A pestilent child will bo lobbing antrax, smallpox, and/or ebola, not nukes. Get your WMD straight.

An illuminated bush? Didn't Moses come across one of those already? If I were a Christian of the conservative variety, I would be a bit upset about some crazy scientists trying to play God. As if those pretentious molecular biologist aren't arrogant enough stealing the name of such a shady character for something as beautiful as the warm soft glow of summer evening fireflies.

The solution to pollution is dilution. - with apologies to Dr. Loh.

It is a practical reality that everything in LEO is subjected to some degree of atmospheric drag. Even the Hubble Space Telescope, at a normal altitude almost twice that of the ISS will succumb to the ocassional collision with gas particles in the thermosphere. We happen to be entering the solar maximum which should heat and expand the atmosphere, exacerbating the effect. I recall this was the reason America lost the first Skylab station. The idea of bringing the atmosphere up to the orbiting debris instead of waiting for the orbit to decay is an elegant solution. Especially for large debris fields where for example the fragments of a destroyed satellite still pretty much share the same orbit. You would maneuver a de-orbiting tanker traveling in the exact opposite direction, release a gas cloud that will collide headon with the target. Each gas particle will slow it down and lower it's altitude, sending it on its way into the thicker lower atmosphere. The gas itself would pose little hazard, most likely dissipating harmlessly. I think the biggest drawback may be that it probably wouldn't be very cost effective unless you can de-orbit multiple targets at once. In the case of stray small objects that are not trackable by radar, you simply don't know.

Guess who's presecuting? I'm watching the live stream from ABCnews and who should I see muscle her way in front of the mic but Carmen Ortiz. Yep, the one of Aaron Swartz fame. God! It would be such a travesty if she should escape responsibility for bullying Aaron by riding the political prestige to be had from punishing this nut job bomber.

I'm sorry for coming a bit late to the discussion. Who's proposal? It seems to me that a Kill-every-living-human/WMD-type device that takes months to years to take effect in a statistically small proportion of the exposed target population wouldn't be a very good way to achieve any kind of military or political objective in any sensible way. If on the other hand, you are a non-state actor trying to spread terror....I'll give you that, maybe. But still, there are no historic precedence to my knowledge of any extremist groups declaring to the world: "give us what we want or we will give you brain cooties". True, symptoms of fevers/bleeding/malaise of things like bird flu makes for dramatic visuals in the same way conveyed by WWI photos of soldiers blinded by mustard gas. In contrast, aside from the scary name of Mad Cow Disease, how many in the general public can identify the symptoms of vCJD much less know what it is? Put it another way, Do you think a terrorist would consider it a good idea to weaponize HIV? Similar in a lot of way - certainly easier to get and transmit, but just not practical from a common sense perspective.

Exactly! In unmodified form, the disease vector is terribly inefficient - being statistically significant enough infection-wise to make your target sit up and take notice, but otherwise doesn't nearly approach the virulence that true pestilences of the past have cause death and destruction among the masses. It really isn't going to kill very many people. I guess what I am trying to say is, no matter how you cut it, prions - as we currently understand them - do not have the qualities of a good biological weapon regardless of what kind of war you are trying to fight with it. I would assert thus, that given the slow acting nature and generally vague symptoms (which can easily be mistaken for other neurological issues in the absence of post-mortem histological analysis), the only appropriate role for prions as a weapon of some sort is along the lines of some kind of assassination tool. That is, if other short comings can be addressed.

Last I was aware, no one has yet divined the role played by PrP in living organisms. (It must be important though because the sucker is highly conserved across many species.) It has been a while since I've kept up with this stuff, so it is entirely possible that something within the last few months has been published that can be used to put numbers on this thing. However, The matter of symptoms can be really tricky to pin down. We've made great strides in illuminating many aspects of prion molecular biology, but not nearly enough to say we truly comprehend disease pathology. To complicate matters further, the brain is an incredibly resilient organ capable of taking quit a bit of abuse by adapting and compensating around damage. It may very well be the reason why symptoms take so long to appear is because victims brains are actively rewiring around parts damaged by plaque formation. I don't know if plasticity is something that has yet been quantified and/or standardized across all people. But given the range of brains, even in a place like slashdot, there are different levels of suceptability. I could very well be wrong, but I think it is premature to be asserting any kind of symptom time frame in association with a protein function that still isn't clear at all. From a strictly experimental perspective, however, I am optimistic analytic tools and techniques can be applied with further effort to help establish the "conversion" mechanism prion infection (if it is indeed that. the protein only hypothesis still has detractors) to the point where it can be possible to artificially enhance/accelerate the process to induce higher virulence. ehrrr.....I am *NOT* suggesting we do that, though - just that maybe we can....if we wanted to....which we never would. Crap. I need to get some sleep.

So far diagnosis of prion infections can only be reliably done using post-mortem detection of PrP, which is too late in most cases. The incubation period of most prion disease, measured in months and years, makes it a very poor bio-weapon candidate. While the argument can be made that military research can make progress toward that end, the practical reality is that it is still a not very well understood disorder and a lot of basic research is still needed despite intense and public scrutiny (for obvious reasons) from the agricultural sector of developed nations. Treatment options at the moment are virtually non-existent. Containment and culling to halt the spread of infection is still the order of the day in most agro scenarios. But this has been difficult where the infection exists in wild populations. Studies from a Colorado wildlife research facility where chronic wasting disease is endemic in local elks and deers have shown that prion infections can persist dispite conventional cleaning and sterilization methods. Other research shows that livestock to human transmission are not the only cross-species cases with examples being observed in minks from fur farms and guinea pigs in the laboratory also being suceptable. Such realities have resulted in hunters and recipients of venison from road kill being publicly cautioned from consuming the meat of animals from area known to have infected populations. There are a few efforts in very early experimental stages, but owing to the still very immature understanding of prions in general, it is still effectively a fatal disease with know cure/treatment options in human.

