The moon is not a fact, the moon is an object. Same for trees, just plural.
Theories can be believed or not; there are several examples in science where two(+) camps disagree over which of two theories is true; where one camp believes their way & v/v. Evolution itself is not in that kind of circumstance, although some mechanisms of it are.
You can believe in something other than a god. Even certain scientific theories (although most people use the term "adhere to" rather than "believe in"; same subjective meaning to most, though)
For those of you who don't know about it, Putty is a pretty good ssh client. It's a nice little client (open source) that compiles into a win32 executable; no need to install. And it's small enough to fit on a floppy.
I have a box at home set up like that & just carry the floppy with putty on it when I'm out of town.
Re:Science is open to everyone
on
Who Owns Science?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
As a scientist, I want people to "steal" my work as you put it. When people read what I write and cite it, because their work is based on mine, that's the validation for what I do. It means that what I did didn't just die off, useless.
I had ADSL for quite a while from SBC. I was very happy with it, very reliable, fast. Then, about a year ago, they jacked up the rate by $10/month, so I called the cable company. Now, I pay less, get the same degree of reliability, and get 4x the upload speed (not to mention 2x the download speed). Used to get 120/10 kbps; now I get 250/40.
Let's see, about the same ammount of downtime, costs less, and is faster......If my experience is typical, I think that pretty much sums up why cable is beating the crap outta DSL in the US....
Cloning is a large set of techniques which involve the transfer of nonnative DNA into a (typically DNA) carrier or vector. One specific type of vector is an expression vector, in which the instructions in the DNA sequence are carried out (i.e., make a protein or make a protein in response to a particular signal).
A specific use of an expression vector is the nuclear transplantaion technique, commonly referred to in the media as "cloning". In this technique, the vector is a whole cell and the inserted DNA is a whole genome.
This is cloning, but in the same way that a Pontiac GTO is a car. A very specific type.
I agree it's beneficial, and that some great treatments are going to come out of the research. But the MOST promising medical research ever? HGP? Gene therapy? Antibiotics? Vaccines?
All of those saved more lives than ES research probably will.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for it and I think great things will come of it. I simply object to the hyperbole.
My big beef regarding ES research is the timing. All this media attention brought everything to a head, forcing people to go directly to ES cell work, before the other options were fully explored. The majority of the currently demonstrated technologies using ES cells can be done with cord or marrow cells just as effectively. Before all the media attention, people were doing the research using cells from these sources. Now, they are pushing for ES work so they can be part of the New Big Thing as put forth in the media. Marrow and cord cells are easier to get, cheaper, easier to handle, live longer, and do not come with any messy controversey.
Before all the media attention, people were looking at these things; but now ES work is hot, and people are shifting focus from strategies that could have made good treatments and moving backwards to finding techniques to get reagents. That's a huge step backwards.
There's a lab down the hall from me that was doing great things using cord and placental blood cells from dogs to aid in certain types of cardiac and vascular damage (in dogs...it's a canine model). Their results looked good, with a few issues to hammer out before looking at using a similar technique in humans. They were perhaps 2-3 years from trials. As a result of the ES hoopla, they have gone back and retried the technique with dog ES cells instead. They reset the whole thing; the ES cells work just as well, but it's been about 18 months and they are just now getting back to the level of effectiveness they saw from cord blood cells. That's an 18 month delay.
To continue the rhetoric (apologies all around, but the post begs the question):
What is the definition of a "functioning brain" as it pertains to a human?
BTW, I agree with you in you final argument. Except that the cells they are creating don't even have the potential for life; we aren't good enough at cloning yet to get a decent success rate under the best of conditions, when you are trying very hard to get a viable clone.
These guys aren't even trying to get a viable clone; they just want the cell to live long enough to poke at it for a little while.
Bone marrow cells aren't the same; they are multipotent, but not pluripotent. They don't have the potential to become any cell in the body, only a limited set.
