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CharonY

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Everything posted by CharonY

  1. Poor math and reading comprehension it seems. I.e. forgetting that more than 58% were vaccinated (i.e. the rate of deaths in vaccinated folks is disproportionately lower) and just a few lines further in the article it is even explained that the unvaccinated folks were at over 8-fold more likely to die. While not tangential to OP, it suggest that the poster has a habit of either being very uninformed and/order argue in bad faith, as they obviously do not even read what they are linking.
  2. Theere should be. I remember a study around 2000s that measures task switching as a measure of focus of around 2.5 mins. A recent follow up from same author measured around 0.5 mins or so. I have the papers... somewhere.
  3. That is true and exactly the problem. For example, attentionspan and is going down everywhere, but it is not clear whether current tests account for them.
  4. There is that, but I think with more data, we are starting to think a bit more about what is the range of normative behaviour? At which point does a certain behaviour cause dysfunctionality and requires additional treatment and how is what we should accept as normal range? One big issues is that in contrast to, say, infectious diseases we do not have causative agents, or even absolute clear targets. I am fairly sure that among experts, there is a more nuanced discussion about that, though.
  5. Also note that it is easy, especially non-quantitatively to correlate two or more random temporal trends with each other.
  6. This is a bit of a discussion going on, and goes beyond textbook knowledge. I.e. the questions there are not clearly resolved. There are certainly proponents stating that we have overlooked their importance for too long, and there might be something to it. Others might argue that the importance might be overstated as existing models seem to deal with overall questions fairly well. It is not my field, so I am certainly not familiar with all the intricacies (and my knowledge is also somewhat dated) but my reading when things came out was that yes, there is likely an influence, but given all the other aspects that are already known to play a role, it looks more like an addition that one has to acknowledge only in certain models. That being said, I believe there is more lit out there specific regarding plants, but as I am not a plant person, I have no insights about their significance. That all being said, if one wants to start about the basics of evolution, one should start with the basics before exploring more complicate advanced topics. Inevitably, starting off the other way round will lead to misunderstanding and confusion.
  7. Cooking is just applied biochemistry.
  8. What you are talking about are generally not related to evolution as they occur only within the organism and are (generally) not transmitted to the next generation via the germline (there is evidence for some exceptions, though). In broader terms, it is important to note that DNA itself is not doing anything. Simplified, their main role is a data repository that needs to be first transcribed into mRNA and then translated into proteins. The latter are doing all the work. Obviously our cells (and by extension our body) need to be able to address changes in the environment, each cell type has to fulfill different functions despite all having the same DNA. So what is happening is that transcription/translation is regulated via a wide range of internal and external cues resulting e.g. different protein compositions in different cell types or adaptive changes in response to some environmental signals. However, this dynamic is within an organism and is not transmitted to the next generation (e.g. in a Lamarckian sense).
  9. Also, yeast extract is typically used for flavoring. It is a cheap source for umami.
  10. There is an even worse implication. If impeachment is a prerequisite, it means that the president could avoid all criminal liability by simply resigning (well or killing everyone who would vote for impeachment).
  11. Not necessarily in that granularity but there are studies looking at it. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad318
  12. Then the do not understand the impact of selection. And I have not seen that really reflected in most of the posts (with one or two exceptions). Folks have said that as a whole evolution has no goal, which is true, but that is not the same as saying it is random. No the DNA is left intact, for the most part. There are some exceptions, but if the article is what I think it is about, they are talking about RNA editing. RNA is basically a copy based on DNA (using different sugar and one different base). However, all eukaryotes process the resulting RNA. The canonical knowledge is the excision of introns, leaving a mature RNA with exons. There are also chemical modifications, caused post-transcriptional modification such as A-I editing by ADAR. What has been found in cephalopods is therefore not really something unique as such. I believe the main surprise is that canonically one assumed most of this editing does not really change the resulting protein sequence (i.e. they are neutral), but in cephalopods have a much higher frequency of these changes. It is not quite clear why (or perhaps the results in other organisms are somewhat underestimated, it can be tricky to as it varies from tissue to tissue) .
  13. As noted, that is not how evolution works. We are apes and we share a common ancestor with extant apes, including chimpanzees. It is like asking why your cousin did not evolve into your brother.
  14. Evolution is a change in the gene pool of a given population over time, as has been stated before. Not sure what you mean with development, as I do not see it well (or at all) defined in your posts. Individual development is a different discipline. I have not read any of them, but the text and title alone are pretty horrible for the most part. None obeys the command of their DNA to the letter, during conception we shuffle or DNA as part of the process, we modify our DNA throughout our lives epigenetically, our immune cells do recombination to create antibody diversity. The first link goes to a rather horrible interpretation of a PNAS paper, where they looked at the pangenome of a bacterium and basically found that that it is more shaped by selection than drift (based on a machine learning models). While interesting, there was no supposition that evolution is super random in the first place. What is unknown for any given population is what the contribution of each to the current shape is.
