Hi Reddit! We're the team of researchers behind the world's first fully synthetic protein "switch" that can control living cells. It's called LOCKR, and it's a general building block to create circuits in cells, similar to the electrical circuits that drive basically all modern electronics (Wired called this the "biological equivalent of a PID algorithm", for any ICS people out there).
Imagine this: A patient gets a traumatic head injury, causing swelling. Some inflammation is necessary for healing, but too much can cause brain damage. The typical approach today is to administer drugs to control the swelling, but there's no way to know the perfect dose and the drugs often cause inflammation to plummet so low that it impedes healing.
With LOCKR (stands for Latching Orthogonal Cage Key pRoteins), you could create "smart" cells programmed to sense inflammation and respond automatically to maintain a desired level - not too high, not too low, but enough to maximize healing without causing permanent damage. BTW, we've made the system freely available to all academics..
We're here to talk about protein design, genetic engineering and synthetic biology, from present efforts to future possibilities. We'll be on at 11 AM PT (2 PM ET, 18 UT). Ask us anything!
Here are some helpful links if you want more background:
- Coverage of the announcement from UCSF and from UW
- Nature article about LOCKR design
- Nature article about designing circuits in living cells
- Wired's coverage of the announcement
We're a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the UC Berkeley-UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering, and the University of Washington Medicine Institute for Protein Design (IPD).
Here's who's answering questions today:
- Hana El-Samad - I am a control engineer by training, turned biologist and biological engineer. My research group at UCSF led the task of integrating LOCKR into living cells and building circuits with it. Follow me on Twitter @HanaScientist.
- Bobby Langan - I am a recent graduate from the University
Hi Reddit! Iโm Brian Hare, and Iโm here to talk about canine cognition and how ordinary and extraordinary dog behaviors reveal the role of cognition in the rich mental lives of dogs. The scientific community has made huge strides in our understanding of dogsโ cognitive abilities โ Iโm excited to share some of the latest and most fascinating โ and sometimes surprising โ discoveries with you. Did you know, for example, that some dogs can learn words like human infants? Or some dogs can detect cancer? What makes dogs so successful at winning our hearts?
A bit more about me: Iโm an associate professor at Duke University where I founded and direct the Duke Canine Cognition Center, which is the first center in the U.S. dedicated to studying how dogs think and feel. Our work is being used to improve training techniques, inform ideas about canine cognitive health and identify the best service and bomb detecting dogs. I helped reveal the love and bond mechanism between humans and dogs. Based on this research, I co-founded Dognition, an online tool featuring fun, science-based games that anyone with a dog can use to better understand how their dog thinks compared to other dogs.
Letโs talk about the amazing things dogs can do and why โ Ask Me Anything!
For background: Please learn more about me in my bio here or check me out in the new podcast series DogSmarts by Purina Pro Plan on iTunes and Google Play to learn more about dog cognition.
This AMA is being facilitated as part of a partnership between Dognition and Purina Pro Plan BRIGHT MIND, a breakthrough innovation for dogs that provides brain-supporting nutrition for cognitive health.
I'm here! Look at all these questions! I'm excited to get started!
OK AMAZING Q's I will be back later to answer a few more!
I'm back to answer a few more questions
thank you so much for all your questions! love to all dogs. woof!
Thatโs if we survive...
The janitor pranced by the school looking to murder someone. The only problem was that he was on school campus. โHMMMMMโฆโ he thought. โWould it be wrong to impale a child?โ The janitor laughs. โOf course it wouldnโt. The real question is: would it be wrong to impale a woman who hangs out in the garbage.โ He paused for a second. โHMMMMMMโฆ. No I donโt think itโs wrong.โ The janitor goes to the garbage and suplexes it. โIโM GONNA KILL WHOEVER IS IN THERE!โ A woman popped out of the garbage. โHello nice young man. Say, ya got anyโฆ. Food?โ โShut the fuck up and let me kill you!โ
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He left with a broken wrist
What is 09:
- A mental calculation game that helps you improve your brain reflexes with numbers.
- You can play 09 solo to climb that leaderboard and show who is the most muscular brain of them all!
- You can also play 09 with a friend on a single device!
Aside from testing the game. It would be much appreciated if you guys gave us some feedback about the mechanics of the game:
- If they are self explanatory or not.
