CharonY

I will add that fomite transmission is difficult to verify outside of controlled infections. Especially when airborne pathways are more important. Based on what we know about viral characteristics, fomite transmissions is certainly possible. There is one study showing in animal models that bedding is a transmission route (though less effective than airborne transmission). There was a study earlier this year conducted during the alpha wave, where upper respiratory tracts and hands of index cases as well as surfaces were sampled over time and associated with household transmission. Interestingly, they found that transmission events were more strongly correlated to viral presences in the hands of index cases, the hands of infected persons and household surfaces, rather than respiratory tract samples. While not conclusive, it might suggest that in household infections (at least when folks know that there is a positive case and might take precautions, such as wearing masks) fomite infections might play a role. Or at least that it cannot be ruled out. I forgot the authors of the report but I am moderately certain that it was in the Lancet or Lancet Microbe.

I think you are still missing the point regarding how risk is evaluated. The reason why it is controversial is because animal studies suggest an effect, but so far no evidence in humans have emerged. And as also said before, the real benchmark is whether a treatment provides a net benefit over a disease, and not whether it is perfectly safe. Almost no drug is. All antibiotics have harmful effects, some rather severe, and sometimes can both, suppress and promote cancer via different mechanisms (chloramphenicol comes to mind). Other drugs, like cisplatin for cancer treatment have a risk to promote secondary cancer, yet without, folks might succumb to the first cancer. All it really means is that you should only take the drug when needed. And this is why also vaccines are so important, because for most, the risk of adverse effect is way lower than therapeutic intervention. And besides, there are also chemicals that our body synthesizes and needs, which are anticipated to be carcinogenic, you cannot get rid of those, either.

Good thing that science is not opinions, then. Homosexual behaviour has been observed in many species. Conversely, instincts that somehow senses extinction level events and adjusts behaviour accordingly are unheard of, and likely doesn't work well, considering the number of extinct species.

I suspect the main question would be what bats are.

Human are apes and together with other extant apes, they share a common ancestor. There are many fossils showing several levels of gradual changes from our ancestor to now. The limitation is not the presence or absence of a miraculous substance but the mere fact that fossilization is a rare event and discovery of fossils even rarer. That is not a theory.

While I am not disagreeing with the sentiment, I think we can largely agree that murdering children and non-combatants is deplorable. It matters little in the end if it is done targeted or willingly as collateral. Both actions fuel the cycle of hatred and it takes folks with a superior moral compasses of which there are many outspoken Palestinians as well as Israelis. Unfortunately, they are not in the majority and there are folks benefitting from the carnage. I will also note that settlers and IDF have killed a fair amount of Palestinians in the West Bank over the years, so getting rid of Hamas is apparently not a sufficient solution.

I do appreciate that Israel (even if they are not innocent in the events) are between a rock and a hard place. That being said, I read an interesting opinion piece (by Friedman, but surprisingly thoughtful) where he contrasts the actions with the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai which was carried out by a group with links to Pakistan's military intelligence.

I think that the messaging at least starting with the 24h threat by Israeli forces has created a sense that no good will come out of it. Even no communications from Gaza is likely going to interpreted in a negative way. And realistically, the only positive scenario I can see where Israel can start a PR blitz is if they manage to free the hostages.

I think that heavily depends on what sources you look at. Humanitarian organizations (Unicef for example) seem to focus on the humanitarian crisis. The issue that the Israelis have (I think) is that they do not have a good morning after narrative. They have been attacked and everything now is framed on retaliation. The most positive interpretation here is the self-defense narrative. Yet even so, I have not read much beyond incapacitating Hamas. Multiple voices (including Israelis) have wondered what is going to happen after (if) that is achieved. What is going to happen to the displaced? Who is going to govern Gaza? I think the immediate response to the terror attack has raised sufficient international concerns regarding the humanitarian cost that it is not going to be an all-in support anymore. Sure, Hamas is using their own folks as victims, an I think the world has mostly moved on from accepting total war scenarios where an unlimited number of civilian casualties can be just ignored (which to some degree happened during the Iraq wars). Another aspect of the media wars is that Israel's leadership is embroiled in a blame war (and comes in the wake of political strife surround Israel's judiciary). So a unified message is a bit hard to get out.

Sorry, my sentence was ambiguous. I meant to say that a maximum age (or term limit) might not be a bad thing.

The issue here is that we have got savage targeted murder of innocents on the one side and collateral murder of innocents on the other. Folks are suffering, while those responsible keep fueling the cycle.

How about you ask that the Israeli settlers in the West Bank? What emerges as a common thread through multiple reports is that Netanyahu's policy of enabling Hamas (and starving Fatah) in order to torpedo a two-state solution spectacularly backfired. It seems that the hope was the occasional (minor to moderate) threat from Hamas, to justify a hardline approach. That, would fuel the attacks and keep things looping (and at the same time, make things harder for the more accommodating factions) I will also state that folks tend to support authoritarian figures when they perceive threat. We see that happening even in stable countries throughout Europe. I can only imagine how much that is amplified with an actual threat present.

