Actually, the bacteria they used has this aspect covered. From the MicrobeWiki (ridiculously informative, btw):
Thermotogales are thermophilic or hyperthermophilic, growing best around 80C and in the neutral pH range (R. Huber et al., 2004). The salt tolerance of Thermotoga species varies greatly; while some display an extremely high salt tolerance, others are restricted to low-salinity habitats. This aerobic gram-negative organism is typically nonsporeforming and metabolizes several carbohydrates, both simple and complex, including glucose, sucrose, starch, cellulose, and xylan (EBI, 2003).
(Bolding mine) So it eats cellulose and makes hydrogen. Mildly useful, I would say.
Looks like I lost my arrow in the equation there. It should read:
N2 + 8H+ + 8e- + 16 ATP -----> 2NH3 + H2 + 16ADP + 16 Pi
One diatomic nitrogen, eight protons, eight electrons, and sixteen adenosine triphosphates form two ammonia, two diatomic hydrogen (which we'd like), sixteen adenosine diphosphate, and sixteen inorganic phosphate. The nitrogen comes from the atmosphere, the protons and electrons from the bacterium (the enzyme nitrogenase helps with providing electrons), and the ATP from the bacteria's metabolism, food for which comes courtesy the bacterium's symbiotic buddy, the legume.
It wouldn't necessarily have to have any impact on the bacteria themselves. The equation for biological nitrogen fixation is N2 + 8H+ + 8e- + 16 ATP 2NH3 + H2 + 16ADP + 16 Pi (where Pi is inorganic phosphate)
Basically, nitrogen-fixing bacteria use an enzyme called nitrogenase to grab a nitrogen molecule (N2), donate electrons to the nitrogen molecule to break the triple bond, then bond protons to the nitrogen -3 ions to form stable ammonia, which the bacteria then incorporates into amino acids- the inorganic becomes organic. This requires a large amount of energy, supplied by a very large amount of ATP breaking apart. Notice that on the right side of the equation, hydrogen gas is produced. Normally, the bacterium reclaims this hydrogen through use of another enzyme. However, with the hydrogen uptake enzyme disabled, the bacteria should release this gas into the environment. I say "should" here because I will admit the possibility of something unforeseen happening.
However, the basic equation does not call for molecular hydrogen as a reactant; it calls for protons, which can be found pretty freely in any aqueous environment. Just raise the bacteria in a slightly acidic enviroment, and they should have all the protons they could ever need. The bacteria already have an amazing symbiosis set up with the legume plants they live on, so really all humans need to put into the system is the effort to keep a bunch of bean plants alive (which is helped by the nitrogen-fixing bacteria on the roots that naturally provide fertilizer for the legumes). All humans would really need to put into the system is water, sunlight, and nitrogen gas. I think this is a really clever idea, actually.
I wonder if it might also be possible to use engineered nitrogen-fixing bacteria for their ammonia in order to replace the Haber-Bosch process, which, while a triumph of industrial chemistry, is responsible for something like 1% of the world's energy use.
The parent is exactly right, and I should have specified that I meant an amino acid with a basic sidechain, which is to say say histidine, arginine, or lysine. It should be noted that all amino acids are what's known as zwitterions, where oppositely charged groups exist on the same molecule. The amine on one end can act as a base (it's like ammonia) while the carboxylic acid end can act as an acid. As the parent notes, what differentiates them are their sidechains. Alanine, for example, has a methyl group for a sidechain, which is neutral and hydrophobic. Glutamic acid, or glutamate, has another carboxylic acid group in its sidechain, so it tends to have acidic properties, particularly when its acid and amine ends are both bound up in peptide bonds. Lysine has an amino group in its sidechain, so it tends to act as a base.
In terms of my wondering about the general absence of basic sidechain amino acids in the Miller-Urey vials, I figured histidine would be unlikely due to its complex imidazole (ring) sidechain, and arginine would be unlikely due to its complex guanidinium sidechain, so my question really was, why was there no lysine? I looked into it, and apparently making lysine is really hard. Both synthetic and biosynthetic routes are complex, usually involving some sort of ring-closing and ring-opening steps. The most common biosynthetic pathway recruits nine different enzymes for the process. It's an essential amino acid in most vertebrates, including humans- we've lost the ability to make it ourselves and must get it from our diet. It is therefore not surprising that it wasn't generated randomly by mixing water, ammonia, and methane together and shooting some electricity through.
