CharonY

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.

Actually I think that there were reports of ISIS executing Ba'athist militants. But, to my shame I have to admit that it is entirely possible that I confused those with non-ISIS Ba'athists. There were definitively reports of Ba'athist ex-military being executed after ISIS took Mosul.

Define "better".

I understand what you were trying to say, but I was thinking that your analogy was a bit odd in the given context. And somehow the discussion started to conflate police with military actions in general (not a specific criticism of your post, though). Regardless, This is an interesting question. I faintly recall that there have been some internal power struggles with Baathists removed from power or murdered (sometime last year, I believe). It is therefore possible that by now they got marginalized or radicalized. But I guess it will remain speculative until documents get declassified sometime in the future. I suspect that after they established structure and a power base, the fanatics may have little use for the ex-military. Which in some way may be a good sign, as it would weaken their military expertise. Or so I wildly and baselessly speculate and hope.

Prokaryotes form the basic elements of global nutrient cycles. So yes, rather obviously prokaryotes are essential and have lived long before eukaryotes even existed.

I have no idea how you read that into what I wrote. Casting everything in false dichotomy in order to justify actions is not a thoughtful way to go about things. Also note that the US did not "allow" ISIS to grow due to inaction. It was due to their action that they created it. The command is dominated by Ba'athists who, at one time were somewhat secular (as the party was about pan-Arabism rather than religion) that the US dismantled. Also you are confusing your anti-Americanism. The great Satan is a term and popularized used by Khomeini (you know, Iran, not Iraq) mostly in context of UK/US interference in Iran's internal affair. You know, like operation Ajax. I.e. they have similar reason to oppose the US but in a different historic context. With regards to the the Ba'athists it is probably interesting to note that while they forged an alliance with religions extremists they do not seem to be that religious. In the 90s Saddam did reinvigorate Islam in Iraq to some degree, but I am sure that most leadership would have seen it as a move to strengthen his power in the Arab world. So their goal is probably not in line with that of the fanatics. This goes back to a comments that we had earlier in this thread that religion is a great propaganda tool. And in fact, the whole ISIS thing was seemingly under the radar for a long time because it was simply seen as that, a bunch of fanatics. Yet it became clear that a significant portion was loyalists. Of course I cannot pretend to know how the internal dynamics really is but files have been found that highlights a master plan of the take over by ISIS. And as it turns out, religious fanaticism and Shia law is indeed used for a singular reason: control. While many followers are driven by fanaticism, it is not how IS is led or built. In fact, if it was one could argue that it may not have become as organized and powerful as it is. Yet, much of mass media (well headline articles at least) and common perception is still focused on fanaticism, a notion that ISIS heavily encourages. In that regard we are falling right into the propaganda trap as we are encouraged to fight shadow of an enemy and, in the course of action, may radicalize others. All being cannon fodder for the ultimate goal, which, not surprisingly, is power rather than religion.

There are a couple of reviews out there that I would use as starting point. I only remember Takahashi et al (2014) in a frontiers journal and one from a group in Columbus.. Croce, I believe

I do not want to speak for Ophiolite, but given the context it is pretty clear to me that ultimately he was talking about foreign policy and motivations behind decision making. The bully analogy was an attempt to describe the motivation of certain posters who, apparently (at least to me) seem to translate playground behaviour to international policy. Your example is IMO pretty meaningless in this context. You could as well as if you should take up arms if you are getting invaded by a foreign army. And what if that army happens to be the US? As side note, if your party is the most powerful around and if it is promoting instability and promoting or actively engaging in offensive wars, it is a bit weird to play the defensive card. Even in the short example (well, rather long post but that is when you try to to be brief but to not want to resolve too much into soundbites that completely distorts context) between Iran and Iraq it is obvious that there was little evidence that the motivation were of humanitarian or protective nature. They were either conducted to promote economic interests or to expand Western sphere of influence (at the leader level, of course not so much that the population would have benefitted). The real tragedy to me is that these actions are directly or indirectly responsible for the rise of the terror organizations that are now threatening international security. As I already mentioned, if we claim the right to depose or destabilize any government that suits us, it also means that no pro-Western government is free from the suspicion of colluding with foreign powers. And the argument that radicals can make is rather easy: how can a government that is furthering foreign interests truly be invested in its own people? That, ultimately is what I and I assume others mean when they bemoan a short-sighted foreign policy. And again, to pretend that all these actions were benevolent or defensive in nature just reeks of revisionism. And if you really think that we can do no harm, then we are truly screwed, because it implies that we are unable to reflect on our actions and learn from mistakes.

