Giles

I quote like the sun (or sol if you want) personally. I would also like to thank the supernova(e) that made this post possible.

First, socializing 'medicine' is a broad concept; there's no reason why care cannot be financed publicly while research remains private. Second, the meaning of 'american capitalism' has changed over the decades so that the stock-market-dominated "financial engineering" model that has now emerged is actually taking money away from research budgets (as the most productive R&D in patent terms is actually long term 'pure' research, which doesn't do much when profits are measured across financial quarters). Third, such pure research is actually largely the fruit of public expenditure - the US leads in this field not because the US patent model is stronger (international IPR treaties now make the US patent office the de facto arbiter anyway, certainly in the west) but because US public expenditure on research actually exceeds european expenditure as a proportion of GDP (though this is falling). Fourth, for SOME REASON cuba has a strong biomed sector. work that one out. Fifth, intellectual productivity under, say, the german version of capitalism is as strong as under the US system, due to their massive publicly funded network of training and research institutes.

Surely cold viruses are unusally prone to mutation (i suppose that could be an artefact of their endemic status). if it's very virulent, and genuinely confined to cancer cells, that would help mitigate against a mutant arising, but it still seems probable if the treatment is widely used. i can't see this being a 100% safe therapy (in so far as there is such a thing) no matter what they do or how extensively they test. it'd still be worth using ofc, but watch out for a media scare story.

Assuming random mating and no selective dis/advantage to being pink, and that pinkness is controlled by a single locus, it makes the same number of sheep go pink as were pink in the last generation, after f(1). Huzzah! EDIT: damn, it's got to be a dimorphic locus too. forgot that part. Population genetics: don't do it!

what an excellent thread. if only people got lots of silly ideas about the hardy-weinberg law i'd be set to look clever too.

That's really only true of the germans. The french were just employing their usual brand of international diplomacy. Are you sure it's not more a case of punishing those who disobey than compensating those who cooperate?

i think it was a sarcastic comment on your novel approach to the english language, and indeed facts. I severely doubt sayonara missed the fact that you were referring to The Two Towers. I still have absolutely no idea what you mean by 'PEEK' though, unless you're trying to spell 'peak' and referring to the large number of mountains and/or the volcano in the film.

hmmm i'm not sure we need to go so far as bringing back extinct species to do that, considering how many we have available already.

What do you mean by receptor? I assume you're referring to some alternate model for changing the selectivity of the membrane, but i can't imagine what it might be. Surely this would also entail overturning conventional wisdom on the impermeability of plasma membranes to high charge concentrations? I got the impression this was a settled matter of chemistry but i could be mistaken, as I haven't the savvy to check that personally. Is there a physical chemist in the house?

Are you proposing that the membrane itself is selective in neurons etc? heh, i know the pumps and channels are different, but you posted about both. the points in my post were unconnected :/

I'm asuming you're not talking of very recently extinct species. taking genetic samples of populations wiped out by man so they can be recreated seems wise, but it might become an excuse for not conserving them now. Pogo, reintroducing a species to an existing ecosystem isn't always a good idea even if it works, and rebuilding an entire ecosystem from scratch would be impossible (for now). The critters would be in zoos. Also, you'd need a lot of samples to create a wild breeding population instead of lots of clones. genomics is going so fast that i doubt we'd learn much evolutionary history that we didn't already know. In short, i think it's pointless for now, but it would benefit whoever did it.

Is it a very new idea? i was told last year that the pump is only thought to account for a difference of few mV of membrane potential anyway. the molecular structure of the potassium channel has been resolved in the last year or so, and it does appear to be a channel. the paper was published in Nature but i don't have a reference for you :/

Really? I've only seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and that was best described as 'complete balls'.

You've missed the point

"Worst.. thread.. ever."

Building huge centralised office complexes for daily commutes is never, ever environmentally friendly. It doesn't matter how much greenery the daft buggers stuff in it to allow architects and politicians alike to employ mind-numbing 'celebrating life' rhetoric.

Do you have a link so I can see more precisely what is being proposed? It was my understanding the pumps only generated a few mV anyway. All i can say for now is that membrane selectivity can be altered by mutating the polypeptide sequence on the cytoplasmic side of the sodium and potassium influx channels, and that poisons inhibiting ATP synthesis also inhibit Na+ efflux.

'pure' energy?

I think this post was the problem: I don't think you meant to say that. Ummm not really, Plato had an iron grip for a very long time and that's not even an accurate description of a lot of the empiricists. I'd say it would have to, although of course it might not be a green tree. unless experience is how you define green tree. (i think that's actually what you mean to say, and sort of do later.) That's basing a not very controversial idea on a much more complex one. if you're trying to suggest this is a proof of some shared reality then you really should re-read it. you could have put this better. "decided that is what we mean by real" for example. that's not what experience tells us, that's what we've decided. claiming stuff that only exists in the mind is unreal tends to undermine empiricism a bit. Despite all of that i think you are correct in what you're getting at. mark, there are absolute proofs of the falsity of statements which reach a contradiction with valid a priori statements.

Only in the way that evolution means change, it has nothing to do with biological-type evolution. Why are they bound to take over? The thing in Dune was the 'Butlerian Jihad', and the main point wasn't really about military conflict or conquest per se (google Samuel Butler erewhon) - more to do with the slightly wierd ideals of humanity herbert was advancing. I might as well reference asimov and claim they're bound to be benign.

Surely they have to both find the black box (that's going to scatter debris fairly widely) and then analyse what you might call 'quite a lot' of data? (i think it quite possible they do have recording devices that could survive)

Presumably this was done via blood flow measurement and some variant of resonant imaging, which is not neccesarily a good way of mapping brain activity. The obvious next stage is to try stimulating these nerves, to see if they are the whole story even of the direct perceptual mechanisms. I suspect in this case the research will be vindicated however

Yes, i assumed that's what you meant. You might think of me as an 'evolution and molecular biology' major if it helps. Not every characteristic is adaptational, full stop. (This is a mistake which the late Stephen J. Gould labelled 'Panglossianism', after the fictional character Dr. Pangloss, who held that 'everything is for the best'. There is a general tendency, even among biologists (though perhaps not molecular biologists, because genomes 'a complete mess' as my supervisor puts it) to believe that every characteristic is an optimal adaptation.)

It's not for a 'purpose' afaik, it happens in response to certain physiological cock-ups.

(1) I suspect they thought that the west would decide based on its own interests. (2) That's basically it, I already said the resolution was unbelievably stupidly worded. That they are not permitted to hide weaponry is not per se a function of the resolution itself. (3) I was careful in what i stipulated about Iraqi stability. With regard to internal stability, I went no further than countering your argument and did not address other factors. With respect to their external stability, this is not a manner in which the term is usually employed. I was trying to cover all bases. I meant nothing more than to say that they are unlikely to try another military adventure under present conditions. Certainly 'stable' as used by the intelligence services is a more technical term. And they have hardly been infallible in their assessment of the region before. I'm also dissappointed that someone moderating a science forum is employing an 'argument from authority'.