Context is important. I was not implying that actors are dumb, the parent was. I was simply indicating that no one I knew that was wealthy fit any of the criteria listed in his anti-wealthy screed.
Why you felt it necessary to attack my wife to make your point is beyond me. Fortunately for me, the actors she's most attracted to are openly gay so even if she was the cheating kind, actually met the relevant star, and attracted the actors attention, I still wouldn't have to worry because she's lacking the requisite equipment.
The Valedictorian of my graduating class was not the smartest person in our class, just the hardest working. I remember a conversation in which she admitted as such. She gave me a list of people that she believed to be smarter than herself, but that didn't apply themselves as much as she did.
A friend of mine was on that list and he was notorious for not turning in homework assignments, despite being capable of doing the work. She never missed a due date, did all the extra credit she could, and spent far more time studying than anyone else in our grade. That application was the difference between being in the top 20% of our class (as my buddy was) and the top 1%.
The original post didn't even provide anecdote. So, while my examples are hardly valid from a statistical stand point they are at least data points, instead of poorly informed class hostility.
That's why I asked for citations. If he's got data (plural) to refute my datum (singular) then he wins. Otherwise my datum (singular) trumps his complete lack of any verification (null).
Apparently you are poor, becuase most of the rich people I know are very intelligent. They earned their money (ie not "Old Money") legitimately (ie not "Celebrity Money") and are not connected with hollywood (ie not actors, directors or writters).
Some rich people are stupid, but so are most of the poor people I know so unless you've got a couple of citations to back up your obviously prejudiced opinions your just a troll.
Prisons serve all three roles. Their existance is ment to be a deterrent to those that have not broken the law, punishment for those that have already broken the law, and protection of the rest of society from those who've demonstrated a willingness to break the law. The nature of the crime will effect to what extent the sentencing is intended to act as a punshment or protective role.
Sentencing of Blue and White colar criminals are going to be aimed at punishment and a warning to others that may be tempted to perpetrate similar acts (embezlement, breaking and entering, etc.). The ancillary effects of incarceration (loss of job, being ostrasized by friends/family, difficulty finding a job post incarceration) are as much part of the punishement as the actuall time spent in prison.
The sentencing of violent offenders is going to be targeted more at punishing the perpetrator and protecting the innocent. That's why they tend to have longer sentences and are locked up in higher security facilities than their blue collar compatriots. Rehabilitation is more important, but less successful with certain groups of violent criminals and thus they serve longer sentences and are occationally euthanized by the state (depending on where they are incarcerated).
The death penalty is the ultimate in both punishment of the criminal and protection of society, and IMO not to be used lightly. It should never be used for those that have not proven themselves to be violently dangerous to the rest of society (ie tax fraud doesn't deserve a needle, but repeated homocides does).
1. A strong nation needs scientists and mathematicians more than anything else.
I'm willing to grant that for the sake of argument, although it does expose your personal bias
2. The idea of not increasing native-born scientists on the basis that "employers ain't gonna pay more if there is an over-supply of scientists" is totally bullshit.
Not even a little. It's supply and demand. If you've got 35 qualified applicants for a job, you can afford to be choosier in who you get and what you pay them, than if you've only got 2 qualified applicants. The author of the study may overstate how much of an influence this plays on overall salary and retention, but that doesn't make it "Total bullshit" as you put it.
3. Most of the scientists in America are foreign born. And those foreign-born scientists have no difficulties in going back to their homeland if they can live better back home.
I attend Purdue, which is always in the top 5 for international students as a percent of the student body, and is usually number 1 or 2 for international students in the Graduate Programs nationally. However, international graduate students (or undergrads for that matter) don't make up anywhere near 50% of the student body within either demographic. You could claim that international students are not evenly distributed across departments (I don't know that to be the case), but I'm in the sciences and they don't even make up 20% of my departments graduate students. I've seen no evidence that they make up more than 30% in any given department. It's all circumstancial, but leads me to believe that you are completely wrong.
There may be a field out there, possibly your field, that is made up predominantly of foreign born scientists, but that does not appear to be representative of All science and mathematics nation wide.
4. Imagine the scenario of foreign born scientists leaving America while there are not enough native-born scientists to fill the posts, what type of future America gonna have?
Most of the foreign born scientists I know are trying their best to stay in the US. The problem is that companies need to be willing to sponser their Visa's and at least in my field they seem very unwilling. I know several former students who are doing Post-Doc work at the university in order to stay in the US long enough to find a sponsor. The number of applicants for permanent US residency far out strips the number that the US is willing/able to approve each year. As a result, when no longer able to find a Post-Doc most of those foreign MS and PhD students I know have had to return home to China, Ireland, India, Nigeria, etc, so the situation you describe has already happening without the sky falling in on anyone.
4. Does that anti-science sociologist want America to become another Zimbabwe?
The US has been training and exporting educated foreign born scientists for decades and we've retained our competetiveness. There is no reason to believe that it will change if we educate a handful fewer scientists every year.
