foodchain

Maybe a chunk of the anti-war crowd simply hates the idea of war. Now, not to say I agree or disagree, but an "organized" gathering of humans killing each other probably is not everyone’s cup of tea. The reason I would hate on say the anti-war crowd is that its easy to simply be against something in life, I know I share in this fault on some levels also, but its a whole different issue to be able to solve such problems. Example, there is an anti-nuke crowd, but for what its worth I praise such technology as I would guess we would be on WW6 by now if not for such items. I think it boils down to nature and nurture really, and the human condition, which far be it from me to simply say we have all kinds of unknown variables in that equation towards understanding, yet this does not preclude the seemingly endless amount of idiots that want to get on a soapbox and start a religion for instance. So to simply hate on the anti war crowd, well sure its possible, but in a world less the perfectly objective, what progression does that make?

Doorknob shocks I think is just a product of static electricity really. I mean humans do use stun guns, but that’s probably not what you are talking about? If for the sake of practicality that you want something not quite as normal but feasible, I guess you could try to strap two stun guns to someone, and put the business ends embedded in some gloves, I would think palm, though the gloves would have to insulate and you would have to get close which means touching them or them touching you really I guess:confused: As for a bolt of lightning type of effect, well lighting melts concrete or what not, and electricity itself as I have witnessed with my eyes can simply make metals like stainless steel “disappear“ for instance on a multi tool, so I would be careful really.

Not to sound like a complete layman, but I would think that gravity existing in nature seems to only occur where there happens to be matter or particles or something of that nature, which in my intuition leads me to think that maybe gravity and atoms share some kind of relationship possibly?

So if I get this right, some degree of "energy will always be present in a polyatomic system? If so, then what "speed" or "velocity" does that require to exist, or occur naturally as? I mean if you were to go so slow as to go slower then energy could exist then could you go that slow? I get this from that idea that if you were going the speed of light in a car and turned on your headlights the light would travel away from you at the speed of light, which to me basically means that one, no top speed for the universe exists, or its just a mechanic or observation in which point I am completely lost. I would think though that at a certain speed allows for a certain physical phenomena or medium to exist, such as you don’t see or record atoms traveling at the speed of light naturally, and I don’t know if such is possible really. Then such leads me to think, what is the slowest something can go then? But my question derives from my question on the relation of energy in the form of heat or electricity and velocity or such for example. Basically I would think that nature has a top speed or a bottom speed in which physical reality can exist in really, which is relational of course to energy and matter in systems, but from what I understand of relativity, this just does not seem to exist really.

I don’t know about that. I mean you put it in such rigid mathematical terms which is nice, 1+2, and so on. To me though, I don’t think “time” has in the first place an adequate definition really. Far be it from me, but many people with phd’s that spend all their time trying to figure out how to unify physics still have not reached that point, so what I am to guess is that they simply overlooked this? When I was in a psychology class we were asked to create some oddball topic about something, anything really. I put time down as a product of action/reaction really. I only wrote a paragraph but I basically surmised time as being a product of reality simply carrying itself out, and we arbitrarily gave it a name because we could. I then went on to simply highlight that our perception of this can be a great many things, but exactly at what point can you claim a truth on the matter? That was my topic for my project that day. Now many people want to use math, and that is fine, I appreciate such endeavors actually and I am always amazed by the young kid blasting through calc. That aside, there is a definite point of separation between math as a hypothesis, and a working theory of observation, and experimentation. Can you actually test your idea about reality anymore then my psych class topic? If so how? I mean they cant really test string theory yet, and to imagine all of that math actually being force on nature, it really should be the other way around. Case in point is I have gone over pages of the most incredible I could probably live for another hundred years and not understand it math’s on a particular subject for the math to be false, simply put what actually was occurring was a bit different from the math is all. Now this will not be my typically attack the math session, I do hold my reasons for such though. I like to study ecology a lot, I would bold the a lot part but I see not real point in doing such. Now what I have come to find in regards to the math in ecology, for how far I have gone, still a student thanks to life outside of learning which I don’t mind BTW, anyways, that even for say a population of rats in a sewer system, you cant ever really fully explain day to day behavior. All you can really do is know barring some extreme changes in environment that certain actions fitting of a rat and a population of rats will be occurring. Now going from say the molecular in the rat to the population of the rat, how about trying to put that population of cell signaling to each individual into a math equation that will perfectly describe each rats metabolism through a 24 hour period of perfectly described behavior in that particular ecology. I think that’s why most B.S level educations in biology, or ecology really have two math options, one is calc with a lot of stats, or more calc and calc. I think this is why you can also find statistics formed for biology really. Now I know that’s no where near the extent of math’s involvement with biology, that such is in-depth and provides a great deal of understanding and is very complex being you could be modeling the structure of RNA or what not. The point I am trying to make is the math to actually stay real time with a population of rats, or make something that day to day can be used to understand that population in itself is a rather profound task actually. Now past this, you have a theory, that’s not very long, has no real evidence past a basic postulate of human made geometry to explain the entire universe… Do you see where some people, chiefly myself might be a bit less then accepting of this? I mean even Einstein said math has little to say about nature after all.

