CharonY

Dak, evolution is the process of change. It is undirected. Imagine that in a given population an allele is exterminated by random even (e.g. genetic drift). You got evolution, but it is not directed with regards to anything. Natural selection, however, leads to the prevalence of alleles that result in an increase of fitness (by weeding out the others). Hence it is directed (kind of).

Dak, you are confusing selection as driving force with evolution itself.

The non-polar column will essentially separate according to boiling point (as the latter correlates inversely with polarity). The reverse is true for the polar column.

.Are you referring to flavoprotenoid microspheres or about lipid protocells? I only recall the Szostak paper on this point and AFAIK their point was mostly that their lipid protocells allow diffusion of nucleotids and that the lipid environment of the cell is compatible with simple chemical primer extension reactions. In flavoprotenoid microsphores ATP generation was found but essentially it was due to irradiation of ADP in presence of Pi (which is quite intersting by itself, though), but I have not yet heard about real photosynthesis. Could you provide a source for that ? I only recall that at some point someone assmebled a protocell and added some porphyrins. But I would by surprised if that led to photosynthesis. And why precisely would one need a culture medium for them? I may be missing something but they do not have metabolism and hence should be pretty stable in a defined buffer. Am I missing something here? And just btw. in theory for pure sterile work a clean, turbulence free horizontal flow box would be ideal. Dead flow do not provide active protection (though they reduce turbulence). It tends to be more necessary for smaller contaminants (as e.g. DNA), which are not removed by HEPA filters. But that being said, if you are practiced enough for a limited number of samples it can be enough just to work near a flame. Many microbiologists do that.

Sounds to me that journalists are pretty bad with numbers. And having a bias (either way) obviously does not help.

Why is 2 not biology? I would consider 4 not to be biology. And most likely quite complicated to sum up all the relevant factors.

Nonsense. There is no dark toast. This thread really starts to degrade up to the point that it should belong in pseudoscience. And btw. smoke alarm exist already. They have been improved to the size of a disco and only require a numerous deaths to indicate that there is smoke. None of which ever have detected dark toast. Popcorn on the other hand...

Well you could do it with a nanodrop (only needs 1µl), but is also a spectralphotometric method. Alternatives are a fluorescence based assay with subsequent measurement with a fluorometer (e.g. picogreen). You could also make isotope dilution measurements with a MS, but that is kind of overkill.

I think I may now know where the misunderstanding come from. When I talk about cell death I really mean apoptoptic or necrotic events. In my opinion these are stronger indicators of neural cell loss than merely counting cells in the latter case you will have to make a case-control study. That is counting cells from an area of a pool of alcoholics, vs a pool of controls. However, due to the high variability of the brain and due to inherent variability of cell counting events you generally need a very high sample size to reach the required statistical power to allow differentiation of those two (remember, the lancet report only had 22 individuals in total). The paper that I put forward base their assumption on animal models with which they found ncecrosis upon binge ethanol treatment, but not in controls. The damage is rather diffuse and hence, given he limitations that the authors in the Lancet paper put forward, may explain their results. Especially given the multitude of publications indicating neuronal damage and even at least hints on the mechanism of neuronal degeneration and necrosis in animal models.

And conversely you can have innumerable cups of coffee and still write like a drunken monkey (just re-reading something I wrote up)...

In these cases either no one answers, or always the same guy. You know, that one who sits in some distance from anyone else, who actually read the book before the class started, the one without the iPod in the ear during lecture. You know, the guy in the mirror one or two decades back....

Actually I found more physicists to be religious than chemist and biologists. More or less in that order. Just some random thoughts.

If you read the whole abstract (or even the paper) you will notice that they refer exclusively to the neocortex. The reason being that lesions there are generally not reversible. In contrast, the documented cell loss of glial cells are reversible (though it may take a long time). And btw. a statement that the neuron count of alcoholics in the neocortex does not differ from controls is not the same as the part as I took offense in: Because, again, there is not way to ascertain that claim. It is true however that cell count techniques have their limitations and statistical powers may not be sufficient. However the limitations are lower in animal models which clearly showed necrotic events in rat brains, for example. And I was actually wrong that no mechanisms are known. Apparently there are indications that oxidative stress may be a major factor of alcohol induced cell damage. Crews and Nixon 2009, Alcohol and Alcoholism 2009 44(2):115-127

To be fair the mechanism of alcohol on brain cell lesions is to my knowledge not really resolved. They could be direct or indirect effects. However, the blanket statement that alcoholics have the same number of neurons is pretty much not tenable (and hence the nonsense part). There is a significant difference in cell count between individuals to begin (and also within a person as time progresses) with. However, localized and selective neuronal damages have been well documented at least since the 90s or so. These have been supplemented with animal models. In contrast I have not stumbled across any newer findings that invalidate the research of the last decades or so. While this is not my field, I would be interested in seeing those claims.

Ack, the towel of course. Only if it is sold in Germany it is under a different name. Of course there are a gazillion towels around. But I have neither heard nor seen anything similarly marketed like it.

That is a reductionist's interpretation of the law. The extended law demands that while toasting you short out your whole neighborhood, thus creating an angry mob with pitchforks, set yourself on fire while trying to get the toast out, slash your wrists while buttering the toast, slip on your blood while trying to drop the toast, breaking your spine in the process. All the while the toast comes sailing down on your face, butter side down. Only it is isn't butter, but due to prolonged incubation in the fridge something grew that is infectious and has a hunger for your brain. While being thoroughly infected the mob comes crushing in, only to find you zombified. You start biting the first of the, Then we can cross-over to the zombie thread. The end. Darn. I forgot the cat. She will scratch you if you try to throw her. If she is a he, he will scratch you regardless what you do. Because he can.

Actually recent research indicated that coffee is at best a mild diuretic, if at all. It had hardly more effect than water alone.

Actually there is regeneration going on as GDG pointed out. However, the rate is slow and I am pretty sure that it also depends on the area.

Nonsense. Excessive alcohol consumption leads to significant reduced brain volumes ofgray and white matter. Especially the frontal lobes are affected. E.g. Kubota M, Nakazaki S, Hirai S, et al. 2001, J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry

On the other hand I am wondering whether it is a German product at all. I mean, I have not seen things like that in Germany at all.

It is the enzyme that polymerises a sDNA strand onto RNA, yes.

We do not have a reverse transcriptase at all.

Essentially their RT (reverse transcriptase) do not have proof-reading capabilities. During the reverse transcription step errors are incorporated. If you try to give it a higher fidelity you'll have to add a function (proof reading) rather than inhibiting one. This is generally not feasible. Moreover, recombination can also occur at high frequency, for instance if a cell is co-infected with different strains.

I have not read that book so I cannot really comment on it. But regarding psychiatrists: it depends on what topics are covered in the book. If he just gives examples regarding plasticity, then yes of course. It is common knowledge and an MD would surely know a significant amount about this, especially a psychiatrist actually. Depending on their specialization they tend to have quite a bit of neurobiology in their curriculum. More detailed up do date research regarding neuronal plasticity on the cellular level however often requires a psychiatrist with a deep specialization of the more biological field. That is a generalization, of course and just my two cents on the way to the coffee machine.

In addition a number of enzymes have pH optima near the neutral range. Given the relatively short time that food stays in the stomach it is rather unlikely that they will help much with digestion. And seriously, cellulases? That is kind of absurd.