CharonY

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.

Recently someone posted a quote that was attributed to Aristotle "“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it". As so often on the internet it is a widespread attribution that does not seem to be accurate. In Nicomachean ethics Aristotle said (and I add preceding lines to add context): "Therefore, in a discussion of such subjects, which has to start with a basis of this kind, we must be satisfied to indicate the truth with a rough and general sketch: when the subject and the basis of a discussion consist of matters that hold good only as a general rule, but not always, the conclusions reached must be of the same order. The various points that are made most be received in the same spirit. For a well-educated man is one who searches for that degree of precision in each kind of study which the nature of the subject at hand admits." Thus the misquotation has a entirely different point that what the original quote meant to convey. What other examples of common misunderstandings/misquotations that changed the original meaning do you know?

That could be dealt with by inviting them, but not giving them a place as speaker.

McCain did bemoan the increase in partisanship over the years and probably recognized that eventually he did play along. The fact that he asked Obama to have his eulogy, despite being rivals and not having any personal relationship (in contrast to Biden, for example) could be seen as reaching across the aisle a final time. And make no mistake, the rivalry was fierce, if not as grotesque as the last election. In similar vain, he invited Bush, who defeated him the first time around. That and by explicitly not inviting folks who he likely saw as drivers of partisanship, populism and overall caustic political atmosphere (which is tearing on the seams of his party) is a carefully crafted message. It is not so much a message about which guys he liked or not. Rather, it can be seen as a lesson for the public at large.

Yes there are some trees showing the relationship between the African Wild dog (Lycaon pictus) and wolves, coyotes etc. There have been minor differences between studies, but from my limited knowledge the one in wikipedia is fairly accurate. Typically Jackals and the African Wild dog are outgroups (and foxes even further away) with gray wolves and coyotes grouping closer together. Dogs end up with or closest to the gray wolves. Some hybrid dog breeds group closer to the gray wolf clade than the dog clade.

What you describe is part of the problem, especially your first sentence. The classic approach to pain is to treat everyone the same (or just use a pain chart) and expend drugs and perhaps therapy accordingly. Based on what I am hearing from pain specialists (from infrequent meetings) is the desire to establish more individualized approaches trying to figure out sources and individualized therapies that reduce pain. The reason being that newer research has shown a vast variance in terms of how patients with certain types of pain respond to treatment and pain management. The limitations here are obviously that one needs to find a specialist who makes the effort to establish such plans, with an understanding that especially for chronic treatments a rapport has to be established over time. However, that approach does not work well with how most physicians work, so there are incredibly barriers in practice. Rather unfortunately, it does not seem to be changing in the short run. Having new drugs will allow us to proceed with the old model, but there is quite a progressive movement among medical scientist and medical professionals who are aiming at larger overhauls.

The approach of this one is quite interesting, though one should keep in mind that non-opiate analgesics have already been shown to be effective against chronic pain, but are not as often prescribed, often because they need longer to kick in. In the end, it is not simply the availability of alternatives that is an issue, but rather the overall approach in pain management therapies. Many centers have been switching models, but many physicians still overprescribe opiates.

There are also other components in coffee. What is perceived as buzz may actually not be caffeine.