Then I started talking about creating my own company with the project that I did in school. Surprise surprise...they took the contract away from me and said that I could sign it another day. The next day when I called back, they suddenly had no need to hire anyone else at the time, so my offer was no longer on the table. Darn...
Maybe they weren't trying to rip of your intellectual property...maybe they just didn't want to go to the time, inconvenience, and expense of training someone who was planning to jump ship and start a (competing?) company in the near future.
For me, power can mean only one thing: the "right" to initiate force as a means to an end. It does not mean wealth, influence over others, popularity, knowledge, or ownership of business or material items.
Dude--wealth, influence, popularity, knowledge, and ownership of material goods are almost always means by which one can encourage or coerce the use of physical force. Just because that use of force (or implicit threat of use of force) is sometimes nested many layers deep behind other, friendlier concepts doesn't mean that it isn't there.
Mandela had power, ultimately, because of his ability to influence people. That influence, in turn, meant that he could influence both individuals and nations with 'power' in the coarse, physical sense that the parent describes. That power in turn led to things like the enforcement of trade sanctions, and support for the transition to non-apartheid government. The real power lay with Mandela and those like him, because they were the ones that ultimately dictated where physical, economic, and political force were brought to bear.
Lastly, we're not talking a few innocent private emails here. We're talking 70% of randomly chosen samples over a timespan of 7 months showing the asshole boss playing Solitaire. Do you need it cut out for you ?
First of all, how do you know that the samples are actually randomly chosen? You're going to take this guy's word for it? What if he's just selected the Solitaire screenshots? What if his boss plays solitaire while making phone calls and eating lunch?
He obviously has more issues with his supervisor than this--actually, he has some issues, period. In addition to his boss' machine, he also installed spyware on his wife's computer--they share the same workplace. It's possible that the only two coworkers he suspected of misusing computing resources happened to be his boss and his wife...but it sure looks suspicious.
Let's see here--the screenshots purportedly cover a period of 105 working days, over seven months. I'm a little surprised by that--there should be closer to 150 or so working days in that period. Unless the boss took eleven weeks of vacation during that period, that's quite a chunk of time unaccounted for. Perhaps the guy actually gets a lot of work done without using his computer.
The arrangement of shortcuts and whatnot on his desktop strongly suggest someone who is not particularly comfortable with a computer--it's probably one of millions of desktop paperweights adorning desks of borderline computer illiterates everywhere. He probably prefers to avoid working on the computer as much as possible.
At eight hours per day, 105 days is 840 hours. The screenshots are taken every (approximately) half hour of computer usage, so 414 screenshots is 207 hours' worth. If the guy was playing on his lunch and coffee breaks, then that's 105 hours that are on his own time. That leaves us with 102 hours 'wasted'--about an hour per day. If he plays solitaire while he's on the phone or while other departments have him on hold, that hour could be quite a bit less. This also depends on how exactly the software counts idle time. (If he played solitaire for five minutes, then the software waits for five minutes without input to flip to an 'idle' state, then his solitaire usage gets double-counted.)
That 'hour per day' also neglects the missing eleven weeks. If we include the days he didn't use his computer, that brings us down to forty minutes per day. What if the guy is very good at his job? What if he has a habit of staying an extra hour or two at the end of the day, or arriving early? Maybe he just tries to stretch out his work day because he's fighting with the wife. So far, what we've been given to read is only one side of the story.
The employee was required to report and document 'misuse' of computer resources. Fine. He reported it to--presumably--human resources or the equivalent. They sat on it. That's their prerogative. If the boss' performance is acceptable in other respects, perhaps his solitaire habit deserves only a slap on the wrists.
Public sector or private, it's not appropriate for a sysadmin to spy on any employee without a damn good reason. "Because I thought HR wasn't doing enough about it" isn't a good reason.
Quite frankly, firing the sysadmin in question seems to have proven an excellent decision. By posting the screenshots, he's announced to every future potential employer, "If I perceive I have been treated unfairly, I'll post pictures of your desktop on the Internet."
Oh, and am I the only one that chortled at the fact that this paper, which lists the 100 most cited papers, had only 26 references?
It's amusing, but not surprising: the current paper doesn't need to cite those other papers. It doesn't refer to their research or conclusions. It just counts their citations. The sources for the citation counts, plus sources for the techniques used to analyze the data, should properly be cited.
