CharonY

Not really, I want to remind you that we are still in the primary, which, as I mentioned, requires a generally more progressive (or conservative) agenda than during the actual election. And as I mentioned, the data seems to indicate that the bigger share of potential voters for the Dems are on the rather far left part of the scale. As indicated in the report, the lower left part of the graph (i.e. far left and left on both, immigration and econonimcs) captures 32% of all voters and 60% of Dems. Moreover, the authors mentioned that in the lower left cell, (i.e. the most progressive on both dimensions) the highest proportion of higher educated Dems are found, who generally are more politically engaged. Which is going to a point I tried to make, which is that even among those groups there are sub-targets that need to be mobilized, potentially with different means.

! Moderator Note Considering that no attempt at science was made, the thread is closed.

This is something strategies have to work out, but of course the structural elements also play a role. E.g. while the base has always been clearly voting based on party affiliation, key is mobilizing. But there are the primaries, which are a weird US thing, which generally mean that during that time candidates traditionally shift more to the left/right in order to win it, as registered Reps/Dems, especially those showing up to those primaries want to be pandered to. Afterward, the candidates generally pivot to the middle, or quite frequently, somewhere around centre right, IIRC. Now if we ignore primaries and look at the graphs there are a couple of interesting points. If only looking at the total electorate (ignoring party affiliation and ignoring who is more likely to show up to vote) it would make a lot sense for Dems to go very far left on economics and slightly less so on pro-immigration policies. For Reps it would make sense to heavily go for anti-immigration but be less so on the economical axis. The risk of straddling the middle is losing the bulk on either the further right/left (which, may just decide not to show up to vote). There is also more information in the article that one could look at. for example, what is the profile of undecided voters? Those appear to be fairly liberal on immigration, but conservative on economics. That is slightly surprising, considering how polarizing immigration seems to be, but that also seem to coincide with voters who tend to have higher degrees and higher incomes. But what is missing from the article is weighing the axes. For example, it is not clear (unless I missed it) whether the two parameters are equally predictive of voting behaviour or whether one or the other is considered more important. For example, it is possible that for those highly conservative in immigration, it may be the pivotal issue (as they e.g. see a cultural threat from immigration), whereas those liberal might see it as important, but perhaps not as important as a tax cut. The most important point, however, is that the article does show that the commonly used talking point about the appealing to the middle may not be a no-brainer after all.

Either I am misunderstanding your point of confusion or you misunderstood the setup of the report. Each responded was asked a set of questions regarding immigration and economy. From this you can plot the responses on one axis separately as in the top graphics, or you plot each response for economics of a given person against their response on immigration (the square plots). From there you can see that only few folks end up in the middle. I.e. folks in the middle of economics apparently are rarely also in the middle in immigration (and vice versa). It does not make a prediction on how folks end up voting other than the reasonable assumption that folks are more likely to vote for whoever is closer to their view. As seen in the graph, the center position is occupied by few. But if you move either bottom left or upper right, you get closer to more of the electorate and hence represent more voters. Unless your assumption is that voters either predominantly vote on single issues (which is not part of the report) or that somehow people do not follow their own preferences. Perhaps you could clarify that a bit.

The cross The cross analysis shows that it does not work that way. If you take the median of both, you'll get only a small set of the electorate. Again because the folk in the median of one indicator are not the same as in the other.

As mentioned, you are forgetting the intersection (which is the key point of the ppaper). Folks in the middle in economics for example are either left or right in immigration (and vice versa). So if you moved right on both you lose the perhaps 12% of moderates but gain 20ish (or more) of the more right electoraten(mostly reps). Going left from there gives you a bit more. In either case one could risk especially those that are left on economics and right on immigration. One of the points of the report is specifically looking only on one axis misses out on those trends.

I think you are looking only at the individual index and drawing your conclusions from there. The point is that if we add at least two issues, the middle intersection becomes depleted. The likelihood of the extremes to be maximized in individual scales is, even by chance highly unlikely (just the way the surveys are set up). Or specifically that there are cross-corre One key conclusion is that: I.e. if someone wanted to get the crowd on economics, one would need to move quite left on immigration, too, to gather most of the folks. But one would lose the (smaller ) group which is left on economics but right on immigration. If one balances both out into two moderate proposals, you lose out over 80% of the electorate. It is correct to state that it also is arbitrary to some degree as the question invariably is what actually is perceived as left vs right by the voters. And perhaps even more important, it is really only relevant in the swing states.

I found an interesting report in which the position in terms of immigration and economics are outlined.