Command line really is a great way to get to know the system. I recently went in head first into linux as a newbie; I found an old alpha and installed debian on it. I can't get X to work (which REALLY irritates me), so I'm stuck at command line. As a result, I'm really getting to know the system. I've just been tinkering around with it on our home network; exploring commands, learning how to set up servers for ftp, ssh, http, mail...I've been having a lot of fun. My wife thinks I'm insane sending e-mails to myself....
Not to mention that it feels pretty cool to have an Alpha with command line Debian running.
parts of Africa and India there are more people than the local agriculture can support.
I agree with your point on the population expansion...that is near the core of the problem. Wasn't it Kennison..."people are staring in Ethiopia...why does this surprise anyone? It's a desert! Of course you're starving...I got a solution for you, MOVE!"
But, if you can alter the local agriculture to the point that it can suuport the populace, wouldn't that be A Good Thing? GM can potentially do this; give foodstuff crops the ability to grow in areas that traditionally cannot support them. Or create foodstuff crops that produce more abundantly or efficiently on what little land is available.
Give a man a fish/teach a man to fish.
Re:A homozygous single copy murine immune mouse.
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
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· Score: 1
I was under the impression he was saying that this technique had to be done in an immunocompromised host blastocyst. I was just saying that that is not needed; a fully competent host would not reject the donor cells. e.g., C57 is the standard line for knockouts, and it is quite immunocomptent.
Besides, your example just highlights the impracticality of using compromised mice for this technique in the first place.
When you add the cells at the blastocyst stage, they are not absorbed; you are probably thinking of the proceedure at the ES stage, or how it's done with transgenics. This is more analagous to a knockout. The resultant animals will be chimeras; in the animal some cells will be like the host (the blastocyst) and some will be like the donor (the introduced cells). No cell will be a hybrid of the two. You can see this in the mice made for knockouts; donor cells are typically FVB's (white mice) and the hosts are C57's (black mice). The resultant animals are park C57 & part FVB. You can see it on the coat, it has black & white patches on it. (that's actually why you do it; you look for animals that have more white on them for breeding; more likely that they got the gene you altered)
Re:A homozygous single copy murine immune mouse.
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
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· Score: 1
Methinks the poster is a cluebag.
Just read on to read the poster's comment...
Ahhh...putting a toddler to bed. That makes him a temporary cluebag. I feel your pain.
Re:A homozygous single copy murine immune mouse.
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
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· Score: 1
Methinks the poster is a cluebag.
I'm a biochemist & work with transgenic/knockout mice, and it took me a few minutes to decipher that crap.
For one thing, the thing about blastocysts from immunologically crippled mice isn't correct. The cells are injected at the blstocyst stage (early development, pre-embryo); self/nonself determination takes place long after that. So, the mouse's immune system would see them as self regardless.
Besides, where in the article does it mention doing genetic manipulation on the cells prior to injection anyway? It just talks about putting human ES cells in a developing mouse.
Re:A homozygous single copy murine immune mouse.
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
·
· Score: 1
"homozygous lethal" has a meaning distinct from "homozygous,[or] lethal". The first says that homozygous animals die as a result of their being homozygous. It's the same as "homozygous=lethal".
Just because research takes place at a university does NOT mean that the funding is all public. In fact, a very large number of academic labs (I may even venture so far as to say most labs) have research agreements, funding, or MTA's with biotech corporations.
And where did you get the idea that all info is shared freely in academia, anyway? There are academic labs that are more secretive than the corp's. Hell, when I worked at Baylor there were PI's that wouldn't let you go in their labs unless you were a member. No lab will tell outside labs (especially labs working on the same stuff) what their latest & greatest is, not unless there is formal, documented collaboration. Even then, people get screwed all the time. Academia is full of backstabbing secretive oppurtunists.
I have fairly poor vision, but wasn't diagnosed until I was nine; same situation with my younger sister. Neither of us could make out a face that was more than a 2-3m away, so we learned to recognize people by their walks.
We both still do it unconciously, and even now I find it more dificult to recognize a person when they are motionless than when walking.
There are features that stay with people, and are consistent with age, footgear, and even injury. Crutches don't fool me most of the time, and people I haven't seen in 15 years or more still have a recognizable gait.
