CharonY

Well, the subspecies definition is imprecise at best (to put it very, very mildly) . However, it should be noted that in case of dogs time is not an issue. Dogs are highly inbred and their gene pool was largely isolated from the original pool (i.e. proper wolves) which accelerates divergence. The distinction to a subspecies is therefore used to delimit dogs from wolves for practical reasons.

Yes, dogs are considered a sub-species of wolf. I.e. both belong to the species Canis lupus.

The key to sorting them is the dye. Do you know which was used and why? For practical purposes it is helpful to use software to isolate the individual chromosomes and move them around. Alternatively you could do what we did a very long time ago as undergrads: print on transparencies and cut them out.

Throw us under the bus, didn't ya?

The issue here is that forming endosymbiosis is typically a very slow process. I.e. if environmental situations become hazardous, both would die before a symbiosis had stabilized. A simple model how these symbioses form is the avoidance of phagocytosis in amoeba. Specifically you could look up Dictyostelium which is a model to study symbioses (mostly in terms of parasitic ones, but the lines are blurry). Typically amoeba and other eukaryotes consume bacteria as prey. However, over time some bacteria may obtain genetic mechanisms allowing them to survive the uptake (phagocytosis) from the predator. They then exist in a membrane-surrounded compartment within the host. At this point there is no actual benefit for each partner. In a parasitic interaction, the bacterium may have additional so-called virulence factors, that allow them not only to survive the host, but potentially also steal nutrients and other things from the host. Here, we have a parasitic symbiosis. However, in arms races between host and bacterium, over time the bacterium may settle down a bit (so to say) and instead of exploiting the host, it may couple its reproductive success with that of the host. When that happens, anything benefiting the host also benefits the bacterium. So over time, the bacterium may start contribute to the nutrition of the host, rather than just take away. Only at this point real mutualism starts. Thus it is unlikely that species suddenly merge to overcome a harmful situation. Rather, over time mutualism may develop that allow them to exploit previously unfavourable niches. Note that the "endosymbiotic theory" as a term generally refers to a specific endosymbiotic case, which is the formation of organelles in the evolution of eukaryotes. Symbioses generally refers to interspecies interaction. I.e. the luminiscent bacteria on anglerfish would be considered a symbiotic partner, but the male would not.

I would qualify this. At least he wants that folks think he is smart. After all, why else would he boast that China respects his "very, very large a brain". Or how else does one interpret this memorable presidential quote: He wants to appear smart. He just does not want to put the effort into it. But I agree he does not care if folks working with him are idiots or not as long as they are loyal.

Well, mostly a bit nonsensical. Unless one is a shut-in with a relatively sterile environment and one gets exposed to a lot of potential harmful bacteria and the immune system does not fully protect against all of them (otherwise we would never get sick). After all, many common bacteria have found ways to circumvent our immune system. You cannot train yourself to be immune against enterobacteria by licking small amounts of raw chicken, for example.

That is an artificial distinction.

Not really. The limiting factor is the redox potential between terminal acceptor and donor. The potential energy does not change. Think of it that way. The energy you could obtain from dropping a single weight from 100 ft does not change whether you used one or two ladders to get there. Also think in terms of potential as the height. I.e. if you start with glucose and end with oxygen, you are much higher than if you started e.g. with lactate instead of glucose. Or if you ended with nitrate instead of oxygen. With hydrogen as an acceptor you have the even bigger issue that redox potential is at a level where respiration actually normally starts. I.e. think of hydrogen being basically the same height as the floor. Dropping anything from there will give no or negligible energy.

Also, it is really somewhat beyond OP, as the question is then not how to improve ACA but really how to improve hospital care as a whole. For the most part though, hospitals like to implement things themselves, if at all possible. And there are good reasons for that. However, whether that works depends a lot on the leadership. The idea behind the various provisions is to provide incentives to implement required changes. Keeping those in place might be a good idea, but requires adjustments following active research (there are several groups looking into the effects of these and other measures of health care). But if the goal is to improve overall health care and health care funding, that would require a much longer discussion.

So with using the term "respiration" you will have to be careful whether you think of hydrogen as electron donor (the role otherwise played e.g. by glucose ) or the terminal acceptor (the role played by oxygen). Due to the low redox potential, the latter generally does not allow the generation of energy and is mostly involved in energy conservation and to balance reducing equivalents in fermentative processes. Hydrogenomsomes are example of such processes as the reduction of H+ to hydrogen does not yield energy per se, but rather regenerates ferredoxins. With regard to the first role, i.e. oxidation of hydrogen, there are examples of endosymbionts of tube worms, I believe, and probably more critters around hydrogen vents. I am not sure how much or if these symbionts contribute to the energy balance of the host or whether they perhaps only contribute to nutrition. These are not necessarily anaerobic per se, as it would possible to couple hydrogen oxidation to oxygen as electron acceptor.

It is important to note that while these are provisions of the ACA, they are not its cornerstone. Rather these are (fairly unique) measures to try to quantify and improve critical aspects of health care (such as infection with antibiotics resistant bacteria, which is an increasing problem even in otherwise excellent hospitals). For the most part the most obvious solution is a fine-grained analysis of why hospitals fail, which includes the mentioned socioeconomic aspects. As such e.g. adjusting ratings against hospital population demographics would be a step in that direction. However, in the broadest sense this also shows the incredible disparity in health care we find in the US system. Depending on where you are, the health care can range from world-leading to rather dismal and while the measures may provide information which hospitals provide low quality care and why, it is still under the assumption that free market forces will somehow make them improve. As others have noted this is not really an ideal way to view or manage crucial services. How these things can be improved is literally a billion dollar question. In some areas, enforcing best practices to limit infections and fund measures in underfunded hospitals to implement them would be ideal. However, there are also conditions and situations that require more flexibility. From what I have seen there is little agreement among health care professionals what the best measures are (though almost all agree that measures are needed) and how to reach them.

