Tiny_Rat

Tiny_Rat t1_jbiiqk2 wrote

It's not entirely true that feral cats can't be acclimated to living indoors or with other cats, but it's not easy to do. My in-laws adopted a feral cat (didn't realize it was feral when they got it), which promptly ran away. However, it stayed in the neighborhood, so they started leaving food out for it, and slowly moved the food closer to the door until the cat would come inside to get fed. Then the cat started to at least occasionally hang out inside, at first when they and their dogs were out, and eventually even with them around. This winter it's been really cold and rainy, and the feral cat is getting older, so it more or less decided to become a mostly indoor cat, and seems fine around them, their dogs, and their other (indoor only) cat. It would probably throw a fit if it couldn't go out on demand; it still runs off when strangers come to visit, especially strange dogs; and it's definitely not a cuddly, pettable sort of cat. However, it does spend a lot more time indoors by the fire than I thought a feral cat ever would!

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Tiny_Rat t1_jadhudx wrote

>However, they remain recessive for various reasons. This could include the recessive trait being advantageous in certain circumstances, but not others. Or that is only an advantage if other traits are also expressed at the same time

This makes no sense. "Recessive" described how an allele intersects with other alleles, and this is largely determined by the molecular mechanisms the protein produced by that allele is part of. A trait cannot change from recessive to dominant, no matter how advantageous or disadvantageous that would be. And while recessive traits are acted upon by evolution, that only happens in homozygous individuals that have two copies of that gene and thus show that trait. A newly-arising recessive mutation could spread through quite a few generations of heterozygous individuals, being passed on but not expressed, until two heterozygous individuals met and bred to make a homozygote. In the meantime, that allele could pick up new mutations that would change it's function without significant selection pressure.

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Tiny_Rat t1_jabhwuj wrote

>needs to be at least as good if not better than other siblings.

>If it's going to take three generations of mutations to get to an advantage, they probably won't make it.

This is largely up to chance, unless the mutation is both dominant and a significant disadvantage early in life. Many mutations that are recessive, neutral, or only slightly disadvantageous spread through populations just through chance. For example, just look at human traits like hair color or clinodactyly.

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Tiny_Rat t1_j9bu799 wrote

Oh, yeah, it's a stupid issue. Especially the idea that throwing those embryonic/fetal tissues in the trash (which is where they end up after abortions or fertility treatments, nobody is burying them in a graveyard or something) is somehow more moral than using them in research that could actually save lives. That one especially ticks me off. It is important to keep an open discussion on medical ethics, of course, and to keep researchers accountable for following best practices, but the forced-birth people really take it to an extreme that helps nobody, and does real and lasting damage on many fronts.

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Tiny_Rat t1_j9berwd wrote

Look, I'm a stem cell researcher, I'm doing my PhD in this, so I'm fairly familiar with the backlash against embryonic stem cell research. Bone marrow stem cells really aren't part of the controversy, and haven't been at any point. Some of the research into bone marrow stem cells has received criticism because it sometimes does use fetal tissues, but that's again separate from bone marrow stem cell donation and use for medical purposes.

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Tiny_Rat t1_j81m6ud wrote

If they autoclave it, a sealed vessel will still explode, as the pressure inside the vessel and the machine will still change at different rates. Plus, killing the bacteria won't make the solution less cloudy, it will just be cloudy with dead bacteria instead of living ones. And, worst of all, heat treatment will most likely kill the fluorescent proteins anyways.

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Tiny_Rat t1_iy4okvs wrote

Have you ever babysat a kid, or worse, multiple kids? It only takes a second of distraction for a toddler to disappear in a crowd.

And that commercial you hear on the radio sounds a lot less stupid when you realize that the parents of most babies are incredibly sleep deprived, and sleep deprivation often causes the brain to be prone to running on autopilot for common tasks. That makes it very easy for someone to forget about anything not part of the default routine, like the baby in the backseat when they'd normally be at daycare. It has little to do with carelessness or intent. Here is a good article about it

I realize that it's comforting to think that accidents only happen people who did something to deserve it, but thats not how the world works. Sometimes, bad things still happen even if you're trying to do everything right.

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Tiny_Rat t1_ix00rde wrote

That doesn't really explain the number of 30-40+ year old people who are getting diagnosed for the first time now thay we've gotten better at recognizing what the symptoms look like in adults, particularly women.

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Tiny_Rat t1_iwqabou wrote

The dogs that run like this have much more flexible spines than horses, and are also much lighter for their height. A horse doesn't have enough flexibility and power to run like that.

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