skyhook

are you a boss and he is an employee ? or are you a doctor or some kind of health professionals and he is a patient that refuse to go on medication ? I'll presume you're the boss. and my sixth sense tells me, you seem to be finding a reason to fire him. That's the decision you have to make, I can't say right or wrong. I probably get fired often enough. Some companies have some health benefits for their employees, and if the employee have major health problems, the company may be footing large bills, but it is different in some countries, so maybe it didn't apply. Does being eccentric get you fired ? As you mention tremors and alcoholism, I thought alcoholism caused tremors but I've not seen it myself except my late granddad being an alcoholic and getting violent and can't control his addiction. Drinking cold water, he feels very thirsty or something ? or trying to stay awake at work, sluggishness? OCD is classified as a mental problem or disease. so is depression and anxiety disorders, schizophrenia. I can't tell my potential employer I've this or that condition , or I'll be at a huge disadvantage. probably never make it pass interview. and faced discrimination from colleagues. So an employee tries to hide his condition and the employers always try to weed out undesirable elements. but if OCD isn't serious, most patients will probably function just like the other employees, you just have to accept some eccentricity if you can accept that. man... its an uphill battle...

Uploaded with ImageShack.us This is quite a big pod of an orchid. I've just flasked it, and I took a few pictures. Orchids seeds can be germinated in bottles, and it was first done probably a century ago by someone. This pod is still green. If it is too immature, none will germinate. Green pods just before it turns yellow and split seems to be the preferred stage to flask orchids. I do not know what stage this pod is at, anyway I go ahead and flask it. I got some jam bottles, clean them. I cooked some agar nutrient, using a recipe I got off a website. fill a bit of the agar nutrient into the jam bottles. I'm not using the commercial plant nutrient, as I can't find it at nurseries yet and I didn't order online. The bottles are steamed 3 times at 12 hours interval for about 30 minutes. Supposed to be 24hrs interval, but I'm impatient. If I have a pressure steaming device , I can steam it just one time. This time ,I steamed those bottles in an old rice cooker, which is not used after we bought a new one. Not a good idea actually. but that's what I did. After 2-3 days of preparations, I put the bottles in a new fish tank, and cover with a yellow trash bag. I prepare a weak bleach solution in a spray bottle in 1:20 concentration, sprayed everything in the interior of the fish tank with it, and also into the trash bag which is unused before. This is to kill the germs in the air inside the tank. The trash bag covered the fish tank perfectly. I tape up the edges. Left this for at least 20minutes. oh, and the pod is soak in a bottle of bleach and detergent for 20 minutes too. as well as the tweezer. After 20 minutes or more, time for some action. I cut open the pod, and transferred the seeds into the several bottles. I could only do up 8 bottles, there are a lot more seeds left over. I disposed them. quite a waste. This is handled with the trash bag as an isolating layer. The bottles should be quickily opened, transfer seeds and closed. After that, I can safely open up the trash bag, remove the bottles and I washed it under tap to remove the bleach smell. I leave it for 2 days on the table. To my dismay, 6 of 8 bottles were contaminated as a milky liquid or some stuff start to appear. LOL... only left 2 bottles, which I presume is the first 2 bottles I did. The rest of the bottles are quickily discarded. Now is probably the third day as I'm typing this. I've done this for probably 10 times , done some dendrobiums, oncidiums, and spathoglotis. I get them to the 2 months stage, after that they deteriorate as they need to reflask. The risk of this is the effect of bleach on human health, which I'm quite worried, but I just hope I don't get problems in future. and the next is unknown pathogens which slips into the flask. There are things which I could have done, I'll try to do next time. anyone can comment on this if you want..

you can look into transmitting FM and AM radio signals, which is established quite long ago. It is call FM modulation, or AM modulation, and you can find it in textbooks or wikipedia. However for practical purposes, I don't know how to do up the circuits.

I heard that there is always a demand for engineers. I'm not engineer level, but just a Technician when I was working. Now I'm slacking at the beach or something. yes I think aerospace engineer earn a lot and so are chemical engineers in the petroleum trade( with some risk involved). I was in electronics and I feel some electronics factories went to china or neighbouring countries. we have some semiconductor plants, but I somehow hate donning a cleansuit. Mechanical and electrical engineers will always have jobs. Biomedical engineering, I think has several lines you may end up in. You could work in a hospitals as biomedical engineers, which do things like certify the equipment is working properly,with lots of nurses to ogle, or you could be in some pharmaceutical factories donning clean suits, manufacturing plastics surgical wares etc. There are large MNC that make medical equipments, like Panasonic, Fujinon, the equipments are varied,lasers machines, colonoscopes ,ultrasounds, etc.., and its a trade that is quite specialised, if you have experience, you may be in demand. The most rich of these lot are sales engineers, I think. There is this remote surgery equipment I saw, that's quite impressive. One thing I was a little troubled is there may be rare occasions when you are near a very ill patient, and you tend to feel uneasy. and some years ago, there was a SAR epidemic, and H1N1 and you could drop unexpectedly. hahaha... I was mildly interested in environmental engineer, but it seems the work involves making sure construction worksites are safe, preaching no accidents, no mosquito breeding, and such. so check up what it is before you go in. There is also software engineers and IT engineers, which sometimes pays well, but the numerous talents from india and elsewhere may undercut you. <br><br>hope you can do something you like, and pays well.

I would think scientists are doing that. I saw on documentary those whale scientists took tissue samples of whales, and those animals they immobilized using a tranquilizer and draw blood sample from a needle. I don't know what they do with these samples though. no idea what is the critical number of animals to preserve diversity. Gerard Durrell said in his book he took about six(I think) pink pigeons and successfully increase the numbers in captivity. The Passenger pigeons went extinct after efforts are taken to save it. Worst case, the number is one. and after that, you can try cloning it. Charles Darwin said that there are more variations if the population is large. So it is a good thing if you can get a large population. One that is not mixed with domestic stocks. Animals adapt to domestication and become tame and some changes that make it difficult when you want to return it back to the wild. I think when the sperm and egg combine, there is a rearrangement of some genes, that why someone look different from his siblings, and that could be a form of diversity. An animal that rebound from near extinction, American bison. That parrot Kakapo is very rare, but well known case, might have some research done on it.

Testing picture upload as attachment... seems to work. I clicked "Use Full editor" button, and there is an attachment box, so I uploaded a picture from my computer to this thread. 8MB limit... could be a load . At some other forums elsewhere, first we uploaded picture to a free hosting site like http://photobucket.com/ , then we get a link or code from there and copy and paste to your threads here. For video clip, it is Youtube.com, I think it is the same as the above, and you can find the embed code and copy and paste, or just post the link. I seldom post video clips, so not sure about this.

If it is free ebooks, yes there are some websites that have a collection of free ebooks.Probably not as complete as a local library. In the internet age, anyone can write anything , don't know about the credibility.

I'm using Tangent Digital mini scale. Up to max 300g. cost about $47 usd, I converted from local currency. reasonable price. Some places may sell cheaper. There may be other makers of such products. or check second-hand stores, ebay...

one example is hyrax related to elephant. The rodent is hairy while the elephant looked like it doesn't have much hair.

I've always wondered why some people have a "unique" smell. and think it is due to genes. might be lacking some enzymes to break down some chemicals in the sweat. I think can try going vegetarian for a while. Beef have a smell, goat have a strong odor too. Vinegar would have been better to include small amounts in the diet, instead of applying on the skin. Might improve women's bad odor problem, don't know about men though. Some trivals...Stelechocarpus burahol - This fruit is said to deodorize the body. but I personally don't think I'll take it because I'm afraid it may make one impotent for a short while. I've never take it before, so I don't know what's its effect. It is a rare fruit that is not in commercial production. I've only seen it in pictures. If the above is true, there might be other herbs and fruits that might do that too. maybe the apples , peaches might do it already.

I'm suspecting that internet make people more fanatical in their religions instead. That's where some of the young guys picked up twisted info, and want to be martyr.

I don't really understand what is metaphysical continuum too. I guess it exist all the time. metaphysical "things" exist in the minds of humans as ideas. The existence of humans, and when the ideas are passed on, enable the metaphysical things to exist. They call it meme is it ? an equivalent of genes, but in information form.

deviantART.com seems like popular for graphics stuff. coolness - 3D stuff are cool, I was meddling in it for a while but give up. one of the free source of 3D tools is POVRAY raytracer. But for the 3d animation industry, maybe need to learn the more popular commercial soft-wares, which is not this one, I think.