The distribution of amino acids is quite interesting. Eight of the amino acids (glycine, alanine, valine, serine, phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and glutamic acid) are from the 20 "standard" amino acids directly coded for in DNA. Seven more are isomers, close homologs, or simple derivatives of the standard seven (isovaline, 2-methylserine, etc.). Ornithine is not found in proteins, but is found as an intermediate both the natural synthesis and breakdown of other amino acids. It is curiously enough the only amino acid found in the vial which is a base- I would have expected more, given all the ammonia in the experiment atmosphere. I would have expected glutamine and asparagine as well, but they're pretty fragile, and if present, may have been lost in the workup.
Five are aminobutyric or aminoisobutyric acids, which are also not coded for by DNA, but are involved in biochemical processes (the best known example is gamma-aminobutryric acid, GABA, a neurotransmitter). No sulfur in the vial, so the absence of cysteine and methionine is unsurprising. Proline is absent, but in organisms, it is formed from an enzyme-catalyzed ring formation from glutamic acid, so it may not form easily in test tubes.
Phenylalanine was the only aromatic amino acid found, which is unsurprising, given the complexity- in organisms, they tend to be synthesized by multistep enzyme-catalyzed routes, and most organisms high on the food chain have lost this ability. Notably, phenylalanine seems to be present in the vial at about one-millionth the concentration of glycine, so its production is a pretty rare event. And all of the amino acids produced were racemic mixtures, whereas nearly all amino acids utilized in nature are the L-enantiomer. It is still a mystery as to when homochirality first arose.
I wouldn't go quite that far, at least not yet. Looking at the last ten Chemistry Nobels, it's about 50-50 between molecular biology and the rest of chemistry. Last year's prize went for work in surface catalysis, 2005 went to the olefin metathesis guys, 2001 was for chiral syntheses, 2000 was for conductive polymers, 1999 was for femtosecond kinetics, and 1998 was for quantum chemistry.
I'll grant that chemistry doesn't have the big questions to solve like physics does, but there are still substantial discoveries out there to be made. Synthesis and catalysis can always be improved, as can analytical techniques. There's been a big push in modern chemistry to make industrial chemistry more enviromentally friendly, which I'm sure will lead to at least one prize specifically for this.
The issue is that there is no Nobel in Biology- there are Nobels in Chemistry and in Physiology or Medicine. While there have been some fascinating experiments using GFP to illuminate (sorry) processes in human cells, what these three did probably is not best categorized as a medical advance. It's been pretty common practice, especially in the last couple decades, to consider advances in biochemistry/molecular biology as eligible for the Nobel in Chemistry.
That's usually true, but not always the case- a good example of a Physics Nobel that did not lag its associated discovery long was when Carlo Rubbia led a team at CERN which discovered the W and Z bosons in 1983, and then was awarded the Nobel for that work in 1984.
Modern transportation networks, industrialized agriculture/animal husbandry, and globalization all make it less likely that a zoonotic disease will be able to remain contained in a small population for the length of time HIV managed. The construction of road networks deep into the rainforests of the Congo (sometimes described as "the AIDS Highway") connected a huge biological reservoir with the wider world, and the construction of the international air travel network eliminated many of the natural geographic barriers to the spread of disease. It is of note that that Ebola and Marburg both found their way out of the jungle at about the same time as HIV; Marburg is naturally endemic to central Africa, but gets its name from an outbreak in Germany.
As development continues into the high-biodiversity tropics, we will continue to be confronted by new diseases. What will disappear is endemism, where a disease can percolate among a small reservoir for decades before breaking out into the wider world. AIDS is thought to have trickled through a network of truck drivers and prostitutes across central Africa, until it finally made it to people who hopped on planes and spread it to Europe and North America. Now, someone can pick up a disease in a jungle (or a livestock processing plant) and bring it to New York, London, or Shanghai the next morning. On the other hand, reporting and containment of outbreaks has become faster- in large part from painful lessons learned from the spread of AIDS.
To more precisely answer the parent's question though-"What diseases that crossed the species barrier in the last 30 years will we be talking about in 2078?"- my guess is we'll still be dealing with foodborne microorganisms, especially the pathogenic E. coli strains, with the expectation that one of those will pop up with a nasty new enterohemorrhagic strain in the vein of E. coli O157:H7. I think we'll still be talking about prion diseases given their relation to the food supply as well. Their first recorded human cases are earlier than 30 years ago, but I'd argue for the emerging future importance of West Nile virus and dengue fever as the types of mosquitoes that spread them have greatly increased their ranges. Probably some sort of viral respiratory ailment (like SARS)- they just spread so easily.
