Arete

While I'm probably echoing at lot of what's already been said, and the pictures are pretty, they aren't really addressing any of the flaws in your proposal. 1) You need a proof of concept analysis. As in "Increasing global O2 concentration by Δ% will increase O3 by β% - restoring the ozone layer to pre-industrial levels by 20XX." Currently this is lacking. As the ozone layer is replacing itself, and thought to be potentially fully restored by 2070, you need to demonstrate that will actually restore the ozone layer significantly more quickly than it would do so otherwise, otherwise the proposal is sunk before any other analysis is done. 2) You need a proof of efficacy analysis. As in "An acre of algae farm produces Ω oxygen per day. Φ acres of algae farm will produce Ω x Φ oxygen per day. This will increase the global oxygen concentration by β% by 20XX. Natural atmospheric stabilizing forces will be overcome due to X, Y and Z. Currently, you appear to be simply assuming that it will simply work. If you do the math and discover that you'd need to cover the globe 6 times over to have any significant effect and/or other atmospheric forces will simply negate the increases, the idea is sunk. 3) You need a cost estimate. Currently all you are really saying "It won't be expensive/it won't cost as much as you say it will." Cool. break it down for us. Just warning, projects like this can turn out to surprisingly expensive - and for all that you can ascertain from a photograph (which isn't a lot) $20K per acre for what I see doesn't seem unreasonable. For e.g. if you wanted 20 rows of algae per acre, you'd need over 1200m of rope - to have buoy every 10m you'd need over 120. Then you need a boat, fuel, labor costs... do you also need a seaweed nursery? Do you need to fertilize the juvenile colonies? etc etc etc. After you've done analyses A and B, you'll know how many acres you need. You can cost out materials and labor, then estimate maintenance. The cost will allow an assessment of feasibility. 4) You need a geographical analysis to provide suitable areas. Most of the ocean won't be suitable for algae farms, either due to low nutrient concentrations, storm activity, protected status, existing anthropocentric usage, etc. If analyses A and B say you need to cover a 1/4 of the world's oceans in algae farms for a significant effect, and only 1/200 of the ocean is suitable, the idea is sunk. 5) You need a turnover analysis to provide any benefit to greenhouse gas reduction. Seaweeds are colonial organisms - each cell is an individual even in kelp. As such, I would imagine that there is a very high rate of turnover - lots of cells dying and being replaced http://books.google.com/books?id=gl7hw2WLAlcC&pg=PA630&lpg=PA630&dq=algal+turnover&source=bl&ots=6Qp5AILiqF&sig=wCc_kZsC1F4kDmnxR5FsrGwlp8k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KJahU-ybJOO_sQSA-4HABQ&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=algal%20turnover&f=false. This makes algae a poor carbon sequestration tool - remember CO2 from fossil fuels is being released from long term storage, and biomass is short term storage. So unless you are routinely harvesting the seaweed and somehow sequestering the carbon (simply burying it will not work, as it will decay and release CO2) you would not be able to claim any long term/significant impact on global CO2 concentration. Ultimately, I'd be very surprised if the concept could be proved viable and efficacious, which makes of any further limitations somewhat moot. Additionally, your frustration at the critique of others is showing in your response and appears flippant and condescending. No one cares how well educated you think you are, how experienced you are or how eloquent you think may be, the user base here is usually simply looking for you to put up the proof/math behind your ideas. If you can, great, if you can't, you may need to adjust your ideas. Refusal to justify or modify an idea in the face of criticism makes the idea worthless.

The only context I've ever heard the term is in genetic sequences with "sticky ends". Following incision using a restriction enzyme, a sequence can have uneven sequence at the end. Other than that - no idea what your teacher was referring to.

This publication in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23285307 Title is NSFW.

I would not say that technical staff are people who didn't do well at college. Most of the techs I've worked with have either been lab management staff, or on their way to something else (e.g. deciding if they wish to go to grad school). In fact where I am the technical staff get substantially better benefits and salaries than the grad students, and often the postdocs. $35K is a middle of the road postdoc salary - i.e. what someone who has "made it" through a PhD and been retained in science. The truth of the matter is that being a scientist, for most scientists, is not an overly financially rewarding career choice - despite the fact that most people who become scientists are intelligent, driven people who could easily have successful careers in more financially rewarding industries if they wished. I know more than a few people who have left science entirely to pursue a more financially rewarding career. Science is saturated. And most people graduating with STEM degrees will not pursue a career in a STEM field (see figure below). We hear a lot from politicians about the "shortage" of people working in these fields, but the solution of pumping out more graduates into already oversupplied workforces doesn't solve it, and leads to the depression of wages in these fields.

On top of the impracticality, it's replacing itself: http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-features/51619-ozone-layer-is-recovering-says-un

With the liberal use of exclamation points.

As I pointed out way back on page 1, if someone has already explained why a post is incorrect/inappropriate, I can simply neg the poor post and plus the good post, without cluttering a thread with redundant posts. It effectively shows that more than one person disagrees or agrees with a post, without pages of "I also agree/disagree" posts. Also, there seems to be virtually unanimous agreement among the long term members that the rep system is a positive feature which works as intended. Given you joined the forum less than a month ago, why not see how it works for a while rather than presuming to change a community you are a newcomer to? Edit: not to mention that the rep system can save me time. If I see a wall of text post with several neg reps, or by a user with low reputation, it can save me trawling through reams of nonsense. In such a case, neg reps can be a kind of community service - "I've taken the time to read this. I want my ten minutes back. Let this red mark act as a warning to others."

They were in response to, and relevant to the specific statements you made, which I quoted.

No, I understand what you are saying and disagree with it. Last time I was back at my parents, I used a rifle to shoot a kangaroo which had tangled itself in a fence and broken its leg. In the past - particularly whilst doing fieldwork, I've shot animals who have been struck and injured by cars. In those cases, using a rifle to euthanase a suffering animal has been an act of kindness, rather than a bad thing. I've used guns to shoot feral pests. I actually did a project for my MSc where we culled a number of introduced rusa deer in a national park, and used morphological parameters to estimate their abundance and relative impact on the park. I've also shot feral cats, pigs, rabbits and foxes. When I helped my wife out with fieldwork in the Galapagos, we mainly subsisted on beef from feral cattle that the park rangers shot. And these are just a few examples of cases where responsible use of firearms by people other than law enforcement had a positive outcome - I'd go so far as to say that guns are an integral tool for responsible and ethical conservation and land management - both for private and public land, and as such there are people who legitimately use guns going about their daily business. That said they are a tool, I don't see them as an inalienable right, or a legitimate means of self protection. Kind of like a chainsaw....

I see your point regarding assault weapons, however as a general statement about guns, I disagree. I grew up in a semi rural region of a country which doesn't have a constitutionally defined right to bear arms. I was always taught that the gun was a tool like for e.g. a chainsaw - useful in the right circumstances, and incredibly dangerous if mistreated. Both should be stored correctly - i.e. unloaded and away from the ammunition, or in the "off" position away from the fuel can in the case of chainsaw; and used correctly - i.e. correct protective wear, clear are free of obstruction, by person with the proper instruction who isn't under the influence of anything. Given where I came from in regards to guns, having a loaded shotgun by the bed in case someone breaks in seems about on par with keeping an idling chainsaw next to the bed in case a tree falls on the house, and walking around in public with a loaded assault rifle in case you encounter a crazy person seems about as intelligent as carrying around an idling logger's saw just in case a power pole falls down and you need to saw it up.

If reputation points on a forum make someone sad, the peer review process is going to utterly destroy them. Criticism is very much a core component of the scientific method - if someone constantly need their ego stroked, they should probably investigate another field.

Pros: Provides a way to evaluate the community consensus on the quality of posts, and the general quality of the posts made by a given member. Provides a quick way to provide input on a topic without producing redundant posts when another member has already rebutted a poor argument, or given a good explanation. Abuse is controlled by limiting the number of reps a single poster can give, both in general and to a given post. Cons: Posters who frequently post poor quality posts and garner lots of negative reputation points get butthurt. Conclusion: Keep the rep system. It works pretty much as intended on this site.

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Aside from the obvious issue, in how to do you distinguish between the crazed mass murderer who entered the public place with an assault weapon intent on killing you, from the upstanding patriot who just entered a public area with an assault weapon to protect you, I've always found the false dichotomy between "good people with guns" and "bad people with guns" hard to swallow. I mean how many people who have committed murder are an otherwise reasonable person placed in extraordinary circumstances?

1. Non-coding DNA is not synonymous with "junk" DNA. We actually know a significant amount about the functions that non-coding DNA performs, including protection from frameshift mutations, regulatory functions, transcription factor sites, telomeres, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA#Functions_of_noncoding_DNA To say that " Scientists have no idea what 98% of the Human Genome is for." is plainly false. There's plenty of the genome that we don't know what does, but to say that everything non-coding is a mystery is just wrong. 2. Pseudogenes can perform evolutionary functions. For example I worked on Trypanosoma brucei for a while. 40% of the T. brucei genome is made up of pseudogene archives which encode a surface glycoprotein gene. Being non-expressed allows theses gene archives to mutate into novel forms, and about once every 100 clonal generations, the trypanosome will swap out the coding gene for a pseudogene via ectopic recombination, thus presenting the immune system of the host it's infecting with a new surface, and evading the host's immune response. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_variation Thus at least in this organism, pseduogenes perform a critical biological function. It's not inconceivable that for e.g. MHC pseudogenes in humans may play a similar role. 3. Coding genes encode proteins. A single cell is made up of many different proteins. A "tissue" in an organism is usually made up of a number of different cell types. Therefore, to say that genes encode tissues would be somewhat false. Multiple genes encode the proteins which make up each cell, their expression is controlled by other, regulatory genes, and tissues are made up of many such cells. We know which proteins a lot of genes encode, but there's a lot of genes which we don't. These are generally genomically annotated as hypothetical proteins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_protein 4. Scientists say they don't know stuff all the time. Even the example above - "hypothetical protein" implicitly suggests that we think there's a protein encoded by the gene, but there might not be and we sure as hell don't know what it is. Again, I've never even heard another geneticist use the term "junk DNA". That particular term is only really used in pop sci.

I don't necessarily think that it's a "witch-hunt". When one makes arguments as spurious as "Additional deaths will not occur due to increased frequency and severity of heatwaves, because people will take off their jumpers" and repeats it with no evidential support, one should expect some heavy handed criticism. Furthermore, if Tim had actually read the article, it would have spoon fed him a sensible rebuttal - "One study of US cities reported that an assumption of future adaptation, based on using analogue cities, reduced temperature-related deaths by 20–25% compared with no future adaptation." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1469832/ http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/01/08/jech-2013-202449.full#ref-29 So if he had of given that citation, and argued that with a projected 25% reduction in mortality due to adaptation, the real figure was closer to 3,750 deaths per annum and that the figure from the original article may have been inflated - he would have had a valid point. Instead, he chose to make take a stance that the paper was "bollocks" and that no one would die because of his own assertion that people would "take their jumpers off" for which he was rightly criticized.

A heat wave in the UK in 2003 caused approximately 2,000 deaths. To say that people will "open a window and take off the jumper" and therefore there will be no deaths due to an increases in the severity, duration and frequency of heat waves is demonstrably false, and rather ridiculous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave#United_Kingdom http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/teens/case-studies/heatwave http://www.coolgeography.co.uk/9/Risky_Earth/2003_heatwave/2003_heatwave.htm You're ignoring basic facts because they are inconvenient to your point of view - it renders point of view willfully ignorant and therefore trivially dismissable.

