CharonY

The relevant bit here is that most of the description in OP suggest that something does not work the way it should (or at least the way it works in most folks). While most researchers would think that perhaps there is something wrong (anesthesia resistance can be a big issue in some folks and in addition to drug abuse has been associated with certain neurological conditions). Now there is some interest in finding out why that is the case (IIRC one mutation in a gene coding for a channel protein was implicated in local anesthetic resistance). However, the fun bit is that OP seems to think that these are desirable things. In most cases you want to similar to most others simply because then treatments and medication are more likely to work on you. That is in fact quite a bit of a problem as folks with rare conditions may be at higher risk as physicians may simply not be aware of these conditions and how they affect treatment. Somewhat related, a similar issue is there because many study cohorts have been historically white and male. Which is why there has been a push in having more diversity in study cohorts, if possible. There is no general term for these types of studies, it really depends on the specific question. For example, assuming that you have tolerance to a certain drug and this trait is found within your family, one might be interested in exome sequencing to see if there is a genetic component. If you have a certain condition that might result in some physiological alterations, one might be interested if those traits are also found in folks suffering from similar conditions and so on. I.e. you design your study around a highly specific question. That is actually a typical effect of caffeine withdrawal, which in turn suggest that you are in fact reacting to caffeine. My guess there is that the acid is not sufficiently concentrated to do immediate burn damage. However, please do not test that out. It is not worth it for an internet discussion.

There are a couple of known conditions that result in abnormal pain perception. It is indeed something that one should consult with a physician, especially if serious cuts are not being noticed. Caffeine tolerance on the other hand is not terribly unusual. During my postdoc times I had easily two litres of coffee a day quite frequently and there was no noticeable effect. However, I tried being on decaff for 1-2 years and after that I found that coffee actually had some effects such as on heart rate. Though that vanished quickly again. Similarly, there are different conditions and issues that can cause tolerance to certain drugs, including anesthasia. Alcohol, amphetamines, opiates as well as high levels of caffeine can alter how those drugs work, for example. Why would acid help with grease? Diluted sulphuric acid often does not immediately result in noticeable damages (especially if skin is protected by a layer of grease a bit). Also, if the skin is also already in rough shape, it may become less sensitive and minor burns may not be immediately noticeable. Folks who routinely work with damaging agents (e.g. aggressive cleaning solutions) with insufficient protection often have badly cracked and damaged skin with little sensation left. However, concentrated suphuric acid will rather quickly lead to burns, and there is no way that healthy tissue would not get damaged.

I think staggering is the right term. Accountability is definitively a huge issue.

Bad genetics generally refers to the practice of invoking genetics in an uninformed way to make silly demeaning claims about someone.

Another from Wuhan indicated that about 45% of hospitalized patients had at least one symptoms after a year. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2784558

Heh, you mean Kim Campbell who was PM for about half a year? Yeah I guess folks to a careful dip into that concept but probably it was a bit much. Baby steps, I guess.

A new cohort study with over 200k patients found a rather high incidence of long-COVID symptoms: PLOS Medicine: https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003773

That part is apparently from the methods section. I.e. while the calculations all indicate the same total weight of trehalose are consistent, the sugar was added as solution rather than as solid.

I think it is less annoyance but rather the desire to indicate existing knowledge that is prevalent here. Population size for example is something that pops up every single time in these threads and every time the solution is fairly obvious: educate, promote gender equality and improve standard of living. Those parameters have the strongest association with lower birth size. And as also mentioned every time, short of killing folks there is no way to actively reduce the population size (often a link to one of Rosling's lectures is added here, which illustrates the issue).

Technically one wouldn't convert the volume into weight that way as the density of a any solution would differ slightly from pure water. However, as I presume the recipe is calling for 2% solution (w/v), i.e. weight/volume, the calculation would end up to the same. It is just generally not done that way to avoid errors if other notations are used. So in this case a 2% (w/v) solution of trehalose would be 20g trehalose per litre or 20 mg/mL. 2.4-3 mL of this solution would therefore contain 48-60 mg trehalose (the difference is due to an error in doubling 1.2).

I mean, there is a reason why quite a few diseases that were close to be eradicated making a comeback. I am wondering whether the increasing politicization of vaccines may lead to even accelerated spread of this diseases in the future.

The big groups, yes. But there are also holdouts among certain marginalized groups for a variety of reasons. Those folks tend not to join in those demonstrations, though.

There are different flavours of antivaxxers, though the international Trump-followers are a specific kind of xenophobes. Saskatchewan and I think Manitoba are in the same boat. There were also efforts to cut contact tracing, testing and isolation requirements. I.e. if we don't know that we are screwed no one can hold us accountable, right? Health officials have been at odds with the respective governments, with is always a bad sign. Not to mention how burned out the folks on the ground are, and then folks protest near or even in front of hospitals. Even without the frankly insane pay cuts, who would want to continue working under these conditions?

