fukuda

If noone ate meat ever, then I doubt many of the animals that are common today (sheep, cows) would be alive, or they would be rare species. quote> Actually.. Wild cows got extinct long time ago

I'm still on the fence though. No offense to any of you but I'd rather wait to make up my mind. I feel that after I take AP biology and a few courses in college, I'll then have enough info from reputable sources to make the best decision. quote> No problem . Feel entirely free to post if you are interested in or want to learn more about biology or evolution-related topics. - At the end of the "Carbonic Explosion"quote> I fear you're talking about the "Cambrian Explosion" instead. It did not involve dangerous reactions with hydrocarbons.. well I think it didn't.

Maybe all these different devices were designed. For example, a leg designed to swim, and a leg designed to run. there are similarities but could one have come from the other? quote> Legs don't just magically appear during your embryonic development, there is a building plan. Length and shape of bones and muscle position are controlled by cell migration and signal release by other cells(veins just follow the other cells and nerves follow muscles). How far a cell goes through your leg depends on what is going on in the nucleus and which cells exchanged information with it on its way. I'll give you a relatively simple example, how is bone length controlled? Using a sand clock model. Let's say that your cell received an external signal to build up lots of a molecule, this molecule binds to a gene and causes the cell to growth more in a given direction. After a second signal has been received from a neighboring cell, the gene coding that molecule is blocked and the cell starts to grow in that direction. Your bone is growing and getting longer and longer (we're talking about thousands of cells growing at the same time) but this molecule is also getting destroyed by cell machinery at the same time, and cell duplication just lowers the amount of that molecule every time the cell divides to increase your bone's length. Under a given amount the molecule no longer causes cell duplication and bone elongation stops. Just slightly changing the shape of that molecule would make it easier or harder to destroy by the cell machinery, resulting in a longer or shorter bone, or just changing the DNA in the place where the molecule binds to the gene would cause a similar effect without modifying the molecule itself.. The same kind of effect also controls the diameter of bones. And combining the effects of several signal pathways and cells you get a complex net of interactions that is the basis of body development. As I said earlier evolution is lazy and the same gene is used for different things, so usually modifying one molecule induces changes in other tissues, this usually isn't good news and a mutation causes havoc and misfunction, but sometimes it allows fast development of new appendages and abilities. In the evolution of bony fins bones get longer, shorter, wider, new fingers appear.. many driven by this process of changing promoter affinity Appendages ain't "designed" to fullfill a task, they get changing shapes (in fact no shape lasts a long time due to genetic drift) and these useful are selected and the negative ones are eliminated (99% of big appendage mutations are deletereous). The building plan is modified by mutations and both natural selection and genetic drift decide what remains *Keep in mind that I used a (very) simplified model, there are more processes involved IRL, but that's a basic view of how some morphogenetic factors work, and sorry about the crappy pic, I ddn't have much time to work on it

