CharonY

Heh, you mean Kim Campbell who was PM for about half a year? Yeah I guess folks to a careful dip into that concept but probably it was a bit much. Baby steps, I guess.

A new cohort study with over 200k patients found a rather high incidence of long-COVID symptoms: PLOS Medicine: https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003773

That part is apparently from the methods section. I.e. while the calculations all indicate the same total weight of trehalose are consistent, the sugar was added as solution rather than as solid.

I think it is less annoyance but rather the desire to indicate existing knowledge that is prevalent here. Population size for example is something that pops up every single time in these threads and every time the solution is fairly obvious: educate, promote gender equality and improve standard of living. Those parameters have the strongest association with lower birth size. And as also mentioned every time, short of killing folks there is no way to actively reduce the population size (often a link to one of Rosling's lectures is added here, which illustrates the issue).

Technically one wouldn't convert the volume into weight that way as the density of a any solution would differ slightly from pure water. However, as I presume the recipe is calling for 2% solution (w/v), i.e. weight/volume, the calculation would end up to the same. It is just generally not done that way to avoid errors if other notations are used. So in this case a 2% (w/v) solution of trehalose would be 20g trehalose per litre or 20 mg/mL. 2.4-3 mL of this solution would therefore contain 48-60 mg trehalose (the difference is due to an error in doubling 1.2).

I mean, there is a reason why quite a few diseases that were close to be eradicated making a comeback. I am wondering whether the increasing politicization of vaccines may lead to even accelerated spread of this diseases in the future.

The big groups, yes. But there are also holdouts among certain marginalized groups for a variety of reasons. Those folks tend not to join in those demonstrations, though.

There are different flavours of antivaxxers, though the international Trump-followers are a specific kind of xenophobes. Saskatchewan and I think Manitoba are in the same boat. There were also efforts to cut contact tracing, testing and isolation requirements. I.e. if we don't know that we are screwed no one can hold us accountable, right? Health officials have been at odds with the respective governments, with is always a bad sign. Not to mention how burned out the folks on the ground are, and then folks protest near or even in front of hospitals. Even without the frankly insane pay cuts, who would want to continue working under these conditions?

Wouldn't that be an incestuous relationship, anyway?

Seem a bit disoriented (spatially and temporally) with all the re-elect Trump banners and such.

I am not sure whether morality or altruism plays comes into play as such. The financial system is set up a certain way and the players, regardless of individual moral standards need to work within this system to be successful. Assuming that the system punishes altruistic behaviour, a moral player would either need to underperform, squash their moral qualms or quite the game altogether. I.e. if we want to change the outcome I think it makes little sense to couple it to actions of the individuals as such (including CEOs) but rather the system has to see changes.

Or anywhere, really. Wealth inequality in OECD countries has been increasing over the years and it seems that in most countries social mobility is either stalled or decreasing. And you are right, economists have pretty much shown that trickle-down economics does not work. Not it does not work enough, it does not work. Corporations tend to increase shareholder dividends, for example, which retain the funds at the top. With regards to UBI, there are a lot of different flavours, but I think research is still ongoing which variant (e.g. negative income tax, vs income-independent benefits) might benefit low-income more.

I think that is a big part of it. Fundamentally, we are utterly unprepared in dealing with social media. Or rather, our psychology is not well suited to deal with it. Fundamentally the issue at hand is one of trust. Few folks have the expertise and time to evaluate each claim they encounter and there is at best a superficial, intuitive evaluation of the facts. Moreover, we are prone to trust folks that we know or feel that we know more. In societies without with no mass media that makes a lot of sense. However, eventually mass media created celebrities. By seeing folks on a regular basis, even if one a screen, it creates the illusion of familiarity and this is why celebrities have a disproportionate influence on public opinion (see their role in promoting anti vaccination sentiments over the last decades). Now with social media, that effect further extends to random folks, youtubers and so on. Those folks are more trusted than individuals with actual expertise, in part because the latter are busy working in their field of expertise than using psychological tricks to make folks like (and subscribe) them. You can see that effect in classes now. College students increasingly cite random youtubers as sources of information, which I find rather worrying (and I used to be worried about wikipedia in the past). So the combination of a big network of trust without expertise and mistrust of gatekeepers seems to create a system where outrageous misinformation can speed happily along, leaving fact checking and similar slow measures in the dust. And I will also say that this is not an US-specific problem.

Also it seems to me that OP sees SF in a very narrow context. The genre has almost always been more a commentary on society and its development rather than the application of science to a literary genres. In fact, more often than not, the "science" part is just the vehicle to make a point (similar to the purpose of, say, monsters in fantasy). There are of course notable exceptions where the science part is heavy and sometimes is considered under the genre of "hard" SF. As a whole it is but a small slice of the overall SF picture. As such one could expand the question to ask whether fiction or even literature is bad for society.

! Moderator Note Similar topics merged to focus discussions.

It is similar to a decentralized religious practice. There are certain tenets you have to adhere (e.g. only use approved media). But other than organized religion, the belief structure is meme based and can stuff can be added ad libitum. You cannot convince me that the 5g/microchip/children sacrifice things did not start as a joke.

Well, I wonder then how reliable remote systems are. After all, presumably airplanes can also be controlled remotely and much of the flight is automated, anyway. In either case we presumably do not have real safety data to actually figure out whether having a manual backup (and hence a need for a pilot) would improve safety. As the flights are presumably very short and few in numbers it might not make much of a difference, but I think at this point one can only rely on massive extrapolation to form an opinion.

