fukuda

I don't get the rationale behind the claim that marihuana legalization would lead to generalized consumption by almost everyone...

Fascinating. Sand is a wonderful filtration plant if you have enough of it. You get purification and desalination at the same time. Is it necessary to chlorinate this water to finally sterilize it?quote> While sand filters are the standard procedure to filter out big particles, you will never be able to desalinate water using sand. It will not filter out toxins, colloids or pathogens either. Seawater is unable to get underground thanks to the aquifer freshwater pushing against it and the fact that freshwater is less dense than seawater, which impedes the flow of seawater underground.

Dancing Leprechauns

Welcome back, dev

What I meant to say was that if science wasnt completly funded by corporate money, scientist might already have invented cars or fuel that where more efficient, cleaner, etc etc. But because of their corporate funding, science has become completely dependent on what a bunch of suits somewhere in a sky scraped decide what to continue and what not. And due to the short term thinking of those corporate suits, science does not produce a lot of new things anymore, because its to expensive and the immediate gains are to little. Thats what I meant with that science produces nothing anymore. quote> Science isn't completely funded by corporate money.. Research is still going on about the respiratory system of passerines even if there is no corporate interest behind it. It's not the job of science to invent or design things anyway, that's an engineer's job. Science still produces knowledge.

Happy birthday to both Dirk and Woody! (talk about reviving old threads by the way)

Wait, why did I draw a pig.... I guess a pig is fine too

Originally posted by: Duke87 Originally posted by: fukuda Oh yes, you should use glass containers for long-term use, plastic storage is just for when you're in a hurry.quote> Define "long-term use". Weeks? Months? Years?quote> Months and years.. Weeks too if you want.. It's also a question of convenience.. A glass bottle is usually easier to clean than most plastic bottles. Most terminal water ducts are still made of PVC and other outlawed plastics though. And it's even worse in old cities where most mains are still made of lead :\quote> Lead pipes, meanwhile, are less of a problem if you can keep the pH up. New York City puts phosphate in its water for this purpose. quote> Indeed, it's mostly a problem in places where acid soils are abundant. Using phosphate as a buffer, hmm. Well, there shouldn't be a problem as long as your calcium intake is ok. The Phosphate/Calcium equilibrium is one of the most important things when controlling bone growth after all.. But as long as your calcium intake is normal and the phosphate amounts are low there shouldn't be a problem. Oh wait am I repeating myself?

From what I understand, storing water in plastic containers for long periods of time can allow for toxins to seap into the water. I think after a year or so that water is no good. But this should really depend on what type of plastic the contanier is made out of. I don't know about the validity of that statement, but my dad mentioned it to me.quote> Oh yes, you should use glass containers for long-term use, plastic storage is just for when you're in a hurry. However, when travelling in Europe, I do get travellers trots, but an intestinal sterilizer usually fixes this, as I reinfect with the local bugs. This problem happens in France, but not in London. Just an environmental thing, I guess.quote> Actually (sorry if it sounds like I'm badmouthing my own country), France's water system is quite a bit unhygienic, and toilets are even worse. Extra care should be taken with water when travelling around France, unluckily. Plastics are not inert. Bulky plastic will pass through the digestive system, yet we have all heard about phthalates. There is also a reason why some governmental entities have outlawed certain types of plastic for containers - namely for food/drink (you have to look across the pond, they are still legal in the US). quote> Most terminal water ducts are still made of PVC and other outlawed plastics though. And it's even worse in old cities where most mains are still made of lead :\

Two widely separated instances? Says something about the infrastructure, eh?quote> Yeah, sadly. I understand and agree that tap is "suitable" for human consumption, but it still takes like crapquote> Depends on the treatment. Modern treatment processes produce water with no noticeable taste or odor, but it also depends on your water treatment plant's quality of treatment and how old it is. Reusing a water bottle for future water needs is a negative, unless you wash it after every other use. Washing it once a week or so is a recipe for illness. Just think about the saliva that gets trapped in the screw guides, left to grow and be augmented until it is finally washed. I'm just saying... quote> Bacteria don't live out of thin air, unless there is a relatively abundant carbon source into your water they won't grow into a dangerous or noticeable number, sure that you can find trace amounts of bacteria into your bottle, but unless you do weird things with it there should be no carbon (or other basic elements) sources available. And that's without taking into account the chlorine and other substances put into tap water to control bacterial populations. *Funny fact: you can find up to 16 different species of roundworms in the tap water of Barcelona, and this is considered a fairly low amount by treatment standards

