mr. mckay voice: "weaponizing space is bad, m'kay?" (sorry, couldn't resist).
never mind those 300,000 people that went blind from the nuclear blast in russia
what are you talking about? could looking at a thermonuclear detonation taking place in space be worse than looking at this massive fusion reaction going on up there that we call the Sun?
ok, yes your point of showing that assuming the converse can be invalid is well said.
nonetheless: doesn't it seem a bit out of line that 50% of the murders would be committed by a group that makes up only 11% of the population?
this would not be "racist", but objective.
we can take contrarian thinking too far, and wind up with the "im ok, youre ok" philosophy where everything is just A-OK here in the USA, and that its the "damn lying statistics".
...since the admin can always write packets (in frames)directly to the layer 2 driver. all they are doing is breaking the BSD sockets API - security through obscurity? right....
if you are mucking with protocols by using raw sockets, are you really going to be coding it on a windows platform? i can imagine a worm or trojan doing it perhaps - in a ddos scenario - but since when has raw sockets become the red-headed stepchild implicated in this?
i also had a friend who typed "rm *.gz" instead of "rm *.gz" and accidentally deleted about 5,000 lines of source code that he had written and not backed up.
this problem, and others related to subway travel, have existing engineering solutions.
how to stop people from holding the doors? place a 2nd set of doors on the platform outside the train, a set which ppl will have to walk through in order to get on the train. This set would close around 10 seconds before the train doors - therefore, no point trying to hold them open. And if you have ever been in NY, you will know that ppl all surround the train doors before they open and then push each other chaotically. having a 2nd set of doors, along with a series of gates to herd the ppl aboard quickly, would be a simple solution to this.
another thing that could be done is that while ppl are waiting at the station the platform could have a scale under it. Based upon the weight, the number of ppl waiting for the train at that particular station could be estimated, and using this value traffic decisions such as "have next train stop at station" or "just pass this station by - not enough ppl" could be made by a centralized system such as the one in the article.
you may as well be arguing how many fairies can dance on the head of a pin. language is a living code, and subject to change.
However, since you raise the point, American english has grown to encompass more concepts than UK english, due to the USA's assimilation of a myriad of cultures. American english language dictionaries are usually several hundred pages bigger than UK dictionaries.
Besides, the USA has far surpassed the UK in intellectual achievement and geopolitical power, so the question of "math" vs. "maths" is largely irrelevant. Maybe it is the British who should change to our language? Someone once corrected me that the word router is actually pronounced "roo-ter". Ok, so how do you pronounce "gout", "trout" or "spout"? Who's language is REALLY more consistent and logical?
Some of the loopholes have been closed, but in essence the technique used was "op diverting" - being redirected from the TSPS console (usually by claiming to be a disabled user) to an 800 number of an outside network. Once being redirected, depending up on the network being switched to, the ANI information would be obliterated and an operator would pop on and ask for your phone number. Any number could be made up, but as a matter of policy, the op won't call a POTS line..
There were ways around this that were discovered, which I will not elaborate on since that would probably lead to its abuse, were one COULD infact complete a call to another POTS line with a completely spoofed ANI (and with no charges, for that matter).
this is all using the PSTN...I would imagine that under VOIP the situation is even worse...
Read his resume - he's a lobbyist with a science degree. Does this amaze anyone?
can you really justify this? afterall, not everyone with several high-level degrees (including a Ph.D. and 5 masters degrees) and a very impressive history in aerospace industry is a lobbyist simply because he knows how to play the games necessary to succeed in Washington.
I, for one, am excited at the prospect of having a respected scientist breath new life into a flailing agency whose goals are no longer clearly defined. If anyone is qualified to lead this effort, it is Griffin.
And partisan? Hardly...did you RTFA? Democrats praised Bush's choice.
Would you prefer O'Keefe, the traditional bureaucrat? If you think that someone with no experience in gov or industry is going to head NASA...well, good luck with that. So take your pick.
I'd challenge you do find any that have actually been "of the masses" as you say.
how 'bout the US tax code, and how it relates to american politics?
how about how the people who pay the least in taxes require the more productive among us to pay the most in taxes? if that is not tyranny through overdemocracy, then i don't know what is.
how about labor unions that bully businesses into accepting ridulously high wages for tasks that require no brain whatsoever? should a bus driver earn the same as a computer programmer? gues what: they do. know why? cuz one has a union and the other doesn't.
how about affirmative action, which FORCES businesses to hire people of one race over another?
are you okay with all of this? and get your facts straight: the bill of rights is intended to protect the rights of citizens from OTHER CITIZENS. As I have a right to do business with you, I have the right to not do business with you. Likewise, you have the right to buy things from me or not. Anything other than this is not freedom.
As a matter of fact, I hate the airline industry (having flown a countless number of times for business). This is besides the point, which you obviously did not understand.
But nonetheless it does not change the fact that they have a right to refuse service to whomever they want.
If you FORCE someone to serve you, when it is refused, that is called SLAVERY.
Mr. Gilmore is merely trying to make some kind of point that we shouldn't have to show ID for anything. Rather than try for a reasonable public discussion, he talks about some kind of "invisible" secret law that in reality doesn't exist.
the rules are this: if you are getting on a plane, you show ID. Simple. There are good reasons for this, wouldn't you agree?
They are corporations which hold a license to exist granted by US through our representatives....They have no rights.
I don't understand your point.
Corporations DO have rights, as well they should. If I start my own corporation, put $1 mil into it, why should you be able to make a spectacle out in front of my store, while I lose all of my $ and you lose nothing but a haircut?
Indeed what you are describing IS a tyranny - a tyranny of the masses, who feel that the rights of others can be trampled by their own collective whim whenever they conflict - a kind of tyranny through over-democracy. "Let's see a show of hands, class: who votes that we should take all of Jimmy's milk money?" - [vote radically affirmed, as everyone but Jimmy raises their hand].
This, to me, is more terrifying than socialism, communism, or fascism.
If Mr. Gilmore doesn't want to follow the rules, but instead wants to be a washed-up hippy cry-baby, then he should get in his car and drive: no one has the "right" to fly, no more than I have a "right" to post on slashdot! (And infact, I suspect this msg will be modded down by someone else with greater "rights", thus proving my point, or deleted altogether.)
yes, thalidomide was one of the shining examples of the importance of the FDA, since thalidomide was never approved in the USA while in Europe it was given a free pass. Hopefully, with some reform, the FDA can enjoy this status again.
It is also interesting that it is only one enantiomer of thalidomide that caused the nasty birth defects, the other stereoisomer seems to not be associated:
your cells don't crank out working viral RNA, but the same mechanism prevents your body from making working RNA.
you are almost right...AZT actually terminates the synthesis of DNA, not RNA. (the reverse transcriptase enzyme translates the viral RNA to DNA, and this DNA then gets inserted into the host cell's genome).
"wait a minute" - you say, how could DNA synthesis be terminated and the cell still live?!?! the answer most often given is that the reverse transcriptase enzyme has a stronger affinity for the AZT nucleoside analog than the normal cellular DNA polymerase. Few biochemists would actually believe this, and the high toxicity of AZT is a testament to this - if you take AZT, you will die.
it is also interesting to note that nucleoside analogs such as AZT have been used in cell culture techniques since the 1950's to arrest cells in S phase for biological research. needless to say, it was quite a leap to suddenly make a "drug" out of a common laboratory technique...and infact AZT was first marketed as an antineoplastic chemotherapy drug in the 1970's before it was rejected by the FDA for killing too many of it's trial patients. Hey, no problemo, lets just wait 10 years and re-market it as an "AIDS drug". It is also somewhat humorous that they would claim on the one hand that the drug does not affect normal cellular DNA synthesis and then on the other hand they previously marketed it as an inhibitor of cell replication as an anticancer agent (meaning that it prevents cells from replicating their DNA - which clearly means that the claims of reverse transcriptase specificity were bogus!!)
it is for such examples of plain-sighted backwardness that many have come to doubt the safety of drugs approved by the FDA, as is evident in the US national news every other week.
