Dak

the higher the clock speed is set (ie the more hertz that go through the prosesser at once), the hotter the prosesser gets (due to the resistance of the processer) -- if the prosesser gets too hot, the conductive properties of the prosesser changes to the point where the processer stops working properly. cooling systems just stop this from happening, and the aim is to get them as cold as is nessesary for them to run at their advertised clock speed, although if you soup-up the cooling system you can set them to run at a faster speed.

i dunno... intelligence isnt the best survivability-charechteristic, but it is relatively good if you are by far the most intelligent species, so i can see another species evolving advanced intelligence... and the human body plan is quite groovy (opposeable thumbs go well with intelligence). yeah, they wouldnt be humans, but i think theyed be fairly human-like. or possibly rats. there are as many of them as us, theyre everywhere that we are, and theyre quite intelligent already. maybe rats would be the next intelligent species?

as well as fire, vaccuoles (little sacks of phospholipids) also adsorb new phospholipids (consume), which causes them to grow and, when they reach a certain size, they split in two (ie reproduce). they also float about so i suppose could be said to move. as for die, this cant be used in the definition of life, as for somethin too die it must have been defined as being alive in the first place (otherwize it doesnt die, it ceases operating/breaks etc) opholites answre is good, unless your taliking about the possiblity of life on another planet -- opholites answre would have to be reworded in that case, as it is too terra-centric (eg, replace the reference to nucleic acids with a reference to the need for a way of storing and passing on the hereditary information etc)

w00t! 11! cool game, cheers bettina

No. from Mozillas website

back on topic, would you like to discuss any of your arguments against evolution?

I think its safe to say that britain will vote no to the constitution, and lots of the remaining contries seem split (although quite a few are in favour). BBC news summary of contries stances a (very brief) summary of the constitution

^ OMG, episode x of 'when biochemistry gets complicated and confusing'!!! urm, am i right in thinking that the iron molecule('s eletrons?) get contorted by the interaction with the haem bit, so its not the same as most iron(III) (hence the different colour, which is part way between the red of iron(III) and the blue of iron(II))? more like iron(2.9) than iron(III)? also, does the Cu in haemocyanin become oxidised to green copper(II) in the air, do ya recon? ok, in that case: if deoxyginated blood is dark red/purple, and the veins are pinky-red, why do they look blue? surely the pinky-red arteries should contain the blue part of the purply blood, and only let the red wavelengths out (like a red filter over a light), hence the veins should appear red...

Nothing, IIRC... i believe the pleural membrane is a double-layer of membrane which seperates the lungs from the ribs. theres probably some fluidy stuff inbitwix.

haemocyanin contains copper as opposed to iron. the deoxyginated form (copper I) is coulourless, and the oxygenated form (copper II) is blue. as coppor rust is green, id assume that, upon squishing the insect, the haemocyanin is fully oxidated in the air (to copper III?), whereupon the insects blood goes green. Same as the fact that the deoxyginated blood in our veighns is blue*, as it contains iron(II)oxide, but if you cut yourself it comes out red, as it oxidises in the air to iron(III)oxide (ironII being blue, ironIII being red) *apparently. I'v always been a tad scepticle about this, but i guess our veigns are blue, so maybe?

yeah, any bone with marrowbone in it contributes to the production of red and white blood cells as for breathing, the muscles and cartelage inbetween the ribs contract, causing the rib cage to shrink and expel air from the lungs (blow out quickly and pay attention to your ribs)

419eater reply. waste his time. hell, even try to get some money out of him. its been done before (see above link -- 419 is the nigerian (where most these scams originate) police code for fraud, apparently). i especially like the 'tale of the red breast' scam. SCAMMER: "dear sir. i need to use your account to clear $25,000,000 from the funds of a nigerian oil company. i will give you $2,500,000 for your cooperation. interested?" ANTI-SCAMMER: "sure" SCAMMER:"well, you need to send $1,800 to clear the paperwork so that the money can be transfered to your account" ANTI-SCAMMER"ok, but youll need to send me $80 withdrawl fee, so that i can afford to withdraw the $1,800 to send you so that you can transfer the $25,000,000 into my acount" and the scammer fell for it too...

Or maybe it was from a band of super-intelligent monkeys who genetically modified one of their own viruses in an attempt to wipe out humans, who were encroaching upon their forests. Or maybe, deep in the african jungles, there are groops of human and monkey heroine addicts, who sit around in circles sharing dirty needles. Or maybe its the first wave of preperatory-viral bombing from the vanguard of the alpha-centurian invasion forse, in their quest to take over the earth in the name of their god, HKJkj;lkjf;aipohe pahif ;alken f;ahf the third. Or maybe, just maybe, HIV evolved naturally without any interference from a/god, b/aliens, c/the american govournment, or d/any of the other people commonly blamed for the 'creation' of HIV. It may even have happened without any bestiality being involved (although im less certain on that last point... there are some very odd people in this world) current thougt is that SIV was contracted by bush men, by eating contaminated monkeys, although this is more a 'buest guess' than a known fact.

could you provide any of those sourses?

i missed this reply. yeah, thats why i said for the gold to be in the nucleouse rather than in the cell, but i guess the transcriptional enzymes would experience the same problem . oh well... back to plan A .

