CharonY

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.

In addition to what StringJunky said, evolution has no end product per se. If it ends it just means that we essentially have a static gene pool. Indeed, it is hypocritical to criticize others that try to obtain the same standard of living that one already enjoys. It is easy to see to state that "oh, we have seen the error of our ways and enjoy the cool breeze of an AC (the USA and Canada produce about 8-9x the amount of CO2 per capita as Brazillians, South Korea and most European countries ~ 5x, using 2010 values). Of course growth is not the only issue, but also use and infrastructure. One issue is that few see ecological issues as a global problem that has to be solved on a global level. Biodiversity, functioning ecosystems and associated fluxes affect us globally. If we seriously wanted to preserve them, wealthy nations should invest more heavily into raising the standard of living of other countries using sustainable means. While there are projects in place, they seem to be incredibly small compared to the challenges.

Sounds interesting. Do you have data on estimates, or lacking that some secondary sources? I have trouble finding data that is looking at productivity of white-collar jobs, though I am pretty sure they must be something around somewhere.

I actually wanted to say that most people are not Eric Idle, including Tom Baker. But yeah, timing and such.

I have Avast one computer and while browsing the forums, seemingly at random points I get an infection blocked message. E.g. while clicking on this the biochem link I get: link: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/14-biochemistry-and-molecular-biology/|{gzip} Infection: HTML:Script-inf Anyone else having these issues?

This does affect potential dimorphisms in language use, yet does not explain the development of language as a consequence of sexual selection. The similarities in development (again, outside of selection) between human and birds is well noted, but also exaggerated as birds traditionally have been used as models for human speech development (as you should not dissect infants). Again, one thing is mechanism, and a second is the historic (i.e. evolutionary) development. My guess is (almost as always) that due to the flexibility of the tool it touches on many selective forces, which may include sexual selection. To ascertain that there is one main path is, in absence of experimental evidence, very speculative at best.

There is no fixed definition of gene regulatory networks, but is most commonly referred to interactions based on genes, i.e. using regulatory RNA and/or proteins. Theoretically, epigenetic regulation falls under the same auspice as they, too modify gene expression by interaction with DNA. The main difference is that these changes can be inherited. Thus whether they are used side-by-side or if you use gene regulation as the more global term depends solely on context. All of these elements work together resulting in distinct gene/protein expression patterns.

As swansont said these rules are set by homeowner's associations, so they are not law. These associations typically want to preserve a certain look of a given neighbourhood, and often require certain optical arrangements of your home. This may include certain colour of your house, a certain look of your frontyard etc. Some apparently also think that clotheslines may look ugly and diminish the value of their area. But sometimes theses people are also just idiots on a powertrip. edit: Cross-posted

If only taking what is described in OP the evidence seems to be rather weak to me. From the limited information it seems that the only argument is that for some reasons bird song is supposedly more similar to speech than other forms of vocal communication, which does not seem to be very conclusive (e.g. how are they more similar). This all does not even address the point of what other potential factors are related to speech evolution. It does not need to be one or the other, it could have been a multi-purpose tool from the get-go. Even birds have non-mating related calls and in a number of mammalian species vocalization is used as a warning signal (again, mating unrelated). In other apes vocalization serves quite a number of purposes, including emotional expression that are not all related to mating. It is not implausible that it is one piece of the puzzle, but how large this piece is and how it relates to other elements would require much more work and I imagine it would be very tricky to get that data (as we are limited in what we could do experiment-wise). That being said, the idea is not new, Darwin already proposed that things like culture and potentially language arose from sexual selection. From the area of linguistics there are actually arguments against this as there it is typically assumed that flexibility and information transfer (a whole subset of this branch deals with so-called "honest" communication) is one of the inherent elements of human language. However, under sexual selection, exaggerated displays of particular traits are selected for (including for instance loudness and/or specific elements or complexity of mating calls that apparently can be used by the female to gauge suitability of her partner). This would be a counter-mechanism to flexible communication that conveys a plethora of information. Also, under these conditions, males would be the main communicators.

Do you have data somewhere? Also, is there a reason why you limit it to white collar only? If productivity is an indicator of living standards, why would it only apply to a specific category (or conversely, why would white collar productivity be an indicator for the whole population?). Moreso, isn't it actually tricky to measure and as such not really that beneficial as a criterion? On a general note: The values I found were PPP so they are adjusted to some extent. But even by hour the USA is still typically comfortably close to other Western nations (though dropped a few places a while ago). http://www.bls.gov/ilc/intl_gdp_capita_gdp_hour.htm#table03 There was also OECD chart showing that, but I would need to dig it out. Among the G7 US is leading, though the other countries are catching up (or are too close to call). What you may be confusing it is that the growth rate has massively diminished in recent times, though it is true for most developed nations (which kind of makes sense). Although it appears to be quite large in the US even in comparison (although Norway actually has a reduction).

