CharonY

1) only small ones (like bacterial). Also only partially from scratch. I.e. we can synthesize them with any sequence we want but in order to be functional we still need to use existing ones as template. IOW we do not know enough to create fully artificial ones that would still work when introduced into bacteria. For eukaryotes (such as humans) the structure is more complicated and we are not able to re-create them. 2) no. We do not know all the details of tissue healing. Also, it is a complicated process requiring the concerted efforts of many elements. Thus, there is no singular factor nor can we improve the natural healing processes (genetically).

An expert on a particular field is not someone who has accumulated known information but has also acquired the ability to evaluate it. In order to push the boundaries of knowledge it is therefore crucial to understand shortcomings and improve in that area. The box analogy fails in many areas of science because we are pushing at the boundaries all the time and it is impossible to delineate boundaries. Experts in structural biology have accumulated knowledge that I am not aware of (as a molecular biologist) but I expect that at one time or another it will spill over to my field and I have to make appropriate adjustments due to the new findings. Likewise looking at new molecular interactions will at one point lead to altered or completely new ways we have to address diseases or infections. Sure, if a cell biologists decides to use methodologies from physics to address a problem, you could argue it is outside of the box for that person. Yet these types of interactions happen all the time, though the farther the fields are, the longer it takes until one party realizes that methodologies from a different discipline may be more suitable. And then there are the in-betweeners who specialize more in methodologies rather than systems. They may bring methods that are applicable for e.g. bacterial physiology as well as environmental monitoring (to provide random examples). What would be the shape of their boxes? As such, thinking outside the box in scientific communities tend not to be something seen as relevant. What you hear more often is something along the line of: "whatever works is right".

Interesting thought. However, it is contradictory to a degree. On the one hand you are saying we should not pick winners, on the other we should create a system based on ethnicity and/or religion. Remember, Sunni or Shiites are not ethnic groups and you can e.g. have Kurds that are Sunni, Shiite (though being a minority), Jewish or Christian (likewise minorities). I.e. the delineation of either group are often not clear. Thus, if you start splitting up countries in order to form new ones, how is it not being "daddy". Also Western powers tried to unseat Assad, I guess it is a bit tricky to convince him to cooperate with them. Also AFAIK the US and allies are already targeting ISIS leadership (and killed several). As a response they tried to organize themselves into a more decentralized form, though it is not clear whether they managed to do so. What I do agree with is that the actions of Western (or other) powers should be directed towards long-term stability and self-governance. This is pretty much the only thing that has proven to remove the basis of terrorists. However, each region will require a different plan as the Middle East is extremely diverse and simple approaches ("just remove the dictator") have not worked. Another requirement would be that the efforts are, at least to some degree, selfless. If it is done to promote one's own interest with little regard to the population as done in the past, people will (rightfully) question motives.

With regard to incision and excision: yes, incision is a cut into something whereas in a excision you cut something out. What specifically is being targeted depends on context. An excision could be just affected tissue, for example.

From what I understand it was quite a bit more complicated than just the Sunni- Shiite relationship. Corruption on the highest level was arguably one of the largest culprits. And one should remember that large parts of the military are now Shiite dominated (rather than Sunni as it used to be). But in hindsight it would have been crucial to improve dialogue between these groups and utilized a strategy that would have maintained security (using some from the old guard that were more palatable?) . With regard to troop withdrawals, two things are important to remember. First, Bush signed the agreement to leave, so having troops beyond 2011 in Iraq required a new agreement. It is also true that Admiral Mullen suggested leaving 16k troops whereas the Obama administration preferred a 10k option. There are numerous speculations why the agreement failed. Other than doubts regarding military benefits, there was always the issue of sovereignty (after all at various points there have been demands for the US to leave) as well as having persecution rights over US troops. And as MigL noted, it is not clear whether more troops would have stopped the insurgence or whether it would simply had resulted in more US deaths. Most likely extended intelligence operations would have yielded the largest benefit as ISIS did not waltz in as an army, but rather infiltrated the cities long before they started their actions. So why was the decision made to create a situation where ISIS could form? And if you say it was a mistake in hindsight then what would you suggest to do that ensure that it will not be a mistake? After all military action brought this mess, so obviously it is not an error-free solution.

