foodchain

Instead of just books you might also try to use software built for such. As a student you can get a discount on maplesoft software which usually costs around a thousand usd for around over a hundred bucks. I guess its one of the best tools on the markets though the reviews are all kind of the same. I was in somewhat the same situation wanting to get into matrix algebra in which I just used the schools library. It helps to have something though to get you past any points of being stuck, in which that’s why I am suggesting the software angle unless your school has easy tutors.

That’s a big and mean word but yes along those lines. Such as the reaction of decomposition of such would have on oxygen in the environment.

I don’t know about the DNA part. Its been shown already to not be the only aspect of inheritance or the core reality of biology and or evolution. I think because of its role in biology many simply think you can study life from a genetics only point of view. I don’t exactly know why life currently uses such or if such is the only possible route for life to sustain itself, being it has many components. I think the reality of the complexity of life might be a reason DNA is used basically as a means to organize itself, in which like the impact of natural selection in general conferred a greater fitness value in time then other means of such if they did exist. It would seem though in life that mutability is a reality and that structures come and go typically based around what can maintain fitness. In short I view genetics as but one part of a whole, and I think its that whole that really needs to be understood in time from the past to real time or the now to understand life currently as we know it. --------------------------------- As for the OP question, I don’t know what the role of life is. Evolution has various mechanisms, and of course life has various forms. The core rule that seems to apply to it is natural selection. That being said environmental interaction seems to be so finely meshed into an organism its typically highly impossible to separate the environment from the reality of an organism. Which could tie into your question into a great deal simply because life does require rather naturally energy to sustain itself, but that holds true for just about any physical phenomena which only again sits life as a natural thing like star or a planet not much more. I mean in all reality we could find life in the crust of mars that is nothing at all like life on earth, a real alien, but of course it still will have to be able to survive naturally by natural means. I mean with the untold amounts of carbon allotropes to the reality of how many types of amino acids exist to just the basic reality of I guess the universe I don’t think one can put how life on earth is as a absolute for life as nothing more then an assumption really at this point. Being able to relate the molecular reality of life to the environmental is probably going to become the holy grail of biology in my opinion, but a very difficult one as it sort of requires real time analyses. I have often thought about how to go about this in which I think of artificial environments for microbes might be a good start with all kinds of differing environments and or physical realities from any variable such as chemical composition to pressure to how they go about getting energy. The regulation of energy or equilibrium is probably a large part of the spark of life though I would think, being microbes or things like prions or viruses do indeed blur definitions of life.

Would you think such as being a juvenile version of a more to be large scale field of science in general in the future? Complex systems seems to derive already from the reality of various natural sciences, but I think without various biases such hold simply from axioms of choice. What I mean is any newcomer to any field of natural science is not taught at first to think really about what they are learning but rather just to learn it, and from that any real endeavors after that point seem to be instantly rejected if they do not follow along the same lines. For instance. Whatever natural laws of the universe that exists, they allowed for life to come into existence by whatever definitions we happen to attribute to it. Yet it would seem that such a reality is hardly represented in physics overall save past minor discussion. I guess what I am getting at is from the point in which sciences were actually segregated in study, by I think Descartes, they have developed independent views and axioms of nature with no real desire or urge to make a more composite view. I guess physics tries with various attempts as a GUT, but such hardly works out. From the various natural sciences though it would seem various truisms have come about in relation to reality, in which I find being the prime products of study in complex systems, I also think again because of the relative age of such a field that is has not become for lack of better words degraded with various axioms that have to be satisfied by any idea put forward. Do you think such a field has promise to advance human understanding of reality in the future more so then any typical field which lead to its creation? Hers is a link from wiki on the subject as a general overview. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_systems

Sounds awfully spooky to me. The idea of creating giant algae blooms for the idea of sequestering CO2 sounds flawed for a couple of reasons. I don’t think anyone can really say with confidence at this point about the reality of how that would basically change aquatic environments to the simple idea that CO2 production in the first place by humanity really has no end in site as its stands right now.

