Home > Friday, Science & Technology > Science Friday: a global computing project, vaccination follies, and - ! - daylight saving time

Science Friday: a global computing project, vaccination follies, and - ! - daylight saving time

October 26, 2007

Middle son suggests:

“You should check out WorldCommnityGrid.org if you haven’t already.  It’s a distributed computing site which has a number of projects which you can choose from.  Right now, my computer is crunching the numbers of the binding of protease inhibitors in both Dengue fever and the HIV virus (in the Discovering Dengue Drugs Together and Fighting AIDS At Home projects—DDDT and FAAH, respectively).  I guess the biochemists didn’t really want to come up with cool acronyms.  There’s also folding@home, a hugely successful project which has resulted in the publication of more than 50 scientific papers.

I think these projects are really neat, and you can set them to only be active while the computer has been inactive for a certain period of time.

I think I’m going to get our home file server working on one of those when I get it running.  An easy way to help towards important work.

BBC reports that British “Schoolgirls to get cancer jab” as the new HPPV vaccine goes online.  Parents who worry that granting their daughters protection from a dangerous STD would make them promiscuous, however, can opt out.  On our own shores, by the way, presidential candidate Ron Paul is an anti-vaxxer, a group of particularly dangerous denialists whose short memory of what it was like before vaccines poses a threat of revisiting some of our old plagues.

Just in time for the bi-annual enforced wrench-in-the-gears, comes a chronobiologist’s post: Daylight Savings Time is worse than previously thought.

That’ll have to do for today; I’m off to get my car from the mechanic.  It’s a new thing for me, letting someone else work on my car.

  1. October 27, 2007 at 23:53 | #1

    I think I will definitely look into the World Community Grid for my home systems. So I just have one question to ask… What do you think the chances are of talking our boss into implementing this in the wasteful lab where systems are on 24/7?

    Rather than pander to Ideologues I think it would make more sense to enforce vaccinations across the board and educate parents that don’t want their children to have them. I would be willing to have the state pay for education, because in the long run that education will cost less than an outbreak.

    I always wondered about DST. It seems like one of those things that doesn’t make sense, and no one really knows why we do it. But we do it because…

  2. October 28, 2007 at 08:51 | #2

    If our lab build weren’t already bursting at the seams with software, TSRs and network policy considerations, you’d have a chance of talking me into it.  The lab computers do not belong to me and neither do I think it’s a good idea to load external software on them that was not requested by our faculty whose interests those computers are there to serve.  My home computer, different story.

    DST?  No question why we do it – because we used to do it when our society was more agrarian than urban, same as the long summer vacation for schools. Societies have a lot of inertia.

  3. Ted
    October 28, 2007 at 09:06 | #3

    On our own shores, by the way, presidential candidate Ron Paul is an anti-vaxxer, a group of particularly dangerous denialists whose short memory of what it was like before vaccines poses a threat of revisiting some of our old plagues.

    In my opinion, their anti-vaxx stance stems from a distrust of the unholy alliance between commercial interests and government. They believe that the government is too compliant to business and that individually, their personal tragedy is written off mathematically as being insignificant to anyone but themselves.

    Their memory is fine; they want more information (because they’re addicted to information, unlike previous generations) and a greater confidence in the pharma companies.

  4. james old guy
    October 29, 2007 at 11:10 | #4

    “I think it would make more sense to enforce vaccinations across the board and educate parents that don’t want their children to have them.”
    Educate them how? What is the punishment if a parent because of their belief system prohibits vaccinations? There are vaild reasons to have questions about vaccinations,links to autism seems to be surfacing from mandatory childhood vaccinations. Here is one website that has some legitmate issues.
    http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/vaccines.htm

  5. October 29, 2007 at 11:41 | #5

    Actually there is no scientific basis whatsoever for the links between autism and vaccinations. There have been a couple huge studies conducted that have found no basis for the claim. Which is why education becomes so important.

    Educating people would be very easy. First you force across the board all vaccinations are mandatory unless there is a medical reason from the family practitioner (such as an immune disease). And at the same time you schedule night classes for parents that are uneasy with the issue. These night classes would be more like a Q&A;, where the info is presented and parents are allowed to ask questions.

    For parents that do not have their children scheduled for vaccs and do not attend class, the solution is simple. A monetary fine. The monetary fine increases for each failure to comply as well. Tax dollars are used for vaccs and would be for this program, so a simple fine that puts money back into that pool would suffice.

    As I said above, the cost of running such a program would be cheaper than the cost of an outbreak and health insurance costs in general.

  6. October 29, 2007 at 11:53 | #6

    Woah, you two, put them shootin’ irons away!  Siddown & lets reckon on it a bit.  (Steps out of Old-West movie bartender personna)

    Thing is, a heavy-handed approach has been shown over and over to have severe limitations in public health measures.  Lacing up the jackboots is a last resort.  Public education is tricky business and tends to drift toward overly simplistic propaganda in a coercive environment.  If you doubt this, look at any of the anti-drug literature our government puts out.  Most of it is complete BS wrapped around a grain of truth.

    Since the human brain tends to remember the most-heard information as true even if it was in the context of a logical deconstruction, official denials (even if well-supported by facts) are often ineffective.  Got any effective ideas how to persuade people, even if it takes a little longer than just forcing them to comply?  In the long run, that works out better.

  7. October 30, 2007 at 09:29 | #7

    I’m not an “anti-vaxxer,” and I just shake my head at the persistence of those who believe, against all the evidence, that vaccines cause autism. Still—if I had a young daughter today I would absolutely refuse to allow her to be injected with the anti-cancer vaccine. Why? Because it hasn’t been around long enough for us to know anything about the long-term effects. Using the vaccine is a gamble—possible effects surfacing at a later date vs a disease which may or may not occur. And I would vigorously fight compulsory vaccination in this case because it’s not preventing a communicable disease. I would also make sure my daughter had full information about her sexuality, the risks involved, and basic safety measures.

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