Because before they were singing the tune "we don't believe Linux infringes on copyrights, and we're so sure of it, we'll sell you insurance". Now they are singing the tune "Linux might infringe on up to 283 patents, don't you think you want insurance?".
That is the difference between noble altruism and fear-mongering.
I thought it was the difference between copyrights and patents. The statements above are not mutually exclusive....
I am aghast at the some of the remarks to this news.
In general, the remarks I have seen have been respectful of Steve's condition. Yes, some have shown a sense of humour, and some have taken a few shots at Apple's warranty plans. It should be noted that Steve has an excellent prognosis. Non-metastatic cancer, well localized and readily excised. People would be more circumspect if the outcome were more in doubt.
Somber, humourless expressions of support are all well and good for politicians, and they're fine from close friends and family--in moderation.
From anybody else, come on. For people who are ill, the last thing they need are folks moping morosely around their hospital bed acting like they're already dead. Steve expects to be all right, and he's apparently quite well enough to be plugging the Powerbook and AirPort from his bed. Yes, he has cancer. Yes, he's having surgery. It's more serious than a tonsillectomy, but easier than a coronary artery bypass graft. For that matter, it will probably be done laparascopically, so it's less traumatic than, say, a C-section.
The problem is that word 'cancer'. It seems to have the same magical effect as 'terrorism'. The words are the ultimate trump cards in medicine and politics, respectively. Hear either one, and you're supposed to sit in stony, respectful, mournful silence.
Damn it, get real! These people are our friends and family. Should we stop laughing with them just because they're ill? Treat them differently? Shy away from smiling around them? Suck the fun out of their lives because joy, and humour, and laughter are only for the healthy?
In case some dumbass wants to spout off on my 'right' to have an opinion on this--yes, I have some experience with cancer. My best friend's mother passed away from a very aggressive breast cancer. My great uncle is pushing eighty after surviving a bout with lung cancer. I do cancer research for a living, in a large research and teaching hospital. Oh, and there seems to be a tendency towards Alzheimer's in my family, which is a really scary way to go.
I feel for the parent poster's nephew, and everyone who is facing cancer. It is scary, and it isn't funny. What I see here on Slashdot, though, it not people laughing at Jobs' cancer. I see people laughing with Jobs, because he's going to beat cancer. I see people laughing at Jobs for the same reasons they always have, and it's a taste of normality. I see people laughing at Apple, because it's friendly ribbing that Jobs is used to. He's one of the geek family; he took the time to tell us from his hospital bed what kind of hardware he was emailing from. The parent poster still plays games and jokes with his nephew, doesn't he?
A-. I'd suggest rinsing or moderate soaking in a couple of changes of lukewarm distilled water. Putting it through the washing machine introduces all kinds of new opportunities for mechanical damage, and you might get trouble from mineral deposits if your local water is particularly hard.
Still, good for the Canon rep for taking a shot at it, and having the confidence to recommend doing that to their product.
In short, the boss had it coming to him, and it's a fucking disgrace that his ass wasn't handed to him on a platter, plus the admin getting a prize for his initiative.
Really?
How would you feel if your employees (or coworkers) took it upon themselves to install spyware on your computer for several months to 'monitor your productivity'?
Doesn't matter if they're reading the emails to and from your wife about your upcoming medical appointments, does it?
You're not concerned that the screenshots will be cherrypicked so that it seems you spend 50% of your time on Slashdot, are you?
You wouldn't mind if they listened to and recorded all of your phone conversations either, right?
You're not worried about people recording every minute of your workday, because you've got nothing to hide.
Would you want to work in a workplace where any other employee with a grudge against you felt justified in installing spyware on your computer?
I had always thought that there must be some really scientific reason for this, but now it occurs to me that it might just be ignorance.
The heart pumps about 300 liters per hour--that's about five liters per minute. Your patient contains about five liters of blood. If you sever the aorta, do the math....
Blood vessels are kind of squishy, and they're under pressure (much harder than covering a hole in a vacuum line). You can't see through blood, either, so the surgical field is a mess--try stitching in a patch to a floppy pipe (don't forget to connect both ends!) immersed in opaque liquid. If the field clears, then it means that your patient is out of blood, and you're screwed again.
