Even if something like this happened a hundred years from now I don't think we would be sufficiently technologically advanced to try and control the weather, or alter it in a predictable manner. We would essentially have to sit back, try to keep warm, and decide if we really screwed ourselves or if it was a natural cycle that caused the climate change --- so we could try and avoid causing such an change in the future, if we were the cause. Either that or we all just learn to love the cold and the dust...
I would argue that the problem here is that in today's culture scientists want the credit because without it being funded is very difficult. If funding were not so competitive I would bet that most scientists (myself included) would be happy without the credit as long as they had the money to keep working. And face it, most scientists today don't get much credit beyond their colleagues's anyway (there aren't many publicly famous scientists out there), and I would be willing to bet that open-source computing people get the recognition and respect from the people they work with.
Chances are it was more alumni money than taxpayer money that paid for this project...i'm pretty disgusted that University of Virginia is building a new $120 million dollar basketball arena when our team sucks, but i guarantee most of that money is coming from Alumni contributions. UVA is funded something like 95% by non-public money. V-tech may not be that high, but I bet they're not far behind.
"immunity is exposed by infection. It isn't created out of thin air as needed."
Wrong. That's exactly the way our immune systems work in some ways. The body has innate immunity against certain germs i.e. the immunity exists before the germ even infects.
Unfortunately I don't think we yet have anti-virus software like this yet, specifically, software that could predict what a virus might look like (work like) and then make a patch for it before it even exits. I bet software like this is created in less than a decade though. probably less than a few years...
maybe the sponge has symbiotic algae, which need light...so maybe the fibers "shuttle" light into the area of the sponge where teh algae live. Just a guess of course...
There's a reason most reseachers use mice and rats, and it's not just because of size. Scientists have known for some time that we are most similar to mice in some respects, escpecially in how our immune systems function.
I doubt sewn cotton clothes have been around anywhere near that long (200,000 years), as that requires both a spinning wheel and a loom of some sort. I suspect we were wearing hides up until probably 10,000 years ago, if not later. Seems doubtful that writing and language would develop that far behind the ability to make cotton fabric.
I read an article a while back in Science or Nature (can't give the link unfortunately), and it pointed out that the only way we currently have to efficiently produce lots of hydrogen is through the use of lots of electricity (which is of course generated mainly by coal burning)...thus, to get enough clean burning hydrogen to run a countries cars on it would lead to more air polution than we currently have. The authors answer? Safe nuclear power, which, if regulated properly, can provide a lot of energy, with very little pollution (assuming safe and proper disposal of spent fuel rods).
But as far as this article is concerned, the idea is that little bits of hydrogen will be generated at everyone's houses through current techniques that work well on a small scale, thus negating the need to produce a crapload of hydrogen in just a few places.
I think i saw a television program on the discovery channel or something a while back where some scientist postulated the same theory. I don't think this guy is on to anything new...
Clearly you don't take the time read into the meanings of statements. Of course when I said the mice the don't have the instincts I didn't mean they don't have any instincts. Regardless of semantics, these mice do not behave like wild mice. Period.
As far as idiots on slashdot, why don't you try and write something that actually contributes to the discussion instead of just being a troll? If you could stop trying to show off what you know about philosphy and simply look at what I wrote it would be obvious to you (or should be) that I know a fair amount about science. You clearly do not. Yet I don't sit here claiming to know anything about philosophy. If you think slashdot is full of idiots, your leaving the boards would begin to relieve that problem.
I don't remember the ype of meditation it is (it's that type made famous by the guru the Beatles hung otu with), but everyone agrees it's non-religious and simply a mental exercise.
You're probably right to a large degree, but the work place isn't the only place where meditation or even just sitting quietly for fifteen minutes has yielded improvements -- I saw a piece on an urban school in chicago or something that was a complete disaster. The school had rowdy kids, poor attendance, and poor grades, and horrible test scores. A new principal there instituted a mandatory meditation period of fifteen minutes for all students. Within months attendance had increased, grades and test scores had increased, and attitude was significantly improved. Yoga in the workplace sounds like a stretch to me, but I see nothing wrong with a few minutes of peaceful meditation each day.
First off, if you think in silico experiments have reached a place where they are more informative than in situ experiments than you clearly don't much about science.
In response to your other points, researchers don't just simply stick as many mice together as possible. What we do is governed by rules and overseen by the government. For example, we don't put more than four male mice in one cage (about the size of a size 10 shoe box) or five female mice. Furthermore, crowding (if it were to occur, which it doesn't) of mice within facilites that are germ free is not going to lead to disease -- because there are no agents to cause disease unless people bring it in because of poor sterile technique. If you think space is cheap, you're completely wrong. You think it's cheap to house mice in a sterile envrionment? Try again. I can't speak for other researchers, but the mice we use are hardly tortured. They eat all they want, they aren't hunted, and they die quickly and painlessly. Not to mention, these mice wouldn't live an hour in the wild, they simply don't have the instincts -- if they escape a cage, they just sit in the middle of the floor sniffing, they aren't even afraid of people.
