maybe read more than the first sentence next time?
you're right, there isn't a pre-med major at berkeley. you can major in french literature and still be a pre-med. as I said above, my major is molecular cell biology.
As a pre-med undergrad at UC Berkeley, I think it needs to be taught. I have been through a year of it (including labs) as part of my requirements, both for my major (molecular cell biology) and for med school. It was one of the hardest subjects I have ever taken. The kid next to me during the final for the second semester of it didn't write a single thing in three hours. I just heard him flip, flip flip.
It isn't about the course content. To be an effective doctor you don't need to remember how to synthesize carbonyls. Find me a clinical physician who can take me through the steps of glycolysis. Organic chemistry is a gauntlet. It's an incredibly difficult subject that doesn't smile kindly on rote memorization. Rather, a complete understanding and application of knowledge, often in seemingly-unfamiliar settings, is required to excel in the course. Yeah, some people made hundreds of flash cards, and some of them probably did well. But the longitudinal thinking that one has to go through to really shine in ochem is also needed in medicine.
Also, especially at Cal, classes like ochem are needed to pare down the pre-med pool. The merits of "weeding" kids out can be discussed, but there's no doubt that ochem is good at that.
cue the "obama flip-flopped on space exploration" crowd any time now.
and probably from people who don't even support (read: care about) it to begin with.
his position on space isn't going to be a deal-breaker for me this election, but I would really love to see some more support from him. unfortunately, there are bigger fish to fry this time around.
the stereochem
of the amino acids found in meteorites is important. Nearly all biological amino acids (except glycine) have a chiral component to them. for those who didn't have the wonderful pleasure of taking organic chemistry, stereochemistry refers to a molecule's physical orientation in space. given a sufficiently complex molecule, you can have different "versions" (enantiomers) of the exact same molecule that have the same physical properties, but are in fact distinct.
all amino acids made by biological sources on Earth are L enantiomers (L= left, referring to the fact that pure enantiomers rotate plane-polarized light to the left or right, depending on which enantiomer it is.) Some meteorites have been found there the mixture of amino acids is racemic (equal mix of L and R). This would be expected from an abiotic chemical reaction in space making these things. Miller and Urey found a racemic mixture of AAs in their famous experiment.
some meteorites have been found to contain an 'enantiomeric excess' of one form or the other. could this be contamination from Earth? well, some of the meteorite AAs are rather unique and not found here in any numbers. when it comes to AAs, it is very difficult to think of a totally physical process that would lead to such an excess. hmmm.
the HyperSonic Sound technology. not a laser, just highly-directed ultrasound. I read about this a few years back in some science magazine (pop sci maybe?). Not only can you point it at someone and have them be the only ones who can hear it, but if pointed at a suitable surface (glass, stone, etc), it will emit sound from that point. imagine a surround sound speaker system contained in a small box, pointing these ultrasonic beams of sound at different parts of the room. You could imagine a completely continuous distribution of sound. goodbye 7.1, hello infinity.1.
neat stuff.
here is a Forbes article from 2003 with a better description of the technology. apparently it relies on an acoustic phenomenon where two different frequencies interact, yielding two new frequencies where one is the sum of the first two and the other is the difference. it also mentions their intended applications (imagine a coke machine beaming sounds of fizzy cola into your brain as you walk by...)
yeah... I know. that wasn't the point. the point was that i thought they got over to brooklyn before the bridge collapsed, and then were suddenly at a 6 station, which would be a little odd.
forgive me if I missed some of the movie, the camerawork made my friend puke at one point. one part didn't really click for me:
***SPOILERS BELOW***
it seems like they crossed the brooklyn bridge into brooklyn just as the bridge gets destroyed. then, they decide they need to get back into manhattan... and it just sort of happens. "oh look! were in the station for the 6 train!" Was it that they never made it across the bridge to begin with, or did they teleport across the east river? just wondering.
i think with the current evidence, it is safe to say that most dark matter is strictly non-baryonic (the mass we are used to). there is no doubt, however, that dust and other baryonic matter in all kinds of forms (clouds of gas, dwarf stars, planets, you name it) contribute to dark matter. what we must quibble about now is the amounts, the proportions.
by the way, dust doesn't just spontaneously emit radio waves. if that were true, all the dust on our planet would likely make radio stations impossible. there are plenty of places dust could be where it doesn't reflect light, or emit radiation due to absorption. in fact, dust contributes more to our inability to see our whole galaxy than anything else.
very true. this dark matter does not need to be special in any way, it can be dust. but it has to be right around galaxies for the rotation curves to work out. there simply aren't enough stars to account for the way our (and every other) spiral galaxy behaves relatively far from its center. dark energy on the other hand is a different (and unrelated) story.
i resent your implication that majoring in biology is a gamble. as a current bio undergrad, i'd like to say that many of us do just fine after college. yes, the starting salary may not be spectacular, but look at the number of doctors with bio degrees. an intern's starting salary out of med school is a tad better than minimum wage, but it scales rather quickly. i know most people with a BS (or BA, which is what I will be getting)in bio don't go to med school, but I would bet that many many doctors have an undergrad bio degree. just sayin' that starting salary isn't the best metric to measure a major's worth.
that being said, i agree that the genetics boon of the next twenty years will indeed give bio grads more lucrative options other than med school, which is very much welcome. the way i see it, biology is only of the last unconquered scientific paradigms. we have pinned down physics to scales that are beyond the reaches of most people's imaginations. we have incredible understanding of and control over chemistry. our predictive power in biology, however, is much weaker. biology is less elucidated and that's what draws me to it. there's still a lot of work to be done.
these types of tests are the future of medicine, i have no doubt about it (i'm staking my current education in genetics on it), but at the moment they don't provide a lot. not only do these tests only cover a very very limited portion of your genome, but their "disease predisposition" prediction ability cannot possibly be very accurate for diseases with complex and largely-unknown genetic backgrounds.
there are now hundreds of known "hotspots" in the genome that have been linked to certain chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and certain types of cancer, just to name a few. someday, when DNA sequencing is cheaper and faster, it will be feasible to test large samples of people and extrapolate strong empirical statistics about the relationship between specific mutations and disease, until we find the exact mechanisms of each gene. but for the time being, these statistics are based off of very very few people. for some diseases, looking directly at your sequence can tell you if you have a condition or not. for instance, it is well known that sickle cell anemia is caused by a single nucleotide change, from A to T, which causes a valine to be used in place of a glutamate in the B-globin protein. if one has this mutation in both parental copies of the gene, one has the condition no matter what. however, most other diseases are not so cut-and-dry, and will require huge sample sizes to elucidate the probabilities. this is especially true considering the fact that any one disease can be affected by dozens if not hundreds (or thousands) of different genes. the science of bioinformatics will be very important to us in the future, as pinning down these correlations is as much mathematics as it is biology.
individual disease prediction will have to wait, but one thing that this type of testing can help with now is carrier testing. many diseases are recessive, and one can be walking around completely healthy but still carry the gene for, let's say, cystic fibrosis. If two heterozygous carriers have children, (usually) the odds of having a child with the disease is 1/4. these genetic screens may be able to tell you if you are indeed a carrier, which will allow you to make more informed decisions about having children. "genetic counseling" is starting to take off these days, as couples are increasingly aware of the genetics behind disease.
that thing might not be able to see it, but there is a lab that regularly bounces laser light off of reflectors that were left there by americans and russians
the amount of deflection due to gravity, as I understand it, is excruciatingly small. It is only because of our great distance from these galaxies that we can see the deflection at all. in fact, due to the expansion of the universe over that timescale, the light hasn't passed through as much actual space as you might think. it in fact passed through extra space as the universe expanded (and continues to expand) around it.
