CharonY

It is always the little ones, isn't it? Could be an universal trait. I have heard that they also create hierarchies with other animals, if there are not enough alpacas around (one was apparently top sheep).

Possibly. I would want folks to have some ability to discern fact from fiction. But it appears that this skill is lost. Or perhaps we normalized that facts don't matter anymore.

Groups that have some level of accountability.

I used to be clearly in favour of free information flow, even if counterfactual. The idea was that facts would win out. Algorithm-driven self radicalization and the fact that I got pre-meds citing YouTube as evidence that vaccines are dangerous and don't work, I don't know anymore.

! Moderator Note Similar topics merged.

Deaths are related to number of infections, who got infected, available treatment options, availability of health care, vaccination rates, public health orders, compliance to health orders, viral variants etc. Generally speaking case numbers declined with firm health orders in place and with delays also the deaths. During summer time health orders were lifted and by fall cases increased sufficiently to create a new wave (also driven by new variants). In the US health orders were more spotty in the UK so the decline during summer was much less uniform (especially 2020). Looking at more worldwide data, the seasonality of COVID-19 is a bit overblown. While folks are more outdoors which could reduce infections a bit, in many areas there is only a short time frame (1-3 months in the summer) where SARS-CoV-2 infections were really low. And in most cases there were health orders in place before that. Without, the seasonality effect is even weaker.

It looks very much like a micronutrient solution to me. If that is the case, I would ask the the lab for their SOP, as differences in preparation, especially with metals, can result in differences in the experimental outcome. But the general procedure is to weigh in the required amount into volumetric flasks and fill up to the indicated volume. If the weight is too low, one can increase the volume or create stock solutions (either of the whole mix or of each compound individually), which depends a lot on the solubility of the components and possible cross-reactions.

Viruses are basically genetic material wrapped in protein (and sometimes other compounds). They do not replicate by themselves but are always spread by a host that produces them. Essentially they get in, inject their genetic material into your cells and forces them to make more viruses. Viruses generally become inactive outside of a body over time, but some are more resilient than others and it also depends a lot on the conditions (e.g. temperature, exposure to UV, humidity etc.). SARS-CoV-2 is mostly transmitted directly via aerosols produced by infected individuals.

Especially with high-dimensional data (incl. MRIs) associations are often spurious. At the same time, only allowing high-participation studies to exist would effectively eliminate smaller labs and result in loss of creativity as studies would only be conducted by a few (successful) folks.

There is also the issue that there are a collections of folks who honestly believe that their way of life in danger from things like the white replacement, homosexual or liberal agendas and so on. To them, someone in a position of power and being openly bigoted validates their own believes, which have fallen out of public favour (or are considered non-PC, depending which vernacular you want to use). To them, a potato with a suit would be suitable candidate as long as it reflects these values, which they see under attack. This victim attitude creates an incredibly loyal group that have long decided that they do not need to be tethered to reality. Ultimately this group also managed to marginalize the reasonable folks in the GOP (i.e. those that can distinguish fact from fiction, even if they sometime pretend they don't).

First, something regarding the "sloshing around" bit. Vaccinations do not leave residues behind. They come in, trigger the immune system and then are flushed out of the system. Actual infections with virus or bacteria could stick around if they are not fully eliminated (though with SARS-CoV-2 we have not seen that happening yet). In other words, what sticks around is really just your modified immune response and not the vaccine. To date, all approved vaccines were developed against the original variant. While there are attempts to target vaccines more specifically to a given variant (similar to flu shots), there is nothing that has outperformed the 1st gen vaccines yet. So far most existing vaccines provide overwhelming protection against severe disease regardless of the SARS-CoV-2 variants. However, protection against getting an infection (and potentially transmitting it to other folks) is waning, especially without a booster. Also, as a side note, there are many, many, many more than eight variants of SARS-CoV-2. A huge number of folks were infected and as a result we have created hundreds if not thousands of different variants. However, only few are spreading successfully and those are also called variants of concern (VOC, but not all VOCs are first characterized by spread, some might be of concern due to mutations that could make them more likely to evade vaccines or changed their virulence). However, the dominant ones currently circulating are Delta (some of its subvariants) and Omicron (and mostly its subvariant BA.2, which has edged out Omicron in some areas). These have displaced most of the other variants of concern (such as Alpha or Gamma).

Ehhhhh...... Wouldn't bet on it. I mean, if what happened is not disqualifying, then nothing is.

Not sure I follow. RuBisco is sensitive to oxygen (or rather, oxygen and CO2 both compete for the binding site) and increasing oxygen levels lower the effectiveness of carbon fixation. Or do you mean their abundance increased in response to oxygenation...?