They already are "Buying in" to patent protection.
The billions of dollars required to identify potential bioactive compounds, evaluate their potential plusses and minuses, then prove to the USDA/FDA/etc. that the drug is both beneficial and safe enough for approval don't come from nowhere. The company foots the bill up front, and most of the compounds they investigate either don't work, don't work reliably, or are not safe enough for approval. The company needs to make enough profit to cover the development of the 1 drug that did pass muster, as well as the 100's to 1,000's of chemicals that did not. The high prices on patented drugs pay for the R&D necessary to identify the next drug. If the patent protection is too short, the they run out of money and R&D stops.
I'm not saying I know what the sweet spot is as far as the amount of time a drug patent should be valid for. I don't believe that there is ONE number that will fit in all situations. However, charging companies for patent protection after already requiring them to spend billions on getting FDA approval in the first place is going to just muddy the waters and possibly inhibit R&D spending.
Correlation is a measure of how well the model describes the data. So according to the summary, 33 to 52% of the variation in the data was explained by the model. Depending on the inherent variability in the criteria being evaluated, that could be very good or very bad. In my line of work that would be very bad, but for social sciences such as sociology, that is very high. It all comes down to how many variables you can control. The more control, the less variation, the higher the correlation when the model is a good fit.
Significance is a measure of the probability that the response seen is due to random variation or errors in sampling. They may have given a measure of significance in the article, but the summary did not.
This solution would probably require much higher doses than current vaccines do, but it would probably be safer and faster.
The flu at least is an RNA virus, but the function of the genetic material is for the replication of the virus after it has infected a cell. When it is not actively infecting a cell the DNA/RNA is completely dormant within the viral coat, thus the debate over whether viruses are alive or not. There is no metabolic activity in the absense of a host cell to infect.
The shell or viral coat is primarily what the immune system recognizes when fighting a viral infection. That is why killed vaccines work. They don't work as well as modified live vaccines (generally) because you don't get the first couple of generations of viral replication (at a slower rate than the wildtype virus) that trigger a much stronger immune response. Viral RNA can also trigger immune response, but the RNA needs to be processed by an antigen presenting cell such as an infected cell or a phagocyte.
It actually works the same way with certain bacteria. Researchers will frequently inject LPS (lipopolysaccharide) into animals to simulate a bacterial infection, because bacteria have LPS on their surfaces and their are immune systems designed to recognize this ubiquitious bacterial component.
I'm not sure about separate shells, but I do know that many (all?) viruses have several different proteins involved in making the shell, and that changes in which proteins are present will change the antigenic profile of the virus.
You may be an AC, but you are correct. It is fairly simple to create cDNA librarys of the viral RNA genome. One benefit of cDNA libararies over working with the viral RNA directly is stability. You still need to be fanatical about avoiding contamination of your samples, but DNA is more stable.
I feel pretty confident in saying that we will experience viral outbreak that will rival the Spanish influenza epidemic within the next 1000 years, which last time I checked, is considerably shorter than ETERNITY
You are assuming a steady state over those 1000 years in human technology and efforts. Vaccines are a hair over 300 years old, our use of antibiotics are less than a century old, and our use of antivirals is less than 50. Based on our current rate of advancement in understanding genetics, virus host interaction, and immune function it is entirely possible that we will have solved the problem of conferring immunity to all viruses within the next 1000 years. Your over generalizations are your own undoing.
Sigma(small value) over infinity is infinity.
This is a description of division, or more specifically a fraction. Therefore my comment was completely relevant to what you wrote. Now, that may not have been what you were attempting to describe, but as I tell my wife on occasion "I am not a mind reader". If you meant something else, then you should have written something else. It's more than a little hypocritical for you to repeatedly tell me that I need to learn to read, when you fail to actually write what you mean.
Also, this whole debate began because you failed to read the parents post critically. As a result, you incorrectly asserted that an impossible situation was a certainty. As I pointed out in my first response to you, the author was not describing mutation, although it would appear to be the case on first examination. What the parent was describing was the spontaneous acquisition of certain abilities by an innocuous virus in the absence of any sort of genetic recombination or mutation simply because a cell had been infected by both viruses. Here is the salient point again
4. He seems to be indicating that the packaging of the genes from Virus A into the viral coat of Virus B will some how make a new hybrid Virus A/B that is more virulent than either of it's progentors. However, once this new Virus A/B injects the genes from Virus A into a cell it will produce the viral coat for Virus A, not Virus B . That is because the scenario he describes includes no mention of genetic recombination of the two different viral genomes.
If he had actually said what you thought that he said, you would have been right enough that I wouldn't have bothered responding. However, since he essentially said "If unicorns stab people in the heart..." and you changed it to "When unicorns stab people in the heart..." your statement was false. It was false primarily because of what He said, not necessarily because of what you said.
As your indication that I'm a soft science loser, I fail to see where you got that impression. I'm a practitioner of the life sciences. If I weren't, I would not have gotten into a debate of immunology and virology with you, as I tend to avoid arguments outside my knowledge base. Since you've decided to start questioning qualifications, what exactly is your relevant training?
