They do know what causes it. Death of dopaminergic neurons in a specific part of the brain, and/or inactivation of dopamine receptors on those neurons.
The underlying causes, though, are still not completely clear. As from your link, certain chemicals can cause this.
But it's important to note that dopaminergic receptors die off regularly, anyway (IIRC ~5% per year) but no Parkinson's symptoms are exhibited until there are very few dopaminergic receptors in that part of the brain... sure wish I could remember the name of the region.
This is bunk, as many people have said before... exercise is good medicine.
Ah yes, "This is bunk" states known Parkinson's expert and physiology sage jshackles.
Before you call it bunk... do you know what causes Parkinson's? Do you know what neurotransmitter abnormality causes Parkinson's symptoms?
Do you know what neurotransmitters are the mediators of the response we know as "feeling of accomplishment"?
Do you know how video games stimulate that response?
Do you know, even discounting the neurotransmitter impact, how exercise via the Wii differs from other "standard" methods of exercise, and how this might specifically be of use to Parkinson's sufferers? Do you know if using a Wii for fine motor control exercise has a higher percentage of participants actually sticking to their rehabilitation schedules than traditional methods?
In short... you call it bunk... but it seems VERY clear to me that (1) you don't know much about the subject and (2) you didn't bother researching it at all before decrying it.
Even if this study was bunk, your refutation of it is even worse... at least they bothered to collect data before making any kind of conclusion.
The great thing about today's video games are the reward schedules that make games so damn addictive. These rewards cause dopamine release, which helps offset Parkinson's.
What I wonder is if there's a "Flowers for Algernon" type effect -- like with Levadopa, is tolerance built up quickly? Do patients doing Wii-hab for Parkinson's need to take a "Wii holiday" the same way Parkinson's patients on Levadopa need to take a drug holiday to reset their tolerance?
You explained a legal situation by citing a movie? All kinds of wrong.
This is slashdot. You're supposed to use high-falutin' legal terms inappropriately, like you're trying to pose as a lawyer but suck at it.
Yes, the knowledge still comes from a movie, but YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO ADMIT IT.
Now be a good slashdotter and state your opinion as fact, without citation, or I'll be forced to serve you with a poena. That's right, a poena. It's like a subpoena, but it's broader in scope... it'll mess you up bad.
See, here's the thing about controlling geese populations at public parks, golf courses, etc.
In theory, if you have border collies chase them around when they're deciding if that's the place for them to build their summer nests, then they'll go elsewhere, and you'll be pretty much unbothered the rest of the summer. In practice, they'll come anyway to feed when that's the only place with green grass in the dry parts of summer.
But really, you're asking for a larger problem.
You have the geese. Then you bring in the border collies to get rid of the geese. Then you've got to bring in bears to get rid of the collies.
We all know how that turns out -- bears hibernate, so they won't freeze during the winter, so now you've got a bear infestation on your hands.
Since the only thing known to be so irritating to bears as to drive them off is when there's goose shit everywhere, you'll need to bring in some geese to get rid of the bears, which leaves you back where you started.
Seriously, though... if you want to get rid of geese, bring in coyotes or wolves. Sure, Mrs. Fuddlydudd now has to worry that her precious Snookums might get eaten... but that's a small price to pay for me to be able to play 18 holes without having to clean goose shit out of my spikes. And as for kids in the neighborhood... at least they'll get exercise if they need to run from a wolfpack now and again. Good for youth fitness, I say.
Motorhead could kill any wimpy acoustical black hole.
Undoubtably Lemmy could kill an acoustical black hole.
But Soundgarden already did (or at least traveled through one). Unfortunately, the singer's voice was permanently damaged by the experience, and so when he sings "Black Hole Sound" we hear "Black Hole Sun" instead.
Or something.
Not that Lemmy doesn't have more talent in his superfluous third nipple than Soundgarden has, but he probably just hasn't bothered with an acoustic black hole yet.
