Greg Boyles

Who has shown that heat re-distribution des not occur via the gulf stream and other ocean currents? It seems as though it is still at the hypothesis stage, but here are the details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation So there is currently insufficient firm evidence to prove the hypothesis. Probably the same problem with proving CO2 induced geenhouse effect. I.E. It requires many decades of accumulated evidence to reveal any overwhelming pattern. Presumably the hypothesis is far to young as yet. But it is certainly not the case that the hypothesis has been empahtically disproved. Please don't misinterpret my post as supporting your notion that climate change, global warming or what ever your prefer to call it is not somthing to be very concerned about. A mini or full ice age will kill millions or billions of humans and destroy western civilisation just as surely as the effects of significantly increased average temperatures. As I pointed out, a future ice age will not necessarily disprove that global warming was real prior to it. The larger issue here is global climate change or shift not short term global warming.

Let's remember here that there is a serious theory that a period of average global warming will melt the greenland ice sheet, disrupt the critical turn around of the gulf stream ths shutting it down, halt redistribution of heat from the tropics to the northern latitiudes and thus trigger an ice age in much of north america. And that the last ice age was triggered by a similar period of global warming that melted a major ice sheet in the great lakes region of north america that also shut down the gulf stream. So global cooling may indeed happen. I think the deniers and media have successfully derailed the debate by centering it exclusively on average warming such that any instances of cooler average temperatures is seen as evidence against global warming. If anything the increased heat retention in the atmosphere energises the global climate system and makes it swing more wildly between extremes, including possible ice age conditions. Through statemements like this you are re-inforcing the deniers' strategy and debating the issue entirely on their terms. STOP IT! The correct term is global climate change, which may include both periods of warming and periods of cooling over a longer time frame.

Was not criticisng that particular comment. Was criticising this one:

Well regardless, I still think your criticism of biochemistry is misplaced.

Notably when it comes to how enzymes actualy catalyse their chemical reactions. But again this is in the realms of organic chemistry rather than biochemistry, at least for routine biochemistry. Perhaps there is or will be molecular biochemistry, and other specialised fields of biochemistry, where they focus down on these sorts of precise details. I don't feel insulted and nor am I insulting you. I am merely calmly pointing out that your criticism of the way biochemistry is currently taught was a little unreasonable in my opinion. Precisely! Which illistrates my point that a great deal of biochemistry is in a 'layer' between physiology and organic chemistry.

When they were first working out the organic chemistry behind biochemistry then they no doubt used full chemistry nomenclature and molecular structures. But now that a lot of it is well understood full chemistry nomenclature and molecular structures are not necessary for routine biochemistry. Let's remember that biochemistry is mid way between organic chemistry and physiology. It is necessarily provides a broader picture of the chemcial processes of life than organic chemistry. And the full details of organic chemsitry would be unnecessarily confusing. Trying to describe every aspect of biochemistry in terms of full organic chemistry nomenclature would be a bit like trying to describe how to drive a car by providing full details of what happens in the engine bay when you depress the clutch etc. The complex polypetide folding that produces functional enzymes etc is well beyond both organic chemical nomenclature and dscript anyway. The only way you can reasonably convey those sort of structural details is through these sorts of means: Trying to convey this sort of detail through chemcial nomenclature like below is meaningless when it comes to describing the physiological roles of such biochemical entities such as enzymes and neurotransmitters If you were designing drugs to replace neurotransmitter then you would need to get into precise chemical structures etc.

I am merely pointing out the manor in which I was taught biochemistry at the university of Melbourne. Molecular structures are rarely required or used for routine biochemistry. In fact even empirical formulas are not always used. E.G. In biochemcial reactions involving energy transfer the abreviations of ATP, ADP + P are used rather than their chemical formulas. It is about being able to convey the big biochemical picture rather than getting bogged down and distracted by unecessary detail.

Since when are biochemists concerned with molecular structure when representing biochemical pathways? From my biochemistry days in 1986.....rarely. The molecular structure and entities involved are so well understood that it is rarely necessary to go beyond the form C6H12O6

The conventional diagram on the left looks far simpler and more intuitive to me. I still don't see why the d-script representation can be written more quickly than the conventional representation in this case. Looks more intricate to me.

Don't know much specifically about the banana plant but I would say that what you are calling torn leaves are actually leaves divided into lobes.

If you are familiar with chemical nomenclature and the haemoglobin molecule in particular I don't see why you couldn't draw the above molecular diagram in less than a minute anyway and I don't see why you could do it any quicker in dscript. The molecule contains a high level of complexity which requires the same level of detail to represent it in what ever script you end up using. The periodic table is an intuitive means of representing chemical elements as possible, hexagons/pentagons as intuitive method of representing the various carbon ring structures as possible and single/double/tripple lines as intuitive methods of representing single, double and tripple bonds as possible. If you are very familiar with the structure of the compounds you are trying to represent then it seems to me that you can very easily and quickly represent them with this current method. D-script seems to be adding another layer of complexity than you need to learn and become profficient with. Anyone with a basic knowledge of the the periodic table etc would be able to have a stab at the meaning of a lot of the above diagram. But D-script representation would be totally unintelligeble to them.

While there have been improvements in cancer treatment we are at great peril of returning to the pre-antobiotic era due to our wide misuse of antibiotics resulting in the rise of antibiotic resistance bacterial strains. So yes there is some evidence that we may have hit a brick wall in at least some areas of medicine.

The gist was that humans are the dominant and superior life form on Earth. But that depends entirely on your criteria for dominance and superiority. I merely pointed out that if you criteria for dominance and superiority were evolutionary longevity, number of individuals and variety then class Insecta would win easily on all counts. Evolution did not exist for the sole purpose of giving rise to humans and there is nothing to suggest that humans will not become extinct at some point in the future.

Not true. A soup of sugars, amino acids and DNA etc existed before any cells formed. The nly thing missing was oxygen and so the first cells had to use oxidants other than oxygen, e.g. inorganic sulfur compounds etc,

You are missing the point Amr Morsi. Hormones are indeed chemicals in the broad sense, in the same way that sodium chlorine, ethanol and amino acids are all 'chemicals' But hormones are not a specific chemical familes like alchols, hydrocarbons and ketones etc Hormones are a family of biological components like organelles, organs and muscles. There are many organelles and organs with highly varied structures and functions. There are 3 types of muscle in the human body (smooth, cardiac, skeletal and no doubt many more if you take into consideration the whole animal kingdom) also with different structures and functions. Hormones are similarly a highly varied group of biological functionaries that perform a wide variety of different physiological functions and have highly varied molecular structures.

A chromosome is a biological structure not an individual molecule. As well as the DNA molecules, it contains a plethora of proteins. Structural proteins like chromatin and various specific gene inhibiting and activating proteins etc.

Hormone refers to an effect on biochemical or physiological process, not a chemical relationship. Ethylene, I think it is, acts as a hormone that promotes the ripening of many fruit. But it clearly bares no chemical relationship to testosterone.

Please note that split brain patients, where the corpus collosum has been divided in order to contain severe epileptic siezures to one hemisphere, have shown that the two hemispheres of the brain at least (and quite possibly other components and regions of the brain), are entirely capable of generating seperate and independant conscious and self aware entities. So split brain patients are a literal and physical case of split personality disorder. One personaity controls the left side of the body and the other personality controls the opposite side of the body. As to the minimum amount of brain that is capable of generating a conscious entity, who knows. But clearly the smaller the mount of brain the less sophisticated will be the conscious state. But until science comes to a different consensus, individual cells do not have any consciousness or self awareness. They certainly respond to stimuli and avoid obstacles but that is in the same sense as a robot.

Rubbish questionposter. Either you weren't paying attention in class, you have an intelligence deficit or your teacher(s) are incompetent in science. Here is a challenge for you - you cite one single biology text book that states that single cells are conscious and self aware. You wont find one because it is not accepted science fact, at present at least. Even in the scientific paper below that proposes a shift in the emphasis from whole complex brain source of consciousness to a single neurone source of conscious, please note that the assumption is that it is the electric impulses travelling along the neurones dendritic processes is what makes the neirone conscious. The neurone is not conscious in and of itself without the electrical impulses. http://cogprints.org/3891/1/snt-9html.htm

http://scitizen.com/future-energies/can-renewables-replace-fossil-fuels-_a-14-3165.html Comments?

Perhaps it would make more sense if I wrote the equivalent function in C int factorial(int n, int total = 1) { if (n == 0) return total; else return factorial(n-1, total*n) } Call it as x = factorial(10);

No specific figures. But clearly coral reefs accumulate over geological time scales as do oil and coal deposits. In terms if a human life time or the life time of a civilisation they are similar time scales. Probably also should consider that coral reef accumulation is a far more common occurence than oil and coal deposition which require more specialised conditions I believe. E.G. Oil deposition requires anoxic deep ocean conditions and how often has that occured through the history of Earth.

Single cells DO NOT have conciousness or self awareness. I am confident in saying that this is a universally accepted biological fact. And I never said that individual neurones have consciousness - you have completely misunderstood what I was saying. I will try again for what it is worth. When a neurone does what it does in firing off nerve impulses to neighbouring neurones it contributes to the generation of conciousness within the brain, i.e. the continuous stream of nerve impulses is a small part of consciousness not the neurones themselves. Back to the motor cycle analogy..... It is not the piston of the spark plug that is a small part of the speed of the bike. It is the coordinated movement of the piston and the coordinated sparking of the spark plug that are small parts of the speed of the bike. If the piston does not move or the spark plug does not spark then the motorcycle does not move and generates no speed. Similarly if the neurones in your brain do not fire impulses, or the propagation of those impulses was disrupted by severe brain injury resulting in a coma, then the conscious and self aware entity that calls itself questionposter would simply no longer exist. If your brain was some how repaired so that impulses could again flow as normal then the conscious and self aware entity that calls itself questionposter would exist. Much like flicking a light switch on and off. And a light switch analogy pretty much matches the reality doesn't it......with fainting, a blow to the head, sleeping or a stroke etc. You might think that this reduces our humanity to insignficance but on the contrary, I think it makes our humanity even more amazing and precious. Think about it.......simple chemistry and physiology can generate a fragile self aware conscious entity that is capable of such incredible scientific acheivments, including being able to question its own existence.

I guess the thought takes shape in the frontal lobes with a cascade of nerve impulses being sent to the motor cotex which then sends the appropriate combination of impulses down the spinal chord to the limbs that then results in us pushing ourselves up and out of the bed. In much in the same way that the CPU of a robot reaches a point in the program it is running where electrical signals are sent through a series of wires to limb actuators that then cause the robot to move in some way.

Deposits of calcium carbonate are laid down at a similar rate at which oil and coal deposits are formed. So technically it is no more renewable than coal and oil. The only difference being that the reserves of calcium carbonate are so much more massive.