CharonY

Ehhhhh...... Wouldn't bet on it. I mean, if what happened is not disqualifying, then nothing is.

Not sure I follow. RuBisco is sensitive to oxygen (or rather, oxygen and CO2 both compete for the binding site) and increasing oxygen levels lower the effectiveness of carbon fixation. Or do you mean their abundance increased in response to oxygenation...?

In addition to scale, the platforms are designed to create positive feedback loops so that users stay engaged. Considering that folks are already biased towards what they assume to be true, this feedback loop can start based on some level of reality. However, with each cycle they can be more and amore outrageous until it becomes and almost impenetrable alternate reality which is not amenable to any sort of discussion anymore. For example, at the beginning there were quite reasonable worries regarding vaccine safety. While clinical data looked good, there are (as we any other vaccine) safety considerations that needed to be looked at. However after a couple of rounds through social media, there are now folks actually believing that vaccines cause infertility and death on a regular basis. Sources are of course social media.

It doesn't help that many provinces have still tied themselves heavily to fossil fuels. At least politically. At least silently they try to diversify a bit away from non-renewables, but it is a very slow process.

Actually buying is legal, but it is just so much more costly to do it properly. Why they went to jail is because instead of official donations they basically bribed their way to fake scores and fabricated athletic profiles. AFAIK Canada does not have a legacy system, but I would not be surprised if the student background plays into admissions.

These are often connected (and is mostly a US thing). From what I have heard the reason for legacy admissions is because some think that it would result in more subsequent donations (kind of a weird alumni allegiance thing). As it happens, this mechanism mostly benefits the wealthy (and predominantly white) folks.

Also legacy admissions.

A) I have not read the link, but I am guessing that the two studies in question are the following: https://zenodo.org/record/6299116#.YhpLBi9h06w https://zenodo.org/record/6291628 Preliminary in this context likely means that it has not been formally peer-reviewed for publication in a journal yet. You can wait until it has been reviewed (at which point it would address potential criticisms from the reviewers) or read it as is. B) I have only skimmed the papers and I recall that I mostly nodded along and did not immediately find anything questionable with it. But perhaps others can take a closer look.

The situation is complicated, and to a large extent it is because the boundary between ROS activities on the cellular level (including in cancer) are often mixed up with dietary antioxidants. It is often not quite clear, for example how much and in which form a dietary supplement reaches a particular tissue and how it might act once there. Studies in beta carotene have shown that once oxidized it might have pro-carcinogenic properties and in radical-rich environments (e.g. where inflamed tissues, lungs) it might increase cancer risk. However, that is actually very difficult to track in-vivo. I think for resveratrol there is some of largest of evidence with regard to anti-oxidative and -inflammatory actions, but hepatoxicity and other issues limit their usefulness. Many studies are cohort-based, i.e. you compare folks taking supplements vs those that don't. But here the issue is that we often only see outcomes and can only speculate on mechanisms. The closest we get to mechanisms are often animal studies, but then there is always the question is how to translate the metabolic differences. I do agree that the data on anti-oxidants is incredibly vague and again is mostly based on cohort outcomes, and especially in humans we have so many variables that we would need huge effect sizes(which we typically do not have) to be certain of a true effect. I am not an expert in this field, and all I can say is that I have not come across a "killer" paper that erased all doubts on effectiveness. Rather, as outlined in OP, we see some papers with positive, some with negative effects (and I am sure a lot of unpublished ones with no effect).

I am still bitter about this. When I read the Watson & Crick paper as an undergrad, I was confused as there was so little (no) data in it. But for a long time I simply assumed that I was just to stupid to understand it properly. Only later, when I wanted to use it for teaching myself (and dabbled a bity with crystallography), I realized that Franklin actually published a paper with the data the way it should have been. It also highlighted the limits of interpretation based on the resolution she obtained. But I never heard about it during my time as a student. It is was kind of a watershed moment for me realizing disparities regarding selling a narrative and following the data in science (and especially for women).

For legal reasons that would be my wife.

I'd say it is adjacent but looks at something else. The RNA world hypothesis (and its many problems) mostly concerns itself with the steps towards the current DNA-protein paradigm. There are relative few concerns about metabolism, as anything remotely complex likely would not have been present. Catalytic properties of RNA are very limited, and require fairly complex RNAs, so folks have looked at other potential precursors of metabolism.

Assuming you actually locked yourself out. I mean, it is a cat, after all.

