coquina

There surely would be one if all organisms were immortal. Also death is the means that returns nutrients to the system, except in the case of humans, where people think they have to have a corpse embalmed or burned. Maybe somebody ought to buy a huge chunk of desert and establish a cemetery there where people who would like to replenish the earth with their bodies could be buried, without embalming, caskets, or vaults.

give blood at a Red Cross Blood Drive. You can do a good deed and find out for free at the same time. I don't know why people have different blood types - I wonder if it originally came from different populations being separated by long distances. Why don't you start a poll and have every body click off what type they are? I know that there is A AB B and O, and that each can be positive or negative. Here is a web site that should help you understand it better: http://www.biology.arizona.edu/human_bio/problem_sets/blood_types/Intro.html

But only when I go to the right side of the board and click on the last message. If I open the main topic, and then click on the thread, it works.

I would say that one of the traits of collective conscious is the desire to form groups. It is probably an ancestral "safety in numbers" thing. However, people have discovered that when you have a group, it has to have a leader. How people select their leader is downright screwy. Again, it must be more than what the leader says, leaders must have something that goes right down to the primal collective conscious that allows people to be led by a "strong" individual. I think the prime example of this is Hitler. How in the world did he convince the german population the "Aryan" characteristics - tall, blonde, and blue eyes were superior to people who were short, dark haired and brown eyed, especially given that he was one of the latter?

They are also called Isopods, and are arthropods, not insects. http://insected.arizona.edu/isoinfo.htm Look at their little segmented body - they must turn a corner sort of like a marching band. If they are turning left, the left side marks time and the right side runs like hell. Maybe they alternate so that the legs on either side get the same amount of use.

Bereavement can bring about what is known as "situational depression". When someone dies suddenly, the bereaved are thrown into a state of shock, and are really numb. At about the time the "DGI's" * think you should "be over it", and "moving on", you are just coming out of your fog and realizing that this is for real, and he ain't ever coming back. Based on my own experience, and the experience of my support group, this usually occurs at about 6 months out. However, at 6 months, my mother died, and I was back in "Scarlett Mode" (I'll worry about that tomorrow.) When "tomorrow" came, 6 months after that, and a year after Butch died, it was a double whammey, and "situational depression" hit me like a ton of bricks. At that point, I did seek counciling and was put on meds. However, I have a girl friend who has suffered from depression all her life. She had great parents, went to college and graduated with honors, married a successful man, who treats her very well. She has a lovely home, and no money worries, and yet she has battled depression all the time I have known her. We lived next door to each other for 25 years, we did lots of things together, but Chele's depression was always there. She has seen psychiatrists and takes anti-depressants, but she still has bouts of it. With her, I believe it is hereditary. Several people on her mother's side of the family have had it. Before I got to know her well, I thought she was a snob - she isn't. It is really easy to make assumptions about other people, but you just can't know all their ins and outs. The only thing you can do is try to be non-judgmental and the best friend you can be. * BTW - "DGI" stands for "Doesn't Get It". I was the Queen of the DGI's before Butch died, and didn't realize the effect that asinine comments have on the bereaved, such as, "At least you know he's in a better place." I don't know where the heck he is, but age 57 was far too young for him to go there. Or they will say, "God needed him more than you do." Yeah - I suppose he's up there machining new hinges for the Pearly Gates as we speak. The only thing the newly bereaved needs to hear is, "I'm so very sorry for your trouble", accompanied by a hug. Will somebody please kick this soapbox out from under me?

... and I do see a councilor once in a while, when things become overwhelming. I also participate in an online support group for the "involuntarily unspoused". Thanks for the concern.

An autopsy wasn't performed, he had a history of diabetes and hypertention - the death certificate said "sudden cardiac ischemia", meaning that his heart just stopped. I am moving on, and no one is controling my life, least of all my dead husband. There is a limit to how far or how fast I can move, I am running a business by myself that we were running together. I am getting my act together, little by little. Things are far better now than they were in the beginning. It's not as though I am continually depressed or suicidal or anything like that. The original poster asked about loneliness, and I just gave one example of something that can cause it. I didn't do it for the purpose of having a "pity party" or for wanting people to feel sorry for me. The purpose of my post was to give people insight to what it is like to suddenly become a widow. After all - if you are in a marriage that does not end in divorce, you stand a 50/50 chance of being in my shoes, and the other alternative isn't so hot either.