Factoid about E. coli: the O157:H7 strain, the one which causes the most serious human illness, is nothing new. It is estimated to have picked up its nasty shigatoxin (distinguishing it from the more benign strains) between 2 and 4 million years ago. The first recorded outbreak in humans, however, occurred in 1982.
Hilbert's original problems weren't all particularly well posed either- most of the ones that can be now considered "settled" were well-posed in 1900, as well as some of those outstanding (the conditions of the Riemann Hypothesis are clear, for example), but the original 23 contain a number of vague "discipline-extension" problems as well. Number 23 for example is "extend the methods of the calculus of variations," a task to which a large number of mathematicians can lay claim.
Wow, I haven't come across that one before, but that book sounds excellent- right at the heart of what I was trying to describe. Thanks for the recommendation.
As an chemist (pharmaceutical development, so mostly analytical on small organic molecules) who sat through many an o-chem class with pre-meds, I am of course biased towards the subject, one of the most useful things I have ever learned. That being said, while I will argue for the importance of organic chemistry to medical professionals, it seems clear to me, from what I heard in my education and from what I see from the comments here, that the lessons o-chem can impart are not being absorbed.
Organic chemistry is the basis of pharmacology. Organic chemistry is the basis of molecular biology. From the future doctor's point of view, that should make it required reading. Do you want to know what makes some drugs orally active and others parenteral only? Do you want to know why one drug has a thousand times the activity, or a thousand times the metabolic clearance, of another drug in the same class? Do you wish to know the mechanisms underlying lipid storage disorders, protein misfolding, or genetic mutation? Is it conceivable you might ever want to develop pharmaceuticals alongside your old/. pal reverseengineer? Organic chemistry lays the groundwork for all of these things. I don't think it's asking too much for doctors who plan on treating diseases based on proteins, DNA, and sugars to know the basic chemistry of amino acids, nucleotides, and carbohydrates, as well as a basic notion of the reaction mechanisms. There's a sweet spot of knowledge here: I don't care if my physician can tell me the products of the Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky reaction, but knowing the difference between an aldose and a ketose would be helpful.
Here's the rub: the mechanisms are really the key to knowing o-chem. Unfortunately, it wasn't until my third semester of orgo, when it was up to orgo for the people who genuinely enjoyed it, that I really saw this. If you know what the electrons will do, and why they will do it, you understand organic reactions, and you don't need to memorize everything. This is where I think organic chemistry education is really falling short. At my alma mater, in particular, there are two levels that most chemistry courses are taught at. Being a chemistry nerd, I took the accelerated track all the way (adv. p-chem was like chewing glass). Only the most ambitious and self-confident pre-meds followed this track; the rest followed the regular sequence.
The problem with the way "normal" organic chemistry is taught to pre-meds is that in order to "make it easier," it tends to get abstracted into meaninglessness. Pre-meds in orgo are often like Searle's Chinese room: they can give you the right answers, but they don't understand them. The whole thing's backwards: advanced organic students are taught the basics, the essence, the very point of organic chem while basic students suffer with their fat deck of flashcards and wonder if a C is going to keep them out of Hopkins.
If I were to fix this, I would keep o-chem a requirement for pre-meds, but it would be a quarter-length course at most, or folded into the start of a decent biochemistry course. It would focus hard on functional groups found in biological molecules- amines and carbonyl compounds especially- and discussion of the physiological consequences of reactions. More time drawing arrows showing electron flow. More time learning about equilibrium and kinetics. No time spent memorizing different ways to do electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions. What I want physicians to really know about benzene is that it is poisonous.
Actually, what got us into this bisphenol A mess was that polycarbonate laboratory bottles became popular among regular consumers- chemists who enjoyed outdoor pursuits started taking Nalgene bottles (which are light, stable over a wide range of conditions, and nearly shatterproof) out of the lab and into the woods.
While I am not the sort to get caught up in scares about chemicals , I will admit the bisphenol A thing is a concern. This is Bisphenol A, and this is diethylstilbestrol. A nonsteroidal estrogen agonist, DES was once prescribed to reduce the risk of miscarriages. Banned from that use in the early 1970s due to it increasing rates of cancers and birth defects, DES is currently causing rare birth defects and cancers in the grandchildren of the women it was originally given to. Endocrine disruptors can be extremely potent, with persistant harmful effects, and I think it a prudent course that such compounds be identified and their use minimized.
