Professor Melton, the person asking Harvard's permission to make embryonic stem cells, is not trying to clone humans. His research is focused on curing juvenile diabetes.
Previous research in his lab has demonstrated conclusively that there are no adult (by which I mean post-embryonic) stem cells in the pancreas which can be used to make replacement beta cells (the cells in the pancreas which produce insulin). Therefore the notion of using the approved stem cell lines to cure juvenile diabetes is a non-starter. During a talk during this year's Whitehead Symposium Melton suggested the Bush administration's policy on stem cell research would have him work using stem cells that do not exist.
Because Melton is a HHMI Investigator, he is able to do some embryonic stem cell research using entirely private funds in a lab separate from Harvard, if I remember correctly. I assume that this recent request is an attempt to expand this existing research.
Lest anyone question Melton's motives in this research, he has at least one child with juvenile diabetes, which is the reason he switched his lab's focus from straight embyonic development research to finding specific cures for juvenile diabetes.
Quite right. But it is one thing to oppose something as a private citizen, and quite another to have to vote on it, face one's constituents, and quite potentially lose one's job because of it. I would like to think that Howard Dean would have had the courage to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, but it is something that will never be known.
And also remember that of the Democratic presidential candidates in Congress, only Dennis Kucinich voted against the USA PATRIOT Act. Of course, the pundits say he has no chance. Of course, way back in April when being pro-war was "in", the pundits were also saying that Howard Dean had no chance.
In the USA, life expectancy increased 60% from 1900 to 2000. In Italy, 80%. In Japan, 80%. In Mexico, 120%.
A fair bit of that is due to decreases in infant mortality and childhood diseases. 140 infant deaths per 1000 live births (the infant mortality rate in the USA in 1900) will drive down the average life span significantly. The median life span in the USA in 1900 was 58, compared to 80 for 2000, an increase of only 38%.
And the maximum life span as measured by the probability at birth of reaching a given age of 0.00001 moved only from 105 to 112 in the last 100 years. So while we are seeing improvements in life span, we won't be seeing 600 year old folk anytime soon.
A book I used when I was learning calculus many moons ago was "Prof. E McSquared's Calculus Primer". Yeah, it's a stupid title for a book, but I found it helpful because many of the mathematical concepts were explained visually, which for me made a huge difference. The book reads a bit like a comic book, which may be a good or bad thing. That didn't matter much to me.
According to Amazon, the current edition is called "Prof. E McSquared's Calculus Primer: Expanded Intergalactic Version". I haven't ever seen this edition so I can't comment on whatever changes they made.
Re:LinuxBIOS in flight computers
on
In-Flight Reboot?
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
"It makes me wonder why the military has less stringent requirements."
Money.
Maybe because the Pentagon has too much money. The recently approved defense budget is $400 billion, not including the continuing cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and whoever we invade next.
Is this money for the "war on terror"? Nope, as the first figure on this page shows, most of the recent increases in the defense budget occured before 9/11/01.
Further down the page, you will see how the Pentagon can't even pass a minimal annual audit, how increases in the defense budget create pressure for more increases into the future, and how pre-production cost estimates are usually much lower than the actual cost. This is particularly relevant today as there are many projects in the pre-production stage now.
This information was put together by Chuck Spinney, who worked in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation for over 30 years.
And if you happen to be on the Red Line in the Boston subway system, take a look around the stations a bit. Some of them have interesting arty touches here and there. Off the top of my head, there is poetry engraved on the platform at Davis Square, bronzed gloves all over Porter Square, and a couple of musical instrument/sculpture things at MIT/Kendall Square. I think there is supposed to be more stuff in some of the other stations as well.
Re:it's about time...
on
SARS Contained
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You can get SARS by sitting next to someone with SARS on the subway in New York.
On the other hand, unless New York becomes warm enough to attract mosquitoes, you should be relatively safe from yellow fever there.
So a disease is only newsworthy if it potentially afflicts New Yorkers. Wow.
Even for something like tuberculosis, which is transmitted by droplets, the infectivity is far lower than SARS. Ask any doctor who knows something about SARS.
