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+ Show Spoiler +
What were you doing when you were 17? Playing video games with your friends? Smoking outside the back door of your high school? Well, unless you answered "curing cancer," prepare to feel like an underachiever compared to Angela Zhang. The impressive 17-year-old from Cupertino, California just won the $100,000 Grand Prize of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology for a project called, "Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells." Not too shabby, right?
It's even more impressive once you can understand what that title of that project actually means. Basically she created a nanoparticle that kills cancer cells. Here's what's so special about it:
Zhang said the particle she designed improves on current cancer treatments because it delivers a drug directly to tumor cells and doesn't affect healthy cells around it. The particle is also able to release a drug when activated by a laser.
A laser? Hot damn! Her creation is being heralded as a "swiss army knife of cancer treatments" because it has so many different potential uses. As is often the case with these types of innovations, it's many years away from being used in actual patients, but it's still quite an accomplishment—especially for a teenager.
Her research was spurred by the deaths of her grandfather and great-grandfather from cancer, she explained:
I asked, "Why does this happen. Why does cancer cause death? What are we doing to fix this and what can I do to help?"
And her win didn't come without dedication. Zhang has been working on this nanoparticle since 2009 and has spent more than 1,000 hours on the project. Hmm, suddenly makes all of that time I spent wandering around the mall and listening to Nirvana seem like kind of a waste.
EDIT: added picture
Wall Street Journal Article
Although far from being ready, this is still just another amazing advancement, I love how things like this pop up, pushing everything forward, says it would take 25 years before everything could get fully developed, but if you get enough grant money, It may push it forward faster, not really sure.
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If this is real and actually works that would be totally baller and badass and she deserves to just retire to an island of her choice ;D
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I read this on reddit a few days ago. Who would've thought that a mere teenager could've possibly found the cure to cancer? Pretty amazing if you ask me.
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awesome the sooner we cure cancer the better!
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oh wow, I definitely feel like an underachiever...
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Is she some sort of prodigy? I mean, how...
I feel like even more of an underachiever than I already do ;_;
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Somewhat unfortunately, she's not likely to get rich from this. Vital cures like this never make the creator any money, because the government won't stand for you charging an amount proportional to what it cost to develop.
But, she'll be famous for life if it leads to a true cure.
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Guys, remember this isn't a "Cure" it's a delivery system for drugs. It won't magically cure cancer, but it WILL make treatments easier on the body, allowing targeted treatment instead of simply giving a person drugs and hoping that they can kill the cancer before it kills them...
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Not to hate on her accomplishments, but the idea of targeted nanoparticles for treating cancer is not new. Though being able to make contributions to a scientific field at that age is pretty impressive, assuming her work will be useful to researchers in some way.
Edit: Just googling nanoparticle cancer gives a lot of hits. Here's an article from 2002 talking about the advances in the field that had already been made by that point.
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On December 15 2011 17:27 Dhalphir wrote:
Somewhat unfortunately, she's not likely to get rich from this. Vital cures like this never make the creator any money, because the government won't stand for you charging an amount proportional to what it cost to develop.
But, she'll be famous for life if it leads to a true cure.
The US pharma industry disagrees with you.
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What a horrible article for such theoretical wonderful news
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United States10328 Posts
woo Siemens. I know the kid who got 2nd  [woo RSI represent]
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On December 15 2011 17:27 Dhalphir wrote:
Somewhat unfortunately, she's not likely to get rich from this. Vital cures like this never make the creator any money, because the government won't stand for you charging an amount proportional to what it cost to develop.
But, she'll be famous for life if it leads to a true cure.
oh yeah because the only possible motivation she could have is mo money...
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it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
i'm so off topic =p
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This sounds great, if you don't know what "nano" "particle" or "cancer" mean. If you do know what they mean the statement just becomes an absurd non sequitur...
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On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
i'm so off topic =p
According to the WHO in 2004, cancer was responsible for 12.5% of deaths across the world, while HIV/AIDS was 4.9%. On top of this, cancer is a much more pressing problem in the US, so it's hardly surprising more focus is placed there.
Source
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United States10328 Posts
Yeah so guys, this is the Siemens Competition, which along with the Intel Science Talent Search is one of the biggest high-school research competitions in the US. These kids sometimes (with their mentor's help) actually get good results, and such people are usually national finalists, if not winners. They're actually pretty legit for high school kids; true, few would qualify as "top-notch researchers" since they're still inexperienced... but they have a pretty good chance of ending up as one.
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16987 Posts
On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
i'm so off topic =p
This is factually incorrect.
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instead of 2 years military service, all of us should have mandatory 1000 hours spent trying to better the planet.
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Damn curing cancer at 17. whats next, aids at 12?
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just a thought she only spent a 1000 hours on this thing about that... I have spent more time playing certain games than that damn....
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i'd be interesting in the technical details of what she actually achieved. even though on paper 1000 hours sounds like a long time, it isn't for significant groundbreaking work.
i'd also be interested to read more about that team one that looked at walking gait. sounds pretty similar to my honours project.
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On December 15 2011 17:30 Bobbias wrote:
Guys, remember this isn't a "Cure" it's a delivery system for drugs. It won't magically cure cancer, but it WILL make treatments easier on the body, allowing targeted treatment instead of simply giving a person drugs and hoping that they can kill the cancer before it kills them...
That's the main problem with cancer treatments.. there are plenty of substances that kill cancer cells in vitro, 100% effective, but most of them dilute in the blood when used in vivo. Most chemo treatments deal with this problem by using a highly concentrated dosis of this substances which due to their ample spectrum start killing your own cells. If true, this could be revolutionary.
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Is this actually true? If so wow, she must be a genius unless I am misunderstanding the level of greatness she accomplished.
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My god. How many times have we cured cancer now. 
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FlaSh: is probably like, "But I won an OSL when I was 15..." NO FLASH, NOBODY CARES ANYMORE
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Congrats! I saw this on the news the other day and kinda felt bad about myself for always playing lol.
I hope they fully develop this one.
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Hmm, I don't really like the fact that this article treats you as though you're stupid.
Impressive for sure, but you have to be careful.
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First rule of mass media is sensationalize sensationalize sensationalize
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oh wow and she is only 17... I was playing sc1 then i think
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?37024 Posts
HOLY CRAP!!!
GIVE HER A NOBEL PRIZE!!!!
(If it turns out that she found the cure for cancer)
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I don't want to sound like a dick and diminish anyone's hard work, but from personal experience, most (not all) of the projects that get deep in Intel and Siemens are basically done by the students' mentors. In many cases, all the high school kid has to do is to tag along and try to understand what's going on and some of them don't even understand their own projects.
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at times like this i sometimes wonder what have i achieved in life...
congratz to the girl. hope this turns true for the sake of her and for everyone else in this planet.
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mrmin123
Korea (South)2971 Posts
Fuck you Monta Vista High.
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On December 15 2011 18:00 chenchen wrote:
I don't want to sound like a dick and diminish anyone's hard work, but from personal experience, most (not all) of the projects that get deep in Intel and Siemens are basically done by the students' mentors. In many cases, all the high school kid has to do is to tag along and try to understand what's going on and some of them don't even understand their own projects.
But of course. How can anyone without a full scientific education hope to solve such a problem on their own when a Ph.D. can't do the same?
Medicine takes a lot of hard work, collaboration, and education. It's not possible for a high school student to do more than just a little bit.
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On December 15 2011 17:32 gosuMalicE wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:27 Dhalphir wrote:
Somewhat unfortunately, she's not likely to get rich from this. Vital cures like this never make the creator any money, because the government won't stand for you charging an amount proportional to what it cost to develop.
But, she'll be famous for life if it leads to a true cure. The US pharma industry disagrees with you.
you still make money, theres just less profit in a cure vs working towards a cure
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i remember my TA in oen of my classes talking about the kinds of buzzwords that would just grab people's attention in research... haha just things that make people automatically interested
"Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells"
drug releasing
multifunctional
nanosystem
treatment of cancer (or just cancer)
stem cells
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On December 15 2011 18:03 Lightwip wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 18:00 chenchen wrote:
I don't want to sound like a dick and diminish anyone's hard work, but from personal experience, most (not all) of the projects that get deep in Intel and Siemens are basically done by the students' mentors. In many cases, all the high school kid has to do is to tag along and try to understand what's going on and some of them don't even understand their own projects.
But of course. How can anyone without a full scientific education hope to solve such a problem on their own when a Ph.D. can't do the same? Medicine takes a lot of hard work, collaboration, and education. It's not possible for a high school student to do more than just a little bit.
I just want to make sure that people don't blow the news out of proportion.
Every year, dozens of high school students bust out impressive sounding projects at Intel and Siemens finals that are more likely than not the work of their "mentors", as most competitive schools nowadays have mentorship programs that pair up kids with researchers that have PhDs.
To be honest, these kids are probably much less impressive than International Math Olympiad competitors, and yet get so much more attention in the news because it's much easier to report "girl cures cancer" than "dude solves problem that 99% of our readers/viewers can't understand".
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On December 15 2011 17:31 BajaBlood wrote:Not to hate on her accomplishments, but the idea of targeted nanoparticles for treating cancer is not new. Though being able to make contributions to a scientific field at that age is pretty impressive, assuming her work will be useful to researchers in some way. Edit: Just googling nanoparticle cancer gives a lot of hits. Here's an article from 2002 talking about the advances in the field that had already been made by that point.
That's kind of what I was thinking. I remember reading something about this in a biology class i took in high school.
Edit: LOL didn't even realize it was you.
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On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
i'm so off topic =p
Cancer is the major killer in 1st world countries, HIV/AIDS is not. For 3rd world countries, the sub-Saharan African continent in particular, people die too early in their lives for Cancer to be a problem. HIV/AIDS is a problem there, mainly because the governments have been ignoring the problem, and in some cases even outright denied the existence of HIV. Vitamins are quite effective in keeping HIV/AIDS from killing you, and is therefore a mere minor nuisance compared to Cancer.
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you'd figure she deserves more money than that. That is, if it turns out to be successful. Even still, seems to be quite the advancement in the right direction in science. Can't wait til we can monitor our bodies at the molecular level.
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The girl has been busy thats for sure.
Btw, what did I do when I was 17?
Playing starcraft 
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On December 15 2011 18:07 chenchen wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 18:03 Lightwip wrote:On December 15 2011 18:00 chenchen wrote:
I don't want to sound like a dick and diminish anyone's hard work, but from personal experience, most (not all) of the projects that get deep in Intel and Siemens are basically done by the students' mentors. In many cases, all the high school kid has to do is to tag along and try to understand what's going on and some of them don't even understand their own projects.
But of course. How can anyone without a full scientific education hope to solve such a problem on their own when a Ph.D. can't do the same? Medicine takes a lot of hard work, collaboration, and education. It's not possible for a high school student to do more than just a little bit. I just want to make sure that people don't blow the news out of proportion. Every year, dozens of high school students bust out impressive sounding projects at Intel and Siemens finals that are more likely than not the work of their "mentors", as most competitive schools nowadays have mentorship programs that pair up kids with researchers that have PhDs. To be honest, these kids are probably much less impressive than International Math Olympiad competitors, and yet get so much more attention in the news because it's much easier to report "girl cures cancer" than "dude solves problem that 99% of our readers/viewers can't understand".
Impressive is relative word mr. skeptic. But sure, medical research is a collaborative effort, there is nothing wrong with that.. it is a lot of hard work still.
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Wonder if/how much this will change the average human life-length in first-world countries.
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The reason 1st world countries don't focus on HIV and AIDS is simply economics. Research is expensive, so it's more reasonable to only focus on those dying in your own area who would pay to live, unless some form of incentive is created.
Much of the United States's research on tropical diseases came from the Vietnam War effort to protect soldiers. If this incentive was not created, who would bother treating an unprofitable disease?
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On December 15 2011 18:14 Sated wrote:
News outlets not doing enough research to understand that this isn't a new idea... nor will it cure cancer.
I hate mainstream news reporting of science.
Sure there are plenty of other similar works, haven't read the article yet, but I presume it is dealing with a new set of conditions or else it is targeting a previously untreatable type of cancer cell -- in vitro that is.
Caltech research did this a couple of years ago
http://inventorspot.com/articles/nanobots_deliver_rna_interference_therapy_patients_cancer_cells_39132
There are other companies that sell siRNA-based nanobots to treat certain type of cancer but their spectrum is really narrow.. but yeah I agree, there is long ways to go.
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On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
i'm so off topic =p
You're wrong but unfortunately with every bit of unfounded jargon that people put on the internet there's a grain of truth in your statement. Simple diseases like Hepatitis and malaria which can be treated by things like better hygiene and vaccines are not getting the same amount of attention that cancer is getting. So in this you're right. A lot of that money could be put into implementing malaria and Hep help programs. As for research though for diseases cancer is still the biggest one. Also it's the one that is the biggest problem in developed countries.
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On December 15 2011 18:15 s4life wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 18:07 chenchen wrote:On December 15 2011 18:03 Lightwip wrote:On December 15 2011 18:00 chenchen wrote:
I don't want to sound like a dick and diminish anyone's hard work, but from personal experience, most (not all) of the projects that get deep in Intel and Siemens are basically done by the students' mentors. In many cases, all the high school kid has to do is to tag along and try to understand what's going on and some of them don't even understand their own projects.
But of course. How can anyone without a full scientific education hope to solve such a problem on their own when a Ph.D. can't do the same? Medicine takes a lot of hard work, collaboration, and education. It's not possible for a high school student to do more than just a little bit. I just want to make sure that people don't blow the news out of proportion. Every year, dozens of high school students bust out impressive sounding projects at Intel and Siemens finals that are more likely than not the work of their "mentors", as most competitive schools nowadays have mentorship programs that pair up kids with researchers that have PhDs. To be honest, these kids are probably much less impressive than International Math Olympiad competitors, and yet get so much more attention in the news because it's much easier to report "girl cures cancer" than "dude solves problem that 99% of our readers/viewers can't understand". Impressive is relative word mr. skeptic. But sure, medical research is a collaborative effort, there is nothing wrong with that.. it is a lot of hard work still.
Nevertheless, I personally do not appreciate the sensationalization of the media.
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On December 15 2011 18:07 chenchen wrote:To be honest, these kids are probably much less impressive than International Math Olympiad competitors, and yet get so much more attention in the news because it's much easier to report "girl cures cancer" than "dude solves problem that 99% of our readers/viewers can't understand".
Yes, it's no coincidence that virtually every successful science fair competitor at this level is in the vicinity of a top research center. I mean, for olympiad types, the correlation is also high between proximity to good universities or top magnet high schools, but not nearly as strong.
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Can she patent it like most people would? 100,000 doesnt seem like enough money for something like this
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I'd really be interested in just exactly how much of this is actual innovation. I've been hearing about local drug release systems ever since I started uni. Sounds like they just meshed together a bunch of technology that people are already working on everywhere gave it a fancy title and called it a day. There is no way this group of highschoolers understands all these fields being thrown together sufficiently to revolutionize it to any degree.
There's a lot of sensationalization going on here, and it's really hard to figure out what exactly it was they came up with themselves.
