Tridimity

There really doesn't. Society could be divided into liberal and conservative, pro- and anti- welfare state, respectively - on the terms outlined in my previous post. Let the working and lower middle classes (and those of higher social class who consent to the welfare state) get on with living independently of the upper middle classes and the super-rich. Let the upper middle classes and the super rich get on with living unburdened by the needs of the lower social classes. Everybody would be happy this way - this is, after all, what each social group is asking for! Working class people, those dependent on benefits for their survival, and the lower middle classes would no longer feel ashamed of their societal position; they could be proud sponsors of the welfare state, helping others and being helped in their turn. No more feeling patronised or feeling the condescension of the upper classes. The upper classes would no longer need to put up with the demands of the working classes. The two groups could co-exist and would have an absolute financial separation; this could be achieved and maintained peacefully and by democratic process. Let's see who is actually generating profit and whose social system is correct. Are you with me?

Why aren't intratumoural injections of chemotherapeutic agents used routinely in the clinic? There are some issues with diffusion of the drug when administered in this way, however a more targeted approach would prevent the side-effects of systemic administration of chemotherapy by IV injection or by oral administration. I can't seem to find any data on the efficacy of intratumoural versus IV injections of chemotherapy in the literature, although intratumoural injections feature in some in vivo models and clinical trials. Intratumoural injection would allow for the delivery of viruses (1), RNAi (2), miRs (3), radioactive microspheres (4) or classical chemotherapeutic agents targeted against tumours. Another potential advantage is that the drugs could probably be used at higher concentrations than is currently possible with drugs administered systemically. 1. Harrington KJ, Vile RG, Melcher A, Chester J & Pandha HS (2010) Clinical trials with oncolytic reovirus: Moving beyond phase I into combinations with standard therapeutics. Cytokine & Growth Factors Reviews 21 (2-3): 91-98 2. Pecot CV, Calin GA, Coleman RL, Lopez-Berestein G & Sood AK (2011) RNA intereference in the clinic: challenges and future directions. Nature Reviews Cancer 11: 59-67 3. Biagioni F, Ben-Moshe NB, Fontemaggi G, Canu V, Mori F, Antonni B, Di Benedetto A, Santoro R, Germoni S, De Angelis F, Cambria A, Avraham R, Grasso G, Strano S, Muti P, Mottolese M, Yarden Y, Domany E & Blandino G (2012) miR-10b*, a master inhibitor of the cell cycle, is down-regulated in human breast tumours. EMBO Mol Med 4(11): 1214-1229 4. Morawska ME (2013) Imaging: Radioactive microspheres - see and destroy. Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology 10: 124

You would need something that can react with one or more of the below: ChrysotileMg3(Si2O5)(OH)4 Amosite Fe7Si8O22(OH)2 Crocidolite Na2Fe2+3Fe3+2Si8O22(OH)2 Tremolite Ca2Mg5Si8O22(OH)2 Actinolite Ca2(Mg, Fe)5(Si8O22)(OH)2 Anthophyllite (Mg, Fe)7Si8O22(OH)2 The substance would need to be able to penetrate deep into lung tissue and would need to be unreactive against other compounds found in the body. The reaction products would need to be safely broken down and excreted from the body. Any ideas?

It's not possible to know with any certainty from symptoms alone, a scan is required. I'm not sure how the politics of Medicare works but don't give up on this.

