• qyron@sopuli.xyz
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    10 months ago

    Nestlé has been patenting human milk proteins for decades. To my understanding, this prevents other companies to add such molecules to baby formula, even if somehow methods to synthesize said molecules were developed.

    That is a scary notion, a malevolous intent and a gross outcome.

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      These shouldn’t hold up. Wouldn’t the prior work of thousands of generations of mothers invalidate such a patent.

      • Darkard@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        “Excuse me madam but do you have a license to use those tits? No? Didn’t think so. The content of those bazongas is Nestle property. I’m afraid I’m going to have to clamp those nipples until such time as the proper Bandonkadonk subscriptions are paid”

        • shinratdr@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          i got this new legal drama plot. basically there’s this patent infringer except she’s got huge boobs. i mean some serious honkers. a real set of badonkers. packin some dobonhonkeros. massive dohoonkabhankoloos. big ol’ tonhongerekoogers.

          what happens next?!

          lawyer shows up with even bigger bonkhonagahoogs. humongous hungolomghononoloughongous

        • zaphod@feddit.de
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          10 months ago

          As long as the tits aren’t used for commercial purposes you don’t need a license. Anyway, I doubt that in Europe you could patent any naturally occuring molecules in any kind of milk.

          • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            You can patent pretty much anything in Europe.

            However, enforcing those patents is a completely different affair.

    • GenEcon@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Something doesn’t add up here since you can’t patent anything for decades.

      • jadero@mander.xyz
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        10 months ago

        I read that as:

        For decades, Nestle has been patenting milk proteins.

        They’ve been doing it for a long time, not somehow getting extra-long patents.

  • Sanyanov@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    As a person who just paid a fuckton of money to publish in open access (literally half an hour ago), that HURTS.

    Open Access is good, but first we have to abolish an entire publisher industry that lays insurmountable costs - either on readers or researchers themselves. Their work is not remotely worth that money. By making it a public good, we can cut down on so much unnecessary expenses.

  • seth@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    He owns a yacht. I’d be interested to hear of a single yacht owner who is a decent person. I’m not sure one exists.

    Edit: Thanks for the cool examples of decent people with yachts!

    • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Some people live on yachts and that’s their entire home. So like a 70,000£ yacht, then like 300£ a month in slip (berth) fees, including electric and whatnot. I strongly considered it. It’s roughly the same cost but better than caravan living, IMO.

      It’s a decent alternative to a landlocked home.

      But yeah, millionaires with yachts are a different thing.

      • seth@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        That’s a good use case. I’d be interested to know more about the idiosyncrasies that come with that lifestyle, like if they go out to sea when a storm is expected, or just weather it out in the harbor.

        • psud@aussie.zone
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          10 months ago

          They are almost always better in their dock, specifically boats optimised as condos are terrible at sea since open ocean is not in their design brief

          Perhaps they might be better up river as far as they can go

    • lad@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      My ex-teamlead owns a yacht (if he didn’t sell it). The catch is that yacht is worth about $40 thousands, not $4 millions.

      Also there was a person in USSR who built a yacht and circumnavigated the Earth on that, not everyone who do own a yach own that luxury slab of floating gold

      • seth@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        That’s an excellent exception, and quite interesting. Thanks for the link!

      • 768@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        Noah would’ve been a genocide-complicit, doomsday cult prepper, similar to those who build private libertarian cities on the ocean or some planet as a climate adaptation strategy.

      • Notyou@sopuli.xyz
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        10 months ago

        Wasn’t he the one that banged his daughters? Idk there was a few of those types in the bible.

        • SlikPikker@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          Lot.

          And actually, to be “fair” to him, his daughters raped him.

          As written it’s not strictly his fault. Even if his parenting skills clearly lack.

  • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    I’m not even sure what he’s talking about. Open access journals are the ones who charge authors to publish.

    If you publish in a journal that has closed access, there is generally no fee to publish. If you want your paper to be open access, you can tack on an additional open access fee so that your paper doesn’t end up behind a paywall. The last time I looked - and this was several years ago - the going rate for making your paper open access in a closed access journal was about $2-3k. We always budgeted for publication fees when we were putting together our funding proposals.

    The fee structure is similar for open access journals, except that there’s not a choice about paying them. For researchers whose work isn’t grant funded, it generally means they’re paying out of pocket, unless their institution steps in.

    I had a paper published in a small but (in its field) prestigious journal, and the editor explained to me that he only charges people who can afford it, and uses those funds to cover the costs of the journal. He explained that he had a paper from a researcher who couldn’t cover the publishing fee, and he let me know that I was helping out the other person, too.

    What I don’t understand is how anyone how has gone through academia doesn’t know this.

      • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Of course you can put it anywhere you’d like. Services like arXiv specialize in hosting pre-prints of published papers as well as white papers that only have an institutional association.

