Steph

Yea, I would say either the top or contamination... where did the samples come from?

really? I'd like to see your sources for such an affirmation.

uhm, everything that goes up goes down? you have delusions if you think the US can somehow keep the top spot for all eternity.

Evolution does not say anything. it won't suddenly decide to apply a mechanism to a species. what pink_trike said is that this would be a natural use for homosexuality in keeping the species in check. here is the article i was thinking about The example pink_trike gave actually goes against this, but i think it may be more of an exception.

regular iPods and iPod Mini use hard-drives, Nanos and Shuffles use flash drives... I think Gigabyte released a card where you can put RAM. the card will supply power to the memory (via a rechargeable battery or via the powersupply as long as it is plugged) enabling you to use it as a hard-drive. Maximum is 4GB i think, but this is enough to put to OS on and have an near-instant on and completely quiet boot (note, it uses a s-ATA inteface, but I forgot which one... I would think 2.0). Flash memory is faster. the reason it seems slower is because there is a bottleneck due to your USB interface, and the physical distance to your CPU. oh and IDE cables are sooo 20th century! get s-ATA cables already!

its not an ethical issue. unless it would be for other reasons than to help makes vaccines, or cures, etc. in that case, its simply a security issue.

As much as I would hate anyone experimenting on me without my consent, I think I would hate even more a person who would withold a cure because of that fact. What is done is done and if good can come from it, then it'd make the sacrifice a little easier to bear in my opinion.

genetic engineering is far from established. We can do many things, true, but we still have an awful lot to learn.

I stand corrected. I was saying this though, because i live in Canada and I'm black. during the winter months, I used to spend weekdays without seeing the sun (waking up early, going to school then coming out when its dark again). This would technically be enough to have symptoms if it wasn't for what i'm getting in my diet no? and I'm not taking any supplements.

well, I may be wrong but, in my point of view, patriotism is following the people of your country, while following the government would be (in nation-states at least) nationalism. in the end though, both are (also in my point of view) roots to many wars. (whether those wars were necessary or not is a whole other topic though)

this is deoxythymidine but the only difference is that you take the H on the ribose and add an oxygen for the regular thymidine (which is by the way the name of thymine+sugar). so... the base (thymine) is the structure with the two nitrogens, the ribose is the pentagon structure in the middle and the phosphate is attached to the other side of the ribose. hope that helps

wow... this is pretty interesting stuff. really interesting actually. IKDC's... well if this works out, this is a new field for immunology!

Well... I would think that it was pretty evident that ocean temperatures would affect hurricane strength. else, we'd have them all over the world.

They already do that. You, however, have to find the right Phage.

actually some people do. and its the whole reason why industrialization (with all that comes with it) reduces birthrate dramatically. in certains areas of the world, having a small army of kids is the only way for a family to survives. Not only is the child mortality incredibly high, but also, the children, when they grow up (7 or 8 years) can be of tremendous help to the family (growing or earning food). Most people do not have 10 kids because they really want to, but because they have to.

wow. The majority of people are FOR eugenics? on a science forum? this is interesting and rather scary. eugenics is simply not doable for a simple reason : the vast majority of people on earth have at least one allele of a dangerous genetic disease. I guess you could argue that 100 000 healthy people on earth could repopulate without genetic disease but, by the time they do, through mutation, we will have been brought back to the level where we are now... or humanity would have stopped existing (if you weed out "mutants"). So it wouldn't be just a few people undergoing minor surgery. Its not even a question or being ethical or not, its just not doable. (oh and how do you go about neutering the majority? without getting killed in the process i mean.) EDIT: to anyone talking about IQ tests... these are NOT valid tests of intelligence whatsoever. immigrants, and minorities in general, will score lower on those tests. poor people will score lower on those tests. Also, forcing people is doing exactly what the Nazis were doing. the gassing was not an integral part of their plan, it was a weird digression, an escalation of it (killing is lest costly than sterilization).

they grow it in eggs, since its the easiest way to do so. Its inactivated, but you can get the symptoms of the flu since those (fever, muscle pain, etc.) are general symptoms of an immune response, which is the whole point of the vaccine. however those symptoms will be much milder than getting the disease.

At any rate... I find lucid dreams very stimulating. No matter what, it cheers you up in the morning, and since you aren't losing much sleep (a few minutes) you aren't more tired.

no... with viruses you can have something called antigenic shift and antigenic drift. drift is mild, and is the reason we get the flu every year or so, its just slight difference in the proteins of the virus that makes it harder for you immune system. Shift is a major change and this is where you change the numbers. antigenic shift means a larger and stronger (deadlier) flu epidemic. so H1N1 to H1N2 would be a shift, as well as H1N1 to H2N1. also, both numbers can change independantely of the other. like the Spanish Flu was H1N1 but the next one could have shifted either in the hemagglutinin or neuraminidase genes (H2N1 or H1N2) or both. now the main strains are H3N2 (and some H1N1) which means that H5N1's introduction would lead to an epidemic. the other problem though, is that H5N1 is particularily virulent (this is an information not contained in just the name). about a convention in naming viruses. well, i'm not sure there is a global one. its true that strains are sometimes named by their point of origin (same is true with the flu) though.

Rhizopus and Mucor are usually darker. Penicillium makes sense, although I'm not a mycologist... its actually hard to not have fungi in bacterial cultures left at room temperature. you have be careful and sterile. I don't know how you inoculated or anything. if you left it to the air, this happens, if you just swabbed something, again this would happen. The best way to get bacteria (as well as fungi but less) is to incubate at closer to human temp 35-37oC. how? uhm... only way i can think of right now... an idle (recent AMD) computer runs at about this temperature. Pentiums are a little higher. so if you can make a box around one, and leave it there, it could work. oh and the computer chips can withstand around 80oC so you wouldn't have to worry about that (as long as your box doesn't catch fire) EDIT: btw, the white colony is also fungi