It's time for nerds to rise up yet again. Throughout modern history in the US, celebration of the nerd has resulted in unprecedented economic prosperity and global economic domination.
From the idolization of Einstein, Feynman, and other physicists, arose the economic superpower that dominated much of the world in the 1950s and 60s.
In the 80s, we were captivated by the message of Revenge of the Nerds, and on the shoulders of this movie we came to dominate the new era of Information.
Ladies, gentlemen: Now is the time. Now is the time to rise up from our comfy chairs, to rise up from our futons, to rise up from the depths of our basements! We must rise up as one united voice of nerd-dom, and speak to the mouthbreathers who have ground us beneath their bootheels since time immemorial. We must tell them:
ENOUGH! Take your stupid sports and shove them. Take your stupid pop music TV shows and shove them. Take your idolization of stupidity and sacrifice it on the altar of curiosity, the altar of edification, and the altar of neckbeards and cheetos!
WE MUST DEFEAT THE...
What's that mom? Yeah... OK... I'll be up for dinner as soon as I finish this level. Did you get some Mountain Dew?
The doomsday machine output should have a value with a lower limit of 0 and an upper limit of 1. Fractional parts should be rounded to the nearest integer.
Poppycock.
The outcome of my doomsday machine is DEATH. And SUFFERING. Also, some Mountain Dew. But mostly DEATH.
I'd assume the dead state is 0, and the live state is 1 -- except Hubble was living while he calculated the value, so he may have assigned 0 to the live state, and 1 to the dead state. Or he might have foreseen my current problem and switched the values just to trick me.
Speaking of which (my current problem), it appears my doomsday machine has entered into a positive feedback loop, and I'll only know how to fix it and save the planet if I have the correct value. I'd appreciate an accurate (and swift) answer if you can kindly help me.
Doesn't the term web bug (Score:1)
by Rombuu (rombuu@yahoo.com) on Thursday August 03, @12:46PM EDT (#126)
(User #22914 Info)
Seem like a really bad name for these things? I mean, they work exactly the way they are intended to. So why call them a bug?
Space is Big / Space is Dark / It's Hard to Find / A Place to Park - Burma Shave
It's not just about risk of disease in the person tested. It's also about reproduction.
Genetic counseling is important for proto-parents who have inheritable diseases, or may carry an unexpressed gene for those diseases.
Furthermore, lots of insurance companies don't cover genetic counseling. It can get very expensive...
Example. I have slight hip displasia (genetic). My wife does not, but her brother does -- and her brother's son had a much more serious condition that was at least partially due to the same gene. My daughter was born with hip displasia and another related birth defect, which required multiple surgeries, although it was a minor defect.
If my wife and I want to have another kid, genetic testing will help us assess the risk of serious congenital disease. This risk assessment will help us determine if we are fiscally prepared for another child, since we'll need to factor in the potential cost of one of us not working, or paying for special care, if that child were to be at high risk for serious birth defects.
So, the question is, do I need to pay a genetic counselor $600, when I could get the tests done myself for $100? I have access to the studies that give the prevalence and severity of birth defects according to the genes of the parents. I just need to know (1) Do I have one copy of the gene or two and (2) Does my wife have 0, 1, or 2 copies of the gene.
So why shouldn't I be able to have these tests done myself, instead of having to pay the overhead of going through a genetic counselor?
If true, this is a pretty serious escalation in the Net Neutrality wars.
It's not just an escalation in the NN wars (I didn't know we were fighting a war, anyway. I thought it was just a 'security detachment' or 'police action').
This represents a fundamental shift in how the internet works. If you can't use your own DNS servers, or at least send requests to an outside DNS server, then the internet loses some of its ability to route around damage (again, using the convention that 'damage' includes shit like deep packet inspection, etc).
If true, this is really a sad day... for it represents the true beginning of the end of the internet as we know it.
And now that I've got the Chicken Little hyperbole out of the way... seems to me like Comcast wants to be a forced portal, not just an ISP. Hopefully they are rewarded with the same fate AOL was rewarded.
