Yes.

For a long time identifying bacteria required growing them on different media. If then bacteria didn’t grow on the media, we didn’t know what it was. However for most pathogenic bacterium we did figure out how to culture them.

Then molecular biology advanced to a level where we can amplify and sequence a single bacterium’s DNA. This has led to a continuous stream of new species discoveries from different environments.

Finding a new pathogenic bacteria for humans is still a rare discovery.

Academia is usually about minutiae, not concepts. Sometimes they get so hyperfocus in small areas that they are completely unable to give a general summary of what they are doing in the bigger picture. To do so would require them to understand things outside of their very narrow field of study.

Cancer is a DNA mutation. Those mutations can be hereditary, random chance, or environmentally caused.

After much debate over copious drinks at the bar, we finally decided to settle the argument with darts.

0 are all crossed.

1’s are written as l

7’s are all crossed.

And 9’s… Well we got kicked out and it was never settled. How was I supposed to know the nickname Nicky sounds like the French word “Niquer” and somebody (Nicolas) got all bent out of shape over it. “Hey Nicky it’s your turn!” apparently was not well received by a drunk frenchman.

Some way to identify the person who wrote it is also helpful. Different cultures write numbers differently.

The French person reads the top one as 1 , 2, 3.

The American reads it as 7, 2, 3.

That’s just Min.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_(god)

No - you missed my direction.

The paragraph is an overly polite way of writing to avoid any semblance of disparaging the other person. As mine was clearly written as a personal anecdote there is no need to qualify your remarks as non-derogatory.

Generally I see people develop those types of phrasing habits when they have negative experiences with misunderstanding in the past. Very common with many PhD’s communicating with MBA’s, sales or production teams. A little overly verbose but carefullly respectful to avoid conflict. It’s a very good habit to have professionally but quite funny when out of context.

First paragraph had me laughing. Somebody has spent a lot of time in private industry and has gotten burned a few times.

As for #2 it depends on the age of the industry. Here is the life cycle of research driven industries as I see it.

Historically in research driven industries the foundations have been started in academia. Private companies start up relying on the universities research.

Money flows into the university systems from private companies and they start producing a lot PhD’s in the field.

Next the private companies decide they can make more money doing the research in-house. They offer large sums of money to the established professors and get fresh grads at bargain prices.

Pretty soon most of the best and brightest are drained to private industry. The funding from private industry slows to a trickle and all that is left in academia is those with more social connections than ability.

For the next 30 years, private industry has great talent. Then the first first wave of PhD’s retire. The new PhD’s grads are trained by the social connections crowd.

That’s when you start to see fun job descriptions posted like:

PhD + 2 years of experience, Masters + 5 years experience, Bachelor’s + 8 years experience.

I spent most of a decade in industry doing what is generally thought of as a PhD’s job. In order to fill in some gaps, I took a ton of graduate classes on the companies dime and looked at doing a fully funded PhD. I didn’t end up doing it.

Why?

1. The industry paid better than academia. So the brain drain was real. The informal training I had from PhD’s in the company was vastly superior to the graduate level training at the university. Anyone who was any good at the applied side was not in academia. The ones left in academia were a very odd group with zero applied knowledge.

2. Most PhD hires failed miserably in the field. 9 out of 10 of them could not make the transition to the practical application of knowledge.

3. I saw a trend where smaller companies where hiring mostly industry experienced people for the positions (like I was).

So for me the time and investment was not worth it.

One of my friends made it halfway through his PhD. He then got sick of the politics and drama and noped out.

I am of the opinion that most “supply” issues are due to investors. Except in certain geographic areas we do not have a shortage of actual physical housing. What we have is a shortage of available housing at a mixed pricepoints for purchase.

All housing that investors purchase for rentals removes it from the supply.

Traditionally investors have sought out entry level housing for rent. They invest in building rental complexes. They make all cash purchases and then rent it out to people who otherwise would have been first-time homebuyers. Investors used to be the low end offer. Blatant price fixing has increased rent outrageously. Now investors are the high end offer and removing supply constantly.

With AirB&B, the middle and even upper range market that traditionally has had less investor competition is now a major target. This has led to price wars for investment purposes on previously safe segments.

The first solution to the housing supply is simple: taxing income from rent so that selling the property is financially more lucrative. It will have to include a prohibition against rental increases to cover the taxes as well.

The second is to mandate zoning and new construction to match the market needs not the needs of the investors.

Last would be to create a program where builders who focus on entry level housing receive incentives from governments (also include hefty penalty for substandard construction).

My undergrad biochemistry course was taught team taught by a microbiologist and a molecular biologist because the biochemist got fired for sexually harassing a few students.

The molecular biologist was a cool guy and taught concepts. I got an easy A in that section.

The next few weeks were taught by the microbiologist. That asshole wanted us to memorize a ton of different pathways on our second midterm (cyclic acid, fermentations, photosynthetic, MAPK etc…). Something like 20 total. I took an F on that one.

Luckily the final was a standardize test that all universities in the state used that year. So I ended up with a B.

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The whine on larger the TV’s were so damn loud. My neighbor’s had one of those massive beasts of a CRT. I could hear it 100 feet away.

My first migraines where triggered in the computer lab from 40 CRT monitors being on. It was so loud and annoying.

The chirping noises from shoes is so annoying. When I watch college basketball it’s with the volume off.

When I worked in research our lab staff spoke 10 different languages.

After a couple of years, everyone swore fluently in 10 languages.

Airborne respiratory viruses in humans tend to decrease in lethality. This doesn’t really transfer anywhere else. The decrease in severity in is due to selection pressure from human quarantine behavior.

Killing the host is normal in single celled organisms. The most common method viruses leave the cell I by causing it to burst open.

Killing the host is also common in the plant world.

I get a picture of a receipt for my expense report.

They really don’t care where the nutrients come from. However they take very little to keep going for a long time.

Cell biologist I worked with tested tested this one.

He placed 10 small plants into sterile agar made with diluted Hoagland’s solution. He then sealed the petri dishes with petrifilm (gas permeable). Then placed them under a low light (4 T12’s at 20cm and a 12 hour photoperiod).

He started them about 5 years before I met him. We worked together for 11 years and he never lost a plant.

A long time ago I was the guinea pig/first user for a company developed system.

I often had my 1 year old at the time son with me when I worked on the weekend. He had a great time smashing buttons on the keyboard and randomly clicking the mouse on the test version. He found most of the bugs.

Jobs was his own worst enemy for a while on the compatibility issue.

New OS launches- all your old programs don’t work on it.

Want to use a floppy to transfer files between a Dos/Win and a Mac? Nope, not compatible. When USB drives started coming out they dropped all support for floppy drives, even in machines with them installed.

Constant driver issues with all sorts of things. Many never got resolved. To be fair the market share for Mac’s was so tiny, offering support for them didn’t make business sense.

Want to play a game? Good luck. The majority of games didn’t work on Mac. Same reason as the drivers.

As for stability issues, for a while I ran a computer lab for a college 50:50 win/Mac machines. They both crashed about equally as often.