While it COULD be possible to detect solidlers using similar technology, it would still be VERY difficult.
#1 as you stated most of the electronics are probably well shielded so as no to put out much radiation.
#2 a single soldier or even a squad is a very small target from any distance and if you are close enough to really zero in then you just use your eyes.
#3 By it's very nature a photovoltaic cell will NOT put out radiation. It is built to absorb radiation, not put it out! Radio waves are produced by moving electrons back and forth quickly. A photo power cell only move electrons in one way and at a relativly low power. The photo cell will probably need NO shielding...and even if it did, most cells use visible light for power so you could shield radio waves to your hearts content and not affect the function f the device.
yes that is deffinetly true....but wouldn't people use there left hand without having to codify it....I mean you would only make that mistake once...it would probably leave a bad taste in your mouth...
Mad cow disease is caused by cows eating COWS (or sheep). The US has banned canabilistic feed. But remember that most diseases are species specific and by feeding turkeys to cows and cows to turkeys you prevent the spread of disease as efectivly as turning them into oil.
But remember that by doing this you will make the cost of feed go up which will make the cost of meat go up...
GM products DO have a few down sides, some of which you mentioned.
They do tend to incourage monoculture farming. However this is nothing new. Farmers have been trying to monoculture for the last 10,ooo years. In the last 50-100 years they have gotten to the point of true monocultures. But just like any other plant they will only thrive in the enviroment they were designed for (by nature or man). If farmers see that they are not doing as well with GM crops THEY WILL STOP USING THEM.
GM foods can be health hazards. Especially if you mix organisms that tend to trigger alergic reactions like peanuts. It could be dangerous for people with sever allergies to buy carrots (or any other food) because it has peanut products in it. While this danger is real it is also avoidable. Just like so many prepared foods already have warning labels for food alergies, GM food will probably need labels.
But here are a few errors in you assumptions:
GM products do not necessarily need to "escape." It is very VERY easy to make organisms unable to breed with wild strains. The easiest is to only distribute sterile seeds when they are not being planted in a controlled environment (ie an open field rather than a greenhouse). However the downside to this is that farmers are then FORCED to buy new seeds every year. Now while farmers ALREADY tend to buy most or all of their seeds every year, this forced addiction may be unacceptable.
Probably the best way is to make the GM food unable to mate with wild strains. For insance, plant sperm needs to recognize and attach to plant ova. With out this attachment no fertilization can occcur. Fo the mdification is simple. Replace the two genes necessary for this matching with simlar genes from say a grasshopper....Now the GM plants absolutly cannnot coss with the wild strains and mating with grasshoppers won't be viable (:-))
But your BIGGEST oversight is the assumption that nature does it best.
It has been proven that nature is random. Genes are randomly distributed in each generation. Ever now and then a new gene or combination of genes are created that fundamentally changes the way the organism interacts with its environment...it forms a new species.
Just like introducing bull frogs to australia, this new species will wreak havok on the environment until a new balance is found. This is NO different that what would happen if GM plants got out.
Finally, there is a great deal of evidence that genes ARE transfered between completly unrelated species. This is done through bacteria or cross species virus's. A bacteria or virus picks up DNA from it's first host and the 2nd host incorproates it. Now fish DNA IS in soybean DNA. There is a great deal of evidence that suggests that a similar process triggered our evolution from other primates.
While GM food could be dangerous, it is no more dangerous than any other product we create. While removing a gene can cause changes to an organism, they will have to be very minor changes for a the reserachers not to see them. So long as proper percautions are taken...testing the food produced, checking the plants with varius others in a simulated wild situation etc...GM food can be very safe and a boon to society in general.
If there is ANYTHING history has shown us is that governments are usually pretty good at solving TECHNICAL problems and fatastically HORRIBLE at solving social problems.
There are LOTS of programs that were funded with no real anticipation of "tangible" returns.
Radio for example. Early mechanical computers (which of course were later copied into electronic versions). Automobiles...etc
Most of the really MAJOR technologies we use today were once pipedreams that a few people thought were neat but NEVER thought it would turn into anything.
The advantage of BASIC RESEARCH (which is what space exploration is) is that it will ALWAYS produce results in the long run. The down side is that it might be 10-20-100 years away.
Did you also notice that theyu said they would dissect the human brained mouse on birth?
It is litterally impossible for a mouse sized animal to have a human sized intelligence...you need a minimum number of neurons to get there and mice just aren't big enough.
