The point is that humans are changing the global climate relatively drastically in such a short period of time that it outstrips the rate of normal climate variation. Sure, the changes we're experiencing might happen on their own over the next 100 million years.
Please demonstrate your scientific knowledge by at least using the correct terminology when describing changes in climate. The actual cause of the recent drastic climate change (if one is really taking place [I do _not_ have access to raw data saying one way or the other]) cannot yet be determined, as there does not exist a model of significant predictive power to make a testable claim of causality. Currently, all we are looking at is data indicating correlation. Correlation, as you should know, does not necessarily indicate causation.
If you're going to claim such a thing, kindly provide a reference, so those of us with doubts can at least see the firmament upon which your conclusions are based. A lack of references and a basic misunderstanding of statistics is often a good indication of junk science.
Finally, regardless of evidence, I personally feel that it is in our best interest to reduce polution and waste wherever possible. I dislike seeing lands throughout the world being denuded unecessarily. However, invalid and/or impromper scientific claims are not the way to go about convincing people that they should be stewards of their homes.
This page is using the document.layers DOM property, which isn't w3c compliant at all (and doesn't exist in mozilla). So there's no _way_ it will display correctly in mozilla until they fix their code to be w3c compliant....
If the ROM is borked "properly" (i.e. really borked, not just a little bit), you can't even boot up to a floppy, so how would you run the new BIOS?
You don't actually boot off of the floppy. Assuming the floppy controller works, the invalid checksum of the bios typically triggers a routine that tries to re flash the bios from the floppy in drive A. Many motherboard manufacturers/chipsets include this functionality, although there are some that don't.
I've removed ROMs from a few friends' motherboards, just to correct damage they did from flashing the wrong BIOS on them.
Odd. Most motherboards allow you to rescue a borked flash using a properly formatted floppy with the bios on it, so desodering the bios (why it isn't in a chip socket is odd too) to program it externally is often unecessary.
IMAX 70mm, 15 perforations per frame - 1.91" x 2.74", Area = 5.23 sq. in., (48.5mm x 69.6mm, Area = 3376 sq. mm).
IMAX Dome 70mm, 15 perforations per frame - 1.98" x 2.74" Ovoid, Area = 4.13 sq. in., (50.29mm x 69.6mm Ovoid, Area = 2665 sq. mm).
The picture above this text is pretty clear about it as well.
It is basically just 70mm film run sideways at a much higher speed than normal 70mm (or 35mm) film.
However, while the quality of IMAX is very difficult to match, or surpass, I have also enjoyed to a similar level some of the 360 theatres (shot with 6 [iirc] 35-70mm cameras...)
I'm not in a position to comment fully on Francis Boyle's commentary, but to attempt to deal correctly with biological warefare when you are unaware of the rudimentary biology necessary to generate said anti-biotics is definetly foolhardy. His talk should have been prefaced with the IANAMB (I am not microbiologist) instead of the ubiquitous IANAL.
It's genetic engineering, not DNA genetic engineering
You don't typically use "DNA gene splicing" to generate agents... the most powerfull agents are already there...
The method to generate a vaccine is often dramatically different than the method to generate a new anti-biotic agent
Pigs, sheep, and rabits are used normally in immunoligical research because their immune systems are relatively similar to humans (not because their circulatory system and respiratory system are similar)
I'll stop there... while some of the points he raises are definetly worth going into, he should really consider becomming better informed of the technical details behind his assertions. It would also be userfull if he would site his sources in true academic style, rather than just asserting them to be so.
it'd have independently evolved proteins with similar functions, they wouldn't be chlorophyll, and they wouldn't be similar to chlorphyll in terms of sequence or overall shape.
It's not entirely clear that the proteins wouldn't have similar tertiary and/or quatenary strucure, presuming that they had similar amino acid composition. Obviously, similarities in tertiary/quatenary structure do not necessarily indicate homology, but convergent evolution is not necessarily a phenomenon confined to earth.
Regardless, in this particular case, they were not testing the protein composition itself, but rather the spectroscopic composition of the protein (which could very easily have similar absorbance frequencies).
A retrovirus is a virus that carries its genetic material in RNA instead of DNA, and as such, needs RT, or reverse transcriptase, in order to make DNA from its RNA. The other major type of viruses are DNA viruses, which do not require RT to integrate into the host's genome.
The whole Bombadil thing is only a side-venture and the rest of the story does not depend on it.