That’s just the thing, I don’t know how to define it any better I guess. To try to shorten the post, basically I am looking for any information or models that treats nature I guess for lack of better words as an evolving entity in regards to a particle in it to collections of such, from planets to stars, basically everything. I am hoping that whatever it is if such exists deals with such on a QM basis. Anyways, thanks for the replies.

What I don’t get is if spacetime or the universe is one solid body I get this image in my mind. If you take a piece of paper, crumple it so you have some texture, moving such at any part causes moment to the rest. So my idea is if that the universe is fully connected at some or any points, any activity in such then should have related activity via its connection to all parts it touches, sort of like a butterfly effect. I don’t know if at all this can be explained at a QM level as I have no formal education in physics, just an interest and an over the top at times imagination. Then with the concept of time as I think you may or may not be getting at? I just don’t know how time can be fully separated from say matter/energy or the relationship the two have, which again for some reason I get tossed back wondering at QM origins. I don’t really understand classical systems to much and to be honest. I mean from reading on string theory if everything is a representation of a more primitive or underlying particle or object, what is or why is the differentiation present from a particle level to a classical system, more or less with the idea that the universe is a quantum system, and of course lastly how does chaos theory role up in all of it.

I don’t really believe in the ego. I think the mind in itself is a biological organ which has more then one function and or also shows differentiation on a biological level to a good degree. I think the term of the ego may hint at some actual process or faculty of the mind, but I do think the term is a primitive term derived from primitive methods of observation/experimentation. I mean do we try to probe the ego of a common fly? Its neural faculties have proven to be slightly more complex then we think, so I guess what I am getting at here is understanding the biology of the organism would probably need to be understood before we can try to fully define it in real time in relation to the environment.

I have been dealing with a question for a very long time now and I can seem to word it correctly to find sources on the net to read up on, so I was hoping someone actually educated in physics could simply give me a pointer. I come from a biological background, and well physics is still and interest to me in a great many ways. To make the story short via evolution one can find connections of affinities between organisms. When reading up on physics I find stuff that with an uneducated eye seems to appeal to me as somewhat the same. I have no idea though what I am talking about but I am greatly interested in anyone that has studied for lack of better words why natural phenomena in nature seems to be related in that essence if I am anywhere near correct on it. I wont go as far as to say I am looking for the study into the phylogeny of natural phenomena but something similar. I have read up on studies that deal with nucleosynthesis but that’s not exactly what I am looking for. So basically if anyone has more of a clue then I as to what I am talking about in regards to study in physics and happens to know any links I would greatly appreciate such if you could give them to me. Thanks for reading this also.

Now not knowing if nature or reality such as QM and evolution for example is truly finite to any real extent and the reality of organic evolution being a part of that very nature from any level be it classical to QM and such also becoming evident in even astrophysics what is the implication to humanity in regards to worldview and behavior? It derives so many profound speculations I will not even attempt to cover them all here, and not to appear as a hippy out of touch, but is the reality of the future in regards to something so natural as evolution truly in our hands via behavior? If such is so would it not for the simple sake of survival be humanities best bet to choose a worldview in which life and peace are of the most importance? As to evolve a future in which various primitive realities of nature have taken on different roles or even vanished in the face of change? I know people are not decided on genetic determinism such as eye color in regards to behavior and the reality of nature is not fully understood. One thing that does appear to me though is the simple reality of however nature truly operates is evident in life also. So giving the concept of evolution and the idea that the organism which is an octopus reflects the reality of being an octopus as in regards to its nature and nature in general I do not find the concept of being human so separate from that very same nature, we are human and act accordingly to such. So is it a far fetched idea to think that we can manifest more or less some degree of control in nature of our future evolution via understanding and behavior, and if such is true I would think the paramount reality humanity should strive for in worldview would be one in which again life, the continuum of such regardless of form and peace would be the ultimate way in which to conduct life. So please feel free to add thoughts in on this. I thought about placing such in speculations but its not really even a hypothesis, its just thoughts or reflections I guess on what I have learned and how I look at things.

Plant biology is typically/normally called botany. As for the chemistry aspect, well I would simply suggest starting with general chemistry and working your way up.

