foodchain

If life per say down to the cellular level or even just the DNA had visibility of its surroundings I would think evolution to be a bit different. Now what’s being viewed as "networks" per say in the organism and the relationship from phenotype to genotype to ecotype or so on is not standing at 100% factual understanding. With that said though science does have a good grasp on phylogeny, and in that or studying such or studying biology in general you can see where terms like the blind watchman come about, because as is things go extinct, some things make it, and change such as the DNA with mutations does occur, it can be objectively viewed and is recorded even today. Such as in your own DNA, evolution is recorded. Such as in Hanford Washington, a microbe or bacteria has become able to survive and maintain fitness is nuclear waste basically for one example, but if you view say population biology, or population genetics how this is done is mutations coming about that either survive by being advantageous, die out by reducing fitness, or basically having no impact overall, such as neutral. You can actually after a bit of study learn how to do this in a Petri dish really all on your own. The point being is that the life had to adapt to its surroundings to survive, in with no doubt I am sure not every individual made it say for those microbes. But genetics is just one part of a whole, and really you have to view the whole in essence to understand it all I would suggest, not just trying to deduce life from one angle. As in it becomes a rather complex issue, life that is and its structure, origin and function.

I don’t know, I have looked into engineering programs before, and I don’t think its just money or coursework alone that is the final factor. For instance, I would like to eventually work in biology, I would like to work on my own in microbiology. That’s difficult coursework, and well the pay is not so great, and there does not happen to be a boom in the market per say. I just think you cant squish the interest factor. I mean I am interested in physics, but for what its worth, I could easily spend a great more deal of interest in my life studying simply a specie of wasp when you get down to it. Maybe, just maybe not everyone wants to be an engineer or a computer specialist. On the flip side I suppose it lessens the competition factor for those already in the field, but I guess it could lead to more outsourcing, which is typically bad in some cases because the company usually screws everyone involved save for management.

Its not an original idea, it may be in the context of you generating it independently though. I don’t think such is possible really, being first you would have to catch up with said light, and I don’t know how you would do that, then there is the idea of whatever the light has interacted with for instance since leaving earth at a particular moment in time.

I can grasp that much, its just more or less if time itself is a product or byproduct of action/reaction or if its an entity all to itself, I have been asking this question on this board for over a month now. Well I don’t know if I want to get in some heated debate on this, as in I don’t know how you would test this past battling with math equations. So what do you travel back in time to, if per say that means time is its own entity, what is the unit of time or physical reality of such that permits per say a perfect recording really of each nano second of the universes existence. I think that would have to exist in order to traverse time without having to take the current or real time universe with you. Then again the idea of time travel into the past has a whole different set of issues vs. traveling into the future.

I am still stuck on at what point does time become physical. I mean I can understand time in the sense of a framework for understanding, much like the need for an operating system in computers, but as far as outside of human perception or what not alone, where is time actually a physical entity like an electron. I try as I may to digest such from GR, but it does not always work out for me. As in I can fire a round through the air and get some effects, cold air or hot air having an impact, or fire it into some gel and get different effects, so basically I am at a lose as to where time is physical and no necessarily just something that comes to exist so we can make sense of something like reality/nature. I mean stuff that exists in the material world, aka reality has a physical presence, I mean we are even finding this for stuff like dark matter and dark energy right? To me to travel back in time, well then all of the mass or energy in the universe would have to do such also right?

