CharonY

Depends. The risk is of pathogens in general (Legionella are often less of an issue in the wild as they tend not to be as competitive as other bugs. However, they are opportunists and under the right condition they can pop up) is associated with warm standing water. Showers themselves are not a huge problem, but badly maintained water tanks are. Hot tubs need to be disinfected. and if badly maintained are obviously a risk for many nasties. Since acute flaccid myelitis is still a very rare disease, looking at associations is bound to identify tons of incidental co-occurrences so I doubt that a source can be reliably tracked that way. Moreover if a virus is to blame, AC is rather an unlikely place to look at. However with the little data we have we can at least superficially test your hypothesis. If ACs are associated with AFM, there are a at least two predictions we can try to make. 1) it is more prevalent in areas where AC use is heavier. 2) timing should be close or around heavy AC use. Looking at 2014 data (there is a report by Sejvar et al 2016 , Clin Inf Disease) we see that CA had the highest incidence rate was in California but if we account for population, Pennsylvania and Virginia have similar rates and Colorado has roughly double that rate. On the other hand other states with traditionally heavy AC use (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico) had none or only a single case. So the geographic distribution does not lend a strong support that AC use is correlated with incidence. Next, looking at the incidence rate as a function of date we see a peak around the last two weeks of September. If car AC was the main culprit, It would probably be more likely to have peaks around late summer. Moreover, the incidents continued to occur up to late December, when AC use should not play any role anymore. What has more merit among the things you listed is probably school. There children are in fact packed together, but rather than getting infected by ACs, they infect each other. For example it is known that acute asthma cases in kids cases peak in September, often caused by rhinovirus infections. Lastly, if we look enterovirus infection, we see all-year infections with no noticeable peak around the summer months. However, peaks are also observed in September , which could coincide with exposure e.g. at school. I.e. as noted, the AC could be just a random co-occurence, with school onset being a likelier cause for transmission.

So how should it be called then. When we look gene pools we observe that they generally change over time. Isn't this a fact? Or perhaps a different example. If we measure outside temperature we will see that it fluctuates throughout the day. Is that a fact? If so, what is the difference between these two statements?

There is also the rather obvious observation that excess CO2 is in fact not taken up by plants. Otherwise the atmospheric CO2 content would not increase...

Conjugation only work when the they have the required genetic factors (especially in cross-species events these are located on plasmids). Otherwise it depends on the bacteria in question. If there are big differences in growth rate one might overgrow the other and you have a high likelihood of ending with one or the other after transfer. If not you typically will have a mixed culture. If you do dilution streaking you should spot different colonies, though. Unless they produce antibiotics, bacteriocines or other antimicrobial compounds or are one of the few predatory bacteria they should not kill each other. I have no idea what mean with mega bacteria.

Oh right the question in OP, forgot about that.

Also, it does not seem that the governor in Florida actually has veto powers in these instances which would make the claim even more ridiculous.

Note that viruses do not "breed" as bacteria. They require host cells to multiply.

Actually, I meant to say that this is not strictly true. As a whole industrialized nations produce more CO2 per capita, yes. However there are large differences even in affluent countries (the mentioned 5-15 metric tons), which would be the equivalent of tripling the population in terms of per capita emission.

The world is not quite at replacement levels but is pretty close. The overall population is expected to level off at somewhere around 9-12 billion in about a hundred years (driven by birth as well as increased life expectancy). That being said, only focusing on population is a bit short sighted. Looking at industrial nations, the range of annual CO2 emission per capita is rather broad with countries like USA, Canada and Australia emitting over 15 metric tons. Other countries in Europe have reduced it to 9-5 metric tons per capita. Certainly, population is a multiplier, but reduction of emission is the other side of the equation that cannot be overlooked.

There are plenty of naturally fluorescent animals. GFP is only one of the man fluorophores around. Another well-known and common examples are scorpions, which you can also get in certain pet shops.

Kindly check the time line here: As mentioned, the rate is the important bit.

