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 Friday, July 19, 2002
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What the headline doesn't say is that, although the drug is just as effective in blacks and whites, blacks progress to disease faster than whites. The reason is still unknown. 10:44:13 PM 
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Tweaking Single Gene Makes Mice Brainier [Scientific American]
Don't These Scientists Watch Any Movies?. Don't these scientists watch any movies? If they watched any movies, they would know that this kind of thing is never a good idea. Scientists create big-brained mice Altering a single gene gives mice human-like brains. Mice with the altered gene developed large, folded brains, right, that looked like human brains... big brains... brains so large they have to fold up, much as human brains do, to fit inside the skull, researchers said Thursday. IT IS NOT yet clear whether... [Semi-Daily Journal]
The first article discusses what the second article questions. It would be hard to believe that changing a single gene could increase the intelligence of an animal but stranger things have happened. In such a chaotic system as biology, simple changes in starting conditions can have huge effects. Maybe this is one of them. Maybe it will lead us to the strange ethical world of underpeople as descibed by Cordwainer Smith in his'Norstrilia' books. 10:29:26 PM
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I am listening to the Limeliters 'The London Concert', ripping it to mp3 using iTunes, while it is still legal ;-) I heard this all the time when I was younger. I just loved them. My parents had found out about them when living in the Bay area and saw them at the hungy i, I believe. I saw one of their reunion concerts when I attended CalTech in the 70s. Yarbrough had such a great, clear tenor, Hassilev could do anything and Gottlieb was such a character. They were one of the groups that had to be heard live. And what is great is that my 11 year old son really likes them, along with Smashouth and Snooby.
Oh, now they are singng 'When I First Came to This Land' 10:22:46 PM
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The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Comes Out Against Growth. There has long been speculation about whether the replacement of Robert Bartley by Paul Gigot as chief of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page would bring it back from Gamma Quadrant to planet earth. Now we know the answer. The answer is, "No." The Wall Street Journal's editorial page wishes that the Federal Reserve had used monetary policy to choke the economy so that interest rates would have been higher, growth slower, and employment lower in the late 1990s. WSJ.com... [Semi-Daily Journal]
Always a good read. 10:15:25 PM
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Hope this buzzword works better than Knowledge Management. Everytime I mentioned KM, people rolled their eyes. 10:12:40 PM
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A very cogent article about how web services can be useful. Tim has obviously read The Innovator's Dilemma by Calyton Christensen. Disruptive technology is often not profitable when it first starts. But catch the exponential curve and you will eventually make quite a bit. 9:45:54 PM
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My son is bugging me to fix breakfast, my wife is on her way back from an art show in Portland, so this may be it for today. I'll try and make a habit of putting in a few hours every morning. 9:47:23 AM
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I do not understand how anyone can state '...we are highly confident that this person isn't suffering from anthrax', as the CDC does. Maybe anthrax as we presently think it works. But human exposure to such highly purified amounts of anthrax is something that we have NO experience with, much less understand. There may be no trace of the bacteria or toxins now but we can only find what we know to look for. This could be the beginning of a whole new syndrome following anthrax inhalation. It should bear further study. 9:45:13 AM
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It appears that finding a cheap remedy using biotech approaches for malaria could be difficult. The parasite is much more diverse than suspected, meaning that it will be more difficult to find ONE thing to attack that will AFFECT all parasites. But humans are pretty smart and knowing more information will allow us to find something that will work. 9:40:07 AM
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Bad headline for a nice study. Cox-2 is increased by tumor growth, so inhibiting Cox-2, along with other therapies, could have an effect on uterine tumors. Unfortunately, this was done wil isoalted cells, not in a mamal. It is years and years away from human trials. While a neat idea, the trash heap of history is filled with neat ideas that worked in the test tube, worked in mice, worked through Phase I and Phase II human trials, but failed in Phase III. We will have to keep an eye on this. 9:38:21 AM
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New Scientist continues in its headline grabbing manner. The world is a dangerous place and mankind can do dangerous things. Ebola is a real headline-grabbing disease but it is, so far, not one that is widespread. Humans usualy die too quickly for it to become farflung and it requires blood-blood contact. What this really shows is that research into infectious disease need to be a priority; that eradication can never be fully guaranteed and that vaccination procedures need to be updated. Generating vaccine in chicken eggs is sometimes the method of choice. We may not be able to prevent people from creating these things but we can work hard to make their effects minimal. 9:29:02 AM
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My wife, in her biotech days before she let her right brain free to explore art, worked on similar molecules. This is really interesting stuff and shows the interaction of the immune system with other, less obvious, aspects of the circulation. It is by understanding the complete network of interactions that biotech will allow use to forever change medicine. Still very exciting times to live in. 9:22:55 AM
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As we understand the pathology of congestive heart failure better, screens like these will be very important. Immunex was testing Enbrel (TNFR-Fc) in congestive heart failure. Some believe that the failure of that trial led to the discussions with Amgen. It still seems to my mind that the importance of TNF in the progression of this disease will be very important. Maybe Enbrel will be revived, or some other anti-TNF molecule will work. We just need to find the right parameters, which can be VERY expensive when you are not 100% sure of the entire cascade of events in the progression of the disease. 9:18:36 AM
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Hand, foot and Mouth disease sounds so much more pedistrian than Coxsackie. It is noce to know what causes it. Let's hope it remains a fairly benign outbreak up here in the Northwest. 9:15:32 AM
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My second day without a job. Since I graduated from CalTech 25 years ago, I have always had a job. I never had any extended time between jobs. This is an excting new experience. I really want to figure out some way to get things like k-logs going in biotech, since I have an intimate knowledge of what is needed. The tricky part is marketing it for most biologists. We are, as a group, pretty conservative about trying new things. Biology is such a chaotic system that it tends to select for people who, while often used to finding novel ways to do things, are slow to change when things 'kind of' work. It took almost 2 years for e-mail to become used enough that you could be sure that anther scientist would check their messages at least ONCE a day. I had lots of times I'd send an e-mail then walk down the hallway later in the day to ask if they had seen it ;-)
Radio is something that is hard to explain to many biologists (who, in many cases, went into biology to escape the math requirements of other disciplines - joke;-). Everyone I showed it to at Immunex was really excited, but usually only AFTER I had demonstrated it. I think that if I had been there a few more months, I could have really gotten something going. Now, I'll just have to do it from outside. 9:13:18 AM
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While interesting, the article does not indicate how much of the GM DNA made it throught the gut. Since it was only found in ileostomy bags, while none was found in normal people, it is probably not something of major concern. One could try to create Frankenstein scenarios but I would prefer they keep the GM companies honest in creating products that are really good for the consumer and not just for the bottom line. Properly done, benefits of GM foods can far outway the samll negative effects. Much like vaccines. The benefit to society of a vaccine usually outweighs the negative effects. When it does not, we should not use it. 9:04:51 AM
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Being blogged so I can read it at my leisure but a quick glance shows it to be very interesting. One of the motifs I liked in 'Minority Report' was the fact that, although advertising was ubiquitous AND personalized, it was almost universally ignored. Most humans, luckily, can just tune out these sorts of messages. 8:48:36 AM
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I would not think that College Station in Texas could be home to such an interesting effort. I would love a really carefree rose, since most of the ones I have tried to grow get all sorts of diseases. I want something like daylilies - grow in awful soil but still have brightly colored flowers. Only they bloom eternally, not just for a day. 8:43:47 AM
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Blogs: They're All Over Apple. Webloggers are diggin' the Macworld scene this week. Also: Inside Steve Jobs' keynotes ... secretive closed-door meetings ... and more, from Leander Kahney's Macworld Expo notebook. [Wired News]
This Macworld is the first huge conference whose wireless networking really seems to have gotten the attention of the mainstream media. Simultaneous weblogging may finally show the media that weblogs have something new to add. 8:34:30 AM
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