CharonY

Well the example that you put out for biomed scientists is a bit optimistic. Working at a national institute can give you 38k, but the average is lower. I have seen salaries from 30-40k. Of course it is not an automatic progression, you only make postdocs because you could not get a faculty or industrial position fast enough. Also note that faculty is not the end of the road. The really important bit is tenure, which is usually at least 5 years after the initial faculty position. Engineers enter faculty earlier. However it is expected that they enter earlier. I.e. if you do not find a faculty position within two postdocs at the latest, your chances of ever getting one will plummet. I have seen fresh PhDs immediately getting a position, but usually that only works if your advisor has good contacts and an interest in promoting your career.

However, tool use of wild animals has often been reported and is likely to have predated human tool use.

Well I am not sure how serious that is to be taken, however it was published in a peer reviewed journal (low impact, but still). Influenza or not influenza: Analysis of a case of high fever that happened 2000 years ago in Biblical time Kam LE Hon email, Pak C Ng email and Ting F Leung email Department of Paediatrics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Prince of Wales Hospital, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China Virology Journal

Franklin's story actually gives important insights into the live in academia (and I believe most of it still holds true). One way to look at it was the fact that she did not provided enough balance between communication (including handwaving) and secrecy. It probably did not help that she was a woman. Regarding bad scientists, I would basically put people in that deliberately conducted fraud. This includes e.g. the famous autism fraud and ethical misbehavior conducted by Wakefield. Of course one could argue that they do not deserve to be called scientists.

From memory there are four bones involved in forming the knee join: femur, tibia, fibula and patella. The four bar linkage is simply established between femur and tibia with linkages by ligaments, though. At least, if I recall correctly. It has been a long, long while since I last worked with something that had knees....

Multicellularity arose several times (even in prokaryotes, to some extent) throughout history, if that was the question. Edit: cross-posted.

There are different definitions for synteny. Classically it was used to define genes on a given chromosome whose distance was unknown. More recently it has been used to actually describe genes co-localized in a genomic block. There are some finer points to it as well, that I will ignore for now. However, neither of these definitions describe the scenario in the OP. A single gene can, obviously not be co-localized in any way. What is being described is most likely an orthologous relationship, i.e. separation by speciation (in theory they could be also be paralogs, if duplication occurred first, but let us ignore that for now). In order to have any form of synteny (according to modern use) the scenario should be like this: Genes A and B are localized in a given genomic area in humans and in mouse we have an area containing two orthologous genes. They would then have a syntenic relationship. In other words, synteny is normally referred to conserved blocks, not single genes. Now, if the OP is slightly rephrased as e.g.: Gene A and B are within syntenic blocks, Not necessarily, as some definitions of synteny do not require the correct order or colinearity. Conversation can also be the existence of orthologous genes in any order. To summarize, if you deal with an old-school geneticist you probably should not use the term synteny to describe the relationship between species. If you look just as a single genes, use paralogous or orthologous instead. If looking at blocks and you use the modern definition you can use synteny, if you want to respect the historic term use conserved gene neighborhood instead, and apply the term collinearity when appropriate.

This thread started with speculations and did not improve. Thus a warm welcome to the speculations forum.

n+1

Not necessarily. If the required element is abundant there will no selective pressure to maintain them. I.e. mutations can occur within this genes without strong negative effects on the organism. There are scenarios, in which that may be an advantage as flows towards the synthesis of the abundant nutrients could be diverted to something that is more needed. However, synthesis pathways are normally strictly regulated anyway. One would have then to take into account the underlying regulatory networks and the potential effects of disruptions of those by mutations to estimate their impact. In many cases a neutral assumption comes close to what happens, though.

I wouldn't know a single analytical technique that requires some kind of interaction and is thus indirect. Not even our senses provide direct measurements (and we have to, one way or another plug the measurements into our senses, even if it is just via a screen). Despite the fact that it has indeed been observed species is a lousy hallmark of evolution. This is in fact the case because evolution happens and results in gradual changes within and between populations. However the species concept is something we plug on top of it for easy classifications purposes. It is only partially matched by nature. It is especially appalling when we go down to bacteria, for instance.

The article I was refering to was this one: Circulation. 2006 Jun 13;113(23):2690-6. Critical time window for intra-arrest cooling with cold saline flush in a dog model of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Nozari A, Safar P, Stezoski SW, Wu X, Kostelnik S, Radovsky A, Tisherman S, Kochanek PM.

I think they basically used hypothermia to minimize brain damage. Key was to induce the hypothermia quickly after cardiac arrest. If that was delayed, most died. It is more a means to delay death rather than bringing back the dead. It depends a bit on the definition of course, but biologically rarely something happens immediate.

Also it would be an oversimplification to attribute everything to specific adaptations (i.e. exclusively in terms of selective advantages or disadvantages). Except in cases of extreme selective pressures other mechanisms are involved in governing the spread of a given trait.