  15. I think you might be glamorizing it a bit more. There is something to say regarding better representation. But, in recent times, wedge issues are also immensely successful in disruption these processes. Take the rise of the far-right, for example. They do echo the US situation, while having a very distinct political system. The mixed economic model is probably as a whole better in many areas, especially for folks not swimming money. But there are also distinct issues there. I think in some areas there are clear advantages, but I don't think that they are necessarily to the political system, but based on what folks mange to agree on. Sure bi-partisan system encourages taking sides, but populations are not necessarily passive receivers. The immigrant-averse stance permeating much of the European population is quite at odds with many parties and which has fueled the success of the far-right. They also happen to be more aligned with the GOP, potentially due to the right-wing networks which have sprung up with suspected funding from Russia. Ultimately it is an interplay between system and sentiments in the population. And they often cross-feed each other. If folks did not had the simmering resentments, Trump and the GOP would not be able to profit from them. But once they did, they managed to shift the Overton window to more acceptance of previously considered extreme sentiments. That in terms gave an opening for even more radical changes and so on.
  16. I mean, looking at the ingredients it does not seem too bad. The second one might have different design principles as they used a lot of coloring, potentially suggesting that the ingredients were not of great quality (though this is probably true for all sauce packages). The use of caramel for color is generally not harmful, but should not be found in decent quality soy sauce. It darkens during the fermentation process naturally, so adding colour just makes it appear to have aged longer, without providing the flavour. It is also possible that the production process bleaches out the colour and they restain it, but chances are that this will impact taste, too. But for bloating onion is a good first assumption.
  17. Well, looking at Europe I don't think that representative parties are a clear solution.
  18. Why are people using hammers when screwdrivers are so much better at putting screws into walls? The reason is that different tools are used for different purposes. Logic is helpful to investigate conclusions in relation to a given premise. If the established premise is valid for a given question, the conclusion might also be. Even if the premise is incorrect, it allows for speculative investigations. Logic is a structural element in thinking about a given issue and allows for the creation of nonsensical connections.
  19. Not sure without seeing the whole protocol, but from what I see there no urgent red flags. TCEP being a few year old is not ideal, if it was opened years ago and not stored under nitrogen, or at least well-sealed. That being said, I have used fairly old powder without too much trouble (but used it in excess). As you are using Ni-NTA I presume that there are no metal chelators involved. I would probably run the sample through mass spec to see what I got. I am not a big fan of dialysis, as I tended to lose too much. But then that was decades ago, so perhaps the dialysis systems have improved.
  20. There is collective disapproval, but kids also learn to clean up their classroom. That might also stick.
  21. TCEP is routinely used in Tris under basic conditions. It is less stable in phosphate buffers at neutral Ph. Is your chemical or the solution very old?
  22. Does not matter, selection happens on the individual not on the collective level. Also, the same issue applies. It is about reproduction not only survival. A group entirely composed of mails may survive as many hardships as they want, their gene pool will end with them. Well, that is a semantic issue, something can be either under positive, negative or neutral selection. It does not refer to the mechanism itself under which they are positive, negative or neutral. I think the issue is that you might be have a view on evolution that is not the one used in science. There is no real necessity to see intelligence as a fundamental different trait than, say the ability to use oxygen to create energy, for example.
  23. Even worse, generally speaking affluent folks consume more and produce more garbage. As you noted, they are just better able to pay folks to clean it up and frequently things get dumped into poor areas/countries.
  24. Yes at the time of reproduction, but if you manage to stay alive at the cost of not reproducing you are not contributing. Conversely, if you reproduce and then die, you still contribute. This is like in the example of salmons. If they don't go through the trouble of migration to their spawn sites, they would live a fair bit longer. But they would not contribute to the gene pool. In other words, if there was a mutation that prevents them from conducting that migration, it would improve their survival, but eliminate them from the gene pool and would therefore vanish as trait (negatively selected). Intelligence has shaped our environment, so the contribution to human evolution is indirect. We change selective pressures and that can affect our gene pool. The one part that could be somewhat considered direct is sexual selection. What is considered to be attractive in a mate can be culturally shaped and this could lead to proliferation of specific traits. Evolution and intelligence is harder to assess as we really do not know how it is inherited and estimates of inheritability have been diverging quite a bit. Mostly because it is seemingly a very malleable on top of the inheritable bits. I don't understand what you mean with your last questions. Evolution is not about the origin of life.
  25. You are mixing different things here. Survival does not equal passing on genes. They can increase chances, but very contextually. Conversely, there are multiple species where reproduction is coupled to death. Secondly, improving chance of survival does not necessarily involve intelligence. Effectively one would need go back to the basic definition of evolution, where we ultimately end up with terms like inheritable traits that are under positive selection, for example.
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