Neil9327

Here's a businness idea:

Like where you have a milkman to deliver milk, you have a gas man to drive round a mini tanker and fill up your car with diesel or petrol so you don't have to waste time doing it.

Don't know whether it would be legal though. And your customers would have to get copies of car keys for you.

Would probably appeal to rich people in rich estates where one gas man could make sure every car was full of petrol in the morning. Assuming it was not in a garage.

OK its a bit of a barking idea, but I thought it was cool

It would be interesting to see whether humans could evolve into Cockroaches

Or would that be devolve?

Well if I had some first class levers in me I'd be able to open a bottle of beer and crack some nuts without having to use a tool...

15 years ago when I was a physics student I wondered whether for a coil with a dc current flowing through it the energy contained within the resultant magnetic field is equal to the kinetic energy of the electrons flowing around that coil.

Since then Ive worked in sales and computing, and have forgotton all my favourite theories that would have allowed me to calculate it.

Does anyone know the answer?

what is the skeletal fellow's name? i think i saw a glimpse of him once.

Its the grim reaper.

I think death has occurred when you just stop thinking at all.

Will you have my children?

 

On a lighter note' date=' I've never had any true physical relationship with a human. I think all humans are mushy and childish; humans never seem to become sociopathic idealists or vagabonds with a quest.[/quote']

 

Genecks I'd love to have your children. And then eat their livers with some fava beans and a niiice chianti. thksss... hehe

 

Moderator: I think you should set up an online dating service here: ScienceForums Dating.

Can any one tell me what is death? According to my knowledge a person is called dead when all his brain cells(neurons) are dead. If that is the case then if we are able to bring the neurons to the previous(alive) state then that person can be raised from death?

Someone please clarify...

I don't think death is a scientific term at all - it is a cultural concept of the end of life.

In the most conventional sense yes death means when all the brain cells are dead, but I don't see any reason why they can't be chemically repaired and brought back to life.

Indeed I read about a case of a dog that was dead that was brought back to life, and indeed what about babies that have been starved of oxygen for hours when buried in earthquakes and under ice that have survived. Their brains must have been considered dead surely?

this and this and this[/url'] should get you started.

Ooo that's HHEEAAVVYY man

it seems to me that sex is one of the closest, most personal things you can do with another person. why is wanting to have sex with someone seen as shallow?

I have always felt that sex is an enjoyment no different to eating chocolate or having a beer. However it is also the case that I haven't married and had kids. Society doesn't want everyone to be like me, because the human race would die out. So it applies an artificial moral bias stating that "casual" sex is shallow, by which it means less valid than sex in a relationship that will eventually lead to babies.

Due to our tribal nature as people - looking up to our elders (pop stars, church leaders, the queen etc) we buy in to this propaganda so keeping the population going.

In the past several thousand there was no need for anything artificial because we lived in small tribal units with no anonymity or birth control, and the tribal elders directly controlled all sexual access to the women. Themselves, usually, and it was a free-for-all (when they weren't pregnant).

So in summary I suggest you go get it if you can young man!

Do a search on Ebay. For magent

For example Check out http://stores.ebay.co.uk/South-Pole-Magnets

They have a very attractive collection. But some of them are quite repulsive...

Hope you break your fingers hehe

in answer to the original question, since most people with HIV/Aids are gay men (in this country) then this group will have had more time to develop immunity to HIV. So they'll be the survivors. But as they are gay they won't be willing to reproduce. So the species will die off anyway.

Dialysis is a very serious procedure. The patient's life will be shortened far more significantly through the dialysis procedure itself' date=' as well as the heightened risk of infection. Not to mention the stress to the body of rapidly changing blood sugar levels (insulinemia, anyone?). My guess is leptin-based therapy will be far more important in the years to come.

 

Also, getting off your fat ass and getting some exercise.[/quote']

 

That's a shocker about the dialysis. Why is the patient's life shortened?

I read the thing about leptin on wikipedia:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptin

 

It looks like fat cells release leptin into the bloodstream and this tells the brain how much of it there is. The article also explains how some people become resistant to the leptin and their brains don't realise how they are getting fatter. But it doesn't explain how the fat itself gets removed.

