CharonY

Actually no system tried it in its purest it is a stateless and classless society with a common and free access to means of production (only in the transition state a state party or equivalent exists). As you will notice, a strong dictatorial government runs counter to these ideals.

Let me comment on this part here. It is correct that up to (and partially including) postdoc is a kind of training phase after which the real job hunt starts. If you are interested in academic research it should be noted that usually less than 20% of all candidates will get a tenured position. A big weakness in academia is that there is no real middle-ground between tenure and non-tenured position (i.e. if you want to stay it is expected that you eventually get tenure, with few exceptions). The majority of your time spend on a tenure-track or tenured position is teaching, pulling in grants (and tightly connected to that, network), faculty work, organizing and leading the lab, advise students. Only in few cases actually lab work is possible, must of the time that is dedicated to science is spent reviewing data from students. So in most cases the actual research will not be the single biggest part in your actual day-to-day work (though it will be career-defining). Up and including postdoc the reverse is the case, btw. Purely research positions that are not time limited are very rare in academic settings. The majority of PhDs will find work outside of academia, but usually these jobs include even less research. Common examples include sales, support, product management, compliance officers (or whatever they are called) and project managers (sometimes these are also involved in some type of research). Regarding diversification: you need a specialty. People hire faculty because they have the potential to be world-leader on a specific field. You cannot easily associate with a heap of different things that you have done, and it is sometimes hard to convey skills branching out into different scientific disciplines (just trust me on this, it is bloody hard). Often careers are made just by the very last thing you did, that happened to be a hot topic. Bottom line is that a research career is highly competitive, and depends on many non-technical skills (i.e. it is hard to evaluate the trajectory of your career, but that can be said to about any competitive career). You will do a surprising amount of non-scientific stuff, requiring a boat load of soft skills. One thing that you have is that you have already worked, which will give you an edge up and including PhD. After that there is a certain amount of randomness in terms of career development (including knowing the right people, getting the right project etc.).

I do not think that it has much to do with sexual relationship at all, but rather on how you (and your partner) approach and behave within a relationship. While at the beginning it may appear to be the dominant factor, in the long run, you will spend more time with your partner not having sex. Having a large number of romantic relationship does not help you there much, if e.g. it is limited to sexual encounters on the weekend. Living together for a while gives you much better information, on everyday interactions. If, at some point you realize that yes, you want to get old together with your partner and you also realize that a marriage is not going to change anything then, I assume the marriage has good chances. A marriage to save a relationship... probably won't.

I think having a good time for the rest of ones life is a good revenge.

Actually I think it is something different Germans are very private people. In the US, everyone is your friend. In a very extrovert shallow way (at the beginning, which can deepen with time, of course). In Germany only if you are truly of the inner circle, so to say, do they truly open up. Living a week with them is nothing. They will treat you like an honored guest, but not as a part of their family. But if you are their friend, it is usually a serious friendship. There are supposedly local differences, though. Northern Germans are supposed to be more gruff but loyal, Bavarians are essentially aliens and Berliner are... well they are themselves. It is a bit similar to Chinese, I have noticed. Except that the letter have a fake friendly outer face, whereas the German's outer face is something more like faint disapproval. Being "yourself" as you put it, would be considered extrovert by many (which is something I found kind of exasperating in the beginning in the US, the "fakeness" of interactions). I have to admit, German is an acquired taste. But then, what isn't?

Thanks, timo. I was under the impression that the money was at least partially tied to certain projects. I recall some ecological projects in which the GTZ was involved, for instance.

TonyMcC: I think your observation is still valid in many cities. I think one of the reasons is that the drivers are so impatient that people rather jump in before (s)he just closes the door and drives off, worse, shouts at them. Happened to me a few times. It is a bit better when older people are involved, though (i.e. people tend to be somewhat more polite around them, most of the time).

Could you provide sources that show that the West (I assume you mean mostly US and EU?) donates billions of dollars to China every day?

