CharonY

The way it is explained to me is that there is a list somewhere associated with security risks. I forgot the details but in the list for biosecurity there were things like knowledge about certain pathogens, use of fermenters, freeze dryers and a couple of random other things. The reasoning is that this knowledge is useful for building bioweapons (and kimchi).

That is just not true. That would somewhat require all languages came into existence fully formed

I think expecting reason from an administration that not only a non-existing white holocaust in SA and then trying to make it reality by inviting refugees is a bit of a tall order. Also, I would not be surprised if they use AI or some other stupid pattern-based method to flag folks from certain "undesired" countries where they assume some risk of overstaying. But one would only really see that if one looks at broader patterns, a Nobel Laureate is of course a special consideration. If it is targeted, one possibility is that Soyinka was incarcerated in the wake of the civil war. Even before this administration, the US does flag individuals in some cases often without further understanding of the situation. For example, a microbiologist who has ever used a freeze dryer (a very standard piece of equipment) could add a few flags already.

Yeah, what a mystery. In all seriousness, I suspect that they are starting to flag repeat visits from countries where folks do not have the right shade of mayonnaise. It seems to be part of a larger effort of ehm, "diversity" efforts by the administration. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/us/politics/trump-refugee-white-people.html

I know that this is in the philosophy section, but it sounds more like you are talking about pattern recognition in the brain. And fundamentally it is constructive process, in a way it tries to create an output based on sensory inputs, but also what is present in memory as well as the current state of mind. If afraid, for example cues are more likely to be interpreted as dangerous, for example. But there is no right or wrong at that point as only in hindsight (which means following a corrective pattern matching process) can the brain figure out whether something was identified rightly or wrongly. The interview situation seems to be rather different to the scenario outlined in OP, though (and is more philosophical in nature).

I think it depends on the context and time a fair bit. Independent scientists outside of academia or industry are very rare and were probably more common until sometime around the 19th century but Lovelock could be such a rare example. At least considering the period where he was self-funded. Before that he did consultant work, IIRC where it would be considered a private entity but not entirely independent as such. Most folks would rather fall into externally funded, but usually academia-affiliated group. One of the reasons being that most public funds require some sort of affiliation (to reduce risk of money funneled to grifters, for example).

In academia an independent researcher is a specific designation for a PhD-level person not on a traditional faculty track (which is usually a mix of some sort with teaching and research duties), but which is not associated to someone who is (like a postdoc). They are not terribly common, but can include folks leading core facilities, or so-called research professor positions. They often are soft-money based, (i.e., externally or service funded), but there are exceptions. In the online world this designation takes a different meaning, usually referring to folks to lazy to understand the basics and diving right into WAG. Doing "a research" here often means casually watching random videos until they consider themselves an expert.

I think for those things one would need to start looking at the structure in more detail. DNA is fairly flexible but much is due to the helical backbone. Intercalation between base stack does bend the structure for example, but imagine it as "filling" is, at least to me, more confusing. It is more inserting into tight stacks and creating a partial unwinding of the helix or sometimes a just a bending. Also, not terribly important, but since students sometimes do that, I have to note that one shouldn't confuse agar with agarose. Especially if one does not want to spend time cleaning up the gel chambers.

I would assume that oxygen is actually fairly soluble in vegetable oil at RT. I am not sure specifically about vegetable oil, but in most lipids (IIRC) the dissolved oxygen at a given temp and pressure was always significantly higher than in water. I think what you are looking at is a bit if a physics questions. I.e. the diffusion of the respective compounds through at the lipid/water interface. If you have little headspace, and a sufficiently large oil volume and either a small surface area with the liquid beneath and/or a significantly slow diffusion rate, most of the oxygen in the headspace could be contained in the oil, with little being released via diffusion. There, the with sufficient abundance of facultative anaerobic bacteria the oxygen is likely going to be consumed before the yeast gets a chance.

I don't think that this platform has essential oils activated. Would need a higher subscription tier than we have.

One aspect where influencers are good at is manipulating emotion. There is an increasing body of lit that shows how misinformation is linked to emotional responses and that truthfulness and facts only play minor, if any role. The authors of a recent paper have written an article on their findings. In short there are folks who virtue signal by perpetuating known (even to them) falsehoods. (https://theconversation.com/winning-with-misinformation-new-research-identifies-link-between-endorsing-easily-disproven-claims-and-prioritizing-symbolic-strength-265652) Regarding OP: As others have noted, whether a discussion makes sense heavily depends on what you want to get out of it. There will be cases of (preciously few) good faith debates. But as outlined above, there are also plenty of cases where the facts deliberately don't matter and it becomes a performance.