But let's face it, there will always be people that disagree with using animals for research. i won't lie, I like the mice and would prefer not to use them, but we simply are not at a place where we have any other options at this point. I think the opportunity to learn something about how biology works is worth the price. You should think about that the next time you take some medicine, as you swallow the pill, taking for granted the whole time all of the animals that died in order for that medicine to be made, and all of the thousands of hours of work that scientists put into it.
I never meant to suggest that stress would not affect things like immune responses. My point was that, as sort of a cost/benefit analysis, it wouldn't make sense for many researchers to take the steps to give mice more interactive environments. Keep in mind that I'm viewing the issue in a reductionist manner. For example, I am interested in what gene X does. So I ablate its function in some mice but not others. All of the mice will be in the same environment, and therefore will be effected the same by lack of stimuli, or whatever. Therefore, I can directly compare mice with a normal gene X to mice who don't have gene X. If there is a difference, regardless of what effect the environment has on the mice, I have learned something about the possible function of gene X.
with that many stars, how could anyone be so arrogant to think earth has the only intelligent life forms?
this guy should run for president...
on
Keeper of the Objects
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· Score: 5, Insightful
"we have to do more than the dinosaurs."
I'm glad this guy has a good grasp on the subject, since most people don't seem to realize asteroids probably represent the most immediate threat of extinction to the human species. He should exaggerate a few more threats, so that someone actually starts contributing money to finding out ways to prevent the impact of an asteroid. All current/.ers will be dead by the time a big asteroid probably hits, but we should still have a plan.
The question of the safety of GM foods for consumption varies depending on the GM plant. Many of these plants are modified genetically in such a way that the transgene is only expressed in the body of the plant - not the fruit. This would significantly lessen the intake of the protein generated by the transgene by humans. The safety also depends on what the transgene is. An insecticide, even a natural one, may be harmful to ingest. But many of the other types of transgenes are probably harmless to humans, since they often come from naturally resistant plants.
The question of safety for the environment is a much more complicated one. If too much of the plant population is GM, it is possible that the pests could develop resistance to the transgene. This is why, in the US, the FDA wants farmers to plant no more than 20% of their crop with GM food. It is critical to maintain diversity, because the emergence of a new pest could potentially wipe out an entire plant species if there is no variety,
Fact of the matter is, teh proper, long term experiments addressign these issues have just not been done yet. But at the same time, as long as the population on earth continues to increase, we will need to increase our ability to produce food. Getting more cropyield per the same amount of land is the best way that can be done, and GM'ing the crops may be the only way to give that result. Of course, if that doesn't work and we run out of food there will just be a major human die off, and the cycle will start over, just like in other animal populations.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if something like this happened a hundred years from now I don't think we would be sufficiently technologically advanced to try and control the weather, or alter it in a predictable manner. We would essentially have to sit back, try to keep warm, and decide if we really screwed ourselves or if it was a natural cycle that caused the climate change --- so we could try and avoid causing such an change in the future, if we were the cause. Either that or we all just learn to love the cold and the dust...
I would argue that the problem here is that in today's culture scientists want the credit because without it being funded is very difficult. If funding were not so competitive I would bet that most scientists (myself included) would be happy without the credit as long as they had the money to keep working. And face it, most scientists today don't get much credit beyond their colleagues's anyway (there aren't many publicly famous scientists out there), and I would be willing to bet that open-source computing people get the recognition and respect from the people they work with.
Chances are it was more alumni money than taxpayer money that paid for this project...i'm pretty disgusted that University of Virginia is building a new $120 million dollar basketball arena when our team sucks, but i guarantee most of that money is coming from Alumni contributions. UVA is funded something like 95% by non-public money. V-tech may not be that high, but I bet they're not far behind.
Wrong. That's exactly the way our immune systems work in some ways. The body has innate immunity against certain germs i.e. the immunity exists before the germ even infects.
Unfortunately I don't think we yet have anti-virus software like this yet, specifically, software that could predict what a virus might look like (work like) and then make a patch for it before it even exits. I bet software like this is created in less than a decade though. probably less than a few years...
maybe the sponge has symbiotic algae, which need light...so maybe the fibers "shuttle" light into the area of the sponge where teh algae live. Just a guess of course...
There's a reason most reseachers use mice and rats, and it's not just because of size. Scientists have known for some time that we are most similar to mice in some respects, escpecially in how our immune systems function.
I doubt sewn cotton clothes have been around anywhere near that long (200,000 years), as that requires both a spinning wheel and a loom of some sort. I suspect we were wearing hides up until probably 10,000 years ago, if not later. Seems doubtful that writing and language would develop that far behind the ability to make cotton fabric.
But as far as this article is concerned, the idea is that little bits of hydrogen will be generated at everyone's houses through current techniques that work well on a small scale, thus negating the need to produce a crapload of hydrogen in just a few places.
