The description of this research is completely misleading. These mice are not resistant to cancer in general - they (direct quote from the paper) "possess a unique autosomal dominant trait that allows them to survive challenges with aggressive mouse cancer cells". This is an important distinction. These mice have been bred to withstand implantation with specific foreign tumour cells (called S180) - basically a laboratory model for tumour growth. Nowhere does it say that these mice are more or less susceptible to developing cancer the old fashioned way by exposure to carcinogens, etc. If you blasted these bad boys with UV or gave them a good dose of tobacco smoke, they would still get cancer. Shoot them up with S180 tumour cells, and they won't take. Big leap from one to the other - but there's no chasm of logic that the media can't cross for a good headline.
Maybe my thinking is too Machiavellian, but I think all these companies know that to destroy piracy is to destroy their industry. The fact is, the biggest game players are too poor to afford to feed their insatiable gaming appetite.
If I was rich enough to buy all my software, I wouldn't be wasting my time on a computer. I'd be off galavanting around the globe getting in adventures and stuff. In order for software to be ultimately successful, people have to actually USE it. The more people use it and like it (starting with the 'ol "early adopters"), the bigger the early and late majority will be. These companies know this (at least the savvy ones do) and, in my mind, copy protection schemes are there to keep this dynamic operating at level that keeps things profitable (i.e. making it hard enough to get enough people to the stores).
I know I heard that Microsoft turned a blind eye to piracy for this very reason. Companies using schemes like StarForce are blinded by greed, and think pirated copies equate to lost sales in a 1:1 ratio. The backlash against them is as much a corrective effect than rage about messed up computers.
Ironic. I just spent today attending a mandatory biosafety course. The topic of doctors/nurses in lab coats came up, because we researchers are collectively horrified to see them wearing these things in the cafeteria, etc. Apparently, the lab coat is considered a uniform, but policy states they are supposed to change into a different one when they enter a ward or whatnot. Of course, this often isn't followed. One solution is having medical personnel change into a really ugly blue gown when entering potentially infectious areas, thus discouraging this practice. I guess fashion sense trumps the threat of spreading a deadly antibiotic resistant bacteria around.
Thanks for the reference! Gold star for finding it, because it's not indexed by PubMed, nor is the full-text available on-line (for this or any other article).
It's only fair to judge research by the details of the study, but one's eyebrow has to rise a bit when it's published in a journal like this. Not listed in any of the impact factor lists that I looked at, either. I would be very interested to know if the article was rejected by a better journal, and if so - why?
Also, a blurb from the publisher's web site:
PJB Publications is the leading provider of business information for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices, diagnostics, instrumentation, crop protection, animal health and brewing industries.
In any event, it's a little premature to celebrate. Their follow-up work in mice (abstract) used implanted tumours. It is already known that tumours have the capacity to evade immune response, and we should not be surprised that implanting a foreign tumour mass into a host and stimulating the immune system will provoke a favourable response. The situation is more complicated when trying to raise the immune system to attack a tumour comprised of one's own cells. It seems to me that, at this point, they are trying to prove their particular growth model, not developing a de facto cure.
That their devised strategy worked on a single human subject is cause for optimism, and nothing more. That work has not been published (that I could find), so there is no way to properly assess the result. At this point, they are more than likely drumming up press to ensure continued funding for their research... not that there's anything wrong with that;).
I second this. Moreover, many "small projects" are essentially prototyping exercises requiring a lot of fooling around (and changing one's mind).
VC is often a much better option than creating a static code base that just accumulates endless comment blocks (especially in a team), e.g.:
/** Hey Bob, I trashed your algorithm something fierce. Not sure if that was the right move, now that I think about it.:( Not to worry, I commented out the original below (most of it anyway). Well, I'm off on vacation. */
I honestly can't understand why such a large proportion of project teams would continue to let themselves exist without VC. I work in scientific programming - perhaps most others work on projects with really tight (and well designed) implementation specs?
Well, I hoped someone stroked out writing Cthulu, and meant to say Duty. Alas, it's just a Resident Evil clone. Still... "Call of Duty : Dark Corners of the Earth" - wonder where that would take place?
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The description of this research is completely misleading. These mice are not resistant to cancer in general - they (direct quote from the paper) "possess a unique autosomal dominant trait that allows them to survive challenges with aggressive mouse cancer cells". This is an important distinction. These mice have been bred to withstand implantation with specific foreign tumour cells (called S180) - basically a laboratory model for tumour growth. Nowhere does it say that these mice are more or less susceptible to developing cancer the old fashioned way by exposure to carcinogens, etc. If you blasted these bad boys with UV or gave them a good dose of tobacco smoke, they would still get cancer. Shoot them up with S180 tumour cells, and they won't take. Big leap from one to the other - but there's no chasm of logic that the media can't cross for a good headline.
Maybe my thinking is too Machiavellian, but I think all these companies know that to destroy piracy is to destroy their industry. The fact is, the biggest game players are too poor to afford to feed their insatiable gaming appetite.
If I was rich enough to buy all my software, I wouldn't be wasting my time on a computer. I'd be off galavanting around the globe getting in adventures and stuff. In order for software to be ultimately successful, people have to actually USE it. The more people use it and like it (starting with the 'ol "early adopters"), the bigger the early and late majority will be. These companies know this (at least the savvy ones do) and, in my mind, copy protection schemes are there to keep this dynamic operating at level that keeps things profitable (i.e. making it hard enough to get enough people to the stores).
I know I heard that Microsoft turned a blind eye to piracy for this very reason. Companies using schemes like StarForce are blinded by greed, and think pirated copies equate to lost sales in a 1:1 ratio. The backlash against them is as much a corrective effect than rage about messed up computers.
Ironic. I just spent today attending a mandatory biosafety course. The topic of doctors/nurses in lab coats came up, because we researchers are collectively horrified to see them wearing these things in the cafeteria, etc. Apparently, the lab coat is considered a uniform, but policy states they are supposed to change into a different one when they enter a ward or whatnot. Of course, this often isn't followed. One solution is having medical personnel change into a really ugly blue gown when entering potentially infectious areas, thus discouraging this practice. I guess fashion sense trumps the threat of spreading a deadly antibiotic resistant bacteria around.
Thanks for the reference! Gold star for finding it, because it's not indexed by PubMed, nor is the full-text available on-line (for this or any other article).
It's only fair to judge research by the details of the study, but one's eyebrow has to rise a bit when it's published in a journal like this. Not listed in any of the impact factor lists that I looked at, either. I would be very interested to know if the article was rejected by a better journal, and if so - why?
Also, a blurb from the publisher's web site:
Other eyebrow just went up...There is a follow-up article criticizing the original article: abstract
And a response by the original authors: abstract
In any event, it's a little premature to celebrate. Their follow-up work in mice (abstract) used implanted tumours. It is already known that tumours have the capacity to evade immune response, and we should not be surprised that implanting a foreign tumour mass into a host and stimulating the immune system will provoke a favourable response. The situation is more complicated when trying to raise the immune system to attack a tumour comprised of one's own cells. It seems to me that, at this point, they are trying to prove their particular growth model, not developing a de facto cure.
That their devised strategy worked on a single human subject is cause for optimism, and nothing more. That work has not been published (that I could find), so there is no way to properly assess the result. At this point, they are more than likely drumming up press to ensure continued funding for their research... not that there's anything wrong with that ;).
Well, I hoped someone stroked out writing Cthulu, and meant to say Duty. Alas, it's just a Resident Evil clone. Still... "Call of Duty : Dark Corners of the Earth" - wonder where that would take place?