I've seen estimates of the brain's computing power ranging from 38 PetaFLOPS, which Tianhe-2 is approaching, to 6.4 ExaFLOPS, which was the estimated computing power of all the computers on Earth in 2007. I suspect the actual figure is closer to the latter than the former.
In 25 years, transistors have gotten around 100,000 times smaller. In 1988, the fastest computer was the Cray-2. It had 32 MB (!) and could achieve 250 MFLOPS (!). The Tianhe-2 just exceeded 30 PFLOPS. That's 120 million times faster than the Cray-2. I think the available computational resources will make a difference at some point.
The core of science is the scientific method, which is a set of mental tools and processes designed to help us figure out the truth and avoid our inherent biases and cognitive limitations. The part that's important to your question is this: extraordinary claims must require extraordinary evidence to be considered valid.
Not even considering the content and supposed provenance of the Christian Bible, just the claim that there is an entity with the qualities and attributes ascribed to the Christian God is an exceptionally extraordinary claim. There is absolutely no independently and empirically verifiable evidence to support that claim. Objectively, any acceptance of the truth of that claim is the same as acceptance of any of a number of similar extraordinary claims, most of which would fall under the categories of myths, legends, superstitions or pseudo-science: faeries, unicorns, elves, UFOs, ghosts, etc. There simply is no rigorously objective, intellectually honest juxtaposition between most major religions and the scientific method. Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot comes to mind.
Personally, I think if one considers oneself a scientist, one must apply the scientific method to all truth propositions, regardless of whether such happen to be in the lab or outside, or whether they fall under one's specialty or not. I suppose it's possible to draw a line somewhere and say "Here I'll apply the scientific method and there I won't." but given our inherent human fallibility, I think that's a recipe for disaster. Sooner or later, the line will blur and you end up with bad science.
It's called UTF-8 because it uses a baseline of 8 bits (one byte, not 2) to represent characters.
UTF-8 encodes each of the 1,112,064 code points in the Unicode character set using one to four 8-bit bytes (termed "octets" in the Unicode Standard). Code points with lower numerical values (i.e. earlier code positions in the Unicode character set, which tend to occur more frequently) are encoded using fewer bytes. The first 128 characters of Unicode, which correspond one-to-one with ASCII, are encoded using a single octet with the same binary value as ASCII, making valid ASCII text valid UTF-8-encoded Unicode as well.
Funny. I can get to the Control Panel in 2 clicks on Windows 7. I can even get to it without taking my hands off the keyboard. If the Control Panel isn't in your Start menu, right-click on the Start/Windows button, properties, then Customize. Or just hit Windows-key, start typing "control panel". It usually comes out around the time you're at n or t.
Main beam cannons on giant robotic Japanese battleships manned by Japanese space chicks are generally pretty directional and very powerful...
Come to think of it, that post was probably referring to a more recent anime franchise, Macross/Robotech. Space Battleship Yamato wasn't robotic and had a fairly balanced bridge crew, gender-wise. The SDF Macross, on the other hand, could transform into a giant robot and had a predominantly female bridge crew. Guess my age is showing.;p
Space Battleship Yamato (Uch Senkan Yamato, also called Cosmoship Yamato) is a Japanese science fiction anime series featuring an eponymous spacecraft. It is also known to English-speaking audiences as Space Cruiser Yamato; an English-dubbed and heavily edited version of the series was broadcast on North American and Australian television as Star Blazers. The first two seasons ("Quest for Iscandar" and "The Comet Empire") of this version were broadcast in Greece in 1981-82 as Diastimóploio Argó ("Spaceship Argo"). An Italian-language version was also broadcast under the name Star Blazers in Italy, and a Portuguese-language version was successfully shown in Brazil under the title Patrulha Estelar ("Star Patrol") and Viaje a la Ultima Galaxia ("Voyage to the Final Galaxy") or Astronave Intrepido ("Starship Intrepid") in Spain and Latin America.
It is a seminal series in the history of anime, marking a turn towards more complex serious works and influencing works such as Mobile Suit Gundam and Neon Genesis Evangelion; Hideaki Anno has ranked Yamato his favorite anime and credited it with sparking his interest in anime.
Yamato was the first anime series or movie to win the Seiun Award, a feat not repeated until the 1985 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
The show starts on a post-apocalyptic Earth, with humanity trying to survive a war with an alien race. The titular ship is actually the wreck of the World War II battleship Yamato, rebuilt and converted into an FTL starship. The engine that allows supraluminal travel also powers a planet-busting spinal mount beam weapon, the Wave Motion Gun.
They recently did a live-action film, which had a pretty awful script. I found it entertaining in a cheesy/campy/back-to-childhood way. YMMV:)
I don't doubt that well-educated Chinese individuals exist. I also don't doubt that high-work-ethic Chinese individuals exist. Those individuals are the ones who get to travel and whom people outside China tend to meet. But the vast, vast majority of the Chinese workforce are not at all well educated. That's why they're cheap. They work in sweatshops, making shiploads of cheap Chinese crap to sell both to China and to the rest of the world.
You compared China to Japan. The difference I see is that while Japan did benefit significantly from technology transfer during the time they were rebuilding from the devastation of WWII, they were already technologically advanced even before the war. By the 80s and during the 90s, Japan was where the future was being invented. China, on the other hand, is relying on espionage and outright theft to acquire technology. The draconian terms under which China allows factories to be built there basically guarantees that they will have access to all the technology, down to being able to make unauthorized, parts compatible clones.
I may have misunderstood what you initially meant by "work ethic". You're right about their attitude towards leisure and idleness. But they will take short-cuts, they will cut corners and they will cheat if they think they can get away with it, regardless of the danger to life or health. They'll use lead-based paint on children's toys, they've put toxic chemicals in infant formula (to hide the fact that the milk's been adulterated, they have fake eggs (!!!) which they'll try to pass off as food, they use waste cardboard as a food filler, they cut corners when building schools and housing, leaving students and residents vulnerable to earthquakes. This kind of corner-cutting is deeply ingrained in the Chinese culture. It happens not just in mainland China, but pretty much everywhere they are, from Vancouver to Manila. Compare that with the well-known Japanese obsession for perfectionism, for doing things right. I consider that attention to quality an important part, maybe the most important part, of one's work ethic. But you're right, the Chinese aren't an idle people.
I'm not sure if this is worth the bother, since you seem to be completely resistant to accepting any correction, new information or indeed even the possibility that you might be wrong. Any of the three runs counter to the scientific method, all three together is dogma. But I'll try anyway.
There is no such thing as a 'kuru strain' of the CJD prion.
Because it is conversion of the host prion proteins, the only 'strain' that exists is the host.
These are the statements you made that I am refuting. I quote them here for easy reference.
The introduction of the paper contradicted what you referred to in the abstract.
No, it didn't, and I'll explain why in a bit.
You focussing on what the abstract said, rather than what the paper said suggested you read the abstract, but not the complete paper.
Because I only needed an example of the use of the word "strain" to describe varieties of prions, specifically the kuru strain, and nothing more.
There were several citations from the paper which, when those papers were read, contradicted what the paper claimed those citations said. This indicates the authors are not in agreement with the community they're working in. (Again, fairly common.)
Irrelevant to our discussion, because we're not discussing their study, just the fact that there is a kuru strain and that the word "strain" is used in prion literature.
Citing the number of Google findings from 'prion strain' also suggested a quick overview method of research review. Googling 'prion isoform' produced a similar, but larger number of hits.
I only used Google to find examples of prion varieties being referred to as "strains" in scientific literature. Since you suggested this as a metric... prion strain: About 518,000 results; prion isoform: About 356,000 results. Searching for the exact phrases... "prion strain": About 30,400 results; "prion isoform": About 5,290 results. Not that those numbers mean anything.
At best it suggests there might be disagreement over terminology among scientists researching prions.
The disagreement isn't among prion researchers. They use "strain" and "isoform" to describe two different things. Again, explanation follows.
The authors cited use the term 'molecular strain types', when they should have said 'molecular isoforms'.
The authors used 'molecular strain types' because they meant 'molecular strain types' and not 'molecular isoforms'. You think they should have used the other phrase because you misunderstand what they mean, and I think I understand why there's confusion.
Here's the promised explanation. In prion literature, we mainly study the protein PrP (aka CD230), which is encoded by the PRNP gene in humans. The normal form is referred to as the PrPc isoform or the normal cellular isoform (c for cellular). The pathogenic form is called the PrPsc isoform or the scrapie isoform (sc for scrapie). PrPsc is a misfolded PrPc and it seems to be able to cause existing PrPc to misfold into PrPsc. In prion research, there are two isoforms of PrP, the normal c and the misfolded sc.
