Greg Boyles

Actually, I do not believe in the" evolution theory"; since the anatomy of our eye is the same as the one of a human lived 10000 years ago. So "evolution" has nothing to do with this topic.

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

Compound eyes first evolved in the Cambrian period some 500 million years ago. The extinct triloites were among the first life forms to possess them and in fact their compound eyes are unique in evolutionary history in that they had lenses composed of calcite......calcium carbonate........effectively stone.

Since then complex lensed eyes have evolved independantly many times in many different types of animals and thet all share common components and common genes.

While it is impossible for a complex eye to evolve in a given species in 100s or 1000s of years, leading you to the false conclusion they must have been created by your god, it is highly likely that they might evolve in a given species in 100s of millions of years. 100s of millions of years is a LOOOOOONG time for tiny genetic and anatomical changes to imperceptibly accumulate and produce a functional complex eye.

I think that can be done, and it really doesn't copmare to the Gulf. Two very different scenarios. Plus you can find volcanoes in very remote locations, and they are going to errupt anyways, so you have the safety specifications to properly maintain the process. I mean, you could use yellowstone for sure. That would just be another example of us using our Earth's natural resources. That's what we have been doing forever and it is what we will have to continue to do, because we can not evolve and survive without the Earth's resources. So one day there will be nothing left to use. But that's down the road. For now we drill volanoes and start producing electricity and more. Think of the power you could harness at yellowstone. That is a great idea, that will probablly come to fruition eventually. Accidents will always happen, this is not the first oil spill in the Gulf. And I'm sure that we will have accidents with volcanic matter, but that's just the price we pay for the resources.

If you built your geothermal power plant near or on an active volcano it would have a very short lifespan and you would expend more energy replacing the infrastructure than you would ever extract from the volcano.

This is where you folks with little or no scientific education show extraordinary naivity in not moderating your ambitions for science with practicality and common sense.

As for releasing pressure in volcanos, your talking about vents hudreds of metres in diameter and / or kilometres long. And yet these are unable to release enough pressure quickly enough to prevent massive volcanic explosions.

What in the hell makes you believe that the puny human bore holes would make any noticeable difference to the enormous pressure exerted by massive upwellings of motlen rock from the mantle????????

In my opinion some of the general public has substituted their faith in god with faith in technology and now direct they're prayaers to scientists rather than priests. This ludicrous idea is little different from asking a god or gods to stop a natural catastrophe in my view.

The best that you can realistically expect of science is to be able predict a volcanic erruption with enough time to evacuate any communities from danger zone.

It is more like blaming the steel industry for making steel that can be used to make guns, which then can be used to kill people.

 

I am sure most scientists do think about this, but it is not obvious what the wider implications of their works are.

Conceded, then perhaps the strict oversight should come when pure research is being converted to specific industrial applications where its misuse could be better predicted by an appropriate multidisciplinary body.

That is how it works when new drugs are being developed for the medical profession.

How can this be the case given all the hoops to jump through to get funding?

These days that seems to have more to do with whether or not the research will be profitable for the university in the short to medium term rather than if that research will bring long term benefit to human civilisation or not.

Not all scientists have anything to do with animal experimentation or drug trials on humans or similar. Thus questions of ethical treatment are non-existent. If one is dealing with potential pollutants, harmful chemicals etc then there is, or at leasts here in the UK rules and regulations to follow.

I am not refering to only human or animal ethics. I am suggesting that the science ethics systems be unified across the globe to produce one global standard and that it be broadened to global ecological considerations as well as narrow human and animal ethics.

Animal ethics committess could never have predicted the disasterous effects of DDT because their focus is far too narrow. Perhaps if soil scientists, ecologists and organic chemists combined their expertise in an ethics committee, charged with determining whether or not DDT should be manufactured on an industrial scale, then they might have predicted this and decided that it should not proceed.

This is the whole problem with our society - no one, including scientists, is prepared to accept their proportion of the responsibility for our increasingly dire global circumstances. It is always some one else's falt.

I am saying that the buck has to stop some where and, as scientists have played a central role our current global predicament and they are in a position of superior knowledge, it should stop with them.

