CharonY

Thimargarita have been found in various habitats and are not unique to mangroves. IIRC they were originally isolated from ocean sediments. They have a predominantly anaerobic metabolism using among others hydrogen sulfide as electron donor and nitrate as acceptor. The ability to gain that size is based on at least two important factors. First, they are sessile, so mobility is not an issue as for many other bacteria. The second is that are able to store nutrients which allows them to survive nutrient fluctuations, despite being sessile.

The common ancestor of all humans were black, as that is the population were humanity came from different skin colours developed later after dispersal from Africa. Nationality are a modern construct, so it really does not figure into the biology here.

There is no way to predict how humans will look like or whether we will still exist in 50 million years. Being ugly is likely the least of our worries.

Fair enough.

They do have the power to overturn laws that are deemed unconstitutional.

As you said, the case study did not determine that, and they often don't in these studies, if they do not have an epidemiological angle. Typically, Neisseria meningitidis spreads via direct contact (e.g. kissing or extensive close contact). And these narratives with vaguely xenophobic undertones get high interest. I did a quick google search and even articles that mention the causative agent, still added lines about dangers of leftover food. That is is just annoying.

The report in OP is also severely misleading. The case under discussion is this here: N Engl J Med 2021; 384:953-963 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMcpc2027093 And the final diagnosis is Which is not a food-borne disease. The report linked in the article in OP was part of a diagnostic survey where folks could try to perform a differential diagnosis based on all the information provided. The article then heavily suggested a food-borne disease (and I can only speculate that the "Chinese food" angle was just to tempting to pass up). The full case was then reported in the article I indicated and revealed Neisseria mengitidis as culprit. Sources, sources, sources...

Specifically for interdisciplinary papers I often try to find a reviewer with background on methodological side of things to makes sure that the approach is sound and ideally someone in field from for which conclusions are drawn. That is not always possible as you often have to go through a lot of potential reviewers before you find someone who agrees to review it, as Arete already mentioned.

! Moderator Note This seems like a slightly repacked topic posted elsewhere already. The same issues also exist in this one, so please consider the previous comment before goin on yet another rant:

It is one of the weird arguments I started to keep hearing recently, and I think it is based on a misconception of what a vaccine does. Fundamentally, it is a stimulant of the immune system, helping us to fight off an incoming infection. It is not an one or all situation, but mostly a vaccine is considered effective if the overall outcome is improved compared to an unvaccinated cohort. I think part of it is how immune is being used, and the idea that being resistant against infections should equate not being able to be infected. It does not help that the language is a bit loose in that regard. Herd immunity, for example refers to stopping spread, but the situation can also dependent on non-immune system related measures. I.e. by reducing the effective reproduction number of the disease (e.g. by reducing contact time between individuals).

! Moderator Note I see no biological science in that OP. The topic is moved to speculations and OP is requested to provide evidence for their assertions. If none are delivered and this post remains a blog style, it will be locked.

Think about what PDT is used for and where the drug would be delivered to. Specifically think about how the drug is delivered to its target and where low water solubility can cause problems.

Also mechanistically it does not make sense. Vaccines provide robust immune responses including neutralizing antibody formation (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03653-6). And the mortality numbers have been adjusted in many reports and studies by age and comorbidity, yielding uniformly protective results (though with a drop over time, especially in the elderly).

Which means they allow vaccinated individuals to mount an effective immune response, which in turn is the function of a vaccine...?

Or you can ask for a name to be appended to the approved list. It does need to follow certain rules, though (edit: in hindsight not sure whether a name was actually approved or just a nickname).

Do you have a reference for this? I am a bit surprised as most calculations on mutation rates at the replication level are much lower for SARS-CoV-2. Or are you referring to the likelihood of new variants. That is dependent on the number of active infections but also the overall fitness landscape (e.g. effects of purifying selection).

A recent study indicates that omicron seems to have increased rates of hospitalization among unvaccinated children and adolescents. The authors have adjusted for incidental COVID-19 cases and found:

! Moderator Note The answer is No. Also, nothing in the post seems logical, and the reasons for high death rates in the US are well documented and include: - dismantling of pandemic response forces and plans - downplaying the disease by politicians and especially the former administration - crippling CDC and other health professionals and undermining their message by the administration - as a result, anti-pandemic responses were fractured and often counterproductive (catastrophic PPE distribution, is but one of the many examples) - sowing vaccine hesitancy - lack of solidarity and trust in science We do not need a bioweapon, if we have facebook. Since this appears to be an attempt to promote conspiracy rather than a discussion, the thread is locked pending review.

