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The Ebola Wars

newyorker.com

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Re: The Ebola Wars

#11

Post by harshreality »

spacehome wrote: post #4
ddlatham wrote: post #3

A sample of the Ebola now raging in West Africa has, by recent count, 18,959 letters of code in its genome; this is a small genome, by the measure of living things. Does this mean mean Ebola is essentially about 38 kilobytes?

Yes. I wonder if being so incredibly small means that replication is more efficient and intense and is therefore a strong factor behind why it's so virulent.

I don't think that's the most important factor. Influenza, along with ebola and rabies, is small, while smallpox is big.

http://www.lehigh.edu/~jas0/viralgenomes.html

Re: The Ebola Wars

#12

Post by ddlatham »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #7
ddlatham wrote: post #3

A sample of the Ebola now raging in West Africa has, by recent count, 18,959 letters of code in its genome; this is a small genome, by the measure of living things. Does this mean mean Ebola is essentially about 38 kilobytes?

38 kilobits = 4.7 kB, but yes. Here's the complete genome of the pandemic strain (scroll down a bit): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KJ660346 Here's the paper sequencing it. ([edit]: I just realized the New Yorker article is largely about this exact paper -- I commented before reading, sorry). Note that five of the authors died before publication; there's a short tribute accompanying it. http://www.sciencemag.or…

Oops, thanks for the bits to bytes correction.

It is simply incredible to me that it could be so small (in an information sense).

This article (gzipped) is 22KB, more than 4 times as much information.

Re: The Ebola Wars

#13

Post by goatforce5 »

androidb wrote: post #2

Very well written article, but does anyone else think that the cartoonish image advertisements don't really fit well with the purpose of the article? The photo of an aid worker removing the body of a dead woman also looks surreal...

The cartoons are a big part of the New Yorker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Yorker#Cartoons

Re: The Ebola Wars

#14

Post by rads »

ddlatham wrote: post #12
throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

38 kilobits = 4.7 kB, but yes. Here's the complete genome of the pandemic strain (scroll down a bit): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KJ660346 Here's the paper sequencing it. ([edit]: I just realized the New Yorker article is largely about this exact paper -- I commented before reading, sorry). Note that five of the authors died before publication; there's a short tribute accompanying it. http://www.sciencemag.or…

Oops, thanks for the bits to bytes correction. It is simply incredible to me that it could be so small (in an information sense). This article (gzipped) is 22KB, more than 4 times as much information.

Yeah, but don't forget the complexity of the hardware you need to run ebola versus a website. Our bodies provide most of the implementation details.

Re: The Ebola Wars

#15

Post by anigbrowl »

androidb wrote: post #2

Very well written article, but does anyone else think that the cartoonish image advertisements don't really fit well with the purpose of the article? The photo of an aid worker removing the body of a dead woman also looks surreal...

It's a New Yorker thing - they've had whimsical cartoons mixed with serious reportage in their printed editions for decades, if not over a century. It is odd but I suspect it gets people to read more articles than they otherwise might.

Re: The Ebola Wars

#16

Post by throwaway5752 »

FD3SA wrote: post #10

Good thing we've been cutting science funding across the board! Doubt the NIH and NSF grants were helping science much anyway. As a matter of fact, science should be privately funded and privately run. What idiot thought it was a good idea to make scientific research a government mandate? To thy weary, I say: The market shall provide. P.S. Yes, I am bitter about the current state of science. I've written about it in…

Sorry in advance that this going a little off topic (though, I would argue it's somewhat pertinent given the historically notable scientific illiteracy in the Ebola coverage/public response). This is a political site, but the author is an expert in healthcare policy: http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/10/17/resiliency-is-not-ef...

I tend to agree with you and him on the topic that capitalism as practiced in the US currently is a quarter-to-quarter exercise. It doesn't disincentive externalized and systemic risks enough.

Re: The Ebola Wars

#17

Post by scottious »

ddlatham wrote: post #3

A sample of the Ebola now raging in West Africa has, by recent count, 18,959 letters of code in its genome; this is a small genome, by the measure of living things. Does this mean mean Ebola is essentially about 38 kilobytes?

Yes, but also no. I work at The Broad Institute and I deal with these genomes all the time. Long story short: there's tons of redundant data in these genomes because of the imperfect nature of sequencing so the real file size is many times bigger than that. Though in theory if we had perfect sequencing then it'd be around that size.

Re: The Ebola Wars

#18

Post by jerf »

FD3SA wrote: post #10

Good thing we've been cutting science funding across the board! Doubt the NIH and NSF grants were helping science much anyway. As a matter of fact, science should be privately funded and privately run. What idiot thought it was a good idea to make scientific research a government mandate? To thy weary, I say: The market shall provide. P.S. Yes, I am bitter about the current state of science. I've written about it in…

The CDC was and is plenty funded to deal with this threat. If you think they didn't spend it well, well, join the club.

No amount of money is ever "enough" if it not managed responsibly. I'd really appreciate it if those who think the answer is always more government money would start putting more pressure on their goverment to spend it responsibly. I mean that quite straight, not as a snark. It would go a long way towards getting me on the bandwagon of more government spending if it didn't appear to me that the people making this claim didn't always take every opportunity to dodge away from the question of responsibility in practice.

Re: The Ebola Wars

#19

Post by [deleted] »

ddlatham wrote: post #12
throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

38 kilobits = 4.7 kB, but yes. Here's the complete genome of the pandemic strain (scroll down a bit): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KJ660346 Here's the paper sequencing it. ([edit]: I just realized the New Yorker article is largely about this exact paper -- I commented before reading, sorry). Note that five of the authors died before publication; there's a short tribute accompanying it. http://www.sciencemag.or…

Oops, thanks for the bits to bytes correction. It is simply incredible to me that it could be so small (in an information sense). This article (gzipped) is 22KB, more than 4 times as much information.

[deleted]

Re: The Ebola Wars

#20

Post by Florin_Andrei »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #7
ddlatham wrote: post #3

A sample of the Ebola now raging in West Africa has, by recent count, 18,959 letters of code in its genome; this is a small genome, by the measure of living things. Does this mean mean Ebola is essentially about 38 kilobytes?

38 kilobits = 4.7 kB, but yes. Here's the complete genome of the pandemic strain (scroll down a bit): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KJ660346 Here's the paper sequencing it. ([edit]: I just realized the New Yorker article is largely about this exact paper -- I commented before reading, sorry). Note that five of the authors died before publication; there's a short tribute accompanying it. http://www.sciencemag.or…

There's something fascinating about looking at that code, even though I can't decompile it just by reading the characters.

P.S.: It's 37918 bits, about 4.6 kB

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