Let me stick to Bt use for the moment as there are several specific questions I have. Also the mode is very different and it does not make sense to blanket BT crops and herbicide resistant crops. So your assertion is that Bt GMOs singificantly increased the overall release of Bt into the environment and thereby promotes resistance on a higher level than just external application? If so, kindly provide the corresponding data (or links to these studies). You repeatedly characterized Bt release as benign. How else am I to interpret it? Or are you talking about toxicity? But that has no impact on resistance or the way it is released. If neither of it is relevant why repeat it like a mantra? Has GMOs made them less benign? Being more specific really would help to communicate what you think. If bugs are already multiresistant then nothing will work. However how does release of a single toxin via GMO create them, whereas spraying does not? What if one variant is presented as GMO and another is sprayed? Where is the difference there? Obviously you are talking about Bt and not herbicide tolerance here (as that would make no sense). Also, where is the news aspect on it? I expected a new study finally demonstrating the issues of GMOs yet came up short. Actually, I can help you there and list some specific issue (rather than handwaving opinions). And let me focus here on herbicide resistance as I happen to have some data here. 1) Glyophosate resistant weeds are on the rise. Surveys have shown that their numbers have increased since the use of resistant GMOs. The reason is less due to the GMOs themselves but they way were used. Monsanto advertised that one would only need the application of one herbicide and that crop rotation had not impact (among other claims). A number of studies have been published on this topic and even Monsanto has now shifted its stance in promoting multi-herbicide application, for example. Just to make sure, the resistance is not due to the GMOs but due to the increased use of glyophosate. 2) On the other hand resistant crops allowed the use of glyophosate which are less toxic and USDA data has shown a decrease in their use (with increase in glyphosates). Of course one could argue that using more glyphosates creates more resistant weed, which it does, but then on the other hand you would use other herbicides with the same issues but even higher toxicity. As proposed by numerous researchers, mixed application and crop rotation even with GMO plants would be a better approach (see USDA economic research report 162). 3) Worries about spread of transgenic traits. Here the data is conflicted as it requires expensive environmental sampling and tends to be underfunded. There are a couple of papers out there but the results are mixed. Some groups found no evidence (e.g. Oritz-Garcia et al 2005, PNAS) others found sporadic evidence but nothing conclusive yet (for a review see Mercer and Wainwright 2008, Agric. Ecosyst. Environ.). 4) Mixed yield with herbicide tolerant plants. Several studies have looked at yield as well as net return (factoring cost of seed, herbicides etc.). Overall the effect seems to be pretty small, but varied from region to region. In a number of cases no significant change in net gain has been found, indicating that yield alone would be a relatively weak argument for the of adoption of herbicide resistant crops. The situation is different for Bt crop (both findings are summarized in an USDA study from 2014 on GMO use). Overall, the major point you are missing is that one cannot discuss GMO apart from general agricultural use. Each technology has its own advantages and disadvantages and proper crop management requires a strategic use with view on cost, yield, sustainability and environmental impact. Focusing on only one aspect is at best shortsighted. The glyophosate use is a perfect example in this context.

Last off-topic comment: Brooks is a political commentator and as such certainly has acclaim in that regard. However, there is a distinct difference to historic research. The latter takes a more distant approach and there is a reason why historians typically do not tackle events that are less than ~20 years back. And that is my point with regards to the Middle East, much of the events under discussion here draw from important events at least that time ago and cannot be explained with the lens of current perception. He may have acquired expertise independently, but most likely they will be on current rather than historic events. It should also be mentioned that he has been criticized for pushing a conservative agenda and have accused him with a liberal use of statistics. Either way, it would require an enormous stretch of imagination to describe his work as that of a historian. His thesis was on a science writer, btw.

This is off-topic, but: Overtone, none of the people you have listed are historians and certainly not experts in the relevant field. Clausewitz is a Prussian general and would be the subject of historians, David Brooks is a journalist. Also, comments on current policy is not what a historian would do. After all their job is to identify evidence to establish past events and contextualize them. Note that among historians deeper interpretations of many events can be and should be disputed. What I am saying, is that we are not even within a mile of such depth. I mean, here we typically do not even get the simple facts right, yet many here extrapolate on assumed facts in order to construct a weird alternate reality in which all their believes are founded on hard facts that are largely made up or interpretation of events without context. In other words, I wished we would first at least try to discuss things by first establishing facts and then proceed.

Where in these links does it show that resistance generation is due to GMO plants as opposed to increased use of the herbicides and pesticides? Resistance to Bt has been on the rise for a while as it is being used in increasing amount. I know that you claimed at some point that spraying massive amounts of it does not increase resistance. However biologically that does not make any sense as for the insect it does not matter where the selective pressure comes from. As a matter of fact, this is the reason why mostly a combination is sprayed, in a deliberate attempt to slow down the survival of resistant bugs. What is pertaining to resistance (whether by spraying or by production in GMO crops) is to some degree the habitat and the respective bug present in the system. But again, the main point that you seem to make that for some reason GMO is much worse than traditional insecticide use has not been shown. Especially as the latter is known to be pretty bad and I do not expect GMOs to do much better either as they get more common. What always surprises me is that you like to highlight the risks of GMOs whereas you like to think taht "traditional" industrial approaches as perfectly environmentally sound and safe. Just because we did it for a long time does not mean that we are not doing massive damage to the environment, especially water sources and numerous biota (not the least of it the massive spread of antibiotics resistance due to the way we handle livestock). How companies control food markets is a different (if serious) issue altogether.

