Bluenoise

Nah freebase and crack are the same thing. By freeing the base you can then smoke it since the base has a lower boiling point then the salt. Trying to smoke the salt destroys much of the drug before it vaporises due to the high heat needed. So when you hear about people using baking soda (HNaCO3)to cook crack they're just absorbing the HCl to free the base. (Also creating side products of NaCl, H2O and CO2) Cocaine HCl is what's know as "Cocaine" and can be snorted because it is a water soluble salt that can pass through the thin nasal lining once it dissolves in the mucos present.

Uhhh well most of air is pure nitrogen. As I understand it if you put it underalot of pressure and/or cool it you get liquid nitrogen. Here's a site of a company that sells machines that produce it on site from air. http://www.stirling.nl/sp/sp3.html As you can see it's not chemical but a mechanical process. Are you sure you searched the web though? I googled "producing liquid nitrogen" and this is the first thing that popped up, it even has a scimatic of the interior workings of the machine.

The amount of mercury in a can of light tuna is actually fairly low, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Tuna steaks on the other hand have quite a bit more mercury in them, since they come from larger fish which bioaccumilate more mercury during their life time. This is mostly a concern for pregnant women since a fetus is far more suseptable to the negative effects of mercury. Especially so during the 8 week period where the brain is developing but the blood brain barrier hasn't yet. However there are no recommendations for limiting tuna intake for other people. I'd be more concerned with not having a balanced diet then I would be from being exposed to that amount of mercury. Trying to survive of tuna alone isn't a good idea. There is no simple miracle food, you need to mix up your diet a bit to be healthy.

No entropy deals with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Conservation of energy/matter is delt with in the first.

That's not entirley true. Stemcells are what your organs are created from in the first place, so it is theoretically possible to grow them into organs. It's just that science has progressed nowhere near to that point yet.

Possibly with the right combination of stem cells and developmental factors. But you should know that when a body part first divelopes it is acting on cues and signals from other nearby parts that are in specific stages of developement. Mimmicing these in an already developed human body to regenerate a whole organ would be very tricky to say the least.

I doubt it. Full body hair is apparently due to a single gene, they are no less human then the rest of us. They just posess a unique trait. To perform a proper splice you'd most likely have to rearrange chromosomes and genes to line up properly then you'd have to consider the implications of 1000's of new gene interactions. It would probably just be easier to modify one organims into what you want then to actually combine two different sents of Chromosomes.

Well different DNA's from a molecular perspective are very simular. The possibility of having antigens produced that would recognise a unique DNA isn't very realistic, and if you recognised a small sequence it wouldn't be specific enough to be very useful. DNA just doesn't have the unique structural elements and functional groups need.

Well acetomenophen is insoluble in water and cocaine hydrochloride is soluble so you could just try to dissolve it and see what happens. Also cocaine is made insoluble upon addition of NaOH and acetominophen is made soluble by addition of NaOH. So putting it in an NaOH solution would tell you what it is even if you didn't know if the cocaine was in it's HCl salf form or if it was in it's base form. But this is only usefull for differentiating between the two if you know that it has to be one or the other.

So all they did was just bend it around into a spiral to give the impression that it looks like a galaxy. It's much harder to read this way. I really don't see the point.

Maybe if we survive that long. We'd probably have mastered genetic engineering by that point though and be something else entirely. Major ethical concerns. There's really not much you can say to this question. It's just a whole lot of serious speculation. It'd made more sense to talk about doing 1 small nanotech modification first, since not even that has been done.

Well I can understand it or parts of it. Physics really isn't my thing too. I'm a biochemist. He writes it in a way where he points out which parts are easy and which are mindbreakers. He actually uses emoticons to do it. It's kinda funny. I think anyone can get something from it. Even if you just read his history lessons and stories. But a in-depth understanding would take alot of reading. The first 16 chapters kinda cover the math you need for the rest of the book. Good investment I think.

The basic current idea is that RNA was the original molecule of life (If you'd call that life). RNA forms readily from the compounds that we believe to have been present on the premordial Earth. This RNA can spontanously assemble into polynucleotide chains. Now since different chains can have different properties that they excert on molecules around them it is believe that eventually chains formed that were able to increase the probability of similar chains forming. Many refer to this phenomen as the principle of self-organisation. This is where natural selection comes in, If a specific chain can have some positive effect on the probability of it occuring again then it has positive selection on it's side. Even if these probabilites just shift the slightest bit, the shift is likely to increase by more the next time around since you'll have slightly more similar molecules complimenting each others formation, though you will be depleting the resources. As I stated earlier we know RNA to have catalytic ability (i.e a Ribozyme), so if you had a Ribozyme that has the capacity to copy strands of RNA, they it may copy itself, and self propagate. This definatley not a stretch since RNA has a large part in Replicating DNA, and is know to replicate on it's own template. Eventually over time such a sea of Self propagating RNA's would start to deplete free nucleotides, so having an Ribozyme present that can produce Molecules that can utilies other compounds to recreate more RNA or contain it would be beneficial (i.e. proteins (as well has having thousands of other uses)). And there are Ribozymes like this. They're the main catalytic component of Ribosomes. DNA formation would be probably now since you have the molecules present that we know are needed to assemble and accuratley copy DNA. Using DNA as the template for life is much better then using RNA since it is much more stable, so it's believed that DNA replaced RNA as the template for life. Now other steps would be things like formation of a membrane to contain the system, phospholipids do self assemple into phospholipid bilayers, so the system would just need to be able to guide them around itself then later guide their formation. Then compartmentalisation to create organelles so different parts of cells can have different functions that would otherwise conflict in the same space. This is also the idea with the formation of multicelluar life. Different cells for different fuctions, the ability to take more stress and survive. Formation into tissues, organs, and body plans can all be seen to logically follow. Note: Please people I just threw this all out off the top of my head so be gentle. And I'm definatley not saying that this was the exact order of things, most likely some or most of these things developed side by side from steps that we will never guess, but I think it's a fair outline of the basic idea. Now notice how every progressive step in a theory like this increase the probability of this system of molecules propagating itself? So in effect it is the next probable step. Since any negative step would produce somethign that would be overwhelmed and lost by the more probable ones. Darwinian natural selection in effect. The problem mcoy with the resources that you're quoting is that they're attempting to refute a theory that no one believes anyways. They don't take the time to study the actual view on something and just assume that it's something else like that a complex organism will just spontanously self assemble. No ones saying that. The current argument is once of many small steps. If you take life to spontaneously form a complex organism in a slipt second the probability is nilch. But if you let it take a small step every 1000's of years or so and strech that out over 4 billion years it almost seems unavoidable.