Personally I find this area of research to be fascinating. I simply could not digest all to well the idea of just genes alone when viewing life as many would have it. I don’t think such research undermines the role of genes or the overall importance they hold in life, I just could not simply digest evolution as just genes alone. Here is a wiki article on some of it, of course the internet alone is full of information on the subject for anyone interested. "Among the more surprising and, perhaps, counterintuitive (from a neo-Darwinian viewpoint) results of recent research in evolutionary developmental biology is that the diversity of body plans and morphology in organisms across many phyla are not necessarily reflected in diversity at the level of the sequences of genes, including those of the developmental genetic toolkit and other genes involved in development. Indeed, as Gerhart and Kirschner have noted, there is an apparent paradox: "where we most expect to find variation, we find conservation, a lack of change".[10] Even within a species, the occurrence of novel forms within a population does not generally correlate with levels of genetic variation sufficient to account for all morphological diversity. For example, there is significant variation in limb morphologies amongst salamanders and in differences in segment number in centipedes, even when the respective genetic variation is low. A major question then, for evo-devo studies, is: If the morphological novelty we observe at the level of different clades is not always reflected in the genome, where does it come from? Apart from neo-Darwinian mechanisms such as mutation, translocation and duplication of genes, novelty may also arise by mutation-driven changes in gene regulation. The finding that much biodiversity is not due to differences in genes, but rather to alterations in gene regulation, has introduced an important new element into evolutionary theory.[11] Diverse organisms may have highly conserved developmental genes, but highly divergent regulatory mechanisms for these genes. Changes in gene regulation are "second-order" effects of genes, resulting from the interaction and timing of activity of gene networks, as distinct from the functioning of the individual genes in the network. The discovery of the homeotic Hox gene family in vertebrates in the 1980s allowed researchers in developmental biology to empirically assess the relative roles of gene duplication and gene regulation with respect to their importance in the evolution of morphological diversity. Several biologists, including Sean B. Carroll of the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggest that "changes in the cis-regulatory systems of genes" are more significant than "changes in gene number or protein function".[12] These researchers argue that the combinatorial nature of transcriptional regulation allows a rich substrate for morphological diversity, since variations in the level, pattern, or timing of gene expression may provide more variation for natural selection to act upon than changes in the gene product alone. Epigenetic alterations of gene regulation or phenotype generation that are subsequently consolidated by changes at the gene level constitute another class of mechanisms for evolutionary innovation. Epigenetic changes include modification of the genetic material due to methylation and other reversible chemical alteration [13], as well as nonprogrammed remolding of the organism by physical and other environmental effects due to the inherent plasticity of developmental mechanisms.[5] The biologists Stuart A. Newman and Gerd B. Müller have suggested that organisms early in the history of multicellular life were more susceptible to this second category of epigenetic determination than are modern organisms, providing a basis for early macroevolutionary changes.[14]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_developmental_biology

Not all wasps happen to be super aggressive or kill on sight or sting on sight really. I have quite a few yellow jackets that for the most part will just basically leave you alone, its funny watching them land on the side of a hose and fall off. If they start flying faster and coming at you and doing zig zags and stuff is when you would probably want to defend yourself in general, or more to the point like people you generally have to do something to aggravate a wasp, unless its in the process of making a home or something, then if might just attack you though I have never had that happen. The difference in specie to specie might account for a variance in behavior though along with other factors. As for detection of wasps, I have no idea what you would place in a room for such past A.I and detection equipment like thermal imagery or what not. I would think your best bet is basically learning about local wasps, such as what they like for food or shelter and trying to minimize such on your property. The shelter part might be hard to defeat though.

I have three firewalls going at least I think, two I know of for sure, two different security programs, and well other gadgets and I still get a spyware or two here and there. I don’t think you can get a computer security program really and feel safe, they are to exposed to the hackers on a regular basis and or cannot cover everything. Not saying it does not hurt to have one, but really the best bet is to save anything important in like an external drive, and back your computer up. As for the program in question, I never really noticed norton doing much anything when I had it.

Actually the study of paleomagnitism does not put a particular standard of time to a reversal per say, as in other variables I guess could apply to the flips. Someone made what basically looks like a serial code you might find on a item for purchase. The code when finished was somewhat easier to describe by simply looking at it with the word chaos then anything else, as in there could be many flips in a time equal to the lasting of one, as it sometimes you would find long stretches of time without a flip, and in other areas the flips came in minor fractions of the time that others had lasted.

Well on the truth bit, I don’t think crime is solved simply by people just making equations, and I would guess that’s my aim in general with the question.

I hear in many threads in the physics section in regards to views I shall call them that its the math/calculations that makes something true. IS such an actual or viable position that professionals in such a field hold, even if something has not been tested or for that matter directly observed? It seems to me that with reality as a whole, that simply does not equate into truth, no pun intended.

TO me I would fund the science just to end what could be some new and wild religious explosion in the human race. All I could ever not want is a bunch of "neo" want to be people running around looking for the oracle. Then again like religion in general there may be no way to end such a "faith" with anything called logic or what not, or evil words like objective and empirical...

Well thanks, I had no idea really. I got thinking on it simply from say mutation rates of bacteria or more or less thinking of some way to possibly very rapidly discover bases on a certain length of DNA, I guess the laser is out of the question though.

