it increadibly cold...
-tid242
This is true but belies the point so i'll ignore all the judgemental preachy-type stuff and just address this: This is a good point, which is why most environmentalists want to ultimately use solar power to bust hydrogen atoms from water... This is better than trying solar-powered cars, or the electric battery-based cars (what do we do with millions of discarded enormous batteries every year?). Personally this is why i like BMW's approach of actually burning hydrogen in a somewhat standard engine as opposed to a lot of other attempts to use H2 to fuel a generator that stores power in a battery. Besides i live in the midwest (Chicago at the moment, but will be going back to North Dakota and Minnesota in a few weeks) i've never been a big fan of battery-car anything for two reasons: batteries don't hold dick when they're cold and they don't give off any heat, when the temp is -40 i like my heat to be "ON" as opposed to "nonexistent."
Besides, increasing the humidity of cities is certainly better than polluting them with Ozone, unburned hydrocarbons, et al. i would rather deal with the problem of it raining a lot than sitting around debating whether or not diesel fumes are contributing to the Asthma epidemic in this country.
-tid242
please enlighten me, i fail to see your logic, and please don't tell me you're thinking about tritium used to add some 'zip' to nuclear weapons...
Anyone remember those "fly-wheel" cars that were all the hype a few years ago, which involved having a big-ass flywheel spinning at 50k+ RPM mounted in the back of a car, well one of those could certainly do a lot more damage than a tank-full of hydrogen, and i don't remember anyone even mentioning what would happen if someone got into an accident and allowed a 55,000 RPM flywheel to take off down the sidewalk...
-tid242
No, it's easy to make that assumption since most of the people posting reasonable comments on this thread have had enough financial experience to have an opinion, while the younger "gen-X'rs" have not.
Firstly the dates of a generation are not clear-cut as generations are defined by generalized beliefs withing groups of people, it is absolutely asinine to say people born before 1976 (or whatever) have this attitude and people born after 1976 have a different attitude, doesn't work like that. the 'Baby Boomers' are the only generation actually defined by when they were born (as opposed to their attitudes) and thus grouped inappropriately. i've read reports of the Generation-X'rs (is this a really stupid fucking name or what?) extend all the way to 1980, which places yours truely as an "X'r" (1979).
So then, as a fellow "X'r" i will disagree with you on this point: i am 23, 6 months away from completing college (PharmD is a 6-year degree) which i started immediately out of high school. i worked my way through college (at one point i had 3 jobs while enrolled in 22 Sr. level credit courses (i believe it was 7 classes)) have $0.00 in debt, and had over $20k put away before the market crash, today i think i have around half of that (yes they are diversified investments: global, national, large cap, mid-cap, small-cap, techies, utilities, etc, etc). i do not come from an "advantaged" family other than that my family works for their money, i am one of three children and my parents have never made more than $40k or $50k per year combined (yes, tehy both worked full-time). The difference between myself and a billion other people my age that are broke and in debt, is that i was not, nor am i, a dumb-ass with my money. There are people with poor financial skills of every generation and age strata within those generations, it's no suprise to me that the majority of slashdotters (my perception anyway) are also fiscally responsible... This isn't bragging from a "high horse" or anything (it sounds kind of conceited now that i look at it), but a representation of how the world works, why some people don't "get it" is absolutely beyond me... If i can "do it" then a lot more people than currently are can too...
What'll really erk your cranks (everyone that's proud of this responsibility) is when the government steps in 40 years down the road and gives all those louts who never saved a penny a bigger pension than they give you. "Why should we give it to you?-you have money." they'll say.
Of course the US population could increase to 500m by that time (economist.com(might be subscription-only, sorry if it is)) so this could offset the babyboomers moving into retirement moreso than EU or Japan, but that's a different debate altogether.
-tid242
It seems to me that companies should be required to take back certain forms of consumer waste that needs to be disposed of properly. A good example of this is used motor oil, in Minnesota service stations et al are required to accept used motor oil from anyone who feels like giving it to them, on the justification that people would be dumping it in their back yards otherwise.
AFAIK within the next few years the EU will be requiring that all automobile manufacturers assume the cost of recycling/destroying all of their cars sold, when they are no longer driveable... So i think the idea is already around, but just needs a more broad implementation.
To me it seems obvious: if you want to sell something that carries an intrinsic burdon upon the environment/society/etc later on, then you should build the cost of safely getting rid of it into your business plan, and this should be required whether old parts are actually useful or not, and this should apply whether you're an electricity plant or a computer manufacturer.
