LuckyR

On 9/16/2024 at 5:34 PM, iNow said:

Unless you believe students in other countries around the planet are magically better at coping with social difficulties than students in the US, then you’re doing nothing but trying to displace the conversation and distract from the actual root cause. 

It’s easier for frustrated white boys in America to get a gun than to get laid, and the consequences of this simple fact are obvious to us all… especially the tens of thousands of students being put into lockdown in schools every year and being forced to do active shooter drills every few weeks starting in kindergarten. 

Best post in the thread. While there are many factors in why school shootings occur, none of them (except getting rid of all guns) will make much of a difference if implemented and a "gun ban" will never occur in the US. So you have the status quo. 

Holding parents responsible will reduce a minority of the events and has broad support. That's the only positive I can detect. 

What makes for automotive excellence goes far beyond the carbon footprint of it's fuel. 

And even the genetic component of psychopathy is likely mostly spontaneous mutations (as opposed to being inherited). Thus cannot be selected out of existence.

Watch Sister Wives on TLC. That's why.

On 5/28/2024 at 3:19 PM, Alfred001 said:

I'm putting this in the biology forum because, if this is a legitimate phenomenon, I imagine the explanation would have something to do with epigenetics.

Now, this is not a scientific observation, but an anecdotal one, however it's one I've heard a number of people make - people in old photos looked older than modern day people do. That is to say, 18-20 year olds of the 1950s and earlier looked way older than 18-20 year olds of today. Again, I don't know whether this is simply an illusion due to cherrypicking of anecdotal evidence or a legitimate phenomenon, but I've heard a number of people make this observation.

Now, I'm sure science hasn't studied this and therefore doesn't have an answer for this, but let's presume that the observation is true to begin with, is there some plausible mechanism, genetic, epigentic or otherwise, that could explain this?

Well the first question is: did people before the 1960s look similar to the way they posed for pictures? Also were the youth in prior eras trying to look older, whereas now everyone wants to look young?

6 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

Most anti-aircraft weapons are based on a lot of luck.
The ratio of bullets fired to bullets that hit is pretty big.
 

Exactly, but more importantly, the targets of the A 10 don't generally warrant AA batteries let alone expensive, high tech autonomous systems. 

On 9/16/2024 at 3:16 AM, John Cuthber said:

Just needs a bigger bullet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

Big bullets exist, but you've got to be able to hit the (moving) target first. Good luck with that. 

5 hours ago, swansont said:

We try to deal in facts, though. Your opinions are not worth much, by themselves 

I completely agree, neither of our (CharonY's and mine) opinions are worth much. And since neither of us made the decisions at the executive level at large pharmaceutical corporations, there are no "facts" available here.

You're free to discard your meds on their expiration date and rebuy new, I'll keep being invested in the Healthcare sector. Let's see who ends up ahead.

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

No, you are just misunderstanding how it works. Remember, manufacturer have to provide empirical data for the shelf life of their products and it doesn't make sense for them to figure out the max shelf life (which could be decades) before putting them to market. These are not randomly chosen, to bost sales. Though the market average is likely calculated to provide the optimum balance for profits.

Remember, if they determine a longer shelf life, they might be wnle to charge more from their customers. Also, you might have missed the fact earlier in this thread that there is acclelerated program to dtermine longer shelf lives, which would run counter to your assumption that manufacturers want to minimize shelf life.

That's one opinion. I and the Department of Defense disagree. 

The Pharma industry's interest in profit maximization, needs no citation, commonly performed through even shadier techniques. 

On 9/7/2024 at 4:41 AM, dimreepr said:

Then you should try sticking vegetation to your clothes and sitting still... 😉

Have you seen a ghillie suit in Real Life? Amazing. 

The A-10 is/was essentially functionally bulletproof. It first flew in 1972.

On 9/13/2024 at 10:30 PM, CharonY said:

I think you are confusing the regulations for food with those for medication. For the latter the manufacturer have to have potency testing done and the expiration date is the minimum guaranteed time where they retain potency. They could remain effective for longer. This has been discussed earlier in this thread, though. And roughly a year back.