I would suggest pooling these discussions into a single (or a few limited) threads. That way discussions can be more had without spreading out the same lines over and over again.

So tar, you are saying that you are in favor of a jingoist attitude reserving the right for a country to challenge the sovereignty over any other country in order to further its interest with no regard to long-term issues? Even when these actions demonstrably lead to issues we have today? Even if these actions limit the right of self-determination of whole populations? Even if these actions provides fuel to the extremists who can justify their actions as a defense against outside influence? Even if these actions put moderates into jeopardy as they can be easily accused to collude with outside governments against their own people? Even if these actions weaken any potential of the formation of stable governments that may have an interest in curbing terrorist actions? I think these short-sighted strategies that seem to emphasize short-term goals (access to resources, controlling oil prices or other economic factors) are precisely why regions are embroiled in devastating power struggles. MigL, I am not going to elaborate on all the issues, I would refer to UNSCOM reports for that matter. The question is a good one, however. I do think that the only viable long-term strategy has to be promoting stable governments and societies that will allow a peaceful transition to a more democratic society. This is only likely to happen if at the same time social tensions are reduced and prosperity will be accessible to the majority of the of the population. While it cannot prevent from radicals trying to seize power, typically it does reduce general support. How it can be realized is of course a different matter.

For actual medical advice you should take to physicians. What I can tell you is that our biological knowledge is currently far too limited to derive diagnostic information from whole genome sequencing. I.e. the only information would be based on known targets which can be done cheaper and faster with conventional tests. So the information you have is quite accurate. There is work on omics-related technologies (such as genome sequencing, proteome analyses, transcriptome analyses etc.) which are aimed to identify physiological traits, including diseases based on this complex data. The problem is that we basically learned that it is much tougher to find a link between molecular information and the physiological manifestation (i.e. phenotype) than originally anticipated. To put that into perspective: in E coli, a simple and arguably the best investigated organism we have no clue what about 25% of the genome is doing. Moreover, from the rest roughly half we only have rough idea but often insufficient experimental evidence. So you may understand that if that is the case, we are having a much harder time with multi-cellular, complex organisms.

This is what a lot of neuroscience is converging on. That being said, it is not the same to ask whether our behavior is deterministic, as some may think. Given sufficient complexity in a system, the outcome of deterministic and non-deterministic systems may well be indistinguishable.

