Fallen Enigma

Ah I misunderstood this, sorry about that then. I agree but I was talking more about if you were particularly feeling cheap and only wanted to protect the sample (not that I would advise it). To be honest even with experience and facilities places I know of regularly end up with contamination because someone has made a slight mistake and not adhered fully to aseptic techniques.

I think I could have been more clear, the dismissing of ideas in one situation and restating previously noted points another separate situation. I agree that ideas and data need to be critiqued, particularly in the face of interpretation, and I understand people may take that in the wrong way and not to say that is was meant in such a way. One example I am thinking of though is where a PI made a good point of a student's work being misinterpreted, which is fine, everyone is learning. However immediately after this (which I do not understand) a student jumped on the bandwagon as it were and stated the exact same thing as the PI's comment, with no extra clarity or additional information that came off (to me and a few others) as if it was like they were saying I understand what your PI was saying, why don't you. Is this behaviour not demotivational for the primary student in question? With no added advancement in their learning themselves? To put this in a bit more context I am expanding on a conversation I had with a postdoc in which she felt that the environment that had been created wasn't inductive to learning and she felt she couldn't present her data to the research groups. She had also had a few conversations with PhD students that deliberately stopped turning up to group meetings due to this. I am not sure if they fear criticism itself, but from my conversation with her I felt as if it was more the air in which either a criticism was spoken or an irrelevant point was brought into or reiterated with no benefit to the person receiving the comment. Now if such an environment had been created where people weren't even willing to present their work is this not detrimental to science? I know I personally would (and seemingly have) stop benefiting from what some of my colleagues are working on and issues they may have with that work (which I may also face). It's the restating I don't understand, maybe I am missing something, if so can someone fill me in here? Of course this may be due to slightly more than just the few people in question that have created an atmosphere (insecurities etc with the others) but I am basing it on the fact several people have stopped attending (assuming they won't all be insecure etc). Good point to be honest, my jumping to "intellectual snobbery" was just to name something I couldn't quite pin down to be honest. I am not saying science is particularly plagued with it, more just it's the context I am familiar with it. With the analogy put down by Richard Feynman, instead of having tried or read about the combination to the safe, someone is presented with evidence that the combination could be 102030 (in the form of papers), yet they dismiss the idea of it ever possibly being 102030 in the face of that evidence and saying it must be 103230 without any evidence or inclination that it may be so.

So I came across a nice quote of Hemingway in another thread posted by dimreepr: There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self. - Ernest Hemingway This got me thinking about the intellectual snobbery I have seen in science. I quite often have seen and come across people who disregard other peoples ideas without even considering them. I am not talking about absurd ideas, but feasible, genuinely thought out solutions to situations. It also seems to be (when I have seen it) that these same people will prove a point that has no benefit to either the advancement of the conversation or a genuine constructive criticism, seemingly only brushing the ego of stating it. Of course, this is quite a biased view, through my pinpoint telescope lens, I was just wondering if other people (whether in science or not) have come across such behaviour and what they think of it. To get started I would just say that I agree with a healthy competitive environment that can induce motivational pushes when necessary. But I oppose what I have seen because the behaviour of one upping another person (with seeming intent to dishearten) can only be detrimental to most goals in my opinion. In science for example, not only has that person perhaps demotivated a fellow scientist, they have only temporarily bolstered their productivity (maybe), but have possibly permanently (at least long term) damaged relations and possible collaborations (hindering potential science). So have you seen similar behaviour and what do you think about it? ps. I am not talking about disagreements and discussions of different viewpoints (I think this is healthy under most circumstances) EDIT: I have just noticed this is probably more suited for ethics, can it be changed please? Sorry for inconvenience.

Hi there, I am a Biological Science PhD student, I am looking (as always) to expand my knowledge and improve upon the existing body I have built. Particularly I am interested in no one subject alone rather trying to look at the interactions between all. Thanks for having me too!

I believe microarrays also allow you to multiplex samples so you can process multiple analytes. Here's an article on a more detailed comparison: http://www.gracebio.com/blog/immunoassays-protein-arrays-vs-elisa-and-westerns/

I don't know how you're planning to use CRISPR, a genome editing tool, to extract neuron cells. As you're talking about licensing etc I am assuming you are planning to do this of your own accord. One of your biggest problems bar getting the cells on a suitable medium (bearing in mind they can't themselves undergo division), would be contamination. You would need to ensure that bacteria, fungi and other opportunists, that would be happy to contaminate your media don't make their way in to it. For this you would need a lot space, experience and equipment (as a result money), one of your most important tools would be at least a Class I cabinet, if you're feeling particularly cheap. Unfortunately the commitments of such a project make it virtually impossible to do outside of an institution. As for licensing etc I am not sure, it depends on where you are, but I can't see you needing a license or it being illegal.

I haven't assigned an arbitrary upper limit, just a burning candle, if it happens to be a short one, long one or is extinguished early is not for me to decide, just fate really. I am also presuming that this backup system has a never ending loop within it where I can backup, die and re-download an infinite number of times. In which case I would be in the same position as with the immortality as I would just download the next day as a back up again etc. If I was hit by the truck though, I would rather that be it, instead of getting up the next day for my original reasons of immortality not being for me. Yet, mentioning the truck reminded me of the film Groundhog Day and made me laugh. That being said would people be happy with an eternal life if you were stuck in the same repeating day yet you remembered and had freedom within that day?

Hi Trurl, Do you yourself want to know what a string of genetic code will turn into? Or do you want to know the process by which cells do it? If you yourself want to do it you can look at codons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_codon_table) when you get to the mRNA stage, before this stage though (DNA and pre-mRNA) you can still have introns present, which can be functionally important, but redundant when trying to determine the end product of your genetic code as they're spliced out. To be honest this may be difficult as the redundancy of codons means several codons can lead to one amino acid. Yet this is precisely how ribosomes transcribe and translate the information in nucleic acids. Transcribing essentially gets the small part of information necessary (from the huge DNA molecule) out of the nucleus and allows it to be translated which allows ribosomes on the rough endoplasmic reticulum to utilise tRNA molecules (which have amino acids attached to them) and string them along next to one another in order to produce the primary structure of the protein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_RNA). Note these methods are extremely sensitive to shifts in point shifts etc where the code will be read one base off so on so forth. Can God make a function that can't be reversed? I am no mathematician, but regardless of whether or not a god has or hasn't done it would the translation step be non-reversible? It seems the paper you site states around 66% can be roughly recovered (if I read it right), but 33% of the information is still unknown. I don't know how far reversed you would consider a reversible code. Hope this helps.

I personally wouldn't want to live forever, you would have to watch your loved ones disappear while you live on. Yes you may move on, but I think I would eventually give up with human contact after a bunch of generations had come and gone. That's one reason for me. Another is the flame of life, if you had eternity to do everything quite a few things would lose their special quality that makes them unique "Halley's comet? No thanks, I will catch the next one", sort of thing. ecoli, I don't want to live forever, not to say I don't want to live. I want to experience life while I have it, go through what I have been given while I can and then be happy knowing my atoms will merge their ways into all sorts of organisms and minerals etc C; (yes I am aware it's kind of happening on a small scale now). Would be difficult to express this more elegantly/succinctly in my opinion. P.S. Are we talking about immortality here (In the sense that you literally can't die) or an organism without any senescence? (Not counting Turritopsis dohrnii cycles) Hence you would have the potential to live forever? Based on being a true immortal who would want to live forever? Let's say you can't die but can feel pain. Eventually you will get into a situation where you either run out of food or possibly experience the pain of a global event such as an ice age or a super-volcano like Caldera under Yellowstone eventually exploding. Would you not feel a bit like Prometheus or Ixion? Also to answer the OP: Heaven - Would be interesting, I would love to see if it got overpopulated, but would still like to die. Hell - Toasty but eventually I can see myself dehydrating and just sitting there in pain C; Still no to both