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Nice job but we have an overpopulation problem.
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1000 hours of work... That's not a lot! Taken into account she needs to read up about all the current technologies and their drawbacks, that she's only 17 and probably? doesn't have the basics for jumping onto such a problem 1000 hours is a joke.
It would be hard to imagine that a 17 year old had such a breakthrough in a well researched field while her title doesn't even contain anything innovative.
Nevertheless, she must have done something, and to just be involved into this kind of research at her age is very impressive.
On December 15 2011 18:45 OrchidThief wrote:
I'd really be interested in just exactly how much of this is actual innovation. I've been hearing about local drug release systems ever since I started uni. Sounds like they just meshed together a bunch of technology that people are already working on everywhere gave it a fancy title and called it a day. There is no way this group of highschoolers understands all these fields being thrown together sufficiently to revolutionize it to any degree.
There's a lot of sensationalization going on here, and it's really hard to figure out what exactly it was they came up with themselves.
I agree.
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I read shit like this and I realize no matter how much school I go to I'm never going to be above the average Joe grad school guy. Some people are just smart.
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poorly written article but good for her. she didn't "cure cancer" but it's definitely a impressive accomplishment.
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Good for her, we need more people like this in the world
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We already know a cure for HIV. It's called a condom...
Also, this girls is super amazing. I hope she invents a lot more stuff in the future.
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Wow, really impressive but how did she get her hands on all she needs to accomplish such a thing? I mean, what we are talking about is pretty high tech things. Any intel?
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1000 hours is actually pretty fast and bloody impressive. Thats like a full years worth of an honours year in university, still hats off to her commitment and determination. Wish I had this drive to achieve my goals in life.
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United States10328 Posts
On December 15 2011 18:07 chenchen wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 18:03 Lightwip wrote:On December 15 2011 18:00 chenchen wrote:
I don't want to sound like a dick and diminish anyone's hard work, but from personal experience, most (not all) of the projects that get deep in Intel and Siemens are basically done by the students' mentors. In many cases, all the high school kid has to do is to tag along and try to understand what's going on and some of them don't even understand their own projects.
But of course. How can anyone without a full scientific education hope to solve such a problem on their own when a Ph.D. can't do the same? Medicine takes a lot of hard work, collaboration, and education. It's not possible for a high school student to do more than just a little bit. I just want to make sure that people don't blow the news out of proportion. Every year, dozens of high school students bust out impressive sounding projects at Intel and Siemens finals that are more likely than not the work of their "mentors", as most competitive schools nowadays have mentorship programs that pair up kids with researchers that have PhDs. To be honest, these kids are probably much less impressive than International Math Olympiad competitors, and yet get so much more attention in the news because it's much easier to report "girl cures cancer" than "dude solves problem that 99% of our readers/viewers can't understand".
lol, it's a little unclear (though I'd say the average IMO gold medalist is "more impressive" than the average Intel finalist.) But when you have big companies sponsoring you for big $$$ (which, incidentally, doesn't quite exist in math competitions; #1 on USAMO gets $20k, whereas the top 5 in Siemens and Intel each get at least $20k), and who know how to do publicity, ... well, they get the publicity.
The fact that the research is in the medical field is just icing on the cake; moreover, so many top projects are biology/chemistry because what can a smart, ambitious high school student who still doesn't know very much do? She can work in a lab for 10 hours a week during the year and 40 a week during the summer, and have a 10% chance at getting good results (depending, of course, on mentor and location).
I also don't really agree that the mentors "do everything": they're going to make sure the high schooler does the grunt work in the lab--but the high schooler doesn't exactly get a terrible deal either: they learn lab technique and scientific communication, and get a chance at big money. Not to mention a chance at meeting other smart kids at these competitions, too.
The few and far between who do theoretical projects are usually unfortunately limited by their knowledge. It's hard to do representation theory if you barely know what a module is; it's hard to study superconductivity if you don't know any quantum mechanics. So each year, lots of smart kids work their butts off in lab, and some (a) have that extra drive and/or (b) get lucky and win competitions. It's not something so amazing that everyone should immediately know about it, but it's pretty impressive nonetheless. (The same can be said for IMO, except the problem there is that most of advanced Olympiad math is kind of worthless outside of contests. And again, publicity for Siemens/Intel happens because they know what they're doing and have the money to spend.)
... ok I'm not sure what I just ranted about, since it's 5 AM, but hopefully I responded to something someone said. T_T
Edit: Hmm, I guess I concede the point that it's easier to talk about "curing cancer" than "solving some geometry problem with techniques that no one ever uses outside math contests" (read: harmonic conjugates... Casey's theorem... sigh.)
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Not to be that guy, but why did you have to specify girl? Does she get bonus points for gender?
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51484 Posts
I bow to this young lader, what a true "Angel" she is i take my hat off to her and like others said, she deserves more than $100,000 or whatever, she should be made a researcher to continue her research on this partcile with other more experienced people.
Well done!
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On December 15 2011 17:53 Lightwip wrote:Hmm, I don't really like the fact that this article treats you as though you're stupid. Impressive for sure, but you have to be careful.
haha, that's good.. and so true. the media is all about "buzz words" that are just flat out misleading. and the pictures.. "point at that" "gesture your arms while you explain". oh, and your project HAS to be "sexy". which is why i'd like some more technical information about the projects.
doing something in the media seems like the easiest fucking job in the whole world. all it requires is a primary school level understanding of humans and manipulation.
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Isn't this just a theoretical idea that she came up with for a high school project, and not something that has been actually tested in a lab setting?
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On December 15 2011 17:25 HoodedAvatar wrote:
awesome the sooner we cure cancer the better!
Sadly I would have to disagree, sure it would be nice, but if all cancer was cured throughout the world, overpopulation would become more of an issue. Not a discussion for now but..
However, I would love to cure it (I'm not an animal) due to it being such a horrible illness ;(
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Well, dealing and working with nano particles is kind of a tricky thing as far as I know. If this whole procedure can be controlled well and the particles don't cause damange to the rest of the body, it might be a huge step forward.
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On December 15 2011 19:12 Morphling_ wrote:
Not to be that guy, but why did you have to specify girl? Does she get bonus points for gender?
Iono before I clicked the link, I assumed the person who found this would be an Asian. By chance (or other factors rolls eyes) I was right. Before it was specified I had an assumption, if "girl" was not there ofc one would assume it would be a guy from the topic title, an assumption that would be undeserving (it's life, face it).
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oh thank god.. this gives me chills just reading this, so proud of this girl... this will evolve cancer treatments (assuming that its not just a one off and will continue to grow in success) ... me, being someone who was scared to death about having cancer (i don't have it, and never had.. but i had some tests done) is extremely happy about this ^_^
angela HWAITING! xD
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On December 15 2011 17:44 wishbones wrote:
instead of 2 years military service, all of us should have mandatory 1000 hours spent trying to better the planet.
Finally a girl who invented something! Not bashing women in any way but am very happy in general because they've needed something like this for years this is a big step for all women.
P.s. Men time to step your game up!
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On December 15 2011 19:46 Golem72 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:44 wishbones wrote:
instead of 2 years military service, all of us should have mandatory 1000 hours spent trying to better the planet. Finally a girl who invented something! Not bashing women in any way but am very happy in general because they've needed something like this for years this is a big step for all women. P.s. Men time to step your game up!
Ignorant lol. "needed something like this for years"
you do realize that there are thousands of women that are currently publishing results far more rigorous those published by this 17 year old, yes? i'm not detracting from this girl's achievements, but rather just informing you that PLENTY of women make it big in science. in the past they just didn't get much recognition which is terrible, but you act as if women haven't done shit for years in science
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I would demand more money if I were that girl. $100k is nothing in this day and age.
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On December 15 2011 19:08 Enearde wrote:
Wow, really impressive but how did she get her hands on all she needs to accomplish such a thing? I mean, what we are talking about is pretty high tech things. Any intel?
An advantage of being born in the upper class , set up for a successful life, mewouldthinks.
Also, her high school is in silicon valley, etc. (Average income there is apparently over 100k+ a year per family)
She was born with a good shot at being a scientist from the start.
Then you have to take into consideration she is Asian, and was probably... "pushed along" that path by her parents.
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And it rolls easily off your tongue as well. DIPCDRMNTCSC. Dipcdrmntcsc.
In all seriousness, though, this is an amazing achievement by somebody who's just 17 years old. I hope she gets to continue her career!
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On December 15 2011 17:27 Dhalphir wrote:
Somewhat unfortunately, she's not likely to get rich from this. Vital cures like this never make the creator any money, because the government won't stand for you charging an amount proportional to what it cost to develop.
But, she'll be famous for life if it leads to a true cure.
though it looks pretty good in a CV that "i found the cure for cancer", when applying for a job in medicine, i think there could be companies or research groups who 'd hire her for a pretty penny if this pans out true
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This universal goal of curing or avoiding something that threatens all of us really gets the best out of us humans. We are one spicies, fighting for survival.
I hope this works out well!
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This author pisses me off, makes me, a 17 year old feel like a major unachiever and worthless.
Quote: "Smoke in the back of the high school" Really? Wtf, just sounds so absurd to put into an article.
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First organ transplants, now a cure for cancer.
We're all going to be happy and healthy 140 yr olds. All 10 - 20 billion of us. Hurrah!
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i was smoking a bit of mary jane when i was 17, so i guess you could say i was curing cancer too
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Everytime the media talk about research, it feel so ridiculous. Look that girl, 17 years old, she cured cancer !
Thanks god, some people in this thread knows how it is and told us.
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Please help me with this because I'm a total newb:
Did she invent it as created it based off of chemicals? Or did she find this particular chemical that has the abilities to do that? Can someone give a brief explanation of what exactly she has done?
Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 20:08 RogerX wrote:
This author pisses me off, makes me, a 17 year old feel like a major unachiever and worthless.
Quote: "Smoke in the back of the high school" Really? Wtf, just sounds so absurd to put into an article.
Yea the author is kinda dumb but thats nothing really new to me, people tend to write things like this all the time when someone young did something, because it encourages yourself to appreciate what the person has done and thus you give more positive feedback in general. It's a little psycho trick that you just have to ignore.
Also, 100k$ are a joke. That girl deserves WAY MORE THAN THAT.
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wow that quite something, i see a bright future for this girl^^
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This is a bit off topic, but this makes me depressed and makes me feel like an underachiever 
... i get jealous.
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On December 15 2011 20:24 KeksX wrote:
Also, 100k$ are a joke. That girl deserves WAY MORE THAN THAT.
If this is as big as the article makes it sound, i have no doubt she will get a decent job offer because of this. She seem to deserve it!
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Again with the overexaggeration of the press.
Nanomedecine has been around for years. As far as 2000 actually. It's a very promising domain which still faces a lot of challenges: safety,efficiency, cost, versatility in terms of drugs...
Don't get me wrong, the fact that a 17 years old is able to design a nanoparticule is very impressive and one day, she might become a leading scientist, but at this point, her work is just another paper on a long list of untested miracles. Just like hundreds (thousands) of other works that get far more prestigious prizes that the public never hears about.
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ummm if they couldl they could fix both aids and cance they wouldr.... the is a reason why we havent been able to sort eithier yet.... reallyhhope this girl is onto something, after losing many relatives toccancer then for mypartner to have cancerous cells lasered away you always fear the worst!!!
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On December 15 2011 17:27 Dhalphir wrote:
Somewhat unfortunately, she's not likely to get rich from this. Vital cures like this never make the creator any money, because the government won't stand for you charging an amount proportional to what it cost to develop.
But, she'll be famous for life if it leads to a true cure.
Sadly yeah, but with a brain and dedication like that at such a young age I'm sure she'll be very fine off, not to say I don't think she deserves something great, definitely more than $100,000
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If I were a supervillain, this girl would be #1 on my kidnap list. Just think of the humanity-enslaving potential of laser-wielding nanomachines...
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Guys, remember this isn't a "Cure" it's a delivery system for drugs. It won't magically cure cancer, but it WILL make treatments easier on the body, allowing targeted treatment instead of simply giving a person drugs and hoping that they can kill the cancer before it kills them...
People need to realize this is not a cure for cancer, it is a delivery system for drugs.. I see everyone heralding the girl as a hero for developing a cure, but it's not. It's just a delivery system.
Edit: I realize this has been said on the front page already but people need to understand this.. There's a huge difference between "cure" and "effective delivery system".
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truly amazing, and always points to why sometimes, the answer is right in front of our face, we just have to look at it from a different view, or in this case, from a different pair of eyes.
people who are doubting this, realize, that while there ARE researchers around the world who ARE experienced trying at the exact same thing, sometimes it takes a different perspective to find the solution.
One such example is an article I think I read here, about how researchers have spent years trying to find a protein strand mapping that could better help the development of cures for diseases such as aids/cancer/etc but the greatest problem is trying to map it properly in 3d space. Years and years of trying and testing yielded improper results, but then they handed it over to a team of gamer minded tech people who solve 3d space things using a game and they solved it in 48 hours.
I hope something truly great comes from this and good job to the girl for taking a life experience (her grandfather and great-grandfather's passing) and turning it into motivation to do something amazing. Wish I had that drive.
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On December 15 2011 20:55 XXGeneration wrote:
People need to realize this is not a cure for cancer, it is a delivery system for drugs.. I see everyone heralding the girl as a hero for developing a cure, but it's not. It's just a delivery system.
Cancer get cured every week it seems, huh ^^
For anyone interested in this sort of thing, a lot of info is posted really fast here
http://www.reddit.com/r/science
r/science is heavily moderated as well, so don't worry about the general mob ruining discussions
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On December 15 2011 19:12 ]343[ wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 18:07 chenchen wrote:On December 15 2011 18:03 Lightwip wrote:On December 15 2011 18:00 chenchen wrote:
I don't want to sound like a dick and diminish anyone's hard work, but from personal experience, most (not all) of the projects that get deep in Intel and Siemens are basically done by the students' mentors. In many cases, all the high school kid has to do is to tag along and try to understand what's going on and some of them don't even understand their own projects.
