Dak

Ah yes, i suppose the chinese govournment could also ask for the emails, or for google to scan the emails for certain keywords.

Google aren't 'effecting' the data-censoring, tho: the chinese country has approximately 14 gateways connecting them to the rest of the internet that all have filtering software installed, meaning that the censoring is happening anyway, via google or otherwize. So i dont see googles actions as helping the censoring -- which would happen with or without google -- but JUST as complying with the law. And yes, they could withold their servises* from china, but as a slight alteration on bascules point, they're not really serving the chinese govournment, but themselves (making money) and the chinese people. I dont think that googles refusal to relinquish search data should be overlooked, either: I'd prefer to see most chinese people using a search engine that won't report the users that search for terms such as 'human rights' to the chinese govournment when requested, all things concidered. *actually, if i remember correctly google are witholding certain services -- such as GMail -- from china... wonder why?

Im sure that there are sites that google has removed from their english and american google searches due to their nature (more than likely due to differenses in the age of sexual consent in places like america and russia), and i dont really see that much differense -- from googles point of view -- between that and the current situation with china: both are censoring their search results to comply with regional legislature. As pangloss said, googles job isn't to dictate a countries policy -- it is to offer search results, whilst obviously refraining from breaking the laws of the local govournment.

this site will show you the differnce between a google.com and a google.cn search (the one on the right is google.com i think).

If the main selective pressures have been removed, and mate-selection were all that remains, would that result in a segregation of H. sap. sap into different sub-sub-sub species (as far as i can see, current mate-choice seems to be assortive)

The selfish gene theory is a valid 'alternative' theory to darwinian evolution. I didn't read the papers due to their inclusion of words such as 'quantumn phisics' (i dont get phisics), but as for junk dna, it would seem asif they may have some structural/functional purposes, for example introdusing bends into the chromosome, weakening the adhesion of the two strands (poly-pyrimidine repeats), forming hoogstein-bonds and thus allowing for self-anneling and so the formation of complex structures (eg, telomeres), so yeah junk dna seems asif it could be far from 'junk', even tho it doesnt code for protiens (hope that was relevant). Both darwinian evolution and the selfish gene theroy can explain how the junk dna could evolve. However, any darwinian evolution requires a limitation of resorses -- food, mates, etc -- and the fact that failure to acquire those resorses results in a decreased ability to reproduce. Therefore, any inheritable trait -- read 'strech of dna', coding or otherwize -- that increases an organisms ability to get food, mates, etc, will increase the chances of the organism passing on that strech of dna, and so the advantageouse trait will propagate throughought the population at a rate that is proportional to its usefulness (slight over-simplification, but hey-ho). My question is as follows: In developed countries, very few people seem to be lacking in any resorse to the point that they cannot reproduce: very few people have so little food/money that it stops them from having childereen, and mates are found, reguardless of the traits of the individuals involved, including some otherwize pretty crippling traits -- i, for example, am extremely short-sighted, and im sure that i wouldnt be able to function and survive to reproduce if it werent for my contacts, the lack of predators, etc (very shortsighted). With the lack of effective limitation on resorses, i don't see how darwinian evolution can work on humanity as a whole, although i realise that this is only really applicable to developed countries. In other words, random mutation --(selection)--> evolution; is it possible that selection has been largely negated in modern society, thus turning evolution back into random change?

is evolution 'happening' anymore? with the ability of humans to correct disadvantageouse alleles and generally lower the death rate to a level whereby most people, barring random events, get a chance to pass on their genes, is the human race evolving?

'twould depend largely on bad driving being a genetic trait, and the ability of the bad drivers to get themselves killed before procreating. Also, bad drivers tend to take a lot of innocent bystanders out with them, evening the selective score a bit. So probably no.

Apart from the method by which they are most commonly taken, tobbaco and cannabis are nothing alike. Nicotine is (very) phisically addictive, cannabis is not (although you can become psycologically dependant); at the doses that it is taken in, nicotine has a very mild psycological effect, cannabis a large one; nicotine effects your mood, cannabis effects your mood and your ability to think strait, descision making, motor skills etc; nicotine is the narcotic responsable for the most deaths per year, cannabis is directly responsable, per year, for 0 acute fatalities, aprox 0 chronic fatalities, and 'very few' indirect deaths (in england -- the figures are presumably the same in the us). So, gurt-big differense between cannabis and tobacco.

