CharonY

One point that I forgot to mention- mpox was one of the critical test cases for effective global infection control in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The reason is that the symptoms are fairly visible and diagnostic, infection rates appear to be relatively low (though there is some uncertainty regarding pre-symptomatic transmission), and there was heightened public health vigilance. While certain efforts (e.g. wastewater monitoring) has been stepped up, the fact that it it wasn't contained, clearly shows ongoing weaknesses. Also the fact that folks still do not understand that we are literally all in this together, whether we like it or not. Edit to add: The big issue is that the level of complacency among public health, politics and to some degree the public (that is somewhat understandable, folks would rather ignore issues and focus on day-to-day). The obvious issue is that being reactive means that we won't do anything before we have to, which in many cases(infectious diseases, climate change) means that the challenge has become so big that it is not easily solvable anymore. So then folks can claim that there is nothing we can do in the first place. It is disappointing that even having worldwide lockdowns is not not enough to create enough will to do think proactively. It also seems to me that folks in public health are a bit burned out by that. Yes indeed. If folks were able to, it would be much better to think in terms of health burden, rather than just deaths.

Respiratory diseases are the biggest fear, but I would also point out that creeping health burden, especially if preventable should not be downplayed. I mean, I do understand why they would do that, as the public generally has a mostly binary response to public health threats: headless panic and indifference. Panicking at this point would likely be net detrimental. But OTOH it does allow for spread that could eventually lead into panic again. Even diseases with very low or non-existent casual transmission, such as AIDS and in recent times increasingly multi-resistant STIs, can spread across the world with tremendous cumulative health burden.

As mentioned in other threads, biofuels mostly have a net detrimental impact on the environment. Until other forms of energy are becoming scarce, they are not really filling a critical gap. I am not sure what the current status is, but electrical planes are a thing and I believe hydrogen-powered aircrafts exist as prototypes. Not sure how far they are from commercial planes though.

Which especially interesting because we could see that happening in real-time just a few years ago WHEN WE WERE LOCKED UP IN OUR ROOMS/LABS. (Deep breaths). AAAAARGH. I guess the true lesson we learned was.. wait what was the lesson again?

Maybe, there are studies suggesting that protection might last decades, but there is always a risk that it drops with time (and in elderly). Because that is exactly how diseases work, of course. I heard similar arguments regarding COVID-19 that it is only risky for the very old and frail and "the fatties". Misinformation and misunderstanding go hand in hand there.

To some degree and depending species. But more commonly are incremental but stochastic increases e.g. due to duplications of repetitive regions. Polyploidy is another mechanism, though in that case genes are also duplicated. Others are related mechanisms of chromosomal structures that can lead to duplication of larger chunks.

There are multiple things here. Do you mean within or between species? But generally speaking there is no trend in evolution with regard to genome size. Rather, it depends a lot on the species and how they deal with additional genomic baggage. Many bacteria have a somewhat efficient genome size, as cell replication is slower with a larger one and any additional material would need to offset that cost. Eukaryotes tend to be somewhat less restricted and there is no correlation between genome size and e.g. overall complexity and there is often an excess of non-coding DNA. The fact that closely related eukaryotic species typically have very similar number of genes (i.e. coding DNA) but vastly different genome sizes is also referred to as the c-value paradox. Humans are around a modest 3.1 Gbp, which and in most mammals the variation is not huge. Yet, among animals, the largest genome size belongs to a bone fish with 130 Gbp. And in a fern a genome size of 160 Gbp was found. In amoeba size variation have been huge, ranging from 23-ish Mbp to many Gbp (though it could be a bit overestimated, as the size estimates were not done by sequencing in many cases). But in short, no we do not expect any specific evolutionary trends in genome size. Gene numbers, on the other hand, are under more constraints.

Oh no, that is how it always starts. Soon enough you won't be able to distinguish "real" American cheese from an Anster and you will have to plant an American flag everywhere you stay for more than 3 days, lest you forget where you are. Worst, you might not get offended anymore being called "English". Get out, I tell ya.

