markkat

I am surprised how so many seem to think this is a bad thing. Ethereum is very nascent, and this was how the community wanted to fix this issue. It was not just about returning DTH, it was about the implications of the allocation of the DTH in the hands of one individual when Ethereum moves to PoS.

Obviously the HF isn't ideal, but not forking was potentially much worse. This settles the issue, and allows people to get back to work.

Hard forks will become less viable as a solution the larger the network gets, and as more interests are involved. However, blockchains are consensus mechanisms. Anyone can propose a hard fork update at any time.

Here is something to consider: as more than 80% of Bitcoin's hash power is in the hands of a few Chinese companies, the CCP could very realistically enforce a Bitcoin hard fork.

Bitcoin might seem like it has a conservative culture, but the truth is that the Chinese government could fork bitcoin tomorrow. I find that worrisome. Those miners that hold more than 80% of the hash power operate at the pleasure of the CCP.

The author makes a lot of assumptions about DAO holders. I am both an ETH and DAO holder. I am pro hardfork, not because I will get my DTH back, but because 1) the consequences of the attacker having that much ETH as Ethereum migrates to PoS and 2) it's much better than eternal white hat battles to control the DTH and the drama it would bring. TBH if we could just destroy all the DTH without a HF, I would be happiest with that solution. But, of course that cannot be done. I would prefer if the HF just burned the DTH.

Slock.it was very irresponsible not to cap The DAO from the beginning. Growing pains.

I didn't vote with carbonvote.com because I didn't have to. It was clear the HF was going to win. No need to mess with my cold wallets. There was no perfect outcome from this situation, but I see the HF as the least bad.

IMHO Bitcoin could use a HF, but they can't get one due to the centralization of mining in a few Chinese companies. I see that as a negative.

The threshold for a HF will likely grow for Ethereum as the network grows due to the diversity of stakeholders and their interests. These are very early times for Ethereum, and even for Bitcoin.

Ethereum does have more scheduled hard forks coming, BTW. The switch to PoS is going to require one.

>I would think having a bank of healthy stem cells would have simplified the procedure and perhaps improved the likelihood of positive outcomes.

It is possible, assuming that the banked cells were drawn before progression to a disease state. Here, they used the patient's own cells, which they treated before reintroduction, which strongly suggests there is a state to which they can be reverted. It's reasonable then to assume that at the very least, previously banked cells could be similarly treated before reintroduction, which might be a better starting point.

As speculated in the article, those patients that did not respond might have progressed too far for the treatment to work. If so, cells banked years before might be advantageous. Of course, that may not be reason why those patients didn't respond. Much of MS still remains a mystery.

Still, these results are very exciting, and add to the growing evidence that bone marrow stem cells have real clinical potential.

I'll ask our Chief Science Officer, Dr. Ben Buller, to discuss this trial in our blog: http://foreverlabs.co/blog He has published work using bone MSCs to reverse demyelination, which occurs in MS. I'm sure he'll have some good perspective.

That runs counter to what I have been hearing/reading. AFAIK the dev community is the fastest growing in the cryptocurrency space.

>Can people from other countries use your service (by traveling to one of your locations?)

Yes.

>At what (maximum) age would the max potential benefit be achieved from harvesting?

Functional data of cells harvested from donors of different ages shows much variability between individuals, but after about 40, a slow trend in decreased differentiation potential, proliferation, and other measures, appears. The decline depends upon the measure, but in general, suggests 20-40yo is the best window, and closer to 20 is likely better. The functional decline continues, but seems to get steeper around 60. Between 70-80, some studies report that the numbers of stem cells start to drop in addition to function. Here is a representative study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2398731/

No, just a local. I described the experience here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832220

It's not bad at all.

In MI/NC it is $3500 and $250/yr storage. Storage will remain constant, but there may be some market differences for the procedure.

Great minds think alike. ;)

I believe it is adapted from this study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16041622 Thanks. I'll confirm and add an attribution, which should be there.

