Biology

Triclosan is bacteriostatic and inhibits fatty acid synthesis by binding to the reductase carrier protein. Does Benzoyl Peroxide cause a simlar effect too since it is lipophilic? How does benzoyl peroxide decrease the number of fatty acids...what is the mechanism (I am aware that it oxidises it)? I would appreciate any help Thanks

A science-oriented tour of Twycross Zoo with the new head of research, Lisa Yon. http://www.test-tube.org.uk/morestuff/zoo_tour.htm

Hello, I have a question on ETC.... What types of differences are there between electron transport chains present in photosynthesis reactions and those which take part in aerobic respiration? A detailed response comparing significant distinctions between the two would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. amaysa

I am familiar with the fallacy, i may be mistaken is called irreducible complexity? Its the idea that certain things could not have evolved because their intermediates would be useless, thus requiring a god or supernatural force to have come into existence at all. Examples would be eyes, wings, and disguises. I know explanations to disprove the fallacy at least for those examples. The simplest one: any type of eye is better than none, from being able to simply tell light from dark, to constructing crude shapes and shades, to more accurate visual equipment. Precursors to a wing may be a flap of skin that produces some amount of air resistance. An individual with this precu…

There is a bit of discussion about this topic, particularly relative to the start (and end) of a human life. Is human gestation like building a car (or a kind of machine) that gets put together on an assembly line, from a collection of parts, then eventually, it gets rolled somewhere, then it gets started and driven out the door. Is this a valid kind of analogy, so a life starts once the organism is "ready to drive"? Or does it begin when it starts getting constructed? What's your point of view? Considering humans take a bit longer to get "ready to drive" --they need maybe a decade of 'instruction' from older humans, and they need to take a lot of driving lessons too…

After a person dies, the muscles stop working (after rigor mortis). I have heard that when the body is put into a constant state where it cannot be moved (for example in a grave), gravity pushes the blood downwards and results in it being located elsewhere in the body. Is this true? If so, how long will it take for the blood to go down? Which route does the blood take to get down? Thanks

so, i've found about 20ish flies in my room today :-/ my current theories are: 1/ the recent really stormy weather woke the buggers up from hybernation and they're currently taking shelter in my room as i have an unclosable vent leading directly outside that they can get in through, or 2/ some rat or mouse has done me the favour of dying under my floorboards, and it's now haemorraging flies. i usually have my window open and i smoke in my room, so i guess i wouldn't neccessarily recognise any wierd smell... anyone know about flies? would they behave like that in a storm, or am i going to have to tear my floor-boards up and look for corpses? also: any t…

I just heard an interesting report on radio that a woman trained caterpillars by exposing them to a chemical odor and then giving them a mild electric shock. They learned to avoid the odor source. What was a cool experiment was allowing them to become butterflies, or whatever moths. These moths also avoided the chemical!

Hello everybody. Iam publishing this which i was thinking for 5 years.... Gorilla has 24 set of chromosomes. right??? If we remove a set of chromosome from the cell of a gorilla and alow it to grow,after some evolution will it form a human????? Please help me.

Cambrian was the evolutionary advantage of Cambrian micro-organism's ability to liberate oxygen from CO2? Of course we breathe O2 which in does not prebiotically, due to its strong affinity to carbon or hydrogen. Early Cambrian organisms must have liberated oxygen from carbon to give us what we breath today. This process had to be extremely robust to accumulate the tremendous current atmospheric oxygen reservoir in only a few billion years, essentially exhausting atmospheric CO2. Oxygen was a waste product for some very successful organism. However, as the atmospheric CO2 level dropped to half what it started, this theoretical organism must have found an e…

Hey everyone I'd like suggestions for what to write about Opium poppy in my term paper. Here's a sample of what I have right now. Iwouldn't even call a rough draft so don't critique it just offer suggestions on what else to cover. Or anything you would like to know about Opium Poppy. Papaver Somniferum: The Medicinal Uses Introduction Poppy-seeds are commonly associated with a muffin, but however the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L.) has been affecting the world in more ways then that of a muffin. Opium poppy has been formed into eighty different drugs (fig 1.1) such as codeine, morphine, L-dopa (Levodopa), and diacetylmorphine (heroin). The opium poppy is one of…

A debate of whether or not the human body has a "spirit" eventually brought up the idea (pro-spirit) that the human body loses a small amount of weight (assuming it doesn't telport away from the earth, mass too) when/slightly after the person dies. The proposed argument was that this was the spirit leaving the body. After the initial shock of spirits having mass (not the Catholic kind) I tried to reason out why, assuming this was true. Is it because of deflation of the skin? discharge of fecal matter/other bodily fluids? Proof by contradiction or lack of soundness in the assumption? Cheers Jonas

Hello all. A sawed off section of a tree shows the seasonal rings, age, and some environmental characteristics, but my question is about growth alone; the addition of material to the trunk. Is the younger material at the center or at the bark ? Or, in other words, the diameter of a tree increases as new wood cells form at the core and migrate outward or the new cells accumulate under the bark ?

Do you know why do the eyes of some animals glow in the dark ? The truth is that the glow is only the reflection of light from a source. the reason that the reflection takes place is that there is alayer of crystalline substance in the eyes. the animals that have more blood vessels in their eyes emitt a reddish glow.

Is in our nucleic acids, proteins, and neurotransmitters. How do they get there? nearly 80% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, is this the origin of the amino stuff in our bodies? What is the process of a plant to harvest this nitrogen? How do we digest it from plant matter? trying to find the answer elsewhere because i am impatient, wikipedia tells me amines are derivatives of ammonia. So i can change my question to, where does the ammonia come from, and how does a plant process it?

I recall that, about 30 years ago, when I was trying to walk through a seacoast forest in Brazil during the night I stumbled in a eerie patch where I got surrounded by strong little lights. At the beginning I did not know what those strong lights were. When I touched one of them I realized that it was a small leaf ( its length was about 2 cm ). Since it was very dark I could not tell if it was a leaf from a shrub or a tree. I reasoned that probably it was not the leaves themselves the source of light, otherwise all leaves of the shrub / tree should glow. Probably bioluminescent micro-organisms forming a thin layer were living on the surface of those leaves. D…

Do you know why does'nt water wet a lotus leaf?? Lotus leaf does'nt get wet due to outer layers of cells in epidermal layer of leaves.They contain cellulose, which get converted into cutin by the process of cutinization and form an impermeable membrane on the cell wall which is the cuticle. CUTICLE, is a layer of wax which are simple lipids containing one molecule of fatty acids esterified with one molecule of long chain alcohols instead of glycerol. These are highly insoluble in waterand chemically inert because these do not have double bonds in their hydrocarbon chains. Hence the waxes form a protective coat.It will be more on lotus leaf, which does'nt allow the lea…

I'm doing a project where I need some filters. I found some reasonably priced ones on the internet but I have no idea how to tell which size is which. I'm looking for the size that filters out the smallest particles. The sizes available are 0.45 microns and 0.2 microns. I know this may seem like a pretty dumb question but which way do these numbers go, it seems to me that the 0.45 micron filter would be the finest one. I'm lost in space on this one & need to get the filters soon. If anyone can help I would appreciate it. THANKS!!!

Hello, I have (hopefully) a fairly straightforward question for you guys: what is the effect of a basic solution on photosynthesis? I've read through http://biology-online.org/articles/ecological_alarm_oceans_turning.html and, form my understanding, an increase of carbon dioxide dissolved in water makes it more acidic. But, what if we were to go the other way? What effect would that have on photosynthesis? Is that measurable? Now, suppose I have sort of regular garden plant that likes a pH from 5-7. What if, instead of watering it with water (pH 7) but with, let's say, a Barium Hydroxide solution or Sodium Hydroxide solution (with a pH of 10), how would that effe…

What part of the cell would be considered it's brain? Would it be the nucleus, the membrane, or would the whole cell be analogous to a brain?

Is this possible. If anyone here can genetically mutate a carrot and a tobacco plant - oh boy this would be the ultimate - all natural smoking cessation resource!

Hey,this is MrSandman, I'm working on a term paper for botany, and I need really solid sources on Opium Poppy (Papaver somniferum ) I've found quite a few, but I need all my sources to be journal entries, and I need a journal entry that just describes the plant. Write down any suggestions on finding the url.

Hi everyone, I was thinking about the following general questions about life on Earth: 1. How many species are there on the planet? 2. How many organisms are there on the planet? 3. How are these species/total organisms distributed among the different animal kingdoms (ie. what is life most commonly in the form of?) I'll look around the internet over the next couple of days and post what I find. If anyone already has a good idea about these questions then please let us know. Thanks!!! (Also, I'm new here...I looked at a couple of the other science forums around and this one just seemed like the best....but I would like to hear from more experienc…

Hey everyone, I'm currently working on a college paper and I need to know what the percentage is of zygotes that fail to attach to the uterus, and are naturally aborted. I've been looking around the web and most things have said around 65%-70% which my gut tells me is a little high. Also one place said 18%. If anyone knows the correct percentage please let me know. Also if you could, it would be helpful if you linked me to a credible site that has this information and that I can site on my paper. Thanks in advance

I think a modern confusion over origin of life studies is perspective. I mean a small perspective. Microbes are not bony creatures, they do leave behind evidence but you have to remember the timeline you are looking for such combined with the fact similar behavior to what you are looking for very well may have eaten such evidence literally. Microbial life, its so tiny that getting much farther away from it can give you the title of not even being alive in the case of the virus. Giving the concept of evolution, time and of course natural selection it might be safe to assume that primordial life may have been not much more the viral like clusters of matter, to much mos…