Let me give you a brief summary of TFA:
- Some cancers have IDH1, IDH2 mutations that change cellular metabolism
- This drug is the first targeting the IDH2 enzyme that has been tested in humans
- 6 out of 7 patients whose disease (leucemia) had the specific IDH2 mutations had "objective response" to the drug, ie the disease burden was reduced. Note, this does not mean cure.

Now, this is obviously good news, in the same spirit as previous targeted agents like vemurafenib, erlotinib, trastuzumab, crizotinib, especially since it concerns a new aspect of cellular functioning (metabolism). It's too early to say whether the drug will have long lasting impact, but we'll know more after phase II/III trials. It does seem promising.

For patients with AML or MDS and documented IDH2 mutation, the study (NCT01915498) is still recruiting in several centers around the US and in Paris/France (Institut Gustave-Russy). More information can be found in clinicaltrials.gov (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=NCT01915498&Search=Search).

In other news, learning is hard. What did you expect, that people would magically learn the hardest of subjects simply because it is on t3h internetz? I have done MOOCs and I think it's great. I got the chance to hear some famous professors, read some good textbooks. I never expected it to be simple and I had to abandon some courses, but the final result is a net positive: I finished 2-3 courses I would never have had otherwise. So what if I didn't do the other 3 or 4?

Too much hype leads to disillusionment, as usual, but MOOCs have their place.

Apple has absolute control of the software ecosystem and can probably gain significant performance from appropriate optimizations. The android landscape is much more heterogeneous and probably less optimized for each individual device. Think consoles vs PC.

Raw benchmarks like this one may not properly reflect user's perception of performance when different ecosystems are compared. In the end, I expect the iPhone 6 to feel at least as fast as the fastest Android devices in real use cases.

Some of the effects are undesirable. Muscle tremor, anxiety are usually not reasons to drink coffee. Similarly, nausea and disequilibrium are not reasons to drink alcohol. With almost any pharmacologically active substance a spectrum of undesirable effects can become apparent before significant risk of lethality.

So, with reference to my initial post, I still believe that 1000mg of caffeine can induce toxic (not necessarily lethal, of course) effects that are, I suppose, undesirable for most people. I guess I can't make it clearer than that.

Indeed, you are right. The DSM-IV is still in use but, technically speaking, it has been replaced by the newer DSM V, which also includes a diagnosis of caffeine intoxication. I don't have a DSM V handbook within reach, but I'm sure you can find out the details.

Does the fact that people suffer from side effects before dying surprise you? Using the reference you provided above, people die (LD50) at about 490g of pure alcohol (ie >1lt of hard liquor), yet most would agree that toxicity is apparent way before that amount. Caffeine is similar.

[quote]
Toxic levels of caffeine: 12,000 mg (for an 176 pound person) [just-think-it.com].
[/quote]
You are right with respect to the LD50, obviously referring to lethality. However, 1000mg of caffeine is certainly sufficient for caffeine intoxication as per the DSM-IV disorder (code 305.90). It all depends on how you interpret "toxic" in this context.

I think there is a subtle difference between being right (in the usual sense of providing a model that happens to accurately represent measurable stuff) and the process of scientific discussion. Consensus is just an outcome of a process, ie collaboration. That process is extremely important but does not guarantee being right.

In the end, without resorting to unnecessary complicated terms, if a bunch of people who are supposed to know what they are saying all agree on something that is not immediately testable (say, long-term human impact on the climate), odds are they are more likely to be right than some random wacko or idiot reporter because they spent some time discussing together and have highlighted potential errors.

In the absence of definitive hard data, which will only be available in retrospect, we have to pick sides. Consensus seems a safer bet than the probability that some random guy is the new Galileo or Einstein.

I imagine taste depends a lot on environmental factors, like soil nutrients, sun and stuff like that. Creating a genetically engineered plant is probably harder than simply improving culture conditions to get a good product. Although you could probably improve some aspects of the product by bio-engineering, in real life I don't think anyone will care to improve taste. Most probably they would sell you cheaper beans that resist infection or transportation or bad climate. I never heard Monsanto advertise their products as "great taste", but then again I wouldn't know.

