CharonY

No and it would not make sense. You cannot draw a direct line from evolution to social practices. Also infanticide refers to postnatal killing.

Well, evolution is not concerned with potential outcomes and if a strategy provides some fitness advantage over another, it will be favored until the situation changes where it is not the case. I.e. if infanticide is too rampant and one groups stops doing it then it will be reduced (or the species dies out). But there are also specific counter-strategies. For example, I believe in mongoose children are reared in common groups. Often, the dominant female would kill children off, to improve their own survival. But apparently they are unable to distinguish their kids from others, which means they kill them based on timing (i.e. kill kids before they have their own). As a counter-strategy, it was found that the other females would synchronize their fertility cycle with the dominant female, so that they would have offspring at the same time. Also note that the case for infanticide are not necessarily that all are killed off. In some species offspring are overproduced and culling merely reduces it to a more manageable amount, which may be more successful than trying to rear all. Also, I wonder what precisely do you mean with common and regular? It is not precisely uncommon if you look at various species and it can be tied to sexual reproduction or resource monopolization, but on the other hand it is not that most species spend an inordinate amount in culling other's offspring (with filial infanticide being a rather rare and specialized event).

If you refer to the horizontal lines, they are not scars but folds/wrinkles. They are quite common, though you tend to see more in older folks. Though I would guess it also depends on skin conditions, and how much abuse they take.

Well p, depends in the level you are. But atypically in an academic career you are busy, if only because you have to wear so many hats (at faculty level). But even at postdoc or also grad student level you spend an inordinate amount I research which at minimum requires a lot of reading an writing and in many disciplines, lab work. As a consequence most are used to work 50-80 hours weeks (with more on crunchtime) but getting compensated for 20-40 (there is no paid overtime). So no I don't see how you can be lazy and still get things done. A common complaint on the faculty level is that you are actually that busy that you often cannot properly develop ideas you have. Quite a few people I know who left academia love that (in most cases) their work in industry stays at their workplace and they do not feel as burnt out as they did in academia.

Of course this is an artificial distinction. Once two populations diverge sufficiently, they cannot reproduce. Or looking at asexually reproducing organisms the species line is even blurrier. Yet the second it goes to to something one can see without an microscope all the mechanisms should be different? That is a rather odd view, isn't it? Also, the interesting bit is that most major religions are fine with evolution, and only a rather specific subset holds on to creationism. Ultimately, the issue is not about evidence or mechanism. Rather, most of the time it is based on the belief that humans are, somehow, an exception to all other organisms. If someone came up with a mechanism which would explain in all species but humans, I am pretty sure a significant portion of creationists would be mostly fine with it. That, however, implies a certain fundamental stance that would not allow persuasion by information. Of course, there are also creationists that are just ignorant of the issue, as they did not take the time to study the more complex aspects and review known information.

Well, I am only vaguely familiar with SFC, so I doubt to be able to give any advanced insights. I would not be adverse to someone donating me a SFC or SFE system, though.

To clarify, fillial infanticide refers to killing of offspring by their parents, not necessarily the mother. And it is actually not limited or even concentrated in fish. That part, on the other hand, does not necessarily refer to filial infanticide as the classic example is the one given by delta, where the unrelated male kills off infants to maximize its offspring. Actually, the killing of offspring by mothers likely refers to species in which the gender role in terms of parental care are reversed. So that the male has a higher net investment in the offspring than the female. In other words, the infanticide would now be at higher cost for the male than the female. In the context of gender asymmetry it would be a means to maximize ones own fitness at the cost of the partner. It has therefore nothing to do with acquiescing to anything (which, in this context, would not necessarily make a lot of sense to begin with). There are other situations in which mother's are killing offspring, but not their own. This is the case in which child rearing is shared by a group for example. I.e. killing of the children of other mother's would increase the chance of one's own, for example. Now specifically regarding filial infanticide, the most common assumption was that of energetics. Hamsters are a prime example, in which offspring are eaten when food is scarce, but also under high levels of stress. However, AFAIK, this view is getting challenged by more refined experiments which point to some more complex mechanisms. For example in some cases parents may overproduce and then cull offspring to reduce their cost of raising the young (although it could be folded under the energetics umbrella).

There are range of (mostly microbial) endproducts under investigation (including e.g. methane). However, process optimization and the economics of the whole is more an issue than the actual fuel type per se. For example, from a biological standpoint ethanol is a rather efficient pathway, but optimization in e.g. pre-treatment as well as methods to increase purity massively influence the cost. And then there is obviously the production side of it, e.g. what crops to use and how energy efficient those are.

Well. if your parents are playing I do not see any issue with that. Also based on your description it does not really seem that you were exploiting anything. At the end of the day you were only guessing right, so I fail to see how that can lead to any legal issues.

Well, there is a difference between associating a specific compound with a given smell as compared to odor that are the result of complex compounds or otherwise very unspecific and thus, more of a word association than a categorization. For example, ammonia and bleach smell very different, so giving it the same name ("chemical") is more a word association than what I assume OP is aiming for. Fruits have very different smells, caused by a variety of esters and other compounds. It would make more sense to call Methyl butyrate "fruity" (or pineapple-y?) and isoamyl acetate banana-like, than call all fruits fruity for example.