A few quick comments on the paper: The major strength and also limitation is that they tested one specific hypothesis: whether sexual selection can alleviate fitness constraints by selection of males. Thus the study is specifically geared to show this effect experimentally but thereby obviously only addresses only one part of the puzzle. The result is that empirically it can. Though it is not clear how that relates to species where sexual selection is not known to be a major factor. Or maybe there is more sexual selection going on than acknowledged universally as some of the competition may happen on the molecular side (but that is material for further study). The study design itself is alright, strength being that they let it run for 6 years (long-term experiments are just so rare, as most are capped to the time limit when you shove the grad student or postdoc out). They did two lines, the first with 90 F to 10 M or 10 F and 90 M with only three replicates each (still must have been a logistic nightmare to maintain). Then they did a divergent line with competition of five males to one female (12 replicates) or monogamy (20 replicates). From these again 3 lines each were maintained.

In some ways I found the history surrounding the Mongol empire even more fascinating than that of the Romans. The latter had the most sophisticated military (for about a millennium) and much of it was down to superior organization and tactics. All backed by a strong economy. The mongols on the other hand started off as nomads (though well-versed in warfare) who initially were illiterate (until Temujin) and picked up everything required to build an empire and things like siege warfare in one go. Finally resulting in an empire that shaped European as well as Asian history on a massive scale.

A few things have to be kept in mind in that context. The first is that the nuclear weapons did not represent the highest amount of civilian casualties in the conflict. At the same time it is not quite clear whether the bombs were the main factor of surrender, or whether e.g. the attack of the Soviets was the element that resulted in that decision. In either case it would be speculation, but as it stands one cannot state with certainty that the bomb ended the conflict (for the same reason that one cannot state that the Soviets did). Finally, during that time all parties at least willingly accepted civilian casualties if not actively promoted it. It is a dangerous thing (and a bit of a folly) to try to assign modern values to historic events. It is close enough to make you think that at that time we shared the same values, but in truth public perception change radically within one or two generation (sometimes even faster and there are plenty of examples).

Well other organophosphates include DNA and RNA. I am pretty sure you have little choice in ingesting those . That being said typical diets are not limited (typical sources include milk, meat, legumes to name a few) and supplementation is generally only necessary in cases of certain diseases (but are available). The opposite is sometimes necessary (i.e. phosphate limitation).

It depends a lot on the specific purpose of the curve and the experimental design. I.e. it depends what you want to use the curve for. The most common one being the analysis of the dynamic range and amplification efficiency of your assay and/or quality control purposes. However, if you are looking e.g. at samples with large variance in expression (as you mention housekeeping I assume you are measuring mRNA) a dilution series may also be appropriate to assess how much you have to dilute/concentrate your sample to be able to measure your various samples within a reasonable range of cycles (i.e. fitting your samples within your dynamic range). If you already have a good idea which make have the highest expression you could use that one to do the dilution series and gain both information of dynamic range and required dilution for comparative runs However, in these examples the dilution series is base on using your gene of interest. A use of standard curves is for the actually quantification process. Here you require an experimental setup where you can prepare dilutions series of an independent sample (e.g. WT, untreated and so on). Here the independent sample is really used as calibrant against which expression (normalized against an internal control) is used. So with regard to your question, it really depends on what you want the purpose of the particular dilution series is. Again, I would recommend going through your notes, evaluate what biological question you have (e.g. influence of mutation, influence of treatment etc.). Take a look of the required controls (with a look at the MIQE standards as a guideline) and design your experiment from the ground up. Typically it should become very clear what you need to combine (or not) to gain specific answers (e.g. if PCR efficiency has already been assessed you probably only need a one or two-point just to validate whether you have any issues, rather than a whole dilution series, for example).

It depends a bit on the type of analysis (absolute vs relative), however it would be easier to explain if you outline what you have read and where the confusion is. I would also advise you to read up on MIQE standards (Bustin et al 2010, BMC Mol Biol 11:74, open source) and follow-up on that. As a side note I would also like to point out that there are no true housekeeping genes, especially when considering conditions that severely affect growth. Many, if not most, ignore this point, but theoretically one has to establish stability of the HG for the condition(s) to be tested first. It should be noted that the control is mostly for the biochemical part (i.e. extraction and assay setup). Theoretically, if you did not screw up the instrumental differences day-to-day will be much less than the biological + sample handling variance. With some training the latter will be minimized leaving you with the biological variance, which is really what is of interest to you.

Lovers of good food?