CharonY

There are dozens of different protocols so it is a bit difficult to talk about specifics. But generally speaking, merging several samples is fine as long as you do not overload the column and provided that you can actually mix the samples (obviously if they are supposed to be different samples, do not mix them). But I would first look whether you got too much material or debris in your sample that may clog the column. With regards to the elution buffer, think about why they would suggest pipetting it there. And what are the worst case scenarios if you do not?

Uh, OK. I think this is based on a fat skimming process. I never had that one, but the ones I tried were kind of tasteless and had a (for me) unpleasent texture. I have read that folks were working on improved techniques and there is the assumption that most of the taste is in the water soluble fraction. But then I have not have experienced a good example quite yet. But then I am partial (probably more ideological than anything) to "traditional" processing. But I suspect that most American cheeses would be something you might find enjoyment in, but again, I do not think that the same cheese variants you find in the US are going to be superior to what you can get cheaper in Europe (maybe unless you compare the high-end specialty producers in the US with some of the mass producers in Europe). Hmm, perhaps you could try a Monterey Jack. There are good variants our there, though overall they tend to be less intense in flavour. But considering it is an American cheese in fullest sense it might be worthwhile to look into. I think I had Tillamook cheddar, which is fine (IIRC) . I did not know that there is an American Dubliner (which adds to the confusion as the original Dubliner is not produced in Dublin, either).

There is cheddar in America, though I have not found anything spectacular. Smoked cheddar is perhaps the most interesting variant I got so far. However, I doubt that cheddar anywhere close to only 3% fat. That just does not seem feasible, considering that full milks starts with 3.25% and there i subsequent liquid loss. If memory serves most Cheddars hover a bit above 30% which actually put them a bit above average. On the lowest end is probably cottage cheese with about 4% (I am discounting all fat free formulations, which are a different thing entirely), but that is probably not what you are asking for.

! Moderator Note Not sure where the thread should be moved to, Put it here for the time being. Considering the leading nature of the questions I am not even sure that the thread should be somewhere to begin with.

I think it is actually quite difficult to find good cheeses in regular stores in the US, as compared to in Europe. Those of the alright ones tend to be cheddars, but then you have at least equally good European counterparts, which will cost you much less. You can find them in big cities and in specialty stores, but frankly, the selection is massively inferior on average (and more expensive). An American (or Canadian) Gouda for example has significiantly less taste than one from the Netherlands. I suspect it is down to either the bacterial content or their activity (e.g. length of incubation). Or compare American "Swiss" cheese with, say Emmentaler or Gruyere. That being said, there are American and Canadian specialty cheese makers, who are very competitive in international competitions. But their production volume seems to be small enough that you do not find them easily, even in North America. A part of it is likely because Americans have gotten used to rather heavily processed cheese-like substances, and regular, if bland cheese is still alright in comparison. So really good ones are still a bit of a niche, though it may change in the near future. I think you are mistaken there. Most "American" cheese products are 30% fat or higher. Emmentaler or similar cheeses are usually slightly below 30. I.e. in the end it is almost the same fat content. However, in actual cheese you get the aroma and umami on top of everything, which, in my mind, is the only reason to add cheese to the perfectly fine beef in the first place (and not to mention the potential issues with highly processed foods). Ever tried one with pecorino, especially with sauteed mushrooms?

I think the bigger issue is that in the US, acknowledging that a) climate change is happening and b) that it is of anthropogenic origin, is already considered a left stance. And this is problematic as it means that the Republican party has adopted denying facts as part of the party platform. The same happened with evolution, for example. This, I believe is at least partially caused by the two-party system. In much of Europe the mainstream parties (if they exist) generally do not adopt stances, they are more typically co-opted by what is considered extreme parties. Of course, those have a recent rise in popularity, so who knows.

There is a big push for carbon capture and storage technologies, but so far AFAIK there is no real option that is more sustainable than alternatives (such as use of plants for carbon storage). The most efficient methods include capture at point of emission, which could have some use to mitigate industrial release. Some, are already in use for quite some time (at least the capture part, storage is a bit more iffy). In industrial use methods such diethanolamine treatment or selexol are in use, but they are not generally not feasible post-emission. There are efforts to push monoethanolamine capture as means to do that, but I am not sure how sustainable that method is. Last thing I hear was a rather mixed bag.