There are several gene polymorphisms of PRNP which express into slightly different forms of PrP. These are what are referred to as strains. The encoding genes are slightly different and the expressed protein sequences are slightly different. These different strains have a (naturally occurring) PrPc isoform and most of them also have a misfolded PrPsc isoform. The PrPsc isoforms of PrPc strains have slight compositional and structural differences, due to the base PrPc isoforms having those differences, hence the existence of PrPsc strains or prion strains. The use of the word "strain" for prions is essentially identical to that for bacte
The word 'strain' doesn't imply anything about pathogenicity. People refer to different strains of plants, animals, fungus, etc. that have no pathogenic modes.
Quite right. I didn't mean to imply that strains only referred to pathogens, just that the word strain is commonly used to describe varieties of pathogens, a category which includes prions.
Prions don't replicate themselves.
Neither do viruses.
It turns out there are different pathogenic ways the native prion protein can mis-fold and that these are referred to as 'strains', but that term doesn't imply what it means in other contexts.
What you're missing here is that not only are there are multiple variants of PrPc (normal form) protein, caused by variations in the PRNP gene, but that there are also multiple variants of the PrPsc (misfolded/prion form) protein (not just different ways of misfolding), and that different variants of PrPc result in different levels of susceptibility or resistance to different variants of PrPsc. These PrPsc variants are referred to as strains in pretty much all the literature, despite your claims that the use of the word is wrong.
I may have jumped the gun in thinking you were making the same mistake.
No, not "may have". You did jump the gun, despite the fact that I actually cited an example of the word strain being used to describe a prion variety in the literature.
Of course, since you're posting on Slashdot, you must be a subject matter expert and know must know better than everyone else.
I am an actual practicing biologist in academia at a major research institution,
Argumentum ex cathedra: "I'm an expert, all you amateurs stand back!" Whatever your background and present situation may be, you're just plain wrong about prion strains.
but don't let that stop you from being a jackass
I started with a simple citation demonstrating that the word strain is used to describe prion varieties. You responded with the following:
yes. you should also look into what a prion actually is.
you should read further than just the abstract of the paper
it really helps to read what you cite. Don't worry, plenty of professional scientists don't do this... citing papers that don't actually have anything to do with what they're talking about in their paper.
Unless you're prone to referring to different types of soda pop as different strains
Several thinly veiled strains of condescension implying that (a) I don't know what a prion actually is; (b) I didn't read what I cited; (c) I cited a paper that didn't actually have anything to do with what I was talking about; and (d) I'm an idiot. Thinly veiled, but easy to translate: I'm an ignorant buffoon and you're an expert, so I should stop playing in the same room as you. In other words, you were a jackass.
Actual science, practiced by actual scientists,
More ad hominem and ex cathedra. Now you're implying that I'm not an actual scientist practicing actual science, but you are.
However, once you've decided to go with personal attacks,
Except you decided to go with personal attacks, very thinly veiled ones.
you're no longer doing science and should examine your motivations.
Good advice. You should take it.
and making claims that don't represent reality.
You mean like:
There is no such thing as a 'kuru strain' of the CJD prion.
First off, prions are infectious pathogens. It doesn't matter what the mechanism for infection is, just that the infection happens. Viruses have a different mechanism for infecting hosts than do bacteria, but we still refer to variants as strains. Soda cans generally aren't considered pathogens, so I don't refer to their variants as strains.
You're implying that the only difference are the host's proteins and all the variance is accounted for by the host's genetic variations. But just like other pathogens, genetic variations in hosts result in different levels of susceptibility from different strains.
You seem to have you panties in a knot about the use of the word "strain" to describe prion isoforms. Sorry to bust your pedantic bubble, but strain is commonly used in literature about prions. Of course, since you're posting on Slashdot, you must be a subject matter expert and know must know better than everyone else.
Because it is conversion of the host prion proteins, the only 'strain' that exists is the host.
Although prions do not carry genetic material, they also come in several different forms - again known as strains. If prions are just proteins, how can they come in different strains? This has been a very important question. It is now clear that there is not just one rogue form of PrP that causes prion disease but there several distinct rogue forms.
Oh look, they also use the word "strain" on that page, the horror!
Aside from the authors I cited and the MRC Prion Clinic, a quick search shows hundreds of examples. They all must be wrong too, huh? Anyway, I'm going to go with the credentialed neurologists and researchers on this, as opposed to some random arrogant Slashdot pedant.
Kuru is an acquired human prion disease that primarily affected the Fore linguistic group of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The central clinical feature of kuru is progressive cerebellar ataxia and, in sharp contrast to most cases of sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), dementia is a less prominent and usually late clinical feature. In this regard, kuru is more similar to variant CJD, which also has similar prodromal symptoms of sensory disturbance and joint pains in the legs and psychiatric and behavioural changes. Since a significant part of the clinicopathological diversity seen in human prion disease is likely to relate to the propagation of distinct human prion strains, we have compared the transmission properties of kuru prions with those isolated from patients with sporadic, iatrogenic and variant CJD in both transgenic and wild-type mice. These data have established that kuru prions have prion strain properties equivalent to those of classical (sporadic and iatrogenic) CJD prions but distinct from variant CJD prions. Here, we review these findings and discuss how peripheral routes of infection and other factors may be critical modifiers of the kuru phenotype.
That's just the first hit when you Google "kuru strain".
Higher-quality video and audio. Higher resolution video and images. More dynamic web page elements, more flash, more scripts, more ads. More fscking 3rd-party tracking. More pr0n...
See: Parkinson's Law, general form:The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource. It applies to storage, processing and transmission requirements.
Back when we used dial-up and n-Gigabyte drives, we'd download 128 kbps or worse audio, low-res images and really shitty video. With today's broadband and n-Terabyte storage, it's 1080p, lossless audio and multi-megapixel images. What does the future hold? More people on broadband, quad-HD, 24-bit-96 kHz audio and Gigapixel images, and maybe even simsense...
Slashdot Mirror
+5 Informative (with bonus points for clarity and presentation) :)
I've seen estimates of the brain's computing power ranging from 38 PetaFLOPS, which Tianhe-2 is approaching, to 6.4 ExaFLOPS, which was the estimated computing power of all the computers on Earth in 2007. I suspect the actual figure is closer to the latter than the former.
In 25 years, transistors have gotten around 100,000 times smaller. In 1988, the fastest computer was the Cray-2. It had 32 MB (!) and could achieve 250 MFLOPS (!). The Tianhe-2 just exceeded 30 PFLOPS. That's 120 million times faster than the Cray-2. I think the available computational resources will make a difference at some point.
The core of science is the scientific method, which is a set of mental tools and processes designed to help us figure out the truth and avoid our inherent biases and cognitive limitations. The part that's important to your question is this: extraordinary claims must require extraordinary evidence to be considered valid.
Not even considering the content and supposed provenance of the Christian Bible, just the claim that there is an entity with the qualities and attributes ascribed to the Christian God is an exceptionally extraordinary claim. There is absolutely no independently and empirically verifiable evidence to support that claim. Objectively, any acceptance of the truth of that claim is the same as acceptance of any of a number of similar extraordinary claims, most of which would fall under the categories of myths, legends, superstitions or pseudo-science: faeries, unicorns, elves, UFOs, ghosts, etc. There simply is no rigorously objective, intellectually honest juxtaposition between most major religions and the scientific method. Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot comes to mind.
Personally, I think if one considers oneself a scientist, one must apply the scientific method to all truth propositions, regardless of whether such happen to be in the lab or outside, or whether they fall under one's specialty or not. I suppose it's possible to draw a line somewhere and say "Here I'll apply the scientific method and there I won't." but given our inherent human fallibility, I think that's a recipe for disaster. Sooner or later, the line will blur and you end up with bad science.
UTF-8 encodes each of the 1,112,064 code points in the Unicode character set using one to four 8-bit bytes (termed "octets" in the Unicode Standard). Code points with lower numerical values (i.e. earlier code positions in the Unicode character set, which tend to occur more frequently) are encoded using fewer bytes. The first 128 characters of Unicode, which correspond one-to-one with ASCII, are encoded using a single octet with the same binary value as ASCII, making valid ASCII text valid UTF-8-encoded Unicode as well.
the newer model Prii
WTF?
"But he points out that later on, during the time of the pharaohs, the gods were believed to have bones made of iron."
Just like Wolverine!
Please turn in your geek card.
Since Adamantium is a steel alloy, he's not incorrect.