'Over long enough time frames' is so vague as to imply infinity. That is the only way that your statement can actually be as certain as you believe it to be.
Once you start using meaningful measures of time like a decade or a century, the probability that your statement is correct becomes much less certain.
I jumped on you because you demonstrated a lack of critical thinking skill to dissect the parent post. Instead you did the minimum amount of thinking necessary to enable you to use the "change one word in someones post and then say 'Fixed that for you' meme." While that may have given you a warm tingly feeling it did nothing to contribute to the conversation and if anything lent credibility to a complex combination of FUD and out right lies that was the parent post.
P.S. any value divided by infinity is Zero. What you are thinking of is dividing anything by Zero gives you infinity.
Anyone who use the phrase "That's a Fact" as frequently as you do when discussing something they've demonstrated a lack of understanding of is way too full of them self, and in my experience trying to save face.
If you understood the first thing about statistics, you know that high statistical probability and absolute certainty are two completely different things. You are correct that over a long enough time frame it is assumed that a more lethal virus will evolve. However, that is based on the assumption that all life on Earth isn't wiped out first. The statistical probability of an extinction level astronomical event on a long enough time frame is also very high. However, if you start to limit the time frame to say, the next 100 years those probabilities drop dramatically.
What you are guilty of is making assumptions that are not safe to make (the infinite existence of life on earth) and then extrapolating certain data (mutation rates of viruses) out beyond what is supported. Feel free to keep calling me names, but that won't change the fact that you were and continue to be wrong.
I totally agree, that's why I make it a point of asking for citations. That forces them to either shut-up or provide evidence I can actually refute. Doesn't always work, but it's served me better than trying to find their citation as well as my one like I used to.
I'll admit I don't always provide my own citations up front, but I am always willing to make them available upon request. Kind of like personal references. You may want to try it and see if it makes contributing on/. less stressful.
I was never bitching. I was telling you that you are both preaching to the choir and bitching at the wrong person.
Don't find their citations, just ask that they provide them. If they fail to do so, then you win. If they do provide a citation, you've got a basis for critical analysis and something substantial to which you can respond.
I'm an American so I'm going to trust the CDC. It's a judgment call, and not one I'm sure I'd make the same way if I lived in Canada.
Which is why I ask for citations. If the person arguing with me cannot or will not supply me with a citation then I quickly lose interest in arguing with them.
I freely admit that I don't always provide citations, but I will upon request and I don't take offense at being asked. In my experience (YMMV) when those making wild claims are presented with high quality sources to contradict their outlandish remarks they stop responding. Sometimes they persist, but usually not for very long because they realize that their "Opinion" is not going to defeat "Evidence" for me, and their persistence will just make them look foolish.
Also, you googled without bothering to actually consider the source of your reference. They may have been a bad source, but it was your decision to run with it without ascertaining its quality. I had to run 3 different searches on the CDC's website to find my responding citation. That you didn't do your due diligence is not the fault of some "SEO companies", what ever that means.
Well, contrary to my initial impression you do appear to be more informed on the topic than I and you appear to have done your homework. It'll take me a while to go through what you've posted, so I'm not convinced yet but I appreciate the info none the less.
As to the apprenticeship issue, I remain unconvinced (possibly because I'm just too stubborn, although I don't think so). The Apprentice is still paid for the work that they do for their Master. It is often a pittance, and the Master profits from the work of the Apprentice, but so does the Apprentice. The payment of the Apprentice is a combination of work experience, knowledge provided by the Master, and what ever money the Apprentice earns to cover living expenses (assuming the Apprentice does not simply move in with the Master, in which case no money changes hands, but expenses are paid on the Apprentices behalf by the Master). Even if for the sake of argument I accepting your thesis that Banking cartels create money out of thin air, that doesn't change the fact that money is simply a commonly accepted bartering currency to be used in place of livestock, precious metals, etc. It has value because we all agree that it has value. Just as with precious metals. Up until recently Gold was valuable because it was pretty, despite it being useless for making tools.
That the Master may pay the Apprentice in US dollars instead of goats or clothing does not change the basic transactional nature of the relationship. Since I manufacture nothing that can be bartered in my Apprenticeship to my Professor, he pays me in currency that is generated by our collective efforts. It is a small fraction of what he makes, but that is because I'm also receiving knowledge and experience in addition to my paycheck.
If you make an assertion, be prepared to back it up with evidence. It is not my job to make your argument for you. While you are correct that I could have looked it up myself, you were the one trying to convince me.
In the absence of a reliable citation from you, and my own interest I went to the CDC's website and found this response to the Canadian reports. Turns out that Canada's results may be an aberration in the global data set. Why is up for debate. It is possible that pure random chance is involved, although with a sample group that size it is unlikely. Changes in preventative behavior due to a false sense of invulnerability is also possible although also not satisfactory without any corroborating data.
