The study by researchers at Duke in which monkeys with brain
implants were able to articulate use of a robotic arm through their thoughts
was recently published here
(link to PDF download is in the right hand column) in the Public Library of Science. It's pretty amazing work. Wireless control, i.e. Bluetooth
implants, are on the horizon. I
think the really significant implication of going wireless is that this potentially
allows for some sort of communication between individuals who possess the
wireless implants. The hard part
was whether the neuronal/electrical implant interface would work (i.e. whether
a brain could send a signal to manipulate a robotic device). The question to consider is if this
goes wireless, will electronically aided telepathy between wireless enabled
individuals be far behind?
no... they will work with you if you can't afford the fee. it initially gave me pause when my postdoc mentioned what the $1500 publication, but having the science freely available to others if published is worth it. in addition, they do ask that you contact them if you can't afford the publication cost (the request is within their online submission forms), and knowing a few of the people involved, i am certain that they would waive it for those who did not have the ability to cover the charge.
While I also want to see PLoS succeed (and indeed have recently submitted work there), please note the PLoS publication charges per article at $1500 a pop. One also obviously has to pay to receive the printed form of the journal - although I doubt many will do this. So while the costs have been shifted and the science has been made more generally available to the public at large, grants are in fact going to be charged. Many journals charge publication costs for submitted and accepted work, but PLoS is definitely on the high end. This enterprise is going have to recoup for operating costs, and the largess of private donors won't completely cover it.
Aside from this point, I do agree with many of your sentiments. I would not worry much about the editorial board. The professional editors they have signed up are first rate and quite idealistic. The academic editorial board is also quite strong. Judging from the quality of some of the initial submissions, they seem to be off to a strong start.
... to the extent that there is no world famous immunologist known as Samuel Forrester and certainly not one being named for Nobel consideration, I can assure you. Google or PubMed/Medline for Samuel Forrester (or derivations) to try and find mention of any of the "Nobel" worthy research. The Iraqi Infirmation Minister must be doing this guy's PR.
It's not clear that anyone in the general public would have access to such organisms - yet. As I mentioned, Columbia holds the patent rights to GFP and commercial applications have been strictly limited. Becton-Dickinson (owners of Clontech) are a major and possibly sole commercial licensee. If you try and order GFP (I have and work with it in many applications), the release ones signs is quite restrictive. My suspicion is that this company which saw the GFP-fish of the NTU researcher have not been made fully aware of the commecial restrictions in use of GFP and its derivatives. Now that it's in the popular press, I suspect that they won't get too far. Moreover, the researcher might also get slapped down to extent for attempting to market this (do you think that this not-so-new-idea hasn't been run by Columbia before?). Nonetheless, I do think your concerns are valid. There are likely places in the world where US patent protection is not that strong, and this is locally feasible biotechnology.
The jellyfish protein introduced as a transgene in different
organisms is known as green fluorescence protein, or GFP. There are actually quite a few
derivatives of this protein with different spectral properties (e.g. see here http://www.clontech.com/gfp/excitation.shtml). Since the late 1990's, many researchers
have engrafted GFP into the genome of mice as
well as zebrafish
to study developmental processes.
GFP has also been used to label and track HIV-1 in light microscopy
studies (see here, here, here, and here). Because of the protein's stability and
ability to fluoresce under physiological conditions, it has been enormously useful to track live processes at the molecular
level in real time. In short, this
molecule rocks.
The researcher at NTU hasn't really done anything new or
innovative, and patent rights to this molecule and its applications are in part
held by Columbia University (at least they used to be). Thus even if a firm is interested in
these glow-in-the-dark fish, they're likely going to pay significant royalties
to be licensed to do so.
Damn, I submitted much the same yesterday, but probably a
bit too late. Next time. Thereâ(TM)s a complementary
piece at MacCentral. Also, thereâ(TM)s a bit of discussion at
the MacNN board, most of which
centers around Safari being able to seamlessly spoof IE 5 and future versions
in using bank sites, online purchase forms, etc that are putatively restricted
to IE. In any case, given that IE
was the most bloated and slow browser available for OS X, this is no big
surprise after the release of Safari.
Nonetheless in the MacCentral story, Microsoft does state âoeMicrosoft and the MacBU continue to
be committed to the Mac platform. We are excited about the new versions of
products coming out like Office, Virtual PC, Messenger and MSN for Mac OS X.
Our commitment hasn't wavered, it's just a matter of doing what's right to meet
customer needs.â
unlikely that it was done sooner than a year or two ago. there's enough money and fame to made in the area that it would likely have been highly publicized. most 'experts' are not publicity shy and would want the credit. remember, dolly the sheep when cloned in 1996 (i believe it was reported in 1997 in the journal nature) stunned many experts in reproductive biology. monkeys, mice, cows, etc followed but success rates sucked and haven't improved all that much.
if cloning of humans has happened before, one place it may happened is in china where there is a high degree of technical competance in the area and a lack of gov't restrictions found in many western countries. there's an interesting story in the new jan 03 wired on the chinese biomedical research establishment's enthusiasm for embryonic stem cell work that gives some perspective on the resources and talent they might put forward on the related area (and easier in some ways) of cloning people. nonetheless, the chinese have had trouble cloning pandas (for which they have a large, publicized effort); so there is reason to believe they might not have succeeded with humans yet either. either way, at the end of the day, the proof will be in the DNA.
great sig.
actually, this sort of thing may be doable. the DARPA web solicitation refers to sampling the
environment for a chemical signature derived from a person's Major
Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) proteins. these have a genetic basis and when sampling blood can be
used to discriminate individuals without examining the DNA which encodes
them. obviously, the technology
DARPA wants developed will be to sample small amounts of protein from a
defined environment to look for an immunological signature of an individual.
from a distance and without making direct contact with an
individual, this type of technology would obviously be more useful to remote
monitoring devices than fingerprints, DNA, etc. who knows, possibly in a 2nd or 3rd gen incarnations
something like this could be used in a predator type aircraft scanning an
area. flying bloodhounds in a
sense.
