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We still use swine thyroid for thyroid hormone replacement. The most familiar US brand is Armour. The meatpacking company.

The parade example of a female hormone replacement agent —conjugated estrogens—is known by the brand name Premarin, because it comes from PREgnant MAre uRINe. Before a good system was developed to harvest horse urine, there were early estrogen products (1930s) made from pregnant human urine.

Human Growth Hormone can now be produced using recombinant DNA tools, but the earliest treatments for growth hormone deficiency were developed by harvesting the pituitary glands from cadaver humans. Animal growth hormones never worked in humans.

Bovine and porcine sources for insulin are still used in some parts of the world.

Think of it like fighting fire with water. If you have a long thin line of leaves and start a fire at one end, and you have simply a small hose or a water gun, you can stop that fire. Now imagine a house catching fire. You have the same hose as before, and water fights fire so it should at least help right? You might be technically reducing the total amount of flames on the house with the little hose, it’s measurable, but if you’re not blasting it with enough water, it’s just going to keep growing. You need enough protection to actually combat the totality of the situation.

We do not consider single nerve cell as possessing intelligence. And again, mold doesn't solve maze. It isn't even aware of maze. It is following a rigid and very simple program. If you draw the line of intelligence here, literally all living beings are intelligent. And all computers too

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Disease isn’t black and white. The extreme options are “you don’t feel sick” and “you die”. There are a whole spectrum of options between those two.

A vaccine that is providing a lot of protection will dramatically reduce your symptoms, and might stop you feeling sick at all.

A vaccine that is providing some protection might cause you to be sick for 50 hours instead of 52 hours, and be in slightly less pain during that time.

Pretty much. It's one thing if you are confident enough in your own work to dose yourself, but you definitely want to know the efficacy and safety profile before you dose millions of people with it, so we do kinda need the regulatory stuff, even in a pandemic we still had essentially the bare necessities of it. I'm convinced that it was slower than it could've been at "bare necessity" speed because they were also proving the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines for the first time, so in the future we wouldn't need to go as slow.

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No, not at all. Human-to-human transmission is not a biological component, like a human leg, but a biological process, like movement. There are many different things that go into human-to-human transmission, but it comes down to getting into the body, reproducing, and getting out again. There are many different ways to achieve those things. The flu is spread very differently to HIV, which is spread very differently to malaria, which is very different to Legionnaire’s Disease.

Edit: although to clarify, Legionnaire’s Disease isn’t usually spread human-to-human, and malaria is debatable. Cholera would be been a better example of a waterborne disease that enters through the digestive tract.

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Why does it only “do something”? It feels like it should be black and white, like “it has this protein, therefore I’m somewhat protected against it”. Like, how much of the protein has to change in order for it to not be effective?

> Not really. From a macro engineering perspective all of the current research in carbon nanotubes for structural use is aimed at producing longer tubes, often referred to as carbon nanotube fibers. Nanotube fibers that are long enough to be used in the same way as carbon fiber, or glass fiber, woven together and bound in a matrix to produce strong macro scale materials. > > ALL current carbon fiber use in concrete is mechanical and exactly equivalent to how glass fibers are used. Except that the carbon nanotubes are far smaller so although they provide stronger local support the scale of the cracking they prevent is reduced vs other fiber mix-ins.

This is absolutely 100% false and if you just browse the ACI YouTube channel you will find a whole ton of research of nano-scale carbon. The goal is NOT to make it micro or macro scale because the nano scale provides unique benefits.

It is incredibly different from how glass fibers are used and I recommend you educate yourself on the subject or else just stop talking down about a new technology you are unfamiliar with.

Again, carbon fiber and carbon nanotubes are very different materials.

Could they get a head start on a vaccine by looking at a conserved protein in virus so that they're ready if it jumps?

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Not really. From a macro engineering perspective all of the current research in carbon nanotubes for structural use is aimed at producing longer tubes, often referred to as carbon nanotube fibers. Nanotube fibers that are long enough to be used in the same way as carbon fiber, or glass fiber, woven together and bound in a matrix to produce strong macro scale materials.

ALL current carbon fiber use in concrete is mechanical and exactly equivalent to how glass fibers are used. Except that the carbon nanotubes are far smaller so although they provide stronger local support the scale of the cracking they prevent is reduced vs other fiber mix-ins.

Like I said, real innovation will come when carbon nanotubes are long enough to be used at a structural scale rather than microscopic. It's neat to talk about futuristic meta-materials and they can slightly change the thermal conductivity and microscopic crack formation of concrete but from a large scale engineering perspective most of the small scale nanotubes that can be purchased in bulk today would be the same as mixing a bag of soot into the concrete.

that kung-fu fighter dude (tzhe old one) carradine

wikipedia says it in different words (hmm, it changed again) but i remember

"carradine dead. in the cupboard, wank-related accident"

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Maybe a little but it will be really small. Current human yearly flu includes H1N1 which is in the vaccine. So H5N1 has an N1 in it which might allow a small amount of cross reactivity. BUT the N1 in our vaccine is not designed to target the N1 in h5N1 which will be different, probably a lot different. Think of it this way, when we have H1N1 viruses dominate a few years in a row you need a new vaccine each year AND the H1N1 variants are not hugely different from one another as the evolutionary change is small from year to year. The N1 in H5N1 is going to be a lot different comparatively. So a tiny bit of immune response is better than none, but if H5N1 turns into a very infectious virus for people with high mortality, I don't think that tiny bit of immunity is going to make much difference. There are a bunch of other bird flu's out there we also keep an eye on like H7N9, H7N7, H5N9 and more and for those we have no immunity, although H5N1 is probably the biggest near term worry due to it widespread infection in birds worldwide right now and some passage into mammals.