The Watering Hole: May 14 – Young Talent

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We too often associate talented young folks as actors, but here is an example where a HS student may have made significant progress in medicine which may well bear fruit in the very near future towards a cure for Cystic Fibrosis. At the very least, this could alleviate some of the suffering from this disease.

This young man relied on a super-computer to assist in his research. The key issue is that he had decided that he would direct his research along a direct path to test out his own theories. He performed the biology work himself.

Now over to my intended post:

Today happens to be the date (in 1796) when Edward Jenner started tests on a smallpox vaccine developed on the observation that milkmaids were less likely to contact the disease. He guessed, correctly, that the agent causing the disease was related to a disease in cattle – cowpox and demonstrated that immunity to smallpox could be developed by contact to the pox suffered by cattle. This immunity was conferred without suffering anything beyond a mild rash. He was in effect using a weakened version of the virus.

Up to that point in time, immunity to smallpox was conferred by applying the pus from the scabs of smallpox victims to a small wound in the skin. This was in effect a vaccine, but the pus had to be harvested after the donor’s immune system had weakened the virus (Yuk! – :shock: ).

Jenner’s method led to the virtual World wide extinction of the smallpox virus in recent times.

This is our Open Thread. Please feel free to present your thoughts on any topic that comes to mind.

Update: Fixed paragraph ordering.

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72 thoughts on “The Watering Hole: May 14 – Young Talent”

  1. Wow … I had two family friends, twins, who died in their twenties from CF … It will be interesting to see how far Sanofi goes with this young man’s/”mentors” ideas … Very interesting article … hmmn …

    It’s curious to me how the mind works sometimes. When I initially noted the word “smallpox” in the article, I flashed back to a Native American man being given an infected blanket as a gift; and when I saw “Jenner”, my flashback was the Olympic Decathlete winning race that Bruce ran … Man, I better get some coffee ;)

    Early shift for me today … what are you up to?

  4. I don’t know why FOK has to ‘categorize’ the posts. Keith needs to just put stuff in one column, and put the video with the text underneath in the same post. Categorizing tends to limit the variety of the reporting.

    Am I the only one who thinks the Bin Laden porn stash is a CIA Psyops maneuver to discredit OBL to his followers?

  5. Am I the only one who thinks the Bin Laden porn stash is a CIA Psyops maneuver to discredit OBL to his followers?

    This is the very thought I had while reading an article about the subject.

    The officials said it was unclear who the material belonged to, and there was no way to know whether bin Laden had viewed it.

    Bin Laden’s son and two other adult male couriers lived at the compound, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

    The disclosure that U.S. investigators found pornography – which provoked ridicule among bloggers Friday – fuels the U.S. narrative that bin Laden was not the respectable or noble figure that his supporters embraced. The U.S. government previously asserted that bin Laden hid behind a woman in the compound as a “human shield” on the night of the raid but later revised its account of the deadly shooting inside the compound and said she rushed at one of the Navy SEALs and was shot in the calf.

  6. I saw this.and then this showed up.

    What gives with wind power? If too much is on-line in the Northwest, couldn’t the excess be transfered to the Northeast at a profit? The power grid is nationwide.

  7. Hi gang. I see that TP has allowed the worst of the sockpuppet factories to resurrect the “dr hunt” identity. I guess that their pledge to revamp the commenting system lasted a whole two days. Sigh…

  9. Am I the only one who thinks the Bin Laden porn stash is a CIA Psyops maneuver to discredit OBL to his followers?

    That has about as much chance of happening as Orly Taitz believing Obama was born in America.

    Same deal with the death photos. Those who don’t believe OBL is dead will never believe authentic photos, DNA results or any kind of proof. OBL may “live” as long as Elvis.

    I don’t know what purpose it serves to know that OBL liked porn. Maybe the CIA is trying to convince the American public that he was just a man, and not some super bogeyman deity.

  10. Walt.

    Some years ago I saw a brilliant idea for storing excess power from wind, solar, tide power, or even nuclear. Simply use the excess power at peak production to pump water to a reservoir on the nearest mountain, Then, when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining, simply let the water flow down through turbines. It wouldn’t be an even return but it would be a Hell of a lot less complicated than storage batteries, transmission lines, converters, inverters, transformers etc. In all of our discussions of clean energy we tend to ignore gravity. It’s, arguably, the most constant force in the universe and I sure can’t think of a good reason to not take advantage of it.

    I was musing about safer nuclear energy centered on small scale molten core breeder reactors and it led me back to this idea. Since the type of reactors would only use water outside the containment vessel that water would be potable. It could be desalinated and pumped from the ocean to the tops of hills or into rivers that have been depleted by human consumption. And? All that water pumped to higher ground would function like a giant storage battery or capacitor.

  11. It may be safe to say those booing Bill Nye don’t have this in their record collections.

  14. Walt, regarding the power grid: The single greatest hurdle to renewable energy in this country IS the grid, because it really is not “national” in the way it needs to be. Each state individually imposes its own regulations and taxes on the power that is transmitted within their borders. This means that wind in the NW can’t be sent to Ohio; solar in AZ can’t be sent FL, etc.

    A smart-grid, which includes a uniform regulatory system, is the sine qua non of a switch to renewables.

  15. Pete, other techniques include pumping air into underground caves and then powering wind-turbines at night. With Concentrated Solar Thermal, the heat is transferred into molten salt which continues to power steam turbines long after the sun has set.

