CharonY

That is clearly not how things work. You may get shunned if your goal is to disprove its existence by any means necessary. There are plenty of folks working on the intersection of e.g. ecological systems and global flows. And due to the increasing effects quite a few have to add it into their models. I.e. that claim is nonsense. Whenever I read such threads I almost feel obligated to go through Eise's post and upvote them as in essence he makes a very basic statement that should not be controversial but many science fans fail to grasp it. Different areas of study have different methodologies to gain insights. To use an example of what is often considered a "softer" natural science: In biology there are only limited area where we can do proper modeling (and even then they often they are extremely rough). The reason is that complexity and data quality are bigger issues than in e.g. physics. Especially a few decades ago this was a huge issue, yet it did not prevent us from making assumptions and create working model based on the data available. Of course the work of historians can not be based on experiments and requires critical examination of evidence. While lack of data and experimentation invites more freedom of interpretation, proper historians (i.e. not youtubers or bloggers) spend a lot of time sourcing their arguments. Dismissing it wholesale is just disrespectful and rather show a lack of understanding how historians work.

North and South Korea reportedly signed an agreement to foster interaction between these nations (including family reunions). Perhaps glaringly, denuclearization was only include in very broad terms, not very different from promises in the past.

While there are repair mechanisms, it should be noted that that presumably the highest rate of mutations occur due to biochemical processes (including failure of said repair mechanisms; but yes background radiation has presumably little influence considering the rest of the activities going on). And as others have said, a) mutations still occur and b) selection still occurs. The pressure of selection are just different than they used to be as we have changed the environment quite a bit. I think the misconception is the term "natural" as in OP it seems that the it is assumed that there is a "norm" of sorts that is selected for. But obviously that is not the case. Even when talking about sexual selection, the selection is on a sliding scale. E.g. women generally prefer men who are taller then themselves but beyond that there is no absolute preference. Conversely, taller women tend to be more relaxed in terms of this preference, which shows that these "norms" are learned to a decent degree.

In that case currently all animals that are not extinct yet are equally superior. They all survived the same amount of time.

Well, this is a good example why the community comes up with such names. The issue here is that originally the symptoms were described by Alzheimer (sometime in the early 20th century). The big issue is that it was (and still is) not quite clear what caused the symptoms. You will find similar reasons throughout biology. Someone has an empirical finding, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. As such it is not even theoretically possible to use an unified nomenclature. Also note that many names (regardless whether it is named after a person or not) often emerge in literature in a meme-like fashion. E.g. someone may start to referring to a disease "as described by so-and-so" which eventually could be changed to "so-and-so's disease" (whether they like it or not). In more recent times I think the trend has been moving away from naming things after persons. One of the reasons (I think) is because the scientific community has grown so large that it is often not common to contribute major findings to a particular person (with the exception of some niches).

Well, here is the thing. It is not that liberals don't care or only if it affects black people. After all, a number of the devastating policies ultimately targeting black folks were enacted under Democratic administrations. It is more likely that most Democrat politicians are equally careful as their conservative counterparts to blame police. After all, law and order is considered a strength of Republicans and many Democrats are try to appeal to the same. The rise of these activists groups can be considered a form of lobbying in which could embolden certain progressive politicians to take those things seriously with less fear of losing votes. It depends on the voter, doesn't it? Many, especially white folks, seem to be complacent with the issue or even encourage tougher enforcement. Ironically probably because the target are generally not what is seen as the "typical" voter such as the white middle class. Many anti-police violence groups were formed or are headed by minorities. This is likely not by accident, as they perceive themselves to be targeted by the police, which is a strong motivator for political activism.

Actually you have two different fundamental cell types with various subtypes. The most basic form are prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea, containing no nucleus) and eurkayotes (which contain a nucleus). Typically among eukaryotes you have, as you mentioned, plant, animal, but also fungal cells. The latter appear closer to animal cells. With regard to drawing, you have to keep in mind that there are certain features which are common to almost all eukaryotic cell types. But there are also specialized cells that can have deviations. The red blood cells from mammals lose their nucleus, for example. When asked to draw "a" animal cell, the task is usually to depict one with classic or common features. Often when folks say animal, they refer to mammalian or even human, if not otherwise indicated. From the list of organelles, can you indicate their function and speculate whether a typical animal cell would have those?

