With X-Plane you can simulate re-entries as well. Not sure how realistic they are, but it's an otherwise very interesting sim - worth a look. It's also available for Win, OS X and Linux.
This reminds me an awful lot of an article I read in Scientific American on some research done at the University of Southern California. They did quite a lot of work with omega-conotoxin (an N-type Calcium channel blocker), a.k.a. SNX-111 and as far as I know, it has already been through certain clinical trials (see Prialt), although I am not sure about the current status of approval or the results of those trials.
This article probably refers to research done on a different conotoxin, but I would recommend the Sciam article to anyone interested in learning about the mechanisms of action of these toxins. I do not know if Sciam provides free access to their archives (I doubt it), but it would be the April 2005 issue (A Toxin Against Pain).
But with the same argumentation, wouldn't one then also come to the conclusion that CD prices are massively inflated, as are prices for the DRM-laden digital variants?
If we found it acceptable to do experimentation on brain-dead humans that couldn't feel any pain, then animals would surely be acceptable in the same situation. In those cases, the guardian/legal representative/"owner" would be the one to consent.
Well, I think that it's tricky to make such direct comparisons between humans and animals. The grandparent poster was basically playing on the point that animals can't give consent, which is correct. You bring up the issue of consent by proxy - so direct family members in humans or owners in animals. I would choose another example in humans than brain-dead individuals. Let's take minors as an example. At the moment, generally research on children and adolescents is only permitted if there is a reasonable chance that it will improve some condition that they have. This stands in contrast to the ethical thinking in adult clinical research.
Now, drawing the parallels you did between humans and animals, the direct conclusion would be to extend this thinking to animals - namely that you can only experiment on them if there is a chance that you can improve some pre-existing medical condition. This of course is based on the premise that one can equate humans to animals. I do not personally think this is the case and the majority of people would agree (I am also not saying that you wouldn't either). So once you seperate humans from animals in an ethical sense, you are freed from the problems of 'informed consent'. This however isn't a carte blanche to do whatever you feel like in whatever manner you choose with them. You make the agument that it comes down to who is doing the testing, but I would argue that the central point of animal research is the perceived potential benefit to humans, weighed against the pain and suffering that will be caused to the animals. It comes down to a balance between profit to humans and suffering to the test animals. Of course, this leads to one ethical dilemma after another, as well as discussions of 'What research is useful to humans?', but this is a topic for another discussion. I think that we primarlly agree, though.;)
Although there is the hipocratic oath in which doctors swear to do no harm where this practially kills people (even though things like surgery actually violate the oath...).
Uh, what?
In many states, the definition of dead includes when brain activity ceases. So, procedures like what I mentioned above can not be performed on people in those states.
Um, no. A patient is dead if either or both irreversible cardiac and brain death are present. In the acute setting, a full evaluation of brain function is often not possible and so one often uses cardiac function - or lack thereof - as a guideline in termination of resuscitative efforts. This is a safe assumption to make in most cases, as the brain is much more sensitive to anoxic damage than the heart is, so by the time a full cardiac death with associated asystole has manifested itself, the patient will have already suffered an irreversible brain death. One classic exception to this rule though is hypothermia. There is an old saying in emergency medicine that a patient isn't dead until he's warm and dead. The rationale behind this is that hypothermic patients really can display all the signs of death, but following re-warming and appropriate resuscitation survive to live a normal life.
Common use of this procedure would change the definition of dead dramatically.
I don't see how this procedure would change one thing in the definition of death. The article is quite light on the details and has no references from what I can see, but if I understand correctly, they are using hypothermia as a means to reduce metabolic load and hence gain time. As stated above, hypothermic patients are always rewarmed during resuscitation, so at the latest when a normal body temperature is reached, one would be able to distinguish the two groups of hypothermic patients from one another. Of course, what are the odds that someone would be intentionally put into this "suspended state" (which the article states lasts in the order of hours) and then left for dead.
What happens if a doctor does this without permission to someone who will not even take a blood donation because of their faith? This also had the unfortunate situation of being a 'neat' idea. 'neat' ideas in a hospital setting are dangerous.
The more I read your post, the more I think you're a troll or just have some serious grudge against the medical professions, but I've invested too much time in this post to stop now. During a resuscitation, one always puts the survival of the patient first in the absence of other wishes either by next of kin or in the form of an advance directive. If the treating team is going to be wrong about the patient's wishes, they want to err on the side of life. Your argument is absurd, because there is absolutely no way you can know what the patient's wishes are if their family or friends are not present and there are no advance directives to be found. Are you supposed to withhold donor blood from every trauma victim that comes through the doors on the off-chance that you might be treating a Jehovah's Witness?
