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While Iran has not been a stabilizing factor (especially due to their ongoing coflict with Arab nations), there was an improvement in bilateral relationships and moderate forces seemed to have gained power. The issue with this particular attack is that it is represents a new escalation, which some already classified as an act of war. This is quite a different level than the tensions (which, btw. were increased by unilateral retreat of the US from the Iran deal). While I do not know enough to make any kind of analysis on the situation, the rather muted or even negative response of US allies, indicates to me that folks more knowledgeable see the move at minimum as problematic (to put it mildly). In other words, the US has created a situation where there is a likelihood that the conflict will turn hot. One could easily see that as an ongoing tit-for-tat between Iran and US, where the US has continuously escalated force. The big issue I see in this policy is that the State Department appears to be far weaker than in previous administrations leaving fewer paths open than perhaps under a different administration. Though to be fair, if one takes a look at Bush Jr., the result was ultimately a series of endless wars. In that light one could perhaps accuse the current administration may not have learned any lessons. What is possible is that the Trump administration believes that a sufficient show of force would force an Iranian retreat. Even if that happens, however, it would at minimum boost the hardliners within Iran. In the long-term further conflicts could therefore be more and not less likely. But of course that is pure speculation. What has already happened is that the US-Iraq relationship have (further) deteriorated.

I think at this point that would be pure speculation. The current political situation could have been an added incentive, but without additional information that are obviously not open to the public I am not sure whether anything would come out of these speculations. The other, perhaps more interesting question are the ramifications of this escalation. US allies have already indicated that they are not interested in further escalation, for example. I do not want to initiate a hijack here, but I think that a) we will not be able to figure out what Trump really is thinking (not sure whether he knows himself) and b) that this is secondary to the threat of violent destabilization throughout region.

This is an excellent point. Some of the work in this area indicates that some some differences we associated with male/female or white/black are probably not that medically useful, especially as we lack information for certain groups. Many trials were historically conducted exclusively with men, for example. My work is mostly focused on molecular mechanisms of disease and similar to what you said, we see quit significant variation in the molecular response on the molecular level, and while we probably could stratify our data on gender lines the diagnostic value is incredibly poor. There are of course massive barrier one has to overcome (including price) before personalized medicine (folks like to call it precision medicine now, since it appears that it is time to rebrand it once more) could become implemented in earnest.

Just some additional info I cam across. There is a poll on science attitudes paid for by 3M conducted by ipsos. When asked whether they agree with the statement that they trust scientists 80% somewhat agree or completely agree. Trust in science 86% somewhat/completely agree. Skeptical of science 35% somewhat/completely agree. The same poll was only conducted once before and globally we see similar responses but a slight increase in skepticism. 2018 values Trust in scientists: 81% Trust in science: 86% Skeptical of science: 32% Here are the changes for some countries from 2018 to 2019: Trust in scientists: US 82/84; UK 82/82; Germany 76/80 ; Canada 80/84 Skeptical of science: US 27/33; UK 28/36; Germany 28/27; 25/32 So while trust in scientists as a whole remained high, skepticism increased in most of these countries.

That may be the case and I understand that it can be difficult. Mental health practitioners (as well as medical specialists in certain areas) have to deal with these uncertainties and make their best judgement. But as with other such matters, it will have uncertainties. Ultimately it is almost always a compromise between the what we no (biologically or medically) what can we see (in terms of measurable outcomes including patient wellness). The big thing here in your argument that I have a problem with is basically how do we determine what is not good for them? It kind of assumes that we have trouble identifying whether the condition is "real" or due to a different condition but isn't it a symmetrical problem? I.e. if we are uncertain what else than the ultimately well-being of the patient do we have (and I would argue that it is not quite as arbitrary as you make it sound, though I would agree that mental conditions are not trivial to diagnose, either). So as a whole if we do cannot have certainty, the most important measure is probably patient outcome. If we see that it is actually not helping (though data suggests otherwise) one may have to do something different. But if the data suggests it does help I am not sure what the justification is for denying it. With homelessness I feel there is a whole additional dimension that one need to explore but I am not sure whether this is the thread to do so.

The issue that you describe is the ability to objectively measure a particular state. Note that this is true for many (if not most) biological aspects including mental/psychological states, where our understanding of the system is incomplete. It is certainly not a situation unique to gender (which does not prevent us to medicate folks, btw.). What we do know is that some measures (such as genotyping) are insufficient to cover all the possible biological elements related to gender identity. Thus, the way I see it, we have got two options. Either use this insufficient and declare folks to be a certain way, even knowing that this measure is imperfect. Alternatively we rely on self-reporting, which, btw. is a commonly used in medical diagnostics. The latter may also be imperfect, however, studies have shown to be positively associated with mental health and quality of life (and lower suicide risk). Now, obviously it is important but often difficult to predict for whom gender re-assignment would help or not, but the same goes for other psychological assessments. Having two imperfect measures at hand, but having one that has shown to improve lives, the choice seems to be obvious. While I understand this is a joke, unfortunately it is also commonly used to disparage folks suffering from gender dysphoria and similar conditions. As swansont stated, it is one of the things that requires some un-learning what we taught to be as facts and some folks have an easier time with it, as they are confronted with such things more frequently, than others.

Agreed, and the study does not show a tremendous effect size and is also mostly an association study (if it is the one I am thinking about). So even in the best case scenario they can only demonstrate correlation in the first place.

As mentioned, the issues are a) that it is not remarkable as such just a regular student doing their regular work (again, it pretty much demonstrates ignorance of the author on how scientific progress works, or just overall laziness in the attempt to discredit someone) and there have been more impactful work around b) the fact that a student is promoted is either an attempt to find someone relatively young (as again, normally the PI is responsible for larger projects) c) it is clear that the whole thing was not done in good faith d) that it is really shitty to discuss other folk's achievement only for the purpose to put someone else's down (rather than elevate other issues). And again, while there may have been better choices (and also again, this comes up pretty much every year), the example you provided is one of the laziest attempts I have seen to discredit one. There far better articles making the case of other important acts of activism, but the author of the blog apparently was too lazy or ignorant to make one of those cases (or perhaps they don't agree with them politically). But I think there is little to gain from go in circles on this subject further.

As thesis projects by almost all graduate students.

I am not sure about that, in Europe high taxation of fuel has forced the automobile industry to produce more efficient cars. Some of those technologies then spilled over to North America. One can argue that these development would not have happened without the whip. Well, she has increased political pressure on Western politicians, and as you know there are plenty who are still denying (for whatever reasons) that AGW exists in the first place. Mainstreaming the issue is not a bad thing. One could argue whether it is worthwhile of the nomination, but these are of course highly subjective (but it is also clear that the other person named in the blog by YJ02 was only there to stir an argument ). I think what you have wrong is what activism is about. It is not that we are lacking means, what we have is political apathy and denial. Things like carbon taxing are used as they are the easy way out. Realistically we would need more drastic measures, but no one really wants that. You are probably right that folks want to stop climate change only if it costs them nothing. But it is increasingly clear that that may not be an option (or we just continue and leave it to the next generation). Activism really does not much more than highlight that hypocrisy and while it may not solve problems per se, it raises awareness and I think it does go beyond preaching to the choir. The whole movement has tangible impact where organization try to become more sustainable. Sure it is a buzzword but if it reduces waste and CO2 emission I still think it is better than nothing and clearly better than waiting for the perfect solution that may never come (or come too late). That being said, I would also not that the person of the year award always had these discussions and for the most part it is about complaining about said choices.

If the choice is strictly between those two then the answer is clear: Thunberg. Bioremediation is not new nor revolutionary, identifying bacteria able to degrade tough compounds are not super rare and already in use for a number of purposes, with varying success. The is almost always in situ efficiency. If that problem had been solved it would have been a much larger project involving many folks rather than just one student. Moreover, the credit ultimately would go to the PI who got the project funded in the first place. From the title alone one can deduce that a) the person writing the blog post has not expertise in either topic, b) clearly just wants to get reads by emotional appeal (clickbait outrage industry comes to mind) c) clearly shows bias in the title alone and therefore c) is it really a good source to foster a discussion? We have talked about quality of sources and articles so I am really surprised that you drag something like that into the discussion.

Depends on the type of supporter, I think. Among seasoned politicians and career public servants, I would think so. But several folks have made the case that there is also a cult-like element (take a look at "The Trump Prophecy", a semi-documentary made by students which argues that Trump was ordained by god, for example). For these folks a lack of loyalty to Trump would be, hum, heresy.

Appreciate the info, MigL.

This is an excellent question, though I think it would be quite difficult to elucidate. I am thinking for example how Dems started to embrace minorities and, to some degree, immigrants, but I cannot help but wonder how much is driven by the animosity shown by right wing policies rather than some underlying values. There are studies which explore attitudes and associate them with political orientation. From memory I believe that Republican voters are more likely to view economics as a zero sum game than Democratic voters, for example.

I think one needs to contextualize things a bit more as they are obvious very specific for a given country. There are globalization efforts underway but coalesce political affiliation with certain topics between countries, but they often still have very different nuances. Another thing one might need to add is that are differences in attitudes to topics along the political spectra and the agreement with actual policies. For example folks may be against welfare in general, but have positive attitudes to medicare (especially when they rely on it). There are also multidimensional aspects to it. For example there is a general agreement (a bit more on the left) that creating affordable housing should be a government priority. However, just by inserting a picture of a black family into such surveys, the support magically drops. There is also the big issue that if one party makes a certain issue their topic, folks may just fall in line to support the party, which can lead to massive reversals in support. For example, there wasn't a huge divide between right and left when it came to mainstream media (using Germany as an example if anything, the left were more skeptical, especially as many larger outlets were held by a conglomerate of well-known conservative publishers). But since then the Republicans have more commonly started to attack media, cumulating in the rather unprecedented attacks by Trump himself. Accordingly, Republicans have lower opinion on journalism than Dems. However, it is interesting to note that among the Republicans who support Trump the most, the disdain for journalism is much higher than the difference between those more critical of Trump vs Dems. Another example of changing attitude is climate change. Before the influence of the Kochs, the Republicans and Dems were on board to discuss the challenge of climate change. As we see now, this has become and incredible partisan issue. So in other words, there is quite a bit of a difference between the attitude of folks on certain topics, the way the choices are presented by the respective political parties (such as talking points), as well as how folks perceive how topics are related to the respective parties and on top we deal with changing priorities. Thus the categorization could be difficult. Should be set up groups according to support to a particular party? Should we look for correlation between an issue and support for a given party? Should we rely on what the parties tell us? I think all these are valid strategies but will tell us different stories.

It trivially should be. But with sufficient folks saying that, it becomes a seed of doubt. Then add powerful voices in media and politics who leverage the doubt and then we are where we are now.

I think the issue is not only that there is a platform, but the fact that ignorance can be produced and spread much faster. If you try to explain why something is wrong, it takes time and requires folks to pay attention. In contrast, lies can be made on the spot in order to create attractive narratives (whereas facts can be boring). Every explanation is countered by hundreds of lies resulting every time in an uphill battle. This is also why Gish gallops have become such a compelling technique. I also do not think that scientists and educators are actually leaving a vacuum (there are even studies on flat-earthers). Rather these false narrative have been so prolific, every measured response is likely to be outdiluted many times over.

So everything set for an orderly Brexit (heh)?

Generally surgery equipment have standardized fitting sizes. So unless they are really a off-brand knock off they should have the same dimensions.

You may want to take a look here. They got an overview of the various sizes, if you need it.

It depends a bit on how topics are covered in class. Perhaps unfortunately sometimes inaccurate phrasing is used, but on the other hand, if you get the principle it should be possible to deduce the correct answer. I will say that the phrasing in the questions maybe too much on the questionable side for 7 but I am generally also not a big fan only using the exact terms all the time- I found that if students do not get the principles I only need to use an alternative (but valid) phrasing to trip them up too much. Students tend then to memorize mostly which ultimately is to their detriment. Of course a balance has to be found but that is often down to the class itself. Also often definitions are not as clear as one might think. Enzyme activity is sometimes used colloquially to refer to different things but ultimately it is defined in terms of enzyme units (technically, katals) which is a bit out of the scope of pure kinetics. With regard to 5, saturation kinetics generally refers to situation of high levels of substrate (i.e. when the enzyme is saturated). I.e. if you look at the curve it would be the part where the you see the reaction plateauing. So stating that enzyme kinetics generally follows that relationship is obviously wrong (i.e. it only follows once actual saturation is reached). Answer 1 describes a specific regime of the reaction and for that, it is correct (at Km <<S V0=(Vmax/Km).

This is technically correct. Or conversely one could say that in class the term catalytic activity was used in a very colloquial sense. A better way to phrase it would be using affinity. I.e. low Km indicates high substrate affinity. That being said, looking at the answers one can eliminate every other answer even if it may not be quite accurate (as the rest makes no sense). 5 probably refers to reaction rate at very low substrate concentration. As enzyme is provided in surplus under these conditions, the relationship is roughly linear. 7 is probably phrased badly. Obviously photons are exciting electrons in pigments and not vice versa. But even then, just by elimination one can infer that either PS1 or PS2 are meant (the light harvesting elements of photosynthesis).

From a quick look I did not see obvious errors in the correct answers, however from your responses I do see that you may have some fundamental misunderstandings on several topics. I think it would be worthwhile for you to discuss the things you are confused about with your fellow students.

! Moderator Note I have deleted the pdf for now, since we generally do not encourage to download files, especially from first-time posters for safety reasons. Feel free to post the questions which you are doubtful about, though.

Cool, never thought about putting a relative's brain into a model aircraft. But now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense.