CharonY

Correct. It is critical to point out that the proton-motive force is reduced rather than describing it in terms of having or more protons without point of reference. I.e. the relative difference is what matters.

Well, I would think the majority of scientists are. It is just that scientists are not the largest part of the population.

Not all uncouplers are necessarily uncouplers of oxidative phosphorylation (it is a little bit context dependent). That being said, you should consider carefully what actually the driving force is (not the presence of protons alone, but something very specific about it). And look what goes where and why.

Very confusing wording and little (relevant) context. Do you mean to find out what the total biomass of the Tongass National Forest is and that that value is supposed to be in your presentation? Or do you mean that you want to discuss biomass production/turnover? If you had to estimate, what info would you need, what would be the major contributor to biomass in a forest?

Well, there are also other factors. In science your job tends to be to ask and answer specific question. So there is nothing to fix in that regard. I.e. you cannot fix cancer and figure out how you did it For the individual issues that pop up on the way the approach is often pragmatic, if the approach allows that. I.e. you figure out that a given protocol works and just use it without further optimization (or in many cases, understanding why it works). For other situations, you may need to get a deeper understanding, e.g. if your goal is develop a method (instead of just using one). In addition it should also be acknowledged that science is also on a tight budget and deadline, also the latter tend to be softer. But still, if you cannot get deliverable out, our funding is getting cut. If you do not get it out fast enough, someone else will. And again, I could pick apart the majority of protocols in molecular biology and show that they certainly are not the best solution, just working ones.

I am not quite sure what the main argument is here. One point appears to be aimed at redefining poverty. For some reasons poverty in America is supposedly different than anywhere (i.e. not tied to income, which is the most common measure). And the reasoning is that there ways to cope better than poverty than most people do. While I do agree with the latter, it does not change the rise in poverty or the fact that in America it is harder to rise from poverty than in e.g. in European countries. This clearly indicates some specific economic reasons behind it, rather than lack of ingenuity (unless you want to argue that Europeans are more hard-working and clever). But a better ability to cope with poverty does not make one less poor. One does has less option and less resources. Again, I am not arguing that certain people may be cope better, though there are also physical and psychological limitations. If you work minimum wage to pay your bills you may not have the time to plant a viable garden (and in the worst case the investment may not pay off) plus there are factors like decision fatigue. Everything you do when you are poor is a trade-off and costs mental energy (even simple ones, can I afford bus or should I walk and risk being late or get less sleep?). This can result in decision fatigue that limits their ability to take good decisions and act on them. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all But again, I am not sure what the argument really is. You are not poor because with available resources you can survive? That is not the definition of poverty. Or that compared to people in third world countries you are still well off? That does not make much sense in terms of understanding poverty in industrialized nations.

Also that is quite misconception. Compared to many other industrialized nations USA does not rank very favorably in terms of social and income mobility http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I do not think that this is more or less a general problem and not endemic to the US. There are, unfortunately quite a few reason why the system is like that. One simple reason is that people are obsessed with metrics. If you want comparable measures for GPA or equivalent, lots of semi-standardized exams are the way to go. Just as a comparison: in the former German system it was insofar different as students had to pass certain exams but were generally not graded. Most graded exams were oral and basically in discussion with one or several Profs. The advantage is that you have to be able to use your knowledge in a discussion. Downsides were cries (sometimes justified) of foul play favoritism and subjectivity. Now the system has switched to a bachelor/master system with more exams and the quality in students is really declining. There is politics to blame, as universities (and politicians) love to flaunt grades, or the desire of politics to put more people into colleges. This is by itself not a bad idea, but then one should re-evaluate the reason behind grading. Is it, to have a cut-off to select out bad students? I.e. identifying and promoting a kind of intellectual elite by giving them titles and denying them to others? In that case mass-education has an issue because it means you are taking money from many students who are not likely to make it, anyway (here is where I really liked that fact that German Unis were practically free for students). Is the goal to provide anyone the best education that they can benefit from (but then why exams in the first place?). Universities have to balance these schizophrenic goals to some extent and I really do not know the final answer to that. Part of it is also the student's fault. If asked, most would prefer engaging lessons where they have to think, apply their knowledge, have exams that make them thing, etc. However, in truth this usually leads to half of the class failing and students being dissatisfied. Critical thinking and applying knowledge is simply hard work and not easy (as compared to memorizing). And quite frankly, it is extremely unlikely that you can engage and interest students in all topics. You will always have some that are good in a certain area, but at best average in others. It is just a matter how much they like a particular subject. But if good students see bad grades (for whatever reasons) they get discouraged. It is easier to make an exam that just requires a bit of memorization since it appears to be much fairer than other kinds of evaluation. I know faculty that tried really engaging lessons, where memorization is insufficient to get by. And guess what the result is? Half of class failed and the student evaluations were abysmal. Since they were not tenured yet, they did not try it again. This leads to the other part that is to blame: faculty. Now for that you have to know that the average faculty has a lot of responsibilities. You have to create lectures/courses, engage in research, lead your own lab, compete successfully for grants and fulfill faculty duties. Realistically there is hardly any time to that. Each hour of lesson requires several of preparation. Unless you only have fantastic people in your lab you will spend a lot of time figuring out what went wrong the second you were not watching. Unless you are a micromanager, of course. In that case it is probably your fault that nothing works out. You do not only have to do science, but also lead and mentor your people (if you want your lab to be sustainable, unless you area already established, then you could do whatever). In some cases you have to deal with breakdowns of postdocs and students (yepp, lots of fun). And then you have to worry about money. Constantly. If just one of the things is weak during your tenure-track, you may be denied tenure. This does not mean that your job got less cozy, it means you are out of job and generally have a hard time finding a new one (unless you enjoy competing with fresh hotshots that are a decade younger than you). In addition, many enthusiastic young faculty have been crushed under the combined amount of disinterest and lethargy of an average undergrad course. Under these conditions, it is understandable that most junior faculty prefer to play it safe. And that means providing simple questions with simple answers that do need not or little interpretation. Does it create the best and brightest? No. Most of us reserve that part of the training (and effort) to those that come into our labs. This is also the reason why grad students see a sudden shift in their learning from undergrad to grad studies. Just my 2 cents, of course (also subject to change, as always).

I was always better at getting information by reading. Preferably in presence of a decent cup of coffee. Talking works best for me for brainstorming sessions. I.e. getting big, rough, ideas. Details again better in writing. When I was a student it was slightly different as there were more concepts that you could simply learn. In that context it did help to explain others a particular concept in order to detect holes in one's own understanding. Listening to lectures never helped me much, unless I was already familiar with the topic and just basically listen to highlights..

I normally do not do these types of analyses so I cannot give a definite answer off the top of my head, but the richest medium would be choc, followed by blood. After that all of the plates are at least slightly selective (either for gram+ or -). As high salt is not normally immediately toxic I would think MSA followed by MAC and CNA would make sense. It may also depend on what you want to be certain to get.

Moved to homework. What is a rule of three? In any case, you have not considered the size of chromosome 22 (in relation to the rest of the genome).

There are gazillions of variations out there (I am not even sure why ruminants are singled out). Surely it is way more than a single post could ever cover.

My thoughts precisely. IMO SFN always had the following constants: Threads about : - violating the first law of thermodynamics - esoteric cosmology - denial of evolution - self-proclaimed teenage geniuses AND - ydoaPs is never to become a mod. (Well and threads about Azure losing her pants, but that is also old news.) What is going to happen next? Insightful discussions? I never!

OK, how about cat-hamster weddings with canaries as bridesmaids? Also your browsing history is going to be interesting.

Dogs to cats, actually. But good thing that we finally got to the things that matter.

I cannot comment specifically on anything regarding aeronautics for reasons of having no clue about degrees and potential careers in this area (though I would think that the market is not terribly big). In the years in academia I have not yet found a single example of natural intellect factor. The important bit is not only to put efforts into something (anything you want to master, really) but also enjoying putting the efforts it. If you do not like what you do it is going to be an uphill struggle. You can still succeed but you would have to utilize a disproportionate amount of time as you will lack of in focus and motivation. Also you have to be certain that your "passion" also includes (and in the end, is dominated) by the day-to-day things that the degree entails. I.e. it is not about designing fancy spaceships or create giant mutant monsters (for totally unrelated example on which I am certainly not working on) but the nuts and bolts of its elements that you will have to be interested in. If you think that is the case and you can get and stay motivated (really, it is a marathon, not a sprint), I see no fundamental reason why you should not succeed. And, on a final note, an academic career is sometimes indeed compared to a sports or rock star career (except of course for the money, sex and drugs... well, recreational ones at least). The reason being that only a smallish fraction will be able to stay in academia there is immense competition, cut-throat system and so on. However, a degree in engineering obviously also allows for jobs in industry, so that is not too bad in that regards. Getting a degree is really the easy part and again there is no fundamental reason why one should not be able to get one. The better question is what to do afterwards as the degree never guarantees a career.

... cats I meant to say. Sometimes my post clicky speed is higher than my keyboard typing one. One of many reasons why I am only stuck with expert status.

Bloody hell, soon enough dogs marry

Well, hold on a second. ydoaPs is staff? What happened to the SFN that I knew?

Odd I could have sworn that I have posted here already. In any case, I still have not found the time to read the paper, but the numbers refer to relative risks. In this case it is the ratio of deaths in vaccinated vs non-vaccinated individuals at the given time points. Thus 1 would indicate that the risk is identical in bots populations, whereas 0.39 indicates that a vaccinated person would have 2.5 lower risk than non-vaccinated people. I would have to read it to be certain but it could mean that over time, the relative risk of both population become identical. Judging from OP I would say that the researchers indicate that the differences in relative risk of death is not due to immunity to flu as the strongest effects do not seem to coincide with the actual occurrence of flu. Again, solely based on the OP, not based on actually reading the paper. To me, that would not be terribly surprising as the general risk from dying of flu (even if infected) is generally low (for industrialized areas, at least). So I would not be surprised that flu vaccination protects from getting the flu, rather than from dying (again, the presented data refers to death and not to getting sick).

Computer games were popular even when the graphics were extremely crappy by today's standard. If the gameplay sucks, the graphics is not going to rescue it. Gaming is the whole experience which also includes accessibility. This is why consoles, with their ease of use and relatively low price tags as compared to high-end computer rigs, have a larger market share than (desktop) computer games. And this is despite the fact that from a technical point of view computer rigs are way more powerful. As lightburst indicated, production of video games is dependent on the market and not how technically advanced the hardware is. In the end, people buy games when there are fun. And due to novel distribution models, low end and retro games are making a revival now. Partially because many modern games almost exclusively focus on graphics, while omitting decent story lines or engaging gameplay mechanisms.

What is she doing, btw. Is she coming with you?

Both can happen. The allosteric inhibitor generally causes a conformational change in the enzyme which in some cases leads to a reduction in substrate affinity but can also just lower the enzymatic activity (based on the extent and type of conformational change).

... and that is how I met my wife.

I always found the twitter irritating or distracting at best. Well, I do not feel that I really want to share random stuff. If I feel the urge to do so I prefer to write an email. I do share photos with some friends but that is about it. And I believe they are grateful for that, otherwise I would science them to It does not help that I am not really good at quick witty posts (I am looking at you swansont). If I did twitter it would probably be something like - sitting in darkness - sitting in darkness - wow, light! oh no, just security with flashlight - why is the stuff not growing? - why is the stuff growing? etc.