CharonY

Three months? Gosh, you guys must be rolling in money!

First, the fact that other folks may be inconvenienced is not a good reason to take rights away. For example, the same argument can be made for sports events- the increased foot traffic, risk of hooliganism and other forms of vandalim, not to mention noise are clear inconveniences. Similar arguments can be made for any number of largish events including things like the "Schuetzenumzug" (you know if you are German, and probably would not understand if you are not). In the US protests are covered by the first amendment. There are limits in terms of creating "clear and present danger". The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms offers similar rights. That means is that it is not fundamentally unlawful to engage in protests. So on the one hand you have the fundamental right to protest but there is no fundamental right not to get inconvenienced. So essentially the question now is what are the limits of the rights for assembly and protest. These have been tested in various court cases in both, USA and Canada. Now I am not an legal expert but I have read that it was attempted to shut down protests by using laws that forbid blocking of roads. However, courts have often rejected these claims as they see it as a possible means to restrict the Charter/First amendment, which would take precedence. But it certainly is not absolute. So you could look at each of the protest and figure out what ordinance they may or may not have violated, whether they needed and got the required permits etc. but ultimately the absolutist claim that they are all unlawful just does not hold. Edit: On the moral level, the intent of the protests should also be taken into account. It is one thing to organize a protest to demonstrate for higher wages, but it is another to organize one for example with the intent to intimidate specific folks (which are not in power). Organizing a demo to demonize homeless folks could be legal, for example, but still be shitty. Also, there could be a legal distinction between e.g. traffic issues as a corollary effect vs it's main intent (something like men's rea?), but I really don't know.

What you are describing here is very different what you claimed before. You specifically mentioned that folks here would condone to some degree violent protests. Yet here you conflate it with "unlawful behaviour". I think most people here do not condone violence but support the democratic right to demonstrate and protest. In fact, based on your description it appears that due to police behaviour actual violence did not occur, which seems like a great outcome to me. Again we have got different levels of actions that are conflated. First, are civil protests. These are enshrined to various degrees in the right of speech and assembly (typically peaceful is added to that). If one has an issue with that (regardless whether they are BLM or MAGA folks), you have an issue with democracy. The second are the risks associated with those assemblies. There is always the risk that folks that take part may have violence in mind. These include opportunistic looters, hooligans but also, as it turns out in the BLM protests, right-wing agitators. These are not condoned by anyone, including BLM folks, who have been very vocal about it. However, it should be noted that if the protest in itself was peaceful and had a peaceful goal, it is to some degree the cost of freedom of assembly. The third, and which are talking here, are those that are not protesting or demonstrating for something, but which have a specific violent agenda in mind. If folks set out to enter the capitol to do a sit-in, to protest something, it would be a different matter. But here, the idea was to overturn a process and it was in essence non-peaceful. It was not a small fringe within the group that demanded the overthrow of the government. If you do not see a difference between those three groups and just consider them all unlawful an hence equal, I do not think that there is a common basis for further discussion of this matter (I mean you kind of acknowledge it, but I still have trouble to get the point). If your point, however, was that some folks can use demonstrations of the groups with other views as a threat to themselves and then react to such a perceived threat, then yes, you are correct. Many folks that would, for example, call police on a black person in a neighbourhood would are no doubt afraid of a whole bunch of them protesting against being shot. But at the same time, I will re-iterate that this is the price of democracy. It is easy to say that there are platforms and rules that folks should follow in order to be heard. The issue is that the rules have been made by folks in part to specifically make it harder for certain folks to be heard. In all democratic societies protests, strikes and demonstrations have been an outlet for these grievances.

I think the slogan kind of implied that already.

Absolutely, I know a couple of researchers, some really excellent ones that basically were temps until their retirement (or close to). The system is not really good if things like predictive career planning, high income, job security early on, work-life balance are important to you. Eh, I made myself sad now.

I think it depends a lot on the level. Once you secured tenure (which is a big if) job security is as good, if not better than in an industrial position. However, before that, I agree that an academic career is far more uncertain. I would also agree to some extent with the benefits. There are few objective benefits, most of the motivation for pursuing an academic career is internal (and to a certain degree probably masochistic).

