paul@phs.UUCP (03/08/84)
< > Before asking whether net.bio should be abolished, one should consider what its purpose is, might have been, or should be. While there are probably quite a few biologists on the net, it is perhaps unlikely that net.bio will, in the forseeable future, be used extensively as a medium for exchange between biologists. This is in large part because biology is rather a large field, and areas of expertise may not overlap much (who else out there knows much about electroenzymological study of Na,K-ATPase? impulse propagation in developing hearts?); it is also in large part because, when biologists get stuck on a problem, they are more likely to talk to the fellow in the next lab or call an expert on the 'phone than fling a question out to an unknown audience. There are, however, two uses of net.bio which do involve biologists and which might lead to extensive use of same. [1]. Net users of any stripe, having a question about biology (non-medical, since there is net.med), might best expect that people who know about biology would be hanging around net.bio. [2]. Net users who are relatively ignorant when it comes to applying computers to biological problems might best seek help in net.bio, where one presumes there are (or will be) both biologists and computerists who know how to get useful results from computers. Finally, while I do not wish to see the entire creation/evolution debate moved into net.bio, I think it perfectly reasonable for purely biological discussion of some issues to take place in net.bio (where else?). The percentage of computerists who know something substantial about abiogenesis or evolution is likely to be smaller than the percentage of biologists who do. ---------------------------------- Paul Dolber @ Duke U Med Ctr (...!duke!phs!paul).
rick@masscomp.UUCP (03/11/84)
Thanks, Paul Dolber. I agree 100% with your defense of net.bio. Like some of the folks who are asking to abolish net.bio, I too had a brief hope of learning through voyeurism. Your reasoned analysis of the enormous scope of the field of biology and the minimal probability of two experts in the same field being on the net at the same time helped bring me back to reality. Another reason why biologists may not have interest in the net is that biological research is slow. Time is spent developing technique, or waiting for a cell type or species to develop or reproduce. One of the joys of biology is absorbing the intricacy of the observed phenomenon (e.g. gardening). Maybe 80% of the knowledge gained is useful only to the biologist in question for figuring out what the next experiment should be. By the time any publishable results are in, the biologist has already talked to most everybody else who is expert in that particular field (and promised them pre-publication manuscripts). In general, biology has had to develop a successful informal information network already, and speed is not a significant factor. Since I agree that state of the art biology has small likelyhood of emerging on this net in the near future, I am pleased that you came up with a couple very reasonable uses for net.bio: [1] answering non-medical biological questions; [2] advising the computer/biology interface. Who knows, there may even be an opportunity to get into esoteric things due to conflicting answers. Biology had been traditionally divided to Botany and Zoology. More recently, many universities have recognized a 4 part division: molecular and cellular biology; anatomy, physiology, and developmental biology; neurobiology and behavior; ecology and (rot 13) ribyhgvbanel biology. (Of course, these are general categories and vary from place to place.) To put a few of my own biased ideas into the fray, I'll point out that electroenzymological study of Na,K-ATPase and impulse propagation in developing hearts are nigh unto medicine. Few organisms other than Homo sapiens (and maybe those wimpy Canadian white rats) have raised enough interest for such in depth study. There are a wide variety of biological questions which could be considered which are completely non-medical: What is that green stuff in the thorax of a lobster? (liver &/or semi-digested food in the cecum) When will researchers definitively determine if acid rain is caused by industrial SO2 emissions? (about 15 years ago, by Scandinavians concerned about pollution from England) Why is there sex? (recombination and vegetative propagation both have (rot 13) ribyhgvbanel advantages, but the mathematics of the (rot 13) ribyhgvbanel genetic models, and the diversity of models themselves leads to unresolved complexity) In a couple of decades, genetic engineering will be an established technology; when walking through the Amazon Basin, every 10th species you run into is not known to modern biology; what irretrievable resources are going up in smoke along with the deforestation of the tropics, 50% of which is for charcoal production? (who knows, but probably several new food crop species as well as the genes for natural immunity to many crop pests) What are the minimum population levels for various marine mammals below which extinction is probable? (remember the california condor and the whooping crane) Then there are the more trendy almost medical issues: The difference between female and male human neuroanatomy is statistically significant (not to mention neuroendocrinolgy). Behavior has a significant genetic component in all species other than Homo sapiens; are people truely different? Why has the artsy-fartsy dogmatic theory of left- and right- hemispheres glossed over the corpus collosum? (significantly larger in female humans than in males) It makes sense that the computer technical news groups have traffic. These are very narrow fields of expertise with many folks involved in R&D. How many news groups are devoted to languages and hardwares? Compared to biology, the differences are trivial. If you work on a different organism, you have completely different hardware and operating system (both of which you must *master*, not merely cope with). If you run a different experiment, even on the same organism, the new techniques involved are much more dissimilar than differences corresponding to new programming languages and editors. But if there is merit to Paul's suggestions, then it doesn't matter if a unix wizard asks a dumb question. Chances are that none of the biologists on the net knows a definitive answer (but those of us out here would not mind a chance to give our 2 cents worth). On the other hand, I hope that the biologists will not be solicited for input regarding certain current net debates which shall remain nameless, and which rightly belong in net.philosophy because they have *no* biologically factual basis. So, Paul, while I consider myself a mathematician (1/3 of my degrees), since half of my degrees are in non-medical biology, I'll try to carry my share. One of my Ph.D. interests was ecology, a.k.a. field biology, a.k.a. natural history (much more complex mathematically than physics, chemistry, or biochemistry; i.e. stochastic functional differential equations). Now, you folks who are flaming about a lack of biology in net.bio, what do you want to know? - Rick Curren @ masscomp
jwb@mcnc.UUCP (Jack W. Buchanan Jr.) (03/14/84)
I agree that the field of biology is diverse. However, this does not mean that there aren't common interests, in addition to the obvious uses of answering questions from non specialists, etc. For example, Paul Dolber mentions the study of impulse propagation in the developing heart. I study impulse propaga- tion in the adult heart, and would submit that is not all that different. Although I am in a Department of Medicine, our group uses Guinea pigs, pigs, and dogs, as well as computer simulations. Although the ultimate application is understanding things about man, I would submit that the distinction between research in "biology" and research in "medicine" is somewhat artificial at times In addition to the above relatively common research, we, and others are beginn- ing to study impulse propagation in excitable membranes as a model for potential biomolecular electronic devices. If this goes anywhere, an interface with groups more in the usenet mainstream would be essential. I still think this group has hope. Jack Buchanan University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill