exchemist

Indeed. There would be no point in trying so hard, if we did not thing there was something out there, besides ourselves, to agree about.

Exactly. The whole of science is predicated on the idea that we, i.e. more than just one "self" , can agree on how something called "nature", which is external to ourselves, behaves and that we can model this nature to predict future, collectively verifiable, observations of its behaviour. I can't see how that makes any kind of sense if the only thing that exists is the self.

Interesting - something I did not know about. However from what I read, framboids are said to be composed of microscopic, even sub-micron, euhedral crystals, so they are crystalline, apparently. It seems that their formation is hypothesised to occur when pyrites form from organic matter, via greigite, Fe3S4.

The structure you have drawn for 4-nitrophenol is not quite right. You can't show 5 full bonds from nitrogen, as the n=2 valence shell has only 4 orbitals in it (s + 3x p.) It is often shown as as a resonance hybrid of a pair of structures with a double bond to one O atom and a single dative bond to the other. This gives the 2 O atoms a partial net -ve charge and the N atom a +ve charge, which is what gives the nitro group its electron-withdrawing properties on the benzene ring. Sometimes it is drawn as a mix of the 2 structures, with a single solid line to each O atom plus a dotted line to each, giving a bond order of 1 1/2 to each, for example in this Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitro_compound. The polarity of the nitro group, resulting from the dative bond, is crucial to understanding its influence.

Strictly speaking, doesn't this depend on what frame of reference you select? In the frame of reference of a rotating object, isn't centrifugal force real?

What do you think about the relative tendency to release H+, for these 3 molecules?

As I recall, this is all explained in some detail in the book. The whole point of that book was to work out in realistic detail what would be possible in the circumstances. Can you not get hold of a copy to read the relevant section?

That's what I fear. Musk, like most charismatic business leaders, is by temperament an autocrat. I think Trump as president again would suit him nicely.

I teleported home one night with Ron and Sid and Meg Ron stole Maggie's heart away And I got Sidney's leg. (Douglas Adams. Who else?)

How interesting. (And nice to know his son, like mine, was called Louis.)

That's interesting. I admit I was going on a newspaper report about the outbreak in Hong Kong, where it was said that many older residents had resisted vaccination, due to distrust of the government. Perhaps the report was wrong, or perhaps the attitude of Hong Kong residents is not that same as in mainland China (one can understand why it might not be).

I think a lot of this is about trust in government health measures. In China there is a lot of reluctance get vaccinated because many older people especially don't trust the Chinese government or its vaccine. A lot of the politically aggravated resistance to countermeasures in the USA is due to the same thing, in that case distrust that has been artificially whipped up. In the UK there is a very high level of trust in the public health authorities, which is why the vaccination rate is so high - AND why everyone is now so furious with Bozo for ignoring the rules, in these Downing Street parties we are hearing about.

This is completely wrong. White light from a black body, such as the sun or a filament light bulb, is not composed of a mixture of yellow, cyan etc. There is continuous emission across the whole range of visible wavelengths. So there is light of all the colours detectable by the human eye, from red through to violet and including all the colours in between. Furthermore, shorter wavelength light is deflected through a bigger angle by passing into an optically denser medium, so the dispersion of the incident white light into its constituent wavelengths begins from the moment the light ray first encounters the glass. I haven't bothered with the rest, as since you get so much wrong at the start there seems little point.

The metrics to measure the impact of countermeasures (lockdown is a political scare term)will be things like ICU occupancy rate and rate of change of R number.

How absurd. The main goal of covid countermeasures (the term "lockdown" is a political scare term) in many places, certainly where I live in the UK, was to prevent the health service being overwhelmed by a huge spike in infections. Having medical people in the family, I can tell you with certainty that it was a close call : it very nearly was. No one, to my knowledge has ever called into question the fact that countermeasures reduced the height of the peak and enabled the health service to cary on functioning, through the height of the epidemic before vaccines were available.

But surely legumes can provide ample lysine in a vegetarian diet, can't they? And they also fix nitrogen, reducing the need for chemical fertilisers when grown in rotation with other crops. I don't know whether any domestic animals can synthesise lysine, but since their flesh contains plenty anyway, I'm not sure how a lysine-synthesing animal would help. Unless you are perhaps suggesting that the land area they require is determined by their requirement for lysine. Is that what you are getting at?

Sure, there's always a chance of misclassifying an individual fossil, just as any individual piece of scientific data can be in error or misinterpreted. That's why we don't base our theories around single interpretations of individual fossils.

Well yes, of course, we can only have our own perspective. But that is a perspective and as such has a degree of validity, even if it can't be assumed, on its own, to be objective. And what we do in life - all the time - is compare our perspective with that of others and, if they align, we generally conclude we are not mad and that what we all perceive is real-ish.

What I see in this thread is the usual phenomenon that has baffled me in discussions of this subject in the past, namely that some responders - including me- treat "conscious" as meaning just some kind of ability to sense and respond to stimuli in a complex way, whereas others seem to be addressing what seems to me a quite separate and far more restrictive issue, namely awareness of self. To me, one practical test of what we mean by consciousness would be whether or not we think the organism can feel pain. A wide range of creatures can react violently, when injured or otherwise subjected to some physical insult, in a way that we recognise as similar to our own response to pain. But I would not for a moment suggest they are self-aware.

Hmm, I think you may need someone with experience in the printing industry to advise you. My own experience is the oil industry (lubricants) which isn't very relevant. Looking at the MSDS for Part A I note that it is a mixture rather than a single substance, that it is not flammable (no flashpoint) and that the lowest boiling point component seems to boil at 100C. So a water-based mixture, most likely. From the generic nature of the information provided, it looks rather as if it may be some kind of proprietary formulation. (Some of our lubricant MSDSs were drafted in a similarly unhelpful style, to protect proprietary formulation knowledge.) Quickly looking up a few things on the internet I came across a comment that reaction times and concentration may need control during silanising, to prevent development of an unwanted thick silane polymer layer. I wondered if this formulation may do something to help control that. But no more than a possibility. I confess this is about as far as I can get with this. Maybe others will be able to add more.

Now I lay me down to sleep. Try to count electric sheep. Sweet dream wishes you can keep. How I hate the night. Now the world has gone to bed. Darkness won't engulf my head. I can see by infra-red. How I hate the night. (Marvin, the paranoid android - as if you didn't know..........)

I had to look this up, but it seems that what the aminosilane is doing is "silanising" the surface of the glass, viz. coating it with a chemically bonded film of alkoxysilane molecules, to provide a key for whatever is then to be bonded to the glass - most likely by means of the amine group. It doesn't seem obvious (to people outside the industry) what this other ingredient does. One guess (and it can only be a guess) might be something that cleans or prepares the surface of the glass in some way, perhaps by removing any oily deposits. An alcohol perhaps? Aminopropyltriexthoxysilane itself seems to be already water soluble, so it doesn't look as if it is needed for that reason.

I don't see how there could be. Consciousness seems to me to be a continuum, rather than a yes/no property of organisms. Most people would think a mouse was conscious, or a bird or a lizard. An insect? More questionable, perhaps. A jellyfish? Perhaps not really.

Well done! I look forward to your next enquiry. I'm having to dredge things up from the depths of my memory - which is a good process.

Presumably someone was having a laugh, as "fundament" is or was a euphemism for bottom or arse. Perhaps the "moon" business is part of the same joke. But I don't see why multiple moons can't align at some point and presumably this would then create a combined tidal effect on the planet's surface.