SMF

This may be totally off the wall but have you looked for bedbugs. They have apparently been getting to be a big problem in some areas of the US. SM

I don't know, but I would like to know, how much extra care our cultivated plants need to get a reasonable yield. I suspect that the "weeds" are just as susceptible to pests as are the plants we cultivate. This is because I think that much of the pest and fertilizer problems come from growing plants as a monoculture that disturbs the ecological balance in small garden plots, but especially in big agriculture. I think the balance that is disturbed is between the "pests" and the natural predators. The book "One-straw Revolution, by Fukuoka, addresses this notion to some extent, but I tried his methods for home gardening a long time ago with not a lot of success. SM

Micro101, if you have a connection with the Mayo Clinic Dermatology faculty, I strongly suggest that you stay with them. They know what they are doing. SM

Wannabe, I found the Febrize air freshener commercial that I got before the main feature to be almost as scary. Amazing! SM

Is this the personals section? Hi, I am an elderly male seeking young slender........

John, I was responding to the pesticide argument. Try doing some searches for polyculture or go to an a good ag school website (e.g. U.C. Davis) and search for organic farming to find where the science is going on this. For something like 12,000 years all of our food crops have undergone selective breeding for taste and yield. Some plants are unrecognizably different from their wild ancestors and there are very few wild indigenous foods in any area that are as good, and none that could support a 10th of our current population. In the last 50 or 60 years big ag has really begun to mess things up. SM

I can see why you lost your faith because without any knowledge that is all you could have had. I don't think I have ever seen as many incorrect statements about evolutionary theory in one place before. On a science site, this has to be a troll. SM

Insane_alien. Much of what you say is self-evident, but I would caution that there are quite a few criticisms of big agriculture because the overuse of pesticide combined with mono-cropping decreases species diversity and disproportionately reduces predators of pest insects so that the agriculture pest problem is actually worse. SM

Homing pigeons have a harder time getting home when their right nostril is blocked. This is a case of olfactory lateralization.

This is a complicated subject. For example in addition to the above comments, as temperature and water vapor go up so does precipitation, which constrains the amount of clouds. Also different kinds of clouds can produce opposite effects. A recent evaluation of the effects of clouds on climate is- http://www.sciencema...6010/1523.short with a full text PDF here- http://geotest.tamu..../dessler10b.pdf. This paper finds that clouds are probably a small positive (warming) feedback. See - http://www.skeptical...ntermediate.htm for a general discussion of this issue. SM

Dean. I really hope that someday some martian colonists will figure this our for themselves, but in the meantime thanks for sharing your fun project. SM

Is there a question here, or is this just some way to get me to spend some of my money?

Schrodinger's what (couldn't resist)? Are you saying that, when doing mirror image writing, your left hand writes the mirror image while your right hand writes left to right like a right hand person? SM

Lemur. This quote- "In reality, ad hominem is unrelated to sarcasm or personal abuse. Argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of attempting to undermine a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker instead of addressing the argument" can be found here- http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html You can only communicate if you know the language. I suggest that you read the explanation in the link. SM

I once knew an old anatomist who liked to draw body structures on the board while lecturing. When drawing something that was bilaterally symmetrical he did the right half of the drawing with his right hand while simultaneously drawing the left half, as a mirror image, with his left hand. This is, sort of, the flip side of the puzzle discussed above. It turns out that most people are able to do this. You can try it by writing your name. If you are right handed, what you write with your left hand will be a mirror image (right left reversed). What you are trying to do is write your name normally from left to right, while with your left hand starting at the same place and writing from right to left. I am pretty sure that the principle works for everybody, but am wondering what happens when a left hander does this. I assume that the left hand writes from left to right and right hand back toward the other hand, right to left. SM

Bill. Some explanation. G and E don't have to be equal, but both are necessary. A very important part of our environment, that we are not usually aware of, occurs during prenatal development. For example, eye color depends upon melanin genes, but the cells that make the melanin arise in the neural crest and have to migrate to the iris. This process requires a very particular environment with a timed series of cellular interactions. If the fetal environment is disturbed the whole eye may not form, or form normally, even though the genes involved in this process are perfectly normal. SM