I'm guessing you have not spent any period of time living on welfare. It's not fun. It just about suffices to cover shelter and food costs, as it is designed to do. This is no luxury option: I doubt that many people, if anyone at all, makes the conscious decision to choose to rely on state welfare payments. Humans usually crave and seek out opportunities to work, when that work is pitched at the right level - just challenging enough to sustain interest but not so challenging that it is beyond their abilities. In this context, individuals become temporarily dependent on welfare payments when they are experiencing a period of unemployment. If there are people who actually believe that they are better off relying on state welfare than on their own merits and industriousness, then I feel sorry for them because they have been cheated out of their own true worth and their own opportunities for growth. I do not think it helps the situation any to demonise these people - much better to reach out to them and to provide them with work opportunities. The vast majority of people who come to need to use welfare at one point or other will have paid taxes into the welfare system also. There is no real dichotomy here, it's just a simple safety-net mechanism. The only people who fail to see its benefits are those who will never need to make use of it: conservatives. Proposal for an interesting social experiment: give citizens two options at election time - to be wholly in or out of the welfare system. Being committed to the welfare system means continuing to contribute tax payments and, in turn, grants eligibility to welfare payments in times of personal financial hardship; these people are not permitted to work for those who opt out of the welfare system. Those whom opt out are allowed to keep all of their personal fortune and are not permitted to pay taxes! However, they are no longer allowed to seek financial aid from the state should they so require; they are also not allowed to employ anyone who has opted into the welfare system. Liberals can get on with being liberal, conservatives can get on with being conservative - everyone's happy, right? So, what do you think would happen? I reckon everyone would soon realise that it is the 99%, the ordinary workers, who are generating profit - not the 1% of CEOs and super-rich, who are expendable.

I agree that government inefficiencies and futile attempts at micromanagement are frustrating - however, they have nothing to do with the desirability of making modest financial welfare provisions for those members of society most in need, and everything to do with misplaced good intentions and a lack of forethought. Your argument seems to rest on the idea that a combination of personal responsibility and community support networks should suffice in preventing the realisation of dire financial/social situations. The plight of well-intentioned homeless people, without social connections, is evidence enough that these two factors cannot be relied on as a failsafe mechanism. The safety nets provided by state welfare are not a luxury for these individuals - they are a necessity - they mean the difference between life or death. I know you might not appreciate the reality of this at an emotional level, even if you acknowledge it at an intellectual level, because your relatively comfortable Western lifestyle with all the privileges that you take for granted form a buffer to keep you out of touch with these realities. Try walking a mile in the shoes of people who have and want to work hard and who have pursued education to the tertiary level in an attempt to develop themselves personally and professionally so as to be able to contribute in a wholsesome way to society - and yet who find themselves unemployed as a result of factors beyond their own control. Some people experience difficulties in maintaining robust social and community support networks - would you condemn these people to go without help when they fall on hard times? If not - state help is essentially nothing more than the mutual financial aid shared between neighbours (citizens all over the US) - the only downside is the associated cost of administration. I think most people would agree that paying that administration cost is worth the result, which is a civilised and caring society. Without that mutual support between citizens, you don't have a society - what you have is merely individuals sharing the same geographical dimensions. I darn well would hope that a single mother and her child would be protected by the state - I would expect no less for a family member, why would I expect less for a fellow citizen? I guess it depends what you want: do you want a society, or do you want a group of people sharing a piece of land and scratching out their own individual existences alone? I fully agree that people ought not to abuse the welfare system - it should be used only as a temporary solution - but actually, living on welfare is not enjoyable, the majority of people do not choose it as a lifestyle as I think you consider they do.

Just came across this awesome anatomy series by anatomist Dr. Gunther von Hagens and pathologist Prof. John Lee, available via Channel 4 On Demand and on YouTube: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/anatomy-for-beginners/ http://www.youtube.com/show/anatomyforbeginners Lesson 1. Movement Lesson 2. Circulation Lesson 3. Digestion Lesson 4. Reproduction Note: do not watch if squeamish or if you have moral concerns regarding human dissection. Hopefully nobody else has previously posted links to the same videos; I tried searching for 'Hagens' and 'Anatomy for Beginners' within the Forum site and this gave negatives but then I was temporarily prevented from performing further searches by the time-out mechanism that is in place at this site. I hope also that this does not violate your video-post policy - I am willing to discuss should other members so wish.

I never claimed that the AHA was equivalent to the universal healthcare that we are privileged to have here in the UK. The crux of my argument was that even the reforms to make health insurance more affordable for ordinary people, that are at the centre of the current stalemate in Congress, do not go anywhere near far enough and that the US ought to consider a universal healthcare policy. As for the second point - are you suggesting that anyone who is unfortunate enough not to have support networks of family and friends ought not to receive financial assistance from the state? You seem proud of your own financial independence, and I can understand that, you are probably intelligent and talented and hard-working. These are venerable qualities and ordinarily would mitigate any need to rely on state welfare. However, this simply is not always the case. So please do not take your own personal viewpoint on the undesirability of claiming state welfare and impose it on the millions of intelligent, talented and hard-working people who, because of circumstances beyond their own control (e.g. recession) are unemployed.

