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Fungi have tens of thousands of sexes - theoretically up to 36,000. Humans have an XY chromosomal mating system - meaning there are two sexes. However, these sexes are not binary, nor fixed in a small but significant number of cases. "This article began by asking how frequently members of the human population deviate from a Platonic ideal of sexual di-morphism. A summary of the frequencies of known causes of sexual ambiguity based on Tables 1–7 appears in Table 8. The grand total is 1.728% of live births." There are also both biochemical and genetic causes of sex plasticity in humans - i.e. physiological changes that occur post birth that alter sexually dimorphic hormonal and physical traits. E.g. there are a known suite of loss-of-function mutations that can result in male to female sex reversal in humans, and studies of endocrinological plasticity have shown that the "hardwired" neurological difference between males and females are not as well defined or temporally stable as once thought.

Oh cool. Thanks a lot for that. Interesting, thanks, that will help.

+1 You're the bestest relevance monitor ever.

Plasticity is the property that allows a material to be shaped and deformed by some outside agency. If the new form is temporary, and the material can be re-formed into some other shape, it retains its plasticity and is still plastic. If the shape is retained permanently, it has lost its plasticity and become rigid or flexible or elastic. Elasticity is the property that allows a material to be stretched by some outside agency - can be extended in a single plane, and thus become thinner. But when the force stretching it is removed, it retracts to its original shape. When it has been stretched and stressed beyond the ability to retract, it has lost its elasticity and is no longer elastic. I should think materials commonly referred-to as plastics can be found at any given point in their respective life-cycles in any of their various states of plasticity and/or elasticity. Similarly, a dead rubber band or waist-band is still called an elastic - only it's a name, not a description.

This might be an interesting question to explore, especially in its own thread. Here in this thread, however, it's not terribly relevant, nor does it impact any of the arguments I've made. It's a bit like asking me to explain abiogenesis in an evolution thread. Related, but separate. Thank you for sharing. This too is entirely irrelevant to the actual discussion happening here.

I use 'plastic' in terms of ability to be permanently deformed, and 'elastic' as the ability to reform to the original physical state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_formula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_formula#Implicit_carbon_and_hydrogen_atoms

Justice is an ideology, there is no such thing as one "true" justice. Ordinary folk are chosen so you (ideally) get an objective view from a variety of differing individuals, that as a collective agree upon a course of action which best suits. A collective which aims to make society a safer and better place for themselves and others. What qualifications are required in a jury? The professionals are called upon to give their opinion based on their expertise, this is not required for judgement but rather medical evidence to aid in that judgement. Professionally qualified people can be prone to biases towards what they have been schooled on, rather than what they experience in life. We all suffer mental "illness" some more than others, dependent on your point of view.

This is triggering my OCD. Can we agree that the proper terminology is to "bear" offspring? Anyone can bare offspring; you do this when you give them a bath.

Peer review discussions have proven to be more valuable in improving my research, equations, calculations and solutions than a blog. Time: The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole. "travel through space and time" The definition seems simple enough. I am attempting to look within the rather large error bars for the estimates of the number of black holes in a galaxy. The calculated solutions are within the parameters of the mainstream conclusion. The difference is that the prior required only a single equation, while the latter required a sophisticated computer algorithm. Does not oppose but validates the mainstream picture, however, this offers an alternative solution to mainstream physics. In terms of stellar astrophysics, the estimate numbers are equivalent to an arrow hitting a target bulls-eye. Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole. I am attempting to look within the rather large error bars for the estimates of the number of black holes in a galaxy. There is no discussion requirement to follow external sources, those external sources exist because the burden of proof is mine. However, anyone interested in astrophysics would be depleting themselves of interesting information by not researching available resource materials. "I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned." - Richard Feynman