Your implication that climate change represents a 1 degree uniform increase in temperature, in every spatial location on every day of the year in order to trivialize it, is a strawman argument. Temperature increases due to climate change will not be uniform, spatially and temporally. Given the quantity of evidence provided directly to you explaining this, repeating that logically fallacious argument ad infinitum amounts to willful ignorance. You have been unable to find one because there is no evidence that the paper is incorrect. The only thing preventing you from accepting it is your own personal incredulity. This leaves your position similar to that of a young earth creationist who is personally incredulous to the Earth being older than 6,000 years, despite clear evidence to the contrary and none in support of their position. Contrary to your statement, here is a peer reviewed paper demonstrating that the liquid volume world's oceans is approximately 1.3324 x 109 Km2. This comprehensively refutes the statement that the ocean is dry. It took me all of 30 seconds to find. http://darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org/bitstream/handle/1912/3862/23-2_charette.pdf?sequence=1

And obviously you don't want it to, so your ignore the fact it violates basic population genetics and evolutionary theory.

Everything you just posted has been thoroughly debunked already in this very thread, multiple times - e.g.

Not to say that being a vegetarian is inherently unhealthy, but the number of vegetarians in the world does nothing to prove or disprove it. 870 million people are chronically malnourished - that doesn't mean it's safe/healthy to not eat enough food.

Apologies - what I meant was calling a poster's reasoning ridiculous/ludicrous/etc can be useful as an appeal to the audience when it's clear that rational discourse has led to a declining discussion. It's unlikely to produce positive results in terms of the OP, but by the time it's employed, rational discussion with the OP has presumably failed. E.g. "Suggesting that unicorns eat garbage proves that it is safe for human consumption is a ridiculous argument, and it doesn't address criticisms a, b and c of your garbage food idea. Can you go back and explain why a, b and c don't apply to your idea, rather than presenting increasingly preposterous arguments for it, please?"

I think it can be useful. For example a poster comes to the forum with a preconceived idea which happens to be based on faulty reasoning or inaccurate evidence. In some cases, when the faulty reasoning/inaccuracies are pointed out, rather than changing their position, the poster will switch to increasingly tenuous arguments to "support" their initial position. In such cases, I think pointing out that the argument is untenable is worthwhile - and example would be this thread: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/79212-my-eureka-moment-a-cure-for-cancer/ Where the poster presented a flawed idea, and many members spent considerable effort courteously explaining the flaws. The OP refused to acknowledge these and adjust his position, and instead starts going down a rabbit hole of making more and more obviously flawed claims. Getting to a point where someone points out "Hey, the argument your presenting here has become ridiculous. Either go back and address the criticisms of your position logically, or give it up." probably won't change many OP's minds, it at least represents an effort to turn a downward spiraling discussion around.

Just an FYI - GAMSAT is the national entry exam for graduate student to get INTO medical school in Australia. Passing GAMSAT doesn't guarantee you will get to practice medicine by a long shot. Even if you get through the exam and the interview, all it does is get you a spot in 1st year med school - which is a long way from being a practicing clinician.

That was my first thought too - I was on my pride and joy Ducati 916. Fortunately, a couple of passers by had the wherewithal to keep me still until the ambulance arrived - potentially saving my life, given I had a broken neck. Unfortunately, the bike was totaled. I was annoyed, I wasn't actually doing anything particularly dumb at the time, despite having gotten away with a lot of thing that were, admittedly with the benefit of hindsight, dumb. I commuted by pushbike all through grad school, I had a couple of incidents, but I would do it again. The motorbike accident really was a bit of a freak incident. The garage was right up on the street, and the car backed out quickly about 10 feet in front of me. Despite having what I thought were pretty good reflexes on the bike, I didn't even have time to process what was happening and brake - I think I hit the car with the throttle still open. Accidents happen. If they had of been around at the time, a leatt brace might have saved me to lot of pain and hospital time.