CharonY

Your extraction protocol does have a cleanup step (typically precipitation with washing of the pellet or affinity based immobilization followed by washing). There is no optimal protocol for every sample, usually a lab adapts one or a few standardized protocols as the basis and make adjustments as necessary.

It depends on what you extracted and how. If you used Trizol, or are doing phenol extraction there is a good chance that that is the absorbing substance. Other typical things include humic acids (soil and sediment), peptides, a number of aromats and urea on top off my head. For clean up I would existing lab protocols based on you extraction method. That makes it easier to compare issues within your lab for your particular type of samples.

What curves the systems gives you is dependent on the system. Typically it is a simple fluorescence (usually normalized) over temp plot with a curve per sample. However, I wonder, if you are supposed to do this experiments is the lab/course not explaining you how the systems work?

Actually one of the few examples where a dictatorship is faster is in military actions. But beyond that there are a lot of constraints which would limit the efficiency. The example with Germany is telling, the two financial crises (inflation, then deflation) was dealt with efficiently by having the right person for the job. In this case the same person, appointed by a parliamentary, and then an autocratic regime. Things like economics take quite a bit of an infrastructure and knowledge to implement, so even a dictator would have to have a support bureaucracy to actually translate edicts into actions. So in that case I would say that in isolation it does not necessarily matter that much who is on top, but how they actually try get things done and whether they put the right people to the task. For these purposes dictatorships are not inherently more efficient.

Sorry, I think I need a translation for this.

I think your assessment makes a lot of sense. Also China has an interest of keeping people out of internal affairs which implies that they will not overtly barge into other nations. But expanding influence economically is a strategy that they have been pursuing for quite a while now.

Well, the first thing you should do is figuring out how much RNA you actually have post-digest. Anything else would be guessing.

50 ul x 19 ng/ul = 950 ng. I mean that after DNAse treatment you make a RNA concentration assay (it seems that you did before), Spectroscopic (i.e. UV) is fine if your sample is clean but requires a bit of volume to be accurate. Better assays (in most hands) are fluorescence based, including e.g. Qubit or Bioanalyzer systems.

Can you give an example of your premise?

I am not sure where you got, this is a concentration not a volume. According to your values you have maximum 50x19=950 ng total RNA. Unless you mean that you added 5ul reaction buffer for the DNAse treatment, which leaves you with the same amount of RNA but now it is in 55 ul. In either case, your total will still be 0.95 ug (unless I misunderstood something), i.e. lower than you calculate with. So something is off. In either case, for critical applications I recommend an accurate determination (i.e. no nanodrop) after DNAse treatment as this is going to be your final yield and it can be substantially different, if the prep was not optimal.

I think it would be also dependent on the devices whether there is a significant boost. I recall that some of the newer generation mice had a cut-off of about 0.6-0.8 V for example. I just need a chart to see how much a battery would be discharged at that point.

I see what you mean. I am not sure about the comparison with the Balkans. It seems that China has a rather long history in trying (mostly unsuccessful) to diminish US influence near its waters (and raise its own influence). Neither has much to gain from an open conflict so in that case presenting a fait accompli could actually work in China's favour.

Assuming it is the same compound it would be, well, the same.

I'll try to clear that up. But first, it must be made clear that the effect described in OP may not be related to pectin at all. But the way it works is that bacteria (and fungi) secrete pectinases in order to cleave pectin into smaller, utilizable parts (oligosaccharides). This happens in the gut. Of course, plants may degrade their own cell walls during regular cell turnover which allows pectin to arrive at the gut already less intact. Heating could have a similar effect, though I am not sure how long and at which temp it would need to be to initiate hydrolysis.

Yes, that was my point, we are not able to utilize them, but bacteria are. I.e. they break down pectin (and other polymers) extracellularly and then process them further. We, also do something similarly for certain sugars (such as starch) but are e.g. not able to use pectin.

Not to a large extent, really. There are a range of pectins, but typical units include galacturonic acid and rhamnose. Both of which are not efficiently metabolized by humans (rhamnose seems to be metabolized to rhamnitol, but to me it is not clear whether it is directly or by means of bacteria. There are also pectins that have substitutions such as glucose that could be metabolized. However, pectinase activity still leaves you with oligosaccharides that are not really usable to humans. My guess is if it is already partially broken down, the gut biota can more easily access it.