Truly glad there is a section of the Federal Government whose job it is to administer basic financial support to those in crsis - no news here? From the tone of your argument I am willing to bet that you have never experienced a period of extreme financial difficulty. I wonder if you would change your tune upon losing your personal fortune/being made unemployed? Would you still encourage the eagles to leave you alone? The way you think about profit-creation is backwards. Sure, there are odd cases of self-made men and women who literally relied on no-one else, employed no-one else. The capitalist model actually involves wealth creation by the workers, the masses, and accruement of that wealth by the CEO. The CEO did not and cannot generate profit without employees. As such, the employees (read, mothers of the fatherless children, above) are the most valuable part of any company but they are hoodwinked into disbelieving their own worth. Helping employees and would-be employees during their time of need is therefore the smart thing to do all-round. It's kind of like in a family. When one family member falls onto hard times, the others chip in to help and are paid back once the person gets back on their feet. Functional families, loving families, do not ostracise that member and say, 'Sorry you have fallen down but we're not prepared to help you, you're a drain on our resources'. Families survive by helping one another across the generations (children helping parents, especially with today's ageing populations in the US and UK, children more than ever need to help their parents). This is where your 'state as mother/father' analogy breaks down. We need our societies to start behaving more like one functional family.

So, essentially, the Republicans (or, rather, a minority of Republicans) are effectively holding the government and, by extension, the rest of the country, to ransom by way of gerrymandering over the Budget - all because they oppose Obamacare? Is that about the extent of it? What I don't understand is, in the 21st Century, how can any one individual citizen or group seriously oppose the concept of affordable healthcare for all? I would argue that even affordable health insurance for all does not go far enough. There is no excuse for any modern economically developed country to not have a robust and high-quality national health service such as we have in the UK. National services not only have obvious direct health and economic benefits for those who use it - they also, by extension, help everyone. If, as I get the impression, the far right Republicans in the US are only concerned about the bottom line - then even ignoring the blatant humanity motive - any US citizen is going to be a consumer of American goods. By helping poorer citizens one is helping the customer base to survive. It's just the smart thing to do. Clearly it is an alien concept to far-right Republicans but - pay attention now - working together constructively and helping one another is beneficial for all. Sure, you may be able to construct big shiny towering buildings and obscene casinos in cities built on the back of the 'American dream'. What good is that if you are not willing to care for the most vulnerable sections of your society in their time of need? Not very civilised, is it? More like the 'American nightmare'. Where is the political spirit in the US? Why aren't people taking to the streets and holding peaceful protests or sit-ins outside Congress? What has happened to the political spirit of the Civil Rights Movement that helped to transform US society and secure equality for black US citizens? Perhaps it is because the US is such a large country and so logistically it is more difficult to organise communication and events between people in distant states who share the same interests but whom are inadequately represented in that place of power concentration, Washington. I feel angry on behalf of economically vulnerable US citizens who are getting a rough deal from government, and I don't even live there. Thank the non-existential Deity.

Oops...needless to say I didn't check the date of the OP

davisdesigns - please do not displace your anger onto CaptainPanic. He/she was only trying to help and provided you with some constructive points of advice. You absolutely cannot allow this person to get away with harming you in this way - if this is indeed what they are doing. First and foremost: do not consume any future food or drink unless you have purchased it fresh from the store in its packaged state. Secondly, home use drugs test kits are available from the FDA: http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/InVitroDiagnostics/DrugsofAbuseTests/ucm125722.htm These will identify some of the most common drugs of abuse present in your urine. Your case is more problematic since you do not know which substance to look for - if the above gives all negatives then it may be worth sending off blood and/or urine samples to a higher education or research institute that has access to mass spec facilities. Thridly, if you get the chance to, it may be worth installing CCTV again and attempting to catch your co-renter in the act of spiking your food (perhaps it would be an idea to inform the police of your case and intentions to film so that you do not get charged with voyeurism and breach of privacy or something). Remember, though, that the person you are accusing may be innocent in all of this and you may have had a simple allergic reaction to one or more of the products in your food item - if so, it would be expected that consumption of the same foodstuff out of a container whose packaging was intact, would give the same result of allergic reaction. This is an easy experiment to do, just buy more at your local store, eat a bit and see what happens. Finally - do not trust anyone. I always give this advice and no-one ever takes it seriously.

