CharonY

True. Though to be fair you managed to get your white house burned down by island folks who are infatuated with wigs. Well, they also attacked every one else at some point, hmm.

Quoted to test quoting (the multiquote button works, but the other does not). Also, it should be noted that many American historic buildings are built less resilient than many of those in Europe (as especially smaller houses are typically wooden constructs). Although you occasionally do find some odd things in the wall(s) in the old homes, once you get the permit to do something with them... I think that may be the tax for the Church. I.e. the state collects from members of the Catholic and evangelic church. However, non-members generally do not pay directly (but can be levied indirectly from the employer somehow).

It is a stochastic event and the larger it gets, the bigger the likelihood of growth defects. The likelihood for each event is dependent on the type of molecule as well as the physical conditions, of course. The relative simple answer to that is that there are only a limited (and sometimes only singular) configuration in which a perfect system can develop. Stochastic elements that interfere with it, are a function of the number of elements that are required to form the structure. As such, larger structure are more prone to imperfections overall. Specifically biological entities usually consist of more complex subunits with more potential interactions with each other and the liquor. As such a protein crystal is much more difficult to obtain than e.g. a simple salt crystal of comparable size.

Assuming that this topic is more related to humans, it is more of a social science than biological question. However, we really do not have a good spot (nor expertise, from what I gather) on this forum.

Tbf, this is true for a lot of those folks. Investors are rarely interested in the technical stuff. It is telling that she targeted tech investors and not do much pharm.

I agree, also it is unclear whether congress actually wants an impeachment process in the first place.

Some interpret it more strongly, as an effective path to impeachment.

The document pretty much points to congress to do the evaluation. However, lacking urgency (say, evidence that the President is under foreign control), it will more likely be used in a political way. The report does paint a picture that the Trump Campaign expected help from Russia, but there was no explicit evidence for a tit for tat. It is somewhat troubling but pretty much established prior to the report that Russia expected to benefit from a Trump presidency and worked toward that goal. With regard to the "no evidence" line that was touted earlier by Barr/Trump, the report is also mentioning that certain evidence was destroyed by investigative targets and does explicitly not rule out that "unavailable information would shed additional light" on the described events. Obviously that is a rather harsh difference from an actual exoneration of sorts. Edit: I must say, the overall tone of the report (or at least bits I have read) are more damning than I thought. While stopping short of calling out a crime, it did little (if anything) to soften its blows and uses quite some space to at least strongly imply corrupt use of authority and the first half, which does not rise to the criminal level, nonetheless is used implicitly to outline all the events to explain why the President chose to exert his powers in the way he did, without explicitly spelling it out. It could be just by accident that they laid things out that way, but somehow I doubt it. Regardless of the actual content, there is quite a bit of compelling writing going on here.

Interesting bit is that Trump actually directed folks to effectively end or obstruct the investigation. But they just denied to do so. Perhaps ironically, if he had more loyalist (but less capable) folks in position, it could have gotten worse. That being said, the report quite explicitly keeps the door open for the matter of obstruction charges, which will very likely be explored by Democrats for the next election.

A redacted version of the report has just been released. Edit: A quick read over the summaries indicate that the investigation was rather careful to draw conclusions, and highlighted how unusual the situation was. Such as e.g. that the President's action itself prima facie legal mechanisms, but they also considered the fact that these mechanisms allow enormous acts of obstruction. They specifically said that the evidence they obtained did not establish a direct crime with Russia underlying election interference (which, again is a bit different to finding no evidence; they found interactions between Russian government and the Trump campaign, but not sufficient to support criminal charges) they state that the different motives (in case of the President) have to be considered. They seem to say that, yes the overall conduct pretty much amount to an intend to obstruct but they kind of keep it open or open with regard to the motives.

First, it is dangerous to presume that all traits are under selection of sorts. It invites speculations that do not hold well under scrutiny (the areas of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are evidence to that). Second, plasticity cannot simply be ignored. OP describes a situation of strong selection of the genetic aspect, which again is very unlikely arising from a variable trait.

In the earlier days, when intelligent design became en vogue, there was quite a bit in biology, specifically evolution. The other chunk that was for a while quite persistent was regarding race (and usually intelligence). The rest is more speculative sci-fi (transhumanism or similar aspects). But I agree as a whole, physics was always target of crackpots and in contrast to other it has barely changed over the years. A part of it is that those areas of physics which are most targeted by those folks are also rather counter-intuitive. The other being that e.g. in biology we have fewer stringent theoretical framework that can be "revolutionized".

I'd be careful with overstating the directness of the interaction, and the role of the microbiome. There is quite a bit that is not that clear and it is also not certain whether it is really something different than, for example other sensory inputs.

You are missing the point. Why play bard's tale at all if do not have to pull out the cassette, turn it over, rewind press play and wait it gets to the right place when entering a dungeon...?

I think in this case this is heightened by the fact that it is in an area that some (again, younger men) see as their domain. I.e. computational sciences. I have a a few female colleagues in that area and until they established themselves there was often the assumption that they were support rather than lead in key positions. But these are more subconscious aspects (that go into the realm of unconscious bias) rather than the outright manifestations of, well, misogyny.

Do you want to make folks feel old? I still got a working external 3.5 floppy drive (I also got a 5 1/4 inch on a very old PC, but I am supposed to throw it away as the PC does not work anymore). I do have a working C64 with datasette, too (got the bard's tale 1 on it).

It seems that there is a tendency to describe such behaviour merely as a reaction to something, rather than calling the behaviour itself. If you followed the story you can see that it kicked off by a photo posted by MIT showing her being excited about (presumably) one of the first renderings. Within a day folks set up fake twitter accounts and targeted her specifically to minimize her contributions. One could discuss the predilection of the public to associate scientific achievements with individuals rather than groups, but it is not by accident that a woman's contribution is being minimized here. Specifically these trolls seem to target specifically young women. Men and older women are somewhat safer, though the latter tend to get commented on because their looks (whereas the stereotypical disheveled male scientists gets a pass. Ahem.). So clearly, this is not a gender war situation (as in, there are opposing parties). It is about a certain group of internet folks harassing the sh*t out of achievers who happen to be young women.

In addition to what phi said, a number of these posts appeared on various websites affiliated with what they ingeniously call men's rights (which, rather than addressing gendered issues for men, instead promotes a misogynist worldview). Edit: social media was a mistake.

I do not get your point here. Or do you mean that those guys trying to put down the author picking up other men from the list only accidentally to pick trans and minority folks?

Yeah, considering the whole thing started with a rather adorable photo of someone being excited over results. There are folks on the internet that just had to ruin that (and put in some effort, too). Imagine a world where those folks were doing something constructive (or at least get a PhD themselves).

It matters insofar as the certain group of people trying to diminish Katie's contribution by emphasizing Andrew's work (and mischaracterize it in the process) often also not very keen on lgbtq folks. Something that Andrew is well aware of which is why he threw it in.

If they are in an operon they are pretty much by definition polycistronic, so...

Jesus, the mere fact that folks decide to post memes discrediting the contribution of one of key personnel in a team just because of her gender is sad. However, it is much sadder that this is what my colleagues experience on a routine basis. It is silly to frame it in terms of a gender war. Rather, it has and still is the case that women have to fight harder for recognition. If you seriously wonder wonder where the disgusting reaction is, just ask yourself, why does the picture with Andrew exist and why did he had to step in to defend his colleague? Of course those same folks will try to make it about identifying contributions and of course it is an incredibly thinly veiled attempt to hide their true motives. That being said, none of my female colleagues find that surprising (especially the older ones), as it has been with them every step in their career. Quite a few are hesitant to use social media in the same way as their male counterparts (especially when it comes to photos). While one can hope that the reactionary attitude will die out with the younger generation, quite a bit will be amplified by social media, where those backward arsehats still have their safe space.

Add physical activities to the list. It seems to have a big impact on some of the highest risks of death (cardiovascular diseases).

A couple of points, the distinction between chemcial and biological is largely arbitrary. There is no biological difference in the use of biologics vs synthetic drugs, for example (though the process of obtaining and characterizing them is different). Similarly, the development of phage therapy is progressing not because they are better than antibiotics (of which many are synthetic to improve their function) but because of the rise of antibiotic resistances. Conversely, biological products can be as harmful as any synthetic drug, depending on their mode of action. This is a weird mischaracterization of how infections work. For the most part infections are not based on accumulation of metabolic byproducts (most of which are either eliminated with waste and/or used by other bacteria in the same community). For infectious bacteria, there are specific host-pathogen interactions. And for opportunistic pathogens it is true that they can bypass weakened host defenses, but it is less about metabolitic products, but their mere existence in otherwise sterile tissues that causes damage. They can, for example, invade host cells eventually causing necrosis. What you may be thinking of are things like endotoxins, which are essentially part of Gram negative bacteria that can be shed when they lyse. The interesting bit here is that their presence itself is not what causes damage, rather, the immune systems responds to them in an aggressive way, which can cause significant damage. Growth rate in itself, is therefore not an indicator of damage and trying to genetically modify the microbiota is a rather futile exercise for many reasons. However, there is some evidence that microbial composition has an effect on health (although one could also argue that they may be an indicator rather than cause). But while there are efforts to change microbiota in an effort to improve health, the overall success is fairly low so far (again, for many reasons). In the end, the largest effect on public health seems to be connected to diet and lifestyle.