Read the article: AIDS Strain Fights AIDS

This is realy cool. The title of the article is just a tad misleading though. What was done was ‘they’ took a bunch of AIDS cells, removed half of the innards (be awed by my techno-speak), then took what was left inside the cell and reversed its genes.

This is called antisense:

Antisense therapy is a form of treatment for genetic disorders or infections. When the genetic sequence of a particular gene is known to be causative of a particular disease, it is possible to synthesize a strand of nucleic acid (DNA, RNA or a chemical analogue) that will bind to the messenger RNA (mRNA) produced by that gene and inactivate it, effectively turning that gene “off”. – Antisence Therapy, Wikipedia

A three year study at the University of Pennsylvania just ended. During the study, 5 AIDS patients, who had become drug resistant, were treated with this antisense therapy. At the conclusion of the study, the immune systems of four of the five subjects was stronger, with the virus showing signs of partial suppression.

This isn’t the first time that gene therapy has been used for AIDS patients. The article points out that some have been cured of AIDS… while others developed cancer from the treatments. Because of this inconsistency, one of the goals of this study was to show that the antisense strain would not be harmful to patients.

The study has moved into Phase II at this point: working with subjects for whom drugs continue to be beneficial.

I think it goes without saying that this is some seriously great work, and I really hope that they are successful. I had always been convinced that the best we could ever hope for was a vaccine to prevent infection, but that, like with most viral infections that mutate too quickly, once you contracted the virus there was nothing you could do about it. The researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have really turned on a light in an otherwise dark room for the world. For the first time… ever, really… I feel as though there IS hope for some kind of cure.

I urge those of you who do so, to pray for their continued wisdom, intellect, and success in this research. In the words of a great TV show, “The Truth is Out There.” And i pray they find it sooner, rather than later.

ooooooooooo…. people are P-I-S-S-E-D. Read this article from the BBC: Pluto vote ‘hijacked’ in revolt

This article brings out some things that i didn’t know before. Such as out of the 10,000 people who attended the conference, only 424 voted on the new planetary definitions.

Dr. Alan Stern, planetary scientist and Executive Director of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute, is one of those who thinks that this is a really bad idea.

“It’s an awful definition; it’s sloppy science and it would never pass peer review – for two reasons. Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line between dwarf planets and planets. It’s as if we declared people not people for some arbitrary reason, like ‘they tend to live in groups’. Secondly, the actual definition is even worse, because it’s inconsistent.”

He says that the “Cleared the Neighborhood of its Orbit” requirement is particularly inconsistent because Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune would fail to meet it. He even agrees with my original question about Neptune:

“If Neptune had cleared its zone, Pluto wouldn’t be there”

What gets me most is that they held the vote with so few people participating! Dr. Stern didn’t like it either:

“I was not allowed to vote because I was not in a room in Prague on Thursday 24th. Of 10,000 astronomers, 4% were in that room – you can’t even claim consensus.

“If everyone had to travel to Washington DC every time we wanted to vote for President, we would have very different results because no one would vote. In today’s world that is idiotic. I have nothing but ridicule for this decision.”

My friend Roy had a good suggestion: If we’re going to pick arbitrary rules to define things, than so be it. Say that a “planet” is anything within a given distance to the sun. Draw the line there. I think that’s a reasonable solution.

So long Pluto, we don’t need you anymore. The IAU finally came to a decision today, and in their definition of Planet, there just isn’t any room for our Solar Systems runt of the litter.

The Washington Post article on the matter shares the newly agreed upon definition, and why Pluto was “automatically” eliminated:

“a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a … nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s.

… ummm, wait a minute… this is just me thinking out loud here, but… if Pluto is not a “planet” because it’s orbit overlaps Neptune’s (thus violating the “has cleared the neighborhood of its orbit” part of the definition) does that mean Neptune is in violation of this part of the definition as well? After all, if Pluto’s orbit isn’t clear because of Neptune, then Neptune’s isn’t clear because of Pluto… right?

[shrug]

So now we have a new planetary designation to throw around: Dwarf Planet. And before all your children get the upper hand and start with their, “But my teacher said…”, you had better commit all this to memory! There are suddenly three objects in our solar system which are now considered Dwarf Planets:

Now, two of the objects that at one point were cruising toward possible full-fledged planethood will join Pluto as dwarfs: the asteroid Ceres, which was a planet in the 1800s before it got demoted, and 2003 UB313, an icy object slightly larger than Pluto whose discoverer, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, has nicknamed Xena.

Sheesh… all those science fair models of the solar system are going to be a lot more complex!

Here is the actual press relese from the IAU website: The Final IAU Resolution