> This has been going on for several years in the US.
Yes, this is true. Thanks for the links on this. I would point out one more thing, in case it's not totally clear, which is that the use of pre-implantation genetic selection is actually an improved way to get a donor. Desperate parents, unable to find an unrelated donor, have been having new babies as potential matched donors for their sick older kids for at least a decade, but only in the past few years has it become possible to pre-screen to insure that the baby they have will be a match.
1. Yes.
2. Yes, they want the new child to be a matched donor for the sick child (as well as to be healthy itself).
3. Umbilical ord blood is a great source of donor stem cells.
No, no one has 'fixed' bad genes in an embryo yet (unless the Raelians did it and haven't told us yet -- just kidding). The targetting of genes into a specific chromosomal location in mammalian cells is just not there yet.... it's a major sticking point in getting any kind of gene therapy (embryonic or in an adult) out of s.f. and into reality.
Er, either you are using "biotech" to mean something other than the biotech industry (perhaps you are thinking of the human genome project?), or you are totally oblivious to what biotech has already done. How about human insulin, human growth hormone, erythropoieten, herceptin or tissue plasminogen activator? Here's some info on biotech products that are already here. Ok, so this website is sponsored by the industry and is not an unbiased source, but they refer to 'more than 90 biotech drugs and vaccines approved by the FDA'.
I've had an account at alexlit for years now, and got some excellent reccommendation suggestions from there (based on my ratings of things I'd already read... I'm curious about how that algorithm works but their FAQ didn't say last time I checked). Alexlit did give me some reccomendations for things that have been too obscure to find but other than that it totally rocks. I second the motion put forth by the AC: Why start a new site when Alexlit already has a great database?
Awards grants for research? The university? What are you talking about? Don't know where you're at, but I've been on several grants and all the money came from private foundations or govt agencies, not the universities.
Besides, we can complain all day-- no one said complaining had to be *rational*.:D
Nice try, but this looks like McLurkin's undergrad thesis work not the current work. Check the page-- it's for "retired" projects, and the dimensions of the pictured robots don't match the size of the ones given the prize.
I see what you're thinking, but that's not the territory we're discussing here. For the purposes of California's Geology Board, licensed geology includes stuff like evaluation of whether it's safe to build on a site near a fault line or landslide-prone area, idenfication and clean up of hazardous contamination of dirt or groundwater, etc. These applications can be at least as life-threatening as what an architect handles.
In this particular instance, (geology license in state of CA), both A AND B are required... and the test is non-trivial. In the 80s and 90s CA had its own special test with horrendous pass rates like 20%; currently CA uses the ASBOG exam with 60-70% passes.
I just called my friend who is part of the NASA Ames DART (Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team), which is part of California Task Force 3, one of 28 FEMA urban search and rescue teams, so I could I ask him about this idea. These are the guys that get called to go to Oklahoma City, WTC, earthquake sites etc. Anyway, he says in the past they have used long probes with wires which they snake down into the debris to listen for sounds that could be made by survivors in the viod spaces, but a sufficiently sturdy wireless transmitter would be new as far as he knows. I was surprised to hear that, but as the article says this was not a big priority area for research before 9/11. He said that not having to go close enough to run wires, and being able to deploy a bunch of these mics quickly all over a site, would be big advantages.
Just a reminder here, it is a very intriguing correlation that more supertasters were found in the group of cancer patients, but the links from supertaster->few veggies->not enough antioxidants->cancer are purely speculation. I expect the scientists said that the the news media tends to report such things as proven...
The source article says
>"... the platypus version comes in two forms. A small part of the protein in one form is present as the mirror image of its counterpart"
Can anybody translate this a into scientifically meaningful statement? I know about chirality, are they saying that one form is made of L-amino acids? Or is it just something like alpha helices that pair up and the reporter didn't know how to describe it?
The scientific article about this is published in Nature Biotechnology. The abstract is available here and if you have a subscription you can access the full text...
This is the same basic technique that has been used to make knock-out mice, but apparently a lot of tweaking was necessary because the protocol used with mouse ES cells works very poorly with human ES cells. It sounds like this article is basically a proof-of-concept to share the method with other scientists.
susceptibility genes
on
Leprosy Genes
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Identifying genes which make certain people more susceptible to certain bugs is an exciting growth area in science which has been greatly aided by the sequencing of the human genome. With regard to leprosy in particular, only a minority of the people exposed to the pathogen will go on to develop the disease. Several groups have been looking for genes which make these individuals more susceptible, and about a dozen candidates areas of the genome are known from previous research. Adrian Hill's group at Oxford, for example, has mapped two other different leprosy-susc. loci (on Chromosomes 10 and 20). Hopefully, once such genes are studied in more detail it will be possible to develop better treatments or even preventative measures.
Yes, you've put your finger on it-- as the scientists say in their PNAS abstract , one of the points of doing mouse sequence was to use it as a basis for comparisons like this, so this is interesting but certainly not big news.
As for the molecular biology aspects, the abstract states that they verified the existence of "112 previously unknown homologs of known proteins" , at least in some cases using RT_PCR (which suggests that the gene is real since it is expressed as mRNA). Apparently the "1019"
refers to 907 additional predictions for which they have only computer-based speculations. Clearly it's nice to have some predictions to work from, but that's all this is.... wish I could supply more info but I can't get to the full text article without a subscription.
One of my friends who works at NASA Ames has an "experiment" on this flight as well. I say that in quotes because actually it's more of observational study, there's nothing really to prove or disprove by doing it. (I won't say what organism since that would give away her identity & I don't have her permission to post her comments, but the expt. design is a lot like the one for the harvester ants.) Anyway, she was telling me that it's sort of embarrassing to her as a professional scientist with a degree to be doing "kid science", that is, something with a big "wow" factor but that is not hypothesis driven. I find it kind of ironic that she has achieved the dream of many kids to get her expt. onto the shuttle, yet after all her grad training she feels like she's wasting time doing this because it's not real grown-up university-level science....
Thanks for the info. I was just sitting here staring at my Covad DSL modem which sez "645" on the bottom and trying to decide if I needed to take action, but it sounds like I'm safe on this particular SNAFU.
Well, I'm not a fossil expert but the peer reviewers for Nature are buying this one.... or should I say six... Supposedly there are 6 different skeletons of this new species and the find is being published by Nature. See the 'news and views' from Nature here ; the data is here but I think people without subscriptions may not be able to see it. Time will tell.
Very good point-- getting asbestos out of buildings isn't the only problem to deal with here. Asbestos is a naturally occuring mineral that is fairly common in certain places, for example in Montana and central California. When asbestos was being used in construction and many other products (most heavily in 1940's to 70's) it was mined extensively. The tailings from such mines are pretty hazardous.
Here's another example of a cleanup site, the Coalinga Mine Superfund Site, at the EPA site , an area that is, fortunately, much more sparsely populated than Libby, MT. It's interesting to note that major aspects of the cleanup were to tear the buildings down then bury all the debris, divert a stream away from the tailings pile, and put up a fence.... I'm sure there are much worse sites but it sure sounds like "file it and forget about it" to me. Let's get some fungi in there to actually chemically break down some of that asbestos.
Perhaps you aren't reading the right sources? The newspapers *choose* to report on "pop-science", but that doesn't mean that that is all that is going on in scientific research!
The scientists doing the routine baby-steps-forward type of work, especially in non-sexy areas of research, are not the ones getting the big publicity. With regards to this topic in particular, there are many scientists working on bioremediation efforts with biological organisms, including bacteria that metabolize toxic chemicals or "treat" sewage or oil spills, plants that absorb heavy metals, etc. Try doing some searches for more info and you might be surprised what is already possible.
Disclosure: I'm a scientistst, so I'm biased to believe that many scientists are doing something beneficial for the world...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, this is true. Thanks for the links on this. I would point out one more thing, in case it's not totally clear, which is that the use of pre-implantation genetic selection is actually an improved way to get a donor. Desperate parents, unable to find an unrelated donor, have been having new babies as potential matched donors for their sick older kids for at least a decade, but only in the past few years has it become possible to pre-screen to insure that the baby they have will be a match.
1. Yes. 2. Yes, they want the new child to be a matched donor for the sick child (as well as to be healthy itself). 3. Umbilical ord blood is a great source of donor stem cells.
No, no one has 'fixed' bad genes in an embryo yet (unless the Raelians did it and haven't told us yet -- just kidding). The targetting of genes into a specific chromosomal location in mammalian cells is just not there yet.... it's a major sticking point in getting any kind of gene therapy (embryonic or in an adult) out of s.f. and into reality.
Sounds like an urban legend to me... "Yeah, my friend's cousin, he knows this guy, who LIKES to get telemarketing calls...no, really..."
Er, either you are using "biotech" to mean something other than the biotech industry (perhaps you are thinking of the human genome project?), or you are totally oblivious to what biotech has already done. How about human insulin, human growth hormone, erythropoieten, herceptin or tissue plasminogen activator? Here's some info on biotech products that are already here. Ok, so this website is sponsored by the industry and is not an unbiased source, but they refer to 'more than 90 biotech drugs and vaccines approved by the FDA'.
I've had an account at alexlit for years now, and got some excellent reccommendation suggestions from there (based on my ratings of things I'd already read... I'm curious about how that algorithm works but their FAQ didn't say last time I checked). Alexlit did give me some reccomendations for things that have been too obscure to find but other than that it totally rocks. I second the motion put forth by the AC: Why start a new site when Alexlit already has a great database?
Awards grants for research? The university? What are you talking about? Don't know where you're at, but I've been on several grants and all the money came from private foundations or govt agencies, not the universities. Besides, we can complain all day-- no one said complaining had to be *rational*. :D
Nice try, but this looks like McLurkin's undergrad thesis work not the current work. Check the page-- it's for "retired" projects, and the dimensions of the pictured robots don't match the size of the ones given the prize.