A similar thing happened to a friend of mine. He was jailed because semen was found on the girl and she had light bruising. Even though they had had sex in his car which was awkward and possibly accounted for the light bruising, which by the way he had bruising himself after knocking his arm and knee also. However she made a convincing case to the court and although he appealed profusely, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison which he served 2.5 of them. It was since discovered that she was notorious for sleeping around and had had sex with many men prior to my friend. Some of which came forward in his defence, though unsuccessful. She admitted to loosing her virginity at 13, she was 15 when she spent the evening with my friend, she had convinced him she was 17, he was 19 at the time. Sadly he died aged 48 from alcohol abuse, after leaving prison he struggled to deal with the stigma and embarrassment. There are many sad cases like this, and I'm sure there will continue to be. Some cases are always going to be complicated, some simple. Either way, protecting society from violent crimes must take priority over anything else. Maybe he did, your example, like mine, is a complicated one that relies on witness statements, the witness's being the 2 participants. Sometimes a good liar gets away with a crime.

The same reasonable mebers would I believe see it as I have....He is of course the vicitm, and the girl totally wrong. But just as obviously if he presented the same facts to the court, he should be given some compassion, and perhaps escape jail. It is in many ways similar to the other case (a real life case again) that I presented re a woman falsely claiming a man who stopped for 2 hrs to help her with her car, had sexually assaulted her. She later confessed that she lied and was rightfully jailed. The vicitm ( the bloke) lost his job, his marriage and spent a couple of weeks in jail. No sympathy for her in my estimate. Here's another, again a reallife case.....https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-17/canberra-woman-jailed-for-false-rape-claim/10723908 A former prison guard who spent months behind bars for a fake rape has told a court how his ex-partner's crime nearly drove him to suicide, changed who he was and "shattered" his faith in the legal system. Sarah-Jane Parkinson, 28, was on Thursday sentenced to more than three years in jail in the ACT Magistrates Court for the false claim made in 2014, in which she went as far as to stage a crime scene. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Again, I believe most reasonable people would certainly know who the true vicitm are in those cases. Nothing really difficult about either. Now you may go on about your "pretend" example, and possibly make some excuse for the young girl. Whether or not their is or isn't an excuse is beside the point. The bloke was the obvious vicitm, although it could be raised that he still should have controlled himself. Sadly, sometimes justice isn't always done. Sometimes the courts do not have all the facts. And sometimes injustices are the outcome, when the victim becomes the vicitm twice over. Over to you and your caveats and/or excuses. You have my answer and reasonings.

The reasonable members of this forum, and in society in general, will most certainly know who the real vicitm is, particularly in the main true to life case, I presented

I haven't taken time to read much of what he wrote. He didn't take the time to discuss what he was doing, instead he just sited sources without explanation for his equations. If he can't take the time to explain what he is doing I am not going to take the time to go through his sources to see why he is doing. [shrug]

Thanks...I do understand that sometimes, these journalists, can go somewhat astray with the language they use and plain old simple errors. Great to see two at least, not missing that error.

We know it wasn’t your error.

Thanks for the correction fellas.

@Sensei From this study: Levin et al. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2114583 I have attached two graphs showing the 50% neutralization titer after Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination as well as an age-separated graph. It shows the decline within 6 months which can correlate to some degree with lower resistance to infections, especially with fast developing infections (such as delta), though as mentioned before, it is only one piece of the puzzle. The dots are the actually measured values, showing quite a range of individual responses.

Oh, you're still sore about my reluctance to 'throw away the key'. I confess to having political leanings toward the Green & Socialist end of the spectrum. The same convictions - formed over a lifetime of watching, reading and learning - that inform my political views also influence my opinions. Opinions are necessarily subjective. Statements of fact, on the other hand, are not. I back those up with citations, statistics, studies and reports from reputable and relevant sources. The emotions you attribute to me are not mine. The 'philosophy' to which you object in this thread is actually Anthropology, a science, though the aspect of it under consideration here was cultural anthropology, which is more akin to the humanities, as it overlaps the disciplines of archeology, history and linguistics. Again, I confess a long-time interest in this field of study, and claim a little bit of amateur knowledge. The origin and development of spiritual, magical and religious belief systems in the past is not even applicable to anything that societies, reasonable or unreasonable (and have quite a few of the latter right now) may implement in the future. The recent past has an immediate impact on present societies; ancient history has an influence on how they formed; prehistory has only the faintest traces in our lifestyles, political and religious organizations, morality and law-making. But it lives on in art, language and spirituality. I'm describing, not subscribing or prescribing.

