CharonY

Considering the extremely low prevalence of burqas in France (various report estimate between 300-2000 max, out of a population of around 5 million Muslims), I would think that the main reason for this law is (as so often) score cheap points with the voters. And I agree with the above posters that an outright ban is at best counterproductive. The only good part is the protection against forcing to wear it.

I am pretty sure few would have problems with wanting to secure borders and maybe adjusting immigration laws. Or at least streamline them. However, I assume that many, including myself to use "immigrants are dangerous" kind of imagery (including the implications in the OP). Personally I think it distracts from the important points and is a simply a misrepresentation of facts (as statistics show). There are other, better reasons why a country wants to regulate their borders. Of course they do not sell as well. Also there are two distinct points to address. One is controlling the influx of illegal immigrants and the second is what to do with those that are already here (especially those with no roots anywhere else).

The causes are essentially unknown. Many identified risk factors are of the generic flavor, also associated with other cancer types. Now, there are epi-studies that indeed found correleation between sexual activity, masturbation and cancer rates, but as often, they have to be taken with a big chunk of salt. One study found that younger males with higher sexual activity or masturbation rates are associated with a higher risk but that trend inverted for males over 50.Other studies found no association.

There are a lot of alternative explanations. It may have reacted to the onlookers, was trained to grab from the German flag decided once against it, confused the flags, or simply liked the color better. Considering the intelligence of these animals I would not be surprised if the reactions of the watchers played a big role, though.

A repetition of the experiment (i.e. a repetition of a set of seven throws) is a typical case of multiple hypothesis testing. As you surmised correctly, if you repeat it enough it is bound to happen by chance (even if the coin is not biased), depending on the accepted p (with p giving the type I error probability, i.e. rejection of the null hypothesis that the coin is not biased). The correct way (excluding adjustments for now) would be to increase N, i.e. the number of throws. Now to test that you could e.g. use the chi-square test, using the null hypothesis that the coin is unbiased. The critical value, at which point you can reject the null hypothesis with a given p is depending on sample size. Quick example: let us say we use n=7 (7 throws) The expected (e) outcome is 3.5 head (h) and 3.5 tail (t) according to our null hypothesis. The observed (o) outcome is 7 h and 0 t. Then [latex]\chi ^{2}=\frac{\left (oh-eh \right )^{2}}{eh}+\frac{\left (ot-et \right )^{2}}{et}=7[/latex] However the low sample size may force us to use the Yates correction, reducing the the [latex]\chi ^{2}[/latex] to 5.14. With one degree of freedom the chi square distribution table tells us that we can reject the null with p <0.01 or 0.025, depending whether we used the corrected or uncorrected value. So if you did 400 sets of these throws, you would expect to get these results either once (with p=0.025) or four times. The problem with the chi square is that it requires a sufficiently high sample size. Here, a power analysis can be conducted to calculate the necessary sample size required for a given statistical power.

Some short answers: Growth phase: often (but not always) the log phase is taken as the bacteria show highest viability and activity here. Repetition: as high as possible. You need sufficient for statistical testing. The at least 3 is a lousy rule and it is there as with 3 you can calculate an average and e.g. make a t-test. But I would try as many replicates (ideally biological) as possible. Time constraints should be the limiting factor here. I cannot really comment on the interval, though. At the very least you need the t0 (i.e. time defined as zero point), and at the end of the 30 days. Most likely in the middle and maybe a week after the 30 days would add to the safety margin.

Several things: 1) you need to isolate a pure culture first. establishing working protocols on a community is nigh impossible 2) you have to find an isolate that is amendable to genetic manipulation, possibly requiring the development of new vectors 3) chances your modified beast won't propagate and just vanish if you spit on the ground a) the amount of GFP bacteria will be near zero (even if everything else works). Also GFP requires excitation light in the blue range. So you won't see anything in the end (even with excitation). You could sterilize your mouth and hope that your new strain colonizes it properly (even if only transiently). None of which I would recommend you to do, of course.

Great post, blike. Maybe it sounds wrong, but I am glad that I do not have your job.

Either this sentence was not very well thought out, or there is some misconception what biology is...

This is basically what I was thinking. Normally it is best to run each step in a gel, just as a control. However, I am not sure what you mean with: So your uncut plasmid extract yielded several bands all of which higher than the target size? Of course uncut plasmids run differently, but the CCC DNA should actually be faster than the linear form.

Depending what you plan to do afterward and the competition in your job, too long of a PhD can reflect negatively upon you. Unless you can compensate it with a huge output. There is usually a certain amount of expectation of output and time. Biomedical stuff tends to result in less papers than most experimental physics and chemistry fields (excluding big projects like anything CERN related), for instance. But it can really vary a lot from sub-discipline. The point is that one should not be below the average expectation too much.

And even if true, it would only enforce that they are good and bad doctors. Big surprise.

Marat, you are cherry-picking data here. The majority of the gain is due to reduced infant mortality and treatment of infectious diseases. It is not unexpected that at older age medicine cannot prolong life much more. In with the ancient Greeks, if people lived to a certain age, they could well reach their eighties (and quite some famous ones did). Only their chance to reach it was lower. At some point biology kicks in. Few people, regardless of medicine, will, for instance, reach an age of 100 and over. Medicine has shifted the causes of death, though. For instance, in countries with bad medical health care more people will die from infectious diseases than cancer or Alzheimer's, diseases that typically have an onset late in ones life. Ow and hygiene is a sub-discipline of medicine, btw.

You need to establish a protocol to treat your cultures in a standardized way. Mostly you would e.g. dilute your bacteria into a buffer with the respective pH or use the same cell number and heat them and then plate aliquots on a plate to check viability.

To clarify, you got a band at 2k and at 10k (i.e. estimated total size of 12k?). It sounds to me that you may have ligated several constructs together, which would explain two cutting sites instead of one.

Actually the company would sell it. And here is the problem. Normally drugs undergo three to four clinical trials, based on the outcome of the pre-clinical studies. The costs are increasing massively from step to step. Now, if people were ready to buy drugs after the early, e.g. phase I trials, why should the company do the large-scale risk assessment? Keep in mind that only in phases II and III side effects, and effectiveness are tested. In other words, it would be beneficial to swamp the market with inefficient drugs. Even if fewer people buy it, the profit margins could still be higher. And with regards to the OP, while the rules may in detail be inefficient (which is to be expected considering the broad variety of issues they have to face) but they are not irrational.

All projects will be in the area of his/her interest. Depending on the need, availability and your abilities you will either work on a granted projected, work to establish something that may become grant worthy or just do something of interest. Especially in smaller, non R01-unis it is possible that there will be less focus on grants, though. The best thing to do is just to talk to them.

Let me start by saying that there are plenty of experiments in biology that take at least 6 months. In biological areas one can expect, as a rule of thumb, one publication per year past the first year, which is used to establish the basics. If it is supposed to be sold higher it can take longer. If everything works. If you are not working on a project that is funded, it can be way longer, that is true. However, this is only the technical side. Even a well-funded prof may put you on an infeasible project or does not let you get your PhD. While funding is important, it is also necessary to figure out how committed the PI is to help you get your PhD. This, unfortunately, is not easy and I have no direct advice I could give you. You can always ask whether and how your PhD project is going to be funded (and see if he simply dismisses your worries or if he tries to alleviate them and how). Be aware that undergrad lab experience rarely prepares oneself to what one has to do in gradschool and above. You should also realize that you are not really just studying under the prof anymore. You are entering your first job position, which means that the prof expects you to deliver results, usually either to advance a project or to provide a data that can be used for a project. If you do not propose something that can bring in money (and the prof likes it) you will work on something he/she thinks that may be beneficial for her. In the latter case you will have little say on what you do (I am talking about the US system, btw). Also note that, depending on whether you really want to aim for an academic career (which I rarely advice students to take as first or even sole choice), pedigree can also become a factor.

Well, the demographics (which is likely to have changed significantly over the decades) has to play a role, too. And the question is whether when the problem has been acknowledged as one. It may be any kind of reasons, really. E.g. people do not like to stay or go back to rural areas and so on. I am not sure whether it is feasible to pin it down to any singular event.

Heh, depends on the flavor of creationism. The catholic church acknowledges evolution and has a more indirect role for god. They are also in agreement with the age of the earth. It is strange to see that the church is slightly more reasonable than their followers.

This is one is great. I shall remember and cherish it.

As I said, the problem is that biology is much harder than rocket science. Seriously.

I think you misunderstand (deliberately or not) the role of the FDA. As others already told you, they do not prevent you from taking experimental medicine. They just limit the options of companies to sell them. You want volunteer for a trial of an experimental drug? Go ahead some people actually make a living out of it. The companies are just not allowed to put something on the market without showing the risk/benefit of it. Which, incidentally, is basically what you propose. Why, do you think can you freely buy homeopathic drops, which are essentially just pure water? And more to the point, if people were good in risk/benefit assessment, why do they buy it, instead of a few gallons of water?

Why is it surprising that approval requests are declining? During the biotech boom there were in fact an overabundance diagnostic markers that were submitted, and none of them survived the clinical trials. Was it a conspiracy? Nope, just the new methodologies simply did not work. We have gained massive knowledge and at some point it is clear that unless the next big thing pops up, rates will slow down a bit. Are people dying left and right from diseases? Nope. Is it likely to assume that there are miracle cures that the pharma and/or government are trying to hide? Nope either. One has to keep in mind that pharma rarely is doing basic research. They just mostly buy up stuff and develop it into a marketable medicine. Novel stuff are often initially introduced by startups rather than by big pharma. But the latter bring it to the market. Cure cancer? Well, there is massive government investment into that (just look at the study section of the NIH). Is anyone hiding the cancer cure? Nope. The problem is that cancer (or, to be precise the various cancer variants) are in fact a part of how our body works and alters over time. For certain variants, that are often triggered by viruses, there are actually vaccines available or under development. But for the others it is actually doubtful whether a cure is technically feasible. Medicine hast its limitation. Or rather, our bodies have. Biological systems are easily the most complicated system that we have to deal with and while the advancement of overall technology is astonishing, it is naive to think that we can as easily deal with our biology.

Depending on the aeration, temp and pH red is often something in the line of ferrihydrite that eventually gets converted to goethite. Black is often hematite.