Wait wait... you have an accepted scientific theory of ID? Please, please tell me. I'd love to hear it, as would any other scientist.
On the other hand, you're probably just full of shit like all the rest of the IDiots. A scientific theory of ID doesn't exist. People much more respected in the "field" of ID than you (ie, Michael Behe) have completely and utterly failed to come up with a scientific theory of ID without changing the meaning of science so drastically that astrology and homeopathy also fall under it. You, and any other moron who says they have a scientific theory of ID, are full of shit.
Certainly a false positive is a problem. A friend of mine had a positive test for HIV come back after donating blood, which surprised him because he does not engage in the sort of risky behavior that typically puts one at risk for HIV infection.
From the article, it sounds like he only got two tests for HIV, so it's possible the first one was just a false positive. However, the description of him as suicidal and the fact that he waited so long before getting a second test seems to indicate that either he doesn't know much about HIV transmission or he did engage in behavior that put him at HIV infection risk.
Either way, I'm sure that researchers will find something interesting if he's willing to help out. If it wasn't a false positive and his body was able to clear itself of HIV, that would be quite an accomplishment.
Actually, knowing a bit about the mechanisms both the Yersinia pestis bacteria and HIV use to cause illness, it's not surprising that developing a resistance to one causes resistance to the other. Both attack the same T cells in the immune system, and both even bind to the same CD4 receptor of the T cells. Thus, mutations in the CD4 receptor that are still functional to the organism but disallow the binding by the pathogen would create a form of immunity.
Certainly, not every form of plague immunity would translate to HIV immunity, but because of the similarities between the two pathogens, some types do transfer.
I seem to remember interning for (ironically enough) an insurance company's IT department a few summers ago and hearing about how they took out liability insurance on pretty much all of the open-source tools they used. This even included things like Perl, where the chances of being sued are fairly small, just to be absolutely sure. Furthermore, it sounded like they'd been doing this for a while.
I suppose that their policies might not have covered the costs to get it into compliance and other such expenses. Still, I'm sure that huge companies like IBM have been careful to insure against such possibilites for years. It would be foolish for them not to.
Normal nucleic acids are composed of sugar, base and phosphate. PNA as described in the article replaces the sugar and phosphate with a peptide (I assume with the R group replaced with the A, T, G or C). The replacement of the sugar-phosphate backbone with a peptide makes the nucleic acid soluble in fat, rather than soluble in water -- the ultimate goal of using PNA rather than DNA or RNA.
And no, I do not believe there are other life forms based on PNA.
The real question here seems to be, "Will Samsung actually change their practices?" In many high-profile anti-trust cases, it seems that the government will fine the company involved, but then the company goes back to the same old tactics of price fixing and other monopolistic behavior. How does the DOJ propose to prevent Samsung from illegal tactics in the future?
Honestly, I'd put most of the "Customer Fault" ones as the fault of the theaters, as well. It's not that hard to control an audience. Bars/Clubs/Concerts throw out rowdy customers all the time - they realize that they'll sacrifice a limited amount of revenue from the obnoxious customers and make it up by increased revenue from people who hate the obnoxious customers.
Of course, most bars or clubs cater to their clientele. Some don't allow anyone in not wearing a suit, some activly encourage public nudity and debauchary. Theaters are perfectly capable of doing likewise, and indeed I've heard of theaters in larger markets than I live in promoting disturbance-free theatergoing by throwing out those who don't comply to their standards of "no phones, no being loud, etc".
However, the path of least resistance for the theater owners seems to be to allow this sort of nonsense to continue, and the path of least resistnace for customers seems to be to not bitch loudly enough to the management and instead bitch loudly on Slashdot. If enough customers start saying "Hey, I paid ten bucks for this ticket, I want it quiet or I want a refund," managers would eventually get the hint.
There's a huge misunderstanding that I see again and again about the federal policy on stem cell research funds. It doesn't just ban federal funding for stem cell research. It bans federal funding of any kind for research at an institution where stem cell research is performed. That might sound the same, but there's a difference.