Perhaps, then, Google ought to change the objective of their project to not merely expand lifespan but to extend healthspan and to reduce human suffering as far as possible. Cancer causes an almost disproportionate level of human suffering, given its modest effects on average longevity, when compared with almost all other ways of dying. Few other deaths are so protracted and inevitable while being so physically and emotionally destructive. At least death by myocardial infarction or as a result of injuries sustained in a car crash, while still acutely painful, are likely to be fairly instantaneous - there is no prolonged psychological distress. In contrast, terminally ill cancer patients effectively have a death sentence hanging over them. Even if they do attempt to appreciate the brief time they do have left, they have to find new ways each day of coping with the knowledge of their own mortality and have to see their loved ones suffering on their behalf.

I can see your point, in that he is estimating advancement in terms of longevity, independent of end-of-life experience. However, I do not think that longevity is the sole criterion on which Larry is basing his estimation. It depends on what he is referring to when he speaks of the tragedy of cancer cases and the emotional consequences of such cases. Perhaps, in this context, you are correct and he is referring only to the shortening of lifespan of these patients. But then, that would apply to all modes of death, including choking on peanuts. I suspect, however, that he is referring to the nature of the patients' deaths; the associated physical pain for the patient and the emotional turmoil for not only the patient but their loved ones also. Essentially, I think he is saying that when the lifespan/end-of-life experience balance is considered objectively, that the gains to be made from developing a universal cure for cancer are not as beneficial as one might think. Frankly I am too pissed off with seeing people I care for die way before their time and in such a horrible way to buy into Larry's argument.

Southern blot? Looks like a standard agarose gel to me - Ashlee please can you confirm? I think the point of the experiment was to extract and purify chicken (Gallus gallus) versus cauliflower (Brassica oleracea) genomic DNA and to attempt to PCR-amplify the gene encoding beta-actin, for both chicken and cauliflower samples, using primers that had been designed and were known to amplify beta-actin in cauliflower. A PCR-product of similar size resulting from the rxns using samples from the two different species would be indicative of a high degree of homology between the sequences. From the looks of your gel, something has been amplified of size ~200bp in lane 3 (unless the band is due to primer-dimers). Lane 2 contains multiple bands - this may be due to non-specific binding of the primers - you could attempt to rectify this by increasing the annealing temperature. One of the bands in lane 2 (though faint) is of similar/equal size to that in lane 3. I am unable to find the DNA sequence for Brassica oleracea beta-actin; the DNA sequence for Gallus gallus beta-actin (5,046 bp) is available from NCBI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/X00182.1 It would help if we knew the sequence of your primers and the conditions of your PCR rxns. For future reference: if, when putting the gel into the gel imager, care is taken to avoid pockets of air between the gel and the surface of the imager, it will help to prevent air bubbles like the one in the middle of this gel. It may be worth playing around with the exposure to give greater contrast between the bands. Hope this helps

Yes, I think we have talked in the past about the current limitations with quantitative Biology, we are on the same page here

Promiscuous enzymes

Start with the things that you know. The Henderson-Hasselbach equation: pH = pKa + log to base 10 ([A-]/[HA]) where [HA] is the molar concentration of the undissociated weak acid and [A-] is the molar concentration of the acid's conjugate base pKa = -log to base 10 (Ka) where Ka is the acid dissociation constant i.e. pKa = -log to base 10 (([H30+] + [A-])/[HA]) The reaction: Sodium hydroxide + acetic acid -> sodium acetate + water NaOH + CH3COOH -> CH3COONa + H20 pH = -log [H+] pKa = pH (the equivalence point) when exactly 1/2 of the acid has dissociated pKa (acetic acid) = 4.76 Here is a useful resource by Wiley Essential Biochemistry, for understanding pH, features self-test exercises and animations: http://www.wiley.com/college/pratt/0471393878/student/review/acid_base/index.html

I would agree with most of this, but would add the caveat: do not conflate 'non-mainstream Science' with 'crackpottery'. Granted, most of the non-mainstream material will turn out to be, at best, pseudoscience. However, there are occasions when scientific concepts are presented and initially receive a cold reception (or are blatantly ignored for the next few decades or centuries) until the requisite technology and circumstances are available to confirm the theory experimentally. A scientific concept that initially fails to be accepted as a part of mainstream Science may simply be too revolutionary for the conservative scientific community to whom it is being presented. Paradigm shifts are born in this way.