I believe evolution is no more than a theoryquote> Indeed No one who is pro-evolution has been able to answer the most fundamental part of evolution. I want to know how I would evolve.quote> That's impossible to foresee, evolution depends on several dynamic factors: the environment the living being lives in, the genetic substrate (that's a very important one, evolution is mostly about recycling and transforming existing stuff instead of creating new things) maybe if I spend enough time in the water and dozens of my descendants do, then maybe one of the generations will somehow end up with gills.quote> That'll be pretty hard. Even though there are humans born with gills(some babies are born with open holes in their necks in a shark gill-like fashion, a chordate ancestry gift..), developing gills seems pretty unprofitable. Take a look at all the mammals living in the sea, none has developed gills. They all have improved physiological solutions to retain more oxygen or lower their oxygen intake needs, developing gills is just a too biologically unfavorable change. It requires radical changes in anatomy and several systems at the same time and, as I said above, evolution is more like recycling stuff than doing radical changes (radical changes have higher chances to screw things up as evolution is not a sentient process and is unable to foresse what changes might be useful, and moderate changes have higher chances to revert to the "normal" state if the change is no longer useful). Changes like improved hemoglobin or new duplicated machinery in red blood cells, coupled with a contractile spleen (like sea lions) and ischemia protection are way more likely than gills. I am asking this question to people who have doctorates in Biology.quote> Well, sorry but I don't have a doctorate in biology , doctors are busy creatures But they always avoid the question of how do I obtain these things, and how do the generations after me get these. quote> Gene duplication, exon reordering, lucky recombination, changes in regulation domains, transposon introduction... there are lots of mechanisms to generate new proteins and morphologic diversity in living beings, especially in animals and plants. But species do not change into other speciesquote> Why not? An entire duplication or triplication of the genome prevents an entire population from interbreeding with another, and it's a relatively fast and easy change, for instance. Fish don't grow legs over many generations just to walk out of water. quote> Nobody is saying that the structures that are now being used as legs were used in the past as such. The recent function of structures does not need to have a direct relationship with the older one.. Wings weren't used to fly back in the day when they were used as arms and arms weren't used to walk back in the day when they were used as fins to swim in muddy water. Every animal has its niche in an ecosystem and food chain. so why would a fish walk out of water to join another ecosystem where it doesn't belong and possibly have no food. quote> Because ecosystems are not static things at all. A fish may find food in a new ecosystem if he's pushed out of the river by new predators or its food developed poison against him, and who knows, he may be lucky and find prey that are completely defenseless against him.. or not. Living beings move and expand through different environments nowadays. even if this fish did walk out of water how would it know to walk out.quote> It wouldn't. walking didn't just appear out of the blue (even though simple walk requires small neuron reflex circuitry similar to swimming). Fishes probably just were barely able to move out of water at first, but attacking prey standing next to the water in a crocodile-like fashion would work anyway.. No need to run out of water. how would it's body know to build an adaptation like legs to walk on dry land which it knows nothing about or has never been on.quote> Fish developed "feet" bones while still in water, not to walk, but to swim more accurately. The body knows nothing, it doesn't build adaptations out of will. there has to be a decision somewhere. we humans can't make a decision to grow gills.quote> Decision? To change the regulation domains of a Hox gene? Fish evolved bony fins for millions of years before going out of water, it didn't happen overnight.

90% of newspaper articles (I still read them though, must be a guilty pleasure)

Porcupines are physically small individuals with an over-abundance of attitude. Probably due to their lack of self-esteem, they have a tendency to seek comfort by putting others down and wit, sarcasm and ridicule are the primary weapons of its oftentimes disagreeable personality. Its reputation as a backstabber is somewhat undeserved, although it has no problem with gossiping about friends and foe alike. In defense of the porcupine's actions, its barbs are not designed to cause permanent harm. Instead, they're intended as a preemptive attack to protect its own sensitive feelings, and if anyone is wounded by its thorny words the porcupine is quick to come to its victim's aid. Like other rodent personalities, porcupines are opportunists and are resourceful and creative in their endeavors. Adept at taking advantage of others' mistakes, they are the first to jump on the bandwagon when an opportunity arises. With their consciously minimalist lifestyle, porcupines' financial needs are limited to the bare essentials of living and their homes are unadorned but functional. Unambiguous loners, porcupines prefer jobs that reward individual effort and avoid manual labor or work that demands mental concentration. However, if it's lucky enough to find a job that requires a biting tongue, it performs above the call of duty. The porcupine displays the characteristically sharp mind and opportunistic lifestyle of the rodent personalities, but unable to function successfully in social situations it is limited in its career choices. Of course, a job like postal worker, DMV employee, and IRS agent, matches its prickly personality perfectly. Woah lol

