mississippichem

You can. I have no problem. I was joking, sorry if I offended. Not intentional. You are perhaps the most reasonable Christian I know Trip.

N-alkyl nucleotides, confusing your RNA transcriptases one base pair at a time

Christians don't even know on what day Jesus died or was born! They expect me to believe he was born of a virgin and rose from the dead...and they can't even guarantee in what month it happened!!!??? *Today I will reluctantly attend church. No matter how staunch an atheist, you still gotta make momma happy.

Then what is your proposed mechanism of treatment? Are you trying to make a guanine methylating agent? Surely azoxymethane is just part of your synth for an anticancer drug, right? If you're an MD/PhD, then you have access to azoxymethane from Sigma Aldrich even though its evidently $200 mg from Sigma [get out your grant writing pen]. Use SciFinder, Pub Chem, or the ACS journals website.

I gave a presentation two days ago. I was required to talk for 20 minutes but it seemed like the time flew by in about 5 seconds. I was well prepared for the presentation and really liked the topic. When we science people begin a rant about something we understand well and are passionate about, it can be hard to shut us up. I imagine SFN exists because science people generally enjoy bumping their gums about science. I also like to listen to people who are vastly more experienced/intelligent/knowledgeable in areas where I have interest. I've probably annoyed ajb to death in the chatroom trying to pick his brain about lie algebras and geometric representations theory I think perhaps the laymen in a room full of scientists always gets the best deal. Though he may get confused, he gets free insight and doesn't have to worry about trying to explain himself. He is free to listen and wonder.

Wow! They did this Ab Initio! This computation must have taken weeks. Ab Initio methods are notorious for requiring huge amounts of RAM to be taken up for very log intervals. I've heard of simulations running for a week before.

Yeah, Navy to the Top! What else do we need besides aircraft carriers, submarines full of nukes, and tomahawk cruise missiles? Real men fight smart not hard. A Nimitz or Enterprise Class class aircraft carrier will be rolling up in a gulf near you much quicker than the army can deploy if you make us angry.

I have only one argument: We should cut everything. Our deficit is out of hand. In order to keep our AAA bond rating, we should cut everything from the military to medicare and medcaid and raise taxes on everyone. Leave no stone unturned. Our current level of debt/spending is entirely irresponsible and unsustainable. Our military is already vastly superior to any other fighting force in the world. I believe we can afford to give it a rest for a decade. No one will catch up to us anytime soon. All the world's armies that are even comparable to ours are our allies anyway...Britain, Israel, France etc.

Woops, sorry. I meant absorption/emission as in florescence. The "-n" referred to a Stoke's shift. I've had lasers on the brain the last few days. We just acquired a new high-res laser Raman Spec. machine and I've been charged with conducting experiments on this new machine that I know little about . Now that I fully understand IR vibrational modes, I've gotta learn the Raman modes. Argh! good catch!

All nomenclature confusion can be resolved in the IUPAC Goldbook.

Take care not to confuse black body radiation with stimulated emission. I could heat a piece of iron to high temperatures without any photons being added and could still cause the metal to glow because I'm thermally exciting electrons to higher energy levels that will have to later decay and emit a photon. Stimulated emission is a "1 photon in, 1 photon out process". Shoot a 450 nm photon at a molecule and get a photon back at 450-n nm. You should do some reading about Atomic Emission Spectroscopy or UV-vis spectroscopy.

Read that post in context. You'll find that it was made in jest.

I've never done it myself, I have little free time. I once rode along with a landscape architect friend of mine who was really into it. We found 3 geocaches in one swoop! It was quite fun. I think geocaching is a cool hobby, one that I would like to take up on the other side of this degree I'm working on.

[math] \frac {1}{3} = 0. \overline{333} [/math] [math] \left ( \frac {1}{3} \right ) 3 = 1 [/math] [math] 0. \overline{333} \times 3 = 0. \overline{999} = 1 [/math] Not the most rigorous of proofs. Seems sound to me though at first glance.

Even the rigorous ab initio methods are not without problems. Electrons vibronically coupling to nuclei is still a problem. The aqueous proton transport chain is also a huge problem (protons jump between water molecules faster than predicted due to tunneling) on the molecular dynamics side of things. However, the existence of the eigen cation [ce] H_{9}O_{4}^{+} [/ce] was predicted by molecular modeling before being observed in solution so evidently something is working correctly.