"Far lower" is an overstatement. The infectivity of SARS is by no means high. If it were, there would have been at least hundreds of thousands of cases once it broke out to a densely populated city with many travellers such as Hong Kong. In the case of a truly highly infectious disease such as influenza, there are tens of millions of cases every year despite the presence of an effective vaccine, global surveilliance, and partially effective treatment options.
1) Regardless of what the press said, the method of spreading is still UNKNOWN
A good point, to which I may add that there is currently no treatment proven effective in treating SARS, nor do I expect to see one anytime soon. But despite these facts, by only using public health measures and unproven treatments the outbreak was contained, suggesting that SARS is no superbug either.
2) Different regions revealed different format of the virus itself. Its true(or original) form is still UNKNOWN
Also true, but pretty much par for the course in viral diseases. We don't know the original influenza virus or hepatitis virus either. The sad truth of the matter is that most viruses mutate very rapidly, so much so that in the course of a long-term viral infection such as HIV the strains you will see in a given patient will change over time.
Re:it's about time...
on
SARS Contained
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
True, but it's the death rate you should be concerned with, not how many people died. The flu kills a thousands more people in a year then SARS because hundreds of millions of people (Billions?) get the flu in a year.
The death rate for people infected with SARS is much , much higher then the death rate for people infected with the flue.
True, but compared with something like yellow fever, which afflicts 200,000 every year and kills 30,000, SARS affects many fewer people AND has a lower mortality rate. But I don't see any headlines about yellow fever and no mad rush to find a cure.
And I wouldn't rule out a disease as a problem just because of a lower mortality rate. The very fact that 1.9 million children die of diarrheal diseases every year, 1 million people die of malaria every year, and 2 million die of tuberculosis every year means that they are more serious health problems than SARS. The fact that the mortality rate can be low for these diseases with proper care is irrelevant. In the real world these are the killers, not SARS.
For more information on the diseases we still really need to worry about, check out the WHO Infectious diseases site
Powerpoint presentation != presentation with slides
A Powerpoint presentation is a presentation made by a PHB or wannabe-PHB for PHBs. They are usually made with the assistance of one of Powerpoint's "wizards". These "wizards" suggest topics, colors schemes, and fonts, and Powerpoint itself makes it easy to add multi-level bullet points. The end result is to reduce any presentation to a mind-numbing exercise with the same overall structure as every other Powerpoint presentation, with dozens of sentence fragment bullet points interspersed with nonsensical charts and graphs.
The reliance on bullet points to convey information can be particularly disruptive when presenting data. Take for example an image from a complex scientific experiment with several relevant points. In the non-Powerpoint approach the speaker simply displays the image and talks through it. In the Powerpoint approach the speaker displays a Powerpoint slide with the bullet points, and flips back and forth between the Powerpoint slide and the image, reading the bullet point, explaining it using the image, back to the next bullet point, explaining it on the image, etc. The funniest part is when the PHB asks a question, he wants the speaker to go back to the Powerpoint slide, not the data image.
1. Edge of Darkness. This 1943 movie is about Norwegian resistance fighters in a small village fighting against the Nazis. This is a great movie with a terrific cast, including Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Walter Huston, Judith Anderson, and Ruth Gordon.
2. Targets. Peter Bogdanovich's directorial debut and Boris Karloff's last American film, Targets is about a sniper modelled on the Texas tower sniper. Karloff plays an aging horror film star who retires because real life is far scarier than his movies, and the sniper proves him right.
3. True Stories. David Byrne directed and wrote the music for this yarn about the quirky folks in a Texas town celebrating its 150th anniversary. The characters were inspired by "true stories" in various newspapers, and though chaotic, the movie hangs together nicely.
Last night I saw an bio-show about Bea Arthur, and her two hit shows (Maude and The Golden Girls) had seven year runs, but the decision to stop was her's. In fact, the other three "Girls" had a continuation series (Golden Palace?) that bombed badly. So maybe Bea has good series timing as well as comic timing.
