CharonY

While I think that is a step in the right direction, I doubt it would have a lot of impact for a range of reasons. In no particular order: - Information and entertainment have been mixed to such a degree that most folks apparently do not distinguish them anymore. Fox News has a small news segment and a huge opinion making machinery, for example. The latter has a much higher impact on public opinion than the former. One could say the same about talk shows and other entertainment segments that have become alternatives to news. - Media consumption has changed to a degree that a significant proportion of the population does not care where information comes from, as long as it is something that they feel strongly about. Case in point, stupid conspiracy theories are spreading like wildfire, and there is not a single serious news source behind it. Just random folks sharing it and to many this is enough to make it reality. - Studies have shown that lies created to evoke emotions (typically outrage) spread much faster through social media than anything informative. Again, I think the distinction between trusted and fake or entertainment sources is of no relevance for many folks and I suspect it will get worse. People now grow up in constant communication with folks that may not even be real persons. Maybe this is an old man yelling at cloud situation, but in class I see an increasing proportion of students that are outrageously misinformed. While many (if not most) can still be educated I feel that it is getting harder and harder. The signal to noise ratio has been so bad, that you have to fight noise almost constantly now. - Connected to that, folks have grown more skeptical of experts of any sorts, but at the same time random folks with no expertise are declared experts, which further erodes trust. This can be expanded to traditional news outlets, which are not trusted by a significant segment of the population. It is like the Murdoch empire on steroids but more nebulous.

Perhaps not that surprising, but there are reports of the administration interfering with other CDC reports: These reports are important tools to gauge public health and while it is not clear what or whether something might have been altered due to governmental pressure, it is worrying interference with science. That is not to say that this novel, other areas such as environmental studies have been targeted in the past, not only in the US but e.g. also in Canada (Harper) and other countries. Nonetheless, trying to influence health authorities during an outbreak is, I think, unprecedented.

I am not sure whether googling is the best strategy. I am not sure about the curation algorithm on google, but other services such as facebook curate news based on ones search and browsing histories. In many ways it is necessary to dig quite a bit to get accurate information. But I do recognize that not everyone has the time and/or ability to go all the way back to primary literature.

It was a dig on the assumption that things will be better after a second Trump presidency. But to be fair, even if Biden wins, I am not sure how much is ultimately salvagable. Social media for example has succeeded in creating custom-made alternative realities for folks, ultimately disruption any discourse one might have. If we cannot agree on what is real, how can we agree on how to deal with issues? I fear that in the long run folks will be able to fully manipulate the way we consume and communicate information to such a degree that democracy becomes nothing more than a meme. And right now we see that certain actors such as China and Russia have been very successful at this and especially right-wing political groups are gleefully embracing it.

Why? You think things are going to be better under Don Jr,?

It is a possibility at least to reduce likelihood. What happens though is that at best one delays the next pandemic. After all, folks are still about, and while reducing or even eradicating cattle farming could reduce huge pool where viruses can mix, there are other sources, including humans as possible sources of new outbreaks. In the end, the only way to fully eradicate risk of pandemics is by eradicating infectious diseases altogether which, for the most part will be impossible. But again, outbreak detection and containment can reduce the risk of a pandemic markedly and arguably would be easier to implement. Yet as we have seen after SARS and H1N1 the lack of a long-term memory in folks seems to be the biggest risk factor.

Exactly, these are all potential vectors. I have not read the book, but ongoing research pretty much makes it highly unlikely that pangolins are the latest source (there may have been admixture but the evidence is low). There is no study able to unequivocally pin the source and as such any specific claims are either speculations or flat out wrong (up until researchers actually find compelling evidence that is).

A) I think zoonotic diseases are about 70% of emergent diseases, not of all B) The source for SARS-CoV-2 is still unknown, better not to spread wild rumours as facts C) Unless you want to ban all animal farms and limit folks entering animal habitats and eradicate all potential vectors, there is no way to prevent infections occuring. What we need to focus on is to identify, trace and limit transmissions. The issue is we keep forgetting that after a few years of no major pandemics (or if the happen far away).

Without reading the rest, no generally not. There is a large body of research on it, which is outside me realm of expertise. However, at least since the 2000s folks have fond that spatial and visual memory can be disrupted by differently using different cues. These suggest that both forms of memory are processed separately. I am not sure whether since then folks have identified the neurological foundation for this separation.