So I looked up "fatty acid metabolism" on wikipedia

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_metabolism

 

and the article says "The breakdown of fat stored in fat cells is known as lipolysis"

 

and "The following hormones induce lipolysis: epinephrine, norepinephrine, glucagon and adrenocorticotropic hormone"

 

Then I clicked on "epinephrine" and it turns out that this is a stress hormone.

So on the face of it it would seem you have to be stressed to lose weight. It would explain why people who are worried are often thin, and why fat people are jolly.

 

So the question is, and I know that this is such a simplification, is can you get "epinephrine" into your bloodstream over night without waking you up or causing nightmares.

I looked up Rimonabant on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant

And it seems to be an appetite suppressor. Will be interesting to see how it does.

I also looked up "fatty acid metabolism" on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_metabolism

and the article says "The breakdown of fat stored in fat cells is known as lipolysis"

and "The following hormones induce lipolysis: epinephrine, norepinephrine, glucagon and adrenocorticotropic hormone"

Then I clicked on "epinephrine" and it turns out that this is a stress hormone.

So on the face of it it would seem you have to be stressed to lose weight. It would explain why people who are worried are often thin, and why fat people are jolly.

So the question is, and I know that this is such a simplification, is can you get "epinephrine" into your bloodstream over night without waking you up or causing nightmares?

I'm enjoying the thought experiment here so I'm gonna go ahead and throw an idea in here which completely has no background' date=' but it seems to me that you need to get away from the idea of filtering out ADP/ATP from the blood system for 2 reasons: 1) it's not likely you're going to have much of that directly in the blood stream it stays in the cell for the most part and 2) it's pretty essential for normal function and you don't want to be removing it in either it's activated (ATP) or unactivated (ADP) form.

 

I remember in your last thread someone mentioned that dialysis is expensive and also tends to be less effective in removing larger molecules vs. smaller ones. As I have no idea how a dialysis machine works so I have no authority to say this would work or not but it seems whatever does this filtering could be modified to be selective for fatty acids using their amphoteric properties to selectively bind them. Unfortunately, proteins can also have these amphoteric properties so your column (?) resin would have to be selective for lipid vs. protein. Then to make this effective it seems like you would have to stimulate fat release from adipose tissue... this is getting more and mroe complicated and well out of my actual knowledge of any of this but I guess it's jsut soe stuff to think about. In short, good luck! [/quote']

 

Yes OK my ADP/ATP ideas are perhaps a red herring. But I was talking to my friends down the curry house a couple of days ago and one of them said they watched a program on the discovery channel that said that scientists were very close to getting a drug that can cause fat to be burned up. My brother recons that it would make them billions. He also said that he thought that enzymes in combination with low blood sugar would cause fat to burn. So how about putting our fat friends on to dialysis over night, and initially after they go to sleep removing much of the sugar from their blood stream. Then the body to compensate would have to cause fat to burn to release more sugar. Then before the person wakes up in the morning the dialysis process adds sugar back so they don't feel tired.

I agree with the sentiments that it would be expensive. Very.

Thanks for the good luck. I won't give up my day job just yet

 

Are there any "serious" biochemistry forums on the internet I could put this question to?. I don't mean to be derogaory about scienceforums.net but this is for amateurs like me.

How about making a rucksack that could be filled with helium after it has been packed. Then it would be lighter to wear.

No, that wouldn't work.

Why not?

Burning fat produces energy. If you don't use energy, you don't burn fat. Drugs could increase your metabolism, which would make your body expend more energy just to survive, but obviously this can only be done to a limited degree, and it's much more effective to actually use energy for real, through exercise. Drugs can also reduce appetite, or hinder digestion, both of which take the approach of denying the body new energy sources, forcing it to burn its reserves (fat). Surgical approaches like gastric bipasses are also along these lines.

So perhaps if you were to artificially "use energy for real" with my idea of taking blood through dialysis and removing the energy from it would work?

BTW When I wrote this post, I didn't get any replies to it, so I thought the title "drugs for weight loss" was not a good title. So I reposted it under the bichemistry section:

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20057

and there are around 5 posts there also. Have a read if you like.

