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So after getting out of academia I must miss it... just after Christmas, this new year I was thinking about issues in cosmology and all this Dark Matter and Dark Energy theories, and had this crazy idea that's within Einstein's GR- maybe, but more so, it's within a non-flat curvature quantum theory, which we don't have so all this is speculation, but i thought perhaps tiny fluctuations in spacetime curvature (from moving masses in sub-atomic particles from distant parts of the universe), travelling in the same direction, in the same region of space, over billions of years, would interact and form very sharp curvatures in spacetime - on the scales 10e-18m to 10e-15m. The idea is that this would disrupt gravitation over the very long range. From this I think one can postulate 4 force effects, 3 gravitational and 1 radiation pressure. Two of the gravitational effects are a type of re-blooming of the gravitational potential, in fact the whole idea is really a type of localized gravitational potential by-pass and re-blooming effect, but not necessarily a quantized version gravity, still continuous just localized spacetime packets. I called it Fine Structured Spacetime (FiSS) because well - it would make matter FiZZ The thing is, at least to me, this idea seems to have an astounding potential to fix problems in cosmology. Every major problem I looked at, FiSS seemed introduced a force or effect that at least moved the problem in the right direction: it seems to explain Dark Matter, explain Dark Energy, rotation curves of galaxies, predicts a linear Tully Fisher relationship (although the math on this is a bit shaky, haven't done math now in 10 years as I'm out of the academic field), it's consistent with the bullet cluster, explains stability of spiral arms, barred galaxy structures, star formation in trailing gases for "Jellyfish Galaxies," weird ring galaxies like Hoag's object, partly resolves the "vacuum catastrophe" problem, possibly resolves the Hubble constant and the "Crisis in Cosmology," explains the "Cuspy-Core" problem, predicts the nature of voids, maybe explains "The Great Attractor" and "Dark Flow"... and it just goes on.. and on. I've probably just spent 3 weeks in cognitive bias looking for evidence for it, but I'm seeing it everywhere now... clearly I've lost all impartiality - I'm too invested in the idea, and that's when you need to step back and let others take a look and form their own option and give you some feedback. I wrote it up as manuscript and submitted to a few journals, a couple of weeks back, hoping to get a peer reviewer to look at it, but due to its early speculative nature, it was not accepted. Also sent the unpublished manuscript to a number of researchers in the field for some feedback, but they get bombarded with claims of solutions for Dark Matter, so I still haven't heard back from them. So I've decided to let it go, and just post the unpublished, un-peer reviewed manuscript on a few Physics and Astronomy forums, you can find the idea here: https://www.ecoonline.com.au/content/FiSS.pdf I'd love to get some feedback on it... anyone here that is intimately familiar with what's possible within a non-flat curvature quantum theory? Kind Regards Dr Gregory Grochola PS: yes I see there are lots of untrained people posting "theories", I'm well aware of the Scientific Method, you can check my track record as a scholar below, 20 of those papers I wrote myself over a period of 10 years... https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aKhLFkwAAAAJ&hl=en FiSS.pdf

Ok first off spacetime itself isn't a substance or medium. The fabric of spacetime is only used in an analogy for laymen. Secondly this has far too many similarities to an eather theory to possibly ignore. If you had some medium flow the speed of light would not be constant. So the Michelson Morley experiment itself would falsify this theory. Spacecurvature involves the mass density of the standard model of particles. If you remove all SM particles (including virtual particles) you would have zero curvature. Including fluctuations as spacetime itself is just volume with time given dimensionality of length under a geometry basis. The only commonality between DM and DE is the word dark as a placeholder. They have completely different influenced and characteristics. A directional flowing field will not generate the scalar field that describes the cosmological constant. Regardless of how minute the fluctuations are. You would have a vector field of quantum fluctuations and not a scalar field. There are numerous other considerations and corrections to be made in your proposal but let's start with the above.

Isn't that your problem???

