CharonY

With regards to microbial fuel cells. The material is usually graphite, however they are not simple to establish and maintain, if they are supposed to have any amount efficiency. You have to maintain the bacteria in a an anaerobic chamber (the anode) which is not quite trivial. The material does not determine what the cathode is, but the direction of electron flow, which goes from the bacterium to the anode and then to the cathode where it has to have some kind of electron acceptor.

Very hard to tell and depends (obviously) how well it was treated. Typical issues are stuff getting below the weighing platform and forming crusts or causing corrosion. For the most part they are quite sturdy and I have used much older instruments that still worked fine after calibration (the oldest must have been from the 50s though at some point a gear broke). Assuming it was not abused and buried in a thick layer of gunk it should be fine. If possible I would ask for close-up images especially of the platform and the parts below for visual inspection.

I would not say that it is fairly down the list. As the list states, it is on top of all developed countries and in the vicinity of Costa Rica, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Barbados and Gaza (though for the low population countries the numbers may be skewed a bit, the reason why Liechtenstein actually pops up, for example). Omitting Liechtenstein (for said reasons) the next developed country would be Switzerland with 0.77 homicides per 100,000 (3.2 US).

I am only aware of using U as a unit of amount and the other one does not make any sense to me. You can estimate enzyme activity from that (by normalizing it against amount) but that is not the definition or usage of U.

Usually epigenetics falls into the broader range of regulatory control. As such it is not a completely new phenomenon, as due to their very nature regulatory mechanisms are highly dynamic. It is in the end a oversimplified view that DNA alone would tell us the whole story, and researchers were very aware of that from the beginning.

Not likely to work. AFM studies have shown that the juice affects bacterial fimbriae. So you would have to have a constant flow of the juice to suppress adherence (once the juice was removed from culture, the bacteria regained adhesive properties). At the same time the juice has sugar and other nutrients that can promote bacterial growth (and formation of acids) even in residues. So unless you have your mouth full of juice all the time the chance is that benefits will be easily offset by the other components of the juice. It should be noted that while the reduction of adhesion was seen under lab conditions, large meta-analyses of the benefit of cranberry juice for urinary tract infection showed only little to no effects.

I think this topic is in the wrong thread, it is more about societal issues rather than biology. In addition, biotech is but only one branch that deals with issues relating to human health,there are many more out there. A bit ironically, biotech is somewhat more applied (and includes things like fermentation processes and production of pharmaceuticals) and is as such closer to money making than, e.g. fundamental sciences.

I guess it depends on school, school year and curriculum. Oftentimes simplifications are made that are alright in the precise context but not in others. A precise way to refer to the genetic material of an organism would be genome, for example.

We need to breed more storks and develop better frog recipes.

Each chromatid contains one DNA molecule. After the S-cycle an (eukaryotic) chromsome contains two identical chromatids. However between chromsomes the DNA varies significantly even within a single organism. The basic structure of DNA is identiical in all living organisms. However, DNA consists of a series of nucleotides that have different bases. The number of nucleotides and the sequence of bases is what makes all the difference.

Well, medicine as a whole has applied as well as science parts. Most MDs are not engaged in active research but follow procedures to diagnose and treat illness. At least clinical psychiatry falls into the latter category. As all medical branches success rates tend to be connected to the knowledge of the particular condition, for which science is needed.

Except for the advice already given I would also add that while putting together a talk, distill the salient points and organize your talk accordingly. Assuming a presentation type of talk, you do not do yourself a favor by reciting one slide after another (though it may be the easiest thing to do) but to use those only to convey a point. To give an example from a academic viewpoint: Many students construct a presentation about their work by showing one experiment after the other and finish with something like:" and these data indicate that gene X is involved in Y". While this approach may highlight that you did a lot, no one is really interested in that. Instead, you should have a story ready and tell them what you are going to tell them. For example:" In the following I will show that gene X is indeed involved in Y" then use the data to support your point "assays bla and bla showed that it does indeed Y but not Z". This has at least two important aspects. The first is that you do not get lost that easily while talking, because you have the main theme in your head and you already arranged your talk to support it. There is less risk of getting lost in small, unnecessary details that no one is interested in. Second, the audience can follow you easier and you will sense less negative feedback e.g. in body language that may arise when they have to concentrate too much (or just get bored). That reduces the anxiety for already nervous speakers.

Could be confirmation bias or the fact that I have seen similar things floating around, but no real surprises (except the gender gap in Eastern and Middle Africa was lower, but the I am completely ignorant in that area). I expect that there will be a drop of the proportion of malaria in the mid-future, as there is some significant progress in understanding that parasite. I think it also underlines the probably obvious point that prosperity has wide-ranging effects prosperity has. Finally, as India and China modernize, they pretty much undergo the same environmental issues that Europe and other Western countries have faced. While they do invest more into alternative energy as the West did, the short timeline and population sizes makes this endeavor incredibly complicated. And obviously they will not give up their shot at prosperity for environmental reasons (as any other nation, really).