In addition to scale, the platforms are designed to create positive feedback loops so that users stay engaged. Considering that folks are already biased towards what they assume to be true, this feedback loop can start based on some level of reality. However, with each cycle they can be more and amore outrageous until it becomes and almost impenetrable alternate reality which is not amenable to any sort of discussion anymore. For example, at the beginning there were quite reasonable worries regarding vaccine safety. While clinical data looked good, there are (as we any other vaccine) safety considerations that needed to be looked at. However after a couple of rounds through social media, there are now folks actually believing that vaccines cause infertility and death on a regular basis. Sources are of course social media.

It doesn't help that many provinces have still tied themselves heavily to fossil fuels. At least politically. At least silently they try to diversify a bit away from non-renewables, but it is a very slow process.

Actually buying is legal, but it is just so much more costly to do it properly. Why they went to jail is because instead of official donations they basically bribed their way to fake scores and fabricated athletic profiles. AFAIK Canada does not have a legacy system, but I would not be surprised if the student background plays into admissions.

These are often connected (and is mostly a US thing). From what I have heard the reason for legacy admissions is because some think that it would result in more subsequent donations (kind of a weird alumni allegiance thing). As it happens, this mechanism mostly benefits the wealthy (and predominantly white) folks.

Also legacy admissions.

A) I have not read the link, but I am guessing that the two studies in question are the following: https://zenodo.org/record/6299116#.YhpLBi9h06w https://zenodo.org/record/6291628 Preliminary in this context likely means that it has not been formally peer-reviewed for publication in a journal yet. You can wait until it has been reviewed (at which point it would address potential criticisms from the reviewers) or read it as is. B) I have only skimmed the papers and I recall that I mostly nodded along and did not immediately find anything questionable with it. But perhaps others can take a closer look.

The situation is complicated, and to a large extent it is because the boundary between ROS activities on the cellular level (including in cancer) are often mixed up with dietary antioxidants. It is often not quite clear, for example how much and in which form a dietary supplement reaches a particular tissue and how it might act once there. Studies in beta carotene have shown that once oxidized it might have pro-carcinogenic properties and in radical-rich environments (e.g. where inflamed tissues, lungs) it might increase cancer risk. However, that is actually very difficult to track in-vivo. I think for resveratrol there is some of largest of evidence with regard to anti-oxidative and -inflammatory actions, but hepatoxicity and other issues limit their usefulness. Many studies are cohort-based, i.e. you compare folks taking supplements vs those that don't. But here the issue is that we often only see outcomes and can only speculate on mechanisms. The closest we get to mechanisms are often animal studies, but then there is always the question is how to translate the metabolic differences. I do agree that the data on anti-oxidants is incredibly vague and again is mostly based on cohort outcomes, and especially in humans we have so many variables that we would need huge effect sizes(which we typically do not have) to be certain of a true effect. I am not an expert in this field, and all I can say is that I have not come across a "killer" paper that erased all doubts on effectiveness. Rather, as outlined in OP, we see some papers with positive, some with negative effects (and I am sure a lot of unpublished ones with no effect).

I am still bitter about this. When I read the Watson & Crick paper as an undergrad, I was confused as there was so little (no) data in it. But for a long time I simply assumed that I was just to stupid to understand it properly. Only later, when I wanted to use it for teaching myself (and dabbled a bity with crystallography), I realized that Franklin actually published a paper with the data the way it should have been. It also highlighted the limits of interpretation based on the resolution she obtained. But I never heard about it during my time as a student. It is was kind of a watershed moment for me realizing disparities regarding selling a narrative and following the data in science (and especially for women).

For legal reasons that would be my wife.

I'd say it is adjacent but looks at something else. The RNA world hypothesis (and its many problems) mostly concerns itself with the steps towards the current DNA-protein paradigm. There are relative few concerns about metabolism, as anything remotely complex likely would not have been present. Catalytic properties of RNA are very limited, and require fairly complex RNAs, so folks have looked at other potential precursors of metabolism.

Assuming you actually locked yourself out. I mean, it is a cat, after all.

Actually it depends. There are two competing theories regarding the origin of life. What I have mentioned falls under the autotrophic origin of life, which makes a lot of intuitive sense. However, there is also the heterotrophic theory, which argues that prebiotic activities can result in organic compounds such as simple amino acids could have been consumed by early cell-like organisms. This theory has been buoyed by the discovery of new biosynthetic pathways that might have existed in primordial times.