If you distill it all down to the basics, women like men who make them feel good when they're around them.
The prospect of having a geeky nice guy wrapped around their finger isn't interesting to most women because they can get that anytime and anywhere. Only the men who are curiously unique, independent and are able to make a woman laugh and feel good will succeed consistently with members of the fairer sex.
This is why women always swoon over the mysterious, indifferent bad boy who plays by his own rules and (apparently) treats women like crap.
Am I right, or am I right ladies (I'm sure both women who read slashdot would agree there).
Can't we just launch the ion engine in a steel ball, paint it black, and add black rectangular wings to the sides? I call it a (using the doctor evil finger quotes) "TIE fighter"
Maybe we've evolved to a point where it's our destiny to control our future evolution?
If a form of cancer today will mutate into something that will save humanity in 1000 years, wouldn't it make sense to use our newfound knowledge and technology to keep people with these cancers alive longer so that they can pass these mutations on and allow them to mutate into something more interesting?
In order to answer your question, i'm going to have to give a little background...
contrary to popular belief, 99.99% of the body's cells don't keep dividing. The somatic cells of the body are replenished by stem cells and progenitor cells which act as the main copy from which all the "backup" cells are made. These cells specialize into skin cells, blood cells, and possibly nerve cells. The only way to have a permanent effect with this treatment would be to fix the mutation in the stem cells/progenitor cells, so that future specialized cells will all have the fix incorporated.
To make this change heritable, you need to fix the mutation in the sperm or egg which is eventually used to create an embryo. Otherwise, the mutation will be passed on.
From what the article says, there's only an 18% transformation efficiency so of all of the cells treated (this would never be the entire human body, just the cells collected), only 18% will be fixed.
We are a long way off from doing the 100% effective gene therapy you see on Star Trek.
Even if a cell line has stable RNA interference of a certain gene, it is still not as stable as you would think.
Introducing a plasmid containing a gene which codes for small hairpin RNA (shRNA) will lead to stable knockdown, but only if you continually select for the cells which are exhibiting this feature. Otherwise, for reasons as yet unknown, the cell will silence the shRNA producing gene that you introduced because it will somehow be recognized as foreign. So in a relatively blue rose, you will see a blue/red mosaic pattern forming over time.
Telomere length isn't the only factor determining how long a human can survive. If that were the case, you would be able to create modified human beings that overexpress telomerase to keep replenishing the telomeres and your cells would live forever (although you probably wouldn't, you'd probably end up being a big walking tumor).
The problem is that over time, the mitochondria in your cells begin to accumulate mutations from all the oxidation they do and they stop functioning. This leads to cells getting less energy and eventually they stop functioning properly, (presumably) leading to old age. This is why some recent experiments have shown that mice who are starved live a lot longer than mice who are overfed--their mitochondria do less oxidative work and accumulate fewer problems.
The cool thing is that some compounds have been recently found imitate the effects of starving yourself (on animal models) so that you can eat more and not have to worry about starving yourself. A prime example is the resveratrol which is found in red wine.
So go out and buy yourself a bottle of merlot and get drunk!
Slashdot Mirror
If you distill it all down to the basics, women like men who make them feel good when they're around them. The prospect of having a geeky nice guy wrapped around their finger isn't interesting to most women because they can get that anytime and anywhere. Only the men who are curiously unique, independent and are able to make a woman laugh and feel good will succeed consistently with members of the fairer sex. This is why women always swoon over the mysterious, indifferent bad boy who plays by his own rules and (apparently) treats women like crap. Am I right, or am I right ladies (I'm sure both women who read slashdot would agree there).
Does anyone have a link for that window pane desktop used in the screenshots?
Can't we just launch the ion engine in a steel ball, paint it black, and add black rectangular wings to the sides? I call it a (using the doctor evil finger quotes) "TIE fighter"
Bah! I, for one, welcome our new Go'auld overlords.
If you replace Best Buy with a strip club, and the cashier with a stripper, it'll all make sense--including the pole.
If a form of cancer today will mutate into something that will save humanity in 1000 years, wouldn't it make sense to use our newfound knowledge and technology to keep people with these cancers alive longer so that they can pass these mutations on and allow them to mutate into something more interesting?
In order to answer your question, i'm going to have to give a little background...
contrary to popular belief, 99.99% of the body's cells don't keep dividing. The somatic cells of the body are replenished by stem cells and progenitor cells which act as the main copy from which all the "backup" cells are made. These cells specialize into skin cells, blood cells, and possibly nerve cells. The only way to have a permanent effect with this treatment would be to fix the mutation in the stem cells/progenitor cells, so that future specialized cells will all have the fix incorporated.
To make this change heritable, you need to fix the mutation in the sperm or egg which is eventually used to create an embryo. Otherwise, the mutation will be passed on.
From what the article says, there's only an 18% transformation efficiency so of all of the cells treated (this would never be the entire human body, just the cells collected), only 18% will be fixed.
We are a long way off from doing the 100% effective gene therapy you see on Star Trek.
Even if a cell line has stable RNA interference of a certain gene, it is still not as stable as you would think.
Introducing a plasmid containing a gene which codes for small hairpin RNA (shRNA) will lead to stable knockdown, but only if you continually select for the cells which are exhibiting this feature. Otherwise, for reasons as yet unknown, the cell will silence the shRNA producing gene that you introduced because it will somehow be recognized as foreign. So in a relatively blue rose, you will see a blue/red mosaic pattern forming over time.Crack found in the shuttle tank? dammit! I thought I told that punk LeRoy to hide my crack well!
Telomere length isn't the only factor determining how long a human can survive. If that were the case, you would be able to create modified human beings that overexpress telomerase to keep replenishing the telomeres and your cells would live forever (although you probably wouldn't, you'd probably end up being a big walking tumor).
The problem is that over time, the mitochondria in your cells begin to accumulate mutations from all the oxidation they do and they stop functioning. This leads to cells getting less energy and eventually they stop functioning properly, (presumably) leading to old age. This is why some recent experiments have shown that mice who are starved live a lot longer than mice who are overfed--their mitochondria do less oxidative work and accumulate fewer problems.
The cool thing is that some compounds have been recently found imitate the effects of starving yourself (on animal models) so that you can eat more and not have to worry about starving yourself. A prime example is the resveratrol which is found in red wine.
So go out and buy yourself a bottle of merlot and get drunk!