But of course. How can anyone without a full scientific education hope to solve such a problem on their own when a Ph.D. can't do the same? Medicine takes a lot of hard work, collaboration, and education. It's not possible for a high school student to do more than just a little bit. I just want to make sure that people don't blow the news out of proportion. Every year, dozens of high school students bust out impressive sounding projects at Intel and Siemens finals that are more likely than not the work of their "mentors", as most competitive schools nowadays have mentorship programs that pair up kids with researchers that have PhDs. To be honest, these kids are probably much less impressive than International Math Olympiad competitors, and yet get so much more attention in the news because it's much easier to report "girl cures cancer" than "dude solves problem that 99% of our readers/viewers can't understand". lol, it's a little unclear (though I'd say the average IMO gold medalist is "more impressive" than the average Intel finalist.) But when you have big companies sponsoring you for big $$$ (which, incidentally, doesn't quite exist in math competitions; #1 on USAMO gets $20k, whereas the top 5 in Siemens and Intel each get at least $20k), and who know how to do publicity, ... well, they get the publicity. The fact that the research is in the medical field is just icing on the cake; moreover, so many top projects are biology/chemistry because what can a smart, ambitious high school student who still doesn't know very much do? She can work in a lab for 10 hours a week during the year and 40 a week during the summer, and have a 10% chance at getting good results (depending, of course, on mentor and location). I also don't really agree that the mentors "do everything": they're going to make sure the high schooler does the grunt work in the lab--but the high schooler doesn't exactly get a terrible deal either: they learn lab technique and scientific communication, and get a chance at big money. Not to mention a chance at meeting other smart kids at these competitions, too. The few and far between who do theoretical projects are usually unfortunately limited by their knowledge. It's hard to do representation theory if you barely know what a module is; it's hard to study superconductivity if you don't know any quantum mechanics. So each year, lots of smart kids work their butts off in lab, and some (a) have that extra drive and/or (b) get lucky and win competitions. It's not something so amazing that everyone should immediately know about it, but it's pretty impressive nonetheless. (The same can be said for IMO, except the problem there is that most of advanced Olympiad math is kind of worthless outside of contests. And again, publicity for Siemens/Intel happens because they know what they're doing and have the money to spend.) ... ok I'm not sure what I just ranted about, since it's 5 AM, but hopefully I responded to something someone said. T_T Edit: Hmm, I guess I concede the point that it's easier to talk about "curing cancer" than "solving some geometry problem with techniques that no one ever uses outside math contests" (read: harmonic conjugates... Casey's theorem... sigh.)
I just pointed some stuff out because it's really annoying when media reports on these things when the high schooler actually doesn't know . . . . anything. I made the contrast with IMO because IMO contestants seriously know their shit and how to apply it in a setting devoid of outside help.
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Pffft, we knew about this on the Funny Pics Thread ages ago.
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It's so frustrating when I come in these topics and news articles looking for more specifics than the hype of "17 year old cures cancer (with nanoparticles)!" I'm not really sure if it's the ignorance of people thinking she's done something new, or the thought that saying something as bland as that qualifies as an informative statement.
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i created a super cancer-killing nanoparticle and all i got was 100.000$.
does siemens buy the technology by giving here that price?
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Not to say that this is the case here, but I come from a long line of Asian scientists and it's very common practice to use nepotism, get your kids in good labs with good mentors, and let them work on and get credit for their mentors' projects. It's very rare to see a 17 y.o. with the knowledge to pursue independent research like this.
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wow amazing. that girl is a true hero
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Well... it's like the definition of being a baller.
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On December 15 2011 20:59 Kazeyonoma wrote:
truly amazing, and always points to why sometimes, the answer is right in front of our face, we just have to look at it from a different view, or in this case, from a different pair of eyes.
people who are doubting this, realize, that while there ARE researchers around the world who ARE experienced trying at the exact same thing, sometimes it takes a different perspective to find the solution.
No, this is something that lay-people commonly believe but is virtually never the case, especially in well-established, technical fields. One reason average people believe this is because they want to believe that they could make an important contribution to science if they just had a single stroke of genius, and they want to believe that there really is not so much separating themselves from brilliant researchers. It's a mild, mostly innocuous form of egotism.
As a result people like this (and yourself, apparently) eat up articles like this because they reinforce this belief. Laypeople have no clue what real research actually involves, and they figure that if high schoolers can do it, then so could they under the right set of circumstances. What they don't realize is that top students in these competitions typically work on low-hanging-fruit-type problems, have special access to top researchers who do much of the real work for them and supply them with access to world-class facilities, and then have the importance of their research blown way out of proportion in hyperbolic press releases.
Take for example this Siemens winner in math from a few years ago (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10336018/#.Tunk6HOleG4). He came up with a novel solution to a subproblem that probably very few people had actually considered. This problem was probably suspected to be doable without requiring particularly new techniques (otherwise it would have been very poor judgment to assign to a high schooler!), was done in concert with an actual research mathematician (the advisor's name also appears on the final paper), was published in a journal that is not that selective, and has not been cited many times. The news article is misleading; while the Dirichlet problem is one of fundamental importance in several fields of mathematics, this particular version of it definitely is not, and the real-world applications are probably nonexistent. It is still a solid result, but it's probably not one of the best 1000 math papers that appeared that year.
Please let me be clear that I am in no way critical of this student. He is probably (several years later) one of the five finest mathematicians of his age in North America, has an IQ off the charts, has a brilliant mathematical career ahead of him, and has already obtained and will obtain much, much more significant results that will be published in much better journals, be much more celebrated by actual mathematicians, and which will not attract one one-hundredth of the attention of this result.
And even so, math is somewhat unique. At least in math really, really bright students (like Viscardi) can actually make real intellectual contributions to research problems (many olympiad competitors have done some sort of 'real' mathematical interest in high school). In subjects like biology or chemistry, where the most advanced high school students are much, much further behind actual researchers in biology/chemistry than top high school mathematicians are behind real mathematicians (at least in certain 'problem-solving' type subfields), these celebrated high school researchers make virtually no contribution to experiment design and the conceptual aspects of the problem (because they lack the necessary background), put in a lot of lab work or experimental work under the direction of a postdoc or graduate student, and do work that typically merits being a third or fourth or whatever author in a published paper, the importance of which is then greatly exaggerated by the media, most of whom do not possess any knowledge relevant to the topic at hand yet feel free to make wild conjectures concerning the importance of their work.
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INCREDIBLE MOLECULE FOUND, MAINSTREAM MEDIA FORGETS TO MENTION ITS NAME
more news at 11
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On December 15 2011 20:36 Diavlo wrote:
Again with the overexaggeration of the press.
Nanomedecine has been around for years. As far as 2000 actually. It's a very promising domain which still faces a lot of challenges: safety,efficiency, cost, versatility in terms of drugs...
Don't get me wrong, the fact that a 17 years old is able to design a nanoparticule is very impressive and one day, she might become a leading scientist, but at this point, her work is just another paper on a long list of untested miracles. Just like hundreds (thousands) of other works that get far more prestigious prizes that the public never hears about.
Yep, this. Sensationalist reporting sucks... it's not actually a cure, just a drug delivery method (which of course is still a nice step towards our eventual goal of curing cancer).
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The company i used to work for, a major pharma company. Which I wont name, has already got a targeted anticancer drug. They use ultrasound to break down the "binding" agent so when the ultrasound blasts the tumour the drug is only active at that site. It's in R&D at the minute.
All pretty amazing stuff, but there is no cure for cancer guys. Only treatments, those of you who know anything about the mechanisms of the disease should know that too. I hate misleading shit like this because most people don't even understand what cancer is let alone what causes it (entropy).
I blame the press tho same old sensationalist bullshit, with no actual tests, research, proof.
And my 2c on AIDs/HIV, well treatments are so damn good now in the west that it has become a non issue, its in reality not much worse of a disease than insulin dependant diabetes for someone in the UK / USA(with insurance). That is why "we" don't care about it just as much anymore.
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thanks for the nicely informative posts like blah_blah's above,
and unrelated found this one hilarious.
On December 15 2011 20:48 3clipse wrote:
If I were a supervillain, this girl would be #1 on my kidnap list. Just think of the humanity-enslaving potential of laser-wielding nanomachines...
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On December 15 2011 19:04 Kickboxer wrote:
We already know a cure for HIV. It's called a condom...
Our immune system is fully capable of getting rid of HIV on its own. Source? Luc Montagnier, the man who discovered HIV. House of Numbers, a film which will change your view on HIV/AIDS forever.
Also, something which i find very suspicious, is that there is no definite way to prove that you are infected with HIV.
But back on topic. As someone else pointed out earlier, she is not very likely to get rich from this. Unless she has closely knit ties with the pharmaceutical elite in the US, of course.
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They've had all sorts of cancer cures for years. But the big pharmaceutical companies pays big to keep thems under wraps.
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On December 15 2011 22:26 bobobobojos wrote:
They've had all sorts of cancer cures for years. But the big pharmaceutical companies pays big to keep thems under wraps.
Sorry but that is wrong. If you wish to believe that, fine, but just know it's sort of like believing that 9/11 was "done by the Feds" or whatever.
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On December 15 2011 17:23 aike wrote:
If this is real and actually works that would be totally baller and badass and she deserves to just retire to an island of her choice ;D
I think we kinda need her as a researcher to cure more stuff and improve what she just have done
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On December 15 2011 22:28 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 22:26 bobobobojos wrote:
They've had all sorts of cancer cures for years. But the big pharmaceutical companies pays big to keep thems under wraps. Sorry but that is wrong. If you wish to believe that, fine, but just know it's sort of like believing that 9/11 was "done by the Feds" or whatever.
LOL it's cute when people say stuff like that right. Well, no one here can prove it so "big pharmaceuticals paying big money to keep them under control" can be a legitimate statement.
Regardless, her accomplishment is really cool. Hopefully this will save millions of lives.
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Cool, will be interesting to see if it can actually be of use in the future.
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So many young genii these days. Makes me not totally lose faith in today's youth.
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Apparently this girl is Zemotion's sister ^^ (according to sth Huk wrote on twitter)
Could just have been an inside joke or sth though
On December 15 2011 19:04 Kickboxer wrote:
We already know a cure for HIV. It's called a condom...
Also, this girls is super amazing. I hope she invents a lot more stuff in the future.
look up what the word "cure" means
Very impressive, would be nice to have a more scientific read about how it actually works though
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On December 15 2011 21:38 blah_blah wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 20:59 Kazeyonoma wrote:
truly amazing, and always points to why sometimes, the answer is right in front of our face, we just have to look at it from a different view, or in this case, from a different pair of eyes.
people who are doubting this, realize, that while there ARE researchers around the world who ARE experienced trying at the exact same thing, sometimes it takes a different perspective to find the solution. No, this is something that lay-people commonly believe but is virtually never the case, especially in well-established, technical fields. One reason average people believe this is because they want to believe that they could make an important contribution to science if they just had a single stroke of genius, and they want to believe that there really is not so much separating themselves from brilliant researchers. It's a mild, mostly innocuous form of egotism. As a result people like this (and yourself, apparently) eat up articles like this because they reinforce this belief. Laypeople have no clue what real research actually involves, and they figure that if high schoolers can do it, then so could they under the right set of circumstances. What they don't realize is that top students in these competitions typically work on low-hanging-fruit-type problems, have special access to top researchers who do much of the real work for them and supply them with access to world-class facilities, and then have the importance of their research blown way out of proportion in hyperbolic press releases. Take for example this Siemens winner in math from a few years ago (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10336018/#.Tunk6HOleG4). He came up with a novel solution to a subproblem that probably very few people had actually considered. This problem was probably suspected to be doable without requiring particularly new techniques (otherwise it would have been very poor judgment to assign to a high schooler!), was done in concert with an actual research mathematician (the advisor's name also appears on the final paper), was published in a journal that is not that selective, and has not been cited many times. The news article is misleading; while the Dirichlet problem is one of fundamental importance in several fields of mathematics, this particular version of it definitely is not, and the real-world applications are probably nonexistent. It is still a solid result, but it's probably not one of the best 1000 math papers that appeared that year. Please let me be clear that I am in no way critical of this student. He is probably (several years later) one of the five finest mathematicians of his age in North America, has an IQ off the charts, has a brilliant mathematical career ahead of him, and has already obtained and will obtain much, much more significant results that will be published in much better journals, be much more celebrated by actual mathematicians, and which will not attract one one-hundredth of the attention of this result. And even so, math is somewhat unique. At least in math really, really bright students (like Viscardi) can actually make real intellectual contributions to research problems (many olympiad competitors have done some sort of 'real' mathematical interest in high school). In subjects like biology or chemistry, where the most advanced high school students are much, much further behind actual researchers in biology/chemistry than top high school mathematicians are behind real mathematicians (at least in certain 'problem-solving' type subfields), these celebrated high school researchers make virtually no contribution to experiment design and the conceptual aspects of the problem (because they lack the necessary background), put in a lot of lab work or experimental work under the direction of a postdoc or graduate student, and do work that typically merits being a third or fourth or whatever author in a published paper, the importance of which is then greatly exaggerated by the media, most of whom do not possess any knowledge relevant to the topic at hand yet feel free to make wild conjectures concerning the importance of their work.
This is exactly how it is. In 4 years, if she had done the same exact work as an undergrad, she would be lucky to find her name on the paper itself. She'd get paid as a lab assistant over the summer, and possibly face promotion to a full-fledged lab tech with her contributions to the project. Even then, though, the research being done was merely an expansion of what is already being PRACTICED in some leading medical fields. There are a lot of drugs treating cancer which are targeted onto a tumor by some form of radiation. She (or her team really) is just adding to the heap that exists.
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100000 seems kinda low...
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No one makes leaps and bounds as big as creating a nanoparticle that can fire lasers. Though it may be the end result of her and two hundred other scientist's research, what did she really do?
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Has been said like a million times here but SHE DID NOT FIND A CURE FOR CANCER GOD DAMNIT. She found a particle that facilitates the transportation of drugs into cancer cells, which is not completely new. There have been such discoveries before and cancer is still an issue. This is nothing special unless someone can find a way to incorporate this into clinical practice.
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FREEAGLELAND26781 Posts
And I've spent a third of that time period playing DotA.
I contribute nothing to this world.
Also, this.
On December 15 2011 21:30 hazelynut wrote:
Not to say that this is the case here, but I come from a long line of Asian scientists and it's very common practice to use nepotism, get your kids in good labs with good mentors, and let them work on and get credit for their mentors' projects. It's very rare to see a 17 y.o. with the knowledge to pursue independent research like this.
Also also, whoa didn't realize it was you hi Mona.
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Ya, but does this girl know I'm in Master League?
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If she was really that brilliant, she should be in college already by 15 and actually doing practical work in labs to substantiate her design. The way this dumb article talks about all of this makes it sound as if she designed a cancer killing nanoparticle with only the aid of your local high school library and google, without any mention of lab work or research done at any university or private institutions.
If she is well connected enough to have access to all those resources, how is that even considered as a high school level competition? Why is she even in high school still if she actually did all of this? If you've already went to college or are in college you'll smell the bullshit in this easily, especially as a science major. This is the kind of stuff Phd students spent years in grad school and labs doing.
I prefer the high school math genius kids that solve insane problems, that's more legit.
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I want to start this post by apologizing for sidetracking the discussion even more than it already has been, however, these statements are simply not factually accurate and I feel like I should say something about this since they are being presented as facts.
For you first statement; if that were the case then there would be no cases of HIV. Ever. It is true that the immunesystem has a chance of suppressing HIV, but there will always be a rate of infections. And once HIV gets a foothold in your body it is pretty much downhill from there, because it destroys your immunesystem from within.
The video you reference claims that the high HIV infection rates in the 3rd world are caused by malnutrition and that treatment of the malnutrition might reverse the infection rate and bring to the level it is currently at in 1st world countries. From seeing this interview this may or may not be true.
However, this is the authors interpretation of data that is not presented in the interview and subsequent speculation about this data. I very clearly recall him using the wording "it is possible" about his theory. Not exactly the wording I would use for something I was certain of. I would caution against referencing this sort of statements as proof for anything at all.
