Darklight
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Days Won
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Posts posted by Darklight
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You bugger, I'll miss you here. Love your irreverance and fire, and your honesty when you apologise after a stoush
Still, a good reason to go. Best one I've heard. Makes sense even. I'd rather see you happy :D
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Cold-resistant polyploid vine anyone?
Yeah but but. I was only told this. Haven't seen anything to back it up, and the bloke who told me ( who is a wellspring of amazing and obscure botanical facts ) is out of range for a few more weeks
So I was wondering whether anyone knew more than Google about those claims, or had enough experience with polyploid mutation to be able to describe trends they've noticed
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Is there an underlying belief in academia that pharmaceutical research is more likely to be fudged as compared to research in other fields ?
From my outside perspective science is science, so the need for divergence seems almost irrelevant.
Yep the last point is the one I'm interested in for the purposes of the discussion, but I don't want to hijack the thread
Theoretically, successful human clinical trials are supposed to be thorough, having been tried on actual human beings, the margin for error should be theoretically smaller, capacity to replicate greater etc.
And for human clinical trials of pharma products, the consequences of poor or corrupt reportage are potentially fatal. Much more so than, say, Glowkitty theoretical project described above, or a paper on hamster gut cell receptor genetics.
And yet... and yet... that hasn't stopped the apparent falsification of data in some instances
You're prolly right Sally, it's the same issue
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There's also the problem that they more specific & advanced the topic being reviewed (i.e. all the "cutting-edge" stuff), the fewer "peers" there are available to review it. So if you're trying to publish a paper about a new technique to create glow-in-the-dark cats, there might not be too many people who are qualified to review your work. And chances are that they'll say "oh, this methodology looks familiar from those GlowKitty 1.0 studies by Goober et al, I know those guys", and then go on to either think: "oh, Goober's a good fella, this must be fine, I don't need to read the rest of it", or: "Goober's a self-righteous git who didn't credit my work on that first GlowKitty study, fuck him & his children & this paper - FAIL".
Yep. In practice, the peer review process is broken these days. It's not a reason to dump it tho.
Main reasons IMO are as Anodyne says above. And I think it was mentioned earlier here that much research these days is so highly specialised there aren't many people who are qualified to rebut any dubious statements in public fora.
Are we distinguishing here between successful pharmacological clinical trials here and general academic publication or are we drawing parallels between them? I'd rather keep the two discussions separate for the purposes of this thread. Forging or forcing clinical documentation is one thing and has potentially greater repercussions but perhaps mending the process could be a model with wider application.
Personally I am drawn to the Alltrials ethos. If your work diverts from a previously published process or endpoint, a working group could replicate that branching point as a part of the regulation process and then continue in it's own direction through the rest of the trial
Yes, that could mean an expensive duplication of a particular clinical trial phase, but would confirm ( or not ) the work done by the previous group at that point.
I have no idea how pie-in-the-sky this is, but the Alltrials campaign has gained some ground. And in the process re-opened the discussion about the publication of negative results being just as valid and a part of the necessary scientific process as positive results.
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We need research police. It would solve the problem.
GAHAHAAAAAAAAARK AAAARGHHHHHH SPEW
No. No. NO. Do not feed the stupid. More police isn't even the beginning of an answer
For all research taking place, a research officer could be consulted, and validity could be standardised.
No. What on earth makes you think that is a good idea. I do not have words for what an absolutely sincerely fucked up idea that is
How in hell did you get the idea that adding a layer of potential corruption favouring larger companies and richer and more vested interests would give an incentive for people employed thus to just take the money and tick the boxes?
What makes you think adding an extra layer of bullshit for smaller non-profit groups, community groups, individuals or even perfectly legally run corporations is going to do anything other than stifle research and promote corruption and poor reporting
At the moment it's just a bunch of kids with cash running around trying to look important and feel respected.
Like that doesn't happen in any other field.
Never stop asking questions.
Here's my question- do you sincerely believe your proposal is a good idea? I'll keep asking it. I'll keep adding swear words tho
One part of a workable solution would be to ensure that all pharma approvals require the publication of all clinical trials data- not just the successful outcomes- as proposed by the Alltrials mob at www.alltrials.net.
