The levels released at the plant were way beyond low level, background radiation. You know that background radiation is far lower. It is obvious that more than enough radiation was released to cause cancer in some of the people exposed. Biology has a lot of tricks to repair DNA, but it only can do so much. When the double strand breaks get too numerous, repair becomes impossible. If the damaged cells fail to undergo apoptosis, they may turn cancerous.
Obviously the cancer rates are going to go up, especially for the workers at the plant. It's biology. Radiation and DNA don't mix well. In a few more years more cases will show up. I am sure the workers all took extra iodine to protect their thyroid gland, but that won't prevent things like leukemia.
I think I am quite calm, how about you? Because old age neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer disease have a connection to the unfolded protein response and the buildup of misfolded proteins in nerve cells, and because waste removal, which happens at a much higher rate during sleep, is critical for nerve cell function and getting rid of junk that interferes with normal activity, then my guess is that it is better to err on the safe side. Maybe you have a strong objection to that suggestion. How many hours is that a night? You tell me. Nobody knows. In all of my posts I have said you need to know things we don't know yet about individual genetics and about exactly what cellular systems are involved in the process. Are you going to respond to me again by asking how many hours that is? Please.
Absolutely. But I think there is a huge difference between many of the people at/. and the average person using modern technology. People here make their own computers, write code, set all their security and privacy settings just so, some use Tor (I don't bother because most of my internet activity is doing science research or reading the news) etc. My car is 20 years old and unless someone has stuck a magnetic bat-tracker to it, I am a non-entity on the road electronically. I don't use a smartphone because I don't need one for anything. For most people, none of these things even cross their minds. So my point was that the tracking of the majority of people and the lack of privacy is growing, and will continue to grow. But as more and more of them have no technical expertise, they won't have the faintest idea what is happening, or what, if anything, to do about it.
I think for me the bottom line is that the data collection, whether for monetizing people's activities and habits, or looking for terrorists, is a very negative direction for society to be moving in. From my perspective it is putting people at odds with corporations and the government, and I don't think it has to be that way. I think that adversarial arrangement fuels some of the crazy gun behavior and rampant conspiracy theories because people feel like they are being screwed, they just aren't quite sure exactly how or who to blame.
So again, please tell me how it is that we are the ones attacking countries from Somalia to Pakistan with drones, have troops on the ground in dozens of countries, and how we have our military and intelligence agencies interfering in countries from Africa to the Middle East and into Asia, but it is China that is somehow doing these things instead?
OK, your just F'ing with me, I get it. You just like to screw with people and you aren't even trying to make a point.
We are in all of those places and many more right now. Our military is globally deployed, and we spend huge sums of money destabilizing countries we don't like with covert actions and drone strikes. What if China was doing that instead of us? How would that make you feel?
The US is going to reap what it sows. Blowback is a bitch. Maybe diplomacy would be better? I'm sure you will have all sorts of nonsensical reasons why we need to be very afraid.
The US is already an international threat to many nations (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and many others), so anything China does is following our lead, and playing catch up.
Genetic polymorphisms. Look it up. Now find all the genes associated with clearing toxins and waste products from the brain during sleep. Now map the genes of everyone and compare the results to the list of genes involved. The question you are asking is not answerable with the current data set.
Not at all sure why you have to make sarcastic comments about taking anti-indoctrination courses. I guess somehow I hit a nerve, but I didn't insult you. Are you actually suggesting that having military bases all over the world is about something other than making money for corporations that build and service those bases, and to intimidate with force projection? The bases are often highly resented by the local populace (e.g., Okinawa) so how are they making the US safer?
Several people in the Bush administration said that the oil was a critical reason for the Iraq war, on top of the fact that Bush and Cheney were obsessed with invading Iraq long before 9/11. Clearly it was not about Iraq posing an imminent threat to the US. We were an imminent threat to them, and they are still paying the price.