Ok, this was an idea I came up with one day while being sick. If you were to put a mechanical/chemical object down in say a body of water, say 100 feet down. Say you had it explode releasing a fine mesh of carbon nanotubes(I added the tubes recently) holding together a hydrophobic gel. Could the pressures along with the mesh hold a dome of the gel together, say the pressure was caused by maybe differentiation of the gel along with various layers of the mesh screen to create and internal environment for people to occupy. Basically you have the initial pop, it starts to expand the gel which in turn is meshed with the tubes that give a skeletal structure of sorts for support. This is further advanced by the filling internally of the pocket or dome the gel creates or a bubble really. Could something like that be created for underwater research? If its not clear to anyone please ask questions as I have had this idea going for a bit now.

Is it implicit that even another quantum universe have anything in common with say the one we live in, which I think the concept implies our universe is then a quantum system or event or events. I don’t see why an alternate or even how many ever alternates that exist need to be anything like our own. If unless QM itself is not bottom layer and something is producing QM on its own, then I would see QM having to satisfy whatever laws such produces within the behavior put forth by QM. Then again it would seem that our universe does interact with QM, so the curveball to me is that whatever is below or producing QM manifesting through a possible QM function, or if QM is standalone does it have to have similar to exact properties such as actions event in any alternate form.

Well that’s sort of what I was getting at but I guess its my fault. Habit formation by living things seems to be pretty large scale, so I am guessing via natural selection it has a reason really to be around, which I think is environmental for a variety of reasons. First its not that hard to think that the governator or arnie down in California as a kid was actually skinny. So that being said its more or less a concept based on plasticity really in relation to environment or norm of reaction stuff I think. But to what I am trying to get to in this thread is more or less on a more molecular point of view. Such as the various smells of fruits and or vegetables. How did this come to be known by people. Not withstanding that it might not smell the same to another type of organism the fruits and or vegetables themselves contain regularly occurring chemical formulas or signatures and happen to be a rich energy source proper for consumption by a species geared for such. I think its via environment and adaptation that the smells of such have become known, which I would try to relate to habit in a sense being able to be recognized at more of a molecular level. I think this question more or less happens to relate at whole species level, and I know I am crossing into grounds on developmental biology and molecular biology, but organismal biology being what it is again the concept of the habit seems to be rather robust, as in occurring in more then just people. I think it has a reason in relation to norm of reaction in a giving environment also in relation to a genotype mapping into a phenotype, or more of less I think habits are a product of such. Again giving the idea that life is temporal it would then pertain to more lasting or acute realities as posed to life, such as staying clean and or eating I guess. Now food sources could have been a trail by error, but as witnessed with predatory animals they do indeed posses means to damaged and incapacitate or kill prey, such as claws for example. In relation to another type of predatory such as a lizard that has more specialized adaptations for a different type of prey. It all requires a certain degree of normal action, which then ultimately utilizes the molecular aspect of life. So again to reduce the question to what I think I am talking about is the realization of habit on a molecular level in relation to norm of reactions for a giving phenotype is a possible ESS as derived from natural selection.