You are correct when you say that "embryonic" stem cells are not the wave of the future for regenerative medicine...but they ARE a critical first step.
The goal is to take adult stem cells and give them the abilities of embryonic stem cells and THEN use them for medicinal purposes.
Just taking adult stem cells will not give you much...but by understanding embryonic stem cells we can in effect Have our cake and eat it too.
Get all the real benifits of embryonic stem cells without the problems of rejection and ethical problems.
What bugs me is not that this story doesn't "prove" anything but that people seem to expect cell phone usage to be completly harmless.
Remember people, everything will kill you in the righ amounts. One of the most potent poisons know is good old Oxygen. Oxygen is also a prime cancer causer as well as any number of thoer diseases.
No one is suggesting we stop breathing because the risks are minimal and the benifits are great.
As far as cell phones go, the risks ARE minimal and the benifits...well other than while driving...seem to be pretty good.
At the frequency and energy levels that the typical cell phone puts out, the worst that happens is a temporary local temperature elavation. This is the ONLY prove effect of cell phone usage.
Now anytime the body is moved out of homeostasis bad things can happen...but it IS rare and fairly minor.
Cell towers MAY (and I stress MAY) be a different matter and there is a lot more evidence for damage there.
But a call to stop cell usage just makes people not take you seriously. You need to be able to say exactly what is happening or no one will do anything except ignore you!
It is a defect because it makes the immune cell less effective!
That protein allows immune cells to lock onto each other and help to destroy disease.
Since these cells lack this mechanism, they don't lock onto other immune cells as well and aren't as good at killing things. This affects EVERYTHING the cell does.
So while the person is protected against AIDS, they are more suceptible to every single other illness and injury out there.
There are methods of taking chlorophy and instead of using the electrons that get kicked off to create sugar they are directed to a wire and produce current.
It actually works REALLY well...something like 40% efficiency but it doesn't last long...the chlorophyl degrades in under an hour unless the cell is there to support it.
I think slashdot acytually had an article with that some time ago...years ago.
We are actually unlikly to get much past about 50%
This is the best plant chlorophyl (sp?) systems can get. It is also sad but true that it is extremly rare that machines, silicon or other, significantly out do nature in efficiancy.
HOWEVER, since the average solar energy hitting earth is 1.4 kW/m^2 that means that even at 50% we are taking in 700 w/m^2. Now since the average energy use for a home is 17,130 kw/h that means we will need an average of 24-25 square meters to power a house.
Then of course there is no light at night so we will need to double the area to 50 square meters and add a battery system.
But REGARDLESS at even 50% efficiency we can power most single family american houses with simply the roof area!
As I sit in my lab waiting for the buffer to warm up so I can study cyclosproin dependant endothelium relaxation as few things pop into my mind.
#1 I find the concept of patents on natural gene sequences to be idiotic bordering on stupidity! That is like walking down the street, picking up a rock and filing a patent on it!!!
#2 there is a good reason science is willing to pay so much to private compaines for specialized buffers etc. REPRODUCABILITY
By buying from a well known company you know exactly what you are getting. Anyone who wants to reproduce your experiment simply has to get the catalog number. That way if something goes wrong you have many fewer variables to check out....was there some contamination or mis measurements in the buffers, was the DNA not quite right...is the problem on the original investigators side or mine?
I feel the basic research represented by say gene sequences of natural things should be "Open Source." There should NOT be patents on these and therefore no licensing fees to do experiments on stuff I grow in my own body.
But it is impractical to do this for all biological research materials...the scientific community won't take it.
In theory....yes it is possible although we do not know how to do it or how to maintain homeostasis as it grows.
But there are several significant problems with that method:
#1 as I mentioned, no brain means no breathing and very poor heart rate etc. THe clone would ahve to be on total life support for its entier existence.
#2 say you lost an arm, you would not want to then make a clone and let it grow up old enough so you can transplant an adult arm onto yours. This could take decades. Therefore you would have to get a clone made very early in life...thus it will be VERY expensive and storage would be an issue...on the of chance that you had an accident.
#3 There is still the whole morality issue of...is it alive? etc
I think a better way would be tissue engineering. You place various kinds of stem cells in a matrix that acts like an adult arm and over a few months the cells replace it and become the complete arm. No muss, no fuss but probably even harder than growing a clone with no head.
in some ways I prefer that! Content is really just another word for spin.
