The approach is interesting, but I'm not sure it works for everybody. I tried the Heisig method, but I found that while I could get good at flashcards, they didn't really stick.
Probably helps if you are also exposed to Kanji on a daily basis in their true context.
Off the top of my head: I wonder if astronauts are on lower calorie diets than usual.
Lowering calorie intake is one of the few well known ways that lifespan can be increased. Will have to see if there's any research correlating low calorie diets and telomere length.
There is also one sure-fire way to increase telomere length : get cancer.
So these people were in a thin metal cube, exposed to abnormal levels of ionizing radiation, ... and after that there was telomere lengthening ? I always heard that astronauts, given the groups they're selected from, have suspiciously short lifespans. Still somewhat above average, but these guys got selected from the creme de la creme. Half of them should live to 120, and that is definitely not happening. I've never seen a good study actually comparing it though.
According to several doctor friends of mine, balance is the best way to go for a long life. Being too thin will kill you, because once you're 65 or 70 or so you will lose the ability to quickly gain weight. A significant number of people dying from "natural causes" die as follows : they get infected with something stupid, like a flu virus. Or they break a hip or something. Either way, they get really under the weather. Result: they lose weight, a lot of weight, rapidly. If your weight falls under about 35 kg, odds of survival drop dramatically, and they die from "complications" (in practice: secondary infections resulting in metabolic exhaustion: your body simply cannot maintain the minimum energy level to keep you alive. On the plus side: very peaceful way to go, and likely quite comfortable too). Keep in mind it will take a year to work your way back from 40kg to 50kg at such an age, so the higher you go the more likely you'll drop back down due to another incident before recovering.
And of course, exercise only helps up to a normal level. If you spend 2 hours every day running, that is definitely in the "shortens lifespan" area. 10 minutes, probably very good for you. And of course, the obvious : exercise increases the odds of accidents happening. Accidents, even stupid ones, can kill.
> There is also one sure-fire way to increase telomere length : get cancer.
This badly needs a source.
This article from 2013 [1] says the opposite, that shorter telomeres are associated with cancer:
In recent years, shorter telomeres have become associated with a broad range of aging-related diseases, including many forms of cancer, stroke, vascular dementia, cardiovascular disease, obesity, osteoporosis and diabetes.
And another [2]:
"Telomere shortening is common in cancer, but the degree of shortening varies from one cancer cell to another within each patient, and this variability may give us a better idea of how prostate cancers behave."
Edit:
At the top since I think it may qualify my comments: I think there's a causation/correlation incongruity in this, the parent, and the grandparent posts. Telomere lengthening can lead to cancer; getting cancer is not necessarily a "sure-fire way to increase telomere length"
"Cancer" is an unbelievably broad term. Generally speaking, expression of telomerase and maintenance of telomeres is seen in (many) cancers. The background behind this is that as telomeres shorten with each cell replication, they get to a point where they are too short, and the cell stops dividing. Cancer occurs when cells that are not supposed to divide keep dividing.
>"According to several doctor friends of mine, balance is the best way to go for a long life."
From what I understand, this is just the "moderation is good, extremes are bad" meme. Similar things are recommended regarding diet composition etc. I usually read it as "we don't really know, so just do what everyone does".
>"And of course, exercise only helps up to a normal level."
What's normal? You think people only spent 10 minutes a day running, in the past?
1 hour is 10 km at a leisurely pace. If I go for a run in the morning, and in the evening, I'm very confident that I'll have better chances to live longer than someone who runs less than 2 km a day. Running ultramarathons will shorten your life, maybe. But not a jog or two.
---editing to add details after googling around a bit---
Intensity of physical exercise is measured in metabolic equivalents (MET)[1]. There is also a table with MET values for common activities.
I looked at some studies, but most are not interesting. One[2] defines "vigorous PA" like this:
Assessments of vigorous physical activity were based on a single set of intensity categories applied at all three time points; these were: 1) walking, 2) alternately walking and jogging, 3) jogging (light running), and 4) running. Vigorous activity was defined as levels 2, 3, or 4 (all more intensive than normal walking), performed at least 3–5 times/month in 1975 and 1981, or at least for 30 min each week in 1990.