It sounds very interesting I have a few questions though and maybe you could clear them up. Is by chance his idea as he would put it for patters in the neocortex or hierarchies of such based more in objective reality of the brain? I ask this because I wonder if the theory itself is a product of the need of modern tools and methods, such as math and how computers work or even what "patterns" the scientist run in there heads for understanding. Second, animal behavior and learning. He touches on learning a lot which I think is rather easy to see. Such is a more historical basis of even psychology going back to Plato. I cant see how you can say its just patterns based on cellular communication or so fourth simply because of the vast difference humans have in that regard with a great deal of life. Simply put to me it seems as if we don’t have any differentiation in that organ and simply put it seems to become as if our brain works simply from bulk of neurons? I don’t know if I follow that one to well. simply it would then seem you could do a count of neurons per specie/organism and find a max or min really of cognitive ability based on neuron count(minus possible compression algorithm I guess), but of course I doubt this to be the case because the brain does have differentiation and related function. For instance, unless routed by specific needs in the overall biology of such the sperm whale has a 20 pound brain roughly, the human brain is a fraction of that in regards to size. The structure though at question, such as the neocortex though, share difference in comparison of the two species.

Having some experience with this here is the problem. Why would the insurgents happen to go where you are strong? They look just like everyone else, have blended in, or really were always there. Its like asking police to end crime in a state. I mean these people look just like every other civilian, the insurgents that is, this is why you can download youtube videos that show confused U.S personal gunning down confused civilians in a bus, that is if you would like to watch such things...Plus they dont have to go home, they are already there. The war in Iraq was never really a war, in a war you have one side going out the kill the other. IN WW2 we dropped nukes, firebombed cities, basically laid waster to entire landscapes and civilizations, that’s war, iraq is Vietnam all over again. The armed forces in fighting on one leg with both there arms tied behind there back, and I think its that stress and the reality they face for life combined with other variables in Iraq that lead to horror stories such as prisoner torture for no reason save they could do it. Now not to say anyone’s stupid, but in all reality outside of comic books the opposition in Iraq probably sees what they are doing as correct or just, to compound with this the insurgency in Iraq is an amorphous composite of groups, some of them being complete and utter religious nutcases trying to bring the apocalypse on. To compare the good with the bad, well on one side of the scale you have 100 pounds of the good, and on the other side of the scale you have 30 tons of the bad, now the only thing I can ever hope that Americans would do is simply see this, the four years of such and demand change.

Well, you just answered my questions.

Ouch, if you got any more condescending this could become a flame war. What exactly qualifies one as a scientist though, being a grad student. I mean I have made logs as a child as to what foods ants will particular choose if giving the option and recorded such, does this count, or do I have to be a grad student? Though, we cant tell what science will be tomorrow, so me being a grad student tomorrow might not let us know what science will be, I mean we just cant know those things, but of course being some grad student you probably already know this:D

Now I don’t know if this has anything to do with the topic but this is a pretty darn cool little organism. "Ability to Resist Environmental Extremes While in a state of cryptobiosis tardigrades are able to resist environmental extremes that would be instantly letha to animals if in the active state. In 1842, the French naturalist Doyere first discovered tardigrades were able to withstand being heated for a few minutes to 125 °C, later Rham in 1929 increased this figure to 150°C. Adults have been able to survive being cooled to temperatures of almost absolute zero (-272.8°C) where there is no free molecular vibration and so no metabolism can exist. While in this state the organisms are also greatly resistant to X-Rays of 570,000 Roentgens (only 500 Roentgens would be fatal to a human). Water bears are also resistant to a vacuum (like outer space), some noxious chemicals, boiling alcohol, and pressures six time greater than the bottom of the deepest ocean etc." http://www.museums.org.za/bio/tardigrades/index.htm

