Melllvar has more cool links than 420Munkey

[hitode-kun]

Seeded are Melllvar and 420Munkey. Fighters, prepare. Let the battle BEGIN.

 

[Melllvar]

From Physorg:
Graphene in Space
Information Escaping from Black Holes
Drug Cures Almost Any Viral Infection
Anti-Censorship Scheme Makes it Impossible to Block Sites
Vertebrate Intestines Always Loop the Same Formation
Modified T-Cells Treat Leukemia
Toxic Flame Retardants in California Pregnant Women
Birds Supposedly Pass on Abusive Behaviors
Evolution of Corn

From Slashdot:
Prediction of Next Facebook Friend
Court Rules Sending too many Emails is Hacking
Stuff about SNES Emulators
UK Riots Lead to Internet Censorship

Misc:
(Totally Awesome) Game Developer Jonathan Blow on Gamasutra
2011 Quantum Interpretation Poll on Physicsforums (please don't vote)
Oxygen Found in Deep Space
Alzheimer's Detected 20 Years Prior to Symptoms
Top Quark Asymmetry Implies New Force
Challenging Arsenic Replacement of Phosphorus in DNA
Seventh and Eighth DNA Bases Identified
Evidence of Salt Water on Mars

I win.




As usual.

 

[A22]

Nice Melllvar

The one about the alleged miraculous antiviral: Very interesting. Is that website a trustful source?

I wonder how they binded the dsRNA recognition protein with the "kill the cell" protein. Also: Is dsRNA only produced by virus? What about bacteria? And from the comments: Are there good virus in our body that shouldn't be killed? ...

 

[Melllvar]

The one about the alleged miraculous antiviral: Very interesting. Is that website a trustful source?

MedicalXpress is just some sub-site of Physorg. I've seen a lot of sketchy science stuff on there (Physorg), but I wouldn't blame the website itself, they're just reporting on science news and not running their own sort of peer review. The good thing is they usually have links to the original source/paper/etc., if you look at the bottom of the article. Also this has been reported lots of other places as well. Unless you mean the quality of the article itself, in which case, I guess it's always seemed pretty accurate stuff to me.

In this case:

"More information: Rider TH, et al. (2011) Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Therapeutics. PLoS ONE 6(7): e22572. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022572
Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news : web)"

I wonder how they binded the dsRNA recognition protein with the "kill the cell" protein.

I'm not sure, probably by some standard method for intentional protein binding. I looked through the paper's Materials and Methods section but it didn't seem to say (or if it did, I couldn't understand it).

Also: Is dsRNA only produced by virus? What about bacteria?

I found this in the paper that was linked to above:

Most viruses have double- or single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) genomes and produce long dsRNA helices during transcription and replication; the remainder of viruses have DNA genomes and typically produce long dsRNA via symmetrical transcription [4]–[5]. In contrast, uninfected mammalian cells generally do not produce long dsRNA (greater than ~21–23 base pairs) [4]–[5]. Natural cellular defenses exploit this difference in order to detect and to attempt to counter viral infections [6]–[7]. For example, protein kinase R (PKR) contains an N-terminal domain with two dsRNA binding motifs (dsRBM 1 and 2) and a C-terminal kinase domain [8]–[9]. Binding of multiple PKR proteins to dsRNA with a length of at least 30–50 base pairs [5] activates the PKRs via trans-autophosphorylation; activated PKR then phosphorylates eIF-2α, thereby inhibiting translation of viral (and cellular) proteins. Other examples of proteins that detect viral dsRNA include 2′,5′-oligoadenylate (2–5A) synthetases [10], RNase L (activated via dimerization by 2–5A produced by 2–5A synthetases in response to dsRNA [11]), TLR 3 [12], interferon-inducible ADAR1 [13], and RIG-I and Mda-5 [6]–[7].

The first few sentences of which are most relevant.

And from the comments: Are there good viruses in our body that shouldn't be killed? ...

Incidentally, in the past I've found the comments on Physorg to be pretty bad. But I don't read them often so maybe I've just had bad luck with them.

I did google it and found these two links:
http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/virology/1996-May/006188.html
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2001-01/980565197.Vi.r.html

I'm not really familiar with virology, but it would seem that the general process is infection -> reproduction -> lysis -> further infection. So I doubt a virus would be directly beneficial, as it would have to eventually kill the host cell(?) in order to reproduce, although both of those links imply that they may likely be beneficial in out-competing other more harmful viruses. Also that virology is a young field and most focus has been on harmful viruses as they are easier to detect.

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Do people want more links like this? I'm not sure if there's a point since people can look for all this stuff as easily as I can, and it does take some moderate amount more time to post them. Of course not everyone visits the same news sites either. Should this just be a cool link thread or what? It wasn't my idea to start it.
​

 

[A22]

Wow thanks for the answers.

I got to know some very good science websites through the Science & Technology board (and through here now). If you keep posting I'll keep reading but that's just me... If this thread is open for contributions I'll post some links myself later...

 

[ZombieAtomico]

I'm just showing support for Melllvar. Why? FUCK YOU!... that's why.

[/Thread]

 

[Melllvar]

So I think we've established that I won't be putting very much effort into this thread, but here's some cool stuff I found this morning anyways...

Exoplanet Found Orbiting Two Stars
Dinosaur Feathers Found Preserved in Amber
Escaped Pet Parrots Teach Wild Ones Human Speech
Research Against Video Games Stimulating Cognition
Predictions of Urban Sprawl over the Next 20 Years
Rootkit Protection
Ferrofluid Pump with No Moving Parts

 

[ApostateAbe]

420Munkey is going to bust into thread any time and have so much awesome awesome linkage you won't believe it.

 

[Melllvar]

420Munkey is going to bust into thread any time and have so much awesome awesome linkage you won't believe it.

I doubt it, but that would be pretty awesome.

 

[Cognisant]

If nothing else you've won the initiative