Essentially we have multiple datasets that appear to provide contradictory conclusions in the absence of any proposed mechanism for the Canadian data. Welcome to active scientific research!! It is nowhere near as cut and dry as people frequently believe.
I gave a seminar presentation just 2 weeks ago on the "Problem with Assumptions" in which I discussed some frequently made assumptions in my own field of research, despite more than 50 years of evidence hinting that they are not safe to make. I must admit that I've made them myself in the past as well, so by no means am I faultless. I just didn't piece together the evidence until after my studies were done and another researcher provided a pretty convincing re-analysis of 13 different studies showing that fundamental assumptions made were not justifiable.
I don't post smart ass comments on topics upon which I am uneducated and unqualified. You and the parent apparently do. How can you know what is and is not going to happen if you know nothing about the underling science?
While I may consider myself somewhat of an authority on the life sciences, I pretty much stay out of arguments over the physical and computer sciences. Both topics that are very popular on/. and I tend to limit my posts to asking questions instead of making affirmative remarks as you and the parent did. That I called you both out for making it obvious you don't know what you are talking about may sting, but it doesn't make me egotistical at all. Just better informed and probably more than a little pedantic. I can live with that.
I get annoyed when the uninformed spread misinformation, and those pretending to slightly more information accept the misinformation at face value. I was correcting not only you, but anyone that was reading your posts and possessed of a similar lack of immunological education. That you don't like being made an example of is understandable. Hopefully you will learn from the experience and keep you yap shut when you don't know what you are talking about, as I do. You will probably learn more in the process and make a fool of yourself less frequently. It's just friendly advice that I suggest you take.
that school yard chant would normally require me to have called you a name. I didn't. However, I am willing to be gracious so here is an insult to retroactively justify you last post.
Sorry about that, I read the post while on the phone and missed that piece.
I could probably make an argument that since the government recognizes marriages as a part of policy, it is well within the scope of government to regulate what the definition of marriage is. However, that isn't what this discussion is actually about.
I also recognize that there are important differences between petitions and ballots. However, while petitions are supposed to be the public lending of support, people should feel safe that they will not be penalized for having lent that support. Prior to the digitization of these sorts of records it was exceedingly rare that anyone would bother to look up who exactly signed what petitions. Now we have to deal with the possibility that activists can publish the home addresses and phone numbers of those that disagree with them for harassment. It can potentially step up the hostility on already divisive issues to dangerous levels. That is what this case is primarily about, not shame.
There is nothing that says believing something requires you to put yourself up for persecution unnecessarily. These people signed the petition expecting that their signatures would be filed away in a cabinet somewhere. Now they have to deal with their information being accessible on the internet, thus lowering the amount of energy necessary for potential reprisal. I'm not saying that they should win, but it is an important issue that should be addressed so as to prevent future confusion in the future.
Ok, without even going to the link I get the impression that I was right in calling it FUD. The source is "Natural News", which is not definitive, but highly suggestive.
The first paragraph is a strawman argument.
All of the links in the article are to their own news articles, instead of the outside sources that are implied.
The statement made in bold text toward the 2/3rds mark is patently false.
There may be a kernel of truth in there somewhere, but they've surrounded it with so much FUD, outright lies, and self-referencing that I feel completely justified in dismissing the entire thing as anti-vaccine propaganda.
Are you aware that getting the seasonal flu vaccine increased your chances of getting H1N1?
CITATION NEEDED. Not trying to be pedantic, but it strikes me as FUD at first glance. Could be that those who receive the vaccine stop being as cautious thus increasing their chances of contracting a disease they have not actually been vaccinated against.
I do agree with you as to the knee jerk reactionary types on slashdot when it comes to the biological sciences. My understanding of the typical slashdoter is a computer or physical sciences degree and little if any life sciences outside of what they've gleaned from the latest SciFi novel (Not knocking scifi, it's a favorite of mine). I realize I'm painting a huge community with a broad brush, but the shoe does appear to fit in most situations.
477 people. Now, that is, in fact, an order of magnitude LESS than the seasonal flu.
Except that those deaths have occured during the season when the seasonal flu is not active. So it's 477 deaths during the time of year that you aren't expecting anyone to die of the flu that isn't at high risk of dying anyway. Now combine that increased survivability demonstrated over the summer with immune systems compromized by the weather and seasonal flu, and you'll see higher than normal mortality rates this winter. We've already lost more children to the flu this year than normal and it's only October.
I'm not normally one to get the flu shot. I'm healthy and haven't seen the need. However, I have a 2 month old at home and in order to reduce her risk of getting it, I went out and got the seasonal flu vaccine and plan to get the H1N1 vaccine as well. You are correct that most people don't need the flu vaccine in normal year, that it is not the panacea many believe it to be, and that the media totally blew things out of proportion when first reporting on it several months back.
However, none of that negates the fact that the H1N1 virus is more dangerous in certain populations (the young) than the seasonal flu and more likely to be fatal.
Slashdot Mirror
Context is important. I was not implying that actors are dumb, the parent was. I was simply indicating that no one I knew that was wealthy fit any of the criteria listed in his anti-wealthy screed.
