When I was running my 486 with the case off once, I spilled a can of Diet Coke onto the motherboard. The monitor made a fascinating pixel design the likes of which I've never seen before or since, and I quickly unplugged the box and let it dry.
I turned it back on about a day later. It was absolutely fine, and I kept using the machine until I upgraded six months later. I guess the moral of this story is "diet soda less destructive than the sugary kind."
I used the term "monkey" too loosely, but macaques and SIV are very much a model system used for determining HIV vaccine efficacy. You're wrong that SIV never kills macques; in fact, the right strain of SIV kills them very quickly.
What works in a dish of cells is often an entirely different story in an entire organism. It will be exciting when their virus manages to, say, keep an SIV-infected monkey alive for five years post-infection.
Seven years ago, a custom rhabdovirus (rabies) for selectively killing HIV-infected cells had my biotechnolgy professor all excited, but nobody's heard from them for a while since it didn't work in whole organisms.
The technology education I received in middle school was a complete waste and consisted mostly of making HyperCards on aging, virus-filled Mac LCs. Nobody even knows what a HyperCard is anymore.
I agree with the parent that computers are best learned later. Giving kids logic puzzles will do so much more towards making them good programmers some day than mastering clip art.
I agree totally that a vaccine would be orders of magnitude better than serum treatment. It's just that the post I replied to implied that if one catches Ebola, there's absolutely nothing to try, which doesn't seem to be _quite_ the case. I believe I read about the serum treatment in either The Hot Zone (Preston) or The Coming Plague (Laurie Garrett), but it's been a while.
To be really technical, you can treat viruses with no "cures" by giving serum from somebody who has recovered, because presumably it has some really good antibodies in it. I believe they do this at the CDC and Ft. Detrick whenever anyone who studies Ebola accidentally sticks themselves with a dirty needle.
I feel sorry for the guys who recovered and thus suddenly had the duty towards mankind to donate plasma frequently for the rest of their lives.
Re:A few percent
on
The Red Queen
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· Score: 3, Informative
The human species is actually closer to 99% identical to chimps genetically. It's recently been discovered that the Y chromosome has more genes on it than was thought, which would indicate human males are actually closer-related to male chimps than to human females and vice versa. Go figure. There is an article about it here.
Given the overpopulation of the world (maybe we can feed everyone, but the world can't sustain everyone living like Americans), is it ethical to do things that promote population growth? Is it ethical to help infertile people to make babies? Is it ethical to design better corn so we can feed more people who will all want food and consumer commodities? Is it ethical to cure lung cancer, or is it better to allow people's own stupidity and choice of bad habits to kill them? Ditto for other diseases caused by destructive lifestyles? Is China's one-child policy ethical?
I'd love to know what everyone thinks. I'm in a doctoral biology program and nobody talks about the ramifications of molecular biology research.
>Why was AIDs not decleared a contagious disease back in 1981 and infected people quaratined? Were the rights of a few worth more than the rights of 75 million?
If being branded HIV-positive landed you in quarantine for life, do you think anybody would ever willingly be tested? Either you'd end up with loads of willfuly ignorant souls spreading disease around, or you'd have to force testing on everyone. How would you do that without feeling like an even bigger trampler upon the Constition than Ashcroft?
Laurie Garrett wrote a very good book about emerging diseases and the emergence of HIV in general, called "The Coming Plague." It's very long but an insightful view for anyone truly interested.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was running my 486 with the case off once, I spilled a can of Diet Coke onto the motherboard. The monitor made a fascinating pixel design the likes of which I've never seen before or since, and I quickly unplugged the box and let it dry. I turned it back on about a day later. It was absolutely fine, and I kept using the machine until I upgraded six months later. I guess the moral of this story is "diet soda less destructive than the sugary kind."
I used the term "monkey" too loosely, but macaques and SIV are very much a model system used for determining HIV vaccine efficacy. You're wrong that SIV never kills macques; in fact, the right strain of SIV kills them very quickly.
What works in a dish of cells is often an entirely different story in an entire organism. It will be exciting when their virus manages to, say, keep an SIV-infected monkey alive for five years post-infection.
Seven years ago, a custom rhabdovirus (rabies) for selectively killing HIV-infected cells had my biotechnolgy professor all excited, but nobody's heard from them for a while since it didn't work in whole organisms.
(Why yes, I _am_ a molecular biologist....)
I agree with the parent that computers are best learned later. Giving kids logic puzzles will do so much more towards making them good programmers some day than mastering clip art.
Gupta et al, J. Virology 2001 May; 75(10) 4649-54 is an article testing the same concept on mice, more wide-spread, and finding out that it works pretty well.
To be really technical, you can treat viruses with no "cures" by giving serum from somebody who has recovered, because presumably it has some really good antibodies in it. I believe they do this at the CDC and Ft. Detrick whenever anyone who studies Ebola accidentally sticks themselves with a dirty needle. I feel sorry for the guys who recovered and thus suddenly had the duty towards mankind to donate plasma frequently for the rest of their lives.
The human species is actually closer to 99% identical to chimps genetically. It's recently been discovered that the Y chromosome has more genes on it than was thought, which would indicate human males are actually closer-related to male chimps than to human females and vice versa. Go figure. There is an article about it here.
These researchers at the University of Glasgow are studying a correlation between some bird species having relatively large genomes, and their long life spans and decreased senescence compared to mammals.
Given the overpopulation of the world (maybe we can feed everyone, but the world can't sustain everyone living like Americans), is it ethical to do things that promote population growth? Is it ethical to help infertile people to make babies? Is it ethical to design better corn so we can feed more people who will all want food and consumer commodities? Is it ethical to cure lung cancer, or is it better to allow people's own stupidity and choice of bad habits to kill them? Ditto for other diseases caused by destructive lifestyles? Is China's one-child policy ethical?
I'd love to know what everyone thinks. I'm in a doctoral biology program and nobody talks about the ramifications of molecular biology research.
>Why was AIDs not decleared a contagious disease back in 1981 and infected people quaratined? Were the rights of a few worth more than the rights of 75 million?
If being branded HIV-positive landed you in quarantine for life, do you think anybody would ever willingly be tested? Either you'd end up with loads of willfuly ignorant souls spreading disease around, or you'd have to force testing on everyone. How would you do that without feeling like an even bigger trampler upon the Constition than Ashcroft?
Laurie Garrett wrote a very good book about emerging diseases and the emergence of HIV in general, called "The Coming Plague." It's very long but an insightful view for anyone truly interested.