Lentiviral vector retargeting to P-glycoprotein on metastatic melanoma through intravenous injection
Kouki Morizono1, 2, Yiming Xie1, 2, Gene-Errol Ringpis1, 2, Mai Johnson3, Hoorig Nassanian1, Benhur Lee1, 4, Lily Wu3 & Irvin S Y Chen1, 2, 5
1 Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
2 UCLA AIDS Institute, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
3 Department of Urology, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
4 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
5 Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
Correspondence should be addressed to Irvin S Y Chen syuchen@mednet.ucla.edu
Targeted gene transduction to specific tissues and organs through intravenous injection would be the ultimate preferred method of gene delivery. Here, we report successful targeting in a living animal through intravenous injection of a lentiviral vector pseudotyped with a modified chimeric Sindbis virus envelope (termed m168). m168 pseudotypes have high titer and high targeting specificity and, unlike other retroviral pseudotypes, have low nonspecific infectivity in liver and spleen. A mouse cancer model of metastatic melanoma was used to test intravenous targeting with m168. Human P-glycoprotein was ectopically expressed on the surface of melanoma cells and targeted by the m168 pseudotyped lentiviral vector conjugated with antibody specific for P-glycoprotein. m168 pseudotypes successfully targeted metastatic melanoma cells growing in the lung after systemic administration by tail vein injection. Further development of this targeting technology should result in applications not only for cancers but also for genetic, infectious and immune diseases.
Nice to see - my faith in the Patent system has raised slightly from 'completely hopeless' to 'mostly hopeless'
right - it is nice to see the USPTO as a stooge for someone else pushing their agenda on us, isn't it?
it is exactly this type of abuse of the patent system that has stifled American ingenuity and allowed for the theft of intellectual property to become an accepted facet of doing business.
while you are certainly making a valid point, there was a certain arrogance toward the beagle mars mission that to some seemed it would spell disaster before it even left the ground.
make no mistake about it: the beagle 2 was a TOTAL loss. not only was the design uterly unprepared, but proper diagnostics were not relayed back during descent which effectively means that not only did the probe crash, but now we will never know WHY exactly it crashed, which means that learning from that mistake is now impossible.
and i am tired of hearing the "well, it actually landed but we just cant hear it" crap. this thing crashed, lets accept it and move on.
also, their design was completely unproven at that time (the nasa rovers have since shown that the overall design CAN work if done properly). given the shoe-string budge that they had, one would think that they would over-engineered their systems and copied the basic scheme of the Viking missions just to play it safe.
i, for one, was looking forward to seeing the results of the beagle 2 since it carried what many would consider to be more revealing scientific instrumentation, as the parent has pointed out.
In addition, in order to be logically consistent, an anti-ES person must be against women's birth control hormones. Why? Because typically the contraceptive hormones do NOT prevent conception, they merely make the uterine wall lining a less hospitable place for a zygote to develop. So then the next time the woman goes to the bathrooom...wooosh, down the toilet goes the "person".
So where are the protestors and waving their stupid signs? Exactly.
Unfortunately, the media presents the issue as if little babies were being killed for their cells...infact, a cluster of 32 cells that have not differentiated into any of the embryonic germ layers hardly constitute an organism at all, let alone what we consider a "person".
and just for the record...I happen to be AGAINST abortion, which I logically reason IS infact murder. Harvesting ES cells, by contrast, is not.
there are immortalized cell lines, scientists use them all the time (SV40 transformed, HeLa cells, etc.)
there is no physical reason why a cell must die, which is an intriguing thing. cells wind up dying because for some reason they are preprogrammed to stop dividing...once they stop dividing/apoptosing, the oxidation damage accumulates (which we call cell aging).
cancerous cells are nearly all immortalized, some have been replicated in culture for more than 50 years now.
i dont know who told you this, this is completely off base. roundup (glyphosate) degrades over a period of 3 months into ethylamines. many microorganisms will then turn those into CO2, not nitrogen. infact, glyphosate has been found to inhibit anaerobic nitrogen fixation in the soil.
glyphosate is an amino acid analog designed to inhibit enzymes needed for neogenesis (the target supposedly being 5-enolpyruvyl-shikimate-3 phosphate synthase) of the plants amino acids.
while glyphosate has not been found to be harmful to humans, the inactive ingredient surfactant (which makes up 15.0% of roundup), polyoxy-ethyleneamine, IS known to be toxic to humans and is typically contaminated with dioxanes (as a byproduct of the formation of it) which is a known human carcinogen.
no it doesn't prevent the plants from "harvesting" air (whatever that means).
it inhibits enzymes responsible for the biosynthesis of certain amino acids, bringing protein synthesis to a halt and starving (not strangling) the plant.
Slashdot Mirror
...to serve the internet? China?