Actually, that is what I meant, I realize that I did not specify "they", my apologies. I.e. on the economic axis your assertions probably mostly hold true. But in other elements, including social programs it really depends. Many of those are tightly connected to the economic systems, but other aspects, such as those of based on traditional values (i.e. social conservatism) is fairly ingrained in mainstream. Or if you ask questions involving cultural superiority for example. In religious matters much of the USA is still more conservative than many parts in Europe. At the same time, certain strains of liberalism are more prevalent in the US culture when compared to a number of of European countries. And of course, Europe itself is culturally massively diverse showing a rather broad range of distributions, which makes these types of comparison difficult and perhaps ultimately meaningless.

I think I am unsure whether "unique" really applies. Of course if we use the term hominids in the strictest sense and include chimpanzees it may be true, but then there is quite a divergence in the development of humans are other extant hominids, despite that all have developed various degrees of tool use. So in the end I do think it is more matter of degree rather than uniqueness per se.

Even the development of tool use is not necessarily unique. Rather the cognitive abilities to make more elaborate ones are. Also tools use by hominids predates that of Homo sapiens. A few years ago (in Nature, I believe) folks reported stone tool findings that are dated 3.3 million years ago.

I have heard that a lot but I think it really just shows the weakness of an one-dimensional scoring system. They are probably slightly right when it comes to economic ideals, where the far left in the US are closer to mainstream in much of Europe. However, in say social aspects this is not quite as true, or at least it is a mixed bag. There are of course a number of reasons, including the fact that the US (and Canada) are countries built on immigration, whereas Europe is more conservative in that areas. Often the progressive wing within the US is more progressive than the equivalent in Europe (as well as on the opposite end of the spectrum), which has provided the US with a reputation of being a country of extremes. It strange (by design) that climate change is seen as a left-leaning policy. It is a mere statement of fact and the need for addressing it (if not the right approach) should be a no-brainer. That being said, the conservative movement has formed a weird amalgam of religious, business and other inputs and took stance against it, which is now virtually impossible to shift.

I would also like to add that a part of the discussion (though not all of it) is somwhat US-centric. While there are quite a number of reason why higher education is more commonly associated with progressive viewpoint, it has to be noted that the Republican party has for decades run a platform of anti-intellectualism and anti-science, which have impacted many disciplines. Rather obviously, when you start gaining knowledge in an area and someone just tells you to ignore what you learned and experienced, it makes it harder (though not impossible) to support them.

Depending on the system, there can be fairly low correlation between mRNA levels and actual protein expression. More often than not this is due to posttranscriptional regulation, such as mechanisms that control how how much and which mRNA effectively gets to a ribosome and gets translated there. There are probably too many mechanisms to list them in detail, but many ultimately affect RNA stability. As a whole there is only partial correlation to be expected between RNA and protein levels in general. The cases where protein and gene expression are opposite to each other are trickier, and could and often are the result of at least two different mechanisms. It depends a lot what the baseline levels of transcripts are as well as translation activity in order to establish where regulations have kicked in (though it often is not as straightforward).

What are your thoughts on the questions?

We are talking about different measures here. Weaker immune system is a mechanistically different from increased infection rate. The latter is also dependent on a lot of different external factors. On the tissue level coldness can affect vasoconstriction, another element of respiratory infections. One aspect that is also unrelated to the immune system is dryness in the winter time, which affects mucosal surfaces. When we talk about the immune system proper, we have to look at factors influencing things on the (sub)-cellular level. And here things get quite complicated to a degree that I do not expect MDs to have a deep knowledge about. For starters, all kinds of stressors have the potential to affect cytokine expression and inflammatory signaling in general. Also if locally temperatures are lowered, immune cell responses are significantly altered, However, that link is mostly derived by in vitro experiments and it is not clear how applicable it is to animals. Additional stress such as exercising in cold does effect the lymphatic system, but it is not clear whether the observed changes are actually immune mechanism in any measurable way. In short, we know things change at lower temperature, especially when cold air is inhaled or the body is also stressed with other factors. However, we do have a bit of a knowledge gap in translating that molecular change into actual health outcome. As usual, biology is multifactorial and it is quite difficult to make easy explanations based on what we know.

I am not a hydrologists, but they have a specific classification system for different types of boundaries where different water sources mix. Much of the classification seems to rely on water composition and source tracking, but I do not know about the specifics. It is not entirely arbitrary, though.

Well, I was thinking of names, but point taken.

