_qua

Ambulances cost money everywhere, it's just a matter of who is paying. Do we think paramedics in Germany are more susceptible to PTSD when patients die than ICU or ER staff, or paramedics anywhere?

I've never heard of a policy like that for physicians and doubt it's common for paramedics. I work in an ICU and a typical day involves a death or resuscitation. We would run out of staff with that policy.

I think we’re basically on the same page. As you note, a conserved promoter without strong sequence conservation elsewhere suggests functions that might be more structural or regulatory. Still, it’s also true that some (actually many) non-coding regions show no evidence of selection and appear to evolve neutrally.

To borrow an example: an onion likely doesn’t need 5x more DNA than a human, and a lungfish probably doesn’t need 30 times more than we do (and 350x more than a pufferfish). And yet, these enormous genomes exist. It’s very likely that portions of these sequences are what we’d call “junk,” i.e., DNA that doesn’t confer a meaningful functional advantage and can accumulate due to the relatively low cost of carrying it along.

If we want to avoid the term “junk,” we could say something like “areas of the genome for which we assign a very low prior probability of functional importance.” But “junk” is a concise shorthand to acknowledge that, while some non-coding sequences matter, there are also huge swaths of DNA in many eukaryotes that show no signs of being anything other than evolutionary baggage.

That's just not how evolution operates. It can't "look forward" 1 million years and keep something because it will be advantageous in the future.

I don't have an qualms with the research. I think it was shared on HN because of the never-ending articles about "it's not junk after all" which is what I was reacting to. The linked press release uses this term, but the original study does not. I agree with your points.

I get the skepticism. There have been a lot of surprising revelations in biology and I don't think anyone would argue we have every angle nailed down. However, the idea that some DNA is genuinely “junk” is based on more than a hunch. It’s from looking at patterns across species. If a sequence really mattered, then changing it should cause a problem. That would put pressure on the sequence to stay the same, generation after generation. Yet we see big stretches of DNA mutating freely, at rates that exactly match what would be expected from accumulation of random copying errors. That suggests these sequences aren’t under selection for any important function.

This isn’t just “we don’t know what it does, so it must be junk.” It’s more like, “We can’t find any sign that it matters, and everything we know about evolution says if it mattered, we’d see fewer random changes there.” Down the road we might uncover small roles for some of these regions, but at this point, calling them junk is just an honest read of the evidence we have.

As others and I have mentioned above, there are absolutely parts of the genome that are functional despite being non-coding. There is no debate about this. You have shared links and arguments emphasizing that there is function in these parts. However, you have not addressed the fact that there are large stretches of DNA that are not conserved across species, show no differential selection pressure compared to what would be expected from random genetic drift, and that there are hugely varying sizes of genome between species.

From my reference below: "If most eukaryotic DNA is functional at the organism level, be it for gene regulation, protection against mutations, maintenance of chromosome structure, or any other such role, then why does an onion require five times more of it than a human?"

Of course, one can always say, "How arrogant to think we know everything." But given our current understanding of evolution and genetic function, the specific identity of a genetic sequence correlates with its function. If that function is important, the sequence should be preserved to a degree better than random chance.

To deny this is to suggest that any random sequence of genetic material can serve a vital purpose while being subject to endless mutation without consequence. This raises the question: What do we mean by a "specific sequence" if it isn’t conserved and is constantly mutating?

I assume you are familiar with the information I’ve just shared. I’m curious where we are diverging in our views because it feels like we are not discussing the same thing.

This artcle fairly represents my understanding of what I mean when I say "junk DNA": https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo...

Some non-protein coding DNA produces RNA which serves a purpose. We also know that there are large areas of non-coding DNA which are very important for transcriptional regulation.

But it remains true that there are large amounts of non-coding junk DNA which is under no selection pressure. It may be important for spacing out sections of DNA or it may just be along for the ride after being incorporated by ancient splicing errors or viruses. It's just frustrating to keep reading this articles about how, "it's not junk after all," when it has been known for decades that DNA/RNA have many non-coding functions and it has also been known for decades that there truly is "junk" DNA.

I don't even have the words to express how little I care if companies serve me targeted ads with cookies. On the other hand I absolutely despise what the average visit to website with a cookie banner has become.

Light doesn’t go at light speed through optical fiber.

Good idea, but such a frustrating company to do business with as a consumer

Anyone who is smart enough to use this weird triple shift key shortcut is intelligent enough to preload a different site in another tab and use the close tab shortcut. I would guess there is almost complete venn diagram overlap between people who can learn this weird shortcut and people who can deal with this threat in any other way using normal browser functions.

Guidelines call for metformin first for most people, add ons from there are usually chosen based on the individual patient's comorbidities.

It would be interesting to run an experiment to see how long we could keep a mouse alive using the results of all these mouse-positive trials, treating each disease as it crops up.

It’s one of my favorite procedures! To each their own I guess.

That white hose you see coming off the back of it is the drive line which passes out the chest and connects to an external battery. It's not a normal life with one of these in place, a heart transplant would be vastly preferable.

The lack of pulsatile flow is associated with formation of AV malformations in the colon which can cause GI bleeding which is a more than a little problem when you have a piece of hardware in your chest which requires you take anticoagulants.

This is not the first cardiac support device using maglev technology. Some LVAD devices and Impella pumps also use maglev.

I mean just Google that term and you will get a lot of information. There are multiple public health campaigns regarding it

Undetectable = Untransmittable has been a mantra in the field for years because there is good data that people who have 0 detectable circulating copies of the virus cannot transmit it.

You require at least a low level of insulin to keep metabolic systems in balance. Whether they eat carbs or not, T1 diabetic patients need insulin or they will go into diabetic ketoacidosis and die. Because insulin necessarily lowers glucose in addition to suppressing ketoacidosis, T1 patients need carbs.

T2 patients are on a spectrum with some having enough insulin production and sensitivity left that they can do okay with no/very low carb intake and may even get better as they lose weight. Some T2 patients get a kind of burned out pancreas and severe insulin resistance which requires exogenous insulin to treat and behaves more like T1 but with the caveat that due to reduce insulin sensitivity, they usually need much higher doses in insulin than T1 patients.

That's an embarassing letter from the company.

As someone currently forced to live in Ohio for work, where the hell does it get off with the slogan "the heart of it all"?

I thought about buying a slide rule just for fun to learn how they work. I couldn't find any regular sized traditional slide rules on Amazon. Does anyone sell them for a reasonable price?

How are we going to afford all these incredible therapies as a society? They’re life changing and worth it but we’re going to need some cost breakthroughs.

I used to be someone who might have a single beer with dinner a few nights per week. When I got a Garmin and saw what it did to my stress levels and sleep, I essentially stopped drinking at all except for rare social situations.

In addition to improving the numbers, I noticed a qualitative improvement in my sleep, energy levels, and exercise recovery.

Purely as a piece of photography that second photo is very cool with the sharp focus and the snow in the air.

This is fascinating. Never would have thought neutrinos could be a problem!

This is awesome, will likely subscribe--just need to pare down some of my other subscriptions--there are too many tempting AI products lately.

Granted I've never been in a Waymo but I've definitely been picked up by Uber/Lyft drivers who were extremely erratic and likely drunk or high.