CharonY

HDL-LDL relationship is complex and the literature is shifting if you even take your eyes off it for a minute. While medically recommendations are being made, the actual mechanisms are uncertain and some statistical associations are less stable than one might hope for. There is a decent chance that e.g. increased LDL is an indicator of certain cardiovascular events rather than the cause, for example. Or that certain ratios are more relevant than absolute level. Or dozens of other things. One connection with HDL is its role to reduce the activity of LDL-derived oxidized phospholipids for example, and is therefore considered to be anti-inflammatory (in this context). However, in animal models under certain conditions HDL can actually promote inflammation. Perhaps another aspect that sometimes causes confusion: LDL and HDL refer to lipoproteins, which are actually a class of diverse proteins that carry cholesterol and are not cholesterol per se (but the complex is often referred to as LDL/HDL cholesterol). That is is just the pre-emptive caveat to state that there is a lot of uncertainty in play with regard to lipid metabolism/transport and associated disease. Similarly, the connection to infections as well as inflammation. The issue with post-infection levels is (among others) the close connection with the inflammatory response, which may persist even after clearance. Though most commonly HDL are reduced allowing higher levels of LDL oxidation (due to the dimished anti-inflammatory effects mentioned before). Changes in LDL depend a lot on the type of infection or inflammatory response. During acute infections general HDL and LDL levels often decrease, with some LDL-species being elevated. I am not sure whether the mechanisms for that is known. Since there is also a disruption in triglyceride transport, it will depend on numerous factors on when levels will return to baseline (i.e. before infection). Edit: I should add that the complex knowledge situation is not due to the fact that researchers are silly bastards and just make up things (well mostly not because of that) but because the role of LDL/HDL in disease is explored from various angles and methodologies. Much of the effects on overall health and coronary disease are based on cohort studies, which tells us something about association, but not the functional relationship. On the other end of the spectrum we got molecular mechanism, often in animal models, but they provide an incomplete view how diseases develop and ultimately affect health.

I am also wondering how a sunken sheet would prevent nutrient dispersal.

Don't ask me, can't keep my hdrangeas alive. That being said, it seems that there is a wide spread of longevity and there is some effect of competition with pollinators. Some spring plants seem to flower very long, if they remain unpollinated. It also seems that habitat plays a larger role.

Usually you start with a search in the appropriate database. If the name is common you then refine the search via affiliation/topic as appropriate. Nowadays quite a few also use Orchid identifiers, which makes things easier.

As already mentioned most fruits we consume are the product of extensive breeding. Also many fruits are originally from different climate zones, which makes assessments difficult. Surely taste is not a good indicator if carbohydrate contents, either. So I am not sure whether OP can be easily validated.

Makes sense.

From memory, I recall to main states of the follicle with telogen being the resting state and anagen the growth state and I believe there were a number of factors determining the transition including direct hormone sensing but also secondary event that would influence it, including changes vascularization. I.e. mechanistically it is probably not the length itself is necessarily the limiting factor (though at some length it may just break/fall off) but the signaling involved in transitioning from on to the other state. But again, my recollection is murky on the details and I may be off.

Yes, facial hair has some of the highest growth rates, and I believe it is due to the follicles themselves, but I may be misremembering. Also note that growth rate is not the same as potential length. I don't think we have any way to assess changes in growth rates.

Issue with sexual selection in humans is that it does seem to have significant cultural overlay and is therefore extremely variable. Long beards in itself is not an indicator of testosterone levels from what I recall. Though the overall connection is a bit more complex than that. Individual follicles react to testosterone and it can stimulate hair growth. However, not everyone has the same densities of follicles. Moreover, length depends on linear growth after initiation, which correlates more with DHT (a conversion product of testosterone) levels. So, instead of beard length or density, the growth rate might correlate better.

It should also be noted that not everything in biology has necessarily a direct reason. Sometimes they are leftovers or consequences from other developments.

Could you elaborate what you mean with "organisation as organism hypothesis"?

... I mean, it has to be satire, right?

I think I have been conflating size of the enclosures with scale of the operation. Let's take a step back. How do you envision to enclose a body of water with plastics in a way that prevents nutrient loss (if that is what you propose). How is the circulation with outside water to be managed (if at all)? How would those be different from existing closed containment devices? For the latter challenges have been well-described and can be used as starting point. It should also be noted that one should make clear goals in terms of what one would like to achieve in the system. Phytoplankton in itself is not of sufficient commercial value. If one wants to have sufficient fish production, additional feed input is pretty much inevitable. Obviously, sediments in areas with poor nutrient input are not likely to yield high nutritional levels, for starters and establishing a self-sustainable ecosystem is a very ambitious goal. If the main product is seaweed, IIRC a extremely large size needs to be used until the operation becomes commercially viable, which would make enclosed systems rather difficult. That all being said, folks are trying to exploit ocean for farming purposes. But the way I read it is that trivial solutions do not exist. The balance between ecological impact, economic feasibility and technical difficulty is still being investigated.

Because if you contain all the waste in a closed species you will have fouling. It is the basic reason why aquaculture are preferred over, say, aquariums. What you seem to propose is a semi-open system. I am talking about scale because it is one of the big limiting factors. Oceans are not static and there is a limit that you can control in a semi-closed system. If you want to pump up sediment (under the assumption that the area that you mix is actually rich in nutrients- that does not need to be the case as they can be transported ) or manipulate other things large-scale in a closed or even semi-closed environment things are going to be very difficult and massively expensive. This is one of the reason why folks actually use open system. The cost and difficulty generally do not become exponential higher with size. There are likely solutions for closed aquaculture farming, but I am not sure about cost, scalability etc.

I think you at this juncture you would benefit more from textbooks rather than links. For biological basis I recommend Alberts: Molecular biology of the cell. For Methods my go-to book is Sambrook: Molecular cloning. While I applaud your enthusiasm, it is important to note that one needs some foundation in a given topic in order to even find and understand relevant literature. Trying to do that just using online sources and a forum is going to be impossible and you will inevitably come to wrong conclusions. This is also evidenced that you seem to misunderstand the point of the paper you linked. You may want to follow up on Racaniello's work from the 90s on that topic (but really, try get some fundamentals, it will massively boost your ability to understand the issues).

That is quite different to how typical ocean aquaculture works. It seems you want to basically trap off a part of the ocean and limit exchange with the outside. What area do you think can you reasonably enclose and would how would you control the mixing. Regular aquaculture depends heavily on the exchange in order to allow production. Limiting exchange would change the equation considerably. How would you address that? Or to put it differently, even smaller experimental aquaculture stations (with only 100 m2 in size) are open systems. Have you considered that there may be a reason for that?

The biggest issue is the notion of 3D printing biomolecules. Theoretically certain photolithgraphic methods could approach the required size limits, however, to date it is not feasible to create the detailed structures and, perhaps even more difficult, the correct physicochemical properties at the interaction site. Still, I ignored that in my initial post. However, using iron is even less feasible. There is simply no way to do that. If the patient is dying from viral infection, the organs are likely failing. It would be too late for intervention. What you would do is just make them die faster. Why call it a vaccine if the mechanism is entirely different? Look, I encourage to read up more on molecular biology. To give a pointer: 3D printing of these biomolecules is not only impossible, it is also not necessary. We have simple means to produce virus binding biomolecules such as soluble receptors. And they have in fact been explored for the use of antiviral properties certainly since the early 90s if not earlier. The conclusion was (IIRC) that for many viral infections the use of soluble receptors would merely lead to a selection for resistant viruses making the whole process rather ineffective. Now, with improved knowledge on viral structure and variations there have been renewed attempts to find better agonists leading to some preliminary successes. Whether it could lead to the development of therapeutics remains to be seen. None of these approaches requires 3D printing. However, if you somehow managed to develop a method to 3D print biological molecules in an easier way than standard in vitro methods, you may be in for a Nobel price. The difficult part is developing it, though... A) it is not an invention. It is barely an idea. B) One cannot try it as one would first need to develop a new technology. If they did, the credit is theirs C) You surely have read the guidelines, in which it is stated that you may put a link to your blog in your signature but avoid having it in the main body to direct clicks.