Maybe, but there is also maybe something else at play. There are certainly different ways to read it. For example, it is possible that in Italy and Germany conservative forces held sufficient power so that the ideologically similarly aligned fascist movements could be gain power in a somewhat "regular" way. Another possibility is because at that point fascist held power in Germany and Italy, they thought that a violent grab to power was possible or perhaps even inevitable. Again, I am pretty sure someone has looked into it, but I certainly didn't. I strongly suspect that this is at least some part of it. And especially among young folks I hear a lot of of disillusionment when it comes to the capitalist system, heavily fueled by the affordability crisis and that most won't be able to afford houses as even their parents did. This makes them naturally being interested in finding someone to blame and solve the problem. And generally speaking the centre tends to try to maintain some sort of status quo, whereas more extremist voices purport solutions (whether real or not). It is part of the reason why especially young men have shown a swing to the right (including MAGA), which generally provides an outlet for grievances and often promises easy (if unrealistic) solutions. In fact we see that play out in real time, and I do wonder how long it takes until folks realize they have been had. Especially the working class is going to feel the financial squeeze. While this all seems rather similar to what we have been discussing, it is also of note that there are not real extreme left powers of relevance in the US, so there is some uncharted territory.

It feels that there is a resurgence of Marxism, especially as society is barreling towards exactly what he has been worried about (with some modern twists). To large degree it is fueled by recent economic crises, but perhaps most importantly, by rising inequality which goes beyond a more qualitative difference. Add to that that we are entering a new era where it is entirely unclear whether labor is worth anything, and where somehow all the wealth apparently is generated virtually it might be time to rethink how the economy is and isn't working for people.

There are no ratios. 1:2 refers to the distance between the first genus on your table compared to the second. So, Racophorus : Polypedates. If you look at the listed traits all are identical except webbing. So the difference except webbing is 0 (i.e. no distance/identical). The difference in webbing is "full" vs "partial". Here it boils down how you evaluate that difference. If you think that full vs partial is the same as full vs absent, then the score would be the same (e.g., 1). If you think full vs partial is less of a difference, then you could e.g. score it with a 0.5. You would follow the approach for all possible combinations (hence, the matrix shape).

Yes, but these armed conflicts were not directed at the government, rather they stoked dissent and fought political rivals. In fact, both ingratiated themselves with that with parts of the government. The Beer Hall Putsch failed and Mussolini didn't really expect to succeed. Though to be fair, Italy was politically in a more precarious situation plus due to the outsized power of the King, the decision was more based on individual decision than governmental consensus. Hitler was a different issue. They did not fear his powers, it was more down to fears of socialism and strong influence by conservative industrialists and elites to convince Hindenburg. They explicitly did not see the brownshirts as a threat to them and they assumed quite openly that Hitler would be a controllable way to undercut socialists influence over the workers. With respect to the SA, prior to Hitler's appointment their influence was mostly minimal. They functioned mostly as the equivalent of party security and fought mostly with hecklers and political enemies who would show up at meetings. Essentially they were beer-hall brawlers who would also go on and disrupt meetings of other parties. Especially the KPD and other communists groups were doing the same. But these fights were not considered major civil disruptions, if you look at newspapers of that time, it was just kind of a thing folks expected from the working class. They were also racketeers to make fund their actions. But the bottom line is that their influence at that point was not seen as a threat to the ruling class, rather a means to maintain power over revolutionary influences. One way of reading is that a lot of the political strife was focused on leveraging or suppressing the rising influence of the working class due to democratization processes. One the one hand the KPD and associated more revolutionary inclined groups, the NSDAP on the right wing and the SPD in the center, which pursued a strictly legal course of action (and eventually lost ground). Similar arguments have been made for Mussolini, but I have not read enough to get a real sense. However, Mussolini also organized his groups as anti-communist forces and afaik, there was no clearly formed program. But there are bits and pieces of his reasoning (other than desire for power) that also explain his falling out with the Italian socialist party. One of the key elements is that in contrast to most socialists, Mussolini did not believe in equality using an early version of (I believe) misinterpretation of Nietzsche's "Uebermensch". He did believe in ethno-state land ownership and was (in contrast to the party) in favour of WWI. Now, while the march to Rome was a show of force, this and prior actions did not threaten the King as such. A key element here is the political instability following the election of 1921, where the Socialists, Catholics and the National Bloc (anti-socialist coalition, including Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento) having pretty much the similar number of votes with the Socialists coming out a bit ahead. Bonomi was appointed as a moderate prime minister but his coalition pretty much fell apart. His successor (Facta) moving to the right had little success to govern, either. This weak government trying to keep communist revolutionary groups out of power eventually marked an opportunity for the National Bloc to gain power. As you mentioned, fascist paramilitaries started to gain power (already after the 1921 election) and after the switch to Facta, they increasingly engaged in provocations. Italian authorities did not engage them, in part because they were seen as anti-communist allies, but also because of the general impression that the army would support those groups (which, as mentioned, contained ex-militaries). Now the point that is debatable and I am sure there are good books on that matter is whether the March on Rome was a power grab, with King Emmanuel being afraid of a repetition of the Russian revolution, or whether it was a show of force to break nudge centrist-right rule and shift it further towards the fascists. But whatever it was, the core elements were laid down within the legal framework existing at that time, rather than a revolutionary violent uprising to destroy it. Again, the fully dismantling happened after seizing power and even then some elements remained.

