Genecks

Write things out while looking at your arm, hands, etc.. and imagine all the parts.

Write things out...

Sometimes the trick to studying for an aspect of an exam/quiz is to actually use rote memorization.

if you have any documentations or links id love to see them thank you not to have proof of what you say i believe you but id like sepcifics on the the levels of stress it broke under again thank you

If you're really into this stuff, you may be interested in taking up a profession in bioengineering and reading more about materials science.

Well, I think if I were a sophisticated alien (let's say I'm from Earth, I've blown up Earth Lobo-style, I'm immortal, and I'm too lazy to look for intelligent life elsewhere), I'll just bounce a signal off someone, see if they pick up on it, and attempt to analyze it. The trick is having some kind of information bounce back to me, thus knowing they've intercepted it. Of course, it would take some time to receive the bounce, right?

Well, perhaps the equipment I develop sends out a signal generated my some high-tech stuff that only people who've developed particular technologies and mastered particular realms of physics can analyze.

With this in mind, a signal will only be bounced back once other life have mastered those technologies and realms of knowledge. And from there, I'm notified that there is someone of equal intelligence as me in the Universe.

From there, I attempt to go visit them. Or perhaps I'll have my technology down a few steps so they don't try to visit me, pull a fast one on me, and attempt to take over my space fortress with gadgets and realms of knowledge they have yet to master yet can obtain via brute force.

I think there are few things that would entice aliens to visit Earth and start crap:

1) We actually build a time machine

Perhaps performing experiments in the mastering of the technology would be a signal for those who've already mastered it to come visit us: Thus making an intergalactic time travel war.

2) We master immortality

Maybe they wouldn't care. Maybe they would.

3) We somehow generate this crazy idea that there is indeed life out in space and have an amazing bloodlust to destroy all life beyond Earth (perhaps the Aliens are psychic and will pop up just to destroy us).

An old UFO people theories is the interplay between Egyptians and UFO people. But if we go back to Egyptian thinking, many were crazy and believed they developed time travel and immortality... And the Mayans did something similar. Perhaps UFO people did show up, destroy them, notice there really .. wasn't... anything special, and zipped away.

Surely, the whole astronaut image in one of the pyramids bothers me to this day.

We may be able to find homological similarities, but it is questionable how far those homological similarities will go. Combine that fact with how the central nervous system (CNS) of a worm is different from a human's, and you must understand that involuntary AND voluntary control of particular systems, such as heart rate and breathing, may not be so easily understood with a model organism, such as C. elegans.

For instance, I was lying down last night thinking about pacemaker potentials, nerve development in the heart, and whether or not worms can be a good enough model system to examine how hearts develop and mesh with a nervous system. I think they are a good model for study (as I even understood as a child when I would always cut up worms to watch them live on their remaining hearts -- earthworms have five), but I still think it won't get the complete picture.

Yes, security flaws.

You're probably better off inducing those security flaws into bacteria. There's a variety of ways to attempt that. As you attempt to bring in more security flaws, you increase the probability of destroying more of those bacteria.

Maybe figuring out how streptococcus conducts gene therapy on itself, putting that aspect into other bacteria, and then bring forward greater security flaws would give a larger ability to destroy the bacteria (B. anthracis in this case).

If the genotyping of the various bacteria were known, perhaps using various biochemicals would easily take care of the bacteria.

It seems like a method of exhaustion tactic might work well. But then again, for the 9/11 attacks, I believe they used steam pressurized formaldehyde (or some chemical) on government building walls. It took a while to clean the stuff up.

Remember: B. anthracis can develop spores. So, if B. anthracis is in a spore form, the virus is not going to easily enter (if enter at all).

In a lot of ways, mice and rats are invasive. For some odd reason, we still have ethics committees about those guys.

Should we have strict ethics about doing biological research with invasive species?

What about bunnies? Should there be ethics involved with bunnies? I'm talking about Australian bunnies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia

Australia is supposedly filled with a lot of these bunnies. Let alone, people have attempted to generate viruses in the past to get rid of the bunnies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11553459

Personally, I think creation of the viruses was seriously unethical. Secondly, why destroy a useful resource when you can do so many things with it?

