Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

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iannis

iannis

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"still many years off" is something of an understatement, I think. Gene therapy on a fully differentiated organism isn't even science fiction, it's just fiction. That said a better understanding of the genetic defect which leads to cystic fibrosis has resulted in new and more effective treatment regimens. But I do sort of worry this creates a hope that there will be a time we can give an infant with downy eyes a shot and turn him "normal". It's too late at that point.
 
Burnem Wizfyre

Burnem Wizfyre

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Iannis_sl said:
"still many years off" is something of an understatement, I think. Gene therapy on a fully differentiated organism isn't even science fiction, it's just fiction. That said a better understanding of the genetic defect which leads to cystic fibrosis has resulted in new and more effective treatment regimens. But I do sort of worry this creates a hope that there will be a time we can give an infant with downy eyes a shot and turn him "normal". It's too late at that point.
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I'm not sure what point during the pregnancy that they can tell but I know they can find out if the kid has down syndrome before he/she is born, uncertain if that would be early enough in development for a gene suppressing shot to work or not.
 
hodj

hodj

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They can tell as soon as they can take a dna sample from the child, which is pretty damn early, because trisomy occurs during meiotic cell division when crossing over occurs. Honestly, if they could take the egg out and examine the dna in it, they could determine if trisomy will occur, because what happens is two genes are supposed to separate, but instead they don't, so one sex cell ends up missing a chromosome completely and becomes inviable, while the other ends up with an extra chromosome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosomal_crossover

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisomy
 
ZyyzYzzy

ZyyzYzzy

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If I was a mammal bird hybrid then yes. But since with birds males are the homogametic sex, I'd just become a plain old male bird.
 
Tuco

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With that path of gene treatment could they detect it before they missed the chance to treat it?
 
iannis

iannis

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Theoretically yes. Practically I'm not sure how unless you start growing fetuses in artificial wombs. And we don't have anything close to artificial wombs. And if you're going to do that why fix the defect? I mean you could... but why? Why not just terminate it and start again. It's a much more practical use of resources, and if you have decided that these things exist in some quasi-state of unprotected life why wouldn't you do that? The moral distinctions we make and tone we set actually do matter.

The window is very small. I haven't studied it in years so give me some slack, but from what I remember it's something like the first 3 weeks of pregnancy where most of the really important stuff happens. I mean spina bifada occurs on week 2 or something because of a vitamin deficiency. How many women, even the ones actively trying for pregnancy and being vigilant about their bodies, know they're pregnant on week 2.

I'm not a woman but my feeling is that most women don't even start to guess they're pregnant until they've missed a cycle.
 
F

fucker_sl

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just saying, but if you discover your fetus is affected by any uncurable illness that will make his/her life hell (like down syndrome), and you dont abort, you deserve to be beaten with a spiked crowbar
 
iannis

iannis

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A lot further away than we were 20 years ago. The more you study it, the more complex it becomes.

I have to imagine they will probably happen at some point. Knowing how to do it would be super-cool for a lotta reasons.
 
hodj

hodj

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A long long way away.

Just think for awhile how radically different human life would be if we had artificial wombs. Sexual reproduction would no longer be necessary, in fact it would be detrimental to the species, allowing random chance to alter the allele frequencies in our species when we can literally control it down to the most finite detail? Sexual reproduction would probably become illegal. Mix Gattaca with Warhammer 40k's superhuman Space Marines and you might be getting close to what things would be like.
 
iannis

iannis

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It would be like... A Brave New World.


Without all the Shakespeare references, which even Huxley later regretted.

Edit: As an intermediate some clever fucking monkey might figure out some delivery system to repair the most egregious and common defects in utero without killing the cell mass (forget the terminology) and rich, white, 50 year old women never need worry about birthing defective children again. But it'll take some dodgy-ass research to get there.
 
hodj

hodj

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We've already made our society a Brave New World society though.

http://www.highexistence.com/amusing...ley-vs-orwell/

rrr_img_37347.jpg
 
iannis

iannis

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Gates has been throwing serious, serious money at Malaria for at least 5 years. There has been sporadic incremental progress reported. So: Probably not bullshit.

Bear in mind there is more than 1 strain of malaria just like there is more than 1 strain of the flu. Bear in mind this also sounds like a precursor to a more reliable vaccine. It seems to be effective but the effectiveness is still somewhat low. 3 of 15 high dosage were infected. That's still notgreat.

But it does sound pretty good, doesn't it?
 
D

Dabamf_sl

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Considering how many people die to malaria, 12/15 is fucking amazing. If this is legit and effective against multiple strains, it would be one of the greatest medical breakthroughs ever.
 
iannis

iannis

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Yeah, I agree.

But temper that optimism a little bit. You've got 12/15 with "high" dosage. With low dosage it was a lot closer to 90% infection. Malaria transmission isn't 100% to begin with, even with the sample size being so small you have to allow thatmaybeone or two people exposed at either dosage just wouldn't have contracted the virus in those conditions. These are highly controlled circumstances they're testing under, meaning it's a test of theory rather than one of practicality -- at a guess mass production is not remotely reasonable yet. You don't have any safety studies yet nor will you for a very long time considering there's not much to study the long term safety of yet.

It's wonderful progress, and it will literally change entire nations. Even if it is legit (which I assume it is) and an effective avenue of study/production (it certainly sounds promising) there are still many years of work to be done before anyone can claim victory over malaria.
 
R

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University of St Andrews scientists create 'fastest man-made spinning object'

"They were able to levitate and spin a microscopic sphere at speeds of up to 600 million revolutions per minute...

The team balanced it on a laser beam in a complete vacuum and then spun it using the light itself. They saw it spin faster and faster until it reached 600 million rpm - and then it seemed to vanish!

The researchers don't know what happened to the sphere - but one possibility is that the object may have reached some theoretical speed limit - after which it changed in some way. "

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...-fife-23861397
 
Tuco

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article says it's 4micrometers, at 600million rpm that's around 125m/s right? Pretty cool. I wonder how much centrifugal force is exerted.
 
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