We're both right. Yes, the FDA "requires" the manufacturer to provide data to support their experation date, but those chosen dates are up to over 20 years too early, likely to boost profits by encouraging repurchasing over reusing. 

"The best evidence of acceptable potency of the medications beyond their expiration date is provided by the Shelf Life Extension Program (SLEP) undertaken by the FDA for the Department of Defense. The aim of the SLEP program was to reduce medication costs for the military. SLEP has found that 88% of 122 different drugs stored under ideal conditions should have their expiration dates extended more than 1 year, with an average extension of 66 months, and a maximum extension of 278 months.^3"

On 9/29/2023 at 1:44 AM, MissDP said:

I'm probably worrying about nothing but since the pandemic I've been even more worried about germs. I was given a used laptop - the keyboard I sprayed lightly with an alcohol aerosal and then wiped down with antibacterial wipes. I didn't take the keys off, so I'm not confident that the underneath of the keys got cleaned. How long do harmful germs last on a keyboard anyway? I've had it for about 2 months and since I don't really understand microbiology and have only seen the scaremongering in adverts about germs, I'm freaking out. I didn't wait for the alcohol spray to dry either before I wiped, so I'm also freaking out that the two agents mixed and possibly cancelled out each other's ability to sanitise.

More importantly was the laptop factory reset? 

On 9/8/2024 at 2:09 PM, KJW said:

About 30 years ago, I experienced something quite extraordinary: I got glasses to correct my short-sightedness. The new clarity of vision was like being reborn. But everywhere I looked, it was like I was in a depression, with the ground and other horizontal surfaces sloping upward away from me. Then after about six months, I noticed that I was no longer in a depression, the ground and other surfaces were flat again. I didn't notice my sight correcting itself over the time. I had simply forgotten about the distorted vision until I suddenly noticed that the distortion was gone. It's extraordinary because it raises the question of how the brain managed to correct the distorted perception.
 

 

Well it underscores the fact that we see with our brain, not our eyes. My left eye's natural preferred focal length happens to be at infinity whereas my right was about 3 feet so I needed reading glasses, but when I was fitted with regular glasses, the left lens was a blank (since I had perfect distance vision there). The glasses gave me a literal headache. My ophthalmologist explained to me that since the left image was larger than the right one, since corrected images are smaller than uncorrected) my brain was having to reconcile the two, but if I continued to wear them my brain would "learn" to do it and the headaches would go away. 

I never wore them again. 

On 5/31/2023 at 6:39 AM, Riba said:

Hi there folks, I'm supposed to start uni soon, new chapter of life. I don't wanna take much of your time so long story short I'm interested in a research career as a theoretical physicist and until recently was interested in studying astronomy (getting bachelor's degree in it). Now I am rethinking that and I'm starting to believe that I won't learn as much mathematics as I would truly love to during astronomy degree, so I started thinking about doing a bachelor's in mathematics. I am interested if one can do bachelor's in mathematics and then proceed to do master in physics or something like that? The other choice is also physics but I'm not sure about that either... Any advice about this is welcome! 

In my experience not many have the personality to thrive in academia. But if you do, great. Try to attend the most prestigious university in your chosen field because I agree with the previous advice that paid positions are very few and thus any advantage in your application will be important.

Good luck.

12 hours ago, bananaharvester said:

I guess how are you defining PR work? I think that the EU and specific countries within the EU (I.e. Germany) still do science outreach work in various media outlets, perhaps it is less sensational and less about gaining more funding or popularity for research.

It really depends on what the OP means by "best". There's no way that any country has a lock on the transfer of undergraduate curriculum. OTOH certain schools located in certain countries will make it easer to get into Grad school or to be hired by prestigious corporations.

15 hours ago, TheVat said:

Not necessarily.  Dogs, unlike cats, or their ancestors wolves, are not obligate carnivores and are more omnivorous.  Their GI tract will benefit more from roughage and some plant nutrients, so protein levels are just one part of the equation.  