For instance, perhaps a more ethical and considerable thing, people ate the Australian rabbits during the great depression. They generated a market around it. That's understandable.

But then people generated a virus with the questionable intent of releasing it into the population without permission.

Now that this has happened, surely people will be wary about eating the rabbits, as was done in the Great Depression and wartime.

We have seem the ethical and the unethical.

Nonetheless, as they are an invasive species, it gives a person opportunity to use them as a mammalian model to conduct biological experiments with, such as doing experiments on anatomy and physiology: And I'm not referring to immunology, as previous experiment with them in that regard have provided themselves as unethical.

I'm tired of looking at the ethics of particular things, such as religion and marriage.

Is there someway we could notify users to make things more science related?

I mean, I would more than likely be cool with a religion thread that talked about transhumanism and if it's ethical for people to persuade others to transhumanism (and then the person made some argument about sociobiology and whether or not transhumanism serves a functional use in a person's life)....

But people aren't really going on that level.

The board is polluted and getting out of control again.

Ethics

Discussion of ethical topics relating to science, medicine, religion, and so on.

How about "religion and so on -- in relation to science/medicine"?

I'm looking over synthesizing alcohols with grignard reagents.

I'm going batty trying to figure out where the positive charge is on MgBr+.

Is it on the Br? The Mg? Is it localized all over, as in [H3O]+? Thus being [MgBr]+?

Also, what is the name of the MgBr+?

ChemSketch didn't seem to help in this department.

I have not read the paper, however based on the description above it appears that synaptic plasticity appears to be affected (as e.g. by establishing persistent LTP or suchalikes) rather than cell viability. The latter of which would be, to my knowledge, rather unusual.

After taking a quick look at the article, I'd say there is definitely more ground to say synaptic plasticity is affected. I'd need more time to dissect the article. However, it seems as though it was implied that there was some cell viability and that a positive feedback loop was being created so that particular cells with applied TGF-II were sticking around.

*reads a little harder once more*

Thus, the IGF-IIdependent

enhancement might not recruit the activation of new cells,

but rather uses those that have been transcriptionally ‘marked’ by

training and target synaptic mechanisms, possibly those at activated

synapses. One of these mechanisms might be GSK3-regulated GluR1

synaptic mobilization, a hypothesis in line with previous reports of

functional links between dendritic trafficking of GluR1 and GSK-3

(ref. 29), as well as between GluR1 and Arc expression, synaptic

plasticity and memory consolidation25. We cannot exclude that

IGF-II-dependent memory enhancement may occur via recruitment

of new cell activation, which however would be independently from

the activation and function of CREB-C/EBPb.

I went to a talk about it yesterday (where a bunch of us scientists, multiple professors and students, were sitting around and someone presented it). It seemed pretty cool. It came out last month, though.

A critical role for IGF-II in memory consolidation and enhancement

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v469/n7331/full/nature09667.html

We report that, in the rat, administering insulin-like growth factor II (IGF-II, also known as IGF2) significantly enhances memory retention and prevents forgetting. Inhibitory avoidance learning leads to an increase in hippocampal expression of IGF-II, which requires the transcription factor CCAAT enhancer binding protein β and is essential for memory consolidation. Furthermore, injections of recombinant IGF-II into the hippocampus after either training or memory retrieval significantly enhance memory retention and prevent forgetting. To be effective, IGF-II needs to be administered within a sensitive period of memory consolidation. IGF-II-dependent memory enhancement requires IGF-II receptors, new protein synthesis, the function of activity-regulated cytoskeletal-associated protein and glycogen-synthase kinase 3 (GSK3). Moreover, it correlates with a significant activation of synaptic GSK3β and increased expression of GluR1 (also known as GRIA1) α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxasolepropionic acid receptor subunits. In hippocampal slices, IGF-II promotes IGF-II receptor-dependent, persistent long-term potentiation after weak synaptic stimulation. Thus, IGF-II may represent a novel target for cognitive enhancement therapies.

