CharonY

First thing you have to consider is that this hypothesis does not postulate that viruses were ever independent organisms and does not actually relate that much to your initial assumptions. Second, I see it as a possible hypothesis but it is not my actual research area and I have no strong assumptions regarding the origin of the nucleus. However, a more common assumption, lace the origin of the nucleus into the archaeal area, though AFAIK the issue is not resolved as of yet. The fact that the eukaryotes are of mixed arachaeal and bacterial origin, including the origins of plastids and mitochondria is pretty much the basic model (and taught as such in basic courses). But that has not direct impact on the role of viruses. Now, what is actually interesting about giant viruses is that they encode a translation machinery. That actually has opened up the question whether they could have originated from another, now extinct cellular ancestor, and got reduced as an ancient adaptation to a parasitic life style. However some recent metagenomic studies suggest that the origins of these translation system are not from some sort of cellular ancestors, but that actually grabbed them via other viruses and through their respective hosts. That, in turn, is strong support against ancient origins from a cellular ancestor.

Here you are talking about the general categorization problem of things with (mostly) arbitrary demarcation. There is no clear way to assess validity, rather each definition would require its own context and reasoning. Ultimately trying to categorize these elements are only useful or used in certain contexts and can be of any level. Competing local regions can highlight cultural differences as significant based on history (e.g. a proudly protestant city in a catholic region). They can institutional manifestations (say private protestant schools and colleges) and may even have at some point significant political and other consequences (up and and including participation in wars). Yet on a different scale it would not matter, the whole region can be considered homogeneous as they have been within the border of the same nation. What is somewhat worrisome is that this ability to but boundaries at any level are often used to draw boundaries to other people, even those living in the same regions. And more often than not, the same folks also imply something immutable in the context of cultural values. Thus, they imply that it is almost something intrinsic to certain people and are thus the same as natural differences.

Seems to me that you are talking about story telling per se. To make a good story out of political debate is hard, for example. What you seem to be talking about is a summarizing events and/or topics. But then you are looking at things from the wrong end. The length does not determine a god summary (or story). Quite the opposite, being concise is the important bit. You seem to want to reproduce things at full length, which is usually not useful. Rather, you should focus on key aspects and put them into context.

Oh yeah, the replacement age is going up, which makes intuitive sense.

That is highly doubtful. Brackets often follow available data. If you look at most world data (say UN ESA data) the population is often divided in 4-year brackets. Thus, there is a 15-19 bracket that divides children from adults (and note, they are not the dominating bracket). You could argue that they all should be counted as children. However, in many areas you will find most e.g. entering work force and/or being of reproductive age (especially when looking at historic data). Thus, for many purposes it makes more sense to treat the group as adults. You will note that they are based on the ESA data you mentioned, which obviously come to the same conclusion, of course. I am not sure what agenda you are suspecting, as the trends have been fairly obvious. The median age is going up (going above 40 by 2100), for example. And that is the simple consequence of folks getting older, and having fewer children, none of which is really a surprise, either. Some of the largest increases (again, using ESA data) are in the 35+ age bracket, btw. Though the highest relative increase are in the highest brackets, if I am doing the calculations correctly.

Actually, the above mentioned trichinosis was a major issue with pork, as the typical feed for cattle is not a risk factor. As with everything, it is a matter of likelihood. There is a good chance that you will have not issues. But if you happen to have contaminated meat, eating it undercooked is an added risk. However, even so, my guess would be that overall diet imbalances has a higher net risk on health. Unless, of course your meat source is from a high risk pool.

I should amend my statement by another element. Aside from incompetence, there are of course also appointments that are specifically there to dismantle agencies. How well that works depends of course on how much influence the leadership has on the overall function and structure of the agency and how tangible their failings may be. One notorious agency are those that are involved in granting asylum, immigration and otherwise deal with foreigners. Since foreigners have no voting power, there are often rapid changes that can affect them appease the voter base. Other areas that I feel are often bargaining chips are education (as no one really has a strategy that is guaranteed to work) and to some degree, the environment. The latter mostly because the effects tend not to be immediate. However, in Germany for example there are strong environmental lobbies which would make appearances more important than in the US. If sufficient lobbying groups with different goals are involved, inertia may take over and despite different directives, it can continue with business as usual. Over time, and assuming no changes due to elections it may become the new status quo. The other distinction to be made is probably between agencies with highly specific goals, those with overarching missions and others, who are deeply tied to administrative processes (like administering services). Especially the latter are usually fairly resilient as a whole, as their failings are often felt by many folks. But an agency that promotes science, how does the average person notice whether it succeeds or not?

I would be careful to distinguish between talking points and actual actions. While shrinking the government is a common talking point among Republicans, since (and including) Reagan they never really shrunk it, with an almost constant ration of government employees to the overall population. The smallest government to date was, perhaps ironically, under Obama, though the recession also played a role in that. While Trump is louder than most, his hiring freezes and other measures the overall impact on the force as a whole seems to be modest at best, and mostly found in the defense sector, according to most reports. What is striking is more that he does not appoint key leadership positions and/or fills them with entirely incompetent people. The question is then how well the agencies can still perform with a profound lack of leadership. The answer to that, I think, is how much influence the leadership has on the day-to-day operation, and this is more dependent on the structure of the agency and its mission rather than, e.g. from which country it is. I would think that there are plenty of mid-level employees who would just continue doing there things to the best of their ability. Other, smaller agencies which require key expertise to function in certain levels may be hit harder, though.

Perhaps pulsing the sensor back and forth (rather than lateral) but at frequencies relative to the readout speed.