        The problem is that the job of an academic is to publish. That’s how you build credibility and seniority. For it to count as a “published paper” it needs to have undergone peer review so that the people who want to read/cite the paper at least have the confidence that it’s at least been reviewed by other experts in the field.

        There are some “journals” that will publish anything as long as they get their fees. Most academics are wise to that by now, but it can still impress people in business for whom a pub is a pub.

    • QZM@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      If you publish in a journal that has closed access, there is generally no fee to publish.

      What field are you in? In the life sciences, there’s normally a fee to publish closed-access and a higher one for open-access. My last paper was open access and costed about 3500, compared to 1500 pay walled.

      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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        10 months ago

        no fees in closed access in organic chemistry, as far as i know. some other subfields can be different

        open access can be easily two, three grands, and you better have a grant that covers this

  • Sloogs@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 months ago

    Surely there has to be a cost to the infrastructure of publishing and curation though. And possibly all the work of setting up and organizing the peer review process. So they probably charge the institutions or authors submitting the paper instead of their readers. But perhaps we should treat scientific journals as a public good, like libraries, or at least have a publicly funded option. Or have universities and institutions fund it for the public good.

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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      10 months ago

      But it’s mostly a scam. The costs don’t remotely compare to the revenue. Reviewers time is not paid, and there’s a price to both publish and access. It’s all about the prestige to publish. If you contact the author directly they’ll typically gladly send you the article for free.

  • pokemaster787@ani.social
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    10 months ago

    What even is this argument?

    “Scientists who say they can’t afford to do X should do X”? Does he think this makes him sound smart?

  • jadelord@discuss.tchncs.de
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    10 months ago

    Well, he does have a point though. #OpenAccess

    Footnote: Yeah, I saw that he had done some bad faith research, but remember open access is for everyone in the world, not just free rider corporate shills.

    Footnote 2: If it is not feasible to go for gold OA journals, please go for green route: publish in closed but allows authors to put it up on preprint like arXiv.

  • moog@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    “…he sought funding from the private sector to start Celera Genomics. The company planned to profit from their work by creating genomic data to which users could subscribe for a fee.”

    Fuck this guy

  • bl_r@beehaw.org
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    10 months ago

    Paywalled articles are still openly available if you politely email the researcher. While we should strive to have no barrier, if you can’t afford to publish openly those who need the research can still acquire it under the table. Having research unpublished because the researchers could not afford to pay the fee is worse than having the research published in a closed journal.

    I’ve gotten a few dozen papers from closed journals that way, and I’ve never been told no.

  • lugal@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    Tbf he evolutionarily developed that genome all by himself. That’s how capitalism works

  • Haagel@lemmings.world
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    10 months ago

    Venter is one of the many quacks who promised that he’d find the “aging gene” and switch it off. People threw a lot of money at him about twenty years ago.

      • Knusper@feddit.de
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        10 months ago

        Hmm, I have no expertise in this field. I recently read that aging happens, because when cells replicate their DNA a gazillion times, then sometimes they introduce slight inaccuracies or mistakes, which I guess, means tons of tiny chunks of our body will have slightly different DNA from what we got born with…?

        From the little I’ve just read about telomeres, it sounds like they help to prevent some of these mistakes. Is that you mean?

        • Sabre363@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          IIRC, telomeres are essentially the self-destruct button for DNA. They get shorter everytime DNA replicates and when they are all used up, DNA stops replicating and the cell destroys itself. The telomeres help prevent too many mutations from building up or cancer from forming.

          They was some research on animals that indicates that resetting the telomeres can extend the lifespan of the animal. But, without the telomeres, cancer and mutations eventually kill the organism.

          • Knusper@feddit.de
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            10 months ago

            Interesting. Yeah, it sounds like the only real way to prevent aging, would be to create a clone of yourself, let that clone grow up until their body is fully developed and then organ-harvest them to replace all of your organs one-by-one, until you’ve eventually ship-of-theseus-ed yourself. Well, and repeat that process every thirty years or so.

            Certainly not quite as sexy of a process as some skincare lotions promise…

            • Sabre363@sh.itjust.works
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              10 months ago

              You would never be able transplant the brain, and it’s still subject to the mutations and telomeres. The only way would be to transplant the personality Altered Carbon style or completely cure brain cancer.

              • Knusper@feddit.de
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                10 months ago

                Yeah, that’s true. Maybe you could pull off two or three cycles without hotswapping the brain, but eventually you’d have to rejuvenate yourself by just teach everything you know to one of your clones.

                …which sounds an awful lot like just having children. 🙃

                • Sabre363@sh.itjust.works
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                  10 months ago

                  I wonder if it would be possible to transplant to transplant the brain in pieces over several cycles? That way the brain could eventually be replaced by dupli-babies. Memory might become problematic though.