How does this set with you? When I took biology in the dark ages - I learned that only one organism can occupy the exact same niche. Let's exclude human interferance for a moment... Stephen Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" theory was that after major extinction events, many niches became vacated, and through chance mutation, organisms adapted that would fill them. However - since speciation is a slow process, maybe the animals that did fill a particular niche were able to grow larger because the population was lower. We can see that the reverse is true. Take for example the pygmy mammoths, whose fossils have been found in the channel islands, of the coast of California. http://www.nps.gov/chis/pygmy.htm Mammoths swam across the Santa Barbara channel, when sea level was at its lowest and when the islands were one larger land mass. As sea level rose, the geographical area decreased. As a result, small size was selected for. I wonder if there is a "pygmy gene" present in many species that gets "turned on" by lack of food. Maybe there is a "giant gene" present that gets turned on by an abundance of it. In other words - maybe there is more than sheer chance in adaptation towards an environment. From what I have read, when genomes are mapped, there seem to be large sections that appear to be unused. It seems a waste for an organism to manufacture all that, for no good reason. Maybe those sequences are "species catastrophic insurance policies" that get "turned on" by changes in the organisms niche.

But in the newest of therapies, leeches are used to suck the excess blood out of reattached digits and limbs. There used to be a science forum called "The Why? Files" - through it I became friends with a doctor from Darwin, Australia who has done practiced a lot in the aboriginal communities. Reading about their remedies was fascinating - for example, they put honey on infected wounds. They figured out it has antibiotic properties because it doesn't rot in the hive. That is not to say honey is superior to modern antibiotics, but it is interested to know what they figured out over thousands of years of trial and error with what was available to them.

I think one of the biggest problems is that people are so gullible and believe everything they read, and "truth in advertising" seems to have gone out the window. It's just the modern version of the snake oil salesman - "magical weight loss drug - you don't have to exercise, eat all you want, and we'll guarantee you'll lose 30 pounds in a month or we'll give you your money back. I will bet you that people don't reorder because it doesn't work, but that hardly anyone asks for their money back. It doesn't matter - all they have to do is collect the first $50 or $75 from several thousand gullible people and they're rich. However, I have always been interested in "Folk Remedies" - so many things that were originally learned on a "hit or miss" basis, but were passed down from generation to generation. I'll give you two examples. 1. If you have hay fever, eat a tablespoon of raw local honey a day. As late summer arrived, my husband would develop the most God-Awful case of hayfever you ever saw. He eyes would be red and tearing - his nose would be continually running, and he would sneeze incessantly. We went to a farmer's market, and a man was there selling local honey. The beekeeper saw my husband's condition and suggested he try the old folk remedy. He did, it took a season to work, but he never had hayfever again. The principle is the same as "allergy shots", but it's a lot cheaper and it's tasty too. 2. One summer, when I was a teenager - I had a terrible ingrown toenail. I had gone to my regular doctor, who had sent me to a foot surgeon, who had removed the entire nail, but it grew back worse than ever. An old woman lived in the neighborhood - this was in the 60's and she must have been at least in her 80's - so we're talking about some one who was born before the turn of the century and had lived her whole life in a very rural environment. She saw me limping and asked me what was wrong. I told her I had an ingrown toenail, and she said, "Well, honey, I can fix you right up. What you need is a poultice." I figured that since modern (and very painful) surgery, hadn't cured the problem, I'd give her poultice a try. I went into her house and she brewed up a vile smelling concoction. I don't know what all was in it, but I suspect the two main ingredients were sulphur and creosote. She dipped a long piece of gauze in it and wrapped it round and round my toe. Then she told me to leave it alone and take it off after 3 days. The pain gradually lessoned and when the 3rd day arrived I unwrapped the gauze. Out of the end of my toe popped a nail spur. It was a sliver of toenail that had separated from the main nail and was growing into the flesh. It had wrapped its way all the way around the end of my toe, and when it popped out, it was about 1/2" long. The poultice softened the skin and allowed it to break free - the relief was immediate. When the surgeon removed the toenail, he apparently hadn't gone all the way to the corner, and that piece of nail had continued to imbed itself deeper and deeper into my flesh. It still hurts to think about it.

