Sayonara

"liposomes , in an aquaeous solution" means the liposomes are in water with nothing else. This question is just testing your logic. The aim is to get you to recognise how to interpret observations made during practical tests, in the hope that you will develop a knack for experimental design. You have been given the "specifications" for the bits and pieces in your test, so try to visualise the mechanisms that are at work.

I have heard fat gossipy office women who read far too many glossy magazines making that claim, but not seen anything peer reviewed. Got a source?

Here it is simply an indication of how involved a member is in the science discussions. Posts in non-science forums do not contribute to rank, so you cannot bump it up by posting dozens of "lol" posts in (for example) general discussions.

Rated thread: 5 Stars.

Does this mean you are on the run, Dr Kutakintay? Thank you for posting a copy of your newsletter for us. I particularly enjoyed the colours in the electron micrographs.

May we see a copy of this newsletter? Also, in what way is it "peer reviewed"?

"Was" instead of "were". Words are not enough to describe how bored I am right now. But maybe correcting minor grammatical hiccups in thread titles on a web forum is an adequate demonstration

I have corrected the grammar in your thread title. This is a service I provide free of charge, because I am so nice.

Spam is unsolicited advertising. The reason this qualifies is because he started a new thread. If he had posted that as a relevant and informative reply to an existing thread, it would not be spam.

Maybe if we demonstrate how bad he is at spreading the word, he will be fired. I heard Monsanto whacks the people it fires.

Well he's certainly earning his crust.

Judging by the first two replies you have earned I would have thought you'd be only too eager to provide some kind of direction for such discussion, never mind distance yourself from ownership of the text.

No. You've seen enough people being wrist-slapped for this to know better than to argue the toss. And need I point out that you have not actually received a warning? Give this thread a point.

This was the funniest thing I heard all week. The judge made a big point about him being jailed for his tax avoidance, and not his beliefs, which I thought was very kind of him

Reallllly? Well good, because that's the point.

These are not "his" points. They are directly copied from the page he linked to, which is actually in violation of SFN guidelines: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=22869 Rule 2c, plagiarism. Please ensure you cite correctly, not just give a link to the material you copied and pasted. It would have been better to summarise the offshore content, provide the link, and prompt a directed discussion.

It's from a US "Wife Swap" style show. I.E. the people are real.

When you put it like that, I entirely agree. In fact this is quite similar to my own views. So many of the preceding arguments we have made turn out to be moot! Well no, because it can't. My point was that because we can, we should at least consider that as an option. Which we can't do without sufficient information.

It's not strictly necessary to add it, as the pyramid begins with the producers in the living system. But it won't hurt to add it. (Unless you are dealing with an autotrophic or chemotrophic system, where the sun plays no role, such as the habitat around a deep sea sulphur vent.)

His degrees were awarded by unaccredited fundamentalist schools are for all academic purposes at this level, they are essentially useless.

What a convenient side-step. Complete with its own strawman, no less. In an ecological context, "non-selfish" means taking consequences for other species into account. It is not a matter of "caring", per se. It is a matter of understanding that all interconnections between populations transmit the effects of actions which are imposed against any one population. This is a simple principle. I can't imagine what would make you think that you can predict my "choices" in such a scenario. If you have understood everything I have said so far, you should by this point be thinking along the lines of "...but Sayonara proposes that we need more information about how rats and bacteria operate in the networks we are affecting, and how those networks interface with co-located networks". Clearly this is not happening. I have put forward no case or requirement for consciousness. All species are "cells" of the biosphere only in that they are ecological components. False condition. Actually, this is untrue. I have provided reasons why the form of anthropocentrism you discuss here is ecologically unsound, and those reasons draw on ecological systematics and population dynamics from the current models. If you have an alternative model, the onus is on you to evidence it. If nobody sees me smashing up the car, I have still done something bad. I already have done. You responded in a confusing manner, I queried it, you gave the non-response which is quoted at the top of this post. And without sufficient information on the interactions we are invoking in remote systems, we often find that we are avoiding your future negative consequences by swapping them for longer-term and more severe problems. This is getting tiresome now. No, it's not. However they often go hand-in-hand, which was actually my point. On its own, this is true. However it does not lend any credence to your next statement... That is your belief and if you wish to use it in an argument against well-founded ecological principles, then it must be adequately evidenced. So far I see no such evidence - just your proclamations. This is superfluous. A rational being takes the rough with the smooth. I don't see why this should not operate at the species level too.

Which outcome are you saying you object to? The two are diametrically opposed. A benefit can often be observed. What is not always observable are the negative consequences, which may operate on a different time scale altogether. History is replete with examples - take the artificial reef built off Port Lauderdale in the 1970s as a freebie. Yes, it is hard. But that doesn't mean we should just give up and act in a selfish and short-sighted manner. What I am proposing is that we should strive to achieve such a system-level understanding of ecosystems as to allow balanced decisions about how they will tolerate changes to their components. If you mean irrational, say irrational. Note well that I was not advocating an arbitrary allocation of intrinsic value to nature. It is entirely possible for me to to recriminate against anthropocentric value judgements without any requirement for me to provide an alternative. If you read my arguments, what I have stated all along is that oftentimes we act without any other value-oriented basis. And if I am saying that, then it is unlikely that I am discussing any such basis as an alternative to anthropocentrism. Where you think "best" and "viable", I think "selfish" and "convenient". Our species has a lot to answer for. This is not in the least bit consistent with your prior proposals. Define "evolution scale". Seriously, I'd like to know what that is exactly. Also I would like to know what any particular species being at the top of it has to do with benefiting the biosphere. There was no term for this before, so I am coining it here: meganthrophilia. That is a completely unfounded statement, and all key ecological indicators from the past thousand years or so (which you yourself have indirectly commented on) say otherwise. Exactly. Not rocket science, is it?

So I did, my mistake. What I was responding to was the bit where you said "A thing if we as a species will do our best to mind our OWN interests, in will serve the best for ecosystems and a biosphere as a whole". You seem to be saying there that if humans look out for themselves, the biosphere benefits. However in your previous post, you quite rightly point out that as human welfare has increased, biodiversity has decreased in many places. It can't be both things at once. Humans may have urgent needs etc, but the very cause of this is our plague-like ecological status. It is all very well saying "well we don't really know what will happen, but we need irrigation here NOW", but the simple fact is that we have seen time and time again - and this is well documented - that anthropocentric intervention into ecological systems without adequate foreknowledge and/or planning can be damaging to the local habitats, usually with consequences of some sort for the humans. What I have been very consistently saying is that we cannot know whether or not such objections as the ones you mention are scaled realistically against the need for the human intervention without a better understanding of how changes to diversity will affect the local habitat/s and the networks within it. That's not really up for debate. Whether or not people want to take notice and why they should do so (which I think is what you are asking) are different matters, and will always vary on a case-by-case basis.

Answer to what?

The variability of the Earth's tilt in its axis is well-documented.