Tridimity

I completely agree with this. I don't think that teachers ought to take full responsibility for these educational failings; the fundamental issues are systematic. Formal qualifications including high school diplomas (in the US) or GCSEs and A-Levels (in the UK) are important determinants of future employment prospects. Teachers obviously appreciate this and the better ones will also understand the deficiencies in the curriculum and in an educational system which teaches children what to remember rather than how to think. However, from the teachers' point of view, if they allocate too much of the very limited teaching time to teaching the Philosophy of Science then their pupils risk failing (absolutely or in relative terms) when it comes exam time. The teacher would therefore be responsible for the lowering of achievement in terms of formal qualifications and the subsequent lowering of employment opportunities for their pupils - this would probably weight heavily on their consciences and so results in them, too, playing along with the broken system. What needs to happen is to uncouple employment prospects from the achievement of qualifications that are grounded in the rote memorisation of current scientific facts - and begin to couple employment prospects with evidence on the part of the pupil that they understand how to think critically and scientifically. If I am successful in my application for the position of Science Teaching Assistant I think I might enquire as to whether it would be possible to allocate some classroom time specifically to teaching the basics of the nature of Science and how to think like a Scientist - even if it is only one lesson, that is better than none at all - and change can be incremental Admittedly, this has nothing to do with gender issues in Science so Mods you might like to move this post elsewhere, I don't know?

I guess this is what is most worrying about capitalism: the transformation of market economies into market societies http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_why_we_shouldn_t_trust_markets_with_our_civic_life.html Michael Sandel articulates it far better than I ever could

Businesses do have to maximise profits, and some businesses do this by any means necessary, although I would not condone this approach. Even taking the obvious humanitarian question out of the picture, it is not in the interest of businesses to make such risky investments and demands of their customers that their customers are unable to pay them back, as in the case above. If capitalism was so successful, we would not have just witnessed the near collapse of the global economy under its reign. As for the historic attempts at radical socialism and communism, as far as I am aware all attempts have been authoritarian - as in the enforced agricultural collectivisation under Stalin which caused the loss of millions of lives - and so in my opinion it does not reflect so much on the relative merits of capitalism versus communism than it does on the relative merits of authoritarianism versus libertarianism. The advantages of capitalism are arguably incentivisation of profit generation and entrepreneurship, and a certain flexibility to respond to changing market forces; the disadvantages are lack of balance between profit generation and human welfare. The advantages of socialism are the intention and action (under mild-moderate socialism) to protect the individual and to protect human welfare; the disadvantages are reduced incentivisation of profit generation and entrepreneurship, and a diminished capacity for flexibility to respond efficiently to changing market forces. The ideal system would therefore mesh the attributes of both systems and while conventional mixed economies have achieved a measure of success, the pain of their failures is still being felt by almost every citizen in the West, with young people's futures being sold to pay for the excesses of the baby boomer generation. A better system, in my opinion, would feature two distinct subsystems operating in parallel - one unrestricted capitalism and one a moderate socialism (stronger than our current so-called 'kind capitalism') with an ability for citizens to move between subsystems come election time, should they so wish. The switch to this system and its maintenance could be achieved peaceably and would retain the aforementioned attributes to a greater or lesser extent (in that profit generation would be a higher priority in the capitalist subsystem, whereas protection of human welfare would be the highest priority in the socialist subsystem).

