CharonY

As already mentioned, the main criticism of OP is that it lacks specificity as well as novelty. The use of bioagents for cancer control has been under investigation for well over a decade or so. OP does neglect all the issues with using them in a clinical setting as well as their general limitations (e.g. that it only works, if at all on certain types of solid tumors). In research throwing ideas around is really the cheap part. Over a coffee you will easily collect a few dozens of them. It only gets interesting if you manage to identify challenges and strategies to overcome them. And no, declaring that there will be something without any specifics is not worth a damn.

Companies may be a bit different as the workers there seem to view themselves less in a training situation as compared to academia. In these situations the most common strategy I have heard is to request updates or have project meetings rather than making the round. The latter is sometimes understood as a matter of exerting dominance and/or favoritism. It does boil down to having milestones against which progress can be benchmarked. That way it is easier to spot when someone needs assistance, even if the person may not actually be aware of. If there is no specific set goal bringing up performance or trying to help someone getting back on track may be perceived as criticism as the goal now appears to be arbitrary. But more specific to the question, if you need to keep tabs on things, a formalized setting (i.e. meeting) is better as it allows people to prepare themselves and individuals are not singled out. Creating good meetings (as opposed to massive time-destroying wormholes) is an art in itself, though. Just to reinforce (and of course, this is just my experience), in a setting where there is a power imbalance (i.e. boss vs. employee) and beyond a certain group size, walking up on them is almost never perceived in a positive way, unless you are super charismatic and have a fantastic group dynamic going on. In your mind it may appear that you swoop in and boost everyone's morale and increase productivity. However, if they are already reluctant to ask for help, then it is more likely that it is perceived as criticism and meddling.

No, the do not actually use the bacterium but rather introduced the gene that codes for that specific protein into the plant. Once integrated into the plant genome it will be produced just like any other protein.

Actually in some areas they actually do, to some extent. More commonly papers that rely on modeling and/or statiscs get replicated in silico,e.g. using different test or validations sets.

A friend of mine (who works in a company in a non-science role) basically said that the reason why academia is so ineffective is because many foster infighting (who gets on which paper, who gets to evaluate which data, whose name is on grants. who is allowed to write grants) rather than creating win-win situations. If everyone benefits from everyone else, being an arsehole just hurts yourself.

Unfortunately availability cannot always be guaranteed (in one of my jobs I met my formal supervisor roughly four times a year, though for me it actually worked), depending on their role and available infrastructure. However, you also raise an additional number of important points. One keyword is expectation. Manage and communicate expectations well. This goes both ways, i.e. what postdocs and phds may want from you as mentor (which usually boils down to help them along in their careers) and what your expectations are to them. Never assume that things are obvious (as I already mentioned, really that can kill projects like nothing else). Another, even more complicate aspect is managing group dynamics. Considering the size of the group mentioned in OP one has to be careful that no cliques are formed. Animosity between sub-groups or even individual can break a group and reduce productivity pretty much to zero. Strive to create (realistic) scenarios in which the success for a given member translates to the benefit for the whole group (this goes back to negotiating expectations). There are PIs who think it is a good idea to foster competition within a group. I wholeheartedly disagree. Another aspect to remember is that often in scientific settings you may get divas. Managing these persons can be very tricky. Also, while managing people one has to be aware that technical competence is not the only thing you look out for when hiring. The potential group members should have basic sets of soft skill or demonstrate willingness to acquire them. Having a group if highly competent people that use their intelligence to mob each other is barely more productive than hiring a bunch of badgers with diarrhea.

This is not easy to answer, it really depends a lot on the personalities involved as well as the types of projects the groups are working on. If you are not very amiable as boss, being around too much can put too much pressure on them (though being too friendly can also have detrimental effects). Another critical element is the type of deadlines/milestones/deliverables as well as how hard and specific they are. The very same group composition may have to be managed very differently if you have short-term specific goals or log-term exploratory ones, for example. From my viewpoint (academic position) the strategy that works best for me to be as hands-on as necessary, as hands-off as possible. This requires that you (the boss that is) have an idea about how the persons are working and tweak accordingly. I tend to have group as well as project meetings. The first is usually short and deals with stuff that everyone may need (e.g. supplies) the project only has those people that are involved (or are interested). I create negotiate workplans and milestones with everyone involved in a particular project and ask to be notified if something unexpected happens. I keep a closer tab (with more defined and closer milestones) for new/inexperienced group members, and provide more open plans for those cases where I know in what pace they work. Outside of that I generally let them do their thing and only step in if I think that someone is losing track. I try not to micromanage them (which especially bugs more experienced researchers), but I always expect them to come to me when they hit a snag. It is often really hard not to micromanage, especially if you see that you could solve a particular problem much faster, but that defies the reason of having a group. At some point you just have to let go. I have colleagues in companies that work on much shorter projects. For that they tend to have daily meetings in the morning where the jobs for the day are distributed (or just to re-affirm distribution) as not to waste time. In area where processes are established there is much more micromanaging (or rather, auditing) to ensure everything is followed to the letter, etc. Unfortunately, this is really more an art than anything else, but a few (trivial and random) things to keep in mind are: - never criticize an individual in front of the group. Nothing good will ever come from it - do not micromanage, it will eat up your time, create dependency and decrease morale (usually) - be approachable, try to be a mentor (tell them what you wished you knew when you had their position), but do not a boss or a friend - do provide criticism in a positive way - negotiate goals. That way the other party is also invested in reaching it (i.e. they are not just doing it because you said so) - have realistic goals, tweak to the ability of the worker (push but do not crush) - never assume things (e.g. assume that a phd student had certain degrees/courses and thus should know about a certain aspect). Communicate and make sure. - if there cross dependencies between different people, make sure that both see that their input is valued and important. Never have a favorite.

As hypervalent_iodine mentioned, non-enzymatic hydrolysis is not going to work in the given environment. Also, enzymatic degradation is not quite trivial as glycogen is highly branched. The whole process is a bit more complicated. The glycogen phosphorylase releases G1-P from linear glucosidic bonds (1->4 bonds), but is not able to work near the branches (1->6 bonds.) Here, another enzyme has to act (debranching enzyme) in order to create a debranched limit dextrin, which allows the glycogen phosphorylase to act again.

I think that pretty much proves my point.

These kinds of plants have been around for quite a while. Generally insecticidal proteins from Bacillus thurigiensis are being expressed by the plant. These proteins are known to be harmless to humans. In fact the bacterium and its toxin have been used widely for pest control before the production of GMOs.

I think that has something to do with the fact that males are much better are prioritizing the important things. I mean, I know women that see something on the internet that is wrong and do not care. Something wrong! On the internet!!

There are quite a few different ways to classify proteins, but whatever you choose, you should be consistent. The first examples indicate that you wan to use the form of iron moiety to categorize. However, cytochromes actually contain heme, whereas iron transporters usually do not contain iron at all. Edit: I should add, with transporters I meant transmembrane trasporters of iron, but I realized that you may mean iron storage proteins. In any case that would be a functional classification.

Indeed. Also most definitely speculations.

That is actually quite an interesting point. In many biology programs at the undergrad level there is a female majority. Some groups are completely female even on the graduate level. However, there are still more male than female PIs. And I think you will see that almost everywhere higher positions have a lower f/m ratio. There are numerous reasons for that and but one (in academia) is possibly that pregnancies can delay progression for women a little bit. Some older (mostly but not exclusively male) faculty in conservative departments see taking a time-out to care for the child as a lack of dedication to science. And there are cases where female Profs are basically back at their desk a day or two after giving birth. This is a bit silly considering that one of the advantages of academia is that outside of teaching you have in theory more liberties than at other jobs (exempting ubiquitous self-exploitation). The good thing is that the mentality is changing in that regard and having a work/life balance is more and more accepted. I should not comment on that, however, as I am not really good at it, either. Edit: Just found an interesting article indicating that in the younger markets females are more commonly found in senior positions in companies (up to 51% in China, compared to 20% in the USA). Source

Hmm, I actually do not know whether I have been karyotyped...

Well, time for a serious discussion. When this site started there were a lot of female members. In fact, you could not swing a pregnant dugong without hitting one. But then things happened. Bad things. Especially ydoaPs. The number of casualties were horrible. Then things became worse. Frogs fell from the skies, Comic Sans became a real thing, iPhones started to take calls and ydoaPs became moderator. And there is no one to blame but us. And the others. And medication.

Small but important correction, via the electron transport chain protons are transported to the outside of the cell, i.e. the movement through the synthase is from the outside to the inside (i.e. the other way round). As otherwise noted the charge transfers are the result of redox-reactions that are catalyzed by enzymes. With regards to NADH2, this is a matter of notation and charge conservation. The correct equations would be NAD (+) +2e- + 2H(+) -> NADH + H(+) Only one hydrogen delivered from the oxidized molecule is actually bound.