Maybe I am thinking about the wrong dish, but what I consider to be rice porridge is essentially overcooked rice with more liquid. It only cooks faster if certain high-glutinous types of rice are used.

Not sure how, that would work, either. First, I am not sure how, say, vibrations in the focus motor would shift the sensor. While there are sensors that allow shifting (e.g. for stabilization), they move laterally, so it should not affect brightness. If the sensor is able to move all the way out of the light path, you probably have a defective camera. Either way, the first thing you get is a blurry mess. There may be a way to create brightness artifacts, but I cannot think of way to create such pronounced ones.

It is often called an electronic shutter, which is actually the reason why banding occurs. A physical shutter eliminates the problem as it cuts off exposure . But assuming no other software tricks adjusting it should increase/decrease banding depending on exposure time (and adjusting iso would also be helpful). Of course, just borrowing a regular camera could also be an option (using it in modes that use electronic shutters). In fact, the larger sensor (relative to cell phones) could make the effect more pronounced. But why would you expect brightness differences if the focus motor is distorted?

According to FDA food codes reaching an internal temperature of 62 degrees (if calibrated) is recommended to ensure killing of Trichinella . The 72C is typically referring to ground meat products. Due to advances in controls Trichinella is rarely found in commercial meat products anymore (still occasionally found in privately raised animals and more common in wild animals).

An crucial aspect is its malleability, due to social learning processes being at the heart of its transmission. Many cultural norms and elements change rapidly, other at somewhat slower rates. It is virtually never static, though.

It basically depends on how the animals are raised. Obviously there are parasites for all of them.

How to bridge gaps? Mostly by not being two-dimensional caricatures.

Under most conditions the difference is negligible. Note that the measurements are directly from beans. Once brewed, only a fraction is released and consumed. Weight by weight, potato chips and cookies will give you an order of magnitude more, for example. In effect, every cooked meal will at least have the amount of brewed coffee (or higher).

That was one of the most simplistic and not to mention wrong summary of a huge set of different cultures with vast regional differences. And even if we assume that collectivist mindset is correct, how do you imagine such a family? A merger of the families? What if several sons/daughters are married? Are they now a super collective? What is the role of the newly-weds? where are they integrated? How would it work in rural areas? How in urban? No, family structure is usually closely aligned with certain aspects such as property laws and inheritance. Even by talking to one or two married Asians (of whatever region) you can easily gain insights that go far above the stories you made up.

Most of the acrylamide is produced during the early steps of the roast (couple of minutes actually). Longer exposure to heat leads to some degree of breakdown.

Cell phones do not have lens motors. Also, if you mess with it, you will affect focus, not light transmission. Again, shutter speed is the culprit. The reproducibility is issue is based on the fact that most cell phones do not allow fine controls of shutter speed, nor is it often clear what they used. I assume you could check exif data to see whether it changed between banding and non-banding images. However, there is also software trickery that tries to circumvent it so that it only shows up (or becomes more visible) in certain situations. This includes e.g. closeup with little light, where shutter speed are non-ideal and iso is high. A very simple experiment, which does not require you to get an actual camera with controls is to take a picture in horizontal mode. The banding should also become horizontal as it is related to the sequential readout from CMOS sensors (i.e. the integration issues that you see column by column, will should row-by-row). Unless, of course there is some weird technology in cell phones not seen in cameras (which I doubt).

Oi, who are you calling nutty? I have not followed the thread so some it may already have been discussed, The image in OP looks like banding. The reason is that light sources in your home usually have pulsing characteristics due to the 60 HZ AC voltage being used. For cameras that only have electronic shutters (such as phones) the common readout characteristics of the sensors will result in areas of varying intensities, i.e. banding. In this case it is vertical as the image is read out from the sensor in columns (either starting left or right). So why is there less or no banding in some situations? The reason is the exposure time. If your exposure time is a multiple of the utility frequency, you integrate over the whole wave(s) (again, the brightness of the light sources fluctuates with the AC waveform). Thus the image appears homogeneous in brightness. However, if you get close to an object you are likely to change available light and thus change the exposure time. If the corner is dark for instance, it may slow the shutter to a degree where banding becomes very noticeable (I suspect that most phones will use software tricks to make sure that banding or similar common issue are minimized). If you can, I'd try to take photos (or better, videos) with varying shutter speeds at the same light and look at the results. It may be difficult as phones have a significant layer of software that may alter them. And not, it is not the bat. If they had some sensor shattering powers, the folks in the department who document them clearly would have noticed and published something high-ranked with it. Also I hope that you made sure that in you area bats do not carry rabies or similar diseases and, if hurt, find someone who can take a look at it.

You are kind of missing the main point here. Them considered not to be organisms is because of their total dependence on other metabolism. It is the opposite of not being related to them. Think about this: do you consider plasmids or transposons to be organisms? Why or why not?

The parasitic part is not under question, the categorization as living organism is. Because a classification system that puts a stretch of DNA into the same class as fully functional cells is not terribly useful.

It is getting off-topic, so I will quickly answer to that question based on my understanding and leave it that. From what I read the convention is to have an open contest (i.e. primary) and only after the candidate is chosen do they exert control over the DNC. Yet, in Clinton's case she secured significant influence even before. Since I am not familiar with the rules the respective parties made up, it may been an actual violation. Yet, quite a few democrats saw it at least as a breach of the spirit of the process.

And perhaps the tiny issue that it would be foreign interference with elections and involve actually breaking laws rather than internal rules of an organization. Also there is this: