Arete

Oil and gas reserves are by and large found within porous rocks. Extracting the oil/gas does not generally create an underground void. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reservoir

Almost all results will be reported with a statistical confidence interval and associated p value. http://en.wikipedia....idence_interval http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value additionally, experiments are usually replicated a number of times the assure that a consistent result can be obtained in independent runs of the same experiment.

The point is separate manifestations of identically appearing, malignant, uncontrolled cell division (e.g. melanoma) can be caused by two completely unrelated cellular malfunctions. Exposure to the same trigger (e.g. UV radiation) can cause two, completely independent cellular malfunctions (e.g. regulatory malfunction vs nonsynonymous point mutation). While SYMPTOMS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symptom) for these two distinct, independent maladies may be identical and TREATMENT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapy) may be the same, the CURE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cure) will be totally different. I know you're openly stating you're not an expert which is fine - but in order to discuss cancer CURES I think you need to become aware of a few basic definitions and how disease prevention and treatment differ from curing said disease. http://medical-dicti...ease+prevention http://medical-dicti...y.com/treatment http://medical-dicti...ionary.com/cure and how they relate to how cancer works So, back to my original point - when you're discussing a cure for cancer, you're actually talking about millions of cures for millions of different cell level malfunctions which ultimately result in uncontrolled cellular division. Whilst there may be common methods for preventing cancer or treating the symptoms of cancer and both of these are critically important in managing the disease they aren't curing it per se. Now another set of definitions: disease management: http://encyclopedia....nt+%28health%29 disease eradication: http://medical-dicti...com/eradication Because cancer is a malfunction of your own body which can be caused by quite literally millions of environmental, genetic and combinations of environmental and genetic factors, it cannot be eradicated, vaccinated against or controlled in the same sense as a disease caused by a pathogen, like smallpox, influenza and polio. The chances of there being a "cancer free world" or expecting a universal cure are slim to none. What we CAN improve and refine are the management and control of cancer. Many ailments which used to be lethal to humans have become trivial (at least in the developed world) due to effective management and treatment (http://medical-dicti...Disease+Control). So my point is that rather than asking "How do we cure cancer?" and awaiting an extremely unlikely medical "silver bullet" miracle we should be asking "How do we better manage cancer with prevention, detection and treatment methods?"

It is fundamental to scientific endeavor to let the data guide your assumptions, rather than to let your assumptions guide your data. Hence the formation of the hypothesis testing approach - you don't form a hypothesis and keep collecting and cherry picking evidence until you find the specific evidence which supports your a priori position. If the evidence as a whole and your hypothesis are untenable, you reject the hypothesis. Opinion only enters into the equation in the interpretation level - i.e. I could conceivably do a distance-based redundancy analysis on my data x and y and find a significant correlation between them. My colleague could conduct a Mantel test and find no correlation between x and y. If we have differing opinions on the best way to analyze and interpret the data at hand, and thus come to differing conclusions with the same data based on different opinions of the best method of interpretation (until I go and do a simulation study and prove my colleague's method has a high type 2 error rate ).

My (and the comics) point is that no, they aren't. "Cancer" describes a myriad of cellular malfunctions, ranging from regulatory failure, replication failure, translation failures damaged DNA, etc and so on. There is no common "cause" and as such it is extremely likely that there is no common cure.

"cancer" is an overarching term for a whole suite of cell replication malfunctions. As summed up well by PhD comics, what you're actually trying to do is find a million cures for a million disorders which fall under the general definition of what we call "cancer". http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1162

"Inclusive fitness: The expansion of the concept of the fitness of a genotype to include benefits accrued to relatives of an individual since relatives share parts of their genomes." http://groups.molbiosci.northwestern.edu/holmgren/Glossary/Definitions/Def-I/inclusive_fitness.html Click the wiki links.

Prehaps it's because having homosexual individuals in a population is evolutionary advantageous under kin selection and inclusive fitness models and the existence of a percentage of homosexual humans in a given population is perfectly natural/ not a problem? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_fitness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection http://www.news-medical.net/news/20100205/Kin-selection-hypothesis-may-explain-homosexuality-from-an-evolutionary-point-of-view.aspx

Indeed It's always an amusing counter to the "it's not natural" argument. Homophobia on the other hand is only documented in humans... [/can of worms]

Homosexual behavior is documented in over 500 other species. http://en.wikipedia....vior_in_animals

Given the repetition of this ultimatum I'm gathering you don't understand the uncompelling nature of trying to provide definitive answers to questions for which there is no evidence in either direction. Any assertion is a complete speculation, any further discussion of causation is speculation reliant on speculation. If you have evidence to support your own conclusions on the ultimatum you pose it would be great to see it, otherwise what you're presenting us with is a question to which a positive answer requires a blind faith assertion, which you're unlikely to get from a rational/scientific audience. In a scientific context, it's a spurious line of reasoning, devoid of value.