Not strictly true. We did neutrino spectrometry measurements via momentum reconstruction when I was a postdoc at TRIUMF (in the TRINAT group) back in the 90s and they've continued the work. The neutrinos weren't generated directly in the cyclotron collisions, but we were most definitely at the site.

No I am not conflating issues Charony Your "creationism and intelligent design" remark is deplorable. Youre trying to paint my and professor Kathleen Stocks argument as creationist and intelligent design leaning. Youre not bringing any actual merit to this thread instead trying through a really crude and slimy way to deflect and paint her argument as religious extremism, shame on you.

The level of your blindness which is caused by your bias is only topped by your hypocrisy.

No. You are not perfectly willing to be convinced that youre wrong or mistaken, your stance is predetermined and biased. I am willing to accept that and agree to disagree. I certainly will not launch a witch hunt against you to get you fired, call you a bigott, conspiracy theorist, call your thinking anti vaxxer/climate change denialist or try to put you in my line of thinking with a dozen downvotes. See the difference? While youre convinced that your stance is well ballanced in this thread and that you analised all view points to arrive in your convlusions, I assure you its not the case after seeing what has been happening in this thread. Youre locked in your bubble so tightly and for so long that its no longer the case that you don’t see the light coming in, you forgot that the light even exists. Maybe I should find out who you are, flood your employer with how youre not respecting me and hire people to spray paint your house with „iNow is a biggot, fire iNow!” After all, I want you to respect me and I feel youre not doing a very good job on it.

This whole premise which was introduced by @swansontat the begining of the thread is as much wrong as it is absurd. I genuinely do not know if you both plus @CharonY are so far down the rabbit hole of PC that you've lost your screws already or you are just pretending for the sake of something. It doesn't matter as far as I am concerned as unconscious incompetence is as much incompetent as deliberately bullshiting people into a view (anti vaxers come to mind) No, post menopausal women are not an argumet nor the infertile women are - Women bare children, men don't and thats ok, really it is grotesque that you seem to think its not. You have to be a really special kind of dick to argue that an evolutionarily built in defect or trait of a species is evidence for another evolutionarily built in trait. You're a DICK iNow. You haven't got reprimended for calling me one a few years back so it's only fair I won't be reprimended for calling you one now. You do go straight into confrontation in most your post regarding me so dick is what you get.

It just solidifies my stance towards you when you cherry pick things from my comment while evading the meat. And it's all to make the poster to look like a dick and a moron for future readers while downvoting ad nauseam - thats being a dick. This will work but only in a closed and biased environment - this site. This is what you were supposed to adress: "No, post menopausal women are not an argumet nor the infertile women are - Women bare children, men don't and thats ok, really it is grotesque that you seem to think its not. You have to be a really special kind of dick to argue that an evolutionarily built in defect or trait of a species is evidence for another evolutionarily built in trait" Yes you did. But you also wrote this which is a really dirty and fallacious swing and the subject. Levels of grotesqueness are hitting the stratosphere here, this kind of debate is something that I came in here 6 years ago to counter against the religious and anti scientific crackpots, besides trying to aquire new to me knowledge which I’m getting none from this.

And that category is not a 3rd sex in humans now is it Charony. Just spit it out and say it through the downvotes, the subtle accusations and implications of homophobia, racism, conspiracy theory throughout the previous transgender thread and this one, just please f say it - "Individuals who are e.g. sterile from birth, are intersex or have other deviations from the standard distribution are NOT a 3rd SEX in homosapiens !"