From what I gather, injections of TGF-II help create a positive feedback loop that allows particular cells, those of which are involved in the retention and recall of memory, stay alive and generate even more TGF-II for themselves so they stick around.

I could see some Flowers for Algernon (link) stuff being possible with this.

Furthermore, the more interesting aspect, is that I doubt there would be a decrease in cell stability as would be found in the fictitious Flowers for Algernon book. The cells find a way to stabilize themselves. Questionable if a person could eventually develop a tolerance, as the chemical is extracellular and binds to receptors.

Many drugs can pass through the cell or somehow interact with the phospholipid bilayer to affect what is inside of the cell. But this binds to a receptor outside of the cell.

As it is independent of the cell machinery, TGF-II could help discover more aspects of what's inside the cell (neuron) via manipulation/application of TGF-II and seeing what new things form in neurons. Perhaps some correlations can be found with worms or invertebrates that have expansive nervous systems (ganglia) that reach into somatic regions.

It would be interesting to see a study. I don't have a pHD, but I intend to start one soon. I've noticed that the more stuff I learn the more cynical I get .

According to the study, for both sexes, higher education leads to a higher rate of suicide.

You may want to take a look at the methods.

suli%2E2009%2E39%2E5%2E463.pdf

The point here is that I asked for help, and I did do research. After doing enough research and not getting enough information, I asked for help.

I decided all of it was becoming some serious B.S. when I looked into the terminology and concepts I was going to present and looked around on the web for others who have presented the information. Funny enough, they had only presented the terms and concepts in a very brief way. And they didn't even really explain the concepts or terms enough to be adequately understood. And this was from the main flag university, too. It's similar to how the article discusses it. You can't really make out too much about what CF and the FM is unless you're in the know about those. It just mentions that bats use FM and CF, but doesn't go too much further than that. It wasn't any better than just parroting something.

I could have easily parroted the article and walked away.

After seeing that happen, I thought to myself, "Alright, this is getting ridiculous. I've looked over and over for information, and am definitely not getting what I need. Time to ask for help."

I had asked for those materials well enough ahead in time, of which he failed to adequately present. Furthermore, there was no research for him to really do, as he already had any data or relevant research materials gathered. There is a difference between collecting data and already having the data. He already had the data yet acted ignorant to its existence.

There are few reasons for a person doing that. The fact that he actively helped the other students by (and if you're claiming it's him doing the research, then we can argue that) doing the research for them by telling them what they need.

To help them and not me? Well, that's discrimination.

I think this might really be a personal situation. The professor broke protocol last semester with a situation. Let a girl sign up for a class who was a brand new transfer: They're not suppose to. I got the A grade and she got a C. Maybe he thinks I deserve punishment or something for her getting a C and me getting an A. It was a team project, and maybe he thinks I'm responsible for her failure rather than him breaking protocol.

It's not the first time I saw discrimination from them, as they put more emphasis on helping their grad students than anyone else accomplishing goals.

Based on scientific society's understanding of the brain and physics, we do not have evidence for telekinesis.

However, you could attempt to trivialize the matter by saying volitions of the body are acts of telekinesis, but I'm not too sure how many people will agree with your paradigm.

I think if it were to exist, then you'd surely have some crazy, almost impossible level of physics and interplay with physical surroundings. I mean, at the subatomic level, you'd have to find some way to use your neurons to change other quantum/physical aspects of your surrounding. I think if this were discovered, then people would either attempt to define the physical and cellular biology involved or find a new realm of physics and/or cellular biology. You're always going to get some hardcore physicalist wanting to define everything via physical law. At best, it could attempt to elude everyone and NEVER be understood: But then that person would be independent of physics, right? Definitely supernatural.

And, as I often push forward to other scientists (and I annoy them with this), I say that James Randi is a psychic killer.

And what I mean by this is that if someone with the skills did come forward, they'd end up on a table as a specimen (or perhaps someone would try to kill the psychic).

Was this the professor's article you were presenting, or some other article the professor coincidentally had information regarding?

The professor picked an article, the one I attached a few posts back.

And I do not believe the information was coincidental at all.

No way, because we're talking about owls now. Last week was bats.