This way I get the information...new pictures from Saturn showing a principle still holds true on gas giant scales...I do not need people to tell me how this will change my life...for better or for worse depending on the analyst.
If I really want to know the larger effects I will look them up myself.
I think it is a refreshing change for news to be exactly that...NEWS and not some flunkies opinion on what the news means.
not to mention that the station will be forced out of orbit by it's own beam....so you would have to send a second equally as powerfull beam out the back....
The reason you have to say marrow stem cell or baby teeth stem cell or neural stem cell or embryoinc stem cell is that there ARE MATERIAL differences.
bone marrow stem cells are possibly the most plastic of adult stem cells....they can differentiate into the half dozen blood cells, liver and sattaliet cells for muscle. They CANNOT turn into neurons.
neural stem cells are almost as good, they can turn into all types of neurons as well as all the supporting cells in the brain.
Baby teeth stem cells can ONLY turn into teeth and make enamel...that is it.
While almost every cell (blood and immune cells are the major exceptions) DO contain all your DNA, your comment that "Even your baby teeth contain stem cells to grow any organ." is not more accurate than saying a mature skin cell can grow any organ....it just isn't correct.
Embryonic stem cells can turn into all the adult stem cells then turn into all the mature tissues...unlike adult stem cells.
Slashdot Mirror
While it COULD be possible to detect solidlers using similar technology, it would still be VERY difficult.
#1 as you stated most of the electronics are probably well shielded so as no to put out much radiation.
#2 a single soldier or even a squad is a very small target from any distance and if you are close enough to really zero in then you just use your eyes.
#3 By it's very nature a photovoltaic cell will NOT put out radiation. It is built to absorb radiation, not put it out! Radio waves are produced by moving electrons back and forth quickly. A photo power cell only move electrons in one way and at a relativly low power. The photo cell will probably need NO shielding...and even if it did, most cells use visible light for power so you could shield radio waves to your hearts content and not affect the function f the device.
yes that is deffinetly true....but wouldn't people use there left hand without having to codify it....I mean you would only make that mistake once...it would probably leave a bad taste in your mouth...
Sort of but not really.
Mad cow disease is caused by cows eating COWS (or sheep). The US has banned canabilistic feed. But remember that most diseases are species specific and by feeding turkeys to cows and cows to turkeys you prevent the spread of disease as efectivly as turning them into oil.
But remember that by doing this you will make the cost of feed go up which will make the cost of meat go up...
If you REALLY want to annoy the Saudis build one of these next to the pig farms.
Pigs make as much sewage as a human and many of these farms have 300,000 animals! Sewage treatment from pig farms are MAJOR environmental problems.
So we process the sewage and pig guts left over from slaughter into oil....
I wonder what Islam says about running a car fuled with ex-pig gas?
GM products DO have a few down sides, some of which you mentioned.
They do tend to incourage monoculture farming. However this is nothing new. Farmers have been trying to monoculture for the last 10,ooo years. In the last 50-100 years they have gotten to the point of true monocultures. But just like any other plant they will only thrive in the enviroment they were designed for (by nature or man). If farmers see that they are not doing as well with GM crops THEY WILL STOP USING THEM.
GM foods can be health hazards. Especially if you mix organisms that tend to trigger alergic reactions like peanuts. It could be dangerous for people with sever allergies to buy carrots (or any other food) because it has peanut products in it. While this danger is real it is also avoidable. Just like so many prepared foods already have warning labels for food alergies, GM food will probably need labels.
But here are a few errors in you assumptions:
GM products do not necessarily need to "escape." It is very VERY easy to make organisms unable to breed with wild strains. The easiest is to only distribute sterile seeds when they are not being planted in a controlled environment (ie an open field rather than a greenhouse). However the downside to this is that farmers are then FORCED to buy new seeds every year. Now while farmers ALREADY tend to buy most or all of their seeds every year, this forced addiction may be unacceptable.
Probably the best way is to make the GM food unable to mate with wild strains. For insance, plant sperm needs to recognize and attach to plant ova. With out this attachment no fertilization can occcur. Fo the mdification is simple. Replace the two genes necessary for this matching with simlar genes from say a grasshopper....Now the GM plants absolutly cannnot coss with the wild strains and mating with grasshoppers won't be viable (:-))
But your BIGGEST oversight is the assumption that nature does it best.
