prat

There is a problem with observing changes in a single protein and reversing them to see if it all fits again. Evolution doesn't necessarily changes single proteins - it changes whole pathways (that define a biological function) - that include a number of different proteins expressed from different genes. If scientists had changed all these proteins back to where they were in addition to reversing the 5 changes in glucocorticoid receptor, the old function would surely be restored.

> Thus, my cell lines will undergo somewhere between 20 and 50 more cell divisions than a cell in a living mouse.

Just curious - is cell division time period same for humans and mice?

a google search got me another article "Genetic Mechanism In Mole Rats Can Be Targeted In Cancer Research" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090315223845.ht...

"Researchers have found that subterranean mole rats have developed cellular mechanisms in order to survive the low levels of oxygen in their underground habitat -- mechanisms that are similar to those used by tumors to survive and progress in humans."

I am not sure of the source of this post (newscientist - they haven't mentioned any references) but I found a paper describing the new animal model using naked mole rat in the area of aging. The paper also talks about highly reduced incidence/severity of cancer.

"The Naked Mole-Rat: A New Long-Living Model for Human Aging Research" http://biomed.gerontologyjournals.org/cgi/content/full/60/11...

Great guy. Gotta get his book "Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind"

>A mere 50 grams of brown fat - well within the range of what some of us already have - could dissipate around 500 calories a day.

Amazing.

Amazon has ready competition (Newegg) waiting for it in this area. But of-course newegg should be worried right now.

I think if the cable industry had a platform for developers to make apps (like on iphone/android etc), the cable software could have been much better. Look at time-warner/comcast/at&t interface - they all suck so much yet there is no one to tell them the first thing about good design or functionality.

I think it is inevitable that this would change in the next few years (with entrants like apple or google in cable business) and you would have all the functionality of netflix on cable. This would be the end of dvds altogether and netflix would die as a business model just like blockbuster is dying today and video tapes died back in time.

>"intermeddling with goods belonging to someone else, or altering their condition, is a trespass to goods and will entitle the photographer to claim compensation without having to prove loss."

The goods belonging to someone else (paparazzi) ARE photographs with a bolt of light. How can a photographer's photo be altered with a bolt of light if it was created with a bolt of light in it in the first place.

Would also like to point out that culture driven entrepreneurship may be slightly of a different kind than we are acquainted with (startups/VCs/business plans etc.). These people may have for example started with being a taxi driver and grown to be the owner of travel company.

Another dimension that would have been interesting to consider in this study is immigrant entrepreneurship. http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/02/immigration-india-china-ent...

"Fear of the unknown" - very well said. In fact, there are some communities (sindhis, marwaris, parsis in India for example) where the culture of entrepreneurship has been handed down through generations. Like getting a job is a way of life and not "unknown" in common families, entrepreneurship is not an "unknown" in families of these communities.

>Entrepreneurship doesn’t always run in the family. More than half (51.9 percent) of respondents were the first in their families to launch a business.

the converse of this is more surprising. The ball-park null hypothesis is that only 0.29% (290 for every 100,000 individuals) should come from family with history of entrepreneurs - but observed figure is ~50%. From this one should conclude that entrepreneurship does run in families.

Very interesting. This will most probably be a big boost to neuroscience.

This is probably off-topic so deleting.

Musharraf may have continued the trend of not caring about the purpose towards which the US aid was used. http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/14/stories/2009091458281100.htm

How credible can the current Pakistan govt be? Even with a strong base in Pakistan, US had no idea this was going on back when A Q Khan had his job.

>they used their private knowledge of 10 people in the network who were gay but did not declare it on their Facebook page as a simple check. They found all 10 people were predicted to be gay by the program.

Does the author care to give a false positive error rate? how many were predicted gay and were not. without that statistic this argument is bogus.

Venture capital is just the fuel that is required to keep an innovative enterprise running. Can oil industry take the credit for bringing industrial revolution? No.

Education, innovation and hardwork of entrepreneurs is what keeps the VCs alive. VCs depend on entrepreneurs not vice versa.

This argument is purely hypothetical - purely a thought experiment. Observation on the other hand is that provocative fashion statements being made by younger population more than the older, by blacks more than whites and finally (this is not a personal observation) by people with Histrionic Personality Disorder (http://www.buzzle.com/articles/what-is-abnormal-psychology.h...).

So if there are so many effective separators of provocative vs. regular fashion people - how important can status be?

One of my previous roommates wouldn't wake up if there was a garbage truck inside the room. Nothing short of hitting him would do the trick. That's another idea for an alarm clock.

I would like to find out how this relates to how people laugh - I have an intuition, that a bigger bolder laugh correlates with high testosterone.

I like the hypothesis but I was expecting a better description of the experimental design. What kind of patterns were found by people who read Kafka that were missed by others. Were the subjects tested before reading - it doesn't say so. I guess the research paper might answer that.

But its interesting to know that there is a heightened sense of pattern recognition in those that are exposed to the unexpected. It seems to hint that this might be an evolutionary characteristic in humans that compensates for one having been through survival struggles in life.

I agree about the child bearing age point..resistance to infectious disease may have been a better example.

but re your last point, being prone to cancer could speed up evolution but at the same time could wipe out a sub population? infact- that (probably) holds for anything that speeds up evolution - but again math models would be needed to prove that.

That is possible, but the gene for blue eyes may also be linked with some other characteristic (biologically more relevant than attraction - like resistance to cancer) that might provide selective advantage. Linkage (close enough genes travel together) among genes plays a huge role in selection but often, and understandably, we regard the the feature that is easily visible to us as essential.