CharonY

Depends on the eukaryote, but in most multicellular ones the role is more of a regulatory and cell-cycle-dependent nature. Examples include involvement in apoptosis, modulating autoimmune response.

What I found over the years is that kicking yourself to do stuff usually does not work (at least for me). I am also working in an academic setting (roughly on faculty level) and have to keep track of a lot of projects and administrative things on a long time scale. It is easy to forget things, or just put them off until last minute, when everything has to be done in a rush. What worked best for me is to use a time tracking and prioritization and tweak them to the way I work. By allocating time in a bit more rigid manner I ensure that I get progress in all the things I need to keep track of, without having to constantly think and worry about them (which may lead to further procrastination). So I would for instance figure out which tasks require more creativity (e.g. papers, grant applications, to some extent talks) and allocate more or less on a daily basis a larger, coherent time slot for it, usually at a time when I am mentally most active. Within in these time slots I would e.g. read papers, bounce ideas off colleagues etc. Boring but easy tasks such as responding to emails could be done early morning while barely awake, lab time could be later in the evening, according to taste. The important bit is that I do break up this work with rest and pause times, where I e.g. use the internet for a few minutes or chat with colleagues to de-focus a bit in a guilt-free manner (it is scheduled after all!) as a kind of reward for boring tasks. There are quite a number of other tweaks and things will vary quite a bit in the way one would prioritize things (ideally in a way that there are only few absolutely urgent and relevant things at the same time) but it will vary from workplace to workplace. And obviously I cannot claim that the whole thing works perfectly, but giving myself (arbitrary) timelines helps me to get things done in a realistic manner. Productivity can, in theory, always be higher, but if one obsesses too much about it, I think it will actually decline.

Also note that the immune response is (as all biochemical reactions) a bit of a stochastic effect. I.e. even if a given antigen has been memorized by the immune system, it does not mean that the response is immediate and 100% effective. So at very low concentrations the immune system is likely not to mount any response at all (but then the likelihood of succesful infection is also not very high). But once infection is successful and the virus particles start to spread (or the titer was high to begin with), the vaccinated immune system will have a much higher chance to contain the infection. It will depend on the precise mechansims of the infection process, however.

For the most part it should be fine if you avoid putting stuff in that actually inhibits bacterial growth (such as chlorine) or having too high of a temperature for instance. In any case the involved process is relatively slow and I do not think that even with higher bacterial content it will be that much faster. You might be able to accelerate it a little bit by seeding your sample with water which already has a decent bacterial content, though (from a good maceration process, for example).

So you amplified the promotor? Did you make sure that the amplificates had the correct overhangs (e.g. if you use restriction enzyme have you made sure that the restriction site is not right at the end of the product, for example?). I assume that your ligation mix contains the cut vector, product with appropriate ends and the original (excised) promotor? Have you done anything to prevent re-ligation (and if not, are there any clones with the original vector?).

Being desperate is a normal state of mind when it comes to cloning. So you have done all the controls the only thing would be to check whether everything for your construct is correct (i.e. compatible restriction sites), I am assuming you are excising the promotor from one vector and cloning it into another? You could play around with concentration ratios of insert to vector. However, there is also a question of the promotor strength and what is being controlled. In some cases overexpression of certain genes may prove to be fatal. In that case it is beneficial to use a promotor that you can repress, although this may defy the purpose of what you are trying to do.

In metabolic contexts flux is not referring to volumes in a spatial sense, but are usually used to describe biochemical reactions. A compartment could then essentially be a metabolite pool and the flux would be defined by the reactions to and from that pool.As BabckockHall mentioned, often steady-state conditions are assumed, though it does not have to be the case (really depends on your modeling for instnframework). Demand reactions, for instance, are simply unbalanced network reactions that allow compound accumulation. Under steady-state assumption the influx should equal the outflux. In reality, certain compounds may accumulate and this often has to be fit in into a given model somehow. You may want to get some reads on biochemical systems theory (which is a bit oldish term but still pretty much the basis of it all) or books about metabolic modeling.

You should probably look at the pathways of TLR4 signalling and the question would include why is sepsis modulated, and what are the consequences thereof. Things to think about are why sepsis occurs, which pathways are involved. What would happen if these are changed under various conditions?