I am sure that you will appreciate that the process can be as important as the outcome. After all, violent explosions killing people largely have the same outcome. But the reasons why those happen are varied and so are the means to prevent them. Even if we ignore ideological differences, there are historic differences how these systems came to power and those do shape how they act in a certain way and why. I will preface that the very end point, where absolute powers are invested into a single person things start look similar again but the path towards that is very different. I will also add that I am no clearly not a history scholar I am sure better learned people will point out how that is again a simplification and that there are important differences. However, my limited knowledge won't allow me much to speculate too much here. Let's start with Italy. It was a constitutional monarchy with significant powers invested into the king. The democratic structures were weak and few political actors beyond the left were really promoting further democratization. Following WWI and resulting social and political upheaval. something Mussolini was able to take advantage of to get himself appointed as prime minister following the famous March on Rome. At least superficially the desire for "law and order" and he spearheaded a strong anti-socialist stance, a group, as you noted, he originally belonged to. Many of his successes have the hallmark of a supreme opportunist, for example conveniently abandoning his anti-monarchist stance, once he saw a way to power. The anti-socialist was arguably also a way to align himself with the ruling powers in opposition to Marxist revolutionaries (though again, this is a quite a bit of an oversimplification). In contrast, race played originally only a minor if any role (there was an underlying Aryan supremacy with a goal to civilize inferior peoples but prior to the late 30s it was more of an undertone than policy. Somewhat similarly Hitlers rise to power in Germany were based on riding the popularity of grievances, but perhaps in contrast to Italy, more centrist powers led the governments and an outright quasi-revolutionary grab to power was cut short and he ultimately needed to get elected. With support from the right (which included significant contributions from a partially monarchist party) he presented himself with contradictory stances, such as being a champion of the working class, while presenting himself to industrialists as bulwark against working class uprisings. Both, (perhaps Hitler more then Mussolini) had to appeal to the broader population and played mostly originally within the legal confines of the system, just barely flirting with revolution. But in both cases, they started as a continuation of the existing democratic or quasi-democratic system and only started to dismantle them after their rise to power. They had to ride populist waves and did not have significant military might at their disposal but both are historic evidence how democratic structures can be effectively dismantled, how grievance politics can enable such events and also the role of outgroups in order to galvanize opinion, Meanwhile, the Russian and Chinese revolution were structurally different, marked by armed conflicts aimed at fully dismantling and replacing existing power structures via civil war. Here, the stories are more complex but the enemy in this case is less nebulous, the movements squarely targeted the Monarchy or Republic, respectively, though for different proximate reasons. Why do the differences matter? Well, looking at say Western societies, a revolutionary uprising is pretty much inconceivable. However, a populist-driven takeover of democratic structures, well, I have got a couple of examples.

I think an important element is that fascism is not a coherent ideology, but in many ways is just a way to appeal to the worst in a population to enable authoritarian rule. Unfortunately, this is why the method is quite effective and is pretty much part of any modern illiberal democracy. The nature of the outgroup is formed is pretty much arbitrary except they need minorities as they are either powerless or easily made powerless and they also have to be mistrusted. Another inconsistency in fascism is that they always are simultaneously very strong in a comical masculine way (see Hegseth's speech in front of military leadership), yet they are also the underdogs and oppressed by said minorities (which, at any given time are also part of some nebulous elites). Defining fascism, as the saying goes, is like nailing a pudding to the wall. But key elements are always authoritarianism (the strong man is central in all manifestations since inception), playing on grievances and other populist ideas and and generally also a strong element of nationalism, though some modern forms are less so and focus a bit more on race (at least implicitly).