Thanks, Ophiolite. It is extremely frustrating if people use bad understanding (obvious even to casual observers like myself) of history to explain or even justify things. It is the same as we see in a number of science threads. I wished we had a history expert here to tackle at least a few of the most common things. But then, I guess it must be even worse than tackling misunderstood science. And apparently there was now a coordinated attack on a medical center in San Bernadino, leaving 14 dead and 17 wounded.

It is weird how contextualization gets thrown out of the window and soundbites get used instead. Pretty much what was predicted to happen within the first few posts. Moreover, using repetition of unfounded opinion does not make it a fact. Under Obama many drone and other strikes have resulted in numerous civilian deaths (I could try to dig out numbers, though I doubt that someone claiming that the US has a threshold of 0 for civilian deaths would care for accuracy). Moreover, the US has been attacking oil revenue sources for a while now. including over 100 trucks just recently. But there were ongoing attacks at oil refineries since at least last year. And obviously this solved all our problems.... As appealing as single action solutions are, if one spends a few minutes reading about a given topic, one would realize that at one point or another one has to think, instead of flailing around and hoping that sufficient explosives will eradicate the problem. For example, the largest chunk of revenue may actually come from taxation. And let me guess, the obvious solution would be to kill everyone in order to rob that revenue source.

Rather unfortunately, there is more. The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment which ran until the 70s on rural African-American men. While they did not (IIRC) actively infected patients, they pretended to treat them, but instead just observed disease progression.

OK, so to make it clear, the question cannot be unequivocally answered without actually trying it out. The reason is that small changes can create incompatibility. However, as a rule of thumb, the further species are apart, the lower the likelihood. Chromosome variances are more complicated in certain groups (in mammals it is usually a big problem), whereas in others it is less so. So without actually having any data, one could assume that the likelihood for martens and wolverines would be higher than either with badgers. Yet time wise their split is still longer than e.g. horse and donkey, who already typically have fertility issues.

As already mentioned, the right person to ask is a medical professional. There are tests that can help figuring out whether and what condition you have. Inflammations does not cause low oxygen conditions per se, but rather anemia and associated lack of iron and red blood cells. Each of these parameters can be measured directly.

According to amnesty international Brazil has a horrible track record of police-related deaths. I am not sure how that relates to the topic at hand, though. Even if suspects resisted arrest, the response should be proportionate. Out of the 1036 deaths, 204 (or 20%) were unarmed, for example. While some may have been justified to a degree it does seem that in many cases the officers were not able to de-escalate a situation. This could be due to lack of training, for example.

I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean that whether stimulating the eardrum could stimulate the cochlear hairs? Well, yes if it creates a pressure on the window it would be perceived as sound. Though the sensation may be quite different to what you apply as it is modulated during transfer. It does seem different to your initial question, though (unless I miss something here). Stimulating a nerve can have various effects and I am not enough of an expert to assess what specifically would happen if you stimulate a whole nerve bundle. From what I read it would highly depend on the stimulus and range from modulating signals to full fledged cramps and seizures. If you could specifically target the sensory neurons as outlined in the paper, your sensation would be nociception. I.e. it would probably feel like you had something touching your eardrums (but you would not hear anything from that).

I see how the last sentence could sound confusing in isolation. What they looked at was sensation of the membrane due to touch. This may include. tactile sensation and (in this case) nociception, and is totally independent of hearing (which happens in parts of the cochlea). It is the sensation you get when you got something stuck close to your eardrum, for example. What they mean is that the trigeminal nerve serves as the sensory pathway for these types of sensations to the brain (in the sensory branch). This is clearly established by context. Again, a) sensory branches lead to the brain and b) the hearing process does not happen at the eardrum.

Yes, but they are also much more closely related than wolverine and badgers.

That is funny, I just started a similar project looking at the "elasticity" and shifts of regulation in various cell lines. Results so far seem consistent with what you have seen for long-term adaptation.

That does not sound right. Why would the eardrum receive sensory information from nerves? It is part of a sensory organ and thus the flow of information would be the other way round. Specifically it is not even actually a sensory system in the strictest sense, either. Its role is to enhance and transfer signals to the ossicles, which then end up in the chochlea where the actual sensing (by sensory hairs) happens. As a rule of thumb: sensory signals originate at sensory neurons into the brain by afferent fibers. Efferent fibers send signals from the central nervous system to acting motor neurons. As the ear drum is a passive structure (essentially a membrane) that is not controlled by muscles, it does not make sense to have efferent signals going in there. I should add that while not directly connected, the tensor tympani, which can move the malleus can adjust the eardrum.