I would need to see the original paper, but I am not quite sure what the new bit here is. There are plenty of anaerobic bacteria that utilize hydrogen as electron donor. And there were papers back in the 70s who described the use of hydrogen as donor in a PSI-dependent reaction. Perhaps there are new details emerging, but at least from the linked article it is not quite clear what the really new finding is (perhaps the isolation area is different, but then those buggers are pretty much everywhere).

It's PNAS and not an original paper. Though I agree that a 11 year old paper is not precisely "news".

Typically the confusion is based on difficulty in grasping the different units that are at play here. You should draw out a chromsome, and label the chromatids on it. That draw a sister chromomes and do the same. What are the key steps in meiosis? What do yo end up after the first, and what after the second? I think you kind of get it, but the way you describe it is slightly confused.

I do not think that I have seen many (or any) postulating utilitarianism as fundamental ethical principle. What folks have stated are (at least in my memory) utilitarian views on certain subjects. That being said, you are somewhat misstating (or perhaps overstating) the utilitarian position. First there are different varieties of utilitarianism (I am not really familiar with the literature) but IIRC what you describe could be classified as "act" utilitarianism. Another position (or variation) is that instead of each individual act requiring to maximize happiness, rules should be followed that allow a net increase in happiness. There is also the argument that the apparent conflict between customary morality and utilitarian ethics is, for the most part, artificial. Or that customary morality does not provide and answer either. If we switch the example to the tram example (switch the way the tram goes down and one person, or do nothing and kill fiver persons), you still end up with an ethical dilemma when following other principles of morality. I also recall that Popper has argued that instead of maximizing happiness, the goals should be to minimize pain instead. And while I do not know how that discussion evolved, I am vaguely aware that there are several variations and modifications to that principle. Long story short, there is quite a bit more to the whole thing, and considering that there are many books on this topic, I think it is worthwhile reading some of them and make up your mind on the topic yourself.

There are tons of other uses. Functional genomics relies heavily on phylogenetic relationship to predict functions, for example.

I think it is wrong to see it as detachment. Not being too worried about murder, which in any scale is an extreme measure, is taking a stance. Justifying it (even only for a bit) by highlighting perhaps problematic views of the victims is not taking a neutral stance or perspective. Rather, it implies that only folks with acceptable views and behaviour are worthy of basic protection. For a free and democratic society where you want the rule of law this clearly not a dispassionate, position. If we only extend protection to those we agree with, this is taking a side, consciously or not. Sure, but in my understanding murder is on an extreme range that should never be part of an appropriate response.

So you are saying that folks leaning toward things that you are not a fan of should be freely assassinated? That is a very scary thought. It also scary to simply designate folks one do not like as an enemy combatant. Especially if the only weapon seems to be words. If you think words and thoughts should be punishable by death, I truly hope that you don't get into a position of power, regardless what your leanings are.

From I understood he was a columnist more than a journalist. But can you point out more background? I understand it is a broad topic, but it would help if you could contextualize your comments e.g. with sources. There are articles around that highlight that the crown prince is not the progressive icon that he tries to make himself to be. And specifically, if dissenting voices are assassinated I am going to be very skeptical about any reforms.

Touche.

Stephen Miller will be appointed to Grand Vizier.

Part of it is because of the parliamentary structure in most European countries. Instead of polarizing between two choices, issues give rise to alternative parties. Sometimes it is something like the greens, now it is the far right. That being said, there is a fair amount of trickery that goes behind the scenes, though usually less blatant. For example electoral districts are also subject to gerrymandering and if you are in local politics there is quite a fight around that in areas where slight differences could prefer one party over the other. However, due to fragmentation risk of votes it folks keep it fairly muted. It seems to me at least that these things rarely go beyond the local press (if at all). That, btw is something that I found to be very different to politics in a number of European systems. In the US the politics is far more in our face and individual candidates often have a prominent profile. In Germany at least, only the top candidates are really presented to the public, the other candidates are kind of there and expected to vote with the respective party. The fact that the parties vote en bloc in the US is a somewhat recent development).

There have been different measurements in different studies which show marked differences but they happened at very different times and not necessarily from a large sample size. Another complicating factor is that some measurement were taken from captivity were animals often are in poor conditions. However, larger population surveys show no significant differences between regions and the average weight of males is around 46 kg and of females roughly 37. Dickman and Marker showed weight of males ranging from 32-64 and of females from 26-51 kg.

Not necessarily. While it does not have to be a zero sum game per se, some of the earlier arguments from Musk and co (not necessarily from folks on the forum) was that that it will somehow safeguard the human species. That thinking implies that if one manages to survive there we are safe from catastrophes on Earth, and I find this highly problematic for a number of reasons. What it has, however, is an imbalance (in my mind) in the hype/cost ratio. You can enthuse folks easier to send something to Mars than to take a closer look at our oceans. In my mind the latter is orders of magnitude more interesting and relevant. It is like looking for greener grass in a far away desert, so to speak. I support the sense of adventure, sure. However, I wish some more of it would go toward the place we need to maintain in the first place. With regard to financial resources, we could have develop technologies much earlier to mitigate CO2 issues. But there was no market for it. Now we are late. We could have funded research into alternatives to antibiotics decades ago. Now we are running out of options (well they start funding novel approaches now, but it is always after the house is halfway burnt down). I do agree that it is not only funding, but also political overlay to it, but some of it is also simply down to funding.