Ok. Lets look at the earth for instance, obviously one would not doubt that its a dynamic system right? Well for it to do anything requires energy. There is quite a bit of energy moving around in the earth, enough to move tectonic plates, enough to build mountains, and enough to make volcanic activity. So lets just say for the matter or mass of the earth that we have a certain amount of energy, which giving the idea of the solar system in which we have a star and or a sun probably is not a fixed and or constant number. So why geological differentiation? It sounds simple simply because of all the energy moving around in the earth, and of course we already pointed out that the earth is not a closed system, that can be further evidenced by the need of AC systems to sun block formulas. So then, we do have energy, and lots of it. How much energy does a microbe require to sustain itself? How about a football field sized sheet of them? Would it be nearly as much juice as found in a lighting storm? To go back from that to another point, how could any chemical activity take place in a system that has no energy period? I think actual changes of atomic structure of an atom alone might be awfully rare on earth, but chemical reactions themselves seem to be overtly plentiful. So then, how many spontaneous reactions have taken place and continue to take place to this very second. I would think it would be an incredibly large number though I don’t know who is counting. So lets just postulate then for the sake of brevity that the earth has plenty of energy to reach activation energies and various enthalpies to simply enough energy to create mount Everest and fuel Vesuvius. Then again lets go to the point of the energy required for a microbe or even a few million to sustain themselves, just in terms of energy I think the earth as a non closed and energetically dynamic system has enough energy to supply this. So then we jump to probabilities. On probability. For one minute of one day on earth the probability of life forming I would agree to be quite low. I think over all the seconds of say all the actions that can occur in a dynamic system over say a million years actually changes that low probability to the probability of highly likely. I mean flipping a thousand sided day for one day probably is not going to reveal much, flipping a thousand sided die for a million years constantly probably would reveal much more. Here is an example, what is the probability of a snowflake ever having a certain appearance? Looking at snowflakes alone its easy to see basically the endless forms such can take in all reality, which again I would just like to use as a pointer to the reality of time combined with a dynamic system in which free energy persists, more then enough to power early life. Now lets jump away from that to the point in which life exists. Going from the study of such in time we have from the very simple relatively speaking, to dinosaurs, to primates, to humans. In which you find that it was not instantly everything, that many forms of life have gone extinct and or changed. So what can this be evidenced by? Well from the molecular to even the ecological to even behavior one can find physical evidence for evolution, its actually to numerous for a person a single person to know. Then we have how life survives. Currently it survives again in relation to energy, in the forms of trophs and or energy webs, or food chains. Its not just the bottom troph to the top with nothing in between also. As for one last point, on the topic of form. How many kingdoms does life have? How many phylum’s? How many species currently exist? Those numbers seem a bit of a pointer I would think to something natural. It would also seem that the bauplan seems to be highly conserved, such as four limbs, be it four legs, or two and two arms, to how many digits each limb has. You see, people just think mutation, and while mutation is by in large a large part of evolution, its no where near everything. Plus non biologists or people that are not even students of don’t really study any of the details. Such as aquatic mammals or penguins. How about monotremes or marsupials to placental mammals? Or again even the existence of dinosaurs to aves. All physical evidence of all that life above as studied in the context of evolution only goes to lend support to evolution. So does any field of biology, be it developmental to ecological, to the concept or thing that is DNA and what it holds. You see the problem is that it is vastly complex. People were shocked when the human genome was uncovered and the quantity of genes did not support fully a DNA centered view of life, as in genetics is but one aspect of the whole... Yet any angle that is studied, objectivity, for empirical evidence, by anyone that wants to or does, finds support for evolution, empirically with physical evidence. I mean do you know what developmental buffering or developmental canalization is, or what a bauplan is? I mean lets just say life is a bit more complex then a snowflake, can you make a program that will predict perfectly what naturally occurring snowflakes all over the world will look like perfectly, as in real time? Now to say mathematical or computational biology cant work, but that’s a pretty high order for a system not truly deterministic as much as say something you might study in general chemistry.