Why you felt it necessary to attack my wife to make your point is beyond me. Fortunately for me, the actors she's most attracted to are openly gay so even if she was the cheating kind, actually met the relevant star, and attracted the actors attention, I still wouldn't have to worry because she's lacking the requisite equipment.
I have to agree with you.
The Valedictorian of my graduating class was not the smartest person in our class, just the hardest working. I remember a conversation in which she admitted as such. She gave me a list of people that she believed to be smarter than herself, but that didn't apply themselves as much as she did.
A friend of mine was on that list and he was notorious for not turning in homework assignments, despite being capable of doing the work. She never missed a due date, did all the extra credit she could, and spent far more time studying than anyone else in our grade. That application was the difference between being in the top 20% of our class (as my buddy was) and the top 1%.
The original post didn't even provide anecdote. So, while my examples are hardly valid from a statistical stand point they are at least data points, instead of poorly informed class hostility.
That's why I asked for citations. If he's got data (plural) to refute my datum (singular) then he wins. Otherwise my datum (singular) trumps his complete lack of any verification (null).
Apparently you are poor, becuase most of the rich people I know are very intelligent. They earned their money (ie not "Old Money") legitimately (ie not "Celebrity Money") and are not connected with hollywood (ie not actors, directors or writters).
Some rich people are stupid, but so are most of the poor people I know so unless you've got a couple of citations to back up your obviously prejudiced opinions your just a troll.
Prisons serve all three roles. Their existance is ment to be a deterrent to those that have not broken the law, punishment for those that have already broken the law, and protection of the rest of society from those who've demonstrated a willingness to break the law. The nature of the crime will effect to what extent the sentencing is intended to act as a punshment or protective role.
Sentencing of Blue and White colar criminals are going to be aimed at punishment and a warning to others that may be tempted to perpetrate similar acts (embezlement, breaking and entering, etc.). The ancillary effects of incarceration (loss of job, being ostrasized by friends/family, difficulty finding a job post incarceration) are as much part of the punishement as the actuall time spent in prison.
The sentencing of violent offenders is going to be targeted more at punishing the perpetrator and protecting the innocent. That's why they tend to have longer sentences and are locked up in higher security facilities than their blue collar compatriots. Rehabilitation is more important, but less successful with certain groups of violent criminals and thus they serve longer sentences and are occationally euthanized by the state (depending on where they are incarcerated).
The death penalty is the ultimate in both punishment of the criminal and protection of society, and IMO not to be used lightly. It should never be used for those that have not proven themselves to be violently dangerous to the rest of society (ie tax fraud doesn't deserve a needle, but repeated homocides does).
1. A strong nation needs scientists and mathematicians more than anything else.
I'm willing to grant that for the sake of argument, although it does expose your personal bias
2. The idea of not increasing native-born scientists on the basis that "employers ain't gonna pay more if there is an over-supply of scientists" is totally bullshit.
Not even a little. It's supply and demand. If you've got 35 qualified applicants for a job, you can afford to be choosier in who you get and what you pay them, than if you've only got 2 qualified applicants. The author of the study may overstate how much of an influence this plays on overall salary and retention, but that doesn't make it "Total bullshit" as you put it.
3. Most of the scientists in America are foreign born. And those foreign-born scientists have no difficulties in going back to their homeland if they can live better back home.
I attend Purdue, which is always in the top 5 for international students as a percent of the student body, and is usually number 1 or 2 for international students in the Graduate Programs nationally. However, international graduate students (or undergrads for that matter) don't make up anywhere near 50% of the student body within either demographic. You could claim that international students are not evenly distributed across departments (I don't know that to be the case), but I'm in the sciences and they don't even make up 20% of my departments graduate students. I've seen no evidence that they make up more than 30% in any given department. It's all circumstancial, but leads me to believe that you are completely wrong.
There may be a field out there, possibly your field, that is made up predominantly of foreign born scientists, but that does not appear to be representative of All science and mathematics nation wide.
4. Imagine the scenario of foreign born scientists leaving America while there are not enough native-born scientists to fill the posts, what type of future America gonna have?
Most of the foreign born scientists I know are trying their best to stay in the US. The problem is that companies need to be willing to sponser their Visa's and at least in my field they seem very unwilling. I know several former students who are doing Post-Doc work at the university in order to stay in the US long enough to find a sponsor. The number of applicants for permanent US residency far out strips the number that the US is willing/able to approve each year. As a result, when no longer able to find a Post-Doc most of those foreign MS and PhD students I know have had to return home to China, Ireland, India, Nigeria, etc, so the situation you describe has already happening without the sky falling in on anyone.
4. Does that anti-science sociologist want America to become another Zimbabwe?
The US has been training and exporting educated foreign born scientists for decades and we've retained our competetiveness. There is no reason to believe that it will change if we educate a handful fewer scientists every year.
They already are "Buying in" to patent protection.
