immortal

Assuming you are the President of USA if a group of scientists came to you having strong evidence for an alien civilization what will you do.

I apologise for not making it clear but I did'nt say that you need to have an inherited mutated gene for cancer. . What I was trying to say is you need to have a number of mutations for cancer to occur and only those people who have a large number of mutations will get cancer. Remember colon cancer is an inherited disease.

According to John Maynard Smith, an evolutionary stable strategy is one which is adopted by a group of populations and which can not be altered or changed but if a better strategy develops then that will eventually win. Its very hard to change the minds of the people (in a world where 3 out of 4 people does'nt know to read and write). If a small group of population (in this society) develops a better strategy then they will eventually win.

Yes I agree with that but one more thing you have to remember is you need a number of mutations to make normal cells cancerous and we have people who have lived past 80 years normally. This is more about statistics and the number of people affected by cancer are very less when compared to population of the world (but yes the chances are very high). I need to stress this . "The rest of the cause is likely to be an interaction with other mutations caused by environmental factors, somatic mutations, which turn potential into reality. This theory, of course, fits in well with the observations of apparent racial and cultural differences in cancer frequencies."

Yes prostate cancer arises when you are more than 50 years old. Cancer arises when you have mutations in the genes so only those people who have mutation in their genes will get cancer not everyone. Sorry I could'nt provide the link. "The mutation is just a single nucleotide substitution in the genetic code for this protein, which results in the amino acid alanine being replaced with threonine, but this is enough to change the protein's structure, so that it becomes more efficient, making the prostate grow faster. This does not explain how the mutation causes cancer, but it explains part of the why. The rest of the cause is likely to be an interaction with other mutations caused by environmental factors, somatic mutations, which turn potential into reality. This theory, of course, fits in well with the observations of apparent racial and cultural differences in cancer frequencies."

This is to paralith also. I don't think always the stable strategy works what if the person whom you agree with cheats you. The number of these cases are increasing day by day. Then you look for new strategies and by the time you look for new strategy you will run out of time. I know that misunderstanding prevails if you have multiple mates but alongside one more thing which has evovled is 'language'. I know people who have multiple mates and also live in a single home.

Have you gone into their minds and felt that they will not enjoy the pain. I know that I exist but rats don't know that they exist. Lucaspa you have got a good sense of humour

Well I am not sure about that but when you incident a beam on a black hole you will get more energy from the reflection than the energy of the incident beam. For us the universe seems expanding but for the future organisms it does'nt look the same. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/06/070604-universe.html?email=Inside8June07

Here are studies which suggests that moral decision making is automatic. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/27/AR2007052701056_pf.html

Yes I was wrong Evolution is all about random mutation followed by a non random selection. I just looked at the mutation part but forgot to see what happens after that. I don't think that there is lot of difference between random and chance. Random implies lack of particular pattern or without any purpose where as Chance is by accident or lack of arrangement in advance. Its not decided in advance that humans will evolve during this time. It just happens. I think both words will apply to evolution. You can not have life without Evolution but you can have Evolution without life.

I think more than preserving alleles its about providing variety which is the raw material for evolution. If your child does'nt adapt to a particular environment you always have an alternative child from a different mate who can easily adapt to the environment and go on to do the samething what you did. Yes I accept it that our culture and society play a major role in this.

According to the theory when an electron collides with a proton the resulting energy will be converted into matter in the form of Higgs boson and Z particles as the z particle is formed usually in the accelerators and both decay into bottom quarks. SO what they would have detected may be a Z particle which will decay into a bottom quark.

Evolution can be applied starting from the moment of origin (when space and time itself expanded). Yes evolution not only applies to life it also applies to other things. Evolution is all about randomness and it can be seen in life as well as in matter and as you can't perfectly say that a particular gene gets mutated you can't be 100% sure that a particle will decay into another one there is lot of uncertainity and randomness. Even I don't know much about the Higgs boson and this is what I know it is very essential to understand the nature. According to theory the elementary particles should have zero mass like photon but experiments show that particles are too heavy and has mass. The particles interact with the Higgs field and acquire mass and Higgs field is carried by Higgs boson. The particles exists for a thousandth of a second before it decays so you need lot of energy to collide a huge number of sub-atomic particles at the speeds approaching c and chanes of finding the particle is very less.