That's exactly it. Gold farmers are not the equivalent of large corporations in the real world that leverage economies of scale.
Gold farmers are leveraging the difference in labor costs between different areas. It's labor arbitrage, plain and simple.
One thing to add -- not all gold sellers are gold farmers. There are other ways of generating in-game currency than taking advantage of labor rate differences. I think these are the cases he's referring to, the non-farming gold sellers who make their money the old fashioned way -- by being at the top of a organization devoted to making money.
By finding a way around the NSFNet acceptable use policy, ClariNet was the first business founded to use the Internet as its platform for business, and the era of the 'dot-com' had begun.
Oh, so *you're* the asshole who started the commercialization, by shady interpretation of a use policy you agreed to, no less.
I bet next you'll tell us that you're also the asshole who sent the first spam.
How long have you been waiting to use that? An entire post about graham crackers?
Well, the idea came naturally to me when I started to respond to the prior poster about the column needing to be very wide as the atmosphere got less dense. And then I got to thinking about how marshmallows get their lightness, and I thought maybe it would be applicable to the problem at hand.
And then I realized I hadn't had dinner yet, and that I'd better call my wife on my way home and ask her to start the charcoal for the grill. And then I started thinking about s'moresr,because it's summer, and I'll be grilling over charcoal tonight, and I just couldn't help myself.
Sometimes the muse takes over and we just sit, trancelike, while the genius flows from our fingertips to the keyboard. I don't think that really was me typing, nor was it my idea... it was like some force greater than man itself took ahold of me -- just used me as a conduit for brilliance. Kind of like Noah's ark, I guess... it is not my place to question why. It is only my place to build it, as directed by what can only be the divine inspiration of He of the Tangled Forkful, the FSM.
But seriously, if you think that was thought up ahead of time, and I'd been waiting to use... don;t you think it'd be a little more polished?
Lazy paradise? I remember a foggy sleep-deprived existence that involved short naps between busting ass. What's your trick?
It was getting ass-busting undergrads to do underpaid work while I reap the profits. Mwua-ha-ha.
Seriously... there were and still are lots of opportunities for the bright and lazy to put the work of their fellow students to good use. Running a sysadmin service was a good one when I was in school.
Laziness, after all, is the driver of much innovation.
If it hypothetically allow class sizes to get bigger with better results even then they won't care.
Wrong. Bigger class sizes == fewer teachers == less union dues (for the 100% cynical side).
Bigger class sizes == less demand for teachers == lower teacher pay (for the somewhat cynical side).
Bigger class sizes == less individual attention for the students == the brightest (and dimmest) bulbs don't get as good of an education (for the naive/optimist side).
That's ridiculous. If Jupiter is 8-12% He bv, and 88-92% H bv, then Helium-filled balloons would *sink* in the Jupiter upper atmosphere... what use would that be?
Oooh, ooh, I have a magical fantasy plan that would have us create balloons so as to SINK in Jupiter's gravitational well!
Eventually you get to the ridiculous point where your tower is >100 m wide because the atmosphere is so thin.
You naysayers will be crying when I build my giant space marshmallow chain.
100 m wide? I don't think so. The trick is to fill them with your lighter-than-air mixture at the local atmospheric density... create, heat, inflate, rigidify, cool. And 100 m is just about right, from the base all the way up.
When it gets too high, then you simply start at your Chambered Heuristic Orbital Clasp Object -- Ladder Attachment Terminal Endpoint, and work your way back down.
The big problem I see is the earthbound anchor, but I believe professor William T. Graham (a pasty-white fellow my less couth colleagues refer to as a 'cracker') is working on a solution to that.
All of humanity shall be as neanderthals around the campfire, envying the colossal testament to my intellectual superiority. Plus, they'll probably have a hankering for S'mores, what with the figurative campfire and all.
Hell, I only got a degree so I could put off working another six years (what? change majors a few times, and you too can turn a four-year stint in lazy paradise into six years).