It might not be a bad thing. Was there a report that folks were using plastic surgery (not that I think that matters).

I mean sure, there is also that, because who needs representation when you can have a convoluted system that based on 200 yr old considerations. But as a whole not only the mechanism is silly, but also the fact that folks have a choice between someone old and unexciting and someone old and on multiple criminal indictments.

It is still a bit early, but general polls show that they are unfortunately very close (with Trump leading in some). Considering all that has happened, it is rather disheartening.

Depends on what you bake. When you start cold you obviously have a transition time when things heat up, which can be a good or bad thing. If you have something that is rather cold for example it can help to get the inside more cooked without scorching the outside (though you could achieve that we adjusting heat, too). For products where you e.g. have a lot of yeast, it can lead to over-proofing (e.g. spilling things out of your form). Very thin (and other) baking goods that need high heat for a short amount of time, are more likely to dry out before being cooked through.

OK, we should clarify at this point that we are all swansont (including yourself). Anything else is just delusional.

That is true, but this marginalizes the roles of supplements even more. Generally, you find little or conflicting evidence of benefits. There is the theoretical consideration, which includes poor Western diets with high energy but low nutritional value but even there folks were generally not able to show benefits in any consistent way. For certain groups, e.g. aging folks or folks with restricted diets might see more benefits, but again, that still is a bit more theory than evidence-based. Recent-ish reviews on that matter: https://doi.org/10.1136%2Fbmj.m2511 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18178897 And one on vitamin D (which is often supplemented) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41574-021-00593-z And here is an older discussion on the subject: https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-159-12-201312170-00011 Ideally one would monitor the level and trends of an individual and also check the impact on supplements if the levels appear to be at the lower end (even if it does not go into deficiency territory). But unfortunately we are not where personalized medicine is really a thing.

It is important to note that the difference between groups is not larger than within (and depending on which groups you compare, can be smaller, depending on how diverse a population is). That is not quite accurate. The original assumption was indeed that that during the spread from Africa to Eurasia folks mingled with Neanderthals, and the back-migration would only contribute a tiny amount into African populations. So the estimates were that Europeans and East Asians have about 1-4% (or something in that order) of Neanderthal DNA, and only a small part of the African population had any or close to none. However, a series of investigations a few years ago have shown a much higher proportion of Neanderthal DNA in African population (though only about a third of non-African populations). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.01.012 The misidentification of part of the Altai Neanderthal genome has interesting implications on why the East Asian population were (potentially wrongly) associated with a higher Neanderthal proportion than European ones (essentially Neanderthals might have picked up DNA from modern humans based on a failed migration from Africa to the Middle East around 100k years ago and thus resulted in misattribution).

Ok, so it means that you got about 100 mg zinc citrate dihydrate (C12H14O16Zn3) per tablet, which corresponds to 30 mg elemental zinc (for details see exchemist's calculation). As the daily recommended dose of zinc is about 8-11 mg, this corresponds to 300% of what is recommended to consume per day. I.e. it exceeds the recommended dosage by a fair bit and unless there is a case of serious zinc deficiency should probably not be taken regularly. The naming suggests that this is based on EU guidance levels.

Sorry during deleting repetitions I removed the front end of my answer. The levels refer to magnesium, the second supplement, not zinc. Your values are the correct one for zinc. You are also correct with your assessment of supplements. Other than in situations of high deficiency, studies keep failing to show a benefit. I will state that nutritional benefits are difficult to assess in general, due to the huge range of individual differences and other factors that (again, outside of deficiency) have larger effects on overall health status. And heck, even defining good health measures to monitor can be rather tricky.

As others already commented while I was typing this up I'll just leave the stuff that has not already been explained. There are various concepts at play here. Elemental refers to the element (not vitamin) in question (i.e. zinc). However, elements are often hard to absorb by the body, so there are often used in forms of citrates or bisglycinates etc. to make them more water soluble. The reference value typically refers to how much the daily recommended intake is, usually in %. So 300 would mean 3x the recommended daily intake. For adults the recommended daily amount (edit:) for magensium for men is around 400-420 mg and for women around 310-320, for example. I also wanted to add that supplements are a bit in the regulatory wild west almost everywhere. There are often no requirements to have the formulations checked independently and studies have found huge variations even between individual pills of a manufacturer. Also, the design of the pills is sometimes really marketing (more filler to appear more potent) but can also be simply that the the factory only produces a single size of pills and just vary concentration of the active ingredient and fill up the rest.

Or for starters, books.

Naah, what is the point of making rules if you yourself have to adhere to them?

Not quite, viral remnants are less than 10%, a lot of the noncoding are variable in structure but duplications are fairly common (about similarly frequency as viral remnants). The biggest chunk, are the transposons are mentioned by Endy (maybe around 50% of the genome). One should also be noted that amount of coding regions have been increased with newer research, as some presumed to be non-coding areas actually do encode things like sRNA or small proteins.