CharonY

Several newspapers are printing a best of from these cartoonists, which is a great response.

I think cartoons that depicts solidarity and/or the fact that freedom will not bow before radicalism would work. Aiming specifically at Mohammed alone (instead of the larger issue of violence) could make moderate Muslims feel that they are being left out or grouped with the crazies. But they should realize and feel that they are part of the same society and that their freedom is under threat as well.

How is absurd to posit that complex situations are based on numerous factors? If you think there is one singular explanation, why don't you publish it and show all those scholars specialized in conflict research that you got the solution all along? Here is the thing, abuses against women are endemic in many cultures. Christianity is deeply misogynist, and only in recent times have women been seeing as equal. The weird fetishism of female purity and virginity is not exclusive to Islam. It is true that it certainly does little to discourage it, which leads back to the issue that religion is probably not the best way to set up a modern society. That being said, there are likely deep cultural issues that promote violence rather than religion alone. To my knowledge Islamic countries have been late in providing legislature aimed at protecting women. Note that for example in the US up to 1970s marital rape was exempted from ordinary rape charges and only 1993 have all states withdrawn the exemption. Considering the timeline of female rights in Western society compared to the overall time of the respective religion, I would think that having equality is actually quite an incredible feat and it will take time for a society to change toward that.

Several things are likely to be relevant: 1) it does not benefit the discussion to talk about muslims as a blanket group as they are muslims in very different geopolitical, historic and socioeconomic situations. Muslims in Kosovo are typically in a very different situation from, say, Indonesia or Syria. Political instability, (violent) opposing fractions, education levels, wealth etc. all contribute to varying degrees to radical ideologies. Religion is just another (if powerful) of these factors. It will be difficult to disentangle the cause and effects of these relationships. Trying to find a single main cause is likely not possible. 2) If something dominates the media it is because it is something that the audience wishes to see. Often in the context of some larger narrative. The Ebola scare on US soil was such a story. The overall narrative at least in part, is still feeding of the post 9/11 situation, the subsequent wars and so on. Also many other terrorist organizations that had headlines on a routine coverage quite a while ago (IRA, ETA. RAF) have all but retired, likewise cold war enemies, leaving islamic terrorism the most attractive foe to the scare people. Not that there are important issues underneath that need open discussion, but unfortunately the noise tends to drown out the sensible parts.

Note that in the first paragraphs you invested a lot of space in making up excuses before getting to the gist of the post. Cutting down on fluff and get to the real issue helps with distractions. The simplest things to do for focusing is a) get interested in something. Really interested, not the superficial hype that burns out after initial confrontation. b) get rid of distractions like texts, emails, discussion fora (ooops) and compartmentalize your day as much as possible, so that you have time slots allocated to do one thing only (e.g. writing emails, reading, planning, boring routine stuff etc.). We suck at multitasking.

I would object to call Ophiolite opinionated. The common definition is :"unduly adhering to one's own opinion or to preconceived notions" and I found him to be very open to new concepts, provided they are evidence-driven. He does not suffer opinionated fools, though. And sorry for being off-topic.

Also note that the implementation in various European countries vary quite a bit, which reflects different concepts each country had implemented. UK is closer to US than Germany, for example. The Bologna process was supposed to streamline things, but in effect it created a hot mess that unis are ill suited to cope with.

Aside from what others said, the career paths takes a long time (get PhD, postdoc for an indeterminate amount of time) with very low likelihood of success. Once you are faculty, things are not necessarily that much better. Pay is better (postdocs often get in the 30-45k range in the US, assistant profs usually 60-80k), but your duties multiply. You have to create and teach courses (new courses eat an incredible amount of time), have to establish a research lab and have administrative duties. Establishing a research lab is more than a full-time job itself, as you have to get grants, hire and manage researchers. Especially in experimental labs you almost never do research yourself, but rather you direct it. If you get a bad crop of researchers it can dent your career right there. Then you have all the teaching duties which includes preparation of lecturesr/seminars/exams/ marking, student interaction etc. All those things further reduce the time you have got. In fact you are likely to be busier than as a postdoc (but at least you work for yourself now). However, you are going to be around or close to 40 at this point and most learned to eke out some time for family to balance their jobs. Those that do not, tend to burn out. But as workload comes, it gets busier and busier. Even tenure does not change much, unless you decide to let research go, or work in an area that is less dependent on personnel and money. Late in the career is probably the least busiest...