FBI admits Spanish politician was model for 'high-tech' Osama bin Laden photo-fit The FBI has admitted using a photograph of a bearded Spanish politician as the basis for a mocked-up photofit image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look now. By Fiona Govan in Madrid Published: 3:24PM GMT 16 Jan 2010 The US state department was forced to withdraw the mocked up photo-image, circulated around the world last week, after the discovery that it was not quite as technically sophisticated as the FBI had originally claimed. The digitally altered image of an older and greying Bin Laden was meant to show how the world's most wanted terrorist might now look without his trademark turban and long beard. It was released in a renewed effort to locate him, more than eight years after the September 11 attack which he ordered and directed. But it created an unexpected stir in Madrid when a Spanish MP recognised strong elements of himself in the image and complained to the US. Gaspar Llamazares, 52, a member of Spain's communist party and the former leader of the United Left coalition in parliament, said his forehead, hair and jaw-line had been "cut and pasted" from an old campaign photograph. The FBI claimed to have used "cutting edge" technology to reproduce new images of 18 of the most wanted terrorist suspects for the State Department's Rewards for Justice website. But yesterday Ken Hoffman, a spokesman the FBI, admitted that a technician "was not satisfied" with the hair features offered by the FBI's software programme and instead used part of a photo of Mr Llamazares, found on the internet. "The technican had no idea whose image he had found and no dark motive for using it," he said. Mr Llamazares said the mistake showed the "low level" of US intelligence services. It could cause problems for any individual mistakenly seen to resemble the wanted terrorist, he said. "Bin Laden's safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is." ============================================================================= Llamazares (center), "Bin Laden" (right) and "Atiyah Abd al Rahman" (left) Yes, they also used Llamazares's pic to shoop Atiyah's face, you can still see the shoop in the FBI site before they take it down That's cutting edge technology, indeed. Using PS's cutter tool

Originally posted by: Patricius Maximus And it also figures they'd have to use the picture of a communist.quote> Well, no one seriously believes that they somehow found his picture on google by mere bad luck... That's a big part of the mess, actually.

Happy Wikipedia Day!

"We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China," Drummond's statement reads.quote> Dohohoho Let's see how China deals with this

Please keep the discussion civil

Health is superficial. We all die eventually anyway. Freedom is fundamental.quote> It's pretty hard to enjoy freedom with a broken body, y'know. Freedom will not relief the pain of a chronic patient or a badly treated appendicitis. Health is only superficial when you're not the one concerned, which is only a matter of time after all...

'Lifeless' prion proteins are 'capable of evolution' Abnormal prion proteins cause at least 20 fatal diseases Scientists have shown for the first time that "lifeless" prion proteins, devoid of all genetic material, can evolve just like higher forms of life. The Scripps Research Institute in the US says the prions can change to suit their environment and go on to develop drug resistance. Prions are associated with 20 different brain diseases in humans and animals. The scientists say their work suggests new approaches might be necessary to develop therapies for these diseases. In the study, published in the journal Science, the scientists transferred prion populations from brain cells to other cells in culture and observed the prions that adapted to the new cellular environment out-competed their brain-adapted counterparts. When returned to the brain cells, the brain-adapted prions again took over the population. Charles Weissmann, head of Scripps Florida's department of infectology who led the study, said: "On the face of it, you have exactly the same process of mutation and adaptive change in prions as you see in viruses. This is a timely reminder that prion concerns are not going away and that controls to stop abnormal prions being transmitted to humans through the food system or through blood transfusions must be vigorously maintained Professor John Collinge, Medical Research Council Prion Unit "This means that this pattern of Darwinian evolution appears to be universally active. "In viruses, mutation is linked to changes in nucleic acid sequence that leads to resistance. "Now, this adaptability has moved one level down- to prions and protein folding - and it's clear that you do not need nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) for the process of evolution." Mammalian cells normally produce cellular prion protein or PrPC. During infections, such as the human form of mad cow disease known as vCJD, abnormal or misfolded proteins convert the normal host prion protein into its toxic form by changing its conformation or shape. "It was generally thought that once cellular prion protein was converted into the abnormal form, there was no further change", Mr Weissmann said. "But there have been hints that something was happening. "When you transmit prions from sheep to mice, they become more virulent over time. PRION DISEASES Human prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD) can arise sporadically, be acquired by infection or be inherited because of a mutant gene coding for the prion protein They are relatively rare but have occurred in epidemic form in Papua New Guinea as a result of brain cannibalism Animal prion diseases include scrapie in sheep and goats, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk and transmissible mink encephalopathy Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) first appeared in UK in mid-1980s It is estimated that more than two million UK cattle were infected Variant CJD (vCJD) caused by the same prion strain as BSE was first recognised in the mid-1990s "Now we know that the abnormal prions replicate, and create variants, perhaps at a low level initially. "But once they are transferred to a new host, natural selection will eventually choose the more virulent and aggressive variants." Professor John Collinge, of the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Prion Unit, described the research as exciting confirmation of a hypothesis that he had proposed two years ago, that there could be a "cloud" or whole array of prion proteins in the body. He called it the cloud hypothesis. He said: "The prion protein is not a clone, it is a quasi-species that can create different protein strains even in the same animal. "The abnormal prion proteins multiply by converting normal prion proteins. "The implication of Charles Weissmann's work is that it would be better to cut off that supply of normal prion proteins rather than risk the abnormal prion adapting to a drug and evolving into a new more virulent form. "You would do this by trying to block the sites on the normal prion protein that the abnormal form locks on to to do its conversion. "We know there is an antibody that can do this in mice and the Medical Research Council's Prion Unit have managed to engineer a human antibody to do this. Chemical libraries "It is currently undergoing safety tests and we hope to move to clinical trials by the end of 2011" Professor Collinge said the MRC was also trying to find more conventional chemical compounds to do this and has been collaborating with the chemical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). He said: "They have given us access to their chemical libraries, which contain millions of compounds, and we have already identified some that may work well. "This is a timely reminder that prion concerns are not going away and that controls to stop abnormal prions being transmitted to humans through the food system or through blood transfusions must be vigorously maintained." ============================================================ Life is amazing.. I wasn't expecting this at all

