CharonY

Marxism is not simply a political program and arguably its philosophical influence ins more relevant in modern times. What is still relevant are the criticisms of capitalism and class struggles, though it is less frequently referred as that outside academic discourse, I suspect. But undeniably Marxist influence are part of modern economic system (mostly implicitly) if only to more or less successfully soften issues identified from Marxist frameworks. Social justice and related issues are often developed under frameworks that at least superficially appear Marxist. Some of the developments seem to me analogous to the development of Darwin's theories, though it is outside my expertise to really be certain.

People on this forum are saying that you are not reading your own sources and you are wildly extrapolating based on what you think and not what the information that you provide says. For example, from your earlier link it says: Yet your interpretation is that somehow the polls are faked.

It is important to note that published cancer rates are highly dependent on the monitoring systems in a given country. Typically, countries with earlier and more rigorous screening programs for cancer also have the highest cancer rates. This is not necessarily because the rate is actually higher, but because they are being detected at a higher rate. That being said, there are regional differences in the risk. One example is skin cancer which is associated with risk factors like fair skin, high solar radiation and high level of outdoor activities. These are more prevalent in some countries than others. Likewise, diet and smoking vary between countries and are associated with certain types of cancers. These factors are not intrinsic to the immune system or are not necessarily indicative of an altered immune system as such. The clearest interaction on the immune level are virus-associated types of cancers, where immunization against e.g. HPV has a promise to massively reduce cancer rates. But as others have already said, the only way not to die from cancer, is to die from something else.

This does not make any sense. Downsizing of military followed the end of the cold war. It is also a bit silly to extrapolate demands of a country, which isn't even part of the European Union to the whole of Europe. In fact, polls and articles around that time highlighted the different path Switzerland was taking compared to other European countries, including UK, France and Germany. This also highlights how badly this extrapolation works. In Germany, nuclear plants were deeply unpopular with a large swath of the population. While the Green party was pushing for it politically, most of the time, the anti-nuclear movement was a deeply populist movement with large protests throughout the 90s and 2010s against nuclear power. The Fukushima incident further empowered that movement and ultimately made a continuation of nuclear power politically nonviable. However, with the threat of global warming increasing, combined with high energy cost, the mood has been shifting in the last few years. Also you are misrepresenting the situation in Switzerland somewhat. First after Fukushima, there was a big push by the population to phase out nuclear power (from Wiki): The failed referendum was aimed to limit that lifespan. However: Germany is buying natural gas, not oil. There are lot of wild extrapolations in OP and none of them are pointing out, as the title suggests, "Anti-democratic political decisions in the Western countries". With the possible exceptions of abortions, which seems to run counter the popular vote in the respective country.

There are quite a few advancements in stem cell research and also the development of artificial organs. What has happened is that biology is vastly more complicated and folks assuming that there would be quick solutions were not the folks actually doing the hands-on research.

It should be noted that there are only few mutations ("defective or flawed is a bit of a misnomer, most of the time from a biological perspective, though I am aware that some folks in the medical profession use that in communications). There are only few genes known to be associate with Parkinson's, which is not the same as causing it. One example is a mutation GBA1 which increases risk of inflammation and negatively affects clinical progression of the disease (i.e., there are folks who have the mutation and are fine, but once it Parkinson's is diagnosed, the clinical outcome is worse in patients with this mutation. The hope is replacing the mutation could stop or stop progression and has been in clinical trials. However, at least one was terminated and at least as far as I am aware the rest are still ongoing. Other gene therapies target some of symptoms and try to increase dopamin levels genetically. One of these approaches has been in trial maybe a decade ago at least passing Phase II and I am aware that a 5-yr follow up suggesting that motor improvement was still observed in most patients in that time period (which was a major concern for this particular route). However, the improvements were generally moderate. I am sure there is more around, but

Good luck! One thing I cannot stress enough is to clean up the bench and only have stuff you need at the moment- removing clutter just reduces so many points of failures. For plates, I usually do a full stack in one go, as if you keep the bottle tilted (rather than putting it down to grab a new stack) you tend to introduce less bubbles. But YMMV. Also, especially at the beginning be slightly paranoid about contamination and make extra dilution streaks to at least visually confirm purity (or use a microscope if you access to and experience with it).