(so - not useful)
However, I found another one[3], which has this to say:
Several of us have recently analyzed 55,000 individuals (13,000 runners) from the ACLS database during nearly 15-year follow-up to assess the impact of running on CVD and allcause mortality.11 Compared with nonrunners, runners had a reduction in all-cause and CVD mortality of 30% and 45%, respectively, with an average increase in survival of 3.0 and 4.1 years for all-cause and CVD-related survival, respectively, after adjusting for lifestyle factors (eg, smoking and obesity) and medical conditions (eg, HTN and T2DM). Persistent runners appeared to receive the full benefit from mortality reduction, whereas those who started running but stopped or those who were not running at baseline but subsequently started running appeared to receive nearly half of the benefit received from CVD and all-cause mortality reduction. These results are impressive, though perhaps not surprising when considered in the context of the data outlined in previous sections, showing myriad health benefits of running.
However, when assessing doses of running, somewhat surprising results were found. Runners generally had considerably higher levels of CRF than did nonrunners, and moreover, CRF levels in runners progressively increased with increasing doses of running (Figure 2).11 Most evidence indicates better survival with estimated MET levels greater than 10,23-25 although some evidence indicates progressively better survival with even higher CRF levels.45 When 13,000 runners were divided into quintiles of running doses (miles per week, times per week, minutes per week, and speed), no significant differences in the benefits were noted for any of the running groups.Infact,runnersinquintile1(eg,<6 miles/wk, 1-2 times/wk, <51 min/wk, <6 mph) received the full benefits from running with regard to reduction in CVD and all-cause mortality (Figure 3).11 These results suggest that maximal benefits of running occur at quite modest jogging doses and that runners in quintile 1 have almost similar benefits of running compared with those in quintile 2 to quintile 4 and have a slight, nonstatistically significant trend toward greater benefitcomparedwith those in quintile 5. However, in contrast to the results of the Copenhagen City Heart Study,14 our results, from a larger sample with much better statistical power, indicated that runners with high doses of running in quintile 5 still had significantly better CVD and all-cause survival compared with nonrunners.11 However, these higher doses of running were not necessary to achieve maximal reduction in CVD and allcause mortality.11-14
Aren't both of those activities more endemic in generally healthy people anyway (tend to live longer)? It'd be a bit of a stretch to say that it'll improve the genetic variables effecting your lifespan.
I'd characterize the research so far as suggestive, but not conclusive. It's fairly well supported that caloric restriction extends the lives of many rodent species. There have been two primate studies, both finding health benefits but only one finding longevity. No human trials have produced results yet to my knowledge.
When google play was embargoed, android developers in Iran (and elsewhere) could publish apks on their websites to distribute to users inside Iran. When the apple app store is embargoed, you have to work a lot harder :(
Your pay doesn't seem massively outside current industry norms.
If I were you I'd probably do two things:
1. I'd try and save enough money for a couple of years runway in case I wanted to do my own thing/start consulting.
2. I'd look around to see if there are other jobs that might be interesting. My biggest regrets are jobs I've stayed at too long, not the ones I left too quickly. Experience at many companies is great. Now, when you can take or leave a new job, is a good low stress time to look.
We don't really understand how most of the treatments we have work. We have data, we have in many cases some ideas, but we don't know.
Take Psoriasis as an example, doctors are still prescribing coal tar based treatments. I guess they are ~100 years old. They don't work very well, and people don't really know why they should work at all.
Pretty much all Psoriasis treatments are like this, even the more recent ones. They interfere with some pathway related to the immune system... but we don't really understand why they work.
So we don't really understand "how it all fits together" for current treatments. It's still reasonable to use them if they are relatively safe, and work. Same is true of gene therapies.
Mostly we figure out that things work/are safe through experimentation. Not through totally understanding the system.