What other nation of the world could guarantee the free speech implicit to the internet, as sites like slashdot are testament to?
weaponizing of space is a bad idea.
mr. mckay voice: "weaponizing space is bad, m'kay?" (sorry, couldn't resist).
never mind those 300,000 people that went blind from the nuclear blast in russia
what are you talking about? could looking at a thermonuclear detonation taking place in space be worse than looking at this massive fusion reaction going on up there that we call the Sun?
peace and love, stop pollution by dihydromonoxide
ok, yes your point of showing that assuming the converse can be invalid is well said.
nonetheless: doesn't it seem a bit out of line that 50% of the murders would be committed by a group that makes up only 11% of the population?
this would not be "racist", but objective.
we can take contrarian thinking too far, and wind up with the "im ok, youre ok" philosophy where everything is just A-OK here in the USA, and that its the "damn lying statistics".
yes, but those are Good Things(tm).
what purpose would breaking the raw sockets api make for improving security? nothing.
...since the admin can always write packets (in frames)directly to the layer 2 driver. all they are doing is breaking the BSD sockets API - security through obscurity? right....
are they kidding?
if you are mucking with protocols by using raw sockets, are you really going to be coding it on a windows platform? i can imagine a worm or trojan doing it perhaps - in a ddos scenario - but since when has raw sockets become the red-headed stepchild implicated in this?
i also had a friend who typed "rm * .gz" instead of "rm *.gz" and accidentally deleted about 5,000 lines of source code that he had written and not backed up.
this problem, and others related to subway travel, have existing engineering solutions.
how to stop people from holding the doors? place a 2nd set of doors on the platform outside the train, a set which ppl will have to walk through in order to get on the train. This set would close around 10 seconds before the train doors - therefore, no point trying to hold them open. And if you have ever been in NY, you will know that ppl all surround the train doors before they open and then push each other chaotically. having a 2nd set of doors, along with a series of gates to herd the ppl aboard quickly, would be a simple solution to this.
another thing that could be done is that while ppl are waiting at the station the platform could have a scale under it. Based upon the weight, the number of ppl waiting for the train at that particular station could be estimated, and using this value traffic decisions such as "have next train stop at station" or "just pass this station by - not enough ppl" could be made by a centralized system such as the one in the article.
...the same fuel that the Cheech and Chong mobile ran on?
you may as well be arguing how many fairies can dance on the head of a pin. language is a living code, and subject to change.
However, since you raise the point, American english has grown to encompass more concepts than UK english, due to the USA's assimilation of a myriad of cultures. American english language dictionaries are usually several hundred pages bigger than UK dictionaries.
Besides, the USA has far surpassed the UK in intellectual achievement and geopolitical power, so the question of "math" vs. "maths" is largely irrelevant. Maybe it is the British who should change to our language? Someone once corrected me that the word router is actually pronounced "roo-ter". Ok, so how do you pronounce "gout", "trout" or "spout"? Who's language is REALLY more consistent and logical?
yes and no - ANI can infact be spoofed.
Some of the loopholes have been closed, but in essence the technique used was "op diverting" - being redirected from the TSPS console (usually by claiming to be a disabled user) to an 800 number of an outside network. Once being redirected, depending up on the network being switched to, the ANI information would be obliterated and an operator would pop on and ask for your phone number. Any number could be made up, but as a matter of policy, the op won't call a POTS line..
There were ways around this that were discovered, which I will not elaborate on since that would probably lead to its abuse, were one COULD infact complete a call to another POTS line with a completely spoofed ANI (and with no charges, for that matter).
this is all using the PSTN...I would imagine that under VOIP the situation is even worse...
like for shakey the robot?
Read his resume - he's a lobbyist with a science degree. Does this amaze anyone?
can you really justify this? afterall, not everyone with several high-level degrees (including a Ph.D. and 5 masters degrees) and a very impressive history in aerospace industry is a lobbyist simply because he knows how to play the games necessary to succeed in Washington.
I, for one, am excited at the prospect of having a respected scientist breath new life into a flailing agency whose goals are no longer clearly defined. If anyone is qualified to lead this effort, it is Griffin.
And partisan? Hardly...did you RTFA? Democrats praised Bush's choice.
Would you prefer O'Keefe, the traditional bureaucrat? If you think that someone with no experience in gov or industry is going to head NASA...well, good luck with that. So take your pick.
I'd challenge you do find any that have actually been "of the masses" as you say.
how 'bout the US tax code, and how it relates to american politics?
how about how the people who pay the least in taxes require the more productive among us to pay the most in taxes? if that is not tyranny through overdemocracy, then i don't know what is.
how about labor unions that bully businesses into accepting ridulously high wages for tasks that require no brain whatsoever? should a bus driver earn the same as a computer programmer? gues what: they do. know why? cuz one has a union and the other doesn't.
how about affirmative action, which FORCES businesses to hire people of one race over another?
are you okay with all of this? and get your facts straight: the bill of rights is intended to protect the rights of citizens from OTHER CITIZENS. As I have a right to do business with you, I have the right to not do business with you. Likewise, you have the right to buy things from me or not. Anything other than this is not freedom.
As a matter of fact, I hate the airline industry (having flown a countless number of times for business). This is besides the point, which you obviously did not understand.
But nonetheless it does not change the fact that they have a right to refuse service to whomever they want.
If you FORCE someone to serve you, when it is refused, that is called SLAVERY.
Mr. Gilmore is merely trying to make some kind of point that we shouldn't have to show ID for anything. Rather than try for a reasonable public discussion, he talks about some kind of "invisible" secret law that in reality doesn't exist.
the rules are this: if you are getting on a plane, you show ID. Simple. There are good reasons for this, wouldn't you agree?
They are corporations which hold a license to exist granted by US through our representatives....They have no rights.
I don't understand your point.
Corporations DO have rights, as well they should. If I start my own corporation, put $1 mil into it, why should you be able to make a spectacle out in front of my store, while I lose all of my $ and you lose nothing but a haircut?
Indeed what you are describing IS a tyranny - a tyranny of the masses, who feel that the rights of others can be trampled by their own collective whim whenever they conflict - a kind of tyranny through over-democracy. "Let's see a show of hands, class: who votes that we should take all of Jimmy's milk money?" - [vote radically affirmed, as everyone but Jimmy raises their hand].
This, to me, is more terrifying than socialism, communism, or fascism.
If Mr. Gilmore doesn't want to follow the rules, but instead wants to be a washed-up hippy cry-baby, then he should get in his car and drive: no one has the "right" to fly, no more than I have a "right" to post on slashdot! (And infact, I suspect this msg will be modded down by someone else with greater "rights", thus proving my point, or deleted altogether.)
yes, thalidomide was one of the shining examples of the importance of the FDA, since thalidomide was never approved in the USA while in Europe it was given a free pass. Hopefully, with some reform, the FDA can enjoy this status again.
m ide/chemistry/chemistry.htm
It is also interesting that it is only one enantiomer of thalidomide that caused the nasty birth defects, the other stereoisomer seems to not be associated:
http://www.rlc.dcccd.edu/MATHSCI/reynolds/thalido
Best of luck to you in your new career.
your cells don't crank out working viral RNA, but the same mechanism prevents your body from making working RNA.
you are almost right...AZT actually terminates the synthesis of DNA, not RNA. (the reverse transcriptase enzyme translates the viral RNA to DNA, and this DNA then gets inserted into the host cell's genome).
"wait a minute" - you say, how could DNA synthesis be terminated and the cell still live?!?! the answer most often given is that the reverse transcriptase enzyme has a stronger affinity for the AZT nucleoside analog than the normal cellular DNA polymerase. Few biochemists would actually believe this, and the high toxicity of AZT is a testament to this - if you take AZT, you will die.
it is also interesting to note that nucleoside analogs such as AZT have been used in cell culture techniques since the 1950's to arrest cells in S phase for biological research. needless to say, it was quite a leap to suddenly make a "drug" out of a common laboratory technique...and infact AZT was first marketed as an antineoplastic chemotherapy drug in the 1970's before it was rejected by the FDA for killing too many of it's trial patients. Hey, no problemo, lets just wait 10 years and re-market it as an "AIDS drug". It is also somewhat humorous that they would claim on the one hand that the drug does not affect normal cellular DNA synthesis and then on the other hand they previously marketed it as an inhibitor of cell replication as an anticancer agent (meaning that it prevents cells from replicating their DNA - which clearly means that the claims of reverse transcriptase specificity were bogus!!)
it is for such examples of plain-sighted backwardness that many have come to doubt the safety of drugs approved by the FDA, as is evident in the US national news every other week.
