klmr

56 ms·

361.
by klmr 8y ago
> we also don't know much at all about the mechanism behind RNA Wait wait wait. We know a tremendous amount about “the mechanism behind RNA”. Without being more specific it’s hard to say what you mean but we’ve certainly done a lo
362.
by klmr 8y ago
Even if: neurotransmitters are extremely short-lived, and almost completely unspecific: they’re either generally excitatory or inhibitory, they don’t encode complex messages. They experimental setup sufficiently controls for that due to t
363.
by klmr 8y ago
Same caveat as above: the existing studies are deeply flawed. So far, the evidence for this kind of trans-generational inheritance is very week, and there’s no plausible mechanism to explain it, either.
364.
by klmr 8y ago
Figure legend 1D says: “Control RNA (5.4 ± 3.9 s, n = 7) and Trained RNA (38.0 ± 4.6 s, n = 7)” That’s a relatively low n but it might be sufficient. However, they don’t explain how the number was reduced from ~30 donor animals to 7 test an
365.
by klmr 8y ago
> I haven't checked, and apparently neither has anyone else. Wait, how did you figure that out? Of course this has been checked. Here’s a review: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4446746/
366.
by klmr 8y ago
> There's a fifth fundamental force of nature, just like gravity/electromagnetic/strong/weak forces, which interacts with specially structured organic matter We can fairly confidently exclude this possibility. Dirac’s
367.
by klmr 8y ago
No study has successfully shown that inherited PTSD actually exists in humans. The studies that purport to show so are plagued by flaws. Here’s a good write-up of the state of the field: https://www.theguardian.com/science&#
368.
by klmr 8y ago
RNA is too short-lived (in the order of minutes to hours) to serve as a long-term memory. Muscle memory, despite the name, corresponds to changes in the brain structure. In a way muscle memory is the exact opposite: it’s a slowly learned,
369.
by klmr 8y ago
> it'll make people reconsider that genetics Yes, > and race affect intelligence no. To clarify: it’s extremely well established that genetics strongly affects intelligence [1]. Nobody in the field is denying (or ignoring) this.
370.
by klmr 8y ago
> Unstructured wealth transfer will never happen Basic income is arguably that, and there’s some hope that it will happen in the not so far future (or rather, there’s a reasonable fear that without it, and with the structural changes to
371.
by klmr 8y ago
> genetic factors (that is distinct from heritability, which is lower, ~60% You’re confusing something. Genetic factors = heritability, by definition[^1]. The 60% number is simply the heritability at birth (actually it’s probably lower),
372.
by klmr 8y ago
> 70-80% comes from where? Mostly from twin studies. This number (at least the ballpark figure) is essentially uncontested amongst researchers at this point (see e.g. [1]). However, this is the heritability of the variability of intellig
373.
by klmr 8y ago
As you are saying, 20–30 per cent of the variability of intelligence is not heritable. In other words, it’s acquired. This contradicts your claim that “[helping them] is unlikely to improve intelligence in the poorer population”. If done
374.
by klmr 8y ago
Maybe (and it’s definitely relevant), although I’m not sure other studies agree. But it is well established that parents’ wealth is an extremely good predictor of children’s wealth (see e.g. [1]). And I don’t think OP is matte_black is deny
375.
by klmr 8y ago
Leaving mortality aside, survivorship doesn’t just apply to literal death; it usually (and importantly here) applies to sampling : Let’s assume for argument’s sake that poverty does indeed have a significant, detrimental effect on brain de
376.
by klmr 8y ago
This is one of the main subfields of bioinformatics.
377.
by klmr 8y ago
CRISPR specificity. Designing good gRNAs isn’t quite trivial, although it’s not as hard as the article makes it seem. I’m not sure about the claim of reducing the time of experiments by “month”.
378.
by klmr 8y ago
> I wonder if the headline was even written by the author rather than some copy editor Almost certainly not, and they rarely are.
379.
by klmr 8y ago
> Analog computers were just digital computers with a different computational paradigm. No, there are fundamental differences. Digital computation is inherently error correcting because there are only two states — on or off. With analog
380.
by klmr 8y ago
The article is fine. The editor (who provided the title) is the one without a clue.
381.
by klmr 8y ago
> But what if there was a way to write algorithms that can't be expressed with a von Neumann architecture? There almost certainly isn’t, due to the universality of computation (see the Church–Turing hypothesis). At any rate, even if
382.
by klmr 8y ago
No, I think it’s totally possible (albeit exceedingly unlikely). But we already know that CRISPR has (rare) off-target effects. That’s why I’m saying that the i-motifs don’t change the risk assessment. At best, they can explain why CRISPR
383.
by klmr 8y ago
Both.
384.
by klmr 8y ago
> How so? With other gene editing techniques, such as TALENs (and others before that). > And if so, why is CRISPR such a big deal? CRISPR/Cas9 is a big deal because it makes gene editing a lot easier and less error-prone (and hen
385.
by klmr 8y ago
> Are you even a biologist though. Yes. > or else CRISPR would already be a widespread mode of therapeutic treatment You underestimate how long it takes for anything to get from fundamental research to treatment. Not just because of
386.
by klmr 8y ago
Fair enough. I was just adding this trivia since the item stuck out of your list: all the other items may (under some jurisdictions) be illegal to possess.
387.
by klmr 8y ago
> You can't gauge the specific danger or benefit of the unknown. I’m not claiming to. All I’m saying is that “CRISPR [isn’t] dangerous specifically because we underestimate the complexity of DNA”. In the context of this discussion I
388.
by klmr 8y ago
This already exists, it’s called cryptography: for example, you can exchange some prime numbers (key exchange), and then use those to apply a generic mathematical function to the information. You then send the resulting numbers. (In this si
389.
by klmr 8y ago
> If no, what if the book is Mein Kampf? Incidentally there isn’t a single country (as far as I could find) where owning Mein Kampf is or was illegal. There’s a common misconception that its possession is or was illegal in Germany. How
390.
by klmr 8y ago
> Can it contain itself? Well it does, trivially. You’re probably thinking of set theory but the file system is about storing information in a sequence and an offset. Seen that way, π can be stored with offset 0.

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