For your second statement; the link you present us with clearly states that HIV antibodies can be detected at the very very latest 6 months after infection. In fact the methods used to detect HIV infection are so sensitive that you may have to test with more than just immunoblotting to be certain that you do not get a false positive. Which means that there indeed is a very definite way of determining whether you are infected with HIV or not.
I apologize once again for derailing the thread.
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On December 15 2011 22:22 MCMXVI wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 19:04 Kickboxer wrote:
We already know a cure for HIV. It's called a condom... Our immune system is fully capable of getting rid of HIV on its own. Source? Luc Montagnier, the man who discovered HIV. House of Numbers, a film which will change your view on HIV/AIDS forever. Also, something which i find very suspicious, is that there is no definite way to prove that you are infected with HIV. But back on topic. As someone else pointed out earlier, she is not very likely to get rich from this. Unless she has closely knit ties with the pharmaceutical elite in the US, of course.
Sure, our immune system is capable of fighting HIV, but that only happens on a very small percentage of the population. In most people it doesn't happen.
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She just copied a study. It's been done before-- I forget the exact details, but apparently a radio host/ broadcaster came up with the idea. He has a foundation promoting it, and they have a pretty slick advertising video. The marketing made me a bit skeptical (I think they asked for donations at the end?) about if it really worked. Emory University (my school) is messing around with the idea too.
I will try and find the link to the video-- I have to ask a professor for it.
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized. Anyone with access to the (rather expensive) materials and equipment could have done it.
I'm a bit bitter about Siemens. I lost out in regionals to some project about the effectiveness of dandruff shampoo. It was a pretty trivial topic, and I could have pointed out some big errors in the methodology. I spent a few hundred hours isolating and sequencing a cellulose degrading enzyme gene from a termite to produce ethanol. Admittedly the idea has been done before for a lot of other proteins, but it was a new protein I worked on.
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thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude...
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She's Asian, that's the reason
EDIT: Nvm.....thought of making a joke, didnt realise thread was old....
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On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude...
I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't.
Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience.
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On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience.
I've learned to never trust a news source for information on scientific breakthroughs. The media tries to make every little thing seem like a new discovery that is going to reshape the 21st century as we know it. But it never happens. They're just simply trying to get as many viewers/hits as possible.
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oh god it's the zombie apocalypse get to water
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On January 24 2012 14:53 Voltaire wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. I've learned to never trust a news source for information on scientific breakthroughs. The media tries to make every little thing seem like a new discovery that is going to reshape the 21st century as we know it. But it never happens. They're just simply trying to get as many viewers/hits as possible.
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On January 24 2012 14:55 Bill Murray wrote:
oh god it's the zombie apocalypse get to water
=
proof opposites attract
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haha people trying so hard to make less of this. whatever, I was also fucking around when 17, I still am.
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I have spent >10x 1,000 hours playing Starcraft. She creates laser activated nanotechnology that selectively destroys cancer in 1,000... maybe if she keeps practicing she can create AIDS killing nanobots.
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I tutored her at contest math around 4 years ago!
(-is trying to claim a distant association despite having done nothing nearly as spectacular)
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On January 24 2012 15:10 SerpentFlame wrote:I tutored her at contest math around 4 years ago! (-is trying to claim a distant association despite having done nothing nearly as spectacular)
What does she look like? Is she pretty?
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On December 15 2011 18:04 unit wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:32 gosuMalicE wrote:On December 15 2011 17:27 Dhalphir wrote:
Somewhat unfortunately, she's not likely to get rich from this. Vital cures like this never make the creator any money, because the government won't stand for you charging an amount proportional to what it cost to develop.
But, she'll be famous for life if it leads to a true cure. The US pharma industry disagrees with you. you still make money, theres just less profit in a cure vs working towards a cure
I am sure that she already has a 6 figure a year "starting" job at some laboratory or some pharma company lined up soon Hell she's only 17, a breakthrough of this magnitude would shock me if she didn't get a "set for life" style job offer out of university.
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On December 15 2011 23:03 flamewheel wrote:And I've spent a third of that time period playing DotA. I contribute nothing to this world. Also, this. Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 21:30 hazelynut wrote:
Not to say that this is the case here, but I come from a long line of Asian scientists and it's very common practice to use nepotism, get your kids in good labs with good mentors, and let them work on and get credit for their mentors' projects. It's very rare to see a 17 y.o. with the knowledge to pursue independent research like this. Also also, whoa didn't realize it was you hi Mona.
Omg Hazelynut is gonna go save the world at the end of the semester!
On topic: Killing cancer cells is an end for which there already exist many effective means. The hard part of cancer is detection and identification of diseased cells.
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On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience.
Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb?
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This was on 9gag a few months back..
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Not to take anything away from the girl's accomplishments, but it really irritates me when people say "the cure for cancer." Cancer is a bunch of different disorders with different manifestations. It's like saying "the cure for virus" or "the cure for sick."
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Why post new threads when bumping old ones seems to have the same effect?
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Where would she get the resources and equipment to do this?
I could be a noob but wouldn't she need some seriously heavy-duty lab equipment to do the experimentation required to "invent" this "nanoparticle"?
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On January 24 2012 15:37 Eljee wrote:
Not to take anything away from the girl's accomplishments, but it really irritates me when people say "the cure for cancer." Cancer is a bunch of different disorders with different manifestations. It's like saying "the cure for virus" or "the cure for sick."
well, its a good thing she didnt say "the cure for cancer" then.
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The research itself is not very interesting. All she did was replicate the research that people have been doing in drug delivery for the past decade. What is impressive is that she was able to do the research at such a young age; though, if you connections to labs and such it's actually quite simple.
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On December 15 2011 17:42 Empyrean wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
i'm so off topic =p This is factually incorrect.
And yet erectile dysfunction never killed anyone and there is more money in giving a white guy a boner than curing a black guy of AIDS.
Many cancers are chronic these days, AIDS on the other hand is ravaging an entire generation of African people. Its not about what kills more people, its about what colour their skin is and where they live. Many cancer patients only have themselves to blame for contracting their disease through smoking, drinking etc. Simple fact is that while more people die of cancer than AIDS, the people primarily affected by the latter live in countries where there is little research infrastructure and no money. If millions of Europeans were dying from AIDS, we would have had a solution yesterday.
for note... I'm white, I live in the UK and will probably get cancer as i'm a smoker, if I get cancer I would have no problem with being put to the back of the line for treatment if its on the NHS, as I did it to myself. Most people with AIDS can't say the same.
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This girl better get the patent and royalties. I'll be pissed if some corporation swoops in and steals it from her.
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On January 24 2012 15:57 Mjolnir wrote:
Where would she get the resources and equipment to do this?
I could be a noob but wouldn't she need some seriously heavy-duty lab equipment to do the experimentation required to "invent" this "nanoparticle"?
It's called being born into a family of doctors and high income upper class.
It tends to produce children who are better off in life.
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There are already very good medicines and treatment for cancer that does not harm the rest of the body (like e.g. chemo) but the thing is that they are expensive as hell. What you need a cheap and effective treatment that does not damage healthy cells. Will this be it? Hopefully.
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On January 24 2012 15:58 dAPhREAk wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2012 15:37 Eljee wrote:
Not to take anything away from the girl's accomplishments, but it really irritates me when people say "the cure for cancer." Cancer is a bunch of different disorders with different manifestations. It's like saying "the cure for virus" or "the cure for sick." well, its a good thing she didnt say "the cure for cancer" then.
I agree with that statement, but what she is doing with nanoparticles works on many different types of cancers, rather than say just colon cancer or just lung cancer, because it is using better imaging to find and then eradicate cancer tumors. Also, I would use the term invented loosely here, being the a-whole that I am, I want to see an issued patent and what kind of claims she gets. I work with university patenting and have come across quite a few of these 'inventions' and have even made the decision to file on a few myself. Like any new field, people can advance the art in different ways and build upon the works of others. I would say that she has made an 'improvement' that may even warrant some general claims in a patent, but to say she found a 'cure' or to imply that she did it on solely on her own is a stretch.
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That's an average asian for you!
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Cancer gets cured daily on the internet.
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On January 24 2012 16:05 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:42 Empyrean wrote:On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
i'm so off topic =p This is factually incorrect. And yet erectile dysfunction never killed anyone and there is more money in giving a white guy a boner than curing a black guy of AIDS. Many cancers are chronic these days, AIDS on the other hand is ravaging an entire generation of African people. Its not about what kills more people, its about what colour their skin is and where they live. Many cancer patients only have themselves to blame for contracting their disease through smoking, drinking etc. Simple fact is that while more people die of cancer than AIDS, the people primarily affected by the latter live in countries where there is little research infrastructure and no money. If millions of Europeans were dying from AIDS, we would have had a solution yesterday. for note... I'm white, I live in the UK and will probably get cancer as i'm a smoker, if I get cancer I would have no problem with being put to the back of the line for treatment if its on the NHS, as I did it to myself. Most people with AIDS can't say the same.
Um just stop posting if this is the kind of ignorance that your going to post.
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Its funny I was just explaining to someone how companies who put out prizes for innovation can come up with mindblowing solutions hordes of researchers and intellectuals could not. Fantastic that she found this, the cancer therapy right now is like trying to destroy a farm by nuking the whole country, very unprecise and harmful
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On January 24 2012 16:05 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:42 Empyrean wrote:On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
i'm so off topic =p This is factually incorrect. And yet erectile dysfunction never killed anyone and there is more money in giving a white guy a boner than curing a black guy of AIDS. Many cancers are chronic these days, AIDS on the other hand is ravaging an entire generation of African people. Its not about what kills more people, its about what colour their skin is and where they live. Many cancer patients only have themselves to blame for contracting their disease through smoking, drinking etc. Simple fact is that while more people die of cancer than AIDS, the people primarily affected by the latter live in countries where there is little research infrastructure and no money. If millions of Europeans were dying from AIDS, we would have had a solution yesterday. for note... I'm white, I live in the UK and will probably get cancer as i'm a smoker, if I get cancer I would have no problem with being put to the back of the line for treatment if its on the NHS, as I did it to myself. Most people with AIDS can't say the same.
The only colour that matters when it comes to developing drugs is green, ie money. Race has nothing to do with it... theres way more money in viagra than something that can develop viral resistance to a drug and thus limiting that drugs effectiveness in a few generations when that drug took billions / years to develop
Why do people throw the race card around so much? It makes light of actual racism and ironically its highly ignorant
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I really want to see her paper on how she construct and assemble the nano-particle, what polymers she use, how the receptors of cancer cell will recognize and allow the particle to enter it while normal cells won't, etc.
But the News is really quite sensationalist. The research in nano-vehicle for drugs is not new at all. I know a group of chemists at my university who works on this field for like 5-6 years already. If you want to know more, just google Professor Karen Wooley.
On December 15 2011 20:33 Grettin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 20:24 KeksX wrote:
Also, 100k$ are a joke. That girl deserves WAY MORE THAN THAT. If this is as big as the article makes it sound, i have no doubt she will get a decent job offer because of this. She seem to deserve it!
I think I kinda saw her future. She will definitely be in... the grad school
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I would want to see the step by step process.
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hot damn... a 17year old achieving what thousands of other scientists couldn't with their 20+ years of knowledge and research... Thats pretty god damn jaw dropping. And this was at a science fair too, a fkin 17 year old achieving more than all the past cancer researchers for better treatment.
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Reading the majority of this thread is akin to cutting myself.
I'm sure this is the umpteenth time that this has been mentioned, but she did not actually cure cancer. I doubt this post will make a difference though, since it seems most posters don't read any portion of the thread other than the OP before posting.
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On January 24 2012 17:12 NMx.StyX wrote:
hot damn... a 17year old achieving what thousands of other scientists couldn't with their 20+ years of knowledge and research... Thats pretty god damn jaw dropping. And this was at a science fair too, a fkin 17 year old achieving more than all the past cancer researchers for better treatment.
Read the article. It's a delivery system, not an actual treatment. It's a great accomplishment, but to say that it eclipses cancer research is complete hyperbole. She would probably be the first person to tell you that this is based off the work of others. Standing on the shoulders of giants. Hopefully she becomes a giant someday.
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Isn't there any concern for the after effect of curing cancer? Don't get me wrong it's a terrible disease, but people need to look at the role that disease plays in an ecosystem. Curing cancer would cause a huge increase in population one that the world may not be able to sustain for us, or a super cancer that becomes immune to the cure that we create. I dunno just a thought.
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On January 24 2012 17:12 NMx.StyX wrote:
hot damn... a 17year old achieving what thousands of other scientists couldn't with their 20+ years of knowledge and research... Thats pretty god damn jaw dropping. And this was at a science fair too, a fkin 17 year old achieving more than all the past cancer researchers for better treatment.
Apparently, as was already said earlier in the thread, she basically copied something that was already done. So no, she didn't achieve anything more than past cancer researchers have achieved. :S That said, what she copied was a delivery mechanism, not a cure for cancer. In other words, basically, she didn't achieve much as she did something that already was done. It's like me making a Tesla coil and it being made out like I innovated and invented it. Nope. Nik Tesla. It's a good idea to read the thread, especially the OP :S.
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On January 25 2012 04:34 Trict wrote:
Isn't there any concern for the after effect of curing cancer? Don't get me wrong it's a terrible disease, but people need to look at the role that disease plays in an ecosystem. Curing cancer would cause a huge increase in population one that the world may not be able to sustain for us, or a super cancer that becomes immune to the cure that we create. I dunno just a thought.
imo cancer research is like a hole people can throw their money into and feel good about themselves. I'd wager there never will be a cure for cancer just from my knowledge of it through schoolings and speaking with profs o_O It's not really that sad I guess since technology has increased our lifespans so much so that cancer sounds like population control
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My dad works for Siemens.
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On December 15 2011 17:51 hahaimhenry wrote:
FlaSh: is probably like, "But I won an OSL when I was 15..." NO FLASH, NOBODY CARES ANYMORE
LOL
Quite an amazing feat indeed !
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On December 15 2011 18:52 SnetteL wrote:1000 hours of work... That's not a lot! Taken into account she needs to read up about all the current technologies and their drawbacks, that she's only 17 and probably? doesn't have the basics for jumping onto such a problem 1000 hours is a joke. It would be hard to imagine that a 17 year old had such a breakthrough in a well researched field while her title doesn't even contain anything innovative. Nevertheless, she must have done something, and to just be involved into this kind of research at her age is very impressive. Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 18:45 OrchidThief wrote:
I'd really be interested in just exactly how much of this is actual innovation. I've been hearing about local drug release systems ever since I started uni. Sounds like they just meshed together a bunch of technology that people are already working on everywhere gave it a fancy title and called it a day. There is no way this group of highschoolers understands all these fields being thrown together sufficiently to revolutionize it to any degree.
There's a lot of sensationalization going on here, and it's really hard to figure out what exactly it was they came up with themselves. I agree. Pretty much this. Cool science project submission, but when you factor in the fact that thousands of PhD recipients and medical researches spend millions of dollars into cancer research annually and all those hours in the lab, I find it really hard to believe that a 17 year old high school girl in a mere 1,000 hours innovated something that flew over the heads of the previously mentioned researchers (who are more experienced and more deeply educated) who all spent a combined millions of hours working on the same problem.