Also I object against biologists being bunched together with medical sciences.

It depends on how broad you want to define the microbial composition. There are already differences between individual humans in terms of composition, for instance. At the same time the composition is dynamic and if we provide similar ecological niches, similar compositions are to be expected. Certain bacteria (as e.g. Escherichia) are found in many mammals as well as birds, whereas e.g. Bifidobacterium is mainly present in pigs and humans, also in the rumen of cows (but they get digested before they can become feces), but not in poultry, for instance.

One should note that up until recently the German system is completely different from the American one, not only medical school. In Germany you choose a subject (e.g. biology, physics, chemistry etc.) and the whole curriculum is created around these topics. I.e. biologists get a different chemistry training than chemists. Thus the medical school equivalent basically does the same as any other discipline. I disagree that highschools in Germany have advanced labwork, though. I do recall that calculus is part of the basic highschool curriculum, though.

It depends on the selective pressure the organism face to maintain a small genome size. Best example are viruses who only have a very small genome and face physical restrictions in size. Many bacteria also have a selective advantage (faster propagation) when it comes to having smaller size, though there is trade-off with metabolic versatility. More complex eukaryotes have less restriction and therefore are able to maintain larger genomes, even when they serve no immediate purpose. Note that the accumulated "junk" can gain functions at some point as they can serve as a base for genetic variability that organisms with small genomes do not possess. Also they can serve as harmless hot spots for viruses etc. At this point it may be useful to make it clearer what everybody is talking about. For instance whole genome size vs ORFs vs non-coding functional regions vs regions with unknown function. Or another example is what one means with expressed. E.g. under regulatory control or just dysfunctional in its expression (e.g. by mutation).

Getting no products is indeed often due to primers. You should check whether they are as "optimal" as possible (e.g. checking for repeat runs, unspecific binding, GC content etc.). While one could ascertain proper binding of individual primers to the template, most of the time it is easier and cheaper just to generate new primers. If the GC content is high you may want to use additives to lower melting temperature, for instance. I also assume that the buffer also includes the ions that the polymerase needs (usually Mg2+). If it is separate from the rest of the buffer you can also try changing that concentration.

Heh, I wouldn't be surprised if that this surfaced as an attempt to, say, renounce citizenship of a a recent US politician that got a Nobel price

Also, what would there be described as foreign power? Foreign companies? Grants from non-US science organizations? An US-citizen sent to, say a European branch to work a couple of years there would become eligible to a pension, if he pays taxes there. Certain retired scientists in fact get pensions from half a dozen countries. Even if the whole thing was true it would not hold up in the globalized market.

So going back to irreducible complexity as an argument? You are aware that even for multienzyme (most prominently tryptophan synthase) complexes astonishingly still examples exist where there are stepwise changes in affinity of the subunits? That it is possible in a number of cases to trace down the development of such a complex into an operon? Do you really want to argue that everything we see now is just as it ever was and that the similarities and differences that are phylogentically traceable are just so designed? Wow. The designer had a heck load of time on his hands. Quoted for truth.

I think the link to AC is very weak. The strongest effect is actually drying of the mucous membranes which render them less effective as a barrier against pathogens. Juice does not help except for wetting (in which case you would also have to snort it, which I do not recommend). Temperature itself has very little effect. Other things to consider: exposure to a large number of potentially novel pathogens from across the world that your body is currently not adapted to (probably depends on how frequently you travel), plus stress due to traveling itself. People for example often have minor gastrointestinal inconveniences while eating food during their holidays, which at least partially may be attributed to the ingestion of novel (or rather slightly different) bacteria in that process.

Three things to keep in mind. First, when we talk about evolution, we are talking about population effects (not individuals). Second, 10,000 mutations can be easily found within a single bacterial culture within few generations. Third, most mutations just sit there and do nothing. They can even add to the genome, e.g. by duplication, though their effect on the phenotype is near nil. Say, a hydrogenase gene duplicates and sits there. It spreads a bit in the population, accumulating mutations in the process (as it is not in use there is no selective pressure). Then at some point a new nutrient source comes in that the mutated hydrogenase can suddenly convert into something useful for the cell. Whee, see the allele. See how it spreads. Spread allele, spread. At which point we marvel how well designed this particular strain is to utilize, say, spam extract. Well this is the simple version (in which we do not want to be tangled up in networks), anyway.

Well, from what I have seen there are basically two different stances. One is that they readily accept that it is way outside their expertise and basically accept what an expert on the field is saying (though with potential of subsequent revision once new information is available). Basically an approach also used to tackle a novel research question. A second is trying to squeeze the information into a format that kind of makes it into their area of expertise, trimming where necessary. This allows them to evaluate it within a familiar context. This is more common in scientist that study very fundamental aspects of nature, e.g. for theoretical physicist or applied mathematicians. Of course, the farther away (and more complex the system) it is the more errors they make. From this group I have seen more examples of what is described in the op (due to selection of data).