That being said, it's bewildering to see people panic over BPA and then see an explosion of products touting their levels of soy isoflavones. Everyone knows those are estrogens, right?
A tremendous loss. It seemed like David Foster Wallace could write brilliantly about everything (and with his famous tendency for digressions, footnotes, and endnotes, did his best to actually write about everything). Brilliant nonfiction essays, hilarious short stories, and of course, mindwarping novels. Infinite Jest contains multitudes- it's a novel about tennis and addiction and entertainment and American hegemony and Quebec separatism and commercialism and physical deformity and a thousand other things. The novel is worth reading for the description of the game of Eschaton alone. Infinite Jest was a major undertaking to read- I cannot imagine what it was to write it- but richly rewarding.
R.I.P, DFW.
Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?
Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.
on
LHC Flips On Tomorrow
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· Score: 4, Informative
A counter to the argument that any subatomic black holes the LHC produces would behave differently than those produced in cosmic ray collisions in the upper atmosphere is the existence of neutron stars. Cosmic rays are constantly colliding with these objects as well.
Neutron stars present a gravity well surpassed only by that of black holes, so even subatomic black holes moving at relativistic velocities are likely to be pulled in. The densities of neutron stars are such that if it is indeed possible for a subatomic black hole to grow to macroscale by encountering nearby matter, there would be no place likelier. After billions of years of cosmic ray bombardment, one should expect at the very least to find lots of black holes with masses between the Chandrasehkar and Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limits (roughly, between 1.4 and 3.0 solar masses), implying that these events are the ultimate fate of neutron stars.
That is not what is observed however; there are in fact no known black holes with masses in that regime, while there are a lot of neutron stars. And it would take much longer than the current lifetime of the universe for a 2 solar mass black hole to evaporate by Hawking radiation, so if they were ever made, they should still be around.
So either subatomic black holes are not produced in energetic collisions of cosmic rays, which is good news because those energies are far greater than what the LHC will produce, or subatomic black holes very, very rarely or never survive to consume massive objects, which is also good news.
There might be some truth to that, actually- ethanol suppresses vasopressin (also known as antidiuretic hormone) secretion, which is why alcoholic beverages tend to have a noticeable diuretic effect in addition to their disinhibition effects.
Well, I think the grandparent post is making the implication that due to substantial van der Waals forces (the forces that hold sheets of graphene together as graphite, as well as the forces most responsible for making sticky things sticky), a graphene monolayer condom would be sort of like covering your penis in double-sided adhesive tape. I'm going to make the argument that this little factoid could, under the right (wrong?) circumstances, could conceivably fall in both categories deemed interesting to the internets.
The original Roman calendar had ten months, yes, and actually only covered about 300 days, with most of winter considered off-calendar. However, by tradition, the second Roman king, Numa Pompilius reformed this calendar and added January and February (at the end of the calendar), giving the year 12 months (and so at this time, the names of December, etc. as numbered months still made sense). This was the calendar used (with modifications) from roughly 700 BC to the introduction of the Julian calendar in 46BC. The calendar of Numa Pompilius ended up with some crazy leaps and intercalations to keep it reasonably in line with the solar year, so reform was definitely due.
In doing so, the Romans consulted with Greek astronomers, who had a lot of data about such things (though the Julian calendar is merely a solar calendar that keeps pretty good time with the moon, and not a true lunisolar calendar like one based on the Metonic cycle would be). Greece at the time of the Antikythera mechanism (about 50-100 years earlier than the Julian reform), had in fact just come under Roman control.
In addition to reforming the "leap" system, January got pushed to the start of the year, making the "number-names" months no longer descriptive, and the months of Quintilis and Sextilis were renamed for Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, respectively.
If I remember the episode correctly, the point of that particular myth wasn't so much whether they could build a working "jetpack," but specifically, if they could do so using some instructions they found on the internet which claimed a person could successfully do so with inexpensive, commonplace parts. What they found was that the instructions were too vague to serve as anything more than guidelines, and even after going over budget to get better quality parts, their machine still had an unacceptable thrust-to-weight ratio and so could not fly with a human passenger.
While they "busted" the feasibility of that particular set of plans, they didn't really attempt to rule out a jetpack altogether. With the resources for proper parts, and the time for proper testing, it's undoubtedly possible to build a working jetpack/rocketbelt/ducted fan harness thing. The issues with personal flight systems have not so much centered around possibility as practicality.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the bacteria they used has this aspect covered. From the MicrobeWiki (ridiculously informative, btw):
(Bolding mine) So it eats cellulose and makes hydrogen. Mildly useful, I would say.
