CharonY

The point is that LPS elicit strong immune responses and thus inflammatory responses.

I am not sure whether that is true. Those who are labeled geniuses put a heck of a lot of time into the area that interests them. They are more likely to be more intelligent than average. however they also put a disproportionate amount of time into it. I have yet to meet a single person in the science field who is able to do what he/she does without effort. To most it just appears to be effortless. Even Mozart had to work hard....

Also memory is selective and plastic and if not reinforced (e.g. by recalling it every now and then or having a strong association with something) may also result in gradual loss.

I think the definition of socialism has become really fuzzy over time. As mentioned earlier the original sense was that the means of production are owned collective by the people and communism. According to Marx and Engels this eventually would lead to the creation of a egalitarian democratic society where decisions were not made by a government, but directly by the people. Needless to say, it never happened. That being said none of the European countries is truly socialistic (or was, for that matter). Most adopted some flavors of social democracy, which emerged from the socialist movement and therefore have a mixed economy.

Talent is extremely overrated. The single most important trait is probably persistence. Being fascinated by a subject helps to maintain it. The rest is just hard work (as in any other job). For that it is important to realize what science really entails (as opposed to romanticized versions of it).

This is a simple maths question. Please indicate at each step the dilution factor. I.e. adding 1 part os something to two parts yields what?

Two major risk factors are the potential of generating viruses that become competent again in vivo and possibly oncogenesis. While the vector as it is usually used should not be really harmful, there is always the possibility that changes might occur post-infection. This will also make it difficult to find out if they are causative agents in diseases or cancer that may occur later on. At least I have not heard of any infection that could have been traced back to a lab accident with a modified vector yet. The actual risk really depends on the origin of the vector, its safety features and what insert is used for transfection.

In order to see a complete growth curve including lag, growth and stationary phase the experiment would have to run for several hours.

The first experiment can go wrong due to a number of reasons. Without knowing the precise setup troubleshooting will be difficult. But some things to consider: - was the initial count accurately determined and how - were the cultures fresh - was the dilution series made correctly, was the right buffer used - was the medium OK - did you let the scraper/spatula/whatever cool off (if heat sterilization is used) before plating the cells? Regarding the second experiment, in the time frame that you measured (90 minutes) you cannot expect a growth curve. Even fast growers like E. coli or Shewanella have replication times of around 25 minutes under optimum conditions. So at most three cell divisions could have taken place in that time. However, depending on how and when you inoculated the batch you will start with the lag-phase (also the OD is already pretty high in your graph). And the results clearly indicate no growth as the changes are only minimal and can be easily the result of pipetting or mixing errors.

As I mentioned before, intuition generally only yields useful results if the required knowledge base is there. How much really may be necessary depends on the complexity of the problem at hand.

There is better data for overmedication in well (or at least better) defined areas. That is, where risk-to-benefit balances can be relatively easily done. This include for instance epilepsy treatments. But in the area of mental illnesses it is hard to quantify benefits of certain medication.

You could also use sterile swabs or pipette tips in lieu of an inoculation loop. Or toothpicks, if you blunt and sterilize them. The key is to make sequentially diluting strikes as pointed out above. If high titers are expected I would do it slightly differently, but the principle is the same.

From what I have read we are quite farther than 30 years ago. At least in terms of finding out what we still do not understand.

Watching ants at their nest.

Your definition is quite correct and basically you already got the answer there. Think about it for a second. A low ID50 means that a low number of organisms are required to cause the diseases (in 50% of test subjects). So what does it mean if you compare it to a disease with a high ID50?

Intuition without knowledge is just random guessing.

Cell lysis can be achieved by cooking, though not really by enzymatic actions. The latter can be used to destabilize cell walls and similar structures but the membrane remains relatively intact. An additional step as e.g. chemical, mechanical lysis is subsequently required (or cooking for that matter).

To the OP, while I was in Germany I never heard about that campaign (was around 2001 according to the article). And just btw. the linked website is quite odd with a few spelling errors in German. I would have to see whether I can find anything more news-like on that. Nudity in public can be considered persecuted if someone is offended by it and calls the police (the police does normally not actively act if they see someone walking nude through the street). Usually it carries a small fine. I recall the story of a guy who always walked naked through the streets and claimed that his body was art. Some (mostly elder women) tend to call the police at some point, where he has to pay a fine and cover up. Quite often no one bothered, though. The only time when he had serious trouble was when he undressed in court and got sentenced for contempt of the court. Generally public nudity is considered impolite (unless in nudists camps, although you will also see women topless on regular beaches) but you will see it regularly in ads as well as on TV. Primary sexual organs are generally not allowed to be shown on TV or ads except e.g. for teaching purposes.

Depends, in principle it is fairly straightforward. What kind of mircroarray are you refering to and for what purpose? I.e. transcriptome analyses with a DNA microarray, DNA identification, tilling, protein microarrays, etc.? More importantly though, do you include the time needed for the upstream (i.e. properly experiment planning, RNA isolation, if applicable,etc.) as well as downstream analyses (i.e. data analyses, statistical assessment, modeling, if appropriate). Also you do not master the technique, the technique masters you

The flow is too low and the vaporization to mild to allow for anything like that to happen. In LCMS, for instance you pump in and vaporize at most 1-2ml/min of your solvent (which is often flammable like methanol), without anything happening. And then you add a minute amount of your sample. The most you could do is mess up the ion source (usually by using unfavorable conditions and way too much substrate). And just btw. depending on substrate and ionization you can also easily yield negative ions. You can run any MS in negative mode, which basically just requires a switch of polarity. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedJust to add, apparently someone did manage to mess up his MS in a liquid system. Apparently a non-standard mobile phase (not further specified) was used that resulted upon heating into a volatile reaction. Of course the volume were too low to blow anything up but apparently the resulting products were covering the whole ion source. But again, it was not the analyte but the mobile phase.

The public should want to know the truth. However, most of the time the public really wants a reaffirmation of their respective opinions. Padren, sadly it does not really read like satire.

I actually recall that a while back a group actually cloned the genes into E. coli and tried to create spider silk heterologously.

This is an interesting topic. It should be pointed out, however that cohort studies only provide associations and by their very nature can lead to conflicting results. It is therefore very important to check more than one study and ideally find one that demonstrates mechanisms. A quick search revealed that there are studies that find that there are indeed conflicting results. The most recent one being Zhang et al. 2009 Alcohol and Alcoholism, doi:10.1093/alcalc/agp068

You have to keep in mind that the H1N1 variant is just a different Influenza A strain. The basic sequence has long been published. You are probably more interested in more detailed analyses of the differences between the strains. There are a couple out there including the one posted here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=41872&highlight=h1n1 Also for starters you may want to check a recent review. The author was Schnitzler, I do not know the complete reference off the top of my head, though.

What do you mean with genome map? The annotated sequence has been published earlier.