... despite the oversight. What would be interesting is evaluating redundancy of today's versus yesterday's comments and how they scored with the dif moderators. I suspect these might be less consistent. Anyone recycle their post and see if got moderated up or down or stayed the same? Obviously, we're not accounting for the additional turkey in the belly and booze in the bloodstream of today's moderators (not that it would impair their fine judgement of course).
Re:A homozygous single copy murine immune mouse.
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
·
· Score: 1
sorry, submitted this last nite as i was trying to put the toddler to sleep. some of what i posted was edited out so the editors spared you the full brunt of technobabble and inappropriate grammar. looked like a mess when i saw it this morn. original post is in my journal.... if you dare. i should have said if an altered gene in its heterozygous state (single copy state) caused sterility one couldn't breed animals to have 2 copies of the gene (i.e. make them homozygous for that gene). remem, we have 2 copies/alleles for just about everything due to having duplicate chromosomes.
Re:Ethical Problems? They already do it.
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
in truth, several similar things are done, but not
approaching this scale, and not anything that would have the possibility
(albeit remote) of creating offspring with cells that are entirely human.
Examples...
(1)
hybrids between murine (or other rodent species) and human
cells. these experiments are
typically done to map genetic factors unique to one organism or assay the
recessive of dominant phenotypic nature of a gene factor. In long term culture, these are
unstable. Mouse and human cells
have different numbers of chromosomes which are duplicated at different speeds
and move toward productive mitosis (somatic cell division) at different rates. The human chromosomes lag behind in the divisions and are
eventually lost over time.
(2)
immunologically crippled mice grafted with parts of the human
immune system to study human immune function in an 'animal model'. These mice usually bearing the SCID or
RAG genetic defect don't have an adaptive response/capability to recognize foreign cells as
non-self. One popular model is the
SCID-hu model in which mice typically are typically injected in their kidneys
with human thymus, liver, and/or
lymph node tissue in a capsule. There
is partial immune reconstitution in these animals by the human immune system
cells and they can be used in pathogen challenge or other studies. Obviously, potential progeny offspring
would not genetically inherit human cells as a chimeric organism.
(3)
Human genes can be introduced into mice as transgenes or by
'knock-ins' also more properly known as gene replacements. This is done to study human gene
function in an animal context
often looking at the cancer causing or cancer suppressing potential of genes
of interest, the developmental role of particular genes, the immunological
effect of genes, and more. These
changes are very often heritable and there are many genetically altered mice
currently available carrying numerous different human gene products
None of the examples above are on the scale of what is being
considered in creating hybrid blastocysts between mouse and human. These are obviously most likely to be
viable, but a concern I have is what happens when an enterprising individual
takes it to the next level and successfully does the experiment using monkey
(example was Rhesus) blastocysts...what if human neurologic tissue is grafted
into this chimeric organism? This
type of research should not be taken out to an island run by a Dr. Moreau but
really needs to carefully considered before our science moves faster than our ability to comprehend
what we have created.
but I don't. In
fact, a scientist whose original arguments you're using, wouldn't agree with
half the stuff you've written to either.
Listen, you started this thread with the left field assertion that HIV
does not cause AIDS. Then you back
up the assertion with questions and not facts. You finish 'with go read this lammo website that tells you
all about it'. Guess what? I write a response based listing facts
used to prove that HIV causes AIDS.
Yeah, that's the ticket, list some evidence before making an assertion
that you can't back up. Give it a
shot. You spend a good deal of
your posts getting hyped about AZT and know full well that HIV/AIDS existed
prior to any individuals getting AZT.
You probably know that most of the people in the world that are HIV
infected and develop AIDS never see AZT or other antivirals. In the absence of any other information
other than HIV is found in many people who have this immunodeficiency whose
disease manifestation is called AIDS, you prefer to ignore Occamm's razor and
go with what is mostly a crowd of scientific misfits, dilettantes, and yahoos
(check out the board of your source material website) that claims that people
get AIDS because of poppers, their nutrition, because they take antivirals,
because their 'lifestyle' is unhealthy for whatever reason (Falwell's fav),
because they live in Africa, yadda yadda yadda... but not because they're HIV
infected. But of course, there's many
more facts than just the etiologic association of HIV and AIDS as I've listed
previously. I don't think you were
able to really dispute a single one of then, right? Even that apocryphal claim that HIV hasn't been isolated
doesn't sound too strong now, does it?
(I think I'll let someone else contend for the lammo website's prize on
this). Given that you're so 'fact'
based why don't you start with some and show us what you know about the topic
before demanding answers to questions to a thesis you can't back up? What causes AIDS and how? Why does HIV not cause AIDS? These two are simple and would
substantiate the thesis of your post before venturing off into being po'ed at
burroughs-wellcome, claiming you have scientific proof of the link of KS and
poppers (i presume at least a couple papers from reputable scientific journals
and not someone's manifesto/novel), what's the proper definition of an epidemic
(actually the UN refers to the HIV/AIDS crisis as a pandemic... but they're
probably similarly clueless in your book), etc. Stick to the big questions and fact based evidence first for
the claim you put forward and then deviate into your lists of random questions.
dude, chimera 0.6 on jaguar/mac OS X is able to manage the iFilm site and play the trailers via Quicktime fine - so you can avoid use MS products! i'm guessing this is your default browser given your MS aversion so maybe the site was/.. when you tried to check it out today. that being said, the iFilm site interface sucks. but the 5 minute trailer is still worth it if you're an impatient fellow such as myself.
>I think what you didn't write is more imporant than what you did write. Why did you duck every single one of my questions?
i wasn't ducking your questions as they weren't posed to me per se but posted in this forum. moreover, i was stating facts and not questions as you were. you can dismiss the facts as you choose based on whatever general or specific knowledge you have in the topic area. obviously you're someone who's concerned about being informed, and i in no way intend this to be personal. just giving you the perspective of someone who's seen these things up close as well as knows scientists involved in driving the debate on both sides. you've picked up on some of the points that peter duesberg originally put out. thus i also wanted to raise the possibility that his motivation might be influenced by other personal factors other than the science (ego is both a good and a bad thing in science). to briefly and honestly treat the last 4 points/questions you've brought up... (1) & (4) are semantic issues, right? the larger question you were posing prevoiusly was whether HIV caused an immunodeficiency that allowed secondary infections. i think the data is unequivocal on this point. as per what secondary infections occur in 'AIDS' caused by HIV-1, this has changed somewhat over time because people learned more about the disease and some of the early second infections became treatable and non-issues (thus saving lives). as per question (2), i don't know what burroughs-wellcome does with its money but am generally suspicious of large drug companies. as per question (3), supply whichever peter duesberg theory you want as this is one of his issues. he stopped scientifically publishing on HIV for the past 4-5 years, and has primarily gone back to his cancer work.
>HIV has not been isolated. How can any of your claims, which deoend on the existence of HIV, be true?
do you have specific knowledge of this or perhaps have done any molecular biology research to back this up? HIV has been isolated numerous times. it's real. it's not so hard to do. you can in fact isolate just it's nucleic acid genome, put this into cells, and they will make the virus. peter duesberg (again the leading scientific figure who used to question the HIV/AIDS link) has done the same exact experiment with other retroviruses. it's a pretty simple one. anyway, go to this website...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
search for...
hiv isolation
or whatever terms you want and you'll find more than a few scientific references in the literature database.
>Antiviral drugs such as AZT? Do you work for Burroughs-Wellcome?
No. Why are you so hung up on this company?
I could work for big pharma if I wanted and prob triple my salary. Would probably make my wife a lot happier too. However, I am guilty of doing basic research. My specialities are immunology and virus biology. Run a small lab, train students and postdocs. We work hard, do our best to do good science and stay out of politics, and see if we can make a contribution to the common good. I decided to professionally continue studying retroviruses after seeing a friend die of HIV-1 infection that progressed to AIDS while I was a grad student. Pretty sad as it was the year that these drugs called protease inhibitors were coming out experimentally and he was trying so hard to get in a protocol so he could get the meds. If he had hung on a year longer, he still might have been here when they became generally available. It's amazing what the virus would do in those pre-protease inhib days. The guy went from being a healthy and fit 30-year old to looking like a gaunt and emaciated 80-year old man in the space of a year when his CD4+ cell counts were decimated. Every day, he would still come into work and try to do his job as if in denial. When these drugs were introduced in the early 1990's, the life expectancy of those HIV infected in the US has steadily shot up. I suspect persons like Magic Johnson would not be around now if it were not for this series of drugs/antivirals and those that have come out later (remem AZT was a first gen drug and not specifically designed to fight HIV... it was in fact originally an anti-cancer candidate).
As per speaking 'fondly' of Peter Duesberg, I was just giving the guy his due. He's done good research in cancer, but I think some of the things he's said about HIV/AIDS are incorrect based on an examination of the body of scientific data and experiments I've performed with my own hands. Sometimes smart people make mistakes. I'm not going to get into a debate of whether you have or I have on this topic because I think you're coming at it with an open mind and willing to examine information or evidence as presented (obviously beyond what spin or rolling stone or the popular press may report). I decided to put my own curiosity on the research bench and test things myself. It's no conspiracy. HIV kills CD4+ T cells. Stopping the virus saves these important immune cells and it prolongs life.
as per the romulans, at least some of the clips i saw made them look almost retro, like they appeared in the original star trek series. thought it was kind of funny; although, you're right in that they should be updated. (and i don't believe these presumed romulans were depictions of vulcans as their sense of style was more akin to that of north korean leader kim jog il... consistent in the lack of sophistication in original series when compared to vulcans)
however, who was/were the dudes who like alien nosferatus... aberrations of the romulans?
now that this hit the popular press, how long do you thing venter's U.S. Energy dept funding is going to last? given the current regulatory climate in funding human embyronic stem cell research, one would think that those same legislators ensuring restrictions in this arena are not going to be so thrilled with the US gov't funding research that news headlines trumpet as 'playing god'. dude, your research funding has been slashdotted.
in truth, as has been noted in prior posts, he's not exactly proposing starting from scrath. indeed, ventner has had a long standing interest in the basic living unit prob for some time now, and now that he's primarily been hyping personal genome sequencing, it's nice to see him trying to push a scientific frontier once more.
there's an interesting CNN quote from him on the topic... "We'll have a debate on what should be published and what shouldn't," Venter said. "We may not disclose all the details that would teach somebody else how to do this."
somewhat ironic as he was also accused of withholding info on his company's sequencing efforts when they were published a couple years back (although there were no security reasons in that case). he seems to be prepping ahead of time here, but how can someone judge if he's really accomplished what they set out to do without adequate scientific review of the data, and more importantly, allowing other scientists to determine if the data is reproducible? it's like saying 'i made this gold from lead, but i can't show you how'. making this type of comment so far ahead of the efforts seems odd.
