GDG

If memory serves, you'll also find a good discussion of it in his latest book, "Musicophilia".

There is work proceeding along that line, but it has a long way to go. Current interfaces are limited to moving a cursor, and in some cases selecting letters from a keyboard, or indicating vowel sounds.

Is it possible today? Probably not. Possible sometime in the not-too-distant future? Probably, assuming you can get approval to conduct the experiments... Probably a matter of determining which HOX genes are responsible for upper limb development in humans or simians, and determining if one can adapt them to function in the dolphin.

Yes, there are different forms of ribosome: at least bacteria and eukaryotes have ribosomes of different sizes, and our mitochondrial ribosomes more closely resemble bacterial ribosomes. However, the ribosome is not what enforces the genetic code: nothing in the ribosome specifies a particular nucleotide or a particular amino acid. The code is really determined by the aminoacyl-t-rna synthases, which are the enzymes that recognize a particular anticodon on a tRNA, and charge the other end of the tRNA with the appropriate corresponding amino acid. There are a few idiosyncratic differences in genetic code in a few different species (see, e.g., Wikipedia), but these are pretty rare (apart from mitochondria, which have a slightly different code).

Strictly a gedanken experiment: a machine cannot read the exact (to sub-angstrom accuracy) position of 2 x 10^27 atoms without violating the uncertainty principle, much less reassembling the exact same number of atoms in exactly the same positions. Hope you don't twitch during the scanning And then there's the data stream with absolutely no errors... Let's see, even if you could encode each atom (and you would need the atomic number and the absolute position) in just one bit, it would still take you 2 x 10^17 seconds to send the signal at 10 GHz. I think that works out to be something over 6 billion years, just to finish transmission. Hope you're not in a hurry It is an interesting setup for philosophical debates though. And what happens when you accidentally press the "broadcast" button, and a copy of you steps out of each of multiple machines? (Aside from taking over the world, that is )

See, e.g., Sandra Pizzarello, et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (2008) 105(10):3700-04. As to why it doesn't occur today: how would you know? It would be hard to pick out against the background of existing life. Chances are pretty low, though, that anything new would survive: things that look like nutrients can get snapped up pretty quickly...

Perhaps not DNA per se, but the bases are found naturally in meteorites. See, e.g., V.A. Basiuk et al., Adv Space Res (1999) 24:505-14. The study of how DNA and RNA arose crops up in abiogenesis (and surfaces periodically in this forum as well).

What you are probably thinking of is the telomere problem. The end of each DNA molecule in a chromosome has a special repeating sequence of bases called a telomere that is added by an enzyme (telomerase). With each time the chromosome is replicated, a number of repeats are lost (not copied) at each end. After a number of cell divisions (and thus chromosome replications), you run out of telomere repeats, and start losing parts of the genes at the ends of the chromosomes. Eventually you accumulate enough damage that the cell division cycle halts, and the cell apoptoses. Telomerase operates in your germ cells and stem cells: once your stem cells differentiate away from their pluripotent form, the countdown timer starts ticking... Telomerase also functions in certain other cells, but we usually call those "tumors"... Cells that express telomerase can continue replicating essentially forever, as in the case of immortalized cell lines.

I think smells and tastes are harder to describe because (a) they tend to be more complex, and (b) we don't get nearly as much practice. Since you spend all day hearing language and music, and have to distinguish very similar sounds to extract meaning, you develop the ability to a much greater extent. If your job involved formulating perfumes or foods, or e.g. buying wines for an expensive restaurant, your ability to discriminate flavors and odors would probably increase accordingly.

My recollection is that one has amnesia associated with traumatic events because one's memory is essentially interrupted: e.g., the short term impressions never make it into long term memory, because unconsciousness intervenes. Haven't read up on PTSD lately, but isn't the problem believed to be in part due to having an extreme emotion reaction to triggering stimuli, without being able to consciously remember what caused the trauma in the first place? In any event, I'm having a hard time imagining an extremely positive emotion associated with extreme trauma...

Perhaps this thread would do better in Chemistry or chemical engineering: does not appear to involve biochemistry or molecular biology...

If the plant is completely dependent upon the moth to reproduce, and vice versa, then their selection pressures are going to overlap substantially. If bats start eating the moths, then the plants are going to suffer because they're not being pollinated. Similarly, if the plants are attacked by fungus, the moths will suffer because their primary (sole?) food source is depleted. I think the reason you didn't get the response to the OP you were looking for is because nobody saw a big connection between co-evolution and epigenetics. Perhaps you could expand a bit on why you think there might be one?

Don't think of natural selection (or evolution) as having a purpose or function: it is just the name given to an observed phenomenon. You might as well ask what the function of moonlight is: it doesn't have a "function", it just is. As for why we're not all immortal, probably there is no evolutionary advantage for us -- we haven't been selected for immortality. Consider that once you have finished reproducing, you are competing with your offspring for the same resources (food, shelter, water, etc.). Yes, your parents and grandparents (and great-grandparents) may also provide substantial support, and pass along their knowledge and wisdom (or not), but how much extra benefit would you get from being around your great^10 grandfather, telling you how he farmed as a serf during the Dark Ages? I suspect we have the lifespans we do because, as we evolved over the past several hundred thousand years, it provided an optimal balance between the advantage of having elders, and the extra resources those elders consume.