Yes, it's possible to clamp some vessels for a few minutes and effect repairs, but if something major goes, you're in a lot of trouble.
I agree with your statements, except for one thing, that nmr is closer to the in vivo reality than xray. Recent beliefs are that if you calculate the content of a cell and compare it to its volume, you end up much more with a xray like environment than a nmr like one
That's an excellent point. I suppose I should have posited that where the two techniques show good agreement--and this is often the case--then we're probably at a reasonable approximation of the in vivo structure. Cheers.
Oh, FYI-the prion 'dies' at around 1000 C. You'd kill any patient you try to 'clean'. Perhaps it resonates at a different frequency than the normal folded sequence. Detection(absorption) and irradication(more power) might be possible.
It doesn't take a thousand degrees to eliminate a protein. Diamond will ignite at less than that temperature.
Extended autoclaving at 135 C or immersion in 1.0 N sodium hydroxide will positively disinfect prion-contaminated objects. Granted, those conditions would also kill a patient, but let's not go overboard.
It's bloody difficult to eradicate--we don't have any techniques to do so yet. Perhaps something antibody based would work--something that will recognize the uniquely misfolded prion. I can also see this being a potential application for gene therapy. Regardless, it's a tough nut to crack. On the other hand, it is by no means alone in being an incurable, progressive, degenerative illness. Are the drug companies actually suppressing cures for all of cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, MS, ALS, etc.?
I'll leave the full debunking of the conspiracy theories to someone else. The notion of a pharmaceutical company deliberately murdering people to quiet them is appealing, but this is a dumb way to go about it. If you're trying to silence someone, you don't give them a disease that takes years to manifest--you hire a hit man. They'd also need to get your physician on side, unless you're in the habit of accepting injections from random individuals.
Incidentally, one of the symptoms of CJD can be paranoia. Hm.
That burying cattle for instance, leaves these proteins in the ground and that they don't ever break down. Is that true?
The prion proteins tend to be fairly durable, but extended exposure to high temperatures or harsh chemicals will eventually degrade or digest them. (Hospital guidelines for decontaminating instruments exposed to prions involve autoclaving at >130 degrees Celsius or soaking in 1.0 N sodium hydroxide. Hospitals tend to be pretty conservative, however.) Full-strength bleach or fairly concentrated hydrogen peroxide would probably also take care of mild prion contamination.
If you've got time to spare, prions will break down on their own. Exposure to open air and sunshine will do it. I would expect that soil microbes would be able to digest the stuff, albeit slowly. Sure, they'll remain the ground for a little while, but they're by no means indestructible. Formalin-formic acid treatment will also inactivate prions; I believe this is what is usually done with tissue samples.
Your body can probably cope with a small exposure to prions--your cells have mechanisms that are designed to recognize and digest misfolded proteins. (It happens fairly regularly; if the body couldn't cope with the occasional oops we'd *all* have CJD. My own area of study is a family of so-called protein chaperones which carry out these folding, refolding, and disposal tasks.)
If that's true, the followup question is what do the do with the remains of the study rats?
In general, I would expect the study rats to be disposed of in the same way as most other experimental animals: incineration. It gives you a nice, clean, essentially guaranteed destruction of pathogens, including prions. My understanding is that a lot of the cattle corpses in the UK and elsewhere were actually burned, rather than buried.
I'm sure. How many labs are reading it and beginning similar experiments of their own? Other labs should be able to duplicate the results, or not. And if independent results do not show prion disease sooner in the innoculated mice than the controls, then this paper looks foolish.
The problem is that the important time points are at six hundred or so days--this is an experiment that will take two years to run, even after the months soaked up getting approvals for the animal work and acquiring the proteins and miscellany to carry out the protocol. Allow a few months lead time for peer review and publication, and it will be three years or more before a repeat of the experiment can be reported. That's one of the catches of the scientific method--although in principle others can repeat a published experiment to verify results, often it's too expensive or inconvenient. Nobody wants to invest years verifying someone else's result, because in the likely case that the work is confirmed, there's very little to publish (think "me too!" comments on Slashdot.)
On the other hand, I imagine that similar studies are underway in other models with related prion proteins. Actually, that's more interesting anyway--if we can see a general pattern of results rather than just a one-off specific case of (likely) prion disease.
Yes, but there have been 150 *human* deaths (so far) from vCJD due to the BSE outbreak here in Britain.
On the other hand, people typically consume several kilograms of beef each year. Further, many of the cases linked to BSE involve people who work closely with cattle and beef products.
If the researchers were wading around knee deep in mouse carcasses, butchering them for sale, or eating the diseased mice--yes, there would be cause for concern. The grandparent post is right--vCJD/BSE/scrapie/etc. just don't count as 'highly contagious'.
Does that mean it maintains the same structure in other situations, such as in vivo?
Yes, pretty much.
We now have structures for a lot of molecules that interact with DNA. DNA that doesn't have Watson and Crick's proposed structure in general won't work with all the proteins that bind to DNA. Sure, you can also suggest that the conformations that these proteins adopt when crystallized are not identical to their in vivo shapes, but it all hangs together pretty consistently.
More recently, NMR has been used to determine protein structures for proteins in solution--this gets you much closer to the in vivo state, and these results generally line up well with the x-ray crystallographic structures.
Electron microscopy of DNA supports the double-helix structure.
NMR experiments also support the double helix under all but some weird circumstances. The Nucleic Acid Database at Rutgers has a very cool collection of NMR and x-ray DNA structures.
In general, DNA exists in a double-helix form. The weird examples above show what happens in a few unusual cases: They represent a vanishingly small proportion of normal DNA--stuff that wouldn't show up in Watson and Crick's work, or configurations that have been deliberately engineered. So yes--skepticism might have been warranted fifty years ago, but we've been past any uncertainty about the predominant form of DNA for decades.
And thus begin the endless debates on whether IBM or SCO shot first.
SCO shot first, but the gun jammed. And it was very small caliber anyway. And on closer examination it appeared to be carved out of soft cheese of some sort.
IBM has spent the last year carefully preparing to return 'fire', using its powerful orbiting battle station built entirely from defunct RMA'd hard drives.
... it was the most influential book of the century...
...in the field of fantasy. Not to be too hard on JRR, but there are a number of authors of both fiction and nonfiction that I would hate to describe as less influential. I mean, even an unabashed fanboy on TheOneRing.net contents himself with describing Tolkien as only one of the most influential authors of the last century.
I'm not saying I agree with the philosophies of all of the following, but some names do come to mind. How about Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)? Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)? Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)? JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye is best known, though IMHO not his best work)? George Orwell (1984)?
What I would like in an ebook reader would be an exemption so that I do not have to shut the damn thing down during take-off and landing. with a real book I can kill 30 or 40 pages during this time.
On the other hand, I'd be much happier if you didn't have your ebook out when we were taking off and landing. Forget electronic noise for a moment--if there's a serious incident, then an ebook of comfortable size becomes a projectile in the cabin. Magazines, newspapers, and paperbacks usually have a bit more give to them. From a safety standpoint, hardcover books should probably be stowed, too.
There are too many "knobs." The exposed interfaces are either too complicated, even with documentation, or too weak and limited. Security on Windows is hard to configure correctly (try setting up IPSEC).
You really shouldn't call Windows users that. They can't help it.
And don't make me do a Beavis and Butthead laugh for following a comment about 'knobs' with one about 'exposed interfaces'.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they weren't trying to rip of your intellectual property...maybe they just didn't want to go to the time, inconvenience, and expense of training someone who was planning to jump ship and start a (competing?) company in the near future.
Damn. I mistyped apostrophe. Odd that nobody has commented....
Dude--wealth, influence, popularity, knowledge, and ownership of material goods are almost always means by which one can encourage or coerce the use of physical force. Just because that use of force (or implicit threat of use of force) is sometimes nested many layers deep behind other, friendlier concepts doesn't mean that it isn't there.
Mandela had power, ultimately, because of his ability to influence people. That influence, in turn, meant that he could influence both individuals and nations with 'power' in the coarse, physical sense that the parent describes. That power in turn led to things like the enforcement of trade sanctions, and support for the transition to non-apartheid government. The real power lay with Mandela and those like him, because they were the ones that ultimately dictated where physical, economic, and political force were brought to bear.
Half a billion dollars, and two beers for every man, woman, and child on earth...and instead they bought Lycos?
