CharonY

Actually that is not true. For starters, .many journals have images from scientist on the title page (a couple of mine or from my group have been featured). In addition, there is a recent trend in a number of journals for authors to submit a summary image for the paper abstract (which is what H-I is referring to). ACS journals have been pushing it hard (used to be voluntarily but now it is mandatory). IIRC Nature and Science did not request one, but actually created one for approval in the report section. In biological journal it is rare, I believe. From that it may be true that chemical journals tend to favor it (would not be surprised if some of the leading journals tried it and everyone copied them). Obviously, not everyone invest a lot of time into those. Personally, I do not care much for them and invest little time in creating them (though every now and then you could cram in a collage of pics that did make it into the main paper). But again, obviously the artistic quality of the individuals will range quite a bit. And has been pointed out, typically there is no formal training and it will dependent on individual abilities and interests (though those in areas which require either excellent data representation or visual abilities may have an edge).

To be fair, though the thought in the title (i.e. "I have no fucking clue what I am doing") occurs to me quite often. Punctuated by:"oh, why did that work. Can it do it again?"

That is the issue if you discuss idealized positions (e.g. enlightened West and medieval East). Once you take an even slightly closer look the generalizations do not hold water well. Modernization of countries does not follow civ games logic, democracies form and break up and re-form. Laws are influenced by whomever hold power and current beliefs. Germany was a democracy for a time, before it re-instated an authoritarian regime. Obviously external and internal forces allowed that (such as aftermath of WWI, rise of communism, economic issues etc.). The issues with modernization in the middle East are manifold but vary from region to region. Just putting one convenient label on everything is about simply not useful. The various countries in that region (which did not exist as independent countries for that long, in most cases) have achieved various degrees of democratization, humam rights achievements, modernization etc. But not all developments go hand in hand. Israel certainly has a functioning democracy, but still has religious law (including Sharia) in place. On the other hand, a number of Arab nations are super-modern, but wealth is concentrated in a small, autocratic elite. Both approaches to religion are different. When it comes down to it, we are still apes sitting on a rock and throwing rock at things we do not like. Sure, some may have prettier rocks or more elaborate reasons why they throw the rocks, but in the end if we feel afraid or go hungry we still grab the next rock we can find. Only when we are sated and safe do we seem to find the power of restraint and vaguely wonder why others lack the same.

Well, in the EU about 50% state that they believe in god and a further 2xish% in some supernatural powers.Atheists are at around 20%. I would not state that to be barely. Also religion does have influence, ranging from parties that cater to certain confessions to certain limitations of freedom such as same-sex marriage in certain countries. There is the issue with Church taxes in Germany for example. Also the role of church in ethical issues including abortions. Claiming that Europe is not religious n any way is simply not true. Also note that the lack of religion in some Eastern countries was not the result of Western enlightenment, but the influence of Soviets. Even so traditionally very religious countries such as Poland believe from 80-95% in a god. While the influence in religion is waning on average it is still going strong in many countries (and has made a comeback in some cases). It is also used in popular politics quite a bit while referring to European vague Judeo-Christian values. So yeah, you are off the mark a bit again.

You are aware that this isn't true for Western countries?

Either he is a creationist or willfully uneducated and proud of it (or both). While I do not disagree with your notion, it gets old fairly quick. If classes were derailed by debunking this nonsense, little information would actually be transmitted.

Well, I found that botanist and zoologist often have an incredible eye for detail and often are very good drawers. Especially the old school folks prefer drawings over e.g. photos as they claim that they can highlight specifics better. And also evaluate whether the drawer actually identified the species correctly. Maybe it is the fresh air that helps. A similar thing could be said for certain subsets of histology and microscopy people. However they are somewhat split. About half are incredible in remembering and visualizing and often drawing histological details (and may arguably be the better biologists because of that), the other half are more technically inclined and good at getting high resolution images but may be less capable in interpreting the relevance of the data.

The forum is full of this the same kind of drivel. I would have thought that over the years they would come up with at least one single original thought. But then it may actually require to read up on the topic rather than rehashing silly assumptions over and over. A quick search should show plenty of debunking. But honestly, you may do better by looking at talkorigins. Every single argument has been refuted at least once. The fact that they did not need to update their website to continue to refute these arguments pretty much shows in what horrible state the deniers are.

What do you need the DNA for? There are a large number of protocols dealing with fixed tissue. Even with tricky specimen (older, fixed tissue slices) DNA of decent quality (especially if used for simple things like PCR) can be obtained. That being said, penetration rate depends largely on the fixation technique and the size (volume) of the specimen. If a small fish is submerged fully, it will take a few days for it to penetrate all organs. Often, formalin is directly injected into the gut, to prevent rotting in the time frame. So if the sample is fresh, digging into deep tissues could give relatively clean samples. The type of tissue has little effect on the penetration rate.