Let's face it, technology in capitalism will only be used to make the boss more money, while giving you no long-term benefit.
And therein lies the incentive to BE boss. You can replace the word "technology" with any word in the English language. Capitalism is all about money.
Hell, "capital" is not referring to the location of the seat of government. Those who have the intelligence to figure out how the system works will be rewarded. Those who cannot figure out how the system works will remain where they are. So figure it out.
a Russian guy proposed that dna chain got shorter each division and that was the TIME CLOCK thatthis nobel is all about.
ummm....apoptosis doesn't have a lot to do with shortening telomeres. That is a completely different phenomenon. There is no time clock in apoptosis; there is a signal that originates either outside or inside the cell that causes the cell to die in an ordered, controlled fashion. Nothing to do with shortening of DNA chains at the ends.
No. Necrosis and apoptosis are two different pathways. NF is caused by a bacterial infection, and the cells in tissue die abnormally, in an uncontrolled fashion. Apoptosis is highly regulated and controlled.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I'm not. Your sig begged for it. It had to be done.
Theories can be believed or not; there are several examples in science where two(+) camps disagree over which of two theories is true; where one camp believes their way & v/v. Evolution itself is not in that kind of circumstance, although some mechanisms of it are.
You can believe in something other than a god. Even certain scientific theories (although most people use the term "adhere to" rather than "believe in"; same subjective meaning to most, though)
The pain...the PAIN
and
Pansy ass styro wrapped blood sucking pieces of SHIT
Man, I love militant hypocrisy.
I have a box at home set up like that & just carry the floppy with putty on it when I'm out of town.
As a scientist, I want people to "steal" my work as you put it. When people read what I write and cite it, because their work is based on mine, that's the validation for what I do. It means that what I did didn't just die off, useless.
Let's see, about the same ammount of downtime, costs less, and is faster......If my experience is typical, I think that pretty much sums up why cable is beating the crap outta DSL in the US....
Cloning is a large set of techniques which involve the transfer of nonnative DNA into a (typically DNA) carrier or vector. One specific type of vector is an expression vector, in which the instructions in the DNA sequence are carried out (i.e., make a protein or make a protein in response to a particular signal).
A specific use of an expression vector is the nuclear transplantaion technique, commonly referred to in the media as "cloning". In this technique, the vector is a whole cell and the inserted DNA is a whole genome.
This is cloning, but in the same way that a Pontiac GTO is a car. A very specific type.
I agree it's beneficial, and that some great treatments are going to come out of the research. But the MOST promising medical research ever? HGP? Gene therapy? Antibiotics? Vaccines?
All of those saved more lives than ES research probably will.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for it and I think great things will come of it. I simply object to the hyperbole.
My big beef regarding ES research is the timing. All this media attention brought everything to a head, forcing people to go directly to ES cell work, before the other options were fully explored. The majority of the currently demonstrated technologies using ES cells can be done with cord or marrow cells just as effectively. Before all the media attention, people were doing the research using cells from these sources. Now, they are pushing for ES work so they can be part of the New Big Thing as put forth in the media. Marrow and cord cells are easier to get, cheaper, easier to handle, live longer, and do not come with any messy controversey.
Before all the media attention, people were looking at these things; but now ES work is hot, and people are shifting focus from strategies that could have made good treatments and moving backwards to finding techniques to get reagents. That's a huge step backwards.
There's a lab down the hall from me that was doing great things using cord and placental blood cells from dogs to aid in certain types of cardiac and vascular damage (in dogs...it's a canine model). Their results looked good, with a few issues to hammer out before looking at using a similar technique in humans. They were perhaps 2-3 years from trials. As a result of the ES hoopla, they have gone back and retried the technique with dog ES cells instead. They reset the whole thing; the ES cells work just as well, but it's been about 18 months and they are just now getting back to the level of effectiveness they saw from cord blood cells. That's an 18 month delay.
What is the definition of a "functioning brain" as it pertains to a human?
BTW, I agree with you in you final argument. Except that the cells they are creating don't even have the potential for life; we aren't good enough at cloning yet to get a decent success rate under the best of conditions, when you are trying very hard to get a viable clone.
