Thread : In the news today

[Engy]

Science is one step closer to fully understanding how AIDS works and, potentially, cure it. Thanks to gamers.

[Gil Hamilton]

Though technically that isn't that gamers have gotten us a step closer to characterizing AIDS, it's more like gamers were used as parallel processors to brute force thousands and thousands of man hours of manipulating the structure of proteins to find a particular configuration at its lowest energy state, putting gamers on the research totem below the computers that run ab initio structure calculations. This isn't gamers saving the world, it's an extremely low tech version of the Matrix.

[Adamas]

ahh but the result is the same either way isn't it?

[Engy]

Considering that this game has been made mostly outside the scientific community and has a competitive nature rather then a science progressive one, I think I can safely say that the gamers were not used by scientists to brute force the data for them. The gamers were going up against each other for a highscore, not to see who could crack AIDS first. The fact that this is quite likely to bring the science surrounding several diseases forward is a by-product. A quite beneficial one at that. So yes, this is a point for the gamers, especially since they managed to do what scientists could not.
This is like the Corrupted Blood Incident in World of Warcraft. It may have been a coincidence, but the event brought a tonload of information for scientists and other specialists as to what can occur when a similar disease hits real life. Information they otherwise would not have. Science is responsible for the basics and it will be responsible for what will happen next, but the breakthrough step has been set by gamers. The title of the article may have been a bit too... Colourful, yes, but that doesn't take away that the giant contribution was brought by gamers.

[Gil Hamilton]

I'm not sure you understand what happened here, Engy. The player who uses foldit isn't actually doing any chemistry or applying any chemical insight into the problem. They are twisting and moving residues in the protein to get the highest score that corresponds to the lowest energy conformer. This is exactly what an ab initio protein folding simulation that people do in computational biochemistry, where a computer algorithm, rather than a player starts with a conformation, changes it slightly, checks its energy state, moves it again slightly, and iterates this until it hits a local energy minima, at which point the simulation is said to converge (IE get the highest score).

The problem with protein simulation calculations are that they are extremely processor time consuming. It can take weeks of running time to run a single simulation. However, if you get hundreds of people with alot of spare time and a program that does a fast and loose calculation of the lowest energy conformer, you can do a massive parallel processing run and conceivably do the problem very quickly (as was the case here). In other words, brute force the problem using people as processors rather than doing it at the university cluster.

So, no, this isn't gamers showing up researchers, anymore than the protein dynamics simulation shows up researchers when it arrives at an answer. The gamers did no research and applied no insight and would have absolutely no idea if they arrived at a feasible structure (just one that the program told them was the highest score). All those conclusions, including that the structure that the foldit players got was a reasonable one and consistent with measurements, came from biochemists. So lets not exaggerate; this wasn't gamers solving some problem that biochemists couldn't solve, this was gamers providing the processing power to solve the problem that the researchers were working on.

[Searcher]

Some sad news, even though he retired almost 25 years ago the orginial Ziggy creator died today at the age of 80.

[yiraheerai]

[Artemisia]

REM called it quits today.

http://remhq.com/news_story.php?id=1446

[Gil Hamilton]

Huh, no kidding. Just as long as it didn't end with Michael Stipe finally reaching the Smugularity and collapsing like a black hole in on himself, but a clean break up.

[Radbaron]

Quicker than a ray of light! (And I don't mean Madonna!)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/ ... UU20110922

I hear Albert may be rolling in his grave.

[Don Alexander]

Ninja'd!

*shakes fist at*

Anyway, good to see they are being very catious about their result. Yeah, systematics. I bet that will bite them in the ass.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

['J']

A social club in the north-west of England has been hosting cage fights with children as young as eight.

The Greenlands Labour Club in Preston, Lancashire, hosted a ticket-only fight night that included the eight-year-olds' bout which lasted 10 minutes.

In video footage, one of the boys who is bare-chested, stands over another child who is on the floor of the cage. A man in the front row can be seen urging one of the children to keep his chin up, as another man raises his arms in the air. The smaller child has his arm twisted during the bout.

The crowd shout encouragement as the two children wrestle each other in headlocks on the floor of the cage, while others can be heard cheering their names.

At one point, one of the children appears to burst into tears, and medical staff are called in to check them. None of the children are wearing headgear or padding, but the organisers pointed out that they were not allowed to kick or punch each other and that it had been "an extremely good event."

There is no suggestion that any of the bouts at the Reps Retribution night, which also included semi-professional events, breached any rules or licencing laws.

The British Medical Association said it was disturbing as it is opposed to boxing and cage fighting. "This example of cage fighting among young children is particularly disturbing, especially as they are not even wearing head guards," said a spokesman.

"Boxing and cage fighting are sometimes defended on the grounds that children learn to work through their aggression with discipline and control.

"The BMA believes there are many other sports, such as athletics, swimming, judo and football, which require discipline but do not pose the same threat of brain injury."

The sport, also known as Mixed Martial Arts, encompasses a range of martial arts that are used during bouts in cages.

Steven Nightingale, 28, a professional cage fighter who runs the Reps MMA gym in Preston, said the sport is safe and growing in popularity.

He said: "Competitions start from the age of five, it is definitely a big up-and-coming sport. It is all based around martial arts. The kids are not getting hit or anything at all when they are under age. We do not let them strike — punch and kick — until the age of 14 or 15."

Asked about the crying child during one bout, he said: "The kid has never been beaten before, he is the one who wins the gold medals.

"When they get beaten, they are going to get emotional, also the referee and corner man said you do not have to carry on."

Nightingale denied a packed social club was the wrong environment for the bout, claiming it would help their progress.

Paul Jackson, manager of Warriors gym in nearby Plungington said: "The main question I would ask is why were the parents allowing them to do that? I wouldn't really agree with anything like it.

"It's like a circus performance but if it's consenting adults, that's different. It depends on what the rules were as well.

"If they were joint-locking then I'd be questioning that because the bones aren't developed fully yet."

Michelle Anderson, owner of Greenlands Labour Club, who attended the event on September 10, said: "There was nothing wrong with it.

"The kids were there to fight; they have fought before. The parents were there. Would people rather these kids were out on the streets with guns and knives?"

wut.

[Don Alexander]

Looks like someone ignored the first AND second rules of Fight Club!

[Artemisia]

And the fifteenth, seventeenth...you would not believe the horrible number of horrible writers that are out there.

[Don Alexander]

Quicker than a ray of light! (And I don't mean Madonna!)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/ ... UU20110922

I hear Albert may be rolling in his grave.

For anyone who REALLY wants to dig into this, a few minutes ago, the OPERA paper on the neutrino travel timings came out on hep-ex (links to PDF).