There were two hacked servers at MIT, I noted their IP addresses when they tried to spam my little website weeks apart.

Thanks. I'll take another look at that.

I wonder why the article said they were looking at the retroviral protease structure to see if they could find a way to block it? That was purported to be the importance of solving this structural problem. That and understanding how it works.

However, if the players are figuring out how to use the results, that would be incredibly embarrassing.

The players would have to be molecular biochemists (or similar) to figure out how to use the resulting structure, and the researchers have already started figuring out how to use it. They may identify a site on the surface for which they can create a compound that will attach and block the enzyme.

This is all very difficult, and that would be an astounding achievement, but there is nothing embarrassing about any of this. It took a lot of effort to identify the molecular chains of the enzyme and programming efforts to enable manipulation of molecular chains into 3D structures.
 

Several items to note on this:

- kudos to researchers for bringing in gamers to gain some understanding on solving tghis problem

- kudos to the FoldIt programmers for making this 3D structure puzzle a solvable problem. They also constantly refined the puzzle based on feedback from the gamers.

- Not mentioned so far is the incredible importance of finding a workable structure to the retroviral protease enzyme, and that the researchers noted the structure may provide the opportunity to be blocked. If so that would appear to this layman of a nearly universal cure for viruses that insert DNA into chromosomes. I may be overstating that but I don't think it's limited to AIDS.

- There are many other puzzles to be solved for cellular components from what I read. This is clearly one of utmost importance, but I imagine there are others to solve now.

- This reminds me from what I read of the widespread efforts of laymen participation in solving important mathematical puzzles in the 1500's to 1800's.

- I don't know about this having a real useful impact to primary education, other than wow interest factor, but seems to be something that could be ongoing challenges, real "games" to solve if you will, for some time to come. There are innumerable puzzles to be solved at this level.

Now that he has 1 billions modified T-cells, possibly double that now, how do they plan on getting them out, or make the body accept them?

They gradually diminished on their own as the targets disappeared.

This is a great article in explaining what happened. Something on this was posted a couple of weeks ago and most responses were jokes about getting AIDS to kill cancer. In any event I never did see what the explanation was until now.

On a further note, so I don't have to start a new post and get a rejection that I didn't wait several minutes before posting again, there were several references in TFA about dangers to life from contents of killed cancer cells. I am wondering whether the technique used to filter T-cells from the blood could be used to filter or chemically reduce those toxins in the blood after the injection of modified T-cells until the danger passes.

I see now that this works by identifying a protein on the cell types that became cancerous, in this case B type immune cells, and also difficulty or impossibility of identifying a unique protein for other types of cells. As great as this is, it may only work for this type of cancer because of the unique protein on those type of immune cells.

Hopefullly they can find something prevalent in cancer cells to target with this.

I wish somebody would take FF 3.6 and create a fork. The FF developers have lost their marbles.

yes, I'm reading through all this looking for where that may happen. Somebody said stuck on 3.6. No, I'm not stuck on 3.6, I'm not changing to something I don't want.

So far I've avoided clicking on update to version 4 popups. This is probably meant to make that no longer possible. You'll get whatever they want you to get.

If someone forks 3.6 and adds enhancements in a sane way, I will be sticking with that.

I know you are being funny, but I still must correct your misuse. intents and purposes There, now carry on with your willful butchery.

Then correct all of them. You are being far too selective.

That wasn't me by the way. But was a pretty good post, now rated +5 Funny.

For all intensive purposes

For all intents and purposes...

Good job. Now for extra points find all the rest of the misused words in that post. There are several.

"The idiom is "Dog eat dog", not doggy dog."

whooooosh!

The world's financial systems are built on that assumption i.e. anyone who lends money expects to make a profit on the loan, after inflation if applicable.

I humbly submit that is just a very silly premise. Yes, every lender expects a profit, and many recieve losses instead. There is nothing built in enough in what we do that requires growth to survive. We in fact are currently undergoing substantial regression in growth even as we speak.

If this is what passes for accepted economic theory, no wonder everything is so screwed up.

I don't know about all that, but we neither are dependent on growth nor must have a communal society.

I disagree with both of these theorists.

He's simply saying that our economy depends on the assumption of growth, but growth can't reasonably be expected to continue forever.

I don't believe there's any basis for saying that we depend on the assumption of growth. There is growth, and we may or may not be able to deal with it before it turns into disaster, but not dependent on it at all. If population and energy use stayed static we'd be just fine.

I would agree with that.

Thanks for the info.

These have been around for quite a long time; tractors replacing large groups of field workers, factories replacing blacksmiths, steam engines replacing human muscle -- in all cases it's true that the employment for unskilled manual labour was decimated, however many more jobs opened up in higher-level areas, and the average income and quality of life was raised for all.

Actually not quite a long time, it's only been about 70 years in the US since large scale migration off the farms to cities, and much of the economic activity was fueled by unsustainable debt which we are just now starting to face.

You free market types are in uncharted territory, sure that what we did for the last 70 years will just keep on happening, even though you have no idea doing what.

Just faith that your philosophy is right. And it isn't.

  rd