Forget his name but that american scientist who was involved with development of the atomic bomb and who gave the technology to the soviets in order to prevent the yanks from misusing it could clearly, if belatedly, see this and he made the ultimate sacrifice in being branded a traitor.

Baloney.

 

How is a scientists supposed to know the effects of a compound that they have not yet discovered? Further, a scientist working for a company does not have all that much sway in how the results of their work is used. Your chosen example, DDT, was not found to be an insecticide until 35 years after it was first synthesized. That the companies that manufactured and sold it did not do sufficient study of its effects can't be the fault of the people who did prior work on it. Patents don't last forever, and not even 35 years. How, precisely, were scientists supposed to stop its production and use, other than exactly what they did — study and document the problems it caused?

 

Further, you have situations like global warming, where the political structure — people actually empowered to effect policy — are actively subverting science and the efforts of scientists.

Let us consider what happens in the political and business spheres.

A CEO, prime minister or president gains power and embarks on a political or business strategy. If that strategy goes bad due to the president, prime minister or CEO failing to foresee are particular detrimental scenario resulting from their strategy then they are held accountable regardless of their best inentions. Such accountability often makes them very cautious about what they say and doo while in power.

In the applied science community there is little or no accountability beyond falsification of data and plagerism etc.

Why should there not be some level of wider accountability similar to that in the political and business spheres?

For example I suspect I would not be alone in western society in being open to seeing the scientists responsible for facilliating the industrial development of DDT to be held accountable for their share in the blame for this global disaster.

Especially in the scientific community, individual career interests should not trump wider responsibilities.

The scientific community spends far too much time asking whether they can acheive something and far too little time asking whether they should acheive something in terms of the bigger global picture.

This bit " the diammine salts would undoubtedly remain stable." is just plain wrong.

Even if you keep the lid on the sample the complex will still dissociate- the ammonia won't leave the solution- it just leaves the complex.

 

Incidentally, at 80C most of the ammonia would boil off unless you were using an autoclave. This has no place in a sensible discussion about cleaning silverware.

There are no practical conditions where you can wash the tarnish off silver with aqueous ammonia.

 

The ozone is an interesting idea but most people don't have an ozone generator.

John it would be an easy matter to put your silverware in a tub with a sealable lid, add your .88 ammonia, close the lid (with some duct tape if necessary) and immerse the tub in a laundry trough full of hot water.

So don't give this nonsense about it having no place in sensible discussion - it is entirely possible.

And I some one has made an valid point about the nature of silver tarnish via PM.

How can you be so sure that all silver tarnish is entirely silver sulfide? Perhaps if you lived in Bejing or near a mangrove swamp!

I believe that Ag2O is also black or dark brown!

Though overall I see it as societies role not to use science in a way harmful to society or ecology. For example, should we place guilt on Einstein for the atomic bomb?

In my opinion that is just passing the buck and is exactly the same argument that the American gun lobby uses to justify swamping their society with firearms. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people"................"people kill people more easily and effectively with guns".

It just aint good enough.

Scientists know, or should know, better than wider society and therefore have an moral obligation to see that their discoveries and technologies are not misused by it.

Perhaps if the wider scientific community and other segements of society got together and put a restraining hand on the shoulders of over eagre scientists then the problems with DDT may have been anticipated and averted.

As I have said in previous threads, outside the medical profession, science is a bit of a wild west with lots of individuals doing their own thing without anyone keeping their eye on the larger global picture.

For instance the current global food crisis and global warming is a direct result of the massive population expansion that was enabled through the development of fossil fuels and mechanised farming. And it seems the only answer to this problem from much of the scientific community is to produce even more food. As with all other animal species, the response from the human population will undoubtedly be to continue expanding until the technology and the global food supply runs out and the population crashes.

Even as a student of science myself, I can't avoid the conclusion that scientists themselves are equally (to politicians, business and the general public) responsible for our global predicament.

If polciticians and the general public wont act to fix this then the onus is on scientists (being in a position of superior knowledge) to do something about it as they are currently facilitating the irresponsibility of politicians, business and the general public.