Mr Rayon, I am not sure if your interest in the possible association between premarital sexual intercourse and the success or otherwise of marriage is purely academic or if you are attempting to decide upon a philosophy for your own life by way of academic scrutiny of available statistics. As other members have pointed out, the necessary experiment in order to prove that premarital sexual intercourse is causally related to some parameter that acts an indicator of the success of marriage (e.g. divorce rates, overall satisfaction scores from both partners) is impossible because there are too many confounding factors. One would need to take two marriages that are identical except for the presence or absence of premarital sexual intercourse, and then measure the appropriate parameter. So, the closest you are ever going to get to a formal answer is a statistical association between premarital sexual intercourse and the marriage outcome - and the survey would need to include participants from every demographic so as to be representative of humanity as a whole. Even ascertaining the happiness levels of partners is difficult - one option is to use a sliding scale ('5' for ecstatic; '1' for distraught) and repeat at various timepoints throughout the marriage - but even this technique fails to reflect the natural flux of emotional states that individuals experience on a daily basis. The origins of morality with regards to heterosexual relations stems from considerations of energy investment in the offspring (gene propagation). The female invests more by way of provision of the egg, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding than does the male. It is therefore in the male's interest (from an evolutionary point of view) to be sexually promiscuous and to conceive as many children as possible; it is in the female's interest to attract a male who will be loyal to her in order to help raise their children. Of course, most people do not phrase their position in this way - they would refer to an all-transcendent love that is at stake. Premarital sexual intercourse is arguably different, here, then - since neither party usually intends on bringing children into the world. I think that premarital sexual intercourse is morally justifiable so long as: mutual consent is given both partners communicate honestly and effectively with regards the nature of their relationship and how deeply they feel towards one another including intentions to marry in future or otherwise safe sexual practices are used (contraception to protect against both STIs and unwanted pregnancy) This is the humanist perspective though and other religions and individuals will disagree with this position. The important point in that you must decide for yourself what you deem to be morally justifiable or otherwise - and remember to include sufficient flexibility since as you grow and develop your moral framework may shift or stay the same - so try not to do anything that you may later regret. Importantly, if you are hoping to marry a particular individual and you know that (s)he has a strong affiliation with a certain religion or viewpoint, then arguably you should act in accordance with this so as not to scupper your chances of being with him/her. Partners may come and go but every day of your life you will have yourself, and will need to live with yourself, and with your own conscience. Do not rush into doing something that is irreversible if there is any doubt in your mind as to whether or not you ought to do it; life is not a race, there will be other opportunities for that later. "The supposition that we have sex in bed again is simply preposterous. Henry, get onto my divorce lawyer, at once!" LMFAO

Hm, I think your proposed system has some workable attributes - criminals (especially the more careless ones) are probably statistically more likely to communicate verbally and in writing in an aggressive/threatening manner when compared with non-offenders. In this sense, there is possibly opportunity to develop sophisticated technologies to predict the users most likely to offend in the future. I'm not sure how the logistics of the programming would work: you could design for the identification of key trigger words, or even trawl through the dictionary and designate words either a benign or a malign status. However, I struggle to see how a programme would be able to interpret the status of a word or phrase in light of the context in which it was used. 'Massive axe' is benign in the context of chopping a particularly tough fruit when a suitable knife is lacking; 'rabbit teddy' is malign if one is planning to smother somebody with it. And the same with verbs - 'killing' a deadly spider before it harms someone is (relatively) benign; 'soothing' a person in order to gain their confidence as a pretext to exploitation is malign. How would the programme manage to interpret context? It seems like an awfully authoritarian and unnecessary step to recommend imprisonment before the individual has committed any crime! It would also lead to a number of type I and II errors: imprisonment of those people who use aggressive/threatening language but who would never act upon it; and, failure to imprison those who do not use aggressive/threatening language but who do go on to commit a serious violent crime. How would you account for this? Also, the system would be 'workable' precisely because it has set rules for identification of potential criminals. Criminals would evade detection, or if you like, develop resistance to the system, by simply refraining from communicating their secret plots in an aggressive/threatening manner. Instead, they might adapt their language such that seemingly benign terms come to represent malign terms. Or, they might just remain silent. Ed: I do not think these powers would be good for Doctors, many of whom already are in the throes of the God complex - and you want to give them another power? Corrupt Doctors might use the power against their patients: pay me off or else I'll send you down boyo.

Thanks EdEarl, yes I would definitely want to make sure that things were sorted before I left at the end of term and that a suitable replacement had been found and hired. It may well be worth considering studying for a Masters part-time... the reason I keep putting it off is it would obliterate the monetary savings I have accumulated over the past few years... which is to say, I suppose, I am risk-averse (i.e. tight!) Thanks I will look into this

Okay, thanks for your advice

Thanks CharonY, At the moment I am not thinking too far ahead (there's really no point, life is too unpredictable), and I don't necessarily expect that I would progress beyond post-doc level, the competition is too strong. However, what I really want to know is: would teaching for a couple of years at Community College level be likely to hinder my chances of returning to research at a Higher Education institute - as a Research Technician or Assistant or Masters or PhD student? My worry is that some recruiters may regard time spent away from the bench as a lack of commitment to scientific research...