Different does not equal to a 3rd sex. Ofcourse theyre different. Your dishonesty in discourse is amazing.

Into an anomaly, a deviation from the normal distribution within our species, like any non ideology infatuated person would. And no, it doesn't mean I'm transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic, or whatever other phobic your hand waving instead of clapping marble brain thinks.

Ok, I got your schedule. I have already defined a scheme about what a Man and a Woman are, in short: Individual who has an ability to produce male gametes (Spermatozoa) > Male. Individual who has an ability to produce female gametes (Eggs) > Female. Of course, again for exceptions where individuals don't produce gametes or produce both, and I reiterate again, EXCEPTIONS, the Biologist doesn't research a species based on exceptions, furthermore, nor does he do research based on deleterious mutations, Anyway, the your argument was based on a magic to say that sex is a specter, nor am I going to waste my time answering the rest of your messed up dissertation, but allow me to reinforce my idea through the text I'll write now: As more and more people look for themselves as trans, non-binary and are in gender non-compliance, have an impulse towards classifying as obsolete the notion that males and exist as real biological entities. Instead, some argue, we have only varying degrees of “masculinity” and “femininity”. And getting into a deeper idea: Based on this reasoning, the very idea of segregating any space or sport using binary sexual categories is seen as illegitimate, since if no definitive line can be drawn, who can say that a supposed “ male “ isn't it actually a female? Many even claim that we should let people decide for themselves which sex they are, as if that were a matter of personal choice. I noticed two types of arguments here in this OP, already answered in my first text, but I will make a point of detailing it further. Both arguments - that of intersex conditions and that of secondary organs and characters - stem from fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of biological sex, which is related to the distinct type of gametes (sexual cells) that an organism produces. Ser, males are the sex that produces small gametes (sperm) and the necessary large gametes (eggs). There are no intermediate gametes, which is why there is no sexual spectrum. Biological sex in humans is a binary system and therefore there are only two. However, it is crucial to keep in mind that the sex of respondents within a species is not based on the individual's ability to produce certain gametes at any given time. Prepubertal men do not produce spermatozoa, and some adults sterile of both sexes are don't produce gametes due to various infertility problems. Still, it would be incorrect to say that these have no discernible sex, as individual sex corresponds to one of the two distinct types of reproductive anatomy (ie, ovaries or testicle) that develop to produce sperm or eggs. , regardless of past, present or future functionality. In humans, including here transgenders and so-called “non-binary”, which are no exception, this reproductive anatomy is unmistakably male or female in 99.98% of cases. (1). By analogy, we flip a coin to randomize a binary decision because a coin has only two sides: heads and tails. But a coin also has an edge, and at about 1 in 6,000 (0.0166%) (2) thrown (with a nickel) it will fall into that edge. It's practically a the same probability (3) of someone to be born with an intersexual condition. Almost all heads or tails will be heads or tails, and those heads and tails don't come in grades or blends. That's because heads and tails are qualitatively different and mutually exclusive outcomes. The existence of extreme cases does not change this fact. Heads and tails, despite the existence of the border, remain discrete results. Likewise, sexual development outcomes in humans are almost always unmistakably male or female. The development of ovaries versus testicles, and therefore of female and males, are also qualitatively different outcomes which, for the vast majority of humans, are mutually exclusive and unqualified or to varying degrees. Male it's persistent, despite the existence of intersex conditions, continue to be in different categories. The existence of intersex conditions is often taken into account when arguing for the inclusion of trans women in women's sports and other contexts. But transgenderism has absolutely nothing to do with being intersexual. For the vast majority of inidividual claiming trans or non-binary identities, their gender is not an issue. It is the primary sexual organs, not identity, which determines a person's sex. The different male and female developmental trajectories are, themselves, a product of millions of years of natural selection, since secondary traits will contribute to evolutionary fitness in males and second in different ways. Women with narrower hips had more problems giving birth to children with larger head and those therefore with larger hips had an evolutionary advantage in childbirth, of course, humans who remained in the tropics did not acquire wider hips as they had no evolutionary advantage. for that, walking with the hips together allowed a fast locomotion, which may have allowed more distant destinations. This is observed in the difference between sub-Saharan African and African-American women, who in general have a smaller hip than white women, but this is beside the point of what is being discussed, consider this as a curiosity, returning to the topic : That (Big hips) wasn't relevant for men, which is one of the reasons their bodies tend to look different. But that doesn't mean that a person's hips—or any of their characteristic secondary categories, including beards and breasts—defines their sex biologically. These characteristics, although they have evolved due to sex-specific selection pressures, are completely irrelevant when it comes to defining a person's biological sex. Advocates of the sexual spectrum model no doubt meant well when these theories were developed. After all, who wouldn't want an explanation of human biology that validates all of our mutable forms of self-conception and understanding? But over time, it became clear that they created a false theory of biology that distorts the human nature and harms the vulnerable. When you try to achieve equality and justice by distorting reality, inequality and injustice are never eliminated, only reallocated. But anyway, this is my argument basically, I hope I managed to synthesize it well. And one more thing before leaving: If you can prove to me the existence of these gametes I will give up in this debate. That's it, see you later XD

That is very much expected. Preventing infection also prevents death from illness. Your original question was asking for evidence of efficacy of preventing infections, which you have received (repeatedly). And just to prevent a few rounds of arguing semantics I would like to point out some common usages in epi-data: "Infection" commonly refers to all positive tests, regarding of symptom status. Technically it refers specifically to the virus, but for communication with the broader population (e.g. via dashboards) it is sometimes conflated with COVID-19 infection (or similar). While this is technically inaccurate, it is simply a messaging strategy as the population was found to be more familiar with the name for the disease than for the virus. "Asymptomatic" is used if a positive test is found, but the patient does not present symptoms at time of testing. The issue is that folks are typically not tracked over time, so in some cases folks are actually pre-symptomatic (i.e. develop symptoms later in the infection process). Often the status of the patient at testing is not documented at all, so the frequency of asymptomatic cases is usually not well established. Moreover, in several areas testing strategies have switched to testing symptomatic cases only. As such in literature you will find a large range of estimates of symptomatic vs asymptomatic cases. Vaccine efficacy is the ability of the vaccine itself to improve disease outcome. This is generally done in controlled trials and historically this is based on disease presentation (i.e. showing symptoms of the disease). One of the reason is that in many diseases individuals do not spread the disease if they do not present symptoms (often indicating a low viral load). Due to the ability of pre-and asymptomatic spread of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is also monitored, but it is not as easy as tracking of symptoms. Vaccine effectiveness is basically a measure to look how efficacy translates into reality. This is done by capturing data during vaccine rollouts in an observational study. Here, it is important to segment the cohort according to the specific question. I.e. for example look at infected vs non-infected groups and check the vaccination status. Or conversely, segment for vaccination status and check for the variable of interest (e.g. infection rate or hospitalization).

No non-baryionic dark matter effects have been observed either (all experiments failed to show these effects), that doesnt stop scientists and crackheads believe fairy dust is real and makes up 85% of the matter in the universe. Can I at least have the same treatment ? Thanks. So that means that Fritz Zwicky, who invented the term Dark Matter, was uneducated as well, because that gas theory is his not mine ! I find it amusing that scientists who obviously confirmed his theory, by detecting that huge amount of gas he predicted to be the missing or dark matter, are also the ones who infirm it, by inventing a lame excuse like 'but its baryionic matter'- which has no relevance whatsoever, as Zwicky never said it has to be non-baryionic, and it makes no difference if the missing dark matter is baryonic or non-baryionic, or both. They probably just added that part to get funds for countless failed experiments in search of their non-baryonic fairy dust.