this isn't some willful anti-foreign strategy. the simple fact is that google is set up better in america than anywhere else, so of course any new endeavor would start here. i for one wouldn't bitch if a UK-based company introduced something new over there first. "OMG virgin airlines waited years to come to america, WHAT ASSHOLES!!!!111one"
the economics of implementing country-specific code don't work out. not enough people won't buy vista because of this in outside of america (if any at all), and there is practically no benefit. also, any "looser" software released in, say, england would be pirated instantly back to the states.
yeah, aside from the battery thing, the whole point of this online distribution is that media is moving off of physical mediums. there are a litany of advantages to downloaded files vs. dvds, not the least of which is vastly reduced power consumption.
I understand that this particular system was designed with streaming in mind, but that sure as hell isn't because streaming is more convenient than downloading. streaming content is harder (but clearly not very hard) to pirate, etc. in this case the streaming is a handicap, so someone found a way to make the system work to their advantage. that being said, it is a loophole that will likely be cleared up soon given all of this coverage.
"Okay, if this is to watch the videos on a non-Windows system or if you ha[t]e being forced into Windows/IE, fine. I'm okay with that as long as you manually adhere to the rental terms and delete the file."
"that" makes the statement only apply to those on non-windows systems, as per your first sentence. I am talking about a windows user that wants to rent a movie or two for a long trip. if this kind of DMCA shenanagins is ok for for a linux user, it should be ok for a windows user. just because your operating system isn't supported doesn't give you additional justification to circumvent a copy protection scheme.
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hahaha ochem raised your GPA? bravo, sir. pederson i presume?
maybe read more than the first sentence next time?
you're right, there isn't a pre-med major at berkeley. you can major in french literature and still be a pre-med. as I said above, my major is molecular cell biology.
As a pre-med undergrad at UC Berkeley, I think it needs to be taught. I have been through a year of it (including labs) as part of my requirements, both for my major (molecular cell biology) and for med school. It was one of the hardest subjects I have ever taken. The kid next to me during the final for the second semester of it didn't write a single thing in three hours. I just heard him flip, flip flip.
It isn't about the course content. To be an effective doctor you don't need to remember how to synthesize carbonyls. Find me a clinical physician who can take me through the steps of glycolysis. Organic chemistry is a gauntlet. It's an incredibly difficult subject that doesn't smile kindly on rote memorization. Rather, a complete understanding and application of knowledge, often in seemingly-unfamiliar settings, is required to excel in the course. Yeah, some people made hundreds of flash cards, and some of them probably did well. But the longitudinal thinking that one has to go through to really shine in ochem is also needed in medicine.
Also, especially at Cal, classes like ochem are needed to pare down the pre-med pool. The merits of "weeding" kids out can be discussed, but there's no doubt that ochem is good at that.
cue the "obama flip-flopped on space exploration" crowd any time now. and probably from people who don't even support (read: care about) it to begin with. his position on space isn't going to be a deal-breaker for me this election, but I would really love to see some more support from him. unfortunately, there are bigger fish to fry this time around.
the stereochem of the amino acids found in meteorites is important. Nearly all biological amino acids (except glycine) have a chiral component to them. for those who didn't have the wonderful pleasure of taking organic chemistry, stereochemistry refers to a molecule's physical orientation in space. given a sufficiently complex molecule, you can have different "versions" (enantiomers) of the exact same molecule that have the same physical properties, but are in fact distinct.
all amino acids made by biological sources on Earth are L enantiomers (L= left, referring to the fact that pure enantiomers rotate plane-polarized light to the left or right, depending on which enantiomer it is.) Some meteorites have been found there the mixture of amino acids is racemic (equal mix of L and R). This would be expected from an abiotic chemical reaction in space making these things. Miller and Urey found a racemic mixture of AAs in their famous experiment.