Looks like I lost my arrow in the equation there. It should read:
N2 + 8H+ + 8e- + 16 ATP -----> 2NH3 + H2 + 16ADP + 16 Pi
One diatomic nitrogen, eight protons, eight electrons, and sixteen adenosine triphosphates form two ammonia, two diatomic hydrogen (which we'd like), sixteen adenosine diphosphate, and sixteen inorganic phosphate. The nitrogen comes from the atmosphere, the protons and electrons from the bacterium (the enzyme nitrogenase helps with providing electrons), and the ATP from the bacteria's metabolism, food for which comes courtesy the bacterium's symbiotic buddy, the legume.
N2 + 8H+ + 8e- + 16 ATP 2NH3 + H2 + 16ADP + 16 Pi (where Pi is inorganic phosphate)
Basically, nitrogen-fixing bacteria use an enzyme called nitrogenase to grab a nitrogen molecule (N2), donate electrons to the nitrogen molecule to break the triple bond, then bond protons to the nitrogen -3 ions to form stable ammonia, which the bacteria then incorporates into amino acids- the inorganic becomes organic. This requires a large amount of energy, supplied by a very large amount of ATP breaking apart. Notice that on the right side of the equation, hydrogen gas is produced. Normally, the bacterium reclaims this hydrogen through use of another enzyme. However, with the hydrogen uptake enzyme disabled, the bacteria should release this gas into the environment. I say "should" here because I will admit the possibility of something unforeseen happening.
However, the basic equation does not call for molecular hydrogen as a reactant; it calls for protons, which can be found pretty freely in any aqueous environment. Just raise the bacteria in a slightly acidic enviroment, and they should have all the protons they could ever need. The bacteria already have an amazing symbiosis set up with the legume plants they live on, so really all humans need to put into the system is the effort to keep a bunch of bean plants alive (which is helped by the nitrogen-fixing bacteria on the roots that naturally provide fertilizer for the legumes). All humans would really need to put into the system is water, sunlight, and nitrogen gas. I think this is a really clever idea, actually.
I wonder if it might also be possible to use engineered nitrogen-fixing bacteria for their ammonia in order to replace the Haber-Bosch process, which, while a triumph of industrial chemistry, is responsible for something like 1% of the world's energy use.
The parent is exactly right, and I should have specified that I meant an amino acid with a basic sidechain, which is to say say histidine, arginine, or lysine. It should be noted that all amino acids are what's known as zwitterions, where oppositely charged groups exist on the same molecule. The amine on one end can act as a base (it's like ammonia) while the carboxylic acid end can act as an acid. As the parent notes, what differentiates them are their sidechains. Alanine, for example, has a methyl group for a sidechain, which is neutral and hydrophobic. Glutamic acid, or glutamate, has another carboxylic acid group in its sidechain, so it tends to have acidic properties, particularly when its acid and amine ends are both bound up in peptide bonds. Lysine has an amino group in its sidechain, so it tends to act as a base.
In terms of my wondering about the general absence of basic sidechain amino acids in the Miller-Urey vials, I figured histidine would be unlikely due to its complex imidazole (ring) sidechain, and arginine would be unlikely due to its complex guanidinium sidechain, so my question really was, why was there no lysine? I looked into it, and apparently making lysine is really hard. Both synthetic and biosynthetic routes are complex, usually involving some sort of ring-closing and ring-opening steps. The most common biosynthetic pathway recruits nine different enzymes for the process. It's an essential amino acid in most vertebrates, including humans- we've lost the ability to make it ourselves and must get it from our diet. It is therefore not surprising that it wasn't generated randomly by mixing water, ammonia, and methane together and shooting some electricity through.
The distribution of amino acids is quite interesting. Eight of the amino acids (glycine, alanine, valine, serine, phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and glutamic acid) are from the 20 "standard" amino acids directly coded for in DNA. Seven more are isomers, close homologs, or simple derivatives of the standard seven (isovaline, 2-methylserine, etc.). Ornithine is not found in proteins, but is found as an intermediate both the natural synthesis and breakdown of other amino acids. It is curiously enough the only amino acid found in the vial which is a base- I would have expected more, given all the ammonia in the experiment atmosphere. I would have expected glutamine and asparagine as well, but they're pretty fragile, and if present, may have been lost in the workup.
