Mokele

You don't have the slightest clue how science works, do you? You want long studies? Look around. Every one of the studies you disparage is long, well done, with adequate controls and rigor. News flash:Sometimes things are complicated and subtle, and thus take more than one study to figure out. And we can't know how complicated things are without doing studies first.

I wanted to be a paleontologist as a kid, and my love of dinosaurs seems to have been more intense and persistent than normal. I briefly diverted into aerospace during college (for the money), but now I'm back to critters (though living ones).

It depends on the topic. Powerpoint is invaluable for what I study, because it takes 10 minutes of scribbling on the board to show the audience what a 10 second video clip can show.

It won't work because chickens can't fly.

Most wild animals don't regularly get cancer, and the big protective factor is 'getting killed by something else first'. In captivity, or when they live long enough, all animals species can get cancer, though it's very uncommon in ectotherms (simply because they accumulate less cellular damage).

It's pretty poorly worded. Basically, if you eat something dry, the food will absorb water from your body. Then, later, when the food is digested and is passing through the large intestine, the body reclaims as much water as possible (to minimize loss and make smaller poops).

What insane alien said. Plus, as a basis for comparison, the average exhaled human breath is still 15% Oxygen (and is 5% CO2). Here's some actual numbers for the effects of various Oxygen percentages

The big question is "How does this brain compare to a real cat brain?" After all, how else do you know there's not some huge error?

Underlining? In everything I've read, scientific names are always italicized. (Genus) sp. is the correct formatting, and is usually because the species cannot be determined (I'm most familiar with this coming up in tadpoles, which can be right pain in the ass to ID).

Looks a lot better, IMHO. The big one looks quite cumbersome, which is actually very accurate - pterosaurs were probably pretty clumsy and awkward when on the ground. And yes, trees and cliffs change things a lot, especially if they can just drop to get the speed, then glide away.

No, not even for a moment. Cells are teeming with H+ and -OH ions - these would react with the oxygen ion before it did anything else (remember, cells are mostly water)

The small one looks much better now. There's still something not quite right about the big one. It seems as if the legs are just sort of stomping the ground uselessly, causing the body to pivot at the shoulder without any real benefit. The forelimbs/wings also don't move very much. I think a key issue is how to think of limbs. Imagine a line from the shoulder to the ground contact (foot, hand, toe, whatever). This is the "effective limb", and it functions as an extensible strut. it can do two things, pivot and change length, and all movements are some combination of the two. A walking human uses their legs mostly as a fixed-length strut, pivoting at the hip to produce motion, while a jumping human (from a standing start) uses their legs mostly by extending the "effective leg" without much angle. Running human legs are a mix. For the large pterosaur launch, consider the back "leg-struts" as mostly extending (via changes in joint angle), while the "wing-struts" stay a mostly fixed length and rotate (the angle of rotation should be large, maybe 80 degrees or so). The back legs push off, and the body "pole-vaults" over the wings. Once it begins to arc downwards (past vertical for the "wing-strut"), the wings flip up and then beat downwards.

I've met the guy who came up with this, actually - he gave a talk on the topic. Unfortunately, the paper is in some obscure journal without much online presence. Your animations have a few problems, and I'll take them in order. First, for the small one, it looks like the feet come up, then 'stomp' in order to push off, with not real change in torso height. In actuality, birds taking off crouch low to the ground (how low varies, and it's a very quick movement), then push off their legs as the wing swings up. The feet have completely left the ground before the wing even begins with swing down. For the big one, the wings/arms aren't moving through a great enough angle when on the ground, giving it a very stiff appearance. It should be one movement, no running start, and it should vault over the forelimbs like a pole vaulter, with a large change in torso height during the movement.

The short answer is that if the finger is flexed when the flexor is paralyzed, it'll extend once (when the person activates the extensor) and then stay that way.

Science, at it's core, is "Oooh, that's neat! I wonder what happens if I poke it with a stick?" Seriously, for all the high-minded philosophy of science, it can really all be traced back to "poke it with a stick".

It should be utterly private, just as all medical data is.

Yes, they are. All of them. It may not be their primary speciality, but it's certainly one of the many, MANY things covered in medical school.

Now, if the LHC went offline because a Phorusrhacos materialized in the lab and ate 3 post-docs, maybe they'd have a good argument. However, in that case, I would firmly vote for turning it on full-blast, because I want a pet Allosaurus.

yeah, it's pretty much completely inaccurate. The simple one first - muscle fiber type differences may affect the cost between individuals, but within an individual it won't account for any difference between 1 stair vs 2. Basically, the leg as a whole is a complex system - you have muscles, which attach in complex ways with moment arms that vary with joint position, with force that depends upon length, contraction velocity, and history, with a few springs (tendons) and pressurized compartments (fascia) thrown in. However, if you move it beyond a certain range, or to certain positions, the muscles will be too stretched or too short to generate much force in a particular action, and may be acting against unfavorable lever arms. Attempting to boil it down to a simple concept, because you're flexing your hip and knee more by going up two stairs, you may be putting your muscles at a serious disadvantage. There will, of course, be variation between humans, mostly due to simple leg length, but on the whole, there will be an "optimum" step that minizimies caloric work, and departures will result in lower muscle efficiency in turning calories into mechanical work.

Just a quick hit-and-run to make sure everyone knows what this ammendment will NOT cover: NOT covered: - Abortions for the mother's health (as opposed to life) - Severe fetal abnormalities, including those invariably lethal shortly after birth - The mother's mental health, including in cases where the continuation of the pregnancy could lead to self-harm or suicide. Yeah, real compassionate.

Different genes are turned on or off in different cells, due to their position in various organs. A neuron shuts off the genes for hemoglobin, while blood cells have no need for liver enzymes, etc.

It's pretty simple - you have hydrostatic pressure pushing out, and outer pressures pushing in. If the hydrostatic pressure gets lower for any reason (faster airflow, lack of air) or the outer pressure rises, the airway collapses simply because there's not enough force on the inside to oppose the force on the outside.

I suspect that two at a time will require more energy, because the greater excursion of the limb puts the muscle off the plateau of the length-tension relationship (muscles generate less force if too short or too long). Thus, to generate the same force, more motor units will have to be activated, resulting in greater metabolic cost.

Yes, it's called "Europe". Pretty much every country there is 'socialist', or at least much closer to it than the US. No political police, better standards of living, more economic stability, etc.

Copernicus_Meme has been permanently banned for promoting a racist forum via PM.