You confuse "well known" with stereotypes. While there are obviously partner preferences, they are strongly influenced by a large variety of cultural norms. There is a large body of literature suggesting that gender stereotypes and perceptions of masculinity (and femininity) vary between populations and connected to that, traits that are associated with masculinity as well as attractiveness. Interestingly, as a whole secondary sex characteristics almost persistently play second fiddle to other traits. There is also a marked difference in selection for long-term vs short-term partners. At least one study found that in societies with high masculinity indices, for example, husbands were preferred when they were wealthy, healthy and understanding. Boyfriends were preferred to have more feminine traits, such as affection and intelligence. In more feminine cultures these differences vanish (see works from Hofstede et al, but even there it is argued that he is actually overgeneralizing things- the individual differences even among a culture are much wider). Other studies suggest have shown that partner preferences are built on a wide range of parameters and one of the strongest predictors for strong masculine features (especially among gay folks) happens to be high scores in sexism queries. In other words, it is again a topic starting off from badly informed assumptions, and then rapidly extrapolating to further, even less founded questions. Edit: so the provided quotes actually give some decent context. Most importantly it shows that even if we focus on preferences on a single characteristic (and thereby eliminating all the other, potentially more important factors of partner selection), it shows that preferences vary significantly. I.e. even focusing on a narrow measure the assumption in OP does not hold true.

It is not that bad (yet). In phase III a lot of folks are treated so it increases the risk that someone has an adverse reaction which might or might not be related to the treatment (e.g. an undiagnosed diseases). However as part of phaseIII it is necessary to make sure that they are indeed unrelated to the vaccine before they can continue.

The issue with a wildly speculative mind is that basically everything will reinforce the assumptions. This is how conspiracy theories thrive, evidence against it are evidence of the conspiracy itself and evidence for it is self-evident. The speculations are untethered from fact and reality which basically makes it impossible to address it.

On the other hand, giving them a platform legitimizes them. Lose-lose.

! Moderator Note In order to avoid the need for another split I suggest to keep on-topic or start a new topic on heating systems.

T'is a silly take. Words for scientific concepts were developed after the discovery of the concepts. Sometimes existing words are used, but the recast in new contexts. Heck many words used in scientific language nowadays are derived from Latin and Greek words. Often, the words have a massive change in their meaning from their origins or their original use. In other words, due to the flexibility of language itself, it is unreasonable to assume that it constrains the development of new meaning. In essence, that argument is a strong form of Linguistic determinism, which has generally been discredit. There is a potential impact of language in the neurolinguistic sense, but the impact is far more subtle.

The argument is not limited to monetary value, though it may be a convenient way to assign value in a specific context. Value is not an intrinsic property of an object, it is something that is assigned by someone.

! Moderator Note We do not dispense medical advice and it is generally not a good idea to seek such advice on social media. The first step is to ask a medical specialist not a random person on the internet.

That depends a bit on the nature of the data and I am not entirely sure whether there is an universal answer to that. If migration events are rare, even in the reference sample, for instance your data will be dominated by non-migration events. If you only count the migrated cells and ignore the non-migration events, you would amplify the signal. However, it would also amplify potential skewedness in your data, for example. For the most part I would go for percentages as in many assays I would expect a proportionate increase in migration after treatment, but again, that depends a bit on the assay.

Value is determined by how much buyers are willing to pay, and rarity plays a big role. In case of artwork, in addition to authenticity, the history often also plays an important role. As in many things, context is very important in the assessment of value.

For close up card tricks Richard Turner is fun to look at. He can tell you exactly when he is going to do something and it is still close to impossible to see how he does it as his movement are just incredibly smooth.

There are a lot of good articles about that. Essentially it is a social media phenomenon that started on 4chan. An overview without paywall is here, for example. I try very hard not to read the actual content of these conspiracy, I fear for my neurons.

Different measures can be used to highlight different things, typically you select the measure based on what you want to show. For control vs treatment studies often relative difference of some sort is shown (either percentage or fold). Just showing raw counts is usually requires the reader to do extra work to interpret the data, you generally want to avoid this.

Well, I would rather say it is based on what society deems harmful which overlaps only imperfectly with things being harmful. There are plenty of laws that are actually harmful, but were not recognized as such, for example.

Exactly. I fail to see any benefit to change the existing policy other than political gain. And if that is true, and the CDC is not able to make independent health recommendation it basically means a catastrophe to public health, independent of COVID-19. Diseases do not care about affiliation, other than they hit disadvantaged folks harder. In that context, the numbers also clearly highlight racial inequality in the US, where African Americans and Hispanics are not only more likely catch the virus but especially African Americans are also much more likely to do die from it. And that despite the fact that the Hispanic and African American population is actually younger than the white population.

That is a pretty good description. Some corrections, though. Most (large) manufacturers will isolate and use their own strains rather than buying them. The strain becomes part of their business portfolio and some larger companies also engage (often in collaboration with university researchers) to improve their production strain for their fermentation process. But yes, once strains have been selected (or created) for production, they are first cultivated in moderately sized batches and frozen as backup and the rest is used for the actual fermentation. Depending on type fermentation and species a cycle can be fairly long, before they need to start over from scratch. Typically they never run out of their production strain (they better not, else their process will break down) as they can propagate them close to indefinitely. Also note that a fermenter does not spoil easily as such per se if run in continuous mode. Here the growth conditions (e.g. pH, cell density, nutrient availability) are kept constant so the bacteria stay happy for a very long time. Whereas in batch mode, the medium gets depleted relatively fast and needs to be renewed periodically.