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This is super cool. She deserves every bit of that ~$100 / hour she spent on this. Here's hoping lightning strikes twice with research on another disease soon :3
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I would feel like an underachiver if this girl also got C- on ICCup !
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On January 25 2012 04:34 Trict wrote:
Isn't there any concern for the after effect of curing cancer? Don't get me wrong it's a terrible disease, but people need to look at the role that disease plays in an ecosystem. Curing cancer would cause a huge increase in population one that the world may not be able to sustain for us, or a super cancer that becomes immune to the cure that we create. I dunno just a thought.
This idea could be applied to any medical technology. It's rather shortsighted, however, because you also ignore the fact that humans are innovating in other fields that will also increase capacity for higher populations, and that once it becomes a pressing demand, it, too will receive such proportionate response in investment, study, and development.
Also, if you know what cancer actually is, there's no such thing as "super cancer."
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My question.. How? Where do you obtain the intellect to not only understand this, but to actually create something out of this? I'm confused on so many levels.
1,000 hours of what? How much research was involved? Is she just a natural at biology..? Like, I can't even begin to comprehend how.
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On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb?
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up.
There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either.
To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do.
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On December 15 2011 18:51 ShadeR wrote:
Nice job but we have an overpopulation problem.
Fact: everyone in the world can live comfortably in Texas. Also this makes me feel even more like a bum lol. A article about over population. http://ingles.homeunix.net/rants/density.html
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On January 25 2012 04:34 Trict wrote:
Isn't there any concern for the after effect of curing cancer? Don't get me wrong it's a terrible disease, but people need to look at the role that disease plays in an ecosystem. Curing cancer would cause a huge increase in population one that the world may not be able to sustain for us, or a super cancer that becomes immune to the cure that we create. I dunno just a thought.
Two things: Cancer isn't caused by a microbe. It is a natural mutation of any cell in our body, and is usually caused by gamma radiation (skin cancer) or carcinogenic particles (lung,colon cancer especially). It would be impossible to stop cancerous cells from being produced, but instead we work on destroying tumors. Destroying tumors without killing the host = curing cancer.
Secondly, an interesting fact about death statistics: Curing cancer would simply increase the amount of deaths due to other causes. Lets say for discussion sake 1/4 of our population dies of cancer, and 1/2 from heart disease. If we cure cancer, than we can assume about 5/8 of all deaths are now caused by heart disease.
People might live a few years longer, but there would be no great surge of population.
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Wow. I, like far too many people, have lost someone important to me to cancer. That was an event that literally changed my whole life.
It's really great that this girl was able to take such a great step forward for the betterment of the world. Cancer's terrible, and I am looking forward eagerly to the day when the human race finally defeats it.
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On December 15 2011 17:44 wishbones wrote:
instead of 2 years military service, all of us should have mandatory 1000 hours spent trying to better the planet.
I agree 100% with this statement :D
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So... the ONLY reason you people are interested in this story is because of this girl's age.
If you were interested in the scientific achievement half as much as you seem to be then TL would be flooded with phD papers on discoveries/advancements in cancer that are as impressive or more impressive than a carrier for drugs that is able to target certain cancer cells above healthy cells...
This strategy for treating cancer is decades old and researchers have been developing numerous ways to make drug carriers for different types of cancer... this girl just happens to be one more researcher in this genre of science/engineering...
I don't claim to know the details of this story, but I can almost guarantee that there are more talented, intelligent, innovative and older(OMG) researchers who deserved funding more than she did...
So while we are on the subject of privileged teenagers abusing mommy/daddies connections/money/resources to make themselves feel special... A SIXTEEN year old girl has sailed around the world recently!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089989/Laura-Dekker-Dutch-girl-16-youngest-sail-world-own.html
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On January 25 2012 07:31 Zinroc wrote:So... the ONLY reason you people are interested in this story is because of this girl's age. If you were interested in the scientific achievement half as much as you seem to be then TL would be flooded with phD papers on discoveries/advancements in cancer that are as impressive or more impressive than a carrier for drugs that is able to target certain cancer cells above healthy cells... This strategy for treating cancer is decades old and researchers have been developing numerous ways to make drug carriers for different types of cancer... this girl just happens to be one more researcher in this genre of science/engineering... I don't claim to know the details of this story, but I can almost guarantee that there are more talented, intelligent, innovative and older(OMG) researchers who deserved funding more than she did... So while we are on the subject of privileged teenagers abusing mommy/daddies connections/money/resources to make themselves feel special... A SIXTEEN year old girl has sailed around the world recently! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089989/Laura-Dekker-Dutch-girl-16-youngest-sail-world-own.html
Life isn't fair. It's plausible that this kind of story bring in more funds than some other dude that no one gives a damn about would have if they did the exact the same research. Fair? No. Benefitial? Probably. Means to an end.
It would be great if people cared for this kind of stuff without the sensationalist angle but sadly we can't control what people care about.
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Im sorry if you people take this the wrong way. But this is terrible. I refuse to believe this had not been thought of before by pro's. They just cant silence this girl
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On January 25 2012 07:31 Zinroc wrote:
So while we are on the subject of privileged teenagers abusing mommy/daddies connections/money/resources to make themselves feel special...
You managed to take a story about someone advancing cancer research, if even by a little bit, and turn it into a reason to hate. What is wrong with you?
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This makes me feel as if I am nothing more than a tiny ant.
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I'll take a healthy toxin free lifestyle over getting shot with a laser. Out of control cancer is impossible in a healthy body.
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On January 25 2012 08:10 HowitZer wrote:
I'll take a healthy toxin free lifestyle over getting shot with a laser. Out of control cancer is impossible in a healthy body.
So you honestly think healthy people dont get cancer? You think Lance Armstrong was unhealthy? Theres no way he could even take illegal substances due to his profession...
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Really hope this works out for everyone's sake.
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Don't be distracted by cancer guys, we have the internet to save.
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If I had a dollar for every "omg cancer cure discovered!" thread ... jesus
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On January 25 2012 08:12 Zamee wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 08:10 HowitZer wrote:
I'll take a healthy toxin free lifestyle over getting shot with a laser. Out of control cancer is impossible in a healthy body. So you honestly think healthy people dont get cancer? You think Lance Armstrong was unhealthy? Theres no way he could even take illegal substances due to his profession...
Just google Olympic athletes cancer, and you'll get a bunch of results.
I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer. We ran track together in seventh grade (we're college-age now). Since then, I got pretty lazy-- if it weren't for my crazy Asian guy metabolism, I would be a fat wreck. But she still worked out and ate healthy. Then suddenly, she got sick. Was tired a lot, got thinner. Doctor said it was T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia.
She's 19. It's a cancer for adults over 30. There are 4 men for every 3 women diagnosed. She's a girl. It makes up 2% of some subset of leukemias. She got it anyways. Cancer doesn't discriminate.
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On January 25 2012 08:10 HowitZer wrote:
I'll take a healthy toxin free lifestyle over getting shot with a laser. Out of control cancer is impossible in a healthy body.
Yes, it can. Mikrotumors practically grow all the time, but normally, you have special cells in your body that kill them.
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On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do.
serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder....
first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated....
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On January 25 2012 08:10 HowitZer wrote:
I'll take a healthy toxin free lifestyle over getting shot with a laser. Out of control cancer is impossible in a healthy body.
It's nearly impossible to avoid any toxins while living in the current civilized world
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On December 15 2011 17:44 wishbones wrote:
instead of 2 years military service, all of us should have mandatory 1000 hours spent trying to better the planet.
I like this idea very much, but that being said, mandatory ANYTHING is sort of impinging on someones freedom.
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thats amazing, love how technology develops
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Who wrote this article? What she did is (presumably) impressive, but to me, her age is irrelevant. She (or he) could have been 80 when they created a cancer curing device. Hopefully a working prototype can be used in real hospitols soon.
On January 25 2012 08:10 HowitZer wrote:
I'll take a healthy toxin free lifestyle over getting shot with a laser. Out of control cancer is impossible in a healthy body.
You should consider reading about different kinds of cancer, and their cause. Cancer happens when a cell's mechanics that control reproduction stop working, and it, and all its replications, grow out of control. Toxins (carcinogens) can make such mutations more likely, but avoiding all toxins would not guarantee you don't get cancer. By the way, many of the preservatives in fast food are carcinogens.
Also, prostate cancer is common (almost guaranteed) in men, regardless of lifestyle. For most men however, it occurs so late that the patient would die of other causes before the cancer.
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On January 25 2012 07:55 Witten wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 07:31 Zinroc wrote:
So while we are on the subject of privileged teenagers abusing mommy/daddies connections/money/resources to make themselves feel special...
You managed to take a story about someone advancing cancer research, if even by a little bit, and turn it into a reason to hate. What is wrong with you?
(quoting out of context FTW)
I think it's quite obvious that my point was that this ISNT a story about advancing cancer research, but rather a story of "a young super gifted girl omg lets idol her" ...
If stories about advancing cancer research were as popular as this minuscule contribution I'd be THRILLED because that would mean that society is actually taking an interest in research, both in the field of cancer and in general.
The fact that it takes the sensationalization of a 17 year old kids' science project to raise public interest is something I am uncomfortable with and feel is worth discussing.
P.S. gruff did provided an intelligent counter argument to my point so if you disagree with me (or anyone) please do them the courtesy of replying with a constructive counter point like he did rather than shallow personal attacks like "What is wrong with you?"... , but there I go with a futile attempt to improve the internet...
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A cure for cancer was found last year, but due to not being able to take patent on it no company could make money from producing it and afaik it´s still not being used.
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On January 25 2012 09:32 znow1 wrote:
A cure for cancer was found last year, but due to not being able to take patent on it no company could make money from producing it and afaik it´s still not being used.
Rofl, there is no cure for cancer. Cancer is a group of diseases like bacterial infections, each type of cancer needs to have specific treatment. The media is just ignorant and or is being sensational to sell stories to the stupid.
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Lucky to discover before adulthood since it is harder to assassinate youth. Microbiologists are #1 in unresolved deaths.
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On December 15 2011 18:15 s4life wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 18:07 chenchen wrote:On December 15 2011 18:03 Lightwip wrote:On December 15 2011 18:00 chenchen wrote:
I don't want to sound like a dick and diminish anyone's hard work, but from personal experience, most (not all) of the projects that get deep in Intel and Siemens are basically done by the students' mentors. In many cases, all the high school kid has to do is to tag along and try to understand what's going on and some of them don't even understand their own projects.
But of course. How can anyone without a full scientific education hope to solve such a problem on their own when a Ph.D. can't do the same? Medicine takes a lot of hard work, collaboration, and education. It's not possible for a high school student to do more than just a little bit. I just want to make sure that people don't blow the news out of proportion. Every year, dozens of high school students bust out impressive sounding projects at Intel and Siemens finals that are more likely than not the work of their "mentors", as most competitive schools nowadays have mentorship programs that pair up kids with researchers that have PhDs. To be honest, these kids are probably much less impressive than International Math Olympiad competitors, and yet get so much more attention in the news because it's much easier to report "girl cures cancer" than "dude solves problem that 99% of our readers/viewers can't understand". Impressive is relative word mr. skeptic. But sure, medical research is a collaborative effort, there is nothing wrong with that.. it is a lot of hard work still.
I don't know her work but seriously, 1000 hours? That's nothing for a research. If you invest 1000 I'm not sure if you would be able even to read research at the frontier. Add an extra zero and it would sound more likely.
There are thousands of researchers working on exactly this problem. How to deliver a medicine only to cancer cells without affecting healthy cells. A friend of mine who works as a researcher at Bayer's lab told me about it already years ago? And now I'm supposed to believe that she solved that problem on her own? I mean top pharmaceutical companies spent incredible amount money on the cancer research and there has been tremendous progress but they were not able to come up with drugs that prolong patient life more than, on average, a couple of months.
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On January 25 2012 09:35 Unhallowed wrote:
Lucky to discover before adulthood since it is harder to assassinate youth. Microbiologists are #1 in unresolved deaths.
..o_o
is this actually backed up by something or a troll comment? I honestly can't tell, lol.
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On January 25 2012 08:12 Zamee wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 08:10 HowitZer wrote:
I'll take a healthy toxin free lifestyle over getting shot with a laser. Out of control cancer is impossible in a healthy body. So you honestly think healthy people dont get cancer? You think Lance Armstrong was unhealthy? Theres no way he could even take illegal substances due to his profession...
Cycling is actually really bad when it comes to substance abuse. Armstrong certainly didn't take any meth or heroine or other "street drugs", but several cyclists in the Tour De France have been caught taking Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). Some people think that he took some type of PED, and others disagree, but there is no way to prove it. Just as a bit of information though, he would have had to ride the Tour a few months after getting chemotherapy, have only a year to rest, and then win the Tour De France against people who admitted to using PEDs. And before he got cancer, he wasn't a big enough name in the world of cycling to be tested except for random testing, and at this time the producers of PEDs were greatly ahead of the testers.
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Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though.
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On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though.
no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved.
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On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated....
Calling her cheating might be a little bit too far, but saying it has never been done before is wrong either.
Unless the paper or project is published so that it can be peer reviewed or read by others, then it's still not crediable to say "hey it's new". Sorry, we scientists are trained to be skeptical about this thing or else anyone could claim anything.
Moreover, the research in nano-vehicle for drugs is not a new idea, at all. The term "Nanoparticle Drug Delivery" gets a 16621 hit when it is searched in SciFinder, which is only a chemistry journal database. So it should be even more in other database too. And this does not even count a paper that does not contain these terms but still revelance to drug delivery by nanoparticle (because scientists tend to use specific name instead of "drug delivery").
She's got a talent, sure. Calling her work "original" might be true to a certain extent, as people might not think about this idea of using laser to degrade the particle (but it seems not efficient at all). But calling it a new discovery is just sensational.
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On January 25 2012 09:52 Veldril wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... Calling her cheating might be a little bit too far, but saying it has never been done before is wrong either. Unless the paper or project is published so that it can be peer reviewed or read by others, then it's still not crediable to say "hey it's new". Sorry, we scientists are trained to be skeptical about this thing or else anyone could claim anything. Moreover, the research in nano-vehicle for drugs is not a new idea, at all. The term "Nanoparticle Drug Delivery" gets a 16621 hit when it is searched in SciFinder, which is only a chemistry journal database. So it should be even more in other database too. And this does not even count a paper that does not contain these terms but still revelance to drug delivery by nanoparticle (because scientists tend to use specific name instead of "drug delivery"). She's got a talent, sure. Calling her work "original" might be true to a certain extent, as people might not think about this idea of using laser to degrade the particle (but it seems not efficient at all). But calling it a new discovery is just sensational.
i would be surprised to see any 17 year old think of an original new idea in such advanced science. but her work was obviously impressive enough to win the $100,000 prize. i have no problem with people saying that her work isnt original, or that it has been discussed before. but, this dude, is just taking a shit on her while at the same time saying how wonderful he is (and his friends are). that says to me that he has a huge chip on his shoulder.
whether her work is original or not, she is very impressive. at 17 i was playing super nintendo and tennis, and not very good at that. ;-)
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On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated....
I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans.
And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust.
EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things.
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On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved.
I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive.
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even if this doesn't pan out to work, it's at least a step in a good direction
amazing for her, incredible props
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On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things.
I didn't see exactly what she did(the article was extremely unspecific), but you are right, the idea of using nanoparticles for targeted cancer treatment isn't original at all. Researchers have been working on it for almost a decade now and no one has developed a true delivery system that works yet(its also different for each VERSION of cancer, so liver/pancreas/brain etc), let alone there is little consensus on the type of drug to deliver for any specific cancer.
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y necro?
just a load of sensationlist journalism >_>
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On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things.
lets try quoting:
On January 24 2012 14:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized.
On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges.
i cant find where you talked about your friends, so i will take that back.
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On January 25 2012 10:10 Bleak wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved. I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive.
That doesn't make sense. Cancer can come in many forms and types and is mostly completely random. "Good" genes have nothing to do with it.
ANYONE can get cancer, that's the scary thing.
An individual has an estimated amount of 10^23 cells in the body. Every cell becomes a growing danger for mutation with every next generation.
DNA replication has it's flaws, but it's mostly corrected. The system is so good that it only makes 1 mistake (1 wrong base) per cell cycle. This is also accompanied with the decaying of the telomeres...
Also, take into account the amount of harmful radiation out there and the higher chances of getting this disease are evident.
There's also cancer inducing viruses like Human Papilloma Virus to account for.
I believe every human body has at least some mutated cells in the body, who just don't have the genetic instability yet to develop into a cancer. This is NORMAL. Only the ones with all the right variables (like being able to make blood vessels grow towards you for growth, telomerase activation, ..) become real threats to the human body.
The sad thing is, while the evolutionary process has given us much to thank for, it does come with a price. It's normal for a mammalian to develop a cancer, how horrible that may sound.. (think about how many pets die from some sort of cancer.. I have had two pets die of it..)
Any person could have had the misfortune of having just the wrong gene targetted at the wrong time for a cancer to develop, no good or bad genes will fix this.
However, I do believe some people are more predisposed to cancer than others.
Hope this is kind of understandable and not just a ramblefest to read, I tend of being all over the place..
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On January 25 2012 10:24 Uldridge wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 10:10 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved. I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive. That doesn't make sense. Cancer can come in many forms and types and is mostly completely random. "Good" genes have nothing to do with it. ANYONE can get cancer, that's the scary thing. An individual has an estimated amount of 10^23 cells in the body. Every cell becomes a growing danger for mutation with every next generation. DNA replication has it's flaws, but it's mostly corrected. The system is so good that it only makes 1 mistake (1 wrong base) per cell cycle. This is also accompanied with the decaying of the telomeres... Also, take into account the amount of harmful radiation out there and the higher chances of getting this disease are evident. There's also cancer inducing viruses like Human Papilloma Virus to account for. I believe every human body has at least some mutated cells in the body, who just don't have the genetic instability yet to develop into a cancer. This is NORMAL. Only the ones with all the right variables (like being able to make blood vessels grow towards you for growth, telomerase activation, ..) become real threats to the human body. The sad thing is, while the evolutionary process has given us much to thank for, it does come with a price. It's normal for a mammalian to develop a cancer, how horrible that may sound.. (think about how many pets die from some sort of cancer.. I have had two pets die of it..) Any person could have had the misfortune of having just the wrong gene targetted at the wrong time for a cancer to develop, no good or bad genes will fix this. However, I do believe some people are more predisposed to cancer than others. Hope this is kind of understandable and not just a ramblefest to read, I tend of being all over the place..
I do believe there are certain genes that can (maybe indirectly?) lead to higher chances of certain cancers. Even if this weren't true though, most cancers occur past the normal ages at which we reproduce, so @Bleak: yeah natural selection can't do anything about cancer.
EDIT: I will assume you typo'd 10^23 and meant 10^13
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Yeah, 10^13, sorry about that.. that was way too much haha.
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On January 25 2012 08:10 HowitZer wrote:
I'll take a healthy toxin free lifestyle over getting shot with a laser. Out of control cancer is impossible in a healthy body.
wow are you trolling? because if so, please just let me know and i'll concede before i get raged to the point of getting banned.
I absolutely hate these pseudoscience/pop-lingo words like "toxins." What is a "toxin"? And do you think more "natural" lifestyles are cancer-free? First of all, toxins are not a word used in the scientific community the way you see them used in Oprah or Cosmo or wherever you get your hippie nonsense from, a toxin is simply a biological byproduct of one organism that harms another. You people use toxins almost synonymously with pollution or chemicals, as if all artificial chemicals are inherently bad and all natural ones are inherently good. Chemistry is chemistry, it comes down to a molecule-by-molecule basis (or functional group by functional group).
stop oversimplifying the complexity of biological chemistry. avoiding "toxins" that don't actually exist isn't doing anything.
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On January 25 2012 09:40 Jaso wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 09:35 Unhallowed wrote:
Lucky to discover before adulthood since it is harder to assassinate youth. Microbiologists are #1 in unresolved deaths. ..o_o is this actually backed up by something or a troll comment? I honestly can't tell, lol.
haha holy shit, i too would like to know this o_o
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On January 25 2012 10:22 dAPhREAk wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things. lets try quoting: Show nested quote +On January 24 2012 14:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized. Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. i cant find where you talked about your friends, so i will take that back.
Sigh. I said Siemens was pathetic. And I backed up my opinion of science fairs quite enough I think. Saying she had a connection with a judge might be a stretch and admittedly a statement made colored by (whatever bad diction) my experience, but it happens quite often. Try looking at the list of Siemens projects. There are thousands of them, and probably quite a few dozen really good ones. I'm willing to bet that a few of those got passed over in earlier rounds of judging for various reasons.
This is pretty tangential to the discussion (which was pretty tangential anyways), but cancer is a huge keyword, buzzword, whatever in science fairs. Do a project on cancer, and many judges will be like "OMG CANCER CURE YAY". I once saw a project at a regional science fair about "cancer worms", in which some student got some earthworms, irradiated them and compared the size of tumors between those that were cut and those that weren't. And somehow that was a cure for cancer. I believe it made it to the state level before it lost to some project about peanut butter...
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On December 15 2011 17:36 B.I.G. wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:27 Dhalphir wrote:
Somewhat unfortunately, she's not likely to get rich from this. Vital cures like this never make the creator any money, because the government won't stand for you charging an amount proportional to what it cost to develop.
But, she'll be famous for life if it leads to a true cure. oh yeah because the only possible motivation she could have is mo money...
That's quite notorious of you..
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PICTURES OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!!!!
But seriously, why doesn't the Wall Street Journal have some picture of her holding up a giant check or something? I need to gauge whether or not this girl's as nerdy as I imagine her to look.
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Our kids are our future. Glad to see young teenagers doing something positive for a change. Mad props to her.
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On January 25 2012 17:28 TheToaster wrote:
PICTURES OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!!!!
But seriously, why doesn't the Wall Street Journal have some picture of her holding up a giant check or something? I need to gauge whether or not this girl's as nerdy as I imagine her to look.
google is a wonderful thing:
http://x0c.xanga.com/149f836250033280155747/m223184122.jpg
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If I was the president of the world or of her rich country... or president Of anything with lots of money really, I 'd make her so rich that all she would have to do is keep developing what she's doing and she wouldn't have to do anything else. I'd make sure she is wealthy as well as her children and her children's children.
All it takes honestly is lots of motivation that is motivated by an emotion that is forced opon someone who is capable of doing something that they're good at (example to grandparents dying) and anything can be achieved really.
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On January 25 2012 10:37 synapse wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 10:24 Uldridge wrote:On January 25 2012 10:10 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved. I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive. That doesn't make sense. Cancer can come in many forms and types and is mostly completely random. "Good" genes have nothing to do with it. ANYONE can get cancer, that's the scary thing. An individual has an estimated amount of 10^23 cells in the body. Every cell becomes a growing danger for mutation with every next generation. DNA replication has it's flaws, but it's mostly corrected. The system is so good that it only makes 1 mistake (1 wrong base) per cell cycle. This is also accompanied with the decaying of the telomeres... Also, take into account the amount of harmful radiation out there and the higher chances of getting this disease are evident. There's also cancer inducing viruses like Human Papilloma Virus to account for. I believe every human body has at least some mutated cells in the body, who just don't have the genetic instability yet to develop into a cancer. This is NORMAL. Only the ones with all the right variables (like being able to make blood vessels grow towards you for growth, telomerase activation, ..) become real threats to the human body. The sad thing is, while the evolutionary process has given us much to thank for, it does come with a price. It's normal for a mammalian to develop a cancer, how horrible that may sound.. (think about how many pets die from some sort of cancer.. I have had two pets die of it..) Any person could have had the misfortune of having just the wrong gene targetted at the wrong time for a cancer to develop, no good or bad genes will fix this. However, I do believe some people are more predisposed to cancer than others. Hope this is kind of understandable and not just a ramblefest to read, I tend of being all over the place.. I do believe there are certain genes that can (maybe indirectly?) lead to higher chances of certain cancers. Even if this weren't true though, most cancers occur past the normal ages at which we reproduce, so @Bleak: yeah natural selection can't do anything about cancer. EDIT: I will assume you typo'd 10^23 and meant 10^13
That's scary to hear man. If evolution can't take care it, it seems like we're fucked eternally.
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Wow, this would be amazing if it worked. Congrats to her too. That's really impressive stuff. Fingers crossed.
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On January 25 2012 17:59 Bleak wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 10:37 synapse wrote:On January 25 2012 10:24 Uldridge wrote:On January 25 2012 10:10 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved. I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive. That doesn't make sense. Cancer can come in many forms and types and is mostly completely random. "Good" genes have nothing to do with it. ANYONE can get cancer, that's the scary thing. An individual has an estimated amount of 10^23 cells in the body. Every cell becomes a growing danger for mutation with every next generation. DNA replication has it's flaws, but it's mostly corrected. The system is so good that it only makes 1 mistake (1 wrong base) per cell cycle. This is also accompanied with the decaying of the telomeres... Also, take into account the amount of harmful radiation out there and the higher chances of getting this disease are evident. There's also cancer inducing viruses like Human Papilloma Virus to account for. I believe every human body has at least some mutated cells in the body, who just don't have the genetic instability yet to develop into a cancer. This is NORMAL. Only the ones with all the right variables (like being able to make blood vessels grow towards you for growth, telomerase activation, ..) become real threats to the human body. The sad thing is, while the evolutionary process has given us much to thank for, it does come with a price. It's normal for a mammalian to develop a cancer, how horrible that may sound.. (think about how many pets die from some sort of cancer.. I have had two pets die of it..) Any person could have had the misfortune of having just the wrong gene targetted at the wrong time for a cancer to develop, no good or bad genes will fix this. However, I do believe some people are more predisposed to cancer than others. Hope this is kind of understandable and not just a ramblefest to read, I tend of being all over the place.. I do believe there are certain genes that can (maybe indirectly?) lead to higher chances of certain cancers. Even if this weren't true though, most cancers occur past the normal ages at which we reproduce, so @Bleak: yeah natural selection can't do anything about cancer. EDIT: I will assume you typo'd 10^23 and meant 10^13 That's scary to hear man. If evolution can't take care it, it seems like we're fucked eternally.
What natural selection can't take care of embryo selection, and in the future embryonic genetic modification, will.
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On January 25 2012 11:24 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 10:22 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things. lets try quoting: On January 24 2012 14:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized. On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. i cant find where you talked about your friends, so i will take that back. Sigh. I said Siemens was pathetic. And I backed up my opinion of science fairs quite enough I think. Saying she had a connection with a judge might be a stretch and admittedly a statement made colored by (whatever bad diction) my experience, but it happens quite often. Try looking at the list of Siemens projects. There are thousands of them, and probably quite a few dozen really good ones. I'm willing to bet that a few of those got passed over in earlier rounds of judging for various reasons. This is pretty tangential to the discussion (which was pretty tangential anyways), but cancer is a huge keyword, buzzword, whatever in science fairs. Do a project on cancer, and many judges will be like "OMG CANCER CURE YAY". I once saw a project at a regional science fair about "cancer worms", in which some student got some earthworms, irradiated them and compared the size of tumors between those that were cut and those that weren't. And somehow that was a cure for cancer. I believe it made it to the state level before it lost to some project about peanut butter...
Back in Dec., I was really happy for this person, but even though you basically killed nearly all of adoration I had for her achievement, I'm not feeling down. What's important to me is knowing the fact of the matter. If in fact she did was basically already done, and chances are she simply copied it, then it's there's nothing amazing here. I congratulate her on her putting in the effort into this project/presentation as it surely did take effort, and on her luck in the competition, but I guess there really isn't much else to say. She didn't discover anything or do anything novel. That said, I hate sensationalism, and it gives me a more negative outlook on things.
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On January 25 2012 19:32 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 11:24 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 10:22 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things. lets try quoting: On January 24 2012 14:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized. On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. i cant find where you talked about your friends, so i will take that back. Sigh. I said Siemens was pathetic. And I backed up my opinion of science fairs quite enough I think. Saying she had a connection with a judge might be a stretch and admittedly a statement made colored by (whatever bad diction) my experience, but it happens quite often. Try looking at the list of Siemens projects. There are thousands of them, and probably quite a few dozen really good ones. I'm willing to bet that a few of those got passed over in earlier rounds of judging for various reasons. This is pretty tangential to the discussion (which was pretty tangential anyways), but cancer is a huge keyword, buzzword, whatever in science fairs. Do a project on cancer, and many judges will be like "OMG CANCER CURE YAY". I once saw a project at a regional science fair about "cancer worms", in which some student got some earthworms, irradiated them and compared the size of tumors between those that were cut and those that weren't. And somehow that was a cure for cancer. I believe it made it to the state level before it lost to some project about peanut butter... Back in Dec., I was really happy for this person, but even though you basically killed nearly all of adoration I had for her achievement, I'm not feeling down. What's important to me is knowing the fact of the matter. If in fact she did was basically already done, and chances are she simply copied it, then it's there's nothing amazing here. I congratulate her on her putting in the effort into this project/presentation as it surely did take effort, and on her luck in the competition, but I guess there really isn't much else to say. She didn't discover anything or do anything novel. That said, I hate sensationalism, and it gives me a more negative outlook on things.
Siemens does not take plagiarism lightly. Why would you believe a random internet poster over a prestigious science competition?
Seriously, even if they have some judging mishaps at the lower levels, Siemens doesn't choose winners lightly. The contest is actually a pretty big deal. No, cancer was not cured. But some nontrivial scientific progress was made along the way. And yes, everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Ticklishmusic, either link the fck to the place the girl plagiarized from or stop fouling up the thread with your bitter and unfounded accusations.
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On January 25 2012 20:22 SerpentFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 19:32 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 25 2012 11:24 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 10:22 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things. lets try quoting: On January 24 2012 14:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized. On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. i cant find where you talked about your friends, so i will take that back. Sigh. I said Siemens was pathetic. And I backed up my opinion of science fairs quite enough I think. Saying she had a connection with a judge might be a stretch and admittedly a statement made colored by (whatever bad diction) my experience, but it happens quite often. Try looking at the list of Siemens projects. There are thousands of them, and probably quite a few dozen really good ones. I'm willing to bet that a few of those got passed over in earlier rounds of judging for various reasons. This is pretty tangential to the discussion (which was pretty tangential anyways), but cancer is a huge keyword, buzzword, whatever in science fairs. Do a project on cancer, and many judges will be like "OMG CANCER CURE YAY". I once saw a project at a regional science fair about "cancer worms", in which some student got some earthworms, irradiated them and compared the size of tumors between those that were cut and those that weren't. And somehow that was a cure for cancer. I believe it made it to the state level before it lost to some project about peanut butter... Back in Dec., I was really happy for this person, but even though you basically killed nearly all of adoration I had for her achievement, I'm not feeling down. What's important to me is knowing the fact of the matter. If in fact she did was basically already done, and chances are she simply copied it, then it's there's nothing amazing here. I congratulate her on her putting in the effort into this project/presentation as it surely did take effort, and on her luck in the competition, but I guess there really isn't much else to say. She didn't discover anything or do anything novel. That said, I hate sensationalism, and it gives me a more negative outlook on things. Siemens does not take plagiarism lightly. Why would you believe a random internet poster over a prestigious science competition? Seriously, even if they have some judging mishaps at the lower levels, Siemens doesn't choose winners lightly. The contest is actually a pretty big deal. No, cancer was not cured. But some nontrivial scientific progress was made along the way. And yes, everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Ticklishmusic, either link the fck to the place the girl plagiarized from or stop fouling up the thread with your bitter and unfounded accusations.
Yeah, but standing on the shoulders of giants doesn't take just 1000 hours... As I wrote before in 1000 hours you may at best get to know the literature and even that would be tough as the topic she contributes too is not new and you need to be familiar with what's been done "to stand on the shoulders of giants". There is a reason why PhD in science takes 5+ years. And these people are already the best of the best.
It's all cool that's she won and there must have been something ingenious about it but I would be damn surprised if there was anything even close to as revolutionary as the article claims. I would be even more surprised if she wasn't working under a team of researchers.
Seriously, research takes years and you need to have huge prior knowledge before you're ready to really make any sort of contribution. Reading the posts in this thread one would think that anyone can just grab a book, spend a few months reading it and come up with revolutionary idea. It just doesn't work like that.
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On January 25 2012 17:31 nBk wrote:
Our kids are our future. Glad to see young teenagers doing something positive for a change. Mad props to her.
i don't think anything changed, kids have always been the future, and some have invented things of worth at young ages. I think the media just didn't cover the events really well. Obviously this is a step above.
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I'm glad there are people like this in the world
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On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
That's because in the countries where the research is being conducted, cancer is a bigger killer than AIDS. Not saying it's not important, but when was the last time you saw an internationally funded laboratory complex in Africa on par with North American, European, or Asian labs? They'll prioritize closer to home, if you know what I'm saying.
For that matter, there are more philanthropic organizations and wealthy philanderers in those areas than Africa. There's just not enough money in the budget for African nations to worry about donations and charities (as they are more on the recieving side than the donating side).
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Rofl, there is no cure for cancer. Cancer is a group of diseases like bacterial infections, each type of cancer needs to have specific treatment. The media is just ignorant and or is being sensational to sell stories to the stupid.
Please, do some research before you do statements like this one!
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On January 26 2012 04:27 Rob28 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
That's because in the countries where the research is being conducted, cancer is a bigger killer than AIDS. Not saying it's not important, but when was the last time you saw an internationally funded laboratory complex in Africa on par with North American, European, or Asian labs? They'll prioritize closer to home, if you know what I'm saying.
Actually, cancer kills 12.49 percent of all deaths, while HIV/AIDS accounts for 4.87 percent. (Source: Wikipedia, which cites the WHO)
Of course, cancer tends to be a first world problem that strikes at people who've lived already long lives, while HIV/AIDS kills off younger people in the 3rd world in droves. I personally believe in an ideal world, we'd put HIV/AIDS as a higher priority, but the idea that more people die from AIDS than cancer is not correct.
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On January 26 2012 04:29 znow1 wrote:Show nested quote +
Rofl, there is no cure for cancer. Cancer is a group of diseases like bacterial infections, each type of cancer needs to have specific treatment. The media is just ignorant and or is being sensational to sell stories to the stupid.
Please, do some research before you do statements like this one!
... Yeah, cancer is a failure in physiological homeostasis. It has nothing to do with "disease" in the conventional way of thinking.
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On January 25 2012 17:59 Bleak wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 10:37 synapse wrote:On January 25 2012 10:24 Uldridge wrote:On January 25 2012 10:10 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved. I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive. That doesn't make sense. Cancer can come in many forms and types and is mostly completely random. "Good" genes have nothing to do with it. ANYONE can get cancer, that's the scary thing. An individual has an estimated amount of 10^23 cells in the body. Every cell becomes a growing danger for mutation with every next generation. DNA replication has it's flaws, but it's mostly corrected. The system is so good that it only makes 1 mistake (1 wrong base) per cell cycle. This is also accompanied with the decaying of the telomeres... Also, take into account the amount of harmful radiation out there and the higher chances of getting this disease are evident. There's also cancer inducing viruses like Human Papilloma Virus to account for. I believe every human body has at least some mutated cells in the body, who just don't have the genetic instability yet to develop into a cancer. This is NORMAL. Only the ones with all the right variables (like being able to make blood vessels grow towards you for growth, telomerase activation, ..) become real threats to the human body. The sad thing is, while the evolutionary process has given us much to thank for, it does come with a price. It's normal for a mammalian to develop a cancer, how horrible that may sound.. (think about how many pets die from some sort of cancer.. I have had two pets die of it..) Any person could have had the misfortune of having just the wrong gene targetted at the wrong time for a cancer to develop, no good or bad genes will fix this. However, I do believe some people are more predisposed to cancer than others. Hope this is kind of understandable and not just a ramblefest to read, I tend of being all over the place.. I do believe there are certain genes that can (maybe indirectly?) lead to higher chances of certain cancers. Even if this weren't true though, most cancers occur past the normal ages at which we reproduce, so @Bleak: yeah natural selection can't do anything about cancer. EDIT: I will assume you typo'd 10^23 and meant 10^13 That's scary to hear man. If evolution can't take care it, it seems like we're fucked eternally.
Its funny because all natural selection cares about is getting you to have more kids and having those kids survive to make more kids. You know the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations? They basically give you a much higher risk of breast/ovarian cancer to the point that carriers of these genes sometimes get both ovaries and breasts removed as a defensive measure.
You might ask yourself, why would these alleles exist in our gene pool if its survival of the fittest? Well the simple answer is that it has little effect on whether or not a woman reproduces, since by the time she gets cancer she has probably already reproduced. The more interesting answer is that some studies suggest that BRCA1 and BRCA2 confer increased fertility (and possibly skew male/female sex ratio of offspring). By keeping BRCA1 and BRCA2 in the gene pool natural selection is effectively making a tradeoff between increased fertility earlier in life for increased mortality later in life.
Edit: As a thought experiment, think about regeneration. The ability to regenerate organs/tissue is extremely useful for obvious reasons but can increase risk of tissues turning cancerous. Examples of tissues that can regenerate quickly are skin and intestinal tissue, both places where cancers are frequent. Ever wonder why we have comparatively poor regenerative abilities in our heart/brain?
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Man you haters are just jealous, there's no need to downplay her achievement lol.
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United States10328 Posts
hello guys!
in other news Angela Zhang wasn't selected as a finalist for the other most-prestigious-high-school-research-contest, the Intel Science Talent Search. I'm a bit surprised, but it's not terribly rare for Siemens finalists to not make Intel finals, I guess.
http://www.societyforscience.org/sts/2012/finalists
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On January 25 2012 20:22 SerpentFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 19:32 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 25 2012 11:24 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 10:22 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things. lets try quoting: On January 24 2012 14:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized. On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. i cant find where you talked about your friends, so i will take that back. Sigh. I said Siemens was pathetic. And I backed up my opinion of science fairs quite enough I think. Saying she had a connection with a judge might be a stretch and admittedly a statement made colored by (whatever bad diction) my experience, but it happens quite often. Try looking at the list of Siemens projects. There are thousands of them, and probably quite a few dozen really good ones. I'm willing to bet that a few of those got passed over in earlier rounds of judging for various reasons. This is pretty tangential to the discussion (which was pretty tangential anyways), but cancer is a huge keyword, buzzword, whatever in science fairs. Do a project on cancer, and many judges will be like "OMG CANCER CURE YAY". I once saw a project at a regional science fair about "cancer worms", in which some student got some earthworms, irradiated them and compared the size of tumors between those that were cut and those that weren't. And somehow that was a cure for cancer. I believe it made it to the state level before it lost to some project about peanut butter... Back in Dec., I was really happy for this person, but even though you basically killed nearly all of adoration I had for her achievement, I'm not feeling down. What's important to me is knowing the fact of the matter. If in fact she did was basically already done, and chances are she simply copied it, then it's there's nothing amazing here. I congratulate her on her putting in the effort into this project/presentation as it surely did take effort, and on her luck in the competition, but I guess there really isn't much else to say. She didn't discover anything or do anything novel. That said, I hate sensationalism, and it gives me a more negative outlook on things. Siemens does not take plagiarism lightly. Why would you believe a random internet poster over a prestigious science competition? Seriously, even if they have some judging mishaps at the lower levels, Siemens doesn't choose winners lightly. The contest is actually a pretty big deal. No, cancer was not cured. But some nontrivial scientific progress was made along the way. And yes, everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Ticklishmusic, either link the fck to the place the girl plagiarized from or stop fouling up the thread with your bitter and unfounded accusations.
Fact of the matter is it was based almost entirely on something already 'discovered', as ticklish and many others in this thread have already said, but that doesn't make it plagiarism. Now let's discuss plagiarism and what was done here:
Plagiarism is taking things word for word and claiming them as your own. I can read a ton and study/research about Tesla coils and the relevant EM physics, and then do some research, and submit a project directly based on it but with a couple partially-substantiated ideas even if they're terribly wrong but make some sort of sense and I'll go far. That's not plagiarism. It's not plagiarism, but it is really really close to things actually done, and believe it or not, that's how these sorts of competitions are. Nearly every project (I don't want to say "all" in case of the random anomaly or two that don't get anywhere) is heavily based upon things already done. Do note that this isn't plagiarism. But what it is is "Based off of all of these things I didn't actually do or study or whatever, you could probably also do this perhaps even if atm it is entirely theoretical", and that's exactly what we have here. There is nothing overly special tbh. Not to take anything away from her, but this is being exponentially inflated to something it is not.
Here's something important to consider: When you write a research paper for school, your paper is almost entirely based on things already studied and discovered, but of course with some of your own thoughts even if they're entirely wrong but still make any sort of sense, but it isn't plagiarism, because at least there's something novel. That's exactly what's being done here. No, it isn't plagiarism, or else practically every student science project would be plagiarism. That completely makes your plagiarism point irrelevant, because there wasn't any. You're assuming that plagiarism means any form of copying, which is incorrect. If anything and everything was plagiarism, all of these science projects would be considered plagiarized, fyi. Every school report of yours would have been plagiarized, because nearly all of them heavily rely upon research, ideas, and topics already made.
Thus, Siemens has no need to consider people for plagiarism. No one copied someone's EXACT project and report word for word, idea for idea. With the plagiarism claim out of the way and Siemens out of this picture, it's a matter of believing ticklish or you. Yes, you can certainly bet I will believe someone who actually knows what the hell he's talking about rather than someone who attacks strawmen and doesn't know what plagiarism is and is ignorant on the matter. Kudos to ticklishmusic for having tons of experience on the matter of science competitions and standing his ground against trolls who don't know what they're talking about.
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25 years to be developed my ass... Most of the actual diseases can be cured for a longtime already, the pharma industry wouldn't allow it because of the billions dollars they are making out of it.
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Holy shit...Way to go kid.. <3
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On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
i'm so off topic =p
I'm sorry, could you please reread the opening clause of your post? No one can be that ignorant. You have set a new standard.
On a more related note, that's incredible. Hopefully this can go somewhere and develop into something powerful in the medical arsenal.
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On January 26 2012 05:09 lain2501 wrote:
25 years to be developed my ass... Most of the actual diseases can be cured for a longtime already, the pharma industry wouldn't allow it because of the billions dollars they are making out of it.
Way to make a uninformed post; maybe actually read up on the subject and realize how much is unknown about the human body.
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+ Show Spoiler +On January 25 2012 19:20 -_-Quails wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 17:59 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 10:37 synapse wrote:On January 25 2012 10:24 Uldridge wrote:On January 25 2012 10:10 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved. I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive. That doesn't make sense. Cancer can come in many forms and types and is mostly completely random. "Good" genes have nothing to do with it. ANYONE can get cancer, that's the scary thing. An individual has an estimated amount of 10^23 cells in the body. Every cell becomes a growing danger for mutation with every next generation. DNA replication has it's flaws, but it's mostly corrected. The system is so good that it only makes 1 mistake (1 wrong base) per cell cycle. This is also accompanied with the decaying of the telomeres... Also, take into account the amount of harmful radiation out there and the higher chances of getting this disease are evident. There's also cancer inducing viruses like Human Papilloma Virus to account for. I believe every human body has at least some mutated cells in the body, who just don't have the genetic instability yet to develop into a cancer. This is NORMAL. Only the ones with all the right variables (like being able to make blood vessels grow towards you for growth, telomerase activation, ..) become real threats to the human body. The sad thing is, while the evolutionary process has given us much to thank for, it does come with a price. It's normal for a mammalian to develop a cancer, how horrible that may sound.. (think about how many pets die from some sort of cancer.. I have had two pets die of it..) Any person could have had the misfortune of having just the wrong gene targetted at the wrong time for a cancer to develop, no good or bad genes will fix this. However, I do believe some people are more predisposed to cancer than others. Hope this is kind of understandable and not just a ramblefest to read, I tend of being all over the place.. I do believe there are certain genes that can (maybe indirectly?) lead to higher chances of certain cancers. Even if this weren't true though, most cancers occur past the normal ages at which we reproduce, so @Bleak: yeah natural selection can't do anything about cancer. EDIT: I will assume you typo'd 10^23 and meant 10^13 That's scary to hear man. If evolution can't take care it, it seems like we're fucked eternally. What natural selection can't take care of embryo selection, and in the future embryonic genetic modification, will.
Cancer is a byproduct of evolution. Evolution happens through mistakes in DNA replication, just like cancer commonly develops from misreplications in replication regulation related genes.
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Saw this in the ROFL thread ages ago comparing it to Justin Bieber's wealth for making pop music or something.
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Will Smith is preparing his basement lab and breeding dogs as we speak.