I'm amazed that this disinformation still persists. You can line up many times more scientists and physicians who work on infectious disease or viral and/or bacterial infections, and they will agree that an HIV-1 infection will lead to the destruction of CD4+ T cells in the body which leads to immunodeficiency and susceptibility to secondary infections which characterize AIDS. There's many lines of evidence to support this. Consider...
(1) Exposing purified CD4+ T cells in culture outside the body to HIV-1 leads to their infection and killing. I've observed this many times under a microscope.
(2) Introduction of the genetic material obtained from HIV-1 through a method called transfection into these same cells leads to HIV-1 production and cell killing by the virus.
(3) In either of the circumstances listed in (1) or (2), if one uses and antiviral drug that specifically targets the virus, virus spread is stopped as is cell killing.
(4) The same antiviral drugs used in humans who are infected with HIV-1, prevents diminishment of CD4+ T cells, reduces the amount of HIV-1 present in the body, and extends life of HIV-1 infected persons.
(5) People with specific mutations in genes required by HIV-1 isolates in cell culture (such as CCR5), are highly resistant to natural infection by HIV-1 relative to the population at large. Persons who engage in behavior deemed to put them at high risk to HIV-1 infection (unprotected sex with different HIV-1 infected individuals multiple times) live longer and do not get infected with HIV-1 or develop AIDS at rates probably 100-1000 fold lower than the general population.
(6) Unfortunate laboratory workers who have exposed themselves to unique genetic HIV-1 isolates present in their respective labs have gotten infected by these specific virus isolates and had their CD4+ T cell numbers decimated by the infection until put on antivirals. Unfortunately, over time, retroviruses, such as HIV-1, under drug selection acquire resistance to the drugs through adaptation/evolution so the drugs are a temporary panacea.
(7) Different monkey species which in the wold were never exposed to HIV family viruses, when exposed in captivity under experimental circumstances, develop an infection, demonstrate loss in CD4+ T cell numbers, and ultimately succumb as a result of the infection. Antiviral drugs can prolong the life of these animals (sometimes indefinitely in the current time frame) and some vaccine strategies targeting certain viruses appear to be protective (unfortunately, because of HIV family viruses genetic diversity, thse vaccine strategies do not work against viruses that are genetically different -- imagine dealing with 1000's and 1000's a different flu isolates at once to get some perspective).
An early proponent in questioning whether HIV-1 caused AIDS was Peter Duesberg at UC-Berkeley. I've met Peter before, and some fo my senior colleagues know him quite well. Peter is a smart man and has made important contributions as to our understanding of cancer usng retroviruses as a model to explore oncogenesis. Indeed for his work in this area, some scientists (even those who disagree with his views on HIV and AIDS) think he may have been deserving of Nobel consideration. However Peter is a somewhat scorned man and he definitely possesses an ego - at least this was my impression as a junior scientist meeting one of the old big guys who had made important scientific contributions (the guy's also a pretty slick dresser relative to most scientists I know). Some of the same crowd involved in retroviruses and studying cancer moved into HIV-1 when it was discovered because it was a retrovirus. These included people Peter may not have liked and people he may have thought dissed him regarding credit for his work on oncogenesis. Thus Peter was probably a little more skeptical about work these scientists were involved in. I think this was fine at the beginning and Peter posed some legitimate questions. However, over time, this seemed to become personal. A lot of evidence has mounted about HIV-1 killing CD4+ T cells and causing immunodeficieny since the early days. In fact, a lot of the scientists that Peter may not have thought best of are no longer involved in the cutting edge of HIV-1 research or in the limelight as much. Peter's boxed himself in a difficult position and so I am unsure of whether he would ever be publically accepting of the evidence in favor of HIV-1 causing immunodeficiency no matter what it was.
Anyway to get perspective on the early days of the field aside from Peter, I would recommend John Crewdson's excellent recent book called Science Fictions. He mostly treats the tawdry characters who were involved in characterizing HIV-1 in the mid-1980's when first isolated and recognized. Some of these characters Peter (and those of us in the field) probably found distasteful in behavior - and for good reasons. However, in the long term, despite the players, the facts remain... HIV-1 causes an immune destruction in individuals, the earth is not flat (remem, many more argued for years despite the evidence of the era that is was), and evolution is more than just a theory.
(as per the website, rather than quote Nobelist Kary Mullis on the topic who understands the area as was as he might string theory, consider Nobelist Howard Temin's opinions on the topic... or Nobelist Harold Varmus... please)
Apple has the 2 minute trailer (and in larger formats unavailable at iFilm) and an earlier teaser trailer not present at the iFilm site. However iFilm also has a 5 minute trailer *not* currently available through the Apple Quicktime Movie Links. If this interests you and you can get the iFilm stream going (although autodetect was useless as posted, I just selected Quicktime and T1 after it suggested MediaPlayer and Cable/DSL... using Chimera 0.6), I think it's worth a look... esp if you're one to generally make the Star Trek films irrespective parity/even/odd film rules. Romulans, birds of prey, bodies tossed into space,... this one looks well worth the ticket price.