Yeah, the last one is definitely not bad. If they added hellfire missiles it would have been genius. The tongue one is probably acid induced (neither Bronsted, Arrhenius nor Lewis).. Actually in bio I found that people either use microscopic images (cheap way out) or drawings from 5 year olds. The exception tend to be the outdoor biologist who apparently took freaking arts classes between their bloody hikes.

Key elements are regulation and signal cascades. The various cell types have huge amount of proteins that sense and produce signals of various sort, integrate that information and regulate gene expression to ensure function.

I am not sure what you mean, Lebanon has religious (including but not exclusive influence in its politics, though to lesser degree than other countries in the middle east but to higher degree than Turkey. And again, Syria is a secular state, so should other countries in that region aspire to that? But if we expand on the religious elements: According to a Pew poll In the US, asking people whether the bible or will of people should take precedent in laws, 63% responded with the people's will. This is quite a bit off from 95%. Also, 32% responded that the bible should take precedence. Yet there is obviously no denying that the US is a free, democratic state. Also, as has been mentioned a few times in various posts here, a large majority of Muslims responded that religious freedom is a good thing, though the values vary significantly between countries. My point is there is not a singular thing like political Islam. In different countries the influence of Islam on politics, law and society is very different, and if we conflate everything into a simple term all we are discussing is a caricature of the real thing. For example, Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim, is a secular state and as such has severe restrictions on religious freedom (GRI 6.4, the higher the more restrictive). On the overall democracy index it is somewhere in the middle worldwide (rank 88 2012, between Sri Lanka and Ecuador; as reference,Norway is 1, France 28, Russia is 122, Singapore 81, Serbia 66). Turkey also has abolished Islamic law courts. Lebanon has more religious freedom than Turkey, is less secular and score worse on the democracy index (99, between Bosnia and Cambodia). Its legal system is based on Civil, Sharia and Ottoman laws. Similar to Lebanon the secularity of Israel is ambiguous, at best. There are laws drawn from orthodox Judaism and Sharia Laws that are applied to Muslim citizen. Again, undoubtedly due to the unique elements of this country. Freedom of religion is low (6.5), but democracy is relatively high (rank 37, between Chile and India). Syria is secular, but again went a different route than Turkey. It combined secularism with a strongly authoritarian system and as consequence has some of the least religious freedom and democracy in the world. Although it should be stated that current affairs are skewing the results a fair bit. Obviously we also have secular states with low degrees for religious freedom and democracy such as China (GRI 8.6, democracy rank 142 and Russia (GRI: 7.7, 122) to add another issue on top. Or we can move out of the Middle East and add Indonesia, another predominantly Islamic state with low religious freedom, but somewhat decent democracy (between Argentina and Bulgaria). So just using a few (two, actually) values we see a bit of a spread in countries in the Middle East and it is only getting more complicated once we delve into politics and laws. Elements such as freedom of religion, human rights and democracy are realized in different patterns based on historic, societal and socioeconomic challenges and realities. Even if we look at a single aspect such as gender equality, things are complicated. The voting right for women was in some middle eastern countries established pretty fast, especially compared to many European countries (if accounting when voting was established, even for men). And looking at Pew polls the majority of asked Muslims (polled countries Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan) state that women should have the same rights as men. Highest number Lebanon and Turkey (93/84%) Lowest Egypt (58%). When asked whether men are better political leaders 32%! in Lebanon Agreed, 42% in Egypt, with the highest numbers in Pakistan and Tunisia (75%/62%). There are also hugely mixed attitudes in the decision of who should choose the husband, family, women or both, ranging from 11% -85% women, 5-59% family and 9-49% both. So the spread on even a single issue is huge, how can we assume the same situation in every region and, even worse, propose the same solution? Sure there are certain things that will always work. Better access to education, improvement of socioeconomic situation, improve urbanization and overall standard of living. Promote regional and political stability. The whole works, really.

Overall concentration does not vary much as release of albumin regulates the osmotic content in blood. However the content changes on a continuous basis. It is wrong to imagine the organism or blood in a static homeostatic situation, some parameters are kept somewhat in an equilbrium but specifics (such as protein expression and secretion) changes constantly depending on many internal and external factors.

Neanderthals and modern humans (and Denisovans) are considered their descendants. But obviously the transition would be gradual with some gene flow in the early stages of separation. To put into perspective, common ancestor of humans, gorillas and chimpanzees are estimated to be around 6-8 million years ago. So unless there are some things that I am unaware of (which is quite possible as this is not my specialty), the initial estimate seems a bit like a random guess.

Yes, though to some extent various other species will also have more or less selective pressure in any given condition, although I agree that for the most part they will not be as versatile. However, there are very resilient species out there that would shrug off conditions for which humans would need quite a bit of technology just to survive. And obviously all bets are off once we get down to bacteria.

I would be careful with that statement. Selection would favor traits that that would be able to survive in low-light, but it does not necessarily mean that any species would would suddenly obtain low light vision. Using human eyes as an example it is possible that over generations we would lose cones in favor of the more sensitive cones, at least in some groups. Other organisms may respond similarly. Or reduce reliance on vision completely. Traits arise mostly randomly and are then selected for, they do not rise in response (which may not what you imply but could be interpreted as such).