Urks, geez, no. That is an odd, jumbled misrepresentation of what happened and the interaction between Iraq and the US. I am not even sure where to begin. Well, first the US was complicit in the rise of power of the Ba'ath party in 1963. That was well before the Iran-US conflict and one of the key points there was the increasing influence of the Iraqi Communist Party (there may be more, but the background here is the cold war, religion played virtually no role). This was followed shortly by an internal power struggle leading to another coup, ultimately ending in a pro-Nasserist government. Saddam came to power in 1968 in yet another coup (technically as the second in command). In this context it is often said that he ruled with an iron fist to keep the various Iraqi factions under control. What is not so often said (at least after the Gulf wars) is that he did it in conjunction with massive welfare programs (not unlike Germany under Hitler) as well as modernization of the economy. This was realized using Iraq's oil reserves. Now that the stage is set, let us talk about the Iran conflict. You make it sound like a defensive action against a religious conflict (secular Iraq vs religious Iran), but if you know your history book, you will realize that at that time the big ally of the US was: the then secular Iran under Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (you know, after UK/US deposed the elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh). So what actually happened is closer to the following: Saddam started closer ties with the Soviet Union and following 1968 the relationship was rather bad with the US. Thus, in 1973-5 the CIA worked with the Shah (Iran) to finance Kurdish rebels resulting in the second Kurdish-Iraqi war. Also the thought that Iraq would be there to defend Israel from Iran is so mindblowingly wrong.. Just let me say that in 1977 the relationship between Iraq and Egypt went sour because Egypt started peace talks with Israel. Now the Iran-Iraq conflict proper. As we all known 1979 marks the time when Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in the Islamic revolution. The resulting conflict had two elements. The first is indeed partially religious, but more specifically driven by revolutionary fears. The second is that the Arab states were wary of Iran, who, as we all know, are Persians. As the Western states now had lost their Iranian play-thing, they threw in their lot with Saddam in 1980. The funny bit is that the Soviet Union was pretty much the only one not chipping in, bringing him closer to the Western world. This is also the time when the US helped Saddam to use chemical weapons against the Iranians and then, also the Kurds. What I always found weird is that there was no regard for international law. This point is actually quite important. What the war ultimately did, however, was to provide Khomeini with massive support from Iranians as he was seen as the successful defender of a massive Western-funded Arab invasion (note again that Iran was not the attacker and it also did not make a miraculous jump over Iraq in order to attack Israel). Now let us talk the fall from grace: you said he was so powerful and because we did not want him to conquer the region we put him down. This ignores what I just mentioned, we gave him money to conquer a swath of the region first. And obviously, he largely failed. No the actual issues with Kuwait are different. In the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war Saddam wanted Kuwait to eliminate the debts Iraq made, which they refused. Saddam then tried to use oil to pay off his debts, and pushed for a raising oil prices, which was torpedoed. Saddam then reached out to the US and, among other things, complained that the Kuwaitis were slant drilling into contested oil reserves. As tensions rose Saddam seemingly initially assumed that he could obtain support f(or at least non-involvement) from the US for a foray into Kuwait, similar to the support they received against Iran. After all, the US was providing heavy support to Iraq for a decade.and the tone was initially conciliatory. However, it also became apparent that the US had no interest in rising oil prices and that the decision of OPEC not only not to curb oil production but instead increasing it, was supported by the US. Ironically, this situation resulted in an Iran-Iraq alliance to pressurize other Arab countries to limit oil production. Ultimately it resulted in the Iraq invasion of Kuwait (backed by the Soviets this time). So instead of being all-powerful, Iraq was actually in a crisis and the move was a move to alleviate it. The attack by the US was unlikely to be exclusively due to the issues of international law, as they showed quite some disregard with respect to Iran. Moreover, Kuwait was a vocal enemy of Israel. What the ultimate reasons were can probably only be known once more information is declassified and analyzed by historians. But things that have been mentioned include stability of the region and especially the oil price (and thus, world economy) but potentially also due to heavy investments into Kuwait by a number of corporations (and again, it would not be the first time that large corporations were part of the decision making). Finally, with regards to WMD, those that were delivered to him were found to be destroyed by UN inspectors. What the UK and US trumped up were false reports on new WMD programs that, as we know now for sure never existed. I should also add that I do profess to know the specific motivations of the parties involved, this is something for the historians to look at. And since this is friggin long post for which I should not have invested any time I will let you keep all the grammar and spelling errors that you can find (heaps of them). I would like to close again with an appeal not to give in to simple narratives to justify actions that can or have resulted in massive amounts of death and suffering. Every time such a decision has been taken it must be put under the highest level of scrutiny. We should not take the easy way out and pretend that our actions or the actions of our representatives were just using feel-good stories. The resulting issues are real and ISIS is just a manifestation of a quagmire where short-sighted foreign policy was used to systematically destabilize regions by pitting forces against each other. And now that the lid has been blown off it is just hypocritical to pretend that we had nothing to do with it. Or that we were just doing our duty (whatever that means).

disjunctase?

In that case, as I said, it is a matter of concentration. And injecting it into the bloodstream means diluting it. There is little difference for the toxic effect if diluted by water or by blood (actually some component may have some minor effects, but overall it will negligible). And if your thought is having a sufficiently high concentration to harm organisms that feed on blood, then you are going to kill the host first.