Nope. If it were that easy for us to slay each other, the world would be a very different place right now... Talk to the Australians: they've been trying to wipe out their rabbits for quite a while now, unsuccessfully. Naw, they'd probably all die from fluorine deficiency...

The brain produces around 10^-14 to 10^-12 Tesla; skeletal muscle, around 10^-10 T; the heart, around 5 x 10^-10 T. See, e.g., S. Yamada and I. Yamaguchi, "Magnetocardiograms in Clinical Medicine: Unique Information on Cardiac Ischemia, Arrhythmias, and Fetal Diagnosis", Internal Med (2005) 44:1-19. There's a handy chart on the third page. Unfortunately, it does not have figures for the body as a whole.

Chemical reactions that include breaking bonds can be exothermic or endothermic. You have to consider the total energy of your reactants vs. your products.

Intense emotion of either kind tends to make events more memorable. However, you are more likely to think about positive memories than negative memories: over time, your happy memories will be reinforced, and your negative memories left in the corner of the cellar. Unless, of course, you like to dwell on negative memories. Boring, unemotional events are quickly forgetable.

Sounds to me like someone has inverted the concept of herd immunity. In brief, if you vaccinate nearly all of the population, then even the non-vaccinated individuals are protected, because (in essence) they are surrounded by protected individuals who cannot pass an infection to them. The odds of you coming into contact with an infected individual, and becoming part of the chain of contagion, are much smaller when nearly everyone has been immunized. Only works when the great majority is immunized: if you have a substantial subset who aren't, then no herd immunity.

For one-on-one combat, unarmed, I don't think you can beat a grizzly bear. "Stronger and smarter" is not an advantage if your ecological niche has only low-quality food. If you don't need strength and intelligence to survive, the energy to maintain those traits is wasted -- and critters that don't waste their energy will out-reproduce you. Look at rabbits, for example. The real long-term trait that wins is adaptability -- the ability to survive changes in your environment.

I don't know about Alaskan wild-caught Keta salmon specifically, but the pathogen that springs to mind in association with under-cooked seafood is vibrio. "Vibrio" is actually a genus of micro-organisms often found in salt water, and includes cholera.

Yep: see G. Preti et al., J Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci (2009) 877(22):2011-18.

Yes, it is possible to induce tolerance to LPS. See, e.g., A. Draisma et al., "Endotoxin tolerance does not limit mild ischemia-reperfusion injury in humans in vivo" (2009) Inate Immunity (epub); and A.E. Medvedev et al., "Inhibition of lipopolysaccharide-induced signal transduction in endotoxin-tolerized mouse macrophages: dysregulation of cytokine, chemokine, and toll-like receptor 2 and 4 gene expression." J Immunol (2000) 164:5564-74. Whether this would be a good idea for therapy is a different matter... Weigh the odds of experiencing toxic shock vs. the probability of having continuous bacterial infections.

I don't know about happiness, but anxiety has a demonstrated effect on cognitive ability. See M. Mennes et al., "Developmental brain alterations in 17 year old boys are related to antenatal maternal anxiety" Clin Neurophysiol (2009) 120:1116-22.

1. First generation. Let's say you have Mom ("M") with genes AA and Dad ("D") with genes aa. We're assuming that Dad is homozygous for the recessive "a", because otherwise we wouldn't know that he has the trait at all. 2. Second generation: children C1, C2, C3, C4. Each child inherits an A from M, and an a from D. Thus, all the children are Aa, and none show the recessive allele. The trait "skips" this generation. 3. Third generation: grandchildren GC1, GC2, etc. Each grandchild has a 50% chance of inheriting the a allele from its C1 parent. The chance of the grandchild inheriting another a from its other parent depends upon that other parent's genes. Suppose we take C1, who has Aa. C1 marries spouse S1. If S1 is AA, then C1's children (GC1, GC2, etc.) will inherit an A from S1, and either an A or an a from C1. Statistically, 50% of C1's children will be Aa, and the other 50% AA (statistically: of course, all of C1's children could be Aa, or all could be AA, or anything in between). If S1 is Aa, then each grandchild has a 50% chance of inheriting an a from S1, and a 50% chance of inheriting an a from C1, and thus a 25% chance of being aa and showing the recessive phenotype. If S1 shows the aa recessive phenotype, like grandpa, then the grandchildren will inherit an a from S1, and have a 50% chance of inheriting an a from C1: thus, the grandchildren would have a 50% chance of being aa, instead of the 25% chance when S1 is Aa. If all the children in generation 3 are AA or Aa, the trait "skips" this generation as well. However, as long as some of the children are Aa, the trait is still carried. 4. Fourth and following generations. Assuming that there is no selection pressure against allele a, and that each generation has enough children, the recessive allele persists. It pops up (potentially) whenever another parent bearing the recessive allele marries into the family. From the third generation on (GCs), it is possible that none of the descendents carry the a allele. However, the a allele does not die out unless all of the children of a given generation are free of it.

The children of blacks and whites can have a wide range of skin pigmentation and appearance. Thus, the phenomenon of "passing" for white. In the Jackson case, it is possible that the children naturally have the complexions pictured. It is also possible that, having a white mother and a father attempting to be white, they or their parents opted to have their complexions "adjusted" as well.