ahh, i was thinking slightly down the wrong tracks... yeah, that seems feasable. it wouldnt cure AIDS, but it could limit its spread as long as the CD4+ and corecepter of the VOD dont interfere with the immune system too much. One thing to bear in mind though, is the possibility that a lot of the pathogenicity of HIV possibly comes simply from the presence of gp120 being placed on the surface of the CD4+ cells, in which case the VOD could be as bad as HIV once theyve picked up the gp120 molecule (ill try and find a citation or two for that tomorrow) you seem to know a bit about HIV, has anything like this been proposed/tried before? I'v never heard it sujjested before. I'll have a hunt for it, and any related research, on pubmed tomorrow.

in that case, i agree -- nested genes are exquisit. hmm... i remain a tad scepticle on this point. what are you actually thinking will happen to the RNase? will the HIV capsid disolve once its bound to the VOD, thus exposing the HIV genome to the RNase? (in which case i suppose the RNA genome could be RNased with a relatively low level of RNase, which would reduce the impact on lymphocytes) oh yeah, the VOD would have to have coresepters to initiate fusion with the gp120+ thingys*, which would strengthen their interference with the immune system cells. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- *ok, can some one please tell me what the collective plural for cells and virions is?

are you sure? would it not degrade the cellular mRNA, tRNA and rybosomes? quick aside: nested genes, does that refer to the fact that the HIV genes' reading-frames overlap?

click the 'edit' button, in the bottom right of you post (to the left of the 'quote' button). this button disappears after 6 hours, due to the fact that on a couple of occasions, people have deled their posts days after they made them. this stops that from happening. if you realy need to edit a post that you made more than 6 hours ago, you have to PM a mod/admin, and get them to do it for you.

OK, not giving up on that idea, but heres another one: based on kylonicuses original idea and mokeles gold thing, would it be possible to culture CD4+ WBCs and somehow coat the host genome in heat-resilient histine? then plonk gold inside the nucleouse and inject into an AIDS patient. i assume that if HIV is inserted into these Au+/CD4+ cells' genome, that its genes within the genome would be constructed with regular histine and so would not have the heat-resilience. then, a quick zap of the EM ray, and all the gold lymphocites would heat up -- the genome would denature if it contained the non-heat-resilient DNA genes and the cell would die, whereas the HIV- cells would resist the heat and survive. or if anyone else can think of a way of heat-proofing the cells?

but if the HIV genome remains, then the patient would still be reinfected. Thered have to be a very high titre of vacuoles of doom if they were to adequately suppress AIDS using RNase, and that would of course screw the whole mRNA thingy... I think using something like lysase would be better, as it would distroy both the virions and the infected lymphocytes. here, this ideas pissing simple when you think about it, which makes me suspect its been thought of before and that theres something that were missing... what effect would the introduction of random CD4+ cells have on the immune system? would it screw it up? oh hang on, one potential problem: CD4 vacuole of doom (VOD) meets gp120+ thing (either HIV virion or previously infected CD4+ cell) CD4+ VOD and gp120+ thingy fuse contents of VOD meets contents of gp120+ thingy virion/infected lymphocyte are disolved HOWEVER the fusion of the VOD and the membrane of the gp120 thingy results in a CD4+/gp120+ VOD uh-oh... the CD4+ molecules on the VOD will continue to allow fusion with gp120+ thingies, but the addition of gp120 molecules to the surface of the VOD means that the VOD will now fuse with CD4+ cells. result - CD4+/gp120+ VOD now kills HIV virions, gp120+/CD4+ cells AND unchallenged CD4+ cells. hmmm... thats probably not good... anyway to stop that happening?

thats a tad black and white. not that it follows that its nessessaraly innacurate, but theres a whole shade of gray inbetween. What if he does love this woman, but not to the extent/in the same way as he loves his wife? what should he do then? give up a friend that he cares for? divorse his wife to be with his friend? franco, exactly how do you feel about this woman? love? like? friend? fancy? how deep and in what manner are your feelings for her?

i have blond hair and brown eyes, which is uncommon. id guess that the hair and eye colours are linked; a quick google search supports the idea, although there was no uber-scienticical research in the results, by the look of it.

maybe he equates knowledge with wisdom? in which case i feel obliged to point out that knowledgable people are not nessesaraly wize, and infact are oftern the stupidest people around. anyway, i find in complicated situations like this that honesty is by far the best policy; after all, no-one involved has done anything wrong so why shouldnt you be completely honest with each other? if you feel that the contact should be discontinued, then tell her -- and tell her why aswell. itd be better than simply drifting away from her and leaving her to work out why you did so, and it will remove the risk that you end up thinking of her as a nuicance that you cant get rid of. and tell your wife how you feel about your friend. It seems as if she is just a friend, and being married does not mean that you cannot have female friends. if you try and underplay your feelings for her atall, and your wife notices, then she may question by how much you are understating your feelings for her. better by far, i feel, that people are just honest in these kinds of situations. even if you do derive emotional pleasure from this woman: well, thats what friends are for. hope it goes well for you.

hey, thanx you three, i (think i) understand what dlls do now. yeah, i meant a malitiouse dll, which is desighned to get the program that runs/uses it to perform a crappy operation. (i believe svchost runs dlls at start-up? in that case, the malware will appear on the running prossesses list as 'svchost', as svchost will be doing the dirty work) malitiouse dlls are quite common, mainly in slyware (adware and spyware) as opposed to viruses (CoolWebSearch springs instantly to mind, but there are many, many others which use crappy dlls, either installling their own malitiouse ones or by making changes to existing dlls) hence why i wanted to know what dlls actually are. it all makes a tad more sence now. cheers guys.