! Moderator Note OP has been flagged as a spam account. Thread locked.

Fundamentally algae as a term refers to a rather broad range of diverse groups of organisms and while in common use algae can refer to marine plant species (e.g. seaweed), depending on the field they can refer to different things. Especially in the ecological field cyanobacteria are rolled together with algae, presumably because in their viewpoint they fulfil similar roles in the system, I guess. Likewise, when folks talk about harmful algal blooms it can be cyanobacteria, but it can also involve other photosynthetic species, such as dinoflagellates (e.g. Alexandrium sp.) which are eukaryotes, but not plants.

There has been quite a body of work looking into increasing photosynthesis rates in cyanobacteria, for a range of applications, perhaps most commonly biofuel generation. There are a few issues though. Cyanobacterial overgrowth (blooms) due to fertilization can severely disrupt ecosystems and quite a few cyanbacteria produce toxins. The issue here is that many marine and freshwater systems are warming and deoxygenating due to climate change. Those in which also algal blooms occur that damage the systems beyond individual actions. Note that algae do not necessarily counter deoxygenation. If the system is heterotrophic, i.e. the biomass is being consumed it will have high rates of respiration which can result in further net deoxygenation. That being said, there have been speculations on whether on specific conditions algae could be used as net carbon sinks. So while it cannot be entirely dismissed there is the issue that such an approach can severely disrupt ecosystems.

I think so, too. However, you cannot force someone to get a rounded education, it is something you want to have and work for in the first place. Rather unfortunately many students now do not really relish the critical thinking part but are hyperfocussed on grades and optimizing what to learn (i.e. the minimum needed to get the most time efficient grade). They won't even read book chapters on their own anymore as they think it is too inefficient.

There is an interesting side point here. Vocational schools should be boosted more. The training for specific professions has a different philosophy and approach than that of basic higher education. And quite a few folks getting into uni are really looking for more vocational-type training.

Let me contrast that with a situation that is already happening. As in NA higher education is seen mostly through a financial lens, degrees that presumably lead to better jobs (folks actually often misjudge which degrees have higher salaries or higher employment rate, but that is probably another matter). As a consequence we have classes full of pre-meds and other pre-professionals who have zero interest in the subject matter, and do poorly as a result. Basically the only question we get are not about the subject or questions of understanding but "what will be asked in the exam?". Certain ways of teaching do not work any more for these reasons. It is not an either or question, there always be plenty of folks trying to get a more vocational style degree. However, it is detrimental to teaching and learning if the only reason to take them is because they are seen as "useful". As a consequence not only does the degree (should they get one) not necessarily pay off career-wise, they also have likely learned little as the topic was not in their interest in the first place. As faculty we are not well-equipped to weed those folks out, either. The university administration has a vested interest to keep enrolment high. That then leads to a drop in quality of graduates and industry is more hesitant to take fresh graduates in. I would much more prefer a stricter weeding process and have folks succeed in areas where they are actually willing to put time and interest in. If they are good in a given degree, their chance of employment even in what folks may claim to be useless, increases dramatically, as they will have a broad intellectual and soft skill set that can be beneficial in many roles. Conversely, if you are just scraping by in a "popular" degree, you will be quickly outcompeted. Similarly, even having stellar grades does not mean much nowadays, it may just be that you are great in memorizing without really learning (and in the pandemic time cheating has been more rampant than usually). So once it gets to the interview process where one needs to show problem solving skills things fall apart, based on what we hear from industry.

I think that is the crux of the matter. The terms are similar and the to some extent the mechanisms, so it is intuitive to apply individual debts, which folks arguably are more familiar with, to national debts. However, it of course neglects the fact that personal debt is actually not the norm when to think about debts, to some extent it is an exception. There are huge differences between debts and debts that even a small company can and should take on. Or even between low and high income debts. Many folks make the mistake debts for lost money rather than investment opportunity. As long as you are not dependent on debts to sustain minimum operations, it often increases your ability to expand and increase net revenue. There is a reason why companies who do have huge cash reserves and record revenue (like, Apple) still maintain a huge chunk of long-term debt. Even without governmental mechanisms, it is net more profitable to do so. And just to re-iterate, the subprime mortgage crisis was not because household debt was too high, it was more related to how it was distributed.

Just as a minor side note, European systems vary quite significantly and in quite a few charging significant tuition fees (e.g. UK), especially for international students. In almost all postgraduate degrees are significantly cheaper than in North America. However, there are elements that inflate costs in the US and Canada. One that has been mentioned is the public support from states/provinces and feds which forces the universities to compensate with higher tuition. The other part however, is students in North America are used to a much higher level of support. Universities across NA are run like companies with recruiters competing for students (again, due to cuts from public funding). In this model amenities and administrative support (e.g. student support offices) etc. are required to remain competitive, which at least partially inflates prices. Our somewhat smallish faculty has a few full-time recruiters and student support counsellors. Whereas when I studied in Germany the whole counselling for my degree was a 30 minute presentation done by a staff scientist/instructor (who actually gave wrong instructions forcing me to add a semester to complete my degree). But it was fully funded by taxes. It is not the only issue but I think full public funding can actually result in more efficiencies that drive costs down, which runs a bit counter to the assumption that capitalist mechanisms will reduce costs. In that regard higher education is closer to health care.