CharonY

"Truth" really has no place in science. It assumes a transcendental certainty that simply is not present in science. Anything in science can be challenged and has to survive challenge for it even to be considered. Prevailing well-tested theories and models are not deemed truths, nor are they put on pedestals. Rather, they have a huge mark on their back as any scientist able to initiate a paradigm change will indubitably make their mark in their community. That being said, the reason why theories have prevailed is because they are well supported by data and numerous studies will have to support the essence of their finding. In other words, it is not enough just to make some half-arsed assumptions and then logic your way through flawed premise- you really have to generate the data (which clearly does not exist yet, otherwise folks would have used it to challenge the models) that are so rock-solid that they can topple all the existing data in satisfactory manner. Folks don't declare any random opinion on the internet as a scientific finding for good reason. What many are not aware is that scientific work is hard and takes time and expertise. Most work from PhD students represents years of training and (hopefully) hard work, yet depending on the field, often the results alone are insufficient to publish on their own. The reason is that it takes them years to master a methodology and only towards the end are they able to implement it on a particular problem. The assumption that we can just avoid that and just reason our way to completely new insights is, frankly, quite arrogant.

I don't think that it is a top result. Based on what I have read it is so blindingly obvious that anyone else would have been long indicted for that. So essentially this is not a highlight, but rather the bar was on the floor and this time around, folks did not trip over it. They did in the other cases, though.

Not that it likely will matter much. The more serious criminal cases at this point are pretty much postponed until after the election and as long as he is not physically behind bars (which is extremely unlikely) folks will conveniently keep forgetting that he is convict (and those who don't wouldn't vote for him in the first place).

"Bushman" is frequently considered to be a derogatory term, and the poster does a good job in demonstrating why it is to be the case. Frequently they refer to the the San peoples who have developed an incredible set of traditional knowledge and survival skills. Those might in fact come handy when the rest of us have polluted the Earth in pursuit of more convenience. As a matter of fact, many "primitive" folks can teach us a lot regarding resource stewardship (a research area that has gained prominence in the last decade or so). If you want to meet clever folks who are able to eke out a living without destroying everything, you probably should talk to those that you so readily dismiss.

I too think that everyone else should behave in a way that benefits me personally, whereas I shouldn't do anything different. Also,it has been mentioned many times before that we are approaching peak population with an expected rapid subsequent decline.

Yes it is mostly related to nitrosamines. The thinking has shifted a bit in the last years, it seems and there is some lit suggesting that cured meats are not necessarily a higher health risk than regular meat. OTOH the health baseline has shifted a bit with general overconsumption of meat as well as ubiquitous presence of overprocessed foods so I guess that particular risk might be difficult to tease out. Moreover, in a healthy diet nitrates are generally derived from plant material (ca. 5% would be meat-derived). Also, quite a few traditionally cured meats are salted and dry-cured (e.g. capocollo).

No, but there is increasing evidence on the impact of nitric oxide deficiency on vascular health (as well as in the nervous system). I should add that the issue of nitrate reducers only came up in the context with antiseptic mouthwashes. To clear up some confusion, (also in response to Luc Turpin), there are generally two major routes of NO production. The first is produced by our bodies via the NOS pathway (derived from arginine). Nitric oxide itself regulated in part by oxidation to nitrate which contributes a bit to local nitrate pools. NOS-independent production can be initiated by commensals in the the mouth, which is mostly reduction of nitrate to nitrite, and the latter can be further reduced to NO non-enzymatically (which would also apply to dietary nitrite). In parallel, gut bacteria are also known to reduce nitrate, but in this case completely to NO. Going back to OP, there is limited data that suggest that mouth wash would significantly disrupt NO metabolism, though it certainly could make things worse for folks who already have issues in that regard.

Please check your image and the refs you posted. The bioactive molecule is mostly NO. If it was just nitrate, nitrate reducing bacteria would play no role and the issue with mouthwash would make no sense.

It is actually not nitrate, as that would not require bacterial action. What I assume they refer to is reduction of nitrate by bacteria to nitrite and nitric oxide. The last one is associated with cardiovascular health. Without digging through lit I am not sure whether we can clearly state that the effect size is large enough to have broader scale health issues.

Also, methanol is toxic and can be absorbed through skin.

Coming from Germany, I think I have talked to profs maybe a total of 30 mins through undergrad. It is not that much because of class sizes, it was mostly because you were expected to work through things on your own. There were exercises with postdocs/grad students, but they were often hit and miss. However there were block courses in the 3rd and 4th year, which were basically focussed topics where you went to the lab (or field) for a month to run a project (one lecture a week, the rest was whole day doing things, ranging from collecting plants, to running gels). The number of instructors depended on the group size of the prof (I had courses where there was basically just one technical assistant for the whole bunch, to a half-dozen grad students plus assistants). And then the real, real learning started when you ran your own project for a year (for a MSc equivalent). Good times.

Sperm is optional in a range of species.

The best undergrad training IMO are labs where you have to apply what you have learned. Unfortunately in most countries this is the first thing to cut, as they are expensive and many students don't like them, as they are harder to get good grades in.

