Lifshiztz

If you think about it... Our self-conciousness and intelligence are the direct products of evolution. So if we are tampering with the so-called "natural" progression of life on this planet via said intelligence, wouldn't that still just be a direct product of evolution? Just a thought.

I'm Taiwanese, and my parents don't really like it when I drink ice-cold stuff, unless it's a really hot day. They always say I'll get sick if I keep drinking cold stuff. I don't believe it has much long-term effect on health, but I think I heard once that cold makes you more suspectible to getting sick.

If you wanted to deliver a plasma bomb as a weapon, your best bet would be to contain a mass of plasma in a magnetic shell. As far as I know, the only thing that can contain plasma is a magnetic field. If you could encapsulate the plasma within some kind of shell that can generate said mag field, you could in theory use it as a plasma bomb.

Well... you're right. Cholchicine binds to the tubulin dimers, which prevents them from polymerizing. Actually, it also shuts down cell movement because cilia/flagella are composed of microtubules (which is why cholchicine is used to treat gout, since it shuts down movement and division of white blood cells)

Colchicine inhibits the formation of mitotic spindle, which effectively shuts down mitosis and cell division. During metaphase, mitotic spindle is used to move the chromosomes onto the metaphase plate. If colchicine is present, the spindle doesn't form, and the chromosomes cannot line up in the center of the cell, so the cell never ends up dividing.

I'm not sure if that's actually the case. Let's say you have a particle with zero thermal energy (it is absolutely still, and is not moving). It has an exact speed and location. However, if you were to measure this position and speed, the electrons you use to measure the particle (by reflecting them off of the particle) would displace the position and change the speed of the previously still particle. I believe that is the definition of the uncertainty principle. We can infer that the particle's position is in a particular location and that its speed is 0, but we cannot measure that because if we did, we'd displace the particle we're trying to measure.

I don't know much about the uncertainty principle, but doesn't that just say that you can never measure the exact location of a sub-atomic particle, not that a particle can never be in one exact location? If something had absolutely no thermal energy, I'm pretty sure it would stop moving altogether.

I'm quite interested in the topic of neutrophil apotosis. As far as I know, neutrophils self-destruct much more often than any other white blood cells. However, I have never actually seen a reason for this occurence. Has the reason for the frequent self-destruction of neutrophils been discovered yet, or is it a topic of ongoing research?