I'd call out this article for more than nit picking. Aside from your point where he conflates evolution, TFA is rife with sweepingly broad statements. Just because some bacteria secrete serotonin doesn't mean that they can make people happy. Further:
Recent research has shown that gut microbes control or influence nutrient supply to the human host, the development of mature intestinal cells and blood vessels, the stimulation and maturation of the immune system, and blood levels of lipids such as cholesterol. They are, therefore, intimately involved in the bodily functions that tend to be out of kilter in modern society: metabolism, cardiovascular processes and defense against disease. Many researchers are coming to view such diseases as manifestations of imbalance in the ecology of the microbes inhabiting the human body. If further evidence bears this out, medicine is about to undergo a profound paradigm shift, and medical treatment could regularly involve kindness to microbes.
The first sentence is a bit hyperbolic. The second sentence is completely over the top and not at all supported by anything other than the author's enthusiasm. The third sentence reads like something from an old time chiropractic tome.
We'll see about the 'paradigm' shift. If this sort of thing were really as important as he makes it out, antibiotics would likely kill you routinely.
Yes, we will find some nutrient / immunomodulation functions that we are unaware of when we study the bugs more closely but I rather doubt you will be singing lullabies to your little colonic friends in hopes of their helping you get through the weekday better.
Traditional-style warfare doesn't really work anymore, since the majority of conflicts aren't of the "everybody line up and shoot at each other" style these days.
Small guerrilla type wars have always been more common than big shootem outs. Recently the US has seen fit to start them or join in but there have always been low level skirmishes likely since humans grabbed the first stick. But not to worry, given the upcoming issues with the increasing human population and the decreasing / static levels of a number of important resources, we will likely be pitting the big boys against each other in the near future.
You really believe that, eh? You believe that so much that you're unwilling to log in to present the argument (which is demonstrably false). Try again next time....
VMWare running 98 with legacy tools, dosbox running even more decrepit legacy tools. Several spreadsheets, a remote desktop to the hideously decrepit 98 machine running legacy software that requires access to a custom 16 bit card and another program that needs access to a custom PCI card. Various in circuit programming tools from Lattice, Phillips, Microchip, Altera, Atmel our own engineers psychotic in circuit programming tools. Oh and we're running outlook.
I always wondered what Hell looked like from an IT perspective... How are the benefits down there?
Damn. Save the world and get reprimanded for not completing the paperwork correctly. Even being cynical is no defense for this sort of thing. God hates us.
The problem is that this is not new. There have been many cases recently where custom software on a regular computer would make a world of difference and it is turned down in favour of a much more expensive custom hardware solution because the regular computer can be used for non-medicinal purposes
No issue with that statement, but (and Christ, it's Saturday and I'm defending Medicare) these rules are a complex interplay of vendor greed, legal blather, unintended consequences, politics and money. Can you imagine the political hay some random congresscritter is going to make if they find out that our precious tax dollars are going to fund for... iPads? (Yes, I'm sure the federal government is buying iPads for something). It is a much harder decision than it might seem. Personally, I think that insurance ought to pay for the software - this being the hard part now, and have the patient pay for the iPad out of pocket. Open up the Pandora's box of medical insurance paying for COTS computers and you'll likely find that lots of ugly things fly out.
So totally this. Yet another case of perfect being the enemy of good.
While I'm hardly a fan of the Medicare regulatory dungeon^Hframework, I think it would be appropriate to give these guys a bit of break. The iPad really just showed up on the market a year? or two ago (time flies when you're having fun) and the applications and more importantly, the usefulness of the applications is just getting some attention.
I would not expect CMMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Security, Medicare's daddy) to rush in and say "OK Ipads are fine, everybody go get one....". I would hope that they would take notice, maybe fund a study to see if they did do everything they are touted to do, that they last long enough to be useful and maybe address the issue of using a medical product to view YouTube or the like.
So, keeping up the pressure is fine but lets not drip hate and vitriol on everything. Just yet. (Sorry for all the parentheses).
Here is the issue: We (now) know that life on Earth has expanded into pretty much any environment that doesn't denature DNA and proteins. From the bottom of the ocean, to near the stratosphere to miles deep in rock.
We presume that when life started off on this planet 4 billion years ago, give or take a week, there was water, heat, little oxygen and a lot of minerals and dirt. Life started and then colonized, and dramatically changed, the planet. The question now is whether life can form in other environments and if so, what is the range of those environments (the Goldilocks zone). Can you do it in high pressure and cold temperatures? Probably. Can you do it without water? Maybe. Can you do it under denaturing conditions for DNA and protein (temperatures greater than a couple of hundred degrees, significantly acidic or basic, significant ionizing radiation)? Perhaps not at first. But we certainly don't know that. We don't even know that life exists anywhere else. Most of us assume that it does, but until Kreel shows up on the Rover camera, we have to go digging around. That's why it's important to get our asses to Mars and beyond.