The billions of dollars required to identify potential bioactive compounds, evaluate their potential plusses and minuses, then prove to the USDA/FDA/etc. that the drug is both beneficial and safe enough for approval don't come from nowhere. The company foots the bill up front, and most of the compounds they investigate either don't work, don't work reliably, or are not safe enough for approval. The company needs to make enough profit to cover the development of the 1 drug that did pass muster, as well as the 100's to 1,000's of chemicals that did not. The high prices on patented drugs pay for the R&D necessary to identify the next drug. If the patent protection is too short, the they run out of money and R&D stops.
I'm not saying I know what the sweet spot is as far as the amount of time a drug patent should be valid for. I don't believe that there is ONE number that will fit in all situations. However, charging companies for patent protection after already requiring them to spend billions on getting FDA approval in the first place is going to just muddy the waters and possibly inhibit R&D spending.
Apparently I'm in a very pedantic mood today.
Correlation is a measure of how well the model describes the data. So according to the summary, 33 to 52% of the variation in the data was explained by the model. Depending on the inherent variability in the criteria being evaluated, that could be very good or very bad. In my line of work that would be very bad, but for social sciences such as sociology, that is very high. It all comes down to how many variables you can control. The more control, the less variation, the higher the correlation when the model is a good fit.
Significance is a measure of the probability that the response seen is due to random variation or errors in sampling. They may have given a measure of significance in the article, but the summary did not.
This solution would probably require much higher doses than current vaccines do, but it would probably be safer and faster.
The flu at least is an RNA virus, but the function of the genetic material is for the replication of the virus after it has infected a cell. When it is not actively infecting a cell the DNA/RNA is completely dormant within the viral coat, thus the debate over whether viruses are alive or not. There is no metabolic activity in the absense of a host cell to infect.
The shell or viral coat is primarily what the immune system recognizes when fighting a viral infection. That is why killed vaccines work. They don't work as well as modified live vaccines (generally) because you don't get the first couple of generations of viral replication (at a slower rate than the wildtype virus) that trigger a much stronger immune response. Viral RNA can also trigger immune response, but the RNA needs to be processed by an antigen presenting cell such as an infected cell or a phagocyte.
It actually works the same way with certain bacteria. Researchers will frequently inject LPS (lipopolysaccharide) into animals to simulate a bacterial infection, because bacteria have LPS on their surfaces and their are immune systems designed to recognize this ubiquitious bacterial component.
I'm not sure about separate shells, but I do know that many (all?) viruses have several different proteins involved in making the shell, and that changes in which proteins are present will change the antigenic profile of the virus.
You may be an AC, but you are correct. It is fairly simple to create cDNA librarys of the viral RNA genome. One benefit of cDNA libararies over working with the viral RNA directly is stability. You still need to be fanatical about avoiding contamination of your samples, but DNA is more stable.
I feel pretty confident in saying that we will experience viral outbreak that will rival the Spanish influenza epidemic within the next 1000 years, which last time I checked, is considerably shorter than ETERNITY
You are assuming a steady state over those 1000 years in human technology and efforts. Vaccines are a hair over 300 years old, our use of antibiotics are less than a century old, and our use of antivirals is less than 50. Based on our current rate of advancement in understanding genetics, virus host interaction, and immune function it is entirely possible that we will have solved the problem of conferring immunity to all viruses within the next 1000 years. Your over generalizations are your own undoing.
Sigma(small value) over infinity is infinity.
This is a description of division, or more specifically a fraction. Therefore my comment was completely relevant to what you wrote. Now, that may not have been what you were attempting to describe, but as I tell my wife on occasion "I am not a mind reader". If you meant something else, then you should have written something else. It's more than a little hypocritical for you to repeatedly tell me that I need to learn to read, when you fail to actually write what you mean.
Also, this whole debate began because you failed to read the parents post critically. As a result, you incorrectly asserted that an impossible situation was a certainty. As I pointed out in my first response to you, the author was not describing mutation, although it would appear to be the case on first examination. What the parent was describing was the spontaneous acquisition of certain abilities by an innocuous virus in the absence of any sort of genetic recombination or mutation simply because a cell had been infected by both viruses. Here is the salient point again
4. He seems to be indicating that the packaging of the genes from Virus A into the viral coat of Virus B will some how make a new hybrid Virus A/B that is more virulent than either of it's progentors. However, once this new Virus A/B injects the genes from Virus A into a cell it will produce the viral coat for Virus A, not Virus B . That is because the scenario he describes includes no mention of genetic recombination of the two different viral genomes.
If he had actually said what you thought that he said, you would have been right enough that I wouldn't have bothered responding. However, since he essentially said "If unicorns stab people in the heart ..." and you changed it to "When unicorns stab people in the heart ..." your statement was false. It was false primarily because of what He said, not necessarily because of what you said.
As your indication that I'm a soft science loser, I fail to see where you got that impression. I'm a practitioner of the life sciences. If I weren't, I would not have gotten into a debate of immunology and virology with you, as I tend to avoid arguments outside my knowledge base. Since you've decided to start questioning qualifications, what exactly is your relevant training?