Apparently, it's just like the one for Catholics. :)
Funny. I can get to the Control Panel in 2 clicks on Windows 7. I can even get to it without taking my hands off the keyboard. If the Control Panel isn't in your Start menu, right-click on the Start/Windows button, properties, then Customize. Or just hit Windows-key, start typing "control panel". It usually comes out around the time you're at n or t.
Apparently tyranny isn't something the requires definition. It's more like obscenity used to be. You just know it when you see it.
So, just like "terrorism".
Main beam cannons on giant robotic Japanese battleships manned by Japanese space chicks are generally pretty directional and very powerful...
Come to think of it, that post was probably referring to a more recent anime franchise, Macross/Robotech. Space Battleship Yamato wasn't robotic and had a fairly balanced bridge crew, gender-wise. The SDF Macross, on the other hand, could transform into a giant robot and had a predominantly female bridge crew. Guess my age is showing. ;p
Space Battleship Yamato (Uch Senkan Yamato, also called Cosmoship Yamato) is a Japanese science fiction anime series featuring an eponymous spacecraft. It is also known to English-speaking audiences as Space Cruiser Yamato; an English-dubbed and heavily edited version of the series was broadcast on North American and Australian television as Star Blazers. The first two seasons ("Quest for Iscandar" and "The Comet Empire") of this version were broadcast in Greece in 1981-82 as Diastimóploio Argó ("Spaceship Argo"). An Italian-language version was also broadcast under the name Star Blazers in Italy, and a Portuguese-language version was successfully shown in Brazil under the title Patrulha Estelar ("Star Patrol") and Viaje a la Ultima Galaxia ("Voyage to the Final Galaxy") or Astronave Intrepido ("Starship Intrepid") in Spain and Latin America.
It is a seminal series in the history of anime, marking a turn towards more complex serious works and influencing works such as Mobile Suit Gundam and Neon Genesis Evangelion; Hideaki Anno has ranked Yamato his favorite anime and credited it with sparking his interest in anime.
Yamato was the first anime series or movie to win the Seiun Award, a feat not repeated until the 1985 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
The show starts on a post-apocalyptic Earth, with humanity trying to survive a war with an alien race. The titular ship is actually the wreck of the World War II battleship Yamato, rebuilt and converted into an FTL starship. The engine that allows supraluminal travel also powers a planet-busting spinal mount beam weapon, the Wave Motion Gun.
They recently did a live-action film, which had a pretty awful script. I found it entertaining in a cheesy/campy/back-to-childhood way. YMMV :)
LOL! That brings back memories. :)
What is Slashdot's stance on overreacting to what is obviously a joke?
I believe it is "Whoosh!"
normal<b>bold<b>bolder</b>bold</b>normal
Apparently, bold tags stack two high. Learn something new everyday. :)
Did you read the comment? He has a sign outside and plays a policy trailer. That's advanced warning, twice.
i don't need the phone to glow blue when orcs are near
I think this would be an awesome feature. I rather dislike orcs.
I don't doubt that well-educated Chinese individuals exist. I also don't doubt that high-work-ethic Chinese individuals exist. Those individuals are the ones who get to travel and whom people outside China tend to meet. But the vast, vast majority of the Chinese workforce are not at all well educated. That's why they're cheap. They work in sweatshops, making shiploads of cheap Chinese crap to sell both to China and to the rest of the world.
You compared China to Japan. The difference I see is that while Japan did benefit significantly from technology transfer during the time they were rebuilding from the devastation of WWII, they were already technologically advanced even before the war. By the 80s and during the 90s, Japan was where the future was being invented. China, on the other hand, is relying on espionage and outright theft to acquire technology. The draconian terms under which China allows factories to be built there basically guarantees that they will have access to all the technology, down to being able to make unauthorized, parts compatible clones.
I may have misunderstood what you initially meant by "work ethic". You're right about their attitude towards leisure and idleness. But they will take short-cuts, they will cut corners and they will cheat if they think they can get away with it, regardless of the danger to life or health. They'll use lead-based paint on children's toys, they've put toxic chemicals in infant formula (to hide the fact that the milk's been adulterated, they have fake eggs (!!!) which they'll try to pass off as food, they use waste cardboard as a food filler, they cut corners when building schools and housing, leaving students and residents vulnerable to earthquakes. This kind of corner-cutting is deeply ingrained in the Chinese culture. It happens not just in mainland China, but pretty much everywhere they are, from Vancouver to Manila. Compare that with the well-known Japanese obsession for perfectionism, for doing things right. I consider that attention to quality an important part, maybe the most important part, of one's work ethic. But you're right, the Chinese aren't an idle people.