SOMETHING has caused average lifespan to rise from circa 45 in 1900 to 75 today. The well known causes like chlorinated drinking water can only account for half of that.
Public Health measures (drinking water / vaccination / basic hygiene) probably about half - mostly decreases child mortality which jumps average lifespan to jump considerably.
Better and more consistent nutrition (in the society) - few people starve to death in the US. Probably another 20%
Better obstetrical support - maybe another 10%
Better trauma medicine - maybe another 10%
Better treatment of heart disease - another 10 -20% - heart disease is a big killer in the US. That 10-20% however, comes at a huge cost.
Better treatment of cancers - not a whole lot of bang for the buck, probably 5% overall with enormous differences between various cancers. Again, this tends to be a big ticket item.
(Numbers sort of pulled out of my bottom end, to tired to look it up, but I think they are generally supportable).
The general argument being that a number of relatively low tech, simple and inexpensive things have contributed to most of the improvement in quantity (and quality - that's kinda important) of life. Now we're spending enormous sums of money and other resources to chase down small incremental improvements. Of course, no discussion of this subject would be complete without noting that fully half of a typical US state's Medicaid budget (Medicaid is paid for jointly by federal and state funds) goes to long term care (i.e. nursing home) care for low income people. Those people would almost certainly die earlier without that ongoing and considerable expense. Get's really complicated.
The summary is scaremongering; the article is more in depth and interesting. Basically it says that researchers need money in order to, you know, actually research Because they need money they need to receive grants. In order to get grants, they need their grant approved. In order to get approval, their research needs to show "promise". In order to increase the amount of "promise" in their research, they need to have flashy results.
Certainly the Slashdot Summary is misleading and hyped, but that's SOP. However, the article still is a bit more damning. Not only does 'inflating' the results of studies help the academic publishing / funding treadmill, but the same mechanism inflates the 'value' of medications and medical interventions.
That is a huge problem, especially in the US where the trend for Medicare / Medicaid (the country's largest insurers) is to mindlessly pay for 'new and better' as well as the general desire for new and shiny things that go 'ping'. New drugs that are really not much better than old ones (but much more profitable). New procedures that aren't much better than old ones (but much more profitable), new machines that aren't much better than old ones (but now that you've paid off the last one, can we sell you version 2 with tint control?). So this sort of sloppy science isn't just a problem in at the chalkboard. It's a problem in the wallet and in fact, a problem that risks people's lives.
Just one example: Bone marrow transplant for Breast Cancer. Heavily touted. Heavily advertised. Lawsuits again insurers that wouldn't pay for it even though much of the early research was clearly substandard and the benefits marginal. But it hit people at their heartstrings - dying women - and there was a huge push for it. Later research showed no benefit for a procedure that really put patients through an awful several months (worse than the cancer).
It has become a perfect storm in which the complexity of human biology, the poor training of medical researchers (MD / PhD programs basically create physicians with weak clinical skills and researchers with weak research skills), the enormous financial and academic stakes of the research and everyone's interest in 'getting better' or simply staying alive have created (at least in the US and I suspect to a certain degree in other first world countries) an expensive and poorly controlled industry that yields marginal patient benefits and incurs enormous costs - both financial, social, moral and physical.
checking email while walking down a hall, reading ebooks in bed, web browsing on the train, games while curled up on the couch, listening to noise-suppressing music at work, checking house prices while driving thru a neighborhood, writing a book in the few-minute gaps between tasks/events, looking up conversation subjects over lunch, making VoIP calls walking to the car, checking traffic & weather when starting the car, trading stocks the moment you hear news of market activity, looking up & ordering books when a friend suggests one, reviewing news over breakfast, finding a suitable nearby restaurant while going out with friends,... and yes, browsing pictures and watching YouTube -
Funny? I guess I never get mod points because I haven't smoked pot in a long time. Must be some strong stuff you young'ins have. In my day we if we got dizzy from inhaling the smoke we thought we were buzzing along just fine.
Yeah, prices are a bitch. I have an OWC 240 GB at over $500 - but that's a lot cheaper than a new MBP. I also put the 7200 RPM drive in the optical slot and so I have a terabyte of storage in a laptop - pretty cool, if you ask me.
The current processor refreshes really don't impress me much, nor do the video cards. Since I'm mostly doing Photoshop / Dreamweaver on the machine, I don't need supermonster RayTraceTheUniverse graphics cards.
SDDs seem cool but they push the price up an insane amount.
They're pricey, but they make the machine fly. I have a 2007 17" (Version 3,1). Always seem to hang on program switching and heavy disk I/O. Changing out to a 7200 RPM drive made a bit of difference, but really didn't change my 'attitude' to the machine (basically I wanted a new one). Sticking in an SSD however, was a night and day experience. I think OS X really hits the hard drive for lots of little things that really could stay in RAM (the machine has 4 GB) and would noticeably pause starting and switching programs and often for no apparent reason.
Pretty much all gone now. I've basically given up my thoughts of upgrading the machine for a few more years. Perhaps once Nikon gets it 24 megapixel cameras out of the stratospheric price range they inhabit and I afford to buy one and upgrade the machine to handle it.
Marvin: I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.
Trillian: Well, we have something that may take your mind off it.
Marvin: It won't work, I have an exceptionally large mind.
Trillian: Yeah, we know.
This. An IT professional will do more free work than a doctor or lawyer would ever dream of. Some people have legal problems... everyone has problems with windows.
Oh come on. "Reinstall Windows" doesn't take much effort, does it?
Ymmm, rubber bladder tasting water. The problem appears to be that it's hard to make an industrial sized potable water container. Shouldn't be impossible, it's just that no one has managed to do it given the financial constraints you are working under.
Slashdot Mirror
The first sentence is a bit hyperbolic. The second sentence is completely over the top and not at all supported by anything other than the author's enthusiasm. The third sentence reads like something from an old time chiropractic tome.
We'll see about the 'paradigm' shift. If this sort of thing were really as important as he makes it out, antibiotics would likely kill you routinely.
Yes, we will find some nutrient / immunomodulation functions that we are unaware of when we study the bugs more closely but I rather doubt you will be singing lullabies to your little colonic friends in hopes of their helping you get through the weekday better.
Small guerrilla type wars have always been more common than big shootem outs. Recently the US has seen fit to start them or join in but there have always been low level skirmishes likely since humans grabbed the first stick. But not to worry, given the upcoming issues with the increasing human population and the decreasing / static levels of a number of important resources, we will likely be pitting the big boys against each other in the near future.
Grab your MRE's and watch the action.
You really believe that, eh? You believe that so much that you're unwilling to log in to present the argument (which is demonstrably false). Try again next time....
It does, however, get you well rested and out of the rain. The pizza works for the inner fulfillment part.
I always wondered what Hell looked like from an IT perspective ... How are the benefits down there?
Damn. Save the world and get reprimanded for not completing the paperwork correctly. Even being cynical is no defense for this sort of thing. God hates us.
This is a movie not an Instructional Video. No more TV! Outside! Now!
Just thought of a way out here. Apple makes a slightly modified version for health care, call it, maybe the 'pPad'. Nobody would want one of those.
No issue with that statement, but (and Christ, it's Saturday and I'm defending Medicare) these rules are a complex interplay of vendor greed, legal blather, unintended consequences, politics and money. Can you imagine the political hay some random congresscritter is going to make if they find out that our precious tax dollars are going to fund for ... iPads? (Yes, I'm sure the federal government is buying iPads for something). It is a much harder decision than it might seem. Personally, I think that insurance ought to pay for the software - this being the hard part now, and have the patient pay for the iPad out of pocket. Open up the Pandora's box of medical insurance paying for COTS computers and you'll likely find that lots of ugly things fly out.
While I'm hardly a fan of the Medicare regulatory dungeon^Hframework, I think it would be appropriate to give these guys a bit of break. The iPad really just showed up on the market a year? or two ago (time flies when you're having fun) and the applications and more importantly, the usefulness of the applications is just getting some attention.
I would not expect CMMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Security, Medicare's daddy) to rush in and say "OK Ipads are fine, everybody go get one....". I would hope that they would take notice, maybe fund a study to see if they did do everything they are touted to do, that they last long enough to be useful and maybe address the issue of using a medical product to view YouTube or the like.
So, keeping up the pressure is fine but lets not drip hate and vitriol on everything. Just yet. (Sorry for all the parentheses).
Five years from now! I promise!
Here is the issue: We (now) know that life on Earth has expanded into pretty much any environment that doesn't denature DNA and proteins. From the bottom of the ocean, to near the stratosphere to miles deep in rock.
We presume that when life started off on this planet 4 billion years ago, give or take a week, there was water, heat, little oxygen and a lot of minerals and dirt. Life started and then colonized, and dramatically changed, the planet. The question now is whether life can form in other environments and if so, what is the range of those environments (the Goldilocks zone). Can you do it in high pressure and cold temperatures? Probably. Can you do it without water? Maybe. Can you do it under denaturing conditions for DNA and protein (temperatures greater than a couple of hundred degrees, significantly acidic or basic, significant ionizing radiation)? Perhaps not at first. But we certainly don't know that. We don't even know that life exists anywhere else. Most of us assume that it does, but until Kreel shows up on the Rover camera, we have to go digging around. That's why it's important to get our asses to Mars and beyond.
Or at least our sensors.
Public Health measures (drinking water / vaccination / basic hygiene) probably about half - mostly decreases child mortality which jumps average lifespan to jump considerably.
Better and more consistent nutrition (in the society) - few people starve to death in the US. Probably another 20%
Better obstetrical support - maybe another 10%
Better trauma medicine - maybe another 10%
Better treatment of heart disease - another 10 -20% - heart disease is a big killer in the US. That 10-20% however, comes at a huge cost.
Better treatment of cancers - not a whole lot of bang for the buck, probably 5% overall with enormous differences between various cancers. Again, this tends to be a big ticket item.
(Numbers sort of pulled out of my bottom end, to tired to look it up, but I think they are generally supportable).
The general argument being that a number of relatively low tech, simple and inexpensive things have contributed to most of the improvement in quantity (and quality - that's kinda important) of life. Now we're spending enormous sums of money and other resources to chase down small incremental improvements. Of course, no discussion of this subject would be complete without noting that fully half of a typical US state's Medicaid budget (Medicaid is paid for jointly by federal and state funds) goes to long term care (i.e. nursing home) care for low income people. Those people would almost certainly die earlier without that ongoing and considerable expense. Get's really complicated.
Certainly the Slashdot Summary is misleading and hyped, but that's SOP. However, the article still is a bit more damning. Not only does 'inflating' the results of studies help the academic publishing / funding treadmill, but the same mechanism inflates the 'value' of medications and medical interventions.
That is a huge problem, especially in the US where the trend for Medicare / Medicaid (the country's largest insurers) is to mindlessly pay for 'new and better' as well as the general desire for new and shiny things that go 'ping'. New drugs that are really not much better than old ones (but much more profitable). New procedures that aren't much better than old ones (but much more profitable), new machines that aren't much better than old ones (but now that you've paid off the last one, can we sell you version 2 with tint control?). So this sort of sloppy science isn't just a problem in at the chalkboard. It's a problem in the wallet and in fact, a problem that risks people's lives.
Just one example: Bone marrow transplant for Breast Cancer. Heavily touted. Heavily advertised. Lawsuits again insurers that wouldn't pay for it even though much of the early research was clearly substandard and the benefits marginal. But it hit people at their heartstrings - dying women - and there was a huge push for it. Later research showed no benefit for a procedure that really put patients through an awful several months (worse than the cancer).
It has become a perfect storm in which the complexity of human biology, the poor training of medical researchers (MD / PhD programs basically create physicians with weak clinical skills and researchers with weak research skills), the enormous financial and academic stakes of the research and everyone's interest in 'getting better' or simply staying alive have created (at least in the US and I suspect to a certain degree in other first world countries) an expensive and poorly controlled industry that yields marginal patient benefits and incurs enormous costs - both financial, social, moral and physical.
You might consider upping your Ritalin dose.
Funny? I guess I never get mod points because I haven't smoked pot in a long time. Must be some strong stuff you young'ins have. In my day we if we got dizzy from inhaling the smoke we thought we were buzzing along just fine.
Look, as an American, it feels good to be the bestest at something for a change. We're desperate, we'll take anything.
Yeah, prices are a bitch. I have an OWC 240 GB at over $500 - but that's a lot cheaper than a new MBP. I also put the 7200 RPM drive in the optical slot and so I have a terabyte of storage in a laptop - pretty cool, if you ask me. The current processor refreshes really don't impress me much, nor do the video cards. Since I'm mostly doing Photoshop / Dreamweaver on the machine, I don't need supermonster RayTraceTheUniverse graphics cards.
Too Late! already been there, done that
They're pricey, but they make the machine fly. I have a 2007 17" (Version 3,1). Always seem to hang on program switching and heavy disk I/O. Changing out to a 7200 RPM drive made a bit of difference, but really didn't change my 'attitude' to the machine (basically I wanted a new one). Sticking in an SSD however, was a night and day experience. I think OS X really hits the hard drive for lots of little things that really could stay in RAM (the machine has 4 GB) and would noticeably pause starting and switching programs and often for no apparent reason.
Pretty much all gone now. I've basically given up my thoughts of upgrading the machine for a few more years. Perhaps once Nikon gets it 24 megapixel cameras out of the stratospheric price range they inhabit and I afford to buy one and upgrade the machine to handle it.
Marvin: I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.
Trillian: Well, we have something that may take your mind off it.
Marvin: It won't work, I have an exceptionally large mind.
Trillian: Yeah, we know.
Oh come on. "Reinstall Windows" doesn't take much effort, does it?
You could do it in your sleep.
Not to be saying this. Is plan for new Russian export industry. (Don't tell the Iranians).
Let's be PC here. I believe the proper term will be 'militarily challenged'.
Ymmm, rubber bladder tasting water. The problem appears to be that it's hard to make an industrial sized potable water container. Shouldn't be impossible, it's just that no one has managed to do it given the financial constraints you are working under.
Remember this is water, not oil.