OP is quite vague in their concerns and waffling quite a bit between issues more connected to undergrad vs grad situations. There is a focus about getting things done, which may mean different things and priorities for undergrads vs grads vs postdocs vs PIs. What I do read is that OP is ultimately unhappy in their position and thinks about them in structural terms (i.e. departmental issue, Western vs Eastern education system etc.). If that happens, one should ask oneself what are the precise reasons for the unhappiness. The complaints listed above appear to be very diffuse and it may be important for OP to sit down and think more specifically what the issues are. Being unhappy about how things are run is often only be symptom of other issues. One important bit that has not really been mentioned is the relationship with the PI. Ideally a PI is a mix between a boss and mentor, switching between these poles as need be (ideally mostly the latter as much as possible, the former as much as needed). What is needed is a sit-down to discuss expectations goals and develop plans how to reach them. What a student may think is an important next step may not be in the mind of the PI. Is it the only project? Or one of many? If work is self-directed, what are the hurdles? Often students overestimate their ability to work independently and have to be reigned in. This is a time consuming process for the supervisor, but sometimes the only way to ensure that usable results are being produced (or at least allowing the student to graduate in time). Ultimately, the PI has to ensure that the funded project progresses and pays the grads to do so. Unless they are swimming in money, there is only so much one can let a student play before it becomes a drain on the finances or otherwise endangers success of the project. There is a shared interest between PI and student- successful execution of the project helps obtaining further funds and pay for the student. However, there can be disagreements on how to best execute the project. Here, it is relevant to acknowledge that students are still in training and for most it will take a while until they obtain the knowledge to be able to properly evaluate progress and adjust accordingly. Again, if one is unhappy with the PI it is time for a sit down. There, it is important to discuss specifics and not make it personal. It is not your business what lifestyle your supervisor has. Rather think about what you need to achieve, what your common goal with the PI are and how you both can achieve them. But also try to have a broader view on the situation or project and don't have a tunnel view where only your perspective counts.

You wrote, "An optical density of samples with different protein content constituted from 0.0237 to 0.0933." Is this correct? One problem that I see is that if your unknown has a larger absorbance than 0.0933, you will be doing an extrapolation, not an interpolation. I generally filter the Bradford solution the same day as I use it. When I want the highest accuracy, I prepare a standard graph on the same day as the unknown.

Observers not in line with the laser will not see the photons, unless the photons scatter off of something (e.g. dust). The number of photons in the beam is large but not infinite (and can be found knowing the wavelength and power)

I don't think it's so easy to make this divide. There's a quote about polio : “If it was up to the NIH to cure polio through a centrally directed program… You’d have the best iron lung in the world but not a polio vaccine.” Samuel Broder, Former Director, National Cancer Institute The problem here is that he's critiquing government bureaucracy, not socialism, per se. Government management often has a different mindset than the corporate one. In government there is often too much meddling from above - managers making technical decisions based on bean-counting rather than technical ones. The quote rings true to me because there would be a focus on known paths to a solution, and not so much on risk-taking. But the polio vaccine wasn't a capitalist solution. It was funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was a non-profit. A lot of science in the US and elsewhere is funded by the government - not driven by profits. You can only be driven by profits if you think you will have a product that you can sell, and make more money than you invested in the development. You have to make a business case for doing it. Nonprofits and government are not restricted by that. The government also funds business R&D, and helps offset the preliminary costs to develop a product the government deems worthwhile. There are companies that seem content to compete for government research dollars but don't transition to making finished products very often. None of that is capitalism. Seems to me that capitalism involves people giving money to someone else in exchange for a specific product or a service. Socialism (one form of it, anyway) involves giving money to the government so that the government can provide a service (usually not a product) to a group of people, but the people giving the money don't get to pick and choose what service they get for their money. You can pay a private contractor to protect your home, but you pay taxes for police to protect everyone's home. The former is an example of capitalism, the latter of socialism.

Can you provide a link to the "kit"? This sounds like you've just spun down a tube of blood. Plasma, serum? Was an anticoagulant used?

For one thing you keep insisting on 'motion' through the spatial and temporal dimensions. If you take relativity seriously, there is no space, and there is no time; only space-time, as the two cannot be separated. The argument is that you can neither move through time, nor move through space, but you are at ALL locations you occupy in space-time. In a simplified case, as you used, where we consider only two dimensions, displacement horizontally and duration vertically, you exist as a line through space-time. Vertical if you are standing still, with a slope if you undergo a displacement. And if your axis are marked in seconds and kilometers, the slope of this line can never be less than 1/300000. IOW you CANNOT move only in space. In this example, 'now' is a point on the line, and differs for every observer; that point, 'now' is what each of us perceives to be moving, through space-time. I can't really explain the 4dimensional equivalent, but you exist as a volume, 'extruded' through a fourth orthogonal time dimension, and your 'now' is a hypersurface or 'foliation' of the space-time manifold, and again, none are common to differing observers. You are trying to understand 'motion' through time, and inventing all these complexities, much like the 'add-ons' to the Ptolemaic System in its later years before Copernicus replaced it, to try and explain things which are not even required. Take Occam's razor and cut away everything that isn't needed.

I'm somebody who has done his undergrad in the east and has come to the west for grad. I'm questioning the choices made since as far as I can tell some are hard for me to understand for what I envisioned to be better and more established educational systems. I have also gotten mixed messages on how independent one should or should not be. I can and would prefer to be more independent. However, that does not seem possible within the current framework. In fact it makes it feel like a sisyphian task. I'm expected to be more independent but restrictions are placed such that I can't be. Maybe its more an issue with where I am currently specifically rather than the kind of system within this region in general. If you can't handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen. It's probably personal. A lot of students within the department have similar complaints about difficulty in things getting done. I don't think all of them have a poor balance but personally I do believe there are many.