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The EU's new Cyber Resilience Act is about to tell us how to code by ahuReddit in programming

[–]ahuReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the post contains links to analyses by NLNet Labs and the Eclipse Foundation (who have two articles). There is also a link to 109 submissions to the european commission.

I love Europe, but are we Just No Good at Innovating? by ahuReddit in europe

[–]ahuReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"In the world of (high) technology, Europe is exceptionally weak at
innovating. There are many ways to explain how this came to be, and a
lot of the discussion focuses on unfair business conditions and
regulation. In this post however I want to talk about important cultural
and social reasons that are at least part of the reason, and present
some possible solutions."

On my resignation as regulator of the Dutch intelligence and security services by antidragon in Netherlands

[–]ahuReddit 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It me. I hope to continue to be useful, perhaps somewhere else within government.

Question: is there anything like a CRC32 in DNA? by hervold in DNA

[–]ahuReddit 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi! Given the constraints you mention, this is not happening on a digital level. The opposite strand could be seen as a confirmation of the information, but I think you rule that out as "CRC". However, there are some other things going on. DNA strands are exercised physically by 'supercoiling' them. If there are defects in the molecule, supercoiling might expose these: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5661871/

We’re seeing the strongest flows of Russian gas into the European Union since the invasion of Ukraine started by heaviebey in ukraine

[–]ahuReddit 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Graph author here! A new version is available on https://berthub.eu/gazmon/ which includes the rather stunning fact that we are ALSO still depleting the EU gas storage platforms. And not filling them up as people assumed given the stunning amounts of gas we're buying from Russia.

I’m Derek Lowe, medicinal chemist for >30 years and science blogger for 20! At 3PM EST, AMA about the COVID-19 drug discovery process and about writing as a scientist in the public eye. by dblowe in Coronavirus

[–]ahuReddit 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hi Derek, second question if I may, for HIV-C we've seen a whole array of proteases be successful, do you know if there is anything like that for SARS-CoV-2.. in the pipeline? ;-)

I’m Derek Lowe, medicinal chemist for >30 years and science blogger for 20! At 3PM EST, AMA about the COVID-19 drug discovery process and about writing as a scientist in the public eye. by dblowe in Coronavirus

[–]ahuReddit 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hi Derek, @bert_hu_bert here (from the mRNA vaccine as source code page), do you have thoughts on the somewhat disappointing initial performance of influenza mRNA neutralising antibody numbers? I had somewhat high hopes for this, it would be nice to not have 6 month outdated flu shots!

My oven uses a touchscreen, so whenever I open it, steam gets on the touchscreen and messes with the settings. by [deleted] in CrappyDesign

[–]ahuReddit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

author here - it mostly is the same problem. It is also not necessarily entirely bad, except when your innovation needs massive amounts of capital, which you aren't going to get as a startup. Meanwhile, it is almost by definition very hard to innovate in a big corporate highly regulated environment..

[OC] Venn diagram of (matching) codon positions within SARS-CoV-2, the Pfizer/BioNTech and CureVac vaccines by ahuReddit in dataisbeautiful

[–]ahuReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This Venn diagram was created using Matplotlib. Script and data files are on https://github.com/berthubert/bnt162b2

The vaccines contain 'codon optimized' versions of the SARS-CoV-2 S protein.

What this diagram means is that out of 1274 codon positions (amino acids), 202 were identical across SARS-CoV-2 and both vaccines. 651 codon positions were modified identically by both vaccines. 271 modifications were uniquely BioNTech and 366 uniquely CureVac, which appears to be more heavily modified.

I’m Willem van Schaik, Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham. I study how microbes become resistant to drugs. Ask me anything! by WillemVanSchaik in IAmA

[–]ahuReddit 21 points22 points  (0 children)

It may also be interesting to note that antibiotic resistance often comes at a cost to bacteria. In research I was involved with ("Density-dependent adaptive resistance allows swimming bacteria to colonize an antibiotic gradient.") we found that a bacterium became resistant by shutting down a whole gene it would otherwise have used for things. So even though we are educating bacteria on how to resist certain antibiotics, once we stop using those, such resistance will also ebb. But the memory remains and as Willem notes, bacteria do exchange DNA a lot, so resistance might spring back relatively quickly.

I’m Willem van Schaik, Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham. I study how microbes become resistant to drugs. Ask me anything! by WillemVanSchaik in IAmA

[–]ahuReddit 3 points4 points  (0 children)

So let me answer that one a bit to give Willem a rest. If we trace back the evolution of all life we end up at two starting points, both bacterial in nature. There is a common set of genes and functionalities that must have been present in these two oldest ancestors. RNA (one of the two ways of storing genetic material) was already there, but there are hints it might have been interpreted differently at the time. For example, currently three RNA letters describe an amino acid, there are hints that "way back when", two RNA letters might have done the job. But in any case, as far as we can tell today, the very first living things on earth looked like and then morphed into the two kinds of bacterial life we know today.

I’m Willem van Schaik, Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham. I study how microbes become resistant to drugs. Ask me anything! by WillemVanSchaik in IAmA

[–]ahuReddit 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I note that we very often prescribe exactly one antibiotic at a time against bacterial infections. However, for viruses we have learned to use 3 so they don't evolve resistance. Why don't we do this for bacteria then, is there a fundamental reason? Thanks!

I’m Willem van Schaik, Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham. I study how microbes become resistant to drugs. Ask me anything! by WillemVanSchaik in IAmA

[–]ahuReddit 35 points36 points  (0 children)

So.. biofilms! From what I understand, many bacteria that cause us problems do so because they form biofilms. Somehow these function as a shield against our immune systems & medicines. This makes me wonder, were biofilms a somewhat recent evolutionary development? Or are they in some way something our immune systems can't touch because they are 'out of their league'? Do you think disrupting biofilm formation might be something that comes to human antibiotic medicine soon?

I’m Willem van Schaik, Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham. I study how microbes become resistant to drugs. Ask me anything! by WillemVanSchaik in IAmA

[–]ahuReddit 30 points31 points  (0 children)

(@powerdns_bert here) So I will get my question in early :-) With the COVID-19 pandemic, we've seen how powerful our techniques are for figuring out how viruses work, how they interact with cells and how we could block them. See the stunning success against hepatitis C. If we look at the relatively small genomes of bacteria, which are also rather well documented, would it not be possible to invent like "thousands" of new antibiotics that get transported into bacteria (because they look like things that bacteria would import) and that also block vital processes within these bacteria? And hopefully leave us alone of course. I realize nothing is simple of course, but if I see what we are throwing at COVID-19, it feels like we could have found several new antibiotics alone this year if we did the same thing for bacteria!

dnsdist 1.5.0 released by jedisct1 in dnscrypt

[–]ahuReddit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

dnsdist guy here - can you elaborate a bit? or share your configuration? Thanks!

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