Dumbasses.
Thank God for the apotrophe's. Otherwise, I would never have known that the suffix'es were com'ing.
Cheer's.
First of all, how do you know that the samples are actually randomly chosen? You're going to take this guy's word for it? What if he's just selected the Solitaire screenshots? What if his boss plays solitaire while making phone calls and eating lunch?
He obviously has more issues with his supervisor than this--actually, he has some issues, period. In addition to his boss' machine, he also installed spyware on his wife's computer--they share the same workplace. It's possible that the only two coworkers he suspected of misusing computing resources happened to be his boss and his wife...but it sure looks suspicious.
Let's see here--the screenshots purportedly cover a period of 105 working days, over seven months. I'm a little surprised by that--there should be closer to 150 or so working days in that period. Unless the boss took eleven weeks of vacation during that period, that's quite a chunk of time unaccounted for. Perhaps the guy actually gets a lot of work done without using his computer.
The arrangement of shortcuts and whatnot on his desktop strongly suggest someone who is not particularly comfortable with a computer--it's probably one of millions of desktop paperweights adorning desks of borderline computer illiterates everywhere. He probably prefers to avoid working on the computer as much as possible.
At eight hours per day, 105 days is 840 hours. The screenshots are taken every (approximately) half hour of computer usage, so 414 screenshots is 207 hours' worth. If the guy was playing on his lunch and coffee breaks, then that's 105 hours that are on his own time. That leaves us with 102 hours 'wasted'--about an hour per day. If he plays solitaire while he's on the phone or while other departments have him on hold, that hour could be quite a bit less. This also depends on how exactly the software counts idle time. (If he played solitaire for five minutes, then the software waits for five minutes without input to flip to an 'idle' state, then his solitaire usage gets double-counted.)
That 'hour per day' also neglects the missing eleven weeks. If we include the days he didn't use his computer, that brings us down to forty minutes per day. What if the guy is very good at his job? What if he has a habit of staying an extra hour or two at the end of the day, or arriving early? Maybe he just tries to stretch out his work day because he's fighting with the wife. So far, what we've been given to read is only one side of the story.
The employee was required to report and document 'misuse' of computer resources. Fine. He reported it to--presumably--human resources or the equivalent. They sat on it. That's their prerogative. If the boss' performance is acceptable in other respects, perhaps his solitaire habit deserves only a slap on the wrists.
Public sector or private, it's not appropriate for a sysadmin to spy on any employee without a damn good reason. "Because I thought HR wasn't doing enough about it" isn't a good reason.
Quite frankly, firing the sysadmin in question seems to have proven an excellent decision. By posting the screenshots, he's announced to every future potential employer, "If I perceive I have been treated unfairly, I'll post pictures of your desktop on the Internet."
It's amusing, but not surprising: the current paper doesn't need to cite those other papers. It doesn't refer to their research or conclusions. It just counts their citations. The sources for the citation counts, plus sources for the techniques used to analyze the data, should properly be cited.
That's great, until you actually want to sell or use the software in North America or Europe....
That is the difference between noble altruism and fear-mongering.
I thought it was the difference between copyrights and patents. The statements above are not mutually exclusive....
In general, the remarks I have seen have been respectful of Steve's condition. Yes, some have shown a sense of humour, and some have taken a few shots at Apple's warranty plans. It should be noted that Steve has an excellent prognosis. Non-metastatic cancer, well localized and readily excised. People would be more circumspect if the outcome were more in doubt.
Somber, humourless expressions of support are all well and good for politicians, and they're fine from close friends and family--in moderation.
From anybody else, come on. For people who are ill, the last thing they need are folks moping morosely around their hospital bed acting like they're already dead. Steve expects to be all right, and he's apparently quite well enough to be plugging the Powerbook and AirPort from his bed. Yes, he has cancer. Yes, he's having surgery. It's more serious than a tonsillectomy, but easier than a coronary artery bypass graft. For that matter, it will probably be done laparascopically, so it's less traumatic than, say, a C-section.
The problem is that word 'cancer'. It seems to have the same magical effect as 'terrorism'. The words are the ultimate trump cards in medicine and politics, respectively. Hear either one, and you're supposed to sit in stony, respectful, mournful silence.