The only problem with removing bombadil is that it withdraws the early involvement with an Ent decendant in the story. (A race that is notably absent from the silmarillion as well...) Not that I would have included it either in the movie (although I would have sat through a 6 hour production) as it is not strictly necessary, as a forshadowing device, it is usefull to the story.
It is analgous to selling me a car with the hood wired shut
Or selling me a car with the engine totally enclosed in a double walled hood with mustard gas in between the walls, reverse threaded screws, and a glass of mustard gas above the single piston, so if the hood is removed by someone who is not a priest of car repair, they get gassed. (Deathworld Trilogy:Book Two, Harry Harrison)
There are two separate things being discussed here. One is the prosecution of the creators of child pornography itself, the other is blocking access to child pronography. Both involve censorship, in the same way that a publisher of a dissenting opinion can be jailed or his opinion squelched.
You had claimed that there was a difference between blocking access to child pornography and censorship of child pronography, where in reality, there is no such difference.
Again, I'm not discussing the moral or legal implications of child pornography, which is a separate issue completely. However my comment remains: Any time you examine content for the purpose of suppression (enforcement/blocking) or deletion, you are censoring.
I do not believe that blocking CP sites is censorship
Pray tell then, what blocking child pornography is? Censorship is s system or practice of censoring, where censoring is merely the examination of material in order to delete or suppress anything considered objectionable. It has nothing to do whatsoever with wether or not a culture would consider such a examination just.
NB: The parenthetical ad hominem is not terribly usefull.
Let's consider the protein synthetic apparatus. This is the mechanism by which protein is produced. Guess what it's made of.
The translation aparatus (what you are refering to as the "protein synthetic apparatus") is composed primarily of rRNA, or ribosomal Ribonucleic Acid, with some protiens as chaperonins to help make the rRNA work with a much higher efficiency, and tRNA to match the codons with the appropriate amino acid. So, no, it doesn't need protein in order to assemble amino acids into proteins (at low efficiency).
Perhaps you should open an introductory molecular biology textbook before making up an example like this?
When you're working in an environment where a server is expected to be kept running without user intervention, sometimes a cron job that upgrades the distro is acceptable.
Ceteris paribus, it's better to do it by hand, but if the admins that be cannot be counted on to deal with it, a self sufficient machine is better than a rooted one. (Machines that I've set up never to see again run potato with cron jobs to take care of them automagically. If a admin comes along who knows that they are doing, the cron jobs are well documented. If not, at least the box is self sufficient.)
That's the oddest complaint about an OS that I've heard in a while.
Yes. The stable distribution of debian is stable. If you want the newest wiz-bang stuff, you use testing or unstable. It's that simple. My servers that need to be up 24x7 run stable. My workstation runs unstable with custom packages.
You also don't need to use dselect to install stuff. Haven't you used apt-get yet? Even the install process has a redhat like package selector for people who don't want the power (and hassle) of dselect.
For those of you who don't browse the web with java script on and can't read javascript (or haven't bothered to update your copy of mozilla to the new milestone with selective javascript):
when they attempt to extrapolate the data to a human, it will invariable, as it always has done before, fail.
Whoa. Animal models are not invariable failures. It's important not to expect them to always be directly applicable to humans, but even so, a carefully selected animal model is quite often very similar to human beings. Even lesser eukaryotes like bakers yeast (C. cerivisae) or Chlamydomonas are invaluable models to be used in the study of humans, as they are small, have quick generation time, and can easily be manipulated.
Much of what we know about human brain function is through studies of lower primates and murines. Obviously there are important differences, and we study those differences using primary cultures, as whole organism models in humans are not available.
Face it people, they have been curing human cancer in rats for ten years,
Actually, for the most part, they've been working on the rat and mouse equivalent of human cancer. For the most part, successfull treatments of cancer in mice and rats are directly applicable to treating cancer in humans. Most of the therapies that we are using today (taxol, colchine, radiotherapy etc.) were tried and proven in rat and mice models before they were allowed to enter clinical trials.
If you'd like to discuss this more, feel free to e-mail me.
Interestingly, I tried to point out this same issue of premature senesence to the news media following the announcement of the cloning of "Dolly", and was met with incredible disinterest, despite the fact that it was obvious to me that the telomers would be shortened as a result of the adult donor genes, and therefore incapable of reproducing as many times.