Thanks for the imput - I hadn't read those terms before. I am familiar and understand the terms "felsic" and "mafic", which seem very similar, but not quite the same. Look at the map from the Paleo Map project of where the oceans and land masses were placed during the Cambrian: http://www.scotese.com/newpage12.htm If it is reasonably accurate, it is easy to see how life would have rapidly dispersed - one it had got a foothold - lots of contiguous continental shelves that would have been a great breeding ground for life. The area that formed the "Burgess Shale" would have been on the east coast of Laurentia: http://www.paleoportal.org/time_space/period.php?period_id=16

A guy who teaches Dale Carnagie told me that the best way to avoid walking into a situation where everyone is already in a conversation is to get there early. Then, as people come in, you smile at them and they are far more likely to come over and start a conversation rather than stand around by themselves.

I always said that about myself, and to a large extent it is true. I think with me the biggest problem was the sudden shock of it all. For years, Butch and I boated, to the exclusion of anything else. I used to enjoy doing artwork, I painted and carved wood. I also used to be heavily involved in music, I played flute and piccolo. I would tell myself, during those busy years, that if I only had time, I would enjoy doing those things again. I did keep the boat - a 32' powerboat, and I am in the process of refurbishing her. I have a macabre sense of humor - the first thing I did was to use some of Butch's insurance money for a state of the art marine toilet and sanitation system, which uses the chroride to make its own chlorine sewage treatment. I put a sign over the head door ..." In memory of Butch, who wouldn't take $hit off of anyone." Suddenly, I found myself with the time, so I called my own bluff. I dug my flute out of storage and started practicing again. I haven't gone back to painting, but I am learning photoshop. I am enjoying restoring old damaged photographs. I have learned how to "make art" by scanning 3d items. Seashells, feathers, flowers, you would be amazed the neat effects you can obtain. Exercise helps me fight depression more than anything else... together with knowing that my problems are inconveniences compared to those of people in many parts of the world who go to bed hungry every night. I am especially mindfull of those people lost to the recent tsunami - all of them have families, who are at present in numbness and shock, and who will really begin to deal with their grief weeks or months later, when the dreadful occurances are able to penetrate. What I do know is that many things can cause lonliness, and I am far more likely to offer a smile or speak to a stranger. There is an old saying - "If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours." Try it - you will be absolutely amazed at how many people will smile back. You have to fight your way out, and it is not easy. However - it is worth it.

of space exploration there was talk of building a huge wheel shaped station that would spin and create it's own gravity.

Maybe this is what you're talking about - from this site: http://claim.springer.de/EncRef/CancerResearch/samples/0001.htm *reverse transcriptase Definition: enzyme generating a DNA strand from an RNA template in the cytoplasm of a cell infected by a retrovirus; is carried with a retroviral particle.

Thanks for the "atta girl".

I would guess that they are being driven by hunger too - that must mean that the entire food chain has been disrupted. Wonder how many fish and other near shore sea life has been killed. Wonder what the noise of the earthquake and tsunami did to the echolocation ability of nearby dolphins and whales.

I don't know the word "sialic" - do you mean that they are composed mostly of granite as opposed to basalt, the therefore "float" on the mantle? I thought that the "cratons" or "continenal shields" were more or less permanent, but that they are only the interior parts of the continents, and that the balance was lost not only to subduction, but erosion.

