I can't possibly see how this desalination plant will have an impact on salt levels in the long term. We follow a simple reasoning that only the water contained in the current water cycle will be desalinated. Any used desalinated water will end up back in the bay and dilute any increase in salt concentration back to previous levels. OK so there will be a tiny increase but it will not be noticable and will not be a cumulative effect.
I guess this guy has looked at mutations in the stick insect genome and made inferences about the phylogenic tree relating the species. The underlying assumption in these sorts of approaches is known as the infinitely many sites assumption. This says that a mutation can only happen once in any place on the genome and once it has happened it cannot mutate back. This assumption, although reasonable in most cases, may not be valid here. It would be nice to know how much information was used from the genome in order to get an idea of the validity.
Undergraduate science students, in particular physicists are taught that to report results of experiments that don't work is just as important as the reporting of positive results. While this may be true for the pursuit of knowledge, it doesn't really fit with human nature. Since when have money, reputation and Nobel prizes been the reward for the scientist who proves nothing. Is there any other way to reward these people or should we just rely on their own sense of scientific truth to continue this work anonymously and relatively poorly rewarded.
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I can't possibly see how this desalination plant will have an impact on salt levels in the long term. We follow a simple reasoning that only the water contained in the current water cycle will be desalinated. Any used desalinated water will end up back in the bay and dilute any increase in salt concentration back to previous levels. OK so there will be a tiny increase but it will not be noticable and will not be a cumulative effect.
I guess this guy has looked at mutations in the stick insect genome and made inferences about the phylogenic tree relating the species. The underlying assumption in these sorts of approaches is known as the infinitely many sites assumption. This says that a mutation can only happen once in any place on the genome and once it has happened it cannot mutate back. This assumption, although reasonable in most cases, may not be valid here. It would be nice to know how much information was used from the genome in order to get an idea of the validity.
Undergraduate science students, in particular physicists are taught that to report results of experiments that don't work is just as important as the reporting of positive results. While this may be true for the pursuit of knowledge, it doesn't really fit with human nature. Since when have money, reputation and Nobel prizes been the reward for the scientist who proves nothing. Is there any other way to reward these people or should we just rely on their own sense of scientific truth to continue this work anonymously and relatively poorly rewarded.