As for a good series that has lasted longer, I am partial to Law and Order, but since only three of the regulars have been there for greater than seven years maybe that doesn't really count.
Slashdot Mirror
Professor Melton, the person asking Harvard's permission to make embryonic stem cells, is not trying to clone humans. His research is focused on curing juvenile diabetes.
Previous research in his lab has demonstrated conclusively that there are no adult (by which I mean post-embryonic) stem cells in the pancreas which can be used to make replacement beta cells (the cells in the pancreas which produce insulin). Therefore the notion of using the approved stem cell lines to cure juvenile diabetes is a non-starter. During a talk during this year's Whitehead Symposium Melton suggested the Bush administration's policy on stem cell research would have him work using stem cells that do not exist.
Because Melton is a HHMI Investigator, he is able to do some embryonic stem cell research using entirely private funds in a lab separate from Harvard, if I remember correctly. I assume that this recent request is an attempt to expand this existing research.
Lest anyone question Melton's motives in this research, he has at least one child with juvenile diabetes, which is the reason he switched his lab's focus from straight embyonic development research to finding specific cures for juvenile diabetes.
Quite right. But it is one thing to oppose something as a private citizen, and quite another to have to vote on it, face one's constituents, and quite potentially lose one's job because of it. I would like to think that Howard Dean would have had the courage to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, but it is something that will never be known.
And also remember that of the Democratic presidential candidates in Congress, only Dennis Kucinich voted against the USA PATRIOT Act. Of course, the pundits say he has no chance. Of course, way back in April when being pro-war was "in", the pundits were also saying that Howard Dean had no chance.
A fair bit of that is due to decreases in infant mortality and childhood diseases. 140 infant deaths per 1000 live births (the infant mortality rate in the USA in 1900) will drive down the average life span significantly. The median life span in the USA in 1900 was 58, compared to 80 for 2000, an increase of only 38%.
And the maximum life span as measured by the probability at birth of reaching a given age of 0.00001 moved only from 105 to 112 in the last 100 years. So while we are seeing improvements in life span, we won't be seeing 600 year old folk anytime soon.
Here is some actuarial data from the Social Security Administration
A book I used when I was learning calculus many moons ago was "Prof. E McSquared's Calculus Primer". Yeah, it's a stupid title for a book, but I found it helpful because many of the mathematical concepts were explained visually, which for me made a huge difference. The book reads a bit like a comic book, which may be a good or bad thing. That didn't matter much to me.
According to Amazon, the current edition is called "Prof. E McSquared's Calculus Primer: Expanded Intergalactic Version". I haven't ever seen this edition so I can't comment on whatever changes they made.
Money.
Maybe because the Pentagon has too much money. The recently approved defense budget is $400 billion, not including the continuing cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and whoever we invade next.
Is this money for the "war on terror"? Nope, as the first figure on this page shows, most of the recent increases in the defense budget occured before 9/11/01.
Further down the page, you will see how the Pentagon can't even pass a minimal annual audit, how increases in the defense budget create pressure for more increases into the future, and how pre-production cost estimates are usually much lower than the actual cost. This is particularly relevant today as there are many projects in the pre-production stage now.
This information was put together by Chuck Spinney, who worked in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation for over 30 years.
And if you happen to be on the Red Line in the Boston subway system, take a look around the stations a bit. Some of them have interesting arty touches here and there. Off the top of my head, there is poetry engraved on the platform at Davis Square, bronzed gloves all over Porter Square, and a couple of musical instrument/sculpture things at MIT/Kendall Square. I think there is supposed to be more stuff in some of the other stations as well.
You can get SARS by sitting next to someone with SARS on the subway in New York.
On the other hand, unless New York becomes warm enough to attract mosquitoes, you should be relatively safe from yellow fever there.
So a disease is only newsworthy if it potentially afflicts New Yorkers. Wow.
Even for something like tuberculosis, which is transmitted by droplets, the infectivity is far lower than SARS. Ask any doctor who knows something about SARS.