It has been proven that nature is random. Genes are randomly distributed in each generation. Ever now and then a new gene or combination of genes are created that fundamentally changes the way the organism interacts with its environment...it forms a new species.
Just like introducing bull frogs to australia, this new species will wreak havok on the environment until a new balance is found. This is NO different that what would happen if GM plants got out.
Finally, there is a great deal of evidence that genes ARE transfered between completly unrelated species. This is done through bacteria or cross species virus's. A bacteria or virus picks up DNA from it's first host and the 2nd host incorproates it. Now fish DNA IS in soybean DNA. There is a great deal of evidence that suggests that a similar process triggered our evolution from other primates.
While GM food could be dangerous, it is no more dangerous than any other product we create. While removing a gene can cause changes to an organism, they will have to be very minor changes for a the reserachers not to see them. So long as proper percautions are taken...testing the food produced, checking the plants with varius others in a simulated wild situation etc...GM food can be very safe and a boon to society in general.
If there is ANYTHING history has shown us is that governments are usually pretty good at solving TECHNICAL problems and fatastically HORRIBLE at solving social problems.
There are LOTS of programs that were funded with no real anticipation of "tangible" returns.
Radio for example. Early mechanical computers (which of course were later copied into electronic versions). Automobiles...etc
Most of the really MAJOR technologies we use today were once pipedreams that a few people thought were neat but NEVER thought it would turn into anything.
The advantage of BASIC RESEARCH (which is what space exploration is) is that it will ALWAYS produce results in the long run. The down side is that it might be 10-20-100 years away.
I agree the Hubble needs to be saved...but it isn't quite THAT simple.
It is like junking a car because it needs a 1K transmission.
Getting the parts to the huubble and fixing it WITHOUT destroying the thing is not a trivial or cheap problem to solve.
Personally I think it is worth it, but the price tag is big enough to give some people pause.
Did you also notice that theyu said they would dissect the human brained mouse on birth?
It is litterally impossible for a mouse sized animal to have a human sized intelligence...you need a minimum number of neurons to get there and mice just aren't big enough.
You are correct when you say that "embryonic" stem cells are not the wave of the future for regenerative medicine...but they ARE a critical first step.
The goal is to take adult stem cells and give them the abilities of embryonic stem cells and THEN use them for medicinal purposes.
Just taking adult stem cells will not give you much...but by understanding embryonic stem cells we can in effect Have our cake and eat it too.
Get all the real benifits of embryonic stem cells without the problems of rejection and ethical problems.
What bugs me is not that this story doesn't "prove" anything but that people seem to expect cell phone usage to be completly harmless.
Remember people, everything will kill you in the righ amounts. One of the most potent poisons know is good old Oxygen. Oxygen is also a prime cancer causer as well as any number of thoer diseases.
No one is suggesting we stop breathing because the risks are minimal and the benifits are great.
As far as cell phones go, the risks ARE minimal and the benifits...well other than while driving...seem to be pretty good.
At the frequency and energy levels that the typical cell phone puts out, the worst that happens is a temporary local temperature elavation. This is the ONLY prove effect of cell phone usage.
Now anytime the body is moved out of homeostasis bad things can happen...but it IS rare and fairly minor.
Cell towers MAY (and I stress MAY) be a different matter and there is a lot more evidence for damage there.
But a call to stop cell usage just makes people not take you seriously. You need to be able to say exactly what is happening or no one will do anything except ignore you!
Sorry, but I had to rant a little.
It is a defect because it makes the immune cell less effective!
That protein allows immune cells to lock onto each other and help to destroy disease.
Since these cells lack this mechanism, they don't lock onto other immune cells as well and aren't as good at killing things. This affects EVERYTHING the cell does.
So while the person is protected against AIDS, they are more suceptible to every single other illness and injury out there.
It's a trade off...and therefore a defect.
Actualy you are not far off.
There are methods of taking chlorophy and instead of using the electrons that get kicked off to create sugar they are directed to a wire and produce current.
It actually works REALLY well...something like 40% efficiency but it doesn't last long...the chlorophyl degrades in under an hour unless the cell is there to support it.
I think slashdot acytually had an article with that some time ago...years ago.
We are actually unlikly to get much past about 50%
This is the best plant chlorophyl (sp?) systems can get. It is also sad but true that it is extremly rare that machines, silicon or other, significantly out do nature in efficiancy.