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/n m/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm1192.html
Lentiviral vector retargeting to P-glycoprotein on metastatic melanoma through intravenous injection
Kouki Morizono1, 2, Yiming Xie1, 2, Gene-Errol Ringpis1, 2, Mai Johnson3, Hoorig Nassanian1, Benhur Lee1, 4, Lily Wu3 & Irvin S Y Chen1, 2, 5
1 Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
2 UCLA AIDS Institute, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
3 Department of Urology, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
4 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
5 Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
Correspondence should be addressed to Irvin S Y Chen syuchen@mednet.ucla.edu
Targeted gene transduction to specific tissues and organs through intravenous injection would be the ultimate preferred method of gene delivery. Here, we report successful targeting in a living animal through intravenous injection of a lentiviral vector pseudotyped with a modified chimeric Sindbis virus envelope (termed m168). m168 pseudotypes have high titer and high targeting specificity and, unlike other retroviral pseudotypes, have low nonspecific infectivity in liver and spleen. A mouse cancer model of metastatic melanoma was used to test intravenous targeting with m168. Human P-glycoprotein was ectopically expressed on the surface of melanoma cells and targeted by the m168 pseudotyped lentiviral vector conjugated with antibody specific for P-glycoprotein. m168 pseudotypes successfully targeted metastatic melanoma cells growing in the lung after systemic administration by tail vein injection. Further development of this targeting technology should result in applications not only for cancers but also for genetic, infectious and immune diseases.
Nice to see - my faith in the Patent system has raised slightly from 'completely hopeless' to 'mostly hopeless'
right - it is nice to see the USPTO as a stooge for someone else pushing their agenda on us, isn't it?
it is exactly this type of abuse of the patent system that has stifled American ingenuity and allowed for the theft of intellectual property to become an accepted facet of doing business.
while you are certainly making a valid point, there was a certain arrogance toward the beagle mars mission that to some seemed it would spell disaster before it even left the ground.
make no mistake about it: the beagle 2 was a TOTAL loss. not only was the design uterly unprepared, but proper diagnostics were not relayed back during descent which effectively means that not only did the probe crash, but now we will never know WHY exactly it crashed, which means that learning from that mistake is now impossible.
and i am tired of hearing the "well, it actually landed but we just cant hear it" crap. this thing crashed, lets accept it and move on.
also, their design was completely unproven at that time (the nasa rovers have since shown that the overall design CAN work if done properly). given the shoe-string budge that they had, one would think that they would over-engineered their systems and copied the basic scheme of the Viking missions just to play it safe.
i, for one, was looking forward to seeing the results of the beagle 2 since it carried what many would consider to be more revealing scientific instrumentation, as the parent has pointed out.
Dave, you hit the nail right on the head.
In addition, in order to be logically consistent, an anti-ES person must be against women's birth control hormones. Why? Because typically the contraceptive hormones do NOT prevent conception, they merely make the uterine wall lining a less hospitable place for a zygote to develop. So then the next time the woman goes to the bathrooom...wooosh, down the toilet goes the "person".
So where are the protestors and waving their stupid signs? Exactly.
Unfortunately, the media presents the issue as if little babies were being killed for their cells...infact, a cluster of 32 cells that have not differentiated into any of the embryonic germ layers hardly constitute an organism at all, let alone what we consider a "person".
and just for the record...I happen to be AGAINST abortion, which I logically reason IS infact murder. Harvesting ES cells, by contrast, is not.
not true.
there are immortalized cell lines, scientists use them all the time (SV40 transformed, HeLa cells, etc.)
there is no physical reason why a cell must die, which is an intriguing thing. cells wind up dying because for some reason they are preprogrammed to stop dividing...once they stop dividing/apoptosing, the oxidation damage accumulates (which we call cell aging).
cancerous cells are nearly all immortalized, some have been replicated in culture for more than 50 years now.
i dont know who told you this, this is completely off base. roundup (glyphosate) degrades over a period of 3 months into ethylamines. many microorganisms will then turn those into CO2, not nitrogen. infact, glyphosate has been found to inhibit anaerobic nitrogen fixation in the soil.
glyphosate is an amino acid analog designed to inhibit enzymes needed for neogenesis (the target supposedly being 5-enolpyruvyl-shikimate-3 phosphate synthase) of the plants amino acids.
while glyphosate has not been found to be harmful to humans, the inactive ingredient surfactant (which makes up 15.0% of roundup), polyoxy-ethyleneamine, IS known to be toxic to humans and is typically contaminated with dioxanes (as a byproduct of the formation of it) which is a known human carcinogen.
no it doesn't prevent the plants from "harvesting" air (whatever that means).
it inhibits enzymes responsible for the biosynthesis of certain amino acids, bringing protein synthesis to a halt and starving (not strangling) the plant.