From the legal side of things, I suspect it depends a lot on what the commission does in practice. I think that the separation of church and state mostly stems from the first amendment: So, on its face I would think that if, as likely intended, the commission promotes Evangelism as the one true religion, it would clearly violate the constitution. If, on the other hand they use some backhanded means and frame it as promoting religious freedom it could pass initial muster. It could use similar tactics to allow e.g. school prayers but framing it around individual choice. This does result in de facto school prayers but make it seem less mandated, which can gradually shift perception. It will likely get challenged in court, where they will likely defend why whatever they come up with, will likely not apply to Islam or other religions. But that his all hypothetical at this point, of course.

I am going out on a limb here and say that this applies to most of us here. (hopefully). Oh geez. And I am already getting annoyed being a designated fire warden. And all I have to do is yell at people.

That is a really great point. While I had a quite a fair bit of safety training (nominally, at least) and they are certainly somewhat transferable, I am pretty sure that I would react faster and more appropriate to, say, a fire in the lab vs a fire at home. Certainly something to think about, especially given all the llithium batteries we got here.

Regarding sterile techniques: It is probably not going to help you, but I always found in-person training way more reliable than books. The most important elements are proper setup in the lab (i.e., having lab space with no traffic or air flow from ducts etc.), deciding on basic technique options (e.g., working on flame vs biosafety cabinet) and then developing workflows that you are able to do comfortably that minimize contamination risks (e.g., develop a routine how to lay out your tools, samples, plates etc.). There a lot of manuals and also free books that illustrate basic techniques, but again, I find that while they can be decent intros, almost all of them have gaps, which is understandable as the implementation is very location, workflow and skill-dependent. Each lab usually develops their own SOPs and lab culture based on their specifics (and sometimes we have weird quirks that people do but their meaning is lost in time. Fascinating, really). Regarding storage, stab cultures can be stored at 4C for a week or two, but you should make multiple freeze cultures as soon as possible. I think you can find some basic protocols on ATCC, but what we routinely do is starting from dilution streaking, then pick a single colony and cultivate it in appropriate medium (e.g. LB+antibiotic for a given plasmid) overnight. Culture are then mixed with glycerol (25%-50% (v/v)) and frozen. For longer storage, DMSO methods are preferred. For chromatography, the methodology is similar, and there are a host of other methods which might or might not be applicable to your needs. If you have a choice of methods I would just grab either a basic bioanalytics book and skim it, to just get an idea what is out there and what might work for you and then talk to multiple manufacturers and applications specialists to discuss what might work on your budget. Alternatively you could approach from it a protein purification side. Importantly, I suggest you find folks to ask questions. This is one area I regret a bit as I learned being a bit too be self-reliant as grad student, which helped me a lot way later in my career. But if I had done the opposite, my projects would have proceeded much faster.

I recall that about ten years back there was a story about a printed apartment complex in China. I do wonder what shape they are in now.

Yeah my lab was too ahead of the curve and funding dried up. Now it is an issue everywhere... There are also concerns like air contaminants from roads and traffic or volatiles generated by cooking. It is one of the issues where the concentrations and levels are of concern, but solutions are difficult as they very much cut into lifestyles or are simply not addressible. A recent issue in the news were gas stoves, for example. Then you got the ongoing release of particulates including from mud or other building materials as well as carpet, or textiles. Luckily I don't work in this field, but I helped out a colleague in biological interpretation of data many years back and, well, homes are filthy. I try not to think too much about it.

