jimmydasaint

Try smallpox or other viruses from bodies defrosted from tundra

http://www.livescience.com/environment/080327-smallpox-corpses.html or bacteria being released from defrosting and 'reawakened' after millenia or even, theoretically, millions of years.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7019473

This is a simple minded explanation (typical for me) but I regarded epigenetics as the study of the way that certain genes are switched on and off in response to environmental conditions, for example, starvation, in a way that is inherited by future generations. However, in any single organism, the chromatin must be packaged in a way that certain genes are 'on' or 'off' by mechanisms mentioned in the previous posts, so that epithelial cells (epi=outside; thelial = layer) will always be replaced by other epithelial cells when damaged or killed.

IMHO, the organisation of chromatin is central to all differentiation anyway, which is the process in which cells containing identical genes become different - some becoming muscle and others becoming skin etc... however, in cases of starvation, it seems that the 'on' and 'off' pattern of genes is inherited by at least a generation after the original starving generation. This, I think gives the name to epigenetics.

I take it you want to examine immune response in terms of blood and lymph antibodies and then examine celllular responses from cell 'munchers' e.g. macrophages.

There is a really simple system for measuring the antibody responses to the molecules that cause an immune response called antigens. This is called radioimunoprecipitation. Firstly, choose a particularly obvious marker from tumour cells. Next, radio-label it using easily purchased reagents (e.g. Bolton hunter reagent to label lysine amino acids on proteins or protein-containing antigens).

Next perform an antibody extraction using serum from the affected animals. concentrate it if necessary and then add whole serum to the radiolabelled antigen (cell surface marker). After incubation, separate antibodies from captured antigens using SDS or mercaptoethanol and run an SDS-PAGE gel of all the antigens identified. Use a lane of the gel for common molecular weight markers and also include a negative control and a pre-treatment control. Any extra antibody response can be picked up quite nicely.

If you want to examine non-cellular responses, this is a bit more complicated. tell me if this advice makes any sense because I suspect you may be looking at purely non-specific responses.

Wonderful! I will use these in my teaching. Kids love the sheer excitement of Chemistry. Well done mate. Funny and informative. Now, if only teaching was like that!

On a side note, here, there are also some beautiful images of gold atoms reconstructed from a scanning tunnelling electron microscope. So atomic surfaces that are smooth enough can be 'seen.' Here's the image:

Yes, that asteroid is called 1950 DA. It is about a kilometer wide. I would hate to be around when that thing hits us, as that would cause destruction on a scale not seen since the time of the dinosaurs. Luckily, we have 800 years to deal with it, if we decide to continue with space exploration that is.

Very interesting. However, would it be possible for an asteroid to slip by unexpectedly which is unaccountable in terms of predictable elliptical orbits? For example are we as a Solar System not moving round as well? I just wonder what would happen if our Solar System rotated into an area of the Milky Way that is heavily populated by asteroids? Or are these factors taken into account by NASA?

Does the theoretical response exist to deflect NEO’s? Yes.

Does the hardware exist? No.

Also, although a lot of NEO’s have been logged, a comet coming at us from the direction of the Sun would not provide much warning or response time. The more time we have, the greater our chances for survival.

Be aware that a Gamma Ray Burst would come at us from the depths of space (up to 1000 light years away) at the speed of light, so there would be no response time. A supernova within 40 light years would also destroy life on Earth without much warning. Or a mini Black Hole singularity might rip through the Earth.

Of course, none of these events are very likely.

In reality, there is not a lot of hope is there? I take it that you cannot nuke an asteroid which is above 1km diameter to avoid contamination of the Eart's atmosphere. I just wonder if it is possible to nudge it away somehow. However, how much time would be required to organise such a life-saving mission - 24hrs, 48 hrs, a week. For example if you could take a spaceship up to land or to fire a solar sail on the asteroid, it could be nudged away right?

This is a question that puzzles me. I take it that Near Earth Objects such as Comets or Asteroids that are on a trajectory that will hit the Earth can be detected well in advance of hitting us. However, does the technology yet exist to deflect a dangerous asteroid? For example, if an asteroid was over 1km in diameter, do we have any chance for survival? Views and opinions welcome.

Apart from showing duality of matter, what other interest would there be in sending buckyballs through the slits?

My knowledge of Physics does not extend far beyond K10 or the UK GCSE. However, I read that buckyballs (C60 =bucminsterfullerene) forced into diffraction slits caused an interference pattern typical of waves, demonstrating, once again, the duality of matter.

http://www.quantum.univie.ac.at/research/matterwave/c60/index.html#Motivation

If this is the case, and we become Spike Milligan silly here, can you fire a series of cats through an appropriate slit diameter and get the same pattern?

Thank you for the compliment. I love the thought of crocodiles being so muuch superior to humans. IMHO the crocodile blood extract will be purified and used as an effective antibiotic. HIV is a different ball game because it can swap portions of its genome with other HIV's and come up quickly with a new 'strain' which is resistant to the antiviral.

It does... but it doesn't require the population to be small, on the contrary, if the population size is too small drift will get in the way. There are many important things to learn with the HW model; the frequencies will reach a stable equilibrium after one generation; you can track allele frequencies with the phenotype frequencies; even recessive alleles won't disappear (it wasn't so obvious back then)...

 

Of course, the main point of the HW model is that it doesn't work in the real world, because of selection, drift, migration, nonrandom mating, and it's why it's such an important model, it gives us the expected frequency in the absence of those forces.

Thanks for the clarification about population size. However, the next part is counter-intuitive to me - the model does not work anywhere in the real world yet it is still useful. So the model is actually not useful in a real world scenario except at predicting stable inheritance of recessive genotypes. There must be better models surely?

No. Most loci (locations of genes) most of the time are neutral in terms of selection. They are at what is called Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and the frequency does not change from generation to generation.

 

With respect, doesn't the Hardy Weinberg Law make some strong assumptions? For example small population size, negligible rates of mutation, no natural selection taking place, random mating, no immmigration or emigration from the population,,,(this is from memory so I hope this is right)

Excellent questions. In regard to blood transfusion, I think that the components are processed after collecting the blood so that red blood cells, platelets and plasma are separated. Moreover, leukoreduction can reduce the number of white blood cells in the blood. So I think that you can minimise the chance of rejection responses from the recipient of the blood.

http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/BLDBANK/BBPROC.html

Moreover, care is taken to match for as many antigens as possible. IMHO, the biggest problem is in preventing infections from the blood donor to the blood recipient - HIV cross infection has been a good example of this problem.

I think this Forum allows teaching and learning so let's learn together. This site shows pictures of the filament fusion that ocurs during Spirogyra mating. Isogamy seems to indicate that the sixe and appearance of the gametes is pretty much identical right? And that isogamy involves a significant size difference between gametes (like human sperm and egg). Well, take a look at the pictures and see what you think.

http://www.micrographia.com/specbiol/alg/filamen/fila0100.htm

In fact here is a picture and judge for yourself which one it is:

Of course I meant anisogamy for sperm and egg

This is not news but I would love for someone to update it. Apparently blood from crocdilians is highly effective, as an antibiotic, against fighting bacteria. It also seems pretty effective at fighting HIV (which antibiotics cannot destroy). In fact crocodile blood extract may be excellent at treating MRSA(methicillin resistant Staphylcoccus aureus) which have annoying resistance to a number of different antibiotics in hospitals.

SYDNEY - Scientists in Australia's tropical north are collecting blood from crocodiles in the hope of developing a powerful antibiotic for humans, after tests showed that the reptile's immune system kills the HIV virus.

 

 

The crocodile's immune system is much more powerful than that of humans, preventing life-threatening infections after savage territorial fights which often leave the animals with gaping wounds and missing limbs.

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/32069/newsDate/17-Aug-2005/story.htm

Researchers are studying American alligator blood as a potential source for powerful new antibiotics. Apparently, proteins in the blood can kill E. coli, herpes simplex, and the nasty methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Apparently, many reptiles and amphibians have some of these powerful proteins flowing through their blood.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/16/alligator-blood-anti.html

We are making some serious assumptions here about technology and that we will still be around to harness solar energy and deuterium energy. Heck, even right now the West is staring down Iran so that we can monopolise its oil reserves. Although China have the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a source of energy at present, eventually it will move from using coal to oil and when that happens.... conflict. IMHO we have roughly 50-100 years to develop alternative technologies to harness energy but most of the renewable sources are too dilute to support the current lifestyle of the West. Just an opinion...

