CharonY

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Randomness is at the heart of science. We owe our existence to chance, random quantum fluctuations, evolution - random mutations and natural selection, molecules bumping into each other, etc. I understand this. However, in my readings of the science literature over many years, I have been amazed at how much complexity, organisation and structure that appears to come out of nothing. And I have read many articles that seem to edge their bets toward non-randomness events. This is what I think has not been properly addressed in science. Take my numerous posts in the mind-brain thread. They are replete with studies and statements hinting at maybe something more, but this is mostly ignored by the general science community. The foundation of science is that everything occurs by chance and I am saying that my modest readings seem to tell me differently. Is science being too dogmatic about randomness and chance events? you tell me!

Aside from the issues with the use of "randomness" to explain phenomena, the science community typically does not ignore findings. Often things are misinterpreted or oversold in popular science articles or folks are just unable to tease them apart (e.g. due to technological limitations). We first build tools in order to look at things we want to look at. Every biologist is well aware that things are more complicated- we start off with simple models and then add on. To a layperson that might sound like being surprised all the time, but really we all know that we are just working on different pieces of a puzzle. Every now and then there is a paradigm shift, but the frequency has gone down considerably over the last decades. We are more filling out blanks than finding complete new puzzles. But that does not excite the public so often stories come out how things are going to revolutionize things (and to be fair, young scientists often think that way). But folks who have been around longer tend to see it as further parts of the puzzle and just continue (up until something really unexpected happen). Nothing I have seen in these threads fall under that category, though.

Off the top of my head I don't know specific papers, but this is a somewhat known but in clinical practice also somewhat ignored issue. You are right that the medium choice will affect outcome and it goes beyond issues such as auxotrophic effects. It is close to something that my group is working on, but ultimately one has to recognize that clinical practice is driven by pragmatism. I.e. standard media are used because they are (for the most part) informative and allow direct comparisons.

If one wants to understand cellular resilience against ABs, things get exponentially more complicated (as even different strain can have different metabolic adaptations that can change their susceptibility to a large degree). And you can complicate it further as the growth history can play a role. I.e. cells grown under nutrient replete or deplete conditions and then exposed to AB under certain conditions can be more or less susceptible, too. This is basically why these assays are run under standard conditions to mostly eliminate (or ignore) these issues, allowing a simplified characterization. 

If wondering from a microbial perspective there are different areas to look into, all of which are unresolved. These includes stress generation and how cells deal with it when exposed to AB (oxidative stress was a assumed to be a main hub, but I have a slightly different view on that matter) and increasingly, metabolic diversion and flexibility. An example is given here, but it is important to note that these effects are not universal. Using a different bacterial species you do see quite different outcomes.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chembiol.2016.12.015

3 hours ago, swansont said:

“Gene-based disease is more complicated than we thought” is not evidence of a flaw in the established biology. It’s not like anyone found that such diseases aren’t genetic. It looks to me like they found that an assumption - that these diseases were based on some simple genetic code - was in error. In that way, the model was modified.

Also, that was not a broad consensus. Most researchers had hopes that more disease markers could be identified (and to be fair, some have been), but especially folks working more closely in the areas of physiology were highly skeptical about the benefit of such an approach. In these communities the complexity of biological systems is very apparent. There is a big differences in what one sees in the news and popular science publications as there you need to find grappling headlines. 

Saying that "stuff more complicated, just as some folks expected, but others hoped it wouldn't be" somehow does not quite engage the public.

3 hours ago, swansont said:

(“this will help cure disease” might just be some boiler-plate PR that‘s included; I saw this quite often in atomic physics, where some discovery or investigation was touted as improving atomic clocks, which rarely happened because the technique was too difficult to implement, or the complexity/benefit ratio was way off. One shouldn’t pay too much attention to the message sent to the masses)

Exactly, this is a bit of a dirty secret for studies that primarily generate minable information. We really do not know what we get (otherwise we wouldn't need to look), but it just sounds so much better if it is linked to something the public understands. A running joke is that everyone is somehow curing cancer.