People often use 'marrow stromal cells' or 'mesenchymal stem cells' interchangeably as scientific terms (but of course, there is debate) that refer to adherent colony-forming multipotent cells. We use 'bone marrow stem cells' as a non-scientific term that includes MSCs as well as hematopoietic stem cells and endothelial stem cells.

>Is there any reason you can't get this from whole blood?

The blood harvest process uses a machine, takes a few hours, and requires the prior administration of a protein that stimulates stem cell proliferation and release into the blood. It is preferable for some procedures, but for those reasons, not for ours.

As mentioned in the article, transplanted MSCs have not been found to carry risk of tumor formation, and this is seen as one of their advantages.

Induced stem cells (IPS), or stem cells that are genetically modified may carry these risks, as there is overlap in the signaling mechanisms that maintain the undifferentiated state of stem cells, and that of tumor. In fact, stem cells naturally express more tumor-suppressing proteins as they age, which is thought to be a mechanism to prevent tumorigenesis resulting from damage accrued in the cells over time.

We are based in Ann Arbor, MI. We are currently opening operations in the Piedmont of NC, and CA (SF) will follow soon after. More cities after that.

If you are interested, contact us, and let us know where you are at.

The procedure is done with a local anesthetic. The entire procedure takes about 15 minutes from lying down to standing up. It is drawn from the upper part of your pelvis bone on your lower back. The most discomfort is a muscle cramp-like feeling that lasts about 5 seconds upon the draw itself. Personally, I rated it a 3.5 out of 10, as did my wife. Consensus is 3-4. Our CEO is a self-professed wimp, and he said it was a 4. :) I'd much prefer it to a cavity being filled. There is no recovery, just a bruise-like tenderness at that exact spot for a few days. I walked across town for lunch afterwards.

Different therapies will likely require different numbers of cells, and most clinical trials using MSCs involve preliminary expansion of the cells. We store multiple aliquots of your cells so that only a portion may be thawed at a time.

We don't expand the cells at this time, but will likely offer expansion services in the future.

Yes, by expanding you could create a very large reserve of cells.

Sounds great! :)

There has been some animal work that suggests transplantation may have that effect:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23967009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25707248

There is much research to be done, but the technology to transplant young bone marrow stem cells to one's older self exists today.

To be honest, that is part of my personal motivation. 'Autologous stem cell time travel' is low hanging fruit. We preserve the cells in multiple aliquots with the assumption that they might be used for multiple purposes, including expansion.

Actually, the brain is not as immune privileged as was long thought. Only last year, lymphatic vessels were identified in the brain.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lymphat...

I've been working with MSCs for more than 15 years, mostly in stroke, and I agree completely. It's worth noting that this trial used donor cells, and that might be part of the reason they don't remain after a couple of months. There is evidence that autologous cells persist longer, likely because they aren't swept up by immune rejection.

What we and others have found is that age of the donor inversely correlates to their therapeutic potential. For that reason, I founded Forever Labs, Inc. http://www.foreverlabs.co/

We bank young MSCs so that they can be preserved for therapy later in life. I banked my own two months ago.

We prefer bone marrow MSCs as the BM also contains blood progenitor and stem cells, whereas adipose tissue does not.

*We are fast expanding and raising; email in bio. ;)

This is a lying, cheating, athlete in particular, so it's not surprising. Many athletes do have integrity and don't need to concoct such excuses.

I was talking about this to a fellow physicist friend the other day. Natural system with equilibrium points don't evolve away from them smoothly. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect the climate to be any different.

14 second low-variance block times is one that makes an impression from a user perspective.

>In blockchain-based systems the costs are related to market dynamics. Eg. miners can decide what they put to blocks and at what price. Or is ethereum somehow fundamentally different in this aspect?

Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are fundamentally different from current payment systems, and as Ethereum goes to PoS, it will likely be quite different than Bitcoin's PoW. Both probably represent an improvement on current transaction methods, i.e. credit card with 1-2%, plus $0.2 to $0.3 flat processing fees.