Congress determines how much money the NIH and NSF get. The president can push them but he can't allocate funds. Many recent presidents including Obama have made their legacy about things other than science, including force projection in the Middle East and Asia, oil and gas extraction, international IP deals masquerading as "free trade" and helping the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries to increase their bottom lines. I have not seen a big push in support for basic science funding from any recent president. In fact, what I have seen is a commercialization of science at the NIH where they talk about "translational medicine" which is a code word for securing IP rights on drug and medical device development. Basic research is barely on the radar screen. There is good basic research being done, but very often when you write a grant proposal for funding, you better have a bottom line that it is going to lead to some treatment. This of course misses the point of doing scientific research, which is to find out how things work before you try and fix all medical problems. It is difficult to fix things you only partially understand.
All I was saying is what neuroscience research has been pointing out recently. The brain removes waste products and toxins during sleep, and it may be one reason why all animals with significant brains have to sleep. You want to argue over the amount needed. I can't because to my knowledge the amount is probably individual specific with some amount of range between 6 and 9 hours a night. My impression from reading is that everyone may need more as they get older because the waste removal process is not as efficient in older people. This is fairly new research, so it is going to be some time before they have better answers.
I really have nothing to argue here other than the ways in which the government and their buddies in big business can now intrude into our lives is unprecedented. My comment about people wanting to be celebrities and therefore don't care who is watching was meant to be a joke, but a joke with a point. I think that younger people have grown up with decreasing expectations of privacy, and enhanced expectations that someday they too will be a pop star, or a famous basketball player. I think that these are relatively new developments because there has never been such an ability to monitor people remotely so completely, or such an ability for people to send their selfies all over the world. I understand fully that a small minority of people can expend some effort to hide and blend into the crowd, so of course if you know what you are doing you have some ability to avoid it. But when you buy a new car with all the telemetry and black box, or a smart TV with microphone and HD video with face recognition built in, you have to admit that it has gotten a lot worse. So you won't get an argument from me, but I think you will agree that the opportunities for watching people, even in public with untold numbers of surveillance cameras, is on a much larger scale than in the past. For a very long time most lack of privacy was just because too few people lived in too close quarters.
It's tough to get a good discussion on biology going here at/. This is a really interesting find if it holds up. The structures they found are interesting, and have characteristic features that don't seem like they could have been produced by geological means. But still, I think they have their work cut out for themselves to find more samples, and confirm that these aren't just some very odd geological artifacts.
Exactly how is it that there was never any privacy? Are you saying there is no additional loss of privacy now with the internet and the way corporations and the government are data mining? Are you also saying that the level of celebrity worship did not increase with modern venues like movies, radio, pop music and television? I understand that Kings and Queens were worshiped by some and hated by others, but I really don't think that there is any historical counterpart to current cult figures on TV, music and in the movies. Maybe you can enlighten us all and quantify the levels of celebrity worship throughout history since you are an expert.
Do you know where exactly they did the surgery around the left hippocampus? It may be relevant for the panic attacks. The amydala is right nearby, and it responds to threatening stimuli (or invents them when overactive). It may be that some level of GABA input to the amygdala on that side was affected, so the area is overactive.
If you continue to have seizures when you don't take the medication, there is one other thing you can try that is drug free, and it is called the ketogenic diet. They rarely use if for epilepsy that responds to drugs like dilantin, they only use it for what is called intractable epilepsy (drug unresponsive). But it does work. The problem is that you need to almost eliminate all carbohydrates (sugars and starches). You also need to keep protein to a relatively low level, and concentrate on eating lots of oils and fats (so two eggs plus bacon would be a typical breakfast on a ketogenic diet).
As far as the panic attacks keeping you up once you wake up, Valium of any type (benzodiazepines) will definitely help as you have seen. That is because it boosts the action of GABA, the main inhibitory transmitter in the brain. But benzodiazepines get addictive over time if you use them every night. You might still want to try melatonin. It is a "sleep hormone" but it is not the main thing that makes you go do sleep at night. It does help make you a bit drowsy though, so if you took it when you wake up in the middle of the night, it might help get you back to sleep. Also, because serotonin and melatonin are related (both synthesized from tryptophan) and help with sleep, taking the amino acid tryptophan might also help you sleep because it would boost both serotonin and melatonin. So instead of taking melatonin when you wake up in the middle of the night, try taking a tryptophan capsule before you go to bed. It might help, but it might not depending on your biochemistry. It is the old thing about getting very sleepy after a big turkey dinner, because turkey has lots of tryptophan.
