CharonY

There are even worse consequences. One we have seen is that folks are not only taking in LLM or AI outputs uncritically. More and more, they are not even reading the outputs and just parrot them. Basically folks parrot those stochastic parrots. The danger here is that folks are not only losing the ability of critical thinking- basic skills like reading and reading comprehension is also diminishing. I am aware that in the past there there was always a kind of moral outrage from the older generation lamenting how tools are going to degrade human skills. However, we are starting to see real shifts in basic reading skills especially (but not exclusively) in the younger generation, which are not filled by other means. And in contrast to archaic skills that have become obsolete, reading and being able to process information is, in my mind, a foundational skill that is needed in every society, regardless how technologically advanced it is. For the first time we are seeing evidence of things happening that old folks have been yelling about for millennia, mostly because it is happening way faster than anything else I am aware of.

Even less than that. Evolution is basically just what we call the process by which allele frequency changes with time. It is like watching a pot boil and try to derive intention of the pot and its purpose. Yet all that happened is that a heat source transferred energy into the liquid. It did not boil because the pot really, really wanted it. Evolution is just the consequence of things happening to the gene poll when certain conditions are met present (basically, deviation from Hardy-Weinberg conditions). If you put together a combination of mechanisms, such as mutations, non-random mating, gene flow, and selection, the gene pool will change.

Even worse, it is literally just talking to a chatbot. What is the point if there is no person on the other end to talk to?🤖

So you are saying just because something affect something else in the future, there must be an intention? That suggests that there is no action without intention, at which point the worm "intention" becomes meaningless.

You failed the most basic thing that you learn in school regarding providing references (and not using LLM to write your work). The continued attempts at obfuscation suggests that the arguments are not made in good faith. It is trivial to provide at least the abstract, which is always freely available, or failing that, provide the full reference. As you cannot pull them up, it is clear that you could not have read the abstract. I will also note that ChatGPT likes to make up references with Gao as the first author for some weird reason. Funnily, there is actually a researcher named Gao who works on the field of LLM and imaginary references. If a hinge moves increasingly smooth by being operated multiple times so that in the future the movement is very smooth, did the hinge act with intention?

You are missing the point. What you are posting is what the LLM is saying the presumptive article says. If we are asking for references we ask you to go to the source and read it. Otherwise we are just discussing imaginary musings of an LLM. If the paper exists and you have read the abstract, you should be able to provide enough information for others to find the article. That is the main purpose of references. Also even if the first article article existed and the summary is accurate, it still merely says that cells are able to read subtle cues and anticipate reactions. As it says nothing about genetics, it does not not actually address evolutionary forecasting. Rather if a mechanism existed to anticipate change, that one would be a selective advantage, which again would be classic selection. The issue here is that the LLM really doesn't understand the difference between signaling, cellular adaptation and evolutionary adaptation. For example there are papers discussing mechanisms which allows bacteria anticipate stimuli (through "priming" of signal cascades and related mechanisms) but these are not evolutionary adaptations.

So just some quick information, will add details when I got more time, but all cohorts are longitudinal: InCHANTI cohort is an Italian age study with ~1,500 folks with a broad age range, the Singapore study (SLAS-2, IIRC) had close to 3,000 with mostly folks >55. The Tsimane cohort (TLHP) had around 600ish participants. I am not familiar with the Orang Asli cohort and will need to dig out the paper again.

Well, the bias does not follow the US bipartisan axis. That being said, they will obviously be biased on their own perceptions. So you will see a different type of bias here. But there are outlets who try to characterize news media in terms of bias, such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllSides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_Fontes_Media You can check their methodologies and see if you agree with them.

Aging is generally associated with an increase in chronic inflammation. There are multiple hypothesis why that might be the case, including cellular senescence causing issues that the immune system tries to clear up to issues with the immune system itself. These chronic inflammations are associated with a wide range of issues, including dementia. This study is interesting as it provides some preliminary information challenging the notion by looking at inflammation markers across populations with different levels of industrialization. And found that in non-industrialized populations, inflammation is associated with infections, but not with aging, compared to industrialized countries. It suggest that there is a lifestyle effect that impacts how we age. It should also be noted that while there are biomarkers associated with inflammation, they are rather broad with different molecular functions and there is no consensus panel that we can pull out, rather it is a bit of a patchwork of markers that are involved in immune signalling (e.g., cytokines) and/or modulating immune responses. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-025-00888-0

On the college level It is a trend that I have seen in the UK, US and Canadian systems. In each case the reasons are that a) they cost more many than they bring back and b) especially younger students dislike them as it is harder to get perfect grades without putting much effort in. In Germany and from what I have heard in France and China labs are still very much present and a requirement. One of the reasons is that the students do not really pay meaningful tuition and the university is not pressured cater to the bulk of the students who want an easy time and learn little. With regard to video tuition, for the most part I found it useless. Learning via video is more difficult at the best of times and most are paying even less attention. I also found that me just hovering around is a strong motivator. They hate it, but they accidentally learn stuff just just to make me bugger off.

In a way they are, but within that the usage tends to be fairly specific. I think you have been thinking about homologous traits, which refers to similar basic structures that are found in different taxonomic units. Within a population this, to my knowledge is not referred to as that. How we define taxa is a somewhat different issue. But generally speaking, if we have free gene flow I don't we would refer it as those. Mind you, I am mostly coming from a molecular perspective so I am not sure whether there is another usage (I suspect that I would have come across that by accident, though).

By definition no fertilizer can be persistent. Their function is to be metabolized by crops (and other organisms) so they would eventually be used up. A big issue is overfertilization, of course, leading to algal blooms which has immensely detrimental to many river and lake systems. DDT and other organochlorines are persistent, but typically the big issue is that the are bioaccumulative (i.e. organisms cannot effectively get rid of them and they accumulate over time). This can lead to issues but we are typically looking at longer-term impacts (compared to fertilizers).

That is impossible to answer as there are generally various configurations for SEMs. But depending on capabilities you are often looking at 60% or more of the original price for a working instrument. I assume you refer to magnification? Generally zoom is not the term used here except for the idea of digital zoom (and in light microscopes zoom usually refers to continuous magnification objectives).

I am not entirely sure what you mean or at least the use of the term homologous seems a bit odd to me. Do you mean present in all members of a species, such as in a fixed allele? That is unlikely as they looked at many loci. The likelihood of many variants arising and being beneficial within a short time frame is rather slim. And that also somewhat addresses your comment regarding diversity- we are not looking one specific allele that is getting fixed.

Not meant as a criticism, but thinking about the title, obviously the score would be far higher in favour of evolution, even if we limited ourselves to studies to a topic like e.g. "rapid evolution of novel trait". I think most studies are just not sexy enough (though some the traits are sexual) to make it to newspapers.

IIRC that study did not do genetic work. I.e. while it was speculated that there was adaptation, I don't recall that they e.g. bred the frogs to see whether the coloration persisted.

Yes pretty much, though again the interesting thing here is that we are looking multi-loci changes which will have a range of phenotypes. And among those they somehow confer protection, but is a bit different to the textbook one (or few) gene and a specific phenotype situation. And to be clear, this is likely what happens much more common overall compared to the highly specific examples we find in textbooks. But the main reason we usually talk about the simple cases is because the others are technically difficult to assess and in many cases we don't really understand the underlying mechanism. Just that somehow the new genotype in this specific situation seems to be beneficial. It is the biology equivalent to physic's spherical cow in a vacuum model.

I think that is down to a bit of a difference in language use between common and scientific usage. In biology an evolved trait does not mean that a trait emerges that was not there in the population. Rather it refers to some threshold increase in frequency (often in comparison to other traits or to some other baseline). The study in question is a bit more interesting than that, though they looked at multiple things. First, it is not a study looking a single allele which is under strong selection. Examples of these are fairly common, and there are a lot of models (say antibiotic resistance genes) where one can look at those. Rather, the folks look at many loci and found that there was a large shift in many loci between adult trees before the fungal outbreak and juvenile trees. In their simulations they estimated about a third of the juvenile population was selected against and in the surviving population there are many genomic shifts which could not explained by random selection. Thus it is an example of polygenic adaptive change in the population over a short time frame. And again change is meant in terms of frequency change and not necessarily change due to something new popping up, though some might be new.

Pretty much. Though we do not add a preservative, we generally use sterilized solutions and keep it that way if we are using them. I believe in rare cases (and with compatible material) we also had stored them in ethanol, but rarely.

Oh OK, I should probably explain my reasoning better. Since you mentioned a gradient elution approach, I assumed that you were trying to optimize the elution profile. There are various reasons that I am aware of to do so, including optimizing the imidazole concentration which then can be used for purification rather than running a gradient every time, it can be part of off-or online methods where you use a fraction collector to catch your fraction of interest and so on. As that is essentially a chromatography problem, the elution volume would impact the elution profile. So my comment was mostly regarding optimizing the elution profile to dial in the fraction collection. Now if you only use gravity I personally would use batch elution and see if a single step elution might be of sufficient purity. I.e. once the gradient tells me when my target of interest starts eluting I would wash with a lower concentration to get rid of weakly bound proteins and then elute with the higher. Gradients are really only needed when there are other molecules with very similar affinities as the target and at least I did not have much luck with those using gravity columns. Recommended values I have seen are more in the area of 5-10 column volumes.

That looks like a scanning electron microscope. Depending on precise configuration new ones frequently run between half a million to a bit more than a million (at least those I looked at).

That is true, but does one does not necessarily follow from the other. Irrational actors could try to further escalate the situation regardless of the chances of success or a better negotiation positions. Also apparently Trump's declaration of a cease fire has surprised his own officials and there is no official word from it from Israel or Iran.

That is a fair assessment. Though historically, the US was also a rational actor, but the balance has shifted.

The answer from Iran appears to suggest that they are trying a measured response, including giving the US advance warning to avoid casualties. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/23/world/iran-trump-israel-news?unlocked_article_code=1.RE8.16PA.rj_1k8FVEABM&smid=url-share It is a bit strange, but for now they seem to be rational actors. Which is a strange reversal of perception, all things considered. But apparently that is the new normal now.

And to some degree it is also a way to externalize cost. From what I have heard, NASA is actually required to do a "proper" iterative process but with are not allowed to take risks. I.e. they are in a bit of trouble if they were to blow something up outside of a very controlled scenario and with a clear assessment of risks, but also environmental pollution. From what I understand, SpaceX is not really proactive in that area and basically just wait until they get fined, which is one of the potential reasons why DOGE is gutting regulators. Ultimately someone has to pay the bill and the "advantage" of a private company is that they can get others (to do that).