Well, that wouldn't be nearly as cool as assembling a posse of nerd Avengers and publicly humiliate the damn bastard in the most awesomely creative way possible. The guilty should live if for no other reason than to suffer the ridicule and retribution of those who've been harmed by said malware.

Depending on the type of cancer this therapeutic approach is attempted on, the patient may experience the same symptoms as either a severe but localized or broad, systemic infection. Even if you are going to train the immune system to go after cancerous tumor cells, it will treat the target in the same way (using the same biochemical weapons) as a dangerous pathogen. History has taught us that the immune response itself can be more destructive than what triggered that response in the first place. If this isn't done correctly, you can easily have a case where the cancer patient experiences a positive feedback loop where the immune system overshoots the intended treatment goal and kills the patient.

I would go so far as to even say GP is wrong. The article describes how experiments show the mosquito's olfactory system appears to loose sensitivity to DEET after the first exposure. There is no supporting evidence that conclusively points to this being due to evolutionary change. A more appropriate characterization is simply that the insect's nervous system is being down-regulated in responsiveness to this particular chemical. In other words, the mosquito adapts by learning to ignore some noxious gunk in order to get a blood meal. If such is the case, the insect is simply showing that it can be conditioned with the right stimuli. This is neural-plasticity, not evolution.

An open letter

Dear Citizens of Missouri,

We support your efforts to take science education in your state into a brave new world. Science is an ever changing, ever advancing quest. However, not everything in science ought to be about science. For we must recognize the practical reality that science serves human civilization. And in today's global community, the American nation faces a crisis in which we must as loyal patriots reaffirm our nation's position at the forefront of civilization. We can not afford to continue outsourcing, exporting, abandoning, or otherwise ceding economic and social opportunities to less advanced parts of the world. Therefore it is imperative that we begin building and nurturing a domestic underclass to which we can bequeath unskilled labor and civil malcontent ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H diversity. Through the fire of conflict that your state endured during our nation's bloody adolescence, you have demonstrated an admirable ability to endure hardship and be resilient. We should all be fortunate, that you have taken the bold step of engaging in this new social experiment where the idea that state-directed education can be used to further the socio-political goals of our nation with tangible socio-economic effects.

Let's face it: If we are to stem the hordes of illegal residents taking away job opportunities from real Americans, we must have enough Americans sufficiently educated to be able to compete for those appropriate jobs that do not require an over-abundance of schooling based on excessive and unnecessary critical thinking. A workforce thus educated under your new legislations should be expected to also considerably lighten the load on social services such as health care that is riddled with exorbitant expenses based on medical practices founded on unproven Darwinian principles. Under ID-inspired health care, we are, by design, perfect and thus require no treatment. Imagine the savings we can achieve for a government that is already burdened by entitlement programs our children can not afford!

Ages hence, when historians look back upon our era, the state of Missouri will be held up as a shining example of the pioneering American spirit that blazed a new trail for intellectual courage and social freedom. You will be remembered as the brave souls who cast aside the shackles of conformity and not only challenged, but prevailed against the stifling madness of old tradition. The multitudes, Missourians and non-Missourians alike, will remember with gratitude the legacy you have left them.

yours truly, the mob-ocracy.

You should seriously consider the wide-spread sentiments here about broadening your options. Your wealth of experience is your greatest asset here. I would recommend to you some writing done by NPR reporter Adam Davidson on the current and future state of American Manufacturing.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/308844/

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/02/146297224/the-future-of-americas-manufacturing-jobs

Basically, Adam makes the case that while low skilled, labor intensive work has gone overseas, the American economy still has a lot of opportunities for qualified workers to fill less manual but highly skilled positions in advanced manufacturing. Your work history and familiarity with industrial control stuff positions you nicely to enter the job market he writes about. You didn't mention where you live (and presumably where you'd be job-hunting) however. That may play a significant factor in available opportunities for you.

from the article:

Better trolling next time.

Despite my cheeky comment which set off this little flame war, I happen to identify more with rural folks myself. Before my family came to the US, my father was a vet serving a multitude of local farms. I grew up surrounded by Holstein dairy cows, pig pens, and rice patties. I'm sorry such a throwaway comment was perceived as a slight against people of rural extraction. I have read the other comments of GP and mostly sympathize with his views. I, myself, have nothing against accents as all other members of my family were too old when we came to the US to learn to speak English without an accent. Trust me, I know what it feels like to be stereotyped by virtue of where one calls home. As a high school student, I studied one summer at Cornell in Ithaca, New York. Apparently, high schoolers from other parts of the country knows of San Francisco only as the "Gay Capital of the World". For what it is worth, my real beef isn't with rural vs urban - my problem is with religious fundamentalism vs. science (which i will broadly include science fiction here) literacy.

Those padawans better learn quick how to build their own light sabers when the hillbilly fundamentalists mass at the gates with pitchforks in hand.