1 hour ago, Wigberto Marciaga said:

It seems to me that any conversion that leads to maintaining either fat or glucose in the body is an anabolic process. Well, the definition of catabolism would be when molecules are broken down to generate energy, not even to generate the fuel itself. Glucose and triglycerides are fuel, when they are burned and not when they are produced, their catabolic process would be.

That is not quite correct. Catabolism simply refers to break down more complex to simpler molecules. Energy is released in the process, but does not necessarily generate biologically usable energy (e.g. simply released as heat). Only certain chemical steps (e.g. substrate level phosphorylation) recover energy, rest has to go through additional processes such as respiration. The metabolites are not just simply fuel, they are also building blocks for other molecules.

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

o my understanding (I am not a biologist and stand to be corrected by better informed people here) metabolism is all the processes that extract energy by oxidising the "food* " an organism takes in, whether this be for heat, for mechanical work done by the organism, or for biochemical synthesis, i.e. conversion to fat, bone, muscle etc.  I gather metabolic rate is in fact often measured by oxygen uptake (This applies only to aerobic organisms obviously). So a faster metabolic rate could serve to enable a higher rate of doing mechanical work, or to generate more heat, or to build up body tissues. But the food also provides the building block for building body tissues, so any food used for that is not metabolised.  

In my mind this is overcomplicating things a bit. Metabolism is in the simplest form conversion of one biomolecule (metabolite) into another. Depending on the individual reactions it can require or release energy and the energy might be lost (as heat) or recovered biochemically.

The sum of all processes (or metabolic activities) at rest is referred to as basal metabolism, which sometimes is conflated with the energy expenditure for said metabolic activities. Technically it would be more correct to refer to the energy portion as basal energy expenditure (BEE).

Importantly, BEE is the largest energy expenditure (something in the order of 70-80% of total energy expenditure). I.e. doing exercise does only requires a fairly limited amount of extra energy relative to the basal metabolism.

The interesting but well-known bit is that basal metabolism is dependent on a lot of factors, including age, activity, but also body weight. For example, maintaining a highly active lifestyle is associated with an increase in basal metabolism (and hence, BEE). But sometimes burst of high activities (and higher associated energy expenditure) can partially be compensated by a reduction of BEE, so that the total expenditure does not change proportionately to the activity. Folks with less body weight, or after losing body weight also have a reduced BEE(which might contribute to the yo-yo effect).

Also, I think the attempt to link overall energy expenditure to specific metabolic processes is flawed. There are many, sometimes competing activities going on at the same time involving different cell types, tissues and so on. There is no way way to measure them in vivo and unfortunately quite a few folks start to speculate about them without really having the data to support it on that level of detail. This has resulted in a lot of proposed diets, supplements, exercises and whatnot which for the most part simply not evidence-based. I.e. we cannot gain a deeper understanding of processes by speculating harder. At some point we first have to think about a) what data do we need and b) how can we get them (or is it possible to get them in the first place).

Have you considered the fact that a photo is a frozen moment in time and that depending on conditions and effort, the outcome can differ vastly? In contrast, in a mirror you can pose until you like what you see?

Just now, Moontanman said:

Thank you, learning is why I am here! 

My pleasure.

4 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

I would like to see a source for this please, it goes against everything I know about plants and photosynthesis. 

Added two reviews in the post above. What I heard as student was, I believe, from a textbook related to bioenergetics, but I cannot recall the title (too long ago, likely in German). I only remember because it was fairly counter-intuitive, considering what was taught in high school. But considering what I learned about cellular efficiency since then, it makes a lot of sense.

