CharonY

Actually, I faintly recall that there was a weak correlation between brain size and IQ, but that skull size was not a very good measure of brain size. The overall variations are not huge in any case (as at some point the deformities would be detrimental). I also think that Einsteins's brain size was within the normal range. Of course these studies are limited as age of death would have a large influence on structure of the brain. In any case the mechanistic link between size and IQ (should it exist) is still not known and one has to be careful to make any inferences.

Hmm are you referring to Rowe et al (1999) J Infect Dis, which focused on convalescent patients (but there are likely more that I do not know/remember, so a reference would be very welcome)? But in either case that is actually quite relevant. The majority of rapid virus detection are based on Ebola RNA detection (using RT-PCR). Further analysis are often based on antigens, which yields a bit more information (as at least parts of virus particles have also to be present) However, the presence of RNA or even some antigens does not necessarily also mean the presence of infectious viruses (though it is often associated). I presume it is this confusion that leads many people to believe that it is easy to catch Ebola.

It would be more complicated, but I feel adding a timeline somehow would be very useful to see the shift in politics. Oftentimes these discussion are based on the current state of affairs and projected into the past (it was always that way) and into the future. Yet in many cases major political shifts have happened, that massively changed the relationship between groups and nations. As Willie71 said, the historic background is hugely complex and on top of it it was also a region that saw huge amounts of outside influence (especially, but not limited to the cold war). Without this context many aspects are very hard to understand.

Also, IIRC, he famously claimed that in 2014 there will be a sharp temperature drop which will lead to a new ice age. That is not consistent with existing data either.

Pretty much. However, the lines between acquired and and intrinsic are blurry at best.

The situations are obviously immensely complex and varies significantly from region to region. What I would caution is to use broad historical simplifications as an indicator for trajectories. Looking at the history of Europe, or even just the 19th and 20th century, most would agree that the region is a powder keg. In fact, the world wars started there. Looking at entrenched rivalries (e.g. Germany and France) it is hard to believe that there is any chance for peace in that region. Or looking back at the cold war similar things could be predicted. Rather, I would think that economic stability would have a stabilizing effect on society. A large, well educated and well-off middle class as a whole is probably less likely to participate in actions that would endanger their wealth. Of course this would have to come with political system that would allow that to happen, which could be one of the biggest problems.

The problem is that the UN and by extension the WHO is not funded to actually do something. Their main purpose is to track global information, develop strategies and make recommendations. The various nations are very careful in limiting the actually influence the UN actually has. No one wants the UN or WHO to be able to actually enforce quarantines or taking any sorts of action that may interfere with sovereignty . They do actually provide guidelines and emergency response strategies for emergency procedures but they are unable to just swoop in and to things. They further track the spread of ebola and AFAIK have the most up-to-date info on the events and they coordinate between local authorities and provide technical advice and supplies. And again, most health professionals do not see that quarantines outside of the affected regions are necessary or helpful. So why should they call for it? Edit: and I think it has been established that OP's blame on the US is misplaced.

Sorry, but you are misunderstanding why it is a logical fallacy. In order to know whether these incidents were caused by vaccines, you have to have either a) physiological data that demonstrates what happened or at least b) determine a statistical correlation between the events. Just because something happened to a child after a given event does not give any scientific information about the connection between these two. Adverse health effects can arise spontaneous due to any number of unknown effects, just because a vaccination happened sometime before, does not mean that it is connected. And here is the rub, there is statistical data for the vaccines and vaccines and the it was found that in about 6-8 million cases there is one child that becomes deaf after a vaccination event. The rate is so low that it is impossible to ascertain a connection. If that happened to your friends it means that they are that one rare case. That is unfortunately a rather limited view and to me a contradicting view. On the one hand you think that a one in six million case is a serious issue, whereas a death rate of one per 1000 (in the US) is not. Safety statistics on vaccines should be readily available from the CDC website.

More of a field report.

But isn't that only true if LM is investing its own money? I am not certain of the funding arrangement, but if the majority are governmental funds LM is getting monety to build something that may not work, but could produce patentable spin-off technologies (depending on intellectual property arrangements).

There are a number of reasons of which hypervalent_iodine pointed a few out. For practical purposes (e.g. for really quantifying DNA concentration) this particular experiment is not useful as you need more data points for proper calibration and there is smear over around lane 5/6, it appears that some of the marker did not make it into the pockets. Generally if you put different volumes into the pockets (rather than the same in various dilutions) is if you are not sure how much sample you have got, and you just want to make sure that you have at least one sample that gives a decent signal. I assume that these are PCR products and while the yield is often reproducible in the lab, in lab courses it may get iffy. The chosen volumes are pretty much arbitrary and tend to be in the middle range on the capacity of the average gel pockets (also these are easy to pipet volumes).

There are notable gaps. However, what I like is that it makes it pretty clear that blanket statements with regards to country, religion, sect does not even begin to capture the complexity of the issue (although most discussions, unfortunately) are based around these concepts. Edit: just wondering, shouldn't it be "whom"?

