I agree. In formal logic, however (which I'll admit is in entirely too short of supply on/.), it's considered a fallacy, much like "red herring", "straw man" or "ad hominim" attacks. In other words, you can use it as device to illustrate a point, but not as the basis of your argument. To use your example, I cannot say that I am against police using lethal force in dealing with terrorists because I am against them using lethal force in dealing with jaywalkers. It does not logically follow that this would be a consequence.
Semantics, I know, but when words are all you have, they become important.
The summary actually raises a good question as to whether this sort of "tagging" should be allowed at all.
Sure, let's go ahead and tag immigrants. And pedophiles. And murderers. And rapists. Any got a problem with that? (I'm going to ignore the fact that pedphiles were the next logical step after immigrants for the time being...)
Ok, how about hackers? Jaywalkers? IP pirates? Yes, I know the whole "Slippery slope" argument is technically a fallacy, but when you're dealing with the government, it tends to be the norm. When has the gov't ever been happy with a limit on their power once a particular "right" is stripped away?
I think we all need to agree that nobody needs to be "tagged" for any reason. We have a right to have our identity hidden unless we have performed actions which forfeit this right. You have the right to refuse to show identification to a law enforcement officer if they do not have probable cause. (Before I get lots of cries of foul, Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev. still requires "suspicious activity") All that goes out the window though if all an officer has to do is wave a wand at you.
If you want to get fancy, ALL drugs are poisons, in sufficiently large doses. Every drug has what's known as it's therapeutic index, which is the ratio between the LD50 (the dose at which the drug kills 50% of the patients), and the TD50 (the dose at which the drug has therapeutic effects in 50% of the patients). Most common, OTC drugs have therapeutic indexes in the 1000s, meaning you'd have to take a crap-ton more than the recommended dose to cause any harm. Other drugs, warfarin and digitalis come to mind, have very narrow therapeutic ranges and must therefore be monitored closely.
You can logically extend this concept to just about any substance known to have an effect on the human body, including things like alcohol, vitamins, minerals, etc.
Just finished my pharmacology class... Here's the 10 second version:
It's best to think of GABA as the big inhibitor of the brain. Anything that increases GABA (alcohol, barbiturates, benzodiazapenes like Valium) slows down just about everything else in the brain. Thus, you get such effects as sedation, loss of inihibtions (people do dumb things when drunk), anti-anxiety, and anti-epileptic effects.
Drugs which decrease GABA, which this drug appears to do, would tend to have an overall excitatory effect, through a phenomenon known as dis-inhibition (inhibiting the inhibitor = excitation). There honestly aren't too many drugs that would do this, as you would have VAST side effects throughout the body, not the least of which would be massive seizures. (I quite frankly can't think of another example of a anti-GABA drug besides the one in TFA. It's much more efficient to target just the neurotransmitter you want to increase).
From what I can tell, the drug in TFA is acting on what's known as the reticular activating system (RAS), the part of our brain responsible for minor details like consciousness, sleep-wake cycles, etc. The neuropharmacology of this area is fairly complicated, but it's know to have fairly extensive GABA-ergic projections to most of the brain. Think of the GABA-ergic projections turning things off, with concommitant norepinephrine projections tending to turn things on. So it makes sense that if you decrease GABA in a person in a persistant vegetative state (who presumably has too much GABA, and thus not enough of everything else), there's a chance they might just wake up.
I'm going to have to do a little searching to find the primary source text, but this seems like pretty fascintating stuff.
Two, Vancomycin does not interfere with protein synthesis. It inhibits cell wall formation by binding to the D-ala D-ala portion of the cell wall precursor peptides (it physically gets in the way). Resistance to vanco typically comes from staph picking up the resistance phage from enterococci, which have been resistant for years. This change causes the bacteria to produce D-ala D-lac, thus giving vanco nothing to bind to. This causes VRSA, which is completely resistant to vanco, as opposed to VISA, which is caused by a thickening of the cell wall in an attempt to keep vanco out of the cell and leads to partial resistance.
