CharonY

Not necessarily. Other question include e.g. - what are the basics of life? - how did it originate on earth? -how could it originate elsewhere? - what other chemistry is feasible? - what is the possible range of life?

It doesn't prevent you from making old mistakes, either.

Pretty sure it is a waste of time but there have been quite a number of studies looking at direct heritability of IQ with a focus on African Americans, as there has been a significant mix between them and white Europeans. A number of highlights: - Mixed parents: assuming that the IQ gap is entirely genetic, it should matter little which side of the parent is black or white in a mixed marriage. However, assuming that the mother is more important due to higher involvement in nurturing the child, one could expect differences differences, if one assumes that there different socialization strategies between black and whites. Willerman, et al (1974) found that children of white mothers and black fathers have a 9 point IQ advantage, indicating a strong influence of the upbringing (discounting all other environmental factors). -self reporting: by using known ancestry (i.e. declaring whether grandparent, great-grandparents etc. were either black or white) one would assume that under a genetic model African Americans with higher percentage of white ancestors would score better. Yet Jenkins (1936) found that among the high-IQ black children (125+) the likelihood of white ancestry was actually lower. -blood groups: another way to try to assess black ancestry (and here it should become obvious that it is actually quite tricky to accurately assign precise ancestry, regardless of skin colour) is using blood group characteristics that are more prevalent in either group. Again, the assumptions is that a higher indicator of European ancestry should correlate with higher IQ. And again a number of studies failed to find it: Scarr et al. (1977), Loehlin (1973). I should note that Rushton is one of the proponents of the IQ gap, yet I found that he tends to be rather selective in his papers. There are a number of key findings in newer research that can be summarized that a) the measure of IQ heritability is strongly correlated with social class. Generally, in groups with higher socioeconomic status heritability is high but low in those with lower status. However, comparisons between countries showed mixed result, indicating strong social/environmental influence. b) Genome-wide association studies failed to find strong candidates for genetic markers of intelligence (which is kind of expected) but also failed to show association between markers of relationship and IQ (which would be expected under a hereditary model). there was one study who tried to find it, but suffered from the fact that the identified SNP were actually unable to predict Africans within an European sample. Edit: if you read the paper carefully you will note that they created models based on microsatellites to distinguish the categories that were set up (the classic groups), while noting that especially the African Americans had strongly mixed ancestry, whereas the Hispanics had generally a mix of various groups. The fitted model was then used to distinguish the groups, which you obviously can if you take sufficient markers that are distinct in a given group. That does not mean that the groups are as a whole genetically distinct. For example using the whole set, they were unable to distinguish Chinese from Japanese groups, but by selecting only those groups and create a different set, they were able to do so. If you want to establish distinct races, the approach would generally be the opposite. You take all the genetic markers there are, and look what the variability is between groups. Large scale studies indicate that there at best moderate support for certain groups, usually those that are genetically isolated. To re-iterate the points that have been made numerous times on this forum here a) there are genetic differences between groups, but they tend not to be highly specific (i.e. you can find set of markers that are somewhat predictive, depending how you define your group) b) taking genomic data (or as much as we have) into account the majority of variability can be found within, rather between groups. It is not that the groups are entirely social constructs, as they may have distinct history that genetically more or less isolated them. Yet, in the grand scheme of things the differences are clearly not as clear-cut as it appears in common use. For example, African Americans have a continuous range of European ancestry and while it is still possible to find markers to assign them to the African American group, it would also be possible (though maybe less stable) to identify those that fall into the European group. Which would be the "correct" race? Based on colour? Or use a percentage cut-off?

U wot m8?

The problem is that generally bacteria are very metabolically active, which especially in the top soil they actively produce methane and CO2. Plants have the benefit of sinking a lot of carbon into slowly degrading molecules such as lignin. Bacteria can act as carbon sinks under certain circumstances, but it depends heavily on the conditions. If bacteria get buried and deprived of oxygen their activity may slow down and less CO2 may be released, though you can also have methanogens becoming active and start emitting methane. In other words, it depends on the balance of the system whether bacteria are a net carbon sink or whether they contribute to the overall cycle.

Many astrobiologists hail from other disciplines, including biochemistry and physics. But among those I know that started with biology most are in the areas of evolution (emphasis on computational biology), microbiology and biochemistry. From the list you provided I would intuitively go toward molecular/cellular biology as it exposes you to the very basics of life.

I think it is assumed that they are taken up by lymphoid tissue (mostly Peyer patches, probably assisted by M cells) in the gut and then re-distributed. But there may be newer research out there.

Soil microbes are not terribly efficient in storing carbon, although there is still some unknown in the below-ground microbial-driven carbon cycle. But as long as there are nutrients to utilzed (such as manure) CO2 will be released. Even worse, manure management often results in release of worse greenhouse gases, such as CH4. As mentioned earlier, plants are more efficient in storing carbon. Provided that they are managed properly and not fed into the carbon cycle again (e.g. used as fuel or feed).