As others have said, exploiting a system cannot be illegal, as it is the lottery's fault. They may have terms but I doubt that they could work something like that into it. The usual limitations are more things like age, for example.

I still have PTSD (photosystem-induced traumatic stress disorder) from all the isolation of photosystem I/II complexes.

From days of yore, comes this piece of lore. To process proteins in a tick, you have to be clean, precise and quick, but to many student's disgrace, sometimes you get stuff from your face. Even if you make amends, you contaminate with your hands. Although you may seethe, control where you breathe.

1) No one gets on well with proteins. You just go through all the stages of grief and end up with acceptance. 2) You don't fight with proteins. They would just eat your soul. 3) They only do the things you expect them to if you do the proper sacrifices. But half of the time they just mock you regardless. 4) They have fancy hats.

A) What precisely defines a primitive society and what is the source of these facts? B) What is the difference between a less evolved mind and how does it relate to A)?

With drug addictions I have to add that for various drugs habitual use does not lead to a rush anymore. Rather, it appears that especially with opiate abuse there is a need for it just to be able to function (or feel that they do). It is rather devastating, really. Not taking oxy was probably as a whole a wise decision. And congrats to your daughter for her successful defense.

If at all the opposite. There have been discussion on how to deal with disruptive creationist students, for example. But no at best some may suggest not to put too much of you out there, but these suggestions are mostly given by senior faculty and purely to ensure that classes do not get disrupted too much. But no, otherwise they do not really have authority to limit ones opinion in either way. More importantly, especially when there is no personal relationship, admin is usually careful not to give the impression that they want to limit faculty's freedom of expression and teaching. Most get rather uppity if there is even a suggestion of that happening. The only reason really when a discussion is warranted is if one starts abusing or discriminate students. E.g. saying that one believes in god is fine, but believing that certain students are stupid because e.g. of their skin colour is not. The latter would be considered an abuse of authority and a case of misconduct. The former is actually explicitly protected in most code of conduct policies.

Oh for 9$ it is an absolute steal, no doubt about it. Generations of students have spent a significant time copying parts out for exam preparation.

The book is very good to get a decent foundation. It is a bit old now and will be missing a lot of newer findings, but as a basic read it is fairly accessible and, more importantly, it tells you a lot about principles rather than getting bogged down in unnecessary details.

Precisely. I would be shocked if admin started to telling me not to talk about certain topics. In the few cases when that happens, it does not go well- for admin.

Off-topic, but that is an horrible and inaccurate representation. The conquistadors were not successful due to technological superiority. That alone would have been insufficient as they ware vastly outnumbered. Rather, a key element was securing alliances with the enemies of the Aztecs (something that was repeated in North America). According to letters from Cortés they had over 100,000 indigenous allied troops whilst the Spanish troops amounted to maybe 1k. And as mentioned, during the early days up to maybe the late 18th or so century (or probably a bit later) the technological gap between indigenous people and settlers in North America was not really that large to overcome numerical superiority. There is, after all, a reason why there were some many treaties with the various nations. Only after the then US created a modern army did the power of balance shift.

Actually, the claim is more that modern lifestyle and diet is detrimental to health. However, it does not mean that paleolithic humans were actually healthier. Starvation is one big killer, for example. We obviously do not know the cancer rate in those populations, but what we do know is that, on average they died early enough so that it is not a contributing factor. Likewise, cadiovascular diseaes are a conjecture, though it is somewhat reasonable to assume that the rate nowadays is at younger age. But again, if they die early enough CVD would not be a big issue. Likewise one could argue that there were less people with diabetes. Mostly because they would die pretty young.

Another thing to note is that often not all steps are clearly elucidated (because we just don't know) and some bacteria do things surprisingly and we are not sure why. As such much what you read will be limited to model bacteria (which may or may not be good models). One helpful way to dissect bacterial metabolism is to look at certain aspects in a somewhat isolated way and generalize across genera. For example, start with respiration, but focus only on NADPH to the terminal acceptor and look at the variations at the back end. This will help you understand why they are formed like that and what limitations exist, independent on the specific niche (things such as redox potentials) without getting bogged down by the variety of potential pathways to producing those reducing equivalents. It is very difficult to try to understand all the various aspects as it is just too broad and interconnected.

Can you link to the articles? It is very unlikely that we have actual representative data as tissue is generally not that well preserved, as you mentioned. In fact, Otzi (3300 BCE) was an important exception as he got frozen. Of course, it is insufficient to generalize from one find, but they found ample evidence of arterial disease and dental issues. That being said, what could have been meant is that they were very unlikely to die of diseases that are age-associated. A large proportion of the population is likely to die way before they can succumb to cancer, for example. Though even if they did, it is would be difficult to find out.

Simple. with "cavemen" you probably mean prehistoric time frames. For that, we do not have any records of a) how many people lived nor b) how they died. If lucky, we may find a handful of preserved bones, but that would not tell us much as obviously those finds would not be representative of the population. Considering that suicides are relatively rare events (in the US it is about a dozen per 100k) finding even one instant of likely suicide would be like winning the lottery. Also, considering the low population density, each suicide could skew statistics quite a lot. Which does not really matter, as we cannot get the info in the first place. Realistically, we only have records to infer actual rates for modern history (and not even for every country). Anything beyond that, it gets really sketchy. And again, even the premise that the rate is rising is poorly framed.