What you say is true, if properly applied, for widgets or perhaps even drug trials where the profits are realisable in a business time frame.
It is not true for ideas and inventions where the profits may or may not exist and are way off in the future - i.e. those based upon scientific research or artistic endeavors. That is why we have a different model to drive basic research. Believe me, if politicians didn't believe that funding NIH was the only way to cure cancer and prolong their own lives they would not funnel billions into something that gives no campaign contributions.
The problems arise when the two models collide, as they do when we talk about intellectual property. Unfortunately what is good for encouraging better widgets can stifle creativity in science and art and that is not good for profits or humanity...
This sounds very similar to therapies that have been around for 15-20 years using radio-labelled antibodies. The idea is that antibodies to proteins expressed in tumours can be used to deliver radioactive isotopes (iodine, strontium - nasty ones..) to the tumour. Apparently it works very well in mice but in humans the antibodies are concentrated and destroyed in the liver. There was a guy who worked downstairs on this marginal research - finding people for trials that he must have known had no hope of working. Really quite sad for the people involved who have to wear lead shielding when spending their final days with their loved ones...
Anyway back to the point, I'm not dissing the nano-idea, using a weaker poison and maybe with a better targetting mechanism is a reasonable approach and may work eventually - but just because it works in mice doesn't mean it will work in humans. As the previous poster said - the cure(s) for cancer have existed for mice for quite a while. I also think that the parent poster was rightfully skeptical and should nitpick - there are way too many stories that overstate the progress and value of different cancer therapies - which unfortunately can cost investors their money and patients their quality of life...
Word 4 was Word 5 without the bloat. It was much faster and nearly file compatible with 5.0 (I remember there were a few hacks that would make it compatible..). Word 5.0 was crappy and buggy which is why Word 5.1 is being mentioned.
IMO, the only reason that Word 5.1 is remembered with fondness was that Word 6 was so bad that it was unusable. It was also when I stopped reading mainstream computer mags after MacWorld proclaimed it the best wordprocessor available... (that and the article about vdt radiation pushed by an editor with stock in a company that made "anti-radiation" screens...)
The Economist is usually very good in its bioscience articles. This article is completely abyssmal - the person who wrote it has absolutely no understanding of how scientific research works. and that is not flamebait but the sad truth
First of all, we are a bio-informatics lab - all the software we produce is open source. This is not the exception but the rule.
The motivation behind our research is not profit and again, in academia that is the rule not the exception.
The article states that if aspirin were the cure for cancer - it would not be developed because there would be no profit. If that is true then it is a reflection, not of a flawed scientific research model but rather a flawed biotech/pharmaceutical model
Researchers like myself would be looking into it - because it would be INTERESTING and scientifically important regardless of whether it would be profitable.
Basic scientific research is done by publicly funded labs like ours. The results are freely communicated. Biotech companies use our results to make money (and rightly so) but in the end do very little basic research - because, as the article says, - it does not pay. However let us not get the two confused as our poor "science" writer did. The NIH funding model may not be perfect- for example there is probably too much emphasis on western diseases like cancer rather than third world problems like malaria - which sort of creeped into the article. And it is appalling that we have 10 versions of Viagra rather than cheaper generic chemotherapy alternatives but the blame for that does not lie with the lack of basic research but further down in the R and D food chain.
It is a ubiquitous practice among even the most prestigious journals to have page charges - especially for things like colour figures. The reason people pay this is that for academics, getting published in journals that people read and cite is how they are evaluated. Thus, if it costs a bit more to get into a better journal, it's just the cost of doing business and it comes out of the grant. Since the readership is limited (I mean really limited - *noone* buys subscriptions except maybe to Nature and Science) there is not much ad revenue going to these journals and they need the help to defray costs.
Yes it is a silly way to communicate results - especially since most of the added value from a journal comes from the reviewers who are not paid.
Actually, he wrote a pretty influential paper on the Turing hydra where he described how a reaction/diffusion mechanism could give rise to stable standing wave pattern of concentrations - that is, if your hydra had its head connected to its tail, and you didn't mind infinite concentrations. Still, this was the basis of quite a few theories of the formation of patterns such as zebra stripes.
Although most of these models of these are almost certainly wrong (eg. a simple double gradient probably controls hydra formation)- it was a good idea...
Airline fares, for example, were set by the government, instead of market prices.
Now the government just subsidizes them through infrastructure, tax breaks, and direct bailouts without requiring much in return. The airlines still try to make as much money as possible but not by being the most efficient necessarily but by exploiting the weaknesses of the new system. The best examples are points, and the incomprehensible seat pricing system designed to take advantage of the indirectly subsidized business travel.
Yes it may be easier to make money in this mis-regulated environment but is the public better served? Have safety, convenience, service improved for the average traveller who can't write off business class?
No, it is not a free market - more of a free lunch (or at least a tax-deductable one...)
Just a clarification, the article never claims it is a cure, just that it is a better drug to control the symptoms of type II diabetes with fewer side effects. It states that whether it actually stops the deterioration of islet cells in humans (which would be a cure) is not known though it does seem to do so in animals.
I run Mozilla and still use Proximitron. It is free, flexible, stable and easily configurable using downloadable config files. I think it is superior than Mozilla's built-in functions (though I haven't played with them in a while) and it allows me to use IE on those #$#!% sites that I need to vistit but require IE.
Too bad the original author abandoned the project about a year ago - but there are still quite a few user support sites around.
I think you are looking at the wrong sample. You could probably say the analogous things about computer execs. The real algorithmic research of course happens at the universities and similarly that's were the real biology research is happening - not at the biotechs.
You are correct that nowadays biology and mathematics are intertwined, attracting more quantitative people. Where you are mistaken is your implicit assumption that the naivete is on the biologists side. There is a lot of knowledge that needs to be accumulated before the biological literature can be adequately digested. Your post is point in proof - had you been more experienced in genetics you would have realized that no geneticist really believes in junk DNA - it is really a term that laymen have found useful.
As someone who does both, I would also argue that it is much easier to pick up the mathematics than the biology. If you are a quantitative person it is very easy to learn what a Laplacian is, and to apply it to your biological problem. While it may be just as easy to look up junk DNA - it is very difficult to get to the point where you realize that is what should be questioned. The problem I see is not so much biologists who waste time because their projects are mathematically unsound, but more so, mathematically trained people spinning wheels on research which is not relevant or based on dubious biological tenets. However, I do think it is a transition thing as specialists in both fields learn (the hard way) about the pitfalls.
May be a bit off-topic - but why is this guy being singled out. As far as I can see he has contributed very little to the field. Why doesn't Fortune write about Elizabeth Blackburn who pioneered telomerase studies (and was recently kicked off the Presidential council of Bioethics - the only real scientist) or the researchers he associates with who work on aging as their day-job.
A very American attitude to credit the money rather than the brains.
Back on topic though - my personal opinion is that all this research is a bit doubtful. My problem is that they are based on relatively short-lived organisms or tissue culture where DNA damage may indeed be important. Very hard to extrapolate to humans I think, where many of the accumulated errors may be on the level of the organization between cells (scarring is a trivial example) and not inside cells. Still it is very interesting research...
I agree with you 100% that it was mismarketed. They tried to compensate for the lack of native OS-2 apps by supporting DOS/Windows. And it worked - a lot of people bought OS-2 just to run, what they considered, a more stable version of Windows (I guess not seeing the blue screen of death is a big deal - I dunno, I was using a Mac II at the time). Trouble was that the apps never appeared - at least not in large enough quantity - why would you want to develop a OS-2 version if people with OS-2 could run Windows and many of them were happy with it as Windows+?
In hindsight, Windows support was a big, big mistake. They should have emphasized OS-2/PM's superiority as a Windows *replacement*. There would be fewer apps but they would have been native ones and there would have been a clear distinction. Maybe it was the Microchannel fiasco that made IBM a bit gunshy - who knows...
Re:Carr's article speaks more to the past
on
Why I.T. Matters
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· Score: 1
I've seen (mostly during the.com boom) small companies invest ridiculous amounts in bleeding edge technology when they should have been focusing on building a viable business
Forgive me for being cynical - but I thought that spending ridiculous amounts of money was their business plan.
Early Windows versions were very slow and for a time the only decent way to run Windows was under OS-2. It truly was a better version of Windows, being written in assembler, was much faster and more stable. But that just solidified Windows as the *standard* (duh..) and eventually code and hardware caught up and OS-2 died.
It just goes to show that even a vastly improved clone of existing MS software can't succeed (unless it's free...) because people will treat is as a beta of the next MS release. The models to look at are when existing standards are overturned i.e. Excel versus Lotus or Quark versus PageMaker. They supported importation of the *standard* formats (at least initially) but the rest of the software was their own distinct implementation.
As another poster already stated - it reminds me of the DAT fiasco where they threatened to put a watermark at the 15Khz range which of course would degrade the fidelity of the system which was the entire point of DAT. I don't think it was ever implemented but it, along with ridculously high prices, killed audiophile interest in DATs.
I guess my problem is that anyone stupid enough to think that a digital flag will stop music from being copied is too stupid to implement it in such a way as to not affect the quality of the music (and after all that's what digital is for - if you're not copying...).
The approach seems sound - the results look reasonable and believable and it is published in a top-tier journal. Noone overstates their claims and, at least to these jaded eyes, it truly looks like it could be developed into something of real therapeutic value.
It's a shame that a well-researched story be buried with all the sensationalist stuff. Being fairly new to/. - I wonder if there is a way to moderate stories up...?
Nothing is immune to radiation -it's all a matter of dosage
Ionizing radiation damages DNA, protein, lipids etc both directly and by generation of free radicals (hence the term ionizing...). Organisms differ greatly in sensitivity mainly due to different efficiencies in repair but nothing is *immune*.
With enough juice the cockroach eventually fries like the rest of us...
This remark bothered me so much that I had to look it up
http://www.txdpinfo.org/issues/herrera.htm
The case is Herrera vs Collins and what Scalia actually says is
"Claims of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence have never been held to state a ground for federal habeas relief absent an independent constitutional violation occurring in the course of the underlying state criminal proceedings."
This is very different from the quote given (it is possible that it might have been said afterward - but although I can't find many secondary sources none quote the original source...). I read the judgment as basically saying that federal intervention is only justified when a procedural error has been made and not when new evidence is brought up because that would mean re-trying the case. In addition the judgement has a weasel paragraph at the end - that basically says that we also looked at the new evidence and it wasn't that convincing anyway (it was not DNA...)
BTW I am against capital punishment but for also for being fair.
No offense was intended - I should have looked it up beforehand to see that AJP has a decent impact factor. My point was if the work of this nature (evidence for a very different form of life) was truly convincing - it would have been published in a broader journal.
The data that you've talked about are still not very convincing - even if the dye is not adsorbed by the particles all it really just shows that they are particles that bind DNA better than the HAP crystals they added.
As for further investigation? Well I just figured that they already did the obvious stuff - better time courses, PCR and had gotten no or negative results. Solid evidence that might have gotten them into Nature/Science/Cell which I assume is what they were aiming for.
The first clue (other than it appearing in Slashdot...) was something that sounded groundbreaking but published in an obscure clinical journal.
After looking the abstract up on Pubmed, it smelled even worse.
Recap: their "evidence" is based on 3 findings
1. Presence of DNA from staining and uridine incorporation. 2. Increased cloudiness of solution after filter sterilization. 3. Electron microscopy.
None of this is very *good* evidence. Pretty much any small (nan[n]o)particle could have these properties. For example activated charcoal will absorb dye and hydroxyapatite will bind uridine. Colloidal aggregates can and do form in sterile solutions, resulting in increasing cloudiness. And everything looks like small balls under EM.
What they didn't show and what would have been more convincing was PCR to actually find some novel sequences (RNA or DNA). Also some evidence to show that these things actually multiplied like bacteria - i.e. does uridine "incorporation" increase with time at an exponential rate.
Finally, a quick Google search reveals a possible motive for this (other than NASA trying to get more money) I don't know how valid the concerns are but they seem plausible
You can always look up the abstract there and you should. Mainstream media always like to publish "Cancer cured!" type stories and never ever get it right.
As a computational biologist, it dismays me how especially gullible computer people seem to be when it comes to biology. Maybe there is a bit of a 'tude here that anyone can do biology. Maybe it come from watching too much Star Trek - I don't know.
I do know that a story in WIRED about a team of biologists hacking a linear solution to the Travelling Salesman problem would generate far more skepticism here - unless, of course, they used the mystical "DNA" (or were MIT grads...)
Slashdot Mirror
What you say is true, if properly applied, for widgets or perhaps even drug trials where the profits are realisable in a business time frame.