Well, even the most basic life we have on earth currently such as prokaryotes in my opinion is probably a large evolution from whatever really primitive life was like, purely opinion. Now I know that complex organic aromatic compounds have been found in space among with other amino acids, but I don’t know where this is going with it all. Maybe the way life on earth came about is not the same as it did somewhere else? Who is to say really, or more or less why do things have to be simple and elegant? What I don’t understand is simply comets bring life to earth, surely I am not getting the article confused with peoples posts. I don’t know of anything living that would survive a comet impacting on say a body like earth. I don’t even know of any experiments we can do which would gauge what such an impact would yield truly. Now if the article is just about comets bringing basic building blocks of life to earth as we understand it, such as various organic compounds, well to me that seems more feasible. There are such theories behind how a deal of water made its way to earth. Primitive fish that had a scale like system similar to modern fish scales, or the primitive scales themselves were inorganic compounds actually, so maybe a fallacy that is being labored about is saying life needs a certain chemistry to exist possibly? I mean to me talking about chemistry is somewhat a moot point, for you can do that with a grand scale of things that happen to be made out of matter. I think a more real question would be how to get something to sustain and reproduce itself. The laws of physics happen to be ever present as far as I know, so "life" would always be faced with that, such as thermal energy. I mean from what is understood so far factually about evolution most any thought on the subject from that points to origins that are even more primitive, its just that such is probably not a simple or elegant thing, and more or less it would be easy on my part to suggest that whatever scientists studying such might not even be doing it with the right questions, such as thinking you have to have a certain chemistry, not to mention what was the environment in terms of structure or energy, such as maybe a certain type of rock formation in a certain location was paramount to the foundation of life on earth, but over billions of years, how do you find out exactly. TO add to this maybe the process that lead to life itself took millions of years or longer... The list really could go on.

ITs a he, as in me:D Evolution full of holes? Well I wont go as far as to say that, just that not everything is resolved, and well who knows what taking a radical direction on such could yield, not that you should, but hey.

Actually giving evolution the egg came before the chicken. If I were to go back into the past and change an event, every event "entangled"> with that one would then be altered to some degree.

Yes, but you would at least have to pertain to the subject. I mean for instance deformed special relativity, now do you see lots of threads on this board about such? The point was not about philosophy, not in a sense of is politics corrupt, we all know that it is, its about science. ID attacks science but ID does not have any science period, it has lots of people that support it but I don’t know when a single ID hypothesis was even created much lest tested. The only one I know of was about geology and it was found out that the two IDiots behind it actually falsified data so what have you on that. I don’t really look at ID as science because to be honest it does not have any unless you favor intelligent falling which I suppose you don’t actually. Its about if science lacks any support or even punishes fringe scientists or people that think outside of the box. I mean all the hype about string theory, or LQG, what if some group of physics people came up with something else that can encompass already existing phenomena, my guess is that such already exists and gets little to no attention. The point is which I guess I poorly worded is about science, its not about politics, or economics per say, as in I did not even take those angles on which others have.

I posted more then once on this board that I am a student in college. I have never read lee smolins book either, and well personal attacks aside are you not just sort of proving my point?

I don’t know of any current means to remove ID from philosophy and put it into science. Overall I don’t know any means to scientifically or objectively study ID. I mean if you say find out one day that gravity means if you toss a ball up it better be able to maintain escape velocity, well that’s all it says, to go outside of that is to basically invoke philosophy until you can fine a means to test such.

First of all I did not set out to upset anyone’s day or anything, so please don’t go that route I am a certified laymen of physics. What I mean in general by the word selection I guess if I can sum such up is that QM as I understand it is not deterministic. If per say I have a group of different colored spheres, the color of such being the only difference, say 400 of them in a box and I shake the box for an hour, what pattern am I going to get back if the pattern I assign to it is not completely arbitrary, or fault of the observer. So I don’t understand I guess in the terms of cosmic evolution following along from say the big bang on how QM which is a very real part of our universe say lent a hand to the standard model coming into existence or for that matter persisting in time. Odds would have it that if I did my colored spheres enough I might get twenty green ones on the surface, but those are just odds. It just seems to me that from where I sit in regards to understanding QM it basically must then hold the key to understanding a great deal of things. Such as entanglement, is that purely arbitrary and random also, simply if its not can you follow entanglement into the past if not the future? What role did QM play in quarks coming about, or flavors of such for that matter, and why out of a non deterministic system could something so regular as the laws of physics come about, or is it really just a modern probability open to massive change? From what I know of conservation laws they aid me in understanding a great deal of things because I can see how stuff has to work in that deterministic tone, it has no consciousness of course and water will take the easiest path, which I think plays a large role in the various phenomena’s we come to observe from the formation or pattern of galaxies to why I get circles in water if I drop a drip in it, I just get confused when trying to lump something like that up with QM when what I know of such is that QM is non deterministic, the only thing I keep getting back in a loop then is entanglement must play or reflect some larger role, but being a laymen I come here to ask of course people actually “certified” in such endeavors of course.