Giles

By interference do you mean multiple cross-overs? If so, then I don't think interference can produce more crossovers than expected, (unless you have a model which neglects triple crossovers or more i guess). it may simply mean you have run across a 'hot spot' on a chromosome, where recombination is more likely. These are found by comparing chromosome maps from linkage mapping with chromosome maps from nucleotide sequencing. A suggested explanation is simply that hot spots contain many sites at which the meiotic endonuclease acts. The converse applies to 'cold spots' ofc. I don't know of any other general principle that can produce extra cross-overs.

Conjugation isn't about opting to exchange good genes. It's about horizontal transfer of genetic material, which higher organisms manage (in effect) through sexual reproduction. This increases both variation, and, in common with selection, spread of 'good' genes. Conjugation wouldn't work in higher organisms because our genes are physically organised within the cell very differently. You can't just pop a length of DNA into a eukaryote as you can with bacteria (or close enough). I don't know of any evidence or respected theory that DNA is directly manipulated for 'thinking' or memory (except in a different meaning of the word memory which applies to genes). As for transmitting DNA, pffft. icemaiden, radiation is not the only cause of mutation. DNA could be damaged by chemical reaction in the cell, or there could be an error in one of the proccesses in which DNA is manipulated (usually copying). [EDIT: fair 'nuf, i'll leave it in for the edification of our colleagues ]

Briefly, there are many theories, but the leading two are essentially the 'RNA world' and the 'reductive membrane', or a combination of the two. I'll simplify since i'm guessing you don't know a lot of biochemistry. Please bear with me here. RNA is a carrier of genes, in structure very much like DNA. It is more primitive, and is no longer used by much life on earth to store genes. DNA is less reactive than RNA. This has two consequences: - DNA makes a better storage material for genomes, because it is less prone to be damaged. - RNA displays some catalytic activity - like enzymes, it is able to affect reactions, and so act as cell machinery. Such RNA, called 'ribozymes', performs some functions in the cell. Since RNA is involved in making proteins from DNA as both an intermediate messenger carrying the genes to the protein 'factory', and as part of that factory (a ribosome), it is thought that originally almost all organisms used RNA for both their genome and some metabolism. Now, RNA's ability to act as an enzyme is determined directly by its sequence, just as a protein's activity is determined by its sequence. This immediately suggests an origin for genes - a fragment of RNA could be both a gene and the ribozyme it coded for. Under certain conditions, which probably existed on ancient earth, nucleotides could spontaneously form, and link into polymers of RNA. These would have some limited catalytic effect. If any RNA chain should happen to catalyse its own formation (and such 'autocatalytic' chains do exist in both nature and experiment), then it would be possible for evolution to begin. The RNA would copy itself, and some of the copies would be erroneous. Some of these would be better at copying themselves, and so after a while there would be more of them. The problem with this is something called the 'eigen paradox'. Short genomes can't code for the ability to accurately copy long genomes, and inaccurate copies tend to be worse at their job. so after a while genomes can't realistically get longer, and this would be far before anything as complex as modern organisms arose. The solution may lie partly in the 'reducing membrane', which would be a sheet of something like iron (III) sulphide. The RNAs would be confined to this surface (instead of free to float around in three dimensions as i've described above), making reactions more favourable and also increasing the chance of a molecule being surrounded by its immediate neighbours. Even better, the iron surface would promote the formation of something like a genuine cell membrane. Once this sort of thing starts to happen, lots of short RNAs can get together and confer benefits on one another. Without getting into the technicalities of modes of evolution and selection, this effectively allows the eigen limit to be bypassed, as multiple RNAs within a membrane can act together to increase the chances of them all multiplying. furthermore, such membranes would tend to divide into two spontaneously as their volume increased (they would take on more reactants and water due to osmosis and diffusion). This would be the beginning of cell division. Seperate cells could then undergo selection, and you're off! \o/ I'd recommend the first few parts of "The Major Transitions in Evolution" for more detail, but it is quite technical. I'll try to answer any questions. If any of that needs more explanation just ask. i've probably got some things wrong too, for which i apolgise, and which i hope sayonara or ed will spot.

ok, i'm speaking as a layman here but... iirc, gravity is defined by energy density, but einstein's famous relation means that a little mass is worth a lot of some other form of energy. So I guess that makes mass 'more important' in the gravitational scheme of things. (i guess matter is also more amenable to accretion than say photons, which prefer spreading out, making it more important in forming large scale structures.) Since gravitational fields are described as 'curved space' in GR, i doubt they have any energy of their own that produces a gravitational field. In any case, if you introduced some kind of carrier particle like the graviton i guess it would have energy, which may be one of the reasons physicists want to quanticize (is that the right term?) gravity. If you couldn't have infinite 'grades' of gravitons the problem would disappear, much like the black body problem.

