It really irritates me when people post things on arxiv.org and try to claim that it is something worth reading. Don't get me wrong, I am sure that there are some important ideas in there, but the truth is that it is a non peer reviewed pre-print repository. So, unless it can be backed up with an actual accepted peer reviewed journal then why such the big deal. If it is really so great perhaps we should be reading about it in Science or Nature.
I think that the term Quantum Biology is somewhat misleading in this instance. I do not think that we are anywhere close to being able to simulate anything at the biological level Quantum Mechanically (QM). Well simulate it and obtain reliable data anyways. In the field of Molecular Modeling, we have a pretty good grasp of how to simulate an entire protein at the atomistic level (MM). Right now Quantum Mechanical simulations can provide us with reasonable answers for systems of something like 400 to 4000 atoms, such as the switch described in the article, but not the whole protein. So for the time being QM is really only effective for small specialized systems involving chemical reactions, such as this.
People are still ultimately responsible for their own actions. Where do we draw the line on my responsibility to make sure that you are behaving in a socially acceptable or responsible fashion? It is a tough question of morality and one that obviously does not have a black or white answer.
I am in no way condoning the behavior of the predators skulking around the internet, but I really do not see how this is My Space's responsibility. I know of several families that have their computer situated off in the basement or in their child's room and will leave them unattended for hours with their high speed connection and webcam. I have no idea where the families in this story kept their computers, but a little diligence on a parents part, in my opinion, goes a long way. If the kids stumble onto these situations and get entrapped by these people, how is suing News Corp going to make any difference at the end of the day? There will always be sexual predators out there and there will always be children looking for attention. I think that the solution to this problem is already at home.
So essentially, it seems that we go from an array of pixels on the photodetector in the camera, from which the data being collected is filtered and redundant information is deleted during compression into a jpeg. Now a new "less wasteful" method uses an array of tiny mirrors that must turn on and off and then focus the reflected light efficiently onto a single photodetector that then just filters the information using some complex maths? I am not quite sure how this is better, or is it just different?
Exactly. I read some other press on this treatment and they are trying to develop it as an external spray, I am assuming akin to something like Lysol which is already sold as killing 99.9% of viruses. My question is; why not just use Lysol on everything you touch then it is probably just as effective and a lot cheaper.
In this case, I believe that it is just the active ingredient. However, I agree with you that much more work will need to be done on the pharmacokinetics side of things. Also, there are apparently quite a few people out there who still chew on willow bark to relieve their headaches.
Seriously, I never told anybody to go to the store (I stand corrected on the ease of purchasing it by the way), buy DCA and take it. I said you could if you wanted to (which you can), just like you can go to the drugstore and buy a bottle of acetaminophen for your headache another bottle of cold medication for your congestion and accidentally kill yourself that way as well. Lots of people do stupid things every day in the hopes that it will make them bigger, better, healthier, stronger (DMSO, mega doses of Vitamin C, Steroids). However, you missed my point. I was not saying that DCA is a either a valid treatment for cancer or that you should actually take it, I was pointing out that if this treatment truly works, it will not take big Pharma to bring it into general use as a treatment for cancer. Lets also not get started with anecdotal evidence and drug discovery. How about paclitaxel, colchicne and vinca alkaloids to name a few. These are all drugs that were discovered when the active ingredients in plants, commonly used for killing people, were shown to be quite effective at killing cancer cells also (OK, vinblastine was actually discovered while looking at treatments for Type 1 diabetes). Don't misinterpret this also, I would never suggest that someone go and eat some periwinkle leaves instead of visiting their oncologist when they find out they have non-small cell lung cancer.
This reminds me of a comedy skit I heard on the CBC the other day about warning labels on tires that say: For your safety, do not place your head between the rubber and the pavement.
I am not sure why people tend to label big pharma as "evil" they provide a service and people pay for it. Everyone has to make a living and drug companies will supply what the market can support. If that means that you pay $600 a pill for a new cancer treatment that will let you live another month, then, bankrupting your family aside, that is your choice. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rules and that is a discussion best left to people smarter than myself.
When I checked, Dichloroacetic acid was not a controlled substance of any kind. Therefore if you have cancer and want to give it a whirl, you can just go onto the Sigma-Aldrich website, give them your credit card number and order a bottle. I am sure if it works as well as the researchers believe it does we will have plenty of anecdotal evidence for its usefulness in no time. Also, if it does work, then there is always the public funding sources that also fund actual clinical trials. All drugs do not have to come through Pharma. Soon someone will decide that there is enough money out there to make it worthwhile putting it in a caplet and selling it along side the vitamin C.
I totally agree and fail to see how this article is actually interesting. I could top the Gold and diamond mp3 player, lets make that a platiunum and diamond mp3 player. Wait, if we make it a really big platinum and diamond..... This sounds like those really expensive martinis where you get a stir stick with a ruby glued to it.
The simple answer to your question is no. In the field of Molecular Modeling, we have a pretty good idea of how to simulate a system at the atomistic level. As the article states, we are pushing the limits of computational resources and time to complete the simulations at the level of about 1 million atoms (this is state of the art). The simulation discussed in this article is of a Satellite Virus (not even a true virus by strict definition, as it requires a cell to be previously infected by a virus) and as such is the smallest "living" organism on the planet (it has only 2 genes; 1 to synthesize its coat protein and another which we have no idea of its function). Now think of a bacteria like E.coli which has something on the order of 4500 genes, several of which are expresed in multiple copies. Don't forget all of the metabolites and water also. This takes the simulation from 1 million atoms up to at least say 5-10 orders of magnitude in size. So a simulation that took 12 days on a 256 CPU SGI cluster would now take 1.2 million to 1.2e11 days on the same cluster (you can also do the math to figure out how scaling the cluster would effect the time). So, long story short, we have no hope of doing an all atomistic model of even Ecoli any time soon.
But, lets not forget that these simulations were only atomistic in the Newtonian sense of the word (we are only simulating atoms as point masses using Newtonian Physics, commonly referred to as Molecular Mechanics). If we want to simulate chemical reactions (an essential component of life), we require Quantum solutions for these simulations and we are looking at a limit of somewhere on the order of 400 to 4000 atoms for these types of simulations. So to really simulate E coli, lets add another 10 orders of magnitude to our estimates.
The next order of business is to simulate a eukaryotic cell which may have 10,000 genes in it. Then lets go to multi-celled organisms...and so on.
The long and the short of it is that there is no realistic hope, any time soon, of doing simulations on this order, until there is a significant leap made in either the way the simulations are done, or the power of the computers on which we do them. There may be ways of abstracting things by making assumptions that will reduce the accuracy of the models, but that is another story.
1) Get egg
2) Inject DNA
3) Implant
4) Incubate for awhile
5) Start morality debate...
again and again.
Re:When can I move there?
on
Ice Lake on Mars
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Except for the fact that the average surface temperature of Mars is -63 C, the atmospheric pressure is 100x lower than earth and the O2 composition of the atmoshpere is about 1,000,000x less.
I would agree with you, but I think that you assume a surface pressure of only 1 Pa. At the recorded pressures of 0.675-1 kPa for Mars' atmosphere, water remains ice until it reaches a temperature of somewhere between 240 to 275 K (-27 to 35 F). The average recorded temperatures of the surface of Mars ranges between 130-250K (-225 to -9 F) with a mean of 210K, so it is entirely possible for this ice to remain year round without sublimating, or melting at the extreme temperature (275K) and pressure (1 kPa) range. I am only extrapolating these values from a phase diagram for water, therefore the numbers are most likely off. This, of course, also assumes that the sun is not shining on the region in question, as soil temperatures of 300K (+81 F) have been reported.
I actually had to sell my minidisc player beacause I detested the sonicstage software so much. However, it looks like these new players may support mp3 directly (perhaps just like every other flash player by plugging it into your usb port) I have yet to see this specification though. That said, why not just go out and buy any of the other 50 models of flash player out there? I do not see Sony bringing anything new to the table. At least the shuffle is somewhat unique.
I have a Creative Muvo Slim and it is recognized perfectly in iTunes on my iBook. Well not so perfectly, the resource forks on the files sometimes cause some problems with playback but this is rare and all you have to do is open a terminal and delete them all before disconnecting. There is actually software around to do this, or you could easily write your own script.
Slashdot Mirror
It really irritates me when people post things on arxiv.org and try to claim that it is something worth reading. Don't get me wrong, I am sure that there are some important ideas in there, but the truth is that it is a non peer reviewed pre-print repository. So, unless it can be backed up with an actual accepted peer reviewed journal then why such the big deal. If it is really so great perhaps we should be reading about it in Science or Nature.