Here are the abstracts from the links above:

Quote

The literature and our present examinations indicate that the intra-leaf light absorption profile is in most cases steeper than the photosynthetic capacity profile. In strong white light, therefore, the quantum yield of photosynthesis would be lower in the upper chloroplasts, located near the illuminated surface, than that in the lower chloroplasts. Because green light can penetrate further into the leaf than red or blue light, in strong white light, any additional green light absorbed by the lower chloroplasts would increase leaf photosynthesis to a greater extent than would additional red or blue light. Based on the assessment of effects of the additional monochromatic light on leaf photosynthesis, we developed the differential quantum yield method that quantifies efficiency of any monochromatic light in white light. Application of this method to sunflower leaves clearly showed that, in moderate to strong white light, green light drove photosynthesis more effectively than red light. The green leaf should have a considerable volume of chloroplasts to accommodate the inefficient carboxylation enzyme, Rubisco, and deliver appropriate light to all the chloroplasts. By using chlorophylls that absorb green light weakly, modifying mesophyll structure and adjusting the Rubisco/chlorophyll ratio, the leaf appears to satisfy two somewhat conflicting requirements: to increase the absorptance of photosynthetically active radiation, and to drive photosynthesis efficiently in all the chloroplasts. We also discuss some serious problems that are caused by neglecting these intra-leaf profiles when estimating whole leaf electron transport rates and assessing photoinhibition by fluorescence techniques.

Quote

The pleasant green appearance of plants, caused by their reflectance of wavelengths in the 500–600 nm range, might give the impression that green light is of minor importance in biology. This view persists to an extent. However, there is strong evidence that these wavelengths are not only absorbed but that they also drive and regulate physiological responses and anatomical traits in plants. This review details the existing evidence of essential roles for green wavelengths in plant biology. Absorption of green light is used to stimulate photosynthesis deep within the leaf and canopy profile, contributing to carbon gain and likely crop yield. In addition, green light also contributes to the array of signalling information available to leaves, resulting in developmental adaptation and immediate physiological responses. Within shaded canopies this enables optimization of resource-use efficiency and acclimation of photosynthesis to available irradiance. In this review, we suggest that plants may use these wavelengths not just to optimize stomatal aperture but also to fine-tune whole-canopy efficiency. We conclude that all roles for green light make a significant contribution to plant productivity and resource-use efficiency. We also outline the case for using green wavelengths in applied settings such as crop cultivation in LED-based agriculture and horticulture.

15 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

Despite the amount of energy available to Earth plants between Red and Blue they have not evolved photosynthesis that utilises Green effectively, despite the great abundance of green light - the limitations may be in the kinds of photosynthesis chemistry that work and the other, non chlorophyll sorts of photosynthesis (some not doing CO2 to O2) are less effective. Maybe plants elsewhere will manage with Red and Blue photosynthesis (and look green like here)  because those kinds of photosynthesis are easier for biochemistry to achieve.

Not really a plant person, but I think it is a bit of a misconception that plants do not use green light effectively. It is just utilized slightly differently. One important finding is that green light penetrates deeper into tissue, providing energy for CO2 fixation in deeper within leaves. Studies also suggest that because of that (and because of the rather steep absorption profile, this deeper penetration is more effective rather than trying to absorb more blue/red light closer to the surface. I think there are quite a few studies out there regarding the overall quantum efficiency at different wavelengths and different intensities in relation to plant architecture and distribution of chloroplasts, but I think the the idea that the rather simplistic idea of low absorptance of green light and associated low levels of CO2 assimilation that is sometimes still taught is school is a fair bit outdated (and goes back to studies in the 70s, I believe).

But again, not my field of expertise but there is a rather large body of literature on this topic.

Edit: found two reviews on the topic (only skimmed the abstract, but rings a bell to what I heard as student): 

https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erx098

https://doi.org/10.1093/pcp/pcp034

On 4/3/2024 at 3:42 PM, Gian said:

Yes I am suggesting that Dawky's encouragement to disrespect other's opinions at the 2002 Ted talk has contributed to intolerance. I mean what other effect could it have?

This is an extremely poor argument, especially in the context of racism. Are you arguing that if folks respected racist opinion more, folks would somehow be less racist? We see how well that works under Trump and other reactionaries.