What sort of WGS? Most platforms (Illumina Hiseq, Roche454, PacBio, etc) you're looking at a bare minimum of 10 μg of template - which will dictate the type of collection you use. Options I've used for collecting parastie infected bodily fluids have been FTA cards - but the yield of parasite DNA is usually too low for WGS, but adequate for microarrays. http://www.fishersci...2329_29104_-1_0 We've also used RNAlater. http://www.qiagen.co...bilization.aspx And liquid N2 Dewars.

Given the number of times my data supports neither the test hypothesis or the null hypothesis, but yields a third result outside of the possibilities considered a priori I always find it difficult to accept dichotomous a priori positions. Besides, it's always humbling/exciting when the data comes along and proves that all opposing parties were wrong and the answer is one no one actually considered. e.g. Hypothesis A: "We will find genetic structure concordant with rivers acting as barriers" Hypothesis B: "We will find genetic structure associated with Pleistocene refugia" Null Hypothesis: "The population is panmictic" Actual result: "Genetic structure is completely discordant with current geography and what you thought was one species is actually eight. Sucker." Sometimes I feel like the divide between scientific thinking and theological/metaphysical thinking is that when you actually have/will get real data, you need to accept the very real possibility that all your preconceptions will be totally wrong. There's nothing wrong with it and more often than not it's far more exciting (if considerably more humbling) than simply having your preconceptions supported. As such, having a statement such as "Matter either always existed or it did not. Pick an option." foisted like an ultimatum is very disconnected from my experience in actually making hypotheses and then collecting observations to verify them and it's difficult to reconcile with a premise where an un-thought of alternative isn't accepted as a very real possibility.

Seems fairly straightforward to me - if someone identifies as belonging to the opposite gender to the one they were born as, one might feel out of place in their own body. Reassignment medication and surgery might be extremely important in generating an identity, self esteem and self worth to an individual in such a position. If someone is not asking you to sleep with them, does it matter what gender they identify as or what gender they were born as?

We all did - and found it to be based around a logical fallacy by which the demanded answer was both unequivocally speculative (i.e. not based on any form of verifiable, independent, observable evidence - see Moontanman's video) and restricted to a false set of answers which exclude plausible and unconsidered a priori alternatives. If the basis of your argument is fallacious, it's hard to accept any of the proceedings thereafter. The house is built on sand, to appropriate a biblical analogy.

A 1) The days of every day citizens signing up/being conscripted to fight against imperial, invading forces threatening our nations are, for most western nations, thankfully long gone. Most soldiers I would argue, join the military as a career choice rather than out of an obligation of servitude. http://theblogaboute...n-the-military/ http://enlist.milita...n-the-military/ 2) The current US military does not primarily protect America from invasion. In fact, it carries out far more of its own invasions than most other nations in recent history. Most of these are to protect American economic and sociopolitical interests rather than the actual invasion of the nation itself. The argument that Iraq or Afghanistan were about protecting the nation from decentralized, internationally mobile terrorist groups like Al Queda seems a bit simplistic and naive at least to me. So, I see soldiering as similar to any other career path. You do a job to either earn an employer money or protect an employer's capital. In this case the employer is a nation. Granted it's a dangerous job - but one they are compensated for. I see soldiering in the present day as no more or less admirable than say - oil rig diving, underground mining, etc. People do it to earn money. Its dangerous. The risk is part of the reason it comes with the perks (education, health coverage, travel, etc)/paycheck. It's sad/tragic when the risks culminate in someone's death, regardless of who/what they do. B This: While I understand the need for a country like the US to have a powerful military presence, does the nation really need to spend more than the next 14 military spenders combined? I can't help but think of how much national and global benefit would arise if just one billion of the $707.5 billion the US military will spend in 2012 (http://en.wikipedia....akdown_for_2012) was diverted to the NSF ($7.03 billion budget http://news.sciencem...st-in-2012.html) or NIH ($30.860 billion http://officeofbudge...13_Overview.pdf) instead...

I guess false dichotomy doesn't perfectly encapsulate the type of fallacy at hand, but it does describe the exclusion of answers in a fashion. For e.g: In the couch example I could have no couch, a couch of a color other than red or blue, or my couch could be red and blue, etc. In the initial proposition, matter could have existed in a fashion not currently understood, as to not fall under our formal definition of "existing", or any other number of intermediates or alternative conditions which are not and unable to be considered in the initial premise. The presented conditions both enforce an answer to an unknowable question and excludes possibilities outside of the a priori set of hypotheses.

Agreed. "There was a time point at which matter never existed" is a positive assertion. "There has never been a time point at which matter never existed" is also a positive assertion. Support for a positive assertion requires positive evidence. We have no direct evidence to support either statement. Insisting that one answer positively to one or the other statement introduces a false dichotomy, as no proof exists for either statement. It would be the same as me asking you if my couch is blue or red and insisting that you provide a positive answer.