In the last 8 years or so, services have popped up where you can design and have them made the required constructs (while not terribly cheap, it makes since easier). However, you still need to do a successful viral transfection and that means setting everything up for sterile cell culture. Unless I missed some major development, that is still rather labour intensive and prone to contamination issues, especially in home settings without training. Can one be theoretically successful? Sure, but it will still take time and money. It is one of the reasons why despite a lot of internet hype in the DIY area there are not regular posts of folks with their glowing frogs. Getting GFP producing coli is much easier, but even then there will be challenges (mostly contamination and risk of growing certain pathogens).

Since you seem to be familiar with the process (and I am not) could you point out how the rules in Florida are and what the powers of the governor are and how he could prevented it? As a side note, assuming it is as you say, it is still clear that Rick Scott was against the measure. That fact at least is well documented. That and his record dismantling a previous process and systematically denying restitution makes it pretty clear, even from a cursory reading, that this is far beyond just my "own personal beliefs creating facts". Rather it is what is called "context". And as Ten Oz already mentioned, Rick Scott appealed a federal Judge's ruling that they had to overhaul the system as the process was arbitrary and basically prevented from folks getting their rights back. Any such background info would make the assumption that he was instrumental in the process suspect. More likely scenarios is either he could not prevent it, or preventing it would have caused too much political backlash. Crediting him for it is odd, to say the least. Again, context. You are asserting this. However, it seems that Native American communities to take actions in order to get their votes out. This measures include handing out free Ids, putting educational forces on the ground to help folks navigate the requirements and so on. The fact that they had to go through additional hurdles is what suppression is all about. Also the media clearly did not left that part out. Again, contextual reading into what voter suppression is clearly indicates a system where certain groups are systematically disadvantaged when they try to exert their right to vote. This can include things like having polling stations far away from their place, restriction mail-in and early votes (if those are used differently by different demographics), as well as requirement of additional ID which certain folks may have a harder access getting (even if it is something like fees). Looking at how things went it is clear that Native Americans had to clear an additional hurdle to get their votes in. And that is classic voter suppression. Misinformation is also an issue, but it is not state or federally mandated and hence in a entirely different league. However, there were many, many robo-calls and facebook ads with blatant lies around and at least in the presidential election it came out that quite a few were thrown in from foreign operatives. While this is clearly an attack of democracy, it is not the same mechanisms or issue as state mandated rules that makes it harder for folks to vote (under the guise of fraud prevention for which there is still no evidence). I hope you can see the difference here. As a side note it should be noted that there was a District Court blocking the implementation of the Id laws, but that was overthrown but that was blocked in Appeals Court. The request for the Supreme Court was to throw out the stay, but the court denied without explanation (thought there was a dissent from Ginsburg and Kagan). So far, however, I have not seen evidence that Native Americans were not disporportionately targeted by these measures.

Without detailed demographic info to identify trends and irregularities it is impossible to even guess at the state of suppression, much less rule anything out. What are you referring to? The only high-profile cases I have heard of in ND where Republican changes so that a full street address is required for voting. That, in turn disproportionately affected Native American voters. Or are you including misleading facebook ads? Those seem to be quite a recent trend, often from unknown sources, but bad as they are, they do not implement rules to alter ones ability to vote. Voter suppression in Texas is also centered around ID laws and restricting early voting. Yes indeed. Also in cases where he allowed restitution, it benefited a disproportionate amount of white felons.

You make it sound as if it was something done by Rick Scott. In fact Scott, and DeSantis have maintained that an restoring their rights would treat felons too leniently (check some Floridian newspapers for that). From what I understand it was put on a ballot backed by a grass root movement which collected sufficient petitions. There was bipartisan support from the ACLU and some Koch-backed organization, though.

That is a very good question. I will add the caveat that this is only true for eukaryotic systems, as in bacterial ones there are many more ways to deal with anaerobic situations. But since you added human cells, and there I would say it is not wrong. The main issue I would think is one of perspective. If using "anaerobic glycolysis" one often refers to the upper part of the pathway and associated ATP generation, whereas when using the term "fermentation" the focus is usually on the regeneration of reducing equivalents. However, that is not a hard rule and could be viewed differently.

IIRC a higher rate of fructose remains unphosphorylated. I.e. in urine fructose is the characteristic metabolite being found in urine. Hexokinase has lower affinity for fructose and usually only converts fructose if glucose levels are low enough not to interfere.

Basically the water capacity of the atmosphere is temperature dependent. At higher temperature the water vapour rises. As water vapour is a greenhouse gas itself it can lead to feedback effects.

There is something to that. The brain is energy hungry and roughly speaking, organisms with a higher metabolic rate (which is related to higher body temperature) tend to have larger brains (adjusted for body size). While insufficient to posit intelligence per se, it implies that being able to maintain a high metabolic rate increases the size potential, which in turn might enable more options to develop intelligence.

There are different mechanisms known intracellular gene transfer. But if you refer to reasons why the transfer stabilized, it is a bit more complicated. If it was to avoid mutations, keeping it in mitochondria would be better, after all there would be more copies around per cell. If transferred into the nucleus, there is only one point of attack. However, there is something related to that is called "Muller's ratchett", a hypothesis that in asexual reproduction deleterious mutations can accumulate irreversibly and hence a nuclear transfer can, by providing access to sexual reproduction, relieve these effects. However, especially in plants there is minimal evidence for that. Another hypothesis is genome streamlining, which is often found in parasites. By not having to carry a gene, a mitochondrium would outcompete those that still carry it. There are also a number of hypotheses that are non-selective, and have just ended in the nucleus due to DNA escape and uptake, i.e. mostly mechanisms-driven with subsequent pruning, for example. In different lineages different factors could have contributed, to make things more complicated.

Not sure what you are referring to. In 2016 Reps got 49% of the popular vote but received 55% of the seats. Dems got 48% of the vote but only got 44% of the seats. This is in part what the others were talking about and goes to the gerrymandering process.

I found the case(s) curious and tried to look into the legal arguments. With only a very superficial reading it seems that the following things were at play (with no singular law responsible for the results) - the lawsuits were civil in nature and did not consider criminal culpability (which is possibly a big issue for victims, but I am not sure how these things are generally handled in civil courts) - as consequence the means of conception were often found to be irrelevant for the child support case - quite a bit more concerning is that in at least on of the cases the court reasoned that there was partial consent and that the victim in fact contributed to a misdemeanor (which to my layperson's eye reads like a victim blaming excuse which is sometimes use for reduced rape sentencing). That part seems to be a systemic issue where consent and capability of consent seems to be used rather loosely in court. In some cases consent did not really factor in (see first point) - the courts (including the Kentucky Supreme court) further weigh the importance and right of child support against the goal of deterring statutory rape and generally decided that the rights of the child outweigh the latter - child support is for the child and paid by the non-custodial parent, which typically has asymmetric results

A lot (most) of mitochondrial (and plastid) DNA has been incorporated into the the host genome, though the extent can vary between different groups of organisms. Many of functions for replication are typically transferred to the host, though a few may still be retained. Typically the mitochondrial genomes lack the complete set of genes required for independent replication. There are several models and evidence of DNA transfer during the early phases of organelle origins. After establishing the core functions of organelles the rise of protein import/export functions have slowed down the transfer of the rest.

Nope in the liver it is not about stem cells but because of simple structures. Liver cells can restore function just by growing. Other organs can't do that as they require more complex structures. Connective and fibrous tissue are not cells but based on things cells produce to keep stuff together. Again you got things backwards but i really can't give a cell biology lecture just for you. I can dig out some papers where folks try to minimize scarring, however concepts are somewhat advanced.

No, the liver is not a terribly complex organ. Functional regeneration is possible by simply growing what is left. It also has only little to do with stem cells. Essentially it is the liver cells (hepatocytes) which are differentiated (i.e. they do not become other cell types like stem cells) start growing. There is an influence of some stem cells, but they are already further differentiated and basically turn themselves into further hepatocytes or epithelial cells. Scars are, again irrelevant for its regeneration. the resulting liver mass can resume function but looks quite different from the original liver. You seem to be hung up on scarring, it is really just deposition of fibrious tissue for a number of different reasons.