The name is essentiallly a geometry joke. The IBM System/360 line of mainframes (1964) revolutionized the computer industry with the concept of one family of computers for all applications: business and scientific. (Before the 360, nobody considered compatibility, so different computer models were entirely incompatible, which was a mess.) The name symbolized that System/360 covered the full 360º of applications.
The 4 Pi name extended this idea to applications in the 3-dimensional world: 4π is the number of steradians making up a full sphere. As IBM put it, "System/4 Pi also fills a sphere—the full spectrum of military computer needs—for airborne, space, or shipboard use."
My local carwash's top-end wash is called the "Ultimate 360°", despite the fact that it obviously cleans the entire surface area of the car, and I'm simultaneously annoyed by the name and reminded of the System/4 Pi.
There a difference between overpriced and snake oil. If you claim that your cables "gives the breath-taking experience of ‘being there’ thanks to the purity of its conductors and their precise geometry" your firmly into the snake oil territory. If you sell an amp with hand picked components to achieve 0.001% THD at 100w on a 4KHz test tone, it's probably overkill and overpriced but unlike the cables it's not fraud adjacent.
As long as the garbage data is authentic and the method used to produce it is adequately detailed, I agree with you that: "it's better to publish the garbage data than to not publish it"
But fake data or garbage data without the method, is better left unpublished !
It's the inverse, here how you have to bet (unless you plan to be doing the hands on assassination works) :
X will get re-elected. Company Y CEO will not change in 2027. This is not artist Z last tour. Athlete K will participate in this event etc.
Like I said elsewhere in this thread the bet have to be lost if you want your target dead.
If someone want him dead, someone have to bet that million on the target being alive at a specific date. Unless someone plan to do the execution themselves, the bet must be lost for the target to be unalive !
I too had esophagogastroduodenoscopy and the "sedation" I received as a barely noticeable dose of fentanyl. It was unpleasant to feel like I was drowning in saliva but it was quite bearable.
If I ever receive that procedure again, I will ask to skip the fentanyl microdose. The anesthesia and the buzz were not only underwhelming but for some reasons I started to feel the typical opioid warmth when the procedure was almost completed. Had they waited a few minutes after the IM injection I might have had another opinion on the usefulness on fentanyl during endoscopie because the last 30s were almost pleasant!
Because the cancers cells adapt! (fast reproduction and high mutation rate of the cancerous cells make that process quicker than antibiotics resistance)
from the article (pay attention to the part in italics):
FLASH radiotherapy flips the conventional approach on its head, delivering a single dose of ultrahigh-power radiation in a burst that typically lasts less than one-tenth of a second. In study after study, this technique causes significantly less injury to normal tissue than conventional radiation does, without compromising its antitumor effect.
That phrasing isn't perfectly clear, as there's two things at play.
If you're delivering a large dose D all at once, FLASH spares normal tissue compared to conventional rate irradiations, with maintained anti-tumour effect.
But, you can instead deliver your treatment in a number of smaller doses, say n "fractions" of dose d. This also spares normal tissue (1). This latter approach - fractionation - is the way radiotherapy was delivered for most of its history. But at these low doses, FLASH sparing is small to negligible.
So, we have two demands in tension - and its unclear which is actually optimal. Some of the early results in FLASH showed huge sparing, but lots of more recent studies have shown more modest effects which may not be worth giving up benefits of fractionation for(2). And to date I think we have basically no meaningful in-human data to guide this, so there's still a lot of uncertainty.
1 - Fractionation also spares tumours, a bit, but you can offset this by increasing the total dose a bit and still see benefit.
2 - There is a general move to somewhat larger, fewer fractions even in normal radiotherapy, although almost all of these are still below the threshold where FLASH sparing is seen.
Another potential factor at play is the accuracy of delivery. It is generally easier to accurately deliver one quick dose vs daily doses over multiple weeks (due to patient positioning errors, the patient losing weight, soft tissues moving around etc).
I actually like the forced saving of Québec. I also have a defined benefit pension plan, a TFSA and RRSP but I am happy to be forced to contribute the RRQ for the general welfare of the province even though I know how manage my portfolio.
Considering that they also have to consider economic development in their investment decisions, the RRQ funds are well managed by the CDPQ.
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