CharonY

I think the paranormal as a kind of quasi-science was quite "in" in the 19th to the early 20th century. Nowadays I do not see much of a way to make a living out of that. Except to write books for those that "want to believe". Or something like that.

Dolly was cloned, which is not related to stem cell research per se. Dolly as well as all other cloned mammals (using adult nuclei that is) aged prematurely, had offspring, though I do not believe that they should be remarkable in any way (at least in theory). Back to stem cells, I would be surprised if there was a controversy regarding adult stem cells. At least, I am currently not aware of them.

Were the protocols you used specifically for S. aureus? AFAIK there are a few out there. If those do not work I would start troubleshooting the process than yet try another one (doing it in duplicate is not really troubleshooting, but rather counts as doing a backup).

It is a bit overused, I admit. For a while I tried to make an argument with "it is more likely to be hit by an elephant, dropped from a plane". The thought that someone might actually try to find a reference to it amuses me in the dark hours.

I have to say I am totally uneducated when it comes to the intrinsic of the politics in the middle east (or probably anywhere else, too, for that matter). However, can anyone point out, why precisely Mousavi is a better choice? Also a better choice for the Iranians, or a better one from the viewpoint of the West. The mass media is not really helpful in that regard. You know, today's reformer becomes tomorrow's dictator and so on...

Huh? What is that supposed to mean?

Well, actually...no. According to http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm the odds of being in an airplane with at least one fatality is 1 in 830,428. Unfotunately I could not find statistics of flights crashing in houses, but rest assured, it is more likely to die from flu (seasonal is the most likely bet, though).

Most plastics are not suitable for fluorescence measurements. There are exceptions, but glass is preferable. LY is generally believed to be of low toxicity and it is supposed not to interfere with the cell too much if used in the normal range of measurements. Of course, in theory everything you throw at a cell will do something, however it is likely that the effects will (hopefully) not interfere what you want to see. Microinjection will definitely alter cells, but if carefully done cell integrity is generally preserved (and the way cells may react should ideally have no impact on your experiment). Especially Fibroblasts are rather stable. 1) fluorescent images of multilayered cells are generally hard to see well. In theory you can focus on a particular layer (unless it is really thick) however stray fluorescent light from cells beneath and above will make it harder to see properly (if at all). single layers are definitely preferable. 2) I actually use a self-made microfluidic chip to electroporate but I look at cell with quite a different focus so someone's else opinion is probably more useful here.

Usually only across small gaps. E.g. put a cell on top of an electrode, and then put another electrode on top of the cell. Measure current through the cell. The I/V curve is roughly that of a bad semiconductor. Or you could grow cells between electrodes. Depending on cell type it does not work for larger distances.

Due to the length of a doctorate it is extremely difficult to predict how the job market will be when you graduate. E.g. there was an overabundance of engineers in early 2000. Taking the data in the link from Swansont's post for example, the unemployment rate 2003 for engineers was 4.4 % (similar to 4.6 in social sciences) but dropped to 2.3 in 2006 (wheras social sciences dropped to 3.9 only). And of course it does not mean that they actually get to work as engineers (though it is highly likely for this discipline). The important point is imo not that academia makes less money. This is generally well known. No one goes into academia to make money. The really unattractive bit is that in contrast to industrial positions you position is up to tenure always limited (you can, of course be laid off in industry, too, but the contract is often not time limited per se) and, which is even worse, instead of increasing the chances of promotion by staying in academia, there is a peak time, after which your chances actually gradually decrease. So if you belong to the unlucky ones stuck too long in academia (e.g. by making choosing bad postdoc positions, or getting underfunded faculty positions) the career chances go down the drain. The industry as well as academia is meanwhile very interested to have as many PhDs as possible, regardless of actual job opportunities. The reasons are simple, it helps keeping the salaries down, as well as as increasing the ability to choose among candidates. But in any case, the availability of jobs in industry far outweighs those found in academia. In addition, Katz is explicitly referring to physical sciences . This is a bit of an overstatement, however, I recall that a significant number of physical science (especially theoretical physicists) in non-academic fields actually work on a completely different, often physics-unrelated areas (e.g. as statisticians). Now getting back to the money issue. In the study a scientist was defined as anyone with a bachelor and above. Also while bachelors are more unemployed than doctorates (3.4 vs 2.3 in 2003, 2.9 vs 1.6 2006) there are roughly 10 times more bachelors around than PhDs in total and around 5 times more Bachelors in science and engineering fields. That being said, the mean salary in industry (S&E field) for bachelors is 70,000 compared to a PhD with 78,000. However, a bachelor gets a head start of around five years to earn money. By the time a PhD candidate can look for a job, the bachelor got five years of industrial experience under his/her belt. Of course the cap salary for PhDs is higher, but the question is how the promotion possibilities of a bachelor are compared to a PhD. On the median the difference is rather low and almost non-existent between masters and PhDs. Overall if you go into industry in order to do science or engineering for money, it appears not to pay off too well, either. Edit: apologies beforehand if I wrote up too much garbled nonsense again, had a number of deadlines and hence did not manage to grab enough sleep. See? You got deadlines in academia, too.