"Far lower" is an overstatement. The infectivity of SARS is by no means high. If it were, there would have been at least hundreds of thousands of cases once it broke out to a densely populated city with many travellers such as Hong Kong. In the case of a truly highly infectious disease such as influenza, there are tens of millions of cases every year despite the presence of an effective vaccine, global surveilliance, and partially effective treatment options.
1) Regardless of what the press said, the method of spreading is still UNKNOWN
A good point, to which I may add that there is currently no treatment proven effective in treating SARS, nor do I expect to see one anytime soon. But despite these facts, by only using public health measures and unproven treatments the outbreak was contained, suggesting that SARS is no superbug either.
2) Different regions revealed different format of the virus itself. Its true(or original) form is still UNKNOWN
Also true, but pretty much par for the course in viral diseases. We don't know the original influenza virus or hepatitis virus either. The sad truth of the matter is that most viruses mutate very rapidly, so much so that in the course of a long-term viral infection such as HIV the strains you will see in a given patient will change over time.
True, but it's the death rate you should be concerned with, not how many people died. The flu kills a thousands more people in a year then SARS because hundreds of millions of people (Billions?) get the flu in a year.
The death rate for people infected with SARS is much , much higher then the death rate for people infected with the flue.
True, but compared with something like yellow fever, which afflicts 200,000 every year and kills 30,000, SARS affects many fewer people AND has a lower mortality rate. But I don't see any headlines about yellow fever and no mad rush to find a cure.
And I wouldn't rule out a disease as a problem just because of a lower mortality rate. The very fact that 1.9 million children die of diarrheal diseases every year, 1 million people die of malaria every year, and 2 million die of tuberculosis every year means that they are more serious health problems than SARS. The fact that the mortality rate can be low for these diseases with proper care is irrelevant. In the real world these are the killers, not SARS.
For more information on the diseases we still really need to worry about, check out the WHO Infectious diseases site
A Powerpoint presentation is a presentation made by a PHB or wannabe-PHB for PHBs. They are usually made with the assistance of one of Powerpoint's "wizards". These "wizards" suggest topics, colors schemes, and fonts, and Powerpoint itself makes it easy to add multi-level bullet points. The end result is to reduce any presentation to a mind-numbing exercise with the same overall structure as every other Powerpoint presentation, with dozens of sentence fragment bullet points interspersed with nonsensical charts and graphs.
A good example of a typical Powerpoint presentation is Peter Norvig's Gettysburg Powerpoint presentation
The reliance on bullet points to convey information can be particularly disruptive when presenting data. Take for example an image from a complex scientific experiment with several relevant points. In the non-Powerpoint approach the speaker simply displays the image and talks through it. In the Powerpoint approach the speaker displays a Powerpoint slide with the bullet points, and flips back and forth between the Powerpoint slide and the image, reading the bullet point, explaining it using the image, back to the next bullet point, explaining it on the image, etc. The funniest part is when the PHB asks a question, he wants the speaker to go back to the Powerpoint slide, not the data image.
1. Edge of Darkness. This 1943 movie is about Norwegian resistance fighters in a small village fighting against the Nazis. This is a great movie with a terrific cast, including Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Walter Huston, Judith Anderson, and Ruth Gordon.
2. Targets. Peter Bogdanovich's directorial debut and Boris Karloff's last American film, Targets is about a sniper modelled on the Texas tower sniper. Karloff plays an aging horror film star who retires because real life is far scarier than his movies, and the sniper proves him right.
3. True Stories. David Byrne directed and wrote the music for this yarn about the quirky folks in a Texas town celebrating its 150th anniversary. The characters were inspired by "true stories" in various newspapers, and though chaotic, the movie hangs together nicely.
Last night I saw an bio-show about Bea Arthur, and her two hit shows (Maude and The Golden Girls) had seven year runs, but the decision to stop was her's. In fact, the other three "Girls" had a continuation series (Golden Palace?) that bombed badly. So maybe Bea has good series timing as well as comic timing.
As for a good series that has lasted longer, I am partial to Law and Order, but since only three of the regulars have been there for greater than seven years maybe that doesn't really count.