Having worked in the health care field for numerous years, I would aruge that it is much more a discrepency in the rates of diagnosis than a discrepency in the overall health status of the two countries. Unfortunately, in America we have a system whereby doctors/hospitals/nurses/etc get paid by the insurance companies based on what's wrong with a patient. This leads to every little diagnosis possible being charted, charged and treated. I've been told by doctors that I work with that knowing how to "code" can make the difference between a comfortable lifestyle and barely eeking by. Hell, hospitals pay consultants to come in and teach their doctors the best way to use the ICD9 coding system. This IS a big issue and is more or less ignored by this study.
Actually, proteins are the most antigenic molecule type. Any foreign protein rapidly has antibodies created against it. Thus why most immunizations these days attempt to use proteins from the organism to which you want immunity (or a carbohydrate-protein hapten setup).
What the hell's wrong with our country when we charge kids with a damned felony before we expel them from school?! What do you think would have a more detrimental effect on kids future? A felony conviction (which you are required by law to divulge on any job applicatin that asks it) or being kicked out of school? Jesus...
I happen to know many salts very well and I tell you, they are some of the nicest, most genuine folks in the world who would not appreciate or accomodate your characterization.
For the sake of intellectual honesty, I should point out that the Republicans are trying to ban filibusters on votes for judicial nominees only, with the argument being that the Consitution charges Congress with giving "adivce and consent" for presidential judicial nominations. Argue the validity of that amongst yourselves.
Ok, this is obviously pretty cool stuff, but what kind of images could you really get with 50-100 "pixels"? We're talking 10x10 resolution here... Hardly enough for face recognition... Or anything really.
Ok, seriously. I get a little tired of hearing how "suchandsuch.com posted this X days ago". I don't think anybody here reads/. for up-to-the-minute news. It is, however, still a place where one can find (relatively) intelligent discourse on the topics - as opposed to, say, Fark.
Not at all. The idea of a "critical period" is well established in regards to development of vision, hearing, etc. If the neurons in the visual cortex don't receive stimulation from the retina, they die back. For example, if a newborn has uncorrected cataracts in only one eye, they will NEVER be able to see out of that eye, even if the cataracts is fixed at a later date. The intact eye takes over the neural real estate that the other eye would have used. To imply that someone can simply "will" themselves to rewire their brain is completely unsupported by research.
Actually, your explanation doesn't apply in this case. If memory serves me correct (I didn't RTFA, since I read it on SciAm three days ago), their test involved having half the subjects shoot a toy gun and half not, then have all subjects say they did do it then say they did do it. They could tell which subjects were in each condition based on the MRIs.
Thus (and this is actually the interesting part), there is a separate area of your brain that fires when lying, regardless of the thought/energy put into it. (Though I'm sure someone will point out that the act of remembering to lie has to be factored in somewhere... makes for a good little philosophical discussion).
I guess you could call Parkinson's a "fairly uncommon metabolic disease"... After all, it only affects ~0.1% of the population over 40. But if you're in that 0.1%, I bet you'd be pretty interested in the ways that the ubiquitination system has recently been found to be central to the disease process of Parkinson's. (See Giasson and Lee's review article in the June '03 issue of Cell if you're interested and/or have access to it.. good read).
When popular media tries to herald a scientific discovery, they try and make it sound important to the larget possible audience. In this case, that means the possible ties of the ubiquitination system to cancer. However, don't disregard all the other current and almost-certain-to-be-coming implications of this system. It's active in every single cell of the body, after all.
It's about time. Every class I took as an undergrad in physiology and neuroscience always just glossed over olfaction. It's amazing how little we know about this sense compared to the other senses. We have a fairly complete understanding of the way sight (for instance, did you know that the visual cortex can perform on the fly Fourier analysis??), sound, and sensation (with the notable exception of pain) work, yet olfaction has always baffled us - mainly because we couldn't fathom of a system that would have thousands of different receptors that could each recognize a different smell (whoops!).
Over the long term, the demand for workers WILL equal the supply for workers, the only variable being the market clearing price (i.e. the price a which the supply of workers willing to work for said price is equal to the price at which all employers are willing to hire said number of workers).
There is a shortage of nurses right now.
Therefore, over the long term, the market clearing price is increasing. This bass-ackwards way of trying to circumvent the system is doomed to failure.
The only caveat I'd throw in on this little explanation is that the preceding scenario assumes a free market. Unfortunately, (libbies, close your ears here) we've got the government artificially setting the price of health care beneath its value (two very different concepts).
I'm curious to see how this one works out for the hospitals... nurses are a notoriously feisty bunch when mistreated...
The center I work at has several labs working on stem cell research, and we also have several other labs working on federally funded (NIH) projects as well.
While it is true that the ban makes a lot more red tape necessary (i.e. separate supply rooms for the labs that do stem cell research, very careful bookkeeping, etc.), the research still gets done.
"Scare tactics" work better on potential voters, not well informed researchers....
Slashdot Mirror
For some reason, my copy can't seem to get a dial tone...
Semantics, I know, but when words are all you have, they become important.
Sure, let's go ahead and tag immigrants. And pedophiles. And murderers. And rapists. Any got a problem with that? (I'm going to ignore the fact that pedphiles were the next logical step after immigrants for the time being...)
Ok, how about hackers? Jaywalkers? IP pirates? Yes, I know the whole "Slippery slope" argument is technically a fallacy, but when you're dealing with the government, it tends to be the norm. When has the gov't ever been happy with a limit on their power once a particular "right" is stripped away?
I think we all need to agree that nobody needs to be "tagged" for any reason. We have a right to have our identity hidden unless we have performed actions which forfeit this right. You have the right to refuse to show identification to a law enforcement officer if they do not have probable cause. (Before I get lots of cries of foul, Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev. still requires "suspicious activity") All that goes out the window though if all an officer has to do is wave a wand at you.
You can logically extend this concept to just about any substance known to have an effect on the human body, including things like alcohol, vitamins, minerals, etc.
Would you fancy yourself an executive transvestite?
It's best to think of GABA as the big inhibitor of the brain. Anything that increases GABA (alcohol, barbiturates, benzodiazapenes like Valium) slows down just about everything else in the brain. Thus, you get such effects as sedation, loss of inihibtions (people do dumb things when drunk), anti-anxiety, and anti-epileptic effects.
Drugs which decrease GABA, which this drug appears to do, would tend to have an overall excitatory effect, through a phenomenon known as dis-inhibition (inhibiting the inhibitor = excitation). There honestly aren't too many drugs that would do this, as you would have VAST side effects throughout the body, not the least of which would be massive seizures. (I quite frankly can't think of another example of a anti-GABA drug besides the one in TFA. It's much more efficient to target just the neurotransmitter you want to increase).
From what I can tell, the drug in TFA is acting on what's known as the reticular activating system (RAS), the part of our brain responsible for minor details like consciousness, sleep-wake cycles, etc. The neuropharmacology of this area is fairly complicated, but it's know to have fairly extensive GABA-ergic projections to most of the brain. Think of the GABA-ergic projections turning things off, with concommitant norepinephrine projections tending to turn things on. So it makes sense that if you decrease GABA in a person in a persistant vegetative state (who presumably has too much GABA, and thus not enough of everything else), there's a chance they might just wake up.
I'm going to have to do a little searching to find the primary source text, but this seems like pretty fascintating stuff.
One, here's the link to the Nature article abstract (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7091/a bs/nature04784.html). Submittors of scientific stories, please go through the trouble of at least finding a link to the primary source. I beg you...
Two, Vancomycin does not interfere with protein synthesis. It inhibits cell wall formation by binding to the D-ala D-ala portion of the cell wall precursor peptides (it physically gets in the way). Resistance to vanco typically comes from staph picking up the resistance phage from enterococci, which have been resistant for years. This change causes the bacteria to produce D-ala D-lac, thus giving vanco nothing to bind to. This causes VRSA, which is completely resistant to vanco, as opposed to VISA, which is caused by a thickening of the cell wall in an attempt to keep vanco out of the cell and leads to partial resistance.