I do not see that Overtone said that terrorism is justified. From what I understand he states that US foreign policy has led to terrorist attacks. Or at least create an environment that promoted terrorist to flourish (correct me if I am wrong). This is a far cry from justification.

Well, we have touched on a number of reasons, but the influence of specific local groups is also tied to infrastructure (or lack thereof) and quite large socioeconomic differences. In the Middle East we find some of the most modern cities in the world as well as remote villages that have little or no idea what the current government is. As such it is a bit silly to refer to the Middle East as I just did. Other effects including destabilization by internal and external forces were also already mentioned. Unfortunately religious groups are generally already at least semi-organized and are in a better position to utilize these disruptions than democratic forces, it seems. The need to hold groups with vastly diverse ideology together. Saudi Arabia is a prime example. They have draconic laws including clearly mysogynist ones. From that point of view it appears that the government would support suppression of women. At the same time Kind Abdullah had introduced reforms and heavily promoted education. Another element that I have seen is heavy financial supports for students who want to get a foreign education (independent of gender). I.e. they can get full living expenses and tuition paid by the government if accepted by a foreign university. This does not paint a picture of government that actually wants to suppress women. Ironically some of the restrictions on female rights are supported by females due to cultural as well as religious reasons. Thus, the various seemingly contradicting policies are indicative of a balancing act to maintain power in diverse society. Same could be said about the state sponsoring of Wahhabsim as an attempt to externalize radicalism. With regard to China, that is going to be weird. China has always proclaimed non-involvement in internal affairs. Yet terrorism would be something they are very worried about. If they get involved ISIS would be likeliest target and they would have a difficult in coordinating with the Russians against rebels, as that would undermine their stance. If that was the case they would be pretty much the only part exclusively focused on ISIS. Also, I read in a an article yesterday that Turkey actually changed its rules of engagement after their plane got shot down in Syria. As an answer they changed the rules of engagement by treating all military movements over the Syrian border as hostile. Now an audio recording of warnings has been released, whereas the rescued navigator denies that.

Well, things are certainly complicated. Russia is basically the only one openly backing Assad, Iran covertly so. In contrast the US and Europe (mostly France and UK) have been supporting the rebels that now are also getting attacked by the Russians. Turkey is a bit in a weird situation and I guess it would require some serious reading (and probably more information that is not available yet) to disentangle all the levels of involvement. For starters, the diplomatic relationship between Turkey and Syria really started to worsen post 2011, resulting in direct support of rebels. Yet, it seems that Turkey is somewhat eager to take more direct measures as they do not want a Kurdish state being carved out from the remains of Syria. And in that context the Turkish dealings with ISIS are more than a bit sketchy, Unfortunately it has clearly become part of a propaganda war which makes current assessments unreliable at best. It will take time until actual information leaks out. I do believe that the oil dealings at least are actually documented. In that context it is probably relevant to highlight that it is not simply a three-party war but has actually a host of smaller factions with various differing allegiances. For example, the al-Nusra Front is an Al Qaeda branch fighting primarily against the Syrian government. They have coordinated with other Syrian rebels (specifically the Free Syrian Army, which actually is not homogeneous, either), but was fighting with ISIS. To make things more complicated defectors from the al Nusra Front have merged with other smaller groups to form the Jaysh al-Jihad, which, in turn allied with ISIS. Or take another islamic group: Jaysh al-Islam, is part of the Islamic front of the rebels. This groups is allegedly supported by Saudi Arabia as a counter to the al-Nusra front and are allied with FSA (which whom they share little ideological similarity). Really, just trying to list the involved parties would take quite a while, and even longer to display who is allied with whom.

Well up to the 50s (at least) there was also distinctly unethical medical research including the infamous Guatemala syphilis study in which US researchers infected patients and monitored the progression with and without penicillin treatment.

All claims, if possible. To list them up: A) that there is no correlation between genetic divergence and divergence time. Keep in mind how divergence is estimated. B) that species that need not evolve do not. Also specify what you mean with "need not". C) how are species forced to evolve? D) what specifically do you mean with chromosome matching? E) what is the basis of your calculations? F) What specifically do you want to modify in sperm? G) What do you think would it accomplish? H) Why specifically sperm an not e.g. the oocyte? I) How would it be accomplished? J) What do you mean with "splicing" sperm? There a a few good reasons why time alone is not a perfect estimator, and that it is certainly not universal in all groups. But your claims do not address these issues as far as I can tell. I would therefore be very interested in the specifics, as it is not quite clear to me what you mean.