nitro, what do you think about the premise of his next book http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/uni...an=9781451624458&itm=1&usri=lawrence+m+krauss :eek:
In response to this and the above, I think the premise is very real. The problem is that imo it is a play on words that is intellectually dishonest. People believe that it is matter that is something, and that fields are not really there. Hence his "nothing." Do I believe it? Not exactly. I believe in the cyclic version of creation espoused by Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok in http://www.amazon.com/Endless-Unive...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323114683&sr=1-1 This talks about Physics pre big-bang. What Krauss is talking about is creation from the instant of creation or AT big-bang. We are only now barely able to ask these questions. While it is fun to speculate about it, we don't even understand what the basic constituents of matter are (we think maybe strings and branes) and yet we want to talk about nothing when we can't even talk about something. Still, it is fun, and we may be closer to the truth than we think we are.
Future Science: Essays from the Cutting Edge http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fut...7?ean=9780307741912&itm=1&usri=future+science Loved it. Quick read by outstanding researchers that know how to write to a popular audience.
Good thread. I have gone ahead and picked up and read a few ideas on this thread. 2 were above my level at first glance, but with a little study I understand the concepts on at least a base level. I've started reviewing courses on the MIT site and Kahn Academy to learn more. I hate the internet for all the stupidity, but love it for the learning available, and sharing by others.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is one of the research for today and the future "The next generation: DNA vaccine advantages." Conventional vaccine limitations "When it was discovered that creating a prior sensitivity and immune system memory against a specific invader would help the body mount a faster and more powerful attack against this invader if it was again encountered, the idea of preventive vaccination was born. A dead or weakened pathogen (virus or bacteria) is used to make a vaccine, which when introduced into the body presents an antigenic ("foreign") protein uniquely associated with that particular pathogen. The immune system responds to this "attacker" and then develops long-term memory of this protein. If the real virus or bacteria enters the body, the immune system recognizes the unique protein associated with the pathogen and generates a more rapid and robust antibody response. This approach led to the development of numerous successful conventional vaccines. Unfortunately, conventional vaccine technology has key weaknesses when tested against more chronic infectious diseases and cancer. Conventional vaccines: â¢Are designed to attack specific pathogen strains and may provide little or no protection against, for example, new strains of influenza that evolve over time, or against a virus such as HIV, which can evolve once it enters the body. â¢Are not adept at generating T-cell responses to kill cells infected by a pathogen that was able to avoid the first-responder antibodies or to kill mutated cells. â¢May use a weakened version of a virus, which is not desirable for diseases such as HIV due to a possible risk of infection caused by the vaccine. â¢Are complicated and expensive to design. â¢Are often difficult and time consuming to manufacture. Because of the need to grow vaccines in chicken eggs, significant manufacturing bottlenecks do not facilitate rapid production increases to address rapidly spreading diseases such as pandemic influenza. The next generation: DNA vaccine advantages Scientists have been seeking to develop a new generation of immunotherapies to overcome these weaknesses of conventional vaccine technology. One important approach Inovio is vigorously pursuing is DNA-based vaccines, which have the following characteristics: â¢Instead of using a killed or attenuated virus as a vaccine, scientists identify a unique antigenic protein(s) associated with the pathogen and the DNA sequence that produce the protein(s). This DNA sequence, itself innocuous, is delivered into cells of the body. The cells' own machinery may then produce the protein encoded by the DNA sequence. The intent is to produce sufficient quantities of this foreign (antigenic) protein to trigger the body's immune system to attack the targeted disease. â¢DNA vaccines are effective in stimulating antibody responses to attack infectious diseases as they enter the body, before they can infect cells, therefore acting as a preventive vaccine. â¢DNA vaccines are efficient at generating T-cell responses that may kill targeted cancerous cells or cells infected by the targeted virus or bacteria. DNA vaccines may therefore also be used as a therapeutic to treat existing disease. This capability provides the potential to treat chronic infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C virus, as well as the possibility to develop therapeutic cancer vaccines. â¢DNA vaccine technology provides the opportunity to design sophisticated, multi-antigen vaccines and/or vaccines based on conserved genes and antigens that are common to evolved strains of a pathogen, e.g. the potential exists to develop a universal influenza vaccine to protect against both seasonal influenza strains as well as new influenza strains that cannot be known in advance and which present pandemic risk, such as new strains of avian influenza or the Mexican H1N1 influenza. â¢DNA sequences from multiple strains of a virus like influenza can also be designed in a "consensus" form where one antigen is able to confer protection against any one of the original viral strains. â¢DNA vaccines can potentially be developed from concept to FDA approval in eight to 10 years, rather than as much as 20 years that it took to develop, for example, the chickenpox vaccine. â¢They can be readily and cost effectively manufactured using off-the-shelf, well-proven fermentation technology. â¢In most cases, they do not require cold storage and distribution" http://www.inovio.com/technology/understandingdnavaccines.htm
"Time Travel and Warp Drives: A Scientific Guide to Shortcuts through Time and Space" http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tim...224985&itm=1&usri=time+travel+and+warp+drives One of the better books if not the best book written about the subject for the educated layman.
"Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World" http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/why-mahler?store=ALLPRODUCTS&keyword=why+mahler Saw a documentary on Mahler and got interested. This book not only taught me quite a bit about Mahler, but also about music in general and our personal relationship with music, something that we all know intuitively, but is recounted in neat stories here.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cry...18?ean=9780060512804&itm=1&usri=cryptonomicon Perhaps the greatest "hacker" novel ever: