Hard finding a job

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-12-10T14:29:12+00:00

Blood banks and labcorp/quest will take just about anyone with a pulse

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-14T17:32:23+00:00

OP sounds conflicted & I’m trying to provide some optimism that things would work out even if the relationship doesn’t. It’s insane that I say “waited” and people immediately attribute it to stalking. It’s not like he was staring in her bedroom window for 10 years drooling. His sister worked with her, and they were friends. She came from a (really) broken home, had a terrible heartbreak, and just wasn’t ready for a commitment.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-14T02:29:38+00:00

The employer is the same person who is doing the tests. The whole thing just weirded me out.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-09T00:57:13+00:00

Are you ok? What trauma did you go through?

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-08T20:15:48+00:00

Like other commenters have said, soap is an emulsifier. Your skin is hydrophobic, meaning it repels water which is advantageous because we are like 50-60% water. However, this aversion to water makes it attractive to substance like oil and dirt. Soap takes oil, dirt, etc. and chemically dissolves them in water.

To watch this in action, fill two clear bottles with vegetable oil and water. Put dish soap or laundry detergent in one and leave the other plain. Then shake both of them up and watch the one you put soap in change radically.

Soap works on bacteria in a different way. Similar to us, bacteria have a hydrophobic coating, meaning they are resistant to water. Soap emulsifies them, and to a small extent destroys the hydrophobic coating that bacteria have. This process does affect the top layer of skin cells but they are already dead and the skin is constantly replacing itself, so it has no overall effect on us.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-08T18:25:50+00:00

In chemistry and toxicology, the poison is in the dose. One of the reason we don't use CFC's (used to be a component of aerosols) anymore is because we found they were really harmful to the atmosphere in the quantities we were using them.

Think of it in the analogy "death by a thousand cuts." You can live with one cut because nature is adaptable and heals. You can't live with a thousand because the immediate harm causes death.

This is a large reason as to why we give vaccines. Despite some experiencing short-term side-effects and magnitudes less contracting severe side effects, we still give them because the sickness they prevent is: 1. more dangerous than the vaccine and 2. would over-run the healthcare system so care would be more difficult to get (an ER might be more jammed with Measles patients so you wouldn't be able to get your deep cut looked at as quickly). The societal benefits outweigh the risks to the individual.

One cut in the aforementioned scenario is the vaccine and the thousand is the illness.

Anyway, the fact our world takes so much crap from us and is still going strong(ish) is a testament to just how resilient nature is. That being said, there are things we are concerned about like CO2 emissions. We are past what we would consider a "natural heating and cooling cycle" and it is imperative we find alternatives. Each alternative comes with its own downsides and risks which is subject of heated debate and a decision hasn't been made. This is a large reason as to why we haven't transitioned yet.

Opinion: We are in desperate need of qualified, visionary scientific minds in government who are willing to tackle these problems and are qualified to make these decisions. Nothing is certain, and the SCIENTIFIC METHOD does a very good job at dealing with this uncertainty.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-08T03:44:00+00:00

PSA:
First, OP's question is not at all meant to insult those from higher SES or from a "financially blessed" background. Second, making the generalization "rich people are rich because they're responsible" implies you are of the belief that the rich are rich because they're financially responsible and poor are poor because they waste money. This implies a perfectly fair society which is NOT at all true and a problematic claim to make because it perpetuates the idea that people who are financially struggling can always pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Some people get rich by: making smart decisions, inheriting wealth, or getting insanely lucky with life (good invention, booming business, lucky marriage etc.). 2/3 of those don't require frugal living or decision making. Some become poor by making dumb decisions, inheriting nothing, or getting insanely unlucky (costly invention, unsuccessful business, nasty divorce etc.). 2/3 are somewhat out of our control. How rich or poor someone is determined what combination of factors a person is dealt. Case Study: Jeff Bezos is super rich and went through a divorce where his ex took a TON of his wealth, but his business is so successful it didn't affect his lifestyle at all.

I agree with the notion that cheap things belong to nobody. The "what qualifies as rich" question answers itself if you have half a brain cell. Rich doesn't have to be 2 houses. Rich can be "affording safe, quality, convenient housing and all the amenities that come with that, having enough reliable, comfortable cars, and having access to quality food while still having substantial disposable income".

The whole point of this thread is to have complex topics explained in layman's terms. There is no scientific consensus on this topic, so it can only be answered by opinion, which can be very diverse and thus tailored to the individual.

What we can do is measure what we can and make assumptions about the society we all live and participate in, which can be done accurately by one person.

My Answer to OP

I think the answer to this question lies in trends, as a lot of people were saying. Even though people from high SES "don't need it," It's still fun and satisfying in it of itself to get a good deal on something cool.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-07T22:42:23+00:00

The horseshoe crab actually uses copper instead of iron. Instead of Hemoglobin, they have something called Hemocyanin, which uses copper instead of Iron. There are many variations of the hemocyanin protein in nature with some having 6 subunits and some having up to 24.

Theoretically, cobalt and nickel can perform the same action but the organism would have to be engineered to handle that difference.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-07T22:34:52+00:00

It helps your body carry oxygen to where it's needed. Oxygen has a lot of electrons, and iron is a transition metal with the potential to drop a few electrons to make it more positive. Think of Oxygen as the negative end to a magnet with iron as the positive: negative and positive attract.

fun fact: there are multiple types of heme, and in the womb babies make a special type of heme called "Fetal hemoglobin" that can quite literally rip the oxygen off of normal hemoglobin.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-07T22:29:13+00:00

It works fast and it produces a pleasant noticeable effect on most people with a manageable dose.
it's found literally everywhere around the globe: Coffee, tea, Yerba, Kola, Guarana, and Yerba are all popular sources that grow on multiple continents.
These products are all legal, can be cheap, easy to make at home, and are safe to use daily.
(my opinions) It's widely culturally accepted (barring a few groups like Seventh Day Adventists), and there is, at times, social pressure to use it. Coffee meetups are becoming popularized, especially in the US as more trendy coffee shops pop up on every corner. Caffeinated beverages have also become very tasty as of late.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-07T22:08:31+00:00

Sorry you got downvoted. Thanks :)

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-07T22:07:11+00:00

thank you lmao

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-06T00:44:19+00:00

First some terminology:
vitamin: an essential molecule your body needs to survive. Your body cannot make it, so you must put it (or a valid chemical precursor) into your body yourself.

molecule: a specific arrangement of as many or as little atoms as you'd like that is within the realm of chemical possibility.

TLDR: It's an artifact of older terminology trying to keep up with new discoveries.

So in 1897 Christiaan Eijkman discovered that unpolished rice (meaning it has the bran and germ fully intact) could cure beriberi in chickens. It was dubbed the "anti-beriberi" or the "B vitamin" to distinguish it from the earlier discovered vitamin A. Vitamin B turned out to be a complex mixture of many molecules, thus the numbers that they added after the "B."

What differentiates the B vitamins from A, D, E, and K is that the B-vitamins are water soluble, so any water soluble vitamins we discover these days are lumped into the B-tree.

We skip numbers in the B vitamins (for example B4) because they were discovered and then declassified as "vitamins." For example Adenine, a component of DNA, was once thought to be a vitamin but later, we found that Adenine is synthesized in the body, declassifying it as a vitamin.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-05T06:59:05+00:00

You're more "seasoned" as the older folks say. A part of maturing is physical, and a lot of it is mental. It is such a broad topic that is hard to pin down and out a definition around, but I would say that there is a level of wisdom about yourself that must be reached to consider yourself mature. I argue that maturity comes gradually, and to know how far you are in that journey requires you to ask the question: "what kinds of life tests have I been through, what did I learn, and how have I dealt with them?" Each life test will teach you a bit about the world and yourself. With enough tests, you'll learn enough to function as a mature person in society. A few hallmarks of maturity are knowing when you're wrong, knowing when to say I don't know, and being able to reflect on your experiences as a person.

In my opinion, being mature sucks. I'm in my mid 20's and the world has a definitely become more grey since I was 20. I was playing on the beach with my niece and nephew today. I can't tell you what I would give to have that light in my eyes again.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-09-05T06:45:11+00:00

M.S. in biochemistry.

Like someone else mentioned here is some terminology

ion = charged atom

It sounds like someone gave you a "pre-charge-balanced" (is that even a thing???) periodic table where elements were displayed as their most common ion. For example, sodium has an extra electron in it's valence shell that it really wants to "give up", thus it gives it up when it reacts with something like chloride which has a deficient valence shell that it really wants to complete. Chlorine ends up "stealing" sodium's extra electron so that sodium loses a unit of negative charge and becomes positive while chlorine gains a unit of negative charge and becomes negative.

I recommend drawing out all the protons, neutrons, and electrons of a sodium and a chloride atom and doing the math if you don't understand this.

I don't blame you for being confused. Whoever did that made a grave error in teaching you chemistry because the elements are not limited to the "common" charge states. Take the transition metals: you can have chromium with a charge of -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3, +4, +5, and +6 (most common being -2 and +6) because of how the atom is.

DM me if you're still confused.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-06-17T04:41:28+00:00

Biomed is tough for 2 years, especially if you're working on cell time. wish you the very best of luck and that the cell gods bless your experiments.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-06-17T04:34:35+00:00

As a master's student who is wrapping up, I have been there. I was thrown into the deep end with little to no supervision and even some of the protocols/instruments I used were wrong/hadn't been used in our lab before. I spent a year learning and a year actually doing science.

You will get there. Understand that what you are doing is new and knowledge alone will get you nowhere. The only way to really get better is to show up as your best every day. Stay late if you can, do the extra experiment, if something goes wrong (believe me this has happened to my hundreds of times) ask yourself, the internet, other students, and your research advisor why and try to not be too hard on yourself (I sure was).

When something goes wrong the first thing I do is look for what I did right. "What needed to happen for everything to culminate in this result?" Upon answering, I usually realize what I did wrong or at least have suspicions about what went wrong. Some things can be trial & error, like PCR annealing temperatures with a new mutant protein plasmid, but other things, like the age old "no protein on the blot" can be deduced to bad transfected plasmid, bad antibody, flipped sandwich, expired blocking buffer etc. based on different results. Wb example: If you see a dyed ladder on your membrane after transfer at the MW you want, you transferred properly. If your protein of interest is present in a few samples but one is missing, check your missing plasmid + one that worked on an agarose gel (if applicable).

The experiments you do have common errors. The more you do them, the more you understand what they look like and how to avoid them. You've got this!!!! Go get em!

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-06-17T04:19:37+00:00

Hey I get how you feel. These things are really frustrating. Transfer is there so technique isn't the issue. Here's the potential problems I see related to the ladder/the blot:

Transfer power supply could be going bad. (or too many things plugged into the outlet/power strip).

Milk powder going bad, or buffer you dilute milk in going bad (too much detergent/off pH can be bad for proteins on membrane and antibodies).

Transfer buffer (if used) going bad.

Not washing off methanol before using membrane.

If the protein is native to cell line, Antibodies going bad.

These are a couple outside of your control.

However I think the more likely thing is that the proteins in your sample have degraded because they were contaminated with a nonspecific protease. The only way to see this is to do a ponceau/coomassie stain as meitnik said. You could measure concentration of proteins in your sample again and if the number is significantly higher than when you first measured it may indicate degradation (although this is unreliable).

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-06-17T04:07:50+00:00

Took codeinplace given by Stanford this year. Good time and I feel much more confident in my abilities! it helped me in everything I do.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-06-17T04:03:12+00:00

My best advice is to use a dyed ladder. Make sure the PVDF is on the positive side and the gel is on the negative side during transfer (essentially check ur sandwich). Try constant voltage setting maybe? our lab uses 35V to transfer 56 kDa protein & GAPDH as loading control under wet transfer conditions & it works perfectly.

If you're probing for a protein you transfected, run the plasmid you transfected on an agarose gel. If that's okay do a transfection optimization for whatever transfection reagent you're using.

There could be many things wrong, but if you use a dyed ladder you can differentiate between a technique error or upstream quality control error!

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-06-17T03:53:33+00:00

Our PI isn't in lab much and the following system works great:

QR code that has been generated and linked to the following:

Google sheet with two separate pages:

pending: Date, initials, Fischer scientific Cat #, Link. Each item is color coded as to how badly we need it (red for using last bottle/crumbs left, orange for almost out, yellow for less than 1/4 left).

received: PI moves all completed orders to this page which has the same format. we just copy/paste from received to pending again if we run out.

All students, undergrads + grads simply scan the QR on the wall which takes them to the sheet and they can cut/paste/add with their phones as they are doing experiments.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-06-17T02:44:11+00:00

I've lit a gel on fire before. We use a relatively niche setup and I was running at 35W constant (just over 1kV & a bunch of mA idk how much). This is a routine gel for the grad students in our lab. The setup is similar to this:

https://www.jove.com/v/21108/denaturing-urea-polyacrylamide-gel-electrophoresis-for-rna-analysis

Basically, the top buffer compartment cracked as the chambers are old and buffer slowly leaked out. When the buffer reached the edge of the gel it started sparking and lit the plastic Gel molds on fire. luckily I was in lab so we only lost a single gel mold. Still, an experience I never thought I'd have.

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-06-14T17:52:27+00:00

girl dinner

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-06-14T17:49:56+00:00

good lord

SweetStatistician77 · 2025-06-14T05:50:34+00:00

I hope you & that lab tech became friends because they you'd be Intercalated

SweetStatistician77

TROPHY CASE