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Check the required courses at various schools, especially the ones you would most likely attend. Course titles and descriptions will help you to understand their content. Speak/email advisors there. Discuss your concerns with professors or department heads. Determine what texts are used for the courses. The schools' bookstores might tell you online, or you may need to visit the schools' bookstores. Either visit the schools or local bookstores, and look through the books to see which chapters apply to the course and what they contain.

IMO, rain forests require more senses for survival, and the Vietnam War (and other wars) proved it. Thick vegetation limits sunlight, causes sunlight to create moving visual patterns, and limits visual range. Survival depends upon increased visual, aural and olfactory perception and processing. Soldiers were unaware of enemies hiding in the vegetation who were close enough to reach out and touch them. The US tried to develop people sniffers. Some were high-tech E63 Manpack Personnel Detector to detect their entry into possible ambush sites and to detect enemies in tunnels, and the airborne XM3 airborne personnel detectors which detected the odor of human sweat. Another device was a jar of bedbugs with a microphone inside, and the operator would listen through headphones to how the bugs reacted to air pumped through the jar. The jungle conditions of the Vietnam War also resulted the wide-spread use of infrared vision devices. Soldiers are much, much happier in open country, away from the nerve-wracking close quarters of the forests (of any type). Sentries (both modern military and distant ancestral) posted in trees, on hills, etc can see for miles. If anything, our ancestors’ migration onto the open plains alleviated the need to obtain and process so much sensory information, and that this brain power, developed for the rain forests, could be used for other purposes.

The calibration curve, also called a standard curve, is typically represented with a mathematical expression showing the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. By plugging in the independent variable of the unknown into the expression, you calculate the dependent variable. For example: Various substances (that is, standards) with known characteristics (for example, salt concentration in water) are measured for a particular characteristic dependent upon this characteristic (for example, electrical resistance between two electrodes set a fixed distance apart). The electrical resistance of each standard is measured, and a mathematical expression is generated that best matches the relationship between the salt concentrations (independent variable) and resistances (dependent variable). Then the sample of unknown salinity is measured for electrical resistance. The measured value is plugged into the expression, which then gives the salinity of the unknown sample. Almost nothing is measured directly. Even a bathroom scale does not measure mass, but the force of gravity due to the mass. And even then, the old-fashioned spring scales measure the deflection of a spring with a known spring constant subjected to the gravitational force due to the mass.

Down Syndrome babies suffer from Trisomy 21. We know "Down-generated" substances enter the mother's blood through the utero-placental barrier. The mother's body obviously matured many years earlier, so its development is not affected. However, if the Down baby is a twin, it's possible that Down-generated material can pass into the blood of the normal twin and produced Down-related phenomena in the otherwise normal baby.

IMHO, I think they can't accept that they themselves have done anything wrong because it infringes upon them feeling good about themselves. And there may be various degrees of denial. LOOKING INTO THE PAST. Older, conservative people have lived a long life and have a short future. They are in denial about having accumulated the most miles (compared to younger drivers) and having driven the worst polluters (from bygone years). They want to feel good about their lives and can't admit that their decades upon decades of driving ICE cars was "bad" and that they shouldn't be driving their current ICE car. IN THE IMMEDIATE SENSE. They don't want the freedom of having a car taken from them (same as loosing their license due to old age), and their limited wealth and fixed income would be seriously pinched if they had to go out and by a new hybrid (very few used hybrids are for sale). They don't like or need this newfangled technology. LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE. They don't have much of a "future" themselves, being as old as they are, so they personally have little stake in it. They also don't want to think that they have $#!^ in their own backyard. They don't want to think that they trashed the world that their children and grandchildren must now live in. THEIR PERSONAL CONTRIBUTION. They personalize it ... they only drive a little bit a few times a week, they don't drive billions of cars billions of miles around the world, so their own little car doesn't really contribute to the problem. Let other people switch over to those fancy hybrids if they want, they don't need to. The stinky buses and trucks are the cause of the problem. US VERSUS THEM. America blossomed after WW2 with the advent of the modern car and superhighways. Life was "good" back then, and the car made it happen. The ones who are to blame are those monstrously overpopulated, up-and-coming, backwards, polluting countries like India and China who are spoiling it for the rest of us. Let them change, not us. They're spoiling it for the rest of us.

I think the majority were atheists before they became scientists, instead of vice versa. A more accurate question may be: Why do so many atheist become scientists? And it may just be their lack of accepting religious stories leads them to search for proof. What differentiates humans from animals may involve our inherent search for more information and power (generically speaking, the purpose of life, etc). For some, the belief in the supernatural satisfies some of this searching. For others, they need more solid, logical tangible. “scientific” proof. It seems a matter of trust versus doubt. And even though some people may claim to be “scientific”, their knowledge, in effect, comprises a belief system due to the nature of their scientific knowledge … for example, the Theory of Evolution and the Big Bang Theory. I have encountered people who, like religious people, get emotionally defensive toward someone who doesn’t believe in their scientific beliefs. For example, I favor the Big Bounce Theory, and some Big Bang proponents get emotional that their way is the “only way”, just as religious people do. And they certainly don’t like hearing that the Big Bang Theory was invented by a Roman Catholic priest who described the Big Bang as the cosmic egg exploding at the moment of creation.

