CharonY

Does farting create invisible unicorns on the far side of the moon?

And that is simply because you lack knowledge to understand the context and meaning of these words. That is a general language thing. If I say, I drive to work, you are likely to assume that I am on motorized vehicle and not a horse. This is due to the fact that motorized vehicles are more common, and you know that. But any advanced topic will have specific language use or jargon and one has to learn context in order to understand it. Go to any mechanical workshop and see what they shout at each other (unless you happen to be familiar with all the tools and terms). The former is referred to as allopatric speciation. However, I am not sure whether the latter as described. In either case a separation of a part of of the population would be necessary and I am not sure how you would envision that as a single sequence. At one point or another you will have two distinct subpopulations and it does not really matter whether one gets extinct or not. Only the reconstruction would be more difficult. In either case, if there is no geographic separation it is known as sympatric speciation.

It requires quite a stretch to build a parallel there.

It is, but I assume you are misinterpreting it. It does not mean a sudden jump. The nomenclature is (I think) derived from nodes in a tree where a split has happened. However, while it is a point in a diagram, the actual event takes place over a long time and is gradual (which is some trees is indicated by branch lengths, for example). So the speciation happens over the time of two branch openings, so to say.

With regards to Germany, it should be noted that it existed as a nation since 1871 (although a key point was the revolution in 1848) and had a long history of a sort of nation (though lacking a strong nationalistic cohesion). Among some scholars the patriotic movement was not terribly popular at that time, but over decades of essentially propaganda a new patriotism was created to unify Germany. It would have been interested to see what would have happened if someone went in before that and tried to unify the German states externally. Iraq was an independent kingdom only since 1932, but was occupied a while after and finally the monarchy was overthrown 1958. It, was a whole, much less stable and solidified as a country than Germany and US and allied invasion of Iraq was arguably not appreciating the complex political and ethnic issues within Iraq. Likewise, while the NSDAP was dismantled, old political powers, such as the SPD, but also the centrist- conservative wing revived. In parallel, a federalist system was set up and on the local level the allies relatively quickly allowed elections to take place. It certainly helped that also post-war the economic situation in the fifties flourished (known as the "Wirtschaftswunder"). In Iraq, however there are few parallels to be found except maybe that it was a single-party dictatorship (which again illustrates that simplistic assumptions will make lousy predictions). About the delusional part, the proponents of the war probably did not care much about facts, they just cherry picked info from dubious sources. Considering there was no hard intel, but still pushed a conflict that ultimately resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. Meanwhile inspector reports as well as the UN was ignored. So the delusion was manifold, first, ignoring evidence that contradict ones beliefs. Second, and here it can be argued whether it was delusional or just ignorant (I am not sure what is worse if you risk people's life) about the structure of Iraq and what the coalition forces could realistically accomplish. Technically, information was available but as it appears, largely ignored and in parts arguably favored the insurgence and likely assisted ISIS. Yes it is delusional if people tell you not do something because of horrible consequences and your reply is naaah, it will work out great! I suspect this is because politicians are protected from the consequences of their actions. In other occupations if you, despite all warnings, cause the death of people (much less thousands of them) you can't just talk you way out of it. At worst they lose a re-election.

Wait, what if she looks gorgeous?

Education is part of the puzzle. But first one would need political stability. If people live under conditions where wars or civil wars are likely, it is almost obvious why the perspective of human lives will be skewed. A second aspect is economic stability and having access to it. Education becomes important if you expect citizens to participate in a democratic process. Otherwise a small elite will remain the ruling power.

Could you elaborate on that? I am not sure what you mean. Unfortunately, no. It was a while back and it also followed a convoluted, strongly extrapolated reasoning that had little connection to actual data. I do not think the poster is around anymore. I do not know who Klyce actually is, but it seems like drivel to me. It is grossly overstating what the study found. Essentially they indicate that TEs may play a bigger role than currently known in creating new regulatory networks. Also he states "simultaneously" whereas the study obviously can only compare extant organisms. In fact, it shows that mammalian pregnancy required the gradual change (loss as well as well as gains) by comparing it to frogs, chicken, lizard and marsupial. Also why would he classify transposable elements as invasive? At various points they are quite endogeneous the the respective species and there is little doubt that they were heavily involved in shaping them. Using this as basis and then making extrapolations. Seems like awfully bad science reporting (again).

