Vulgaris

Hi everyone, I can now proudly say that Game of Nerds has been launched for its second season, complete with more coins and more ways to spend them; Fancy hire Einstein to help you with difficult questions? Or maybe Edwin Hubble? Or maybe you prefer spending a few coins boosting your leadership abilities and have your whole team perform better?! We have received a large bunch of questions over the last month and a half, making the game even more challenging and interesting, and I wish to say thanks to anyone here who contributed! Unfortunately, it seems that the number of questions in the science categories are starting to lack behind the litterature, movies and computer categories, and being a science nerd, I really can't let that past me... Therefore, I'm hoping I can lure some of you clever heads into helping me bump up the science categories and thereby make the game even more interesting (atleast to me and you!). Hope to see you in Game of Nerds! /Vulg

Hi imatfaal, Yes indeed. That was a horrible incidense, and I apology sincerely for the inconvenience! There was an issue with the servers which made the payout loop multiple times - something that just should never happen. The mass email functions are suspended for the time being, and won't be up again before everything is 100% ok. Thanks for taking it this nicely, I feel truly horrible about it. /Vulg

Hi Leader Bee, Thanks for the comment. Yeah, the timelimit does make it alot harder, but we had to implement that to avoid people just googling all the answers. Wouldn't be much game in that. But it also makes the game more strategic, as you will need to consider how much time you'll spend on answering a question - sometimes, if you'r in a good streak, it may actually be worth spending those extra seconds on it if you'r in doubt. The game is relatively hard, and its difficult to get up on the top 100 now because of some REALLY nerdy people out there, but it's actually alot more fun to compete against your friends, which is what the friends highscore list is for. Each friend is also able to help you in the game with those difficult questions! So remember to hook up with some friends! /Vulg

Heh, yeah. I'm not sure how that got there . Marqq, I'm sure you'r nerd enough. It just takes a bit of getting used to the fast gameplay, atleast that's what I have experienced. Don't give up! /Vulg

Let me first put this into context. As I mentioned in my introductory post some days ago, but which you may not have read, I am a postdoctoral researcher in the field of microbiology, and have since child been a science nerd at heart and proud of it. But as many of you probably know, being a nerd isn't always easy in a world primarily marketing pop-culture in all its fancy glory, with very little focus on the needs of people spending more time pondering the function of the automatic doorway than on what way to comb their hair. About one and a half years ago, me and my friend was sitting at this students bar after having attended one of those 'once a week' bar quizzes. Just like so many times before we hadn't done very good in the quiz, and the reason for this, we both agreed, was the subjects of the questions: Sports, politics, pop music, celebrities and whatever. Whenever there finally was a biology related question or a question in any other so called 'nerdy' category like sci fi movies or computer games, it was so easy that anyone could answer it. Knowing a lot about these things never really helped, because you only needed to know a little. That fateful day we, two nerds in a bar, decided to do something about it. We decided to build our own nerdy game - a quiz for the good old hardcore NERD with two wrist watches and a Star Wars backpack. Having both worked with developing web sites and so on before, it wasn't long before we had set out to build a fully fledge flash interface game for TRUE nerds. After one and a half years in development we have finally launched a version of the game a couple of days ago. It ended up as a quiz with 15 different nerdy categories from math, chemistry, astronomy and so on over software and internet to sci fi movies and fantasy literature, and I think it turned out pretty well. There are several interesting features (gimmicks) in the game, but one of the most important is that the players themselves can (and should) make the questions for the game. In that way we hope to ensure that there's always new and interesting questions to play through. Now, ofcourse we'd like people to actually play the game, and we hope that all the other true nerds out there, being science or movie or computer or any other kind of nerds, will enjoy what we've made. So I encourage you to go and try it out as much as you like, and if anyone should feel like adding some questions, that would be totally awesome! We can never get too many science questions... The game itself is called 'Game of Nerds' and can be found on www.gameofnerds.com. Try it out and let me know what you think. The project is still in development, so any input is much appreciated! /Vulg

The E. coli will grow up over night if you just leave it at room temperature. It definately grows faster at 37 degrees, but lower temperatures will also do if the medium contains all the important nutrients. If you use a heating pad, make sure it doesn't get too hot! Probably the reason you are asked to mix it with milk is that the milk will act like a simple medium for a preincubation, as E. coli is able to degrade lactose under anaerobic conditions. Making a suspension of the E.coli cells will make it easier to plate them out evenly on the solid medium. /Vulg

Consider the ocean bottom sediments. Where there is organic material freely available, you will have microbes eating it. This happens to a large extent on the ocean bottoms, and especially near shore where the organic matter deposition is greatest. When microorganisms have eaten all the oxygen in the sediment, they continue with eating nitrate (if there is any), then oxidized iron, manganese, sulphate and so on and so forth. In the end there won't be many compounds left to use as oxidizers and you are left with doing fermentation, which doesn't require an external electron acceptor. but even long before that, these sediments are highly reduced, although the sediment surface is still oxidized - atleast the top few millimetres. In iron rich sediments you can see that the sediment is reduced if you scrape it with a finger and its all black below the surface. This is a result of iron sulphide accumulating as the hydrogen sulphide produced by sulfate reduction reacts spontaneously with the iron oxides in the sediments. In fact, these highly active, reduced systems are very important for cycling of all sorts of nutrients in the oceans. Read up on biogeochemistry if you'r interested in more along these lines. /vulg