Sounds like a plan, I really do not see the connection between animal testing and drug use/abuse. Whether drugs serve a good for society depends on many factors, and sometimes the most useful ones are a byproduct of a different intention. One could, as a whole, question whether the development of new drugs is beneficial, especially when the target the same condition. However, one should be aware that different people may react differently to a given drug, so to have diversity there can greatly benefit the individual. Moreover, many developments are aimed at reducing toxicity and other harmful effects.

But obviously the most advanced species is still around and makes us figure out how to cure cancer in them.

Theoretically extremely low doses are unlikely to have a strong habitual effect as caffeine gets eliminated fairly quickly. I do not have much data about the lowest limit, though. Exposure levels in mice at about 5mg/kg body weight, was found to exert tolerance effects in mice (see e.g. Chou et al. 1985 Life Sci Volume 36, Issue 24, 17). That being said, differences in abstinence of caffeinated vs non-caffeinated humans with about 200 mg daily consumption showed less effect on mood (potentially to do relief of withdrawal symptoms), but no difference in other metrics (Addicott and Laurienti Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2009 Dec;207(3):423-3). So the answer is apparently not quite 100% clear.

As noted, the two reactions of phosphatase and kinases are different (one is a hydrolase reaction, the other a transferase). I guess it is an issue of nomenclature. I.e. kinases belong to phosphotransferases which is different to either phosphorylases and phosphatases. If it catalyzes the same reaction, an enzyme would also be considered a phosphotransferase. Obviously the reaction flux could be adjusted by the interplay of several enyzmes which different free energies and/or co-factors to some extent, but I guess that was not what the question was about.

The premise is wrong. As Robittybob1 said, there is no visual difference in mammalian blood (you are aware that we are animals, too, right?).

For most bacteria In bacteria they (usually) are basically identical and the distinction does not make a lot of sense. In cases of asymmetric one could make a stronger case for that (and use size-dependent techniques).

Actually, the only point I see is that the overall vacancy rate is around 20%. But that only tells you half the story of being employable (although high amount of part-timers may not be a good sign, but can be related to the type of business). This shows that the over all vacancy rate (for all jobs) in the UK high, but still lower than pre-downturn (which is in line with my reasoning above). I.e. there are likely to be an increase in vacancies for many jobs that are growth-related. Again, this only demonstrates that jobs are to be found in this area again, but it is possible that it is just a return to pre-downturn figures. The only way to see that is to find time-resolved statistics that also shows the total pool of trained applicants and get data on the unemployment rate of this particular occupation. I could, for example make the case that creative writing is a good job now as the posted job vacancies have increased over the last years. The US statistics for 2012 show that hairdressers are slightly better than average in terms of unemployment, which is the only positive indicator I could find right now. I am not saying that employment chances may not be positive for that job segment, but it is hard to tell without additional data. Edit: and I realize that we are going way off-topic.

So, how would biology fit into this? A significant part has moved toward complex interactions to explain presumably simple traits, as simple models failed to predict physiological responses? With regards to English-English, I am happy when things I write are (mostly) a single language and more so, if someone can actually understand what I type. I certainly rarely do.