Having worked in the health care field for numerous years, I would aruge that it is much more a discrepency in the rates of diagnosis than a discrepency in the overall health status of the two countries. Unfortunately, in America we have a system whereby doctors/hospitals/nurses/etc get paid by the insurance companies based on what's wrong with a patient. This leads to every little diagnosis possible being charted, charged and treated. I've been told by doctors that I work with that knowing how to "code" can make the difference between a comfortable lifestyle and barely eeking by. Hell, hospitals pay consultants to come in and teach their doctors the best way to use the ICD9 coding system. This IS a big issue and is more or less ignored by this study.
Any sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from incompetence...
Much scarier...
Actually, proteins are the most antigenic molecule type. Any foreign protein rapidly has antibodies created against it. Thus why most immunizations these days attempt to use proteins from the organism to which you want immunity (or a carbohydrate-protein hapten setup).
Slashdot + "High resolution photgraphs" = Tastes like burning.
What the hell's wrong with our country when we charge kids with a damned felony before we expel them from school?! What do you think would have a more detrimental effect on kids future? A felony conviction (which you are required by law to divulge on any job applicatin that asks it) or being kicked out of school? Jesus...
I happen to know many salts very well and I tell you, they are some of the nicest, most genuine folks in the world who would not appreciate or accomodate your characterization.
I hate taking flamebait...
Ok, this is obviously pretty cool stuff, but what kind of images could you really get with 50-100 "pixels"? We're talking 10x10 resolution here... Hardly enough for face recognition... Or anything really.
Ok, seriously. I get a little tired of hearing how "suchandsuch.com posted this X days ago". I don't think anybody here reads /. for up-to-the-minute news. It is, however, still a place where one can find (relatively) intelligent discourse on the topics - as opposed to, say, Fark.
Not at all. The idea of a "critical period" is well established in regards to development of vision, hearing, etc. If the neurons in the visual cortex don't receive stimulation from the retina, they die back. For example, if a newborn has uncorrected cataracts in only one eye, they will NEVER be able to see out of that eye, even if the cataracts is fixed at a later date. The intact eye takes over the neural real estate that the other eye would have used. To imply that someone can simply "will" themselves to rewire their brain is completely unsupported by research.
Let's shorten that and just call in the Betamax Offense.
Amen to that! I've always had a tough time figurin' out whether them there numbers were bigger or littler than 32. Never was too good at 'rithmetic.
Thus (and this is actually the interesting part), there is a separate area of your brain that fires when lying, regardless of the thought/energy put into it. (Though I'm sure someone will point out that the act of remembering to lie has to be factored in somewhere... makes for a good little philosophical discussion).
So I'm curious... you think Slashdot is accessible from within the Great Firewall? Any Chinese readers out there?
When popular media tries to herald a scientific discovery, they try and make it sound important to the larget possible audience. In this case, that means the possible ties of the ubiquitination system to cancer. However, don't disregard all the other current and almost-certain-to-be-coming implications of this system. It's active in every single cell of the body, after all.
Kudos to Drs. Axel and Buck.
Over the long term, the demand for workers WILL equal the supply for workers, the only variable being the market clearing price (i.e. the price a which the supply of workers willing to work for said price is equal to the price at which all employers are willing to hire said number of workers).
There is a shortage of nurses right now.
Therefore, over the long term, the market clearing price is increasing. This bass-ackwards way of trying to circumvent the system is doomed to failure.
The only caveat I'd throw in on this little explanation is that the preceding scenario assumes a free market. Unfortunately, (libbies, close your ears here) we've got the government artificially setting the price of health care beneath its value (two very different concepts).
I'm curious to see how this one works out for the hospitals... nurses are a notoriously feisty bunch when mistreated...
The center I work at has several labs working on stem cell research, and we also have several other labs working on federally funded (NIH) projects as well.
While it is true that the ban makes a lot more red tape necessary (i.e. separate supply rooms for the labs that do stem cell research, very careful bookkeeping, etc.), the research still gets done.
"Scare tactics" work better on potential voters, not well informed researchers....