CharonY

Back to school? Ugh.

One the more comprehensive reports is this one: Valberg et al. ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES Volume: 115 Issue: 3 Pages: 416-424 Abstract:

Oh yeah, to them it obviously will appear rational. Typically they act they way as they believe it is the best for their child, which makes it even sadder.

Problem is that parents who keep their children unvaccinated have likely done so for irrational reasons. I am not sure whether they would open to discuss their ordeal in a helpful manner.

One thing to consider, especially if our child is not vaccinated and you are surrounded by non-vaccinated children (if you happen to be surrounded by like-minded parent) then you are putting all of the infants at an unreasonable risk. To put it bluntly, you risk health and well-being of your child for some unfounded beliefs. The risks of long-term effects (including death) are much higher. Take DTaP : 1 in a million have sever effects (which may be unrelated to the immunization). If your child contracts diphtheria (which is unlikely now as most are immunized and as a result incidents have dropped close to regional extinction , but if people stop, it will come back) it has a chance of ~20% of dying. 1:5 vs 1:1000,000 (if that). Take your bets.

Not necessarily. There are models which help in explaining altruistic behavior in population (kin selection for example). One has to keep in mind the difference between proximate and ultimate explanation. In this case kin selection would be an ultimate explanation (i.e. indirectly propagation of one's genes), whereas proximately there are mechanisms in place that causes organisms to act altruistically. Depending on how they function they be more or less specifically directed. Often times, one would imagine that learned behavior and imprinting are important (e.g. interaction with ones offspring or relatives) and they may be misdirected to the "wrong" species, depending on how selective theses behaviors are. I.e. the thing is complex, but there are specific hypotheses that could be tested.

Sales depends on what the company does (does it fabricate and sale or is it a vendor?). But in the broadest sense the job in sales (or account manager) is to keep your customers happy so that they come back for more. Typically you would identify how your products would fit the needs of a given lab or company, and present or demo it to them in a tailored fashion. A vendor would e.g. identify products needed by the lab offer discounts etc. Depending on level specialization the sales person often also acts as liaison between the buyer and the technical support team/application specialists. You do not actually actively sell things, but rather your job is to integrate into the buyer's need at some level (can be singular expensive item, like a mass spec, or consumables) and try to meet them. Marketable things? Understanding the products and who/how/when they are used. Know the target audience and be able to communicate with them effectively (especially scientists are not very amenable to business-speak). I have yet to meet a sales person with a business degree of sorts. Most that I interact with or know privately have MSc or PhD degrees in relevant areas.

People who think that they are competent at something (but aren't).

If you have a 5' overhang, how can you ligate without a 3'? But for multiple products there is always self-ligation, concatermerization, multiple PCR products (very common) etc.

Actually it is not. The problem is that these observations are individual events and can be interpreted any way. In other words, the data is "wooly" but not the concept. In population studies an altruic behyavior is essentially someething that decreases the fitness of the actor, while increasing that of the recipient. The problem is that it is not trivial to determine when such fitness increases or decreases actually occur.

According to popular opinion/school history, yes. Good think that historians tend to look at things a bit deeper (though it may take a while until things get pieced together). In this particular situation even a rather insane government would have a bit of hard time explaining how killing Norwegian kids ultimately preserves Norway. Unless it will be come a Battle-Royal-style dystopian future. Then yes.

Do you mean actual biofilm (for which various visualization techniques including stains exist), or just adherence? While adherence is the first step, it is not necessarily the same. Assuming the goal is the measurement of simply adherent cells, it depends on how precise you want to be. As a basic approach one applies a defined amount and identical amount of shear forces to each sample in order to remove bacteria who have surface interactions forces below that given amount. Depending on what you have at hand, centrifugation, use of defined water jets/flows, micromanipulators and AFM are options. The point being that there is no absolute distinction between adherent and planctonic cells. There will always be some level of force, depending on substrate and cellular surface properties (such as charge, morphology etc.). Typically, for each question the design has to be altered. E.g. looking at adherence under a no-flow system would be treated differently (as cells have a long time to settle) than during some kind of active shear forces acting on the cells.

What defines a non-failed state? What level of stability and for how long? The whole of Europe was in a dismal state ~70 years ago. Is there a fundamental time limit to these things?

I know that they are in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Sachsen and was but I was not aware of things on the federal level. Luckily a quick google showed that they are still far away from the Bundestag. It is of note that the party is actually actively agitating against the state and was close to getting banned (before the huge mess made it impossible). Plus this party is associated with a terror group. The argument for prostitution is not a matter of moving things underground (otherwise, murder should be be made legal, as people would just do it in the hidden, right?). It is more a matter of whether legislation is more useful or harmful to the people involved.

