Actually, plants preferentially deposit different isotopes of carbon in different tissues.
Corn comes to mind, just off the top of my head. It has a higher concentration of C13 in its ears than the naturally occuring rate. People who have a diet high in corn products also have a higher proportion in their system.
I guess this means they weigh more than they would otherwise...
I don't know where you guys have been digging up your information, but perhaps try a little farther from the manure pile.
A new drug entity, which is what a copycat drug would qualify as, would require a completely new FDA approval, which runs about 40-60million average, and takes at least 5 years, once safety trials and efficacy studies are performed. An interesting point is that patent protection on new drugs is extended by 7 years when a drug is approved by the FDA (this may have changed in the past few years, not definite on this number). If a company can't get a product to market and turn a profit in that time, then there are serious issues with their choice in which drugs they have chosen to develop.
So, assuming another company can duplicate a new drug, there's at least a 5 year delay to get it approved, even with fast-track approval. If there are patents involved, which there usually are, there's at least 7 years protection.
Drug approval is a time-consuming and expensive process. The protection built into the system is pretty good right now -- there's no need to extend those profitability curves any higher.
-Tec (used to work in a drug R&D lab... a legal one, mind you.)
I've used all three of the above languages as an independant consultant and for developing GUI apps, VB gets initial results incredibly fast. I've been able to churn out data collection apps with full interfaces including error checking in a matter of hours that look and feel just like MS apps (not that this is a Good Thing, but it's what people want and it's what they'll pay me for.
I've found, however, that when people need to get past the basic data goes in, gets stored in DB, or data is collected from equipment, gets stored in file, etc. that VB becomes a truly evil beast. Anything beyond basic operations has been hidden, tucked away, and completely obfuscated that it becomes extremely difficult to use. Add to that the inconsistencies that abound throughout the development environment and interfaces and all of a sudden the rapid development time you started with has blossomed and flowered into a serious long-term project. I've seen logic errors in VB along the lines of:
(a and b are fields from tables in a database object, same type, same properties)
if a = b then//always fails, regardless of values, weird error!
replaced in code with:
if b = a then//code works properly!!!
Bugs like that scare me. It's not something that makes sense. It was working with database objects, and it took me 3 hours to fix it (searching docs and various online sources of info). That was when I realised that you always need to be able to trust the language you are using, and to have some idea of what's going on behind the scenes. VB takes all of that away from you, and you really have no idea of what's happening underneath. I'll take C++ with source code to the class/object interfaces over the VB property sheets and drop lists any day.
VB has its plusses, and is really useful for Windows quick projects. Beyond writing calculators and little data entry screens, however, it's more trouble than its worth.
...Cross platform? VB? hah hah ha ha ha.
VB is popular because Windows has no bundled development tool available at all. Under *NIX there are a hell of a lot of useful little tools available to develop your own solutions to simple problems. People already familiar with getting around the shell can manage to churn out a script or two if they have to, and most have probably been tempted to toss a few lines of perl together. Most Windows users don't have those options. VB really caters to Windows users who need some kind of simple tool to write simple programs. If Windows was supplied with a GUI oriented language of its own, VB wouldn't be successful.
I'm not a geneticist by any means, but with humans having DNA over 99% similar to a chimpanzee, wouldn't many of the same genes exist in chimps? I know that at the moment, certain functional sequences have been identified in the yeast bacteria DNA which carry across to many other organisms.
What's to stop companies from sequencing chimpanzees (or other animals with identical sequences) and copyrighting those?
Seems to leave us with under 1% of our genetic material that remains ours...
The funny thing is that different plants actually extract and concentrate different isotopes of atoms.
This is definitely true with corn, which at harvest contains a significantly higher concentration of Carbon 13 than the surrounding environment (plants, soil and air). Carbon 13 is non-radioactive and harmless, but makes up only about 1% of naturally occurring carbon (the rest is ~98.9% Carbon 12, and then there's a smattering of C14 which is used in carbon dating). The corn plants actually favor using the C13 in their chemical processes and end up with much greater than the natural 1% concentration. People who eat a lot of corn, therefore have a higher C13 concentration in their bodies, and are isotopically heavier than those with a low-corn diet. Might lead to an interesting weight loss program!
Either way, other plants also favor different isotopes of elements, so it wouldn't be surprising to see plants that contained higher concentrations of Potassium 40 (natural radioactive potassium), radioactive phosphorus, and other naturally occurring radioactive elements.
Ever pointed a geiger counter at an open container of salt substitute (KCl - potassium chloride, instead of normal salt NaCl - sodium chloride)? It goes nuts! Lots of happy "natural" radiation right there.
