iPeppers

True. So how about this.... Why is it that certain chemicals and foods are considered cancer causing, while others are being labeled as cancer preventing (such as most green vegetables)? What are the active ingredients, and how can scientists say that some things cause cancer, and some don't? Why do some things cause cancer?

Good to know. I am pursuing an education and eventually career in biotech, but do consider myself to be a layman at present. I read for my own interest right now, and definitely couldn't understand much in an official science journal. This is why I was wondering if anything existed in between something like Scientific American and an official Science journal?

What about the AAAS Science print magazine/journal? Anybody subscribe to this? I'm confused as to what areas of science this covers, and if it leans more towards certain subjects or areas of science. More biology? or chemistry oriented, or physics? or more specific than that?

Exactly! This is what I was getting at. I wanted to know if anyone actually knows for sure that cancer is on the rise due to unnatural, or man-made problems, such as chemicals. It seems to me, that it may just be the natural order of things. ie. we live longer, therefore cancer is a more common death than it used to be, and we are able to detect it better. The media tends to hype up cancer, and seems to be telling me that it is on the rise (and because I also have had people die from cancer who were close to me, I think that in this case the media hype is for once a good thing), but I want evidence that this is actually the case.

I need some help finding a great magazine to subscribe to. I think a magazine geared towards biotechnology would be the most helpful, but biology in general would be fine. I also have interests in physics, so suggestions in that direction would be fine as well. I know there are lots of great science magazines to subscribe to, and I'll pick up an issue here and there of Scientific American or Discover, and others. But I was more wondering if there is ones that have less fluff pieces and are more like unofficial science journals. More like how the Economist is pretty much a journal in magazine form, but still looking for one that is geared towards science in general or Biotechnology. Throw out your favs! Thanks

I read your other post, severian, and it was quite interesting. But if every particle is actually just a bunch of waves, then do they all tend to exhibit the same qualities of waves that light does? Why is light always singled out for our first introduction into wave-particle duality?

Interesting, I didn't even consider that many people may have died with cancer, but not because of it. And that could still happen much more today if it wasn't for medical screening advances that technically may cause many people to go through cancer treatments even though they will end up dying from something else first. So, is there any evidence that cancer is indeed on the rise and much more prevalent in this day of age, because of radioactive or chemical effects? (compared to long ago, when man-made materials and chemical and radioactive disasters and such did not exist) It seems everything in this day of age is either being labeled as either a possible cancer causer or a possible cancer preventive. Why bother? Or is it just a media thing?

For the longest time I thought light (or photons) were both particles and waves. Recently a professor at school told me that it was actually more that photons were not particles nor waves, but instead something new. This new thing does not have any other real life example that we can say it acts as, but has certain properties of both particles and waves, but not all of them. What kind of properties do photons share with particles, and what properties do they share with waves? What new properties do they have that are unlike anything else? Where is the newest research on light going? (I realize these are heavy questions and may have very long answers, but if you enjoy typing those answers, I enjoy reading them! I have also been to wikipedia and other basic sources, so more links aren't necessarily helpful, but the way in which people on here would try to explain this stuff, is. I'm just curious.)

I don't know a lot about this topic, and cancer in general, but I am just curious... Do we actually know for sure that cancer in on the rise, or has any more potential to affect people now, than it did in the past? The reason I am asking is because I have heard that because of what cancer actually is (very basically, cells that have been damaged, causing them to replicate out of control, and have no real beneficial function anymore), every cell would eventually end up cancerous if it was able to live long enough for it to be naturally damaged in such a way to turn it cancerous. This, along with the fact that people have a much longer life expectancy than they used to many years ago, and that our records of illnesses and causes of death are much more complete in this day of age... this all led me to think, what if the reason that cancer is so much more prevalent as a cause of death now, could be mostly because of a couple simple facts; -people didn't used to live long enough, way back in the day, for their cells to have the higher probability of turning cancerous, that they do as they become older. (I realize that younger people can get cancer as well, but a much higher percentage of people tend to get it as they get older.) -before cancer was understood as what it is today, many many deaths may just have been written off as mysterious unknown deaths, or natural causes. So, now that we have started recording more deaths by cancer as actually being by cancer, it makes it look like cancer is on the rise (possibly much more so than it actually is?). Are these ridiculous assumptions? Thoughts?

Seconded! On a slightly related note... did anyone else notice the triforce on the google.com Earth Day image? It's right at the bottom, between the "G" and the "o". I thought it was a fitting easter egg.

No, I believe I'm the chief pony wrangle.

awww I would give my soul to be a real pony wrangler! ...........

When are we going to wrangle some ponies? Does it even show that I am a pony wrangler to anyone else but me? If not, then I suppose nobody will let me in on the wrangling fun.

What up? .... Edit: Ohhhhhhhh! I didn't realize what day it was! I like it, and it works well in our new pseudoscience forums.

What was her game plan?

I don't know about taking something to increase melanin levels, but it depends on what you consider to be awesome coloured eyes... you may need to decrease the levels instead, and other factors come into play. Take a look at this chart. I have brownish eyes with almost yellow bits near the pupil. So, I figure I must have moderate melanin levels in the more brown parts, and less melanin around the pupils with a coarse collagen structure. (can anyone with a better understanding confirm that that might be true according to my iris description?) And because we all want what we don't have, I find blue and greenish eyes to be beautiful. Thus I would want less melanin myself... and a different structured stroma.

Yes it occurs naturally in all our bodies, in our hair, eyes, skin, and more internal parts of the body. Most animals have forms of melanin, and I think some bacteria also produce it. But melanin is just a class of compounds, so there are different versions of it, but for us it is a pigment.

I believe it's all just in your mind. I'll give an example; For a few months after the 9/11 attack, it seemed to me that almost every day I would look at my digital clock and see 9:11 in the morning. Here is my train of thought as to why this happened; -I was always up at around this time in the morning. -I look at the clock very often, but usually don't even realize I do it. It's just a habit to keep me on track and know what time it is. -9/11 was fresh in my mind because it was all over the news for months. -The first time I looked at the clock and saw 9:11 after the 9/11 attack, I immediately thought of the 9/11 attack and it brought significance to those particular numbers in my head. Whereas any other number combination on my clock wouldn't make me think a second thought, because they have nothing to do with any hot topic currently on my mind. -As soon as it stopped being a big topic in the news and with other people that I know, I stopped making the connection between 9/11 and 9:11 on my clock. -9:11 still exists as a time on my clock, and I know that I must still look at the clock once in awhile at that moment in time, but I don't make a connection with it and anything else in my head anymore. People like symmetry and patterns, and although we see many dates and numbers all the time in our lives, people tend to notice very quickly when those numbers arrange themselves nicely. People like order and pattern in our universe. It's an evolutionary advantage to make quick connections between things, but sometimes our brains take it too far.

My girlfriend is an international business major, and while I don't necessarily consider myself a geek or a nerd, I do love all sciences and computer science and take a lot of it in school. And everything has been working out great between us for the past two years. Yeah she doesn't always take a huge interest in science, but people don't tend to talk details about what they just spent their whole day doing in school or a job anyways. She loves that I'm curious and want to know how everything works, but we don't need to talk science or business when we are together. If you spend enough time with another person of roughly the same intelligence level, you will find that you have lots of other things in common like I do with my gf. Nobody wants to date a perfect clone of themselves, it's way more fun if you have differences.

I would think drinking tea that hot would burn your throat a little, over and over again. Of course damaging cells like that in the same area could eventually lead to cancer or other permanent damage. It's almost common sense to learn from mistakes and not keep drinking hot beverages that burn you every time. Who drinks tea that hot anyways? And if the answer is lots of people, than why do I never hear of way more people with throat cancer? As I know many many people who drink tea and not a single one with throat cancer.

Well immediate problems with this operation is; - that there is a lot of false information on the internet, so you would know a lot of wrong and unhelpful things. I think it would be better if it was connected to a database compiled of known scientific facts. - also, what if someone makes a virus that feeds you what they want to? A long scale problem is this situation... If this turns out to be a wonderful thing (as it would, because everyone would have the knowledge to do more with their lives), everyone will start to get this implant. If this happens, humans will no doubt be dependent on it, and it won't even matter if you happen to have brain defects at birth, because the chip would make you seem like everyone else and give you the same knowledge anyways. Thus it kind of cheats natural selection in humans a bit, as everyone has equal chance now to mate based on intelligence and probably personality (as the chip would most likely have a huge influence on a person's life). ....So what if everyone has been using this chip for thousands of years, and all of the sudden, a virus or something takes all of the chips out of service. Would we look around and realize that we had become dependent as a species, and either all drop dead and not be able to function, or realize that our brains had actually devolved? I would probably still immediately get it done if it was cost effective and only a select few people would get the chance to do it in the next 10 years. If everyone has the chance to get it done, then I would wait 5 years or so until most bugs were hammered out and/or a better model was up for grabs.

Well I would conclude that humans never learn how to time travel. If they did, then we would have some record of time travelers, or see them amongst us. Since the human population keeps expanding, one would think that if time travel were invented, that humans would eventually expand into our own pasts. But this has obviously not happened. So either time travel must be impossible for us, or we just get wiped out before we figure it out. Or we do figure it out, but it is too expensive or difficult for everyone but a select few to use, and then we get wiped out before it gets to be feasible for everyone.

Understood. And meat tastes so much better Although I do remember that the crazy fictional apes in the 1995 version of the movie Congo also had a taste for lots of flesh.

Well since I'm probably a higher being, and the universe is all a figment of my imagination and I live it in my dreams, then technically I could do whatever I wanted if I thought hard enough. To do this, I would have to start taking control of my dream. Maybe try some lucid dream walking techniques the next time I go to sleep and dream of this universe. ....maybe I wouldn't waste my time writing on online forums then.

I remember when I lived on campus, there was a huge kerfuffle about recycling. It seems that when the garbage truck came around to the back of our residence to take away all the garbage in the dumpster, that they were also dumping all the contents of the recycling bin in with the garbage. I doubt anyone spent even more energy later on in sorting it all out again. I never got the point of recycling every single little item that we can. The earth will do it for us eventually. I think a better approach would be to cut back on waste that isn't biodegradable and for us to just be less wasteful when we could be reusing a lot of things that we throw out, instead of saying "oh it's ok if I throw this out, its recyclable!". Just because we can recycle doesn't mean that it is good for the environment with all the extra energy and burning of fossil fuels that it requires.