Yes, the bioaccumulation is pretty much the main thing that creates concerns, mostly related to long-term exposure. Plastics are not the only example, but essentially all non-biodegradable products, like PFAS fall into that category. I have worked on the latter and it took many years to accumulate enough evidence to link them to unfavorable outcomes. For plastics we are still fairly far away though right now the hype is a bit outpacing the evidence. That being said, it might chance in a decade. However, a bit of a difference to me is that while plastics and PFAS have gained use since the 50s the evidence we have seems to suggest that PFAS exposure increased since the 70s markedly, especially among higher income folks. While we lack the historic data on nanoplastics, there is good reason to believe that our exposure was higher for a longer time, considering all the routine contact with plastics we have. It is possible that there is also an accelerated exposure, but AFAIK there is no longitudinal data. The reason why that is relevant is that in the PFAS study we were able to identify groups of folks who had overall lower exposure, even when accounting for age and other factors. With plastics my suspicion is that it is going to be very difficult. Folks with low plastic exposure are likely going to have a fairly radically different lifestyle, as it is just so unavoidable. It is then difficult to assess if any differences in health are due to plastic exposure or something else.

I suspect that in intact leaf oxidation should be lower, though I am not certain whether it really translates to the final tea. I always prefer loose leaf, too, though. That being said and I am not sure whether we discussed it elsewhere, there is justifiable skepticism regarding the immediate threat of nanoplastics for health. I think in general the major issue is environmental impact. The research in non-acute toxicity is always tricky, especially if we look into long-term effects and the data at this point is still not particularly strong. It is also problematic because the exposure is going on for many decades so we do not really have a good negative control to assess health impacts. While there are animal and in vitro studies, reproducible harmful effects are to my knowledge mostly on the high but are also difficult to distinguish from, e.g. general inflammatory responses (e.g. induced by diet). I have not doubt that less exposure is better (as always) but not certain how high I would rank it in terms of stuff we are exposed to every day. I would put home air quality higher, for example.

No one mentioned fibrin generation. The secondary comes from the action of hirudin on thrombin then hirudin interaction via PARs and then platelet activation. This is mostly a push for you to stop just making a claim an throw up links that in no way support your claim. Again, your source contradicts your logic and yet you keep sidestepping that. There is no way to figure out why you make those claims and/or use these resources, which is just incredibly lazy and it really doesn't matter if it was AI or not. You are effectively making the same mistakes as a the AI summary from google is making. And if that is a summary of your thoughts why would you add explanation to it that are neither claimed in this thread nor are the relevant to the aspect under discussion. This whole text just shows that there is no understanding and no desire to understand the key issues (as minor as they are). The way it is written just throws together factoids and related elements, even if many of them are simply irrelevant (just as the mentioning fibrin, though we never discussed it, just happens to be the activity in the coagulation cascade but is not relevant to the discussion of potential anti-platelet function which happens via thrombin. And whoever wrote the text clearly lacks any awareness as they continue happily to discuss just that. As such it is clear that there is no meaningful discussion to be had and I might just yell at google.

What statement? Whether I read the papers? I mentioned what is in there and how it does not show your claim. I will again note that despite them being your sources you have not actually showed how it supports or your argument. I remind you that you made the claim. I have mentioned that hirudin works on thrombin and acts on an element of the anti-coagulation cascade and is therefore classified as an anti-coagulant. I cannot show you papers that it does not interact with thrombocytes, because well, they don't. I mentioned before that all anti-platelet activities I am aware of are because of thrombin interactions. And this is because of thrombin is also an platelet activator via PARs, which then activate the process. As you now acknowledged any anti-platelet activity are indirect and hence, they are generally not categorized an anti-platelet agent as you claimed originally. And again, if you had read your first paper, you should have asked yourself why did the add an anti-platelet moiety to a molecule that supposedly has already such activities? You may also want to read a chapter on antiplatelets: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537062/ Then look at the passage about glycoprotein inhibitors, which work on GPIIb-IIIa receptors. Then actually open up your first link (or at least the abstract) and see if you notice something. I will note that the classification of anti-coagulant and antiplatelet drugs is a bit less straightforward as they were not based on a full understanding of the molecular mechanisms and targets.