-tid242
You know the interesting thing about this question is that it asserts the idea that blogging is useless, as a pseudo-blogger i would have to disagree with this idea. For me i write a diary and then post it online, which apparently fits the definition of a "notebook blog" (which i was previously unaware of), sure 99% of the time it's an egotistic pile of shit, but 10 years from now i'm going to find it very interesting to go back and read my entries from today. Not too long ago i started transcribing my grandfather's old diary and it's mighty interesting to see his perception of things that are now in the fading past (Vietnam, Nixon, Oil Crisis, and more personally: my mom moving out, me being born, etc etc) i feel i can reasonably assume that what i'm writing now will be no different...
i see the question as similar to: "do people still actually write diaries?" And i think the answer should be obvious... But then again i've never been "down" with "blog culture" so my perception of the whole shebang is probably grossly inaccurate, sure i've surfed through some blogs and yes they were alright to read, although i don't know that i would read them twice. But i've always been under the assumption that people write for themselves and post it for the hell of it as opposed to posting and writing to gain a following of some kind...
just my two cents...
-tid242
It's kind of interesting to note, but oftentimes with historical events such as this the context is forgotten. Sputnik's intent was more for the purposes of showcasing the superior soviet rocketry than an endeavor for the good of humanity.
Perhaps the biggest direct effect of Sputnik, aside from the beginning of the "space race," was the development of the ICBM-carrying nuclear submarine, which when stationed under the N Pole could offset the ability of the Soviets to "out-rocket" the Americans, and to this day nuclear submarines remain one of the most important pieces in the mutually-assured destruction game of warfare...
It is unfortunate that science and military might are so often inextricably tied.
-tid242
Hub: Normal
Outages: Normal
this is from their network status page, i try to abstain from being a smart-ass but outages are normal?
-tid242
Asthma and allergies are a result of type I hypersensitivity reactions which mean they primarily are mediated via IgE, mast cells, and basophils (and therefore histamine), which is very different than plasma cells pumping out antibodies (IgG not IgE), and don't have a whole lot to do with gamma-IFN...
-tid242
Well... as can be expected Jack Valenti has completely missed the scope of the intended legislation. His is an issue of enforcement, whereas this piece of legislation is focused solely upon consumer rights. They are separate issues [almost] entirely, although his industry has generally ignored the latter...
-tid242
National Geographic
Nature
but much seems to be lacking yet, apparently not much is known about these insects thus far...
-tid242
Anyway, did anyone else find the preoccupation with this insect's mating behavior disturbing? i mean here's an entirely new order of insects, do they talk about what they eat (other than that they're carnivorous), how long they live for, some evolutionary history, where exactly it is that they live, etc, etc. They don't even talk about how many offspring they have after all that mating... Note to boot: cannabalism isn't even uncommon after mating in the arthropod world (although the nutrient thing was interesting, although lacking details)..
"Bunch of inbred trailer trash... all they ever talk about is fuckin'." -Old guy from Green Mile
-tid242
NP, i just feel bad when i make other people feel bad (innocent people anyway)..
If you're interested here's a breakdown of causes of death by age provided by the CDC, it's actually pretty interesting... starting on page 13 or so: cdc.gov...pdf :)
take care,
-tid242
I'm trying to to loose my cool because this being an emotional issue for me, I take offense at what you said.
i am a bit taken aback by this, what i said was by no means to insinuate that children do not develop cancer, nor surely to offend anyone. i think the key words here are "most cancers" this does not mean the same thing as all cancers. point of fact (US 2000 cancer stastics):
incidence:
male: Prostate (30% of all cancers), Lung (14%), Colon/rectum (11%), Bladder, Melanoma (5%), etc, etc, leukemia (3%),
female: Breast, Lung, Colon, Uterine, etc. etc. (leukemia isn't even listed as one of the most common female cancers)
cancer deaths:
male: Lung(31%), Prostate (11%), Colon(10%), all others equal to or less than 5% (leukemia = 4%)
female: Lung (25%), Breast(15%), Colon(11%), pancreaus (6%), all others less than 5% (leukemia = 4%)
these stastics exclude non-melanoma skin cancers
of cancers Leukemias (especially fast-growing leukemias such as ALL, which are amongst the most easily treated of all cancers, if this be any comfort for you) account for 30% of all childhood cancers (and i think neoplasms represent usually w/i the top 5 childhood killers, while the nation's non-age-adjusted 2nd largest killer only behind heart disease), leukemia is 10 times more common in adults than it is in children...