More comprehensive and honest clinical reporting could show up anomalous patterns in studies. Or at least make forged data harder to achieve without a statistical tell
( Other main advantage of Alltrials is, I believe, allowing the extension of data from clinical trials to discover new uses for pharma compounds- saving time and money developing new clinical compounds )
I want to eat your liver for even thinking such a half arsed idea has any kind of merit
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Was discussing polyploidy and mutation breeding with a colleague the other day and he came out with some experiential statements I've been unable to confirm. He's on leave now so I can't have a longer discussion til he returns.
I thought I'd throw the following of his statements out there and see if anyone knows more
1. Polyploidy is cool, and pretty standard stuff in plants. However it's not an increase in secondary metabolites that is the biggest outcome for plants, polyploidy generally first confers an increased immunity to cold temps.
Anyone know more?
And can polyploidy change the actual phytochemical products of a species?
2. No point looking for gross floral morphology changes in a mutant population, flowers are the last things to mutate as the plant has a vested interest in passing on it's genetics using its current methods. So they protect the flowers, and work to make ornamental variatiations of floral morphology is much harder
This one is relevant to me because I was hoping to find floral variations in a mutant population. Haven't seen them. If this line of work is pretty low yielding in terms of results I'll put it on the backburner
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I think you need to post a picture of you in that kimono. Ed surely would have wanted it that way
Nice try. I'd look like a frilly toilet roll doll. With bad hair. Not gunna happen
lookin forward to hitting the "sippers" bar in the hopefully distant future.
I can feel the genesis of a very strange religion coming on
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He'd forgotten to give me the Eileen cuts that he'd brought along to share
That's so Ed hey :D
It took a long time to find out he was gone because he hated fuss. We had this out years ago a few times, I was seriously cross and accused him of going into a corner to die like a dog and he said he could do what he fucken liked he hated fuss that much and hated people seeing him sick.
Fair enough, losing him was always going to suck anyhow
My mobile was out the entire time around EGA, I got it back on a month later, all messages SMS gone etc. And every time I called his landline I'd leave a message- his voicemail thingy sounded different and he sounded so fucken healthy. Prolly an old message. Or a good day. Hope it was the latter
He was always hopeful, always seeking a cure for the thing that ate him medicine couldn't name. And suddenly it was August and almost a year since we last spoke. Too much space.
The house here is full of presents he'd send randomly. Thoughtful. Weird little things would arrive from Alibaba or Amazon. Those neomagnets. A jewellery box. Some whisky tumblers you make out of ice cubes. CD Data dumps of docs he thought would be useful. Sparkly things for the godkids. We got into this huge present war for a bit, he reckons I started it and he hated to lose. Got quite competitive and heated. I demanded he stop because I would rather him call me than send me stuff. He said " Most days all I can do is press "Send" cos I have all my mates' details saved in the store pages. It's my end of the convo love".
I never did put that beautiful kimono on he sent, because I'd never be able to tie it according to tradition and if he saw a poor effort he would have been most disappointed. He did like the whisky tho, we had a bit of a blue about it too. Very much the traditionalist. All proper construction, loved things made to last, loved the old things. Straight razors, peerless metalwork, proper spelling and grammar flawless between every fucken word, every second one that wasn't fucken
Don't often take off the earrings he sent me. Wasn't that a right barney. We'd have these great two minute arguments of slashing at each other and then resolve it and get over it right away. We always took the other's answer as gospel. If something changed our minds we'd bring it up next chat "Yeah I was thinking about that thing you said last time... "
Fuck we had some great convos tho. I keep trying to put stories together and the bare bones don't do justice to the delight of talking to him, hanging out. You never knew where a simple sentence would take you.
I can still hear his voice inflecting, always on a rise when something struck him " Hey what's this about...I thought... " and off we'd go. One minute you're on the West Coast of Tas hunting with your dog and negotiating fish and chips in some godawful inbred town, next we're 20th century composers and political trends, personal takes on gender politics, phytochemical analysis, gossip, alcohol quality, the care and feeding of lab equipment, how much pig you can fit into the freezer in the back of his landy, which generator is better for camping, the nature of love and loss, bizarre things that happened to us or people we knew
Loved a yarn, did Ed, and he was grouse at it
Drove the troopy like a madman, good at it too. Fucken thing looked like something the four horsemen of the apocalypse would paddock bash on a rooshoot. Tyres and wires everywhere. Half the dash ripped out, mostly by his dog, the rest jury rigged to some no-name tablet he'd modified a map system for which was a vast improvement, he claimed, on the ones out of the box. The voice navigation was Darth Vader. Sliding backwards down some high country hill in the near dark, eyeballs parallel to the valley floor hundreds of feet below, maxed out on painkillers and sick, hands me the beer so he can get both hands on the wheel for a minute " fuck, this isn't dangerous, it was a little bit dangerous when we rolled it a bit further up the hill that time. Come out alright tho, walked out "
Wherever you are mate, may there be whisky, and whiskey, and may it be the finest ever
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Last year, around the time of EGA in Melbs, one of our long term and seriously valuable members died.
If you have an Eileen clone, or have drunk of the Eileen clone, you've been a recipient of Ed's work. And probably his generousity.
If you ever did an Otways camping trip with him you'll know why his death is such a great loss.
I only found out today. We'd go months without speaking or writing then binge on it with hours of gorgeous, insightful, funny, irreverent conversation. We'd have phone drinks and pass out talking about amazing shit. He'd pick everything apart, then I would, and we'd put it all back together and it all made sense.
He'd been sick for years- really gut wrenchingly sick, and he hated speaking to anyone when he crook with a pathological loathing I can only be impressed by. So we gave each other space. Only this time I gave him too much. Fuckit.
My head is full of Ed stories. There are no favourites, they're all gold. But the type of gold which fades in text. You had to be there.
He named the Eileen clone after his mum, and sent that cactus clone round the world. Often twice as much as anyone had paid for, and often for free. When I asked him how his mum felt about the transubstantiation, being symbolically consumed by complete strangers at 75, he shrugged and said "Grouse. Ask her "
Nobody grew wasabi like Ed.
Reading his old emails is like hearing him speak all over again. All the words got used. The big ones, the small ones, the swear ones, archaic words, technical ones, words used in contexts I'd not heard of and words I had to look up, side by side in every sentence
Vale fearless bloke, irreverent gentleman-scholar, hunter, mate, plant fiend. You vainglorious bastard, I loved you like you were torn from my own rib.
You brilliant, stubborn, sophisticated, gentle, resourceful, skilled, compassionate, staunch, generous, insane prick.
May the next place you're in find you free from all pain
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Ah Phaemon's dog, what a lovely story you bring, please pass the good doctor my regards
Your information is invaluable
Do you think tho, that there is even the slightest chance that the doctor's description of the elaborate process of tobacco curing is coloured due to his access to all the toys with teh blinkenlights? And extensive knowledge of the processes as they currently operate?
After all, tobacco was being grown, sold and used prior to teh blinkenlights
A colleague of mine's mum grew and cured tobacco as a farm crop in Europe in the 50s. Unfortunately the family went off the farm to the big city when he was very young, and the lady is since deceased.
He's trying to find the original document referencing the curing process she used so I can scan and translate it, but not sure about my chances
ie- is there some advantage to all this new fangled stuff? Or is it, overall and historically, really that complex?
( Also, there is the chance that my colleague's family left their farm because his mum was shit at growing/ curing tobacco and lost money on the venture. I doubt it tho. The farm had been in the family for a few generations and tobacco had been one of it's crops for that time )
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Let us know how it goes incog?
