CharonY

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).

That does sound amazing!

First define "established" then provide an example for this specific scenario. Then think about the genes leading to the disease. What happens with them? Think about how that might relate to your definition of "established". Fundamentally, when it comes to population, you do not think about individuals, you think about the the population as evolution simply refers to generational change of the gene pool.

Or to put it simply, one shouldn't confuse fitness in the common use with the highly specific meaning with respect to evolution (i.e. reproductive success). Evolution really doesn't refer to speciation, though speciation is one possible consequence of evolutionary actions. In the most specific sense, evolution refers to a change in the gene pool over time, which can happen rather rapidly. Drift and strong selection could cause such big changes, especially in small population. A more technical way to look at is that evolution happens whenever Hardy-Weinberg conditions are not met.

What would she do there, though? While they are occupied by the Russians and there is ample evidence of war crimes, afaik they are not actively starving the population. Also while I think counting deaths is not the greatest measure for a wide range of reasons, In the Ukraine about 20k civilians died in Ukraine and among those were over 700 children according to OHCHR estimates (2022-2025). While in the regions there is an increase in food security, reported numbers where as high as 40 % (some reports put it closer to 20%, likely on the precise definition) having to cut down on food consumption (e.g. skipping meals https://www.wfp.org/news/three-years-war-ukraine-one-third-population-frontlines-regions-struggle-find-enough-eat). UN food programs are active in that region. Numbers are difficult to obtain for Gaza with some UN counts outpace those of the Gazan authorities. Israel estimates about one civilian death per combatant, others put it higher. But even taking Netanyahu's numbers, which folks generally do not take seriously, the number of civilian deaths was at 16,000 by May 2024. Around a third were estimated to be children. Since then the death toll only has increased and the only increased. Meanwhile, the only food available is external and distribution (including UN programs) have been severely restricted by the IDF. While there are approved activities by the IRC, they identified severe shortcomings. This has dramatically increased malnutrition about half a million are under extreme food security risk and an assessment of 250 households identified: Nearly three in five families reported being unable to find bread or fresh food, More than 60% said they were struggling to access drinking water, and Nearly two-thirds said that canned food was disappearing from markets. https://www.rescue.org/uk/press-release/malnutrition-rates-gaza-skyrocket-irc-warns-israels-new-plans-humanitarian-aid https://www.bmj.com/content/389/bmj.r1252 Again, I do not think a lot is to be gained by making this comparison as both are in very different situations. As such, I feel that it really drifts into whataboutism region. We can also look at organizations operating in both regions. For example World Central Kitchen (a great organization, btw.) has provided food in both, Ukraine and Gaza. But in Gaza workers were killed by the IDF and eventually stopped operations as they ran out of supplies.

The broader tactic here is also to create fear and even if the courts manage to do something, it is designed to put pressure on folks and forcing them to pre-obey.

Might be, but I interpreted as suicidal in form of nuclear suicide vs individual action. But again, I concede that I might have interpreted the exchange wrongly. The question to me is really how much of that is real or just part of saber-rattling. But to be honest, I am not certain of anything in this climate. During the cold war we were only a tick away from nuclear annihilation if not cooler head(s) prevailed (even if just barely). In the 2000s I would have dismissed it as unthinkable. Nowadays, I wouldn't be surprised if someone would just do whatever chatgpt tells them to (that is, after all what the US administrations seems to do).

Wasn't that referring to the use of nuclear weapons? It is a bit of a difference to convince folks to kill and die for a cause, and another one to blow up everyone (including their families). Unless of course I am misinterpreting the exchange. Going back to the nuclear argument, the question is always how "mad" the dictators really are (Putin is another example). And there is also the consideration of how these conflicts might actually increase nuclear proliferation. Russia's attack and Trump's stance have changed or at least softened anti-nuclear deterrent sentiments in Europe, for example.

This again is a result of parroting factoids without actual analysis or actual reading on the subject. Only by taking massive shortcuts would one arrive at the notion that societies are not male-dominated because of a handful notable women. It is just being ignorant of history or society and is a malaise of seeking superficial knowledge without putting in the work. Obviously women always played an important role in society, but their role was/is frequently diminished. Importantly power structures were set up by men, with deep impacts in all kinds of aspects. There is a reason why medical data for women is still lacking, for example and it wasn't too long ago that institutions realized that we need better data for women. Similar is true for racialized minorities, but especially for women in that group. Now we see that that little progress we are making getting reversed by a strongly patriarchal administration. Following their logic, male mental health should be improving rapidly and I have serious doubts that we are going to see that.

No, the numbers you cited I am pretty sure are not from a study but are directly pulled from the CDC database. It does not meant that they are better or worse, but they are just a data collection as such and are not a study in itself. The latter often have specific cohorts or have some further analyses attached. In the study I mentioned they focused on a cohort of folks who actually verifiable attempted suicide, and investigated the means they used, for example. Oh, you are right, things went off topic a fair bit. But the answer to that is that yet again, folks, again have co-opted an issue and use it as an excuse for being racist/fascist. Specifically, it is a common tactic to avoid accountability and place the blame somewhere else.

That is not how statistics work. You might refer to a particular data set (e.g. CDC).

Nope, I was thinking about a couple of studies which looked at suicide methods. The reported frequency differences was usually between 1.5-4 ish. And older paper by Tsirigotis et al. (Med Sci Monit. 2011 Aug 1;17(8):PH65–PH70.) mentioned about 3 fold, for example. It is not necessarily a cutting off, just a weaker social structure in general. As to relevance it is a direct response to. As I said, trends in mental health try to address exactly that. I.e. attempts to strengthening bonds. I have heard of initiatives to get folks at risk to get them involved in activities for example. But the bigger point to me at least is that the sample mentioning of higher suicide rates means little in isolation. Rather, an analysis of the underlying reasons are more appropriate as opposed to an overinterpretation of a single data point. I have only read a little bit mostly because I got into a discussion with a clinical psychologist a long while ago, but even I am aware that there is a huge body of lit to sift through.

The original post is a few years old and around that time we started to have couple of issues which we assumed was due to supply chain issues (it was a weird time for many things). But if there are recent issues that is concerning. We had some trouble with RNA extractions recently, but we have been using Eppendorf plate. But I attributed that to personnel changes for now. Potentially need to run some additional quality checks...