Damn it, get real! These people are our friends and family. Should we stop laughing with them just because they're ill? Treat them differently? Shy away from smiling around them? Suck the fun out of their lives because joy, and humour, and laughter are only for the healthy?
In case some dumbass wants to spout off on my 'right' to have an opinion on this--yes, I have some experience with cancer. My best friend's mother passed away from a very aggressive breast cancer. My great uncle is pushing eighty after surviving a bout with lung cancer. I do cancer research for a living, in a large research and teaching hospital. Oh, and there seems to be a tendency towards Alzheimer's in my family, which is a really scary way to go.
I feel for the parent poster's nephew, and everyone who is facing cancer. It is scary, and it isn't funny. What I see here on Slashdot, though, it not people laughing at Jobs' cancer. I see people laughing with Jobs, because he's going to beat cancer. I see people laughing at Jobs for the same reasons they always have, and it's a taste of normality. I see people laughing at Apple, because it's friendly ribbing that Jobs is used to. He's one of the geek family; he took the time to tell us from his hospital bed what kind of hardware he was emailing from. The parent poster still plays games and jokes with his nephew, doesn't he?
A-. I'd suggest rinsing or moderate soaking in a couple of changes of lukewarm distilled water. Putting it through the washing machine introduces all kinds of new opportunities for mechanical damage, and you might get trouble from mineral deposits if your local water is particularly hard.
Still, good for the Canon rep for taking a shot at it, and having the confidence to recommend doing that to their product.
Really?
How would you feel if your employees (or coworkers) took it upon themselves to install spyware on your computer for several months to 'monitor your productivity'?
Doesn't matter if they're reading the emails to and from your wife about your upcoming medical appointments, does it?
You're not concerned that the screenshots will be cherrypicked so that it seems you spend 50% of your time on Slashdot, are you?
You wouldn't mind if they listened to and recorded all of your phone conversations either, right?
You're not worried about people recording every minute of your workday, because you've got nothing to hide.
Would you want to work in a workplace where any other employee with a grudge against you felt justified in installing spyware on your computer?
The heart pumps about 300 liters per hour--that's about five liters per minute. Your patient contains about five liters of blood. If you sever the aorta, do the math....
Blood vessels are kind of squishy, and they're under pressure (much harder than covering a hole in a vacuum line). You can't see through blood, either, so the surgical field is a mess--try stitching in a patch to a floppy pipe (don't forget to connect both ends!) immersed in opaque liquid. If the field clears, then it means that your patient is out of blood, and you're screwed again.
Yes, it's possible to clamp some vessels for a few minutes and effect repairs, but if something major goes, you're in a lot of trouble.
That's an excellent point. I suppose I should have posited that where the two techniques show good agreement--and this is often the case--then we're probably at a reasonable approximation of the in vivo structure. Cheers.
It doesn't take a thousand degrees to eliminate a protein. Diamond will ignite at less than that temperature.
Extended autoclaving at 135 C or immersion in 1.0 N sodium hydroxide will positively disinfect prion-contaminated objects. Granted, those conditions would also kill a patient, but let's not go overboard.
It's bloody difficult to eradicate--we don't have any techniques to do so yet. Perhaps something antibody based would work--something that will recognize the uniquely misfolded prion. I can also see this being a potential application for gene therapy. Regardless, it's a tough nut to crack. On the other hand, it is by no means alone in being an incurable, progressive, degenerative illness. Are the drug companies actually suppressing cures for all of cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, MS, ALS, etc.?
I'll leave the full debunking of the conspiracy theories to someone else. The notion of a pharmaceutical company deliberately murdering people to quiet them is appealing, but this is a dumb way to go about it. If you're trying to silence someone, you don't give them a disease that takes years to manifest--you hire a hit man. They'd also need to get your physician on side, unless you're in the habit of accepting injections from random individuals.
Incidentally, one of the symptoms of CJD can be paranoia. Hm.
The prion proteins tend to be fairly durable, but extended exposure to high temperatures or harsh chemicals will eventually degrade or digest them. (Hospital guidelines for decontaminating instruments exposed to prions involve autoclaving at >130 degrees Celsius or soaking in 1.0 N sodium hydroxide. Hospitals tend to be pretty conservative, however.) Full-strength bleach or fairly concentrated hydrogen peroxide would probably also take care of mild prion contamination.
