Skye

I remember reading about this when I was a kid, in an old book about animals. It sounded so cool then From what I know other researchers couldn't replicate the results. At the time DNA and RNA were crazy new things, so these were considered a possible chemicals in which memories could be stored. As more was discovered there seemed to be no way for memories to be stored simply in molecules. Consideing the results weren't replicated it's not taken seriously anymore, afaik.

Look for stuff by/on Roger Sperry if you haven't already. He did alot of work on patients who had the corpus collosum severed as a treatment for severe epilepsy. His work highlighted the differences in function of each side of the brain. Found a nice site which has all his papers in pdf format. Click here

It means you should start thinking hard about lotteries before you go to bed.

Silicon oxidises to silicon dioxide, silica, which is a solid (sand). Whereas we can expell carbon dioxide waste pretty easily, silicon dioxide would require alot more work to get rid of.

The fungal reproductive cycle as I know it has three stages: haploid, dikaryotic and diploid. Most of a fungus is mycelia that grow under the ground, or into their food eg. bread moulds. The mycelia start off haploid. When they meet another mycelia they can fuse to form a single cell, but the nuclei remain seperate within the cell. I've also read that they can exchange nuclei but not sure on that. This cell with two seperate haploid nuclei is called dikaryotic. Two haploid hyphae cells can only fuse with certain others. Basically it's one that doesn't have the same gene as a particular locus. The simplest fungi have a single locus this acts on and only two alleles at that loci, so they have two 'sexes'. Others have 2 (maybe more) loci, and many different alleles at each. The 36,000 sexes (I think this is the highest number but other have thousands of these sexes) are just the many variants at these loci. Why have 36,000 sexes? With two sexes the chances of meeting a mate are halved, because every second one is identical. With 36,000 the chances of meeting another just like you are practically zero. The other thing is that the dikaryotic hyphae produce mushrooms. In the mushrooms the two nuclei fuse which briefly forms the diploid stage, but pretty quickly undergo meiosis and form the haploid spores which blow away and form hyphae. During the meiosis there's the usual crossing over and all that good stuff which produces variation. Soooo each haploid hyphae is able to fuse with half it's siblings, since they inherit one of their two parents 'sexes'. If there are only two sexes in the species then it is able to fuse with half of them too. If there are many more (like 36,000) then they are able to mate with pretty much anyone they come across, but still only half of their siblings. Fungi aren't very motile, and quite likely to come across their siblings, the 36,000 sexes would help in allowing them to mate with most other hyphae that aren't siblings and increase outbreeding.

Yeah, each is a seperate asexually produced 'clone', genetically identical to both each other and to it's parent planula. I'm guessing the planula starts asexual reproduction by dividing into two seperate organisms, there're two ways that I know Cnidarians (jellyfish, coral, sea anemones) asexually produce and the other is by budding off a smaller copy...doesn't makes as much sense. Either way it develops something like an embryo, contantly increasing in number and differentiating BUT each part is a multicellular clone. Man o' war jellyfish belong to a different class to other jellyfish (it's class Hydrozoa, the others are in Scyphozoa and Cubozoa) and are very different. There's two stages of the lifecycle in Cninarians, polyp and medusa. The man o' war jellyfish is the colonial polyp stage. Other jellyfish you see are the singular medusa stage, the polyp stage is sessile, attaches to the bottom of coastal areas and asexually produces larvae that turn into the medusa stage. As I said our reproductive systems are delightfully simple comparitively. But also there are intermediate reproductive systems that could have produced the two seperate sexes.

It's kind of been said before but..there's really no 'need' for useless intermediate structures. The seperate sexes descended from bisexual, hermaphroditic organisms that had both sets of reproductive organs. A variant of a single sex would be able to reproduce with the existing hermaphroditic population. It's not hard to see 'how' it could have happened, but 'why' it would remain a puzzle...I think seperate sexes, as well as sex itself, has developed a few times (at least in both animals and plants seperately) so there could be several individual reasons. Also our reproductive process is complex compared to, say bacteria, but delightfully simple compared to alot of invertebrates that have alternating sexual and asexual generations. In the case of the man o' war (a jellyfish with a ballon-like 'float' that helps it stay on the surface) the jellyfish is actual a colony of many polyps (each is an individual multicellular organism). These are asexually produces from a single worm-like predecessor called a planular. One enormous polyp forms the float, many form the food gathering tentacles, and also many form reproductive tentacles. These reproduce sexually, so the cycle goes: planula asexually produces jellyfish which sexually produce planula. This is a very complex cycle, and perhaps a single sexual cycle would have some advantages....