There are a lot of speculations, assumptions and some misconceptions here. One of the most important points is that there is a certain amount of uncertainty in this (or basically all) longitudinal study. One of the issues is that hormone levels are not very stable and can vary due to a number of daily influences and the sampling points may not be sufficient to capture the variance and to ascertain whether there is significant decline. This is complicated by the fact that at that point the normal value estimates were based on generalized reference values (i.e. a common assumed, non-symptomatic range of testosterone) that has not been normalized against age to take the decline, and the shape of the decline into account. The reasons is that there have not been studies before that have measured the decline of testosterone in a sufficiently large, aging population to create a reference model. These (and a few other) issues complicate the interpretation, though it does not mean that there is no effect.In fact, a number of other studies do indicate that male infertility may indeed be on the rise. Some of the strongest correlations have been found with obesity and diabetes as well as smoking, IIRC. Alcohol was also somewhat correlated but I forgot how strongly. Endocrine disruptors commonly found in household items and drinking water are also suspected to be contributing factors, though the extent is still under much investigation. I.e. it is far from certain whether the effect may actually shift levels beyond typical variation. Unsurprisingly, testosterone levels are also heavily influenced by lifestyle, such as stress levels, sleep and exercise. Thus, another speculations is that more people have less physical jobs, may be to sedentary as consequence, while at the same time stress may have increased. I do think that these factors may actually be much more relevant in the long run as we do know that lifestyle and especially stress (though that is a very broad and complicated thing in itself) has a massive effect on our physiology. In contrast, exposure levels at best only find mild effects, which is a pity as it would make study designs much easier. Other things include frequency of masturbation and sex is also correlated with testosterone levels, to provide other examples. Of course, none of these points speak to the narrative of OP, which, frankly was a bit silly to begin with. It is true that most chefs are still male. Though I would not say that women have not been allowed, per se. I guess it may depend on the time period, but if we are talking about modern times I would like at least to acknowledge Eugenie Brazier who was the first chef (never mind female chef) to acquire three Michelin stars. Also the first to acquire six stars, for that matter. Among her students are famous chefs, such as Paul Bocuse.

Well, noise has getting better in the last years, and for some the optics start to become the bottleneck. I would probably not want to take anything smaller than a micro four third at this point. I do prefer the flexibility and portability of mirrorless, though. Zero photos on the cellphone (unless I forgot to delete a photo of a receipt I took years ago).

Because I am a biologist I tend to be careful to look at physiology to explain social phenomena. Typically, our knowledge does not extend to the mechanistic links that are required to develop causative models. Especially as behavior is modulated by an indefinite number of factors, it is often not helpful to cast it by using the spotty knowledge in biology we have. An analogy is to try to explain complex biological systems using physics approaches. The methodology and knowledge is not quite there yet, though it can applied to certain subset of issues. In this case, one could e.g. speculate that it increases say threshold for violent behavior by a %. However, whether it has any societal impact is purely speculative and certainly cannot explain the existing political situation. Added disadvantages is that many people underestimate the flexibility of biological systems and believe that if something has a biological root, the outcome is deterministic. This is, of course entirely wrong as biological actions are the result of complex interactions of organisms with the external and internal environment. Another issue is that often laypersons (and sometimes even specialists) are not able to evaluate the uncertainty of these studies. As a result they assume something as "scientific proven" when it is at best a vague theory.

I am not quite sure what the main points are that you want to discuss. Yes, religion is mostly dogmatic and yes, it has been used as a manipulative tool. Its societal influence is widely known, though it does serve certain functions. It has been seen and discussed in a large variety of contexts. As an example from Marx: However, the impact, role and influence has changed over the centuries and individual religions have become interwoven with certain groups, ideologies and even nations. I do not think that your question can be answered in any breadth as it would be highly dependent on religion, region and year we are talking about. But to provide alternative viewpoints, in many countries in which Christianity arrived via missionaries, the Christianity is often taught last dogmatic and sometimes even includes a mix of existing religious systems. Depending on the power the respective Christians wielded in, say Eastern Asia, Christians may continue worshiping sine local deities or have other beliefs mixed in. There are also interesting re-interpretation where Buddha and Jesus are kind of seen as equivalent entities in a broader religious tapestry. I would also like to add that in science there is little that we know for certain. Rather we think of various degrees of accuracy and likelihood. A scientist should never be absolutely certain of anything. really. But again, the discussion seems to be a general critique on modern religion (or religion in the modern world) but I am not terribly sure what the precise points under discussion are.