I sure hope that NPD has not gotten any seats in the federal parliament!

That is a crucial point (which I conveniently and to my shame overlooked). But on the other aspects, yes development of complex traits are also regulated by quantitative balances of the various players (including transcriptome, proteome and metabolome). The balance of many of these constituents is what results in certain cellular and tissue phenotypes and not only the types of proteins present (though that is an important point, too, of course).

I am not terribly sure. I was under the impression that in many countries, including US the separation was to protect individual practitioners from state persecution. An offspring of freedom of thoughts, so to say. The exception would be laicite (pardon my lack of accents) adopted by France and Turkey which distinctly calls to lessen the influence of church on public institutions. Though with the general rise of secularism the quoted part may be the current de facto (if not the historical) reason.

Sounds like a organization and time management could be your issue. A few starters: - Use a time management system or optimize the system you have got. - Establish standard methods and workflows, document and organize them well. The goal is just to blindly down a workflow and end up with results without having to twiddle on things too much. Standardization will free up your mind as you can do things without having to think (and forget) about them. - Look at your time management system, and put in the times when you run things. Develop the discipline to follow those time tables. If you do not manage to keep up, use your time table ti figure out where you screw up and adjust accordingly - put in realistic expectations for time (figure in time to do analysis, write report, meetings etc.) see how it matches up with real work and figure out the bottlenecks. - if you are forgetful, document everything. If you are better using your hands I recommend a notepad and pen on your body at all times. These are the equivalent of a utility knife - In addition, set up a routine for everything as much as you can. E.g. plan ahead for weekly/monthly things like calibration maintenance and define regular times per day. Example, come in, start up instruments, load samples, program run, coffee/follow up paperwork and email, analyze data, lunch, start up next run, write report, etc.

Keep us in the loop how it went. If we had more people it would be interesting to discuss the different types of grants and grant mechanisms. I have been in a few countries by now and it is interesting to see how the different granting agencies are driven by research culture, politics and funding sources...

OK, you are cherry-picking data now. These kind of comparisons yield little to no information and just emphasize bias. For example, Switzerland only allowed women to vote on the Federal level in 1971. That is over 50 years after the US. One Canton )(Appenzell Innerrhoden) only allowed women to vote locally 1991. Using OPs approach it is clear that Switzerland is one of the most misogynist nations on Earth, only eclipsed by Nations like Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates (Egypt had it in 1956, Turkey 1930, Iran 1963 ). One thing of note is that I have never heard anyone stating that the US is the "most democratic", rather they tend to be proud of their liberties (whether justified or not is probably another matters).

Regions characterized as non-coding can still harbor unidentified sRNA or, more commonly have a regulatory role (e.g. as transcription factor binding sites). In fact, many (most) cases SNPs exert their effects due to regulatory changes rather than actual mutations in protein-coding regions themselves.

In addition to the points mentioned by others I wanted to emphasize that mercury as preservatives are generally not harmful in the used concentrations. Typically ethylmercurithioslicylate is used which breaks down in the body to ethylmercury. Ethylmercury is cleared from the body rather fast and should not be confused with more toxic variants (including methylmercury, which the form you hear about in wildlife and other tox studies).

One thing to realize is that there is no career in "-insert research topic here." Rather there are jobs/careers that may (or may not) require knowledge in a certain area. I.e. you do not have a genetic engineer, but e.g. a process manager/analyst/project manager with relevant genetic (or other technical and non-technical) knowledge. As such it is is wrong to see college as a type of vocationa education but rather as a means to follow ones interest. That being said, the course that are relevant to your interest will vary from school to school. There is always a requirement for basic molecular genetics (regardless of system or application) and then some specialization afterward.

Just be careful that the ambitious part is not only "sexy" element of your proposal. I.e. you may want to drum up the achievable goals. The reasons is that typically reviewers focus on the negatives (overall too ambitious) and easily dismiss things that may be perceived as minor outcomes. I got more success by selling the cool ambitious part as a bonus element whereas using the mainstream elements (which I found boring) as the "regular" outcome.

The same thing happened in a University where I worked. A student put a laptop which did not shut down properly into a bag and left it unattended. After a while it started smoldering and releasing smoke. It is therefore prudent to check whether closing the lid actually put the laptop into sleep mode before putting it away.