Uhhh RNA does help synthesize proteins and DNA. There are many important RNA components to both DNA polymerase and Ribosomes. Actually the main catalytic component of Ribosomes is RNA... So I don't know where you're getting this comparable to impossible trash from since we know it to happen.

This presents some interesting data. Mostly slanted towards the genetics viewpoint though. http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/obesity/lectures.html

I'd assume through the generations it would either select for more naturally skinny people, or for poeple who can handle obiesity better.

I believe it would be possible, but there would be 1000's if not more genes that would most likely have to be modified/added. It's not as simple as just adding a few genes you'd probably have to modify/redesign practically everything to accomodate for them.

It may interest you to know that fungi are more closely related to animals then to plants. plants branched off from our evolutionary line before fungi did.

I believe it's all the same. From my personal experience it's all based on attitude towards the subject. If I convince myself that I'm good at something and that I enjoy it my abilites improve vastly. If I become bored with something then they decrease. I've never really found any sort of learning to be different from any other. I work hard to never memorise something and to understand it logically, so you can't attribute too that. If you feel that you are bad at something you make an effort to find ways around doing it. Sure why not take the quicker way around it's more efficient, but it turn that avoidence reduces your ability. It's a vicious circle. You're brain looses what it doesn't use. Sure they maybe a few individuals with an amazing capacity for one particular function, but I'd say these are few and far between.

Nope plants don't have an immune system in the sense we do. They may be born with a resistances like toxins that combat infection, or waxy coatings to protect themselves, but no active immune system. Meaning no antibodies, they can't building resistences etc..

Well you were missinformed we didn't evolve from Neanderthals. We both evolved seperatley from a common ancestor. And the Neanderthals didn't make it. No it is not possible that there are a different species of evolved humans. Look individuals don't evolve really. Species evolve or isolated populations. The human population is always evolving every organism is. It is a very gradule process, It's not like all of a sudden a baby is born that is a different species, though maybe 10000's of generations apart you could call two individuals different species.

There is no proof for either. Though there are far more facts supporting the theory of evolution. And you could find these by doing a quick search on these forums. And absolutely nothing creditable supporting creationism might I add.

No they're not for the most part since you can't patent natural chemicals that are present in the human body. So since the discovery of these is useable by everyone, those that have invested money into the research are at an initial loss. Also to get many government grants for research you need to be able to supply 50% corporate/outside funding and since it doesn't specifically benefit anyone that is hard to achieve. I'm not saying such research isn't done and there is definatley fine research done in these areas but it is definatley underfunded. On the other hand things like this are done on some level. Like insulin production for instance, natural protein produced in bacterial hosts for use in humans. There's also production of Human growth hormone, and many others. Also producing a particular protien can have it's own difficulties, it may be hard to direct it to the required area of the body, proteins have limited lifespans etc. The production/design of synthetics is often far easier... ...though admittedly often come with higher degrees of sideeffects...

Purpose? Well that is a phylisophical question really. Life does use it for it's own purposes, but saying that is more of a play on the word. There is no organised purpose though. However, some would argue that eventhough evolution isn't guided there is an element of organisation involved. Only meaning that certain things are more likely to evolve than others. Evolution doesn't seem to just proceed randomly in all directions. It has a way of finding a good idea and improving upon this idea, though this can all be argued probablisitically through natural selection. Take the cambrain explosion for example, the recent shift toward multicellular organisation resulted in the need to experiment with many body plans. Many quickly evolved, but very few survive to this day. Since then evoluction has focus mainly on the improvement of these few ancient plans, new ones doesn't really emerge anymore. There is no record of an insect evolving two extra legs eventhough 8 legs is shown to work with spiders. Such an change would be a too drastic shift from well working body plan insects already have. It's like when bicycles were first invented remember seeing pictures of all those weird early designs? Well nowadays most bikes look fairly simular. Sure there are a few variations for specific purposes but even these don't appear as often as they used to nowadays. There is a book that has many modern insights on evolution. Steven Kaffmans - At home in the universe : A search for the laws of self-organisation and complexity. I'd recomend taking it with a grain of salt however.

Nice, I had almost forgotten about that study with all this talk of reprogramming adult cells to embryoes that have been mentioned latley.