Modern pop culture is all about celebrity. Now everyone is a celebrity because people are watching them. So this is a good thing by today's warped standards. How many of the children who want to be monitored everywhere they go and everything they do ever read 1984 or any other literature that warns of excessive state power and control? When you can just watch YouTube and do FaceBook all day, there isn't much time left to read dusty old books.
How can you complain that I have not given you a "quantity" needed when you have given us nothing in terms of information? You have provided exactly zero information on the subject, but you have given an unrelated example about speed limits that is not relevant to the discussion. You appear to be angry that anyone is even saying that people need more sleep than they often get, which is exactly what the literature shows. Now if you want to point me to a source of information that gives a chart on how much sleep people with different sleep related gene polymorphisms need, then you could make your point. But since no such information currently exists, you can't give me anything to prove your odd point that some people don't need so much sleep. By what criteria? Are you going to follow thousands of low-sleep people for decades to see if they end up with a higher incidence of Alzheimer disease? If you are going to argue a point you should at least offer some information that people can check into, like I did.
I am just telling you what I read in the primary scientific literature on the subject. I gave several links to PubMed. I'll give you those again and some more.
Our research involves delivering neuroprotective compounds to the brain via intranasal application, which bypasses the blood brain barrier. The glymphatic system is the primary route for transporting drugs from the nasal epithelium to the brain. This system is also the one that clears toxins, excess transmitters, and the byproducts of metabolism from the brain, and the flow rate is substantially increased during sleep. It is one of the first discoveries in a long time that sheds more light on why all animals with brains have to sleep. So please read some of the literature, and then get back to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I win the aware?
The levels released at the plant were way beyond low level, background radiation. You know that background radiation is far lower. It is obvious that more than enough radiation was released to cause cancer in some of the people exposed. Biology has a lot of tricks to repair DNA, but it only can do so much. When the double strand breaks get too numerous, repair becomes impossible. If the damaged cells fail to undergo apoptosis, they may turn cancerous.
Obviously the cancer rates are going to go up, especially for the workers at the plant. It's biology. Radiation and DNA don't mix well. In a few more years more cases will show up. I am sure the workers all took extra iodine to protect their thyroid gland, but that won't prevent things like leukemia.
I think I am quite calm, how about you? Because old age neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer disease have a connection to the unfolded protein response and the buildup of misfolded proteins in nerve cells, and because waste removal, which happens at a much higher rate during sleep, is critical for nerve cell function and getting rid of junk that interferes with normal activity, then my guess is that it is better to err on the safe side. Maybe you have a strong objection to that suggestion. How many hours is that a night? You tell me. Nobody knows. In all of my posts I have said you need to know things we don't know yet about individual genetics and about exactly what cellular systems are involved in the process. Are you going to respond to me again by asking how many hours that is? Please.
Absolutely. But I think there is a huge difference between many of the people at /. and the average person using modern technology. People here make their own computers, write code, set all their security and privacy settings just so, some use Tor (I don't bother because most of my internet activity is doing science research or reading the news) etc. My car is 20 years old and unless someone has stuck a magnetic bat-tracker to it, I am a non-entity on the road electronically. I don't use a smartphone because I don't need one for anything. For most people, none of these things even cross their minds. So my point was that the tracking of the majority of people and the lack of privacy is growing, and will continue to grow. But as more and more of them have no technical expertise, they won't have the faintest idea what is happening, or what, if anything, to do about it.
I think for me the bottom line is that the data collection, whether for monetizing people's activities and habits, or looking for terrorists, is a very negative direction for society to be moving in. From my perspective it is putting people at odds with corporations and the government, and I don't think it has to be that way. I think that adversarial arrangement fuels some of the crazy gun behavior and rampant conspiracy theories because people feel like they are being screwed, they just aren't quite sure exactly how or who to blame.