Adding caffeine is also so simple that you shouldn't have to modify plants to get it. In fact, caffeine is dirt cheap (http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/caffeine.html). Even pharma-grade caffeine for the lab is like $0.50 for an almost toxic dose of 1000mg, if you want to "enrich" your coffee.

Decaf, if you enjoy it, would be an interesting bio-engineering project. I don't know if the plant really needs the caffeine for something else (it is somewhat related to DNA, being itself a purine), but simply deleting or attenuating the gene that catalyzes the conversion should be really simple. In fact, you don't need the whole genome sequence to do that, only the locus of the gene.

Anyway, bio-engineering something that tastes good and is healthy is probably at least as hard as all other aspects of the production, even if you have the DNA sequence. Being a fan of the KISS principle, I'd rather have my coffee prepared by people with some decent traditional know-how.

AMD TrueAudio on Kaveri processors and newer GPUs supposedly does just that. I haven't seen any game supporting it, though. Would be a nice feature I think.

Thanks for the information!

I have tried some modest consumer-level equipment with disappointing results so I was thinking of either going high-end consumer or even pro. In the end, I'm probably going to take the plunge. As you say, I don't want to change equipment every year...

This is an expensive solution, but I am tempted. Is it better than the equivalent top-end consumer grade products like the Netgear R7000 or the Asus RT68? Specifically, I was thinking of the combination Ubiquiti EdgeRouter PoE + Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC which is almost $700 of gear. Is it worth it for a gigabit home network with a 300MBps fiber connection?

Any other experiences with the Nighthawk AC1900? The hardware seems quite good. I don't mind the price, up to about $250, but I plan on getting 300MBps fiber so I need a router that can reliably route that plus handle my gigabit home network.

A classical article on the subject, quite old now, has concluded that approximately 80% of diagnoses can be made from the history (ie a structured interview) with a further maybe 10% from physical examination and maybe 5% from additional investigations (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1673456/). Obviously, the requirements for modern medicine and the available means are a bit different. Nevertheless, any serious doctor will tell you that the history taking and the physical examination are the most important parts of an encounter with a patient.

This is a direct result of Bayes theorem: the interview and physical define the "prior" probability for any diagnosis and any further investigations will only serve to modify it by a certain degree (confirm or exclude). With the exception of some quite aggressive diagnostic methods, like a biopsy or laparoscopy, which will never be recommended upfront, most investigations are generally not sufficiently sensitive or specific enough to give a conclusive diagnosis.

Finally, the physical (which cannot be done via Skype) is also a very important component of the physician and patient relationship. An encounter without physical examination seems, in my humble opinion, quite superficial. Patients are generally more satisfied if you take the time to carefully examine them.

That being said, Skype can be a decent solution for people living in remote areas where transportation can be a real problem. Skype for people living in major cities is a bit silly, I think.

PS. I am physician, but I am curious to hear what you think about the value of physical examination.

Well, if "not doing anything" is what your PC does a long part of the day, idle power consumption can be of some importance. That does not necessarily redeem AMD cpus, but it is worth mentioning in my opinion. Obviously, you seem to think that all discussion should be limited to "AMD sucks". Even if true, this does not make for a very interesting read.

Well, in idle, which is what most processors do in typical user workloads, the 7800 is comparable to intel processors. Total energy to accomplish a task obviously varies, but the 7800 uses 30-50% more energy than intel processors for the same task. However, the 7 series APUs are clearly more efficient than the 6 series Richland APUs that they replace. Peak power consumption is around 100W for a complete system with 7800, which is not a huge thermal load.

In the end, what I'm saying is that AMD improved power efficiency way more than absolute performance, something that is more important in the portable space. You're looking at maybe 10% faster than Richland at the CPU side but with 20% less energy. Obviously, they could have chosen different power/performance tradeoffs, if they wanted to compete on the desktop.

For some numbers, you can have a look at Techreport or Anandtech (http://techreport.com/review/26845/amd-a10-7800-processor-reviewed/3). I am not aware of any tests concerning the laptop variants, but they should appear soon.