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One just need to compare the Project 2025 with the historic precedence (in fact, I wouldn't be particularly surprised if they just used what happened in Germany as blueprint adapted to the US). Importantly, Nazi Germany didn't immediately had concentration camps and full elimination of all democratic rules as Peterkin et al. pointed out. For example, they first "just" marginalized and marked Jews and other unwanted folks and the original idea was "just" to deport them. As it turns out that other folks didn't want to accept them it continued first with confinement and then the final solution. Likewise, press and other parties were not immediately eliminated. Rather they were first coerced, threatened and bribed to do their bidding. Rivals first faced threats and then violence not from the main party as such, but by various paramilitary groups. Just take those few examples and look at what the US government is doing now and where the trajectory is. In that regard, it should also be noted that the timeline under Trump is quite faster than what happened in Germany. Also, similar to Hitler, Trump is reigning using emergency measures and aims to normalize them as par of normal executive functions. The US is on an express train towards authoritarian rule and is passing milestones faster than the public discourse can keep up.

20x column is a rule of thumb for a mostly quantitative flush of the column. If running a gradient, it depends a fair bit on the purpose. E.g., whether you want to assess relative purity or optimize imidazole concentrations. The elution profile would roughly follow the same parameters as "normal" LC on parameters like peak width (related to flow rate and volume and gradient steepness), for example.

I think that is right. Fossil records were obviously even scarcer back then. Darwin discussed quite the challenges of fossil records quite a bit in the Origin of species and he was actually quite a bit more pessimistic than things turned out to be. I may be conflating different works, but IIRC he mentioned that soft tissue would never be conserved (which turned out to be not true) and he underestimated the number of fossils that would eventually be found and suggested in his book that fossil records would likely not be able to support his theory. Famously, it didn't take long after publishing his book for the discovery of the Archaeopteryx.

You have to understand how to contextualize observations. We do not have a full fossil records of all organisms that ever existed (fact), but this is not because there are flaws in evolution. Rather, you will have to understand that only few organisms will ever be preserved until today requiring uncommon conditions (see e.g. this link for examples https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fossils/how-fossils-form.htm). From those that are preserved again only a small fraction will ever be found by humans, e.g. because they are inaccessible or were not recognized as fossils (context). As a consequence we only gain information by what kind of fossils we can find and can make only limited or no inferences regarding those we did not see. In addition, there is a fundamental flaw in this line of thinking which has been dubbed "fossil fallacy" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-fossil-fallacy/

Excellent point No! Leave my caffeine alone! ... sorry, what were we talking about again?

That is not a weakness of evolutionary theories, instead it is an expected outcome on how fossils are formed. Fossils require a set of specific conditions to happen to ensure that they are preserved and then they also have to be found. If anything, finding new fossils is the much less likely outcome.

While there are open questions, it also hold a lot of answers. However, many questions posed by folks, including those in this thread are not due to a failure of the evolutionary theories to address them, but by a lack of knowledge about biology in general and evolution in specific. Obviously one cannot expect everyone to know these things, but a good first step is to try to inform oneself a bit better rather than assuming that there are issues with it. It is a bit like declaring planes cannot possibly fly, as they are too heavy.

Already wrong. As any biological they are not inert, as you suggest. They mutate all the time due to chemical, biological and physical influence (e.g., UV radiation). It requires a complex repair apparatus (also biomolecules) to ensure that they don't mutate too much all the time. Considering that the understanding of even basic biology is missing, I would suggest not to try to overturn knowledge that has been established over many, many years.

Yeah that is wide stretch. Any kind of enjoyment by definition provides pleasure in psychological sense. That way, you could classify books as psychoactive drugs for book lovers.

I would go further and argue that any liberal democracy (liberal as an "free") requires universal principles, such as the recognition of human rights, that are uniformly applied. As a consequence, liberal democracies always struggle more with the implementation of these policies as just implementation is difficult and there will be many edge cases which have to be litigated. In contrast, autocracies, which in my book includes illiberal democracies (such as Russia), which only have the appearance of democratic structures (such as having elections but no processes to ensure that they are free or fair, for example), have always simple and clear answers. The only thing they need to look out for is to ensure that the ruling class benefits from whatever policy they implement.

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.