Kaeroll

Oh dear. Dare I click that link?

Good idea - though you'd have to squeeze as many puns and innuendos in as possible. Like... using jiggle to describe oscillations, or something.

What - if you impurify the water it'll conduct well enough, but stepping into the puddle isn't recommended?

Seconded. On a related note - the development of vaccination (look into smallpox and the name Jenner). On the topic of anaesthesia, 'back in the old days' some really nasty compounds were used to clean wounds and incisions - phenol in particular. The approach then was termed antiseptic - kill pathogens in the wound, rather than stop them getting there in the first place (the aseptic approach used now). Phenol is somewhat acidic. Putting on an open wound is not recommended. The development of less irritating antiseptic agents probably made surgery somewhat more tolerable...

Apparently some studies have been done on the power of prayer... cancer patients were prayed for anonymously (the prayers didn't know the prayee's identity and vice versa), and their remission rates were monitored. If I recall correctly most studies have been inconclusive, though one indicated that prayer makes things worse...

Slighty tangential anecdote - apparently JW Gibbs (of Gibbs free energy fame, amongst other things), a quiet man who rarely spoke at faculty meetings of his university, once witnessed a debate. It concerned whether the teaching of languages or mathematics is more important, and he simply interjected with: "Mathematics is a language." Thought I'd throw it in there for historical interest.

mooeypoo- I had never seen that video before. While the lecture was fascinating, more interesting are the comments... many of them depress me. "Woah, the boobs are talking... wow... boobs... I don't think I've ever seen them on the internet before!"

At a basic level, in aqueous media, protons exist as the hydroxonium ion [math]H_{3}O^{+}[/math], which I understand goes through a huge number of (not fully understood) dynamic processes. To address the OP's question, there are reactions that 'just' move a proton from one molecule to the next. You must understand, this does not refer to nuclear transmutation - these reactions don't involve plucking a proton from, say, a carbon nucleus to form an isotope of boron. Simple acid equilibria are good illustrations: [math]CH_{3}CO_{2}H + H_{2}O \Updownarrow CH_{3}CO^{-}_{2} + H_{3}O^{+}[/math] This is simply the dissociation of acetic acid, but is an example of a reaction in which the net result is simply proton transfer. Proton transfer is more commonly used to refer to an elementary step within a mechanism, wherein a proton is 'shuttled' from one part of a molecule to another, or from one molecule to another.

How was the operation? I've heard that sense of humour bypasses can be pretty uncomfortable.

Actually, April 1st has been cancelled due to lack of interest. Existence will resume Thursday.

It's a tough question, and frankly not just with regard to kids being aggressive. Not too long ago I had to catch a train, and a young woman (maybe 25?) jumped onto the tracks as the train pulled in. Thankfully, it stopped in time; a German fella pulled her up onto the platform. He sat in the same carriage as me, and shortly after the train left, one of the men the woman was with stalked down the carriage, leaned over the German, and threatened to kick the sh*t out of him for some reason. Nobody else in the carriage knew how to react. I bring this up because it's a more general problem than you describe. How are we to react to unprovoked aggression from anyone at all? Ignoring it sometimes gets you personally out of the situation, but it's certainly not a solution.

YouTube is not a speciality/interest site. In my opinion, given the huge levels of use it gets, it has a duty to remain as impartial as possible (which includes removing Randi's account if he's been in violation of their terms and conditions) They're also much higher profile than SFN; their actions make worldwide news fairly regularly.

Guilty as charged. Pardon me while I hang my head in shame.

I sense a boycott. I'll spread the love to my other internet haunts...

Indeed.

I like how they put gravity (the weakest force) and love together.

Have another glance at your periodic table. K is rather 'far away' from Kr, which is the next noble gas as you add electrons. How about taking them away? Write down the structure of K, and knock out the valence electron. Should look awfully familiar. This is what's termed the octet rule and applies to light elements (things can be a bit squiffy once you get past the d block). These elements are stable when they have eight valence electrons (ns2 np6), achieved through either 'covalent' or 'ionic' bonding - classic examples being elemental carbon (carbon surrounded by four other carbons, bonded covalently) and salt (an ionic lattice of NaCl).

I'm a student in the UK who actually supported the introduction of tuition fees (a rare breed indeed). The grants and bursaries associated with the introduction of the fees allowed me to go to university in the first place - I'm from a "low-income", single parent, council house background. The cost of living would've rendered my education unaffordable without the new (as in post-2006) financial system. To raise the fees higher than they already are is just... shocking, especially when figures like £20,000 are bandied about. It makes me wonder if the Vice-Chancellors suggesting these numbers have ever stepped into the real world long enough to know just how much that actually is. To put it into context: it's more than my single parent makes in a year, and is enough to rent a house (with all associated bills, taxes, etc), run a car, and clothe and feed three children. I honestly don't think the people suggesting a hike to £20,000 actually know the value of a pound. It also begs the question - do these guys realise there's a recession on? I'm no economist but I'm led to believe that the current financial crisis is, at least in part, due to excessive lending. And they're suggesting increasing the amount of lending per student by almost sevenfold?!

House is an interesting one. Despite having medical advisors, they still occasionally make schoolboy errors (like 'zapping' a flatliner). There's a cracking website called Polite Dissent, where a Real Doctor with a Real Degree takes each episode apart. I don't always agree with his thoughts on what he terms the 'soap opera' side but it's interesting to see how much the show's medical advisors either miss or get overruled in favour of drama. I've never seen BSG, but I recall reading in several places that if you were chucked out of an airlock into deep space you would suffocate before you froze, and would certainly not explode. (Though apparently explosive decompression has occurred deep underwater... ouch)

I pray every day for a moment like that to come along...

Fair enough - I'm just going off my somewhat limited education in the matter. I was always told it's a matter of debate, so I won't press my point.

Hi Zack I'm not sure I'm the right person for this - the course you described sounds roughly the equivalent of the UK A level, which I took about three years ago. You'd be much better off with someone working at the same level as you. That said, I'd be happy to help you out with questions or problems if you post them up here or email them to me. Sorry bout that. Kaeroll

Three questions, if I may: 1. Uri Geller? The same Uri Geller exposed as a fraud by James Randi? 2. What powers? Specifically. Vague claims of 'mystical powers' could mean anything. 3. Given that a good explaination has been given in your own post (confirmation bias and reasoning in hindsight), what is there to discuss? Kaeroll

In a word: "eeeeeeeyup!" Viruses are a grey area, so I'll leave that to a biologist to sort out, but bacteria and fungi are very much alive. They lack mitochondria, too, but can produce energy by reactions at the cell membrane. They grow and multiply, require food, etc - all the hallmarks of a living system. Leave some bread out past its sell-by date, and tell me with a straight face that the greeny-white muck growing on it isn't alive. As for intelligence... intelligence is not a criterion of life. It's not necessary for life. Life is, in essence, a self-sustaining, self-replicating chemical system. Viruses, requiring a host's systems to reproduce itself, is borderline. Bacteria and fungi are quite firmly alive, even if they are dumb. Kaeroll

Unfortunately, by my book RT Davies utterly fails at the above too. Roll on Stephen Moffat! mooeypoo - I never got round to reading Next. I wasn't a huge fan of Crichton's last few books. Prey (also about nanotech) was quite predictable. And scientifically bugged me from the moment a character goes: "So we have this molecular factory, right, where we can assemble molecules atom by atom..." Whaaaat?