Posts by Bilious

Re: these terms are "divisive and humiliating,"

From personal experience: when those words are followed up with physical abuse, then their function is that of hate speech. It's envy, of course, but painful enough. A small and weak nerd is defenseless against the big bullies.

Re: "[Palladium] is easily destroyed by heat"

Number 46, palladium has its boiling point at 2963 degrees Celsius. Number 45, rhodium, has 3695. Number 44, ruthenium, has 4147. But number 47, silver, boils at 2262.

Re: Definition

Actually the Norwegians switched from DAB to DAB+, so plain first-generation DAB receivers are now useless in Norway.

Re: It was something we used to do in the 80s

Could be enzyme induction by alcohol. You might wish to make a lookup on Cyp2E1.

Software to analyse the potential for interaction between a drug candidate and selected receptors or enzymes have been in use for a long time - both for finding substances that may have a desired effect, and for weeding out substances with properties that will lead to failure in clinical trials or clinical use. Newer AI systems will have to deliver additional value beyond the expert knowledge of those already in the field. A general tool written by generalists would seem to have a slim chance of being of general use across all those specialist sub-fields within drug discovery - each one requiring biological and technical knowledge way beyond textbooks or published articles.

The market has spoken: The tool wasn't relevant.

Re: I am wary of this development

Response to the drugs in question may be influenced by lots (really) of genetic and nongenetic variables in both the host and the tumour. One part is pharmacokinetics in the host - the overall fate of the drug substance after administration. Another is pharmacokinetics in the tumour - diffusion into areas and cells and organelles where the action takes place. A third is mapping of the pharmacodynamic susceptibility of each malignant clone in the tumour, and the variation of activity-related susceptibility in each cell. And how successful was the surgery?

Details about the behaviour of old anticancer drugs will have to be mainly guesswork with very poor predictive value for an individual patient. Most of the microdetails needed are unavailable to the doctor ahd his/her computer program. And who knows what is relevant, and the weight of each variable?

I would not invest in this project or the people behind it.

Generic drugs

With ancient generic drugs the prices may fall so low that maintenance of market presence becomes unprofitable. So some price adjustments are justifiable.

Pyrimethamine has been available from 1953 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrimethamine). How could that qualify for a patent in the USA? I would think there are more persons than Martin Shkreli who should be investigated or shamed.

Re: Good article but what's the fix

"Freedom died a long time ago."

It didn't.

My keyboard entries on the Web are registered. My surfing preferences and emails too. My telephone is tapped and taped. My travels on public transportation are videotaped and registered on my name, and all passages through the road toll registering points are registered and taped.

But I can read whatever I like, love any person I like, travel wherever I like - it's just a question of economic means and keeping up good relations to family, neighbours, colleagues and friends. The police never bothers me. I've never done anything remotely criminal, so I have never been in prison.

In some countries people are bothered by police and priests and criminals and racists and religious bigots - but AFAICS this came centuries before the data slurping. Death penalty for atheism? It cannot be blamed on Google, Apple, Facebook or Apple.

National modding

In my language we do not use the oo spelling of g-oo-gle, so I've invented the verb "guggle" instead. That's a non-word, unknown in dictionaries, so I don't need to use uppercase.

Remove all external access?

Some actually do need to access web mail during working hours, and some do need to extract or enter files on removable media. Research and teaching does not always take place on the same network as the patient records, but both are legitimate and necessary - so data needs to be moved between networks. Material has to be made somewhere, whether at work, during travel or at home. Restrictions tend to making research and teaching overly cumbersome, so there needs to be a compromise between usability and security. This is complex and requires people from different professions working together. My experience is that both IT decision makers and institution leaders ignore it.

Two different matters

No disagreement about equal rights and equal opportunities and equal pay, in all countries. Unfortunately there are feminist extremists who dominate some channels and, I am sorry to say, have poor command of their subjects. We can cope with those, even though we may have to misbehave in meetings.

But quite a few apparently moderate feminists squeeze out men from the workplace by hiring only women. So the net effect in those cases is a reversal of roles - from patriarch to matriarch. I do not think it is an improvement.

Nicotine

If you eat eggplant, you may have a weakly positive urine test for cotinine, the nicotine metabolite. But little compared to smoking tobacco.

But why would anyone do a cotinine test in urine?

Binding to lipids

We have some other examples of anti-infectives binding to lipids - think colistin and amphotericin. None of those are highly selective towards the infective agents - they cause considerable injury to the host as well. Other peptide antibiotics exist, but their toxicity is problematic (e.g. bacitracin).

Searching for new natural anti-infectives has been a good idea for decades - but the greatest success story from the safety and efficacy side are the beta lactam antibiotics. The first representative of the group was penicillin. Numerous related substances have been developed and are extensively used. Resistance is rising because of drug-destroying enzymes produced by the bacteria (betalactamases). It is an arms race - and the complexities are increasing. But there is no reason to give up developing better inhibitors for betalactamases. Teixobactin is unlikely to be a replacement for betalactams such as penicillins, cephalosporins or carbapenems.

But what is "drinking"?

Non-alcoholic beers may contain up to 0.7 percent alcohol by volume. One unit will not tip you over the legal limit - even a zero litit - because there is a safety margin included in police procedures. But if I drink one such unit at lunch, it affects my alertness a lot more than it would have if I drank that or a larger amount in the evening.

Falling asleep at the wheel: Too risky compared to the pleasure of a (non-alcoholic) beer.

Re: Most treatments have no need for either genomic or proteomic diagnostics

A large chunk of medical diagnostics are based on basic knowledge and simple clinical observations. A cancer needs to be surgically removed. A bacterial infection of lungs or kidneys or wounds or brain almost certainly will be best treated with one or more antibiotics. Survival may depend on startup of antibiotic treatment long before the detailed biochemical characterisation of the offending bacteria has been finished. A broken bone requires surgery or repositioning and a cast - osteoporosis may be a severe problem during surgery, but some sort of treatment is mandatory. Dementia means that the patient needs special care. Drug or alcohol abuse require detoxification and social rehabilitation.

Proteomics and genomics are mainly irrelevant to these conditions, except as research tools.

Re: This is someone

The problem is that there may be fuzzy borders between responsible and irresponsible use of substances. There can be no doubt that drug or alcohol addiction is a problem to the user, but much more to the surroundings. So there are arguments for restrictions on use and availability of recreational drugs in order to protect the innocent. Drug use is not a purely personal matter.

Bioavailability is defined

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

What is your point?

Administrative megalomania

These governmental database systems are administrative databases. The real content - whatever you say - must be rather simple, even though the entire structure is complex.

I've seen a number of IT disasters from below - and I've seen the providers conning the bosses into requiring huge and complex systems for quite simple tasks. The systems are written for the bosses, and the lay users are always forgotten. They are let down with substandard tools for doing their jobs.Ever after they have to follow rigid and non-intuitive routines to mellow the aggressiveness and unforgiving nature of the final solution which could have been made much simpler, cheaper and better.

Re: TI-59 memories

Classical or classical. I had the SR-52, the precursor to Ti59 (http://en.cyclopaedia.net/wiki/TI-59).

Read errors on the magnetic cards were a nuisance, and battery life was so-so - but space permitted me to program anovas on it. Made me a local statistics expert in the late 1970s.

The printer was very helpful for documentation purposes. There were occasional contact problems, but wriggling usually solved it.