CharonY

You have to understand that literally everything is poison. The reason is that our body (and cells) only operate within certain physicochemical parameters. Too much or too little of certain things will cause injury and eventually death. As such the distinction between toxic or not is really just a matter of dose and not a property of the chemical itself. Distilled water can upset your osmotic balance too and cause death under certain conditions (due to electrolyte loss, for example).

That's offensive. Also, I sense a consensus that most would appreciate humor. If we really had a stringent objective and humorless board, we would have a board with almost not members that take themselves far too seriously.

Right are wrong are probably not very useful categories. However likely and unlikely are. And baseless speculations (or those with little evidence) are clearly in the unlikely category.

I am pretty sure he was referring to Wankel.

Infections are typically mediated by pathogens or parasites (including viruses). The cholera toxin is just a protein complex and does not do infection. The correct question would rather be if it has health issues. The answer is, depends on form, dose and uptake mechanism. Often, only the B subunit is sold (rather than the complete complex, which is kind of hard to maintain) which is not really toxic. But it is a weird assumption that products sold by sigma are not dangerous. The majority of the stuff I get for routine analyses is quite deadly when consumed.

Excellent info. Just wanted to add: 1) Slightly weird perspective as industry jobs should be seen as the norm. The majority of the jobs are non-academic (if that is what is implied). 6) One thing to add is that if you manage to advance significantly it is often not seen too much of a negative. However every two years would indeed be odd. Horizontal moves are more likely to raise eyebrows, though.

Here is the only source where some transcripts were posted. They were apparently from an earlier version, though.

I am confused about the scope. Typically, if a manuscript has enough substance, it can be published anywhere, with or without the presence of a senior PI. However a PI is often involved at minimum to pay salary and provide the means for experiments (if appropriate). As such the target audience would only make sense if the scientific standards are lowered so that e.g. student assays or similar could be published. The only advantage over submitting to a traditional journal that I can see is that there are no publication fees.

Doubtful about that one, too. Penrose has the tendency to slap quantum onto biological phenomena and claims it as shortcut to complex traits such as consciousness. There has been a fair amount of criticism the first time around, and I am doubtful that they have been addressed (especially as these are reviews/opinion pieces rather than original works).

Very doubtful. I believe cleverbot had similar success rate and it is not really that sophisticated. Also for some reasons the they explained odd responses away by claiming that it was 13 year old boy whose first language is not English. At that point I wonder, why bother? Also one might add that the Turing test is more a philosophical issue rather than a testing manual.

There is some literature around with regards to disruptions of gut biota due to certain types of infections. A relatively recent one is Nelson et al. Plos One 7(10) 2012. Pubmed is your best bet for primary lit. The finding was that in a few patients the gut biota was disrupted, though it remained unchanged in the majority of cases.

Why would the clover release nitrogen to the trees while it is still growing?

There is no magic bullet to solve complex biological processes. Often a reductionistic approach is the simplest way to approach these types of problems. However in biology there are many cases of emergent properties which are not explainable by looking at things in isolation. In the long run we need to invest into novel approaches and find a way to utilize complex data and generate models that can assist in their interpretation. However, funding tend to be conservative and approaches that are aimed to find a cure to a disease now are easier to propose than long-term fundamental studies that may, or may not enhance our knowledge in the long run.

As others have mentioned, a single entity the power over scientific discussions is a very bad idea. However, some grant agencies request publications in open access journals and many journals allow the more or less free use of pre-print versions of the manuscript.

Have you read the paper?

Isn't the title contradictory? I mean, it presupposes that these behaviors are somewhat specific to humans and then proceeds to show the opposite. While I guess I understand why one may want to come up with such a title it is still mildly irritating. That being said, if one wants to focus on altruism as a trait, there is a whole bunch of research out there. Vampire bats are a textbook example. Then there are examples from the prokaryotic realm (although rules are different there) including e.g. fruiting body forming bacteria, such as myxobacteria or in cases of toxin or other common goods production. Then there are plenty of studies about bonding, friendship and resulting altruistic behavior in many mammals (models that I know of include a number of monkey species, primates, horses, dolphins, elephants and hyena). A recent focus has been on the physiology of these behaviors further concluding that we share a deep history in the evolution of friendship and social behavior (see e.g. Massen et al. BEHAVIOUR Volume: 147 Issue: 11 Pages: 1379-1412). If we broaden up the categories the bottom line is not that we share a lot with animals, but rather that there is little that makes us special (you could really take any two random species and find the same level of similarities/dissimilarities). It is surely our (necessarily) anthropocentric worldview that makes it appealing to compare everything to us. I am not sure whether it is really helpful, though.