CharonY is right on that one. You can't make any generalisation towards the pH tolerance of bacteria versus algae. Some acidophilic bacteria have a pH optimum around pH 2, and some can live in solutions of pH 0. But it all comes down to adaptation. Rarely can you take an organism living at one pH and transfer it to an environment with a significantly different pH without either impairing or killing the organism. some bacteria and archaea are quite resistant to this, but it's generally a tough treatment. The thing is, that proteins are typically constructed so to function at the specific pH level the organism live at, and changing the pH much will thus denature this protein, or atleast make it very unstable. This is not the full story, but some of it. Another thing that might affect autotrophic organisms in particular, such as algae and cyano-bacteria, when you change the pH is the concomitant shift in the carbonate equilibrium, which will either increase or decrease the level of CO2 in the water. But there are many more aspects to this. pH is an important controlling factor in all environments. /Vulg

Yep, I could write a very long or very short answer to this post, because this is actually a subject that puzzles me, disturbs me and annoy me. This will be short, because I don't have much time. Apodictic, you are very right in asking all those questions. Unfortunately, most if not all are a result of confusion created by various marketing scams. Water need to be filtered or sterilized or whatever mainly if it has been in contact with other humans first. This is the problem we see in countries which do not have proper water-supply facilities or the like, and no access to running water. Water in small puddles or slow moving streams tend to fester up, because the microbes in the water have plenty of time to multiply. If this water has been in contact with other humans, and the temperature is not too low (such as in many developing countries) the water will quickly become a source of illness. However, if you do have access to running water, which does not have waste water being dumped right into it, chances are you will be able to drink it. This is NOT to say you should do this. You will always run the risk or some random infection, unless the water comes from some mountain spring or a glacier as you suggest. But my point is, that all that hype about drinking water from a bottle, clean water, deionized water, water with added vitamins or water ozonated and x-rayed and pH adjusted (oh god don't let me get started on that) is all crap to get your money. All of it. Our body is more than capable of handling the usual small things floating around in the water. Again, unless its been infected directly! I come from Denmark, and here we can (and do) pull water up directly from beneath our feet and drink it, without cleaning it. Still, many drink bottled water. Why, I have no idea. But the manufacturers of those bottles will surely tell you that it's because cleaner is better. But that's the point. It doesn't have to be 'clean'. This was a non-informative rant, but I just wanted to get that one point through. And for the fun of it, if you feel like getting a real idea about what is going on in the world with respect to marketing scams like this go read "Bad science" by Ben Goldacre. You will be amused, horrified and probably think once in a while if that can really be true. But believe me. It's all about the money and not about your well being. Vulg. /microbiologist

Ethanol won't freeze in a common freezer and will therefore evaporator despite the fact that the sauce was frozen. If you freeze a mix of ethanol and water you will end up with sort of a slush ice, as the water freezes but the ethanol stays liquid. Therefore, if you stored the sauce for even relatively short time I would suspect the ethanol content to drop significantly. Apart from that, you need to consider how other compounds in the sauce interferes with the titration. Some of the alcohol will move into the onion, is that taken into account? If there is any fat in the chicken broth (there probably is) some of the ethanol will be dissolved in that. Are you able to extract that in your titration method? I would suggest to redo the experiment where you do a titration right after you prepared the sauce, excluding the freezing step. Just to see the effect of storage. If it's significant, consider either to avoid the storageing all together, or make sure to use glass containers (don't fill it all the way up or the glass will break when the water freezes and expands!). The ethanol won't be able to escape from the glass containers. This shows why it is important always to include controls in your experiments! . Good luck!

Hi Advaita, Generally I would say it's never too late. But as Mr Rayon correctly points out, things do tend to become more complicated if you are so fortunate to have started a family. I definately believe that many doors remain open for those who are willing to do what it takes, even if it might have taken some time longer than expected to get to the required level. My impression of the scientific world is that you can do alot for your options if you generally live up to the expectations of the people around you and are easy to work with. If people enjoy working with you, it is likely that they will put in more than a few good words for you in an application, which can help alot, despite maybe a mediocre track record. Actually, having someone recommending you on the basis of being enthusiastic and a joy to work with may to some extent work better than a sheet of paper with boring grades. Bascially, stick to it, dont' hide yourself! Be open minded and not afraid of challenges. Life would suck without challenges, so don't be afraid to take them head on.

Hi everybody, I am as you could guess new to this forum. Actually, I'm new to using forums in general, but I thought this might be a good way of broadening my horizon and get a feel for what is boiling out there in the real world. So here goes. But first a little bit about me I guess: I am 30 years old and just moved to Australia for work. I am interested in most aspects of natural sciences including but not limited to biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy and so on and so forth. Much of my childhood was spent mixing chemicals or looking up at the stars, wondering how everything was connected. My interest in science got me on the path of studying biology at the university in ny home town, and one thing took the other and now I've finished a PhD in (micro)biology. One of my hopes is that I will be able to do something good for the world through research and/or developing new technologies, and I think microbiology is a good place to start: harnesing the power of mother natures inexhaustible miniature workers! After work I spend my time playing the piano (trying atleast) or programming web-applications with one of my friends back home - digital experiments - you could call it. The last thing we've been working on is a nerdy quiz game with science and sci-fi questions . Looking forward to some great discussions here! Vulgaris