I don’t know if that is exactly it. You know they did a space mission, or china did in which produced purple potatoes. The norm of reaction or relationship of an organism from an level to the environment is highly meshed and not completely deterministic. So then that’s a good deal of stuff about life on earth, but from the diversity of life on earth that is all we have to work with. Supposedly data has the amount of life living in the earth or its deeper areas such as crust as by in large a far greater mass then all life in the oceans and the surface combined. To add to this in such we can find a startling amount of diversity but of course because of evolution we can relate such and such is similar. If we found life in another environment, separate from the earth, it by chance could answer various questionings, chiefly what chemistry is required by life. Though the locality of say mars to earth as you point out could be an issue at some level, finding life on mars would allow for a great deal of questions to get more data, such as again does life require a certain chemistry or environment. I would say no overall from life on earth, but the bounds to life on earth even while vividly diverse again all relate and or share because of evolution. Finding intelligent life could be anything. It could mean a combative race that wants to destroy us, or a race so peaceful they want nothing to do with us. To the idea that evolution again as understood currently does not have to produce human like "intelligence" to what is the bounds again for life. The ideas of other religions destroy religion. How does a follower of a religion like Buddhism go to hell? I really also could care less for occams razor, being if it truly did work its all we should really need to use. Also being an agnostic I don’t really follow either way. If there is something, it cant be supernatural or it could not exist, its all natural. I mean really, maybe something does, but its not conscious like we would think, maybe there are many of them, and they hate us and made this to play twisted games and we still all decompose in the ground into oblivion. Maybe life as we know it is some stage of evolution in which the afterlife is a hint to something else. Personally its all just philosophy, its subjective and it can be anything, its infinite really to an extent, or just another aspect of complex and or chaotic systems in my opinion. For instance, the person. Here is my opinion. You have a genotype, and phenotype and an environment. So what is the bounds, and for every passing second do we all experience the same environment exactly the same with the exactly same biology? No, so in essence there is you individual. Its not very pretty though for an answer I guess, but a person after a head injury or a person on drugs shows very earthly and or real aspects to being alive and or biological... You know its like QM. People found this aspect out about nature. What if QM is just a product of being human, maybe QM is sort of how our brains work and not nature? What’s the point of saying something like that if you cant prove it being right or wrong, or test such? That’s why following evolution is not an act of faith. We have proof, lots of it, and it constantly grows. Anything else besides that needs to be testable, needs to be able to become empirical in the essence of being falsifiable or not, or really all it will ever be at any point in time besides such is philosophy. So what you have then is humans at large, via whatever basically desiring to live outside of what truth we can gather about reality, which to me is a very sad state of affairs.

Finding life on other planets may not be at all what I think you are getting at. Finding life on another planet would be very enlightening to say the least for a majority of reasons I would say the primary one just being able to do comparative studies on life on earth or life on another planet. As for the other issues you bring up, maybe people in science happen to do corrupt things for more earthly reasons, such as money or funding, and it happens in more then biology. It could also be a person poured so much time and research into something when it turned out to be false they had to be right anyways. Lastly in regards to biology specifically, no other science is really attacked as much for a whole series of reasons. You don’t have presidents tossing out or playing with ideas or school boards attempting to ban natural history as much as you have them basically rejecting or attacking evolution for reasons that have little to do with science. I mean when was the last time Einstein was attacked in the press, in the classroom, or by a presidency? There is many different studies going on right now as to what "junk dna" is or was or does or did. I don’t find the concept of junk dna as a vestigial structure all to profound or whack either, I mean vestigial structures exist right? As for whatever junk dna may or may not be I cant say really, but like most things in biology eventually some empirically derived concrete answer or batch of them will emerge, which might show junk dna as being a product of more then one thing and not all of it being junk. As for religious atheism, well, I would agree with you. They made a choice about how things are, and really if reality does not support it you have to do things, like religions do with attempting to ban evolution.

You can plainly see the video has been doctored. Not to mention the drip bit.