I really fail to see why this is interesting.
I am pretty sure you have always been able to use alltunes with allofmp3 credits.
I think that the term Quantum Biology is somewhat misleading in this instance. I do not think that we are anywhere close to being able to simulate anything at the biological level Quantum Mechanically (QM). Well simulate it and obtain reliable data anyways. In the field of Molecular Modeling, we have a pretty good grasp of how to simulate an entire protein at the atomistic level (MM). Right now Quantum Mechanical simulations can provide us with reasonable answers for systems of something like 400 to 4000 atoms, such as the switch described in the article, but not the whole protein. So for the time being QM is really only effective for small specialized systems involving chemical reactions, such as this.
Would this be such a big deal if the story was about plugging your tape recorder into the line out on your XM radio?
Good point.
People are still ultimately responsible for their own actions. Where do we draw the line on my responsibility to make sure that you are behaving in a socially acceptable or responsible fashion? It is a tough question of morality and one that obviously does not have a black or white answer.
I am in no way condoning the behavior of the predators skulking around the internet, but I really do not see how this is My Space's responsibility. I know of several families that have their computer situated off in the basement or in their child's room and will leave them unattended for hours with their high speed connection and webcam. I have no idea where the families in this story kept their computers, but a little diligence on a parents part, in my opinion, goes a long way. If the kids stumble onto these situations and get entrapped by these people, how is suing News Corp going to make any difference at the end of the day? There will always be sexual predators out there and there will always be children looking for attention. I think that the solution to this problem is already at home.
So essentially, it seems that we go from an array of pixels on the photodetector in the camera, from which the data being collected is filtered and redundant information is deleted during compression into a jpeg. Now a new "less wasteful" method uses an array of tiny mirrors that must turn on and off and then focus the reflected light efficiently onto a single photodetector that then just filters the information using some complex maths? I am not quite sure how this is better, or is it just different?
Exactly. I read some other press on this treatment and they are trying to develop it as an external spray, I am assuming akin to something like Lysol which is already sold as killing 99.9% of viruses. My question is; why not just use Lysol on everything you touch then it is probably just as effective and a lot cheaper.
In this case, I believe that it is just the active ingredient. However, I agree with you that much more work will need to be done on the pharmacokinetics side of things. Also, there are apparently quite a few people out there who still chew on willow bark to relieve their headaches.
Seriously, I never told anybody to go to the store (I stand corrected on the ease of purchasing it by the way), buy DCA and take it. I said you could if you wanted to (which you can), just like you can go to the drugstore and buy a bottle of acetaminophen for your headache another bottle of cold medication for your congestion and accidentally kill yourself that way as well. Lots of people do stupid things every day in the hopes that it will make them bigger, better, healthier, stronger (DMSO, mega doses of Vitamin C, Steroids). However, you missed my point. I was not saying that DCA is a either a valid treatment for cancer or that you should actually take it, I was pointing out that if this treatment truly works, it will not take big Pharma to bring it into general use as a treatment for cancer. Lets also not get started with anecdotal evidence and drug discovery. How about paclitaxel, colchicne and vinca alkaloids to name a few. These are all drugs that were discovered when the active ingredients in plants, commonly used for killing people, were shown to be quite effective at killing cancer cells also (OK, vinblastine was actually discovered while looking at treatments for Type 1 diabetes). Don't misinterpret this also, I would never suggest that someone go and eat some periwinkle leaves instead of visiting their oncologist when they find out they have non-small cell lung cancer. This reminds me of a comedy skit I heard on the CBC the other day about warning labels on tires that say: For your safety, do not place your head between the rubber and the pavement.
I am not sure why people tend to label big pharma as "evil" they provide a service and people pay for it. Everyone has to make a living and drug companies will supply what the market can support. If that means that you pay $600 a pill for a new cancer treatment that will let you live another month, then, bankrupting your family aside, that is your choice. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rules and that is a discussion best left to people smarter than myself.
When I checked, Dichloroacetic acid was not a controlled substance of any kind. Therefore if you have cancer and want to give it a whirl, you can just go onto the Sigma-Aldrich website, give them your credit card number and order a bottle. I am sure if it works as well as the researchers believe it does we will have plenty of anecdotal evidence for its usefulness in no time. Also, if it does work, then there is always the public funding sources that also fund actual clinical trials. All drugs do not have to come through Pharma. Soon someone will decide that there is enough money out there to make it worthwhile putting it in a caplet and selling it along side the vitamin C.