can you go? Temperature or thermodynamics and velocity seem to be connected at some point in my opinion. What I mean by this is it takes a great deal of work naturally to get something close to absolute zero, just like it takes a great deal of work to get something to a certain temperature. Does this have anything to do with the Gibbs free energy equation by chance? Some natural equilibrium of sorts really that requires work to go in either direction, such as hot to cold, or slow to fast? I mean if there is an absolute zero, and a the speed of light, if there an inverse of either of those, a absolute slowness something can travel? How slow can something go? What does relativity have to say on this? I mean if you are going the speed of light, the speed of a photon supposedly will still appear to you as going the speed of light, so if you were going an absolute degree of slow, would that mean that you can get basically the inverse of the speed of light slower?

I like to think of what happens to atoms in a BEC experiment at this point. I mean really if I understand what you are talking about well enough, then I don’t know how you would study anything quantum at that point. I mean atoms have energy levels and happen to be active really, it seems at absolute zero or a billionth of a degree away from such that quantum structure or atomic structure seems to fail, so the system, in this case an atom will always have some energy to it, I don’t know if an atom just left alone somewhere in space light-years away from anything else would bec, it seems the universe at this point just is not that cold though, luckily, its a scary though that such could be the case someday though. I wish they could study at a direct way though what happens to gluons during a BEC.

I might suggest looking in at this. The game has one of the best physics engines out there really and many many people using it all over the place. http://www.valve-erc.com/srcsdk/Hammer/html/Hammer_Users_Guide.html "phys_torque Like the phys_motor entity, this entity applies angular velocity to an object. This entity also has the ability to ignore the mass of the object being turned, as well as having a built in timer which allows the entity to exert torque on the attached entity for a given amount of time, disabling itself afterwards. See maps/sdk_phys_torque.vmf"

After reading that I don’t think I am talking about that all to much. I think his idea is more out on the forefront while my question really is more based in older accepted biological terms. I also tend to disagree with his statement on the chemistry issue, I think such is just slightly more crucial overall. I just tend to wonder how much human culture influences maybe human phenotypes.

I heard that brought up before in other threads, personally I thought it was some slang word in the U.K for memory really.

Do you think humans cultures could qualify as phenotypic difference in human organisms? I mean the relation to phenotype to genotype aside, mainly just on phenotype here to be discussed in relation to human cultures. Now I know this supposes that humans are social animals, something I tent to agree with overall, but it does not have to be taken into account overall I think to discuss the question posed.

I think that’s somewhat the problem. I mean not to contradict freedom or liberty or anything, but you don’t see giant debates denouncing gravities control over the natural world, but yet you do have such with these issues and why? I mean you as a physicist or a student of or someone with some pretty accurate knowledge of such alone probably realize that the world has some natural order to it, such as mechanical or thermal, and well organisms and societies belonging to this I would wager to say that we or life is not a separate item overall. I mean just studying what we know of geologic time, or eras such as the Cambrian we can see easily the interconnections of life and the environment. Yet today for the most part such as connection is treated for the most part as non existent, I simply don’t understand. The reality as I see it is simply destroying the microbial scale life is soil alone would probably be enough to basically devastate a majority of land based life if such was to rapid. Let alone the overall destruction of soil period which would surely bring extinction to a majority of land based life. Its simply that biology seems to me, as I learn about such, has a pretty strong grasp of the physiochemical basis of life from a molecular to an ecological sense, yet such is basically ignored, on that same note though, you wont see people simply brushing gravity aside when building an aircraft or a building for that matter, and to be honest I simply don’t understand why this is, it truly has to be an issue rooted in social science.

"These two last ideas are key, since they make it possible to evaluate the load capacity -- the number of organisms which can be supported by a given ecosystem. In any food network, the energy contained in the level of the producers is not completely transferred to the consumers. And the higher one goes up the chain, the more energy and resources is lost and consumed. Thus, from an energy—and environmental—point of view, it is more efficient for humans to be primary consumers (to subsist from vegetables, grains, legumes, fruit, cotton, etc.) than as secondary consumers (from eating herbivores, omnivores, or their products, such as milk, chickens, cattle, sheep, etc.) and still more so than as a tertiary consumer (from consuming carnivores, omnivores, or their products, such as fur, pigs, snakes, alligators, etc.). An ecosystem(s) is unstable when the load capacity is overrun and is especially unstable when a population doesn't have an ecological niche and overconsumers. The productivity of ecosystems is sometimes estimated by comparing three types of land-based ecosystems and the total of aquatic ecosystems: The forests (1/3 of the Earth's land area) contain dense biomasses and are very productive. The total production of the world's forests corresponds to half of the primary production. Savannas, meadows, and marshes (1/3 of the Earth's land area) contain less dense biomasses, but are productive. These ecosystems represent the major part of what humans depend on for food. Extreme ecosystems in the areas with more extreme climates -- deserts and semi-deserts, tundra, alpine meadows, and steppes -- (1/3 of the Earth's land area) have very sparse biomasses and low productivity Finally, the marine and fresh water ecosystems (3/4 of Earth's surface) contain very sparse biomasses (apart from the coastal zones). Humanity's actions over the last few centuries have seriously reduced the amount of the Earth covered by forests (deforestation), and have increased agro-ecosystems (agriculture). In recent decades, an increase in the areas occupied by extreme ecosystems has occurred (desertification)." This is a section of text from wiki, in which I find many conflictions with my view of things. First of all, I think it basically states some derived or driving evolutionary process that simply may not exist, or at least not as worded. I think the only way it could exist is via natural selection, in which I find possibly a very viable option in regards to the environmental impact that humans are bring to the earth. Second, our omnivore status plays a huge role not only in our biology but our evolution in memory serves. The idea that humans can get by now being simply vegetarians may be true, but as hunter gatherers or cavemen I simply cant see us taking in enough protein to sustain really, though again in a modern sense is where I find the confliction, in environmental impact that is. I derive that natural selection is really a constant, and in time, organisms in relation to environment either make it or don’t along with adaptation. I think this is where you can find rapid environmental change of enough pressure brings on massive extinction. The confliction is how this is going to play out for people. I mean for however long people have been on the earth we as a specie lived a far simpler life for a majority of that time, it does not though speak of say another 4,000 years for instance. I mean you look at some specie of insect, and wow, they sure have persisted, but that organisms biology does not reflect nearly as our own does, and each specie I would imagine is a separate case under natural selection overall in a ecological sense really. So what are your thoughts, do you see a positive future for humans, and how would we reach it really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organism