Don't know about the numbers mate, but a quick google came up with this:

http://www3.niddk.nih.gov/fund/other/ribosomes/index.htm

With the recent discovery of a ribosomal protein defect in some cases of Diamond-Blackfan Anemia, exploration into how the ribosomes could cause this disease, as well as others, needs to take place

Also:

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/25/40/9171

Ribosome Dysfunction Is an Early Event in Alzheimer's Disease

 

Qunxing Ding,1 William R. Markesbery,2,3 Qinghua Chen,3 Feng Li,3 and Jeffrey N. Keller1,3

 

Departments of 1Anatomy and Neurobiology and 2Pathology and Neurology and 3Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0230

 

 

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive and devastating disorder that is often preceded by mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In the present study, we report that in multiple cortical areas of MCI and AD subjects, there is a significant impairment in ribosome function that is not observed in the cerebellum of the same subjects.

I take it, that is what you meant in your OP.

You are right. I have also googled it and not found anything of any rigour to support it. This is why I posted this enquiry in Pseudoscience. However, can you comment on what this guy says, extract:

When Maxwell wrote his theory, everyone (all 35 or so of the good electrodynamicists; that’s all there were!) assumed the material aether (a material fluid filling all space). In other words, they thought that there was no place in all the universe that was devoid of mass. Period. So all the EM entities are DEFINED as mass entities: Electrodynamicists today do not actually have anything to say – anything at all! – about the form of EM entities in mass-free space. Even the scalar potential’s magnitude at a point is defined as the energy in joules collected upon an intercepting point Coulomb at that point. In other words, they have confused the magnitude of the water-collected in/on a standard bucket from a raging river, as the magnitude of the water in the river at the dipping point! The scalar potential itself isn’t even a scalar entity! It’s a multiwave, multivector entity. It’s a bunch of bi-directional rivers of EM energy, flowing in both directions at once. Of course, how much of that flow is diverged by (collected upon) an intercepting Coulomb, is a scalar value! But that has nothing to do with the magnitude of the potential itself, just the magnitude of how much is dipped from it by a standard bucket.

http://www.rhfweb.com/scalarwv.html

In the meantime I will google for scholar atricles...

Her's one you can get using your academic account. Hope this is right.

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v35/i4/p1533_1

From my original reading, I thought these were longitudinal EM waves as opposed to standard EM waves which are transverse and that Maxwell had a complete set of equations relating to them. However, they are quite firmly in the world of pseudoscience at the moment but the Russians are 'apparently' using this technology. I see your problem about scalar fields because it seems like nonsense doesn't it? Bearden is prolific in his belief that these exist:

http://www.rhfweb.com/scalarwv.html

I have not understood more than a few words of what you have written man except for 'fields' and 'electromagnetism' - teach me in simple K12 language please.

Who says that blue eyes offered an advantage? Maybe they are linked to some other trait which does. Not all features present in the population were directly selected for. Sometimes, they are just emergent properties tied to other characteristics which were selected.

Agreed. However, I don't think the Mendelian inheritance of blue eyes is a simple Mendelian trait and may involve some multi-gene epistasis. That is only an opinion because I am too tired to look for a link right now.

Very interesting question. IMHO, even before we try to harness energy from the Sun, economically developing civilisations will go to war against each other to harness the dwindling carbon-based energy resources. This power-play will keep us pegged to te first stage. This is a simplistic notion but we can debate this point. I will propose that China will come into conflict with the West at some point in the future.

I was amazed to read about scalar, longitudinal electromagnetic waves as I have never heard of them before. However, I was casually looking through the web and found this:

The anomalous weather worldwide is not accidental. In superpotential theory, which was initiated by a paper by E.T. Whittaker in 1904, it is possible to produce EM force fields and force field energy at a distance. Whittaker 1904 showed that all EM fields and waves can be decomposed into two scalar potential functions. It follows that, by assembling two such scalar potential functions in beams, one can produce a "scalar potential interferometer" where the potential beams intersect at a distance. In that interference zone, ordinary transverse EM fields and energy appear.

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/Beard_wmod.htm

My questions are: Do such waves exist? If they do, what sort of properties would they show and how could you detect them?

I don't know which level you are aiming for. However, this link is a one-stop shop for most Biology questions and careful reading will increase your knowledge. If you are below this level, send a reply and I will suggest another link.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/ClonalSelection.html#LymphNodes