Skye

My last semester maths lecturer had a fetish for competitions and tried to get us to see who could memorise pi to a hundred places first. Didn't happen.

There's a bunch of things that don't fit into a biological definition of life but seem related by their chemical composition and replicating ability, like viruses, but also viroids, prions and plasmids. Prions are interesting because they seem to be entirely composed of a protein. This protein invades a host cell and modifies a particular host protein, in shape, so it is now a prion protein, which is the same as the original prion. A particular type of prion is thought to be the cause of mad cow disease, and is a modified form of a protein common in neurons.

I think the public has little to do with the decision making as it is. They elect representatives to make broad decisions on their behalf, but since science doesn't usually rate as an election issue there's little public influence, only in areas of intense ethical debate..

Here's a link in case anyone wants to read the space.com article. The actual paper doesn't look like it will be online for a few months http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/time_theory_030806.html

Depends what you call efficient. They don't release much heat but they break down a protein (I think) called luciferin with an enzyme called luciferase. Creating both those molecules would take alot of energy.

"Someone summarize the point here." Kids lie.

"Humans are so erronous it's not even funny" Actually, it is kind of funny. You spelt erroneous erroneously

I read in a scientific american mag a couple of months ago that some genetic comparisons between neanderthals and modern europeans suggested there was little or no interbreeding, don't much about the paper though because it was sci am.

Sadly, the guns are more real than the breasts.

The difficulty seems to be is in staying off heroin rather than quitting. The few ex-users I have known had previously quit several times and then gone back to it. To stay off heroin you really need to get away from the other users you know, dealers, the whole culture itself, and start your life over.

Intelligent life would resemble it's predecessors I don't really see why it would have to share our form. There are many animals that have dextrous limbs which would do a fine job in the place of our hands.

Finding any kind of life on another planet would be one of the greatest discoveries, travelling to another solar system would one of the greatest accomplishments. It's quite reasonable to look for simpler life since it will most likely precede complex life. Presumably, if we can find microscopic life, large and intelligent life would be fairly obvious.

The 100,000 refers to our species, Homo sapiens. The older dates refer to lineages of hominid apes that led to Homo sapiens. This is a little rubbery, partly because the classification system is being modified to fit in with new genetic information.

I think it will be alot easier to maintain the natural environment than to create and maintain an artificial one. An artificial envirironment would also require a complex series of interacting componants in order to maintain fairly constant conditions. Designing, building, maintaining, correcting, etc something like this would be a very difficult task, and if it goes wrong we're screwed. Maintaining the natural environment isn't so hard, it has maintained itself in the past, with gradual changes. We only have limit our impact on it so as not to push it beyond certain threshholds that cause undesirable changes.

I haven't read alot on homeopathy and hadn't heard of the HCL concept. Does the HCL have a physical location within the brain, if so where? And have there been any patients that are lacking this region, with noticable immunological deficiencies? How does this fit in with, what I think is the central concept, the concept of like cures like?

Maybe this was really what Van Gogh was trying to do. With cosmetic surgeons going at it hammer and tongs, I don't see this as particularly disturbing though.

T&A

I thought that gravitons were defined as massless and chargeless.

A hypothesis can be disproven if stated in certain ways. Saying, "Stones usually fall down" can't be disproven, whereas saying, "Stones always fall down" can.

The scientific method usually includes something about experimentation being done within the observable universe, or at least this is implicit given that it is based on observation. The rest of your post highlights problems that occur when trying to describe a 'real' universe, rather than the observable one. If you want to learn how people have taken this further, try a little metaphysics. http://mally.stanford.edu/

Seriously, read a basic introduction to the scientific method, even a page or two will answer your questions. Evidence can support or disprove a hypothesis, it isn't proof. Mathematics follows abstract rules so it can prove itself within those rules.

My girlfriend did psychology too, she did an experimental psychology subject during honours and the other girls that she was working with didn't want to touch the rats. I could imagine them in a clinical practice, "My God you're CRAZY." Psychology courses usually do some study of the brain, what you are able to do depends alot on the course and where you study.

It's interesting from a medical perspective though. Alot of major structural changes and it lived to 5 or 6.

I didn't think humans responded to any pheromones, or at least sex pheromones. If we did I'd bathe in the stuff before going to the pub

I'd go with it being a malformed human.