Yes, exactly. Under CA law, to sell this service, they need to be licensed as professional geologists (just like MDs, engineers, etc)
I see what you're thinking, but that's not the territory we're discussing here. For the purposes of California's Geology Board, licensed geology includes stuff like evaluation of whether it's safe to build on a site near a fault line or landslide-prone area, idenfication and clean up of hazardous contamination of dirt or groundwater, etc. These applications can be at least as life-threatening as what an architect handles.
In this particular instance, (geology license in state of CA), both A AND B are required... and the test is non-trivial. In the 80s and 90s CA had its own special test with horrendous pass rates like 20%; currently CA uses the ASBOG exam with 60-70% passes.
I just called my friend who is part of the NASA Ames DART (Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team), which is part of California Task Force 3, one of 28 FEMA urban search and rescue teams, so I could I ask him about this idea. These are the guys that get called to go to Oklahoma City, WTC, earthquake sites etc. Anyway, he says in the past they have used long probes with wires which they snake down into the debris to listen for sounds that could be made by survivors in the viod spaces, but a sufficiently sturdy wireless transmitter would be new as far as he knows. I was surprised to hear that, but as the article says this was not a big priority area for research before 9/11. He said that not having to go close enough to run wires, and being able to deploy a bunch of these mics quickly all over a site, would be big advantages.
Just a reminder here, it is a very intriguing correlation that more supertasters were found in the group of cancer patients, but the links from supertaster->few veggies->not enough antioxidants->cancer are purely speculation. I expect the scientists said that the the news media tends to report such things as proven...
The eurekalert article is better than the Times, please mod up "Having trouble getting to the site?" so more people can see the other link
Why do you say especially Americans? Just curious...
Can anybody translate this a into scientifically meaningful statement? I know about chirality, are they saying that one form is made of L-amino acids? Or is it just something like alpha helices that pair up and the reporter didn't know how to describe it?
This is the same basic technique that has been used to make knock-out mice, but apparently a lot of tweaking was necessary because the protocol used with mouse ES cells works very poorly with human ES cells. It sounds like this article is basically a proof-of-concept to share the method with other scientists.
Identifying genes which make certain people more susceptible to certain bugs is an exciting growth area in science which has been greatly aided by the sequencing of the human genome. With regard to leprosy in particular, only a minority of the people exposed to the pathogen will go on to develop the disease. Several groups have been looking for genes which make these individuals more susceptible, and about a dozen candidates areas of the genome are known from previous research. Adrian Hill's group at Oxford, for example, has mapped two other different leprosy-susc. loci (on Chromosomes 10 and 20). Hopefully, once such genes are studied in more detail it will be possible to develop better treatments or even preventative measures.
As for the molecular biology aspects, the abstract states that they verified the existence of "112 previously unknown homologs of known proteins" , at least in some cases using RT_PCR (which suggests that the gene is real since it is expressed as mRNA). Apparently the "1019" refers to 907 additional predictions for which they have only computer-based speculations. Clearly it's nice to have some predictions to work from, but that's all this is.... wish I could supply more info but I can't get to the full text article without a subscription.
One of my friends who works at NASA Ames has an "experiment" on this flight as well. I say that in quotes because actually it's more of observational study, there's nothing really to prove or disprove by doing it. (I won't say what organism since that would give away her identity & I don't have her permission to post her comments, but the expt. design is a lot like the one for the harvester ants.) Anyway, she was telling me that it's sort of embarrassing to her as a professional scientist with a degree to be doing "kid science", that is, something with a big "wow" factor but that is not hypothesis driven. I find it kind of ironic that she has achieved the dream of many kids to get her expt. onto the shuttle, yet after all her grad training she feels like she's wasting time doing this because it's not real grown-up university-level science....
Thanks for the info. I was just sitting here staring at my Covad DSL modem which sez "645" on the bottom and trying to decide if I needed to take action, but it sounds like I'm safe on this particular SNAFU.
Well, I'm not a fossil expert but the peer reviewers for Nature are buying this one.... or should I say six... Supposedly there are 6 different skeletons of this new species and the find is being published by Nature. See the 'news and views' from Nature here ; the data is here but I think people without subscriptions may not be able to see it. Time will tell.
Here's another example of a cleanup site, the Coalinga Mine Superfund Site, at the EPA site , an area that is, fortunately, much more sparsely populated than Libby, MT. It's interesting to note that major aspects of the cleanup were to tear the buildings down then bury all the debris, divert a stream away from the tailings pile, and put up a fence.... I'm sure there are much worse sites but it sure sounds like "file it and forget about it" to me. Let's get some fungi in there to actually chemically break down some of that asbestos.
most of the scientific 'advances' reported in the media are trivial or non-beneficial
Sure, feel free to complain about what the news media reports on and how they describe it-- sounds like we are in agreement on that topic.
The scientists doing the routine baby-steps-forward type of work, especially in non-sexy areas of research, are not the ones getting the big publicity. With regards to this topic in particular, there are many scientists working on bioremediation efforts with biological organisms, including bacteria that metabolize toxic chemicals or "treat" sewage or oil spills, plants that absorb heavy metals, etc. Try doing some searches for more info and you might be surprised what is already possible.
Disclosure: I'm a scientistst, so I'm biased to believe that many scientists are doing something beneficial for the world...