Pretty much. Long chain polymers are basically not usable. At most they can transport oligomers and then further process them inside the cell. I.e. typically they break down polymers extracellularly.

Well, bacteria also need to use pectinases to utilize pectin.

For most applications in this area you need a good control of pH, i.e. a higher accuracy probe. As Sensei mentioned, check the manuals of your system, and you can also measure repeatedly the pH of reference solutions to see which is more off.

These things are hard to figure out even under controlled conditions. It could be a prebiotic effect, it could be something else and it is almost impossible to be sure what compound, if any had any relation to it. Or it could be that it breaks down things that are not beneficial to your gut whilst providing benefit of fibres/other heat resistant compounds, and so on. As it is, it will be an empirical search for you what works and what does not. Especially if the diagnosis has indeterminate in it, the symptoms do not distinguish clearly between UC and Crohn's. And even if they did, the knowledge on these conditions is somewhat piecemeal and there is not clear optimal treatment. In the end, if you feel better it is great and there is certainly no downside of eating cooked apples.

It will depend on your application, but e.g. for molecular biological work an accuracy of ± 0.2 would be rather unusable. But assuming they are out of spec, you should check the quality of the probes (have they dried out, do they need cleaning, have they been stored properly etc.) and also check whether the temperature sensor (if present) is working properly.

Actually I think (and I may be wrong as I have not read much on it) that the international agreement argument is a tad iffy. While there were a few agreement that I could find via a quick google search, it seems not to be clear that in any case clear borders have been proposed. Rather there is a kind of gentleman agreement in place (if anything at all). In fact, the disputed area, including the Paracel and Spratly Islands are precisely that: contested. It is a long standing dispute. And one of the issues is of course that while the US has interests there, it is not an actually ASEAN member. Thus, direct interference could go down rather badly, considering the history of Western interference in Asian countries. It is also quite possible that this is a signal from China to the US to either step up (which can lead to ambiguous results even among the other ASEAN nations) or to limit their support, because they do not want to get dragged in. However, the US has renewed negotiations with Vietnam, which indicates some level of support (though the question is then how China is going to react to that). And not all disputing countries may be happy with a stronger US involvement, either. It is easy to say that this has to be stopped, but based on what legal precedence except that one does not want Chinese dominance there? It should also be noted that except Brunei, all claimants have some soft of military installations on the Spratly Islands, for example. So it is not that there was a clear treaty and China is rolling all over them. Rather, it has made the boldest move from all claimants yet (or the most recent which, due to our short memories will always remain the boldest and most urgent one). The one legal part that I could find discusses the fact that artificial islands are not considered to be islands and thus the extension of territory is considered illegal. But I would really need a detailed map and a lot of lines to figure out where the claims start and end, respectively.

Dominance is a concept that is basically a value judgement and has nothing to do with evolution. If you think in terms of success I think bacteria are pretty much on top. If all organisms die out, there will still be a viable ecosystem for bacteria (after all, they came before any other species). As Stringjunky already mentioned, we are actually walking ecosystems for a host of bacteria. Yet we have not the inkling of a clue how to maintain a livable, sustainable environment without the presence of other organisms. Of course, if you propose that some day there will be magic technology to enable us to do so, maybe. But this is still far in the realm of science fiction.

Well, the area has always been contested by the neighboring nations. Now for some wild speculations a) China wants to show off supremacy in this region before others can; b) it is a power grab of the Chinese Navy as form of internal power struggle c) it is part of larger scale politicking with the intention to use that area as a bargaining chip, d) someone had too much red bull and vodka.

To be fair, all speculations outside of publications are generally considered to be "idle" speculations. And I am not sure that many come up with them to specifically pander to the public.It is just that some sell better to media and the public than others and hence, become more prominent. There are many more pet theories that are not likely to emerge from drawers or from conversations without a significant amount of alcohol. In some cases these ideas may inspire someone to follow up with something serious, resulting in a publication and moving it to the realm of discovery, though.