No, I never want to be a boss, and I'm not in the healthcare profession. I just worked with him, and simply cared about his wellbeing as one person to another. There were several of us concerned that he lived in his cramped little world filled with dysfunctional habits. He complained about the condition of his life, but he couldn't see his way out of his habits. Overall, he feels that nothing is his fault, his every problem is someone else's fault. Interestingly enough, his boss let him go today for consistently failing to perform the minimum requirements for the job during his probationary period. The guy even admitted that he couldn't do the work and didn't like the work. He expected to be let go, and he wasn't disappointed when it happened.

He began working with us a couple weeks ago, and we started noticing his behavior. He told me that he likes drinking 1 to 2 quarts of 32° ice water at a sitting until he's hypothermic and shakes (constantly). He somehow likes it. Others have noticed some of his various behaviors and mentioned them to him, and I've caught him repeatedly lying to others about it. He also has peculiar behaviors that have nothing to do with maintaining his blood glucose level. For example, he's germophobic and won't touch things that other people touch. He's also a former alcoholic. He seems wrapped up in his peculiar habits until someone breaks him out of them.

I find it unscientific to claim that an effect (ie, the 4-bar knee joint) can result from only one cause (ie, ID) because this insinuates that all causes (typically an infinite number) were tested and failed. To me, these ideas that "it can only be caused by ID" are wholly without substance and can be summarily dismissed. Besides, if the knee is the "perfect" joint for humans, why does it suffer from so many problems?

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I generally find that people's personalities transcend the issues at hand. So, "cross" rage is like road rage ... angry people venting their anger in whatever situation that confronts them, and they happen to choose innocent Christians at their victims. These people classically know little or nothing — and don't care to know — about the modern Christian church, and they cherry-pick their criticisms, sometimes going all the way back to the times of the Crusades. Get educated. And I call it "cross" rage because these people don't rage against Islam etc because Christianity is a religion one can criticize with some terrorist opening up a can of jihad on them. Think about it, after America suffered the largest foreign attack at home, these angry atheists came out of the woodwork and start criticizing the wrong people. Psychologists call this unconscious defense mechanism "displacement" ... classically described as coming home after a hard day at work and kicking the cat (because retaliating or speaking out at work might mean losing the job). Displacement is cowardly.

True, Marat. I saw him shaking again today and I decided to ask him, and he said the ice water makes him shiver!! (I think he's obsessive ... just a smidgen.) He also said he eats nine PB&WW sandwiches daily, which is 630 calories for the bread alone (35/slice), not counting the PB and the nutrition bars.

Bumper snicker seen yesterday :

A recent true story. On a warm, humid summer day, I walked into an air conditioned store and stayed for several minutes. I assume my eyeglass lens temp stabilized at the temp of the store's A/C'd air. As I left the store, my glasses "fogged up" until the outside air warmed them a bit. I went home, looked up the weather on the Internet and found that the outside temp was 82° and the dewpoint was 73°. Should I interpret my experience to mean that the A/C'd air in the store was at or below 73°?

Wow! Thank you everyone, I very much appreciate the information you gave me. This evening his sugar tested at nearly 300 mg/dL, so he didn't eat his snack. This is also the first time I saw him have tremors. I just googled diabetes tremors, and it says that low sugar causes them, so this seems contradictory except that maybe he also has Parkinson's, which diabetes can cause. And his diet doesn't seem healthy: His snacks throughout the day, every day, consist of nutrition bars and peanut-butter-on-whole-wheat sandwiches, but he says he eats chicken-based meals at home.

A middle-aged, set-in-his-ways, sedentary, overweight (BMI>25), former alcoholic is controlling his diabetes with diet alone. He checks his blood sugar 8 to 10, sometimes 15, times a day, and the numbers I have seen him record are about 125 through 150 mg/dL, once as high as 200, and he says he once measured down in the 80s, which he said was "not good". He often will test his blood, gulp down a snack, and 15 to 30 minutes later, test his blood again. He claims he's heat intolerant, he seems to sweat a bit more than others do in the same situations (but I never see any beading or running sweat), he drinks a lot of ice water (sometimes a quart or two at a sitting) and so, he also urinates frequently. He claims he must snack often during the day, which does not resemble eating, but more like taking the food as med (ie, gobbles it quickly and doesn't seem to taste or enjoy it). He's bipolar and on a med for it, but I think he acts very OCD about controlling his diabetes. Trying to do anything with him is like being part of a three-ring circus because he's seems almost constantly engaged in activities related to his diabetes. Does this case of diabetes seem properly managed? Is he possibly overly attentive to avoid having to take insulin? Or is he more likely obsessing? Thanks.

