CharonY

I am not entirely sure whether this is a suitable start for a conversation, but I cam across this report from a Canadian health (in the province of Saskatchewan). Report, News article 1 News Article 2 It details the experience of a number of aboriginal women who were coerced into tubal ligation, effectively a sterilization technique. In at least one case they were misinformed and the procedure was characterized as reversible. Now, there has been a long and ugly history of forced sterilization of aboriginals. But what I want to highlight is how important the "informed" part of informed consent is. I will admit that I am a tad outraged, especially as I am involved in medical research and have to undergo ethics review (though at times annoying) and training specifically to ensure that participants know precisely what they are in for. That medical professionals still can misinform their patients towards unnecessary, irreversible procedures based on what is seemingly a racist attitude is just unbelievable. I will add that only few women have come forward so that it may be isolated incidences. However, considering the population distribution from what I can see, people living there have a high chance of getting in contact with said health providers.

Yup it does. Thx.

Still don't see it. Does it have to be allowed for experts independently?

Just checked, I do not have that button. I.e. it looks like a staff only feature.

You just reminded me that I joined over a decade ago. Bloody heck, who stole all that time?

Nitpicking here, but a) typically they are cues rather than specific triggers. In recollection tasks memories of a correct work can be triggered by hearing an even partially similar sounding one. Though the opposite can also occur, when the cue overrides the recollection of the correct word. b) the patterns are somewhat flexible, in rat models recollection and decision pattern (e.g. during a maze run) may start out indisctinct upon encountering a visible cue , and become clearer when the point is arrived at which a decision is being made. But even then the pattern may start out right and be "corrected" to the wrong decision. That is to say, recollecting memory is an active process that has a lot of flexibility and is not simply stored and recalled.

I thought that was the whole purpose of this forum. Well, that and denying ydoaPs a mod position. But we all know how that worked out.

One thing to consider if you got a portable lab, some heavy equipment does not like to move around. Since you mentioned proteomics, you will need to take great care to shut down and properly secure large equipment such as mass specs before transport and it may take some time to re-certify them before use. It is less of an issue if the lab is only moved very rarely. That being said, there are manufacturers of mobile lab systems and it may be worthwhile to compare the cost to insulate and revamp a container vs specialized solutions.

Well, those are far more stable. The next thing is probably doing a run with a reference sample on the MS and doing a re-run.

Why did two bands show up? But assuming it is still alright (In my initial response I thought that you had a total RNA extract, but upon re-reading it would not make a lot of sense for conformational studies), the issue seems to shift towards the analytical side of things.

It is a good way to spot journals that do not do peer-review, at least.

Yeah I looked at water absorption rates in rice and did not seem to be feasible. If people like to get fancy one could get a vacuum dessicator a vaccum pump, maybe some heating elements and go nuts.

I would assume that under most conditions rice is a fairly ineffective desiccant. Most likely just letting it sit somewhere for the same amount of time would have yielded similar results. But yes, silica bags or cat litter are likely to work better.

If you have liquid escaping, you will end up with a heavy salt crust in your bin. Cleaning that out will be worse than just decontaminate the bin every now and then.

The second article seems to be more interesting. Will peruse it when time permits.

I find it a bit heavy on inductive reasoning and a bit light on contextualization (it is just not a very scholarly article). I have read that some trends of women's clothing were essentially co-opting male trends as part of the feminist movement. But I am not sure what historians have to say on the conclusions by the author of the above article. Here (still not a scholarly article but with more sources) it is implied that the loss of pockets was driven by a change in waistline.

That is odd. It is possible, that they may not have gone into solution, but typically the strong detergents in the lysis buffer should take care of it. Unless you have a formulation with only mild buffers (e.g. NP-40, Triton) in which case I would add SDS.

I honestly cannot think of a mechanism that would allow desalination. Typically, bioremediation is achieved by allowing the bacteria to oxidize or reduce the compounds (they often use them as electron donor or acceptors). For simple chemcials, including e.g. uranium or chromium this results in decreased water solubility. The precipitated metal can then be removed. For more complex compounds degradation to some less toxic compounds or even CO2 may be possible. However, salinity is typically determined by sodium chloride. There is little metabolically that they can do with it. For instance, there are not really any oxidation states that can be exploited.

At acidic condition depurination starts to occur. At high pH 2'-OH deprotonation is an issue, resulting in hydrolysis.

I found that a key component is also purity of chemicals. Contamination with metals or, even worse, RNAses can result in rapid degradation. Even flash freezing does not always help, as the thawing process can be an issue. At the same time, an extremely clean sample that is devoid of any RNAses can be surprisingly stable even at -20C. Also note that nucleic acids are most stable at slightly alkaline conditions (ca. pH 8). Freezing itself seems to be more problematic in larger nucleic acids, but storing in aliquots is generally a good strategy. Finally, if one considers storing for years, a precipitate may be worthwhile. Other than that one should add that quite a bit of lab-vodoo is also involved.

Based on my reading (which admittedly is a few years old) the role of the glymphatic system in these processes is still a working hypothesis rather than established fact. That is not to say that there is no contribution, but one of the question is whether it is the main mechanism.

My points were that a) for a double charged ion you are in the range of individual nucleotides and b) you could have in-source fragmentation and, especially in case of direct injection of low concentrated sample you may have additional suppression effects. Assuming that all is degraded potential degradation products may not survive ionization and/or have bad s/n. E.g. the only strong signals may be final fragmentation products. It is clearly only a guess, though. Running a gel could provide you some insights whether there was total degradation pre-MS.

One month in water is certainly not something that most RNA would survive. Is it double-charged? It definitely seems to be degradation and there is a chance that your ionization may fragment whatever is left there. Do you do direct injection or do you have some level of separation?

While this is not my specialty, neurotoxins are generally only used when they specifically target and damage cells which, in this context is a bit of a misnomer as we are talking about regular metabolites that only become toxic due to accumulation. It is a fine, but significant distinction. What the author probably refers to is the glymphatic system. Its discovery is fairly recent and it is clear that the author you cited massively overstates the confidence in findings. As a side note, the bulk flow is not mediated by cells shrinking, that alone would not allow proper transport. Rather it is a mixture of pulsation of the vasculature and water flux from astroglial cells via activity of aquaporins. But to reiterate, the physiological role is still under investigation.

It is just plain silly. Why would anyone get paid to find an effect that is generally assumed to happen? Instead of bemoaning that the majority of scientific findings are in agreement with each other, you could take a look at those studies and figure out whether you could actually criticize the substances. That, however, requires that one obtains some level of expertise. The other interpretation is that the findings are so obvious and non-controversial that no one actually came up with an alternative. And believe, if someone actually manage to get strong evidence that everyone else was wrong, that one would be a star over night (with emphasis on strong evidence). The real strength of the evidence is not only the pure number of studies, but the diversity of findings that point to the same conclusion. Also, yes people have thought about ways to slow global warming. Carbon sequestration is a big thing and some even proposed climate engineering using e.g. sulfate aerosols. However, to date the former are insufficient to offset current production and for the latter risk estimates are difficult. So no, to date there is still no good alternative that does not include curtailing at least part of CO2 production.