It is not true for ideas and inventions where the profits may or may not exist and are way off in the future - i.e. those based upon scientific research or artistic endeavors. That is why we have a different model to drive basic research. Believe me, if politicians didn't believe that funding NIH was the only way to cure cancer and prolong their own lives they would not funnel billions into something that gives no campaign contributions.
The problems arise when the two models collide, as they do when we talk about intellectual property. Unfortunately what is good for encouraging better widgets can stifle creativity in science and art and that is not good for profits or humanity...
It's just that a paper from the "Tocqueville Business Lobby" doesn't sound as impressive...
This sounds very similar to therapies that have been around for 15-20 years using radio-labelled antibodies. The idea is that antibodies to proteins expressed in tumours can be used to deliver radioactive isotopes (iodine, strontium - nasty ones..) to the tumour. Apparently it works very well in mice but in humans the antibodies are concentrated and destroyed in the liver. There was a guy who worked downstairs on this marginal research - finding people for trials that he must have known had no hope of working. Really quite sad for the people involved who have to wear lead shielding when spending their final days with their loved ones...
Anyway back to the point, I'm not dissing the nano-idea, using a weaker poison and maybe with a better targetting mechanism is a reasonable approach and may work eventually - but just because it works in mice doesn't mean it will work in humans. As the previous poster said - the cure(s) for cancer have existed for mice for quite a while. I also think that the parent poster was rightfully skeptical and should nitpick - there are way too many stories that overstate the progress and value of different cancer therapies - which unfortunately can cost investors their money and patients their quality of life...
Word 4 was Word 5 without the bloat. It was much faster and nearly file compatible with 5.0 (I remember there were a few hacks that would make it compatible..). Word 5.0 was crappy and buggy which is why Word 5.1 is being mentioned.
IMO, the only reason that Word 5.1 is remembered with fondness was that Word 6 was so bad that it was unusable. It was also when I stopped reading mainstream computer mags after MacWorld proclaimed it the best wordprocessor available... (that and the article about vdt radiation pushed by an editor with stock in a company that made "anti-radiation" screens...)
The Economist is usually very good in its bioscience articles. This article is completely abyssmal - the person who wrote it has absolutely no understanding of how scientific research works. and that is not flamebait but the sad truth
First of all, we are a bio-informatics lab - all the software we produce is open source. This is not the exception but the rule.
The motivation behind our research is not profit and again, in academia that is the rule not the exception.
The article states that if aspirin were the cure for cancer - it would not be developed because there would be no profit. If that is true then it is a reflection, not of a flawed scientific research model but rather a flawed biotech/pharmaceutical model
Researchers like myself would be looking into it - because it would be INTERESTING and scientifically important regardless of whether it would be profitable.
Basic scientific research is done by publicly funded labs like ours. The results are freely communicated. Biotech companies use our results to make money (and rightly so) but in the end do very little basic research - because, as the article says, - it does not pay. However let us not get the two confused as our poor "science" writer did. The NIH funding model may not be perfect- for example there is probably too much emphasis on western diseases like cancer rather than third world problems like malaria - which sort of creeped into the article. And it is appalling that we have 10 versions of Viagra rather than cheaper generic chemotherapy alternatives but the blame for that does not lie with the lack of basic research but further down in the R and D food chain.
It is a ubiquitous practice among even the most prestigious journals to have page charges - especially for things like colour figures. The reason people pay this is that for academics, getting published in journals that people read and cite is how they are evaluated. Thus, if it costs a bit more to get into a better journal, it's just the cost of doing business and it comes out of the grant. Since the readership is limited (I mean really limited - *noone* buys subscriptions except maybe to Nature and Science) there is not much ad revenue going to these journals and they need the help to defray costs.
Yes it is a silly way to communicate results - especially since most of the added value from a journal comes from the reviewers who are not paid.
Actually, he wrote a pretty influential paper on the Turing hydra where he described how a reaction/diffusion mechanism could give rise to stable standing wave pattern of concentrations - that is, if your hydra had its head connected to its tail, and you didn't mind infinite concentrations. Still, this was the basis of quite a few theories of the formation of patterns such as zebra stripes.
Although most of these models of these are almost certainly wrong (eg. a simple double gradient probably controls hydra formation)- it was a good idea...
Airline fares, for example, were set by the government, instead of market prices.
Now the government just subsidizes them through infrastructure, tax breaks, and direct bailouts without requiring much in return. The airlines still try to make as much money as possible but not by being the most efficient necessarily but by exploiting the weaknesses of the new system. The best examples are points, and the incomprehensible seat pricing system designed to take advantage of the indirectly subsidized business travel.
Yes it may be easier to make money in this mis-regulated environment but is the public better served? Have safety, convenience, service improved for the average traveller who can't write off business class?
No, it is not a free market - more of a free lunch (or at least a tax-deductable one...)
Just a clarification, the article never claims it is a cure, just that it is a better drug to control the symptoms of type II diabetes with fewer side effects. It states that whether it actually stops the deterioration of islet cells in humans (which would be a cure) is not known though it does seem to do so in animals.
Sounds reasonable and looks promising if true.
If the watermark in a region that is not audible then adding even less random noise to obscure the watermark is also not audible.
I run Mozilla and still use Proximitron. It is free, flexible, stable and easily configurable using downloadable config files. I think it is superior than Mozilla's built-in functions (though I haven't played with them in a while) and it allows me to use IE on those #$#!% sites that I need to vistit but require IE.
Too bad the original author abandoned the project about a year ago - but there are still quite a few user support sites around.
I think you are looking at the wrong sample. You could probably say the analogous things about computer execs. The real algorithmic research of course happens at the universities and similarly that's were the real biology research is happening - not at the biotechs.
You are correct that nowadays biology and mathematics are intertwined, attracting more quantitative people. Where you are mistaken is your implicit assumption that the naivete is on the biologists side. There is a lot of knowledge that needs to be accumulated before the biological literature can be adequately digested. Your post is point in proof - had you been more experienced in genetics you would have realized that no geneticist really believes in junk DNA - it is really a term that laymen have found useful.
As someone who does both, I would also argue that it is much easier to pick up the mathematics than the biology. If you are a quantitative person it is very easy to learn what a Laplacian is, and to apply it to your biological problem. While it may be just as easy to look up junk DNA - it is very difficult to get to the point where you realize that is what should be questioned. The problem I see is not so much biologists who waste time because their projects are mathematically unsound, but more so, mathematically trained people spinning wheels on research which is not relevant or based on dubious biological tenets. However, I do think it is a transition thing as specialists in both fields learn (the hard way) about the pitfalls.
May be a bit off-topic - but why is this guy being singled out. As far as I can see he has contributed very little to the field. Why doesn't Fortune write about Elizabeth Blackburn who pioneered telomerase studies (and was recently kicked off the Presidential council of Bioethics - the only real scientist) or the researchers he associates with who work on aging as their day-job.
A very American attitude to credit the money rather than the brains.
Back on topic though - my personal opinion is that all this research is a bit doubtful. My problem is that they are based on relatively short-lived organisms or tissue culture where DNA damage may indeed be important. Very hard to extrapolate to humans I think, where many of the accumulated errors may be on the level of the organization between cells (scarring is a trivial example) and not inside cells. Still it is very interesting research...
I agree with you 100% that it was mismarketed. They tried to compensate for the lack of native OS-2 apps by supporting DOS/Windows. And it worked - a lot of people bought OS-2 just to run, what they considered, a more stable version of Windows (I guess not seeing the blue screen of death is a big deal - I dunno, I was using a Mac II at the time). Trouble was that the apps never appeared - at least not in large enough quantity - why would you want to develop a OS-2 version if people with OS-2 could run Windows and many of them were happy with it as Windows+?
In hindsight, Windows support was a big, big mistake. They should have emphasized OS-2/PM's superiority as a Windows *replacement*. There would be fewer apps but they would have been native ones and there would have been a clear distinction. Maybe it was the Microchannel fiasco that made IBM a bit gunshy - who knows...
Early Windows versions were very slow and for a time the only decent way to run Windows was under OS-2. It truly was a better version of Windows, being written in assembler, was much faster and more stable. But that just solidified Windows as the *standard* (duh..) and eventually code and hardware caught up and OS-2 died.
It just goes to show that even a vastly improved clone of existing MS software can't succeed (unless it's free...) because people will treat is as a beta of the next MS release. The models to look at are when existing standards are overturned i.e. Excel versus Lotus or Quark versus PageMaker. They supported importation of the *standard* formats (at least initially) but the rest of the software was their own distinct implementation.
As another poster already stated - it reminds me of the DAT fiasco where they threatened to put a watermark at the 15Khz range which of course would degrade the fidelity of the system which was the entire point of DAT. I don't think it was ever implemented but it, along with ridculously high prices, killed audiophile interest in DATs.
I guess my problem is that anyone stupid enough to think that a digital flag will stop music from being copied is too stupid to implement it in such a way as to not affect the quality of the music (and after all that's what digital is for - if you're not copying...).
The approach seems sound - the results look reasonable and believable and it is published in a top-tier journal. Noone overstates their claims and, at least to these jaded eyes, it truly looks like it could be developed into something of real therapeutic value.
/. - I wonder if there is a way to moderate stories up...?
It's a shame that a well-researched story be buried with all the sensationalist stuff. Being fairly new to
$1500-$8000 of tax deductable merchandise for 6 plugins that would have taken how many $$ to produce in house or contract out???
Nice try though...
Nothing is immune to radiation -it's all a matter of dosage
Ionizing radiation damages DNA, protein, lipids etc both directly and by generation of free radicals (hence the term ionizing...). Organisms differ greatly in sensitivity mainly due to different efficiencies in repair but nothing is *immune*.
With enough juice the cockroach eventually fries like the rest of us...
The test that they plan to develop is *not* a test for throat cancer but rather for a condition that makes people more likely develop throat cancer.
However, to be fair, "Barrett's oesophagus" *is* much harder to spell than cancer...
This remark bothered me so much that I had to look it up
...). I read the judgment as basically saying that federal intervention is only justified when a procedural error has been made and not when new evidence is brought up because that would mean re-trying the case. In addition the judgement has a weasel paragraph at the end - that basically says that we also looked at the new evidence and it wasn't that convincing anyway (it was not DNA...)
http://www.txdpinfo.org/issues/herrera.htm
The case is Herrera vs Collins and what Scalia actually says is
"Claims of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence have never been held to state a ground for federal habeas relief absent an independent constitutional violation occurring in the course of the underlying state criminal proceedings."
This is very different from the quote given (it is possible that it might have been said afterward - but although I can't find many secondary sources none quote the original source
BTW I am against capital punishment but for also for being fair.
No offense was intended - I should have looked it up beforehand to see that AJP has a decent impact factor. My point was if the work of this nature (evidence for a very different form of life) was truly convincing - it would have been published in a broader journal.
The data that you've talked about are still not very convincing - even if the dye is not adsorbed by the particles all it really just shows that they are particles that bind DNA better than the HAP crystals they added.
As for further investigation? Well I just figured that they already did the obvious stuff - better time courses, PCR and had gotten no or negative results. Solid evidence that might have gotten them into Nature/Science/Cell which I assume is what they were aiming for.
The first clue (other than it appearing in Slashdot...) was something that sounded groundbreaking but published in an obscure clinical journal.
After looking the abstract up on Pubmed, it smelled even worse.
Recap: their "evidence" is based on 3 findings
1. Presence of DNA from staining and uridine incorporation.
2. Increased cloudiness of solution after filter sterilization.
3. Electron microscopy.
None of this is very *good* evidence. Pretty much any small (nan[n]o)particle could have these properties. For example activated charcoal will absorb dye and hydroxyapatite will bind uridine. Colloidal aggregates can and do form in sterile solutions, resulting in increasing cloudiness. And everything looks like small balls under EM.
What they didn't show and what would have been more convincing was PCR to actually find some novel sequences (RNA or DNA). Also some evidence to show that these things actually multiplied like bacteria - i.e. does uridine "incorporation" increase with time at an exponential rate.
Finally, a quick Google search reveals a possible motive for this (other than NASA trying to get more money) I don't know how valid the concerns are but they seem plausible
http://drcranton.com/nanobacteria.htm
As a computational biologist, it dismays me how especially gullible computer people seem to be when it comes to biology. Maybe there is a bit of a 'tude here that anyone can do biology. Maybe it come from watching too much Star Trek - I don't know.
I do know that a story in WIRED about a team of biologists hacking a linear solution to the Travelling Salesman problem would generate far more skepticism here - unless, of course, they used the mystical "DNA" (or were MIT grads...)