One example is that dogs have the genes that produce amylase. Wolves do not produce amylase, which breaks down starch in the diet; modern dogs do, suggesting an adaptation to process plant-based foods as would be found in a scavenger diet.

While a wolf or a cat can get all it needs from animal muscle meat and organ meats, plants provide dogs with beneficial fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, enzymes and phytonutrients not found in meat.  They help it maintain a gut biome that it needs for optimal nutrition.  So rather than rely on protein content, you should look at the overall balance and type of plant materials in the dog food.  When I was researching this for my dog (RIP), for example, I found that oats, millet and brown rice were better for him, while wheat and corn were best avoided.  Of course, cheap dog foods tend to have a lot of corn and wheat (we used to call it "corn stink").  

True, it's possible to concoct a high protein/low quality dog food. But in the marketplace protein is expensive, plants are (relatively) cheap. So high protein (excluding pea protein) dog foods are generally expensive, boutique and made by companies who are trying to make the best quality food they can. It's a simple way of weeding out the crap brands.

There isn't a firm understanding of who women are attracted to and why without medications, let alone on medications.

There is a robust set of data on the association of sleep deprivation and cardiac arrhythmias (which is how I got out of working nights, back in the day). Of course working nights doesn't necessarily entail sleep deprivation, but it commonly does. The data on working nights is less compelling, but does show negative effects.

In the dog food world, there are micro nutrient requirements (vitamins and minerals) that every dog food must have. Just giving meat isn't going to supply that. However when choosing between dog foods (since all of them meet the micro nutrient requirements), you should choose on the macro nutrients. Basically the higher the protein content (excluding pea protein), the better the food.

It's my understanding that the only product required to have data to back up expiration dates is infant formula. Everything else the manufacturer gets to put whatever date they want. And in my experience there is a financial incentive for the manufacturer to put a date that is much shorter than average. Mostly to have the consumer repurchase rather than reuse, and also (in the case of foodstuffs) to not run the risk that the consumer eats old product and associate suboptimal taste as being the actual quality of the product.

Long story short, with a few exceptions, medications still have efficacy long after the "expiration" date.

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

Thanks, professor. So glad you’re here to pass along these gems of wisdom 

?? 

Maybe you're having a bad day. Wishing you the very best. 

4 hours ago, iNow said:

It’s extremely odd to me that you would use evil as a descriptor given how mere minutes before making this post you said this about that word in another thread:

 

https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/134580-defining-evil/?do=findComment&comment=1274803

 

What do you find extremely odd about using the stipulated terminology of the OP when addressing the OP? Though I stand by my observation that this terminology is both subjective and relative and therefore personal and not universal. 

News flash, personal opinions are the bailiwick of Internet Forums, btw. 

On 4/12/2024 at 5:02 PM, fiveworlds said:

A friend of mine has been taking the progesterone only pill due to having issues with periods but it hasn't helped so the doctor recommended her the contraceptive implant instead. As both are just progesterone delivery devices I was wondering is there a way of monitoring the progesterone levels via PdG testing and a smartphone app while she is taking the pill to determine if maybe a personalised mini Pill dosage adjustment would work instead. Most of what I find online in relation to PdG testing is just about trying to get pregnant should this work in theory?

In a practical sense there is no role for level testing in your friend's case. Since the Pill is being written for symptom improvement, if the symptom is improved to her satisfaction the dosage is "effective" or "correct", regardless of what her serum level might be. Similarly, if she is having side effects she doesn't like, her dosage is "too high", again, regardless of her serum level.

Level testing is valuable in very specific situations such as replacing hormone levels in those with a deficiency, or in preventing a condition so detrimental that you can't tolerate a single episode, such as seizures.

Money is just a tool for keeping score, it isn't intrinsically on the good/evil continuum. Wealth or sums of money at the high end of the scale, is not evil, per sè, but many who possess wealth, acquired it through evil means or participated in an unjust system that those who do poorly under that system would view as evil.