I am glad that you find humour in the situation. Meanwhile over a dozen people have been killed by Florence and the toll from the typhoon Mangkhut has reached close to a hundred (with numbers probably going to rise).

It may indicate that one may need a different type of doctor.

Well, there is certainly a difference in a) expectation and b)competence in hiding lack of integrity.

So apparently Manafort has agreed to cooperate with the Mueller investigation. It seems for a witch hunt there are a surprisingly high number of indictments and subsequent flips.

Reminds me of the case in Italy in which six Italian scientists (and a public official) were convicted for manslaughter because they did not accurately predicted the risk of a major earthquake resulting in over 300 victims. Realistically, there are almost always folks staying behind in potential danger zones (sometimes by choice, sometimes not). Thus, erring on the higher risk side is often much better for public safety. Imagine if the news guy says, well, it is wet but not that bad, and folks start drowning because they were in a higher risk zone without realizing it...

I mean, one thing that is somewhat relevant is the fact that in many cases we are talking about more or less unconscious racial biases. Some of which are merely a byproduct of personal exposure (or lack thereof). Obviously a negative trait is hard to accept if you are not cognizant of them. Majority persons come much more rarely into situations where racial discrimination of any sorts occurs and thus their estimates of frequency of such encounters is likely going to be much lower than minority persons, for example. Even if dialogue occurs the situation is approached from vastly different experiences, which can colour the judgement of the other persons. What instead is needed is a general acknowledgement of said experiences, but contextualize them into a broader context. I.e. where do the described experience fit into the overall social landscape. But that is very difficult to achieve within short time frames. It does not help that research or similar work that specifically provide this context are often dismissed as biased (typically to the liberal side). Without the context we end up in holding up our own experiences as the ultimate truths.

Well, the issue is that there is a disconnect between what it is and what folks think it is. A structural bias that systematically disadvantages folks of certain ethnicities is (from what understand) termed racism. Or at least the outcome is. The issue here really seems to be that folks have learned that it is a bad thing and do not believe that they can associated with it. I mean, perhaps it does help to distinguish between folks that e.g. associate blacks with thugs and those that have a whole racial ideology behind them. But in some ways it sounds to me like branding (though it may be also of academic value due to the difference in mechanism). Though I also feel that it may eventually just become a PC term for explicit racism. On the other, other hand, I could see that a broader discussion educating folks on the matter would be beneficial as a whole. After all, those on the receiving end will often have a hard time distinguishing what is happening and making any kind of pushback may result in folks thinking they are crying wolf (while actually being disadvantaged by certain mechanisms).

They do not identify base pair sequencing... I suppose you mean "sequences"? Based on your knowledge, what is the purpose of sequencing for bacterial ID in the first place, what is the traditional approach and what are the differences in NGS?

That is the million dollar question, isn't it? Technically we are still mostly at the stage trying to figure out which biases exist, how they are formed. In many cases there is the perception that there is no bias, thus nothing needs to be done to address it in the first place. A big issue that this goes beyond merely police encounters. In an earlier study by Jackson et al (2014, J Personality Soc Psych) found that black children are seen to be more adult and less innocent than their white peers or in other studies were black folks are perceived as more threatening. The way I see it, we are early in the process in merely understanding what is going on (and there is already much pushback). Actually addressing the issue will take quite a while and involve a lot of trial and error, unless we manage to understand the causes better. That being said, I remember I read some reports in which counties tried to address police shootings specifically, focusing on de-escalation methods for example. I do not recall the details but I remember that it was hailed as one of the success stories in mitigating police violence. Whether those measures would be effective in the long run or even transferable would require further research.

That is true for any discipline. While it varies quite a bit, there are no areas that I am aware of where a job is guaranteed with a degree (it does increase chances, though). That is outright stupid and is usually a sign of ignorance and limited perspective Well, this is not how the job market works. First of all, the government is not where most of the jobs are. You will generally find more in the private sector. Excess for engineers is the same for every other discipline. Job markets shift, with changing focus, needs and opportunities.

Perhaps it is better not to focus on individual instances but rather overall patterns. While these may affect how data is skewed, more rigorous analyses would be needed to ascertain that what you describe does actually explain the disproportionate response we are seeing. And in fact, there are studies who now start looking into these micropatterns, but they are still fairly young. Nonetheless with what we do have and starting from rough to ever finer details, the majority of data still points to effects that are not simply explainable by socioeconomic factors or crime rates alone. If we take a large-scale view, drawing data from 20 US states, folks found that after accounting for age, gender, time and location, blacks are more frequently stopped than Hispanics and whites. Among stopped drivers blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be searched and ticketed. (See Pierson et al. 2017; available on a arxiv "A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States". Another study by Ross (Plos one 2015) using a Bayesian approach showed that the likelihood of a deadly shooting is higher for black unarmed black person than for unarmed white person (and in some areas, even higher than armed white person). An interesting aspect, which goes to your above point is that there are differences across counties, though the data in that study was no fine enough to resolve location-specifics with too much detail. Nonetheless, it does correlate with income equality and size of the black population. However, interestingly the likelihood of being shot while black does not correlated with crime rates. That does seem to contradict or at least put a caveat that higher shooting incidences are crime related per se. Note that in some cases policing may be perception rather than data-driven. E.g. a poor neighborhood could be policed heavier despite not having a significantly different rate of crime. But due to higher policing, more arrests are made pushing the detected rates upward. I do not recall the precise studies, but for marijuana arrests this pattern was detected (i.e. being white and/or middle class allowed a higher rate of undetected marijuana consumption). It was also found that in areas with higher segregation (and other factors indicative of differences between black and white populations) the bias towards fatal shootings of blacks is increased. This indicates that disparity in socioeconomic status had a higher influence than status in itself. Part of it is, IIRC the so-called place hypothesis, in which segregated minorities are viewed as especially threatening. In fact, a number of studies found that black-white segregation had a strong effect on black killings, for Hispanics the effect was linear and detectable, but less dramatic. Other studies have looked at individual confrontations e.g. using body cameras (Willits & Makin, 2017, J Res Crime and Deliquency). Here, the authors found that use of force seems to be more quickly applied to male subjects and especially to black males. While the research is obviously difficult as police shootings are relatively rare incidence and a lot of factors come into play, most research seem to indicate that especially after accounting for factors such as crime rates, structural racial bias can likely not be dismissed. The case where the scenario of increased fatality in relationship with crime is more likely to hold are cases in which the killed person was armed. Nonetheless, in a system where shooting someone may have a lower threshold, even small structural biases may lead to an increase in unnecessary fatalities. I should add that there was also one fairly recent study which was limited to a 2-year data set which found that potentially crime rate does account for black-white differences (they looked at incidences of assault to normalize the reported crime rate). However, the set was too limited to look at unarmed shootings specifically.

I think this is a slightly problematic example as the two elements you mentioned here are not separate. With racist you seem to to indicate a excessive prejudice or chauvinism of sorts. But the issue is broader, more subtle and far more insidious. In the broadest sense, most folks are to some degree racist in so far as we categorize folks that we do not know according to their outer feature which unconsciously may subtly change our perception. This is not limited to features associated with race, of course. Nonetheless it does alter perception without one needing to have a fully fledged-out racial mindset, rather it is a rather subtle bias. Examples of studies targeting such biases include the speed with which folks associate the word "thug" with a seemingly black face vs a white one. These biases are formed throughout ones life including media consumption. Now, individually this does not necessarily trigger actions against black subjects as in this example. However, it can make it just a bit more likely. Over large numbers, this leads to imbalance in e.g. police violence and since it is not necessarily based on racial frame work, perpetrators can as likely be of the same race as the victim. If it happens in large scale we got a system of racial discrimination that is not based on active racism of the individual actors. It becomes an emergent properties of biases, so to speak.

I was also thinking in terms of human influence on the nitrogen cycle, i.e. production and release of nitrates etc. But I would guess that overall it would still be far lower, considering that those processes are also again coupled to further CO2 release (directly or indirectly). If you are talking about emission and impact CO2 seems also to be on the upper end of that scale. After all, we are looking at drastic effects on the climate.

Probably not, it is more an arid-desert climate, you are right if you refer to the potential origin of dates. I was mostly looking at figs, which seem to originate from the Anatolian region and for some reasons my brain added dates.

Not sure whether the distinction is relevant in this context as total water content also differs (though one leads to the other, of course, assuming constant retention). Well considering the broad range found, I doubt that measures of the means would yield significant differences. I have not seen data that would back either one up, though. What one could do instead is trying find a regression between climate zone and sugar content. But even limited to the list you provided that does not seem to hold true. The two fruits with the highest sugar content (date, fig) are from Mediterrenean climates (which are also often considered to be in the temperate/mesothermal zone, perhaps extending to the arid climate. Melons, as discussed are actually fairly low in content. Peaches are about the same as blackberries (i.e. low) but as mentioned they actually grow in colder climates. In fact, the only truly tropical/subtropical fruit is the banana. I think you may be using different definition than in the OP. Based on OP it seemed that you excluded everything that requires mild winters (such as the Mediterranean, looking at figs). But here you seem to limit it to entirely tropical areas (unless I misunderstand you). But again looking at fruits listed in OP, those listed as tropical seem to span a larger band than those listed as temperate. As mentioned if we use the more classic definitions of climate zone and move the Mediterranean into the temperate band, I would agree with you. But then the OP kind of falls apart as we only end up comparing bananas to all the other fruits. Perhaps it would be beneficial if we agree on certain climate bands as base category and then look into the fruit that originate from each of them to compare carbohydrate content. The categories as outlined in OP seem to be a bit inconsistent to me to test the hypothesis outlined in OP. Edit: thinking in broader terms, I think it is fair to say that environmental factor, including nutrient availability, water, sunlight etc. can be considered the boundary conditions of how much carbohydrates can be diverted into fruits and then selective conditions (e.g. competition with other plants) shape the final outcome. By shifting climate zones, the boundary conditions change. But the individual outcome would be defined from the precise multifactorial niche the plant finds itself over time. My guess is that it would be very difficult to try to break it down to simple factors.

I was specifically addressing your graph. According to your hypothesis temperate would dominate in the lower range of sugar content. What I intended to show is that this is not the case. If we really plot all fruits (even if we ignore the issues with cultivation) the bars would clearly not separate. Of course, your graph does not weigh for number of species. We should also dispense with the notion of "tasting sweet" as it is not an objective measure of carbohydrate content. In addition, the issue is that if you live in temperate climates, the fruit you get in grocery stores are typically harvested in an unripened state. But then, there is the issue of categorization. You basically distinguish between temperate and non-temperate (and it seems that you put Mediterrenean climate also into the "tropical" section).The challenge here is that the former category likely has fewer edible fruits than the latter. From this alone, I would expect that the warmer climate fruits would both, top the high, as well as the low end of the proposed chart (and also note that in OP there was a highly limited selection to begin with). That all being said, climate can affect sugar content in fruits, though not necessarily the way OP has outlined it. There are studies using the same cultivars in different soils and climate zones, for example that have shown that cultivation differences and different timing in blooming does affect texture, sugar and acid content of fruits, for example. An example from in watermelon has shown that faster growth due to higher temperature resulted in higher water accumulation and hence, stronger dilution of sugar content, for example. I.e. if you limit or slow its growth, the sugar content will be higher. In other words, while the general structure of fruits will be dependent on adaptation to its environment (including fruit eaters and pollinators), it is also heavily influenced by current growth conditions.

I am not sure how it relates to e.g. nitrogen emission, but I would not be surprised. CO2 is associated and at the end of many processes, so it is not surprising that we emit loads of it.

If your question is based on an evolutionary point of view, it will be difficult as one would have to identify the original variant and compare their carbohydrate contents. But I am not convinced that you won't see a much higher overlap. Also a question with regard the climate is also what climate they originally tolerate and what modern cultivars do. Peaches, for example are grown in temperate zones. But then they also tend to have less sugar than apples. Mangos are also lower or comparable to apples. The question is also what you define as tropical, figs are typically not considered tropical, for example. But even if we take current cultivars as example, you will find many tropical fruits at the bottom (i.e. low carbohydrate fruits), such as lemons and melons.