Sounds like the field you are interested in is functional genomics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_genomics "The term functional genomics is often used broadly to refer to the many possible approaches to understanding the properties and function of the entirety of an organism's genes and gene products."

Mutualisms are likely to, in the main have started as facultative behaviours - i.e. not essential for survival. Examples of this would be like the cleaner shrimp who obtain food by removing parasites from the bodies an mouths of fish http://en.wikipedia..../Cleaner_shrimp - the shrimp can obtain food elsewhere and the fish can live fine with the parasite load, however it is selectively advantageous for them to engage in mutualistic behaviors and so selection favors those individuals predisposed to engage in them. Directional selection can convert a facualtive trait to an obligate trait, as is seen in systems such as termites who rely on their intestinal symbiont to digest the cellulose in wood. http://www.microscop...ll/termite.html It is likely termite ancestors had a broader diet that did not necessitate the digestion of cellulose, but as the faculative mutualism allowed them to, termites with internal symbionts were selectively advantaged, which changed other behavioral traits (e.g. nesting in wood) that relied upon the mutualism until eventually then termite was unable to function in the absence of the symbiont. http://science.howst.../symbiosis2.htm

This argument is and should be offensive to the majority of society. It's suggestive that, rather than any sort of intrinsic humanistic set of moral values the only thing preventing us all from raping and pillaging is fear of reprisal from a higher authority. I don't believe in a deity and I don't steal lollies from babies when left alone with them. It's not because I am scared of reprisal it's because I actually have a set of humanistically determined moral values, independent of any set of societal rules or theistic guidelines: "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930 If you're talking about eugenics, it is indeed a misinterpretation of evolutionary theory used to justify bigotry and worse. I'm sure we can all think of a few examples of religion twisted in a fashion to justify bigotry and worse too... The power of religion - in the sense of organized religion comes from the power of belonging to an influential and powerful group. As a rather strong example, the Catholic church controls its own autonomous nation state and is arguably the richest organization in the world. Religious organizations are applied tax exemptions in many locations. Iran is controlled by a Theocracy, etc and so on. There's undeniable socio-economic and political advantages to being a member of a religion - more so in the past and in certain societies - in which not belonging to a religious organization reduces your fitness up to and including the point at which non-members are removed from the population altogether. Being a member of a powerful organization that actively supports members and in many cases, rejects and persecutes non-members provides a strong evolutionary advantage. In an evolutionary sense, being a member of a religion also offers mate choice. Members of religious organizations explicitly show within group mate preference - as such, being a member offers a pool of potential breeding partners which are otherwise excluded. There's a number of ways in which which belonging to a religion provides an fitness advantage to an individual.

Just in case you missed the edit I put up before. Hard to go past researching great tits in the Swiss alps <pun totally intended>. http://evol.mcmaster.ca/~brian/evoldir/Jobs/UBern.FieldAssist.AvianEvolution

No worries - sounds like you have some useful skills and experience - keep an eye out on evoldir and http://www.conservationjobboard.com/Category/ecology-jobs One other thing to consider - especially in relation to trips to exotic locales is the current, deliberate and strong move away from so called "safari science" in which a team of scientists from a developed nation go into a developing region, collect what they want and leave. In favor of this is the formation of real and ongoing collaborations with local institutions and the use of locals wherever possible. The best chance you have of being involved in exciting field research is to embark on your own!

My PhD work involved fieldwork in the arid and monsoonal tropical regions of Australia, and my postdoc work involves collections in Uganda, Kenya and the DRC. My wife has biannual fieldwork in the Galapagos. General advice - 1) The best part of being a natural scientist is going in the field. Particularly to exotic, off the beaten path locales. There's usually a reasonable smattering of volunteers who are also scientists, so I personally have never had to advertize beyond word of mouth around the department. Sometimes we put up flyers for a more labor/personnel intensive trip, sometimes I see field assistant positions advertized on evoldir. http://evol.mcmaster.ca/evoldir.html Here's a recent one: http://evol.mcmaster.ca/~brian/evoldir/Jobs/UBern.FieldAssist.AvianEvolution 2) Because of this, I wouldn't expect to be paid - or at least paid well. I've never paid a field assistant I didn't have to (think government or tribal regulations...). I 've asked people to dig in 40 pit traps a day in rocky soil, in 40 degree C heat for two weeks straight, for their food/board and transport costs. 3) There's absolutely no room for tourists on a field trip. I will not take a person who's not a) capable of getting me out of my site with a broken leg (i.e. can you drive a 4wd with a manual gearbox off road, are you first aid qualified, can you use a sat phone/HF radio...) b) not fully aware that we will be working from dawn until after dark, every day c) going to be a liability. Hope that helps.

Sorry, given the OP I forgot to explicitly state I meant in the US.