That thread is fairly long but it could make sense to fuse them. I will say that this is the most expected unexpected outcome. Who knew that lying to folks for so long will make them believe that stuff. Also, I think riot is a misnomer. They are not protesting against a perceived injustice, they were basically attempting a coup, even if it is an incompetent one (weapons and pipe bombs were secured during that event and the specific goal was to overturn the election). It is also not a big surprise that despite the mounting threats, police were underprepared (some unsubstantiated reports indicate that police either removed barricades or at least did not stop the mob from passing said barricades. Numerous news outlets have been contrasting that with the actions during BLM protests. I am not saying that police should have been escalating the situation, but rather that the same restrained should be extended to other folks.

In academia there is a huge gap between tenure-track/tenured (as well as otherwise permanent) positions and non-permanent ones (e.g. postdocs). The latter I would not consider a career (and certainly not the half of ones career) as such but at best as prerequisites. It is also a misconception that a PhD mandates an academic career to begin with. It may have been that the path to an academic career was easier in the olden days (way, way, way back) but it hasn't been so for decades. Part of it is the mentioned oversupply of PhDs, but it only looks lopsided if you only consider the academic track (which really, you should not). In reality, the vast majority of jobs are found outside academia, such as industrial jobs (the biggest chunk), public sector and so on. About 20 years back the numbers were roughly 20-25% of PhDs making an academic career, a number that has been dropping constantly from years prior. I do not have current values but chances are that they are even lower now. At the same time there has been some inflation with regards to PhD requirements in industry and some positions which used to be held by MScs often require a PhD now. In terms of types of jobs there are a lot, ranging from sales, support, product and project management and so on. There is also R&D but it tends to be a smaller slice.

! Moderator Note I have split the increasingly off-topic discussion into a new thread. I apologize for taking matters into my own hands but there are few mods available and most have taken part in this thread.

Not sure what the videos says, but mutation in the gene for the spike protein are concerning. No conclusive evidence either way, yet.

Well, black being one of the imperative word here. Hypocrisy being the other.

Keep safe, I hope you remain negative. The numbers in Canada are currently (and recently) rather awful.

Well, let's see if the riot police actually starts shooting rubber bullets as they did last times when protestors defied curfew...

The only thing it really means is that the GOP cannot just block everything without consideration. The issue with the Dems is that at least in the past they did not vote en bloc as the GOP did (see the Obama years). Perhaps things are shifting, though during the impeachment proceedigns several House Dems voted against or abstained.

Haha, good one.

Well, now Trump supporters have stormed the capitol after all the incitement from the President and the backing from the GOP. Perfect example of what you have been describing.

I am not sure I understand the question is- in a standard PCR you obviously amplify both strands of your cDNA. So generally you would just create suitable forward and reverse primers with the tags you need. Or is the question more about primer design in general. I will add that typically you should talk to your supervisor about the project. Often there are standard practices in place that one should adhere to.

But I take your point that for politicians it can be quite difficult to enforce the right thing, in the face of political propaganda. I suspect that many powerful folks (either private sector or politics) are used to be able to replace reality with make-belief. However, under crises such as the pandemic it shows that nature does not care much for that attitude. The real issue is of course that the typically it is the powerless that suffer more. I always assumed that such failures would be sanctioned by voters, but in the world that we live in (regardless which country) it does not seem to be that straightforward.

Nope. But I have been involved in method development for surveillance and I do look at methods and approaches in various countries. I am not a big fan of re-inventing the wheel multiple times or assuming exceptionalism if there is no real indication for it.

Well, technically they are playing for the same team. They are only interested to cover their own arse, but have not intention to potentially harm another player on the same team.

I am not sure how it changes the essence, if we take the highest threshold (i.e. who won), which could be considered the epitome of crazy, it is already 52% of Trump voters. Only 26% accept reality. I do not think that this is due to the GOP, it seems that the Dems have massively increased their turnout. It would take some more analyses, but so far I have not seen anything that suggest a fracturing. My sinking feeling is that effectively the crazies have won (as the tea party before them) and that if they are folks disgruntled now, they are not enough to matter.

First, that is a very incomplete reading of how SARS-CoV-2 affects our bodies. Damages are not exclusively to cytokine storms, and there has been some discussions whether it is really relevant to the observed damages. There seems to be an association with severity but then there is also the question of the triggers. That being said, there are always interactions with the immune system in vivo but it is not the sole source of damage. What is known is that the virus attacks several organs, including the brain stem and at in vitro studies show that cellular damages also occur. Moreover, there have been immunomodulating therapies which in some cases improve outcome, but as it turns out, it only works for a fraction of the folks. Others still die under that treatment (or get secondary infections and die from that). And very obvious examples are immunocomprised folks that die from COVID-19. In fact, they can also suffer severe consequences from otherwise fairly harmlesss viruses, so no, making the immune system blind to a virus is generally not a great idea. In addition, the viruses that we carry and which do not make us sick anymore often have mutations that reduces their virulence- our immune system has not changed in that regard (and again, except for inactive ones, they are generally only harmless if your immune system still works). As such an one-sided view that viruses do not harm us only our own immune system is simply wrong or at best misleading. It is like saying electricity does not kill us, it is the heart failure. Or the fall is harmless, just the landing happens to be lethal. To be clear, SARS-CoV-2 can be lethal for many folks and let it roam through your body without an immune system to keep it in check is pretty certainly deadly. There is no evidence that rapidly proliferating viruses in your bloodstream, organs and nervous system are in fact harmless. Moreover, the immune system is easily one of the most complex regulatory system in our body. All mechanisms to modulate our immune system are blunt instrument, including vaccines. While many, many folks are working on it, precision modulation of the immune system is still science fiction. It is probably also the closest to a panacea that we could get, if we get it. As you mentioned, this is not the time for high-flying dreams. If folks are unable to the simple things to keep each other safe, a vaccine is really our only option. We (i.e. most countries and their population) failed to take it seriously and since this is not a movie, there won't be a sudden miracle cure delivered by Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, if we had taken it more seriously we would not have needed a vaccine. But obviously that was too much to ask. Folks are dying, and if folks would just keep their friggen distance instead of dreaming about sunshine, bleach or magic we would not be here. Edit: if that sounds angry, it is because I am. A good friend lost a parent. I am afraid for my parents and things go exactly as everyone said it would if we are complacent and mess up. And now some folks are surprised and some are protesting the need to do the absolute minimum to protect your neighbour and community. Plus there are students that do not care because they are effing young and do not care that they potentially kill folks around them.

So if we talk about the ingredient list, they are pretty much harmonized across Europe (as well as the Americas). I.e. you should indicate the stuff you add in a particular product in descending weight. Technically if nothing else is added beside coconut flour, the ingredient label could simply read coconut flour. It does not necessary to indicate byproducts due to processing, for example. Coconut flour definitely contains cellulose and hemicellulose, both of which are chemically carbohydrates. However, in the EU (and UK) carbohydrates seems only to refer to (human) bioavailable carbohydrates (i.e. digestible carbs) and therefore those would or should fall under fibers. It also contains certain polyols, such as sorbitol, which according to labelling requirements would not need to be listed, but would be part of the total carbohydrate count. So there is quite a bit of a difference between chemical and food labelling nomenclature, with the latter focusing on simplicity rather than scientific accuracy. So I am wondering based on these definitions how resistant starch are labelled, for example. As they are poorly digested, they can be classified as fiber, but then there is also the starch category...

I second Sensei's comment on books. Without any background perhaps start with a good highschool or first-semester level textbook and perhaps a good popular science book (best if written from an actual expert in the topic). For starters these provide more background and context that allows you to become familiar with terms and concepts and generally provide more context. It still requires interest and work, of course. If what you read is not in any way interesting to you, you will quickly forget. Learning is an active process that is driven by self-motivation.

I think it is fair to say that so far there are not viable alternatives to abiogenesis. It is less of a theory but more of a theoretical framework that exist due to what we know about the chemical composition of organisms. I.e. we know that something simpler than cells must have existed at some point, we roughly have an idea what chemicals are more or less likely and so on. Moreover are hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of abiogenesis, how potential candidate molecule could have occurred and so on. It is really not my field so I am not sure of the current progress in that area. With regard to evolution, as Phi pointed out, the term describes the observable process (i.e. fact) that gene pools change over time. The theory of evolution describes all the bits and pieces that explain and quantify those changes.