Also note that not all imaging techniques require fixation and in some cases it can be detrimental. Though stains tend to be invasive enough that it does not matter much.

I think it is naive to try to reduce numerous issues into a single element, even something as powerful as religion. Likewise, it is somewhat simplistic to believe that all the existing issues would suddenly vanish with religion. Truth is that religion still has different effects on society throughout Western democracies with the French stance being the strongest in terms of separation of church and state. Now, the real question is why despite all that even religion-inspired laws (including anti-homosexuality policies) are as a whole much less intrusive. I would say that this requires a more thorough study of European history. It would take much more work to even attempt and answer OP is asking, but just look at German history. In 1620 Prussia criminalizes sodomy and has the death sentence on it. 1794 this was abolished. But at the formation of the German Reich in 1871 it became a crime again (the famous paragraph 175). Now here is the interesting thing. In 1871 punishment was imprisonment and the potential loss of civil rights. In the fledgling democratic Weimar Republic there was a movement to abolish that law unsuccessfully and in 1935 the Nazis expanded the scope and punishment of this law. Of course, many think that after WWII Europe became a democratic paradise of individual freedom and whatnot, but that was not the case. Tens of thousand men were indicted and served prison sentences (not to mention other forms of discrimination) post-war as the paragraph remained in place in the BRD. Note that the law was also aimed against male homosexuality. So when was paragraph 175 finally removed? 1994. As you can see, it took an enormous amount of time to remove a discriminatory law and even then, homosexuals still do not have the same rights in Germany. Despite similar religious backgrounds, other European countries had different developments in this regard, but the notion of same rights for everyone regardless of sexual orientation, gender or race is really a modern development. While people are still religious (as polls indicate) and still have influence on legislature, it has become more about maintaining discriminatory elements from the past, rather than setting up new ones (which makes things even more hopeful for future generations). Now the question is then, what, in recent times has triggered these changes and can those be enacted in other countries. The lack of religiosity is, IMO more a symptom rather than the cause as those countries who enforce secularism (at least in public places) did not perform significantly better than their peers.

I would think factors such as economic stability will have a larger influence on long-term success.

I second the notion that one should not try these things out in a living area. It is not easy to work sterile in a lab environment and it is almost impossible at home. It is therefore likely that you will get your media contaminated at one point or another and they may include pathogenic bacteria. They are part of your normal flora, but on media they may propagate to harmful amounts. With regards to mutagenesis, be aware that anything that induces mutation can also do it in you, which poses a cancer risk. Before doing any work at all, I would advise you to read up on safety procedures and potential risk of chemicals and organisms you intend to use. But I would much prefer that you would look at local universities or other schools to get some lab experience first.

One has to be careful, though. Some people in the scientific community actually dislike "prettyfied" posters (typically the same that look down on people wearing suits). It is a bit silly, but sometimes a bit of complexity can be beneficial. Although I typically do not recommend to try it, as it is a very narrow balance to maintain.

Horizontal gene transfer is independent of reproduction. Also it is maintained by specific uptake and recombination mechanisms (i.e. in the context of mobile genetic elements). It does have little to do with the question in OP. The evolution and maintenance of sexual reproduction, however, is a an intriguing subject as it has to offset the two-fold cost of sexual reproduction. There are a few mechanism-oriented hypotheses that I find interesting, though I am not sure whether a consensus has been established yet.

It does not make a lot of sense to me. Typically libido refers to the desire for sexual activity. In asexual reproduction you have, by definition, no sexual act. So how can there be any interpretation of sexual drive in this context? You would have to define cellular division as an sexual act then, which makes no sense on many layers (e.g.absence of sexual recombination). So no, it certainly follows a weird train of thought that are not in line with the usual definitions. Also it weirdly reminds of some weird posts that were around here a while ago...

Nah, these tend to be specialized journals, meaning that it is more common to specifically search for topics/keywords/authors. Also, the are rarely of a quality that they add anything meaningful for the abstract. IMO it is a pure marketing stunt on the expense of the authors. As a side note, ACS and Elsevier, both publishers that kind of push these graphical abstracts, are also among the worst in terms of author's rights, including self-archiving.

Jobs that require some level of degree specify what it is. No one really cares if yo call yourself a physicist or not, nor would they put it in job description (unless they do not know what they want, which is a bit of a warning sign). So you would typically read something like: "requires a BSc/MSc/PhD in XXX or related field".

I would actually recommend having business cards handy. I guess students may be fine with QR codes, but many probably would not do that as, paradoxically maybe, it has getting harder to keep track of online info. A business card on the other hand can be put into the bag with all the other conference swag and you are more likely to remember or contact someone if you see the card at some point. But again, if your target is the younger crowd it may be quite worthwhile. Also, it may be worthwhile to leave a stack of cards at the poster, if you plan to walk around. Every now and then someone may want to contact you, but you are elsewhere stealing coffee. It does not happen often, but at least once I got a worthwhile collaboration out of it.

You misunderstand the format of these sessions. Typically there are boards provided where you are supposed to hang your posters, you do not create your own board formats. That would be quite a nightmare if you imagine a few hundred people (in some conferences) trying to set up their random-sized stuff.

What ajb is referring to are poster presentation session within conferences. They are not intended to be part of a talk, but rather a meet a greet with researchers highlighting ongoing work between the talks.

Yeah, but honestly I cannot be bothered by it. I often just take a figure and add e.g. the component/organism/whatver stuff I have around to it and call it a day. Or, in one case, I completely forgot and they made one for me (based on a supplementary figure). In some cases I know that the PI is annoyed by that crap and deliberately make something awful. But from a PI point of view it is annoying that we pay quite a lot to publish something, have to deal with crappy editing of some journals (ACS is quite uneven in that regard) and then on top get that annoying thing to deal with.

Well, I think H-I manage to find some of the more artsy examples. Typical images are e.g. a relevant plot, or the image of the device in action or microscopic images or sometimes a cartoon illustrating the issue (e.g. a cell surrounded by toxins that have been investigated in the paper). As far as I can see they rarely serve informative purposes. I do not even know when they started doing it. At some point the editors started sending out requests for them. If I think about it, it seems to be more a publishers thing rather than a discipline thing per se. E.g. ACS requires it now (which is mostly chemistry, obviously) but other publisher also start requesting those. I guess it is becoming a general trend now. To quote something from Elsevier: But quite frankly, most pepole would be concerened about getting the article published and once they get that, they are going to be less interested in creating an attractive figure for the abstract. It is just not worth the time, especially if you do not have a graphical illustrator handy. It seems to me that this a way for the publishers to save money and still make their articles more colorful. Outsourcing more work to the authors (and the quality of editing seemed to have dropped to in some journals). Some journals such as Nature and Science actually have illustrators that create images based on featured articles.

Actually, scientists are really bad at answers. Questions are more our thing. If there are answers they tend to be in the trivial areas. The existence of evolution is a rather trivial thing to see (the opposite would be extraordinary, based on what we know about genetics).

I think timo's comment is right on the mark. The poster is there to attract people and to use it as basis to discuss your work. That being said, in other disciplines it is often easier as you can either put in easily recognizable types of graphs or images from which already get an idea from far away what it is about. Some (mostly younger) researchers are a bit hesitant to step up on things that they may not understand. Some general aspects that tend to be well received are a succinct formulation (or even graphical display) of the question or the relevance of the work, the most significant findings and potentially an impact part, if applicable. A simple test is make a design of the poster, wait a day or so, look at it from the distance for a few seconds, then decide whether it seems interesting enough to ask more about it.

Silver staining is not size limited (though AA composition has an influence) but overall is a tad more sensitive (compared to colloidal coomassie that is, it is way more sensitive than standard). If you see it on coomassie you will also see it in silver, most likely better. Forgot to add, I heard that some silver stain protocols do not work with tricine gels specifically. However, I run one of the mass spectrometry compatible protocols and have not seen any issues yet.