Proposal: change of thread title to 'In-your-endo' bingo Helicase - unzips your genes Juvenile much?

I agree, I think that the model of Colleges (in the US) and Universities (in the UK) is upside-down and back-to-front. Somewhere along the way, our Higher Education institutes lost heart and have misplaced their priorities, such that students are now openly described as 'customers' or 'consumers' - and I suppose that that is an apt label for what they have been turned into by the system. Each student is not seen as a unique individual with dreams and aspirations to change the world, or to change themselves in a positive way; not as a human to be invested in and developed - but as a commodity, with a £9,000/year tag hovering above their head - another number to be enticed to the shiny institution. This does not hold true in all cases: get a lecturer and a student together and the chances are that the lecturer will genuinely wish to help the student to learn and develop, as far as it is within their power to do so; the problem is systemic. The picture is similar for those employed by Higher Education institutes: underpaid and over-worked, their roles re-defined to include more and more admin with less and less time for the most important things, the reasons they took the job in the first place - teaching and research, contact time with students. Sure, there are some who are well looked after, but they tend to be well-connected and to have sincerely rich fathers. It is only a matter of time before the system collapses under its own weight - the current model is surely unsustainable.

This is just my experience of the review process so far. I don't think that they are normally made public but this may be possible.

Peer reviews are usually only accessible by the authors and fellow reviewers of the paper and by the editors of the journal. Essentially what happens is, once a researcher has published a paper, the editors of the journal in which the researcher has been published may contact them as a prospective reviewer for one or more manuscripts that have been submitted to the journal. Reviewing is not compulsory and usually involves assessing the merit of the manuscript in terms of: originality/significance, quality of Science, and level of interest. The reviewer is also expected to identify any ethical issues with the paper and to determine whether or not the paper is of public interest, beyond the research community. Opportunity is given to provide comments to the authors and confidential comments to the editor. Decisions for the paper are: accept, minor revision, major revision, reject and re-submit, reject. The peer review process is not infallible but it is the most pragmatic approach to quality control of research outputs. There is no concrete division between accepted or mainstream Science versus non-mainstream. One of the main reasons for this is that Science is not a static body of knowledge; many historical scientific theories were accepted at the time of their conception but have subsequently been disproved and so are no longer considered a part of mainstream Science. It is inevitable that a small proportion of scientific concepts that are currently considered outlandish will one day be accepted as a part of mainstream Science. The key to establishing a scientific concept as part of mainstream Science, is to develop a hypothesis that is testable and which consistently fails to be refuted by experiment or observation over long periods of time. This still does not guarantee that the hypothesis will not be disproved at some point in the future - but, alas, that is the nature of Science. It is normally quite easy to tell whether or not a scientific concept is part of mainstream Science. All you need is a lecture hall full of professional scientists, a microphone to present the concept, and the patience to gauge their reactions (snorts of derision versus calm silent cognitive assent). Note that their reactions have no bearing on whether or not the concept is true to reality. Many people, even highly qualified people, can be wrong at the same time, sometimes the lone maverick dissenter is the only one to see the truth. I think that judgments regarding the status of a scientific theory as mainstream or otherwise are available to all who think critically and independently - it is not the preserve of experts or specialists in arbitrary positions of authority (white coats). The lay person should not trust any single source. It is necessary for the novice to rote-learn vast amounts of scientific information, but even this can - and ought to be - accompanied with a kind of mental attitude that recognises that any one or more of those pieces of information may be inaccurate or down-right incorrect (whilst appreciating that this is unlikely to be the case), and with a healthy preparedness to test any such hypotheses experimentally. Nullius in verba