I think this is a great idea. I bet it's pretty damn cost-effective, too. We could improve results while cutting some of the overripe plums in school budgets.
I wonder how much something like this would be resisted by the teachers' unions? It seems the teachers are big fans, since it motivates the students... but in the long run, I could see the unions getting very upset, since it allows for some method of improving education that does not stem directly from teachers.
Slashdot Mirror
They do know what causes it. Death of dopaminergic neurons in a specific part of the brain, and/or inactivation of dopamine receptors on those neurons.
The underlying causes, though, are still not completely clear. As from your link, certain chemicals can cause this.
But it's important to note that dopaminergic receptors die off regularly, anyway (IIRC ~5% per year) but no Parkinson's symptoms are exhibited until there are very few dopaminergic receptors in that part of the brain... sure wish I could remember the name of the region.
You forgot bleeding. Oh, yes, the delicious bleeding.
Was that my out-loud voice?
Ah yes, "This is bunk" states known Parkinson's expert and physiology sage jshackles.
Before you call it bunk... do you know what causes Parkinson's? Do you know what neurotransmitter abnormality causes Parkinson's symptoms?
Do you know what neurotransmitters are the mediators of the response we know as "feeling of accomplishment"?
Do you know how video games stimulate that response?
Do you know, even discounting the neurotransmitter impact, how exercise via the Wii differs from other "standard" methods of exercise, and how this might specifically be of use to Parkinson's sufferers? Do you know if using a Wii for fine motor control exercise has a higher percentage of participants actually sticking to their rehabilitation schedules than traditional methods?
In short... you call it bunk... but it seems VERY clear to me that (1) you don't know much about the subject and (2) you didn't bother researching it at all before decrying it.
Even if this study was bunk, your refutation of it is even worse... at least they bothered to collect data before making any kind of conclusion.
It's not just the exercise.
The great thing about today's video games are the reward schedules that make games so damn addictive. These rewards cause dopamine release, which helps offset Parkinson's.
What I wonder is if there's a "Flowers for Algernon" type effect -- like with Levadopa, is tolerance built up quickly? Do patients doing Wii-hab for Parkinson's need to take a "Wii holiday" the same way Parkinson's patients on Levadopa need to take a drug holiday to reset their tolerance?
Wait, what?
You explained a legal situation by citing a movie? All kinds of wrong.
This is slashdot. You're supposed to use high-falutin' legal terms inappropriately, like you're trying to pose as a lawyer but suck at it.
Yes, the knowledge still comes from a movie, but YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO ADMIT IT.
Now be a good slashdotter and state your opinion as fact, without citation, or I'll be forced to serve you with a poena. That's right, a poena. It's like a subpoena, but it's broader in scope... it'll mess you up bad.
See, here's the thing about controlling geese populations at public parks, golf courses, etc.
In theory, if you have border collies chase them around when they're deciding if that's the place for them to build their summer nests, then they'll go elsewhere, and you'll be pretty much unbothered the rest of the summer. In practice, they'll come anyway to feed when that's the only place with green grass in the dry parts of summer.
But really, you're asking for a larger problem.
You have the geese.
Then you bring in the border collies to get rid of the geese.
Then you've got to bring in bears to get rid of the collies.
We all know how that turns out -- bears hibernate, so they won't freeze during the winter, so now you've got a bear infestation on your hands.
Since the only thing known to be so irritating to bears as to drive them off is when there's goose shit everywhere, you'll need to bring in some geese to get rid of the bears, which leaves you back where you started.
Seriously, though... if you want to get rid of geese, bring in coyotes or wolves. Sure, Mrs. Fuddlydudd now has to worry that her precious Snookums might get eaten... but that's a small price to pay for me to be able to play 18 holes without having to clean goose shit out of my spikes. And as for kids in the neighborhood... at least they'll get exercise if they need to run from a wolfpack now and again. Good for youth fitness, I say.
