Arete

Unfortunately this is incorrect, as deterioration of marine environments in response to pollution is directly observable. http://www.sciencedi...025326X03005459 http://www.sciencedi...048969794900868 http://www.springerl...083v2650117222/ etc. And the impact of these on humans is directly observable; e.g. http://www.sciencedi...025326X06003705 Fish exposed to radiation display increased mortality as a result (http://www.sciencedi...X03000304#toc12) and the fish left transfer accumulated radiation on to whoever eats them (http://www.osti.gov/...osti_id=4329874). So, research would indicate that the net result of your suggestion would be less fish overall and the remainder becoming carcinogenic when eaten, which would strongly suggest it being a really bad idea. Perhaps the efforts would be better spent in engineering fish which are more productive and resource efficient in aquaculture scenarios?

I disagree with the premise. Any true "opinion of the scientific community" is validated with the experimental approach and peer review and thus best evaluated by analyzing published analyses. That's why scientific consensus has the robust reputation it does. As a biologist who does not study climate change, my personal opinion is just that - a personal opinion, not relevant to "scientific consensus/opinion/debate/whatever term you want to use to characterize expert evaluation". To offer it up as such would be misleading and unethical.

I provided a link to a peer reviewed journal article showing anyone who cared to look EXACTLY what my figures referred to - which is more transparency than any of your posts, given you reference nothing. When evaluating what the "consensus in the scientific community" is regarding an issue - the most obvious place to look is the peer reviewed literature on the subject at hand is, as this is where the scientific data on said issue is going to be, right? If you care to strip away all the arguments by semantics - the underlying suggestion is that people with expert knowledge - whether you describe them as "the scientific community" or something else, are in debate about anthropogenic climate change, when publication by peer review clearly shows that by and large, they are not. I'd counter that suggesting you need to survey scientists who have nothing to do with the issue at all to evaluate expert/scientific consensus on the issue is what is misleading here.

Not quite, by my logic, when evaluating scientific consensus you ask data - not people. Hence you look at published results rather than opinions.

You're right: it's more like 2% and 98% http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.short

A problem I see with your hypothesis is that the presence of extant egg laying mammals (monotremes) and a large number of viviparous reptiles (boas, vipers, Egernia etc) renders egg laying an uninformative character for splitting mammals and reptiles. The placement of the sauropods in Reptilia is based on other morphological characters which are as I understand, pretty extensive.

There's lots of career paths in science; government, private sector, consulting, academia... not all of them necessarily demand a killer transcript. Just to put the MIT thing in perspective - I only just started a postdoc at another well known university not far from MIT and I'm getting at least a couple of unsolicited emails a week from Indian students and graduates seeking PhD and postdoc positions, the professors here get more. Usually my only response is "Let me know if you have your own funding or check the job opportunities page on the University website." That's not to say we don't have Indian lab members - we have two Fulbright Scholars and an NSF frontiers postdoc in our lab from India, but realistically, given the demand for positions from Indian and Chinese students in particular, if you aren't competitive for awards like the Fulbright program, there's not a lot of hope at the top schools due to overwhelming competition. That said if I was looking for a research student I would be willing to overlook a less than stellar transcript if a student had a solid record of showing enthusiasm and volunteering on projects, even more so if they'd managed a publication or two along the way. Given you've said your transcript is poor and you haven't got any experience, I'd be questioning how suitable a student like you would be for a research degree. Getting through a research program requires a lot of commitment, self starting and willingness to put in long hours. If your CV doesn't demonstrate aptitude and passion for it, I'd ask yourself why that is... and if it's what the direction you want to go in address it. Start by asking your professors if there's any research projects you can volunteer on. We recently had an undergraduate volunteer from a community college publish a first author paper and subsequently get into an R1 master's program, even with a few fails on her transcript. It took a 2 summers of her time and a lot of weekends though.

Step 1. If you ever want to publish/patent anything, you will have to demonstrate you collected the plant legally. Dependent on where the plant is and if it is subject to protection, you will need collection permits. Step 2. You will need to demonstrate that the bark of the tree treats the ailment in question and how it works. This means isolating the effective mechanism, proving the concept of how you think it works, then carrying out clinical trails to prove it does work. Step 3. You will need to demonstrate that it is safe according to the regulations of whatever country you eventually wish to sell the drug in. Probably through further clinical trials. Step 4. Patent the drug. Step 5. Manufacture the drug. Step 6. Market and sell it.

Looks like a huntsman spider to me. They used to get into the letterbox where I grew up and we just let them be, we also come across them under tree bark doing herpetological field work in Australia all the time In my experience they are reluctant to attack, however I did get bitten once when I accidentally put my hand down directly on one - the initial bite feels like being jabbed with a thumb tack and the venom is only a mild irritant not much more traumatic than an ant or a mosquito bite - so on the scale of mean bitey things they're pretty low

The hypothetical situation you suggest based upon figures you pulled out of thin air could apply to any country in the world. Rather than be condescending, is it possible for you to suggest how overpopulation is an Australian-centric issue? Otherwise your post appears to be irrelevant to the topic of discussion.

Can you point out a country where a 13 fold increase in population wouldn't place stress on available resources? If not, relevance?

Australia's population is going to increase from 22 million to 300 million in 400 years? Australia's fertility rate is below replacement (1.78) and trending downwards. Growth due to immigration is currently 1.15% pa and also trending downwards. If it were maintained at 1.15% pa. for 400 years, there'd be 2.1 billion people, so where'd 300 million come from?

Some say the republic-monarchy debate is semantic and only hotly contested in nursing homes between people who can actually remember when the governor general wasn't an Australian citizen.

I grew up in Australia - I now work in the US. - Australia has a undeniably questionable human rights history with regards to the indigenous people and now asylum seekers. However, I find it particularly hypocritical when Europeans or North Americans criticize it given the reciprocal human rights histories of say colonial Europe (Australia was a British colony until 1901) or the USA ( smallpox blankets and slavery etc.). - Distances between capital cities are large, population density is very low in both South Australia and Perth, the total state population is approximately 1.3 million and 1 million of those live in the respective capital city of the state. I drove from Adelaide (where I was doing my PhD) and Sydney, (where my parents live) a number of times. Took me one day each way - 1450km. - Universities are by and large, ok. Our "top 8" are the top tier universities and usually have research outputs placing them in the top 100 universities globally. However there is increasing reliance on full fee paying international students to financially carry them which is detrimental to degree quality. Check departments out carefully before committing. - I did my PhD on reptiles. I did fieldwork on reptiles including poisonous ones. I was also a divemaster in the Southern Ocean. I think the figure is something like ~95% of venomous animal bites are inflicted whilst a person is trying to kill or capture the animal. Common sense goes a long way - if you're walking in the bush, wear boots and long pants. Don't stick your feet or hands into places you can't see. Shake your boots out before you put them on. Sometimes people get bitten and an honors student in our dept got taken by a great white 5 years ago doing scuba fieldwork. Driving a car is still considerably more dangerous than the wildlife. - Winter south of the tropic of Capricorn is still winter. Notably, Canberra often sees winter overnight lows below -5 Celsius. Winters are short however, and unfortunately most houses aren't well insulated because most of the year the weather is nice. I've heard students from Europe complain that they've never felt colder in a house than in Australia. - Moving to the US has made me appreciate Australia's lifestyle. Universities are in big cities, which are almost all near idyllic coastline and close to forested areas. At least in the US, good school, nice weather, nice beach and forest don't all come together in same place very often. - Cost of living is higher than the US. Housing is by and large more expensive and so are groceries. However wages are generally higher. Minimum wage for an adult is approx ~$18 usd and an ARC postdoctoral package is $80K - about double what a postdoc earns in the US. if yuo have any specifics I'll do my best to answer them.

1) go to Google scholar, 2) type in "speciation process" 3) click search 4) read papers (there's approx quarter million of them, so probably not all of them). I have a genetics bias, but some of my picks from the current literature providing new evidence for the process of speciation include: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711000024 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711001133 http://www.springerlink.com/content/306486531v05h263/ http://www.springerlink.com/content/uml7526616862072/ The documented empirical, theoretical and logical support for the fact of evolution is copious and easily available. Demanding others to appeal to your incredulity while you sit there deciding what is and isn't "proof" is disingenuous. If you have a genuine interest in what the scientific evidence offers, do some research - the information is all out there.

Negative control lights up - are you saying you have a contamination issue? Diagnosing the source of contamination over an internet forum is like giving haircut over the phone... have you cleaned/autoclaved your pipettes? What's your tip regimen? Who else uses your lab/bench space/reagents? Do you have clean and dirty labs? The only real way to deal with contamination is to eliminate potential sources one by one until you find it unfortunately. Good luck.

I addressed this in my reply to you above. Species diversity is inadequately understood to verify your claim, loss of ecosystem function is incremental and cumulative as you remove species and multiple species performing similar functions buffers against fluctuations in environment. Diversity is not "window dressing". The species problem is particularly acute in prokaryotes, as the biological species concept (Mayr papers) fails to detect independently evolving lineages as reproductive isolation is not present between them. Application of a general lineage concept (De Quieroz Syst. Biol. 2007) allows for the use of secondary characters to distinguish metapopulations and seems a likely way forward for characterizing prokaryote diversity. When it all boils down, there's dozens of species concepts and even more methods of detecting them, which is one of the key reasons for the existence of the taxonomic impediment.

1) I'd deem the question unanswerable due to the lack of data regarding the species diversity in functioning ecosystems. (see http://www.cbd.int/gti for summary and links) 2) As you remove diversity from a system, you incrementally lose function (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00106.x/full) So the question needs to be framed by how many humans you want to support and how effectively. 3) Functional diversity creates resilience to environmental fluctuation (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/277/5330/1300.short). So you'd also need to asses how robust to change you want that ecosystem to be - or define exactly what environmental parameters you expect it to function under. Finally, while the OP has stated that reducing species diversity is desirable (despite the outcomes being demonstratively negative), they haven't explained how. I'd turn the question back around and ask, given the demonstrated benefits, what reason is there for not preserving/maximizing biological diversity?

