CharonY

My guess is that OP is still rather young and thus hobbies make up a bulk of their time. I would agree that for most people work tends to be front and center. Hobbies tend to be something introduced if you think you have a common ground. The opposite is true if the meeting is specifically centered around a hobby, of course. But then people would assume common interests and soon it will drift towards" so what are you doing for a living?". Also there are plenty of people who are (initially) not very good or interested in a given hobby but may have joined in, say, because of their SO or friends. But eventually they may enjoying it and getting pretty good or even better than their partners... An anecdotal example would be the number of academics I know whose abilities are clearly in the intellectual area, yet they massively enjoy getting humiliated playing sports. If they were inclined only to do what they are good at their hobbies would be far more sedentary, I guess. Considering that there is little biology to back up the assertions in OP I am moving this to the Lounge for the time being.

I intended to dig out some books prior to writing a response, but since it does not seem that I will find the time for a more detailed response, I will post in bits from what I remember. The claim of reparations and Hitler implies that a) the economy of Germany was in shambles, specfically prior to Hitler's rise to power b) that reparations were a major influence and that c) dictatorial measures under Hitler finally fixed the issue. To discuss this, we have to take a look at the German economy in the interwar period. First, hyperinflation. In order for it to be a major factor in this discussion, it has to be assumed that it happened just until Hitler "fixed" the economy. However, the major part of hyperinflation occurred between 1921-24, way before Hitler was considered a major player. Subsequently German economy was stabilized, widely contributed to competent policies by Hjalmar Schacht (under Stresemann). Subsequently, the Germany economy saw significant rise in economic power, decrease in unemployment, which were partially co-financed with the Dawes plan. While reparations were a major factor, in the overall economic situation, it did not hinder economic growth. It should also be noted that Germany as a whole was in a pretty strong position in terms of production as WWI hardly touched its infrastructure. Now the actually financial crisis started with the crash of Wall street and the onset of the Great Depression. In a nutshell, a bad situation was made worse by Bruening, who was appointed chancellor. His policy was severe austerity which has been recognized to lead to a severe deflation (not inflation) of German economy, leading to an increase in unemployment. The reparations here were to some extent a psychological factor. Based on letters and other documents from Bruening and his cabinet it became clear that they wanted fight depression by curbing expenditure and thereby also demonstrate their inability to pay reparations, as a basis for further negotiations. Funds that were already allocated to e.g. infrastructure, which, ironically, would have had a chance to improve Germany’s economic situation, were scrapped under these policies. Now we have two situations of post-war Germany. One of relative growth, which was under a somewhat functional parliamentary system (the constitution had some built-in instabilities which were not recognized at that time). Then, we have one of bad fiscal policy. Interestingly Bruening was governing under a dictatorial rule using emergency powers, the same that Hitler was going to invoke after his grab to power. So in this case, the ability of dictatorial powers to “get things done” plunged Germany into a deep economic crisis. Now for the last part, did Hitler “fix” the economy? There have been long text books describing why it was not the case as a whole. But in the short term he appointed Hjalmar Schacht as Minister of Economics and he started programmes that were stopped under Bruening to address the immediate issue of unemployment. However, he also heavily lobbied against military spending. That, arguably resulted in the eventual loss of his portfolio. Had Hitler decided to go with Schacht’s vision, potentially a sustainable economy could have emerged. Instead he went with Goering and resulting unsustainable war economy. The only way out once they walked that path was to force the expenditures to conquered areas and such can hardly be considered a fix at all. The instability once Hitler started these war-oriented policies was well-recognized even during that time. To summarize, there was significant economic growth (the golden 20s) that overcame hyperinflation before the Wall street crash using parliamentary powers. Crash was initiator of economic issue (rather than reparations) and was exarcebated by emergency rulings under Bruening (i.e. non-parliamentary powers made things worse). Immediate fix after Hitler got power were plans from the same guy who managed the growth in the 20s but then converted it into unsustainable war economy.

Most of us would not be here as either we or, more likely our direct ancestors would not have survived to produce us.

I think that is true for many people. Reading experience is better with paper, also I prefer reference works, such as text books or historic writing in book format as it is much easier to track back to certain passages. While it is easier to mark things electronically, I always found that half-remembered passages are much easier to find with books rather than using search functions or similar. I guess it has something to do how spatial memory works. But I found myself moving so much that most reading for entertainment just had to be delegated to electronic readers for practical purposes...

Precisely, in vitro models (including chip-based ones) are currently only useful for a limited number of applications and are nowhere near being able to supplant animal tests. There is funding to improve the systems, but it is still in its infancy stages. Cosmetic testing has been reduced massively over the last decade and has been effectively been banned in the EU and at least is considered for banning in the US. It is certainly not seen as a requirement anymore. One of the reasons behind that is that there are not many new formulations of cosmetics so that no new tox information is required. In addition cosmetic testing does not actually rely on toxicity information, rather specific endpoints such as skin irritation on contact. These can actually tested quite well in tissue cultures.

To be precise, nociceptors do not cause sensation of pain. They are generated in the brain and signals from nociceptors can lead to activity of the respective brain areas. Now, emotional distress has some overlaps, but there are also distinct differences and again, the brain is the important factor and not so much the respective sensory pathways. For some references: Eisenberger, Nat Rev Neuroscience, 2012; Wager et al. N Engl J Med 2013 368:15.

In that case take a look at control of FDR via Benjamini Hochberg (e.g. Hochberg, Benjamini 1990 Stat. Med. 9 811-8, which discusses it in the context of medical research and makes it quite easy to understand)

Additional things to keep in mind: samples have to be independent, you need sufficient N, and from the sound of it you are looking at more variables than samples, which requires multiple testing correction such as control of FDR.

They read more like a curiosity. In newspapers of that year there is also quite a bit of criticism, including from a number of German blogs, but also from a German provider of certification services. The author has in a few cases threatened with lawsuits and in case of the certification service (TUEV) managed to get an injunction to prohibit them to state that there is no perpetuum mobile. I.e. it is more a human interest story rather than a science story.

The thing is, law enforcement is state business and I am not sure how much the feds can enforce policies or are able to investigate misconduct. They can provide or deny certain assistance to promote adoption of certain policies but beyond that their reach may be limited (but I could be wrong).

And even that only in a very narrow, arbitrarily defined context.

I could make the point for virtually anything, including plastics, personal care products etc. In fact is actually data for potential health hazards of common flame retardants and plastic materials. Yet, we still happily use them. For the outlined position to be internally consistent one would either have to call to the dangers of everything (including oxygen) which is clearly unrealistic. And yes we also have negative data on bacon. We still use it freely. What is your point? Just because we used it for a long time its health effects we should consider it safer? We have evidence that it has negative health impacts, why do you label it as safer than something for which we have no evidence? As can be seen, the whole basis of risk assessment in OP is essentially gut feeling and therefore not conducive to scientific discussions.

Weird, I thought I had already typed an answer, but anyway, the colour is due to strong acidification of the medium. How that coloration appears depends a bit on high vigorous they ferment lactose and also a bit on colony density. I.e. growth rate and motility may change the hue a bit, which may range from very characteristically green to some degree of brown-purple-pink (often within the same colony with gradation towards the fringe). So from that the prof. is obviously right, E. coli is not the only Gram- that fits the bill.

First of all, all papers indicating no adverse effects will report it as such. The claim of safety is something for policy makers to do as it is a value judgement. At best researchers will claim that based on existing research no grounds for safety concerns are found. This is a trivial thing and that is how science is supposed to work. Now with regard to human health, this is generally tricky to assess as any kind of cohort study in humans has severe limitations, including the fact that you cannot force people to a specific diet for a very long time. It is just an unrealistic demand. As with all toxicity studies we rely on animal models. And here we see no effects in long-term studies with animals exposed to much higher levels of GMO food than you can realistically expose humans to. In fact long-term studies exist on rodents that have been exposed over several generations (see review by Snell et al. Food and Chemical Toxicology 2012). While several studies only had limited numbers, the variety of approaches have not yet found any potential effects nor potential paths of toxicity. Based on your unreasonable expectations there would be no way to declare anything safe, including breathing (which has known toxic effects). Listen, as wit all things consuming GMOs, as well as non-modified food includes risk. To the best of our knowledge GMOs that are in use today are not more harmful than eating bacon, probably less so. Is it zero risk? No, nothing is. But does it pose dangers above the baseline that we are comfortable with in everyday life? No. Will further research find new potential pathways of effects? Maybe. But so will dedicated research into processed meats, pollutants in your home etc. The real question is what are the risks relative to the overall risks we are taking and it is significantly higher. If it is is we may want to encourage policy-makers to put it under special regulation (which includes mode of exposure amount etc). If it is not it may be worthwhile to discuss some emerging dangers by pollutant that we release into the environment in the tons which have known pathways of exposure and toxicity (including release of massive amounts of antibiotics, for example). Being unable to see that distinction significantly hinders meaningful discussion of these quite relevant issues.

The simple answer is "whatever fits". As you specified similar function (as opposed to simple steric inhibition), a simple way to imagine it is that in order for that to happen, the addition of the molecule in question should result in confirmational changes in the receptor. I.e. by binding to it, in whatever form or shape changes the thermodynamic stability of the receptor. What part of the molecule actually "fits" depends on the receptor and what properties it has to accept a molecule and typically involves a fair number of interactions at their respective surfaces (which can be ionic, hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic interactions etc). For certain ligand classes there are binding motifs identified in receptors (i.e. the amino acids involved in these interactions). As a rule, interactions of novel ligands is incredibly hard and the pharmacological industry would shell out a lot of money for quick and easy solutions. As it is, on the computational side there are ligand docking softwares that help in predicting potential interactions. But again it is not a trivial thing.

It should also be noted that some evidence require a certain level of knowledge to recognize it as such.

Aside form diet, I think that there are a few papers out there that highlight that sitting a lot contributes to the formation of that blubber.

The capacity of air to hold water is limited, regardless how long you pump steam in. Our lungs are more than able to deal with water saturated air. The bigger issue is the heat. Bugs would similarly not die at high humidity, but typically ways to kill them requires to use of very hot water (i.e. you would not use that in a steam bath or shower). You would need to saturate your airways and lungs significantly to initiate drowning.

And in the second case it is about fact-finding about a known condition, rather than trying to remote-diagnose and bouncing off random ideas. It already starts with a medical diagnosis and getting sources about what it entails is much more straightforward and helpful.

Well, the problem is that those that are clearly faulty tend to be caught during review. The issues are often quite minute. More common is that observations are overblown. What I can think of are some high-profile papers like Wolfe-Simon at al, 2011 in Science which claimed that a bacterium could use arsenic instead of phosphorous which has really weak evidence (and can and has been disproven via a simple experiment). Another one is from Gorbi et al in PNAS in which they claimed to found bacterial appendages with ohmic conductive behaviour. Not only does it not make any sense, but it seems rather obvious that they measured an artifact. Typically these things (well the arsenic one was rather obvious, but still) are not necessarily due to bias but often due to the inexperience of the authors in a particular field leading to misinterpretation. There may be still be a role in bias (i.e. they may have neglected negative results) but that is harder to trace without looking at all the data that was done in the lab. Alternatively look at retracted papers, often you will find serious flaws in methodologies there.

Still no biological topic in sight. Lounge maybe?

A more general question, what is the impact of this improvement, i.e. is it something that you would see to be immediately useful for something potentially novel or rather e.g. for improving some current measurements?

I would agree in general with that statement. The thing is that if enough time passes there is a chance that a new mechanism comes into existence that may allow new levels of complexity. Such as the development of an active cardiovascular system that overcomes the limit of diffusion and allows for larger, more complex body sizes and structures. But as we have established, there is not a single value or aspect that we could use to gauge overall complexity; after all all extant organisms, from bacteria to whales share the same historic time frame. Evolution is more about horizontal, rather than vertical hierarchy, so to speak.

That question is too general to provide specific answers. It depends on species, cell type and what receptors you are looking at. You will have to specifically look for lit of the system that you are interested in as there the type of receptors and their localization will vary tremendously. That being said, there is also the issue that especially with small cells, such as bacteria, localization experiments are quite tricky to perform accurately, so there is generally less or only specialized information available. With regards to interactions, most sense something on the external side and transduce the information to the inside (e.g. using second-messanger systems). But again, there is a lot of variation there.

The authors report to achieve a three-fold improvement over previous clocks. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150421/ncomms7896/full/ncomms7896.html