CharonY

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.

I assume you have measured protein concentration after lysis to ensure quantitative release of proteins? Have you tried a positive control on your sample (e.g. GAPDH?) to ensure that nothing is wrong with it? qPCR is a relatively weak evidence of presence as the typical semi-quantiative nature of the measurement does not necessarily tell you much about detectability. Though a positive immuno-stain (assuming it was specific) is usually a good indicator.

In that case, let's talk about the bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois). It grows up to 3m (I believe around 10 ft in silly units), It can get into aquariums by hiding in rocks. It also seems to produce a nice toxin, though I think it has not been properly characterized. https://vimeo.com/28280553

1) It depends on how you define not capable, but cancer cells are the most notorious ones in which it does not activate. 2) generally not. However, there is some research that suggests that at least in vitro some recovery is possible. I am not certain whether it translates well into actual organisms, though. 3) Generally speaking there are two main pathways. Either TNF-receptors are activated or the outer membrane of mitochondria get permeabilized. The former, (extrinsic or receptor pathway) is initiated by signaling factors that tell the cells to undergo apoptosis. The mitochondrial pathway (intrinsic pathway) is triggered by cell damage and stress. 4) relatively fast, we are talking minutes here

The main reason for limited degradation, especially over longer period is usually dehydration and temperature. If the food was stored under high ambient humidity it will degrade fast, especially when warm.

Though the way they control it is quite primitive, to put it politely. Seems a bit like a toddler found with the cookie jar claiming that he couldn't have stolen a cookie as he already has eaten it. I guess I got spoiled by House of Cards. I kind of expected at least some mastery in spin. But hey, maybe they really do not need it anymore.

Based on your description you seem to propose a novel drug, which needs to be approved. That process alone will cost you more than the budget you propose. It won't be a small amount. Getting a bioequivalent approved would be cheaper but still eat up most of it. For that budget at best you can try to get a small startup rolling and get some preclinicals done so that one could find an investor to actually get the required money in. Even ignoring that bit, trying to build facilities to produce drugs on a 2 mill budget is.... ambitious. But honestly, the biggest warning sign is probably the expectation that one could start a business by doing some rough estimates and then asking around on various boards. It may work for Etsy products, but certainly not for drugs.

Well, and it seems to me that the control over the story is fairly weak, too. Well, and there is that.

That seems interesting: The account seems to corroborate the notion that the Trump tried to get hands on the info and only lost interest when it did not seem to be that useful.

Sometimes it is really bad if the research impacts commercial products. For example if you figure out that certain chemicals may (or may not) pose health or environmental risks. If you are not meticulous in documenting potential conflicts of interest one may get in hot water easily. Or anything that may have any impact on politicized issues, mostly in environmental or health sciences. Sometimes things can be very complicated when you have multiple projects funded from various sources.

Conflict of interest is certainly a big thing in many biological or life science areas. For some reasons it never occurred to me that it may be less so in physics, though it does make sense.

Hmm that is quite possible. I kind of missed the online and blogosphere trends. As a matter of fact, I can't actually recall any blogs that I have read regularly, aside yours. I guess I am old-fashioned that way.