Undoubtably Lemmy could kill an acoustical black hole.
But Soundgarden already did (or at least traveled through one). Unfortunately, the singer's voice was permanently damaged by the experience, and so when he sings "Black Hole Sound" we hear "Black Hole Sun" instead.
Or something.
Not that Lemmy doesn't have more talent in his superfluous third nipple than Soundgarden has, but he probably just hasn't bothered with an acoustic black hole yet.
And how, pray tell, will a tinfoil overall protect you from Evil Sound?
Perhaps you should consider tinfoil earmuffs instead. Or maybe a tinfoil hat with earflaps.
It's time for nerds to rise up yet again. Throughout modern history in the US, celebration of the nerd has resulted in unprecedented economic prosperity and global economic domination.
From the idolization of Einstein, Feynman, and other physicists, arose the economic superpower that dominated much of the world in the 1950s and 60s.
In the 80s, we were captivated by the message of Revenge of the Nerds, and on the shoulders of this movie we came to dominate the new era of Information.
Ladies, gentlemen: Now is the time. Now is the time to rise up from our comfy chairs, to rise up from our futons, to rise up from the depths of our basements! We must rise up as one united voice of nerd-dom, and speak to the mouthbreathers who have ground us beneath their bootheels since time immemorial. We must tell them:
ENOUGH! Take your stupid sports and shove them. Take your stupid pop music TV shows and shove them. Take your idolization of stupidity and sacrifice it on the altar of curiosity, the altar of edification, and the altar of neckbeards and cheetos!
WE MUST DEFEAT THE...
What's that mom? Yeah... OK... I'll be up for dinner as soon as I finish this level. Did you get some Mountain Dew?
Sorry, gotta go AFK.
Poppycock.
The outcome of my doomsday machine is DEATH. And SUFFERING. Also, some Mountain Dew. But mostly DEATH.
So is the value 0 or 1?
I'd assume the dead state is 0, and the live state is 1 -- except Hubble was living while he calculated the value, so he may have assigned 0 to the live state, and 1 to the dead state. Or he might have foreseen my current problem and switched the values just to trick me.
Speaking of which (my current problem), it appears my doomsday machine has entered into a positive feedback loop, and I'll only know how to fix it and save the planet if I have the correct value. I'd appreciate an accurate (and swift) answer if you can kindly help me.
How about 2003?
Of course, that was in a sig, but still...
It's not just about risk of disease in the person tested. It's also about reproduction.
Genetic counseling is important for proto-parents who have inheritable diseases, or may carry an unexpressed gene for those diseases.
Furthermore, lots of insurance companies don't cover genetic counseling. It can get very expensive...
Example. I have slight hip displasia (genetic). My wife does not, but her brother does -- and her brother's son had a much more serious condition that was at least partially due to the same gene. My daughter was born with hip displasia and another related birth defect, which required multiple surgeries, although it was a minor defect.
If my wife and I want to have another kid, genetic testing will help us assess the risk of serious congenital disease. This risk assessment will help us determine if we are fiscally prepared for another child, since we'll need to factor in the potential cost of one of us not working, or paying for special care, if that child were to be at high risk for serious birth defects.
So, the question is, do I need to pay a genetic counselor $600, when I could get the tests done myself for $100? I have access to the studies that give the prevalence and severity of birth defects according to the genes of the parents. I just need to know (1) Do I have one copy of the gene or two and (2) Does my wife have 0, 1, or 2 copies of the gene.
So why shouldn't I be able to have these tests done myself, instead of having to pay the overhead of going through a genetic counselor?
On an Alaskan mountaintop... in late summer, when you actually have full dark for an hour or two (depending on latitude) but it's still fairly warm.
Bonus points for the aurora borealis on the horizon if you happen to get lucky at that time of year.
You've got to be lucky anyway (or in the interior) to avoid overcast skies anyway...
That's exactly it. Gold farmers are not the equivalent of large corporations in the real world that leverage economies of scale.
Gold farmers are leveraging the difference in labor costs between different areas. It's labor arbitrage, plain and simple.
One thing to add -- not all gold sellers are gold farmers. There are other ways of generating in-game currency than taking advantage of labor rate differences. I think these are the cases he's referring to, the non-farming gold sellers who make their money the old fashioned way -- by being at the top of a organization devoted to making money.
Oh, so *you're* the asshole who started the commercialization, by shady interpretation of a use policy you agreed to, no less.
I bet next you'll tell us that you're also the asshole who sent the first spam.
jk... mostly.
Well, the idea came naturally to me when I started to respond to the prior poster about the column needing to be very wide as the atmosphere got less dense. And then I got to thinking about how marshmallows get their lightness, and I thought maybe it would be applicable to the problem at hand.
And then I realized I hadn't had dinner yet, and that I'd better call my wife on my way home and ask her to start the charcoal for the grill. And then I started thinking about s'moresr,because it's summer, and I'll be grilling over charcoal tonight, and I just couldn't help myself.
Sometimes the muse takes over and we just sit, trancelike, while the genius flows from our fingertips to the keyboard. I don't think that really was me typing, nor was it my idea... it was like some force greater than man itself took ahold of me -- just used me as a conduit for brilliance. Kind of like Noah's ark, I guess... it is not my place to question why. It is only my place to build it, as directed by what can only be the divine inspiration of He of the Tangled Forkful, the FSM.
But seriously, if you think that was thought up ahead of time, and I'd been waiting to use... don;t you think it'd be a little more polished?
It was getting ass-busting undergrads to do underpaid work while I reap the profits. Mwua-ha-ha.
Seriously... there were and still are lots of opportunities for the bright and lazy to put the work of their fellow students to good use. Running a sysadmin service was a good one when I was in school.
Laziness, after all, is the driver of much innovation.
Wrong. Bigger class sizes == fewer teachers == less union dues (for the 100% cynical side).
Bigger class sizes == less demand for teachers == lower teacher pay (for the somewhat cynical side).
Bigger class sizes == less individual attention for the students == the brightest (and dimmest) bulbs don't get as good of an education (for the naive/optimist side).
That's ridiculous. If Jupiter is 8-12% He bv, and 88-92% H bv, then Helium-filled balloons would *sink* in the Jupiter upper atmosphere... what use would that be?
Oooh, ooh, I have a magical fantasy plan that would have us create balloons so as to SINK in Jupiter's gravitational well!
Yeah, good thinking, buddy.
/deliberately obtuse
You naysayers will be crying when I build my giant space marshmallow chain.
100 m wide? I don't think so. The trick is to fill them with your lighter-than-air mixture at the local atmospheric density... create, heat, inflate, rigidify, cool. And 100 m is just about right, from the base all the way up.
When it gets too high, then you simply start at your Chambered Heuristic Orbital Clasp Object -- Ladder Attachment Terminal Endpoint, and work your way back down.
The big problem I see is the earthbound anchor, but I believe professor William T. Graham (a pasty-white fellow my less couth colleagues refer to as a 'cracker') is working on a solution to that.
All of humanity shall be as neanderthals around the campfire, envying the colossal testament to my intellectual superiority. Plus, they'll probably have a hankering for S'mores, what with the figurative campfire and all.
Biology is really chemistry.
Chemistry is really physics.
Physics is really math.
Math is really... hard.
Why would a well-designed voting machine require crypto?
Seriously, why should anything on the machine ever need to be encrypted?
Hell, I only got a degree so I could put off working another six years (what? change majors a few times, and you too can turn a four-year stint in lazy paradise into six years).
I think this is a great idea. I bet it's pretty damn cost-effective, too. We could improve results while cutting some of the overripe plums in school budgets.
I wonder how much something like this would be resisted by the teachers' unions? It seems the teachers are big fans, since it motivates the students... but in the long run, I could see the unions getting very upset, since it allows for some method of improving education that does not stem directly from teachers.