How does he know whether they were larvae or not - is there some dead give away that would be obvious in a soft-tissue fossil, which are poorly preserved at best? I don't exactly get why the question of whether there were larvae or not enters into the picture. It would seem to me that the development of larvae would be in response to the changing climactic conditions throughout the year. (Not correct syntax but taking a shortcut here...) The species had to have a way of encapsulating themselves to survive winter or drought conditions. If the climate didn't change very much, there would be no advantage to a pupae or larval stage. Have you ever looked at the Paleomap Project? It is here: http://www.scotese.com/Default.htm From that section you can go to "earth history" or "climate history". Here's the page for "climate history" during the Cambrian. http://www.scotese.com/mlcambcl.htm I guess there is another advantage to a larval stage - it's distribution to other areas. It would become an advantage for finding new niches if the one in which the organism lived became overcrowded, because they could be carried to new areas by currents without having to expend energy. I'd like to know how he made that quantum leap. Only a tiny fraction of fossils from the Cambrian has been preserved - the land that existed then has been subducted, melted, and extruded several times over, along with whatever fossils might have been there. At any rate - I think he is putting the cart before the horse, because he starts with the theory that there were two distinctly different animals that hybridized to become a third. I think that if life evolved into two separate types, the split is at the bilaterally symmetrical critters and those that have radial symmetry. Regardless - in Cambrian times, there existed a multitude of niches, with very few organisms to fill them. As mutations occurred, more of them were able to find a way to fill a separate niche without competing with others. You must remember, the fossils found in the Burgess shale are probably only a millionth of the species that were alive at the time. As a comparison - lets take the movie "Titanic" - A thousand years has gone by an someone finds a tape in an old blockbuster store. Out of the entire tape they are only able to retrieve ten frames, and none of them happened to contain the iceberg. The finders might figure out that a great ship had sunk and that a great number of people had been drowned, but the entire reason for the disaster would remain unknown. The only way to know for sure what happened would be to find more tapes, with other undamaged sections and splice them together until you got enough to tell the whole story. At this time - people can speculate, but they don't have enough information to come to a valid conclusion. I'll have to check out the other link later. Ophiolite - what's your take?

I didn't know about the book - I have, of course, heard the phrase. I just checked it out online - looks like a useful one to add to my library.

I was married for 31 years, my husband and I worked together and played together. (And fought together, and argued with one another - it was a far from perfect marriage.) He was an only child, and so was I. I have a daughter from a previous marriage who lives 200 miles away. I have a grandson and an ex-son-in-law who live close by. My dad died in 1997, my mom died in 2003. I woke up on the morning of August 18, 2002, and my husband was dead. His eyes were open, his glasses were on, his feet were crossed at the ankles, and the TV remote had slipped from his fingers and was on the bed beside him. He looked like someone had just thrown a switch and turned him off. That day, I started being lonely - the quiet nearly killed me. When Butch was around, there was always a commotion around him. He was noisy and boistrous, and never did anything quietly (except to die). He had installed "surround sound" in our motorhome (we lived there full time) - he loved action movies and the noise was deafening. At least at that point, I had my mom. She was 95, and her body was giving out, but she had her wits. I started spending the evenings with her. Then, she broke her hip, got a staph infection and died from blood poisoning in Feb. 2003. So now, I am really alone, and often times, I am really lonely. Sure - I have a lot of friends. I am around my employees during the day, and I go out some evenings, but - by and large, I am alone. (Or at the computer with you guys or another forum I participate in for the "involuntarily unspoused") I sing in the church choir - and really enjoy the company of the other choir members. It's weird, the things you miss - Butch loved food and dinner was a big production with us. It's terribly lonely to cook for one and then sit down and eat alone. (Except for the cat, who begs incessantly). It's even worse when you go out to eat, and the waiter asks if someone will be joining you and you have to say, "No - I'm alone." I have an arthritic back - Butch used to rub it for me every morning and evening - now I have one of those back massage cushions, but it's no comparison to human touch. I use his side of the bed for storage, just so I won't see it empty. I went through closets and drawers over the Christmas holidays, and found his wallet, his shaver, his camera, his darts. Don't know what to do with that stuff, don't want to throw it out, don't want to look at it. So - for company I have an exhuberant black lab, with whom I walk several miles a day, and a 18-1/2 year old geriatric cat. I don't think I "tend to push people away", but I am certainly careful around them. The last time I dated, I was 17. For my whole entire life, I have been "somebody's daughter" or "somebody's wife". I have never lived alone before, and I don't even know who "I" am. I do think before I can start dating or consider remarrying, I have to find that out. What I will say to you all - is to treasure the time you have with your spouse or significant other, and "don't sweat the small stuff". When it comes right down to it - most of it is "small stuff".

Gardeners use ladybugs to control other insects, so they may have been put there by the greenskeepers. My other guess is that there was a mass hatching of pupae. http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/beneficial/lady_beetles.htm

Check this site. http://www.fwhc.org/birth-control/iudinfo.htm#cautions