CharonY

Even in biology industrial jobs pay significantly more at the PhD level in high-tech areas, including biotech, pharma or bioanalytical companies (although they are also often competing, and losing, to biochemists and pharmacists). In the traditional outdoors biology areas it may not be true. But there are not that many jobs that are specific to Bio bachelors that I am aware of and even technicians often hold a Masters nowadays. (Also there will be no cancer researcher with a BS, they will have a BS in cell biology or something like that, cancer is a highly specialized branch).

So the scope is just having a small sustainable biodome on the Moon? This seems to be quite a different scope than outlined in OP (especially as carbon sequestration will be negligible). Even so, this is going to be tricky, as failed attempts on Earth have demonstrated, assuming that self-sustainability is the goal. If not, it will still be dependent on steady (and costly) supply from Earth.

X inactivation is a special case of high-level regulation (by compacting the chromatin) but does not really seem to be the question here. That being said. there are still genes being expressed in the inactive chromosome.

Dominance is a description of the phenotype in relation to the genotype and not to its regulation. It is commonly assumed that normally (with few exceptions) diploid organisms express both alleles at a given locus. However, there is now evidence that there are more regulatory mechanisms that may result in monoallelic expression/ This differs from locus to locus.

That is actually not quite how I thought it would pan out.

One should also consider that "Nations" and nationalism is often seen as a relative modern construct (rising around the American and French revolution). If one stretches the meaning into earlier times, things get complicated, but in these cases homogeneity is mostly due to the limited size of the more tribal units that would be considered nations (such as city-states, for example). But with growth, wars etc. these boundaries would blur over time. Then we have nations that were developed based on external constraints (such as colonialism) so where would those fit in? Even in ancient times (where ethnicity apparently was less of an issue as during the era of colonialism, at least according to what written information is available), say, Egypt thinks were already blurry. To the best of my knowledge the early Egyptian Dynasties showed evidence of people indigeneous to the Nile era, tribes that fled from major desertification of the Sahara area and also from the Middle East.

Well, about the meaning part, why should anything have a meaning? What is the meaning of a rock? We give things meaning, but it does not mean that it is an intrinsic property. With regards to DNA and intelligence, it is pretty much the same. It does not know anything about replication. It does because it has the biochemical ability. If it didn't it would not spread. Disregarding the ability to transfer from generation to generation, it is true for every molecule. Water form hydrogen bonds, not because it knows something, but because of its chemical property. Same for the proteins in your body, or lipids or anything else you consist of. We are not special, biologically. Actually, what makes us special is potentially the time we spend on thinking how special we are.

Actually, the whole discussion has ignored the point that photosynthesis does not happen in a vacuum. You require a living organism to be able to conduct PS. Thus, you do not only need water and CO2, but also all the other macro and micro-nutrients. Some may be a available on the moon (though I am not sure about bioavailability) but you would have to transport significant amounts of nitrogen and other unavailable compounds to the moon, too. This further renders the whole idea even less feasible. What again, is the goal/benefit of this project? Terraforming the moon?

And the numbers are clearly not from equivalent jobs. In academia 45k is a decent postdoc salary (usually 30k up to rarely 50k), whereas 100k is only made maybe by a full prof. Outside academia entry level engineering tends to be around 65k which is comparable to biopharma entry-level jobs. There are, of course, specializations that may pay more or less.

This is due to fusion of chromosome 2 in humans. Essentially it is a form chromosomal rearrangement (i.e. in other apes it is present as two separate chromosomes, in humans it is fused). Fusion or breakage can lead to symptoms but as a whole does stop the chromosomes from doing their work (e.g. mitosis still works out as the homologous areas still align with each other, even through a break).

It depends where. In academia both are paid similarly (especially on the postdoctoral level). However, outside academia the salaries can rise massively. Thus, the whole comparison is a bit silly as you are comparing a whole discipline (engineering) that has a large set of job opportunities outside academia with a specialized sub-discipline (cancer research) that is much more limited. For a more apple to apple comparison you have to only look at industrial jobs, for example. In these cases the salaries will vary by company. For example the petroleum industry tends to have better salaries than most biotech ones, but (IIRC) some pharmaceutical tracks are at least comparative, if not higher paid.

Indeed. Also, I disagree to a large extent with the criticism. His later nightwatch novels were always less about jokes but much more about social criticism wrapped in murder mystery. And, to me, he delivered that in spades. His earlier works were more fanciful maybe, but less refined and less pointed. In the latter he has established his world but may seem a bit redundant in its description for those that have read all his book. However, for newcomers the added layer is important to get into Discworld,

Well, in nanoscience people are doing fancy stuff with DNA. To what end, is somewhat unclear. Sometime in the nineties a crystal structure of a triplex complexed to a peptide nucleic acid was reported, for example (can't recall the author, but it was done by then Glaxo. Since then numerous similar molecules have been published.

That is absolutely dependent on your bacterium and the medium you are using. You will either have to count the cells or plate them (life titer) for a given OD range and plot a calibration curve.

Well that has little impact on toxicity in organisms, as the water gets buffered rather quickly. The primary means of toxicity is electrolyte imbalance. Looking over cases the most common forms include: -exercise-associated hyponatremia (i.e. drinking too much while exercising, especially when the liquid is low on salts) -drinking faster than you can pee out (usually litres at once, expulsion rate is about 0.5-0.7 liter/h), this is often linked to compulsive behaviour. Normally it is not the absolute loss that is relevant, unless you have no means to replenish sodium, which is rather rare. Typical serum sodium concentrations are in the 132-144 mmol/L range. Rapid ingestion of water, especially accompanied by water intake. Around 120-110 mmol/L symptoms appear, which can be similar to heat stroke. Further dilution can starting to become fatal. Especially rapid change in osmolarity can accelerate harmful effects. But as pretty much everyone is saying, everything is toxic in too high concentrations.