I think that in 2106 we will also write 2/8/6. If not in 2106, 3006 for sure. What was a computer anyhow?
I totally agree and fail to see how this article is actually interesting. I could top the Gold and diamond mp3 player, lets make that a platiunum and diamond mp3 player. Wait, if we make it a really big platinum and diamond..... This sounds like those really expensive martinis where you get a stir stick with a ruby glued to it.
The simple answer to your question is no. In the field of Molecular Modeling, we have a pretty good idea of how to simulate a system at the atomistic level. As the article states, we are pushing the limits of computational resources and time to complete the simulations at the level of about 1 million atoms (this is state of the art). The simulation discussed in this article is of a Satellite Virus (not even a true virus by strict definition, as it requires a cell to be previously infected by a virus) and as such is the smallest "living" organism on the planet (it has only 2 genes; 1 to synthesize its coat protein and another which we have no idea of its function). Now think of a bacteria like E.coli which has something on the order of 4500 genes, several of which are expresed in multiple copies. Don't forget all of the metabolites and water also. This takes the simulation from 1 million atoms up to at least say 5-10 orders of magnitude in size. So a simulation that took 12 days on a 256 CPU SGI cluster would now take 1.2 million to 1.2e11 days on the same cluster (you can also do the math to figure out how scaling the cluster would effect the time). So, long story short, we have no hope of doing an all atomistic model of even Ecoli any time soon. But, lets not forget that these simulations were only atomistic in the Newtonian sense of the word (we are only simulating atoms as point masses using Newtonian Physics, commonly referred to as Molecular Mechanics). If we want to simulate chemical reactions (an essential component of life), we require Quantum solutions for these simulations and we are looking at a limit of somewhere on the order of 400 to 4000 atoms for these types of simulations. So to really simulate E coli, lets add another 10 orders of magnitude to our estimates. The next order of business is to simulate a eukaryotic cell which may have 10,000 genes in it. Then lets go to multi-celled organisms...and so on. The long and the short of it is that there is no realistic hope, any time soon, of doing simulations on this order, until there is a significant leap made in either the way the simulations are done, or the power of the computers on which we do them. There may be ways of abstracting things by making assumptions that will reduce the accuracy of the models, but that is another story.
1) Get egg 2) Inject DNA 3) Implant 4) Incubate for awhile 5) Start morality debate... again and again.
Except for the fact that the average surface temperature of Mars is -63 C, the atmospheric pressure is 100x lower than earth and the O2 composition of the atmoshpere is about 1,000,000x less.
I would agree with you, but I think that you assume a surface pressure of only 1 Pa. At the recorded pressures of 0.675-1 kPa for Mars' atmosphere, water remains ice until it reaches a temperature of somewhere between 240 to 275 K (-27 to 35 F). The average recorded temperatures of the surface of Mars ranges between 130-250K (-225 to -9 F) with a mean of 210K, so it is entirely possible for this ice to remain year round without sublimating, or melting at the extreme temperature (275K) and pressure (1 kPa) range. I am only extrapolating these values from a phase diagram for water, therefore the numbers are most likely off. This, of course, also assumes that the sun is not shining on the region in question, as soil temperatures of 300K (+81 F) have been reported.
Or goes out of business.
If memory serves, there was already a ThinkGeek April fools article here this morning.
Oakley has previously been quite successful in maintianing their trademarking of the letter O. http://www.coleman-firm.com/veit.html http://www.bereskinparr.com/publications/rcd/pub_r cd_jun_2001.html
I actually had to sell my minidisc player beacause I detested the sonicstage software so much. However, it looks like these new players may support mp3 directly (perhaps just like every other flash player by plugging it into your usb port) I have yet to see this specification though. That said, why not just go out and buy any of the other 50 models of flash player out there? I do not see Sony bringing anything new to the table. At least the shuffle is somewhat unique.
I have a Creative Muvo Slim and it is recognized perfectly in iTunes on my iBook. Well not so perfectly, the resource forks on the files sometimes cause some problems with playback but this is rare and all you have to do is open a terminal and delete them all before disconnecting. There is actually software around to do this, or you could easily write your own script.