Also, they failed to provide any evidence that there was more safety data out there before any of those have been approved. If you register a trial you propose a time point when you expect to hit an endpoint which can be used to demonstrate efficacy (PhaseIII). In case of vaccines they can be based on infection events or disease manifestation. Once the endpoints are met, they are submitted to the drug agencies for review, where requests for additional data could be required. Due to a little, barely noticeable global pandemic, these endpoints were reached really fast and no surrogates were required. But this this point has been made repeatedly and are ignored or met with willful misunderstanding of the process. So let's ask instead: what endpoints did other approved vaccines met that the COVID-19 vaccines didn't? I would like to see evidence that individuals in any of the previous vaccine trials were monitored for longer than three months for side-effects, before wasting any more time on this. Notice that you again fail to understand how trial endpoints work. Or that in Phase IV (i.e. after release) effectiveness information is continued to be collected which then allows regular approval (which also happened). See, if one does not make an effort to understand the process, it is easy to get baffled. But it becomes an issue if instead of reading up and trying to understand the process, one then creates a dangerous narrative that is based on said failure to understand. In most other circumstances it would be easy to dismiss, but in the age of social media, weaponized ignorance is unnecessarily killing folks. That, together with a distinct lack of solidarity shows how difficult it is for us to face a common challenge.

I suggest that you take a look at the syllabus for your course. Typically there will be textbook recommendations. If the recommended books are not online/open source, you might be able to get them from your library. More often than not, lectures are structured around a couple of textbooks so you can easily read up on the topics. In fact, the original intention of lectures was that students first read the textbooks and then use the lectures to deepen/apply the knowledge and to get guidance into context.

Also folks under cancer treatment are extremely vulnerable to infectious diseases such as COVID-19. In the US COVID-19 alone is only behind heart disease and cancer as the leading disease. The mere fact that there are folks still trying to minimize its impact at this point truly and fully establishes how f---ed we are. Especially when the next disease (or a more deadly variant) comes up. Also, it is annoying the those pro-virus folks newest (or at least one of the newest) talking point is how somehow the COVID-19 deaths are all overcounted, whereas epidemiologists and other folks who actually calculate these things indicate that they are likely to be vastly undercounted. To make it perfectly clear, folks dying with rather than of COVID-19 is for the most part a myth, driven seemingly by the rise of Omicron in vaccinated populations where there was a substantial number of incidental COVID-19 hospitalizations. However, comparing the numbers coded with COVID-19 as cause of death, vs just presence of COVID-19, (e.g. looking the ONS data, freely available and with clear definitions of what they consider "involving COVID-19" vs "due to COVID-19" in the mortality analysis) it still appears that whenever COVID-19 appears, it is still the underlying cause of deaths in over 80% of all cases. Looking at the data, one can also see interesting patterns. Early in the pandemic, the highest proportion of deaths in which COVID-19 was involved but also the cause of deaths was very high (ca. 95%) and dropped when the cases were low and vaccinations started to increase. However, whenever a wave hit, the values go up to 80% again. I.e. if the disease is wide-spread it will more likely to hit vulnerable (including unvaccinated) folks, exactly as we would expect. But then, it is abundantly clear that this is not about facts at all, but rather to try to find narratives to justify one's worldview, even if it kills us.

Basically, if the test was not applied correctly, you do not know whether you got COVID-19 or whether you are still contagious. The rough timeframe of being contagious was about 1-2 days before you got symptoms and for roughly 10 days after. But a test would be much better to ascertain that. Wear a tight mask, see if you can get tested again (either rapid or PCR) and talk to your MD.

Did you use an appropriate gel percentage to see your fragments? Did the BamHI digest also show a smear? Was the undigested product smear-free? Was your estimate of the amount of DNA accurate? You could try to make prolonged digests (assuming no star activity) just to make sure. Finally if it is important, it might be worthwhile to submit your product for Sanger sequencing. Prices are so low now, it tends to be cheaper than the work time and material required to do all the trouble shooting and it gives at minimum confirmation that the ends are correct.

It is simple, really. If you want your group to rally around your cause, the easiest approach is to create a foe.

It should be noted that the UK SC has also limited power as it cannot overturn primary legislation by Parliament. Inherently, their appointment therefore becomes less political as it cannot be used to change legislative agendas (from what I understand at least).