StrontiDog. In support of your statement, the simple formula from the behavioral genetics course I took mumbledemumble years ago was P = G X E (Phenotype equals Genes times Environment). SM

I can't speak to the topic of this thread from which I hope to learn something, but I can't resist saying-- Lemur you apparently have no idea how science works and your statement regarding statistics in "human" or any science displays ignorance as well. Communications between scientists (e.g. research articles) are usually designed to be as accurate and clear as possible. When someone is unable, unwilling, or just doesn't have the time to learn an area of scientific specialization they should, perhaps in order to avoid embarrassment, consider not making strong assertions about the science. Just a thought. SM

Bixby, the AlgiMatrix system just provides a surface that is folded and cut up into a sponge. The shape of the sponge determines the shape of the cell mass, but nothing more. HeLa cells are cancer versions of a comitted cell, they are not stem cells that can generate all of the connective tissue and epithelial cells that makes up a breast (I think that Henrietta Lacks had breast cancer). The cells are beyond the developmental stage where they are able to generate a structure. Your persistence on this topic suggests that you have some ideas about this. If we knew what sort of answers you were hoping to get, we might be able to refer you to a knowledge area. SM

No, it makes a nice filter that allows fluids and small molecules through, but excludes larger proteins. Many of the smaller molecules are allowed through and then some are transported back into the blood by specific mechanisms for this. By this process wastes are eliminated while nutrients and necessary ions are retained by bringing them back in. This in-out transport is a topic in renal physiology. One more anatomical question, regarding this mechanism, is how is the filter kept clean. The janitorial crew in charge of cleaning the ultra-filtration membrane in the kidney consists of the mesangial cells. They extend pseudopods into the basement membrane space between capillaries and podocytes and phagocytose molecules, mostly proteins, that get filtered out by the basement membrane. I really need some of these guys to take care of my coffee filters.Below is one of my drawings showing the relationship between capillaries, podocytes, their common basement membrane filter, and mesangial cells

Bixby: You are welcome. SM

Lemur. Don't you agree that premature birth increases infant mortality regardless of what the specific ultimate cause of death may be? Why is being concerned with a primary risk factor callous? Do you think that the Center for Disease Control brief that I linked (post #17) is callous? SM

Jackson, you say- I am not going in circles. I wasn't arguing. I just thought you were interested in the problems regarding reporting of infant mortality in different countries. The CDC piece examines some of the problems, reduces the comparison countries to just Europe where it is easier to make comparisons, and tries to illuminate some of the real differences. The differences in the US deficits appear to be due to more preterm births. As for your point #1, Figure #3 in the CDC article, that I linked, with the title "The percentage of births that were born preterm was much higher in the United States than in Europe" shows that the US is the highest among the comparable European nations in preterm births. Rates are higher not lower, so what are you talking about? The next heading after this figure is- "Much of the high infant mortality rate in the United States is due to the high percentage of preterm births." The article also discusses the fact that we are doing better with later term births. Did you actually read the article? As for your #2. You are changing the subject to welfare reform and prenatal care. If it doesn't work, relative to other nations, then it doesn't work. What is your point? If you seriously believe that the US health care system is the best on the planet, you have to explain the low rank on infant mortality rate AND, I will add, the rank of 36 on overall life expectancy. http://en.wikipedia....life_expectancy What? SM

Jackson33, if you are interested in more on how the US compares with other nations on infant mortality and the problems of gathering international health statistics, here is a National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) brief on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. It appears that we in the US need to do something about prenatal care. SM http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db23.htm

Steevey, I have asked you repeatedly to defend the BBC article and other questionable assertions, but you continue to change the subject and continue to offer more unlikely opinions, such as intelligence not having a genetic component. On a science site this is trolling behavior. I, for one, don’t think that feeding the trolls is a good practice. SM