HOWEVER, since the average solar energy hitting earth is 1.4 kW/m^2 that means that even at 50% we are taking in 700 w/m^2. Now since the average energy use for a home is 17,130 kw/h that means we will need an average of 24-25 square meters to power a house.
Then of course there is no light at night so we will need to double the area to 50 square meters and add a battery system.
But REGARDLESS at even 50% efficiency we can power most single family american houses with simply the roof area!
As I sit in my lab waiting for the buffer to warm up so I can study cyclosproin dependant endothelium relaxation as few things pop into my mind.
#1 I find the concept of patents on natural gene sequences to be idiotic bordering on stupidity! That is like walking down the street, picking up a rock and filing a patent on it!!!
#2 there is a good reason science is willing to pay so much to private compaines for specialized buffers etc. REPRODUCABILITY
By buying from a well known company you know exactly what you are getting. Anyone who wants to reproduce your experiment simply has to get the catalog number. That way if something goes wrong you have many fewer variables to check out....was there some contamination or mis measurements in the buffers, was the DNA not quite right...is the problem on the original investigators side or mine?
I feel the basic research represented by say gene sequences of natural things should be "Open Source." There should NOT be patents on these and therefore no licensing fees to do experiments on stuff I grow in my own body.
But it is impractical to do this for all biological research materials...the scientific community won't take it.
You forget radiant energy.
:-)
At any real difference from the sun you can radiate away the extra heat....
This massive radiator can function as a solar sale when close to a star (Launching and arrival)...double duty
Or you can use the heat to vaporise the fuel material before your particle accelerator spits it out.
Has anyone found out what kind of acceleration they are expecting?
How much will it have to accelerate to get into the stable orbit they were talking about?
PLUS wouldn't running a current through the metal help block some of thoes pesky mind-controlling signals?
Double benifit!!!!
AMEN Brother!!
I am currently studying embryonic stem cells...the crap both parties are throwing around about the possibilities and problems is incredible!
They are both off the mark!
In theory....yes it is possible although we do not know how to do it or how to maintain homeostasis as it grows.
But there are several significant problems with that method:
#1 as I mentioned, no brain means no breathing and very poor heart rate etc. THe clone would ahve to be on total life support for its entier existence.
#2 say you lost an arm, you would not want to then make a clone and let it grow up old enough so you can transplant an adult arm onto yours. This could take decades. Therefore you would have to get a clone made very early in life...thus it will be VERY expensive and storage would be an issue...on the of chance that you had an accident.
#3 There is still the whole morality issue of...is it alive? etc
I think a better way would be tissue engineering. You place various kinds of stem cells in a matrix that acts like an adult arm and over a few months the cells replace it and become the complete arm. No muss, no fuss but probably even harder than growing a clone with no head.
in some ways I prefer that! Content is really just another word for spin.
;-)
This way I get the information...new pictures from Saturn showing a principle still holds true on gas giant scales...I do not need people to tell me how this will change my life...for better or for worse depending on the analyst.
If I really want to know the larger effects I will look them up myself.
I think it is a refreshing change for news to be exactly that...NEWS and not some flunkies opinion on what the news means.
but that is just me
You forget solar.
Put it high enough up and you have a steady flux of solar energy.
A large (think several square Kilometer) solar panel could power this thing easily.
not to mention that the station will be forced out of orbit by it's own beam....so you would have to send a second equally as powerfull beam out the back....
Actually...I would be more worried about re-entry heat first.
Once the newness of getting these resources wears off, the mass change will equalize. As much will leave as enter. (my guess but reasonable)
But if space travel becomes TOO common the heat of re-entry can adversly affect the environment....unless of course we do space cable type systems.
Not true...
The reason you have to say marrow stem cell or baby teeth stem cell or neural stem cell or embryoinc stem cell is that there ARE MATERIAL differences.
bone marrow stem cells are possibly the most plastic of adult stem cells....they can differentiate into the half dozen blood cells, liver and sattaliet cells for muscle. They CANNOT turn into neurons.
neural stem cells are almost as good, they can turn into all types of neurons as well as all the supporting cells in the brain.
Baby teeth stem cells can ONLY turn into teeth and make enamel...that is it.
While almost every cell (blood and immune cells are the major exceptions) DO contain all your DNA, your comment that "Even your baby teeth contain stem cells to grow any organ." is not more accurate than saying a mature skin cell can grow any organ....it just isn't correct.
Embryonic stem cells can turn into all the adult stem cells then turn into all the mature tissues...unlike adult stem cells.