gomijacogeo

() This is the whole appeal of the "RNA world" hypothesis, you have one molecule that can serve both as "code" and catalyst for other chemical reactions.

I think you're just failing to grasp the sheer numbers involved here: there are probably around 10^9 cow-like critters and they interact with other, competing critters every, let's say, 10^4 seconds, with the odds of any one of these interactions being fatal being, again, let's say 1 in 10^4. By comparison, there were probably something like 10^37 (if I counted my orders of magnitude right) biomolecules interacting every 10^-6 seconds where every time some new chemical "A-ha!" moment occurred, that reaction now became 1000x more favorable than any other competing reaction. That's like, what, 41 orders of magnitude; even if I'm off by 10+ orders of magnitude, there was just a whole lot more selective pressure going on during the pre-biotic era. Less favorable chemical pathways were outcompeted on scales so vast you'd need trillions of cow-years to approximate how de-de-de-deselected-for they were.

But really there's nothing yet that even remotely necessitates an extra-terrestrial origin for life. The problem is that, each time there was a "winner" in the very earliest more-chemistry-than-life arms-races, it essentially obliterated all record of what the competition looked like. It's not until pretty late in the game that no one new strategy obliterated all its peers - at that point we got the biological domains (prokaryotes and eukaryotes (which subsumed other prokaryotes as mitochondria and chloroplasts)) and viruses. From then on, the arms-races have been at higher levels of abstraction and the fight over the basics of biochemistry is 'settled'.

But the variation is in the one place you could possibly have it - by changing the interpretation of one or two of the three available STOP codons.

Although most (all?) of the variability is in the one place you can make it without almost-certainly killing your host organism - in repurposing the STOP codons. There are usually three (and likely UGG was a fourth before it got hijacked by Tryptophan in the before time) and all you need is one.

The paper (indirectly) cited here is claiming that some micro-organisms use simple Arsenic-containing ions for electron transport as part of their metabolic cycles. This is a much less outrageous claim and, I think, already documented in high-Arsenic environments. The only big deal here is, I believe, that this is a low-Arsenic environment.

Original paper: http://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1818349116

First, to suggest that padding comes at the expense of operational improvement is wrong; well-applied padding is operational improvement.

Second, some of those time losses are due to the move from turbojets (which are fast, screamingly loud, and inefficient) to high-bypass turbofans (which are slower, quieter, and much more fuel efficient).

More time is lost as planes usually have to fly complex noise-abatement profiles and navigate more crowded and complex airspaces before they get to cruise.

I upgraded to 27" monitors, but portrait mode (2880x2560) involved too much head tilting so I ultimately went landscape (5120x1440), which was both too short vertically and too wide horizontally.

So I'm currently using a single 30" (2560 x 1600) in landscape mode. It's ok. There's simplicity in having a single monitor.

The next (and possibly final) upgrade will likely be to a ~32" 4K or 5K monitor. If I had a 2nd monitor, I'd probably just want it to mirror the first one at 3x zoom centered on the cursor - my eyes are losing resolution about as fast as monitors are gaining it.

First, a clarification, it's 30 pack-years. There are lots of ways to get to that number. 30 years @ 1 pack/day and 15 years @ 2 packs a day are both 30 pack-years. That number sticks with you even if you quit 20 years ago.

So, especially for the younger end of that range (55yo), people between 55-65 are often in their peak earning years (finally gotten seniority or management) and this is when they are most often finally paying off their debts (mortgage, etc). It's also when they are likely doing peak elder care and also sending their kids to college. So this is the time where they are probably doing their peak economic and social good. If you can catch something that keeps them productive for an additional 10ish years, you've probably come out ahead for it.

Flaps-up was commanded about a minute after take-off, which seems about right. The AGL altitude of the plane is hard to determine from the graphs as they only list pressure altitude. It's a high airport with, I believe, rising terrain. I'm not sure if the 1000' AGL cited is supposed to be at first MCAS engagement, or the last one, or at some other point in between.

I wouldn't spend much energy trying to second-guess who was ultimately behind the meeting. Especially if it is nefarious, often the initial contact is done with a cut-out or other intermediary and true affiliations are almost never disclosed initially (or perhaps ever).

In short, sexual reproduction is very old (> 1 billion years ago) and first appeared in an ancestor of all eukaryotic cells and long predates multicellular life. So, all of multicellular life evolved with the haploid/diploid molecular machinery already available and different branches of life have built vastly different strategies to use it. You'd be better served IMHO to start at DNA replication and build up rather than starting at sex organs and working backward.

I'd reframe it as: Technologists come in two flavors, the ones who think their current era is fundamentally distinct from earlier eras, and the ones who don't.

Scenario 1: Leaker: Hi, I'm XXX, I work for YYY and I'm witness to event ZZZ that I think must be exposed. I have classified documents to back up what I have to tell you. Reporter: I'm going to stop you there and make sure my editor, owner, and lawyers are on board with this and determine how to proceed. Please do not communicate any classified material at this time.

Scenario 2: Leaker: Hi, I'm unhappy with the general state of things and am willing to exfiltrate any secure data I can get my hands on. Reporter: Great! What do you have access to? No, better, just send me a listing of everything. Here's a secure server and software that should crawl your net and get it out without raising any eyebrows. No wait, even better, I'll send you a USB dongle that will look like a keyboard to the hw event logger with everything you'll need on it.

Not saying Assange did exactly scenario #2, but I think the press can be only so much of an active participant before they incur some liability for the removal of classified information.