>Payment channels are perfectly supported by Bitcoin, what do you mean by "native"?

I mean that off-chain channels can be integrated without changes to the current Ethereum code.

http://www.arcturnus.com/ethereum-lightning-network-and-beyo...

>Why is ethereums account-based architecture better than Bitcoin's UTXO architecture? Isn't really obvious to me.

For bitcoin one txn requires n signatures for n unspent outputs. For Ethereum one txn requires just one signature. This has consequences for efficiency of micropayments and payment channels.

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/09/17/scalability-part-1-buil...

I agree that oracles make many use-cases over-hyped, but IMO you shouldn't overlook that Ethereum is far better at transacting ETH than Bitcoin is for transacting BTC.

ETH has a powerful use case as programmable money which settles faster and cheaper than any other, and has native support for payment channels and other complexities not only because of it's Turing complete language, but because it does not use bitcoin's UTXO architecture.

Not all interested in Ethereum view smart contracts as the best use case.

>And that Detroit is/has bulldozed 20 or more square miles of empty homes.

The ones they bulldoze are not fit for use.

Local bitcoins volume is a good resource.

https://coin.dance/charts

My concern is that LN puts a premium on unpredictable transaction behavior, and private transactions are unpredictable by nature. Thus, LN trades privacy for efficiency.

It's odd considering the struggle to keep the blocksize near 1MB for the purpose of keeping bitcoin decentralized. LN could centralize by making private transactions very expensive.

Follow both #space and #astronomy (and related) on Hubski.

https://hubski.com/tag?id=astronomy https://hubski.com/tag?id=space

Why is this of particular interest? I work in a neurology research lab that specializes in stroke. There are dozens of proteins that have similar effects, BDNF, EGF, VEGF, NGF, etc., not to mention miRNAs.

This is just one small component of brain repair.

Oddly, it seems that I am seeing more of this on HN lately.

I can see that. More options are always good. Industry has long been a lucrative option. However, I see the OP's concern relating to certain types of research that are largely supported in academia alone. Sam suggest that YCR is an alternative to academic research. Personally, I think YCR will represent another option more than a replacement. Which is fine. However, I don't imagine they can afford the waste needed for academic curiosity and the benefits it brings.

Yes, the best most often start early. But unlike math and physics, disciplines like biomedical research are very resource intensive which leads to older talent as well. My BS was in physics, and I was coding for peer-reviewed research just over a year into my undergrad. In biotech, things are very different. It's typical for investigations that culminate in a scientific paper to take a couple of years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. We've had Seimen's Foundation Award winning high school students come out of our own lab, but these students aren't setting the course of the investigation. We don't have the money and they don't have the time. These students generally flesh out one aspect of an existing investigation. They do great work, but it would be extremely difficult for them to take a study from concept to completion.

I thought my PhD research was fantastic. It was good, but geez could I have wasted YCR's money at that point. :)

Speaking as a researcher, IMO you might be belittling the OP's concern. While the YC initiative is noble, it has yet to be tested. I have worked in research and tech startups, and in very many ways the two couldn't be more different. Some of the best biotech research comes from incremental and ponderous study of minutiae, not 'ends driven' processes.

From the perspective of a biotech researcher in the US, the funding model here is broken. As a result of funding levels falling for more than a decade, and universities being less willing to invest in individuals without consistent major funding, getting grants has become a very political process.

I applaud YC's efforts. We need alternatives, but I am not sure that YC is interested in the same kinds of research that the legacy funding system used to support. Science is not sexy. The results can be incredibly sexy, but you never go in looking for those sexy results.

EDIT: In addition, it's worth considering the difference in the peak talent age of a researcher as compared to a programmer. You can code in your bedroom as a preteen, but it's very difficult to get unfettered access to a molecular research laboratory before the age of 22. The best researchers are older, and that changes the equation in important ways.

They are losing me. Almost 15 years and twice as many grant submissions. I'm writing a grant atm (a fucking good one), and I hope not to be around to be turned down for it. I'm literally pitching investors between experiments.