Five are aminobutyric or aminoisobutyric acids, which are also not coded for by DNA, but are involved in biochemical processes (the best known example is gamma-aminobutryric acid, GABA, a neurotransmitter). No sulfur in the vial, so the absence of cysteine and methionine is unsurprising. Proline is absent, but in organisms, it is formed from an enzyme-catalyzed ring formation from glutamic acid, so it may not form easily in test tubes.
Phenylalanine was the only aromatic amino acid found, which is unsurprising, given the complexity- in organisms, they tend to be synthesized by multistep enzyme-catalyzed routes, and most organisms high on the food chain have lost this ability. Notably, phenylalanine seems to be present in the vial at about one-millionth the concentration of glycine, so its production is a pretty rare event. And all of the amino acids produced were racemic mixtures, whereas nearly all amino acids utilized in nature are the L-enantiomer. It is still a mystery as to when homochirality first arose.
I wouldn't go quite that far, at least not yet. Looking at the last ten Chemistry Nobels, it's about 50-50 between molecular biology and the rest of chemistry. Last year's prize went for work in surface catalysis, 2005 went to the olefin metathesis guys, 2001 was for chiral syntheses, 2000 was for conductive polymers, 1999 was for femtosecond kinetics, and 1998 was for quantum chemistry.
I'll grant that chemistry doesn't have the big questions to solve like physics does, but there are still substantial discoveries out there to be made. Synthesis and catalysis can always be improved, as can analytical techniques. There's been a big push in modern chemistry to make industrial chemistry more enviromentally friendly, which I'm sure will lead to at least one prize specifically for this.
The issue is that there is no Nobel in Biology- there are Nobels in Chemistry and in Physiology or Medicine. While there have been some fascinating experiments using GFP to illuminate (sorry) processes in human cells, what these three did probably is not best categorized as a medical advance. It's been pretty common practice, especially in the last couple decades, to consider advances in biochemistry/molecular biology as eligible for the Nobel in Chemistry.
That's usually true, but not always the case- a good example of a Physics Nobel that did not lag its associated discovery long was when Carlo Rubbia led a team at CERN which discovered the W and Z bosons in 1983, and then was awarded the Nobel for that work in 1984.
It's the Guinness. Just tastes better the closer you are to St. James's Gate.
Modern transportation networks, industrialized agriculture/animal husbandry, and globalization all make it less likely that a zoonotic disease will be able to remain contained in a small population for the length of time HIV managed. The construction of road networks deep into the rainforests of the Congo (sometimes described as "the AIDS Highway") connected a huge biological reservoir with the wider world, and the construction of the international air travel network eliminated many of the natural geographic barriers to the spread of disease. It is of note that that Ebola and Marburg both found their way out of the jungle at about the same time as HIV; Marburg is naturally endemic to central Africa, but gets its name from an outbreak in Germany.
As development continues into the high-biodiversity tropics, we will continue to be confronted by new diseases. What will disappear is endemism, where a disease can percolate among a small reservoir for decades before breaking out into the wider world. AIDS is thought to have trickled through a network of truck drivers and prostitutes across central Africa, until it finally made it to people who hopped on planes and spread it to Europe and North America. Now, someone can pick up a disease in a jungle (or a livestock processing plant) and bring it to New York, London, or Shanghai the next morning. On the other hand, reporting and containment of outbreaks has become faster- in large part from painful lessons learned from the spread of AIDS.
To more precisely answer the parent's question though-"What diseases that crossed the species barrier in the last 30 years will we be talking about in 2078?"- my guess is we'll still be dealing with foodborne microorganisms, especially the pathogenic E. coli strains, with the expectation that one of those will pop up with a nasty new enterohemorrhagic strain in the vein of E. coli O157:H7. I think we'll still be talking about prion diseases given their relation to the food supply as well. Their first recorded human cases are earlier than 30 years ago, but I'd argue for the emerging future importance of West Nile virus and dengue fever as the types of mosquitoes that spread them have greatly increased their ranges. Probably some sort of viral respiratory ailment (like SARS)- they just spread so easily.
Factoid about E. coli: the O157:H7 strain, the one which causes the most serious human illness, is nothing new. It is estimated to have picked up its nasty shigatoxin (distinguishing it from the more benign strains) between 2 and 4 million years ago. The first recorded outbreak in humans, however, occurred in 1982.
Hilbert's original problems weren't all particularly well posed either- most of the ones that can be now considered "settled" were well-posed in 1900, as well as some of those outstanding (the conditions of the Riemann Hypothesis are clear, for example), but the original 23 contain a number of vague "discipline-extension" problems as well. Number 23 for example is "extend the methods of the calculus of variations," a task to which a large number of mathematicians can lay claim.
Sure, five's bad- but a C|Net story would have spread a list of thirteen items across fifteen pages.
Wow, I haven't come across that one before, but that book sounds excellent- right at the heart of what I was trying to describe. Thanks for the recommendation.
As an chemist (pharmaceutical development, so mostly analytical on small organic molecules) who sat through many an o-chem class with pre-meds, I am of course biased towards the subject, one of the most useful things I have ever learned. That being said, while I will argue for the importance of organic chemistry to medical professionals, it seems clear to me, from what I heard in my education and from what I see from the comments here, that the lessons o-chem can impart are not being absorbed.
Organic chemistry is the basis of pharmacology. Organic chemistry is the basis of molecular biology. From the future doctor's point of view, that should make it required reading. Do you want to know what makes some drugs orally active and others parenteral only? Do you want to know why one drug has a thousand times the activity, or a thousand times the metabolic clearance, of another drug in the same class? Do you wish to know the mechanisms underlying lipid storage disorders, protein misfolding, or genetic mutation? Is it conceivable you might ever want to develop pharmaceuticals alongside your old /. pal reverseengineer? Organic chemistry lays the groundwork for all of these things. I don't think it's asking too much for doctors who plan on treating diseases based on proteins, DNA, and sugars to know the basic chemistry of amino acids, nucleotides, and carbohydrates, as well as a basic notion of the reaction mechanisms. There's a sweet spot of knowledge here: I don't care if my physician can tell me the products of the Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky reaction, but knowing the difference between an aldose and a ketose would be helpful.
Here's the rub: the mechanisms are really the key to knowing o-chem. Unfortunately, it wasn't until my third semester of orgo, when it was up to orgo for the people who genuinely enjoyed it, that I really saw this. If you know what the electrons will do, and why they will do it, you understand organic reactions, and you don't need to memorize everything. This is where I think organic chemistry education is really falling short. At my alma mater, in particular, there are two levels that most chemistry courses are taught at. Being a chemistry nerd, I took the accelerated track all the way (adv. p-chem was like chewing glass). Only the most ambitious and self-confident pre-meds followed this track; the rest followed the regular sequence.
The problem with the way "normal" organic chemistry is taught to pre-meds is that in order to "make it easier," it tends to get abstracted into meaninglessness. Pre-meds in orgo are often like Searle's Chinese room: they can give you the right answers, but they don't understand them. The whole thing's backwards: advanced organic students are taught the basics, the essence, the very point of organic chem while basic students suffer with their fat deck of flashcards and wonder if a C is going to keep them out of Hopkins.
If I were to fix this, I would keep o-chem a requirement for pre-meds, but it would be a quarter-length course at most, or folded into the start of a decent biochemistry course. It would focus hard on functional groups found in biological molecules- amines and carbonyl compounds especially- and discussion of the physiological consequences of reactions. More time drawing arrows showing electron flow. More time learning about equilibrium and kinetics. No time spent memorizing different ways to do electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions. What I want physicians to really know about benzene is that it is poisonous.
Actually, what got us into this bisphenol A mess was that polycarbonate laboratory bottles became popular among regular consumers- chemists who enjoyed outdoor pursuits started taking Nalgene bottles (which are light, stable over a wide range of conditions, and nearly shatterproof) out of the lab and into the woods.
While I am not the sort to get caught up in scares about chemicals , I will admit the bisphenol A thing is a concern. This is Bisphenol A, and this is diethylstilbestrol. A nonsteroidal estrogen agonist, DES was once prescribed to reduce the risk of miscarriages. Banned from that use in the early 1970s due to it increasing rates of cancers and birth defects, DES is currently causing rare birth defects and cancers in the grandchildren of the women it was originally given to. Endocrine disruptors can be extremely potent, with persistant harmful effects, and I think it a prudent course that such compounds be identified and their use minimized.
That being said, it's bewildering to see people panic over BPA and then see an explosion of products touting their levels of soy isoflavones. Everyone knows those are estrogens, right?
A tremendous loss. It seemed like David Foster Wallace could write brilliantly about everything (and with his famous tendency for digressions, footnotes, and endnotes, did his best to actually write about everything). Brilliant nonfiction essays, hilarious short stories, and of course, mindwarping novels. Infinite Jest contains multitudes- it's a novel about tennis and addiction and entertainment and American hegemony and Quebec separatism and commercialism and physical deformity and a thousand other things. The novel is worth reading for the description of the game of Eschaton alone. Infinite Jest was a major undertaking to read- I cannot imagine what it was to write it- but richly rewarding.