Hi all, Hoping that someone on here can provide some career advice, as I really don't know what to do. After graduating with my Bachelors, I have been working as a Research Technician, and now need a new job. What I want to do is to study for a PhD in cancer biology, but this is proving difficult and I do not yet have sufficient savings to self-fund a Masters, so at the moment I am making applications for the positions of PhD, Research Technician, Research Assistant and Science Teaching Assistant - I only included the last option in order to pacify the welfare people. I have been invited for interviews for each of the first three positions and have applications ongoing. The problem is that I have been invited to interview for the position of Higher Level Teaching Assistant at a Community College and don't know whether or not to attend. I do very much like the idea of teaching, of expanding young minds and showing children just how great it is to be involved in Science. However, the pay is not so good (£16,639) and it is a permanent position. I definitely do not want to stay just in teaching forever, although I would like to carry out both teaching and research, so ultimately I would want to return to research and study for a PhD (and possibly a Masters). I do not want to mess the College around - they may not wish to hire someone who will leave after a couple of years. On the one hand, this may be the best opportunity for work that I receive, on the other hand I might be successful if I keep on applying for PhDs. I don't know what to do. Do you think that a period of teaching at this level for a couple of years would harm my chances of returning to research in the Higher Education sector?

Gender imbalance in STEM is fine so long as it reflects a genuine imbalance between genders in terms of subject and/or career preference that is innate or consciously decided upon as a life decision that is personal to the individual - rather than as a result of the real or perceived barriers to career progression for women in general in STEM subjects. I think to survive as a female in Science one has to develop a thick skin - mine is pure leather! If men don't want us women in Science, too bad on them

The substrate for production of the volatile odorant, or the odorant itself, derived from asparagus would need to be transmitted to the baby via the mother's breastmilk. I think this unlikely but it may be possible. There is still uncertainty as to the causal agent, although a number of volatile compounds have been proposed as sources of the perceived odor: Pelchate ML, Bykowski C, Duke FF & Reed DR (2010) Excretion and Perception of a Characteristic Odor in Urine after Asparagus Ingestion: a Psychophysical and Genetic Study. Chem Senses 36(1): 9-17 If the odor bothers you, look into acquiring the SNP within olfactory receptors (rs4481887) in order to ameliorate your capacity to detect the odor - or ask your wife to stop eating asparagus There is some debate as to whether a different type of asparagus, Asparagus racemosus, may promote lactation as a galactagogue - but there does not seem to be much supporting evidence for this claim in the literature - although, more related to your question, volatile organic compounds can be transmitted from mother to baby via the breast milk, so perhaps transmission of the odor-causing compound or its precusrsor is not so unlikely: Wiki ^Mortel M Mehta SD (2013) Systematic Review of the Efficacy of Herbal Galactogogues. Journal of Human Lactation doi:10.1177/0890334413477243 Kim SR, Halden RU & Buckley TJ (2007) Volatile organic compounds in human milk: methods and measurements. Environ Sci Technol 41(5):1662-7

Just in case any members are under the illusion that the major capitalist institutions in our societies are willing to protect us as individual consumers or have any reasonable capacity for empathy with their customers - indeed, the Royal Bank of Scotland (Lloyds, RBS and Barclays were all involved in the present scandal) select against existing or potential employees who display too much empathy with the customer, when selecting staff for their Global Restructuring Group programme: Panorama: Britain's New Banking Scandal http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03dz52t/Panorama_Britains_New_Banking_Scandal/ Features two cases of the mis-selling of complex financial products, 'interest rate swaps'. The crux of the contract is designed such that the product protects customers should the interest rate on their loan increase. However, what is not explained to the customer beforehand, is that in the event that the interest rate drops, the customer must pay huge costs. The fact of having an interest rate swap, on its own, when rates drop, means that the customer is then viewed as riskier and so has to pay even more! The rogue deal has cost one couple running a small/medium-sized nursery business in the region of £100,000, which they can ill afford and may well cost them the survival of their business. Barclays offered the couple an opportunity to buy themselves out of the deal - at the price of £100,000 - knowing and acknowledging to the customer that the customer would be unable to afford this option. The couple are now on medication to treat the clinical depression that the financial abuse by Barclays has inflicted - it is easy to see the impact on the customers' lives and wellbeing, that have been stripped by the bank. In another case, a banker contacted a customer while the customer's attention was diverted as he was driving in his car - and mis-sold to the customer a product worth £4.5 million, the terms were read aloud over the phone! Bank staff could stand to gain bonuses worth double their salary and so, once again, bonus culture facilitated the morally reprehensible transactions. Thirty thousand cases are currently being investigated for mis-selling. The new regulatory body overseeing the banks, the Financial Conduct Authority, is working with the banks on a redress scheme, the terms of which are being kept secret. In a flagrant dismissal of conflict of interest, customers seeking redress are directed to a solicitor who is appointed by the bank! This is the gratitude shown by banks towards the taxpayers who have bailed them out; this is the problem with privatisation; this is the problem with the greed-based capitalist model. They don't care about the human cost resulting from their own actions. They don't care about us!

Mostly true, so long as the staff have the relevant training and skills necessary to achieve their objectives independently. This breaks down when the staff depend, for reasons beyond their own control, on the co-operation of staff from other departments in order to complete a task. For example, in my previous job, completion of a certain task required the oversight of staff from a collaborating department however attempting to get them to agree to the logistics of times to meet and perform the experiment, they would ignore my enquiries. After trying multiple times, I had to refer it to managerial level, who then claimed there had been "miscommunication". I suppose, if you call ignoring all contact 'miscommunication'! On another occasion, I organised the logistics of an experiment that I was carrying out with two other people, asked them to confirm the details. They then agreed among themselves their own time to carry up follow-up work. Not surprisingly, nobody listened to my side of things. Management sides with management. I hate working with people like that. Would have been easier to do the experiment on my own.

Turion - no, I am not saying that I would not work with an arrogant person regardless of whether they were intelligent or not. I'm saying that I would not like to socialise with an arrogant person regardless of their degree of intelligence. By extension, I grant that I also would not like to work with an arrogant person regardless of their degree of intelligence. However, most employees have little/no choice with respect to the person(s) with whom they are expected to work, and usually have to get on with it. Socialising is different - we have much more control over our human environment in social circles - I certainly would prefer to befriend humble rather than arrogant people. I think in most cases, arrogant people do not recognise the attitude that they are espousing. 'Arrogant people' is a bit of a misnomer, too - individuals are not 100% arrogant versus 100% humble in 100% of cases. Typically, their behaviour will vary in accordance with their human environment and with the situational context. If, as Deidre has mentioned, arrogance is indeed a trait that surfaces as a defensive response to a perceived threat, i.e. the person feels threatened by an attribute that they perceive to be lacking in themself (whether the attribute is lacking in fact or not, it is the person's self-perception that is important) and which they identify in one or more of their immediate neighbours - then it would be expected that the person would have a high probability of displaying arrogant behaviours when surrounded by these people. I do not think it is helpful to take a person with self-esteem issues underlying their arrogance and then labelling them as 'arrogant' or as 'an arrogant person'. The person would require sympathy/empathy, kindness and possibly counselling to address the ultimate source of their personal issues - I will admit that it is easier to recommend this course of action than to actually act on it when dealing with an arrogant person who is being irritating.

Frankly I would have liked to have sat with my boss all day

Yum. Coffee. So, the problem with HIV/AIDS can also be considered one of heterogeneity. Any attempt at an effective vaccine against HIV as prophylaxis would require that a highly conserved part of the virus be selected as antigenic epitope. The problem here is that HIV has a high mutation rate and so administration of a vaccine targeting an antigenic epitope on the virus that is subject to mutation would result in destruction of those virus particles expressing the target epitope but preservation of those virus particles that have undergone mutation in this region and so effectively evade the vaccine-induced immune response against the virus. As such, HIV would then rapidly evolve, not only on transmission between humans but even within individual humans (note the parallels here with cancer evolution). It's kind of like an arms race between the virus and the immune system, with the virus constantly shifting the goalposts. There is some interest in targeting (amongst other molecules) GP120, a glycoprotein of molecular weight 120 that is exposed on the surface of the HIV envelope and mediates fusion with the membrane of the host cell. GP120 is evolutionarily highly conserved and so represents a good candidate target. More here: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/070301_hiv and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_vaccines#Clinical_trials_to_date I would add also, as a general point, that progress in any field of medical research tends to be, for the most part, slow and steady. It takes a considerable amount of time to prove with an acceptable degree of certainty that, first of all, a given molecule represents a promising target for intervention; secondly, that there are therapeutic agents capable of interacting specifically with the biological target; thirdly, that any in vitro data are confirmed in animal models; fourthly, that the therapy is safe in humans and has the desired effect and minimal side-effects; finally, that the therapy is sufficiently cost-effective as to be made available by the National Health Service (in the UK) or as part of private healthcare policies (in the US, UK and many other parts of the world). A career scientist is lucky to contribute to or fulfil even one of the aforementioned goals; the really lucky ones see target validation through to the clinic.

I am going to know, once I restore my memory, with rosemary Try a tanning booth

The problem with cancer is a problem of heterogeneity. To begin with, there are various different types of cancer depending on the tissue from which the cancer arises. Then, the same type of cancer will be different for different people because our genomes, proteomes and metabolomes are not identical - and because different people are exposed to different environmental conditions throughout their lifetime - which will affect the nature of the individual's cancer. And then, even within an individual tumour there will be various different clumps of cells as a result of clonal expansion. And then, even within a given clone in a tumour, the individual cells will be different. And remember that all of these levels of differentiation are in constant dynamic flux: over time, individual humans grow and change, their cancer may grow and become invasive/metastatic, or may remain static or even spontaneously regress. These changes will be underpinned by changes in the tumour clones - those with activated potent oncogenes or suppression of key tumour suppressor genes may be selected and so the cancer may evolve; individual cells within the tumour clones may die, survive, differentiate or de-differentiate depending on the signalling pathways operating within the cells. So, this is a taste of the heterogeneity that pervades the cancer problem. Attempting to find a universal cure would therefore be very challenging - I will not say impossible. There is still much about the basic biology of cancer that is unknown, although Weinberg's 'hallmarks of cancer' has arguably given the field a sensible basis on which to expand our knowledge, by uniting the universal features of all cancers - and so preventing the field of cancer biology from stagnating under the weight of its own complexities. Classic chemotherapies are generally highly toxic or cytostatic and are usually delivered systemically so adversely affecting the patient's normal cells and causing side-effects. By comparison with the treatment (cure) of bacterial infections with antibiotics, there is not such a marked difference between normal human versus cancerous human cells as there obviously is between normal human versus bacterial cells. There are some rationally-designed therapeutic agents targeted against key oncoproteins (see, for example, the tyrosine kinase inhibitor Gleevec which has been approved for the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukaemia and certain gastrointestinal stromal tumours). Any differences between normal versus cancer cells (e.g. expression of a cell surface receptor) will usually not be shared by all of the cells in a tumour. Therefore, any rationally- designed treatments targeted against the cell surface receptor will necessarily leave certain tumour cells untouched - once the other tumour cells have died, the remaining (resistant) ones are free to clonally expand and so cause recurrence of the tumour. Combination therapies will hopefully reduce the capacity for cancers to develop resistance to drugs in this manner. I think further work needs to be done on investigating the heterogeneity at all levels (between humans, between cancer types, between tumour clones, and at the single cell level between individual cells within tumour clones) so that we can develop more nuanced therapies, delivery regimes, personalised doses etc. In order to get to this stage of progression biologically and clinically, the supporting technologies (high-throughput genome sequencing, proteomics/mass spec and metabolomics at the single-cell level) need to be developed and to be affordable for high-throughput usage. I should note that drug development is also a very expensive business, costing something like $2 billion to get a new drug to market; perhaps there is room here for improved efficiency. Political lobbying might also have an impact on affordability, by for example diverting funds at the Treasury from one Department or from one section of the Health Department to fund basic and translational research (1.7% and 2.7% of GDP was spent on Science in the UK and US, respectively, in 2011) as well as subsidising cancer drugs (Cameron has recently pledged £400 million to keep the Cancer Drugs Fund running in the UK); the passive option is to wait for drug patents to expire as with Gleevec, the patent protecting the active principle will expire on 4 January 2015 and the patent protecting the beta crystal form of the active principal ingredient will expire on 23 May 2019. We need inspired biologists such as yourself to join the field and hopefully revolutionise our understanding so that efficacious treatments can be brought to the market sooner. I will address your question on HIV/AIDS later, need a coffee

One of the main defining characteristics of arrogance, is that the individual concerned will tend to assume that their opinions and interpretations of facts are 'correct' and/or superior to those of others, even where their initial assumption is flawed. The individual will therefore refrain from seeking the viewpoints of others, as they see no need to do so. Note that this is different to individuals who have an innate disposition or acquired preference for working and being and thinking alone. Some people who display arrogant attitudes do fall into this category, but others are happy to accept and acknowledge their own limitations whilst still preferring to do things their own way, rather than working with others. I guess the latter is about personal responsibility: failing or succeeding on one's own terms - without some measure of this independence, a person's life lacks authenticity. It is possible for an outsider to misconstrue the nature of another person - this effect would reflect more on the capacity for accurate judgment on the part of the observer, rather than on the mental capacity of the other person. Intelligence and arrogance are clearly distinct, in that intelligence is a natural mental capacity, whereas arrogance is an attitude or state of mind. The two factors sometimes overlap but are essentially independent such that a person may be: i. Intelligent and arrogant ii. Intelligent and not arrogant iii. Unintelligent and arrogant iv. Unintelligent and not arrogant Personally, I find that arrogance - or lack thereof - is a greater indicator than intelligence per se of whether or not I will like someone on a personal level. That is, I could more easily get along with people whose personalities are broadly consistent with categories (ii) and (iv) than I could with those who fall within categories (i) and (iii).

Well, I've only just seen the Collateral Murder video, don't know how or why it took so long, but there you go. As shown in 'Wikilieaks: Secrets and Lies', first broadcast at 10pm on Tuesday 29th November 2011 on Channel 4: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/wikileaks-secrets-and-lies/4od @ 05:44 and at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LkYvEZOZs and at the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/07wikileaks.html Two innocent Reuters employees, Namir and Saeed, carrying cameras not weapons, shot by US soldiers from an Apache helicopter in Baghdad. One of the injured men is then seen to be crawling along the curb, before being carried to a van by two rescuers, taking their children to school. Without hesitation, the US soldiers shoot the van multiple times - shooting the children also. Murderers on the street also practice dehumanising techniques and are thoroughly callous. I see no distinction here. Soldier commentary: "Oh yeah look at those dead bastards." "Nice." [...] "I think they just drove over a body." Laughs, "Really?" "Yeah" (@10:33 in the second video) If that's not flippant, I don't know what is.

You absolutely should not be a 'pushover'. However, neither should you attempt to make the female (true for any individual of either gender, actually) truncate the conversation before (s)he is ready to do so (unless the conversation has degenerated into an unpleasant argument, in which case walking away is advisable). Just because you think that a point is clear and that there should be no further disagreements or misunderstandings does not mean that this is necessarily the case for the other person. Ideally in these situations, both parties ought to be assertive. This only works so long as both parties care about one another's feelings. Disclosure is pointless if the person you are talking to does not care about the impact that their behaviour is having on your feelings. Also, above, you are assuming that the female is wrong. 'Wrong' is not an objective judgment except, perhaps, in the case of scientific facts. If you are referring to differences of opinion, then your idea of 'wrong' may not equate to her idea of 'wrong', because you have different moral frameworks and different ways of looking at the same situation.

Too true. Gym members typically work in order to pay their gym membership fees and to pay for the maintenance of their vehicle that is used to travel, among other places, between home, work and the gym. Why not just quit the gym membership and quit the car, walk more (thereby fulfilling the need for exercise) and save money all round? Or... why doesn't the government incentivise exercise by paying citizens to attend the gym, thereby reducing their national health service costs?

Some shows, especially those featuring supernatural beings, go further. E.g. the good guys have an ability to instantly heal their own wounds... pretty useful for getting the characters out of a fix.