You're forgetting about that extremely important protein, telomerase, which can elongate the telomeric regions of chromosomes so DNA polymerase is able to synthesize the important ends, and ignore a bit of junk where the okazaki fragment is unable to bind.
In quite a few cancers, telomerase is upregulated or made constiutively active, and it enables cells to become immortal and forgo senessence. A similiar phenomenon occurs in normal stem cells and progenitors throughout the human body.
If you have questions about this, feel free to e-mail me at my e-mail address.
Curious, do the lenses heal after the puncture damage?
The authors claim that the lenses are ok after the trauma, but eventually cataract. (It's not really big deal to loose a lens, it just means that you'll definetly have to wear glasses afterwards...)
Fischer D, Heiduschka P, Thanos S. Lens-Injury-Stimulated Axonal Regeneration throughout the Optic Pathway of Adult Rats. Exp Neurol. 2001 Dec;172(2):257-72. [PDF]
Apologies to those who are unable to view the pdf. (If you're not on a campus who subscribes to idea library, I don't think you can access it.)
Unfortuantly, these researchers still haven't purified the unknown factors that appear to be responsible for nerve growth. (They're in experimental opthamology... so it's not unexpected). Until these factors are purified and their functions described, nerve regrowth therapy will be difficult, if not impossible. Additionally, as some posters have pointed out, there are significant differences between rats and humans, and it remains to be seen if the same factors released by lens trauma are able to produce the same effects in humans or other model organisms. (But the posibility of non-applicability doesn't mean that rats and mice shouldn't be used, it just means that you need to test results obtained in them before applying them willy-nilly to other systems.)
Yes. Typically it's not done with human genes, as it's easier to get non-human cells and non-human genes, but alot of experiments involve rescueing null mutants (where a protein of importance has been disabled in the mutant) with exogenous or xenobiotic protein or DNA. This is typically used as a demonstration of the ability of a specific model to be used as an abstraction of the equivalent human system (or higher organism). [I haven't done this work in my lab, as we don't deal with whole cells, but there are researchers around me who have...]
In the near future, the most likely thing that is going to happen is the cloning of pigs with exact copies of human immunospecific proteins for the human who needs an organ transplant. Then the donor animal will have an exact match immunologically with the human patient, and the human patient will not have to be subjected to an arduous immunosuppressent regimin. So you'll have a chimeric pig expressing the patient's immunological markers, and won't have to wait for a compatible human donor to die or sign consent forms.
Beyond that is mere conjecture, but I don't expect we'll be seeing anything resembling the mythical chimeras of olde, as a work like that would involve a gargantuan effort and (in my mind at least) would have little to no scientific validity and usefullness.
The problem is that the 3-10% of difference is spread throughout the entire genome. (Well, throughout all ORFs of the genome).
Some of the proteins have significant enough homology to allow them to be replaced (some of the Histones, some kinesins and dyneins) but most of the important changes are really subtle, and if you just went and replaced the genes you would still not have a human being.
As far as detection goes, an enterprising researcher could detect changes in cellular proteins on the single amino acid level, assuming they were exposed on a properly folded protein, or important for the functioning of the protein.
There seem to be a great many people out there on slashdot who haven't bothered to look up exactly who designed the currently used anti-aids drugs. None of the companies who currently hold patents on them were actually involved in doing the research that generated the drug and demonstrated it's initial efficacy.
That research was funded at various public (and private) higher learning institutions throughout the world.
What the drug companies did do is purchase the patents from their current holders and chaparone the drug through FDA approval. Of course, the job of taking a drug through FDA approval is quite arduous and involves a considerable amount of cash, but NONE of that cash is spent in R&D, it's spent on efficacy studies and the ilk. (You might argue that this is a form of R&D, I like to look at it as QA.)
Of course, an interesting history lesson is to look at the United States point of view towards International Patents in the early part of the industrial revolution, especially regarding textile manufacturing. (Most of the patents for textile weaving were held in GB, and the US basically ignored them.) [Just in case someone thinks that the US has never behaved as brazil has]
Finally, regarding the search for a cure for HIV. A cure (if one is ever found) will most likely come about rhough basic research being funded already by NIH and other organizations at your local university instead of through targeted research by your local pharmesuitical group. Basic research by CDH and other groups is what gave us the knowledge to use various reverse transcriptase inhibitors, and it's what will bring in (if possible) the cure for AIDS.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're going to claim such a thing, kindly provide a reference, so those of us with doubts can at least see the firmament upon which your conclusions are based. A lack of references and a basic misunderstanding of statistics is often a good indication of junk science.