That warning has been out for a while and it is one of multiple high-risk influenza variants out there. H1N1 (swine flu) already caused a major pandemic, and the increasing propagation of H1N1 in cattle increases the likelihood of it jumping to humans. It also shows that you do not need wet markets for these events to happen. Funnily, our awareness seems to come and go in ever shorter cycles. Pandemic preparedness plans were made when SARS hit, and while a number of surveillance measures were put in place, response mechanisms were not implemented or where removed after a few years. Than H1N1 hit and the same cycle happened. There was a general sense that the next big pandemic would be influenza driven, yet in many cases the public health plans were underfunded or non-existent. Then of course then COVID-19 came and we keep unlearning lessons. There are some incremental improvements. But even so soon after the last (well, technically still ongoing) pandemic we seem to lose capacities already. Add to that the general displeasure of the pandemic with pandemic responses, we are going to be in for wild ride if something major happens.

Heinz Sielmann and the Grzimeks were influential to me. Sielmann was a filmmaker and not an academic, but his expeditions and footage made me want to pursue biology as a career. The documentary from the Grzimeks is one of my earliest memories of the impact of humans on the natural world. Also challenged the prevalent idea of humans being something separate and above nature.

As a general, not too in-depth overview most are fine, especially on non-controversial subjects. I am not sure why a company would have an interested in editing a post on Lincoln. They are more likely to something related to their business interests. While this might be generally the case, I found that references were often a wild mix of decent, wildly outdated or simply incorrectly cited sources (most frequently just a snippet that is not really a key point of the paper). I think that is expected as many folks editing are not necessarily experts on the subject matter, especially for more obscure topics (and the same could be said for traditional encyclopedias).

Generally speaking what you seem to think about are food-borne diseases (such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, noroviruses etc.). Meat should always considered to be somewhat contaminated (and hence need cooking). But even plants can be contaminated (e.g. by manure). Processed food can be cooked, after which the pathogen load should decrease. Freezing food is generally not enough to reduce pathogen count. Boxes and containers are usually not an issue (unless you eat them). What you should do is heat your food.

Fair enough. Though all I have on it is: I'll be in the lab by 5, my plan has landed, I'll be 30 min late. It also has no internet access or bluetooth. I suspect there might be ways to use the cellular network itself, but I have the suspicion it might not be worth the effort.

It always depends on what you want to do. I still occasionally use my old Symbian cell phone (with keyboard). Obviously nothing works except calling and texting, but that is all I need to do, especially while traveling. Maps is the only feature I miss. I have an android but use it actually less (I just hate the idea of having it).

I think this type of lazy thinking is far more prevalent than you give it credit for, and not necessarily linked to religion (even if it might condition one to do so). In many cases, it seems like a protective mechanism to: avoid complicated feelings or the work needed to work through them and to protect and validate deeply held beliefs. I will remind you of (ex)members on this forum who were able to work to complicated questions even vaguely in their area of expertise but went off the handle once it came to issues they deeply disagreed with. Consistency seems to be more the exception (and requires more work) than the norm. I think that prior to the age of oversharing we secretly held the assumption that the folks we surround ourselves with are at least vaguely in line with what we are thinking (hence the old wisdom of no politics or religion at the dinner table).

That doesn't really answer my question. What does ownership mean in this context. Administering it like a colony or incorporating it into the country? In the latter case the "original" Swedes, for example would be a minority in the resulting country. The former is a bit problematic. Even with best intentions, a power differential and lack of self-governance will inevitably lead to issues. I mean, can you imagine Danes ruled by Swedes? The bloodshed (and alcohol poisoning) would be unfathomable.

That is not always the case- it is more a rough tendency, which is not always correct. In quite a few parasites, the reproductive fate of a parasite is not coupled to their hosts, so they do not benefit from the host being alive longer (or conversely, there is no disadvantage for them to kill them- as long as they do not run out of hosts). In fact, in some cases the death of the host is a necessary part of their life cycle. Some fungi, for example, feed on their insect host until they are pretty much spent, then cause them seek a high point for maximum spore dispersal. Certain horsehair worms infect their hosts brain and cause them to drown, so that the worm can get into water and lay eggs. Some parasites have to change hosts during their lifecycle and either cost their first to die (or compel them to get eaten) so that they can get to their second one. Sometimes the opposite happens. Plasmodium falciparum, which causes malaria, is harmless to mosquitos, but an be quite deadly in their final host.

More details needed. Do you mean to say that which political system you want to apply to the rest of the world (i.e. they basically become one nation) or whether each of the individual countries should rule like colonizers.

As stated before: nope. Astonishingly, this short sentence manages to be wrong on multiple levels. Going backward, the retina is not composed of DNA, DNA is not ionized by (visible) light. At most there is photoexcitation by UV which can lead to DNA lesions, but not ionization. Taken together, it seems that you do not understand what ionization means, especially in the context of biomolecules. Also during photosynthesis there is no ionization by light, either. The electron flow is driven by conformation changes within the system that ultimately allow the extraction of electrons and protons from water. The light energy powers these changes but does not ionize the photosystem. I am not sure, are you just having a bit of fun of mushing words together that you don't quite understand?

I think I would say potential rather than possibility. The latter could also include likelihood of exposure (probably).