Wouldn't that be an incestuous relationship, anyway?

Seem a bit disoriented (spatially and temporally) with all the re-elect Trump banners and such.

I am not sure whether morality or altruism plays comes into play as such. The financial system is set up a certain way and the players, regardless of individual moral standards need to work within this system to be successful. Assuming that the system punishes altruistic behaviour, a moral player would either need to underperform, squash their moral qualms or quite the game altogether. I.e. if we want to change the outcome I think it makes little sense to couple it to actions of the individuals as such (including CEOs) but rather the system has to see changes.

Or anywhere, really. Wealth inequality in OECD countries has been increasing over the years and it seems that in most countries social mobility is either stalled or decreasing. And you are right, economists have pretty much shown that trickle-down economics does not work. Not it does not work enough, it does not work. Corporations tend to increase shareholder dividends, for example, which retain the funds at the top. With regards to UBI, there are a lot of different flavours, but I think research is still ongoing which variant (e.g. negative income tax, vs income-independent benefits) might benefit low-income more.

I think that is a big part of it. Fundamentally, we are utterly unprepared in dealing with social media. Or rather, our psychology is not well suited to deal with it. Fundamentally the issue at hand is one of trust. Few folks have the expertise and time to evaluate each claim they encounter and there is at best a superficial, intuitive evaluation of the facts. Moreover, we are prone to trust folks that we know or feel that we know more. In societies without with no mass media that makes a lot of sense. However, eventually mass media created celebrities. By seeing folks on a regular basis, even if one a screen, it creates the illusion of familiarity and this is why celebrities have a disproportionate influence on public opinion (see their role in promoting anti vaccination sentiments over the last decades). Now with social media, that effect further extends to random folks, youtubers and so on. Those folks are more trusted than individuals with actual expertise, in part because the latter are busy working in their field of expertise than using psychological tricks to make folks like (and subscribe) them. You can see that effect in classes now. College students increasingly cite random youtubers as sources of information, which I find rather worrying (and I used to be worried about wikipedia in the past). So the combination of a big network of trust without expertise and mistrust of gatekeepers seems to create a system where outrageous misinformation can speed happily along, leaving fact checking and similar slow measures in the dust. And I will also say that this is not an US-specific problem.

Also it seems to me that OP sees SF in a very narrow context. The genre has almost always been more a commentary on society and its development rather than the application of science to a literary genres. In fact, more often than not, the "science" part is just the vehicle to make a point (similar to the purpose of, say, monsters in fantasy). There are of course notable exceptions where the science part is heavy and sometimes is considered under the genre of "hard" SF. As a whole it is but a small slice of the overall SF picture. As such one could expand the question to ask whether fiction or even literature is bad for society.

! Moderator Note Similar topics merged to focus discussions.

It is similar to a decentralized religious practice. There are certain tenets you have to adhere (e.g. only use approved media). But other than organized religion, the belief structure is meme based and can stuff can be added ad libitum. You cannot convince me that the 5g/microchip/children sacrifice things did not start as a joke.

Well, I wonder then how reliable remote systems are. After all, presumably airplanes can also be controlled remotely and much of the flight is automated, anyway. In either case we presumably do not have real safety data to actually figure out whether having a manual backup (and hence a need for a pilot) would improve safety. As the flights are presumably very short and few in numbers it might not make much of a difference, but I think at this point one can only rely on massive extrapolation to form an opinion.

! Moderator Note OP has been flagged as a spam account. Thread locked.

Fundamentally algae as a term refers to a rather broad range of diverse groups of organisms and while in common use algae can refer to marine plant species (e.g. seaweed), depending on the field they can refer to different things. Especially in the ecological field cyanobacteria are rolled together with algae, presumably because in their viewpoint they fulfil similar roles in the system, I guess. Likewise, when folks talk about harmful algal blooms it can be cyanobacteria, but it can also involve other photosynthetic species, such as dinoflagellates (e.g. Alexandrium sp.) which are eukaryotes, but not plants.

There has been quite a body of work looking into increasing photosynthesis rates in cyanobacteria, for a range of applications, perhaps most commonly biofuel generation. There are a few issues though. Cyanobacterial overgrowth (blooms) due to fertilization can severely disrupt ecosystems and quite a few cyanbacteria produce toxins. The issue here is that many marine and freshwater systems are warming and deoxygenating due to climate change. Those in which also algal blooms occur that damage the systems beyond individual actions. Note that algae do not necessarily counter deoxygenation. If the system is heterotrophic, i.e. the biomass is being consumed it will have high rates of respiration which can result in further net deoxygenation. That being said, there have been speculations on whether on specific conditions algae could be used as net carbon sinks. So while it cannot be entirely dismissed there is the issue that such an approach can severely disrupt ecosystems.