Skye

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Wittgenstein is another one that's relevent to science.

Yeah that is strange, I found this which says it explicitly. When I say strange, I mean I've never heard it used in that way. It might be the origin of the letter R, I don't know. Maybe some people just got it mixed up. Maybe it's just old fashioned, and not used any more to prevent confusion with 'free' radicals (which are often simply called radicals). In any case, whether you say 'R group' or 'radical' or whatever you like, it means an alkyl group (and H to be accurate). You can see from the examples, such as acetic acid (CH3COOH) where the R group would be CH3.

R is one of the abbreviations used in organic chemistry for substituents. It refers to any alkyl substituent. Other commonly used abbreviations are Me for methyl, Et for ethyl, Ac for acetyl, Ph for phenyl, M for a metal and X for a halide. For amino acids the R group generally means one of the standard amino acid side chains. Radicals are often written with dots representing the electron, sort of like a Lewis diagram. Eg. http://www.chemguide.co.uk/mechanisms/freerad/alkenehbr.html

Proteins are part of a chromosome.

The images are drawings of what stained chromosomes look like during cell division. Normally chromosomes are spread out thoughout the nucleus, but when a cell divides they are packed neatly by a variety of proteins. Certain dyes will bind to the chromosome giving the bands seen in the drawings. This is because they bind to specific regions of the chromosome, which depends on the sequence of the DNA and the way it is packed.

I think there are some redundancies. The Genetics and Biochemistry/Genetic Engineering sections should be merged. Same for Neurology and Psychiatry/Psychology, though that is just because most neurology questions are about how a neurological condition leads to a psychological one (or vice versa). Biomedical Ethics could be broadened to include ethical aspects of science in general.

Hi I'm Skye and I'm amused by puffer fish. Mainly because I caught some the other day that were in little sand pools. How? By herding them onto the sand. Yes, they swam onto the sand. Fish. Swimming onto land. Not only that, but they then puffed themself up so they were even more screwed. I'm wondering whether it has anything to do with their tiny genomes. That, and just laughing my arse off at them.