The latest analysis done by the scientists at Tevatron shows that the mass of top quark is heavier than previously measured. This would mean that the mass of Higgs boson has also got heaviour from 96 to 117 GeV/c2 . So it is very likely that they would have found the Higgs boson. There is also a lot of possibility that what they have found may be a fake Higgs boson.

My apologies I should'nt have mentioned about prisoner's dilemma but the game theory certainly applies to the OP. It does'nt always mean that more than one person should be invovled in the game. Its all about making quick strategies only thing is you don't work this out on a piece of paper but its already preprogramed in the genes. Game theory is about making decision. Always the selfish choice is better. If you think everyone are related then all the diversity on earth is related. The fact that all the organisms present today arosed from a last universal common ancestor(LUCA). There are 60 common genes present in organisms which duplicted to adapt to the natural environment.

Well eyes could have evolved only once in the evolutionary history in the form of Pax-6 gene as mentioned earlier. Plants do show phototropism they do this with the help of a protein called NPH1. Who said that half an eye is useless? The sight not only help in search of food but it also help in search of mates. A wonderful example is the Glow-worms I can see plenty of them glowing in my backyard and here how it works. In female glow-worms a greenish-yellow light glows on the underside of the body at the tip of the abdomen they do this with the help of two compounds called luciferin and luciferase. The females glow at night and you can't find them in the morning and they are sedentary. The female twist her abdomen so that the light can be visible above. The male has the ability to fly and has a good sight and if he finds a female he will just fall and mates with the female. Well I saw these worms for a couple of days in my backyard but suddenly they all vanished and I couldn`t find them till now. Are these worms seasonal can any one tell me when can I find them.

Well quite a few but I don't think it is because they could'nt find a mate or they weren't attractive may be because of personal reasons. When do you say whether a person has reproductive success or not? Is it when he has one child or has many children with different mates.

First of all the big bang was not a explosion it did not started with a bang because sound waves could not have existed. The space and time itself expanded. The theory of general relativity can not be apllied during the panck time i.e. the period between the moment of origin and 10-43 seconds.

This is the prisoner's dilemma problem applied to evolutionary biology (i.e game theory). At the end of the day you have to prevent the worst outcome and you have to be selfish. In this case the worst outcome would be that you die along with the other three trying to save one of them. You might have read these kind of cases on newspapers. Its very rare that a person will come forward to save the child may be in movies like Cellular. Well the better thing to do as lucaspa said is to watch the incident. But I would rather save the 50 year old lady for the following reasons - 1. In terms of reciprocal altruism I would save the old lady because she will be the best person to help me in the future. The 5 year old boy may forget this incident. 2. You can say that the old lady is incapable of producing offsprings but what's in it for me those are not my genes so why bother. 3. You can save some resources because the 5 year old boy has to survive for another decade or so to produce offsprings you can save some food. This is called ruthless selfishness. Lot depends on the situation what do you do if the old lady is carrying the 5 year old boy. Everyone has different strategies if it works you are lucky if it does'nt you die.

How does the brain sense whether the external environment is stable or not. I know it uses different systems such as proprioceptors, the circular canals of ears, eyes etc then how this complex system work together. It is interesting to study these designs created by evolution.

If the cells are damaged then the cells are self destructed but in cancerous cells the immune system is not efficient the protective genes will be damaged and can not trigger apoptosis. There are ways to increase the immune response in cancerous cells. Environmental factors play a major role on persons affected by cancer. So virtually everyone does not get cancer.

Adding to that it will be beneficial in an another way if he saves the child he will be a hero and opposite sexes will be attracted towards him and this will increase his reproductive success. During courtship the females select the strong male because he can maintain a large territory so lots of food for the females to hunt. It can get complicated in humans.

It looks great we can get information about any species on earth through a single access. It wil be very helpful because everything is on a single page i.e. the species anatomy, behaviour, evolutionary history and much more

I think it is lots more than that wikipedia gave me around 240 including moons orbiting smaller solar system bodies like asteroids etc.

Does anyone know how many moons are there in Solar system at present?