If you've got time to spare, prions will break down on their own. Exposure to open air and sunshine will do it. I would expect that soil microbes would be able to digest the stuff, albeit slowly. Sure, they'll remain the ground for a little while, but they're by no means indestructible. Formalin-formic acid treatment will also inactivate prions; I believe this is what is usually done with tissue samples.
Your body can probably cope with a small exposure to prions--your cells have mechanisms that are designed to recognize and digest misfolded proteins. (It happens fairly regularly; if the body couldn't cope with the occasional oops we'd *all* have CJD. My own area of study is a family of so-called protein chaperones which carry out these folding, refolding, and disposal tasks.)
If that's true, the followup question is what do the do with the remains of the study rats?
In general, I would expect the study rats to be disposed of in the same way as most other experimental animals: incineration. It gives you a nice, clean, essentially guaranteed destruction of pathogens, including prions. My understanding is that a lot of the cattle corpses in the UK and elsewhere were actually burned, rather than buried.
The problem is that the important time points are at six hundred or so days--this is an experiment that will take two years to run, even after the months soaked up getting approvals for the animal work and acquiring the proteins and miscellany to carry out the protocol. Allow a few months lead time for peer review and publication, and it will be three years or more before a repeat of the experiment can be reported. That's one of the catches of the scientific method--although in principle others can repeat a published experiment to verify results, often it's too expensive or inconvenient. Nobody wants to invest years verifying someone else's result, because in the likely case that the work is confirmed, there's very little to publish (think "me too!" comments on Slashdot.)
On the other hand, I imagine that similar studies are underway in other models with related prion proteins. Actually, that's more interesting anyway--if we can see a general pattern of results rather than just a one-off specific case of (likely) prion disease.
On the other hand, people typically consume several kilograms of beef each year. Further, many of the cases linked to BSE involve people who work closely with cattle and beef products.
If the researchers were wading around knee deep in mouse carcasses, butchering them for sale, or eating the diseased mice--yes, there would be cause for concern. The grandparent post is right--vCJD/BSE/scrapie/etc. just don't count as 'highly contagious'.
Yes, pretty much.
We now have structures for a lot of molecules that interact with DNA. DNA that doesn't have Watson and Crick's proposed structure in general won't work with all the proteins that bind to DNA. Sure, you can also suggest that the conformations that these proteins adopt when crystallized are not identical to their in vivo shapes, but it all hangs together pretty consistently.
More recently, NMR has been used to determine protein structures for proteins in solution--this gets you much closer to the in vivo state, and these results generally line up well with the x-ray crystallographic structures.
Electron microscopy of DNA supports the double-helix structure.
NMR experiments also support the double helix under all but some weird circumstances. The Nucleic Acid Database at Rutgers has a very cool collection of NMR and x-ray DNA structures.
In general, DNA exists in a double-helix form. The weird examples above show what happens in a few unusual cases: They represent a vanishingly small proportion of normal DNA--stuff that wouldn't show up in Watson and Crick's work, or configurations that have been deliberately engineered. So yes--skepticism might have been warranted fifty years ago, but we've been past any uncertainty about the predominant form of DNA for decades.
SCO shot first, but the gun jammed. And it was very small caliber anyway. And on closer examination it appeared to be carved out of soft cheese of some sort.
IBM has spent the last year carefully preparing to return 'fire', using its powerful orbiting battle station built entirely from defunct RMA'd hard drives.
I forgot to insert the link. Mea culpa.
I'm not saying I agree with the philosophies of all of the following, but some names do come to mind. How about Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)? Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)? Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)? JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye is best known, though IMHO not his best work)? George Orwell (1984)?
On the other hand, I'd be much happier if you didn't have your ebook out when we were taking off and landing. Forget electronic noise for a moment--if there's a serious incident, then an ebook of comfortable size becomes a projectile in the cabin. Magazines, newspapers, and paperbacks usually have a bit more give to them. From a safety standpoint, hardcover books should probably be stowed, too.
Really? I find it just allows me to follow Slashdot more closely. :D
You really shouldn't call Windows users that. They can't help it.
And don't make me do a Beavis and Butthead laugh for following a comment about 'knobs' with one about 'exposed interfaces'.