Well of course the word "dialysis" is taken to mean the treatment given to people who have kidneys that have failed. They work by taking blood out of the arm, cleaning it of waste products such as urea, and putting it back into the arm. Just like what the kidneys do.

In my case, the machine would take the blood out of the arm, and do something to it to "trick" the fat around one's belly to think that you've just had a strenuous session at the gym, and cause the fat to burn.

The key question is what specifically causes fat to burn. Is it just low blood sugar levels, or is it this in combination with other chemicals or hormones.

So if you put someone on dialysis every night for a few hours, you could get it to drop your blood sugar levels very low, so cause fat to burn, and then remove the waste products of this burning, be it sugar or ATP or whatever, and then increase blood sugar levels by the morning before you wake up, so you don't feed drained.

Time travel is possible forwards. All you have to do is to go to bed for a few days, and there you are.

Time travel backwards is not possible. Why? Because if you travel backwards you see the world as it was. But you already know (because you have memory) how it is going to be, from then to the point when you travelled back from. Since this has already happened, because you lived the first time through the time when it happened and witnessed it for youself, your entire actions will be consistent so as to repeat exactly what happened before. If you have any power to choose anything different then your surroundings will act against you to prevent this, and you know this to be the case as you witnessed this the first time round.

So time travel into the past is strictly on a read-only basis. But then we already know this as we have many abilities to read stuff from the past. Like this message for example.

For those in the ship the trip would take 395,967 years, compared to the 28 million years the trip would take fro those on the Earth.

That can't be right. Can it?

Surely the idea is that even from the perspective of those travelling you can't get to your destination in less time than the distance to the destination divided by c?

you are so wrong' date=' I don't know where to begin.

 

I could start by telling you that without fat stores we wouldn't last the night.[/quote']

 

First Thank you to Mercurial. It sounds like you think the idea might work, but it is complicated, and there would have to be many safeguards to ensure the levels of critical chemicals aren't adversly affected.

 

MattBimbo: I appreciate I might be wrong, and that's why I made this post on this board. If I was sure I was right I wouldn't have made the post, but instead start investing some money developing the technology.

I am not suggesting that all fat be removed, only that which makes us look fat.

 

If this idea worked it would be very popular because people could eat what they liked and do no exercise at all, and still remain slim. Of course a lack of exercise and bad diet will have many other adverse health effects, but people would be able to make their own decision on this knowing the effects.

Indeed perhaps people could eat chocolate and burgers while on "dialysis", and as soon as the fat enters the bloodstream it is removed before it has a chance to become deposited around your belly etc

When you exercise, you lose weight. Which is why fat people are often encouraged to go running to lose the flab. But what is the biochemical process that occurs here?

My guess, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that when you exercise your muscles turn Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) into Adensosine diphosphate (ADP) in turn releasing energy to propel you along. To complete this "krebs cycle", as I believe it is called, the body metabolises sugar in the bloodstream to convert ADP back into ATP so that the proportions of these two chemicals don't become too uneven.

Then when there is a lack of sugar, the body starts using fat to create ATP, thus burning it.

So the question is what chemical has to be present in either increasing quantities or reduced quantities as a result of sugar levels running low in order to cause fat cells to start to be metabolised.

And also what are the waste products of this process?

where am I going with this question?

Why not offer a solution to fat people such that instead of having to go to the gym to keep fit, they hook themselves up to a blood machine every night (aka to a dialysis machine) to do three things with the blood:

1. Add to it the chemical/hormone that causes fat to burn.

2. Convert any excess levels of ATP (caused by the burning of the fat) to ADP, so as to keep the levels of these chemicals even thoughout the night.

3. Remove any waste products of the fat burning process so as not to overwhelm the kidneys.

There may be a requirement to add extra oxygen as well.

Any thoughts?

Would be really cool if we can ever reach temperatures that high

 

Cheers' date='

 

Ryan Jones[/quote']

 

Dont you mean really hot

Sorry I forgot what I was going to say

or give them a blood donation from a thin person perhaps?

I mean it is ONGOING presence or absence of these chemicals in the blood that would be the key thing. Yes you could give them the blood of a thin person but this would only temporarily fix the problem until whatever factors causing the weight gain reassert themselves in terms of what is in their blood.