Suppose I were independantly wealthy. Suppose I wanted to give $1 million to a large research institution (like, say, the University of Michigan) for use in stem-cell research. If they accepted my money and used it for stem cell research they would not receive any federal funding of any kind, not even for other, non-stem-cell research.
If the policy just restricted the use of federal funds for stem cell research, it woudl be acceptable to many people. But the current policy is much more damaging, and effectively ends all stem cell research except by institutions established specifically for that purpose.
When studying speciation, we learned of types of fruit flies that lived on different types of fruit. While they could produce fertile offspring, (say, from in-vitro fertilizaton) they would never mate in the wild, and thus were considered different species.
When a journalism major at my school (large, public university) looks to complete his or her natural science general education requirements, do you suppose that he or she has to take a science class "for majors"? When any non-science majors take science classes, do you suppose they have to take the classes that are "for majors"?
No and no. On the other hand, when I as a biology major take, say, a psychology course or an english course, I wind up with a bunch of psychology and english majors in my classes.
Instead of taking real science classes, nonmajors take "How things work" or "Technology and Society". I help TA a biology-for-nonmajors class, and the class is basically high school biology. Osmosis? Diffusion? The metric system? These are things they should have learned twice in high school! Instead, we're wasting their time on it in college, when we could be teaching them how to set up an experiment, what the use of controls are and how to tell good data from bad data.
And don't think that the so-called "lab courses" required do anything to help. They're basically used to demonstrate a specific principle rather than help develop a scientific sense in students. On any given lab course, a correct hypothesis can easily be made if the student had done the readings. Of course, not all labs even require hypotheses.
When you don't require journalists to know anything about science, why is it a surprise that most journalists don't know anything about science? Bad science in jounalism is just a symptom of poor science education throughout the United States.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait wait... you have an accepted scientific theory of ID? Please, please tell me. I'd love to hear it, as would any other scientist.
On the other hand, you're probably just full of shit like all the rest of the IDiots. A scientific theory of ID doesn't exist. People much more respected in the "field" of ID than you (ie, Michael Behe) have completely and utterly failed to come up with a scientific theory of ID without changing the meaning of science so drastically that astrology and homeopathy also fall under it. You, and any other moron who says they have a scientific theory of ID, are full of shit.
Certainly a false positive is a problem. A friend of mine had a positive test for HIV come back after donating blood, which surprised him because he does not engage in the sort of risky behavior that typically puts one at risk for HIV infection.
From the article, it sounds like he only got two tests for HIV, so it's possible the first one was just a false positive. However, the description of him as suicidal and the fact that he waited so long before getting a second test seems to indicate that either he doesn't know much about HIV transmission or he did engage in behavior that put him at HIV infection risk.
Either way, I'm sure that researchers will find something interesting if he's willing to help out. If it wasn't a false positive and his body was able to clear itself of HIV, that would be quite an accomplishment.
Actually, knowing a bit about the mechanisms both the Yersinia pestis bacteria and HIV use to cause illness, it's not surprising that developing a resistance to one causes resistance to the other. Both attack the same T cells in the immune system, and both even bind to the same CD4 receptor of the T cells. Thus, mutations in the CD4 receptor that are still functional to the organism but disallow the binding by the pathogen would create a form of immunity.
Certainly, not every form of plague immunity would translate to HIV immunity, but because of the similarities between the two pathogens, some types do transfer.
I seem to remember interning for (ironically enough) an insurance company's IT department a few summers ago and hearing about how they took out liability insurance on pretty much all of the open-source tools they used. This even included things like Perl, where the chances of being sued are fairly small, just to be absolutely sure. Furthermore, it sounded like they'd been doing this for a while.
I suppose that their policies might not have covered the costs to get it into compliance and other such expenses. Still, I'm sure that huge companies like IBM have been careful to insure against such possibilites for years. It would be foolish for them not to.