Right, I brought up the point about the carbon based usage even in extreme environments. It is apparent though going through evolution from say prokaryote to eukaryote the simple differences such as having a cell nucleus. Which can prescribe easily the thought that life may have at one point not had any of the common structures it has today, simply because it did not automatically from the start have these structures, such as limbs or kidneys for instance, or a cell nucleus. IF carbon is required by life, or DNA for that matter, I cant say either way with any real confidence because the reality we have on earth of course is organismal life or life in general that shares in its chemistry, such as carbon use for example, but it does not again state that such is the only way or natural law of such because we cant compare it with anything, unlike gravity which we know exists in nature besides earth. The one thing though is the variation is chemistry possible in life already can easily make a point about what’s available for use chemically speaking.

If you are trying to fool people with this the problem as I see it is none of the action will look normal really. As for any ideas I have, cant you use the earths magnetic field, somewhat similar to a compass perhaps? I don’t know if it will get you want you want on every roll, but perhaps simply increase the chances of getting a role you would like.

I really need to look at the time huh?

My vote is for option four.

So that is sort of an explanation for carbon, but you cant say its absolute in regards to my three questions for one, we have not synthesized life yet, nor discovered life on a alien planet. We have found life in hostile environments, sea vents, toxic waste, but they do not have by in large a variation from the use of carbon for instance. The problem as I see it again comes in three questions I have derived so far, I am sure there are plenty more I don’t grasp yet. 1) Is the chemistry of life on earth the only possible chemistry for life? 2) Is the chemistry of life on earth the only possible chemistry for life in regards to the earths environment? 3)Is the chemistry of life on earth nothing more then the only possible evolutionary progression from the more primordial life, such as the "protocell". For instance with you explaining the various reactions mechanisms that exist in current understanding for carbon, as I would guess relates to its atomic structure in regards to environment?, would mean that evolution in regards to the chemistry of life would naturally have to follow it, but that does not say much past that. I mean silicon might not be a favorable chemistry on earth, but that does not hold true for every possible environment in the universe I imagine. I mean all kinds of complex compounds exist in chemistry that do not use carbon. I fear evolution has not offered up life on earth with an alien chemistry, though you can see various adaptations and of course a broader range of chemicals being employed by life. To me there is no real evidence yet that can get close to answering any of the questions I have posed save for someone to be confident in a hypothesis. I am not trying to argue a point just as I am trying to argue that nothing really exists to state an absolute or a law about the natural world in regards to life and abiogenesis. Not to mean that such is not the case, just that no definitive answer exists yet.

Of course being I study this subject more then others for some bizarre psychological reason I have more to add. I don’t know the exact time or concentrations of certain chemistries geologically speaking on earth, and I think knowing such would be paramount overall. Now just give me a second, I have not tried to see the validity of such, but I sometimes by accident in thought associate gibbs free energy with geological differentiation, I think during the "primordial soup" we have a lot of missing issues that attack directly the topic here, environments that do not exist today moreover. For instance, why is the non metals sections so used? Does this define a base chemistry needed for life regardless of environment, a chemistry required by natural selection in regards to a particular environment, or does the chemistry of life have to equate to the more primordial chemistry of early life, such as the protocell. For instance, carbon and oxygen, you cant just react any element with those. So these questions are giants in my opinion really. I think a big part of it is overcoming the perceptual boundary really from the physical to what is "life" really. The proton gradient in cells is also another point, in which does it only react to a certain sect of say ions for instance, a chemical recognition or such, I think this could even tie into why symmetry is so present in life and even used in mate selection. Supposedly asexual reproduction is less efficient the sexual reproduction, so it all has physical points to study. Now looking at the aspect of metabolism, pathways of such, homeostasis and equilibrium you can draw all kinds of hypothesis, but I fear from the general rate of evolution, more so on a microbiological scale that erosion of any bridges to the truly primitive probably do not exist anymore, so I don’t know how far back current life can truly get you. I am trying to get some good books on prokaryotes currently, because I am interested in symbiotic relationships, the appearance of an immune system and why DNA/RNA happen to exist, but RNA in prokaryotes with a genetic shift to eukaryotes at some point. Maybe as safeguard. I would also like to think detoxification processes and the general set of amino acids in diet are meaningful in this regard to some extent, its all kind of blurry to me as of yet simply from the learning curve. Though I think if you take the three questions I posed earlier that all of this ties into those, and of course none of those currently being able to be answered. Life on mars would be of great benefit to understanding such, as it would give more insight into the chemistry required to sustain life. I would like to see as pollution changes the environment more and more, how this registers in metabolic pathways and notice any changes of rates in regards to evolution. Though I don’t know if the rate of environmental change will be to strenuous for most any life form with any real genetic load or higher degree of complexity really.