During synthesis there is a good chance (I am not sure how sensitive the assay is). Assuming that you tested the solution just after making it, it does indeed indicate presence of Pi rather than degradation. As long as the rate does not increase you should be fine.

It is telling that you miss the obvious part of it. Eugenics was not not only discredited because the Nazis applied it (though on the political level it clearly was the case), but also because it is bad science leading to very bad societal decision. But the real issue is that it was not seen in a negative light because people were so certain that they were right by using heavily extrapolated pseudo science as justification. Once we are certain that certain traits are undesirable, it would be better to get rid of them, no? How certain are you that you are not one of them? It is almost sad that the proponents of eugenics almost invariably establish criteria that excludes themselves from being selected against. It is also ironic that a person that has a severe distrust of politicians would entrust them with the regulation of one of the most personal decision one could make.

Well, considering that the time frame was between 1925-1961 there are not likely to be that many persons left. That is a bit of a blanket statement and as such likely not to be accurate, no?

Actually eugenics was well looked-upon well before the rise of national socialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States And looking back what was decided to be inferior changed quite a bit (e.g. classed based systems where workers were considered unfit. One big issue is of course that for the most part it is not based on science but rather on political agenda and silly narratives. You can bet that if something like eugenics would be re-instated it would be targeted against a small group without much political clout (as e.g. in voting power). How supportive would you be if you would be on the receiving end of forced sterilization because someone states that you have a marker that is associated with something negative (whatever it would be)? As others have stated, and ideal gene pool tends to be a diverse one. However eugenics program tend to promote one form of inbreeding or another, which further highlights the discrepancy between eugenics programs and scientific knowledge.

Are you referring to bacteriocins?

Several reasons: - in cell extracts there is a lot of other stuff that absorbs at UV wavelengths. If you need precise measurements that will mess things up, especially when concentrations are low - the precise composition influences measurements. This is less of an issue for DNA, but for protein it is mostly aromatic amino acids that absorb at that wavelength. Changes in the ratio of aromatic to other amino acids are going to influence your measurements significantly -dynamic range is often quite bad In short, UV measurement just gives you a rough estimate. It works decent enough if you add separation of your compounds and with proper calibration (e.g. using HPLC-UV) but just using in a mixture e.g. using a photometer it will only work within a somewhat narrow range of concentrations and only with a well defined and purified sample. It will still be more imprecise, though.

ATP is extremely stable at the given pH and the most likely source for degradation is biological contamination. At -20 even with freeze-thaw cycles the lifetime is measured in years. I presume that the salts in the buffer serve some function for other assays (typically NaCl is added for osmotic stability, which does not makes sense here and Mg is often just a co-factor. It does influence free energy of ATP hydrolysis though)? In most cases ATP is just titrated to neutral or slightly basic pH. Your best bet is likely to aliquot the solution and freeze them at -20C.

A gene does not really influence anything per se, In the simplest sense it encodes a protein. That alone does not make you aggressive and certainly does not lead to assault. It could, together with the actions of many more factors, which includes developmental aspects (which in itself requires extensive interaction with the environment) can lead to higher susceptibility of, say adrenaline or testostereon. Whether it results in you being more aggressive, or more frightful or more anxious (i.e. behavioral outcome) again depends on even more internal and external factors. Genes are only a tiny cog in the bigger pictures when it comes to complex phenotypes and it gets very complicated when you mix in brain functions and behavior. Linkage studies have not been terribly successful to identify a genetic basis for aggression, for example. As such the statement Is mostly incorrect as other factors (including development) are likely to be more influential and your friend's position is even more wrong.

Also, it appears there is quite some misconception on what genes are and how they may or may not influence behaviour.