The guys who are presenting this week are talking about owls.

Funny enough, he seemed to have tell them that there are reading materials on the website I previously mentioned that will help them accomplish their speech. *grumble*

What sort of information were you missing?

In a lot of ways, I didn't understand some of the diagrams from the article. I didn't understand doppler shift, despite how much I read into it. I also didn't understand many aspects of the cortical maps. There was actually something on a website that the professor put up, which he put up late. I kept asking him to put up the resources. It was like a nice 15 page discussion that basically broke down what what a lot of the terms, concepts, and physical aspects (such as doppler shift, and what it means for a bat to have a constant frequency vs. FM call) of the study were talking about.

When I got the information/resource, I had wished I had it a week earlier.

The professor is not very busy. He might be busy with his 6+ year Ph.D student who is trying to wrap up her dissertation, but other than that, he wasn't too busy.

The student can handle herself... maybe. My supervisor was basically telling her elementary stuff she should already know in order to do an isolation experiment with a neuron. I hope that Ph.D student isn't that dense...

And seeing as the information was available (I wasn't able to easily get access until a little after he assigned me my speech), he should have known it was there. Total neglect and ignorance from this guy. I was pissed.

Lesson learned: If someone is late giving you resources, be late giving them resources back.

He allowed me to have a week's worth of extension on my speech, but I didn't take it, because I believed I had enough ability to tackle the issue. The only thing I was missing, however, was critical information that he neglected to give when I probed him for it.

I should have taken a speech assignment to do at a later time and told him to screw himself.

The speech is over. It didn't go so well. But I suspect that is primarily due to the professor not replying to my emails and being ignorant (literally). There was definitely another crucial part of information the professor did not get to me, which would have answered the brunt of my questions, thus saving me a lot of time. I couldn't tell if he was being arrogant, testing me, or straight-up ignorant as to learning materials and course design. I hate this school and these professors, I really do.

@ ajb

For ajb, since you are in power of your own material and what you choose to say, I would suggest you only show as much data as you are willing to get grilled on. Only show what you're willing to talk about.

CharonY, I understand what you mean, and nothing on this dead dogs experiment has ever detailed how they killed the dogs (but several animal rights groups are mad about the experiments, haha). I understand how we can consider them alive, especially since they do not stay dead.

 

Genecks, thanks for looking into it for me, I hope that you can find something to spark my interest!

Cyrogenics and biochemistry are still things I (and many others, I assume) do not understand fully and I must study up on it.

Hello, Neco Vir.

I do not know if you continue to read this or will come back to this. However, if someday you are to come back to this thread, I would like to suggest that you look into the research conducted by Dr. Richard E. Lee and colleagues at the Miami University in Ohio.

Here is a list of publications: http://www.units.muohio.edu/cryolab/publications/index.htm

After I observed these things for a little bit, I came to understand that there is definitely a complex biochemistry and cytological realm that is involved with freezing an organism and bringing it back. An ethological understanding of various biological and chemical workings may lead to better understanding an applicability to the human condition. There would be a need to discover and use model organisms as model systems to explore homologous (or pretty similar) systems in Homo sapiens. I think this would lead to an eventual link to finding an adequate way to "freeze" and revive people.

I currently hypothesize that if a vertebral organism could be successfully frozen and brought back, there would be severe damage the dendritic spines that maintain memory and cognition. As such, upon revival of the organism, it may amnesia and lack a sense of self. However, as shown with Rana sylvatica, it finds a way to regain some behaviors, such as mating behavior. So, it could be said that mating and feeding behavior, instinctual aspects, find a way to re-emerge after a cryogenic hiberation. There would definitely need to be more research into this, for which I surely lack the funds and time. I do suspect someone will eventually pick this up, though. I have emailed Dr. Richard E. Lee Jr. about this issues, and he suggested I attempt to decide whether or not I think there are serious cognitive impairments after a state of cryogenic inducement after reading some articles he gave me.