Also it seems that you have no idea what happened in the 2000s. The issue around that time was a massive effort by evangelists to influence science teaching in the US by trying to put creationist view next to evolutionary science. At that point folks atheists, including Dawkins became fairly vocal to resist such influence to diminish science teachings and putting belief over facts. 

Still no idea how the various thoughts on Dawkins, cancel culture, racism and whatever has been brought up by OP connect, though.

There is one thing that always strikes me as odd and where the cancer analogy might fail a bit (though it depends on the level of detail). Often, in the discourse anything in the autism spectrum is set apart from the "normal" population, in part using quantitative measures.  This of course requires to set a normative standard and to complicated things, the measures within the spectrum categorization are notoriously hetereogenous. There are attempts to better characterize individuals to better understand population heterogeneity without pre-assumption of what is normal, which, in my mind, would be a better approach to try to identify categories.

There of course challenges to this approach and in the area of medicine it has been sought after for so long that in the academic community folks have rebranded it multiple times to keep it relevant (and I have been long enough around to recognize the same argument, even if the newer generation think that they discovered it for the first time). Many of these terms (personalized medicine, precision medicine, normative modeling) fundamentally recognize the heterogeneity within a population and seeks to find the level of detail to provide better diagnoses or treatment, if necessary. It also tries not to predefine categories by being more data-driven. Obviously, it is also way more challenging and the current flavour of research is to add machine learning or AI to it. 

2 hours ago, MigL said:

And by the way, didn't you guys ( Exchemist, Moon, Charon and JC ) read ... the OP only respects Physicists 😄😄 .

Darn physicists, what have they ever done for us?

27 minutes ago, Gian said:

Of course it's silly, and it's precisely that methodology that Dawky uses to "critique" religion, so he's being equally silly.

You have failed to provide any evidence for that. You are just asserting it. The main  criticism I could agree on is that his books on religion are not based on expertise in areas of religion or philosophy. But then he is not necessarily a thought leader on that topic, either (as atheism is not really a organized system like religion).

27 minutes ago, Gian said:

PS My words were that racism and intolerance seem to have got worse over the last 15y.

And again, this suggests you have not been paying attention regarding the level of open racism 15 or 20 or 30 years ago. The major difference are phases where things were more or less overt but I see politicians, rise of populism, concerted efforts by right-wing groups to push identity politics and other effects on the forefront. More importantly, the undercurrent never went away. As mentioned, what see is mostly just how overt things are. I have no idea what Dawkins has to do with any of it.

We might as well discuss the impact of Hawking on the current state of donuts.

47 minutes ago, Gian said:

MOONTANMAN

Well because in 2002 he was encouraging people to be disrespectful, and 21y later he's weeping about cancel culture.

And the "logic" of his ridiculous book The God Delusion is about as logical as me saying that Dawky and all other scientists are stupid because they believe the Earth is flat.

The Flat Earth Society have made scientific experiments which they claim prove the Earth is flat.

Therefore as Dawky et al are all scientists, they must of logical necessity believe the Earth is flat.

 

This is just silly. Flat Earthers who have conducted experiments have (repeatedly) shown that the Earth is, in fact, not flat. They just don't like the outcome, which is the main difference to scientific methodologies, where you are not just doing random experiments, but rather have to consolidate data with your model. The fact that you do not seem to understand this distinction makes any discussion rather moot.

50 minutes ago, Gian said:

Antisemitism is 1800y old. Racism was invented in the 19th century. 

In case you have forgotten, you were talking about the last 15 years.

4 minutes ago, Gian said:

Given that over the last 15y or so there seems to have been a noticeable increase in racism and in particular antisemitism, Dawky should cut out the rabble rousing.

If you think that antisemitism and racism is a recent thing, boy do I have news for you...

20 minutes ago, Gian said:

Can people here define free speech please, and with a philosophical rationale justify how people should react to opinions they strongly disagree with?