I think many/most Christians would tell a non-believer that we live in fallen world — this obviously ain't the Garden of Eden — and that being created from "dust" (instead of magical pixie powder or whatever) means we're seriously prone to malfunctions. A nasty disease that surprised me is fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva.

Thanks, JC. The OP led me to wonder how one determines that the coefficients of friction are equal. If determined theoretically (for example, both objects are steel sliding on a steel surface), then, as I noted, the theory does not consider the influence of the normal pressure, and the coefficients are not equal. If determined empirically, then the observations themselves (for example, both objects stopped at the same time/distance) may already answer the OP's question, which is then moot.

Friction Factor — The lighter object would stop sooner due to the effect of normal pressure on the friction factor. Friction factor tends to increase with a decrease in normal pressure (Ref: Simulation of Materials Processing). Assume a cubic ‘cow’ (). Normal pressure is proportional to mass/surface area. Mass is proportional to volume (s³), and surface area is s², and the normal pressure (mass/area) ~ s³/s² ~ s. With a decreased size, normal pressure also decreases, so the friction factor increases, and the smaller object experiences more deceleration due to friction and stops sooner. Aerodynamic drag — If this occurs under ambient conditions, including atmosphere, the lighter object would also stop sooner due to the greater aerodynamic drag proportional to its mass. Again, assume a cubic ‘cow’. Drag is proportional to cross-sectional area (s²), and mass is proportional to volume (s³). The deceleration due to aerodynamic drag is a = Fd/m ~ s²/s³ = 1/s. Thus, the smaller object experiences a greater proportional aerodynamic drag and deceleration and stops sooner.

I know "Esquire" as a title of courtesy, similar "Mister" except for its placement. Thus, a man (who has come of age) is either Mr John Smith or John Smith, Esq, but never Mr John Smith, Esq, which would be redundant. The same holds true for women (that is, Jane Smith, Esq). Any adult can use Esq after his/her name, but mostly lawyers do. With many Americans having received the Nobel Prize (including Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson) in various intellectual fields, Thirteeners would be stirring up an awfully big hornet's nest. Then there's Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush Sr who received British knighthoods, and several American war heroes including actor Jimmy Stewart, who were awarded France's Croix de Guerre. I don't know if it counts, but some soldiers who engage in joint exercises with the foreign military receive medals or recognition. I don't know if any of them asked for permission from the USA; I doubt it. This would be insulting many heroic and well-deserving Americans and their families. Because no one has ever questioned/recognized this amendment before, it obviously has no force. IMHO, the Thirteeners, like the Birthers before them, are intolerant people pathetically grasping at straws.

Such situations almost always involve various dimensions/variables. Here we have global warming, natural greenhouse gases, man-made greenhouse gases, a growing world population, countries that are developing or have yet to develop, etc. An adjustment to one or more variables could provide relief, but who wants to reduce emissions, have fewer kids than desired, halt/reverse development, etc? The cures involve some form of belt-tightening, and no one wants to be the only volunteer to do it. A global "keeping up with the Joneses" or "playing chicken". For the most part, any relief must involve the entire world's cooperation, and on this, the various nations cannot agree, and individuals within a given nation cannot agree either. So, how will we survive? By coming together and agreeing.

Bergen, do you mean to ask how accurately/confidently can scientists use a couple hundred years of observations to estimate what happened over the past 14 billion years — that is, reconstruct the whole thing based on one millionth of one percent of it? Myself, I would say that any such theory is almost guaranteed to contain serious flaws, and because it can never be repeated, we'll never know in a true scientific sense.

I specifically remember a Scientific American article from the 1970s on how to influence the gender of the baby, and the acidity/alkalinity of the vagina was one of the variables. A fellow scientist already had three girls and was hoping for a boy. I gave him the SA article, which he sincerely followed, and he had a boy. Sadly, I received no recognition for my part. Perhaps I should have monitored the experiment more closely and published the results? There's plenty of info about how to try for a boy or girl, and I think an alkaline environment favors a boy outcome, however, male fetuses are much more prone to miscarry. Thus, using an alkaline douche would seem to skew the probabilities toward having a boy, which is then more likely to miscarry. Plus, if a woman has already conceived a baby boy and lost it, her body may have become sensitive to male-specific minor histocompatibility antigens. Basically, she may have become allergic to male fetuses, which makes bringing a boy to full term all the more difficult. So, to up your odds of having a baby at all, I'd say try to have a girl — and use a reputable source of information as to how to do it.

This PowerPoint presentation has nice visuals: The Biosynthesis of Amino Acids. This PDF is a very wordy description. If you want to get really technical, search for amino acids and then view their Biochemical Pathway Maps.

Homemade ferrofluid in large sealable petri dishes.