1) Demonstrable benefits to wolf reintroduction: http://rspb.royalsoc.../1612/995.short 2) Actual risk of being attacked by a wolf: http://en.wikipedia....acks_on_humans. 11 Known attacks on humans in the previous decade. One in a zoo. Your chances of being struck by lightning are considerably better than being killed by a wolf. http://www.lightning...gov/medical.htm The sentence is clear to me - they conducted meta-analysis of the effects of biodiversity loss on various spatial and time scales. I would expect it to be clear to an undergraduate biology student. Similar to all professional publications, scientific journals are written by scientists for scientists and assume a certain level of basic knowledge. They have to in order to convey adequate information in a concise manner. Similarly I would have trouble reading a legal journal. That's not a failure of the journal itself, but a failure of my own basic knowledge of the field.

Just so we're clear - you're rejecting the content of a peer reviewed article in the journal Science because it's written in technical language you find difficult to read?

Taking your previous extrapolation to a "global garden", if your artificial roses do not transpire or photosynthesize, you lose essential ecological functions that support human life. We have real plants/forests/ecosystems that do this and many other essential sevices with zero resource and effort required. You're saying that we should remove these systems and at extremely large expense and effort, replace them with some as yet undetermined artificial alternative, for some as yet undetermined benefit. What I'm saying is you can maximize these free services by simply leaving the system alone, thus improving human quality of life and not unnecessarily expending extremely large quantities of resources which could be used for other purposes. Based on these observations I'm asserting there is NO utilitarian gain from reducing the efficacy or removing ecosystem services and that contrary to your claim, reducing global biodiversity is detrimental to human carrying capacity and quality of life.

At least in Australia, Environmental Science + work experience is a solid start if you're looking towards the consultancy field, however if you're a particularly conservation minded person that means working for mining companies and such. I worked in both landscape restoration and as a zookeeper during my postgraduate research studies with a BSc (Environmental Biology) and a MSc (Conservation Biology) by coursework. It's a tough job market, at least where I was as the supply of graduates outweighs the number of available positions, and workplace experience is essential to stand out from the crowd. I'd find a role you want to work in, see what qualifications and experience they desire and endeavor to get them. At least in my case the way I broke in was by offering to intern for free. Once I proved competent I was offered a job.

a) We rely on naturally functioning ecosystems for life supporting services. (e.g. Daily, 1997. http://books.google....=gbs_navlinks_s) b) Whilst these natural systems function effectively, these services are provided for us effectively free. c) It is costly to replace these services with artificial replacements which are considerably less efficient (e.g. water treatment can be effectively carried out by wetlands http://www.sciencedi...043135496001145). d) Reducing the biodiversity of these naturally occurring systems reduces their resilience to change, their effectiveness and can ultimately cause the service to be no longer provided (e.g http://www.sciencema.../5800/787.short) e) We have no accurate way of determining which, if any organisms are "unnecessary" (Reaka-Kudla, M. L., D. E. Wilson and E. O. Wilson (Eds.) 1997. Biodiversity II. Washington) As such, there are considerably detrimental outcomes from humans as a result of reducing biodiversity. Can you explain how your proposal has positive outcomes which outweigh the negatives? As for your rose garden. Say you spray the bugs but it turns out they were essential for pollination of your roses. What now? Pollinate by hand, when you could have done nothing and had a natural system do it for you?

Firstly, Linnaean classification is an attempt to place categories on a system of diversification which is effectively continuous, so comparing species to elements is apples to oranges. There's a discrepancy between taxonomic description and other methods of quantifying biological diversity such as rapid morphological typing and genetic barcoding. Therefore we can look at certain groups, see that the current taxonomy accounts for X% of the diversity accounted for by screening and extrapolate that the taxonomically described diversity represents a certain percentage of the species of the group. Extrapolating further, you can make a guesstimate at the current level of taxonomically undescribed biota of the earth. It's back of the envelope but the point is that we currently have a poor understanding of the biodiversity of the planet and the ecological function of its constituent species so it's currently not possible to decide which ones we need and do not.

Extrapolation, hence the "~" symbol. Dekan - humans evolved in an environment created by, and populated by other organisms. Our basic survival is entriely dependent on the actions of other organisms. If you wish to optimise the earth for human survival you need to, by definition optimise the function of the naturally occurring systems we rely on. Biodiversity increases the efficacy and resilience of these systems and what you suggest produces a demonstrable negative outcome for the human populous. As for "doing away" with our reliance on these systems - they perform the functions they do many times more efficiently than any artificially devised mechanism, and for free. It's an entirely nonsensical suggestion on all levels. Reducing biodiversity REDUCES the viability of the planet in terms of carrying capacity both temporally and spatially.