And the idea of not giving a procedure that would (techinically) save someones life is seen as a moral crime in the minds of many.quote> The tricky part it's that the given procedure didn't save that woman's life, she would be dead without machine support.. Which means that you're only artificially prolonging her life and putting ther in a prolonged agony until she finally dies (machines won't avoid her next cardiac failure and the effects of brain ischemia may be a bit hum, problematic next time). Medical decisions are not an easy subject. What is ethic or human and what is not depends on all cases and is not set on stone, most doctors actually suffer psychological stress caused by some of these decisions regarding patients...

Hey... You're right!

Yes, we were violent and war-prone even before becoming humans. However, civilization itself is based on controlling this kind of behaviour. One of the first thing old civilizations did was establishing laws on how to judge people and strict rules about behaviour. It may be excessive violence, human sacrifice, cannibalism, uncontrolled and bloody vengeance, whatever; they were replaced by symbolism: innocuous religious practices, symbolic battles where no one was really hurt or killed, etc. Yes, living in a civilized society implies accepting rules and learning to suppress violent feelings. And yes, it is possible to achieve, there's hope for them. It unluckily may require blood and slaughter for them both to realize it or even the pressure or third agents, but it's not impossible.

Best wishes aswell

We are doing ourselves to death with our own thirst for knowledge. Somehow, I don't think there is any way to slow that down. Maybe such enlightenment produces interesting times as in the ancient curse.quote> Too bad we don't have a Prometheus to use as a scapegoat today.. Or for another version of the same aesop see the snake in Eden (and there are way more)

I certainly will not support the ultra right-wing israelian government.. Their actions speak for themselves, moderate jews are fleeing from Jerusalem (don't dare driving your car during the Sabbath, you are literally risking your life) and Israel, which is turning into a more and more radicalized country every day.. But I certainly won't support Hamas either. Mafia movement, aiming rockets to civilian targets instead of any military target, publicly supporting hate and radical Islam. No, being an elected faction does not suppress anything of that, same thing for Israel.. You would need to go past the moral events horizon several times to seriously support any of these errr "ideologies".. Oh, and we usually don't negotiate too well with people who are openly backed by a government which has promised to destroy us (yes, Iran)

- 1 sweater - 1 scarf and that's all

BONES FESTES I BONES NOTES

Fix'd

No, what you're saying would be your_address_here's Trixie medal

One where God rolls dice

Will sideways fake Trixies appear aswell?