Just for your info, planes have been landing themselves for ages. Autoland is used routinely in very low visibility conditions where it would not otherwise be legal to land the aircraft manually, unless you were using special equipment like a HUGS. If you're interested on learning more, search for Cat III autoland in Google..
I am pretty indifferent to whether.xxx gets approval or not, but the argument that it will make it easier for kids to find porn they shouldn't be looking at is absurd, in my opinion. Nearly every half-computer-litterate kid on the planet knows how to use Google and would be able to find whatever they may be looking for much more precisely and quickly than a new domain extension would ever let them.
If you want to combat pornography and restrict children's access to it, you need to start elsewhere.
Yes, well one factor is the storage capacity, but let's not forget the size. At least for me, the smaller form factor of the Nano makes it much more attractive than the normal iPod and I don't think that I'm alone. These are really two distinct product lines with usually quite distinct user bases.
On a slightly different topic, I wonder when, if ever, we will see storage alternatives you can actually use to make a full backup of a modern hard drive. I don't know about others here, but HD-DVD wouldn't even cut it for my laptop's comparatively small drive (by today's standards), let alone the 300-500 GB drives making their way into everyone's computers nowadays.
I guess it's always been like this, thinking back to the floppy, CD, DVD, etc. Anyway. Not to say that HD-DVD won't help, but I guess the question is if discs are even the right medium for data backup. It would definitely be one of the most attractive, if it had the capacity. Anyway..
Although I cringed when I read the article summary, this does underline how AMD has pushed Intel into a corner and I for one will feel a lot less sorry for Intel when they get crushed by AMD.;-)
Yeah and while we're at it, the term "biceps" is ambiguous, since you have "biceps muscles" in both your arms and legs (M. biceps brachii caput longum et brevis and M. biceps femoris caput longum et brevis).
Am I the only one who cringed when they read....
on
WMF Flaw not a Backdoor
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
But spyware and keyloggers are written for Mac OS as for other Unixes, and could be installed on a compromised system by a worm or even by a Trojan that is installed with user permission.
Gee, who would think? This statement gives the impression that Unix is especially vulnerable to this issue and that there is some solution to this problem. The fact that Unix's user segregation is one of the cleanest and most secure out there obviously doesn't factor into his security assessment and what I really wonder is what his suggestion for changing this "vulnerability" is. If he's looking for a technical one, I think he'll be looking for a while, since there is none. The human is always a security risk on the system. The question is only to what degree. Technology can help minimize the damage but in the end, it's always the same problem.
Well for starters, nearly all the images on their auction were taken directly from Apple's site. On top of that, their whole page layout is basically a 1:1 replica of Apple's page, which could easily be construed by Apple as misleading marketing practices.
What about the research benefits?
on
Faster DNA Testing
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Of course, the OP did not mention the huge positive effects accelerated PCR will have on research (particularly in molecular biology and biochemistry). It's fine recognizing new technology's potential for misuse, but this article's summary is just plain FUD.
What happened to the innovation?
on
Palm's Mistakes
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
US Robotics and then Palm had a great thing going for them. My first Palm was the Palm Pilot Professional back in the late 90's and it was a blast to use and it boasted a great feature set and unbeatable simplicity. Looking back at the introduction of Windows CE-based devices, I think this was Palm's primary advantage. Windows CE has a huge potential, but for many things, it's just too complex, at least in my opinion. Of course, for some power users, this complexity is welcome, but many people just want to hit a button and get their contacts and don't want to have to make 7 clicks to get there. Palm of course knew that they had a good OS that many people liked, but unfortunately, their platform has been stagnating for years.
Today I still can't believe that they never introduced proper handwriting recognition. Of course you can enter data faster and more precisely with their Graffiti system, but let's face it, nearly everyone would prefer using their own handwriting. Palm should have been releasing new API's and SDK's to extend the potential of their platform, but instead, they made incremental improvements to their hardware and software, hoping that their past dominance and legacy would keep them afloat.
The book isn't closed on Palm yet, but if they want to be around in five years, something has to change - fast.
Slashdot Mirror
With X-Plane you can simulate re-entries as well. Not sure how realistic they are, but it's an otherwise very interesting sim - worth a look. It's also available for Win, OS X and Linux.