Slashdot Mirror
The study by researchers at Duke in which monkeys with brain implants were able to articulate use of a robotic arm through their thoughts was recently published here (link to PDF download is in the right hand column) in the Public Library of Science. It's pretty amazing work. Wireless control, i.e. Bluetooth implants, are on the horizon. I think the really significant implication of going wireless is that this potentially allows for some sort of communication between individuals who possess the wireless implants. The hard part was whether the neuronal/electrical implant interface would work (i.e. whether a brain could send a signal to manipulate a robotic device). The question to consider is if this goes wireless, will electronically aided telepathy between wireless enabled individuals be far behind?
no ... they will work with you if you can't afford the fee. it initially gave me pause when my postdoc mentioned what the $1500 publication, but having the science freely available to others if published is worth it. in addition, they do ask that you contact them if you can't afford the publication cost (the request is within their online submission forms), and knowing a few of the people involved, i am certain that they would waive it for those who did not have the ability to cover the charge.
While I also want to see PLoS succeed (and indeed have recently submitted work there), please note the PLoS publication charges per article at $1500 a pop. One also obviously has to pay to receive the printed form of the journal - although I doubt many will do this. So while the costs have been shifted and the science has been made more generally available to the public at large, grants are in fact going to be charged. Many journals charge publication costs for submitted and accepted work, but PLoS is definitely on the high end. This enterprise is going have to recoup for operating costs, and the largess of private donors won't completely cover it. Aside from this point, I do agree with many of your sentiments. I would not worry much about the editorial board. The professional editors they have signed up are first rate and quite idealistic. The academic editorial board is also quite strong. Judging from the quality of some of the initial submissions, they seem to be off to a strong start.
... to the extent that there is no world famous immunologist known as Samuel Forrester and certainly not one being named for Nobel consideration, I can assure you. Google or PubMed/Medline for Samuel Forrester (or derivations) to try and find mention of any of the "Nobel" worthy research. The Iraqi Infirmation Minister must be doing this guy's PR.
It's not clear that anyone in the general public would have access to such organisms - yet. As I mentioned, Columbia holds the patent rights to GFP and commercial applications have been strictly limited. Becton-Dickinson (owners of Clontech) are a major and possibly sole commercial licensee. If you try and order GFP (I have and work with it in many applications), the release ones signs is quite restrictive. My suspicion is that this company which saw the GFP-fish of the NTU researcher have not been made fully aware of the commecial restrictions in use of GFP and its derivatives. Now that it's in the popular press, I suspect that they won't get too far. Moreover, the researcher might also get slapped down to extent for attempting to market this (do you think that this not-so-new-idea hasn't been run by Columbia before?). Nonetheless, I do think your concerns are valid. There are likely places in the world where US patent protection is not that strong, and this is locally feasible biotechnology.
The jellyfish protein introduced as a transgene in different organisms is known as green fluorescence protein, or GFP. There are actually quite a few derivatives of this protein with different spectral properties (e.g. see here http://www.clontech.com/gfp/excitation.shtml). Since the late 1990's, many researchers have engrafted GFP into the genome of mice as well as zebrafish to study developmental processes. GFP has also been used to label and track HIV-1 in light microscopy studies (see here, here, here, and here). Because of the protein's stability and ability to fluoresce under physiological conditions, it has been enormously useful to track live processes at the molecular level in real time. In short, this molecule rocks.
The researcher at NTU hasn't really done anything new or innovative, and patent rights to this molecule and its applications are in part held by Columbia University (at least they used to be). Thus even if a firm is interested in these glow-in-the-dark fish, they're likely going to pay significant royalties to be licensed to do so.
Funny timing, Mac OSX IE 5.2.3 was released today â¦
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/IE/ie5_osx.a sp
Even if IE 6 never comes out for the Mac, we may in time see IE 5.9.9.
Damn, I submitted much the same yesterday, but probably a bit too late. Next time. Thereâ(TM)s a complementary piece at MacCentral. Also, thereâ(TM)s a bit of discussion at the MacNN board, most of which centers around Safari being able to seamlessly spoof IE 5 and future versions in using bank sites, online purchase forms, etc that are putatively restricted to IE. In any case, given that IE was the most bloated and slow browser available for OS X, this is no big surprise after the release of Safari.
Nonetheless in the MacCentral story, Microsoft does state âoeMicrosoft and the MacBU continue to be committed to the Mac platform. We are excited about the new versions of products coming out like Office, Virtual PC, Messenger and MSN for Mac OS X. Our commitment hasn't wavered, it's just a matter of doing what's right to meet customer needs.â
Whoopie, MSN â¦
unlikely that it was done sooner than a year or two ago. there's enough money and fame to made in the area that it would likely have been highly publicized. most 'experts' are not publicity shy and would want the credit. remember, dolly the sheep when cloned in 1996 (i believe it was reported in 1997 in the journal nature) stunned many experts in reproductive biology. monkeys, mice, cows, etc followed but success rates sucked and haven't improved all that much.
if cloning of humans has happened before, one place it may happened is in china where there is a high degree of technical competance in the area and a lack of gov't restrictions found in many western countries. there's an interesting story in the new jan 03 wired on the chinese biomedical research establishment's enthusiasm for embryonic stem cell work that gives some perspective on the resources and talent they might put forward on the related area (and easier in some ways) of cloning people. nonetheless, the chinese have had trouble cloning pandas (for which they have a large, publicized effort); so there is reason to believe they might not have succeeded with humans yet either. either way, at the end of the day, the proof will be in the DNA.