Well, given the fact that the object in question is of a rather macroscopic size and mass...

I am pretty sure that above examples are all roughly way over the limit. Unless you are talking about sci-fi that is.

But wait a tick. Both candidates have to be approved by the supreme leader, right? So it makes sense that only Ahmadinejad himself would profit from rigging the election. The true power, however, will still reside with the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. I think the role of Mousavi as reformer might be somewhat overstated in the media. But it makes it so easy right? Ahmadinejad = evil dictator, rigging elections, Mousavi = progressive good guy. (And there is Khamenei who does not care either way...).

The space calculation for algae is imo not very informative for a simple reason: the bioreactors can come in a lot of different forms and shapes, in fact there are numerous possibilities to increase surface area, while reducing or maintaining the overall footprint. However, the results I have seen from recent large bioreactor tests indicate that the yield is somewhat low and the costs relatively high.

There is another difference. With selective breeding you affect the genetic composition of the offspring, however with genetic manipulation you generally change the genome of a given organism directly.

I need more details to give specific answers (e.g. what cell, what dye, what is the purpose of the experiment, what do you want to see). - cells can be alive, depending on type of cells and type of injection - dyes can alter the cell, depending on cell type and dye - depending on size of cells and type of microscope you may be able to use petri dishes, however for transmittance microscopy most petri dishes are too thick.

Ehm, cells and most organic molecules tend to have semi-conductive properties. As the link does not lead anywhere I am not sure where the awesomeness is...

Doesn't mean that one should not try. However one should be aware of a) what a scientist's job will eventually be (i.e. no lab work in the long run) and b) what the odds are of getting tenured academic positions (i.e. not that good).

Well, obviously my research need are somewhat higher, and I have not heard much about it. But many positions are actually there allowing research? I was only wondering whether they are numerically significant. Well, in the industry arena you will normally do things that are not related to your PhD stuff. With a little exception on some techniques, maybe (e.g. knowing how a HPLC or MS works). This is basically true for all areas, including biotech. Of course there may be the rare fit in which you developed something in your PhD and the company is working precisely on the same problem(s). This is extremely rare, though. This is precisely why companies do not want you to do postdocs, in which you could broaden your knowledge, but they want you to get into their labs to learn the stuff (and only that stuff) that are relevant to them. Essentially there is a gap between academic and industrial research. The latter will usually not be a continuation of the former.

Uhm no. A hapten per se does not have a carrier part. But a semi-hapten is the derivative of a hapten (or antigen).

Should be moved to homework. Please indicate first what your guesses are and why.

Your best guess is to start looking for the scores of classical DNA binding motifs. Domains affecting, but not pertaining to DNA binding are, obviously, different. They generally just affect conformation to allow/inhibit DNA binding. The gold standard to determine the actual binding, however, are crystallization studies. Alternative to that one could try to isolate the DNA-binding domain (plus possible dimerization domain) and demonstrate binding by DNAse protection assays or EMSA.

I am not so sure about extremophiles. They are heavily adapted to their particular niche, but usually underperform in most others.

Oh well, then we are in agreement. Get a degree, but do not aim to become a scientist. Something like that.

Well, the article was purely from an academic view point, isn't it? As such it is not really wrong. The only point where he was really wrong is about the grad school, as you can still get jobs with a PhD outside of academia. This requires a careful choice on the area you make the PhD, of course. The low unemployment rate for scientists is a bit misleading, as the majority are not working as scientists anymore (at least not in the traditional sense as being actively pursuing research). However, grad school does prepare one for jobs in a more indirect way, including the ability to eventually solve problems independently, building up work ethics (unless one is a workaholic to begin with), etc. As such it can provide important skills that will improve once chances in any job market. However, do not expect to become or stay a scientist. (Although we can debate what defines a scientist, I am limiting myself here to people actively pursuing research).