R.I.P, DFW.
Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?
A counter to the argument that any subatomic black holes the LHC produces would behave differently than those produced in cosmic ray collisions in the upper atmosphere is the existence of neutron stars. Cosmic rays are constantly colliding with these objects as well.
Neutron stars present a gravity well surpassed only by that of black holes, so even subatomic black holes moving at relativistic velocities are likely to be pulled in. The densities of neutron stars are such that if it is indeed possible for a subatomic black hole to grow to macroscale by encountering nearby matter, there would be no place likelier. After billions of years of cosmic ray bombardment, one should expect at the very least to find lots of black holes with masses between the Chandrasehkar and Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limits (roughly, between 1.4 and 3.0 solar masses), implying that these events are the ultimate fate of neutron stars.
That is not what is observed however; there are in fact no known black holes with masses in that regime, while there are a lot of neutron stars. And it would take much longer than the current lifetime of the universe for a 2 solar mass black hole to evaporate by Hawking radiation, so if they were ever made, they should still be around.
So either subatomic black holes are not produced in energetic collisions of cosmic rays, which is good news because those energies are far greater than what the LHC will produce, or subatomic black holes very, very rarely or never survive to consume massive objects, which is also good news.
President of Exchange: [Randolph Duke has just collapsed with shock] Mortimer, your brother is not well. We better call an ambulance.
Mortimer Duke: Fuck him! Now, you listen to me! I want trading reopened right now. Get those brokers back in here! Turn those machines back on!
[shouts - it echoes pathetically throughout the trading hall]
Mortimer Duke: Turn those machines back on!
Perhaps it was a GoldenEye device....
There might be some truth to that, actually- ethanol suppresses vasopressin (also known as antidiuretic hormone) secretion, which is why alcoholic beverages tend to have a noticeable diuretic effect in addition to their disinhibition effects.
That's strange... I thought Unix wasn't supposed to bring about the Eschaton until 2038....
Well, I think the grandparent post is making the implication that due to substantial van der Waals forces (the forces that hold sheets of graphene together as graphite, as well as the forces most responsible for making sticky things sticky), a graphene monolayer condom would be sort of like covering your penis in double-sided adhesive tape. I'm going to make the argument that this little factoid could, under the right (wrong?) circumstances, could conceivably fall in both categories deemed interesting to the internets.
I'd definitely pay more than 35 cents for a candy bar whose ingredients totalled 110% of its contents, just to find out how that was possible.
The original Roman calendar had ten months, yes, and actually only covered about 300 days, with most of winter considered off-calendar. However, by tradition, the second Roman king, Numa Pompilius reformed this calendar and added January and February (at the end of the calendar), giving the year 12 months (and so at this time, the names of December, etc. as numbered months still made sense). This was the calendar used (with modifications) from roughly 700 BC to the introduction of the Julian calendar in 46BC. The calendar of Numa Pompilius ended up with some crazy leaps and intercalations to keep it reasonably in line with the solar year, so reform was definitely due.
In doing so, the Romans consulted with Greek astronomers, who had a lot of data about such things (though the Julian calendar is merely a solar calendar that keeps pretty good time with the moon, and not a true lunisolar calendar like one based on the Metonic cycle would be). Greece at the time of the Antikythera mechanism (about 50-100 years earlier than the Julian reform), had in fact just come under Roman control.
In addition to reforming the "leap" system, January got pushed to the start of the year, making the "number-names" months no longer descriptive, and the months of Quintilis and Sextilis were renamed for Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, respectively.
If I remember the episode correctly, the point of that particular myth wasn't so much whether they could build a working "jetpack," but specifically, if they could do so using some instructions they found on the internet which claimed a person could successfully do so with inexpensive, commonplace parts. What they found was that the instructions were too vague to serve as anything more than guidelines, and even after going over budget to get better quality parts, their machine still had an unacceptable thrust-to-weight ratio and so could not fly with a human passenger.
While they "busted" the feasibility of that particular set of plans, they didn't really attempt to rule out a jetpack altogether. With the resources for proper parts, and the time for proper testing, it's undoubtedly possible to build a working jetpack/rocketbelt/ducted fan harness thing. The issues with personal flight systems have not so much centered around possibility as practicality.