great sig. actually, this sort of thing may be doable. the DARPA web solicitation refers to sampling the environment for a chemical signature derived from a person's Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) proteins. these have a genetic basis and when sampling blood can be used to discriminate individuals without examining the DNA which encodes them. obviously, the technology DARPA wants developed will be to sample small amounts of protein from a defined environment to look for an immunological signature of an individual.
from a distance and without making direct contact with an individual, this type of technology would obviously be more useful to remote monitoring devices than fingerprints, DNA, etc. who knows, possibly in a 2nd or 3rd gen incarnations something like this could be used in a predator type aircraft scanning an area. flying bloodhounds in a sense.
sorry, submitted this last nite as i was trying to put the toddler to sleep. some of what i posted was edited out so the editors spared you the full brunt of technobabble and inappropriate grammar. looked like a mess when i saw it this morn. original post is in my journal .... if you dare. i should have said if an altered gene in its heterozygous state (single copy state) caused sterility one couldn't breed animals to have 2 copies of the gene (i.e. make them homozygous for that gene). remem, we have 2 copies/alleles for just about everything due to having duplicate chromosomes.
in truth, several similar things are done, but not approaching this scale, and not anything that would have the possibility (albeit remote) of creating offspring with cells that are entirely human.
Examples ...
(1) hybrids between murine (or other rodent species) and human cells. these experiments are typically done to map genetic factors unique to one organism or assay the recessive of dominant phenotypic nature of a gene factor. In long term culture, these are unstable. Mouse and human cells have different numbers of chromosomes which are duplicated at different speeds and move toward productive mitosis (somatic cell division) at different rates. The human chromosomes lag behind in the divisions and are eventually lost over time.
(2) immunologically crippled mice grafted with parts of the human immune system to study human immune function in an 'animal model'. These mice usually bearing the SCID or RAG genetic defect don't have an adaptive response/capability to recognize foreign cells as non-self. One popular model is the SCID-hu model in which mice typically are typically injected in their kidneys with human thymus, liver, and/or lymph node tissue in a capsule. There is partial immune reconstitution in these animals by the human immune system cells and they can be used in pathogen challenge or other studies. Obviously, potential progeny offspring would not genetically inherit human cells as a chimeric organism.
(3) Human genes can be introduced into mice as transgenes or by 'knock-ins' also more properly known as gene replacements. This is done to study human gene function in an animal context often looking at the cancer causing or cancer suppressing potential of genes of interest, the developmental role of particular genes, the immunological effect of genes, and more. These changes are very often heritable and there are many genetically altered mice currently available carrying numerous different human gene products
None of the examples above are on the scale of what is being considered in creating hybrid blastocysts between mouse and human. These are obviously most likely to be viable, but a concern I have is what happens when an enterprising individual takes it to the next level and successfully does the experiment using monkey (example was Rhesus) blastocysts ...what if human neurologic tissue is grafted
into this chimeric organism? This
type of research should not be taken out to an island run by a Dr. Moreau but
really needs to carefully considered before our science moves faster than our ability to comprehend
what we have created.
this was a ref to the island of dr. moreau. irv weissman could reprise the role that brando more recently played. it wasn't meant seriously.
but I don't. In fact, a scientist whose original arguments you're using, wouldn't agree with half the stuff you've written to either. Listen, you started this thread with the left field assertion that HIV does not cause AIDS. Then you back up the assertion with questions and not facts. You finish 'with go read this lammo website that tells you all about it'. Guess what? I write a response based listing facts used to prove that HIV causes AIDS. Yeah, that's the ticket, list some evidence before making an assertion that you can't back up. Give it a shot. You spend a good deal of your posts getting hyped about AZT and know full well that HIV/AIDS existed prior to any individuals getting AZT. You probably know that most of the people in the world that are HIV infected and develop AIDS never see AZT or other antivirals. In the absence of any other information other than HIV is found in many people who have this immunodeficiency whose disease manifestation is called AIDS, you prefer to ignore Occamm's razor and go with what is mostly a crowd of scientific misfits, dilettantes, and yahoos (check out the board of your source material website) that claims that people get AIDS because of poppers, their nutrition, because they take antivirals, because their 'lifestyle' is unhealthy for whatever reason (Falwell's fav), because they live in Africa, yadda yadda yadda ... but not because they're HIV
infected. But of course, there's many
more facts than just the etiologic association of HIV and AIDS as I've listed
previously. I don't think you were
able to really dispute a single one of then, right? Even that apocryphal claim that HIV hasn't been isolated
doesn't sound too strong now, does it?
(I think I'll let someone else contend for the lammo website's prize on
this). Given that you're so 'fact'
based why don't you start with some and show us what you know about the topic
before demanding answers to questions to a thesis you can't back up? What causes AIDS and how? Why does HIV not cause AIDS? These two are simple and would
substantiate the thesis of your post before venturing off into being po'ed at
burroughs-wellcome, claiming you have scientific proof of the link of KS and
poppers (i presume at least a couple papers from reputable scientific journals
and not someone's manifesto/novel), what's the proper definition of an epidemic
(actually the UN refers to the HIV/AIDS crisis as a pandemic ... but they're
probably similarly clueless in your book), etc. Stick to the big questions and fact based evidence first for
the claim you put forward and then deviate into your lists of random questions.
Are you out of your depth?
Yes
Will you ever admit it?
No
Typical of a good /.er?