I think I am not too convinced about that. At least most of her policies mesh well at lest in terms of goals with many general polls among independents. While her support is much stronger among the progressive wing, her support among moderate/conservative dems is only behind Biden (who is at the top). That being said, I think much, if not most of politics is about name recognition and meta-narratives, rather than actual positions and proposals. Biden pretty much is the default candidate pretty much merely because of him being known as vice-President and being attached to a president who is (now) very well liked among Dems. At the same time Warren is branded as ultra-left (though in European parlance one could probably consider her to be a Social Democrat), which generally used to have a very negative connotation in US-politics. Yet if the proposals (or the essence of it, such as say antitrust regulation) were discussed independent on the person, quite a lot of folks including independents are quite for it. In other words, politics is mostly about perception and branding rather the actual reality behind policies. And it makes sense. If you ask whether folks want medicare for all, you get quite different responses than when you ask whether you want a public option that may remove your existing employer-based insurance. No one is really asking for numbers, it is all about snap decisions on how things seem to affect your current situation and then stick to the opinion come hell or decent maths.

I think the trouble I have with his policies are that they are often presented as pitches, rather than a cohesive plan. I.e. you have on proposal that involves issues and mechanisms on the federal level, right next to proposals that appear to be very local in application. There are grand proposal such as overhauling the welfare system, next to unionizing MMA fighters. Based on that it looks a lot like a brain storming session with mixed priorities rather than cohesive policy proposals. I think part of it is based on his background, which includes little policy experience but more solutions pitching. While not necessarily against this approach, a bit of more prioritization and a cohesive write-up would inspire more confidence. On the opposite end I would put Warren, where the issues around a theme are outlined and then the pitches are that describe specifically these issues are going to be solved. Just to bring up the MMA example, why isn't it framed around strengthening union? The latter would make more sense in demonstrating a position. Or why is the GI bill filed under foreign policy? Again, it reads a bit student essays to me. They can have good ideas, but have trouble to form a cohesive narrative and contextualize the ideas properly. A little bit more polishing from someone would help a lot to make it look, well, more professional.

Not unfortunate when it was coined, especially as it actually had a different connotation. To my knowledge it is commonly attributed to Ohno in the 70s who referred specifically to mutation that render a duplicated gene non-functional, and thus creating a pseudo-gene. These sequences that look like a gene but do not carry functionality due to the mutation were termed junk DNA. It was only later that the meaning was used broader and in a more diffuse way. Rarely so, at least no in scientific usage. It is used in more specific context such for example as not playing a functional role in some organism-level capacity (which leaves roles open for sub-cellular functions). Other folks use it in other contexts but essentially it refers to the role of a stretch of DNA that does not encode for a protein or RNA and does not seem to be involved in [insert level of observation]. I.e. it is (generally) not used sweepingly, though there are some (imo rather useless) discussions whether the term should still be used. And note, for most of the DNA there is still not evidence of functionality

1 all DNA 2 normally yes (but can also refer to loci that are only transcribed but not translated... Such as rRNA) 3 at minimum will be transcribed, typically refers to protein coding

It refers to non-functional, to be precise. But even that is difficult, as we can define functionality on several levels, for example functional in terms of coding a protein, functional in regulatory processes, functional in structural aspects, functional in terms of phenotype modulating. Depending on your area of research one may emphasize one over the other.

Well, up to the 80s animals were harvested for insulin, which is probably not very pleasant to them. However, by now most production is bacterial.

It was more or less based on the (old) assumption that the main purpose of DNA was coding for proteins, and therefore regions devoid of genes (which is mostly found in eukaryotes) would be "junk". This view has changed. However, there are also other definitions of functionality, including for example phenotype-defining. I.e. if a particular region was lost, it may not alter the phenotype in any detectable way. Evolutionary it may still be a benefit, e.g. as a junkyard region for integration of mobile genetic elements. There is is also the question whether structural function (in terms of chromosomal structures) would be included in that definition. Ultimately I am not sure whether that discussion is terribly useful or not, to be honest. Per definitionem genes are coding for proteins. Therefore, they cannot be non-coding.

A) the coding generally refers to a protein. Hence a DNA locus coding for a RNA, which in turn does not code a protein is typically called non-coding. However, since their purpose is known, they are generally not termed junk DNA. B) junk DNA is a bit of a misnomer, as you may have heard, it basically refers to loci with unknown function, but its use is ambivalent and is typically not used to refer to something specific.

In general it must be stated that many of the ancestry tests are problematic, often yielding non-reproducible results for whatever reasons (most strikingly are identical twins getting different results, there are quite a few articles out there about these issues and typically services also state them). A related issue is that the calculations will highly depend on the information in their respective database. As a general comment, obviously if we go back enough, all our ancestry comes from African populations eventually. But obviously the database compare it to entries of existing populations. So to somewhat address your question, it is possible that somewhat somewhere you have had a relative that was mostly Sub-Saharan in their genetic makeup. However, it is also possible that you had folks in your ancestry that just happened to carry those markers whilst not appearing to be particularly African. The deeper you want to dig the less accurate predictions become, essentially. Another thing of note is that the DNA only shows you what you eventually have inherited. I.e. it is for example perfectly possible that you actually have a sub-Saharan ancestor somewhat way back, but just by chance you only inherited mostly parts from them that are highly conserved between populations (i.e. so similar that they cannot be used to distinguish between groups). Conversely, elements may be missing because just by chance you did not inherit any distinguishing markers from them.

I just came across an interesting paper looking at CO2 emissions in China. Based on their analysis the CO2 production is likely going to peak at 13–16 Gt CO2 /yr between 2021 and 2025. Wang et al. 2019, Nat Sustain

AFAIK that model is a crude simplification and is not really used (so far) among neurobiologists. But that being said, there is already quite a bit of consensus that the processes are mostly decentralized (though perhaps not quite as complete as proposed in the mentioned model). One of the consequences, however is that "conscious" and "unconscious" states are not binary states of the brain, many functions are active in both, and activities in unconscious states influence outcomes once the brain become conscious again. This is also consistent with persistent studies of unconscious decision making or certain phenomena such as "blindsight". There is some interesting literature out there on anesthesia, in which folks try to figure out what needs to be altered in the brain to induce unconsciousness, and as it turns out, the answer is actually fairly complicated. For example, a simple model would be to turn off an area associated with consciousness. However, that does not seem to happen, unless very large areas are deactivated. Different anesthetics affect different areas, but still induce unconsciousness. Others anesthetics induce out of body experiences and dreamlike feelings rather outright unconsciousness. One generally mechanism seems to be disrupting the brain's ability to integrate information and rather than outright inactivation, activity changes seem to be sufficient. Thus a particular model is that of cortical integration. A simple model is therefore that if the brain is able to pull the different activities together, consciousness arises. If critical elements to achieve this are disrupted the subject becomes unconscious. Yet the brain activity proceeds, and can affect changes that endure after consciousnesss arises again.

Mostly, I assume because it already has a well-established name (bioleaching) which is currently in industrial use. But apparently we need a new name if we do it in microgravity...

So that is an interesting point, and one that we have discussed earlier on. It is a bit difficult to find the balance as there is often a disconnect between what folks want, what they think they want and what is presented to them. As a whole I found that there is a lot of erroneous or misinformation (and the example provided by iNow is one of them). For example, in the Obama era, folks (especially Republicans) were strongly against government-controlled health care, but at the same time were highly in favour of medicare. In fact, some opposition was due to the fear that for some reasons government influence would somehow erode medicare (which is a government-run system in the first place). Often times the phrasing or branding alone is sufficient to change polling outcomes. For example, if the question asks whether one is in favour of medicare for all and describe medicare as a system to get health insurance through the government, support is high (65%, and Republicans are essentially split), rest are significantly in favour). However, if the same question asks the same, but describes it as eliminating all private health insurance companies, the support drops. This volatility of voter perception is what defines strategy among the different candidates. Moderates are afraid that because voters can be easily swayed, despite the overall support, it is not good to build a platform of "Medicare-for all" or equivalent, even if technically voters are in favour of such a system. More progressive Dems see it as a way to create enough political will to build something that voters seem to want. Were Dems and Reps are split regarding what universal health care should achieve (and that term alone could be loaded, depending on political leanings). For Reps it is mostly about cost reduction and least regarding access, for Dems access is high priority and independents are somewhere in the middle of it. Reps are somewhat mum on the issue as their platform mostly used to be Obamacare bad and it kind of imploded during the midterm elections. And Trump's position is mostly unicorn sprinkles for all.

There are actually different models on how that could work. But with regard to cash payments, I will add that this is a common assumption (folks will just piss away additional money) but studies on cash payments (including universal income type of models) show a far more mixed response. And I do think that Americans actually are rather hesitant to throw money at things (unless military perhaps), but it is a bit of a perception issue. Not sure how much difference there really is in attitude and perception of government spending. There is a certain partisanship, depending on who is spending on what and it is sometimes difficult to get to the actual nuts and bolts of what is being used for what.

The good news (for now) is that these things are very difficult to achieve (if at all feasible) as we still do not understand the link between genetics and the respective trait sufficiently. Of course that could change in the future, but major breakthroughs have not happened yet. Also there are still major issues in terms of unspecific mutations with the CRISPR/CAS system.

And inadvertently come to the opposite conclusion? Not sure about that.

That is an interesting point. The public opinion was actually always slated at least somewhat slanted towards more government actions : So looking at the graph it clearly seems that since 2008 there was a change in opinion (coinciding with Obama's government) which then normalized again in 2016. I.e. it does appear that the massive campaign to sway public opinion did indeed work and we see a normalization to pre-Obama opinion right now. It also could mean that the opinion is volatile and hence vulnerable to above mentioned influences. Nonetheless, ignoring the electoral college, it does seem that more government responsibility in ensuring health care is more accepted (again), and Pelosi and others have pretty much said as much. The biggest hitch probably is the question whether it should be a single national program or a mixed model. As the public is somewhat risk averse those with existing (good) employer plans are probably less likely to be in favour of big changes. That being said, it seems only a tiny minority would effectively be in favour of reducing government aid (i.e. slashing medicare) In some countries, such as Germany, it is subsidized to a degree that it is virtually free. I.e. semester payments are a few hundred euros at most, mostly for covering things like public transport tickets. Even with subsidies, education is still rather expensive in Canada. But then, US tuition are also subsidized but at least on average still more expensive.