Realistically, what harm can the experiments described in the article do to the general population?
It's so hard to do anything, even design diagnostic tests, that requires FDA approval that personally I'd avoid any startup that had that on their route to revenue.
It's kind of a shame, and countries where it's easier to develop new treatments and tests are likely to take the lead.
Many new ideas for medical technologies are founded on academic work that is often fraudulent. When I hear that a startup is going to start the ball rolling on FDA approval, that often means that the technology is more likely to work.
First of all, I'm not a biologist but a software consultant and have worked in several software companies as level 3 support.
My personal experience on tiny and sometimes unrelated changes having a catastrophic impact: software configuration changes, new hardware, other softwares bug, antivirus rules and updates, etc.
These points can be roughly related to a living being: psychological/environmental/habit changes, transplant/implant, organ failure/traumatism, immune system false positive (e.g. alergies?), ...
I'm not against the idea gene manipulation, just saying that his doings are very marginal and must not be praised.
If labs have been relying on white mice and drosophilae it's for some good reasons:
Common sense (how many people died because of charlatanism?), ethics and Human Rights.
What is at stakes here can lead either to a nobel price (I sincerely hope for him) or a darwin award (thanks to the ignorance of such red flags).
I've bought a lot from iTunes, deals come around often enough. June and Decemeber. There are a fair number of films for 99p rental too.
Although their prices for the my favourite long tale films are seemingly always "moderate".
Network connectivity from the UK is occasionally an issue, Apple were planning to build a data centre in Ireland, but the locals were restive, I have a quality ISP.
iTunes is also dependent on who it makes deals with. I watched "Y Tu Mama Tambien" Netflix just before it was removed, and I can't get it anywhere else to watch it again.
BBC Store, and BFI have apps and a wider selection. The intention being you play it on your phone and ChromeCast or AirPlay it to your TV; I look for the BFI finnessing their app.
Not usually as cheap, but the breadth of the catalog is remarkable. I'll go with Amazon for price reasons if both have what I want, but it's not rare that Amazon doesn't and iTunes does. (And Netflix almost never does. At this point I'm keeping it for season 2 of The Expanse and basically nothing else.)
In the case of Theranos I believe it was this. Elizabeth Holmes seemed to have an "in" with a lot of Washington D.C. influencers and I'm pretty sure her pitch was based on using those connections to score lucrative DoD contracts.
The fact that her father is tied to USAID makes a lot of sense. USAID is the soft power arm of the federal government. It exists mainly to bribe foreign leaders to gain desired policy outcomes in their countries. It does do some good things when those align with politics.
If you needed to find government patrons willing to invest in a corrupt organization and engender goodwill at the same time, USAID is not a bad choice.
I think this is availability bias. Many large (> $100M) deals happen all the time in early stage life sciences but don't get picked up by the tech press or covered as "startups". A few high profile stories flame out spectacularly like this but they are typically already the outsiders to the industry.
To the specific scenario, when N is small all kinds of idiosyncratic bad decision making can happen.
Hmm.. this is significantly more than 100MUSD (630MUSD).
I'd love some examples of good plays in this area (that is, those that resulted not just in acquisition but viable products). This area being life science tools/diagnostics.
From the companies I've been it seems to be biased toward crazy plays that had a stack of money thrown at them. Honestly would like to hear about others, know where to read about others.
At Aperio I was on the team that designed a digital pathology instrument. At the time this was pretty new tech. We were purchased by Leica a little more than four years ago.
After that I went to epic sciences. We will be releasing our first LDT this year in a partnership with Genomic Health. It's a blood based prostate cancer test with demonstrated clinical utility, the first of its kind in the CTC space as far as I'm aware.
It seems that if you have a 100% working technology, you are better off filing for patents and licensing the tech to a large incumbent.
The need for venture financing arises when you're anywhere below 100% reliability, and are temporarily in this "fake it 'til you make it" category where the company has to rely on regular doses of cash infusions without much to show for (potentially) years. The problem with that approach is that for some the "make it" never quite materializes.
I think it'd be cool to get a bunch of statisticians together to review Optimizely. Print out pages of the UI, remove the logo, and then ask them to write down opinions on the validity of the results UI they're shown.
The problem is that it's a lot of work and there's really no incentive to do so. At the end I worry the group could be retaliated against and/or be considered complainers. There really isn't any benefit to doing a review like this that I could see. Plus if you're a statistician like me, you already know the conclusion, a kind of blind study would only build credibility for non-statisticians. :-/
Therein is part of the issue: Silicon Valley is built on software, and software development is very different from medicine. Not trying to say one is harder or easier, but one is a much more unconstrained space of creation in which a really good, revolutionary idea and a strong mission can create a company, and in the other... a broad vision might simply be impossible. "We're going to build a social network online where people can post and see their friends' posts" is a nice vision that can be implemented in code; "We're going to diagnose lots of diseases based on a single pinprick worth of blood" is a nice vision that you can't actually do.
I think their is in incongruence to medical development cycles and software development cycles that will keep most tech money from investing too reliably.
On the other hand, the Boston and San Diego medchem startups are founded by established scientists in their 40s. Computers are quite the anomaly in the space.
The infrastructure requirements are a lot lower in tech. It's possible to be a college dropout and already have many years and projects worth of experience under your belt. It's pretty damn hard to do bio and chem without a proper lab.
The vast majority I have run across have more traditional educational backgrounds, many with advanced degrees through the PhD. It's just not as fun for journalists to profile the 37 year old PhD as the 19 year old dropout.
But, there's another side: it happened because you weren't allowed to question Elizabeth Holmes. The beauty of the Internet is its natural history keeping. If you want more insight into how this sort of thing happens, look no further than early discussions about Theranos on these very boards. It was difficult to be critical, and supporters implied that the naysayers were merely "sexist". Of course, this was happening when tech industry sexism was peaking in the news cycle, and I belive that quieted some criticism.
If you want more insight into how this sort of thing happens, look no further than early discussions about Theranos on these very boards. It was difficult to be critical, and supporters implied that the naysayers were merely "sexist".
Where?
Story from two years ago, before it blew up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9440595 - Lots of criticism, some even calling it a scam, yet no mention of sexism nor heavy downvotes.
>Tell me, where are all those comments warning us about the impending doom at Theranos and getting silenced by supporters calling them sexist?
There have been nearly 500 Theranos articles posted here over the years. You conclude it didn't happen after looking at two?
As someone who participated in the conversation, I know it happened. I'm not overly concerned with combing through the articles to convince you. The OP asked "how this happens"; if you don't think "girl power" at a time when sexism in tech was all over the place was one of the factors that led to an unqualified 20-something overseeing a potential giant fraud, I'm not sure what to tell you.
> There have been nearly 500 Theranos articles posted here over the years. You conclude it didn't happen after looking at two?
I looked at the two I could find with comments from before the whole thing blew up. The vast majority of posts about Theranos are post-blowout, from the past year and half, not those early discussions you were referring to.
> if you don't think "girl power" at a time when sexism in tech was all over the place was one of the factors that led to an unqualified 20-something overseeing a potential giant fraud, I'm not sure what to tell you.
I find your restatement of the previous claims inaccurate. You said "It was difficult to be critical, and supporters implied that the naysayers were merely "sexist"", which is much more specific that her gender having been a factor in story. Yes, it might have. Not in the way you portrayed it, though, in my opinion, at least not in HN.
This is the article I read to learn what had went on last year and it is quite thorough. I'm looking forward to the movie mentioned in the article, seriously, I think it will be fascinating. There are scam companies and people embellishing the truth all over the place but they are usually found out fairly quickly, the fact that Theranos received so much investment and entry into various speaking engagements and clubs is what makes this so interesting. I wonder if it had not been medicine related and putting peoples lives in danger whether the show may have continued for longer.
