Aubiegirl

I'm preparing for my biology final and was reviewing the Kreb's Cycle, and there is one thing that I'm a little unclear about. After alpha-ketoglutarate is oxidized and decarboxylated, the resulting succinyl group is bound to coenzyme A. Then in the next step, when the succinyl-CoA is cleaved, energy released drives the phosphorylation of GTP. What I didn't understand was that if breaking the bond released enough energy to yield a GTP and then ATP, why was there no input of energy needed to form the bond between the succinyl group and CoA in the first place? This isn't a question on an assignment, I hope it doesn't seem like I'm asking for someone to do my homework for me, just something that puzzled me that I was hoping for some clarification on. Thanks in advance for your time!

I have been dealing with anorexia for six years now, and it is NOT something you want to even think of toying around with, like has already been discussed, it can be highly addictive. I think some people are more susceptible to it than others, just like some people are more prone to OCD (many eating disorders have OCD components, but there is no cookie cutter eating disorder case, each had different facets/causes). In my family, three people in the last two generations have died from anorexia, none of which were raised in the same households. For me, it started out with wanting a 'perfect body' but after a while even I realized I looked awful, but I just kept going because it simply became 'the way I do things', you come to define yourself by it and it can be such a powerful cycle once you're sucked in. You can know what you're doing is harmful, you can know it's wrong, you can hate yourself even while you're engaging in certain behaviors, and despite all of that it's still terrifying to let go of it. There are much better ways to better yourself than to try to take yourself higher with deprivation. It can make you feel powerful, but it's an illusion, it truly is a disease. I'm 19 years old and I have osteoporosis, heart damage, and slim to none chances of having children. I've been making progress and am truly trying to leave the disorder behind, but it's something that will screw up your health long after you've 'quit'. Also, it can give you a high but it WON'T improve your mental function, there were times at my lowest weights when I literally couldn't read anymore, not because I'd forgotten how but because it was absolutely impossible for me to focus or retain anything, I could read the same paragraph over and over for thirty minutes and still not be able to tell you what it was about. I can't emphasize enough how much this is NOT something you want to experiment with.

I read it over the summer, it was definitely the best book I've read the entire year, I highly highly recommend it!!!

If you're ever in doubt about how many chromosomes are in a cell at a given time (it can be confusing because a chromosome can have either one or two chromatids depending on its mitotic state) a good rule of thumb is to count the centromeres.

I'm not sure about citric versus ascorbic acid or anything like that, but when I had guinea pigs (which, like humans, need to get vitamin C from their diet instead b/c they can't make it themselves) all the books and everything said to pay attention to the packaging dates on their food and to store it in opaque containers, because after too long the vitamin C would degrade. Just thought I'd toss that in as a real world example. Isn't there something similar with milk? Is it the vitamin D that is supposed to be protected by the opaque jugs?

-Glass of water -Chemistry lab manual -Ipod (60 GB video version), and two sets of headphones -empty can of Minute Maid Light -German Shepherd calendar (the kind with a new page for every day) -birthday card -small notebook -the November 10 edition of Nature -a leather cd book with all my software cds -two orange and blue "shakers" aka pom poms (for football games, I'm an Auburn student and you must have them at games, we have school spirit oozing out our asses at this school, WAR EAGLE!) -spring semester course catalog -notes for the research paper I'm currently working on

I read what you've got so far, and you were right about silicon needing much higher temperatures, it was smart to at least not eliminate carbon from the organism's structure, and you made a good choice with having it in the skin because most of the silicon in 'regular' organisms is found in connective tissue, including the skin. Also, retaining carbon in the organism saves you from having to find an alternative to carbohydrates as an energy source (unless of course you had all of your dwarves on an Atkins diet ). Also, since dwarves are diggers/tunnellers you could try to cite high temps near Earth's core as being conducive to silicon organisms But the problem with silicon is that while carbon is stable in a variety of forms (rings, double bonds, long chains, etc) silicon is unstable in many of those configurations. Carbon compounds can have huge numbers of molecules, but I think the most silicon atoms in an atom of any known compound is only about six, which is another serious constraint. Also, carbon atoms have chirality, or "handedness", which silicon lacks, and that also affects bonding and chemical structures. You have a good concept, extremely good idea and pretty creative, and honestly someone else besides me knows a lot more about the gritty details of silicon function. I know what the problems would be but how to solve them is probably a question more for someone more specialized in this kind of thing. I really enjoyed reading what you've got so far, though, if you have anymore questions I'll do my best to answer them, and I'm sure someone else on these forums will be able to chime in also. You might want to check out this site: http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/silicon.htm for a lot of good information about silicon, and also some info about diatoms.

If the buildup of toxins is affecting your health, has your doctor mentioned dialysis?

It sounds like you've got a great project going, if you're looking for opinions on what you listed as being in progress, these articles particularly caught my interest, although it could be because my science interests focus on biology:

It depends on the context, if you're reading for pleasure it seems that most people would want to read it completely (without needing to be studious), if you rush through it it seems to defeat the purpose of reading for pleasure, although that can differ depending on the person. If you're reading for research or study, skim through first to get a general idea of the concepts and then go back and concentrate on the important parts (reading carefully, taking notes) to really master them.

Perfect excuse to upgrade to the new video Ipod they just released!

The quality of my websurfing has increased so incredibly much since I dumped Internet Explorer for Firefox, now when I have to use IE on school lab computers I can't imagine how I ever tolerated it all the time!

I was just curious, I couldn't tell from your responses. The only difference it makes depends on your access to resources, lab time, etc, the duration of time you had to complete the experiment, and what equipment/supplies you'd be able to obtain to do the procedure.

Are you actually going to have to perform this procedure, or are you just asked to describe how you would hypothetically do it?

Thanks!