-Tec -who used to work in a medical lab with C14, H3, and other paranoia inducing materials...
non-linear is rapidly becoming one of those psuedo-intellectual words I can't stand, joining the ranks of paradigm, post-modern, and psuedo-anything Stop it... You're thinking outside of the box again, aren't you.
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Corn comes to mind, just off the top of my head. It has a higher concentration of C13 in its ears than the naturally occuring rate. People who have a diet high in corn products also have a higher proportion in their system.
I guess this means they weigh more than they would otherwise...
That's why I got it tattooed on my back in binary. *grin*.
All uppercase characters, ASCII encoded (I figured most people aren't fluent in EBCDIC.)
-tec
Cheap digital camera pic of it here.
------------------
I don't know where you guys have been digging up your information, but perhaps try a little farther from the manure pile.
A new drug entity, which is what a copycat drug would qualify as, would require a completely new FDA approval, which runs about 40-60million average, and takes at least 5 years, once safety trials and efficacy studies are performed.
An interesting point is that patent protection on new drugs is extended by 7 years when a drug is approved by the FDA (this may have changed in the past few years, not definite on this number). If a company can't get a product to market and turn a profit in that time, then there are serious issues with their choice in which drugs they have chosen to develop.
So, assuming another company can duplicate a new drug, there's at least a 5 year delay to get it approved, even with fast-track approval. If there are patents involved, which there usually are, there's at least 7 years protection.
Drug approval is a time-consuming and expensive process. The protection built into the system is pretty good right now -- there's no need to extend those profitability curves any higher.
-Tec
(used to work in a drug R&D lab... a legal one, mind you.)
------------------
I've found, however, that when people need to get past the basic data goes in, gets stored in DB, or data is collected from equipment, gets stored in file, etc. that VB becomes a truly evil beast. Anything beyond basic operations has been hidden, tucked away, and completely obfuscated that it becomes extremely difficult to use. Add to that the inconsistencies that abound throughout the development environment and interfaces and all of a sudden the rapid development time you started with has blossomed and flowered into a serious long-term project. I've seen logic errors in VB along the lines of:
(a and b are fields from tables in a database object, same type, same properties)
- if a = b then
//always fails, regardless of values, weird error!
replaced in code with:- if b = a then
//code works properly!!!
Bugs like that scare me. It's not something that makes sense. It was working with database objects, and it took me 3 hours to fix it (searching docs and various online sources of info). That was when I realised that you always need to be able to trust the language you are using, and to have some idea of what's going on behind the scenes. VB takes all of that away from you, and you really have no idea of what's happening underneath. I'll take C++ with source code to the class/object interfaces over the VB property sheets and drop lists any day.VB has its plusses, and is really useful for Windows quick projects. Beyond writing calculators and little data entry screens, however, it's more trouble than its worth.
VB is popular because Windows has no bundled development tool available at all. Under *NIX there are a hell of a lot of useful little tools available to develop your own solutions to simple problems. People already familiar with getting around the shell can manage to churn out a script or two if they have to, and most have probably been tempted to toss a few lines of perl together.
Most Windows users don't have those options. VB really caters to Windows users who need some kind of simple tool to write simple programs. If Windows was supplied with a GUI oriented language of its own, VB wouldn't be successful.
Tec
------------------
What's to stop companies from sequencing chimpanzees (or other animals with identical sequences) and copyrighting those?
Seems to leave us with under 1% of our genetic material that remains ours...
------------------
This is definitely true with corn, which at harvest contains a significantly higher concentration of Carbon 13 than the surrounding environment (plants, soil and air). Carbon 13 is non-radioactive and harmless, but makes up only about 1% of naturally occurring carbon (the rest is ~98.9% Carbon 12, and then there's a smattering of C14 which is used in carbon dating). The corn plants actually favor using the C13 in their chemical processes and end up with much greater than the natural 1% concentration.
People who eat a lot of corn, therefore have a higher C13 concentration in their bodies, and are isotopically heavier than those with a low-corn diet. Might lead to an interesting weight loss program!
Either way, other plants also favor different isotopes of elements, so it wouldn't be surprising to see plants that contained higher concentrations of Potassium 40 (natural radioactive potassium), radioactive phosphorus, and other naturally occurring radioactive elements.
Ever pointed a geiger counter at an open container of salt substitute (KCl - potassium chloride, instead of normal salt NaCl - sodium chloride)? It goes nuts! Lots of happy "natural" radiation right there.
-Tec -who used to work in a medical lab with C14, H3, and other paranoia inducing materials...
------------------
non-linear is rapidly becoming one of those psuedo-intellectual words I can't stand, joining the ranks of paradigm, post-modern, and psuedo-anything Stop it... You're thinking outside of the box again, aren't you.
------------------