Skye

We have a scheme like that that applies to tuition. It's not interest free but at 2.8% interest, which is roughly the inflation rate these days. Most people receive a government scholarship for much of the tuition costs, but some people pay all the tuition themselves. Once you are earning 30-odd grand you start paying money back as a progressive tax.

I think both sides did ok. Israel forced the UN into action and Hezbollah looked like gritty freedom fighters.

I thought that with a fair number of people on this site interested in science fiction it might be interesting to run a short story competition. Perhaps we could have a similar set up to the debate forum, with an area to vote and discuss the stories. I'm interested in the level of support, and any suggestions about how you'd like to work.

Well ok, evolution is obviously more than simply linear change, i.e. descent with modification. It's also lines splitting and changing independently each generation. If you reverse that process the lines merge, indicating (or assuming, depending the methodology) a common ancestor.

I think it's time to build a bridge Silkworm. Just make sure it's not irreducibly complex.

Carbon dioxide and carbonic acid exist in an equlibrium in your body, with the equilibrium favouring carbonic acid. The enzyme carbonic anhydrase catalyses the reversible reaction of carbon dioxide to carbonic acid, and vice versa. In tissues where there's carbon dioxide being produced, in order to maintain the equilibrium carbon dioxide is converted to carbonic acid, catalysed by carbonic anhydrase. In the lungs the carbon dioxide is released, so the carbonic acid is converted to carbon diozide to maintain the equilibrium.

I'm not a big fan of polls but some polling would be useful here. I'm sure the reporter is being forthright, but just think of an Iranian reporter going to New York to cover US politics. The Republicans are going down in flames! The reporter here came up with one guy saying something vaguely against the support for Hezbollah. Most likely he is in some way associated with the main opposition party. But that opposition is heavily based on student activists, and are people worried about the economy and national security going to trust student activists with their vote? That's way too easy a task for conservative tacticians, regardless of where you are in the world.

Islamofascism may have some meaning, but at other times it is a farce. Remember that in many cases Islamists are in opposition to autocratic regimes, and often embrace democracy and popularism, as opposed to autocratic fascism. Hamas and Hezbollah are committed to democracy, rather than authoritarianism. While Gadaffi may have renounced terrorism and his nuclear ambitions, he's still an authoritarian figure. This is the real issue here, how to ensure that liberal democracy has a place in the Islamic world. What's the point of a bunch of Islamist democracies and secular dictatorships?

I think the problem with that is that neither side is going to give up if they lose a single war. Indeed the Arab militants, and their Persian backers, are pretty much resolved to losing the fights as they are being fought now. They know they can't truly be defeated though, as long as they stay motivated. Their motivation is that, with over 200 million Arabs and 14 million Jews, the momentum will one day swing their way.

I wonder if alot of these animals generally seek shelter when they hear low frequency sound, as associated with thunderstorms, and this helps them deal with earthquakes by coincidence.

You should watch more small independent films then, they tend to have a broader range of themes. Remember that films are much more limited in the amount of time they have to tell a story compared to a novel, so the stories tend to be much simpler.

Note that there is within the international law a legal basis to the concept of proportionality, which is what some people are refering to. http://www.cfr.org/publication/11115/

IIRC the Foreign Minister is one of those members of the government endorsed by Hezbollah, so maybe he has some insider info.

Kegerator! Since you're already drilling holes in the door.

You mean like this? http://www.carpages.co.uk/fiat/fiat-to-manufacture-cars-in-iran-01-02-05.asp

That's a good way to get low blood sugar. I imagine after the mars bars you feel great, then after an hour or two you start to crash again. That's the problem with simple carbohydrates. They way to avoid it is to eat complex carbs. There's lots of them in grains and roots. There's less of them in leafy vegetables, but if you eat enough you'd be ok.

I don't think of this as akin to abortion anyway. It's much more similar to whether parents have the ability to consent on behalf of their child to organ donation. The embryo or child is going to die in either case, that's not up to the parents.

Puffer fish are easy to catch because they are so slow. They don't have a particularly sleek body. There's an interesting correlation between genome size and how 'weird' fish look. The fish with with smaller genomes tend to be more weird looking, probably because they've lost genes for normal fishy development.

I remember living on a river that had was skirted by rainforest. Some people who moved next door thought the wonderful that there was this cool misty rain that came down in summer. Cicadas have mouthpieces sort of like a mosquito, but drink sap from trees instead of blood. They drink it all the time while waiting around to mate, so they are constantly excreting the watery waste.

There was a paper out a year or two ago saying that it relied on dissolved gases, and when gases are removed from a mixture oil and water mixed. Maybe it was the lack of atmosphere rather than gravity in the Skylab experiments. http://www.future.org.au/news_2005/april/oil.html

A friend had a thing about moths for a while so I caught one and put it my mouth. Then I went and found him and went blah and the moth came flying out. Outstanding.

I'm pretty sure that after an emergency meeting the Lebanese government said that they had no knowledge of the initial raid and didn't condone it. Or words to that effect. Remember that the government itself is dominated by anti-Syrian members, with only a small number of Hezbollah members or their allies.

The key is that cells can recognise viruses. There are two aspects to it, when the virus is inside a cell and when the virus is in the fluids of the body. In the first case, early in the infection a cell can sometimes take parts of the virus and place them on its surface. Particular cells (mainly CD8+ T cells) then come and eat the cell. In the second case, viruses in the fluids of the body are detected and eaten by cells called phagocytes. They break down the virus and place the parts of the virus on their surface. Then CD4+ T cells come and some recognise the virus particle. They don't eat the phagocyte (snce its not infected) but instead release cytokines, which are mostly little proteins with sugars added to them. This is a signal, and once many cytokines are released, indicating that there's an infection. This then leads to the T cells releasing other cytokines (there are many different cytokines) which signal to other cells to become active. For viruses this is particularly macrophages, which go and eat the virus.

Trying to get out! AFAIK, most are people that left some time during 1976-2000, obtained citizenship, and have since returned.

@darkangel199: note that the UN does provide aid to Palestinian refugees under the unrwa http://www.un.org/unrwa/ Also, Israel doesn't use the Abrams tank, it uses its own Merkavas.