Aeration will not deal with obligate anaerobes. However, many bacteria and other parasites have not problem with it. UV is efficient for microbial treatment, but BPA has relatively low photodegradation rates that also depend on what else is in the water (such as radical scavangers, apparently). One thing you could do is send a sample to a local water testing lab, running a sample should cost you less than $100. There are also home-test kits, but they mostly only test qualitatively, not quantit6atively.

It seems I have misunderstood your question. But at least according to lit ozonation may be a potential way to treat the water. See also this paper here. Whether treatment is effective requires testing, though (and testing for bisphenol A may be worthwhile, as it would give insight on how of degradation products you may obtain after treatment. Direct photodegradation was not very effective, and combined treatment such as UV/O3 or UV/TiO2 were more successful.

You got it the wrong way around. Obesity is correlated with decreased HDL and subsequently cardiovascular diseases. The precise mechanisms are still unclear, though.Short answer is that fat tissue and liver metabolism are altered in several pathways which may explain the effects. But overall it is the result of rather complex interactions. A number of key proteins have been identified that may be attributed to the decline in HDL, and it has been speculated that with more fat tissue simply more of these proteins are present. However it has subsequently been shown that there are actually more changes in the tissue of obese people, which makes a straightforward answer quite impossible.

Manure does not become fixed. It will be further degraded to CO2 by microorganism. Sequestration happens if it gets removed from the food chain.

It always depends on the concentration. You have to know that especially mass spectrometry-based analyses have become so sensitive that we can see minute amounts of compounds. Often, but not always, these concentrations are of no consequence as it would just pass your body. Also compounds such as aldehydes are formed during normal metabolic processes in your body. The goal of treatment is often to change compounds that are potentially harmful in others that tend to be less bioreactive. For example compounds that are more water soluble and do not accumulate in adipose tissue. But again, it is less a matter what is there, but how much.

If you are thinking of durum wheat, it was not produced via GM but by allele-assisted crossing with a wild (resistant) strain.

Using plant/bacterial material as feed does not actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere, though. It will have to remain fixed in order to make a net difference.

The first thing you have to know is that photosynthesis is based on two independent processes. The first, involving chlorophyll, creates ATP. however, even this part of the processes involves a number of other cellular structures, including a membrane and a number of enzymes, as the actual energy-yielding step is based on the creation of a proton gradient. Note that during that step no carbon is fixed. Thea actual carbon fixing step is based on the Calvin cycle, which again requires a different set of enzymes in an energy-dependent manner. I.e. it uses up the energy created during the light reaction. Obviously it would require a very sophisticated system, which we are not able to re-create artificially.And even if we were able to create it, shooting them up in a missile would serve no purpose other than create even more CO2. It is therefore far more efficient (and feasible) to grow plants or bacteria to do it.

I still do not understand the first part. Unspecific amplification can be avoided not only by proper primer selection, but also by increasing stringency of your run. But that was not my point. There are many applications where untargeted amplification is actually the goal.

Enterobacteriaceae are very common (which include E. coli, Salmonella, etc).

Usually, you use microscopy.

Basically no. It would be one of the holy grails to adapt plants to successfully adapt plants to extreme environmental conditions. Especially pH is tricky as it affects the physiology on many levels. Accordingly resistance mechanisms and adaptation were found to be rather diffuse and certainly not based on a single gene or small set of genes (which is basically the extent to effective manipulations we can reasonably do now). The vast majority of resistant plants that were bred were not created by targeted genetic modification.

I have thought about that for a while and discussed it with colleagues but essentially it is unlikely to work out with current models. There are issues on every level. For example, in typical research deliverable are often "just" scientific output. Thus, it is unlikely that sufficient people would buy into a pitch that they cannot assess scientifically. In cases where a scientist is sufficiently famous, just using ones name as brand might work. However, many scientists known to the public are actually science communicators rather than active researchers. As such, crowdfunding an outreach/engagement project might work, but it is likely to fail for basic research. Another area could be in applied sciences where the output is potentially much more tangible. But then the question would be why they were unsuccessful via traditional funding sources. Also it would be limited to relatively cheap projects, which is another limitation.

Uh, you are aware that automobile worker unions exist in all three countries? How would you assess the productivity in these countries?

Unions can reduce profits. However, that was not was MigL mentioned, though: The assumption here is that the work quality will be reduced to the lowest level, resulting in massive loss of productivity. I assume that this meant as a hyperbole, but what does research say?. In a paper by Metcalf comparing a number of industrialized countries indicate that in the US, Germany and Japan productivity is positively correlated with unionization, whereas in the UK there used to be a negative correlation. In the latter case the effect is diminishing, though. While unions can reduce productivity, depending on numerous factors, it is clear that a) this is not a uniform effect, and b) in many cases it can even lead to productivity increase. They often do cut into profits and the productivity increase does not always compensate for that (depending on industry and market situation).

I did not find the details either. But especially the first question, I have no idea why that would create an outrage. Seems like a trivial question to me.

To a certain degree, it might. The original fear was that people would move out completely from the workforce, meaning that a smaller workforce would have to bear a larger tax load. But at least that seems certainly not to be the case as the decrease was relatively small. However, if you assume that the overall workforce will shrink due to lack of jobs, the whole market will change due to loss of consumers, at least in certain areas.