Also note that microbiologist would formally refer to viruses as inactivated rather than killed, the same way as it is first referred to in the linked website. They just clarified it for layperson what they mean with that. To reiterate, categories are just a matter of convenience and context. Thinking that it has a deeper meaning just because we name it a certain way is a fallacy. When we talk about how virus structures have evolved it makes perfect sense to apply models of other living organisms as the base mechanisms we are looking at have overlaps. It makes absolute no sense to do so when we look into catabolic processes, for example. I should add that this worship of definitions and their relevance is likely a remnant of high-school type learning in which students are drilled to give the expected and precise answer to narrowly defined questions. One should keep in mind that especially in complex sciences a lot of time in college will be spent to unlearn this behavior. Well, later on at least.

The premise is faulty. I really doubt that applies to most or even many people interested in this subject. First of all. eukaryotic life is highly specific and based on terrestrial life. There are no meaningful predictions about what it could be elsewhere. What is being assumed that there is likely not very complex life within our solar system. But as all everything about extraterrestrial life remains speculative. With regards to silicon the best counterargument is that carbon is just more versatile. Under most conditions that we know life exists metabolic activities are easier to handle. For example during metabolizing carbon you can end up with carbon dioxide which can be eliminated passively from cells. Silicon oxide (being solid under known physiological conditions) would require some kind of export system, which is less effective. Carbon would simple have an edge there. With regards to DNA and RNA, again there is a specific extrapolation of terrestrial life. Note that one hypothesis posits that proto-life on Earth was potentially based on RNA. Temperature limits have a basis on thermodynamics which makes life less likely above certain extremes and so on. In other words, many of these speculations, some with more, some with less merit have been around for a long time, but in the absence of any research and evidence it will remain just that. Speculations.

There are no basic laws of biology. They are guidelines based on lifeforms that we found on Earth. The actually issue is also less that of structure, but that of metaboism. Viruses have no active ones by themselves. For that reason they are mostly considered to be mobile genetic elements that are propagated via their hosts, akin to transposons plasmids etc., which also encode functions for propagation but have even less structure. That being said, it is not an issue of great contention, most if not all biologists are aware that these distinction are a matter of convenience and are applied depending on the research question (rather than as a law of sorts).

Actually Oscar Wilde said : “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.” A few weeks before his death. IIRC. And when it comes to last moments, Tommy Cooper's is hard to beat: http://youtu.be/bkvg2tr5eSA

Hah, reminds me of my first discussion about data storage for my instruments. The discussion was basically: "how much data do you generate?" "Let's see, I estimate about 4 gigs..." "Per month? that should be no issue whatsoever." "About every 3h with the mass spectrometry systems alone. I have not factored the sequencing facility in yet..." "K, we need a new budget." Yeah, they did not have omics people before...

It depends on how precise you want/need to be, which is also dependent on how good your data is (i.e. having a very precise model to estimate 90% survival means little if your experimental variation is very high or if the curve has only few points). In many cases for these values are estimated empirically. That being said, normally dose-response curve follow the Hill Equation. Thus, you fit a curve through your data using regression methods. There is software around that may be able to do that for you (such as Matlab with the curve fitting toolbox). I vaguely recall a paper somewhere in which they even used Excel (I believe in Analytical Biochemistry, 2007?, not sure) to do that.

Flu is definitely viral, cold often, but not always. However, there can be bacterial infection following or accompanying either. The mucosal system as well as the immune system is often compromised during viral infections making it easier for bacteria to settle in. That is why some may e.g. develop bacterial pneumonia that requires AB to clear out. It really depends on what the MD has found for diagnosis and that is why armchair diagnoses are often wrong.

that is a bit of a circular argument.... Depletion is always an issue as it is not really as specific as one would hope them to be. I.e. sometimes you get different results if you deplete things with different kits, even if the target is supposedly the same. Worse for silencing assays, but I digress. And yes Mol Bio is a huge money devourer. Running such a lab is a constant rat race to get funds to spend on perishable enzymes, kits etc. If a student/postdoc screws up, it can put quite a dent in your budget. I do envy some less money intensive disciplines (e.g. bioinformatics).

The thing that distinguishes biology from physics tends to be the complexity of the subject and the connected differences in approaches and methodologies to solve problems. Physics has very good approaches to investigate well-defined and comparatively simple systems, but they generally cannot be extended easily to the more complex issues. The most overlap you will find are in the area of structural biology, where the subject are usually single molecules. For more complex things either one would have to simplify the question to make it amenable to physics methodologies or utilize "rougher" methods derived from chemistry and biology that may provide less precise but more useful answer (or answers at all).

What if you add cell phone capabilities to a gun?

Most of the time people will not be too interested in the courses you took. They are merely indicators that you have been studying but are not expected to give you professional expertise related to a job. I am uncertain about typical job opportunities in the particular areas of interest (especially as it is a bit vague) but at most the degree and maybe the grades will influence it a little bit. Having contact with potential employers (e.g. on job fairs or similar) will contribute much more, for example.

Well good thing that the manufacturers make a killing with kits for removal... Though at least for small genomes the throughput of even the MiSeq tends to be sufficient to push through the ribosomes (except maybe for low abundance RNAs, for which I distrust the quantitative data anyway...). With regards to OP, there are several potential reasons. One is the obvious fact that translation is the rate limiting step in protein production. If you had more mRNA but insufficient ribosomes they would not affect things much.