In the 90s the first Iraq war was a surreal experience. Up to that point it in the media Saddam Hussein was portrayed as the guy who keeps the fundamentals at bay. Then the narrative changed rather suddenly and what freaked me out at that time was that after the events there was a massive real-time revisionism in the media. Remember, the internet was not yet available as a repository of information and you actually had to search for physical articles in the library to make sure that your memory was accurate. This is one of the reason why I think that history is extremely important to provide context, especially when soundbites and easy answers supersede in-depth analyses, such as reducing the situation in the Middle East just to the religious component. Indeed. During the cold war the conflicts in the Middle East were mostly viewed (or at least treated) through the view of anti-communist ideology rather than religion. One of the reasons I think why there is so much effort in justifying the actions of Western powers is because the attitude of the citizens has changed. A few decades back there probably would have been less outrage if the US or other governments create much suffering in far away countries. Now they at least have to control the news cycles while doing so (but just until people forget). I think it goes well beyond the scope of this topic, but since it has been mentioned, I'd like to add that many officials have not acknowledged that Iraq post-invasion was badly mismanaged. This is against the narrative that you may have found in the internet where some claim that WWII level destruction would have been better as it resulted in stable nations such as German and Japan, which is utter nonsense, of course. Many of the actions were based on erroneous assumption, including a functioning Iraqi bureaucracy. A country always requires such an apparatus to function (even under dictatorial rule, what some promoting strong leader or iron fist regimes tend to forget) and at the same time banning Ba'ath members to work in the government. I.e. decisions were made that were at best short-sighted and in the long run led to massive destabilization. An important thing about something like "winning hearts and minds" is to acknowledge that it is not about bringing in a new system or ideology. Realistically, when push comes to shove few people are that interested in democracy or freedom. These are high ideals that you think about on a full stomach. Rather, the actual question is whether your personal live is better now or then. And the US not only did not manage to control insurgency, but by putting hundreds of thousands out of work they even created a basis for it. The multi-series Army report "On point" is a very interesting read for this.

Actually I would think that the socioeconomic situation (especially large differences), political stability and education are more likely to be the main factors. There are stable, but largely religious countries (including a number of states in the US, but we can take western Turkey as example, too). But a stable life and high levels of education seem to moderate the crazy-think. With regards to the US toppling "decent" governments. The dozens ins certainly a hyperbole and the decent is probably up to discussion. At the same time one does have to acknowledge that the US did force regime changes to further their interests. And it is quite obvious that at least during the cold war it was typically with little concern for the population. If use democratic elected as a goalpost to meet for a "decent government" there are a few (to my knowledge) that were carried successfully E.g. Iran 1953, where the US and the UK prevented the nationalization of oil (which would hurt what is now BP), Guatemala 1954 on behalf of the United Fruit Company. Chile 1973 to prevent the election of an Marxist. Turkey 1980, where the coup was backed by the CIA, again a power move against the left wing. Though it has to be added that the ultimate outcome of the conflict stabilized the nation. Some, however, would state that there was a deliberate escalation of the conflict. Of course the famous funding of the Contras in Nicaragua which was again politically motivated. There were certainly quite a few more unsuccessful or not certain ones, but I doubt it would make it in the dozens in total. Still, it has to be noted that it would be wrong to characterize the aggressive parts of foreign policy as soft or benevolent. One of the reasons they failed in Iraq to wind heart and minds is because they were not able to stabilize the situation and improve most people's life. Dictatorship or note, guerrillas are hard to control and by destroying power structures it apparently had become easier for rivaling factions to form and to thrive. There is certainly much more to it and I would be careful to reduce these complex issues to simple soundbites (for either argument). Edit: with respect to Iraq one probably should add that the US complicit in the the Ba'ath party to overthrow Qasim (who was not a nice fellow) after that one overthrew the Western-backed Iraqi monarchy. One added issue to that region is probably that few areas there had the time to grow strong and independent as a nation, as it was also a hotbed for proxy wars between the West and the Soviets. In some cases ethnicity and/or religious rule is working like a haphazard (and nasty) glue to keep power together.

Indeed. Just to reiterate John's point, fat movement is not the issue here. Almost any movement through our body is practically facilitated by our vascular system. So if you are saying fat movement, it is not going to be hindered by clothing. There is something else however. Storage is predominantly in adipose tissue, i.e. fat cells. Again, movement is not an issue as fat cells also do not move around in your body (just imagine your tissue shifting randomly around). However, I faintly recall a few studies that have found that tensile stress does affect differentiation into adipose cells. I do not recall the extent nor whether normal clothing or posture may affect fat deposition (again, in tissue).

Bleach is a chemical and therefore cannot infect anything. Do you mean affect? Either way, the only difference is the route (oral vs injection). The fact that the ingestion is blood does not matter much. Depends on the concentration. If there was something like that, maybe. But the issue is that toxic components would affect you.