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I don't want to downplay her achievement, but I do want to put somethings in perspective. I'll be playing a little devil's advocate here.
Firstly, using nanoparticles in cancer research is not a novel idea by far. There are many labs around the world who focus on nanoparticles for both imaging of cancer cells and drug delivery to cancer cells. Sample article here. If you google "nanoparticles and cancer," you'll get a ton of hits. Also the idea that this is a "cure" for cancer is false. There are so many factors when looking at cancer, and every type of cancer is different. Therapies like Angela's are one of many of a similar vein that are being tested and may only work for one specific type of cancer or none at all.
Secondly, I want to shine a light on undergraduate research, especially high school research, and the availability of a student to enter a lab and get his/her own project. If you know who to ask or have connections, it is pretty easy to get research experience in a lab at a major university. Most PIs are nice enough to let high school students work for them just so they get some exposure and become prospective graduate students in the future. It also means the lab gets some grunt work done free of charge. What generally happens is you'll get thrown under a Ph.D (post-doc) and he/she will guide you through the basics of the experiment. What most likely happened was Angela was working under a post-doc and edited the project in some small way which makes it seem like she was the mind behind the game.
Thridly, working 1000 hours on a project sounds like a big deal, but since things are getting so competitive you'll often see high school students sacrifice their summers to do research to gain an edge for science fair and college apps. I know this because I've been in the same seat. Because of my parents connections (both Ph.Ds working at a state university at the time), I was able to work full-time 40 hours a week for four summers at lab. That's about 4 summers x 3 months x 4 weeks x 40 hours, which is close to 2000 hours. What I'm trying to say is a high school student can easily claim "1000 hours" by working full time over the summer and part-time through school or two full summers. Also when you're in the lab full time, it's not 8 hours of grueling science per day. 95% of the time it's start a gel in a morning, transform some bacteria, etc. and leave the experiment for half the day and check up on it later. Rinse and repeat. The rest of the time you're on your computer messing around or pretending to read science articles.
Finally, science fairs are a mecca for kids who do research and "claim it as their own." Again, I know this because I've seen it first hand. Growing up with strong science background, I attended large scale science fairs for most of my schooling starting from elementary school. As you get past the regional level and hit state, you'll see these projects with complicated and impressive titles start to pop up, and when you hit nationals, almost all of them are titles you can't comprehend without reading them over 3 or 4 times. A high percent of these projects, at least the biology ones, are done by students who went into a lab and did research grunt work for a post-doc and received original recognition. One of my buddies did some summer research as a high school student for a PI, as part of a junior research paid program, not even as a stand-alone student, and went to the International Science Fair and just thanked his PI under acknowledgments. He was getting paid to do mandatory research that he may have/may not have been remotely interested in and made it to the top giving off the impression that he did a lot of work. Although I never used my research for science fair, my PI was kind enough to co-author me in a publication for a prominent science magazine for the work I did. A publication is a big deal for a undergrad, and I can't say I did ton of the analytical work (mostly grunt stuff), though I would be claim that I've been published.
Overall, I have no doubt that there were plenty of equally awe-inspiring projects at the competition, and she was the most prepared and impressive to take top place. In addition, I strongly doubt that this was a completely original idea from her side. It is most likely a twist on what her lab was working on already. Clearly in any interview she isn't going to say otherwise.
That being said she is to be highly commended on her motivation and devotion to science. We have no way of knowing if she truly enjoys doing research or what her true motivation is. Whatever it is, it's nice to know there are good things that came out of it. I would love nothing else to be proven wrong on all of the points: that she is genuinely interested in her research, and it was her original idea that was given 1000 hours of work. However, as a student who has done a ton of high school research, I know how the story generally goes.
I tried to search online for her paper submission or journal article but I came up with nothing. If anyone has a link to her work or her lab's/PI's work, could you please post it.
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On January 25 2012 20:22 SerpentFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 19:32 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 25 2012 11:24 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 10:22 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things. lets try quoting: On January 24 2012 14:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized. On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. i cant find where you talked about your friends, so i will take that back. Sigh. I said Siemens was pathetic. And I backed up my opinion of science fairs quite enough I think. Saying she had a connection with a judge might be a stretch and admittedly a statement made colored by (whatever bad diction) my experience, but it happens quite often. Try looking at the list of Siemens projects. There are thousands of them, and probably quite a few dozen really good ones. I'm willing to bet that a few of those got passed over in earlier rounds of judging for various reasons. This is pretty tangential to the discussion (which was pretty tangential anyways), but cancer is a huge keyword, buzzword, whatever in science fairs. Do a project on cancer, and many judges will be like "OMG CANCER CURE YAY". I once saw a project at a regional science fair about "cancer worms", in which some student got some earthworms, irradiated them and compared the size of tumors between those that were cut and those that weren't. And somehow that was a cure for cancer. I believe it made it to the state level before it lost to some project about peanut butter... Back in Dec., I was really happy for this person, but even though you basically killed nearly all of adoration I had for her achievement, I'm not feeling down. What's important to me is knowing the fact of the matter. If in fact she did was basically already done, and chances are she simply copied it, then it's there's nothing amazing here. I congratulate her on her putting in the effort into this project/presentation as it surely did take effort, and on her luck in the competition, but I guess there really isn't much else to say. She didn't discover anything or do anything novel. That said, I hate sensationalism, and it gives me a more negative outlook on things. Siemens does not take plagiarism lightly. Why would you believe a random internet poster over a prestigious science competition? Seriously, even if they have some judging mishaps at the lower levels, Siemens doesn't choose winners lightly. The contest is actually a pretty big deal. No, cancer was not cured. But some nontrivial scientific progress was made along the way. And yes, everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Ticklishmusic, either link the fck to the place the girl plagiarized from or stop fouling up the thread with your bitter and unfounded accusations.
More or less plagarized I said. I apologize for using the term fairly loosely in a non-academic sense. I can't analyze exactly how original it is, and how much was done before. There are hundreds of papers about gold nanoparticles and cancer, and it would be impossible for me to become an expert in the field in any reasonable amount of time. But my point is, she did NOT make a huge discovery. She made a small advancement in a fairly big field. Scientists every day make some tiny contribution like hers, but they don't get published about in the WSJ or any other newspaper.
The rest of my post was a discussion about problems with science fairs, which does NOT directly relate to her project's merit. I ended up opening a whole other can of worms because of daPhreak, which I now regret doing. Suffice to say, where there's money there's almost inevitably some corruption or other shenanigans going on. I did science fairs all four years of high school, and you wouldn't believe some of the things that go on behind doors at the convention centers or in hotel rooms. It can get just as bad as politics, and maybe worse. The competition is intense, and there are those who (and their parents) who will do anything to win. But that's another problem altogether, and one I should not have brought up.
I think I come off as bitter because I actually bothered to mention my experience with science fairs. Like I said, I didn't have to, and I could have stopped with "what she did was a small advancement in a pretty big field, congrats but I'm not really impressed, and this is sensationalized as shit." And that was the gist of my post in this thread until I felt compelled to respond to a guy who apparently doesn't even bother to read threads or know how the news updates on the left side of TL.net work.
Darkmetal's post (above) is a much better one that those I've scattered around in this thread. He makes the point about her work that I originally tried to make before this devolved into a flame war.
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unfortunately i doubt she has discovered the cure for science. In fact, I quite agree with ticklish that most likely the work that she has done was probably not entirely or in fact mostly her idea.
However, I know a lot of people that do these competitions (and get far), I believe that these are great way for kids to learn about science and go from there. It's a really great way especially for kids to delve into science and get into the community.
Definitely there is some hype from the media about this being a cure to cancer, but hey, who care as long as more kids get into science and not professional video gaming or something...
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we don't need another thing that prolongs peoples like we're over populated as is thanks to modern medicine. it's a nice thought though
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On January 26 2012 12:48 MugenXBanksy wrote:
we don't need another thing that prolongs peoples like we're over populated as is thanks to modern medicine. it's a nice thought though
ya, plz refuse medicine the next time you have fever. And if you have appendicits plz don't you dare getting it removed.
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On January 26 2012 12:48 MugenXBanksy wrote:
we don't need another thing that prolongs peoples like we're over populated as is thanks to modern medicine. it's a nice thought though
Tell us that when you or a loved one is suffering from cancer. There's way too much hype and anti-hype backlash in this thread. It was nice work for one person at that life stage, more good things may or may not follow.
And as for those posters who claim that Pharma is sitting on "cures for cancer" that they're not releasing, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
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Doesn't make me feel like an underachiever at all, but this is pretty dang awesome. :D
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So I did some digging around and found "Zhang hopes to become a research professor. Her mentor was Dr. Zhen Cheng of Stanford University. Zhang first approached Stanford at the age of 14 but was initially denied any mentorship for being too young" from here.
So I went to her professor's website: http://chenglab.stanford.edu/
Look at the research the lab does. It specializes in imaging and therapy of cancer through various molecular techniques. This makes me 95% sure she was just stuck with a post-doc and did some grunt work on a project that was handed to her. She probably took some promising results and packaged it into her own project. It's not an uncommon thing to see high school students take advantage of these kind of opportunities.
If her discovery was really something new and field changing, her PI probably would've tried to get the work published. As of now, I didn't see her name under any of the recent publications. The Siemen's website (http://www.siemens-foundation.org/en/competition/2011_winners.htm) doesn't have her paper linked either.
Like I said, I can surely appreciate the time and effort she put into working in a lab. It's not most fun job and results are often slow and unpromising. Here's to her becoming baller in the future though 
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On January 26 2012 05:30 Schwopzi wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 25 2012 19:20 -_-Quails wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 17:59 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 10:37 synapse wrote:On January 25 2012 10:24 Uldridge wrote:On January 25 2012 10:10 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved. I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive. That doesn't make sense. Cancer can come in many forms and types and is mostly completely random. "Good" genes have nothing to do with it. ANYONE can get cancer, that's the scary thing. An individual has an estimated amount of 10^23 cells in the body. Every cell becomes a growing danger for mutation with every next generation. DNA replication has it's flaws, but it's mostly corrected. The system is so good that it only makes 1 mistake (1 wrong base) per cell cycle. This is also accompanied with the decaying of the telomeres... Also, take into account the amount of harmful radiation out there and the higher chances of getting this disease are evident. There's also cancer inducing viruses like Human Papilloma Virus to account for. I believe every human body has at least some mutated cells in the body, who just don't have the genetic instability yet to develop into a cancer. This is NORMAL. Only the ones with all the right variables (like being able to make blood vessels grow towards you for growth, telomerase activation, ..) become real threats to the human body. The sad thing is, while the evolutionary process has given us much to thank for, it does come with a price. It's normal for a mammalian to develop a cancer, how horrible that may sound.. (think about how many pets die from some sort of cancer.. I have had two pets die of it..) Any person could have had the misfortune of having just the wrong gene targetted at the wrong time for a cancer to develop, no good or bad genes will fix this. However, I do believe some people are more predisposed to cancer than others. Hope this is kind of understandable and not just a ramblefest to read, I tend of being all over the place.. I do believe there are certain genes that can (maybe indirectly?) lead to higher chances of certain cancers. Even if this weren't true though, most cancers occur past the normal ages at which we reproduce, so @Bleak: yeah natural selection can't do anything about cancer. EDIT: I will assume you typo'd 10^23 and meant 10^13 That's scary to hear man. If evolution can't take care it, it seems like we're fucked eternally. What natural selection can't take care of embryo selection, and in the future embryonic genetic modification, will. Cancer is a byproduct of evolution. Evolution happens through mistakes in DNA replication, just like cancer commonly develops from misreplications in replication regulation related genes.
Several cancers are more common in people carrying certain genes. Where these genes do not confer some other significant advantage, and where the genes lead to disease only after the typical reproductive period, then embryo selection or the genetic modification of embryos would be a viable way for future parents to avoid passing on things like BRCA mutations. These are the ones I was talking about. Other conditions that kick in after the primary reproductive period and would need such intervention to prevent propogation include Huntingdon's disease.
Cancer that occurs very late in life as a result of accumulated errors is harder to deal with - we would ideally develop a mechanism for repairing affected cells, or more likely develop better techniques for identifying cells that go rogue more quickly and killing them. The trouble is that the older we get, the more errors there are and the more likely that there is an error that can lead to cancer - so unless cells can be repaired too their young state we will not do anything more than postpone the time at which a rogue cell evades notice for long enough to cause cancer. This cancer is also beyond the scope of natural selection as it strikes in extreme old age, and is also beyond the scope of embryonic techniques. It is not necessarily an eternal scourge though.
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United States10328 Posts
On January 26 2012 13:21 darkmetal505 wrote:So I did some digging around and found "Zhang hopes to become a research professor. Her mentor was Dr. Zhen Cheng of Stanford University. Zhang first approached Stanford at the age of 14 but was initially denied any mentorship for being too young" from here. So I went to her professor's website: http://chenglab.stanford.edu/Look at the research the lab does. It specializes in imaging and therapy of cancer through various molecular techniques. This makes me 95% sure she was just stuck with a post-doc and did some grunt work on a project that was handed to her. She probably took some promising results and packaged it into her own project. It's not an uncommon thing to see high school students take advantage of these kind of opportunities. If her discovery was really something new and field changing, her PI probably would've tried to get the work published. As of now, I didn't see her name under any of the recent publications. The Siemen's website (http://www.siemens-foundation.org/en/competition/2011_winners.htm) doesn't have her paper linked either. Like I said, I can surely appreciate the time and effort she put into working in a lab. It's not most fun job and results are often slow and unpromising. Here's to her becoming baller in the future though
This is basically true about any lab-based high school research (and often undergraduate research as well.) When you're young, you don't have the experience with lab techniques or the background to come up with your own project idea and then execute it, but those who do "good high school research" usually have the time, the determination, and the raw intelligence to get the execution down decently.
They definitely deserve massive respect, but it's rare that a high-school researcher's results actually have a huge impact on society. When you do research contests, you learn to sweeten up potential applications of your work (I'd know because I did a math project...) in a sort of sensationalist way. There's nothing really wrong with that (companies are giving away big bucks to high school students for their research!), but again, I'm pretty sure that she didn't "cure cancer." She made a small advance in a big field (as someone else put it); that's how almost all science research is. Her work, on its own, has decent quality, but it's only amazing because she's so young. (Same with most of these Siemens/Intel kids. Though sometimes, it's not even terribly amazing... I was a regional finalist for Siemens with a not-particularly-mindblowing math project, and so was another kid from my school who actually didn't really know what he was doing.)
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Glad to see ticklishmusic and darkmetal having common sense, experience, knowledge, and most especially putting completely overblown stories to rest and showing us this isn't anywhere near a huge deal as the OP and other posts make it out to be. One of the things I despise most are things overrated, exaggerated, and sensationalized to oblivion, which is exactly what we saw in this thread before ticklish and darkmetal got involved. They stood up for what's true in the face of trolls, angry people, and naysayers. Huge, huge rep to them  Cheers, and big respect to you two.
In any case, as I've said before, I'm happy for Angela for winning this contest, and that's that.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://x0c.xanga.com/149f836250033280155747/m223184122.jpg)