After briefly reading the articles, I decided that I think the realms of instinctual behavior and cognition are intertwined yet independent. Much more so in higher lifeforms, such as primates. I guess a person may want to find a species of organism that shows cognition along with social behavior and find a variety of experiments to examine and compare and contrast cognition vs. instinctual behavior (and perhaps vs. social behavior/cognition). This could but give the hope to keep such mappings together during freezing and revival.

The fact that frogs regain some behaviors after freezing means that there are aspects to neuronal systems that firmly establish behavior and memories. And there is some kind of biochemical soup that locks connections together so that when the animal in unfrozen, it can again continue to conduct the behaviors.

Long-term potentiation helps establish connections. But somehow, it's as if LTP is put on hold while the connection is still there. There isn't transmission, but it can be brought back online. "On-hold potentiation" if you will.

I'm particularly interested if it's some kind of epigenetic factor, genetic, or simply cytoplasmic issue that allows these neuronal connections to be locked in place so that they can continue activity after revival.

I don't quite get the original question: are you supposed to give a talk on a paper you were given to summarize (say in some form of journal club), or are you supposed to give a talk about your research and want to base it on a publication of yours. In the latter case: why? Also, who's the audience? Is it colleagues at your institution or potential competitors, and are you going to be graded or not?

So, I was given the article "Cortical Computational Maps Control Auditory Perception" 1991 Riquimaroux, Gaioni, Suga by a professor and asked to discuss the article and present it for about 10 to 15 minutes.

2875092.pdf

I'm suppose to present the information within. My guess is that I'm basically putting the paper into dialogue format.

I guess it's kind of like a journal club... sure. There are about 20 of us in the room. There was suppose to be 12, but there is 20, because of some admin. screw up. I'm not giving a talk on it to further my own research agendas.

The audience would be 400-level (4th year) undergraduate students (peers and the two professors who lead the class). In my guess, some would be seniors and others would be 5th year undergraduate seniors. I'm not aware of any graduate students being around. I don't believe we are competing for a grade. If anything, people are competing for time slots to present papers. I was assigned to be the first person to give a speech. And yes, I will be graded.

How should I present a talk on an article?

How do many scientists, biologists, experimenters present their research?

I have to give a talk about echolocation in mustache bats. These mice that flap around.

Anyway, it's a serious article, and I'm not too sure how to go about a talk. I mean, I've given talks on research I've done before. And I'd have to say I have my own particular style that I like. Then again, I've never received much audience feedback. I suspect if I consider what I'm doing, maybe some people wouldn't like it. But I try to make things seem a little interesting and interactive, as I like to use hand gestures and whatnot as I give a speech.

I like to do the following:

1) Introduction

2) Methods and materials

3) Results

4) Discussion

Yes, there is the simple fact this layout is similar to a research article. And I like presenting a speech this way, because it's like reading aloud the article to the audience... but in a more summarized, rhetorical fashion. And that's what I tend to aim for. I attempt to introduce the audience and have them understand what my goals and experiment were about.

I don't know if this is a bad way to present research as an orator. I like it.

Any ideas? Comments? Etc?

To the OP:

I don't think much creativity will be found until graduate school. Personally, right now, I could think of a variety of neuroscience projects that I could work on if I had an army of researchers and enough funds. I've been particularly interested in the anatomical and physiological rebuilding of the nervous system of Rana sylvatica after cryogenic hibernation. I asked a researcher who works on cryogenics about this. He emailed saying he wasn't sure about anyone working on the rebuilding of the involuntary nervous system.

I find I was able to develop this idea after learning enough material. This came about from reading, learning, and spending time learning the basics. If I didn't keep learning more and more material, I wouldn't be able to know the basics to understand the parts of things I want to study and investigate. Furthermore I wouldn't know if what I wanted to investigate is particularly cutting edge.

A person needs a foundation in order to build upon. I believe there is eventually a level where a person develops creative, unique ideas.

Because I some knowledge of neuroethology, I know that there is also some bug species I could investigate instead. I could also, if I could figure it out, perhaps investigate tardigrades and the nervous system under severely cold conditions.

To hypervalent:

I agree with many of your points, hypervalent_iodine.

