CharonY

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.

Are you speculating wildly or do you have anything to back it up?

Well it is not entirely impossible but there are caveats. It is true that offspring from even closely related animals with different chromosome counts are normally sterile. An example would be mules that have 63 chromosomes. However, there have been reports of successful breeding between female mules and male donkeys. It is not common, though. A better example are probably fish, as hybridization is easier (and probably also more common in nature). One example that I recall is a cross of a carp and a bream which have 100 and 48 chromosomes, respectively. A tetraploid offspring with 148 chromosomes was fertile, IIRC. I should add that hybridization could be considered a bit of a special case.

The split between tiger and lion is estimated 6 million years ago, honey badger and wolverine over 20 million. It seems very unlikely.

Not only that. Even regulatory networks that do not appear to be redundant can to some degree self-repair themselves when knocked out. This is due to low-level regulation that can take care of e.g. disrupted metabolic pathways, but only if the environment is not too restrictive. You can (and I have) disrupt large parts of a simple bacterium and it still continues living and proliferating just fine under many conditions. This, again refers to a point Arete made that the phenotype is dependent on genes with the environment.

The only way forward is to talk to more medical specialists and hope to find one who can do a proper diagnosis. A message board is not the way to obtain medical advice, especially for a potentially undiagnosed condition. People here will make random guesses that, given lack of training and (luckily) access to your medical records will unlikely be relevant. The only thing I can tell you with any amount of certainty is that in its current state genome analysis are not terribly useful as diagnostic tools yet.

I am pretty sure that they were at the leadership during the rise, but could not remember whether anything has changed. So I have re-read some of the reports on the documents found 2014. It appears that up and including 2013 it was quite clear that planning and leadership were headed by Baathist with Haji Bakr (former colonel in Intelligence) as one or maybe the mastermind. Part of the documents revealed what propaganda they thought about using for justifying certain attacks. I.e. they planned them on strategic merits and then handed out some religious reasons to deceive observers (and presumably their radical base) about true motives. In some ways that was why the movement was for a long time confused with a simple terror group, whereas it was a well planned insurgence. Even after the the death of Bakr (by Syrian rebels) it seems that ISIS is following his game plan, so there is a good point to be made that the leadership is still active. In some ways it appears that there is a shadowy control within ISIS but I could not find any newer reports that shed more current insights. However, that is pretty much expected. Documents from Aleppo (again found 2014) showed that ISIS had set up a complex surveillance system in rebel and government militias as well as in their own group, and even knew some of the government spies within their own ranks. The files that they have also included weaknesses, preferences, and influence. It included plans to marry into influential families (and plans to to forbid others to marry into those), for example. This, again was indicative of the work of former intelligence officers. Since then I have found a few articles mentioning that the Baathist power may be waning, but since they were not really sourced I guess they were mostly speculation (or even deception).

As Hyper pointed out, general filtration, dialysis or separation that is able to remove small molecules will lead to having very expensive water rather than milk.