Don't worry abt premature announcement, that's practically compulsory in so many industries these days ;) Spiv science announcements making extravagant claims to promote grant application/ company or establishment profile/ investor hype well before data is anything like conclusive or using a small sample size to make 'groundbreaking' announcements
At least you outlined the possible error before hitting up all SAB members for investment $
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It happens mate, it happens. Which doesn't make it suck any less :/
Have had similar happen here. Least you caught it before it got silly
Hope today improves for you
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Don't sign anything or agree to any stuff til you've spoken with yr solicitor. You prolly know that already, but don't get caught in the heat of the moment
And keep an eye out for their competitors, the first offer mightn't be the best one
And ping me if you need any cultivars cloned ;)
Take care mate and best of luck with it
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Thanks everyone for your input
We're now looking at air drying, and we have been discussing the sampling protocol with the analytical lab for clarity
I'm unable to say much about this for IP reasons, so I'll close the discussion off until results come in and I've clarified an NDA with everyone involved
Chem is not my special subject and I may have stuffed the original question here up due to my woeful understanding of several processes
Wish me luck.
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I recently picked up 2 more waterbed heaters but these both have probes. Can I duct tape the probe to the top of the mat? What do you guys do with the probe?
/probe jokes ;)
I duct taped a probe to a thermostat mat years back and it works fine.
As long as you keep a container sitting on the probe filled similarly to the ones you intend to use, it will (reasonably ) accurately measure temps.
If you leave the probe uncovered it will be responding to the ambient room temps, not the container and media temps, the latter will be a little more insulated
Just my experience
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Having a think....
I have fifty non-homogeonous biological samples I want to send to a NATA accredited lab for analysis.
They contain volatiles, so heating the samples will drive off some of the compounds I want to check the levels off. Heating the samples is part of the standard process of digesting them so they can be analysed.
Freeze drying is an option, but for that number of samples the prep would be expensive and out of my range
The compounds I'm looking at are relatively stable at ambient temperatures, or at least any variations for the more volatile compounds which come off at above 60C aren't compounds of interest.
I was thinking of grinding samples to dryness under liquid nitrogen in a not-fully-sealed stainless lab blender- because I have one here ( or should I seal it? ) but was told that as soon as the liquid nitrogen evaporates , water will rush in and the sample won't be dry any more.
Is this true? How fast does the water rush back in if I quickly place the dried samples into a -20 freezer
I've previously dried and ground biological samples under liquid nitrogen and found that most suitable, but that was for DNA analysis, not chem analysis.
Next option is to grind and dry at 50C under air.
Neither will give me consistent moisture levels for all samples, and it will prolly be up to the NATA lab to standardise these before analysis
Does anyone reckon grinding under liquid nitrogen to be the superior method in this case?
Ta for help, this place is fulla smarties :D
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Spose it depends on the practitioner, like every other sort of treatment. Sorry you seemed to have gotten a useless person first sesh
My first accupuncturist was useless, no effect at all, so I didn't try it again for fifteen years
Second accupuncturist was a bloke in the dodgiest looking place, but he was really good. I was scarily functional. Saw him til I moved out of SYD
Third practitioner was pretty meh and kept insisting I felt better when I didn't, fourth was great.The fifth one was the best I ever had
Make sure they sit with you during a sesh and don't walk out- sounds like you have both serious medical condition and reasons to be suspicious. They should be working to fix that too.
Have heard good reports about chiro, and the odd horror story from someone who it happened to. Check round for people you know who recommend a good practitioner. I'm still sceptical but I know people who swear by it
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I am certainly flexible with where I want to be. The main thing for me is warmth/humidity. I would like not to have frost, and humidity helps me with my aches and pains.
Parts of the areas round the back of Nimbin get Melbourne-grade cold over winter, just not for as many of the daylight hours. The higher up your place is, the less cold it will be IME. But then there can be access issues, especially in the wet.
One more thought about moving- if you aren't skilled at driving on our shithouse roads, you and your partner both do an off-road driving course before you get here and make sure you have appropriate vehicles. It'll make you more confident. The city hatchback doesn't cut it. We have potholes here deeper than those things are tall.
A lot of our roads are barely wide enough for 2 cars and in some cases both cars need to have the left hand wheels off the tar to pass safely. Too many people are reluctant to do this and a lot of them are newcomers. We have a lot of passive aggressive/ inattentive drivers up here and they are fucken shitheads who are a danger to life and limb.
If you can't keep pace and find you are driving 20-50km below the speed limit with cars behind you, indicate and pull off the road, there are heaps of safe places to do this if you don't mind not having wheels on the tarmac. No-one minds if you do this and you will earn respect while you learn to handle the horrible bloody roads
Nothing spoils a good new neighbourhood friendship like finding out they're the people who have been clogging up the middle of the road at 50k/hr in a hundred zone for 10km. These people are rapidly identified and word gets around
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Take access into account when looking at the land prices - if you're going to have to spend $50K to build an all-weather road into the place, is it still a good price?
This one's a biggie- at times of heavy rainfall you don't want to be crossing swollen creeks you don't know well, and then climbing a kay up a hill on a driveway with the texture of marzipan icing and ruts deeper than your ground clearance for your bike/ car. There are heaps of lovely places out here but a lot have poor access which gets worse during wet season
Anything you save on your property you will spend on your car over the next 25 years. The roads are shit. May as well know that now.
Fencing, water and fire protection are your next priorities after access and housing. Set those up before you get romantic and spend dosh on gardens and gables
If you look at a bush block, talk to the local RFS if it's not peak fire season, they'll help you assess fire risks and make a plan
Test soil & water (I think DPI do this?) &/or check with local Landcare, Streamwatch, etc groups regarding any issues. Landcare types will usually be able to tell you a bit about the local soil types & plantlife, including obnoxious weeds & pests that you might be up against. The Bureau of Meteorology keeps records you can consult to get an idea about what weather to expect.
EAL at Southern Cross Uni do soil and water tests for a good price
Don't be married to the idea of Byron Shire, as folias says. There are lots of wonderful places everywhere north of Coffs and many are way more reasonably priced than Byron/ Tweed shires. Kyogle even has decent coffee these days. All Byron has is traffic.
Crazy neighbours are a biggie up here ( tho not as bad as it used to be ) and for various definitions of crazy. If you're not buying onto an MO, try not to buy right next to a large one, because more neighbours = higher risk of more crazy
If you're worried about isolation, once you get to the area simply join something. Local school or hall association, Landcare, fire brigade, market group, garden club, pony club, anything. You'll meet heaps of people really fast. They will find ways for you to contribute. Oh yes they will. There's lots to do.
Nobody west of Bangalow really cares what you did before you moved here, it's the contribution you make once you land that's important. That frustrates a lot of people who expect to be taken seriously for something hifalutin' they used to do in the city, but it does level the playing field for people who didn't have those opportunities but do make a significant contribution and have better life and social skills.
Most of the people you will meet in the first 2 years will not be the people you will end up relating to best, so be cautious about going overboard with your early friendships. Getting to know the locals takes time. After a bit you will become one of the locals and that will make more sense than it does now
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Wah! I hope yer OK and you make it back to here safely <3
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Jobs
in Chill Space
I would give someone else's kidney to see that discussion
Fuck incog, that's my happy thought for today. Pls upload to Youtube if it does happen
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Bad news in this case unfortunately. I have both an L. shimeji saprobic mutant and the wildtype mycorrhizal in my library. Looking at my notes I suspect I have innoculated with the saprobic mutant instead of the mycorrhizal, sigh. The nutrient source was so poor, it was behaving like a mycorrhizal and didn't notice.
I hate it when that happens. Has happened to me too in the past :/
DL - It's been too long between chats. I've been in the trenches with lab work, but I'm on the other side with a few good ideas I'd love to chat about
Yes please, would be lovely to catch up. I'll SMS you tonight
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Not necessarily- I've found sometimes a small fruiting form from the original mycelial inoc point when the new substrate is inappropriate.
Is like species goes into panic mode cos it can't send out vegetative growth too well, so opts for sending out spores.
But I guess we aren't talking about the same species
I hope you got a win!
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If Tony Abbott was a character in Walking Dead, how long would he survive?
Too long. However long he survives the zombpocalypse, it will be too long.
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Raising A.Phlebophylla
in Australian Native Plants
Posted
Love it, love it, love it. Congratulations!
I lost both mine late into winter at +5 years. They were doing so well, then started the usual top-down dying thing. Fought back a bit with branches coming up from the lower stem but these too succumbed
If they're in cultivation anywhere else I'm just as happy as if they were mine :D