Man, think about where that tongue might have been;~)
If this works it'll be great. But unfortunately, it will be like most transplants - temporary. Something like ~75%, or more, of transplants are rejected after 5-7 years, even when the person is taking immunosuppresive drugs. Fact of the matter is, we understand why rejection occurs, but we don't yet have the ability to prevent it. Until that happens, and xenotransplantation will play a big role in it, transplants will continue to be risky and long-term failures. But hey, sometimes that is better than the alternative...
(And soft drinks will hydrate you just as well as water).
Not necessarily true, because caffeine is a diarretic (makes you go to the bathroom more often). So go with caffeine free soda -- problem is that stuff tastes horrible.
While it would certainly be preferable for animal subjects to get extra attention and stimuli, this would be a very difficult task for large universities or research centers, which typically have thousands and thousands of mice. No University would allocate money for a position to "play with the mice" (with the exception probably of work study students in psych departments), not to mention it would take a lot of people to interact with all of the mice on frequent occasions. I have observed psychotic behavior (a memorable occasion was a mouse that ran the exact same path around it's cage over and over, very fast), but very rarely. Of course, I don't check on the mice at night, so who knows what they're up to then. Also, an issue at medical research institutions is contamination - the more people are coming and going out of an environment that is supposed to be sterile will increase the likelihood of bringing in some "bugs" that will get the mice sick and skew experiment results.
Having just received my first passport, I have to say I was impressed at how little time it took for it to be issued (less than 2 weeks). This article makes me wonder if it will take longer once the new passports are being used. Also, will you still be able to apply at any old post office, or will you have to go to regional offices which would presumably have the necessary camera to take digital identification images?
Until you've actually seen what goes on in a research lab you should keep your uninformed mouth shut. People don't want to give more tax money to scientists anyway, so what do you expect them to do -- house the mice in the fucking ritz on their own dime (which ain't much)? So if you don't like the way it's done, go live in some third world country with no drugs and no benefits learned from the research done on mice and see how much you like it when you're dying of some fucked up disease.
good for some, bad for others
on
Psychotic Lab Mice
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Having worked in a lab that uses mice for more than 2 years now I found this articel particularly interesting (immunology research). I've noticed odd behavior in our mice before - such as running in circles or pulling their fur out - but it seems to occur most predominantly when mice are housed alone.
It is certainly important to gain more insight into this issue, but it is a very complicated one. The vast majority of researchers are fairly limited in funding, and the costs of maintaining colonies of mice is already very expensive (for example, at my institution caring for about 300-500 mice is around $4000-$5000 per month). While there is probably much validity to Wurbel's argument, it unfortunately becomes a question of cost -- enriched housing conditions would probably be out of the limits of most researchers budgets. Scientists should probably settle on a happy medium - those doing research into behavior should definitely consider these issues; however, they may be less essential for researchers trying to understand the functions of specific genes known to be involved in processes other than neural ones, because the cost would simply be too high.
Without getting into all of the Mac megahertz myth crap, about your second question...they probably used the slower centrino to improve battery life (and possibly result in a physically smaller chipset?).
I agree - no way in hell you can compare a 900 mhz centrino (which is nothing but a gimmick) against a 867mhz G4. Not to mention being able to burn DVD's on the powerbook, 802.11g, better graphics, a bigger screen, and the biggest thing of all - OS X 10.2 Jaguar, with the soon to be available OS X 10.3 Panther.
We should really begin to worry if it gets this hard to email our senators and representatives as well, who at least seem to be fairly accesible at this time. Though who knows what kinds of lackeys really read these emails anyway...probably high school interns.
It is conceivable that there are cells that would have DNA significantly intact in order to use for cloning. Cells will not begin to undergo cell suicide or necrosis immediately upon death -- they will continue to function for while, waiting for the release of chemicals from the liver and other funs places that will begin to autodigest the body. Cells could also potentially hang otu for a while until they simply run out of glucose (energy source). SO, it's conceivable that a cell very near the surface (for example an epithelial cell, which have been used for cloning before) of the animal could be humming along just fine after the mammoth croaked, and because it was cold there the cell could move into a state of inactivity (there's a reason scientists always carry those buckets of ice around). This cell could then possibly be frozen with it's DNA still relatively intact (keep in mind, even in normal, healthy cells there are estimated to be thousands of single-strand, and even some double-strand, nicks at any given time) and DNA does very well when frozen. So it is possible...but I doubt it will happen any time soon though.
