kitchen blender

2009-11-30T20:25:00.002Z

My friend James Schneider wants to abolish patents on drugs. Drugs are of course extremly expensive to develop. It is not only the biological and chemical research needed to develop molecules acting as drugs which makes this so expensive, but also the research required to modify these molecules meet the safety standards for regulatory approval. And these safety standard are constantly rising; in fact many key drugs currently sold such as aspirin would not get approved these days. For many if not most drugs it is comparatively easy to produce them once these hurdles are cleared. Virtually anybody could produce them if not for the patent protection. Surely, abolishing patents would destroy a huge incentive to invest into the risky, but socially tremendously valuable field of pharmaceutical research and development.

Being HIV positive was considered a death sentence in the early 90s, by the late 90s HIV/Aids has become a chronic disease in the Western World . Both nonprofit/ commercial research were key for this medical breakthrough to happen. I would argue that it would be morally abhorrent to slow down the pace of the pharmaceutical research by tinkering with the regulatory framework.

The case for leaving the airline industry alone

2008-06-13T08:06:00.007+01:00

Wired magazine Autopia blog makes the case for re-regulating airlines. Bob Crandall, the former CEO of American Airlines proposes this according to the Autopioa blog :

"Giving the government a role in pricing and prohibit new airlines from offering below cost fares that makes flying unprofitable for everyone."

So he wants less innovation by start ups which was hugely successful in Europe. Granted low cost airlines such as Ryanair or Easyjet do not make travelling a stylish or even pleasurable experience but they get you from A to B quickly, cheaply and in many cases more directly. Moreover they force established airlines to offer either better service or lower prices. I cannot see what is bad about this.

Not only consumers but also employees would lose out by this proposals:

"Amending the Railway Labor Act so that unions and management both "adopt more moderate positions"." Translation: Make strikes by unions illegal and force them into binding arbitration." (from the Autopia blog)

Furthermore the government would second guess the wishes of consumers by:"Pressuring airlines to use the larger jets, which means you won't be flying those annoying 50-seat regional jets between Cleveland and Cincinnati anymore, but you'll only have two flights a day to choose from, instead of eight." (from the Autopia blog again)

"Collectively, airlines have lost over $13 billion since deregulation, and that's even after you throw all the profitable years into the mix. (quoted from the Autopia blog)" I do not care at all how much money the airline industry loses. If it is such a bad businesses ,why are companies not deserting it for more lucrative ventures? Some companies such as Lufthansa are do not look at all as they would struggle for survival. Certainly, air transport is not a public service especially regarding the huge environmental costs associated with it.

Most of the current losses are related to the high oil prices, as far as I can judge. Well, market conditions seems to favour energy efficiency in this case. This will potentially spur research into enhancing fuel efficiency. Hardly a bad thing given global warming.

The Aviation industry is hardly de-regulated when their are still restrictions on who can service domestic routes in the US and the foreign ownership of airlines. Re-regulation might be good for vested interests such as incumbents, but is almost certainly bad for my desire to choose between excellent service or cheap tickets.

Real time oberservation of HIV viron assembly

2008-05-27T20:31:00.002+01:00

Real time oberservation of HIV viron assembly. Pretty impressive stuff- Check out the the Wired Science story about it.

Still fiction, hopefully science quite soon

2008-03-18T15:21:00.003Z

A video from Nokia and Cambridge Nanoscience Center.

The inner workings of a (crowded) cell

2008-03-12T12:59:00.010Z

A very nice video which explains the inner workings of a cell made at Harvard University.

However a typical cellular protein concentration is 400 mg/ml (400 g/L) so the cell should be much more crowded and less neat, in my view. Have a look at this reconstruction of the cytoplasm of a eukaryotic cell (Dictyostelium discoideum, from Medalia et al, 2002).).

It was obtained from cryo-electron tomography, where pictures taken at various angles are reconstructed to a 3D image. There is no staining, fixation or dehydration of the sample. For more on macromolecular crowding see this report.

George Bush´s taste in art- found at SlateV

2008-03-12T12:47:00.005Z

Quite a spectacular misinterpretation of an unspectacular painting.

"Le monde selon Monsanto" - how dangerous is GM milk?

2008-03-12T10:46:00.004Z

Yesterday I saw a documentary on Monsanto, an agrobusiness, which was aired by the French- German TV channel arte. You can watch the film "Le monde selon Monsanto" in either French or German (if you are currently in either France of Germany). The film was highly critical of genetically modified food.

The use of (recombinant) growth hormone rBST in milk production was criticsed heavily. The use of growth hormone seems to increase milk production, but also causing mastitis. It was claimed that farmers do often treat this condition by giving antibiotics to affected cows. Moreover it was claimed that milk produced this way contained not only elevated levels of antibiotics but also of Insulin like Growth Factor (IGF). IGF drives cell proliferation and can thus facilitate the onset of cancer. rBST treatment is not allowed in milk production in the EU and Canada and basically all developed countries save the USA.

Nontheless, wouldn´t the IGF be denatured and destroyed in the digestive system when taken up orally by humans?

Interestingly, the milk produced by this method seems to be save for humans, but there are aminal welfare concerns according to studies conducted by regulators in Canada.

The documentary failed to mention this; it was more focused on the lobbying side of the regulatory process. What it failed to show is how Americans respond to the whole story: They just buy more rBST free organic milk. Organic diary products were already a 500 million dollar market in 2000. GM food is once again not a very convincing bogeyman.