The only way to do that is to bring some sort of 'law' to the scientific wild west through a global scientific regulatory body to which all scientists must be members and are bound by its rulings.

If medical science can function well under such a regime then there is no reason why wider science cannot also function well.

You seem to have misunderstood something I pointed out in a previous thread.

 

Raising the temperature may well cause the complex formed by ammonia and silver to break up.

Once the silver is "free" from the ammonia, it is more likely to react with sulphide ions and precipitate.

It is entirely reasonable to suspect that the solubility of silver sulphide in ammonia solution will fall as the temperature rises.

 

Do you actually have any data about this, or are you just assuming, in the face of the theoretical prediction, that you will be right?

 

The effect of the concentration of the ammonia is already accounted for in the calculation which you haven't done. Please do so, I'm sure you will find it very informative.

 

The effect of pressure will be very small because the change in volume is very small.

I have no doubt that if you heated diammine salts you would cause the ammonia to out gas and the complex ion to break apart.

But to heat ammonia solution without losing its strength you would need to do so in a sealed vessel. In which case the diammine salts would undoubtedly remain stable.

And we are talking about raising the temp to perhaps 80 degrees celsius of so, not to hundreds of degrees.

Greg,

Re "Now unless you can back up your position with a PHD and professorship in applied chemistry (I doubt it) then butt out!"

please let me know what letters I need to put after my name that will make the silver sulphide decide to ignore the solubility data and dissolve in the ammonia?

also, do you realise that the outcome of an experiment is a fact, not an opinion, so your saying "We are all well aware of your opinion." doesn't make sense.

Anyway, to answer one of your questions, there's typically about 7.5% copper in silver used in jewellery etc.

http://en.wikipedia....Sterling_silver

 

re "If silver iodide, chloride and sulfide have varying solubility, albeit very low, in water then logically they would also have varying solubility in ammonia solution also, and probably at least slightly higher than in pure water. Which is to say that ammonia should be capable of dissolving some Ag2S varying with temp and conc of the ammonia."

In the thread I cited earlier, I gave you the data to let you calculate that solubility at room temp and a reason why the dependence on temperature might not be what you expect.

Have you calculated the solubility of silver sulphide in ammonia solution?

If not, may I suggest that you do so before you speculate further?

The point is that equilibrium constants are effected by temperature and pressure. So it is entirely possible that ammonia in high concentration, temperature and pressue could be enough to remove small amounts of tarnish.

You insisted on nit picking about differences between below 0 solubility of various silver salts, so I will insist on nit picking about the differences in solubility in ammonia solution that higher temperature, pressure and concentration can and would make.

Medical research and the medical profession have fairly strict ethical oversight in the form of ethics committees and the Australian Medical Council (and similar organisations in other countries).

These system are quite strict and put the onus on the researchers to show that their research, and the resulting technology, will do no harm to individuals or at least that the benefits far out weigh the risks. Generally it is successful resulting in high medical standards in the west.

Why should such a system not be broadened across the globe to all scientific disciplines? I.E. As well a purely human and animal ethics perspective, it should also have a wider ecological perspective

The idea would be to make science and individual scientists more accountable for the long term and wider implcations of the technologies they develop.

For example, perhaps such a system might have averted the global disaster of DDT.

I'm not sure on the percentage. It varies with the alloy, obviously. It wouldn't be terribly much in comparison to the silver, however.

 

Using ammonia is far less of an effective approach than using thiourea salts, etc., since it's not going to get rid of all the blemishes, only the copper impurities. Depending on how homogenous the distribution of copper is, you will likely get patchy removal. Why waste your time not doing the job properly/at all when bicarb and aluminium foil is a cheaper and easier option that actually works?

 

I'm not sure what your point is with the ammonium thiosulfate. It's fat from being the same as ammonia solution, so it's hardly a comparison. I don't even think it would work that well, since ammonium thiosulfate is used for leaching silver and gold, not cleaning it. I mean, if your objective is to destroy the object then I guess it's what you want. Did you mean the thiourea salt?

 

Edit: You may be interested in this paper.

No, thiosulfate. Because I was reading about its use in removing unreacted AgCl (or what ever it is) in photographic emulsions and it also mentioned that it has also been used to leach the silver out of silver ores. Look it up on Wikipedia for yourself.

And since one of the silver ores is Ag2S (aragonite I think it was) then, since there is no specific mention of it not working for aragonite, then logically there is no reason why it should not also work in cleaning the tarnish off silver. Apparently it is often used as an alternative to cyanate, which is highly dangerous due to possible release of cyanide gas, in gold and silver mining.

There is also a number of mentions of ammonia being used for the same purpose of leaching out the silver from silver ores.

In fact look here:

http://www.electronicsrecyclingdirectory.com/article/ammonia-extraction-of-gold-and-silver-from-ores-and-other-materials.html

There have been numerous attempts made to overcome such problems associated with refractory ore processing using various chemical reagents such as thiourea.sup.1,2, halogen chemicals.sup.3 and ammoniacal thiosulfate.sup.4. However, though these chemicals are effective in dissolving precious metals in solutions, due to high reagent consumption and/or poor selectivity, these reagents are not being adopted by the precious metal industry.

Leaving aside the issue of them not being cost effective, ammonium thiosulfate is apparently quite effective and I have also read that ammonium thiosulfate gives off ammonia. Why specifically ammonium thiosulfate and not sodium thiosulfate. Perhaps the combination of two chelating agents is more effective than the individual ones.

But yes I acknowledge that such cleaning methods remove silver metal and slowly erode the silverware.

No different to polishing them with Silvo however.

Both of you, stop with this ridiculous ad hom back and forth.

 

Greg, ammonia does not remove Ag2S, it removes Cu2S. Copper is a common impurity in silver, especially sterling silver, which is why ammonia is often quoted as being useful by people who don't really know what they're doing.

OK well I can accept that - makes sense to me. To what extent is copper an impurity in silver?

If silver iodide, chloride and sulfide have varying solubility, albeit very low, in water then logically they would also have varying solubility in ammonia solution also, and probably at least slightly higher than in pure water. Which is to say that ammonia should be capable of dissolving some Ag2S varying with temp and conc of the ammonia.

As to how effective and practical ammonia is at cleaning silver might be a different matter. I accept that ammonium thiosulfate (from what I have been reading) is a much stronger chelating agent than ammonia. But it is not something that you could lay your hands on around the house.

The electolytic process involving aluminium sounds like the easiest, most effective and practical method however.

hello guys!

 

Biologist often use agar to plant things, and I would like to know how to make agar......

 

Thanks for any help in advance.

Specialty health food shops usually stock geatin powder. You use it at a concentration o 1-2% or 1-2g per 100ml of water.

Unlike gelatin it melts at about 80 degree clesius but wont solidify until the temp falls to about 35 degrees celsius - quite useful if you need to re-pot a seedling in fresh agar.

For nearly forty years I have been working on a personal project to somehow reconcile two seemingly incompatible ideas. On the one hand there is now overwhelming evidence that we (and other species) carry within us biological "circuitry" that if triggered, induces low mood which brings in its train physiological effects that, particularly in the natural world, would lead to a rapid exit from the gene pool. On the other, there is the impelling logic implicit within selfish gene theory that natural selection will winnow out any behaviors which do not serve to ensure the repeated replication of the genes defining them. Put another way, major depressive episodes are known, for example, to suppress both the immune function and the libido, slow down movement (very bad if predators are around!), impede decision making, diminish interest in most activities, seriously reduce energy levels and induce feelings or worthlessness. As what appear to be the same phenomena can be induced in experimental animals, just how has a package so threatening to survival and reproduction managed to persist over evolutionary timescales?

In 2010, the Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology (2010, 4 (2): 94-114) published a paper of mine with the title "Family stigma, sexual selection and the evolutionary origins of severe depression's physiological consequences". In my view this paper contains by far the best answer to the above puzzle currently extant. Yet for all that, it has excited next to no interest. I should therefore be most grateful if those of you who can find the time to read it would advise me where I might find a receptive audience.

Surely there will be some similarity to the situation with the beta thalassemia gene where one copy of the gene makes you more resistant to malaria but to copies of the gene gives you fatal sickle cell anaemia.

Another factor that probably triggers depression in may cases is the fact many humans are now living in population densities vastly greater than what we are socially evolved to cope with.

For example I have read studies in the past about how high population densities in lab rat colonies induces abnormal psychology in individual rats.

And yet the silver wire I put in some ammonia back here

http://www.sciencefo...er/page__st__20

is still black with sulphide. Of course, as I said before, that's exactly what you would expect from the published data on the solubility of silver sulphide and the strength of the complex that silver ions form with ammonia.

 

Do you realise that something doesn't need to be true to be patented?

There has been one person so far who has some knowledge and experience of chemstry, beyond my first year BSc, and who does not agree with you John.

We are all well aware of your opinion.

Now unless you can back up your position with a PHD and professorship in applied chemistry (I doubt it) then butt out!

Me and my friend were talking about how we think their is a minority in the human population who have not only consciousness, but a perception of consciousness; the ability to analyse their consciousness from an external perspective. They see the fascade humans have put up for themselves from a sociological point of view; as a meaningless structure we've set up to distract from the animals that we really are.

In my opinion it is more about peoples' emotional levels. Some people are highly emotional and this mind state clouds their more cold rational judgement. Analysing things with cold harsh rationality is effectively have a perception of your consciousness as you prefer to put it.

Interesting. here is another method for cleaning silver that you could try......from wikipedia http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022508883900954

to air or water containing ozone or hydrogen sulfide, the latter forming a black layer of silver sulfide which can be cleaned off with dilute hydrochloric acid

I assume it works simply by destablising the sulfide tarnish thus allowing it to be rubbed off easily.

But you wouldn't want to leave the silver in it for to long as you may end up converting the black sulfide tarnish to crusty chloride deposits.

This patent, found via google scholar, also indicates that ammonia is capable of converting silver sulfide to diammine silver plus free sulfurous by-product. Hence ammonia is useful for cleaning the tarnish from silverware.

http://www.google.com.au/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT5308381&id=qcwlAAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=dissolving+silver+sulfide+with+ammonia&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q=dissolving%20silver%20sulfide%20with%20ammonia&f=false

I'm not sure of the statment you are making here. That reference doesn't appear to support the idea that intelligence is essential to consciousness. It appears to be a references for the "continuum" of consciousness as measured in humans. It is my view that basic consciousness, relative to all animal species, is suggested by some basic evidence of awareness such as "arousal and responsiveness" to stimuli, which does not require intelligence to engage.

I posted it as it was medical support for my original idea that consciousness is a spectrum rather than a light switch.

In my view consciousness does not necessitate intelligence; a species could be considered conscious and not have the measure we consider intelligence. Consciousness, at its most basic level, is merely suggested by some evidence of awareness. What distinguishes our measure of consciousness from lesser forms is a mind that enables responses beyond those considered instinctual; e.i., our measure of mind enables proactive behaviors rather than those consider reactive, programmed, or instinctive.

Found this on Wikipedia:

In medicine, consciousness is assessed by observing a patient's arousal and responsiveness, and can be seen as a continuum of states ranging from full alertness and comprehension, through disorientation, delirium, loss of meaningful communication, and finally loss of movement in response to painful stimuli.^[5]

i think that's hydrated lime =/

You can probably convert it to oxide by heating it but I don't know what temperature would be required.

There are many claims that magnets induce blood flow and heal the body but no respectable sources have proved this (as far as I know.) Also, I don't see what the electromagnetic force would do to the body. It guess could affect iron in the blood or electromagnetic pulses in the brain but I don't see how this would make hallucenations.

 

After looking for a whileI couldn't find many articles but I found this one

http://www.research....e2001/mice.html

I do not know how reputable a source it is but I will put it out there.

 

This one talks about the effect of magnets on rats. It says nothing about hallucenations, but then again they used rats so it would be hard to tell. But they subjected them to high levels of elctromagnetism which I doubt could be reproduced with simple magnets. It would need a powerful soure to induce it. So I will say that ordinary magnets will have no or very little effect.

I seem to remember a documentary where a medical researcher was using a strong magnet to induce an out of body experience (altered consciousness) or something like that. At least I think it was a magnet.

I think it was one of those Through the Wormhole docos with Morgan Freeman actually.

But as has been said above, it would take a magnet considerably stronger than a toy magnet to have any effect.

Here you go: http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/7/3/181.full

Apparently magnets are used to psychiatry.

Why did the trees not rot during the carboniferous period?

 

I heard on an "Eden planet earth type program" that as plants moved on to land, fungihad not evolved to break down the cells yet and it took them hundreds ofmillions of years to work it out.

 

Am I correct toassume; that the reason we have an abundance of coal reserves is due to;

 

there being nobiological mechanism (in the form of bacteria or fungi )during the Carboniferous period,

 

to decompose the " vastswathes of forest that covered the land, which would be laid down andeventually become the coal beds"

 

Any Ideas?

 

Thanks Brian 911

 

 

Even today plant material barely rots in the low oxygen aquatic environment of swamps and bogs.

I believe that the climate of the Carboniferous period was warmer and wetter than today and that swamps and bogs were more wide spread.

Hence the large coal deposits that originated from that period.

where can i buy calcium oxide powder?

 

thanks in advance to any replies

Builder's lime, for making mortar, is calcium oxide I believe.

Looks like a mythical perpetual motion machine to me.

In actual fact your device would make a rather unwieldy spirit level. The water in the reservoir would flow through your tube until the level in both the tube and the reservoir would be equal.

The only way water would flow out of the end of the tube is if it was below the water level in the reservoir.

To be honest I think that the approaches to this have become over complicated. I thought of an extremely simple solution that only uses a large tub some piping and a water wheel

I like the idea offered by the theory. I've watched several of these shows on you tube, and the history channel. The idea that the universe is projected out of our own conscienceness is pretty wild.

I don't see how such a hypothesis makes logical sense. How does it account for the fact that the cosmos has clearly existed before there were humans around to project it from their consciousness. Surely it is an unresolvable paradox?

I recently watched a documentary where it was suggested that reality as we experience it is a holographic projection from the surface of a black hole, i.e. a 3D projection of a 2D universe.

That is logically consistent, if no less bizarre, as the universe can exist with or without humans.

I believe the solution to that problem resides in a basis algebraic expression that is a basis of logic thought: If a=b and b=c, then a=c. Cognitive skills (a) are evidence of some reasoning process (b) and reasoning (b) is evidence of consciousness (c); therefore, cognitive skills (a) are evidence of consciousness (c). In my opinion, there is very little distinction between cognitive skills and consciousness.

http://reptilebehavior.com/target_training_to_reduce_aggres.htm

I am certain you would argue that reptiles, specifically alligators, or not intelligent therefore not conscious.

But read the above article.

It is possible to train alligators to be less aggressive when it comes to food. More specifically, it is possible to teach them to respond to human commands including calling their names.

Now cognition is linked to learning and learning is linked to intelligence. Therefore can we be so sure that reptiles do not have intelligence and are not conscious???? Even though they lack cerebral hemispheres that are traditionally associated with intelligence.

It is said that the brain is 'plastic' so perhaps even the reptilean R complex has limted plasticity that allows them to learn in ways that humans would understand as intelligence.

"It's the collective power of all brains combined, itself supplemented with amazing technology, reference information, and past understandings"

 

All of which are products of the brain -

 

My question is complex and difficult for me to articulate nicely...

 

A quick rephrase:

Since all technology and thought is a product of the brain, can this product accurately describe the thing that created it?

 

The brain is more complex than the thoughts it produces and since thoughts are our tools for examining the brain, will they always fall short?

 

What does an egg know of chickens??

You could widen your perspective say exactly the same about quantum mechanics and relativity etc. How can biologicial construct, generated by the cosmos possibly undertand the cosmos that created it?

But we can and have begun to understand the secrets of quantum mechanics and relativity at the heart of cosmos as the success of of various technologies, based on those secrets we have discovered, attest.

It is the scientific discipline that will, theoretically at least allow, us to understand how the brain works in full eventually. It is this discipline that has and does allow us to overcome the biases and other limitations of our brains that would otherwise stand in the way of us understanding our own brains.