81–90 of 241 posts
How sleep washes the brain of toxins: http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/october2013/10282013clear... This mechanism could also be the cause of the refreshment we feel after a short nap or meditation. Much harder to study though!
http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/28/technology/audi-diesel-air-w...
Vampires! Technically speaking, parabiosis. Although it is not actually a new discovery at all, personally I'm convinced there are humans who have already transfused young blood plasma(as the linked article points out illegal stem cell transplants are common as well). Yeah, that's right, vampires. http://www.nature.com/news/ageing-research-blood-to-blood-1....
I went a massive life extension technology reading binge a few months back, IMHO it is, right now, possible to extend human life indefinitely.
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I think you overestimate the "simple to do" part in terms of actually implementing human therapies, but, in any case, crop and industrial bacteria applications are further along toward commercialization now (some of the former may actually already be commercialized), while human therapies may be among the eventual applications, its quite unlikely (and maybe already passed into "impossible") that they will be the firs…
But the point of this technique is, its dead simple. Identify a gene and cut it out. Or add one.
I would say, in no particular order: * the fact that many of the dinosaurs had feathers * myriad of exoplanets * water on Mars (and many other new data on the planet) * Higg's boson (confirmed to 99.999% certainty) * Neanderthal genes present in modern humans * new ancient Mayan cities That's it from me for starters, hopefully others will join in.
Dark energy / accelerating expansion of the universe: well this goes back to 1998..
Understanding our place in the universe will tell us where we came from and where we're going. There's also clearly some fundamental physics left to master which might have unforseen practical applications.
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I think you overestimate the "simple to do" part in terms of actually implementing human therapies, but, in any case, crop and industrial bacteria applications are further along toward commercialization now (some of the former may actually already be commercialized), while human therapies may be among the eventual applications, its quite unlikely (and maybe already passed into "impossible") that they will be the firs…
But the point of this technique is, its dead simple. Identify a gene and cut it out. Or add one.
Is reality invented or discovered? Is math invented or discovered? Was automata theory invented or discovered? OK well then is the quicksort algorithm invented or discovered? Is LISP invented or discovered? Is my code invented or discovered?
discovered, this is a tautology
>> Is math invented or discovered?
invented
>> Was automata theory invented or discovered?
invented
>>OK well then is the quicksort algorithm invented or discovered?
invented, unless you believe that humans do quicksort intuitively. In which case it wasn't invented by you, personally.
>>Is LISP invented or discovered?
invented
>>Is my code invented or discovered?
invented
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Racing to the bottom on price isn't good for you because you have access to lots of food at prices you can easily afford. For a great many people, more and cheaper food means they can actually afford to get enough to eat. Foods have been modified to stay fresher and be more nutritious. But you don't see them in stores.
The real advances have been in packaging and transportation, not genetics. That said, the cost improvements in food aren't such a big impact on real hunger. When people are too broke to eat, making food half as expensive really doesn't have that much impact. And much of the savings-per-calorie relative to fresh food get factored into profits. Food deserts are a huge problem in this country - places where there is no…
You're not wrong about the lack of advances in genetics arriving in markets. What I think you've overlooked is that between attacks on the business models that make such advances possible and the political cover that such attacks bring to the "DON'T EAT THE SCIENCE" people... this isn't likely to change. So please, don't complain about the lack of advances in genetics until you're prepared to stop giving cover to the Luddites ranting about frankenfoods. Proposing a different - and practical and workable - business model that allows for the commercial development of GMOs without abusing copyright would be a great way to go about this.
Also: look up Golden Rice. More nutritious foods have been made. And the lock-in angle addressed. Yet the stuff is still not widely grown.
Your reading of food deserts is naive, however. Junk food isn't just cheap in money. It's cheap in time, infrastructure, and required knowledge. A burger from McD's is cheap, hot, and instantly edible. Even the cheapest of Healthy Fresh Green Things requires time to cook, facilities to cook in, equipment to cook, the knowledge to cook, and a place to store the results.
You cannot just put Healthy Fresh Green Things in food deserts and get results. People have tried, and the stuff rots on store shelves.
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I would first want to see people accept GMO crops. Then I'll be willing to think of people going to the doctor to change their eye color.
The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of monocropping. But productivity i…
Hybrid seeds already did that 50 years ago.
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I would first want to see people accept GMO crops. Then I'll be willing to think of people going to the doctor to change their eye color.
While this is a hot button topic, I've seen some pretty horrible things Monsanto has done to farmers. Accepting GMO crops would mean accepting Monsanto who has a monopoly on the industry and are well know for using sketchy tactics when dealing with farmers resistant to using their seeds.
[citation needed]