some meteorites have been found to contain an 'enantiomeric excess' of one form or the other. could this be contamination from Earth? well, some of the meteorite AAs are rather unique and not found here in any numbers. when it comes to AAs, it is very difficult to think of a totally physical process that would lead to such an excess. hmmm.
the HyperSonic Sound technology. not a laser, just highly-directed ultrasound. I read about this a few years back in some science magazine (pop sci maybe?). Not only can you point it at someone and have them be the only ones who can hear it, but if pointed at a suitable surface (glass, stone, etc), it will emit sound from that point. imagine a surround sound speaker system contained in a small box, pointing these ultrasonic beams of sound at different parts of the room. You could imagine a completely continuous distribution of sound. goodbye 7.1, hello infinity.1.
neat stuff.
here is a Forbes article from 2003 with a better description of the technology. apparently it relies on an acoustic phenomenon where two different frequencies interact, yielding two new frequencies where one is the sum of the first two and the other is the difference. it also mentions their intended applications (imagine a coke machine beaming sounds of fizzy cola into your brain as you walk by...)
yeah... I know. that wasn't the point. the point was that i thought they got over to brooklyn before the bridge collapsed, and then were suddenly at a 6 station, which would be a little odd.
forgive me if I missed some of the movie, the camerawork made my friend puke at one point. one part didn't really click for me:
***SPOILERS BELOW***
it seems like they crossed the brooklyn bridge into brooklyn just as the bridge gets destroyed. then, they decide they need to get back into manhattan... and it just sort of happens. "oh look! were in the station for the 6 train!" Was it that they never made it across the bridge to begin with, or did they teleport across the east river? just wondering.
i think with the current evidence, it is safe to say that most dark matter is strictly non-baryonic (the mass we are used to). there is no doubt, however, that dust and other baryonic matter in all kinds of forms (clouds of gas, dwarf stars, planets, you name it) contribute to dark matter. what we must quibble about now is the amounts, the proportions.
by the way, dust doesn't just spontaneously emit radio waves. if that were true, all the dust on our planet would likely make radio stations impossible. there are plenty of places dust could be where it doesn't reflect light, or emit radiation due to absorption. in fact, dust contributes more to our inability to see our whole galaxy than anything else.
very true. this dark matter does not need to be special in any way, it can be dust. but it has to be right around galaxies for the rotation curves to work out. there simply aren't enough stars to account for the way our (and every other) spiral galaxy behaves relatively far from its center. dark energy on the other hand is a different (and unrelated) story.
i resent your implication that majoring in biology is a gamble. as a current bio undergrad, i'd like to say that many of us do just fine after college. yes, the starting salary may not be spectacular, but look at the number of doctors with bio degrees. an intern's starting salary out of med school is a tad better than minimum wage, but it scales rather quickly. i know most people with a BS (or BA, which is what I will be getting)in bio don't go to med school, but I would bet that many many doctors have an undergrad bio degree. just sayin' that starting salary isn't the best metric to measure a major's worth.
that being said, i agree that the genetics boon of the next twenty years will indeed give bio grads more lucrative options other than med school, which is very much welcome. the way i see it, biology is only of the last unconquered scientific paradigms. we have pinned down physics to scales that are beyond the reaches of most people's imaginations. we have incredible understanding of and control over chemistry. our predictive power in biology, however, is much weaker. biology is less elucidated and that's what draws me to it. there's still a lot of work to be done.
these types of tests are the future of medicine, i have no doubt about it (i'm staking my current education in genetics on it), but at the moment they don't provide a lot. not only do these tests only cover a very very limited portion of your genome, but their "disease predisposition" prediction ability cannot possibly be very accurate for diseases with complex and largely-unknown genetic backgrounds.
there are now hundreds of known "hotspots" in the genome that have been linked to certain chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and certain types of cancer, just to name a few. someday, when DNA sequencing is cheaper and faster, it will be feasible to test large samples of people and extrapolate strong empirical statistics about the relationship between specific mutations and disease, until we find the exact mechanisms of each gene. but for the time being, these statistics are based off of very very few people. for some diseases, looking directly at your sequence can tell you if you have a condition or not. for instance, it is well known that sickle cell anemia is caused by a single nucleotide change, from A to T, which causes a valine to be used in place of a glutamate in the B-globin protein. if one has this mutation in both parental copies of the gene, one has the condition no matter what. however, most other diseases are not so cut-and-dry, and will require huge sample sizes to elucidate the probabilities. this is especially true considering the fact that any one disease can be affected by dozens if not hundreds (or thousands) of different genes. the science of bioinformatics will be very important to us in the future, as pinning down these correlations is as much mathematics as it is biology.
individual disease prediction will have to wait, but one thing that this type of testing can help with now is carrier testing. many diseases are recessive, and one can be walking around completely healthy but still carry the gene for, let's say, cystic fibrosis. If two heterozygous carriers have children, (usually) the odds of having a child with the disease is 1/4. these genetic screens may be able to tell you if you are indeed a carrier, which will allow you to make more informed decisions about having children. "genetic counseling" is starting to take off these days, as couples are increasingly aware of the genetics behind disease.
that thing might not be able to see it, but there is a lab that regularly bounces laser light off of reflectors that were left there by americans and russians
http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/apollo.html
the amount of deflection due to gravity, as I understand it, is excruciatingly small. It is only because of our great distance from these galaxies that we can see the deflection at all. in fact, due to the expansion of the universe over that timescale, the light hasn't passed through as much actual space as you might think. it in fact passed through extra space as the universe expanded (and continues to expand) around it.
except that KDE and gnome apps, in a UI sense, are kinda sorta mutually exclusive, no?
this isn't some willful anti-foreign strategy. the simple fact is that google is set up better in america than anywhere else, so of course any new endeavor would start here. i for one wouldn't bitch if a UK-based company introduced something new over there first. "OMG virgin airlines waited years to come to america, WHAT ASSHOLES!!!!111one"
this is the third time this week I have seen someone whine about a US company doing something with mainly the US in mind. what gives?
FTFA: "Gigabyte drives were only "missing" 24 bytes, and that was easy to swallow."
i think they meant 24 megabytes, which is easy to scoff at now, but wasn't when the first gigabyte drives dropped.
the economics of implementing country-specific code don't work out. not enough people won't buy vista because of this in outside of america (if any at all), and there is practically no benefit. also, any "looser" software released in, say, england would be pirated instantly back to the states.
is that a serious question? why would an american company comply with american law to protect the media that is made almost exclusively in america?
get over yourself
ever heard of the DMCA?
...that you can access it from any computer in the world at any time at a speed that will only be limited by YOUR connection?
yeah, aside from the battery thing, the whole point of this online distribution is that media is moving off of physical mediums. there are a litany of advantages to downloaded files vs. dvds, not the least of which is vastly reduced power consumption.
I understand that this particular system was designed with streaming in mind, but that sure as hell isn't because streaming is more convenient than downloading. streaming content is harder (but clearly not very hard) to pirate, etc. in this case the streaming is a handicap, so someone found a way to make the system work to their advantage. that being said, it is a loophole that will likely be cleared up soon given all of this coverage.
this is a silly spat, but here goes:
"Okay, if this is to watch the videos on a non-Windows system or if you ha[t]e being forced into Windows/IE, fine. I'm okay with that as long as you manually adhere to the rental terms and delete the file."
"that" makes the statement only apply to those on non-windows systems, as per your first sentence. I am talking about a windows user that wants to rent a movie or two for a long trip. if this kind of DMCA shenanagins is ok for for a linux user, it should be ok for a windows user. just because your operating system isn't supported doesn't give you additional justification to circumvent a copy protection scheme.
to watch the movie offline? laptop on a plane, train, whatever?
there are plenty of reasons to want a clean file on your hard drive instead of some streaming BS.