The New York Times published an article in August about a technology that decoded a human genome for less than $50,000. The inventor speculates that the technology will be able to decode a genome for just $1,000 in 2-3 years.
That being said it will be amazing to see the IBM project succeed. Either way the cost of decoding a genome is dropping so quickly it puts Moore's Law to shame.
There is a misconception that being "healthy" will prevent you from getting a primary viral infection, but this is not true. For example if you have never been exposed to varicella-zoster virus (the virus that causes both chicken pox and shingles) and if you inhale viral particles then you WILL come down with chicken pox - I don't care how "healthy" you think you are. Being healthy will, however, usually limit the severe the primary infection.
Being healthy will also allow you to build up a strong specific immune response after exposure to an antigen, so secondary infections by the same or similar viruses can be prevented. As we age and our immunity wanes then the varicella-zoster virus that has been stored in our nervous system for decades will have a chance to erupt again - now you have a case of shingles.
Being "healthy" can prevent a primary bacterial infection, just not a viral one.
If you are young and healthy and think that you don't need the vaccine because you "never get the flu" then you need to realize that you are actually the most likely person in the world to get the flu. Older people are more likely to be resistant to swine flu because many have been exposed before and they carry specific neutralizing antibodies.
So one of the reasons that the conclusion of the article is unlikely to hold up under analysis is that if you've never been exposed to the pandemic H1N1 virus then you are completely vulnerable. Getting the seasonal flu vaccine can't make you any more vulnerable than you already are. Actually I think that the best reason not to draw conclusions from the article is the fact that multiple other countries failed to observe what the Canadians observed.
There is so much paranoia about vaccines that people will seize on any bizarre pseudo-scientific reason not to get one. Unless you are anaphylactic to egg proteins (and I know you aren't) the only non-paranoid reason you should be giving for not getting vaccinated is that you are too lazy and unmotivated, or maybe you have a crippling phobia of needles. Everyone else who gives a different reason is just wearing a tin-foil hat.
I strongly support government intervention to discourage any harmful product or behavior as long as such intervention is supported by appropriate evidence and as long as the risk/benefit ratio of what the government is trying to discourage is sufficiently high.
The increasing severity of the obesity epidemic over recent decades is alarming as demonstrated by the Center for Disease Control's map of obesity prevalence in the United States from 1985-2008. A government intervention to stop this epidemic is warranted, but that intervention must be backed by evidence.
The authors of the New England Journal of Medicine article cite the evidence demonstrating a correlation between the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity. They then cite the results of the four long-term randomized controlled trials that studied the effect of discouraging these beverages on weight gain in school children. A one-year United Kingdom study did not show a significant change in body mass index although a decrease in the overweight rate was statistically significant. The authors failed to mention, however, that a follow-up of these subjects two years after completion of the study showed that this difference in the overweight rate was not sustained. It would seem that this dietary intervention had no more than a transient effect without impacting the long-term propensity of these children to become obese.
The other three long-term studies cited by the authors all failed to meet their primary endpoints. Instead the authors rely on the results of sub-group analysis of these studies to conclude that there is a benefit to discouraging these beverages. The conclusions of the sub-group analysis between these studies don't even match up as one study suggested that only the more overweight kids would benefit, another study suggested that only the more overweight girls would benefit, and the last study suggested only a benefit of increased lean body tissue. These mismatched results of subgroup analysis are only useful as a basis for designing future clinical studies.
So which dietary interventions work? Well, all of them... and none of them. Clinical studies have show a wide variety of diets to be effective (e.g. low fat diets, low carbohydrate diets, etc.) but the most a population of highly motivated obese people can expect to keep off in the long term with any diet is about 5% of their body weight (although there is a lot of individual variability). No diet has been shown to effect the long term propensity to be obese - i.e. you must keep on the diet forever. I think that discouraging sugar-sweetened beverages probably will have some effect, but it is unlikely to be superior to any other intervention. Even if restricting sugar-sweetened beverages does cause weight loss we cannot assume that combining it with another dietary intervention such as a low-fat diet will result in an additive benefit.
Body weight is exquisitely regulated and "will power" can only be used to vary ones weight within a very narrow range. We need to admit to ourselves that we do not understand the etiology of the current obesity epidemic and we should not be distracted by trying to fix it via unproven interventions like restricting beverages. Maybe then we can focus more on basic science to find the true etiology.
The speech states "Network operators cannot prevent users from accessing the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching non-harmful devices to the network."
Specifics are forthcoming: "I will soon circulate to my fellow Commissioners proposed rules prepared by Commission staff embodying the principles I've discussed, and I will ask for their support in issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking. This notice will provide the public with a detailed explanation of what we propose to do and why."
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We will need to wait for specifics, but I hope that in part this means that cellphone service providers will have no say over what devices can access their networks. I'm curious to know the answers to the following questions:
Will the FCC invalidate existing exclusivity agreements with cellphone manufacturers? Obviously it wasn't Apple's decision to restrict the iPhone to just AT&T. Will the iPhone (and every other 'exclusive phone') be available in unlocked form for all carriers?
If exclusivity agreements are eliminated will cellphone service providers still be able to force you to pay for their "subsidized" phones even if you don't want to? Example - Will Verizon force all of their subscribers to continue to pay the same inflated monthly fee so that a "subsidize" Blackberry Storm is "free" while a non-preferred smartphone costs $500 to purchase?
Will cellphone providers be able to change you differently based on the type of data sent via a cellphone instead of just charging you based on bandwidth? What I am really asking is will they be able to selectively charge price-gouging rates for SMS when it effectively uses no bandwidth? Can cellphone providers ban VoIP over 3G and other cellphone frequencies? I hope the FCC specifically bans them from discriminating based on the type of data transmission.
I can go on and on, but hopefully the specific FCC rules will turn cellphone providers into the mindless provides of bandwidth pipe that they should be.
Schmidt resigning from the Apple board was obviously necessitated by the Google/Apple/AT&T conflict that is being reviewed by the FCC. I argue that AT&T is forcing the hand of Apple. Apple has no reason to be concerned about Google Voice, but AT&T and the other wireless carriers have good reason to be terrified of Google Voice if network neutrality is applied to wireless carriers.
In its current incarnation the worse thing Google Voice can do to AT&T is to conveniently allow iPhone users to make inexpensive international calls without going through AT&T. Google Voice uses VoIP to transmit calls, but Google is not a phone service provider.
But what if the logical thing happened and Google became a phone service provider? And what if AT&T lost the right to cripple cell phones that use their network? And what if, in the absence of AT&Tâ(TM)s arm-twisting, Apple now allowed Google to create an optimized app?
Given the above the following will likely occur:
-Since Google is now a phone provider I can now port my current iPhone number over to Google. I then acquire a brand new cell phone number from AT&T. I have Google Voice forward my calls to my original number to my new AT&T number; I can now completely forget about my new number.
When people call my old number I can now seamlessly receive the call on my iPhone. When I use my iPhone to dial a friends number the Google Voice app will automatically call a local number instead that belongs to Google and then Google will connect me to my friends number. My friend's caller ID will see my original old phone number!
Since the phone is no longer crippled full use of WiFi will be enabled. Whenever you are in a WiFi hotspot all calls made either from or to your iPhone will go over WiFi. You can seamlessly use your iPhone at home making a limitless number of free calls. Does AT&T have spotty reception in your house? Problem solved! You don't even have to pay hundreds of dollars for AT&T's idiotic upcoming femtocell. The capacity of the cellular network is also improved as so many people are now bypassing it.
-Let's take this further and apply the potential of Google Voice to the international traveler. Let's say that you plan on going to several European countries and you want to take your iPhone; you will be robbed blind by AT&T if you casually used your phone.
But what if before you paid Google a nominal fee to use your phone in any country you might potentially go to? Google voice should be able to download onto your phone the SIM card data for a locally purchased pay-for-use SIM card. Each account will have one minute of talk time on it. The moment you arrive in a country your iPhone will automatically use that cell phone time to call a local Google number; Google will then add local minutes to that particular account. When you call a US number your phone will actually dial a local Google number that will then use VoIP to allow you to call anywhere in the world at the cheapest possible rate. People in the US will seamlessly reach you by calling your usual number. If you need to give your phone number to locals who don't want to make an international call to reach you then you can give them the local SIM phone number. Once again WiFi calls will be free and seamless.
-Let's apply this again to the US. Your iPhone can contain SIM card info from multiple providers so that your phone can seamlessly switch between providers based on signal strength/capacity/price.
The FCC is also considering forcing the large cell phone providers to sell capacity to smaller providers at non price-gouging rates. Google can purchase bandwidth at a far cheaper price than a private individual can. Now this iPhone with the Google Voice app can pick the cheapest/best cell service available at a particular location. (I picture more combination GSM/CDMA phones being sold).
The cell phone companies, for the first time, will be forced to let an honest market decide the price of their services instead of their abusive oligopoly-driven price gouging. The consumer will get a much better product at a much cheaper price. It is easy to see why all of the wireless providers would be terrified of such a future.
AT&T wants to sell their 'AT&T FamilyMap' plan to its users. Subscribers are charged $9.99 for the ability to locate up to 2 other people with AT&T phones $14.99 to locate up to 5 people. Google latitude will do this for free only better because users can locate as many people as they want and it can locate non-AT&T users.
I think that Apple would be happy to allow this but the problem is that wireless providers abuse their oligopoly status to cripple cell phone features so that users are forced to give the wireless carriers money for things that they otherwise would have been free and better.
For example Verizon forces smart phone manufacturers to rip out WiFi so users are forced to pay Verizon to access the internet. MP3 players are ripped out of cellphones and replaced by silly paid services such as VCast.
Banning Latitude is almost certainly just another mundane example of carrier oligopoly abuse. The federal government needs to legislate to stop cell phone carriers from crippling phones.
Newton already figured out that a high velocity object will stop once it transfers its momentum into the medium it is penetrating. This concept is known as Impact Depth and Wikipedia has an article on it.
From the article: "An iron meteorite with a length of 1.3 m would punch through the atmosphere, a smaller one would be stopped in the air and drop down by the gravitational pull."
So this pea sized meteorite would have been stopped high up in the atmosphere and then it would have fallen at terminal velocity until it hit the ground. It is absolutely impossible for a meteor that size to have blasted a crater into asphalt.
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato
