CharonY

There are sequencers which use nanopores for long reads, if that is what you are thinking about.

Synthesizing short DNA fragments even de novo is quite feasible today. Multiplying DNA using polymerase has been a standard technique for decades. I have no idea why you want to drop DNA into a bucket of water, but sure, you can. It won't do anything, but you can. Amino acids are just amino acids, you can synthesize artificial ones, though. Or do you mean proteins? It is a bit trickier as you need some form of expression system to create a proper protein efficiently. But still these are not new technologies. If you are curious what is commonly used take a look at the pretty much standard book of lab protocols: Molecular cloning (used to be Sambrook and Maniatis). What you describe is also pretty much covered by the polymerase chain reaction and protein expression systems, which are surely covered by some wiki articles. They are simplified to the point were you have simple kits for these reactions, you could check companies such as Qiagen who produce sell them and read their manuals (some are surprisingly good).

I have checked some statistics about the job market for college graduates and actually since are looking up with levels coming close to pre-recession numbers. The issue is probably still that a lot of people that did not get a job during the recession may still be on the market. Still, cranking out applications now is likely to have a much higher success rate than in the last ~10 years or so. So keep sending them out.

If you think that becoming a professor is easy, I have some very bad news... That being said, many biotech/pharma companies had hiring/expansion freezes after 2007 and have only recently starting to expand again. The issue is basically that due to those freezes there is higher surplus than usual of qualified personnel. The situation was already pretty bad before the economic downturn for job seekers, really bad during the crisis and now it is probably somewhere in-between.

Well, but that is just a consequence of how it works, right? I mean in the resume stage (or stages) you start pruning down applicants, and when it comes to the interview you have a relatively small candidate pool. I.e. the likelihood of getting selected increases after each pruning as the pool gets smaller. But you are right that actually getting to the interview is the first challenge.

I guess it is a matter of familiarity with the science publishing system and contextualization of findings (or lack thereof).

As already said, networking typically has the most influence on landing a job. That being said, seven applications are really not that much in the modern economy. Also searching locally can be quite limiting and one would have to need quite a bit of luck to be successful under these circumstances.

I think very few researchers accept papers in their area of expertise at face value. It is generally accepted that peer-review is a relatively low bar that indicates that it has roughly the qualities that makes it worthwhile to scrutinize and utilize further. Edit: I should add that even in hard science and even in reputable journals every now and then papers go through that clearly shouldn't. This includes at least one molecular biological paper that promoted creationism in a very weird way. It was subsequently retracted when other researchers pointed out how stupid that was, but it somehow still passed peer-review.

The problem is that in order to overcome your fear you want assurance that something has zero likelihood. In truth there are many non-zero risks, for example a military transporter getting of course, having a malfunction and accidentally dropping a tank on your head. However, these chances are so ridiculously low that it does not really make sense to think of them as likely options. I am pretty sure you are more likely to choke on your own toothbrush, for example. If you go to a science board you will have to expect that people try not to lie to you in order to make you feel better. Rather the only difference that you need to do to overcome your fear is trying to obtain a rational perspective of things. As you mentioned repeatedly, your OCD (assuming it has been diagnosed as such) prevents you from doing so. Based on that there is little one can do to assuage your fears. Of course you can ask the medical staff whether they follow proper procedure which any reputable medical provider will do. However, if you do not believe them, there is little one can do (though some may have experience with this situation and may even be willing to show it to you).

To be fair, it was going to end horrible after the first couple of drops as the viable candidates (including Cruz) were pretty horrible choices to begin with. Not that this makes it any better, of course.

And to add (or rather repeat, as it has been stated earlier in this thread) it is a balance between the risk of having a gun, having a gun but having it secured or not having a gun at all. Each year according to the CDC there are about 500-600 unintentional firearm-related gun deaths (see Fatal injury reports). Using FBI data this report mentions that in 2012 around 250 justifiable deaths using firearms were recorded. Considering that more people die from accidental than justifiable shooting it seems to be safer that securing guns (as I believe it is done in Canada with a 4 fold lower incidence) may be a better option. It should be noted that firearm-related death due to accident as well as justifiable use are rare events, and framing the discussion exclusive in the context of self-defense seems a bit odd. They will be used far more commonly for sport or hunting. For example, other rare events (that could have been prevented by better handling) include gun-shot injuries (and deaths) committed by toddlers and dogs.

Actually, I think that in many fields the age for postdocs is not much of an issue. At least in experimental fields the actual technical expertise is usually more valued. On the grad level it is usually even less of an issue, as some maturity (should it exist) can be seen quite positively (I had students or know . On the faculty level competition is much fiercer. Yet, I rarely find that age in itself was ever an issue. It can be seen as a negative with everything else being equal, though.

Not if on a population, which is generally the case. A predictor based on an individual is usually not terribly helpful. It does not even matter if there are additional variables, the quality of a predictor is based on how strongly it is associated with an outcome. This comparison really only makes sense within populations.

I would agree with that assessment.

Many heterotrophic plants actually do not have digestive systems, they obtain nutrients from their host/partners parasitically (e.g. mistletoe or dodder) or symbiotically (e.g. lichen or mycorrhiza). Carnivorous plants are usually an adaptation to nitrogen limited soils.

I should add that iron deficiency on the serum level can, but does not have to be present while displaying symptoms. It is assumed that even transient deficiency can cause the tissue levels to be depleted. IIRC it is hypothesized that activation of MEIS1 leads to partitioning of iron into the mitochondria, causing cellular deficiency while serum levels can be back to normal levels.

I do not think that a direct mechanistic link can be drawn at this point. More recently low serum zinc levels have also been associated with restless leg syndrome, for example. Also, the precise pathophysiology is (to my knowledge) not completely elucidated which makes it harder to develop a coherent model of the role and interaction of iron and dopamine in this disease. That being said, the tyrosine hydroxylase actually has iron as a co-factor, but in animal studies actually increased hydroxylase levels were found in neurons with diminished iron content (rather than a reduction, as one may expect due to the limitation in co-factor). The most complete model (again, derived from animal experiments) indicates that activation of the HIF pathway by iron deficiency may be a key element. Increased HIF was found in the substantia nigra and could increase the expression of the HIF-responsive tyrosine hydroxylase. Another part of the model deals with how HIF activation may still lead to intracellular iron deficiency which probably happens via the MEIS1 hub. There may be more complete models out there, but that would be outside of my expertise.

It is half right, but probably a bit too restrictive as it does correlate, usually moderately, with other factors which implies that it is also a (potentially weak) measure of these factors or at least are a confounding factor that can be considered. For example, a number of papers by Duckworth have stressed the importance of self-control and discipline. These factors significantly affect life success outcomes, but also scores in IQ tests (~10 points). I.e. those with high IQ scores also demonstrate strong motivation in doing well in the test. Thus certain correlation with IQ scores, such as a moderate correlation between life success measures and IQ are also explainable to a large part by general high motivation in the subject. It also means that IQ tests could be used as an proxy or composite of the motivational contribution and whatever abilities the IQ tests are testing (see e.g. Duckworth et al PNAS 2011). Likewise, IQ tests are also a decent indicator of academic (undergrad and below) performance, probably as the test setup follows similar principles as exams. After that phase differences diminish markedly. The important bit is that the IQ score does not indicate some static biological measure, nor is it alone predictive (potentially) intelligence-correlated outcomes. It does not mean that it is totally worthless for certain types of research, though.

It is neverbtoo late to learn. In fact most academics (and other white collar workers) will agree that constant learning is part of their job. You do not get to learn something and then are done with it. It is an ongoing process.

Actually the differences in brain functions and anatomy are not a terribly good explanation as a whole when it comes specifically to maths tasks. There are tasks which show strong gender differences, such as memory recall (stronger in girls/women) or spatial tasks (stronger in boys/men). With Maths an interesting issue is that the gap in testing scores in children is very small (and in some countries and certain years girls outperform boys; again, based on PISA data). At least based on older US data the gap seems also to be present in college, though the gap is still fairly small. The major difference seems to be that more males are at the right (high) end of the distribution (see Xie and Shauman 2003, Harvard Univ. Press). I.e. while there is a broad overlap the highest performers seem to be males. Now while this points at some biological source, it is not that universal, after all the vast majority actually overlaps. So it is not that the male brain as a whole is better at performing these types of tasks, but that a subgroup among the male group may be. That is what I meant with outliers earlier. Is there a reference with regard to abstract and linear thinking? I imagine that a proper test system would be rather difficult and I cannot think of a study off-hand that tested it (but then obviously it is not field). It is curious that traditionally it was believed that women are actually incapable of abstract thought, for example.