Finally, regardless of evidence, I personally feel that it is in our best interest to reduce polution and waste wherever possible. I dislike seeing lands throughout the world being denuded unecessarily. However, invalid and/or impromper scientific claims are not the way to go about convincing people that they should be stewards of their homes.
This page is using the document.layers DOM property, which isn't w3c compliant at all (and doesn't exist in mozilla). So there's no _way_ it will display correctly in mozilla until they fix their code to be w3c compliant....
The picture above this text is pretty clear about it as well.
That would be why they call it IMAX 70mm then?
It is basically just 70mm film run sideways at a much higher speed than normal 70mm (or 35mm) film.
However, while the quality of IMAX is very difficult to match, or surpass, I have also enjoyed to a similar level some of the 360 theatres (shot with 6 [iirc] 35-70mm cameras...)
- It's genetic engineering, not DNA genetic engineering
- You don't typically use "DNA gene splicing" to generate agents... the most powerfull agents are already there...
- The method to generate a vaccine is often dramatically different than the method to generate a new anti-biotic agent
- Pigs, sheep, and rabits are used normally in immunoligical research because their immune systems are relatively similar to humans (not because their circulatory system and respiratory system are similar)
I'll stop there... while some of the points he raises are definetly worth going into, he should really consider becomming better informed of the technical details behind his assertions. It would also be userfull if he would site his sources in true academic style, rather than just asserting them to be so.Regardless, in this particular case, they were not testing the protein composition itself, but rather the spectroscopic composition of the protein (which could very easily have similar absorbance frequencies).
There are two separate things being discussed here. One is the prosecution of the creators of child pornography itself, the other is blocking access to child pronography. Both involve censorship, in the same way that a publisher of a dissenting opinion can be jailed or his opinion squelched.
You had claimed that there was a difference between blocking access to child pornography and censorship of child pronography, where in reality, there is no such difference.
Again, I'm not discussing the moral or legal implications of child pornography, which is a separate issue completely. However my comment remains: Any time you examine content for the purpose of suppression (enforcement/blocking) or deletion, you are censoring.
Censorship is s system or practice of censoring, where censoring is merely the examination of material in order to delete or suppress anything considered objectionable. It has nothing to do whatsoever with wether or not a culture would consider such a examination just.
NB: The parenthetical ad hominem is not terribly usefull.
Try again. 5 was already alocated for another IP like protocol that was not IPv4.
Perhaps you should open an introductory molecular biology textbook before making up an example like this?
When you're working in an environment where a server is expected to be kept running without user intervention, sometimes a cron job that upgrades the distro is acceptable.
Ceteris paribus, it's better to do it by hand, but if the admins that be cannot be counted on to deal with it, a self sufficient machine is better than a rooted one. (Machines that I've set up never to see again run potato with cron jobs to take care of them automagically. If a admin comes along who knows that they are doing, the cron jobs are well documented. If not, at least the box is self sufficient.)
The problem with Debian is that it's too stable.
That's the oddest complaint about an OS that I've heard in a while.
Yes. The stable distribution of debian is stable. If you want the newest wiz-bang stuff, you use testing or unstable. It's that simple. My servers that need to be up 24x7 run stable. My workstation runs unstable with custom packages.
You also don't need to use dselect to install stuff. Haven't you used apt-get yet? Even the install process has a redhat like package selector for people who don't want the power (and hassle) of dselect.
Much of what we know about human brain function is through studies of lower primates and murines. Obviously there are important differences, and we study those differences using primary cultures, as whole organism models in humans are not available.
Actually, for the most part, they've been working on the rat and mouse equivalent of human cancer. For the most part, successfull treatments of cancer in mice and rats are directly applicable to treating cancer in humans. Most of the therapies that we are using today (taxol, colchine, radiotherapy etc.) were tried and proven in rat and mice models before they were allowed to enter clinical trials.
If you'd like to discuss this more, feel free to e-mail me.
Interestingly, I tried to point out this same issue of premature senesence to the news media following the announcement of the cloning of "Dolly", and was met with incredible disinterest, despite the fact that it was obvious to me that the telomers would be shortened as a result of the adult donor genes, and therefore incapable of reproducing as many times.