Well that’s just a bit of a thing there. I wont talk like I am all knowing of the subject I am just going to add my two cents. Have you done much physical chemistry? I mean when I first read about that stuff it kind of got my interest going as in it gave matter more of a definition chemically speaking then just the simple idea of why hydrogen will bond with oxygen. Plus the environments of reactions mechanisms are not all to common in any of these talks nor is simply the energetics of any of it. chemical activation energies in cells is another aspect that can be studied really, so could the idea of molecular cell adhesion and so on. Take a look at this link just for an idea of it all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrosome Now to get past all of that lets think of genetics. Do you know what evo devo is or what they have discovered about life? In relation to evolution what evo devo has happened to find through rigorous empirical investigation is nothing but evidence for evolution. Plus evolution is not just one simple deterministic mechanism which will bring me to another part of my post. Life is temporal, its not a finite closed fully deterministic system. It has those qualities as its derives from physics and chemistry, but what’s evident in concepts like chaos theory and complex systems is evidence in life, which I would suggest on reading up on both. The full reality of evolution is not fully understood, and the reality on top of that is that evolution could take life in completely different direction in time, maybe DNA could become CNA or something with 7 or 12 different types of bases, which if I may add also adds into how life got to where it is in the first place. Evolution may have life now looking like nothing it did in the past. To add to this its hard to gauge the impact something like the virus has had on the course of evolution on earth. To get grounded in more normal terms of how life may have started on earth I would suggest on reading up on protobionts. The produce a structure similar to a modern cell, and also express many of the same behaviors or similar. They can also contain internal environments and will absorb naturally occurring chemicals such as RNA. Lastly one thing always overlooked in all of this is simply the time variable. A million years is a damn hard amount of time in which to envision all the possible realities of something that can occur, I mean in the time spans the evolution takes place in entire mountain ranges can be born and subsequently recycled. To get even more down and dirty the reality of the cell and to study it also evokes aspects found in quantum mechanics. I mean one can make all kinds of speculations currently on life. Such as what role does gene regulation have with evolution, is species and genus more a product of drift and family and order being effected more by something else? Does the evolution of the fly represent the evolution of all other life? What impact did falling trees have on the evolution of life? The point I would like to make is that evolution is backed up by physical or empirical tests and data. Its not just a toy model derived from math. You also have to actually study such for a period of time before more simple and subtle realities of such become noticeable. I mean you probably cant compare in full reality the evolution of tame dogs such as a boxer or a pittbull to the reality of why a lion is a lion. Overall you cant try to get so deterministic with life, which I think is a big mistake lots of people make, that one along with the time aspect. As for statistics, what are the chances of anything? The reality of statistics basically to me make anything that occurs ever highly improbable, from me finding this web forum to posting this post with the various words I chose to use to the reality of what tomorrow will bring in the future for all human actions considered. Statistics are useful, but I have a hard time when statistics and philosophy come together on matters that pertain to realities such as life.

As waves move through matter in the earth say from an earthquake I think velocity of such waves are based on density of medium they happen to be traveling through which is basically refraction. Such also has an impact in regards to path of what is observed. That’s the earth though which I am sure will express differently then the topic at hand.

I don’t know why we assume much anything really on the matter. It would seem from our current physical laws that conservation of energy does indeed exist, in that stuff cant be created nor destroyed basically. Trying to define the stuff perfectly is illusive I think if I understand modern physics. I mean when someone says matter, its not perfect or black or white. I think interesting studies are with the concept of co-evolution in regards to black holes and galaxies in a sort of progressive method of observation coordinating with time. In that dark matter seems to be present in some form or function with galaxies that I guess coincides with black holes that are for the most part actually invisible balls of mass of a great many magnitudes of mass more then our star or sun. That all on its own can toss quite a buzz at me more so when the QM reality to the classical of the black hole is not really all that defined past say hawking radiation, if I have my notes right. I think of the ideas of that was anti particle/particle pairs coming to bear at the event horizon? So to me definitely some weird QM stuff going on it would seem at that point, but then again how many properties do black holes and dark stuff like dark matter and energy even have in common? Its all terribly interesting but I do agree that what ever fate the universe as we know it will come to experience in time will have to be combated by whatever life is like at the time. Maybe life will just eventually envelope the universe. That would be weird to think about, cellular or what not or biologic control of QM or what not.

Who knows, maybe proximity to a certain relative and environment will impact gene regulation. Just joking, I would agree with he above poster that the full reality of such is not understood well enough.

Do you think that habits as expressed by an organism say such as a human have a cellular/molecular undertow in the idea they aid in defining actions for systems of such.

Do you by chance even honestly study biology? I mean to me it seems like your education in biology is grounded in the bible and links to Leviticus really, not much more. Creationists lie, distort and survive on fallacy, while at the same time implying biologists or evolution is the product of some grand plan to destroy Thor the sky lord. I like lord of the rings, its a good movie, but if you want to hate on a theory accepted by science and used as the backbone of biology with an untold amount of evidence and applications, you might want to do some research first.

There is a general genetics forum, in which genetics related threads can be made. I don’t think individual aspects of genetics will receive individual forums.