I am not sure that I follow that logic. Fascism, is usually defined by the movement arising around WW1 in Italy and from its inception both ideologies are anti-individualist. Fascism declares that national unity and community is prioritized above the rights of individuals and also claims that to reach this goal an authoritarian system of elites is necessary to ensure that. Meanwhile in socialism the collective is more important (but we also know that this didn't end well, either, though moderate versions such as the SPD were vying for power with the more extreme versions). I.e. the ideology, which is largely built around disjointed populist beliefs with little substance gad at its core authoritarian rule as one of its core principles and wasn't simply a failed implementation of some ideology. It really only starts to look similar if one applies extreme reductionist approaches, at which point virtually all political models would start to loo the same. As a matter of fact, it seems that a worrying number of folks nowadays think that national socialism is in fact a far left socialist movement. This kind of poor understanding of history is extremely worrying to me, but seems to explain a lot of current events.

As the quote goes, the war was won by British brains, American steel and Soviet blood.

Even if you are not concerned about the precise distance, the idea here is to formalize what is closer and what is more distant to each other. This is where the distance matrix is important. What you would do create a table. For example for 3 genera it would look like this. 1 2 3 1 2 3 And for each you calculate the distance (or difference) between them. 1:1 would be 0 for example, as it would be the same genus. So if you follow the list in your table (1 Rhacophorus, 2 Polypedates, etc.). You then would calculate 1:2 -> 0.5 (assuming the partial to full is scored as 0.5) 1:3 -> 0.5, 2:3 -> 0 (that is what makes it a bit iffy as the distance between different genera should be >0). So you would build up the first node from the smallest distance (0, with all its iffyness), so a common node connecting 2 and 3. 1 is equidistant to both, so a new node would connect 1 to 2:3. What you would do is do the same calculations for every pair and then build your tree from there. I think it helps if you integrate nodes into your trees (which are the branching points). You can rotate trees around them without changing branch distances. For example the following trees are all depicting the same relationship, they are just rotated: I would say it is more advanced (or perhaps just easier) in the genetic field as the mathematical models are clearer there, as we basically calculate distance based on base differences. This allows other models (such as Maximum Likelihood). If you are interested Nei and Tamura have done a lot of work on it in the 90s. And have also be foundational in the area of molecular clocks.

A few quick thoughts without going into too much depth due to time constraints: Just generally speaking, it is important to know how distances are scored and if they are weighted. Generally speaking you calculate the distances for each taxa resulting in a distance matrix and then build the tree using methods such as Neighbor-Joining, or, what is seemingly applicable here, UPGMA (but I suspect that it is not really in the assignment). It may have been discussed in class but looking at the provided example, most are binary and I assume that there is no special scoring going on. But webbing has three descriptors and they could either be equidistant, i.e. the score from full to absent is the same as full to partial, or, perhaps more likely, the distance would absent -> partial -> present. There, you could either score the difference from absent to present the same as in the other categories (e.g. 0 for same, 1 for different) and have partial in-between (e.g., 0.5). Or you could score each jump fully (e.g., 0, 1, 2), meaning that from absent to present the distance would be higher than in any of the other binary categories. To provide some examples: The distance between Rhacophorus to Polypedates could then either 0.5+0+0+0 = 0.5 or it could be 1 +0+0 +0=1. And you would continue to do that for every pair. In the resulting distance matrix you look for the shortest distance and join them. Normally, we would calculate branch lengths for both that are equidistant to the node where they are connected. In this case, you cannot really do that, as the distance is 0 as all listed parameters between Chiromantis and Polypedates are identical. I.e. just using this information you wouldn't put them into different branches in the first place. What you would normally do then is calculate a new distance matrix which is reduced in size. In the above example, Chiromantis and Polypedates would form one cluster and the difference from that one two all others would be calculated in the updated matrix. In OP the assignment is simplified to be able to skip these detailed steps, but the basic idea is still to calculate the distances and build from there (and ignoring branch lengths. But in a proper UPGMA method, the distance would move nodes at different depths.

I would also think that as part of their training they would understand that a) arguments are not the same as making unsubstantiated and unlinked claims, b) how to use references (!!!!) and perhaps c) understand what a theory is and what it isn't.

Yepp, well spotted

While we are at it, many (but not all) European countries have stronger separation of powers as well as having parliamentary system. As such, it is more difficult to consolidate power as per the unitary executive theory. As such a president or chancellor would not be able to arbitrarily threaten individuals for exercising free speech or effectively cancel academic freedom as it is done now. Even before the recent event the "Americans have more freedoms" is a bit of a trope, but had some nuggets of truth. But given that apparently much of the freedom is actually not secured but relying on norms, we do see them getting destroyed in less than a year. But then uninformed self-delusion is exactly what makes this type of norm-breaking possible:

I know that the reptile folks have been using a brand called Solarmeter and given how finicky they can be I assume that it works reasonably well. But lit is likely somewhat expensive, which given the cost of the reptiles (and the loss of research if they are unhappy) would probably make sense.