CharonY

Yeah that is really unspecific as it does not specify time frame nor actual numbers. During the heyday of the debate in the 2000s and to some degree in the 2010s it was an outcrop of the US creationist movement that for a while got some traction. In my memory the movement had its gravitational center around the Discovery Institute and was basically just a way to try to give some fake scientific sheen on creationism. Now, while there are also creationists in Europe, the scale is very different. Depending on the precise phrasing, support for creationisms in the USA was slightly above 40% in the 2010s and the last one I have seen on Gallup was around 37%, but I have seen numbers suggesting support comparable to values back in 2010 (so, around 40-ish). Most surveys put the UK among the highest levels with creationist beliefs but I have rarely seen anything much about 20%. It is somewhat lower in countries like France or Spain. A comparative study from 2020 from a Pew poll allows a direct comparison, putting creationist responders at around 32% in the US and between 10-21% in Western Europe. More religious countries such as Russia and Poland are higher (24%/29%) but still lower than the US. Considering that the proportion of religious folks in the respective countries is higher (in some cases way higher) than the belief in creationism, it suggests that most religious folks do not actually believe in creationism. Surveys in the USA suggest around 69% of folks considering themselves religious (majority Christian) so about half are likely creationist. In contrast, Spain has about 55% considering themselves religious but only 10% hold creationist beliefs. So as a whole, the creationist argument is not plausible for the majority of Christians. It should also be noted that specifically the Catholic church does not endorse the literal creationist argument and has accepted evolution as real process. I believe John Paul II may have formalized the notion that there is no conflict between evolution and Christian faith, something that was reinforced by Pope Francis. That further diminishes the proportion where we should expect a strong adherence to creationism.

Have you read what I posted? Because you used a lot of words just to re-iterate pretty much the same points I was making. The way the argument is phrased makes it pretty clear that this is not only an output of an LLM, but that you also did not review it and rephrase it to make it your own argument. For example, I showed studies on molecular clocking highlighting the divergence of time, and you apparently your input resulted in the model to argue that the difference from 560 to 988 is significantly different from 685-1000 despite falling in a roughly similar range of estimates. The 700 MYA estimate was based on a weighted method developed by Kumar's lab, which I consider to be a bit of a gold standard. But again, that is not the issue. The issue is long-winded automated arguments that ultimately are not beneficial to discussions. Also please refer to https://scienceforums.net/topic/133848-policy-on-aillm-use-on-sfn/ But I think I will stop here as we are sufficiently off-topic already.

Except you are specifically wrong, Saccorhytus is in the parallel phylum where you would find humans. Also, note that I said "about" not definitely and also the published range is between 560 MYA (Aris-Brosou et al. 2013 Syst Biol ) to about 988 MYA (Blair et al. 2005 Mol Biol Evol)

Also Saccorhytus is clearly not a an ancestor to humans (or any veretbrate). They belong to the protostomia (arthropods, molluscs etc.), whereas humans belong to the deuterostomia. The split was about 700 MYA. And if we go that far back, why not just got straight to LUCA.

Define biotic resistance in this context then and what kind of specific information related you seek to find.

I suppose it was in another thread, but phage therapy is not precisely a new field of study, due to lack of antibiotics the Soviets used them starting around the 30s? I am pretty sure we had a thread here somewhere discussing the limitations of phage therapy and the reason why it never took off. It only now regained interest because antibiotics are failing, though most limitations still remain.

That is true, and what TheVat said. You seem to agree with him and disagree with your previous quote that TheVat alluded to. In that quite you seem to be referring to paleontological evidence of evolution rather than the fact that some strata hold fossils (which by themselves would not be evidence of evolution).

That is very difficult. As I mentioned, even a mouse which has very weak vertebrae folks often struggle to get it right. With a larger animal this is not an approved method and would be incredibly difficult. And I really don't think that one should even try. Depending on local laws, calling police, SPA or equivalent would be the right thing to do. Exactly, although I would add that in Europe I would be worried if random folks walked around with guns. It took me a while to get used to the fact that for some Americans this is considered normal.

Unfortunately it is not easy without practice. For example, for small animals (e.g. mice) there are protocols for euthanasia, using rapid decapitation/cervical dislocation. It is sometimes not very pretty, despite them being fairly fragile to begin with. Unless you are a hunter I don't think that guns are an option in France. Another thing to consider are local laws. I remember back that my zoology professor ran into trouble multiple times with the police because he was collecting skulls from roadkill. I think calling the authorities and ask for advice would be the safest bet. In Germany we were reminded to call police or local animal protection organizations for advice, at least.

Is your question specifically targeted at the impact on native ant species? There are papers documenting the various effects of invasive ant species on multiple levels. You might be interested in an older paper with long-term data https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-007-9194-x Or a broader meta-analysis not focused on native ant species: https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12672

That is exactly why I specified "developed countries" as in the vast majority the availability is not an issue. Affordability might be an issue in a few of these countries, but that wouldn't be addressed by having folks walking around with vaccines in their pocket. I took the suggestion as a means to increase availability.

Same thing there. You wouldn't want a random person to poke you. There, you would still want to have trusted folks in the community trained to administer injections even if access to fully trained health personnel is lacking. The alternative would be to simplify systems to that would allow safe self-administration, which still requires some training. That is basically what I was alluding to.

Mrs Tilly likes Apollo, but doesn't like God. Tilly likes essays and speeches, but neither prose nor poetry.

From your first premise, your second one (that human exist) would already be very unlikely. If we assume that we have 1000 worlds starting with the exact state as Earth 100,000 years ago the likelihood increases as by then there was substantial human population. But there are so many random trajectories that it is incredibly unlikely to get the same multiple times. It is more likely to throw a billion cards in the air a thousand times and they landing down exactly the same way every time. Edit: I don't think that this is a question related to evolution.

They are not going around shopping for the nicest locations. They (or their eggs) hitch a ride on their hosts and their belongings. They are also nocturnal. Hotels are where people sleep. But so is your bedroom. The main difference being that you probably don't have a lot of travelers in your bedroom. Breath initiatives host seeking behavior. I am not sure whether blood type affects the chemical composition but essentially they are attracted by body heat and breathing, AFAIK.

It is fairly simple, really. They are not only present in hotels but they are human parasites and live where humans are. Humans are vectors in their spread, because they don't travel much themselves (most likely because they never get approved for credit cards). Hotels are frequented by man different humans, so they are hotspots for their spread. I also think that they are distributed around the world. So in short, whenever there is a human with human skin, there is at least a non-zero risk of presence of bed bugs.

Even good hotels can have occasional infestations as you cannot test everyone coming in. But they generally spend more money on remedies if they get affected.

So what then do you think infectious diseases are associated with? Do you think that anyone is safe from them or that it only occurs in certain folks?

You are overthinking it. They are a sign that at some point bed bug got into this area. It could be from folks accidentally carrying in, contaminated fabrics or furniture, etc. There is not that one weird rule that makes them appear form nothing.

I hope you are not implying that cockroaches magically appear when leftovers are present. Rather, they are present in a given habitat and while in urban settings much of it could be human leftovers, they are as happy to munch on all types of organic matter think feces, dead skin and so on. Waste control can limit cockroach presence, but depending on how many are around and how sealed your home is, they might keep coming back. Bed bugs are adept in hiding all kind of areas (beyond sleeping areas think anything porous, like wooden joints, carpets) etc. The lesson here is that that they are resilient bastards and it can take a lot of effort to find and get rid of them.

Your claim was a different one: I.e. the claim was that the pain is the reaction, not an effect of the reaction. In some cases defense reactions can cause pain, as well as damages from the reaction as well as damages from pathogens or other external factors. That is strange as pain is that it is a fairly common symptom https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/neurological/depts/multiple-sclerosis/ms-approaches/pain-in-ms It is not credible. Here is a news article on the paper I had in mind https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/multiple-sclerosis-linked-to-shingles-idUSTRE75F6R9/ Again, as the likelihood increases after infection, the recovery hypothesis does not make a lot of sense. But more importantly, MS is not associated with an pathogen per se (with one possible exception*). Rather, a hallmark of the disease is that our own immune system decided to attack myelin, a structure that surrounds parts of our neurons. IOW it is an autoimmune disease. The challenge is that for autoimmune diseases in general we really do not know how these exactly work. Generally speaking things like chronic inflammation but also acute infection increase the likelihood that our immune system starts damaging our body. The link to viruses here is the hypothesis is that once you got some sort of infection, especially after a sever one, your immune system can be whacked a bit out of balance and it may accidentally misidentify parts of our body as foreign entities. Again, getting an infection increases your risk. * I will add one possible link to viral infections which has one piece of compelling evidence, though I am not yet 100% convinced that it is the right mechanism. The study I am referencing to is an epidemiological study which found a much higher risk (some 30-fold) for MS for folks infected with the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV). This likelihood is much higher than the link to shingles. However there are two challenges. The first is that almost everyone (90%) of folks are infected with EBV. The authors of the article did a clever design study to be able to follow the few uninfected folks and also look at it longitudinally (i.e. tracking those that were first EBV free and then got infected later in time). Still, the issue with such study design is that there could be statistically anomalies and that the study would be hard to reproduce in that forward. Still, the evidence is very interesting, especially given the huge effect size. The second part is that while there are general hypotheses, the precise mechanism remains elusive. There is an idea to do an empirical experiment. As EBV vaccines are in development, it might be possible in the future to just compare MS rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated folks which could provide more insights into the link.

I think there are a lot of issues and few benefits. The major one being that the major driver of extinction is the reckless destruction of habitats. Even if this was not a stunt (and there are reasons to believe it is) it doesn't address the root problem. If the technology was perfected we basically found a way to make interesting exhibits for zoos but are doing little beyond that.

Pain are not a defense reaction. Though defense reactions, including inflammation responses but also general injuries can cause pain signals. I am also pretty sure that your memory is wrong or folks were telling you wrong things. Most studies show that having shingles increase MS risk. There is no clear link but some assumptions include that the immune response is overreacting to viral infections of nervous tissue and start attacking it (specifically myelin, which causes MS). Other potential pathways are linkages via inflammation pathways. Other viruses, including Epstein-Barr are also linked with increased MS risk. I seriously doubt there are studies that show protective functions.

I think Soros is still recalibrating his space lasers. And I think the autopen for the checks broke.

I think the point I am trying to make is that the trade landscape has changed and expanded massively post WW so any historic comparison will be difficult. Number of players is probably also not a good metric, as, well historically there were way fewer players, and some potential players were still colonies. The most famous large-scale tariffs in the US was probably the Smoot-Hawley act in 1930 and it is being used as an example how economically disastrous this approach is and I don't think that many have attempted something similar after seeing its impacct. Now, obviously no one knows what the actual heck is going on right now in the US, but comparisons that were made just after the announcement (using the weird reciprocal table they had) suggest that in terms of effective tariffs on US imports in percent, it would surpass the Smoot-Hawly. The lattter was wround 20% and the reciprocal tariffs were estimated to land around 24ish, but again, who knows? The administration certainly doesn't.