- If the tutorial is (informative/not informative) and (boring/not boring).
- Did you easily understand the mechanics and began actually playing for scoring.
You can download the the game HERE.
Thank you for your feedback.
Throwaway, for reasons. TL;DR at bottom.
Something happened on my 36th birthday. Enlightenment, pieces falling into place, whatever you want to call it - the result was FINALLY being able to place my โselfโ into the context of my entire life.
I had been in talk therapy or CBT with the same therapist for 6 years, diagnosed with a depressive disorder. I sought help at the age of 30 from him to tackle patterns of heavy substance abuse from my 20s that were continuing on, even after being anchored with my first and only child at 27. My sonโs dad and I had only a fling, and tried to make a relationship work while I was pregnant, but I very quickly devalued him when I realized that he would not jive well with my personality. He is an AMAZING father to my son, but Iโve basically idealized and devalued him to extremes in the past 8 years.
Throughout therapy, I learned so much, and was able to really tackle the substance abuse - it felt amazing!!! After 1-2 years of therapy, I was no longer abusing pain pills after many years of addiction. Now, to tackle drinking - this took until the beginning of this year.
It was a sudden decision on New Yearโs Day to cut the everyday drinking out of my life. Many nights in the years before that, I had drank myself to the state of blackout - at home, alone, for no reason at all, or out with friends that I have connections with, but not like that โkindredโ kind. And then suddenly, I ripped off that bandaid on 1/1/2019. I switched to weed, but that was it. I can count on one hand the number of days this year when I consumed alcohol - MASSIVE VICTORY.
Throughout therapy, all was good!! We were so proud of the person that achieved this level of sobriety!
Enter the first romance Iโve had in 10 years. The past decade has been marked with one night stands and devotion and loyalty to people that were in no position to provide me the love and affection that I was seeking. And now this new affection just reignited old habits that were always clouded by drugs and alcohol. But I was in therapy! I could manage this! I applied so many constructive new patterns to this relationship, but SOMETHING was still just so wrong. My decline wasnโt so outwardly apparent in the relationship, but his reactions would trigger me in a lot of ways and I would internalize - but it was apparent in other facets of my life. Iโve had a steady job for 8 years - as long as Iโve had my son - and I have been VERY successful with this company. I started to s
... keep reading on reddit โก
Hello I have severe fibromyalgia and I'm on disability. I get quite bored at times and I really enjoyed playing Diablo 3 and I was hearing from a few people in the past that RuneScape was a great game to help do repetitive tasks and kind of one of those games that you can take very slowly and enjoy over time.
I don't have a very powerful laptop but I'm wondering does this game have any special accessibility options like being able to use a game controller or anything fancy like that? I have a very very old Xbox 360 controller that sort of works accidentally dropped it a few times when I get shooting pains through my wrist.
I don't know if there's any really really the most basic guy that there are things that won't overwhelm me and make me have to do a lot of reading. I unfortunately have very severe comprehension issues so if I have to do a lot of reading it can be very overwhelming for me.
I also heard the game can cost money I don't have any kind of money to my name on fortunately I regularly visit the food bank to give you an idea of how bad things are for me. Is the money required or would I be able to enjoy the game without it?
If you have any advice suggestions comments feel free please don't make them too big of a wall of text or it'll be hard on me.
Sorry if I talked too much I'm using voice to text and just to give you an idea I can't even read what I said just because of how much text I said.
Thank you and have a wonderful day.
As many of you, I've been following the reviews and I'm actually baffled. Some, like that from the goofy from Washington Post, are borderline offensive. And even in more serious articles we can find passages that make us question if the author really knows the product (or even what they're doing, for that matter).
Follow the recommendations. Plug the damn thing and connect it through an Ethernet cable. Make sure that no one else is pulling bandwidth. Do the possible to improve the conditions.
Those of us who play MMOs, MOBAs and online games know the drill. From what I've seen so far: yes. It works.
I read something like this in elementary school but that is all I remember. I do remember liking the book but thatโs all I remember. If no one knows this book but may know similar ones, Iโd love to check those out.
Edit: I remember reading this book sometime around 1998-2000. I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. I donโt remember if I got it from school or a store. So I donโt know if it was age appropriate or not.
