@joelydanger: Thanks, it is hard to come into a forum like this and hear the misinformation. I enjoy the opportunity to share facts about this interesting and difficult topic, but the current political atmosphere has made anyone who is educated on a topic into a "liberal elite" and the enemy. I just can't believe…

@kaffeen: I use that mantra "trust but verify".

@PurdueMEB: No problem, just wanted to clear that teacher issue up.

@Robert Hedges: If you knew law, you would know that there are already many laws that protect children from the mistakes of their parents. Their parents are well-intentioned, I know them personally. However they are misinformed.

@PurdueMEB: I am not a teacher, I am a scientist who cares so much about this issue I work on it nights and weekends.

@samuraibsd: I understand BMI is not a flawless measure but it is very good as a prognostic value. Surely there are people like yourself who are exceptions but these kids are terribly unhealthy, regardless of the scale you are using.

@enlight10ment: See my comment above. More than 50% of students in the SF area school system I work with are overweight and a good number of them are medically obese. This is a.. oh no.. big problem. Don't let that pun undermine my point.

@obnoxiosaurus: The conservatives are about as accurate at constitution interpretation as the christians are about bible study. They just pick out the parts they like and ignore the rest. And then assume some other stuff is in there that isn't. It is just rhetoric.

@The Intangible Fancy: Exactly, I cannot stand people who say they are fiscally conservative but then have no problem spending more on our military than the next ten countries combined. Or a three trillion dollar unnecessary war. Are these people blind?

@darkanimematt: The rule of thumb is that until age 5, a child needs 1000 calories plus their age times 100. So a five year old needs 1000 + 500 = 1500 calories. S0 a 600 calorie meal makes sense.

@icesir: In actuality, this is the failure of our educational system. If you see the post above, I work with the families that this law is designed to protect. They are low income and have never been taught what is obvious to us about healthy eating. They see a meal that is cheap, made for kids and it seems right…

@xsbs: Pretty sure this is exactly the kind on non-constructive comment people get banned for.

Before anyone else gets up in arms about this, take a minute to read this. I work with elementary, middle and high school kids on issues of obesity in the suburbs of San Francisco. Over 50% of the kids are overweight and most of those are medically obese. To say that the child's diet is the responsibility of the…

@kaffeen: No problem, things are changing rapidly these days which is scary and for good reason. However the threat is almost always rooted in how we use the technology rather than what the technology unleashes.

@dufus: The system only works on a very small subset of virus designs, and flu and HIV aren't that type. It unfortunately cannot be improved to somehow adapt to this type. Still there is other work that is promising (see discussion with cassiebear below).

I can't get the primary article until I am at work, but it looks like this TRIM21 protein functions like a ubiquitin tag and targets the virus protein coat for degradation in the proteosome. My question is that, since the proteosome does not destroy nucleic acids, doesn't this just release the DNA or RNA payload…

@kaffeen: Ok, so you are serious so I'll give you a serious answer. It may seem like this is pretty crazy, not well understood stuff. This is a misconception, not on your part but rather a product of the fact that there is a strong disconnect between standard news reporting and what is being discussed in science…

@cassiebearRAWR: Exactly. If we are thinking of the same breakthrough in a conserved region, that was actually HIV if I remember correctly. That was why it was such a big deal, even the HIV virus has some structural parts that are very difficult to mutate while retaining function. It was found by looking at the Ab…

@cassiebearRAWR: This is true primarily in HIV where the exterior coat regularly fluctuates in its composition. It is my understanding that most viruses are not like this and have structurally important constant regions that can be targeted and are difficult for the virus to mutate. So there might be hope here.

@kaffeen: Seriously?