Antrax?

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Martz

Staff member
May 26, 2001
5,707
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Noticed UD has started processing Anthrax data... for some reason! Anyone got an idea why this might be usefull in relation to cancer or any conspiracy theories, as they are always good for a laugh :]
 

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Anthrax infection causes lesions in which the p51a and p53 protein mechanisms which are implicated in skin cancer (and many others for that matter) is broken down more rapidly.

Just like Human Papiloma Virus (HPV) has been heavily implicated in Cervical Cancer, there's lots of research being done at the moment into other virii, spores and bacteria which damage the copy checking mechanisms.

Gives us another way to study the mechanisms which cause DNA replication to run wild.

;)
 
Good answer :]

Well, I've been reading the forums at UD and there are a lot of mixed emotions about UD processing these proteins. I've learnt that the Anthrax project is a secondary project which by default any device will start crunching. You can select to turn it off here by selecting the default profile name and/or any other device profiles you might have.

I was surprised at first, then anrgy - I've read a load of other opinons and reactions. Some people got involved with this for "emtotional reasons", others because they wanted to use their wasted CPU time, some people because it was something to do. Either way the end result is that UD gather as much information which is possible for the greatest gain (be that in £/$ or lives). I joined this to support a cause, and not a company, whos reaction to why thing were changing was "You're under contract (ELUA) - which part of it was violated by us in this 'situation'?"


:wow:
 
no Anthrax for me, but some Red Army Faction :spider:

UD-RAF.gif
 
well, i was late but i finally noticed.
taking part in an us defence program is NOT what i intended when i joined UD...
i changed it back, but the whole matter stinks :mad:
 
Well im not suprised, what do u axpect rrealy...giving controll of your comp to ppl u dont even know.

U dont beleave icq hoaxes, this isnt any difrent in my opinion.
 
I've stopped processing Anthrax for quite some time. Its obviously only been done for comerical and financial gains as Anthrax has been on the increase (at least in the press anyway). This caused some hysteria, and they've obviously noticed that being the first to find a cure for something like this would make them a lot of money.

Don't you just love corporations which benefit from your personal, and painful loss.
:smoke2:
 
This is the kind of reason why I stuck with SETI. Its a total "blue skies" research project, and while it *may* have some possible military implications, I can't think of any yet which stand to benefit private companies.

Would be interesting to see if any of the major tobacco companies have shares in UD...

:D
 
The only problem I had with the SETI project was one of arrogance...

I ran the Seti client on (what we believe) was the fastest single box Intel Server in Europe (an 8-way SMP Compaq Proliant with 800<hz Xeon III Procs, 10gb of physical Memory and NT4 Server Enterprised Ed with 4G tuning) and we played around with it for a few days, playing with multiple process and proc affinities to try and get more "oomph"

Basically, Seti is a dog, and whilst several leading lights of the Linux crowd offered optimisation support, (I believe Intel also offered assistance to get the Seti client to use SSEII instructions) the academics basically took an aloof "we don't want to compromise the science" stance, which was a major insult to the scientists trying to help.

I suspect that the Seti project was trying to look busy, and keep those nice safe funded jobs in place.

Cue the whole Public HGM Project, and Celera Genomics: in ten years the HGM had mapped two chromosomes, then Celera came along and did eighteen chromosomes in two years!!

The really interesting thing was: when the PUblicly funded HGMP was criticised, and it looked like funding might evaporate, they suddenly managed to map another five chromosomes in six months!!

I wonder, if some company altruistically threw some cash at a competing Seti Project and decided to really "go for it" with a highly optimised SETI Client, and dedicate a small Beowulf cluster (perhaps 10-15 nodes?) to the job, could they *catch* the public Seti project?

I suspect they could.
 
LOL! Well, that is as maybe - but then, the UD thing is "corrupted" science if it is simply getting you to donate free cycles to the US military ...

SETI's main problem is that it is not multi-threaded/multi-processor aware - although u can run multiple instances on multi-processor machines.

And frankly, if the "optimisations" from Intel are only going to show up intel processors in a good light, and give them extra worthless benchmarks to trumpet, well, they can stuff their optimisations :D

The HGM comparison you use is a bit unfair. SETI is seen by pretty much everyone as something for harmless, bearded cranks. The HGM thing is far more politically fraught, as its the kind of thing which is grist to the mill of psycho religious extremists of whatever flavour, along with cloning, abortion etc. A *public* body doing something in that sphere has to be *really* careful not to upset its political masters. Private companies, well, everyone knows they are ruthless bastards, right? :D

I'm all for the private sector - if they made their own seti-type client, I'd probably run that instead of the current one...
 
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About the human genome projct u should have looked into it more befoe passing judgement. They said they had finished mapping it before they really had just to boost shares. And if I remember correctly the privately funded one was cutting cornors by chopping the genome into pieces then reading each piece and "hopefully" everything would fit back together alright without any duplicates. Now consider the human genome is only made up of 4 letters and seems to be filled up with a lot of junk, it doesn't seem unlikely to me that there could be a few bits that look exactly the same, meaning it could be stuck together in wrong order.

Also remember there have been a lot of advances recently in genetics so it wouldn't be surprising if u could do in the last 2 years what it took some1 else to do in 1990-2000.

I'm pretty sure I'm right although it was a few months ago since I read the article in Natuur en Techniek.


I just remembered I think, but am not sure that the gu who started up the private project got kicked out of the publically funded one for cutting corners which could have led to mistakes, and he started the private project and there are rumors that one of the "anonymous" donours of the dna is him
 
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And lastly, if I remember correctly terorists tried to get hold of crop dusters but couldn't get loan from the back or tobuy the crop dusters. (Hiring wasn't an option because the duster would have needed extensive modifications). So their plan was most likely to get weapons grade anthrax, probably from Iraq who had an extensive biological warfare program and they also met one of the top militairy leaders in some country like austria or something.

So it was very likely they would have flown a crop duster and spread anthrax over major us citys. The flying planes into the wtc, white house, pentagon was "only" plan b.
 
Ace man, with all due respect, fuck right off!
"couldn't get a loan from the bank for crop dusters"

Do you have no comprehension of the personal wealth of Osama Bin Laden? or the *amounts* of money flowing through Al_Queda?

if you can but military grade Anthrax spores on the black market, crop duster planes are a damn cake walk.

here: wanna buy one for $138,000 dollars??
http://www.barnstormers.com/crop0000.html

also, FYI, the vast majority of militray Anthrax "in the wild" comes not from Iraq, but from South Africa, where the former pretoria regime used it in it's various cross border squabbles. And they got it from Aldermaston in the UK.

As to the HGM project, Celera Genomics did *not* announce the completed map. Idiots in the media who don't understand the difference between the rough draft and the gold reference standard

it's pretty clear the shotgun PCR approach they have used has produced a map which agrees almost completely with the Public project with their "super slow" method.

The only ones whining are those publicly funded guys suddenly having to

a) work for their money
b)explain their slow progress