If any of you have made what you consider to be a particulaly good post explaining a scientific concept/theory/process/fact/thingy/etc, then post a link to it in this thread and i'll wikify it and inport it into WiSci, which is our new science encyclopedia wiki, incase you didn't know. It doesn't have to be great -- the nature of wikis allows for inportation of incomplete/slightly incorrect articles that will later get fixed, so dont be shy.

Whilst the inside of meat generally doesn't contain much bad bacteria, it can still contain flukes -- evil little parasitic animals that bury themselves in the flesh of the animal.

WiSci. It'd increase awareness of it, maybe interest a few SFN members to join it, and would allow us to ask questions etc so that SFN members can contribute to WiSci even if they aren't WiSci members. Just an idea (not nessesarily a good one)

The staggering increase in oil, coal, steel and electrisity production, along with the increase in manufactured goods production and the results of the 'projects', of socialist russia -- which, as i said, was a result of stalins (somewhat despotic) 5-year-plans (which i was reffering to when i said 'effective') rather than of communism. Also, you can't argue with the fact that, at the time of the cold war, communist russia was one of the two biggest powers in the world by quite a margin (capitalist america being the other one); as i said, not nessesarily a direct result of communism, but still an effective communist state.

I disagree -- if enough people would make a desision only to later regret it, and the repercussions would be severe enough, then there is, in my mind, justification for not allowing people to make that descision for themselves. The (english) law, for example, that seatbelts must be worn -- yeah, it seems a bit 'motherish', but the simple fact is that many people, left to their own devises, would not wear a seat belt, and would risk death as a result; fatal road traffic accidents have undoubtedly gone down as a result of the law. Of all the drugs I think nicotene is the best argument for why some drugs should be illegalised... its highly addictive, if memory serves correctly then more than 50% of smokers want to quit, and it's fatal; i think the govournment would be well within their rights to illegalise it and take away people 'right' to make that desision (freedom isnt always nessesaraly good... freedom of choice is also freedom to make mistakes). Having said that, the drugs that are actually illegal could do with a review in my oppinion.

Cheers zyncod -- i was really having trouble finding those things out

yeah, it is unfortunately easyer to get people to do things for selfish reasons than for altruistic ones. However -- and this is more of a result of the despotic way in which communist russia was run than due to the fact that it was a communism -- the biggest pieriod of industrial growth, as far as im aware, was in communist russia just prior to world war II; stalins 5-year plans dragged russia to a level where it could compete with the other superpowers in just over 10 years (if memory serves correctly). Now, Im not saying that it was nice, but it was effective... maybe some form of toned-down 'x-year plans' in a socialist society could work well? Then you'd still have the drive to innovate and inprove that is present in capitalism, with the ideological niceties of communism.

I always thought that politics could do with some kind of moderation system. I'd like to see politicians argue on a board like this... they'd get perma-banned for persistant logical falicies so quickly hmm... maybe we could invite a couple of the lower-ranking ones on?

communism != despotism any more than Democracy = capitalism The lack of freedoms in a commuism is aimed soley at buisnesses, not nessesaraly at the people; it is possible to have a socialist state where the trade is govournment controlled and the people have freedom in all other areas, eg a democratic communism. so the comparisons between democracy and communism/communism and despotism are not entirely acurate.

Hi. could anyone help me with some revision/learning? I missed these lectures due to illness -- knowing these things would give me a good starting point for the solid revision: 1/where do tandem repeats come from? I know that they cause recombination misalinments, which can reslut in their elongation, but this only elongaes existing TNRs: what actually causes them in the first place? 2/is there any difference between the structural effects of trinucleotide repeats and tetranucleotide repeats? eg, mononucleotide repeats can cause bends in the dna helix, triNRs can cause complex dna structures (like hair pins etc)... am i right in assuming that any oligonucleotide repeats have similar properties to triNRs? 3/ other than telomeres, are there any other functional TRs? Cheers

I want to know how the tissues allow the other 1% of the viruses to 'live' outside of the human body.

and not the nice kind... the ones from macdonalds

Are you arguing that human's violent instincts evolved as a defence against getting analy violated? If so, then that's certainly an interesting and unique theory, but its probably more to do with natural selection trying to pass on the stronger genes, from a time when phisical fitness was the most inportant charectoristic.

I sat down dejectedly on the cold floor to contemplate my next move...

try a google image search. Note that, usually, gross morphological oddities are due to errors in the developmental proccess, which means that they are not nessesaraly genetic mutations: environmental (eg, tamazipan) or pure luck (eg, siamese twins) can cause them as easily, if not easyer, than genetics can. In other words, in many cases they are not inheritable, and so can't really be used as direct evidence for evolution. [edit]As aguy2 pretty-much said [/edit]