Paralith

lol, adding a new gene to bacteria is a whole other ballgame - requiring a whole other set of materials, equipment, and methods. Expensive materials and equipment, I might add. The best manipulations you can do would probably be adding various nutrients and/or chemicals to the plates and seeing how the bacteria react. If you do want to try culturing some bacteria though, set aside an that is less likely to get cross contamination from other areas (not under a house vent or by a window or anything), and clean the hell out of it with bleach. While you're using that area re-clean it regularly with ethanol. Depending on your budget it would be nice if you could get some kind of plexiglass shield to go above and/or around the area, which also should be cleaned regularly. It would probably be best if you bought plates that already contain the agar medium - you can make your own but again, the area where you make and store them needs to be as clean as possible. And of course, always wear gloves. I'm not sure what else I would add for a DIYer. CharonY will no doubt have some good suggestions.

I worked in a biomedical genetics lab at a hospital for a little over a year, and it was 60 - 70% women. My group in particular had one man in it for a short period of time before he got a job elsewhere, and after that we were a seven-woman group until I left. There were a lot of people there from India, China, and Taiwan though. However my Indian colleagues were not at all surprised by the ratio like I was - apparently it's been typical for quite some time for the biomedical colleges there to be majority female. Biology is definitely the field we're taking by storm. I'm currently an an evolutionary anthropology department whose student body is the vast majority women. My entering cohort was 100% women.

Firstly, most behavioral traits are probably a combination of both genes and environment, so it's doubtful you'll ever find one that's completely determined by just one or the other. And until the exact ontogenetic mechanisms are found, it really comes down to correlations, like the twin studies Cap'n Refsmmat described. If you look at 100 pairs of identical twins, with all the exact same DNA, and 90 of them have co-twins with differing phenotypes, then it's unlikely that the trait in question is genetically determined, or if it does have a genetic component it doesn't play a particularly large role. Another example might be that if the majority of humans in a wide variety of cultures and environments express the same phenotype, then the trait in question is more likely to be a result of our common ancestry than through chance. A lot of work on sex differences has been substantiated this way. The other problem with complex behaviors is that it is pretty unlikely that there's only a single gene affecting it - there are probably many genes at work, some of which also play a part in other related traits, etc. Some papers have pretty convincing evidence that they have isolated at least one gene or gene region that is very likely affecting a given trait - but then the question is, to what extent? How? If there are unknown numbers of genes that affect the outcome in the trait as well as potential unknown environmental factors, this one isolate might only predict 2% of the variance in the trait, or something like that. Does that enable you to say much about whether or not the trait is mostly genetic or mostly environmental? Not really.

Consider fish living in lakes in caves. They have lost their eyes because they don't need them anymore - there is no light to see anything, so it's a waste of resources to grow and develop eyes and the ability to process visual information. They have lost relatively complex organs and much of the neural material needed to process the information those organs would have gathered - so you could argue that this is a decrease in complexity. The point of the issue of "progress" is that it implies that certain traits are better than all other traits in any environment. And this is simply untrue. No trait is optimally adaptive in all environments. Eyes are great when there is light to see by. They are useless energy sinks where there is no light. It sounds to me like you're trying to draw a line between the evolution of new species, in other words speciation, and the evolution of within-species variation. The only real biological difference between these two is that in the first case you have two or more populations that do not transfer genes between them, and in the second you have gene transfer between all the populations in question. Other than that there is no difference between the mechanisms you are trying to differentiate. Even the differences I described above will no longer apply if you have one population slowly evolving new traits to the point where we humans might decide they have become different enough to warrant naming them a new species. But it would be an arbitrary designation. As are the designations you're trying to draw.

There's much more to human reproductive success than popping out babies. They also require the extended care of both parents if they've any chance of being reproductively successful themselves in the future. Human males are less divergent from human females than the males and females of most other primate species in this respect. There's still some divergence, of course, but not to as extreme of a degree.