I'm not bitter about lab work. I am bitter about many things, but in particular I dislike being mislead, jacked around, and having my time wasted. I felt like a lot of that occurred while I was first looking for research. I try to balance my pessimism and optimism these days.

I agree that it's difficult to find ways to get people to start up on a project and start doing things for themselves. There are many increases in technological advancement to help with this issue, and these advances, I believe, greatly help. Get a group set-up with Skype, webcam technology, email, etc... and you can have people digitally supervising the work of others. Many professionals are dumbfounded when using such technologies and may even be skeptical of such technologies and their efficiency. I don't blame them, as I at times am skeptical of the effiency of particular web collaborations. I've worked on web collaborations since I was about 14. The first one was a video game design collaboration with people from different parts of the U.S.. This wasn't a school project. It was just something a bunch of us gamers did in order to make a cool server with gameplay and awesome maps. This was maybe in year 2000.

I guess you could see people as a security concern if you want. That just needs more control needs to be implemented. It's not simple. Not many people know how to use particular types of equipment. But I often wonder if a person did make a really great recorded tutorial, then it would be easier to not have to supervise people. I often question if there is a way to get around hands-on training. I think extremely effective communication is required. But surely, that means a longer video to watch or more interactive flash programs to make... or something like that....

As a funny point, though, I still see Ph.D students, graduate students, and research assistants failing to prevent chemical contamination or biological contamination when working with particular supplies. Even though people get training, sometimes they forget even the most essential things. I have yet to figure out if that's because many universities are competition-based and so emphasis on particular topics are easily dismissed because people are always rushing to get things done and get a good grade.

Me: "So, why did you take the pipette and suck up the solution from the batch rather than pouring the batch into a clean beaker?"

I see that wayyyyy too many times.

This issue may be more field related.

As a biologist and a person whose done work with psychologists and sociologist, I find you can get out there and do research. Some of it may be physical labor, but it's still data collection, which can either help prove or disprove a particular theory/hypothesis.

I'm not a hardcore physicists, but I could see how you would want to learn everything that has been tried so that you do not re-invent the wheel. However, they may be times when you can do physical labor that involves data collection to a particular research theory/hypothesis; and that will often allow a person to get involved with research.

I'm in a research project at the moment where I would gladly grab about 20 kids fresh out of high school who can think about neuroscience, cell biology, and have patience to sit down for at least 8 hours in front of a computer screen. I'm not team leader, so I can't do that.

I'm not even expecting them to understand cell-to-cell signalling or genetics. There's only a handful of things that need to be understood, and once that's done, most people could do the project.

Even some juniors in high school would be good enough. Just need some people with intelligence who are good at understanding biology.

There are definitely aspects of research that could use more people. That would severely cut down on the amount of time particular people have to use in order to accomplish certain projects. I'm talking about the economics of reaching maximum efficiency.

I just believe the deal is that some professors are straight-up snobs and have a severe pessimistic look on the capability of some students.

There are surely times when you have too many researchers in a lab and not enough equipment. When something reaches that point, then it's just too cramped and you can't really get anything done.

I've been inside many labs of professors, and I don't really believe them anymore when they tell me they don't have anymore room for researchers. If I don't see someone sitting down at the table using equipment, at least one person, then apparently they need another person.

In other words, having enough people means all persons' schedules are in accordance so that lab work is constantly being conducted. If that's not the case, I don't believe the professor. Otherwise, I think the professor is an inefficient manager and might want to look into how to get more people in the lab in a more orderly and scheduled manner.

In reference to the work world, there are often a lot of ignorant, stupid people out there. However, after enough time working somewhere and showing their potential, they are given more skills and knowledge to complete newer tasks. In a lab, I don't think it's necessary to indoctrinate a person with all the knowledge necessary to understand something so that he/she can do her part of the research to help the entire research ground. People simply need to be trained (specialized) in a particular task and do it. They need to be asked to not ask too many questions and simply do their job well.

The major issue and complaint I've heard from professors is that people will work for about a year or so and then leave.

Well, there is some truth to that. That same thing often happens in the work world, too. And it's a major problem.

However, in academia, I think the situation can be a little different. If a student is a freshman and asking to be in research and can adequately describe why he/she wants to be in that group and be in their field, then professors are missing a great opportunity to enlist that person to keep them around. The student may a little naive and may find eventual fun and interest in the research to want to stay on the team for a Ph.D or something like that.

Personally, I'm still a little annoyed with professors I've asked if I could join their research teams. That's time wasted that I could have been there, gained skills, and maybe gained enough interest to stick around as part of their research. I've found major interests in many of the labs at my university, but I am satisfied with where I am now, as I'm actually doing something rather than hustling professors.

Perhaps part of the issue is the pre-meds who just want enough credentials to get into medical school, and surely, they are a pain and need to be segregated. I suspect many professors are skeptical of students, believing that many of them are pre-meds rather than die-hard scientists.

Despite what lines of thinking professors may have, they could still be wrong about their choice in researchers. I find it humorous when people get their Ph.D in a professor's lab and then go on to medical school and do little to nothing with the skills and knowledge they just obtained. Pathetic.

To summarize, I don't often believe professors when they tell me they don't have room. I believe this is code for them not trusting students or calling them stupid.

My advice: Do your best in the mind-numbing B.S. that you have to deal with. Try not to hustle the professors too much, as that can become time consuming. Try asking professors for redirections to others who made need researchers. But I wouldn't suggest spending too much time. Focus more on your school work. When you get into higher-level classes, sometimes professors talk about their research, teach aspects of it, and are even desiring assistants who make As in these classes. So, I think you'll find a point where hard work and doing your best will pan out.

...so my question is could one of these super soldiers exist do we have the technology to today or will we ever have the technology to perform these augmentations?

Answer: I think we have the technology. Our knowledge of science, biology, and engineering to make a super soldier that has a stable bioengineered body does not exist. We have many working theories on biology, bioengineering, biomechanics, and so materials science. And we also have people researching and working to find better ways to make biomaterials.

I'm not saying it's impossible. But not everyone is working on something like that at the moment.

We have the technology to build the technology, but we don't have the allocated resources to build your super soldier right now. I guess theoretically we could do it right now (lacking adequate knowledge for making a stable cellular and anatomical framework for the soldier), but don't plan on living to an old age, as your cellular biology is more than likely going to turn against you. Maybe you could live two weeks to three months. I'm not a specialist on immunology and bad reactions people have to materials, so I'm just throwing out some random guesses. But for whenever I've heard of people having toxic issues with biomaterials, they tend to live at least two weeks.

You would need to find the materials and surgeon with the skills to do it, though.

Possible right now? No.

Possible in the future? Sure, I don't see why not unless everyone stops working on it, as people above have described.

...When you think about it too, some of the basic areas that we have learnt about in high school would have, at some point in the past, been exclusively university territory.

College algebra...

The psychologist Piaget says that unless you learn certain things at the proper age, you have forever passed the developmental stage at which you brain is capable of learning them well...

I find it hard to believe a 12-year-old acted as an autodidact to learn the topic of calculus. It must have been a good book. I'm not sure about any of you, but in my experience, most mathematics books in the 1990s were cryptic. They were still pretty cryptic into the 2000s. It wasn't until there was a medium (the Internet), where people made it very obvious through book criticism sites, such as Amazon, that many math books are f'ing cryptic. Go back even further in history and you'll notice that they are even more and more cryptic. Luckily, some libraries actually have calculus problem set books that are around from the 1970s, so I guess it's practical for a kid to pull a Matilda and just start teaching himself. But then again, many cities, towns, and the such don't have good libraries that provide people with access to the materials to be autodidacts.

And, to my knowledge, not many grade schools actually possess calculus books. Truth be, I haven't walked in a grade school library or middle school library in many, many years; but I'm pretty sure they don't have those college-level resources there.

What am I getting at?

I'm pretty sure the kid didn't do it all by himself.

Whenever I hear or read about someone learning about a particularly advanced topic at an early age, I can't help but consider they had someone there to hold their hand. Otherwise, they had an excellent mentor who explained concepts quite easily so they were quickly understood.