I'm not sure what the problem is. Obviously reality must be everything that exists, that's tautological. We can't guarantee we can accurately perceive everything that exists - in fact we've had no luck finding true a priori statements - but so what? All we need for science is that we can make true or false logical statements defined in empirical terms. a spade in this view is just something with the perceived attributes of a spade. If in 'true reality' it has lots of other attributes, like the ability to predict the future, i don't think anyone would argue that this stops it being spade if these attributes are completely undetectable. The whole point of the scientific method is that although perception is unreliable, it's not all that bad. It may not be logically necessary (ignoring the anthropic principle for now) that the scientific method works well in any conceivable world, but fortunately in this one it does. Anyway, dragging this back to the subject of design... clearly, complicated things like DNA aren't evidence for design per se, they're just evidence for some kind of mechanism that is capable of producing complexity. The same goes for galaxies. Obviously ID is one such mechanism, but in the last few centuries we have found better ones (i.e. mechanisms which make fewer claims which lack corroboration, and many more claims that are corroborated) .

The other problem is that your average virus likes nothing better than a quick round of mutation. If I were looking for a bioweapon virus, i'd say something like AIDS with a modified infection mechanism (say from drinking water and passed out in waste) was a good bet - if you're willing to think long-term. Debilitating to the individual, places a huge drain on health infrastructure, adaptable and able to remain dormant. Look what its doing to african nations even in its present form.

I'm running a program checking ligands fits for cancer drug targetting. It doesn't look as nice as seti but i think its more justifiable.

Care to tell us what this 'law of self preservation' is? Preferably not in terms of this 'TC'.

I think the use of the term 'cavemen' in the title told us all what sort of content we could expect. I don't think there's been a missing link for ages, although we don't actually have all the relationships of the fossils we do have definitely sorted out.

Can you just work out the KE, and then ask how high the block would rise if it was all converted to GPE?

You have to ask yourself, what does this say about cause and effect? And does scienceforums.net have a user base that breaks down in the same way as the general population? For example, I put down socialist because there was no 'rhineland capitalism' (the recognised label closest to my views that i know of) option. But socialist to an american might mean something different to what it means to a european - in fact, to an american, my views probably coincide more closely with 'liberalism.' Among the UK scientific community people are more to the left afaik, certainly among the academics.

Calculus is used in everything, not just physics.

First, learn everything in here.

It was that or flush it.

This has horrible echos of freud, and doesn't resemble the mechanisms i know of in animal species for patterning sexuality. Is there support for this hypothesis? (I am on an institutional network with access to a lot of research journals if that helps.)

This is a completely meaningless number unless we know what those genes actually do. Since we're not even close to mapping the proteome and hence completely mapping development, all we have to go on is how closely we phenotypically resemble chimpanzees, which just brings us full circle.

The 'biological clock' is a 24 hour activity cycle thing (well actually it's slightly over 24hrs iirc, but it gets reset by light levels so it doesn't get wildly out of sync over long periods). It doesn't have anything to do with aging, which as far as anyone knows is related to repeated cell divisions. Cell division does have its own timing mechanisms, but they are unrelated to the behavioural clock.

einstein developed some quite important bits of quantum theory himself, even if he eventually rejected its random component. i don't think qm actually proves relativity wrong - in fact relativity describes what it sets out to describe perfectly afaik. Its just that you can't combine the two theories - they can't both be correct and complete.

I imagine they were combining guesswork with climate predictions. For example, the nature of a food supply can predict the mating system of a population quite closely (taking into account the reproductive biology of the organism in question, which changes quite slowly.) This works particularly well in birds.

I know evolution is a familiy of theories, it's what i (ought to) spend my time studying. I meant in the sense that scientific theories* can only be finally disproved, not finally proved. *i.e. theories that actually describe the world. some of the laws of genetics (for example) are mathematical theorems, but they apply to idealised systems rather than neccesarily describing material entities. Ofc, it so happens that some real systems correspond closely. ... By 'i think' i only mean 'iirc'. artificial selection isn't vague, it's "the process of man deliberately causing change in frequencies of genes in a population over time by exerting control over relative reproductive rates" if you really want a rigorous defintion.

Ladeezangentlemen, american democratic discourse in action!

If you're going to be like that, science will never produce anything that isn't a theory. I think the dog thing is an artificial selection kerjigger.

Shush, we don't talk about that... thing.

If you start by thinking that there is no reality, but only perception, you'll end up like this chappy: - Bertrand Russell on David Hume.

Near as I can make out, the rest is also about the second law. Would the following be a correct summary of your post Michael F.D.? as time goes on, work gets done, which reduces the available potential to do more work (i.e. energy). Thus, potential runs down to zero as time goes on. If that's what you mean, you should read about entropy since it's basically the concept you're discussing. The main thing you've missed is that potential running down (i.e. entropy increasing) is a probabilistic effect. (*Giles braces himself to be savaged by the physicists*)