These guys aren't even trying to get a viable clone; they just want the cell to live long enough to poke at it for a little while.
Bone marrow cells aren't the same; they are multipotent, but not pluripotent. They don't have the potential to become any cell in the body, only a limited set.
Not to mention that it feels pretty cool to have an Alpha with command line Debian running.
I agree with your point on the population expansion...that is near the core of the problem. Wasn't it Kennison..."people are staring in Ethiopia...why does this surprise anyone? It's a desert! Of course you're starving...I got a solution for you, MOVE!"
But, if you can alter the local agriculture to the point that it can suuport the populace, wouldn't that be A Good Thing? GM can potentially do this; give foodstuff crops the ability to grow in areas that traditionally cannot support them. Or create foodstuff crops that produce more abundantly or efficiently on what little land is available.
Give a man a fish/teach a man to fish.
Besides, your example just highlights the impracticality of using compromised mice for this technique in the first place.
When you add the cells at the blastocyst stage, they are not absorbed; you are probably thinking of the proceedure at the ES stage, or how it's done with transgenics. This is more analagous to a knockout. The resultant animals will be chimeras; in the animal some cells will be like the host (the blastocyst) and some will be like the donor (the introduced cells). No cell will be a hybrid of the two. You can see this in the mice made for knockouts; donor cells are typically FVB's (white mice) and the hosts are C57's (black mice). The resultant animals are park C57 & part FVB. You can see it on the coat, it has black & white patches on it. (that's actually why you do it; you look for animals that have more white on them for breeding; more likely that they got the gene you altered)
Just read on to read the poster's comment...
Ahhh...putting a toddler to bed. That makes him a temporary cluebag. I feel your pain.
I'm a biochemist & work with transgenic/knockout mice, and it took me a few minutes to decipher that crap.
For one thing, the thing about blastocysts from immunologically crippled mice isn't correct. The cells are injected at the blstocyst stage (early development, pre-embryo); self/nonself determination takes place long after that. So, the mouse's immune system would see them as self regardless.
Besides, where in the article does it mention doing genetic manipulation on the cells prior to injection anyway? It just talks about putting human ES cells in a developing mouse.
"homozygous lethal" has a meaning distinct from "homozygous,[or] lethal". The first says that homozygous animals die as a result of their being homozygous. It's the same as "homozygous=lethal".
Just because research takes place at a university does NOT mean that the funding is all public. In fact, a very large number of academic labs (I may even venture so far as to say most labs) have research agreements, funding, or MTA's with biotech corporations.
And where did you get the idea that all info is shared freely in academia, anyway? There are academic labs that are more secretive than the corp's. Hell, when I worked at Baylor there were PI's that wouldn't let you go in their labs unless you were a member. No lab will tell outside labs (especially labs working on the same stuff) what their latest & greatest is, not unless there is formal, documented collaboration. Even then, people get screwed all the time. Academia is full of backstabbing secretive oppurtunists.
We both still do it unconciously, and even now I find it more dificult to recognize a person when they are motionless than when walking.
There are features that stay with people, and are consistent with age, footgear, and even injury. Crutches don't fool me most of the time, and people I haven't seen in 15 years or more still have a recognizable gait.
Damn, you must be one boring guy.
And therein lies the incentive to BE boss. You can replace the word "technology" with any word in the English language. Capitalism is all about money.
Hell, "capital" is not referring to the location of the seat of government. Those who have the intelligence to figure out how the system works will be rewarded. Those who cannot figure out how the system works will remain where they are. So figure it out.
ummm....apoptosis doesn't have a lot to do with shortening telomeres. That is a completely different phenomenon. There is no time clock in apoptosis; there is a signal that originates either outside or inside the cell that causes the cell to die in an ordered, controlled fashion. Nothing to do with shortening of DNA chains at the ends.
No. Necrosis and apoptosis are two different pathways. NF is caused by a bacterial infection, and the cells in tissue die abnormally, in an uncontrolled fashion. Apoptosis is highly regulated and controlled.