CharonY

The smallest sensory unit is, depending on how you frame it, in each case either a single cell (i.e. the smallest unit to transfer signal to another cell and ultimately to the brain) or a protein that reacts to a stimulus (usually eliciting some kind of conformational change) that may or may not contribute to a signal on the cellular level. Usually this is done via the manipulation of ion channels (which are also proteins). So from that particular viewpoint there is virtually no differences between sensory organs on the detector level. As others have noted, a comparison only makes sense between identical stimuli. Each tone consists of a large amount pressure changes that the ear resolves into various frequencies and amplitudes to re-create a sound. The fact that you can distinguish instruments requires the sensing of thousands of queues at the same time. Likewise each smell is the result of thousands of chemicals acting on olfactory receptors. In some ways shape recognition is easier, and that is why we have an easier time processing it.

See, that is why you want one that is less sensitive for online purposes. I use an old anvil as a meter. It still broke though.

Likewise. And stay healthy, folks.

I thing both you and MigL have only a slightly different perspective of the same thing. Essentially the stability of a country is not determined by a small set of factors such as ethnicity or religion. Though they can be used as a cohesive or disruptive element. Whether they are, depends on a lot of other factors, including history (which will influence social dynamics) but also economy and others. Another reason why ethnicity and religion can be used disruptively is when they can be identified externally. It is much harder to identify and discriminate people if they appear the same. But as has been shown, we humans are pretty good at drawing arbitrary boundaries. Being the masters of their own destinies will probably alleviate issues in some respects in so much as it would be harder interference of foreign powers (which a number of regimes can do legitimately), though it does not mean that the resulting system will be efficient in dealing with it. Sometimes animosity run deep, but vanish for some reasons (e.g. looking at the once belligerent German-French relationship). It is likely however, that at some point someone will try to exploit these ethnic/religious/economic/whatever differences for their own gain. And I think it is dependent on the structure of the society and governance whether it can be resolved in a peaceful manner. These things may not even happen actively. Examples in the Western world probably include the eventual marginalization of violent racists (such as neo-nazis) in most countries, or the eventual demise of communist anti-government movements. These things still flare up (as with the recent refugee crisis) yet do not have the momentum to destabilize the whole country.

I am pretty confident that it is way further off, unless you are talking about improvements of means we got today. There is still a large gap when it comes to practical uses of nanotechnologies, especially for medical applications.

You are aware this are papers alone that look at consensus among the community? If anything this a lot of work to look at how much people agree on a thing. The actual work that are part of the consensus are in the thousands of publications by now. Also, as others have pointed out (especially take a look at the provided links), not knowing specific details does not mean that one does not have a good idea of the overall picture.

Except the video is not about legislature but about preconceptions.

All things considered, exams are trivial. After all, these are relatively short-term efforts. Building a sustainable life and being able to care for people other than yourself, much less so.

This is assuming that self-awareness is a trait that could be selected for. But self-awareness is not well defined to begin with. We do not have a perfect grasp on degrees and differences, for example. As such we only have a rough idea of how self-aware other animals may be. As a matter of fact we cannot classify our own self-awareness very well for that matter (other that in a very descriptive way). We know more about the neuronal pathways that may affect awareness (mostly due to lesion studies, i.e. looking when things become odd). Moreover, it is perfectly possible that self-awareness is just a consequence of complex brain function.

I do not think this is that uncommon. I have the same, especially for very long projects. And I am certain that everyone at a given point will have the same feeling in their job (to various degrees). What keeps me engaged is either the next step or what I can do once I figured something out. Certainly it is not necessarily an indication of a chemical imbalance, but rather of lack of interest. I also disagree that the world is a horrible place. Rather, the world has no interest in either of us and for this very reason I'd rather do stuff and carve my own niche rather than wait that somehow magically a spot for me appears. Sure, we will all die and it won't matter if we existed or not. Yet in the meantime there is plenty to do and only can decide how you want to fill up your time.

It is important to keep in mind that the triune brain is used as a simplified model. As such it has certain uses (as every other model) without being very accurate in detail. I think that subscribing is not the accurate term but rather it is a model with a limited range of usefulness (e.g. to describe overarching themes) and which fails to describe specifics. In the latter case one would switch to more detailed models. Or, in other words, neuroscientists know very well the limitations of the triune model and when it can be useful to use at least parts of it.

I have a bit of a problem with that. There is no hard way to measure levels of justification and invariably standards will change over time. Thus, using such a mushy concept to allow civilian deaths is not something that I can easily agree with. For example, if a state sponsors terrorism resulting in a few deaths per year, does that justify military action? What if the a state does not sponsor it, but is just corrupt? Do economic interests justify war? How about human rights abuse and if so at what level (the latter would almost be quite an ironic casus bellli, if at the same time we would allow these abuses to happen in a military context). Also, this is without touching legal issues, which may be at conflict with ethical considerations. The WWII argument would require a lengthy post from someone far more knowledgeable than me, However, there have been a number of articles based on military records that have looked into the effects of e.g. operation Gomorrah or other large scale destruction of civilian structures. While there are very different nuances the general consensus (again, based on the little I had read) is that a) the value was in the destruction of the militarily usable structures (i.e. infrastructure and logistics) whereas b) the civilian deaths had no favorable influence on the war outcome and c) to some degree the large destruction was due to the limits of the military technology as high-precision bombing was simply not feasible. It would also be a mistake to attribute the effectiveness of the Soviets to brutality. After all they invested the largest amount of man-power into the conflict. Also, it is hard to see how brutality toward the civilian population would actually helped their effectiveness.

See the issue is that you treat speculations (without calculation or sourcing) as facts and construe speculative narratives with this as as basis. Someone without any knowledge on the topic could mistake our opinion as facts and that is something I severely disagree with. Take your first paragraph. You do not even try to find values regarding how much the protein (Cry to be precise) is produced vs amount sprayed. You just speculate. Specifically you claim that organic farmers use them only in spot treatment. What you completely neglect is that there are guidelines on their use. One reason is that If the spray just the protein it degrades quickly. Thus, if you do not apply enough and repeatedly, you have underdosage. And THAT is the condition that favors resistance formation. To increase the amount farmers often do not spray the protein but genetically modified Bacillus strains (yes instead of GMO crops you got GMO bacteria, chew on that). But even then the typical application is ca. 1-2 lbs per acre every 3-10 days. If we take a weekly application with 1 lb each and have a crop life of 4 months, we have applied 16 lbs of material on the plants. The only other effective means would be to use alternative (and potentially more toxic) insecticides. This and the narrow range of targets usually requires the use of Bt sprays with other insecticides. EPA has published concentrations of Cry variants in all GMO plants which averages out to about 10 ng/mg dry weight. For corn the yield is about 7000 lb dry tons per acre so we get roughly 7 lbs per acre throughout one cycle. So the expected amount on the field in one harvest cycle is roughly the same with either method, or at least not hugely different. But here is the real kicker: spray applications is, as every farmer will tell you, not homogeneous. Rather depending on time from spray, the type of application and other factors (e.g. rain, wind) you will have large differences in the final concentrations. Thus, if you underapply you do not control pest efficiently. In contrast the toxins produced by the plant accumulate precisely where they are supposed to act. With all other factors being equal and using Bio 101 one would conclude that a point application (i.e. in the plant) would greatly reduce dilution effects. And again, the use of Bt-GMO plants (which typically is still supplemented with other insecticides) has reduced the use of total inecticide use compared ot just using Bt spray + other insecticides (as shown in the USDA report I mentioned earlier). Again, every agricultural practice has ecological issues (not only GMOs) and it is important to follow the data in these discussions. Many people invest serious time investigating these challenges and neglecting all reports and studies and insist on throwing your opinion around without referring to any of them: a) does not do the issue justice. Ecological and health impacts of how we utilize the environment is just too important to just form discussions based on opinion and gut feeling. b) is incredibly arrogant towards researchers who worked hard to obtain funds to the research only to be dismissed by either interest group because it does not fit their respective narrative. I should add that I focus here on the way the biology is misrepresented and am not arguing the economic side, which requires a separate discussion in the broader context of patented seeds (or food for that matter). Just by being GMO does not make it commodity that follows different economic rules.

Also, I fail to see how having that info public is helpful in any way. I mean, it is obvious if you manage a project and share assignments with co-workers but if you it just for you it seems a bit pointless to me.

I like to visualize human development as pancake. First we are like batter, unfinished and kind of yucky. Then on the hot pan we see and smell the potential, but is still a bit wet and useless. Once done it is perfect, tasty has all the nice bits and depending on preference you can keep it fluffier or more on the crispy side. Once it gets stale it is still a perfectly alright pancake, but you wished you had gotten it earlier. Also, I am hungry.

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.