So again, please tell me how it is that we are the ones attacking countries from Somalia to Pakistan with drones, have troops on the ground in dozens of countries, and how we have our military and intelligence agencies interfering in countries from Africa to the Middle East and into Asia, but it is China that is somehow doing these things instead?
OK, your just F'ing with me, I get it. You just like to screw with people and you aren't even trying to make a point.
We are in all of those places and many more right now. Our military is globally deployed, and we spend huge sums of money destabilizing countries we don't like with covert actions and drone strikes. What if China was doing that instead of us? How would that make you feel?
The US is going to reap what it sows. Blowback is a bitch. Maybe diplomacy would be better? I'm sure you will have all sorts of nonsensical reasons why we need to be very afraid.
This is for you:
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
The US is already an international threat to many nations (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and many others), so anything China does is following our lead, and playing catch up.
See what I mean?
Genetic polymorphisms. Look it up. Now find all the genes associated with clearing toxins and waste products from the brain during sleep. Now map the genes of everyone and compare the results to the list of genes involved. The question you are asking is not answerable with the current data set.
Not at all sure why you have to make sarcastic comments about taking anti-indoctrination courses. I guess somehow I hit a nerve, but I didn't insult you. Are you actually suggesting that having military bases all over the world is about something other than making money for corporations that build and service those bases, and to intimidate with force projection? The bases are often highly resented by the local populace (e.g., Okinawa) so how are they making the US safer?
Several people in the Bush administration said that the oil was a critical reason for the Iraq war, on top of the fact that Bush and Cheney were obsessed with invading Iraq long before 9/11. Clearly it was not about Iraq posing an imminent threat to the US. We were an imminent threat to them, and they are still paying the price.
Congress determines how much money the NIH and NSF get. The president can push them but he can't allocate funds. Many recent presidents including Obama have made their legacy about things other than science, including force projection in the Middle East and Asia, oil and gas extraction, international IP deals masquerading as "free trade" and helping the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries to increase their bottom lines. I have not seen a big push in support for basic science funding from any recent president. In fact, what I have seen is a commercialization of science at the NIH where they talk about "translational medicine" which is a code word for securing IP rights on drug and medical device development. Basic research is barely on the radar screen. There is good basic research being done, but very often when you write a grant proposal for funding, you better have a bottom line that it is going to lead to some treatment. This of course misses the point of doing scientific research, which is to find out how things work before you try and fix all medical problems. It is difficult to fix things you only partially understand.
All I was saying is what neuroscience research has been pointing out recently. The brain removes waste products and toxins during sleep, and it may be one reason why all animals with significant brains have to sleep. You want to argue over the amount needed. I can't because to my knowledge the amount is probably individual specific with some amount of range between 6 and 9 hours a night. My impression from reading is that everyone may need more as they get older because the waste removal process is not as efficient in older people. This is fairly new research, so it is going to be some time before they have better answers.
I really have nothing to argue here other than the ways in which the government and their buddies in big business can now intrude into our lives is unprecedented. My comment about people wanting to be celebrities and therefore don't care who is watching was meant to be a joke, but a joke with a point. I think that younger people have grown up with decreasing expectations of privacy, and enhanced expectations that someday they too will be a pop star, or a famous basketball player. I think that these are relatively new developments because there has never been such an ability to monitor people remotely so completely, or such an ability for people to send their selfies all over the world. I understand fully that a small minority of people can expend some effort to hide and blend into the crowd, so of course if you know what you are doing you have some ability to avoid it. But when you buy a new car with all the telemetry and black box, or a smart TV with microphone and HD video with face recognition built in, you have to admit that it has gotten a lot worse. So you won't get an argument from me, but I think you will agree that the opportunities for watching people, even in public with untold numbers of surveillance cameras, is on a much larger scale than in the past. For a very long time most lack of privacy was just because too few people lived in too close quarters.
I think that you and I are in complete agreement, but you are so irritated that you can't tell.