Thanks for the replies, I thought zero meant no but the posts mean the same:D I have only read on neoteny on itself for a bit on developmental issues pertaining to amphibians really, I did not know if you could get to the molecular scale, or solely molecular with the term, such as a primitive version of a hormone compared to a modern one. I guess its really where you can cut the two and if such cutting or division is even possible really.

I always wondered about that myself. I think in math its correct if the equation for example reaches the same conclusion, such as 2+2=4 for example, if you could do the math the same but get the same answer then its good. I wonder if that applies in some small respect to the mathematical understanding physics applies sometimes in models is all. I mean in math you can literally get rid of parts of the equation sometimes, you can just minus out a galaxy in the universe though, it just sort of confuses me is all.

I would think MIT right off the bat for what you are interested in, but I don’t know for sure. Have you studied the field itself in regards to employment and what they the employers typically look for. If its a more self motivated issue, then I would think any university with a robotics or strong computer science program would be sufficient as long as you knew well ahead that what you desire to work on would be open as an option there at the university, such as funding and tools to work on robotics/AI for instance. Moreover I am sure more then one university has a robotics/AI club for instance funded by the university.

I would really advise going to see a medical professional on this. For instance, the idea that you have quite a few structures in the ear for example, any of which would be or all of them could be damaged to some point. I don’t know exactly what a doctor would tell you, being I have no idea what exactly may be wrong, but one thing I do know is that fluid such as blood in say saliva may be present while not being present enough to see with the eye. Such as an example with maybe bone in there being moved or even slightly fractured or even having a chip of bone free to move around or cause infection, which due to location of such would probably be very nasty let along any other issues it might bring up.

Patriotism is a relative term. I would like to speak more on this, but simply such would be major in fallacy in regards to my term. Listen, what you might think as lawful will vary person to person in many ways. I think patriotism is getting off of oil dependence, a great deal of self proclaimed patriots have disagreed with me on this already in my lifetime. This is why the term is relative, it has not absolute basis save for what natural selection might say.

Before you go off on some tangent, I am in the national guard and have been on deployment. I have had the luxury of dealing with fight or flight and all that good stuff, even got little metals on my 214. Now with that said, I think the real problem is the choices bush made. The question could have easily have been the one of what if we stay. Its been four years of the same, we don’t have enough people for the mission. Shinseki put it at over 400,000 boots on the ground and then left when bush gave the go ahead at a far smaller number. Say what you want, but nothing is going to change in Iraq, the country is slowing being eroded into nothing but death for everyone involved. Everyday it’s the same, more troops killed, more civilians killed, Iraq burns more into chaos. Politicians say a lot of things, but just look past your political bias at the reality on the ground. The democrats are folding like dried out twigs really, and the bush admin has become something of a tyrant monster giving the middle finger to the American people. The reality of Iraq to me is nothing but bad news we are going to have to face, unless you favor a draft, and even then I don’t see anything positive.