In addition the fact that it has not shown conclusively a link between religion and wealth, it strikes me as odd that the more important issue, namely history, has been rather completely ignored. These blanket statement is an example of extreme oversimplification with no real basis. During the early middle ages Islamic countries were extremely wealthy as compared to the west European nations (I am using nation in the loosest possible way considering the fluidity of the concept at that time). Much of it due to their role in trade between east and west. The interesting thing is that there was no strong feudalistic system in place and still they maintained a loose coherence based on faith (also note that there was no central church or similar organization). Nonetheless they developed a rich and highly advanced culture. Meanwhile after the installing a feudalistic system with close ties to a centralized organisation (i.e. the catholic church) the West was slower in consolidating its power base. Roughly during the later middle ages they became a power to rival the Islamic states. The true source of Western dominance were rooted in the industrial revolution which gave them a significant edge against other advanced nations. Together with expansive imperialism European nations became the de facto power in many areas of the Earth, with consequences still felt today. Thus, to understand the current situation in any country, it is important to track its history. As has been shown in this thread, religion (or any other single factor) is not going to be a good predictor for wealth.

The breadth is not too different, overall. The perspective is, though. Biochemistry looks at the molecular processes. Microbiology does that too, with less depth, but with a broader view on the physiological and ecological impact of said processes. I.e. it provides a biological context. At this point you may as well choose according to interest, unless you already know what your dream job is.

If you make two categories, morbidly obese and very thin, one would first define the the category quantitatively (i.e. BMI or any other measure). And then, and this is important, define the question properly. Then the population has to be defined. Is it e.g. for the US, or worldwide. Both will yield very different outcomes. A finer dissection is relevant to find confounders, but is not within the scope of the question asked (i.e. low weight is more strongly associated with higher morbidity than extremely high weight). In epidemiological studies you never assume a "clean" reference population as indicated above (i.e. amanda more's post). The identification of individual mechanisms requires a different approach and is currently not easily possible in humans. That being said, most epi studies that I have seen associate morbid obesity with higher risk than low weight. An example in US women age 30-55: My link In this study the very low weight class (below BMI 18) and the morbidly obese are somewhat underrepresented. However, at best a positive association between the chance of dying (during 16 years) and weight was observed. Note that the study started in the 70s where there were less obese people around. In a country where food is not readily available the trend is likely to be inverted as there food may be a limiting factor. Edit: found the study I was actually thinking of My link. Here extreme low BMI (17.5) does indeed carry a higher hazard ratio, but was still lower in non-smoking subjects. Comparing all subjects together, however shows no significant difference between extremely low and extremely high BMI.

Every scientist worth his salt is aware that the categorizations we do are oversimplifications and often done in order to create the context for testable hypotheses. A part of scientific endeavors is squarely aimed at developing methodologies that e.g. create more accurate physiological models. It is both, much more and much less of an issue than you make of it. Less, because it is pretty much well-known. It is more of an issue because it highlights our limitations of biological systems and complexity. Therefore the use of mathematical models are powerful, as they provide a quantitative context in which we interpret how the system works. Instead of normal and diseased we would be able to work on the natural continuum. However, we are unable to obtain this goal yet. To summarize, biology is bloody complicated and we need much more basic knowledge (IMO).

The reason is pretty straightforward. Energy conservation is usually meant in a very specific context, and is mostly used in a cellular context (i.e. ATP conservation). The easiest way is to list the different stages and the processes during each stage and what the consequences are if you bypass them. Ions do play a role, for instance.

This question has essentially two components (if we disregard social issues for now) a) how much of intelligence is inheritable and b) does it correlate with skin color. The problem to a) is that we do not really know. Studies vary quiet a lot, which to me is an indicator that there is a lot of plasticity there. And it makes a lot of sense, if one thinks about it. Even if a child has the perfect genes (which we do not know) to make it a genius, it will certainly under perform in about any tests if we keep it isolated and deprived of sensory inputs. Regarding b) black is a poor indicator of race. The highest genetic diversity is found on the African continent (small wonder since the whole species originated there). So "black" covers an incredibly wide range of genetic diversity (not to mention the problems of classifying anything below the species level).

Could it be infrasound (i.e. low frequency sound)?

I would not know how a Mg2+ would be bound to an amino acid. I do not know any examples, but theoretically it may be possible that during AA transport (probably especially for negatively charged one) Mg2+ may be accidentally transporter in. But again, I do know of any examples. If you chemically modify amino acids in a way, then it really depends on a) the specificity of the transporter and the impact of the modification of the overall structure of the ligand. But this has to be analysed on a case by case basis and involves serious modelling.

It is getting somewhat off-topic but anyway: Personalized medicine is something on which whole study sections are working on. The challenge is to find indicators that are predictive with any kind of certainty for a given physiological status and even more challenging to bring it into a medical and finally pharmacological relevant context. There are some examples for genetic markers that are indicators whether a certain drug may or may not work, but overall our biological knowledge is so limited that most markers are based on statistical inference, with all the problems associated with it. Homeopaths, naturally, have not solved the problem, either. The described study is in its design basically worthless as it provides no context. At the very least a control group would have to be treated with a placebo. If the success rate is also 5% it simply means that we can treat people successfully with sugar (or water, the hoemeopath's standard treatment). To see whether an individualized treatement with using homeopathic diagnostics is feasible one would have a large population tested with this methodology, assign them a treatment based on this methodology. Then half of the group would be treated with according to the suggestions, the other half receives placebo treatments. Then one can see whether they really have a method for individualized diagnostics (I faintly recall that such a kind of study has actually been conducted, but forgot about details). Few are arguing that personalized diagnostics is, in theory, superior to bulk diagnostics. However, we lack the knowledge to do so.

Also, there is meat. I would not necessarily downplay, people hire you for a reason (though not always good ones...). But it is important to get a feel for the environment, see where you fit and where your abilities benefit the group best. It is better to demonstrate ones abilities based on tangibles.

Depends on the transport mechanism and the substrate to be transported. Some molecules are so similar that transport systems have trouble telling them apart, and some transport are somewhat promiscuous in what they transport. However, there is always a certain selectivity in there.

Depends on the length of exposure. First thing is numbness then frostbite. Eventually the finger dies off. I doubt that with -25° you are able to make tissue so brittle that it breaks easily. Maybe after very long exposure you may find stress fractures (my guess is that you require lower temperatures, though, maybe -40). There are likely to be reports from expeditions with details, though. Also, I wold not try it out, as much as one might encourage experimental validation.

It is important to realize that even if someone is highly capable one has to fit into the overall social structure. This is pretty much universal in human society, whether it is academia, company or just a random group of friends. Coming in and trying to everything different is usually not warranted, unless it can provide demonstrable benefits (and even then it usually takes some convincing). Proclaiming to be an independent thinker is also kind of dangerous because it may mean that one is not a teamplayer (and there are hardly any larger projects that can be done without a team). And of course there is always the risk that one is not really as capable as one thought one was. Bottom line: humans are social animals, social skills are always needed on top of technical skills.

To be honest, I do not think that any major in one of the natural sciences area locks you in too much for anything. Biochem is less specialized than some more specialized bio or chem majors, however, should you want to switch to anything it is usually not too much of an issue. Especially not if you are thinking about biotech/pharm/med etc. More importantly, does biochem interest you at all? I.e. would you enjoy learning it?

Note that selection is not the only mechanism shaping a population. Depending on the actual history (and that was what Gould argued, IIRC) different stochastic events may have changed the pool to an extent so that selection would result in a different outcome.

Well, it is not sensitive in all or even many animals. Flatworms like to fence with it, for instance.

There are probiotic supplements that are used to help in certain intestinal conditions. But I am not aware of one that would help i.e. during acute diarrhea (also some may help to alleviate it for certain causes).