This reminds me an awful lot of an article I read in Scientific American on some research done at the University of Southern California. They did quite a lot of work with omega-conotoxin (an N-type Calcium channel blocker), a.k.a. SNX-111 and as far as I know, it has already been through certain clinical trials (see Prialt), although I am not sure about the current status of approval or the results of those trials. This article probably refers to research done on a different conotoxin, but I would recommend the Sciam article to anyone interested in learning about the mechanisms of action of these toxins. I do not know if Sciam provides free access to their archives (I doubt it), but it would be the April 2005 issue (A Toxin Against Pain).
But with the same argumentation, wouldn't one then also come to the conclusion that CD prices are massively inflated, as are prices for the DRM-laden digital variants?
Yes, but it's the mRNA that is interfered with, not the tRNA.
If we found it acceptable to do experimentation on brain-dead humans that couldn't feel any pain, then animals would surely be acceptable in the same situation. In those cases, the guardian/legal representative/"owner" would be the one to consent.
Well, I think that it's tricky to make such direct comparisons between humans and animals. The grandparent poster was basically playing on the point that animals can't give consent, which is correct. You bring up the issue of consent by proxy - so direct family members in humans or owners in animals. I would choose another example in humans than brain-dead individuals. Let's take minors as an example. At the moment, generally research on children and adolescents is only permitted if there is a reasonable chance that it will improve some condition that they have. This stands in contrast to the ethical thinking in adult clinical research.
Now, drawing the parallels you did between humans and animals, the direct conclusion would be to extend this thinking to animals - namely that you can only experiment on them if there is a chance that you can improve some pre-existing medical condition. This of course is based on the premise that one can equate humans to animals. I do not personally think this is the case and the majority of people would agree (I am also not saying that you wouldn't either). So once you seperate humans from animals in an ethical sense, you are freed from the problems of 'informed consent'. This however isn't a carte blanche to do whatever you feel like in whatever manner you choose with them. You make the agument that it comes down to who is doing the testing, but I would argue that the central point of animal research is the perceived potential benefit to humans, weighed against the pain and suffering that will be caused to the animals. It comes down to a balance between profit to humans and suffering to the test animals. Of course, this leads to one ethical dilemma after another, as well as discussions of 'What research is useful to humans?', but this is a topic for another discussion. I think that we primarlly agree, though. ;)
Um, with that sort of reasoning all animal testing would be unethical / impermissible.
Although there is the hipocratic oath in which doctors swear to do no harm where this practially kills people (even though things like surgery actually violate the oath...).
Uh, what?
In many states, the definition of dead includes when brain activity ceases. So, procedures like what I mentioned above can not be performed on people in those states.
Um, no. A patient is dead if either or both irreversible cardiac and brain death are present. In the acute setting, a full evaluation of brain function is often not possible and so one often uses cardiac function - or lack thereof - as a guideline in termination of resuscitative efforts. This is a safe assumption to make in most cases, as the brain is much more sensitive to anoxic damage than the heart is, so by the time a full cardiac death with associated asystole has manifested itself, the patient will have already suffered an irreversible brain death. One classic exception to this rule though is hypothermia. There is an old saying in emergency medicine that a patient isn't dead until he's warm and dead. The rationale behind this is that hypothermic patients really can display all the signs of death, but following re-warming and appropriate resuscitation survive to live a normal life.
Common use of this procedure would change the definition of dead dramatically.
I don't see how this procedure would change one thing in the definition of death. The article is quite light on the details and has no references from what I can see, but if I understand correctly, they are using hypothermia as a means to reduce metabolic load and hence gain time. As stated above, hypothermic patients are always rewarmed during resuscitation, so at the latest when a normal body temperature is reached, one would be able to distinguish the two groups of hypothermic patients from one another. Of course, what are the odds that someone would be intentionally put into this "suspended state" (which the article states lasts in the order of hours) and then left for dead.
What happens if a doctor does this without permission to someone who will not even take a blood donation because of their faith? This also had the unfortunate situation of being a 'neat' idea. 'neat' ideas in a hospital setting are dangerous.
The more I read your post, the more I think you're a troll or just have some serious grudge against the medical professions, but I've invested too much time in this post to stop now. During a resuscitation, one always puts the survival of the patient first in the absence of other wishes either by next of kin or in the form of an advance directive. If the treating team is going to be wrong about the patient's wishes, they want to err on the side of life. Your argument is absurd, because there is absolutely no way you can know what the patient's wishes are if their family or friends are not present and there are no advance directives to be found. Are you supposed to withhold donor blood from every trauma victim that comes through the doors on the off-chance that you might be treating a Jehovah's Witness?
Just for your info, planes have been landing themselves for ages. Autoland is used routinely in very low visibility conditions where it would not otherwise be legal to land the aircraft manually, unless you were using special equipment like a HUGS. If you're interested on learning more, search for Cat III autoland in Google..
I am pretty indifferent to whether .xxx gets approval or not, but the argument that it will make it easier for kids to find porn they shouldn't be looking at is absurd, in my opinion. Nearly every half-computer-litterate kid on the planet knows how to use Google and would be able to find whatever they may be looking for much more precisely and quickly than a new domain extension would ever let them.
If you want to combat pornography and restrict children's access to it, you need to start elsewhere.
Just because he may have a vested interest in continued PC demand, it doesn't mean that he's not right.
Yes, well one factor is the storage capacity, but let's not forget the size. At least for me, the smaller form factor of the Nano makes it much more attractive than the normal iPod and I don't think that I'm alone. These are really two distinct product lines with usually quite distinct user bases.
On a slightly different topic, I wonder when, if ever, we will see storage alternatives you can actually use to make a full backup of a modern hard drive. I don't know about others here, but HD-DVD wouldn't even cut it for my laptop's comparatively small drive (by today's standards), let alone the 300-500 GB drives making their way into everyone's computers nowadays.
I guess it's always been like this, thinking back to the floppy, CD, DVD, etc. Anyway. Not to say that HD-DVD won't help, but I guess the question is if discs are even the right medium for data backup. It would definitely be one of the most attractive, if it had the capacity. Anyway..
Although I cringed when I read the article summary, this does underline how AMD has pushed Intel into a corner and I for one will feel a lot less sorry for Intel when they get crushed by AMD. ;-)
Sorry, brevis should be breve. Damn latin declinations. ;-)
Yeah and while we're at it, the term "biceps" is ambiguous, since you have "biceps muscles" in both your arms and legs (M. biceps brachii caput longum et brevis and M. biceps femoris caput longum et brevis).
the word scientificAL?
This is true, of course, but where user management and segregation are concerned, most Unixes are very similar, at least as far as I know.
But spyware and keyloggers are written for Mac OS as for other Unixes, and could be installed on a compromised system by a worm or even by a Trojan that is installed with user permission.
Gee, who would think? This statement gives the impression that Unix is especially vulnerable to this issue and that there is some solution to this problem. The fact that Unix's user segregation is one of the cleanest and most secure out there obviously doesn't factor into his security assessment and what I really wonder is what his suggestion for changing this "vulnerability" is. If he's looking for a technical one, I think he'll be looking for a while, since there is none. The human is always a security risk on the system. The question is only to what degree. Technology can help minimize the damage but in the end, it's always the same problem.
Well for starters, nearly all the images on their auction were taken directly from Apple's site. On top of that, their whole page layout is basically a 1:1 replica of Apple's page, which could easily be construed by Apple as misleading marketing practices.
would a post like this be modded "Interesting".
Of course, the OP did not mention the huge positive effects accelerated PCR will have on research (particularly in molecular biology and biochemistry). It's fine recognizing new technology's potential for misuse, but this article's summary is just plain FUD.
US Robotics and then Palm had a great thing going for them. My first Palm was the Palm Pilot Professional back in the late 90's and it was a blast to use and it boasted a great feature set and unbeatable simplicity. Looking back at the introduction of Windows CE-based devices, I think this was Palm's primary advantage. Windows CE has a huge potential, but for many things, it's just too complex, at least in my opinion. Of course, for some power users, this complexity is welcome, but many people just want to hit a button and get their contacts and don't want to have to make 7 clicks to get there. Palm of course knew that they had a good OS that many people liked, but unfortunately, their platform has been stagnating for years.
Today I still can't believe that they never introduced proper handwriting recognition. Of course you can enter data faster and more precisely with their Graffiti system, but let's face it, nearly everyone would prefer using their own handwriting. Palm should have been releasing new API's and SDK's to extend the potential of their platform, but instead, they made incremental improvements to their hardware and software, hoping that their past dominance and legacy would keep them afloat.
The book isn't closed on Palm yet, but if they want to be around in five years, something has to change - fast.