The fact is, this generates pretty pictures, maybe a nice paper in some backwater of journal land.
Well, if you considert "Nature" a backwater journal, then i dont know.... where should i publish?
This paper went through a peer-review process, so its not just pretty pictures.
Although, I am partial to agree that simualtions are approximations, how long should we wait then before we attain "suitable" computing power? Everything starts somewhere.
Alchemy while often laughed at has provided not only basis for chemistry it has lead to some practical discoveries. For example, discovery of porcelain in Europe is attributed to one of the court alchemists (forgot the name thou).
Can anyone recall other discoveries, pioneered by alchemists ?
Even now a days scientists in the lab often peroform semi-"silly" experiments (late at night) which are based on only partial understanding and hunch. Those often yield intersting results which warrant proper scinetific research.
P.S.You would be surprised what sort of results you can get when you start throwing random synthetic peptides on the virus infected cells.:)
Thats why I always save my completed work in plain txt format in addition to the Doc format. You never know, I might come back to that work several years later only to find out that the file format is outdated and the text can no longer be retrieved.
With the amount of work going into making of each motherboard and cosidering the amount of automation in the process how much does it exactly cost to make a single m/b? What is the profit margin when it arrives at my local computer store counter?
This would work well with CRTs only. I would take a picture of the inside of the empty casing of my monitor againts the computer working background and use it as a desktop pic. Since the cases often have vent holes in them you should be able to see whats behind it. To complete this further id put an item inside an empty case (a lit candle?) The only problem is i have no desire to gut out my monitor.... pictures anyone ?
I have read about a paradox in one of the classic sci-fi novels (Stanislaw Lem's) i presume...
To cut hte story short they (constructors) had a machine which could do anything (including replicating items etc) . The machine was set on an a nearly impossible task and rather then trying to solve it it started making copies of itself to bum off that job on the next one in line ad infinitum.
I agree with above posts suggesting that this datbase can easily be created using exisiting info from NCBI. Just add photos.
However, does anyone know what DNA sequence would be used as a "bar code"? Whole genomes arent avaliable for most of organisms. I am not sure that we have all the 16S DNA sequences for most of organisms. 16S (mitochondrial)DNA is the most common marker used to establish evolutionary relationships between organisms.
Hence, there still might be some work left especially establishing relationships for more obscure organisms.
When I had a ZX Spectrum + with all of 48 Kb RAM and wrote a program that ran to slow, I had to go back and re-optimise the code. Nowadays, I buy faster hardware.
What are the current laws regarding the ownership of the sky above the country? Doesnt that only extend to certain heght above the sea level? What would happen if the ionosphere was above that line?
Wouldnt that allow a certain country to display ads or popaganda over other ountries ?
I would be very much interested to see the details of the proposed chimera creation by Mr.Weissman.
The article sugggests that he plans to re-create human brain organisation in mice by injection of human neurons.
This sounds like an extreme oversimplification. For once a straight injection of neurons does not gurantee that the correct architecture will be recreated. Even if the human and mouse stem cells are combined in early developement stage (so that human progenitor cells are destined to become neurons)the mouse development pathways differ from humans. The cell maturation signals during foetus development will not result in the formation of human equivalent (alebeit smaller) brain.
Then of curse there are the issues of the differnces/incompatibilites between human and mouse cells that may lead to rejection either at the embroy developpment stage or even later when neurons are injected into differentiated tissue.
So I think its too early to say that we can jump from 2% human to 100% human brain in mouse tomorrow. It will take some time. Meanwhile, since the issue is talked about, sensible laws should be laid down to prevent the abuse of these technologies.
At least we are talking about it and are not left facing with the fact already done.
While on the subject of the deep sea creatures (and hoaxes)
Is it true that those creatures became so adapted to high pressure deep waters that when they are taken out to the surface they explode (or something similar)?
By "digesting" its own fuel, the aircraft could become autonomous and operate without the need for refueling, changing batteries or recharging from the mains. In the Microbial Fuel Cell microbes are used to extract electricity directly from food - in this case flies or apple
Of all the food,why apples???
Because there are so many apples avaliable to be ingested by flying aircrafts.
In the past all they neeed was a Great Wall to shield themseleves from outside. Now it appears that they are building the great wall in the sky too. Not so much to stop barbarian hordes from invading but to stop people from leaving. (one of the society activities)
Well at least they arent planning to build a great dome over China. (Given the "Great" Dam project, I wouldnt put it past them.)
All ok, but how suseptible are those against sabotage. I am sure we have came a long way from Hindenburg, but wouldnt still be easy to bring one of those down? I mean its hard to miss a target like this. Surely there is a a degree of redundancy in the system?
All the comments indicating that the cows will still get slaughtered in millions, even if we have artifical hide are very true. It might be agood idea then to follow on this concept. How would everyone feel about eating a nice juicy steak with the only difference being that it was cultured artifically rather then comming from the animal. Research for medical purposes is already advancing in context of organ regenertion/regrowing.
Why dont we try artifcal milk as well etc. etc... except i get the feeling that this way will just lead to the universal "food pill". Lets just hope that people will still like to taste their food in the future.
With all the buzz about new developements and wonders of AI (and overusing it, as seen above), I would like to remind everyone about something that Stanislaw Lem has said:
"With all the work into the artifical intelligence, what is a possiblity that we actually might create an artificial stupidity instead?" (not exact words)
I would be cautious about such reports. Firstly, time and time again such claims are made about particular vaccine or group of people. There was even a case where promitent scientists were so convinced that they have created an attenuated HIV strain as a vaccince candidate, that they were ready to test it on themselves. Fortunatly, cooler heads prevailed and spared them from what was later shown to be a disaster.
As was mentioned before, the virus mutates rapidly and a single gene mutation can protect you for so long until virus finds a revertant mutation. So those ladies better not go and have too much fun, thinking that they are immune:)
Finally, this is not such a rare occurance to have certain protective mutations. Lots of people in Africa are certainly more resistant to HIV. However, unless a combination of those mutations is used in lets say anti-HIV gene therapy (which there is not much chance of) they are not very useful directly.
... Calling AIDS a disorder is a bit of a misunderstanding....
Slashdot Mirror
According to NS an a million dollars just for the landing. Anyone here knows the actual cost of piggy-back ride on the back of 747?
The fact is, this generates pretty pictures, maybe a nice paper in some backwater of journal land.
Well, if you considert "Nature" a backwater journal, then i dont know.... where should i publish? This paper went through a peer-review process, so its not just pretty pictures.
Although, I am partial to agree that simualtions are approximations, how long should we wait then before we attain "suitable" computing power? Everything starts somewhere.
Well, with this kind of attitude might as well lie on the grass and wait for inventions to fall from the sky.
However misguided and uninformed, these people have at least tried. All discoveries start somewhere.
Alchemy while often laughed at has provided not only basis for chemistry it has lead to some practical discoveries. For example, discovery of porcelain in Europe is attributed to one of the court alchemists (forgot the name thou).
:)
Can anyone recall other discoveries, pioneered by alchemists ?
Even now a days scientists in the lab often peroform semi-"silly" experiments (late at night) which are based on only partial understanding and hunch. Those often yield intersting results which warrant proper scinetific research.
P.S.You would be surprised what sort of results you can get when you start throwing random synthetic peptides on the virus infected cells.
Thats why I always save my completed work in plain txt format in addition to the Doc format. You never know, I might come back to that work several years later only to find out that the file format is outdated and the text can no longer be retrieved.
With the amount of work going into making of each motherboard and cosidering the amount of automation in the process how much does it exactly cost to make a single m/b? What is the profit margin when it arrives at my local computer store counter?
This would work well with CRTs only. I would take a picture of the inside of the empty casing of my monitor againts the computer working background and use it as a desktop pic. Since the cases often have vent holes in them you should be able to see whats behind it. To complete this further id put an item inside an empty case (a lit candle?)
The only problem is i have no desire to gut out my monitor.... pictures anyone ?
I have read about a paradox in one of the classic sci-fi novels (Stanislaw Lem's) i presume...
To cut hte story short they (constructors) had a machine which could do anything (including replicating items etc) . The machine was set on an a nearly impossible task and rather then trying to solve it it started making copies of itself to bum off that job on the next one in line ad infinitum.
I foresee a grey goo future.
No I have not RTFA
What makes me wonder is the use of the words "large" German Telco and $359k a 1/6th of the yearly income?
Surely for truly "large" telco this would be equivalent of pocket money?
I agree with above posts suggesting that this datbase can easily be created using exisiting info from NCBI. Just add photos.
However, does anyone know what DNA sequence would be used as a "bar code"? Whole genomes arent avaliable for most of organisms. I am not sure that we have all the 16S DNA sequences for most of organisms. 16S (mitochondrial)DNA is the most common marker used to establish evolutionary relationships between organisms.
Hence, there still might be some work left especially establishing relationships for more obscure organisms.
When I had a ZX Spectrum + with all of 48 Kb RAM and wrote a program that ran to slow, I had to go back and re-optimise the code. Nowadays, I buy faster hardware.
Sigh, nostalgia.
What are the current laws regarding the ownership of the sky above the country? Doesnt that only extend to certain heght above the sea level? What would happen if the ionosphere was above that line? Wouldnt that allow a certain country to display ads or popaganda over other ountries ?
I would be very much interested to see the details of the proposed chimera creation by Mr.Weissman. The article sugggests that he plans to re-create human brain organisation in mice by injection of human neurons.
This sounds like an extreme oversimplification. For once a straight injection of neurons does not gurantee that the correct architecture will be recreated. Even if the human and mouse stem cells are combined in early developement stage (so that human progenitor cells are destined to become neurons)the mouse development pathways differ from humans. The cell maturation signals during foetus development will not result in the formation of human equivalent (alebeit smaller) brain. Then of curse there are the issues of the differnces/incompatibilites between human and mouse cells that may lead to rejection either at the embroy developpment stage or even later when neurons are injected into differentiated tissue.
So I think its too early to say that we can jump from 2% human to 100% human brain in mouse tomorrow. It will take some time. Meanwhile, since the issue is talked about, sensible laws should be laid down to prevent the abuse of these technologies.
At least we are talking about it and are not left facing with the fact already done.
While on the subject of the deep sea creatures (and hoaxes)
Is it true that those creatures became so adapted to high pressure deep waters that when they are taken out to the surface they explode (or something similar)?
Truth or yet another myth ?
They sterilise every piece of equipement that is sent to space. So the disturbance of the local ecosystems (if any exists) is very minimal.
By "digesting" its own fuel, the aircraft could become autonomous and operate without the need for refueling, changing batteries or recharging from the mains. In the Microbial Fuel Cell microbes are used to extract electricity directly from food - in this case flies or apple
Of all the food,why apples??? Because there are so many apples avaliable to be ingested by flying aircrafts.
In the past all they neeed was a Great Wall to shield themseleves from outside. Now it appears that they are building the great wall in the sky too. Not so much to stop barbarian hordes from invading but to stop people from leaving. (one of the society activities)
Well at least they arent planning to build a great dome over China. (Given the "Great" Dam project, I wouldnt put it past them.)
Lets see if anyone can name some of them.
If i had to guess:
Certain Amazon Jungle and Himalayan regions.
All ok, but how suseptible are those against sabotage. I am sure we have came a long way from Hindenburg, but wouldnt still be easy to bring one of those down? I mean its hard to miss a target like this. Surely there is a a degree of redundancy in the system?
All the comments indicating that the cows will still get slaughtered in millions, even if we have artifical hide are very true. It might be agood idea then to follow on this concept. How would everyone feel about eating a nice juicy steak with the only difference being that it was cultured artifically rather then comming from the animal. Research for medical purposes is already advancing in context of organ regenertion/regrowing.
Why dont we try artifcal milk as well etc. etc... except i get the feeling that this way will just lead to the universal "food pill". Lets just hope that people will still like to taste their food in the future.
With all the buzz about new developements and wonders of AI (and overusing it, as seen above), I would like to remind everyone about something that Stanislaw Lem has said:
"With all the work into the artifical intelligence, what is a possiblity that we actually might create an artificial stupidity instead?" (not exact words)
As if there is not enaugh of that already....
I would be cautious about such reports. Firstly, time and time again such claims are made about particular vaccine or group of people. There was even a case where promitent scientists were so convinced that they have created an attenuated HIV strain as a vaccince candidate, that they were ready to test it on themselves. Fortunatly, cooler heads prevailed and spared them from what was later shown to be a disaster.
:)
... Calling AIDS a disorder is a bit of a misunderstanding....
As was mentioned before, the virus mutates rapidly and a single gene mutation can protect you for so long until virus finds a revertant mutation. So those ladies better not go and have too much fun, thinking that they are immune
Finally, this is not such a rare occurance to have certain protective mutations. Lots of people in Africa are certainly more resistant to HIV. However, unless a combination of those mutations is used in lets say anti-HIV gene therapy (which there is not much chance of) they are not very useful directly.
It must still be slow news period, since /. is now starting to post comic strips.
It was said many times before.... Not a chance.
Not even in Uber ultra mega extended edition...
Doom3
This one might require lots of black velvet courtains.