Orbital

I am a first year Enviromental Science student. As such, I am certainly no expert on the subject of climate change. It would be my understanding however, that in order to conduct good science, one should not become 'attached' to any particular hypothesis, but rather 'seek the truth', regardless of whether it contradicts their initial beliefs or not. It would appear to me that some in this thread appear to be emotionally 'attached' to their hypothesis. Surely this isn't conducive to good science, or to a good scientific debate for that matter.

Regarding souls, I don't believe that they are a physical tangable thing. They a meerly an abstract human construct which makes us once again feel like we are superior to all other life forms. It's also a nice way to face the fear of death. Unfortinately, I don't believe they exist. Somebody once said to me that they believed humans were not animals because we have soulds. I asked them to explain what exactly they thought a soul was. They told me that it was "ones personality". Can't all behaviors and personality traits be explained by biological concepts? As in, personality forms as a result of things experienced in life, which are in themselves affecting the make up of the brain. Not sure what my point is exactly lol, but I have one somewhere in there.

I think a lot of this comes down to semantics. I must say I do find it interesting that we, as humans, find it neccessary to create such a word as 'race' which doesn't seem to be applied to any other life form on earth. Sorry, but we are animals and I'm not going to pretend we aren't, and I can't imagine many of you would either. So do we see race in animals? Or do we just see species and subspecies? What is the animal equivelent of race? Is it sub species? Or could it be 'breed', as with domestic animals? I must say I think bombus raises some good points. I guess it is really a difficult problem as there is no scientifically accepted definition of 'species' (and hense 'sub species') and no scientifically accepted definition of 'race'. In fact, the term 'race' is (as previously stated by others in this thread), not really a scientifically based concept, more of a general term used by the lay person.

This is exactly my point. I'm NOT saying it is full blown speciation but meerly that it would have been the start.

Regarding political correctness, I'm not so sure why this topic should anger people. I am not suggesting in any way, shape, or form that one race is better or worse than another. We are all animals though and I thought it interesting to examine things from a biological point of view, given that we are all living. I understand that speciation of humans may be non existant in modern times, but I'm not sure how else you would explain race without it being some form of speciation, if only a very early one.

Really? I would have thought there was a time before humans really had the ability to travel the world, when there certainly was very little interbreeding of people from different geological areas. Surely these races appeared for a reason, what is the biological reason if not as a result of speciation? Do you consider humans to be somehow different to every other animal in the animal kingdom?

Ok, I love the subject of speciation, particularly in the realm of zoology, so I can't help but think that, if the world had not been so cross populated with different 'races' of people, these 'races' would have eventially developed into different species. So I guess I was just wondering if people would agree that human 'races' were/are kind of a starting point to speciation in humans, which may or may not have been stopped by cross breading.

heheh gold!

I went to a very interesting seminar at uni (I study Environmental Science) which was run by an ecologist who had a fair background in stats. According to him, most large mammals are a lot closer to extinction than small mammals. i believe a lot of this has to do with long gestation periods and smaller 'litter' size. It was all kinda stats based and was 3rd year stats at that (I'm a first year who didn't have to go but did cause I thought it might be interesting) so I got a bit lost lol. I think the idea kind of was that everything will become extinct at some point and it is just a question of when. As far as humans go (and other large mammals) our timeline would not appear to be as long as smaller mammals. As far as non mammalian animals go, I have no idea.

Yep! That is my understanding too Although people miss use the term ALL the time.

My mistake, sorry. Found it now Thanks

Thanks for that, I thought that might be the case but really wasn't sure. Cheers.

Hi all, I wasn't sure if this post should go in the chemistry section or in the biology section so I decided to post it in both. Sorry if this is frowned upon. If so, maybe there should be a general science section Anyway, I have had a lot of problems with roots growing into my sewage system at my place and backing my toilet up. The plummer told me that I should put some copper sulphite gems into the toilet as it would help kill the roots. I specifically asked him if it was definitely copper sulphite and not sulphate (as I can appreciate he is most likely not a chemist) and he said yes. He told me that I could get it from most garden centres. So I went to the garden centre and of course i asked for copper sulphite, to which I got the reply "copper sulphate, we did have some, oh here it is" (clearly not chemists). The packet said it was for improving the growth of plants and not, as I wanted, hindering them. We do have some old tablets for the toilet that are meant to supress root growth though, and these contained a small amount of copper sulfate. I am utterly confused. Please help

Hi all, does anybody know if there is a good site on the internet that can provide me with information regarding the analysis of paper chromatograms? I have taken some samples during a lab class and now have to do a small assignment based on them. I'm not really sure on how to analyze them properly. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks, will do . I will rote learn them tonight and hopefully that will help me get through tonight. Thanks for your help.

Hi all, I'm fairly new to the forums and wanted to say g'day. Also fairly new to chemistry (1st year environmental science student) and am about to fail my mid semester exam terribly I think . Can anybody tell me, when given a strong acid (or base), how does one work out the conjugate weak base (or acid)? Also if given the weak acid (or base) can one work out the strong base (or acid)? Is there an easy way of telling what it might be? Any little techniques to work it out? Thanks.