Firstly, this isn't just a man thing - women too can be very appreciative of attractive members of the opposite sex without having infidelity in mind. Secondly, it is partly due to our mating system. As a species we are largely monogomous but not completely so - thus it doesn't hurt to keep an eye on the market and appreciate what's out there should a certain set of situations arise that would favor leaving the monogamous relationship for some reason or another. An interesting counter example are tamarins. These are small New World monkeys that, unlike almost all other primates save for humans, regularly have more than one dependent offspring at one time. Every birth is a twin birth. Now, taking care of these babies is very tough - they're 1/4 of the weight of an adult and they need to be carried around for the first few months of life to be kept safe and with the group. Mom simply can't carry them both AND feed herself with enough efficiency to lactate for them too. So the males in the group help ALOT (also the only other primate where the male actively participates in child care besides humans). And it's not just the father either but other males in the group - they'll actually fight each other for who gets to carry the babies, because the one who does the most work is most likely going to father the next set. So the males are highly dedicated to their group female - to the point where, when confronted, alone, by another female, who may actually be ovulating - well, any other male primate would make a beeline for her, but not male tamarins! They stay dedicated. It's the most reliable way to ensure the most matings in the future with their group female. Clearly our mating system isn't quite like that of tamarins.

Well, whether or not they show traits blended from both parents depends on the nature of the dominance interaction between the different alleles, as Mokele said, but I don't think you need to know the genotypes of the parents - I think the "conclusion" is just not worded clearly. It probably should read, "The offspring from the parental fly cross, conducted in week 2, will either show their mother's version of the trait or their father's version of the trait. They will not show a version of the trait that is a blend of both parents' versions." Of course if both parents have the same allele then the offspring would be exactly the same no matter what. (Barring any environmental effects.) But it seems to me this problem is assuming they are different. If the mother's and father's alleles for the trait in question have a simple Mendelian dominant/recessive relationship, then the conclusion is correct. If they have a codominant relationship, then the conclusion is incorrect. (This is assuming, of course, that we're talking about ONE gene for ONE trait that has at least 2 different alleles.)

Culturing anything besides bacteria that is floating around in your environment will be difficult in your bedroom. Even culturing lab grade E. coli needs to be done in a sterile environment with sterile technique to prevent other common bacterias and molds/fungus from contaminating the plate and taking over, and you'll need an incubator that can hold a specific temperature for a long period of time. Culturing actual animal cells would be even less practical - those need liquid media that has to be changed regularly, all of which needs to be done in especially sterile areas, preferably a fume hood and incubator dedicated to cell culture alone. In other words, not something you can really do at home.

The excessive kung-fu sequences and seeming invulnerability are definitely aspects of the movie - when Rorschach jumps out of the window he hurts himself to the point where he can't run when the police mob him. That's really how they catch him in the book. But Rorschach is supposed to be brutal. He is completely willing to hurt people to get what he needs. Crunching the glass in the guy's hand - straight out of the book. Killing the guy who chopped up the girl - definitely in the book, only worse, really. After handcuffing the guy to the wood-burning oven, Rorschach gives him one of the carving knives and then sets the house on fire - tells him he can cut through his arm faster than he can cut through the handcuffs, and walks out. At least in the movie the guy died quick. Supposedly the heroes have put themselves through training too - Laurie's mom had her train and practice from a young age, for example. They are supposed to be more handy than your average joe, though the movie definitely took that to a less realistic extreme.

I think buttacup means Big Figure, the midget mob boss that Rorschach offed in the bathroom. The book never showed exactly what he did either. You're left to your imagination, buttacup!

I don't know if I'd use the word victim. Obviously not everyone's reaction to realizing a little girl was chopped up and fed to dogs is to burn the perpetrator alive. His reactions are not those of a normal human and I'm not trying to say they are - like you say, he's pretty f*cked up, but I don't think the point of his character is merely to say, "People who become superheroes are effin crazy." His reactions, though extreme, are reactions to his environment. In a calmer environment he was a calmer person. In a more violent environment he becomes more violent himself. Almost as though he amplifies what he sees. Rorschach probably would have remained Walter if he had never come across the man who chopped up the little girl or anyone like him. But the point is people like that are out there, and its because of them that Walter became Rorschach.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. John finally saw the value of human life, in terms he was able to appreciate, and having finally come to this decision he most certainly wouldn't let the determination of one man to whom he had little to zero personal attachment to destroy what he perceived to be a hard won but potentially lasting peace. It makes perfect sense with John's character and I don't think one single ending act outweighs a book full of character development that endeared this little psychotic anti-hero to our hearts. Maybe I'm just the weird one out here, (wouldn't be the first time) but I felt a decent attachment to Rorschach after reading the book. I don't think it was a strange artifact of the movie that he felt like one of the main protagonists. We hear from his journal, he's an underdog from the beginning and that always tends to pull the emotional heart strings (bad childhood, physically smaller than all the other heroes), when he's in jail he fights for himself in the face of incredible odds against him and wins. He is a product of his world. When he was taken out of his mother's house and put in a special school he did well. Perhaps would have continued to be relatively normal in such a protected environment, but he was forced to go out into the world by himself again and be confronted with the horrors that people are capable of. Just knowing about these things and really thinking about them can change people's lives, like it did to the psychiatrist that heard Rorschach's story.

I'm starting to feel like I completely misunderstood the book. I was under the impression that the Comedian accidentally discovered Adrian's plot by flying over the island where the artists were (coming back from one of his government jobs) and then doing some of his own digging to figure out what the hell he had seen. He wasn't in on it. He discovered it and it was driving him crazy. Did Alan Moore write/say something about his intentions with Rorschach? The book itself spent an awful lot of pages on a character you're supposed to "write off."

After talking to a few more people who saw the movie and didn't read the book, I think when I saw it I was filling in a lot of the holes myself and not really thinking about it much. I have to say thought that I disagree with your assessment of Rorschach. He's definitely off his rocker but I don't think you're supposed to write him off. He was driven to his current state by being confronted with extremes of human evil, and I think a large part of the book is the fact that people can be, and often are, shit. This had a lot to do with the Comedian's view of things, too. Because of this Rorschach and the Comedian justify their violence against people - and yet, it seems neither can accept Adrian's course of action. Even they have a line and Adrian crossed it.

Alan, the problem is that there are lots of pretty things in the world that someone, if they wanted to, could claim that they see a god in it. Such as your cosmological constants. But the real question you should be asking is, is it necessary that an intelligent designer exist in order to explain the existence of certain (or any) natural phenomenon? The answer has always been no. Sure, maybe a supernatural being pushed this or that around a bit, but as far as our knowledge goes, never in a way that couldn't have happened on its own.

Fortissimo, in one human genome there are 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA. What is four to the 3.2 billionth power? It's a lot. When they say that DNA is degenerate, that means that when it comes to DNA sequences that code for proteins, different 3-bp sequences code for different amino acids, but though there are 64 possible 3-bp combinations, there are only 20 amino acids - so for each amino acid there are a few 3-bp combinations that code for it. So amino acid protein sequences are less diverse than DNA sequences. Which is why DNA is better for typing individuals.

I just read the graphic novel two weeks ago, and saw the movie itself last night. I enjoyed it a lot - but then again I enjoy excessive amounts of ass kickery in movies, so I'm easily pleased in that department. But all the same I felt the movie stayed very true to the characters and the essence of the story, though I do think my appreciation was much deepened by having absorbed a lot of the back story and additional character details from the novel that they could only touch on briefly in the movie. And I prefer the movie ending to the book ending. I felt like the book ending was anti climatic and hard to swallow. Even I can more easily believe Dr. Manhattan deciding to blow up a few cities to tell us all to calm the f*ck down than an alien "invasion" via one giant squid thing in one city. With his great strangeness compared to all the other humans on the planet, it is probably easy for the average citizen (unfamiliar with him personally) to believe him capable of it. Inc4rnation, I understand your point. But many of the characters strongly felt that the existing police/armies etc were simply not doing enough, or not capable enough, to protect innocent people the way they really needed to be protected from the evils of the world. Granted, some of them did not - the original Silk Spectre was in it to advance her modeling career, for instance. Dr. Manhattan was more being used as a tool by the government and was increasingly unable to make decisions about human morality himself. But many of the other characters did, albeit they each had their own views on how to do it and what demons they struggled with. For example, it is more fleshed out in the book the way characters like the new (and old, really) Night Owl struggle within themselves to reconcile both their desire to really do good for the world and what they know to be a selfish desire to go "adventuring" in a mask. But Inc4rnation, who governs the police? Who watches out for corruption? Who holds the soldiers accountable when no one else is around? To rather cheesily quote the book, who watches the Watchmen? At one point our defenders need to hold themselves accountable to the people they desire to protect, and when it came to Adrian, he decided that accountability meant doing what no one else was willing to do, taking on that responsibility and that guilt (something that was also much more expressed in the book than it was in the movie) to secure as lasting a peace as he could manufacture.

Well, this is my position on the subject: you're going to work your whole life, so you may as well enjoy what you do. I accept that getting a job won't be the easiest thing in the world for me, and I won't always (or ever) make a lot of money, and I'm on a long road there, but I love what I do so I'm ok with that. I'm working on becoming a non-human primate behavioral ecologist. Just a very specific subset of zoology.

The authors took overall muscle mass into account, if I understood the paper correctly - which I may not have. It was my impression that regardless of size they were finding a greater power output than expected according to human norms. Keep in mind also that these are captive chimps, and these measures in particular were from a study in 1926, so not only do captive chimps in general have less to do but in the 1920's I'm sure their enclosures did not contain many opportunities for chimp-like exercise.

A 135 lb captive female chimp registered over 900 lbs of force on a two handed pull, and a 155 lb male human college football player (who had spent all summer before doing hard labor on a farm, reportedly) registered at most 395 lbs of force on an equivalent pull. Do you think just small differences in muscle mass are enough to explain that difference? I've also read this paper on vertical jumping in bonobos, who were able to reach jump heights above 0.7 m. The authors suggested that the bonobo muscle is simply able to output more force per cross sectional area than humans.

Mokele, if this is your field of expertise maybe you can help me out with a question people ask me a lot, which is why are chimpanzees and bonobos so much stronger than humans pound-for-pound? I have thought that part of it must be differences in muscle physiology but if I understand you correctly, all mammalian muscle has a specific power limit of ~350W/kg. Is that so? And if it is, how would you account for the strength difference?

I won't deny that I have counted myself amongst IQ bashers for some time - but I recently read some more information on it which suggests that the scores are in fact fairly relevant to how we currently understand general intelligence (which in itself could be argued of course). When I have more time I'll try to look them up and link them here.

Panthera, course content can vary greatly from school to school. Your best bet is to find people who have actually taken the course at your school from the same professor that you might take it with. Or even email/meet with the professor her/himself. Many professors are happy to describe their classes to students.

50% genetically determined is plenty for natural selection to work with.

I have heard a wide variety of estimates of heritability for IQ; the highest has been 0.7, which is quite high, but remember: that still means that 30% of IQ is determined instead by environment. That's not too bad of a number. Other heritability estimates have it close to 0.5, in which case 50% is still determined by environment. I think it's also important to keep in mind that while lots of traits thought to contribute to intelligence can be heritable, it's a whole other issue to quantify how much these traits actually DO contribute to intelligence, and to which aspects of intelligence.