It is quite a complicated system. From a talk I heard years ago, they were discussing the difference in sequestration based on the type of diatoms; some are less buoyant and sink faster and may have affected some studies. In other cases certain temperature and current changes affected dispersion and so on.

In theory, yes. Sinking phytoplankton could indeed lead to carbon sequestration. There are a few challenges though. A fraction of the biomass is likely to enter the carbon cycle (though it may be in time frame of centuries). In 2009 a study from an European team has shown that following bloom the actual sequestrations was fairly small, the algae were spread and eaten, resulting in a return of much of the CO2 into the atmosphere. The other issue mentioned above is that these blooms can also create dead zones, severely disrupting local ecosystems. I cannot say what the current consensus is, but after the initial enthusiasm, a number of subsequent studies have shown significant difficulties in controlling this process. Perhaps there have been new encouraging developments, but I am not sure.

That is not a good argument for ocean farming. Despite the increase in population, world hunger has decreased. Within the timeline you mentioned (i.e. 40s-50s until now) food security has improved, despite higher consumption in developed countries. In fact, the rise of the population can be connected to increased food availability, as well as world poverty (as a side note this is just another indicator that the world is, in fact, not a zero-sum system). As already mentioned, there is also a lot of food waste. I.e. being more efficient in food use alone would massively alleviate caloric deficiencies. However, there are at least two threats to this situation. One is the well-known threat of wars and major conflicts. The other one is climate change and the changes it will bring to food security. At least the latter threat might benefit from further exploring aquaculture in oceans, which is precisely what folks have started to do. Those that I have heard of must have been around close to a decade by now and I assume that there must be some data somewhere discussing their challenges and benefits. I believe one of the early challenges was nutrient dispersion, for example. Likewise there were worries to the disruption of eco systems, especially the triggering of algal blooms.

A) injecting yourself with significant amount of plastics, even with biocompatible ones is likely not a good idea. B) If a virus can bind to it, it is likely to have to have a similar structure as e.g. receptors. I.e. it will also bind to non-viral biomolecules and thereby affect biological activity. C) this is not how vaccines work. D) Most of the post is gibberish. E) Directing to ones blog is discouraged.

Considering that domestication of canines was a fairly rare process and most wolves, coyotes, jackals etc. have in fact not experienced large scale domestication (beside the odd individual) it is not really surprising that a random carnivore who happens to have "dog" in their name was not domesticated, either.

I dislike the 45 year cut-off for... personal reasons.

I agree. The challenge in the modern world is that the number of (convenient) sources have massively increased. Evaluating quality has become more difficult as there are more sources that can repeat and reinforce false claims. That in itself is not new. But the speed and sheer amount of it makes since difficult. Quite possible. Though of course it helps if it feeds a narrative that folks already believe in. And to be fair, I do see plenty of younger folks falling into same trap. While not that frequent, there are more and more students (in off-topic discussion) use facebook videos as indication of certain things happening with little critical afterthought. I a way there seems to be a young subgroup that believe that traditional journalism is biased on that "citizen journalism" is the best way to get to the real facts. And as you outlined before, those videos (and for the most part it really seems to be videos) are getting popular not because they actually did a stellar job in reporting, but because they got the most clicks.

I don't think that one can answer that with any kind of certainty. We clearly do not fully understand the nature and extend of consciousness in humans, how can we make assessments in other organisms? It is complicated by the fact that there is also not a well-defined concept of consciousness. From my viewpoint I would think that most biologists would, at best, argue quantitative differences. Especially as in biology few things are rarely and truly unique. Especially in neurobiology there are many models used to explore the biological foundations of consciousness, which would not be useful if it was a uniquely human concept.