'Over long enough time frames' is so vague as to imply infinity. That is the only way that your statement can actually be as certain as you believe it to be.
Once you start using meaningful measures of time like a decade or a century, the probability that your statement is correct becomes much less certain.
I jumped on you because you demonstrated a lack of critical thinking skill to dissect the parent post. Instead you did the minimum amount of thinking necessary to enable you to use the "change one word in someones post and then say 'Fixed that for you' meme." While that may have given you a warm tingly feeling it did nothing to contribute to the conversation and if anything lent credibility to a complex combination of FUD and out right lies that was the parent post.
P.S. any value divided by infinity is Zero. What you are thinking of is dividing anything by Zero gives you infinity.
Anyone who use the phrase "That's a Fact" as frequently as you do when discussing something they've demonstrated a lack of understanding of is way too full of them self, and in my experience trying to save face.
If you understood the first thing about statistics, you know that high statistical probability and absolute certainty are two completely different things. You are correct that over a long enough time frame it is assumed that a more lethal virus will evolve. However, that is based on the assumption that all life on Earth isn't wiped out first. The statistical probability of an extinction level astronomical event on a long enough time frame is also very high. However, if you start to limit the time frame to say, the next 100 years those probabilities drop dramatically.
What you are guilty of is making assumptions that are not safe to make (the infinite existence of life on earth) and then extrapolating certain data (mutation rates of viruses) out beyond what is supported. Feel free to keep calling me names, but that won't change the fact that you were and continue to be wrong.
I totally agree, that's why I make it a point of asking for citations. That forces them to either shut-up or provide evidence I can actually refute. Doesn't always work, but it's served me better than trying to find their citation as well as my one like I used to.
/. less stressful.
I'll admit I don't always provide my own citations up front, but I am always willing to make them available upon request. Kind of like personal references. You may want to try it and see if it makes contributing on
Happy Arguing!!
I was never bitching. I was telling you that you are both preaching to the choir and bitching at the wrong person.
Don't find their citations, just ask that they provide them. If they fail to do so, then you win. If they do provide a citation, you've got a basis for critical analysis and something substantial to which you can respond.
I'm an American so I'm going to trust the CDC. It's a judgment call, and not one I'm sure I'd make the same way if I lived in Canada.
Which is why I ask for citations. If the person arguing with me cannot or will not supply me with a citation then I quickly lose interest in arguing with them.
I freely admit that I don't always provide citations, but I will upon request and I don't take offense at being asked. In my experience (YMMV) when those making wild claims are presented with high quality sources to contradict their outlandish remarks they stop responding. Sometimes they persist, but usually not for very long because they realize that their "Opinion" is not going to defeat "Evidence" for me, and their persistence will just make them look foolish.
Also, you googled without bothering to actually consider the source of your reference. They may have been a bad source, but it was your decision to run with it without ascertaining its quality. I had to run 3 different searches on the CDC's website to find my responding citation. That you didn't do your due diligence is not the fault of some "SEO companies", what ever that means.
Well, contrary to my initial impression you do appear to be more informed on the topic than I and you appear to have done your homework. It'll take me a while to go through what you've posted, so I'm not convinced yet but I appreciate the info none the less.
As to the apprenticeship issue, I remain unconvinced (possibly because I'm just too stubborn, although I don't think so). The Apprentice is still paid for the work that they do for their Master. It is often a pittance, and the Master profits from the work of the Apprentice, but so does the Apprentice. The payment of the Apprentice is a combination of work experience, knowledge provided by the Master, and what ever money the Apprentice earns to cover living expenses (assuming the Apprentice does not simply move in with the Master, in which case no money changes hands, but expenses are paid on the Apprentices behalf by the Master). Even if for the sake of argument I accepting your thesis that Banking cartels create money out of thin air, that doesn't change the fact that money is simply a commonly accepted bartering currency to be used in place of livestock, precious metals, etc. It has value because we all agree that it has value. Just as with precious metals. Up until recently Gold was valuable because it was pretty, despite it being useless for making tools.
That the Master may pay the Apprentice in US dollars instead of goats or clothing does not change the basic transactional nature of the relationship. Since I manufacture nothing that can be bartered in my Apprenticeship to my Professor, he pays me in currency that is generated by our collective efforts. It is a small fraction of what he makes, but that is because I'm also receiving knowledge and experience in addition to my paycheck.
Having worked with both dairy and beef cattle, I'd like to know...
Exactly how does a cow fight?
If you make an assertion, be prepared to back it up with evidence. It is not my job to make your argument for you. While you are correct that I could have looked it up myself, you were the one trying to convince me.
In the absence of a reliable citation from you, and my own interest I went to the CDC's website and found this response to the Canadian reports. Turns out that Canada's results may be an aberration in the global data set. Why is up for debate. It is possible that pure random chance is involved, although with a sample group that size it is unlikely. Changes in preventative behavior due to a false sense of invulnerability is also possible although also not satisfactory without any corroborating data.
Essentially we have multiple datasets that appear to provide contradictory conclusions in the absence of any proposed mechanism for the Canadian data. Welcome to active scientific research!! It is nowhere near as cut and dry as people frequently believe.
I gave a seminar presentation just 2 weeks ago on the "Problem with Assumptions" in which I discussed some frequently made assumptions in my own field of research, despite more than 50 years of evidence hinting that they are not safe to make. I must admit that I've made them myself in the past as well, so by no means am I faultless. I just didn't piece together the evidence until after my studies were done and another researcher provided a pretty convincing re-analysis of 13 different studies showing that fundamental assumptions made were not justifiable.
I don't post smart ass comments on topics upon which I am uneducated and unqualified. You and the parent apparently do. How can you know what is and is not going to happen if you know nothing about the underling science?
/. and I tend to limit my posts to asking questions instead of making affirmative remarks as you and the parent did. That I called you both out for making it obvious you don't know what you are talking about may sting, but it doesn't make me egotistical at all. Just better informed and probably more than a little pedantic. I can live with that.
While I may consider myself somewhat of an authority on the life sciences, I pretty much stay out of arguments over the physical and computer sciences. Both topics that are very popular on
I get annoyed when the uninformed spread misinformation, and those pretending to slightly more information accept the misinformation at face value. I was correcting not only you, but anyone that was reading your posts and possessed of a similar lack of immunological education. That you don't like being made an example of is understandable. Hopefully you will learn from the experience and keep you yap shut when you don't know what you are talking about, as I do. You will probably learn more in the process and make a fool of yourself less frequently. It's just friendly advice that I suggest you take.
that school yard chant would normally require me to have called you a name. I didn't. However, I am willing to be gracious so here is an insult to retroactively justify you last post.
You are an idiot!
Sorry about that, I read the post while on the phone and missed that piece.
I could probably make an argument that since the government recognizes marriages as a part of policy, it is well within the scope of government to regulate what the definition of marriage is. However, that isn't what this discussion is actually about.
I also recognize that there are important differences between petitions and ballots. However, while petitions are supposed to be the public lending of support, people should feel safe that they will not be penalized for having lent that support. Prior to the digitization of these sorts of records it was exceedingly rare that anyone would bother to look up who exactly signed what petitions. Now we have to deal with the possibility that activists can publish the home addresses and phone numbers of those that disagree with them for harassment. It can potentially step up the hostility on already divisive issues to dangerous levels. That is what this case is primarily about, not shame.
There is nothing that says believing something requires you to put yourself up for persecution unnecessarily. These people signed the petition expecting that their signatures would be filed away in a cabinet somewhere. Now they have to deal with their information being accessible on the internet, thus lowering the amount of energy necessary for potential reprisal. I'm not saying that they should win, but it is an important issue that should be addressed so as to prevent future confusion in the future.
Ok, without even going to the link I get the impression that I was right in calling it FUD. The source is "Natural News", which is not definitive, but highly suggestive.
The first paragraph is a strawman argument.
All of the links in the article are to their own news articles, instead of the outside sources that are implied.
The statement made in bold text toward the 2/3rds mark is patently false.
There may be a kernel of truth in there somewhere, but they've surrounded it with so much FUD, outright lies, and self-referencing that I feel completely justified in dismissing the entire thing as anti-vaccine propaganda.
Are you aware that getting the seasonal flu vaccine increased your chances of getting H1N1?
CITATION NEEDED. Not trying to be pedantic, but it strikes me as FUD at first glance. Could be that those who receive the vaccine stop being as cautious thus increasing their chances of contracting a disease they have not actually been vaccinated against.
I do agree with you as to the knee jerk reactionary types on slashdot when it comes to the biological sciences. My understanding of the typical slashdoter is a computer or physical sciences degree and little if any life sciences outside of what they've gleaned from the latest SciFi novel (Not knocking scifi, it's a favorite of mine). I realize I'm painting a huge community with a broad brush, but the shoe does appear to fit in most situations.
477 people. Now, that is, in fact, an order of magnitude LESS than the seasonal flu.
Except that those deaths have occured during the season when the seasonal flu is not active. So it's 477 deaths during the time of year that you aren't expecting anyone to die of the flu that isn't at high risk of dying anyway. Now combine that increased survivability demonstrated over the summer with immune systems compromized by the weather and seasonal flu, and you'll see higher than normal mortality rates this winter. We've already lost more children to the flu this year than normal and it's only October.
I'm not normally one to get the flu shot. I'm healthy and haven't seen the need. However, I have a 2 month old at home and in order to reduce her risk of getting it, I went out and got the seasonal flu vaccine and plan to get the H1N1 vaccine as well. You are correct that most people don't need the flu vaccine in normal year, that it is not the panacea many believe it to be, and that the media totally blew things out of proportion when first reporting on it several months back.
However, none of that negates the fact that the H1N1 virus is more dangerous in certain populations (the young) than the seasonal flu and more likely to be fatal.