So does that mean spectators go to the launchpad hours early and gets drunk off their ass waiting for the rockets to launch?
let's hope this one gets some good info
on
Mars-Express On Its Way
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· Score: 3, Interesting
As always it's amazing to see new photos of earth from outerspace, especially in ones like this where you can see the moon in reference to the earth.
The next couple of years could be really interesting with all of the mars missions launched recently. Let's just hope they didn't screw up any metric conversions this time...
If some kind of law like this is ever passed, doesn't the RIAA and the lawmakers realize that dozens of such things as freenet, which was discussed yesterday on slashdot, will appear overnight, allowing people to continue sharing files but preventing them from being found out (without an assload of work done and more money spent than the government would *ever* allow)?
At the risk of offending the many *nix users on slashdot, i'm wondering just how often patches come out for the different *nix systems? I wouldn't doubt that windows is just that bad, probably confirmed by the above article, (I use a mac and the BSD based OS X, having switched last year), but i'm curious if the *nix patches just don't get as much press coverage or if they really just don't happen nearly as often?
P.S. I know enough about UNIX (but still not much) to know that I would switch to a *nix machine before I EVER went back to a windows machine.
There are three kinds of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics --- Mark Twain
Re:Curious...
on
Weapon-X Mice
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· Score: 4, Informative
Bob Villa - AGF has nothing to do with allergies, which are essentially a hyperactive immune response to a foreign antigen. So you'll have to keep waiting and taking antihistamines and getting steroid shots when you eat the wrong thing...:~(
I would be willing to bet that scarring is minimal (with small injuries) as scar tissue is different than normal skin. This could potentially be a very lucrative drug target and I'll bet that big pharma will be doing some studies of their own soon. It'll be interesting to see what the result of the knockout study is...my bet is that it's embryonic lethal (loss of the gene during embryonic development causes the fetal mice to be non-viable).
Using laughter to log onto a computer seems pretty useless. I found the mention of how they coupled it with the ability to track the employees around the office much more interesting. This type of stuff could make the private people freak - imagine the higher up's being able to know every time you went to the bathroom and exactly how long you spent in there?
One should not assume that evolutionists believe evolution to be perfect. First of all, anyone who knows jack about science knows that evolution is not perfect, imperfect, or anywhere in-between. It is simply a response to an environmental pressure that can allow a species to adapt. No adaption and the species dies. On top of which, the adaption is not sought after -- it's usually a freak genetic mutation that happens to confer an advantage. So to say that evolution is perfect is to miss the point entirely.
As to how evolution has led to the creatures that exist today, all by tiny little steps, all one needs to do is grasp the amount of time involved (a few more millenia than 6000 years).
So I suppose in order to go where you wanted to go, you would have to launch at the time of year when the solar wind was "blowing" directly towards your destination of choice (the earth on a straight line directly between the sun and the destination).
Slashdot Mirror
If this works it'll be great. But unfortunately, it will be like most transplants - temporary. Something like ~75%, or more, of transplants are rejected after 5-7 years, even when the person is taking immunosuppresive drugs. Fact of the matter is, we understand why rejection occurs, but we don't yet have the ability to prevent it. Until that happens, and xenotransplantation will play a big role in it, transplants will continue to be risky and long-term failures. But hey, sometimes that is better than the alternative...
Not necessarily true, because caffeine is a diarretic (makes you go to the bathroom more often). So go with caffeine free soda -- problem is that stuff tastes horrible.
get up an hour earlier every day and go to the gym. It sucks, because it means I have to get up before six, but it definitely keeps me in shape.
While it would certainly be preferable for animal subjects to get extra attention and stimuli, this would be a very difficult task for large universities or research centers, which typically have thousands and thousands of mice. No University would allocate money for a position to "play with the mice" (with the exception probably of work study students in psych departments), not to mention it would take a lot of people to interact with all of the mice on frequent occasions. I have observed psychotic behavior (a memorable occasion was a mouse that ran the exact same path around it's cage over and over, very fast), but very rarely. Of course, I don't check on the mice at night, so who knows what they're up to then. Also, an issue at medical research institutions is contamination - the more people are coming and going out of an environment that is supposed to be sterile will increase the likelihood of bringing in some "bugs" that will get the mice sick and skew experiment results.
Having just received my first passport, I have to say I was impressed at how little time it took for it to be issued (less than 2 weeks). This article makes me wonder if it will take longer once the new passports are being used. Also, will you still be able to apply at any old post office, or will you have to go to regional offices which would presumably have the necessary camera to take digital identification images?