    I’ve read or heard somewhere that the “up-hill water” method has yet to prove very effective; numerous inefficiencies still render it fairly poor. Wind-turbine technology has improved dramatically over the last 20 years, which is one reason the compressed air technique looks do-able. (However, I’m not sure if anyone has actually tried it yet.)

  16. OBL and porn: bear in mind that the top consumers (by state) of porn in this country are the most conservative and religious ones. It is unclear to me how or why fundamentalist Muslims would be different in this regard from fundamentalist Christians.

    Such a discovery would help discredit OBL in the eyes of other Muslims, so that also provides a measure of motivation if it is a CIA conspiracy.

  17. Gary,
    I thought the ICC knocked that form of taxation down in the 1930′s as unconstitutional. Live and learn. I would guess that they are taxing the transmission fees.

  19. Walt, the things I’m reading at places like Climate Progress — a pretty good source by my standards, at least — indicate that this is indeed one of if not simply the biggest long-term hurdle.

    The history around this issue is something I’m even less informed on than the current state of affairs. It occurs to me that the ICC might have taken such action back in the ’30′s, but being only an administrative action rather than act of Congress, it would require nothing more than a new administration to completely unmake it. This is one reason why some legislative action to contain CO2 emissions is so vitally important; EPA regulations are only guaranteed to last as long as the administration in which those reg’s are published.

  20. Gary,
    Porn (The farm) is not so hot once you have been to the big city, so to speak. :evil:

  22. Zooey,
    It is a beautiful spring weekend. I would guess that the critters are foraging outside.

    • At the Mexican restaurant, where we had reservations after commencement, and where I had three awesome margaritas, they gave free shots of tequila to all the graduates.

      I’ve never done a shot before, and it went down shockingly smoothly. The lime helped. :)

    • Thanks, zxbe!!

      This is the hottest day of the year — so far — and I am red as a boiled lobster. dbadass might be interested to compare the color differences. :lol:

  25. Zooey – viva Mom’s! Viva daughters who are encouraged by the Mom’s –
    Viva college graduate~!~

  26. Congrats Zooey, I left best wishes in the thread dedicated to that.

    Of course the porn thing is meant to discredit OBL, so was the “million dollar mansion” stuff. Does that place look like what a $1,000,000 would buy in Pakistan?

    I do wonder what passes for porn in fundamentalist societies, my ankles still look good, could I be a porn star?

    I’m sorry I’m babbling, I got up at 4:30 and I’m toast.

    Raising glass in Zooey’s direction…Well Done!

  27. Zooey, did the free shot of tequila happen before or after the three margaritas?

    • Gummitch, I’m sucking down the water. I still feel dehydrated. The others will come along.

      House, my youngest is recording the Doctor for me. I’ll see it when I get back from Portland. I’m gonna start twitching!!

  32. Well, I knew he had his own place, so he wasn’t quite as handy as before. It will be on here at 6pm Zootime. I tried that BBC1 link the last two Saturdays and it was too unstable to watch. It kept buffering over and over. I guess too many people are trying to access at the same time.

  35. Bureaucracies suck.
    There’s always one more office up the chain when you go and ask:
    “Where’s my paycheck?

  36. Zooey, not that I’m an expert on tequila or anything but it it went down that smoothly it should be sipping tequila. You need the kick at the end of a shot otherwise it’s really dangerous. Sooooo, did you do anything you might regret?

  37. I had my colonoscopy/endoscopy and they had to do some extra stuff so they gave me extra anesthesia. I had whole conversations with my daughter I don’t remember. Much like when I used to drink tequila.

  38. Really Raven, I worked for Blue Cross Association, the parent company, for two days in my youth and had to quit because of all the time they wasted. I have the patience of a … heck I have no patience.

  39. Well Bill Nye is “the science guy” so obviously he’s an enemy to all Texans.

  40. Why do you all think Muslim fundamentalist would be any less interested in porn than Christian fundamentalists are. They’re all repressed hypocrites. I would never trust my kid around anybody that obsessed with religion.

  43. heck I have no patience.

    How can someone with no patience be President of the Procrastinators?

  45. Interesting about Huck. He never got axed from Fox. Yet the other two (who hadn’t actually announced at the time) did get axed because they are in fact running.

    Palin didn’t get axed from Fox either. A sign that she’s not actually running?

  46. Patience involves waiting for something set in motion.
    Procrastination is waiting for the motion.

  48. Palin’s smart enough to know that her cottage industry of performance art is much more profitable than public office and Palin is all about the money.

  49. Precisely put. She can stay on the tour bus, going from stage to stage, pulling in 25-30K a pop. Doesn’t have to be accountable, doesn’t have to make sense, doesn’t have to actually perform any useful function.

  51. She’s just milking it.
    She knows that the screwballs who are her support base will drop her like a lead puck as soon as she says she’s not running.

    Huckadribble tries to come off like a messianic reluctant martyr.

  53. Palin has probably broken so many IRS/election laws if she ran and she was investigated she’d be in trouble.

  54. Thanks Raven for helping. I was going to answer that procrastination issue tomorrow … or the next day.

  59. Shayne,
    I’m mt playing it until I an sober, give me a couple weeks. Zooey’s Tequila went right to my head. Seems that nature abhors a vacuum.

  61. Congrats, Zooey!

    There’s a headline from the Borrowitz report doing the rounds at FB to the effect, “Given a choice between Palin and Trump for President, most voters choose suicide.”

  62. I’m starting with Newt on Meet the Press. This is going to be difficult.

    Newt says only allow small increases in the debt ceiling. What happened to ‘American businesses need certainty’?

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