In case you have missed it, the only conclusion that I have drawn is that potential bias against boys could be raised on the comics part. That part is pure speculation. The surveys are descriptive and as such do not need to rule out things. In fact, you are arguing your own strawman (girls like meatier literature) which is not part of the conclusion of the study, nor a claim that I made. They did observe that girls, on average, declared that they enjoyed reading more than boys. This is a data point that cannot be refuted by the anecdotes you present. As far as I can see you have not presented an alternative counterpoint to these observations. Yes you did, implicitly, how else is can you interpret: Other than claiming that girls actually prefer comics or are at least equally like it. Yet the data suggests otherwise. Your only counterpoint is so far your own observations. Of course, you could argue that girls are more likely to misrepresent their preferences than boys, but then you have no evidence to the contrary, either. As whole, this is a minor point and you have entirely missed the context in which it was presented (and instead went on arguing a point that seems to be quite prevalent in your mind). That is the big challenge. In many areas the data is not terribly conclusive and are highly dependent on study design (obviously). A main issue is of course that there is generally a large overlap and the difference may be just found in the outlier in each gender group.The effects are often not terribly large in actual measurements and can be skewed (for example gender gap in maths varies between -15 to +32 points, reading somewhere between +10 and +72 points). Learning has a huge effect on all aspects, making it even more difficult to spot potential biological gender effects and are then covered on top with cultural aspects. I do find it weird that in such a complex area where clearly much more research is needed people have such strong opinions.

So you are putting your own observations over multi-nation surveys? You misspelled "anecdote".

The study on children is based on OECD/PISA reports that includes UK children. But, if you think thatUK specific is more relevant, I direct you to the results of the National Literacy Trust data. Also, take a look at the articles published by the UK Department of Education which summarizes these findings. It is actually your interpretation that girls like meatier texts. What is a fact is that a) more boys declare that they do not enjoy reading than girls and b) comics are one area where boys have much higher preference than girls. As we were discussing bias, comics are one of the reading forms that are frowned upon and could therefore be a bias against reading by boys. It should be noted that the only other category where boys read more are newspapers (a 6% gap). However as it is generally seen as a positive thing, there is unlikely to be any repercussion. The bigger take-home-message is that boys are less likely to read than girls outside of school and generally seem to enjoy reading less. In fact accounting for reading enjoyment may explain as much as 50% of the observed gap. Which still means there is a sizeable portion due to other reasons. What I would like to stress is that a discussion should be rooted on data on not on assumptions based on what you see on newsstands, or individuals unless, of course, you actually have relevant data to present. And no, Shakespeare is not a good argument at all. Almost around the same time there was the celebration of 200th birthday of Charlotte Bronte, Which tells us basically nothing.

I am not sure about the relevance of the comment. The kids were questioned regarding their preferred type of reading. In the adult studies/polls the reading was limited to books or types of books. There are many statistics out there, but a Pew poll from 2013 showed that 69% of all males have read at least one book in 2013, whereas it was 82% for females.

As a general precaution I would like to add that depending on study size, significant difference can exist on negligible effect sizes, which is the case in some studies. That being said OECD-wide studies indicate often varying differences (both, between countries, as well as within countries overt time) in the gender differences in mathematical scores. In contrast, in reading performance in all countries girls outperform boys, with some of the smallest differences found e.g. Columbia, Chile, UK, USA, Netherlands. Australia with a gap slightly below OECD average and Germany above. Some of the largest were found in Finland, Jordan and Slovenia. There actually have been a number of investigations to figure out why it is the case. One analysis for example looked at enjoyment of reading and try to figure out if an increase in boy's enjoyment of reading also improves scores. While it seems to work for some countries (including Germany), reading scores increased in others without increase in enjoyment (e.g. USA) or actually decreased (France). OVerall, no positive correlation was found (OECD PISA data 2000-2009). Yet, in newer studies (OECD data 2012) in which the media usage (including video games) was taking into consideration it was consistently found that girls enjoy reading more (and boys played more video games). When talking about bias it may be due to the fact that the form of literature most enjoyed by boys, comics, may be discouraged by parents (girls prefer fiction). It has been noted that even comics is better than no reading at all for reading comprehension tests and that this may be part of why boys enjoy reading less. Independent of reading,another element that was found is that boys spend less time on homework, which explains a further gap in overall test scores. Likewise, attitude to school questions indicate that overall boys had a more negative attitude to school than girls which is also associated with a motivational gap. Overall, due to the universality and robustness of reading scores, it has been suggested that it may have a development sources, especially as the difference vanishes in adulthood and despite the fact that women remain the more avid readers. On the other hand, while the gap has been persistent, it has also diminished over time, indicating that a number of other effects play a role.