You're forgetting about that extremely important protein, telomerase, which can elongate the telomeric regions of chromosomes so DNA polymerase is able to synthesize the important ends, and ignore a bit of junk where the okazaki fragment is unable to bind.
In quite a few cancers, telomerase is upregulated or made constiutively active, and it enables cells to become immortal and forgo senessence. A similiar phenomenon occurs in normal stem cells and progenitors throughout the human body.
If you have questions about this, feel free to e-mail me at my e-mail address.
Curious, do the lenses heal after the puncture damage?
The authors claim that the lenses are ok after the trauma, but eventually cataract. (It's not really big deal to loose a lens, it just means that you'll definetly have to wear glasses afterwards...)
Fischer D, Heiduschka P, Thanos S.
Lens-Injury-Stimulated Axonal Regeneration throughout the Optic Pathway of Adult Rats.
Exp Neurol. 2001 Dec;172(2):257-72. [PDF]
Apologies to those who are unable to view the pdf. (If you're not on a campus who subscribes to idea library, I don't think you can access it.)
Unfortuantly, these researchers still haven't purified the unknown factors that appear to be responsible for nerve growth. (They're in experimental opthamology... so it's not unexpected). Until these factors are purified and their functions described, nerve regrowth therapy will be difficult, if not impossible. Additionally, as some posters have pointed out, there are significant differences between rats and humans, and it remains to be seen if the same factors released by lens trauma are able to produce the same effects in humans or other model organisms. (But the posibility of non-applicability doesn't mean that rats and mice shouldn't be used, it just means that you need to test results obtained in them before applying them willy-nilly to other systems.)
Yes. Typically it's not done with human genes, as it's easier to get non-human cells and non-human genes, but alot of experiments involve rescueing null mutants (where a protein of importance has been disabled in the mutant) with exogenous or xenobiotic protein or DNA. This is typically used as a demonstration of the ability of a specific model to be used as an abstraction of the equivalent human system (or higher organism). [I haven't done this work in my lab, as we don't deal with whole cells, but there are researchers around me who have...]
In the near future, the most likely thing that is going to happen is the cloning of pigs with exact copies of human immunospecific proteins for the human who needs an organ transplant. Then the donor animal will have an exact match immunologically with the human patient, and the human patient will not have to be subjected to an arduous immunosuppressent regimin. So you'll have a chimeric pig expressing the patient's immunological markers, and won't have to wait for a compatible human donor to die or sign consent forms.
Beyond that is mere conjecture, but I don't expect we'll be seeing anything resembling the mythical chimeras of olde, as a work like that would involve a gargantuan effort and (in my mind at least) would have little to no scientific validity and usefullness.
The problem is that the 3-10% of difference is spread throughout the entire genome. (Well, throughout all ORFs of the genome).
Some of the proteins have significant enough homology to allow them to be replaced (some of the Histones, some kinesins and dyneins) but most of the important changes are really subtle, and if you just went and replaced the genes you would still not have a human being.
As far as detection goes, an enterprising researcher could detect changes in cellular proteins on the single amino acid level, assuming they were exposed on a properly folded protein, or important for the functioning of the protein.
There seem to be a great many people out there on slashdot who haven't bothered to look up exactly who designed the currently used anti-aids drugs. None of the companies who currently hold patents on them were actually involved in doing the research that generated the drug and demonstrated it's initial efficacy.
That research was funded at various public (and private) higher learning institutions throughout the world.
What the drug companies did do is purchase the patents from their current holders and chaparone the drug through FDA approval. Of course, the job of taking a drug through FDA approval is quite arduous and involves a considerable amount of cash, but NONE of that cash is spent in R&D, it's spent on efficacy studies and the ilk. (You might argue that this is a form of R&D, I like to look at it as QA.)
Of course, an interesting history lesson is to look at the United States point of view towards International Patents in the early part of the industrial revolution, especially regarding textile manufacturing. (Most of the patents for textile weaving were held in GB, and the US basically ignored them.) [Just in case someone thinks that the US has never behaved as brazil has]
Finally, regarding the search for a cure for HIV. A cure (if one is ever found) will most likely come about rhough basic research being funded already by NIH and other organizations at your local university instead of through targeted research by your local pharmesuitical group. Basic research by CDH and other groups is what gave us the knowledge to use various reverse transcriptase inhibitors, and it's what will bring in (if possible) the cure for AIDS.