Until you've actually seen what goes on in a research lab you should keep your uninformed mouth shut. People don't want to give more tax money to scientists anyway, so what do you expect them to do -- house the mice in the fucking ritz on their own dime (which ain't much)? So if you don't like the way it's done, go live in some third world country with no drugs and no benefits learned from the research done on mice and see how much you like it when you're dying of some fucked up disease.
It is certainly important to gain more insight into this issue, but it is a very complicated one. The vast majority of researchers are fairly limited in funding, and the costs of maintaining colonies of mice is already very expensive (for example, at my institution caring for about 300-500 mice is around $4000-$5000 per month). While there is probably much validity to Wurbel's argument, it unfortunately becomes a question of cost -- enriched housing conditions would probably be out of the limits of most researchers budgets. Scientists should probably settle on a happy medium - those doing research into behavior should definitely consider these issues; however, they may be less essential for researchers trying to understand the functions of specific genes known to be involved in processes other than neural ones, because the cost would simply be too high.
Without getting into all of the Mac megahertz myth crap, about your second question...they probably used the slower centrino to improve battery life (and possibly result in a physically smaller chipset?).
I agree - no way in hell you can compare a 900 mhz centrino (which is nothing but a gimmick) against a 867mhz G4. Not to mention being able to burn DVD's on the powerbook, 802.11g, better graphics, a bigger screen, and the biggest thing of all - OS X 10.2 Jaguar, with the soon to be available OS X 10.3 Panther.
Great way to kick off the era of zero privacy...Woz might as well go work for Micro$oft.
If WiFi networks were set up on the planes, couldn't people just make internet phone calls instead of using a cell phone?
I gotta say, from experience working with radioactive material (in a molecular biology lab), 300,000 CPM (counts per minute) is nothing to sneeze at.
We should really begin to worry if it gets this hard to email our senators and representatives as well, who at least seem to be fairly accesible at this time. Though who knows what kinds of lackeys really read these emails anyway...probably high school interns.
It is conceivable that there are cells that would have DNA significantly intact in order to use for cloning. Cells will not begin to undergo cell suicide or necrosis immediately upon death -- they will continue to function for while, waiting for the release of chemicals from the liver and other funs places that will begin to autodigest the body. Cells could also potentially hang otu for a while until they simply run out of glucose (energy source). SO, it's conceivable that a cell very near the surface (for example an epithelial cell, which have been used for cloning before) of the animal could be humming along just fine after the mammoth croaked, and because it was cold there the cell could move into a state of inactivity (there's a reason scientists always carry those buckets of ice around). This cell could then possibly be frozen with it's DNA still relatively intact (keep in mind, even in normal, healthy cells there are estimated to be thousands of single-strand, and even some double-strand, nicks at any given time) and DNA does very well when frozen. So it is possible...but I doubt it will happen any time soon though.
So does that mean spectators go to the launchpad hours early and gets drunk off their ass waiting for the rockets to launch?
The next couple of years could be really interesting with all of the mars missions launched recently. Let's just hope they didn't screw up any metric conversions this time...
If some kind of law like this is ever passed, doesn't the RIAA and the lawmakers realize that dozens of such things as freenet, which was discussed yesterday on slashdot, will appear overnight, allowing people to continue sharing files but preventing them from being found out (without an assload of work done and more money spent than the government would *ever* allow)?
More on topic, if this bill get's signed it'll be interesting to see if similar legislation is passed in other states.
P.S. I know enough about UNIX (but still not much) to know that I would switch to a *nix machine before I EVER went back to a windows machine.
There are three kinds of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics --- Mark Twain
I would be willing to bet that scarring is minimal (with small injuries) as scar tissue is different than normal skin. This could potentially be a very lucrative drug target and I'll bet that big pharma will be doing some studies of their own soon. It'll be interesting to see what the result of the knockout study is...my bet is that it's embryonic lethal (loss of the gene during embryonic development causes the fetal mice to be non-viable).
Using laughter to log onto a computer seems pretty useless. I found the mention of how they coupled it with the ability to track the employees around the office much more interesting. This type of stuff could make the private people freak - imagine the higher up's being able to know every time you went to the bathroom and exactly how long you spent in there?
As to how evolution has led to the creatures that exist today, all by tiny little steps, all one needs to do is grasp the amount of time involved (a few more millenia than 6000 years).
What kind of a loser does it take to buy their way into a higher game standing? Same kind that buy the strategy books I suppose...
So I suppose in order to go where you wanted to go, you would have to launch at the time of year when the solar wind was "blowing" directly towards your destination of choice (the earth on a straight line directly between the sun and the destination).