Ooh I hate that. Mostly because STDs are on the rise in many places. And increasingly multi-resistant versions.

It should also be noted that the specificity is far from absolute. Liver is a bit easier as it is the space where most stuff gets metabolized. I.e. when you almost any drug, they end up in the liver, which is why so liver and kidney damage are frequent side effects of many drugs. Many decorations of these encapsulations as StringJunky mentioned can be used to make enrichment in liver more efficient. This can be further enhanced by moieties that target receptors that are a bit more frequent in certain cancer cell types. Could be as simple as a folate or more complex like certain peptides. But again, these receptors are also found in other cells.

Yup. Dunning Kruger has become a vibe now.

Nanoparticles are just things that are, well, the size in the nanometer range. In terms of pharmaceuticals, nanoparticles can be used to encapsulate drugs or vaccines. Recent mRNA vaccines use lipid nanoparticles to encapsulate and stabilize the mRNA, for example. Specifically for cancer, the idea is to encapsulate the drug, which is typically cytotoxic, in a way that it will preferentially taken up by cancer cells. I.e. the idea is to use them for targeted delivery (e.g. with special coatings) so that the drug kills cancer cells more than normal cells.

Parents are part of it, but I think the school system has not kept up with this trends (especially up to and increasingly including university). They are still using metrics and methods where the use of the internet can entirely circumvent learning processes while still providing false sense of success in form of high grades. More money alone would not help that much, it requires a re-thinking of how to learn how to learn in the 21st century. We used to think that available information facilitates thinking, I believe we are arriving at an inflection point, where this is no longer true. Add to that the almost constant distraction by social media, it results folks in leaving little mental overhead to actually do any level of thinking or legwork related to that (e.g. source analysis). It is not that the students do not put in the time. But since they do not learn how to acquire the knowledge properly (other than memorization- and even that is getting rarer), even simple tasks feel much harder to them than it should be. This, in turn often leads to frustration, as many do not realize that spending time is not the same as being productive. /rant off

It is getting pretty bad rather fast. And I am not entirely sure where but we are definitely failing the younger generation in terms of teaching critical thinking and media literacy. Even in the past you might have the odd kid in class who believes weird things because they saw it somewhere on the internet. Now almost half the class doesn't believe me when I tell them that viewing an unsourced video is not doing research. And the rate increases rapidly.

Which would assume that someone is still able to read.

Interestingly recently folks started to wind down surveillance efforts. Great timing.

I think we have not really defined what we mean with value here. Glass of water might have an intrinsic value, but may be low where water is freely available and very precious where it isn't. And if we are not talking about monetary value then basically anything that anyone might enjoy at some level can be considered a value. Everything else is basically a judgement what one might consider more or less valuable.

To 1) it doesn't even need to do that. Art exists in many forms and certain types (music, movies/TV, books etc.) are very big industries.

He is more likely to do a chess pigeon move.

I have underestimated stupid and have learned that is a very durable condition.

I mean, I think all of us here will have experienced a couple of pandemics (at least within the borders we live in) over the past decades. Though COVID-19 was the most dramatic (in terms of deaths in short amount of time). Others, have been more devastated to other communities. But due to increasing travel, diseases spread globally much more commonly.

A very interesting question. I am curious about that, too. But OTOH I am afraid to see it being tested. I have the creeping feeling that the stupidest response will win out in the end.

They didn't. It is a multi-omics study with samples taken over a period of a few years from healthy individuals. So the longitudinal data per person is fairly short (but for these types of studies still a bit more extensive, as most only have single time point per person). Adjustments were, I believe mostly with regard to factors such as BMI, insulin resistance and so on. However, due to the cohort, the data in necessarily aggregated for a view over time.

I think that is to various degree true for most things. I suspect one could argue that e.g.. life sustaining things (say food or water) have intrinsic value as they have purpose, but the value placed on it would be extremely different based on situation. In that context, is there anything that one could think of that has a clear intrinsic (as opposed to situational) value?

The WHO has (again) declared the rapid spread of mpox across 13 countries in Africa an emergency over fears of a global spread.