Of course they'd look confused... every biologist knows that you won't see Uracil and Thymine in the same nucleic acid strand!
Normal nucleic acids are composed of sugar, base and phosphate. PNA as described in the article replaces the sugar and phosphate with a peptide (I assume with the R group replaced with the A, T, G or C). The replacement of the sugar-phosphate backbone with a peptide makes the nucleic acid soluble in fat, rather than soluble in water -- the ultimate goal of using PNA rather than DNA or RNA.
And no, I do not believe there are other life forms based on PNA.
The real question here seems to be, "Will Samsung actually change their practices?" In many high-profile anti-trust cases, it seems that the government will fine the company involved, but then the company goes back to the same old tactics of price fixing and other monopolistic behavior. How does the DOJ propose to prevent Samsung from illegal tactics in the future?
Honestly, I'd put most of the "Customer Fault" ones as the fault of the theaters, as well. It's not that hard to control an audience. Bars/Clubs/Concerts throw out rowdy customers all the time - they realize that they'll sacrifice a limited amount of revenue from the obnoxious customers and make it up by increased revenue from people who hate the obnoxious customers.
Of course, most bars or clubs cater to their clientele. Some don't allow anyone in not wearing a suit, some activly encourage public nudity and debauchary. Theaters are perfectly capable of doing likewise, and indeed I've heard of theaters in larger markets than I live in promoting disturbance-free theatergoing by throwing out those who don't comply to their standards of "no phones, no being loud, etc".
However, the path of least resistance for the theater owners seems to be to allow this sort of nonsense to continue, and the path of least resistnace for customers seems to be to not bitch loudly enough to the management and instead bitch loudly on Slashdot. If enough customers start saying "Hey, I paid ten bucks for this ticket, I want it quiet or I want a refund," managers would eventually get the hint.
There's a huge misunderstanding that I see again and again about the federal policy on stem cell research funds. It doesn't just ban federal funding for stem cell research. It bans federal funding of any kind for research at an institution where stem cell research is performed. That might sound the same, but there's a difference.
Suppose I were independantly wealthy. Suppose I wanted to give $1 million to a large research institution (like, say, the University of Michigan) for use in stem-cell research. If they accepted my money and used it for stem cell research they would not receive any federal funding of any kind, not even for other, non-stem-cell research.
If the policy just restricted the use of federal funds for stem cell research, it woudl be acceptable to many people. But the current policy is much more damaging, and effectively ends all stem cell research except by institutions established specifically for that purpose.
When studying speciation, we learned of types of fruit flies that lived on different types of fruit. While they could produce fertile offspring, (say, from in-vitro fertilizaton) they would never mate in the wild, and thus were considered different species.
Could this standard be applied to nerds? Hmmm....
When a journalism major at my school (large, public university) looks to complete his or her natural science general education requirements, do you suppose that he or she has to take a science class "for majors"? When any non-science majors take science classes, do you suppose they have to take the classes that are "for majors"? No and no. On the other hand, when I as a biology major take, say, a psychology course or an english course, I wind up with a bunch of psychology and english majors in my classes. Instead of taking real science classes, nonmajors take "How things work" or "Technology and Society". I help TA a biology-for-nonmajors class, and the class is basically high school biology. Osmosis? Diffusion? The metric system? These are things they should have learned twice in high school! Instead, we're wasting their time on it in college, when we could be teaching them how to set up an experiment, what the use of controls are and how to tell good data from bad data. And don't think that the so-called "lab courses" required do anything to help. They're basically used to demonstrate a specific principle rather than help develop a scientific sense in students. On any given lab course, a correct hypothesis can easily be made if the student had done the readings. Of course, not all labs even require hypotheses. When you don't require journalists to know anything about science, why is it a surprise that most journalists don't know anything about science? Bad science in jounalism is just a symptom of poor science education throughout the United States.