Localized treatment has been under investigation for quite a long while, but it really depends on the type of cancer and the localization, obviously. There are quite a number of issues, including that in some cases there were no benefits found over systemic approaches (as in the case of gliomas, if memory serves). One issue is that in order to really benefit from it one would need to deposit a high concentration of the substance but let it diffuse to the tumor cells over time. This is what triggered the interest in using polymers for drug delivery and release. For skin cancer there are actually topical treatments using 5-fluorouracil application directly to the skin, for example. Also I would assume that easily accessible tissues areas would often be removed surgically. In addition there are also some commercially available drug delivery systems for the continuous release of therapeutics, though not as a local cytoxic (goserelin comes to mind). That being said, a quick check of clinical trials in the US indicated that quite a few trials have started around 2000 and those not terminated have finished between 2007-12. Of course these vast majority are propriety systems so they generally do not post the results publicly. I.e. there is definite interest to create local delivery systems, for a variety of cancer targets.

I think the evaluation of efficacy in clinical settings is still underway, from what I see. There are different approaches with which to control release (using polymers such as PLGA, for example) and preclinical results are promising (as they tend to be). I think there are not enough trials to show overall better performance yet, though there many proof-of principle papers to be found. There is also a nice review discussing advances and challenges of drug delivery: Wolinsky et al. 2012 Journal of Controlled Release Volume 159, Issue 1, 10 April 2012, Pages 14–26

Not trivially. You still need a diagnostic unit that analyzes saliva and creates a readout that has to be transmitted. Another issue is that salivary markers tend to be less reliable than blood. But the area of lab-on-a-chip research is trying to create miniaturized devices to be able to perform certain bioanalytical operations. Some groups made them mostly portable so that they can be used on the field. I would think that considering the overall size of detectors and other required components that at least a tablet-sized device (if not a laptop) are suitable as they are going to be larger than most current cell phones anyway.

I think the issue with fake journals is less an issue within scientific communities, as bad reputation easily transpires throughout the community, but for laymen and journalists it may pose a problem. However, there are numerous crank websites and fake journals that are partisan, funded by think tanks, or outright crooks. The only think one could do as a scientist is to be outspoken and over time it usually becomes quite clear when a journal (even if it seems reputable) fails scientific standards. At least in the natural science data eventually will trump any agenda one might have. That being said, publication of substandard papers are on the rise. Publish and perish, together with fewer faculty positions and more graduates are certainly one if not the most important contributing factor. Considering how cut-throat and competitive academia is, I am not sure whether there are easy fixes. Some are arguing that the editorial process has to be more rigorous and only let high-quality work pass, but that has several drawbacks. First, it will require significant more work and for cutting-edge experimental research it is often not feasible. One thing that some are calling for is the release of raw data and ask reviewers to validate the calculations. Yet, considering that reviewing is a free community service and the fact that as a researcher you are strapped for time as it is, I do not see that happening except in some rare cases. In addition, this could also result in otherwise interesting papers being rejected. Another school of thought is that the review process should, similar to plos One, just see if the conclusions are sound and let citations take care of the relevance. Even if referees miss things, over time the citations for a flawed conclusion will degrade. In the end, as has already been mentioned, there is really no viable alternative.

This is not just moving the goalpost, that is flying out to India, have craftsman hand-carve a new goalpost, continue travel to Japan to have it painted and then to Russia to have it fired into the stratosphere. This type of argument would make a silly biscuit proud. Well done!

OK, this is something that I do not understand. The system is set up with check and balances and one of these is that congress has to authorize government funds. And they didn't. Over a law that itself has already passed. So, short of rewriting the constitution what could a president do in this regard?

Just a random selection of effects: Programs such as nutrition programs for women, infants and children will be affected http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2013/10/02/government-shutdown-9-million-moms-and-babies-at-risk-as-wic-program-halts/ Veteran's programs that arguably are already have massive backlogs will set back even further http://www.npr.org/2013/10/03/228733842/government-shutdown-will-add-to-vas-backlog A number of invisible effects are there, as having less safety inspections for airlines http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2013/10/02/government-shutdown-means-airplane-safety-checks-are-suspended/ If the shutdown goes on for too long funds for student aids will run out http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/09/29/how-government-shutdown-would-affect-public-schools/ But to the most important point is that it does not even matter. Due to the high incumbency rate with rates above 90% plus gerrymandering of districts, the representatives have have virtually nothing to fear. There is simply no accountability.

Depends really on the experimental setup rather than statistical methods. I believe the database you linked to explicitly used literature data rather than using raw data and infer relationships from there. There are statistical methods to model and look at network relationship but they are a bit hit and miss. Most often a standard experiment would look like this: Mutate potential regulator, check whether putative target is up or down regulated, (using statistics to compare to wildtype). As the expresion data is relative (usually) it is almost impossible to infer anything outside of the context of the experimental setup. In other words, if you only had raw expression data you generally would not be able to reconstruct how the elements interact with each other. Edit: I should add that it obviously also depends on the type of expression data. One could for example apply multivariate statistics to infer interactions. However, it is usually not terribly accurate.