That's true. Though often additional circumstances are present in fatal cases. This may include not replenishing electrolytes by other means (e.g. fasting) or if the loss of electrolytes is accelerated by sweating. Some of the most documented cases (to my knowledge) are exercise-associated hyponatremia.

Or if you ingest enough to upset your electrolyte balance. Typically that will only happen if you drink lots of pure water together with losing electrolytes (e.g. heavy sweating).

That was an enjoyable read. So to speak. Dreadfully fascinating. Edit: Actually I am also quite impressed how well the author conveyed info. I am in no position to judge the veracity (though nothing struck me as obviously wrong) but it seems to be one of the better popular science articles that I have read. Maybe a few references would be nice but other than that, very well written.

To add to Arete's point, for early researchers a high IF paper can be indeed career-defining, especially if you apply shortly after the paper is out. At that point citations are not expected to rack up. However, if it is a few years out and no one cites it, it won't help you much (usually). I cannot say much about publication times, as they vary wildly. However, in my field things accelerated considerably over the last five years or so. From what I heard it is not the same in theoretical physics or mathematics (but honestly, I have only hearsay). That being said, if it is not ridiculously long, and there is not a high chance of getting scooped, submitting it into a high IF and letting it sit in review for a bit may not hurt you too much.

It depends on the field quite a bit. High-ranked journals have the advantage of recognizability even from people not entirely within your field, which is especially an issue if you are multi-disciplinary. Also, getting in to hard-to-get-into journals (e.g. Science or Nature) is often seen as a badge of sorts and also boost recognition. As a side-effect your article is more likely to be found and cited if presented in one of those journals. That being said, it also depends on the context whether the journal rankings are taking into consideration. For example, for hiring purposes people tend to look at your actual citations, so an article with few citations even in a high-ranked journal is not very beneficial. On the flipside for grant reviews people often take less time and may be swayed by the journal's name. With regard to bureaucrats it may also depend on the system and country. In some countries they try to create scores to evaluate tenure and in these cases sometimes the Journal IF is included. Even if it isn't during tenure evaluation being able to say that one publishes regularly in prestigious journals is definitely a plus. Whether the prestige is based on IF or just being the top journal in a particular field does not matter that much, though for obscure fields it may require more explanation. That being said, I generally have an idea where my articles fit well and I do start looking at IF to see where my stuff roughly falls into.

To provide some pointers, these calculations generally involve the summation of ATP generated via substrate-level phosphorylation as well as the reducing equivalents. The latter (NADH) then indirectly can result in ATP production via the respiratory chain. The precise ratio can vary a bit and tends to be a semi-empirical estimate.

You may have better luck looking for octanoic acid. In vivo synthesis is simple via typical acyl-CoA hydrolysis. There are alternatives in various organisms including octane oxidation in some bacteria, for example.

Is it certain that only one or the other exists? Either case, in order to assess purity of iron preparations powder x-ray diffraction is a relatively quick way and also allows a rough estimate of contamination, provided it is relatively pure.

You would change pH but you would have no idea what the buffering capacity of your medium is. Again, a typical buffer systems consists of a weak base/acid and its conjugate acid/base. A citrate buffer could work (though it has some issues) and would be a mix of citric acid and e.g. sodium citrate (refer to the Handerson-Hasselbalch equation for details). Just adding a strong base such as NaOH would raise pH, but you have no clue how stable it is once you add bacteria. I think it is one of the cases where some microbiologists cut corners and disregard basic chemical principles. If your bacteria happens to be E. coli or something related I would recommend looking into M9 medium.

I am not quite clear what the overall points are here, especially as timo pointed out that direct comparisons do not make a lot of sense. However, in this context it should be noted that Germany electricity costs are generally higher than US/Canada even before renewable energies were relevant. The largest part has always been coal. Germany harbored anti-nuclear sentiments at least since the 80s. I do agree that generally there is a lot of nonsense and misinformation about nuclear power in German public opinion, but it does not seem that that are massive changes (which, again is tricky to figure out). A cursory comparison of average household cost per kW (excluding taxes) seems to indicated 0.142 average cost in the EU (2014). Germany is slightly above with 0.144. UK, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Italy have higher costs. While the newer energies have affected direct cost, it is non-trivial to figuring out total cost (e.g. as maintenance costs could be vastly different, to give one example). Either way, it does not seem that Germany is massively different compared to the others. Take a look at Ausrtia, for example. No nuclear, about 13% fossil fuels and 78% renewables (mostly water). Overall lower prices than Germany. Again, an indicator that such superficial comparisons actually tell very little. There are conflicting studies regarding costs, but those that are not from energy companies indicate moderate cost increase. Ultimately the decision of energy use in a given country will depend a lot on how strong the decision is influenced by environmental lobbying, the power distribution of existing energy providers and their respective ability to influence legislature. In Germany the fossil industry tends to have the upper hand, for example, and local protests can influence decision making. In France the nuclear lobby is quite strong and decisions are more central (to provide a very rough and, presumably, mostly inaccurate narrative)