The Lounge

First off let me introduce myself, I'm an undergrad from India, I'm doing engineering in biotechnology(I have one more year left to graduate) and I've dreamed of being a scientist for as long as I remember(I'm interested in doing research in the field of Neuroscience). Too make the long story short, let's just say I haven't achieved anything even remotely impressive academically. I won't say I 'wasted' the past few student years, because I've learned a lot and I think I've grown as a person to a great extent. But like I said, academically I'm very weak. I've flunked a couple of subjects, my basics are poor and I have no research experience whatsoever. Clearly, I…

If people were playing high-stakes poker, making the kind of bets that could cause a whole family's home, college education savings, cars, etc., to be lost on a single hand, most of us would refuse to participate because we would prefer to avoid that sort of stress. Even if there was an even chance of winning that much money, we simply would not want to have to endure the tension and dread of something that bad going wrong. But then what about life itself? Even if you believe that there is a good chance that your fortune in life will bring as many entertaining and rewarding experiences as negative ones, having human physical existence means that you constantly have …

I'd like to create my own secret language for making notes, similar to how Davinci used to write in mirror handwriting. In this sense I'd like to ask you are there any known and easy ways to do just that? Writing in mirror writing is a bit too much of a hassle to me and people still can read it it just takes longer. I thought of the idea of simply switching the alphabet with my own letters. The alphabet has only 20+ letters, so it would be easy to just switch them up with my own symbols and then I'd just have to train which symbol stands for which letter. Any other good ideas you'd like to contribute?

Hello, My name is Tyler. I had been a Cook all my professional life, last year my girlfriend got pregnant, and I decided to get a real education, and attempt leading a legitimate life in society. So I started taking classes at my local community college. Initially I thought Civil Engineering sounded good, So I did a shadow day with my local water bureau and I took a term of "Engineering Technology." It was the hardest thing I've ever done, I was ill prepared, but I survived with a C that I am actually very proud of. I had only taken a basic pre-alegbra class before attempting these monstrous 3 dimensional statics problems that really blew my hair back. What I've…

Does anybody think that there is an inverse relationship between how many sexual partners one has in their lifetime prior to marriage and how long their first marriage will last prior to divorce? (i.e. the more sexual partners one has before meeting the right one will likely find their relationship with the one they marry a bit more boring as they would have already had the boyfriend/girlfriend experience from previous relationships and hence are more likely to not commit in the long run and vice versa)? What does everyone think? Also, could this be the reason why America has such a high rate of divorce? And what does everyone think is the ideal number of rom…

as people have probably become increasingly aware, China will be expected to become a superpower nation soon. Despite this however, we in the West countinue send out billions of dollars to China, which in some areas is actually more prosperous than a lot of places in the developed world. Should we, people of from the developed world stop donating billions of dollars every single day to China? When should we stop sending out money to china? ...they will overtake us soon.

Hi guys, I'm about to make a "life changing decision" and I wanted some advice from an outside perspective of people who aren't my family or friends. I've always been someone who is very indecisive about what they want to do in life, possibly because I take naturally to most things. I get interested in something easily, but get bored of it quite quickly. I've been doing website development for 5 years, but less and less until this year when I got a job doing it to make some money. I applied to do computer science at uni because I saw it as a broad field which I couldn't easily tire of as it has many different branches. I also chose it as it has good job prospects,…

I think people within our society are becoming increasing malevolent and unsympathetic. Share us your stories. Have you ever felt as though one of your friends or co-workers at work were happy that something painful or unfortunate happened to you or to one of your relatives? What should you do if you know they are being malevolent? I've also heard of the notion that good people always see the good in others. However, does this mean that they have to be blind to the evilness in others?

Two guys almost caught by a dinosaur!

Being a spiritual person, who loves to muse on the beauty of nature, and can quite happily watch grass grow with a sense of peace and tranquility, I am fascinated by Fibonacci Numbers, especially when these occur in nature. http://www.fibonacci.name/images/sunflower2.jpg The above sequence occurs in flower petals, seed cones, leaf arrangements, honeybee genealogy and also rabbit breeding. Link However, aware that I am in a Science Forum where rationality is normally the order of the day (no pun intended). I want to throw this out to people. Is it a significant thing or is it just humans recognising…

Hi. I used to ask questions on this forum maybe 6-8 years ago back in high school. Now I'm about to graduate college, and I feel like I've wasted not only much of my college career, but also much of life in general. You ever felt like that? I'm studying math at the university I'm at. But I'm not really engaged in it. I feel like I wasted my opportunities here and really haven't pursued any research opportunities that were available. I'm just having regrets I guess. What do you do when you're at that point where you don't know where to go? And you feel like you've wasted what was one of your best opportunities in life, potentially destroyed any career plans you have in…

Has any good come to European/Western society through experiencing World War I and World War II? If World War I and World War II had not occurred, would the world be a better place now? How has experiencing these wars impacted upon the society in which we have built? Did humanity learn anything from these wars or did it just heighten the demand for nuclear weapons? What's your opinion?

So about 6 years ago Blike started a SFN Yearbook thread, but since it is a year book, and that thread is filled with pictures that no longer exist I figure it maybe time for a SFN Yearbook Vol. 2! So post your pictures!

I've heard of a wake-up call specifically for autistic people who have a hard time waking up because their brain needs to be warmed up first. An automatic system with a voice speech calls the person over phone to his set time and asks the persons several mathematical questions, this warms the brain up, thus the autistic person will wake up. I'd like to use such a service myself, anyone know where I can find that?

I'm not sure what the conventions pertaining to such a post are or even if this is the correct place to post this ,so please pardon any deviance from normal convention. Does anyone know of a science (physics?,math) based project that we could participate in.If there are none could we start our known i.e. anybody have any ideas as to what to look at.I thought the the idea of completing a project purely through a web-collaborative structure is quite an interesting one.

Is Google a porn distributor ?

If so, when? And is it the responsibility of the developed countries to make sure this happens?

This morning, a safety manager passed by the office and started commenting on my book shelves. I have to clean them up. I must rearrange the books, and a book cannot be on top of another book. The books (which have been on that shelf for the last couple of years, in pretty much the same arrangement) could fall off, and injure someone, according to the safety guy. An official report was filed, and it's in our computer system now. I think it's utterly ridiculous (no book ever fell, but even if it would, an injury is extremely unlikely), and I am contemplating how I can avoid rearranging the shelves. I'm feeling a little rebelious, and despite the fact that cleaning up …

hey do u people think dat we shud carry coins instead of notes as per recommended by baba ramdev?he says --1000 rupee note shud be banned

A year ago I was in coma and I lost a good portion of my IQ, I used to be at highly intelligent between 120-130. The doctor said I'm still going to be intelligent and bright, but at the same time I'm going to have a less interest to deal with topics, it also may take me longer to understand systems than it used to. I can only confirm that, by my argumentation and behavior I'm still considered intelligent, yet at the same time I have no problem with just "chilling", before the coma I simply could not just "chill" I had to keep myself busy all the time and I never could understand why other people would waste their time with so called "chilling" - well, now I know both side…

It belongs to the top 10 least corrupt countries, which I find extremely good. I agree with their politics, for example they have very rigid regulations for immigrants like being able to finance yourself and speak English fluently. It is overall a nice looking country with beaches and a comforting lifestyle. It also has more or less the same temperature throughout the year - which is a negative for many people I speak with but for me it is a big plus, I hate the winter and always dreamed about living in a country with the same temperature throughout the year. I think I really may move to Australia. The only thing which takes getting used to is that they drive on the …

What does everyone think is the best science related job out there? Anybody got any ideas?

Can someone explain what gel electrophoresis is and the process? Thanks in advance!

Which country does everybody think is the most dangerous for foreign workers to go to for work? I specifically interested in hearing peoples opinions particularly in regards to countries which are wanting foreign workers to come to their country and have many jobs specifically for foreigners. What does everyone think?

Hi everybody! I am wondering whether anybody here knows whether the places where Aurora Australis/Borealis occurs are popular tourist attraction sites? Anybody know? Thanks!