Yostercoaster- Email or call some researchers and ask, politely, if you can do some voluntary work to find out if it's for you.

I'm not sure if it's due to us having two eyes. We have binocular vision, and the ability to judge depth, because we have two overlapping fields of view. But if you close an eye there is still the same perspective, things get smaller towards a vanishing point. Pictures taken with a camera have the same perspective, and you can quite easily draw a picture that has a sense of perspective.

It's like saying 'success' can be inherited. Social status is a form of success, much like getting food, establishing a territory, finding a good mate, etc are all successes. Traits that have led to success in the past (i.e during the ancestors lives) can be inherited but the actual success depends on the interaction of those traits with the offspings environment. If the environment, society in this case, changes then those traits mightn't lead to the success that the ancestors had with them.

Teeth develop from different parts of the embryo to bone during development. The outer layer of teeth, the enamel, is derived from cells, that in the early stages are called the ectoderm, and that also go onto to form organs such as the skin. The inner supporting dentin of teeth is derived from the neural plate, which goes onto to form the nervous system. http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/courses.hp/zoo.225/OL06-08.html

How do you mean? If the conductor is passing through an electric field then the resistance of the field will slow the spinning, then again I have a spectacular habit of being wrong when it comes to physics.

The question was posted in the 'General Science' section on a site called Science Forums, which to me means it is asked within the confines of science. I think this is has been your main cause for disagreement as your belief seems to be based on personal experiences, which you admit aren't scientifically verifiable.

That's what that 'DNA' stuff is all about. DNA is made of two strings of chemicals called nucleotides. There are four different nucleotides in DNA: Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine, shortened to A, T, C and G. The two strnds have the same sequnce of nucleotides but the sequences are in oppsite directions. Eg. if one stand had the sequence ACGTACG it would be bonded to another with the opposite sequence TGCATGC. If you pull the two strings apart, in a solution with nucleotides dissolved in it, then the dissolved nucleotides bond with the two single strings and form a complementary string for each. Then you'd have two double stranded DNA molecules. Pretty simply, DNA automatically replicates itself if it is pulled apart and has nucleotides available to it.

DeoxyriboNucleic Acid

Just a few points... *DNA (DeoxyreiboNucleic Acid) is made of nucleic acids *Amino acids are made of an amine, a carboxylic acid and a variable funtional group *Proteins are made of amino acids

It's not so much a theory as a vernacular. I imagine he just sat down and thought, "Hmmm I wonder how long I can prattle on about cubes and such?" And to ask the telling question: "Where are the Indian Newscasters?"

You're just educated stupid by cubeless academia.

Because as far as I know weight includes centripetal acceleration as well as the gravitational force.

Weight can be defined as the force required to prevent an object from falling, which neatly sidesteps the whole issue:)

Let's say you have a car. It's mostly red with a little bit of black. Would you say it's a black car?

People who are red-green colour blind would say the red and green look more similar;)

Yes, and those limits are the bounds of science. There may be some way for metals to produce life but within the limits of science, it's inconceivable.

I think atrophy caused by disuse is controlled by the nervous system (which would be why nervous disorders like Lou Gehrigs disease result in it) so there would be no reason for the muscles and bones to waste away during a normal hibernation. The muscles might be broken down to provide nutrients for the body though.

Kids TV shows here have sung 'Yellow Submarine' by The Beatles. Maybe it's a good modern analogy because it was a song that was intended for adults, has no real meaning for kids (aside from "Acid is great!"), but is sung to them because it makes them happy. "Was there any mention of the second verse there?" No, they actually asked if anyone knew what it could mean.