Disqus - Latest Comments for DownBoyDown

Re: The US Government Now Has Less Cash Than Google

DownBoyDown — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 11:35:36 -0000

Simon Black needs to go back to grammar school and figure out what a paragraph is before taking on the complexities of international finance, imo.

Re: The Myth of “Mind-Altering Parasite” Toxoplasma Gondii?

DownBoyDown — Sun, 25 Sep 2016 13:54:53 -0000

AA, you are absolutely right. The study was flawed by design.

They took blood samples of the 837 subjects when they were 38 yo, and 28% of them were TG +'ve. And then the researchers dug through the cop-records and other indicia of past behavioral screwiness in the subjects' pasts. But the researchers don't know how long the TG +'ve subjects had been TG +'ve when they took the blood samples. They all could have been infected the week before their blood samples were taken, for all the researchers know. Any data prior to the date of infection are not just irrelevant, they are misleading. Dumb study.

If they're going to do such a study, they need to be sampling for TG at all the sample points during the 38 year study and then see if there is a correlation between length of infection and behavioral abnormalities. The hypothesis they are testing implicitly requires that the subject be infected by TG prior to demonstrating behavioral problems. Until someone determines how long a TG infection must last before behavior is affected, retrospective studies are pretty much meaningless.

Also, as you suggest. Look at the 200 who were excluded: could the reasons they were excluded be related to TG infection? Sure. 3% died before the age of 38 -- sounds like suicide to me. 7% either did not give a blood sample or did not take part in the assessment at all -- sounds like misanthropy, chronic bad attitude, or other sociopathy.

Much as I love NZ and, particularly, Otago, I don't think this study does anything to advance our understanding of TG and mental illness. And it seems to me Neuroskeptic isn't being nearly skeptical enough of this goofy research project.

Re: The IRS “Scandal” Was A Set-Up

DownBoyDown — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 01:17:04 -0000

Or as the Gutter Grunt at LogoPhere.com said on May18:

"So the question here is not whether IRS mules tried to find conservative groups improperly applying for (c)(4) status – that’s what the mules were supposed to do. The question is whether the IRS mules looked exclusively for conservative groups. IOW, the scandal is not whether or why the IRS plugged "tea party" and "patriot" into the search engine; it’s whether they also searched on words that would identify liberal groups and unions – maybe "occupy," or "united," or "choice," or "parenthood." The only valid question here is not whether the IRS was targeting conservative groups, but whether they were exclusively targeting conservative groups."

http://logophere.com/Topics...

Re: Influenza virus reassortment, then and now

DownBoyDown — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:09:28 -0000

I’m not entirely with you.

First, I only see 7 bands in the MD gel. And that 2 band in R3 looks a lot like L-3.

Not knowing anything about the virology and just looking at the gels, one might argue that R3-1 => L-2. R3-2 => L-3. And R3-3 => M-3, which would mean that R3 is lacking the 1 band and has 2 copies of the 3 band. Does the virology support this type of Ho? Do scrambled cultures drop segments out and/or double up on other segments?

Alternatively, if what we are seeing is M-1 and M-2 smeared, one could conclude the R3-1 and R3-2 are M-1 and M-2 properly separated (i.e. artifact). Is that the fast end of the gels at the top? Don’t you expect more wobble there?

As to bands 4/5, one interpretation is that R3-4 is common to all three gels and L-“4" is really M-5, which in the Lee strain moves faster than the M-4 IOW, the 4/5 doublet could be flip-flopped in the Lee/Md strains. Do such doublets ever flip flop in these viral RNAs?

BTW, as these comments probably suggest, I am really jealous. At about the same time you were getting these beautiful results I was running gels (DNA) and getting spotted film that looked like shots from an X-ray telescope of galaxies in the deep universe! I knew I shoulda' gone into astronomy.

Re: Packaging of the segmented influenza RNA genome

DownBoyDown — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:49:31 -0000

Whoa, sorry. Got my types mixed. H3 is Type A, eh?

But the hypothesis is still plausible. Those CDC data also show H3 positive tests appearing in that week 50 - week15 wave.

I wonder whether co-infection with Type B and H1N1 produces a synergistic effect in terms of symptoms or H1N1 production. . .

(Just thinking out loud.)

Re: Packaging of the segmented influenza RNA genome

DownBoyDown — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:16:37 -0000

Vincent -- Here is a recent paper by Perez et al in which ferrets were co-infected with H1 Brisbane (Type A), or H3 Brisbane (Type B) and H1N1 Calif, confirming your point of lack of reassortment.

http://knol.google.com/k/da...

But note that the animals coinfected with Type B and H1N1 produced more virus (H1N1) and had more severe symptoms -- synergistic interaction, although I don't think Perez used that term.

Now, keeping that in mind, if you look at the CDC timeline for positive samples, say up to Aug22.09, http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/ you see how Type B has been first appearing in December (week 50) and peaking in March (week 9).

Lack of a H1N1/Type B synergism in the spring/summer and the presence of it in the winter results in a very tidy hypothesis to explain the second highly lethal wave of the 1918 pandemic. Of course, the data are with Type B, but lethal synergistic interactions could occur between other respiratory viruses or even bacterial pneumonia and H1N1.

The result would be an H1N1 that looks to virologists as just the same all year in terms of its virulence, but that is presents clinically as more or less dangerous depending on what else is circulating with it.

Forgive this diversion, but I suspect a lot of us are so interested in your discussions because we are trying to get a picture of what is presently going on with the H1N1.

Re: Influenza virus attachment to cells: role of different sialic acids

DownBoyDown — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 12:30:46 -0000

OK, I'm a little confused with the mixing issue. One type of cell has (2,3) linked, another type of cell has (2,6). Pigs have a lot of both; humans have only a few (2,3). Good so far.

But how does mixing occur unless a single cell expresses both (2,3,) and (2,6)? I can see this phenotypic mixing if a single cell is co-infected, and Gallo showed this decades ago. But merely co-infecting the whole animal doesn't make the case because the two types of virus will be internalized by two different cells.