Why would you think that the timeline is in the millions of years? Split between H. heidelbergensis and H. sapiens was about 130k years ago. H. heidelbergensis was around for sure for about 600k years up to 1.3 mio years.

So from a governmental viewpoint Syria would be a model for that region? How about Lebanon, which is more democratic but has a (disputed) confessional system?

Is this something specific to Islam, or rather a trait of authoritarian Governments? I.e. would a secular authoritarian dictatorship preferable? If so, for whom?

This is a very European perspective. In Europe, nationality is deeply tied with ethnicity (which, incidentally, makes it for immigrants much harder to integrate into society). However, in other areas, including Americas and the Middle East it is not the case. In the Americas because the nations there are formed by immigrants, in the Middle East because the area has a range of native ethnic groups. Empires and later on countries were not formed among ethnic lines and legitimization was often be drawn from religion or certain alliances (the latter being also the case in European monarchies). Incidentally, the failure to understand societal and historic differences by colonial powers have led to or exacerbated conflicts in a number of areas. Swansont point still stands, there are similarities with both groups being ideology driven (religious vs racial purity, for example).

The amounts are not precisely massive relative to other proteins in blood. About 60-80% at any given point is albumin, for example. There is also a relatively high turnover rate of proteins in blood, featuring protein digestion and degradation. Also the lifetime of most B-cells is in the order of a few weeks (and in some cases, days).

Well, for starters a true necromancer is 5 caster lvls behind the rest, has the the disadvantages of wizards as well as clerics, also they have to take death domain as cleric. As such you may just be cleric to begin with.

That statement is not quite correct, in that form. At least according to the Pew study on Religion and Public life (2012 data), the governmental restrictions on religion. Most countries in the middle eastern region scored high (score 4.5-6.5) to very high (6.6 and higher) on the restrictions, i.e. indicating less religious freedom. This includes Israel, which, from what I understand, does not appear to allow interfaith marriages within the country, for example. Although it has to be added that some restrictions are placed against non-Muslims, whereas others are directed against non-Jews (after a quick perusal I did not find anything related to Christians, but there may be something there, too). This is, without doubt due to the unique history of that area. However there are also some European countries on the high bracket including Greece, Belgium and Moldova (Russia scores very high). Lebanon has, maybe surprisingly, a better score (close to Iceland and Denmark). So one would have to state that most (or overwhelming majority, if you prefer) of the Middle East has less religious freedom than most of Europe. It is also important to note that despite the democratic nature of Israel, which makes it seem like many other Westernized countries, religion has a weird influence on society. This includes the presence of religious courts (Jewish as well as non-Jewish), for example. And according to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor the government implements some policies based on Orthodox Jewish interpretations of religious law. This, again is an example that one cannot discuss in any meaningful way politics in that region using one simplified image of the Middle East. It is clear that religion is an important aspect, but how it manifest itself is vastly different from country to country and, in several of them, has seen significant changes in the recent modern history.

It should be noted that the cost does not only cover tuition itself, but also provides a lot of things that are generally absent in German, and some other countries in the Euro-zone (I do not know all of them, though). This includes e.g. basic health services, numerous counseling and guidance as well as many more non-faculty teachers (i.e. instructors, TA). In Germany there are barely office hours, for example. This all comes with an added administrative overhead cost. That being said, most faculty I know would prefer to have the cost come down and be available to everyone independent on income (but then maybe with added selection). To this end one would need more funding via taxes and cut down on fluff (and emphasize self-study instead...). I would be interested on details on the actual cost of that, but most budgets that I happened to come across are not itemized enough for that.

You have qualified the statement with "a lot", however I would still be careful about this generalization. Religion in governance is an issue, but there are certain aspects that make it at the same time worse as well as potentially better than the Christian system (whose influence extended beyond the middle ages). The fact that Islam has no real centralized point authority means that many can usurp its powers, which in case of ISIS is a huge issue, but if headed and maintained by moderates can create counter-movements. Also the various middle Eastern countries had, in their relatively short history as modern nations experienced quite a wide range of secularism, democratization. It is not that the areas are completely lawless, although many religious justifications are obviously nonsense. As such the term Middle-East as a general description (which I also used) is actually quite problematic. Take Lebanon, for instance, its foundation is a multi-confessional state in which certain state appointments are based on religion (e.g. President is always a Maronite Catholic, Prime Minister Sunni Muslim, Speaker and Deputy speaker Shi'a Muslim and orthodox Christian, respectively). Despite the weird influence of religion, it is, for the most part a democratic system. Yet there are other issues that threaten stability. Likewise, Syria is secular (though current situation is uncertain at best), but lacks democracy. That is, each area has quite a different relationship to religion, secularism, democracy and human rights, and made various amount of progress and setbacks. If one advocates modernization in that region, one would have to take the unique aspects into consideration.