It's tough to get a good discussion on biology going here at /. This is a really interesting find if it holds up. The structures they found are interesting, and have characteristic features that don't seem like they could have been produced by geological means. But still, I think they have their work cut out for themselves to find more samples, and confirm that these aren't just some very odd geological artifacts.
all those CDs and DVDs.
I have no idea what you are talking about, but you appear to be very pleased with yourself. I am sure it is a habit of yours.
Exactly how is it that there was never any privacy? Are you saying there is no additional loss of privacy now with the internet and the way corporations and the government are data mining? Are you also saying that the level of celebrity worship did not increase with modern venues like movies, radio, pop music and television? I understand that Kings and Queens were worshiped by some and hated by others, but I really don't think that there is any historical counterpart to current cult figures on TV, music and in the movies. Maybe you can enlighten us all and quantify the levels of celebrity worship throughout history since you are an expert.
You are right, obverse is the front side. I was thinking it meant opposite, rather than front.
Do you know where exactly they did the surgery around the left hippocampus? It may be relevant for the panic attacks. The amydala is right nearby, and it responds to threatening stimuli (or invents them when overactive). It may be that some level of GABA input to the amygdala on that side was affected, so the area is overactive.
If you continue to have seizures when you don't take the medication, there is one other thing you can try that is drug free, and it is called the ketogenic diet. They rarely use if for epilepsy that responds to drugs like dilantin, they only use it for what is called intractable epilepsy (drug unresponsive). But it does work. The problem is that you need to almost eliminate all carbohydrates (sugars and starches). You also need to keep protein to a relatively low level, and concentrate on eating lots of oils and fats (so two eggs plus bacon would be a typical breakfast on a ketogenic diet).
As far as the panic attacks keeping you up once you wake up, Valium of any type (benzodiazepines) will definitely help as you have seen. That is because it boosts the action of GABA, the main inhibitory transmitter in the brain. But benzodiazepines get addictive over time if you use them every night. You might still want to try melatonin. It is a "sleep hormone" but it is not the main thing that makes you go do sleep at night. It does help make you a bit drowsy though, so if you took it when you wake up in the middle of the night, it might help get you back to sleep. Also, because serotonin and melatonin are related (both synthesized from tryptophan) and help with sleep, taking the amino acid tryptophan might also help you sleep because it would boost both serotonin and melatonin. So instead of taking melatonin when you wake up in the middle of the night, try taking a tryptophan capsule before you go to bed. It might help, but it might not depending on your biochemistry. It is the old thing about getting very sleepy after a big turkey dinner, because turkey has lots of tryptophan.
Modern pop culture is all about celebrity. Now everyone is a celebrity because people are watching them. So this is a good thing by today's warped standards. How many of the children who want to be monitored everywhere they go and everything they do ever read 1984 or any other literature that warns of excessive state power and control? When you can just watch YouTube and do FaceBook all day, there isn't much time left to read dusty old books.
How can you complain that I have not given you a "quantity" needed when you have given us nothing in terms of information? You have provided exactly zero information on the subject, but you have given an unrelated example about speed limits that is not relevant to the discussion. You appear to be angry that anyone is even saying that people need more sleep than they often get, which is exactly what the literature shows. Now if you want to point me to a source of information that gives a chart on how much sleep people with different sleep related gene polymorphisms need, then you could make your point. But since no such information currently exists, you can't give me anything to prove your odd point that some people don't need so much sleep. By what criteria? Are you going to follow thousands of low-sleep people for decades to see if they end up with a higher incidence of Alzheimer disease? If you are going to argue a point you should at least offer some information that people can check into, like I did.
I am just telling you what I read in the primary scientific literature on the subject. I gave several links to PubMed. I'll give you those again and some more.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
Our research involves delivering neuroprotective compounds to the brain via intranasal application, which bypasses the blood brain barrier. The glymphatic system is the primary route for transporting drugs from the nasal epithelium to the brain. This system is also the one that clears toxins, excess transmitters, and the byproducts of metabolism from the brain, and the flow rate is substantially increased during sleep. It is one of the first discoveries in a long time that sheds more light on why all animals with brains have to sleep. So please read some of the literature, and then get back to me.