Bacteria all the way. When the last animal dies there will still be bacteria decomposing them. But seriously, this is more a poetic rather than a biological question.

The only think I can think of (beside creationism) are simplifications that are often used in highschool and some entry-level courses to introduce concepts. Obviously in fast-changing disciplines certain factoids may need revision, but they rarely are fully fledged out theories.

Sorry, but then it is kind of pointless posting what is in your head, if you have no intention of communicating with others. Communication requires that people agree on certain meanings to convey information. You require people to think like you do and for some reasons agree with you. What you try is not communication, instead you are shouting into the echo chamber of your mind.

Actually, I am at a stage when things get better again. I forget what I forgot (although sometimes I find notes on things that made me realize that I looked into it already...). With regard to OP, I cannot tell the precise time (I forgot) but I know that it was the point that I realized I wanted to be a scientist. Of course, that only means that you are a professional in appreciating what we do not know.

I think this is a case of false equivalence. Just because a model is not up to date or accurate to a certain degree it is not necessarily pseudoscience. The model is a simplified narrative that can be useful to put things into a somewhat historical context (a bit like stating that mitochondria are the power station of the cell, for example). It is certainly inaccurate in terms of what we know to do and it is not a useful model for predictions or further inferences. It has more a place in psychology than in neuroanatomy and is certainly not being used for the latter much, anymore (I am not sure whether it has been at all).

One should also keep in mind that peer-review is not the end of the discussion, just the beginning. It is the low bar to pass to be considered scientifically valid. If something does not even pass that bar, skepticism is appropriate. And with start of a discussion I mean in the context of other evidence that have passed that bar, not, for example, in the context of a random web site with garish layout.

This is actually a bit complicated as it is not only a single principle applied here. As you mentioned, at high ionic strengths you will salt out the proteins. If you just look at the zeta potential as a function of pH you will see a) the pI shifts and the potential curve tends to flatten out (i.e. aggregation becomes more likely). What you describe at the pI is usually in the context of IEF which utilizes much lower concentrations. The major aspect at low salt concentration is best explained by Debye-Hückel , though precise models are much more complex and suffers from the lack of data on protein surface properties and have troubles integrating ion specificity. It is easiest to think of proteins of having patches with different surface charges, even if the net charge is 0 at pI. It is the assumed that electrostatic attractive interactions are the dominant effects (at low salt concentrations) and depending on the types and properties of patches various small amount of anions or cations assist in salting in. One can imagine that the ions act in concert to disrupt protein-protein interactions at low concentration, resulting in increased solubility. At higher concentration this effect reverts.

Doesn't actually sound as bad in German (and can even be used in a somewhat endearing way, though I doubt it was the case). Well, Einstein was young and at that time, from what I understand, used mathematics more than a tool than as a pure research discipline.

From what I can see he specializes in spectrometry of simple system and to some extent in material sciences (I actually can read German) which does not translate to climate sciences. The work is also published after his retirement which indicates that it is not part of his main research. Nature does actually accept longer papers, but you have to put a lot of it (e.g. the model) into supplementary material and limit your main manuscript to the main conclusions and the most relevant data. There is a huge gap between Nature and a journal that is not even indexed.

The myxobacterial swarming is definitely one of the more specialized and interesting form of swarming. But simply put most data indicate that it is a response to nutrient cues and typically also coordinate via quorum sensing. It is likely that it results in a more cost-effective migration than possible than individual movement, though I am not sure whether someone actually calculated the energy expenditure accurately. There are also other specialized function (at least speculated) which may be relevant in certain host-bacteria interactions. I would be careful withe archaea-eukaryote statement, as to my knowledge this issue is far from being resolved.

I do not think that they reversed the scheme, Switzerland always had a scheme where 6 is excellent and 1 is poor (which, to my knowledge has not changed). Germany has the reverse, which could have led to the misconception. Or it was just a nice narrative.

Off-topic, but he was actually a good student and did not fail anything in highschool. His worst subject was French, were he got a passing grade (roughly a D). He got average grades in geography, technical drawing and artistic drawing. He got B equivalent in Italian, chemistry, natural history and German and As in history, algebra, geometry, descriptive geometry (not sure if I translated correctly) and physics. So, overall he is a well above average student with a somewhat broad skill set and actually never failed anything.

Well, there are a lot of memory training methods. However, what I would suggest is not trying to memorize things, but rather try to learn context. Instead of focusing on the content of each slide, only write down a short sentence summarizing the general concept or at least keywords so that you can read up later. Lecture slides are not supposed to replace actual textbooks (though I realize for most students it is more important to get the grades rather than content and I sympathize to some degree with that). I know that this is not trivial, as one need to acquire some basic knowledge before one can quickly understand context of certain tidbits of info. Typically the ideal case is when the student already reads the material before the lecture and uses the lecture to exclusively fill in gaps or to see what the most relevant parts are.