all and all survival rates are higher in children than they are in adults, many times because of cancers specific to children, but also lending to a better chemotherapeutic/radiation tolerance in children allowing health-care providers to "push the dose..."
while cancer does certainly present in children, the fact remains that children constitute a much smaller cancer population, (even when statistically adjusted for population-size).
as i said before, it was not my intent to offend anyone, but the fact remains that general population trends show that cancer incidence increases with age (possible curtailing of the curve could be accounted for by genetic predispositions of cancer). Also, reember that personal experience is not necessarily indicitive of population trends. And likewise population trends does not necessarily reflect cancer incidence in your particular state, country, neighborhood, family, circle of friends, etc. So my original comment was not direct toward people you know, but toward the greater human condition. i am also painfully aware of the differences between statistics and the effect illnesses have had on my life and my family.
my source (american cancer society).
-tid242
that was the original conclusion of my previous post, but somehow i forgot to include it! - damn the brain..
-tid242
i find this a really interesting idea. Especially given that most cancers are not seen until after people are at an age where they generally have children (you've passed your genes on before you die of cancer). If you were to look at our pre-historic counterparts: if their life-expectancy were 20 years old and they had most of their offspring starting at 10-12 (these numbers are mostly guesswork on my part) then i would tend to think that evolutionally being able to regrow lost arms and legs would outweigh the ability to ward off cancer that doesn't strike until they're 25...
This is much the same as the differences between the rates of Progeria and Huntington's disease in people (people with Progeria don't have kids, but people with Huntington's do as the onset isn't until their 40's) even though, they're (apparently) similiar genetic abnormalities (ie in population genetics not taking into accout inheritence, their incidences should be equal)...
But getting back to regen/cancer: Of course there would be a fine balance between the two and figuring this out would involve lots of statistics and things my noggen doesn't compute so well, but i do find it interesting that there's so little regeneration in people.
conversely to my first point, since most regeneration would have probably been selected for, to take place before child-bearing age, and as we've advanced culturally and civically (child-bearing age) has markedly increased, and it's doubtful that missing a leg destroys your chances of having offspring if you live with a family in a cottage as opposed to running through savannas away from man-eating beasts and the like, maybe all this makes sense... (did you understand my convoluded run-on sentence?).
-tid242
Cancer is a very dynamic disease there is not, to the best of my knowledge, any way to just "turn off" cancer cells. The normal lifecycle of groups of cells consists of individual cells that "know" when to divide and when to die (aptoptosis), with cancer, cells may proliferate too rapidly, or cells, normal in all other respects, may simply not know when to apoptose. So there are many different facets of each individual cancer, and each patient with said cancer. For example: while some cancers may respond (by apoptosing) to genetic damage inflicted by cytotoxic chemotherapeutic agents, other cells may benefit from the mutation caused by said damage. Differnet cancers (and differnt populations of cancer cells in the same patient) may be driven by completely different mechanisms, especially as individual tumors evolve and adapt within their host, so again you'd be hard pressed to exact something from stem-cells that would/could just "turn it off."
the term "Cancer" is actually a pretty generic term used to describe hundreds of distinct diseases, much as "Infection" doesn't really tell you the nature of each individual infection (bacterial, viral, fungal, protazoal, parasitic, etc, etc - what kind of bacterial? G-, G+, acid-fast, hemolytic, coagulase +/-, toxin-producing, etc etc.). So when you say "cure cancer" or "turn off cancer" it's like saying "curing infection."
the only major difference I can see is a lack of control in cancer
this, again, is an over-simplification. it's much like saying the only difference i see with infectious disease and commensulistic/symbiotic bacterial colonization (such as your intestinal floura, which can cause infection if cirumstances are such) is that with infection your immune system can't keep them in check and they're in the wrong place, and with colonization this is not the case... or in more Geek terms: "the only difference i see between a PDA and an ULTRA-SPARC machine is that the ULTRA-SPARC box is faster"-it's just a lot more complicated than that...
Does anyone know how much research is going into a link between stem cells and cancer cells?
Contrary (i think) to what you were asking by this question, there is a school of thought that ties the two together. There was a paper published a short while ago which hypothesised that aging is the result of cancer suppression, and the two are almost inseparable. In other words the body's loss of regenarative ability is due to its control of accumulating genetic defects of stem-cells... i had just skimmed the publication and am not sure about its validity, but an interesting idea nonetheless... draw whatever conclusions from this as you like, but as i said i'm not positive of the validity of this report...
hmmm... that should be enough out of me :)
-tid242
not to mention they'd be highly antigenic (much moreso than the antibiotic haptens people are oft allergic to), which would provide a major problem in repeat-treatment...
damn, didn't see your post before i posted my last one, guess i could do a little more RTFMing before posting eh? :)
-tid242
It is a really bad idea to be sure, but vanco resistance doesn't arise directly from cattle feed, as you'd have to be crazy to put vanco in there as vanco has a 0% oral bioavailability (0% absorbed)... although you're right, if it was in there it would because it's still be in their manure and get sprayed around on crops etc, etc...
Phage is probably short for "Bacteriophage" which is just a virus (it's the one in high-school science books that looks like some sort of a phallic lunar-lander) that infects bacteria. yes bacteriophages do kill bacteria from time to time, but ironically are one of the primary vectors in spreading resistance genes from one bacterium to another... probably not the strain the Russians use though if it's highly bacteriocidal, :)
-tid242
vancomycin (an extremely rare antibiotic, used only in cases of desperation)
this is what vanco is supposed to be, but in fact it is used quite frequently, and is actually gaining popularity given that virtually every major medical centre in the US is now seeing the prevalence of MRSA going through the roof (as MRSA is resistant to pretty much everything except for vanco, linezolid (Zyvox) and dalfopristin/quinupristin (Synercid)). vanco is now the drug of choice in many institituitions until lab sensitivities come back, at which time a patient with a staph infection may be switched to something else or remain on vanco. with infectious disease health care providers simply cannot afford to prescribe nafcillin and wait a day for labs to come back and tell them whether or not the organism is resistant, so they prescribe vanco first and modify later (and you would too if you were on the east coast and 1 in 3 staph infections were nafcillin resistant)...
furthermore:
vancomycin resistance can come from serendipity, from vancomycin exposure, or from a mechanism which creates a much broader resistance to a class of antibiotics which includes vancomycin, subsequent to exposure to other antibiotics in that class
there are currently no antibiotics on the market in use with the same mechanism of action (MOA) of vanco (which is a glycopeptide cell wall inhibitor). the Penicillins/cephalosporins are cell wall inhibitors of a different nature, and do not promote resistance to vancomycin directly, although ceftazidime (Fortaz) independently causes an increased incidence of VRE (Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus (not the same as staph a)) for reasons unbeknownst to the medical/research community. Likewise aminoglycosides, flouroquinolones, macrolides, et al. also do not increase the incidence of vancomycin resistance in and of themselves. however all of these compounds increase the selective pressure on organisms, thus favoring strains that more easily acquire resistance than their counterparts... But contrary to your point most of the time when you hear about cross-resistance they're talking about resistances to drugs in the same class or with the same mechanism of action such as all beta-lactams (pens & cephs), all aminiglycocydes (gent, tobra, amikacin), all flouroquinolones (levofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, gatifloxacin, etc) and the like, but this isn't something that normally happens with outliers such as vanco, zyvox, synercid, rifampin, etc.
just as an aside (but of interest), the CDC labels VISA/GISA as staph a with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of vanco to be greater than 8mcg/mL, and VRSA to be greater than 32mcg/mL. When one does pharmacokinetic dosing for vanco, by the book one looks for a peak serum vanco concentration of 20-40mcg/mL, and a trough of 5-15mcg/mL (usually broken down to 5-10 for normal infections and 10-15 for serious concentrations.) But in real life people don't even look at the peaks (it doesn't improve outcomes and costs too much to do if it doesn't help), just the troughs, and as you probably know vancomycin is a time-dependent killer (like the beta-lactams (with the exception of the carbapenems of course) and macrolides) so a range of 8-32mcg/mL for an intermediate strain won't necessarily tell you if it will work in a clinic, especially since many infections are in areas with poor circulation (necrosed tissue etc) in which the drug levels won't be anything near what they are in the plasma (due to poor tissue perfusion). And thus the distinction between VRSA and VISA/GISA are more of scientific/epidemiological significance than of actual clinical significance (especially if you've only got a vanco peak of 20mcg/mL and your MIC is 25 for the strain). And if you're just looking for hard-to-treat cases of Staph a, then this news is nothing new...
-tid242