Except China doesn't exactly have a well-educated high-work-ethic labor force. What they do have is enormous amounts of cheap labor.
There is no such thing as a 'kuru strain' of the CJD prion.
Because it is conversion of the host prion proteins, the only 'strain' that exists is the host.
These are the statements you made that I am refuting. I quote them here for easy reference.
The introduction of the paper contradicted what you referred to in the abstract.
No, it didn't, and I'll explain why in a bit.
You focussing on what the abstract said, rather than what the paper said suggested you read the abstract, but not the complete paper.
Because I only needed an example of the use of the word "strain" to describe varieties of prions, specifically the kuru strain, and nothing more.
There were several citations from the paper which, when those papers were read, contradicted what the paper claimed those citations said. This indicates the authors are not in agreement with the community they're working in. (Again, fairly common.)
Irrelevant to our discussion, because we're not discussing their study, just the fact that there is a kuru strain and that the word "strain" is used in prion literature.
Citing the number of Google findings from 'prion strain' also suggested a quick overview method of research review. Googling 'prion isoform' produced a similar, but larger number of hits.
I only used Google to find examples of prion varieties being referred to as "strains" in scientific literature. Since you suggested this as a metric... prion strain: About 518,000 results; prion isoform: About 356,000 results. Searching for the exact phrases... "prion strain": About 30,400 results; "prion isoform": About 5,290 results. Not that those numbers mean anything.
At best it suggests there might be disagreement over terminology among scientists researching prions.
The disagreement isn't among prion researchers. They use "strain" and "isoform" to describe two different things. Again, explanation follows.
The authors cited use the term 'molecular strain types', when they should have said 'molecular isoforms'.
The authors used 'molecular strain types' because they meant 'molecular strain types' and not 'molecular isoforms'. You think they should have used the other phrase because you misunderstand what they mean, and I think I understand why there's confusion.
Here's the promised explanation. In prion literature, we mainly study the protein PrP (aka CD230), which is encoded by the PRNP gene in humans. The normal form is referred to as the PrPc isoform or the normal cellular isoform (c for cellular). The pathogenic form is called the PrPsc isoform or the scrapie isoform (sc for scrapie). PrPsc is a misfolded PrPc and it seems to be able to cause existing PrPc to misfold into PrPsc. In prion research, there are two isoforms of PrP, the normal c and the misfolded sc.
There are several gene polymorphisms of PRNP which express into slightly different forms of PrP. These are what are referred to as strains. The encoding genes are slightly different and the expressed protein sequences are slightly different. These different strains have a (naturally occurring) PrPc isoform and most of them also have a misfolded PrPsc isoform. The PrPsc isoforms of PrPc strains have slight compositional and structural differences, due to the base PrPc isoforms having those differences, hence the existence of PrPsc strains or prion strains. The use of the word "strain" for prions is essentially identical to that for bacte
The word 'strain' doesn't imply anything about pathogenicity. People refer to different strains of plants, animals, fungus, etc. that have no pathogenic modes.
Quite right. I didn't mean to imply that strains only referred to pathogens, just that the word strain is commonly used to describe varieties of pathogens, a category which includes prions.
Prions don't replicate themselves.
Neither do viruses.
It turns out there are different pathogenic ways the native prion protein can mis-fold and that these are referred to as 'strains', but that term doesn't imply what it means in other contexts.
What you're missing here is that not only are there are multiple variants of PrPc (normal form) protein, caused by variations in the PRNP gene, but that there are also multiple variants of the PrPsc (misfolded/prion form) protein (not just different ways of misfolding), and that different variants of PrPc result in different levels of susceptibility or resistance to different variants of PrPsc. These PrPsc variants are referred to as strains in pretty much all the literature, despite your claims that the use of the word is wrong.
I may have jumped the gun in thinking you were making the same mistake.
No, not "may have". You did jump the gun, despite the fact that I actually cited an example of the word strain being used to describe a prion variety in the literature.
Of course, since you're posting on Slashdot, you must be a subject matter expert and know must know better than everyone else.
I am an actual practicing biologist in academia at a major research institution,
Argumentum ex cathedra: "I'm an expert, all you amateurs stand back!" Whatever your background and present situation may be, you're just plain wrong about prion strains.
but don't let that stop you from being a jackass
I started with a simple citation demonstrating that the word strain is used to describe prion varieties. You responded with the following:
yes. you should also look into what a prion actually is.
you should read further than just the abstract of the paper
it really helps to read what you cite. Don't worry, plenty of professional scientists don't do this... citing papers that don't actually have anything to do with what they're talking about in their paper.
Unless you're prone to referring to different types of soda pop as different strains
Several thinly veiled strains of condescension implying that (a) I don't know what a prion actually is; (b) I didn't read what I cited; (c) I cited a paper that didn't actually have anything to do with what I was talking about; and (d) I'm an idiot. Thinly veiled, but easy to translate: I'm an ignorant buffoon and you're an expert, so I should stop playing in the same room as you. In other words, you were a jackass.
Actual science, practiced by actual scientists,
More ad hominem and ex cathedra. Now you're implying that I'm not an actual scientist practicing actual science, but you are.
However, once you've decided to go with personal attacks,
Except you decided to go with personal attacks, very thinly veiled ones.
you're no longer doing science and should examine your motivations.
Good advice. You should take it.
and making claims that don't represent reality.
You mean like:
There is no such thing as a 'kuru strain' of the CJD prion.
and
the only 'strain' that exists is the host
Both of those cl
First off, prions are infectious pathogens. It doesn't matter what the mechanism for infection is, just that the infection happens. Viruses have a different mechanism for infecting hosts than do bacteria, but we still refer to variants as strains. Soda cans generally aren't considered pathogens, so I don't refer to their variants as strains.
You're implying that the only difference are the host's proteins and all the variance is accounted for by the host's genetic variations. But just like other pathogens, genetic variations in hosts result in different levels of susceptibility from different strains.
You seem to have you panties in a knot about the use of the word "strain" to describe prion isoforms. Sorry to bust your pedantic bubble, but strain is commonly used in literature about prions. Of course, since you're posting on Slashdot, you must be a subject matter expert and know must know better than everyone else.
Because it is conversion of the host prion proteins, the only 'strain' that exists is the host.
Wrong. From the UCL Institute of Neurology MRC Prion Clinic:
Although prions do not carry genetic material, they also come in several different forms - again known as strains. If prions are just proteins, how can they come in different strains? This has been a very important question. It is now clear that there is not just one rogue form of PrP that causes prion disease but there several distinct rogue forms.
Oh look, they also use the word "strain" on that page, the horror!
Aside from the authors I cited and the MRC Prion Clinic, a quick search shows hundreds of examples. They all must be wrong too, huh? Anyway, I'm going to go with the credentialed neurologists and researchers on this, as opposed to some random arrogant Slashdot pedant.
There is no such thing as a 'kuru strain' of the CJD prion.
The origin of the prion agent of kuru: molecular and biological strain typing
Kuru is an acquired human prion disease that primarily affected the Fore linguistic group of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The central clinical feature of kuru is progressive cerebellar ataxia and, in sharp contrast to most cases of sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), dementia is a less prominent and usually late clinical feature. In this regard, kuru is more similar to variant CJD, which also has similar prodromal symptoms of sensory disturbance and joint pains in the legs and psychiatric and behavioural changes. Since a significant part of the clinicopathological diversity seen in human prion disease is likely to relate to the propagation of distinct human prion strains, we have compared the transmission properties of kuru prions with those isolated from patients with sporadic, iatrogenic and variant CJD in both transgenic and wild-type mice. These data have established that kuru prions have prion strain properties equivalent to those of classical (sporadic and iatrogenic) CJD prions but distinct from variant CJD prions. Here, we review these findings and discuss how peripheral routes of infection and other factors may be critical modifiers of the kuru phenotype.
That's just the first hit when you Google "kuru strain".
So, the first rule of NSLs is you do not talk about NSLs...
Higher-quality video and audio. Higher resolution video and images. More dynamic web page elements, more flash, more scripts, more ads. More fscking 3rd-party tracking. More pr0n...
See: Parkinson's Law, general form: The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource. It applies to storage, processing and transmission requirements.
Back when we used dial-up and n-Gigabyte drives, we'd download 128 kbps or worse audio, low-res images and really shitty video. With today's broadband and n-Terabyte storage, it's 1080p, lossless audio and multi-megapixel images. What does the future hold? More people on broadband, quad-HD, 24-bit-96 kHz audio and Gigapixel images, and maybe even simsense...