The English pronunciation is something that confuses me up to this day. I still refuse to use the anglicized version, because it does not make a lot of sense. The issue is that most of my chemistry knowledge is still locked in Germany which can be difficult sometimes to switch out. I may or may not have raised a generation of Genglish speaking young graduates...

Two things. you were talking about international clout and how Harper was great in that respect. However, when Harper pulled out of the Kyoto protocol he expended a lot of international goodwill, presumably in order to curry favour from the industrial sector perhaps? Also it is interesting that you have not given much thought why the emissions went down despite Harper driving a hard line against clime change policies and the formal abandonment of the Kyoto protocol? Do you seriously think that he just gave lip service to his disdain for environmental goal, actively inhibits research in that area only to better the environment in secret? Come on, you do like to call out bullshit when you sense it, and you think this passes the smell test? I'll quote from a newspaper report, but the full articles are also available:

Well, again depends on what you mean with clout. But specifically the science community (national and international) had problems with his policies, especially as they relate to environmental issues (I am not informed enough regarding the pipelines to comment on that). Especially limiting the ability of scientists to create and disseminate was a huge red flag, as control of information by the government is rather obviously seen very critical and not becoming for a democratic society. More specific to international reputation, I can say that at least the press was not terrible fond of Harper, either. Issues included the Kyoto accord, IMF to name two that I remember of the top of my head. It is very difficult to assess as Canada is often not seen as such a big player as the US, but I have not seen a lot that would substantiate the claim that he had any more or less international clout. If anything, from what I have seen Trudeau was seen far more optimistic but mostly because (or at least it looked to me) of the rather dim view many had on Harper. I do wonder how things would go if Harper was still PM when Trump came to power. I am also not sufficiently schooled in economics to determine how effective Harper was in that area. While it is likely that simply not enough time has passed to properly contextualize his economic policies there have been plenty of criticisms regarding income inequality. What I have heard is that he was a very effective political leader, which included tightly controlling information flow (which includes the aforementioned scientific data). Now I will note that there are now leaders out there who will make Harper look brilliant, I am just not sure whether your characterization of Harper is accurate. I will say that it will take a longer look from the future to properly assess the decisions the respective leaders have taken.

Well, at least in the science community Harper was not really liked, due to his rather blatant attempts to muzzle scientists. The range of action included defunding of science (especially related to climate change, but also basic sciences), limiting the ability of governmental scientists talk to the press. In addition, similar to the Trump administration as a recent example, climate change critics were appointed to key positions within the major Canadian funding agencies . The combination of budget control (i.e. governmental influence to decide where money goes), limiting the ability to obtain information (especially environmental monitoring), controlling the information is antithetical to evidence-based regulation and good science. Perhaps a bit ironically, folks in the US and some EPA folks at that time, were quite happy about not being in Canada and bemoaned the loss of research due to the cut of long-term studies. That is not to say that Trudeau reversed all decisions (though in many areas they have noticeably), but there is a reason why Harper was reviled in certain communities.

Beside the fact that Greenland is semi-autonomous which, I presume, would make the legal situation quite difficult, the sale of the Virgin Islands was part of the overall imperialist strategies of the 19th/20th century, which are (at least in the overt form) declining from the second half of the 20th century. While negotiations started in the latter half of the 19th century, various negotiations negotiations ultimately failed, despite the fact that the main interest for the US was imperialist expansion, whereas on the Danish side, decline in the same (as well as increasing cost) were a factor. The sale ultimately happened due to militarist threats from the US. Drawing parallel to current political situations are, tenuous at best (hopefully). Because it is either that or things have gone really insane.

Actually there is little evidence that biotin improves hair growth, unless a person has biotin deficiency. Various forms of hair loss and skin conditions are associated with biotin deficiency and for the most part the cause is that carboxylases require biotin as a cofactor. I.e. hair loss and other conditions are the result of certain carboxylases not functioning any more. Otoh, there is little to no evidence that in patients with sufficient biotin intake will improve hair growth.

The only measure to actually reduce pesticides in produce is washing. Not all pesticides can be effectively removed. It depends on properties of the pesticide, as well as the properties of the produce. Once it penetrates deeply into the tissue, rinsing is somewhat ineffective. Some studies have shown that for certain pesticides washing solutions with oxidizing agents, including ozone and chlorine have shown to reduce their concentration. Some have shown that baking soda may have a similar effect. A general issue is that it may actually require a rather long incubation step (more than 15 mins) to reduce the pesticide content.

! Moderator Note Same topics have been merged.