I hope no one here agrees with sacking people for their opinions

Cheerz

GIAN🙂XXX

I do not see a reason to react to something just because you disagree with them. I also do not see a reason for a philosophical rationale, which seems like an odd request.

Disagreement is a simple fact of life.

1 hour ago, MigL said:

The soft sciences,  psychiatry being one example, is where I would find issues with your approach.

That is actually the gist of my argument. If there are for example different schools of thought, you invite folks who have been dealing with that question in a serious manner. Evidence for that includes publishing scholarly articles and reputation among other scholars, you know, the same way we do it in hard science.

Then, if there are competing viewpoints, folks outline their arguments based on their research and expertise and highlight why they disagree with other models, for example. This includes highlighting what supporting evidence exists as well as educate the audience regarding gaps and challenges. 

This level of engagement requires significant knowledge on the subject matter. Again, not unlike in hard sciences. So the point you are missing is that not only the folks in the panel should be vetted professionally, but also the subject matter. As I tried to outline the role of Universities should be to identify areas where discussions can be held on that level. This won't be the case for random free-for all topics.

In your example, the issue is one of psychoanalysis, a field that has been hotly debated in the field for a variety of reason. So the discussion could be around the validity of psychoanalysis the issue of memory and so on. And this is the part where I see universities fail- they do not rely sufficiently on experts to develop such discussions.

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Who would you choose as 'experts' in a discussion about garbage such as 'revealed faith' ?

And this again is my point. A discussion has to properly contextualized. Otherwise you are just throwing soundbites (incidentally, like OP) and then complain that the outcome is garbage. GIGO, I say.

Or perhaps in attempt to make it clearer, what I am trying to say is that universities should be the place for curated content. And yes, one could argue what level of curation is acceptable for a given discussion, but the basic idea is to maintain intellectual rigour, which after all should be one of the missions of universities.

1 hour ago, MigL said:

I stand by my claim that subjective opinions are NOT factual.
Just like a rectum, everyone has one.
And society decides which opinion is 'fashionable'; dissenting opinions only get you labelled, and the fashionable opinion 'du jour' must then be protected against the dissenting views.
What the hell is 'revealed faith' anyway ?
I may tolerate it,but I see no reason to protect such garbage.

You seem to agree with me that discussions require to be filtered by expertise rather than opinion. Though you also seem to think that I am arguing the opposite? Your claim however was to question who is going to decide who are supposed to be experts who are able to establish factuality and connections. And again I posit that these are not just opinions, but can be underpinned by analyses and data. There are areas where it will be more difficult. E.g. trying to have a plenary discussion on the way forward for peace in the middle East. None of the arguments are going to be trivial, but my point is that folks need some level of relevant expertise in order to propose arguments that are worthy of further discussion.

Just giving everyone a platform does not achieve that (as per OP).

2 hours ago, MigL said:

I agree that universities are in a tough position, but fact based information cannot be easily dismissed.
Opinion based information is a different matter; who is the arbiter of what is valid discussion, and what is conspiracy theory   'sucking all the oxygen from the discussion' ?

There are different venues where expertise does not matter (such as facebook). The value in academic, and I thought that is what you were arguing about is that there exist a methodology to evaluate "facts". The methodology is certainly not infallible, but it has some modicum of self-correction, which is based on academic discourse. If that is not feasible to evaluate, then you are basically saying that facts are meaningless as we cannot evaluate them.  Facts without critical evaluation are, for the most part, meaningless by itself. The synthesis of facts is what provides insights. And this requires at least some level of expertise in the subject matter. I understand that the rise of social media and the democratization of opinion has resulted in a radical decline in trust in expertise. And while it is partially justified, it created a situation where fact-free arguments are mainstream.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Are you saying that in the case of the OP, which references 'revealed faith' ( whatever that is ), discussion should be vetted by priests/rabbis/imans/etc. who have the actual 'expertise' ?

I interpret the quote as some sort of conviction without evidence, not necessarily faith in the religious sense. Folks might be be utterly convinced that vaccination make folks magnetic, for example. 

I think you are missing the point though. The idea here is that universities should take a step further and think about what a the discussion is really about, not what folks want to make of it. If say the discussion is about vaccinations, one should invite folks who are able to educate and discuss in good faith (again, not in the religious sense). And that can include folks who have data on adverse reactions of vaccines, but should not include folks who insist that they vaccines are made from dead babies. 

I think the quotes from Dawkins are missing the mark and certain folks are weaponizing that kind of arguments. There is an issue in universities, but it is not what OP describes and it is more related to a deeper change in society. First, there is a fundamental misunderstanding how discussions should be done and specifically how it should be conducted in universities. Universities are (were) a space for critical discussions, which should involve aspects of critical thinking and expertise. I.e. it was never supposed to be a platform where e.g. conspiracy theories of microchips in vaccines should be discussed at the same level as the benefits of immunization. The former would suck the entire oxygen from anything meaningful and there would be no learning or development of thoughts, which would be the purpose of universities. 

Rather, discussions should be vetted and led by folks with actual expertise. There is a difference if e.g. economists with different viewpoints and arguments relating to fiscal policies explain their thoughts vs. talking heads who argue that somehow any fiscal policy is a dictatorship (as a mild example).

Where the university leadership is failing is basically that they are becoming more corporate and try to appease everyone, especially students (which they increasingly treat as customers rather than, well, students). What that means is that discussions have become more superficial, folks who are popular are getting more space than folks who actually know things (Peterson is one of the persons who managed to grift on that, for example). It is obvious why students are drawn to these superficial but emotional spectacles and why they pick and choose sides just as everyone nowadays in the population. They are still untrained when it comes to critical analysis (and I am afraid, the quality is dropping), they are more outspoken as they have been trained by social media algorithms that every thought has equal weight, no matter how ludicrous. As such, discussions on any topic are now more about picking sides rather than a critical analysis of the situation and, even more importantly, proposing solutions. 

University leadership tries (badly) to be corporate neutral on these issues in order not to get on the bad side of folks and thereby gives the power to the louder voices. This is especially disappointing as they do have in theory access to the best experts but they lack the courage to show actual leadership, which involves taking some modicum of risk. One could argue that then the faculty themselves should do something, but in the current environment they are overworked (as students are more and more demanding, which is encouraged by leadership) and only those with the loudest voices (often in social media) get all the attention. But those are not necessarily the subject experts. So yes, universities are failing in their purpose, but it is not because of free speech issues, but rather because Universities are transforming into a service industry in which critical thinking and analysis is not at the forefront anymore.

All the discussions about cancel culture are therefore in my mind missing the mark entirely.

Edit: perhaps even worse than missing the mark, it contributes to the erosion of intellectualism and is yet another tool in dismantling trust in expertise.

AI Conoclast has been banned as sockpuppet of AIkonoklazt.

3 hours ago, Wigberto Marciaga said:

The point is that I propose, as an explanation, that they carry out processes adjusted to their basic needs to keep their bodies alive in the environment in which they inhabit.

This is true for all organisms, down to the cellular level.

3 hours ago, Wigberto Marciaga said:

On the other hand, fat and obese people lose their balance and begin to hypertrophy adipose tissue in a disproportionate and unnecessary way.

"Balance" is to vague. The processes are still balanced as the mechanisms remain unchanged. However, the circumstances (genetic, behavioral and environmental) promote fat accumulation. Just because it is considered non-beneficial in certain situations (e.g. when food is plenty) it does not mean it is unbalanced. That would be a judgement call.

3 hours ago, Wigberto Marciaga said:

Even this phenomenon that is hypertrophy, even at a molecular level, seems to be influenced by activities such as exercise.

This again is trivial. Straining of organs and tissues triggers mechanisms that among other things can result in hypertrophy. I am not sure what the rest of the argument tries to say here in this context. It has little to do with balance. I think you have an "ideal" of sorts in mind and consider anything different as out of balance. But that is really a judgement call as biology just is. If you train a particular muscle in one arm, it will enlarge. Whether you consider that out of balance (e.g. relative to the other arm) is your call, but changes nothing regarding the underlying biology. It does not really care about that- the mechanisms are independent of such assumptions. 

13 hours ago, swansont said:

Calories are an energy content, but the ability to access and exploit that energy varies.e.g. your gut biome might not break certain foods down as efficiently as someone else’s, or the bacteria might feast on it more before the nutrients can be utilized. I’m sure there are a lot more possibilities that someone more familiar with biology could point to. A lot of moving parts here.

Indeed. From a quick skim it seems that the type of calories matter, as not all are similarly bioavailable (e.g. 100 kcal in cellulose provides no energy to humans as we cannot process it). The difference in energy conversion has been mentioned, but there is also evidence of genetic difference in various aspects in transport and storage of nutrients (especially fat deposition has been studied).  The way we are able to take up various nutrients and process them also changes throughout life, due to changes in our hormonal status (which in turn can change depending what we eat and are otherwise exposed to). Also activity has an impact, but not necessarily only the simplistic sense that more calories are burned (it often is not that much) but the way it changes how our body uses directs nutrient flow (and also effectiveness). 

In short, the biology is complicated and the physics of it (i.e. the calorie count) really only represents boundary conditions. I.e. the maximum theoretically a body can utilize from a given food source. How effective and in what form it processed is dependent on an immense number of factors.

4 hours ago, Wigberto Marciaga said:

The explanation for the fact that they do not gain weight and remain thin, unlike what Herman Pontzer proposed, could be that their high amount of physical activity of low to moderate intensity, and then intense, predisposes them to have predominantly catabolic organisms that exert themselves. more about providing the body with the energy it needs daily than about increasing mass. 

it is often not helpful to see catabolism and anabolism as competing activities. They are mostly cycles as well as reversible. For example, sugars can be catabolized to pyruvate and then acetyl-coA, the latter being the building blocks for fatty acids. We all have to synthesize proteins all the time and create the building block from catabolic pathways. The balance of these activities are therefore regulated on the molecular, rather than on the macro level.

Specifically in this example, intense activity requires significant maintenance of muscle mass, which requires a metabolism that sustains anabolic reactions for significant amount of structural (muscle) protein synthesis.

The only context I have heard possibility of fluorocarbons for biological activities is in the context of fluorine rich environments, which would not be compatible with life as we know it. At least in theory fluorocarbon molecules could avoid denaturation in such an environment, but as already noted, it does not challenge the universality of carbon as building block of life in the least.

8 hours ago, MigL said:

It is common knowledge the emperor wanted an end to the war: the military leadership was of a different opinion.

Not entirely. They have been different factions and while the peace camp was arguably less influential, it is not a clear split between emperor and military leadership.

8 hours ago, toucana said:

There is an entire chapter devoted to this subject in The Fall of Japan (1968) by William Craig  [Ch.3 ‘The Diplomacy of Defeat’ ]. There were some covert attempts made by high ranking Japanese officials to initiate diplomatic contacts in great secrecy with the Soviet foreign minister Molotov by passing messages between Jacob Malik the Soviet ambassador in Tokyo, and Naosoke Sato - the Japanese ambassador in Moscow. The idea was first raised by Emperor Hirohito in person on 22 June 1945  within hours of the death of General Ushijima on Okinawa.

Yes indeed, but my point is that diplomatic solutions were considered before the bomb, including an uncharacteristic overture by the emperor himself. In fact, the official position since 44 was that they were willing to negotiate conditional surrender. The hope of Japanese leadership was always hat they could retain some of their occupied territories (from the onset of the war) while suing for peace after a series of conquests.

By 44 they were ready to broaden negotiations, with te exception of the position of the emperor. This was of course counter the Casablanca declaration.

Something like an adblocker (e.g. ublock origin) on firefox should work on Linux?