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You can get contact lenses for that sort of thing -- much more practical (and easier to control!) than taking mass quantities of melanin. See, e.g., Wild Contacts and Custom Contacts. A friend of mine in college always talked about getting scleral lenses (lenses that cover the entire front of the eye, including the white) -- mirrored.

No problem. I used Google.

Hmm, looks a lot like a Homework question... Wikipedia has some useful information regarding the affinity of O2 to hemoglobin: I think you'll find the answer there if you consider it carefully.

Not sure what "flow" you are referring to. I would not assume that the conditions that currently permit life (in isolated spots, like on Earth) will continue indefinitely. For a period of time after the Big Bang, the universe was too hot for hydrogen atoms to form: the entire universe was filled mainly with free protons and electrons (and many, many photons). Hard to imagine life developing under those conditions. Thus, Life probably does not go all the way back to the BB. The current theory (AFAIK) is that dark energy will cause the universe to expand indefinitely, and possibly at an ever-increasing rate. Under this scenario, there is no "Big Crunch". Instead, all matter and energy in the universe will be widely and distantly dispersed, with the average temperature /energy level approaching zero asymptotically. Life does not continue in the absence of energy. If we instead postulate a BC (e.g., assuming that today's astronomers and physicists are wrong for some reason), the contracting universe results in a corresponding increase in temperature. Eventually, the temperature would be high enough to strip electrons from atoms, and again you would have a plasma regime in which life would be difficult or impossible. Even assuming that by then one has developed technology sufficient to protect conventional living beings from such temperatures, the BC assumes that we pass through a singularity: it is impossible to say that information (or life) survives passage through the singularity. Thus, unless you have a pretty mystical definition of "life" (e.g., all matter is alive), I do not think you could scientifically state that life will be continuous.

An interesting exposition. Of course, Venus is not believed to have any liquid water at the surface, due to a runaway greenhouse effect. Mars is generally too cold (an low pressure) to have liquid water. And the equation does not take into account heating by other means, such as radioactive decay and tidal stress (from orbiting a nearby massive planet). And, of course, not every system resembles our solar system (in fact, AFAIK no other system closely resembles our system). There are several examples of systems with "hot Jupiters", or gas giants that orbit close to the parent star. Your formula may also need some correction factors for albedo, as this affects how much solar radiation is absorbed.

I suspect that it would take more than a second for the Van Allen belts to collapse.

If you were a musician, this would be a problem. With regard to the background/homework issue, this is normal. You only remember what you notice: if you're concentrating on your homework, you are not noticing the music (and probably anything else either). As for picking out instruments, remembering melodies, etc., well, some melodies are more memorable than others If you study music a bit (e.g., maybe take a music appreciation class), you'll find that you understand it a lot more, and will be better able to detect the structure and elements. The more you understand about it, the easier to hear and appreciate it. Try reading "Musicophilia" by Oliver Sacks, and then reconsider whether you have a problem or not Enjoy!

Fred. No, seriously, that would be Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga. Enjoy, Grant

How about a denaturing SDS-PAGE? Should show that your purified Ab turns into two populations of proteins having different weights. However, this does not prove that they aren't heterotetramers, or heterohexamers, etc.

Nope. Depends on temperature, pressure, crystal structure, etc.

Wikipedia explains it fairly well.

To some extent, the experimenter's expectations limit the results because the experimenter must decide what to measure. So, you only determine certain aspects of situation. Thus, for example, if you are running an experiment to measure the index of refraction of a crystal, you are probably only measuring light ray angles, and not temperature, charge distribution, gravity, etc. However, our expectations do not determine the outcomes of our measurements: otherwise we would not need to run the experiments at all... If you're concerned about collapsing wavefunctions by observation, you need not worry. You're only going to have a superposition of states if you very carefully set it up that way: most of the time, your system will decohere essentially instantly.

Yep. See Wikipedia for a pretty good introduction.

Trace amounts that have escaped, and other materials that have been rendered radioactive through exposure to radiation. There are a number of ways that radioisotopes can escape. "Polonium-210 is a low-melting, fairly volatile metal, 50% of which is vaporized in air in 45 hours at 55oC." *** "The energy released by its decay is so large (27.5 calories per curie per day or 140 watts/gm) that a capsule containing about half a gram reaches a temperature above 500oC." Thorium has a high melting point, but decays to Radon - a radioactive gas. Uranium and Thorium are pyrophoric: when machined or filed, the filings can spontaneously burst into fire. One can imagine handling these materials very carefully, in a glove box, and then going to clean the glove box (or even just to dispose of it). How does one make sure that there is less than 10^-11 g of a material left inside the box?

You get all the oxygen you need from the air: why would you need it in the water too? The only real effect I imagine is that it might upset the population of anaerobic bacteria in your gut. You should have a nice, healthy relationship with your gut flora: no need to purge. Recent research suggests that you actually need that gut flora: your immune system evolved to deal with it, and proper operation of the immune system seems to require the balance. As for alkalinity: acids taste sour, and bases taste bitter. You want your water to taste bitter? Don't waste your money.

There's a Wiki entry for it. As a practical matter, contamination occurs from handling radioisotopes and their packaging/shielding materials (which become radioactive). The quantity that is toxic for some materials is just incredibly miniscule. For example: Polonium: "The maximum permissible body-burden for ingested polonium is only 0.03 microcuries, which represents a particle weighing only 6.8 x 10^-12 grams. Weight for weight it is about 2.5 x 10^11 times as toxic as hydrocyanic acid." Plutonium: "The maximum permissible body burden, or the amount that can be maintained indefinitely in an adult without producing significant body injury, for Pu239 is now set at 0.04 microcurie (0.6 micrograms). It is recommended that the concentration of plutonium in air not exceed 0.00003 micrograms per cubic meter. Plutonium, therefore, is one of the most dangerous poisons known." Americium: "Americium must be handled with great care to avoid personal contamination. As little as 0.02 microgram of Am241 is the allowable body burden (bone). The alpha activity from Am241 is about three times that of radium. When gram quantities of Am241 are handled, the intense gamma activity makes exposure a serious problem." Uranium: "Uranium and its compounds are highly toxic, both from a chemical and radiological standpoint. Finely divided uranium metal, being pyrophoric, presents a fire hazard. The maximum recommended allowable concentration of soluble uranium compounds in air (based on chemical toxicity) is 0.05 mg/cu meter; for insoluble compounds the concentration is set at 0.25 mg/cu meter of air. The permissible body level of natural uranium (based on radiotoxicity) is 0.2 microcurie for soluble compounds; for insoluble compounds the level is 0.009 microcurie, or in air 1.7 x 10^-11 microcurie per milliliter." Source: The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 56th Edition. U and Pu oxidize readily in moist air. You can imagine how difficult it is to avoid letting such a tiny amount escape... FWIW, I'm a chemist by education.

This is a common misconception. Animal testing is fairly heavily regulated by the USDA. Research facilities that conduct animal testing are required to have an animal welfare ethics board ("Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee" or "IACUC"), and all experiments and protocols must be approved. The board must include at least one veterinarian, and members who are not affiliated with the research facility. The researcher must certify in writing that the proposed experiment is not an unnecessary duplication of other work. You can find the full text of the regulations at the USDA website. Grab a cup of coffee before you start reading In all respects, animals must be treated humanely.

Fever is part of your immune response. Yes, inflammation causes the fever, due to the release of cytokines that have that activity, but it is not an accidental by-product. Infection is a race between your immune system and the invading pathogens: the pathogens multiply rapidly. If they multiply rapidly enough, they can overwhelm your immune response. Your immune system (particularly lymphocytes - T cells, B cells, neutrophils, macrophages, etc.) also multiply rapidly after they are activated. Changing your body temperature affects the efficiency of the pathogen's enzymes, and (hopefully) slows them down a bit.

IIRC, you have a lot of Ca++ cations too. For anions, Cl-, PO3--, and RCOO- are probably the most abundant.

Just out of curiosity, what is it that you are against? Testing drugs on animals first, or developing new drugs altogether? There are still many diseases and disorders that do not have effective treatments.

Looking at the structure, I don't see any way to modify the molecule itself to make it water-soluble. Your best bet would be to formulate it with a surfactant or lipid, to make (respectively) an emulsion or a liposomal dispersion. It won't be a true solution. However, liposomal dispersions can be lyophilized to a dry powder (often mixed with mannitol), and instantly reconstituted by adding water.

Might find a few ideas here...

Not so much a physics problem as a chemistry problem. A chemical reaction occurs at the electrodes inside the battery: in a rechargeable battery, the reaction is fairly reversible. In a non-rechargeable, not so much.

I haven't tried this before. You could try absorbing it onto sugar. If you want to avoid having a sweet solution, you can use mannose.