I thought about a few examples... High up in the atmosphere, there is ozone, O3 and it is said to be able to "scrub" some chemicals in the atmosphere. so I think with the extra oxygen it could be oxidizing. For iron smelting, iron ores is heated to very high temperatures, and with coke or a carbon source. and after some processes, pure iron is obtained. I just read that carbon monoxide is a reducing agent. In nature, I guess volcano vents have high temperatures. and under the right circumstances, some stuff might get reduced. and there are peat swamps in some countries. Some bodies are found buried in them in relatively good conditions, but they are ancient. However, I don't know if it is considered reducing environment, as the body is still rotting but very slow. and also I've heard of salt lakes but never been to one. salt being a preservative, maybe it has some effects on oxidation.

Any Sun worshiping insects ?

30, Self-styled, self-proclaimed scientist & engineer & free-thinking Philosopher.

alex sam, I think you should follow the Prophet's words. Your opinion that pregnant women can fast at the later stage of pregnancy seems odd. While it is voluntary,I would think there are some really pious followers who will follow your words.

It may be possible to dwarf animals, but to dwarf a rhino is a lot more difficult than the usual pets. Because it is protected species, and it is hard to get stocks. I think there are rabbit breeds that are quite small size, Hamsters, and mice have small breeds too.I don't remember seeing them 20 yrs ago, so these could be quite new. dogs and ponies have miniatures too. It is selective breeding or artificially manipulating the genes of the animals in the labs. The aquarium trade have created many dwarf ornamental fishes. Not really dwarf but the body of the fish is shortened, which creates a smaller rounder fish. Many species of tetras, and cichlids show very uniform rounded shapes in retailing shops. I've heard it is by using some chemicals, but I don't know how they do it. I kept bettas before, and there are breeds called giant bettas which are about 2-3 times larger than the original breeds. This is by selective breeding. It is generally quite sluggish compared to other breeds. boring fishes with high retailing price. However, all this fancy breeds seemed like gimmicks, and I lost interest. Breeding too many fishes made me think of the ethnics, and the money part. Guppies and bettas are quite interesting subjects for learning about genetics.

How about fire hose ?

can I know what is it used for ? or what is this device ? Just curious, but it is most likely out of my ability to build one.

This fishes show up at the local aquarium stores occasionally. I've the impression these fish isn't easy, as it seems like a coldwater fish, and I'm in the tropics. It also grows to huge size. What do you feed it? I've not keep them before.

I'm just speculating... I'm thinking it is the frequency of the sound that effect plant growth. When you are near a speaker, you can feel the bass sounds on your skin, but the higher pitch sounds is not so much. Very high frequency energies can pass right through a person is it ? like the frequencies used in ultrasounds and handphones. back to the bass sounds, so the speaker caused vibrations in the air, and we feel the sound waves on the skin. The plant may feel it too, like being physically pushed, or the vibrations agitate some molecules, maybe soil nutrients or plant fluids. This could have resulted in better growth. However, I don't know if the power of the frequency sources are the same ,will the effects on plants be the same. Some studies that I've heard is on music on plant growth, like classical music , rock and pop music , which is a combination of tones. However, I didn't hear about one that is on pure frequency tones. Most likely there are some. I wrote this without Googling up on the topic. second issue. Yes, I think there is electrical signal in plants.

This link shows a microscope attach to an intel-play microscope component. This toy is discontinued, maybe there are newer products out there. http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjan00/jhqx3.html I'd think no soldering is needed, just building a supporting structure, or adapter to connect cam to microscope. It might be a little more complex than that though, as sometimes precision is needed.

I wish that the blind can see again.I've a relative that has got a genetic defect that cause blindness at a young age.I think that it may be possible already, but if it is possible why is there blind people.so it is probably in the experimental stage. Please god speed up the process, and make it available at the hospitals, and keep the cost affordable. I think I'll support genetic engineering too for this , if I've to make a decision.

fish do breath surface air. Labyrinth fishes, bettas, gouramis ,snakeheads, climbing perch(Anabas testudineus),knife fish, swamp eel,.... Catfish have many species, those sucker-mouth catfish go to the water surface to take in air, and go down again. It might be adaptation to the water or environment, which are poorly oxygenated. Pools of still water, or water which just have low oxygen level due to decaying matter at the bottom. But sometimes, the conditions changed, like from dry season to wet season, and these fish can live in fast flowing streams to flooded plains too. I've kept some of these fish in aquarium before, and it seems while they can breath surface air, with aeration from air pump they may grow better. They can't survive long out of water. snakeheads, walking catfishes may be a few hours, once they dried up, they die too. They can survive longer if kept in water which is above their body, and can be crowded in a container for a while, as seen in some markets in some places in asia.