I'll get a punch in before this thread gets closed. Are you sure? Last time I checked: [math] 1^{n}=1 [/math] where n is any number. You might want to review your elementary school arithmetic. *It's okay to feed a troll as long as you don't get your fingers bitten off.

Because like religion, belief in ghosts or spirits requires faith and is not evidence based.

Let me stop you here. What do you mean by structural balance? There are many atoms that can achieve a similar electron configuration. I don't know what you mean by an "s1" shell either. A free carbon atom in the ground state has a [ce] 2s^{2} 2p^{2} [/ce] configuration. A carbon atom in a stable 4-valent state forms a set of molecular orbitals with [ce] T_{d} [/ce] symmetry*. The reference to an "s1" shell is incorrect unless you are referring to some other nomenclature. * The symmetry about a carbon atom in a graphene sheet should be [math] C_{3v} [/math] IIRC. I was not aware of this realignment of electron structure. The hybridization scheme for graphene is almost the same as that of graphite. The only difference is the lack of [math] \pi [/math]-stacking interactions that are normal to the plane defined by the rings. Theses stacking interactions make only a small contribution to the electronic structure as they are less energetic than any covalent bond. The symmetry is the same as graphite so the set of molecular orbitals is the same. Not really sure how gravitons tie into any of this either. Have you ever calculated the force of gravity between two carbon atoms at 140 pm apart? This is the bond length between two carbon atoms in a 6-membered aromatic ring.

I agree completely. But I was trying to highlight how the two disciplines are different while at the same time co-dependent on each other. We wouldn't know much about hyperfine splitting if some engineer hadn't designed an EPR spectrometer. Then again, engineers would have trouble building an EPR machine without the hard science of Maxwell, Gauss and Pauli. It can all be traced to Newton anyway though so scientists win! Or maybe mathematicians win...Newton might have struggled without Pythagoras or Descartes.

What level are you at in chemistry? If you are a high school student I would recommend you reinforce yourself by memorizing your set of basis facts like polyatomic ions, common valences (as well as how they fall into the periodic table), and basic formulas like gram/mole conversions, density, and the like. Some people might disagree, but I usually recommend that people just memorize the first 18 elements of the periodic table (periods 1 and 2, H through Ar). It really helps to be able to recall that aluminum should have a +3 charge for example. In high school, teachers tend not to stray too far from the first 18 elements, except or the rest of group I and II which have very predictable behavior anyway. If you are an undergraduate college student, then just keep reading, keep reading, keep reading, practice mathematics, and then read some more. Undergrads have plenty of time to work huge sets of practice problems, this can always help. Make up your own problems, it's really not difficult to do. Just find someone more experienced to check your work. When I get confused in a textbook, I try to go find a second, third, fourth, and fifth source to read the same information. Eventually, you will find an author that explains it in a way that fits your thought process. I tend to like the dry authors that give it to me straight without any filler or fluff. If you find chemistry boring at the beginning level I would have to agree. If you stick with it, you will find that it gives many intellectually rewarding treasures; more so than physics or biology in my opinion, but I'm obviously biased .

I think engineering uses a scientific thought process with a slightly different goal. In my opinion, perhaps only my opinion: the goal of science is to understand and model, while the goal of engineering is to produce and create. Good engineering facilitates good science while good science facilitates good engineering. They are two studies with different goals and similar methods.

Or hell, look at something called valence bond theory. Either will work really

I'm just sayin' that "speculations" don't always mean pseudoscience. It just turns out most people who post their ideas here are not willing to pony up the evidence to back their outlandish claims. We've had a few reasonable speculators post their ideas before, they are just few and far between. This site is owned and operated by people who value empiricism, mathematics, and the scientific method. If someone doesn't jive with that, the door is located next to the "X" button at the top of the internet browser window. If you think we are harsh or hypercritical, try writing a grant to the NSF or pitching a new project proposal to your research finance director at work! I think you'll find their criticism to be an order of magnitude more intense.

I imagine that at area 51 they're developing something akin to low radar cross-section fighter jets, or better GPS guided cruise missiles. Really anything but an anti-gravity powered flying saucer. Why don't people realize that even though the military may have some technology that is "higher-grade" than what we civilians have; government scientists attended the same physics and engineering classes a your typical joe-engineer or johnny-physicist and there's no way they know some magic science that no one else knows!? Information can't be contained like that. Just look at the atomic bomb! It didn't stay a secret for very long, and other countries were working on developing similar weapons at the same time.