In terms of neuronal development, I'm skeptical of the quick need to generate associative networks for greater information retention, understanding, and episemantic database building.

I think much of society has been led by a variety of early-age development theories that it's somehow damaged their self-esteem and belief that they can learn an advanced topic even in old age. As such, people don't dare to attempt learning the topic. That's my view.

There are a lot of theories about language development and whatnot. If there is perhaps some truth to all of the neuronal development, it might be hormone-based. I believe it's about the age of 12 where people have greater difficulty learning a new language. Before that age, people don't seem to have many problems. But surely, that's what I read over and over in the university. I don't have the data nor understanding of the methods used to collect the data.

So, it could be just as bogus as me reading something by Daniel Dennett where he describes some guy named Walters using a slide project to discuss free-will. I did read such an article by Dennett, and never once sourced nor cited was what Walters did.

I don't think I can deny, however, that some people are neuronally specialized for obtaining and digesting particular aspects of their environment. In simpler terms, I believe there are surely gifted people out there. I supposedly am gifted at math. Nonetheless, I don't really care for an intense study of the field. I find mathematics classes to be particularly boring. However, set me in front of a spreadsheet, and I seem to have fun.

One could say that I've generated a hidden layer that causes unconscious cognitive dissonance, thus causing me to have a lack of care for picking up particular mathematics materials. As such, when given a mathematics book, I don't learn as easily anymore. This goes back to any particular age-related learning issue that might come around: Some cognitive scientists believe that accumulated life experience unconsciously plays a role in making things harder to learn, similar to how a hard drive fills up. People can only hope to have a type of Zen enlightenment in order to pick up new topics.

As an aside, I do find that some people have an interesting affinity for mathematics. For instance, I have two nephews who I often discuss mathematics and statistics with. One nephew had trouble understanding the concept of tying his shoe, so I explain the process in mathematical terms. It made a lot more sense to him, and he quickly grasped how to tie his shoes. My other nephews finds amusement, as I do, in trying to determine and estimate the probability of events using mathematics, more in an actuary sense.

Also, finally, I think there is a lot of unfairness in academia. This is for sure. There are guilds, old boys' networks, and the such. Collecting the data and information is difficult, as people don't want to be exposed. As I'm not familiar with mathematics on a graduate level, I can't tell if sophisticated equipment is required to generate many new theories; but if it is, I could see not having access to such equipment to be a problem for mathematicians.

I often consider that we are still in the stone age of education, but then again, we have Internet communities who are often willing to discuss academic topics. So, it's not as if people are stranded in caves these days. Maybe we're in a renaissance.

Response to #2: Yes.

Nucleic Acids Res. 1985 August 26; 13(16): 5747–5760.

Type II restriction endonucleases cleave single-stranded DNAs in general.

K Nishigaki, Y Kaneko, H Wakuda, Y Husimi, and T Tanaka

Abstract

Restriction endonucleases (13 out of 18 species used for the test) were certified to cleave single-stranded(ss)DNA. Such enzymes as AvaII, HaeII, DdeI, AluI, Sau3AI, AccII,TthHB8I and HapII were newly reported to cleave ssDNA. A model to account for the cleavage of ssDNA by restriction enzymes was proposed with supportive data. The essential part of the model was that restriction enzymes preferentially cleave transiently formed secondary structures (called canonical structures) in ssDNA composed of two recognition sequences with two fold rotational symmetry. This means that a restriction enzyme can cleave ssDNAs in general so far as the DNAs have the sequences of restriction sites for the enzyme, and that the rate of cleavage depends on the stabilities of canonical structures.

By the way, scilearner, if you don't mind me asking, ... what are you up to?

You seem to be specializing your reading in biological sciences at the moment.

Are you a student currently in an accredited educational institution or an autodidact?

I've been reading about small animals with nervous systems. I've read that tardigrades can be microscopic while rotifers are close to microscopic. Surely, I need some say in a scale, but I don't have one. Nonetheless, I've been attempting to figure out which organism can be the most miniscule and yet possess a simple nervous system for somatic interaction with its environment.

Which can be simpler and smaller: Rotifer or Tardigrade?