CharonY

There is a good discussion to be had how this will affect teaching and especially academia, but that may be off-topic.

Well, the US has supported the UK (and the Soviet Union) with materiel vial the Lend-Lease act a fair bit before that. But yes, the impact on WW2 should not be simplified as outlined by OP. A famous phrase was that WW2 was won with British intelligence, American steel and Russian blood. Since Brexit there are talks between UK and US regarding trade agreements, but the negotiations started 2018 and there is still ground to cover (though a range of products have been entered now). Ironically a lot of these negotiations are based on agreements the US had with the EU, which at that point also covered the UK. Now the wheel has to be reinvented because of Brexit.

I do think that the issue is largely structural due ongoing trends in the university and granting system, which is increasingly streamlined across countries, rather than one of science per se, as already mentioned. Sometimes more make things less focused and harder, rather than easier. I also see more papers that try to reinvent the wheel, which in some cases is down to limited knowledge of older lit (and connected quality drop in reviews).

There is also a massive expansion of literature, which in itself creates a problem of curation. You sometimes observe a divergence in lit on the same topic, e.g. because someone introduces a new term and younger scientists/students pick up on it, and miss lit that is older or lit that uses the original terminology. The fact that some discussion have moved to social networks such as twitter might have have accelerated this effect.

Science as such won't stop as long as people remain curious. However, it might make sense to think a bit about science funding. In most systems, tenure and grants are given fairly conservative. At the same time, things need to be sold as groundbreaking all the time. As such, funding is more likely to be granted to something that seems to be just at the cutting edge of whatever current trend there is. Fundamental research is harder to get funded, as are thing that appear to far ahead. The only folks that tend to be successful with the latter are well-known researchers with a proven track record, a folks tend to assume that they are more likely to produce something groundbreaking. The issue with that is that really novel research is often serendipitous, but if you have to hunt for the latest trend all the time to feed your lab, you might not have the time and money to stop and follow up on surprising things. I have been wondering for a long time whether a more "random" approach to funding would be better. I.e. just cut off the really bad proposals and then randomize funds among those that pass. Big names would not get all the money and there might be a bigger diversity of ideas getting funded.

Rather than using vulcanoes, there have been discussions about using sulphate aerosols directly (folks called it geoengineering). The big issue with these large-scale approaches are the uncertainties regarding the effects on various scales (local to global). A somewhat older review is here, but there will be newer material out there (https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2008.0131).

If you are talking about a whole human chromosome, you can forget about it. Longest PCR products in one go using long range polymerase will get you maybe up to 40ish kb. What is wrong with amplifying a smaller (more realistic) target? Or are you thinking in terms of whole genome amplification? This is not standard pcr method and does not yield a singular product. It is more of a preamplification method to give more substrate for subsequent analyses.

In addition, science is built on learning and understanding, which are active, time-consuming processes for all participants. Many are not that interested in science not because they are not exposed to it, but because they do not want or can't invest the time into it. Podcasts are a great way to make you overestimate that you have learned something.

Another thing to keep in mind is that evolution is not purpose-driven. I.e. things do not start to develop because they might be beneficial. Mutations are random and depending on the starting point, there are certain constraints to how much and in which direction a body plan can change without causing problems.

! Moderator Note I think it is time for everyone to step back and take a breath. From skimming the topic it seems to me that a lot of the back and forth can be rather easily addressed. Since OP has a functional system, how about a short summary on its setup and function, including critical parameters (such as overall setup with details on filtration system, regular maintenance and so on) on this site would be beneficial, as opposed to referring to another forum. This would ground the discussion on something more concrete and would reduce the likelihood of getting personal.

Mutations in early development could do that. But in early development tissues are not that clearly separated, either. I.e. we have a lot pluri-and totipotent cells doing the heavy lifting so, I do not think that mutations would necessarily be neatly contained (though it is not impossible, either).

Would not matter. Cell can have small mutations due to errors in DNA replication or some aging effects. So if you take a few million cells from anywhere in your body, you will have quite a few cells that have an error here or there. Sometimes they lead to distinct phenotype. E.g. cancer cells usually carry quite a few mutations that makes them cancerous, but most will likely do nothing. There are different techniques to sequence DNA, but most basically rely on reading out the sequences from a pool of DNA that you have isolated. This pool usually is derived from a mass of cells (e.g. bit of tissue). I.e. in most techniques you do not sequence a whole DNA molecule but bits and fragments derived from this pool. Say you got in your sample one cell that has one mutation at a specific site, but in addition a million cells that do not carry this mutation, the likelihood of finding specific that mutated sequence is very low.

Yes they would be identical with the caveat that individual cells might have mutations. But unless you sequence individual cells, these won't show up in your final reads.

! Moderator Note Assuming that you do not have some ability examine H. sapiens neanderthalensis individuals, you are presenting your own assertions as facts, which we discourage. What you need is to provide some data (typically scientific papers, or at least reports based on those) as evidence. As it does not appear that any evidence is likely to be forthcoming (at least in part because it is impossible to validate such claims) the thread is locked for now.

In that regard, I would also add that in this case there might be "objective" markers, but we just do not know them yet. Gender identity seems to be so fixed (i.e. they rarely change rapidly or due to external influences) that there are likely at least neuronal correlates. Also objective biological markers can be highly specific on the individual level (e.g. depending on certain genetic background and individual development a certain structure could result in different phenotypes). This does make them hard to detect from population studies, but they are nonetheless "objective". Just adding to emphasize that just because we do not know or see certain mechanisms, it does not mean that the resulting outcome or phenotypes are arbitrary or fluid.

Same here. See you later, alligator.

Sorry, not quite clear what the precise scenario is. A country that is undervaccinated and opening up? Because that scenario has already happened but the effects varied quite bit depending on country. Or if it is about new mutations, every country is happily producing them right now.

No. At least not from a public health perspective. Think of it that way, if the risk of hospitalization is reduced e.g. tenfold, but the spread is tenfold higher, on average your hospital will be equally full. Even worse higher spread means that they are more likely to reach vulnerable folks. At the same time, containing spread got harder. Omicron waves almost nowhere died down as the previous waves. So even with more severe outcomes, there were more tools including contact tracing that could make sense if implemented correctly. These are mostly gone now, except vaccination and masking. As a result in many regions more folks died during the Omicron than in the previous years (if they had it under control pre-omicron that is) China is going to see the same. Individual risk is lower, population risk is potentially higher.

Effective is the keyword here. But that said prior to Omicron three dosages e.g. sinovac protected fairly well against severe disease. However, protection was lower with only one or two doses when compared to mRNA vaccines (not sure how it did to e.g. AZ vaccine, for example). It did perform worse for preventing infections, but the ongoing variants none are likely to do well. Either way, especially the elderly are undervaccinated.

The biggest mistake was not to promote effective vaccines, while they had the outbreaks largely under control.

Excuse me, but old? What the heck, man? Totally uncalled for.

Sorry, I should not have brought it up. It was just a research paper that crossed my mind. Please disregard it, as it is not typical practice. You could look up what types of vaccines are used in your area, but generally speaking you should be good. But do not take that as health advice and if you are doing something that is higher risk in getting infected, having additional boosters are normally not an issue (but again talk to your health hotline/provider).

Especially as these issues have nothing to do with other. Legally it is a bit of grey zone as many countries do not seem to have laws explicitly prohibiting marriages with animals. The wiki article is a bit of a mess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human–animal_marriage. But I think these lines of argument follow a rather similar structure. First, remove any reasonable context (there are no laws explicitly forbidding human animal marriages as these things are normally expected to happen, same as marriages with plants, rocks or bodies of water are prohibited) and then cram in something you don't like (homosexuality, transgenderism, poets). Thereby it is easy to create ridiculous scenario to attack. I mean, clearly poets are linguistic deviants who just want to disassemble clear communication. All these contortions using rhymes and unusual sentence structures rob us of our ability to clearly present facts. As such, they should be banned under law. After all, what prevents me to declare myself a science poet and force journals to publish my gibberish!

So a few things first. A tetanus antitoxin (or more precisely anti-tetanus immunoglobulin) is not a vaccine, but an acute treatment for folks getting or at high risk getting tetanus (essentially antibodies raised against the tetanus toxin). There rest are basically different names for vaccinations. I started of with writing something about tetanus schedules, but upon reflection it would fall squarely into the medical advice area. Instead look up on major health care providers and look at the recommended vaccination schedules. I will just say that the scheduling depends on age and type of vaccine being provided and currently I believe all of them are on a recommended 10 year booster cycle. The CDC for example recommends Td (tetanus/diphteria) or Tdap (tetanus/diphteria/pertussis) every 10 years for adults (see the cdc tetanus website, for example). There is at least one paper that I believe showed that even after 30 years there is significant protection, but I do not recall the size of the study, so I would always follow the 10 year recommendation.

I see, you are referring to macroscopic structures then. There are gear-like structures in planthoppers, but as highlighted by bothers, free-spinning cellular structures would be very difficult to create and maintain in the first place and likely not be very functional