I read the actual article in Science Magazine and it says they don't divide below ~80 degrees C.
A class on how to interface PDA's with computers, and what PDA's are good for what uses.
Most, if not all, strains of bacteria can be frozen and maintain their viability for years if not decades.
I think i saw a television program on the discovery channel or something a while back where some scientist postulated the same theory. I don't think this guy is on to anything new...
It's much more likely that cars will evolve to drive themselves, not to a point where we control them with our thoughts, which would not be as safe.
As far as idiots on slashdot, why don't you try and write something that actually contributes to the discussion instead of just being a troll? If you could stop trying to show off what you know about philosphy and simply look at what I wrote it would be obvious to you (or should be) that I know a fair amount about science. You clearly do not. Yet I don't sit here claiming to know anything about philosophy. If you think slashdot is full of idiots, your leaving the boards would begin to relieve that problem.
I don't remember the ype of meditation it is (it's that type made famous by the guru the Beatles hung otu with), but everyone agrees it's non-religious and simply a mental exercise.
Interviews with many of the students said the meditation significantly improved their outlook and their ability to concentrate.
You're probably right to a large degree, but the work place isn't the only place where meditation or even just sitting quietly for fifteen minutes has yielded improvements -- I saw a piece on an urban school in chicago or something that was a complete disaster. The school had rowdy kids, poor attendance, and poor grades, and horrible test scores. A new principal there instituted a mandatory meditation period of fifteen minutes for all students. Within months attendance had increased, grades and test scores had increased, and attitude was significantly improved. Yoga in the workplace sounds like a stretch to me, but I see nothing wrong with a few minutes of peaceful meditation each day.
I don't see anything new here at all - they just bundled a bunch of things. When is there going to be some fresh innovation in the PDA world?
In response to your other points, researchers don't just simply stick as many mice together as possible. What we do is governed by rules and overseen by the government. For example, we don't put more than four male mice in one cage (about the size of a size 10 shoe box) or five female mice. Furthermore, crowding (if it were to occur, which it doesn't) of mice within facilites that are germ free is not going to lead to disease -- because there are no agents to cause disease unless people bring it in because of poor sterile technique. If you think space is cheap, you're completely wrong. You think it's cheap to house mice in a sterile envrionment? Try again. I can't speak for other researchers, but the mice we use are hardly tortured. They eat all they want, they aren't hunted, and they die quickly and painlessly. Not to mention, these mice wouldn't live an hour in the wild, they simply don't have the instincts -- if they escape a cage, they just sit in the middle of the floor sniffing, they aren't even afraid of people.
But let's face it, there will always be people that disagree with using animals for research. i won't lie, I like the mice and would prefer not to use them, but we simply are not at a place where we have any other options at this point. I think the opportunity to learn something about how biology works is worth the price. You should think about that the next time you take some medicine, as you swallow the pill, taking for granted the whole time all of the animals that died in order for that medicine to be made, and all of the thousands of hours of work that scientists put into it.
I never meant to suggest that stress would not affect things like immune responses. My point was that, as sort of a cost/benefit analysis, it wouldn't make sense for many researchers to take the steps to give mice more interactive environments. Keep in mind that I'm viewing the issue in a reductionist manner. For example, I am interested in what gene X does. So I ablate its function in some mice but not others. All of the mice will be in the same environment, and therefore will be effected the same by lack of stimuli, or whatever. Therefore, I can directly compare mice with a normal gene X to mice who don't have gene X. If there is a difference, regardless of what effect the environment has on the mice, I have learned something about the possible function of gene X.
Does anyone know if the times the race takes are getting shorter each year? In other words, is the technology actually getting better each year?
With a statement like that, nothing else needs to be said.
with that many stars, how could anyone be so arrogant to think earth has the only intelligent life forms?
I'm glad this guy has a good grasp on the subject, since most people don't seem to realize asteroids probably represent the most immediate threat of extinction to the human species. He should exaggerate a few more threats, so that someone actually starts contributing money to finding out ways to prevent the impact of an asteroid. All current /.ers will be dead by the time a big asteroid probably hits, but we should still have a plan.
The question of safety for the environment is a much more complicated one. If too much of the plant population is GM, it is possible that the pests could develop resistance to the transgene. This is why, in the US, the FDA wants farmers to plant no more than 20% of their crop with GM food. It is critical to maintain diversity, because the emergence of a new pest could potentially wipe out an entire plant species if there is no variety,
Fact of the matter is, teh proper, long term experiments addressign these issues have just not been done yet. But at the same time, as long as the population on earth continues to increase, we will need to increase our ability to produce food. Getting more cropyield per the same amount of land is the best way that can be done, and GM'ing the crops may be the only way to give that result. Of course, if that doesn't work and we run out of food there will just be a major human die off, and the cycle will start over, just like in other animal populations.