Since you still refuse to engage with your own sources (again), I will help you along the way. Here the authors say that they have the anti-coaguluation agent hirudin and they wan to add anti-platelet function to it by adding the RGD-motif, which was found to have anti-platelet functions. so kindly explain why the authors felt the need to create a fusion product to add a function, if it was already there to begin with. I remind you, this is a paper you cited to support your point, and you have not shown that it does and ask others to do the reading for you is just lazy. I will also offer another piece of information: anti-coagulations are generally substances that interfere in the primary clotting cascade. Anti-platelet are substances that primarily interfere with platelet adhesion and interactions. There are overlaps in the blood clot formation, but as you made the distinction between these two, you should be also aware of the differences. Now kindly go through your references and simply quote the parts that makes you believe that hirudin is acting on these two processes. And again, note that the direct interference into the respective processes is what distinguishes these classes of compounds. I will also note that your second link refers to your first one and the third one is again a synthetic, as I mentioned. I will also add that if you happen to ask AI and force it tell you about the anti-platelet action of hirudin, it will confuse hybrid proteins with native one. I will suggest that you stop being lazy and either substantiate your points, which could lead to discussions and clarification (and thereby someone could learn something. In fact, I would be curious to see if there was actually a publication showing direct anti-platelet activities (i.e. some direct interactions with thrombocytes), yet afaik all such activities are the result of thrombin inhibition as primary function (and hence the classification as anti-coagulant). Alternative, if learning or providing is not your goal then perhaps refrain to post half-understood concepts as facts. Such an attitude is a big inhibitor to learning and understanding and rapidly derails discussions, as you can see here. Also IIRC that guy never even got a license. They are going to pull some random factoids out of their collective arses and then try to create facts by fiat. Public health is looking grim. I have been talking with colleagues and I kind of regret starting to work in this field. It is just getting more depressing by the minute, especially as the stupidity won't remain constrained in the US. In fact, there are already multiple ripples running through global health systems and the one thing we learned from COVID-19 is that we are not ready to deal with such massive challenges very well.

Have you read the paper? I am guessing not, as if you had you will realize it is about a derivative that adds anti-platelet functions to hirudin (essentially a hybrid moleculer. I am fairly even without reading that the others will also be synthetics. But feel free to read the paper and correct me (rather than just posting unread or misunderstood links). I am not sure if the person wouldn't just think that they slipped from coma directly into fever dreams of a dying mind.

Thanks a lot, that confused me as I saw glutamate and immediately thought that it should be all amino acids, given the "peptide" in the title. But while they looked oddly familiar the base structure (for an AA) was off.

I wanted to say that I loved that, but hold on, those ain't amino acids are, they?

I don't think so. If memory serves, hirudin is a thrombin inhibitor and thereby acts as an anticoagulant (but not as an anti-platelet). D'oh. We need qualified persons everywhere. But as the Trump administration wants to destroy public goods, it makes sense to seek out the most unqualified and mission hostile person for the job. That way they can claim that the departments don't work and dismantle them and/or use them as exchemist described. That has been the modus operandi for since he got into power. It is more surprising at this point if anyone is surprised by it (other than those waking from a 20-year coma or so. They would be justifiably surprised)..

Based on those hypotheses, potentially. They are a "natural" treatment, after all. There is already a big push to fund research on harms of vaccines, while cutting research to make them better and safer.

Yes, that is why everyone sane is panicking. It is the department overseeing critical public health agencies such as the CDC, FDA and NIH. The CDC is (or was) networked across the world and is a leader in critical global efforts like the polio eradication strategy. Losing them, will create massive blind spots which will be almost impossible to fill in the short to perhaps mid-term.

I'd argue that this type of discourse is what is getting us in this mess. Apropos, would you mind cutting down on these memes? IMO they create unnecessary visual noise and clutter while adding nothing. Some of them can be humorous, if used appropriately, but overuse just makes it harder to read threads. I also feel that their overuse (among other things) contribute to the loss of attention spans. This is not about invalidation. Prior to Pasteur and the validation of the germ theory there were competing hypothese, regarding the cause of diseases. Prevalent ones were the so-called miasma and the terrain theory. What RFK describes is a bit of a fusion of both which he calls miasma, but is actually closer to the terrain theory. Therein, folks believed that disease is essentially caused by an imbalance in things like "humours" and bad diet. So basically he has the knowledge and beliefs of a quack from the 19th century.