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 Monday, February 17, 2003
Infection with a harmless virus may help slow down the life cycle of HIV. This presentation confirms and expands earlier work by the group at the University of Iowa. It seems that GBV-C binds to the same cellular receptors that HIV uses to gain entry to a cell. 75 percent of the men who had persistent GBV-C infections were still alive after 11 years versus 39 percent of those who had never been infected with GBV-C. And for the few who cleared GBV-C from their systems, only 16 percent were still alive. Although this last group was pretty small (12 patients), it is very intriguing. It is not known whether GBV-C acts directly or whether it causes the immune system to respond in ways that also slow the progression of the HIV infection. It is also not entirely clear what effect the various HIV cocktails have on these co-infection process. This could be a fascinating approach to dealing with the disease, though. 11:46:13 PM 
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There is an ongoing discussion dealing with new modalities of scientific publishing. This is one of those areas that will greatly change in the next few years. Scientific authors want as many people as possible to read their work. They do not need remuneration for writing. They get support from their institutions. Journals can potentially publish as many reputable papers as their servers can store, reducing the ability of some publishers to restrict the number of papers, thus permitting them to charge huge subscription fees. BioMedCentral is working on many aspects of these new paradigms. With its open access journals, the Faculty of 1000 filtering system and the customizability of My BioMedCentral suggest new ways to publish new scientific information, while retaining necessary filtering and peer review abilities. Excuse me now. There are several interesting articles that have shown up in my own 'My BioMedCentral.' 11:37:04 PM
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Whirlpool blamed in man's kidney injury [Reuters Health eLine]
A man suffering end stage kidney disease, with very high blood pressure and taking blood thinning drugs that slow clotting, sat in a hot tub after swimming. The jets from the whirlpool apparently struck his kidneys, resulting is a large hematoma surrounding one of his kidneys. He was very thin with the normal layer of fat protecting that area. The doctor was quoted as saying 'I think doctors should not recommend that these patients use whirlpools.' Sounds like a good idea. 6:07:55 PM
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Okay, the answer is pretty close to what others had said. I did ask my son, who is in the second grade, and damned if he did noy start on the rigfht track. He said one switch could just be a dummy. He wanted to know what the answer was rather than work it completelly out but I think he might have gotten the answer a lot sooner than I would have. 6:02:04 PM
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Okay, a little 'ivory tower' stuff. Today, there is a confluence of seemingly disparate streams. It is as if you found that the Nile, the Danube, the Mississippi and the Amazon had the same headwaters.You can easily see some of this in the weblogs published here. Networks, creativity, copyrights, high technology affect us all. Changing technology changes what we can do. The flow of information is becoming frictionless, opening up novel ways to attack problems that beset us. Groups and technologies that enhance this flow offer new approaches to old difficulties, ways to create dynamic knowledge from passive information. In biotechnology, these approaches drive what we can and can not do. They will allow us to seek answers and solve problems that have been intractable so far. But, in order to use this information properly, it must be accessible, in ways that could not be done previously. Adaptive, collaborative networks of scientists will be able to solve problems faster and more nimbly than other structures. They will hold a tremendous selective advantage in this new environment of constant change. The asteroid has already hit. The day of the dinosaurs is over. Those that can adapt will thrive. The dinosaurs still exist and can still do damage, will do what they can to survive, but the way is open for new ways to succeed. Attempts to restrict the free flow of most information are, to my mind, doomed because the environment has altered, changing forever the ability to make certain types of information scarce. Technologies that enhance the flow will be important. The effects of these technologies on biology serves as a microcosm of similar effects changing the world around us. Too much information is almost as bad as too little. It will be fun to see just how biologists solve these problems. I'll try to provide some insights and perspectives as we explore where these new streams take us. Maybe we will all end up at one place. 12:21:59 PM
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Study shows strong association between academic collaboration and scientific publishing productivity [EurekAlert!]
I love reports like this one entitled >The Impact of Research Collaboration on Scientific Productivity. They surveyed a lot of scientists regarding several aspects of their research, such as collaboration. They found that the most productive scientists, those that publish the most, are also the most collaborative. They did all sorts of data mashing and found some nice tidbits. They found that the most productive years for a scientist are between the 19th and 28th years following the award of their doctorate. Now measuring productivity purely by publications may skew matters somewhat. It would be interesting to get some idea how important these papers were or whether these just factories chugging out material. But is a nice first start and one that indicates important aspects of how future research will be performed Because Google is such a wonderful device, and since this work is about collaboration, I was able to find a site through the lead author (Barry Bozeman at Georgia Tech) that provides a Word version of the second paper mentioned, Research Collaboration Strategies among Scientists and Engineers. So you can download and read the real thing rather than only a synopsis. I love Google. And I love researchers who are generous with their work. 11:33:08 AM
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Prions get wired [Nature Science Update]
Misfolded prions are the presumptive cause of mad cow disease (or bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and variant forms of Creutzfeldt
Jacob disease. The particular protein causing these diseases is found in all eukaryotes. It looks like the particular form found in yeast may be useful. It self-organizes into linear fibers that can be coated with conducting material can create microwires potentially useful for nanotech. At the moment these wires are too big to be used in true nanotechnology and, I think using prions as a basic material might give some people the willies. But using biological material to self-organize to form microcircuits has been a goal for iver 20 years. 10:38:31 AM
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Okay, I had a few personal matters to take care of this weekend but I should be back in full force. 10:08:56 AM
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