I'd say that it has a nice amount of ammonia according to its rather strong smell

I'm sure that this is a punishment for talking too much about tap water: Cool, a pipe burst somewhere in the network close to my home, so today's water is not even good enough to wash the dishes...

Raise it now? What for?

Pain Bean

I've been drinking tap water since I was a small child, even in Africa (This led to some funny cases of africans asking me where my water bottle was), the african thing is mostly a "bad" habit I inherited from my mother, though. I only buy bottled water to use the plastic bottle as a water container when I go hiking or climbing, I have glass bottles at home to pour the tap water into anyway. There is no reason for me to buy bottled water for daily use. I'm not going to put a filter either, 2 years ago I worked 3 months at a local water treatment plant as my final practice for the technical license and I know how many safety procedures and methods are enforced in our water plants. It's unluckily a different story in water bottling companies.

Really, do we know all that much about human biochemistry? quote> We know a lot about (human(!)) basic biochemistry (metabolism, hormone action...). There's however still a lot to discover about signaling pathways and regulation, aswell as in development biochemistry. The electrical component of many of the reactions appears to be poorly understood.quote> Electrical component? Electricity in the cell comes from 2 places. 1) Exchanging electrons (Redox reactions) is how most biochemical reactions work, electricity, as electrons, is used to break bonds and form new ones by taking electrons from a donor and giving them to a receiver. These electrons come in the first place from what we eat, respiration is basically a process that breaks down what we ingest and gives all the electrons stored in the bonds to organic electron carriers, basically to the one known as NAD: As you can see above this molecule accepts 2 electrons and breaks a double bond in order to store them (Reduction). It goes the reverse way to give them (Oxidation). What for? Here's an example, these electrons can be used to transform nitrate (NO3) into nitrite (NO2) by giving electrons to the nitrogen and oxygen atoms respectively. With new electrons there's no longer need to share anything and they separate into NO2 and oxygen that is rapidly converted into water by spontaneous addition of protons. That's all there is to the electrical component of reactions, it sure is a very important part of it but it's pretty well understood. 2) Now, there's a second place where electricity in the cell comes from, it's just that almost no chemical reactions are involved into it. The electric impulses in nerves and almost all cells don't come from chemical reactions, they're just based in the fast opening and closure of voltage-gated ion channels. In order to be able to import and export things through the cell emembrane and to fire, receive or interpret electric impulses cells need to spend a lot of energy (>25% of their energy production) to create a difference of potential between the outer and inner part of their membranes. This is mostly done by pumping out charged ions out of the cell while pumping in other charged ions into the cell always against their concentration gradient. Why? Because things always go from the highest concentration to the lowest one, see: This is the cell in steady state, there's clearly way more sodium out of the cell than inside of it. When we open the gates this sodium will storm in and pass through tiny channels. And what's called a lot of charged particles going in the same direction? An electrical current! This current will open more voltage-gated channels and so on.. and an electric impulse will be fired. This is pure physics. It's more complex but it's entirely out of the scope of this thread. Reactions occur in the body, catalyzed by often mysterious enzymes at body temperatures that require heroic physical efforts in the laboratory. These are, at best, poorly understood. quote> Back in the day we had to put enzymes and substrates into a glass tube and see what happened(with a spectrophotometer), 90% of the times it never worked, we had to add more coenzymes and other proteins to see if the thing worked or not. If your reactions do not occur at around body temperatures it means that you're missing a coenzyme or a step as your enzyme is not catalyzing anything at all. Nowadays we can know beforehand which cofactors and coenzymes bind to the enzymes by searching for the specific binding sites in the DNA sequence, something we couldn't do before the sequencing of the human genome. if this fails we can look for what works in all the phylogenetically related enzymes, something wwe couldn't do back then either. The human organism, and for that matter, almost any living and reproducing organism is so complex that we barely understand the whichness of the why in most cases.quote> I agree, however, meds don't use obscure or even a lot of molecular targets. There are only around 1200 different approved chemicals as meds, and all of them only use 270 human molecules as targets, 25% of which are isoforms of the same G-Protein! [1] Crazy thing.. There may be a lot of different names, but in fact we have a shortage of meds... I admit that I take advantage of quite a lot of biochemistry. I am on three heart drugs, and verious other things that keep me in "good" health. I have more than the average share of autoimmune diseases, and keeping this all balanced is quite an adventure. So far, I haven't had any real change since my heart arterial bypass surgery 10 years ago. Without pharmaceuticals, I'd be dead in about a week or less.quote> Ouch, good luck with your health problems, you sound like a strong-willed man Do doctors not point out any more that most of the effects of these conditions can be controlled by losing weight and exercise? or is it easier to just med them up an not hound them about their weight?quote> Well, it depends on the person. It may be caused by bad health habits or real disease in some people. The responsibility of deciding what to prescribe is always on the doctor though. The problem is not only our understanding of biochemistry, it's also how some companies are reluctant to pull out of the market meds when they've been proven dangerous or when new safer(and even cheaper!) chemicals have been researched and found. Another thing is that most people have been tricked to buy patented meds by their doctors or even pharma companies when there are cheaper and generic meds that would work aswell. [1] Pharmacology (course + corrected exercises), Yves Landry & Jean-Pierre Gies

I'm a Pharaoh

Check your post and point counts

The collider itself will have a shelf life.. However, the accelerator and cooling systems can, and will probably be used, to accomodate other researching devices and microscopes as many accelerators have been turned (or even recently built to become) into huge microscopes several times more powerful than electronic microscopes.

I think the most reprehensible ads are those for anti-depressants and other mind alterning potions. These drugs are some of the most dangerous and may also be addictive. It has been determined in some cases that users of such drugs have comitted suicide. Science doesn't know enough about the biochemistry of the human organism to go around advertising their alchemy. Medicine is an art, supported by science, but not at all an exact science.quote> We do know a lot about human biochemistry, beta-blockers blocking beta-adrenergic receptors of epinephrine in the heart and slowing down heart rate is science, aspirin inhibiting cyclooxigenase and the prostagandin pathway and preventing the onset of fever (aswell as inhibiting the production of thromboxane and prostacyclin required for blood clotting, oops) is science, using the Cytochrome P450 Enzyme in our livers to oxidize and activate medicaments is science and so on.... But indeed there is a problem, not everything in our body is chemistry (even if pharma and friends would like you to believe so). Our brain does use chemistry to work, but it's a secondary use.. Structure and physics are what matter in your brain, a depression is not a "chemical imbalance", it's a series of complicated structural changes. Sure you can limit the effects of it by bombing down all the neurotransmitter effects in an specific area, but it's a ridiculous and barbaric way to act that only betrays our almost complete ignorance of what's going on. You're absolutely right, anti-depressants and mind-altering drugs are pretty much "alchemy", and it's a shame that we're mass-producing them with lots of wishful thinking about how they "work" (and lots of side-effects, too).

This is why, I personally find it a sad thing, that those with all this intelligence and knowledge of science, find it necessary, to come into a religion thread and try to preach their science, with no understanding of the faiths. This is called the Simtropolis House Of Worship, yet some of you, simply come in here to debate and convert others. It's a shame really. It truly is.quote> I don't know about the others, but the only reason I posted is because someone said that they had "scientific arguments" to show. I haven't come here to "preach science" or whatever that is, I only corrected these statements so that he could write a better and more convincing essay, this is a place to debate not to convert people. I'd be pleased to discuss religion in a broad way but all I see is the same thing as always going on. I'd be pleased to discuss Hinduism, Buddhist sacred texts in sanskrit, Islam, even shamanic religions, but no it's always creationism or deism what's going on. So much for "House of Worship" I guess. What you scientists are doing in here, is offensive and equally as bad. Not fair and not at all correct forum ettiquette.quote> What does fairness have to do with any of this? It wasn't meant to sound offensive, I thought we all in this thread wanted to gain more knowledge and as learn much as possible, wasn't this why this thread was created to begin with? I think you and your peers have valuable things to say, I just wanted to make sure that you expressed it in the most meaningful way. I've been in this kind of thread for years, I (and I'm pretty sure most people over here) don't look for some kind of "fight" of ideas or anything. No one needs to build a fortress and barricade himself into it, we're not here to impose anything on anyone (it wouldn't work anyway)

I think they mean to say scientific management, not the actual field of engineering. Sometimes I think the only thing technical about the social "sciences" is the way scholarly articles refer to statistical concepts in an effort to confuse the reader with terms like "Gaussian distribution of soda preference among 2 year olds subjected to ink blot tests as proof that McDonald's Corporation is eevil"quote> Oh but that's also true about some other scientific disciplines... Here in the department we mainly deal with animals but we also receive feedback from the biomedical research community, which is unluckily largely known for their merits in funny research. Most biomedical papers are excellent articles written by excellent people but the rest are..well.. let's say interesting.: There are teams whose only purpose is to mash up statistics after (flawed)statistics to build even largely flawed statistics out of freakin nowhere that will be used to build other statistics by other teams. There are teams whose problem is exactly the opposite, some seriously think that they can announce an entire new brain processing pathway just by studying only one clinical case (screw statistics and error). There are others whose only purpose is to announce sensationalist discoveries. Others completely mistake correlation with causation (this is a veeery common mistake, 99% of what most teams do is to look for correlations after all) and give magic explanations about it. A big part of it ain't even testable experiments to begin with... Oh, and beware about seemingly obvious error inducing methods that don't seem so obvious to most people ("what do you mean male metabolism is different than female metabolism?"): report published by the National Academy Press pointed to evidence that the same was true for research using animal models: The sex of the animal can lead to qualitatively different results. Yet because male rodents are cheaper and easier to work with than females, almost nobody uses females in basic research.quote> About engineering.... I did a small 2 year-license and got out of the engineering school 2 years ago. I don't consider it blinding, sure it wasn't my thing (though I enjoyed most parts of it), but I think it can give an interesting perspective about how to study, how to do teamwork (this was extremely hard for most of us though, most engineering students show an overt competitiveness against each other) and what real lab and math rigor means.

Wait, wrong topic

Why is the Second Law of Thermodynamics in place? Well, one possibility, and this is what I believe, is that is came into place when Adam first sinned in the garden of Eden?quote> Entropy is one of the main pillars of this universe's own existence, nothing we know in this universe can work without it, needless to say that life is impossible without entropy. Entropy is what drives chemical and energetic reactions, without different energy levels there wouldn't be any reason for particles to interact, this means no molecules, no liquid, solid or gaseous states, no atoms and so on.. And there would be no reason or driving force for expansion or movement to begin with anyway. A crystal structure near absolute zero is the lowest level of entropy that we can achieve. Nothing even remotely comfortable for life, and it still has entropy.

Great stuff! The most amazing thing is realizing the team's inspiration and brilliance to come up with such ideas and methods (the printer thing was crazy) to solve the structural and conceptual problems. Building a functional mammalian heart is a bit more complicated than just having contractile myocytes around a tube with valves however. I dont see how this will help people whos organs fail from genetic problemsquote> Just use cells from a healthy patient, they'll have to take immunosuppressor meds all their life but they'll live after all. or in accidents that damage organs.I guess it depends how fast thier printer is.quote> As long as the affected organ is not the brain we can use machines to replace the lost organ's function until the transplant is ready. I don't really see how this is scary, though