Actually it depends. There are two competing theories regarding the origin of life. What I have mentioned falls under the autotrophic origin of life, which makes a lot of intuitive sense. However, there is also the heterotrophic theory, which argues that prebiotic activities can result in organic compounds such as simple amino acids could have been consumed by early cell-like organisms. This theory has been buoyed by the discovery of new biosynthetic pathways that might have existed in primordial times.

Photosynthesis definitely came later, though I am not sure whether we got a good idea whether fermentation or anaerobic respiration came first. There is a good reason to believe that respiration of inorganic substrates (i.e. chemolithotrophy) such as metals, sulphates, nitrate etc. are an early strategy to obtain energy. As to OP, plants and animals split over a billion years ago (and all extant animals are basically . And no, if something resembles something else (especially if it is mimicry) they do not suddenly become related. A hairy person is not closer related to a bear than a non-hairy person, for example.

! Moderator Note Similar topics merged.

So here is where you go wrong. You don't call it a donation, but an opportunity.

You can refute the assumption rather easily by not cherry-picking examples. Turtles have longer lifespan than most mammals of equivalent size. Many simpler animals have incredible lifespans (e.g. corals) or are virtually immortal (hydra). A part that is connected to lifespan is metabolic activity, but that does fully correlate either. Moreover, animals with very short lifespans simply do not have enough time to accumulate more biomass, so even theoretically there would be a limit on how big they can get. But even if we limit ourselves to a narrow group of animals, we see exceptions. Bats, for example are tiny, but some species have lifespans beyond 20 years. Considering what you wrote following that start, it does not seem that you are quite clear on what a scientific explanation is. Instead of providing literature that supports your notion you write some new-age inspired random thoughts that are based on nothing but gut feeling perhaps (and again, starting from a wrong premise, to boot).

Moreover, Russia already invaded Ukraine a few times. They annexed Crimea, have an ongoing war in Donbas. Integrating Ukraine into Russia either fully or as a puppet state is part of an overall strategy. NATO membership would put a stop to these ambitions, which ultimately is why the the issue might have escalated. Of course you one might argue that if Ukraine decided to fully join Russia's sphere of influence, then the invasion likely could have been prevented, which is basically just blackmailing on a massive scale. It is rather that Russia put a gun to their head and that stop struggling and do as we want.

KarenBrown has been banned as sockpuppet of another sockpuppet.

I would have to look at the lit again, but I am fairly certain that Thimargarita most species had elaborate internal membrane structures which, including vacuole-like structures. I am fairly certain that the DNA in the earlier detected species was also well localized, and something similar has been observed in another giant bacterium (Epulopiscium ep.). It is quite likely that membrane structures are involved, but they might be difficult to properly visualize (as e.g. TEM or other techniques often are do not preserve those structures well). It is therefore possible that either the newly developed species is more compartmentalized or that the compartments are easier visualized as they are larger. It should also be noted that it is sometime reported that DNA in bacteria are free-floating. This is actually not the case as high-resolution analyses (as well as some indirect evidence) does suggest that bacteria organize their internal organelles to quite some degree and are bound to the membrane in a specific way. This is more obvious in large, elongated cells, but is likely somewhat universal, if underappreciated. Thus larger bacteria with internal membrane segmentation to that degree are certainly rare, but we see the basic principles that might be related to that level of organization in most bacteria. I have to say that sub-cellular anatomy might be one of my weaker areas when it comes to bacteria as I have not been doing these types of projects for quite a long time now, and I am not sure where the current literature is at.

While it is sometimes used in lit as an analogy, I think it is severely misleading for many folks, unless very technically versed in the subject. As it is clear from OP, it may confuse things more than it helps. Edit: crossposted with several others.

Thimargarita have been found in various habitats and are not unique to mangroves. IIRC they were originally isolated from ocean sediments. They have a predominantly anaerobic metabolism using among others hydrogen sulfide as electron donor and nitrate as acceptor. The ability to gain that size is based on at least two important factors. First, they are sessile, so mobility is not an issue as for many other bacteria. The second is that are able to store nutrients which allows them to survive nutrient fluctuations, despite being sessile.

The common ancestor of all humans were black, as that is the population were humanity came from different skin colours developed later after dispersal from Africa. Nationality are a modern construct, so it really does not figure into the biology here.

There is no way to predict how humans will look like or whether we will still exist in 50 million years. Being ugly is likely the least of our worries.