31–40 of 129 posts
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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.
Is the lesson here to always steal people's vaccines without asking?
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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…
It is not. Sorry, $6B annual budget is not a lot in the context of their responsibility, which is substantially greater than ebola [edit: or even outbreak containment in general, for that matter]. In fact, ebola (as evidenced by the lack of transmission to Duncan's own family or any additional caregivers of his [edit: not to mention a lack of host reservoir in NA]) probably and appropriately very low on the CDC's rad…
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/books/the-hot-zone-author-...
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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…
It is not. Sorry, $6B annual budget is not a lot in the context of their responsibility, which is substantially greater than ebola [edit: or even outbreak containment in general, for that matter]. In fact, ebola (as evidenced by the lack of transmission to Duncan's own family or any additional caregivers of his [edit: not to mention a lack of host reservoir in NA]) probably and appropriately very low on the CDC's rad…
The answer, of course, is that it wasn't considered so important until a couple of months ago, and thus, it wouldn't matter how much money was thrown at them, it wouldn't have solved the fundamental priority problem.
Contra to some of the press, I took the time to read the CDC's summary budget from the government's website. It wasn't hard to find ("Center for Disease Control" budget). It's full of things that sound superficially wonderful, but none of it matters if it's being spent incompetently or with priorities not connected to the real world, and throwing "more" at such an organization is not a good investment.
You can't get away from it. It isn't about more, it's also about what. What matters a lot. Again, I'd be less vocal about not just handing the government more if the advocates of more would pay more attention... much more attention... to what, and how well. But I can't help but notice the advocates of "more" seem to consider that an attack, when in all seriousness they really ought to be leading the charge. If you are an advocate of giving the government more, shouldn't you consider it very important to your own position that what the government already has be used well? You give away an enormous weapon when you leave it solely to your opponents to point out problems!
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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.
Thank you for saying that! Its so often repeated that our DNA contains the entire program for a human being. That's patently false. The cellular machinery provides almost all of the OS; DNA is just a script. I liken DNA to a paper tape containing one of two punches: MAN or MOUSE. Feed it into a bio-replicator and get a man or a mouse. Does the paper tape define the man? Of course not.
I don't think that really captures it. Yes, it requires external machinery to actually do anything, but DNA is much more information dense and carries much more of an exact definition of the organism to be produced.
Personally, I prefer the analogy of compiler source code. Sure, it can't do anything on its own. But it defines how an working external system (another compiler or an functional cellular environment) can produce a second possibly different system
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the notes to decoded pieces itself fascinating : /note="immunosuppressive region; other site" ... /note="transmembrane anchor; transmembrane region"
it's even more fascinating. (biochemist here) I think the immunosuppressive regions is a small protein called sGP which ebola causes the cell to produce a ton of. It's not attached to ebola virions, so in a way it's a DDOS on the immune system, by creating a foreign component that the immune system gets distracted by instead of going after ebola.
Is that why people die? Cells make too much of that stuff?
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It is not. Sorry, $6B annual budget is not a lot in the context of their responsibility, which is substantially greater than ebola [edit: or even outbreak containment in general, for that matter]. In fact, ebola (as evidenced by the lack of transmission to Duncan's own family or any additional caregivers of his [edit: not to mention a lack of host reservoir in NA]) probably and appropriately very low on the CDC's rad…
Then my point is even more important given the proportion of it actually spent on infectious diseases. If that's so allfired important than why were they doing anything else with that money? The answer, of course, is that it wasn't considered so important until a couple of months ago, and thus, it wouldn't matter how much money was thrown at them, it wouldn't have solved the fundamental priority problem. Contra to so…
If I were the CDC, I'd be spending a boatload on SARS, MERS, MERSA, MDR/XDR TB, any number of the highly virulent seasonal influenza strains, social programs to promote vaccinations (pertussis, for example, kills more babies in the US annually than there have been total US cases of Ebola), annual rabies tracking programs, general education (good hygiene practices)... so many others. And the good news is they are doing this, as I'm sure your research into their budget shows.
edit: thus the downvoter exemplifies the problem, without saying a single word.
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Thank you for saying that! Its so often repeated that our DNA contains the entire program for a human being. That's patently false. The cellular machinery provides almost all of the OS; DNA is just a script. I liken DNA to a paper tape containing one of two punches: MAN or MOUSE. Feed it into a bio-replicator and get a man or a mouse. Does the paper tape define the man? Of course not.
> I liken DNA to a paper tape containing one of two punches: MAN or MOUSE I don't think that really captures it. Yes, it requires external machinery to actually do anything, but DNA is much more information dense and carries much more of an exact definition of the organism to be produced. Personally, I prefer the analogy of compiler source code. Sure, it can't do anything on its own. But it defines how an working ext…
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…