Absolutely.
dude, chimera 0.6 on jaguar/mac OS X is able to manage the iFilm site and play the trailers via Quicktime fine - so you can avoid use MS products! i'm guessing this is your default browser given your MS aversion so maybe the site was /.. when you tried to check it out today. that being said, the iFilm site interface sucks. but the 5 minute trailer is still worth it if you're an impatient fellow such as myself.
>I think what you didn't write is more imporant than what you did write. Why did you duck every single one of my questions?
...
...
...
... it was in fact originally an anti-cancer candidate).
i wasn't ducking your questions as they weren't posed to me per se but posted in this forum. moreover, i was stating facts and not questions as you were. you can dismiss the facts as you choose based on whatever general or specific knowledge you have in the topic area. obviously you're someone who's concerned about being informed, and i in no way intend this to be personal. just giving you the perspective of someone who's seen these things up close as well as knows scientists involved in driving the debate on both sides. you've picked up on some of the points that peter duesberg originally put out. thus i also wanted to raise the possibility that his motivation might be influenced by other personal factors other than the science (ego is both a good and a bad thing in science). to briefly and honestly treat the last 4 points/questions you've brought up
(1) & (4) are semantic issues, right? the larger question you were posing prevoiusly was whether HIV caused an immunodeficiency that allowed secondary infections. i think the data is unequivocal on this point. as per what secondary infections occur in 'AIDS' caused by HIV-1, this has changed somewhat over time because people learned more about the disease and some of the early second infections became treatable and non-issues (thus saving lives). as per question (2), i don't know what burroughs-wellcome does with its money but am generally suspicious of large drug companies. as per question (3), supply whichever peter duesberg theory you want as this is one of his issues. he stopped scientifically publishing on HIV for the past 4-5 years, and has primarily gone back to his cancer work.
>HIV has not been isolated. How can any of your claims, which deoend on the existence of HIV, be true?
do you have specific knowledge of this or perhaps have done any molecular biology research to back this up? HIV has been isolated numerous times. it's real. it's not so hard to do. you can in fact isolate just it's nucleic acid genome, put this into cells, and they will make the virus. peter duesberg (again the leading scientific figure who used to question the HIV/AIDS link) has done the same exact experiment with other retroviruses. it's a pretty simple one. anyway, go to this website
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
search for
hiv isolation
or whatever terms you want and you'll find more than a few scientific references in the literature database.
>Antiviral drugs such as AZT? Do you work for Burroughs-Wellcome?
No. Why are you so hung up on this company?
I could work for big pharma if I wanted and prob triple my salary. Would probably make my wife a lot happier too. However, I am guilty of doing basic research. My specialities are immunology and virus biology. Run a small lab, train students and postdocs. We work hard, do our best to do good science and stay out of politics, and see if we can make a contribution to the common good. I decided to professionally continue studying retroviruses after seeing a friend die of HIV-1 infection that progressed to AIDS while I was a grad student. Pretty sad as it was the year that these drugs called protease inhibitors were coming out experimentally and he was trying so hard to get in a protocol so he could get the meds. If he had hung on a year longer, he still might have been here when they became generally available. It's amazing what the virus would do in those pre-protease inhib days. The guy went from being a healthy and fit 30-year old to looking like a gaunt and emaciated 80-year old man in the space of a year when his CD4+ cell counts were decimated. Every day, he would still come into work and try to do his job as if in denial. When these drugs were introduced in the early 1990's, the life expectancy of those HIV infected in the US has steadily shot up. I suspect persons like Magic Johnson would not be around now if it were not for this series of drugs/antivirals and those that have come out later (remem AZT was a first gen drug and not specifically designed to fight HIV
As per speaking 'fondly' of Peter Duesberg, I was just giving the guy his due. He's done good research in cancer, but I think some of the things he's said about HIV/AIDS are incorrect based on an examination of the body of scientific data and experiments I've performed with my own hands. Sometimes smart people make mistakes. I'm not going to get into a debate of whether you have or I have on this topic because I think you're coming at it with an open mind and willing to examine information or evidence as presented (obviously beyond what spin or rolling stone or the popular press may report). I decided to put my own curiosity on the research bench and test things myself. It's no conspiracy. HIV kills CD4+ T cells. Stopping the virus saves these important immune cells and it prolongs life.
will check out the Diane Duane book.
... consistent in the lack of sophistication in original series when compared to vulcans)
... aberrations of the romulans?
as per the romulans, at least some of the clips i saw made them look almost retro, like they appeared in the original star trek series. thought it was kind of funny; although, you're right in that they should be updated. (and i don't believe these presumed romulans were depictions of vulcans as their sense of style was more akin to that of north korean leader kim jog il
however, who was/were the dudes who like alien nosferatus
whoops, meant the point is 'moot' ...
now that this hit the popular press, how long do you thing venter's U.S. Energy dept funding is going to last? given the current regulatory climate in funding human embyronic stem cell research, one would think that those same legislators ensuring restrictions in this arena are not going to be so thrilled with the US gov't funding research that news headlines trumpet as 'playing god'. dude, your research funding has been slashdotted.
... "We'll have a debate on what should be published and what shouldn't," Venter said. "We may not disclose all the details that would teach somebody else how to do this."
in truth, as has been noted in prior posts, he's not exactly proposing starting from scrath. indeed, ventner has had a long standing interest in the basic living unit prob for some time now, and now that he's primarily been hyping personal genome sequencing, it's nice to see him trying to push a scientific frontier once more.
there's an interesting CNN quote from him on the topic
somewhat ironic as he was also accused of withholding info on his company's sequencing efforts when they were published a couple years back (although there were no security reasons in that case). he seems to be prepping ahead of time here, but how can someone judge if he's really accomplished what they set out to do without adequate scientific review of the data, and more importantly, allowing other scientists to determine if the data is reproducible? it's like saying 'i made this gold from lead, but i can't show you how'. making this type of comment so far ahead of the efforts seems odd.
anyway, it's all mute if his funding gets nixed.
I'm amazed that this disinformation still persists. You can line up many times more scientists and physicians who work on infectious disease or viral and/or bacterial infections, and they will agree that an HIV-1 infection will lead to the destruction of CD4+ T cells in the body which leads to immunodeficiency and susceptibility to secondary infections which characterize AIDS. There's many lines of evidence to support this. Consider ...
... HIV-1 causes an immune destruction in individuals, the earth is not flat (remem, many more argued for years despite the evidence of the era that is was), and evolution is more than just a theory.
... or Nobelist Harold Varmus ... please)
(1) Exposing purified CD4+ T cells in culture outside the body to HIV-1 leads to their infection and killing. I've observed this many times under a microscope.
(2) Introduction of the genetic material obtained from HIV-1 through a method called transfection into these same cells leads to HIV-1 production and cell killing by the virus.
(3) In either of the circumstances listed in (1) or (2), if one uses and antiviral drug that specifically targets the virus, virus spread is stopped as is cell killing.
(4) The same antiviral drugs used in humans who are infected with HIV-1, prevents diminishment of CD4+ T cells, reduces the amount of HIV-1 present in the body, and extends life of HIV-1 infected persons.
(5) People with specific mutations in genes required by HIV-1 isolates in cell culture (such as CCR5), are highly resistant to natural infection by HIV-1 relative to the population at large. Persons who engage in behavior deemed to put them at high risk to HIV-1 infection (unprotected sex with different HIV-1 infected individuals multiple times) live longer and do not get infected with HIV-1 or develop AIDS at rates probably 100-1000 fold lower than the general population.
(6) Unfortunate laboratory workers who have exposed themselves to unique genetic HIV-1 isolates present in their respective labs have gotten infected by these specific virus isolates and had their CD4+ T cell numbers decimated by the infection until put on antivirals. Unfortunately, over time, retroviruses, such as HIV-1, under drug selection acquire resistance to the drugs through adaptation/evolution so the drugs are a temporary panacea.
(7) Different monkey species which in the wold were never exposed to HIV family viruses, when exposed in captivity under experimental circumstances, develop an infection, demonstrate loss in CD4+ T cell numbers, and ultimately succumb as a result of the infection. Antiviral drugs can prolong the life of these animals (sometimes indefinitely in the current time frame) and some vaccine strategies targeting certain viruses appear to be protective (unfortunately, because of HIV family viruses genetic diversity, thse vaccine strategies do not work against viruses that are genetically different -- imagine dealing with 1000's and 1000's a different flu isolates at once to get some perspective).
An early proponent in questioning whether HIV-1 caused AIDS was Peter Duesberg at UC-Berkeley. I've met Peter before, and some fo my senior colleagues know him quite well. Peter is a smart man and has made important contributions as to our understanding of cancer usng retroviruses as a model to explore oncogenesis. Indeed for his work in this area, some scientists (even those who disagree with his views on HIV and AIDS) think he may have been deserving of Nobel consideration. However Peter is a somewhat scorned man and he definitely possesses an ego - at least this was my impression as a junior scientist meeting one of the old big guys who had made important scientific contributions (the guy's also a pretty slick dresser relative to most scientists I know). Some of the same crowd involved in retroviruses and studying cancer moved into HIV-1 when it was discovered because it was a retrovirus. These included people Peter may not have liked and people he may have thought dissed him regarding credit for his work on oncogenesis. Thus Peter was probably a little more skeptical about work these scientists were involved in. I think this was fine at the beginning and Peter posed some legitimate questions. However, over time, this seemed to become personal. A lot of evidence has mounted about HIV-1 killing CD4+ T cells and causing immunodeficieny since the early days. In fact, a lot of the scientists that Peter may not have thought best of are no longer involved in the cutting edge of HIV-1 research or in the limelight as much. Peter's boxed himself in a difficult position and so I am unsure of whether he would ever be publically accepting of the evidence in favor of HIV-1 causing immunodeficiency no matter what it was.
Anyway to get perspective on the early days of the field aside from Peter, I would recommend John Crewdson's excellent recent book called Science Fictions. He mostly treats the tawdry characters who were involved in characterizing HIV-1 in the mid-1980's when first isolated and recognized. Some of these characters Peter (and those of us in the field) probably found distasteful in behavior - and for good reasons. However, in the long term, despite the players, the facts remain
(as per the website, rather than quote Nobelist Kary Mullis on the topic who understands the area as was as he might string theory, consider Nobelist Howard Temin's opinions on the topic
Apple has the 2 minute trailer (and in larger formats unavailable at iFilm) and an earlier teaser trailer not present at the iFilm site. However iFilm also has a 5 minute trailer *not* currently available through the Apple Quicktime Movie Links. If this interests you and you can get the iFilm stream going (although autodetect was useless as posted, I just selected Quicktime and T1 after it suggested MediaPlayer and Cable/DSL ... using Chimera 0.6), I think it's worth a look ... esp if you're one to generally make the Star Trek films irrespective parity/even/odd film rules. Romulans, birds of prey, bodies tossed into space, ... this one looks well worth the ticket price.
... and moderators, Holland, Mich rocks!)
(oh