The matter is (as usual) quite a bit more complicated. In birds, for instance many polygamous species are monomorphic and certain sexual dimorphisms correlate better e.g. with parental care (Owens and Hartley 1998 Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 7 vol. 265 no. 1394 397-407).

If I had unlimited resources and a lot of time I would be really tempted to try my hands on this. Building up the analytics and homeostasis controls alone could be extremely challenging and fun. Although my dream would be to have a mimic octopus. But the requirements would probably be just insane. At least if you want to provide them with a halfway decent habitat.

Ooooh sweet!

The presence of isoamylalcohol is usually for stabilization of the choloroform and reduction of foaming. There are a lot of different protocols however, and if it explicitly states that it should not be used, there may be a reason. Other than that chances are that you got RNAses into your extraction, need to work a bit faster, keep the work area cleaner etc. With multi-step extractions and especially with the low stability of RNA it usually takes a bit of practice to get consistently good results. If the yield is consistently low, however, it is time for running controls for troubleshooting.

Usually means multiple products.

Well, for scientific papers (i.e. journal articles) or other periodicals this is pretty much the norm. Most people use reference software to download the reference in a generic format and then format their references according to the journal they want to submit their article to. As do many bloggers, although some non-scientific journals still make a mess out of it (i.e. by not providing references at the end of their article, but I digress). Non-scientific sources are usually not indexed very well, and can be edited any time. As such, links are probably more useful rather than trying to cite them in a similar way. And besides, most non periodical internet sources may amount to "stuff some random dude/ette wrote that may or may not be based on primary sources".

At least in chrome and firefox you can also just paste as plain text, if that helps.

It should be noted that generally products are not acutely harmful. Depending on the product there may be components that may have minor health effects if used for a long time, due to bioaccumulation. Nonetheless, unless ingested routinely, chances are that overall health effects are likely lower than say, pesticides in food or air pollution in many areas. In addition, certain components may elicit allergic responses (including the perfume component).

Correct. It is critical to point out that the proton-motive force is reduced rather than describing it in terms of having or more protons without point of reference. I.e. the relative difference is what matters.

Well, I would think the majority of scientists are. It is just that scientists are not the largest part of the population.

Not all uncouplers are necessarily uncouplers of oxidative phosphorylation (it is a little bit context dependent). That being said, you should consider carefully what actually the driving force is (not the presence of protons alone, but something very specific about it). And look what goes where and why.

Very confusing wording and little (relevant) context. Do you mean to find out what the total biomass of the Tongass National Forest is and that that value is supposed to be in your presentation? Or do you mean that you want to discuss biomass production/turnover? If you had to estimate, what info would you need, what would be the major contributor to biomass in a forest?

Well, there are also other factors. In science your job tends to be to ask and answer specific question. So there is nothing to fix in that regard. I.e. you cannot fix cancer and figure out how you did it For the individual issues that pop up on the way the approach is often pragmatic, if the approach allows that. I.e. you figure out that a given protocol works and just use it without further optimization (or in many cases, understanding why it works). For other situations, you may need to get a deeper understanding, e.g. if your goal is develop a method (instead of just using one). In addition it should also be acknowledged that science is also on a tight budget and deadline, also the latter tend to be softer. But still, if you cannot get deliverable out, our funding is getting cut. If you do not get it out fast enough, someone else will. And again, I could pick apart the majority of protocols in molecular biology and show that they certainly are not the best solution, just working ones.

I am not quite sure what the main argument is here. One point appears to be aimed at redefining poverty. For some reasons poverty in America is supposedly different than anywhere (i.e. not tied to income, which is the most common measure). And the reasoning is that there ways to cope better than poverty than most people do. While I do agree with the latter, it does not change the rise in poverty or the fact that in America it is harder to rise from poverty than in e.g. in European countries. This clearly indicates some specific economic reasons behind it, rather than lack of ingenuity (unless you want to argue that Europeans are more hard-working and clever). But a better ability to cope with poverty does not make one less poor. One does has less option and less resources. Again, I am not arguing that certain people may be cope better, though there are also physical and psychological limitations. If you work minimum wage to pay your bills you may not have the time to plant a viable garden (and in the worst case the investment may not pay off) plus there are factors like decision fatigue. Everything you do when you are poor is a trade-off and costs mental energy (even simple ones, can I afford bus or should I walk and risk being late or get less sleep?). This can result in decision fatigue that limits their ability to take good decisions and act on them. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all But again, I am not sure what the argument really is. You are not poor because with available resources you can survive? That is not the definition of poverty. Or that compared to people in third world countries you are still well off? That does not make much sense in terms of understanding poverty in industrialized nations.

Also that is quite misconception. Compared to many other industrialized nations USA does not rank very favorably in terms of social and income mobility http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I do not think that this is more or less a general problem and not endemic to the US. There are, unfortunately quite a few reason why the system is like that. One simple reason is that people are obsessed with metrics. If you want comparable measures for GPA or equivalent, lots of semi-standardized exams are the way to go. Just as a comparison: in the former German system it was insofar different as students had to pass certain exams but were generally not graded. Most graded exams were oral and basically in discussion with one or several Profs. The advantage is that you have to be able to use your knowledge in a discussion. Downsides were cries (sometimes justified) of foul play favoritism and subjectivity. Now the system has switched to a bachelor/master system with more exams and the quality in students is really declining. There is politics to blame, as universities (and politicians) love to flaunt grades, or the desire of politics to put more people into colleges. This is by itself not a bad idea, but then one should re-evaluate the reason behind grading. Is it, to have a cut-off to select out bad students? I.e. identifying and promoting a kind of intellectual elite by giving them titles and denying them to others? In that case mass-education has an issue because it means you are taking money from many students who are not likely to make it, anyway (here is where I really liked that fact that German Unis were practically free for students). Is the goal to provide anyone the best education that they can benefit from (but then why exams in the first place?). Universities have to balance these schizophrenic goals to some extent and I really do not know the final answer to that. Part of it is also the student's fault. If asked, most would prefer engaging lessons where they have to think, apply their knowledge, have exams that make them thing, etc. However, in truth this usually leads to half of the class failing and students being dissatisfied. Critical thinking and applying knowledge is simply hard work and not easy (as compared to memorizing). And quite frankly, it is extremely unlikely that you can engage and interest students in all topics. You will always have some that are good in a certain area, but at best average in others. It is just a matter how much they like a particular subject. But if good students see bad grades (for whatever reasons) they get discouraged. It is easier to make an exam that just requires a bit of memorization since it appears to be much fairer than other kinds of evaluation. I know faculty that tried really engaging lessons, where memorization is insufficient to get by. And guess what the result is? Half of class failed and the student evaluations were abysmal. Since they were not tenured yet, they did not try it again. This leads to the other part that is to blame: faculty. Now for that you have to know that the average faculty has a lot of responsibilities. You have to create lectures/courses, engage in research, lead your own lab, compete successfully for grants and fulfill faculty duties. Realistically there is hardly any time to that. Each hour of lesson requires several of preparation. Unless you only have fantastic people in your lab you will spend a lot of time figuring out what went wrong the second you were not watching. Unless you are a micromanager, of course. In that case it is probably your fault that nothing works out. You do not only have to do science, but also lead and mentor your people (if you want your lab to be sustainable, unless you area already established, then you could do whatever). In some cases you have to deal with breakdowns of postdocs and students (yepp, lots of fun). And then you have to worry about money. Constantly. If just one of the things is weak during your tenure-track, you may be denied tenure. This does not mean that your job got less cozy, it means you are out of job and generally have a hard time finding a new one (unless you enjoy competing with fresh hotshots that are a decade younger than you). In addition, many enthusiastic young faculty have been crushed under the combined amount of disinterest and lethargy of an average undergrad course. Under these conditions, it is understandable that most junior faculty prefer to play it safe. And that means providing simple questions with simple answers that do need not or little interpretation. Does it create the best and brightest? No. Most of us reserve that part of the training (and effort) to those that come into our labs. This is also the reason why grad students see a sudden shift in their learning from undergrad to grad studies. Just my 2 cents, of course (also subject to change, as always).

I was always better at getting information by reading. Preferably in presence of a decent cup of coffee. Talking works best for me for brainstorming sessions. I.e. getting big, rough, ideas. Details again better in writing. When I was a student it was slightly different as there were more concepts that you could simply learn. In that context it did help to explain others a particular concept in order to detect holes in one's own understanding. Listening to lectures never helped me much, unless I was already familiar with the topic and just basically listen to highlights..