As I said, it is hard to say if we cannot even decide on the mission of an university. If employment is the primary focus, there is little chance but to break unis up with smaller and more dedicated training units while completely losing the chance of broader education. Alternatively, only train a small elite, which would mean that 90% of students will fail. I am sure there are other models but each will be associated with a large number of issues which no politician will touch. I also disagree with the own income vs. public funded issue. If education becomes a luxury, than it will (and already has) extreme social consequences. It will result in a larger income gap and lower social mobility. This will be extreme in elite type system, as low-income folks also have less access to additional tuition, and often have to work in addition to their studies. Again, it boils down to figuring out what the role(s) of higher education has to have in the society, figuring out what structures can provide them and then whether one can finance them. Personally, I think most people (understandably) focus too much on the practical job side and neglect the impact of having a well-educated population (even if their work is different from what they study). I know that this is a joke, but it is also an example of bias. How would you notice hairdressers that are out of jobs? The true measure would be the ratio of unemployed to employed workers and not the total amount of workers. Otherwise one could claim that academic jobs are plenty as each year positions are filled, while neglecting that there are over hundred applicants per position. Also, many non-essential services are very sensitive to economic situations, so I would think that the situation was especially bad 2008-2010. Now with a slow recovery of services it may seem like growth but in truth may just be a return to prior levels (just as a thought).

Eh, how would that make sense? Like digging out your tree and bring it to another place to fix it up? Physiology of plants is not really conducive to medical treatment.

I would argue that science is the opposite. Learning about the forces that exist. Learning how complex things truly are and how our imagination is so woefully inadequate to intuit the true fabric of nature and reality. How we, ourselves are just tiny parts in an enormous system that is far beyond our ken. And yet we take baby steps, and each step reveals more that we do not know. And the truly positive thing about humanity as a whole we do not give up satisfy ourselves by simple stories that empower us. No, many bow our heads in humility and plow on to uncover what else we do not know. With the faint hope that at some point this will give us new insights.

That is the ideal, but what I am getting at is that this is certainly not the case. Depending on your job, you will need to have skills that you may have acquired during your studies, but often more as a byproduct rather than due to the courses (e.g. effective time management, organizational and leadership skills, to provide some examples). In many cases the technical skills will vary and are often not useful to the majority of jobs outside academia. But beside that, good universities also allow you to broaden your horizons, by taking you out of your comfort zone and exposing you to other cultures and way of thinking. That, however, is often more dependent on the student, the uni just provides access. Again, there is a balance between academic training, technical skills and job-related skills. And really, no one has an idea what the best mix is. Partially, because it will be very dependent on each individual student. A student with sufficient money can afford to focus on broadening his education without a specific career view. Someone who is almost broke after school is more likely in need of a career-focused education, for example. There are also broader, political issues. Are unis supposed to provide degrees to as many as possible? In many cases student success is measured by how many eventually graduate. Or should our duty be to evaluate and train an experts and fail everyone else? The latter is obviously not what is happening, but is closer to what unis used to be. It depends on the ranking, and some include student satisfaction. However, due to issues ajb mentioned these especially undergrads often do not have much to compare to. Also usually they focus on student services and conveniences. As such, these ranking are often national. Often, small, but well endowed teaching universities do disproportionately well, as they can focus their budget on students. But research is at best limited there.

While I understand the reasoning, I sincerely hope that you reconsider. Remember, everything is mostly harmless.

Before this can be answered I think one has to define what the goals of higher education should be. Is it to provides degrees? Create adults with broad education? Or train them for specialist jobs? No one appears to be certain and in many cases we are doing a weird mix of things that is neither fish nor fowl. But let us flip the question. How do you see higher education? What would you like to get? Network? Practical skills? Perdue academic interests? Get broader perspective on other people and cultures?

There is typically no hard age limit (depends on institution, though and the closer to retirement age, the less likely it usually gets), however it depends on what you teach and what skills you bring relative to younger guys. In some cases additional relevant skills can be a bonus.

The thought process is actually quite curious. -Here is my model how I think it works. - According to the model there is no life in universe Thus, the conclusion that there must be magic (instead of acknowledging that the model is absurd, which is the normal response...).

However, if we refer to dreams the actual vivid recollection/experiencing of events, then it is most likely limited to or close to REM sleep, as otherwise you would be flailing around a lot.