Skye

Federal cabinet documents are not publically available for 30 years. Some states vary, eg. South Australia is 20 years. Edit: 50 years John? Notebooks are 50, but I thought documents were 30.

Look at things like biofilms for something similar to tissues.

Also, Bdellovibrio bacteria parasitise other bacteria.

On supply and demand, one of the reasons that fuel is often taxed heavily is because demand is fairly insensitive to changes in price.

Indiana Jones is a fictional character. Darwin had to pay his way. They aren't good career models. The organisation side of things would would be admin work. Avoid. You may be best off getting qualifications in areas not specifically science related but necessary to expeditions, such as driving a ship, which most researchers don't have.

Most sample collection is done by universities or by government research organisations. Commercial organisations, such as pharmaceuticals, normally buy rights to libraries (or go into agreements for their use).

It's an interesting experiment, because aside the Jurassic Park angle, because there could be some interesting results from gene function experiments from extinct species. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002240

I thought swansont, Klaynos and others would enjoy it.

One difference is that Oz and Britain have roundabouts, which make low traffic intersections alot quicker. And exciting.

The basic problem is you can go to BBC Nature or sciencemag, or where ever, and read the stories yourself. I think an alternate plan would be post poor articles that deal with science, and pick them apart. That would get people talking and thinking and all that jazz.

Just put it in whatever category it fits. If doesn't fit in any category, put it in general science.

Burma gets the odd bit of attention from the UN and fairly regular discussion in ASEAN. It goes round and round normally. The main issue is that no-one in SE Asia wants to rock the boat.

Generally called subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems (SLME or SLiME). They are usually measured indirectly, by molecular or genetic byproducts, which doesn't give a precise measure of the biomass. Plus the only research sites are mines, which can obviously suffer from contamination. As such the biomass estimates should be taken with a grain of (ba)salt. Zing!

Cnidaria are the most primitive animals with neurons, as far as I know. Sponges are the most primitive animals around now. How they emerged isn't completely clear, as they have different cells types that line up with different protists. The most obvious in that choanocytes match up very well with choanoflagellates, and this has been the most likely origin for a long time. But it isn't set in stone. As far as carnivore/herbivore goes, in ecology these are sometimes combined into predation. But that still leaves things like parasitism and detritivores out.

Posting inane threads on internet forums.

Land use is something that is too often ignored in claimate change planning I think. It has a range of effects on climate: altering the surface temperature, rate of evaporation, carbon sequestration by biomass, etc. It also affects emissions. Town planning has an effect on transport and housing, which can affect emissions. Agriculture is source of emissions, but also of alternate fuels and materials. Poor forestry practices can also increase emissions, but good practices can reduce emissions.

Great whites apparently need to learn how to hunt particular species, they spend a bit of time making unsuccessful attacks. There was interesting BBC (I think) documentary a while ago showing a young great white spending a day trying to catch a sea bird resting on the surface. To start with it was just sort swimming up to the bird on the surface, and the bow wave of the shark pushed the bird out of the way. It eventually attacked from below at speed, and this was seen as possible evidence that great whites learn how to hunt. So, the fairly clumsy behaviour of great whites when attacking people, mauling but not killing and eating, is possibly just learning behaviour.

Recession isn't really that useful a concept, to me, because it doesn't give people making decisions any information about the position in economic cycle that they are in. Growth tends to be cyclical. There's a period of high growth, then it peaks, then goes into decline, then bottoms out. Each of the four stages has typical macroeconomic conditions. Once you go into decline, unemployment starts to rise, inflation falls, interest rates fall, etc. But this stage doesn't necessarily coincide with a negative growth. It's just a fall in the rate of growth. So in theory you can tell if you've peaked out and have started to decline by the way that various macroeconomic indicators have behaved. Reality is obviously more complex than theory, but I'd say that the US is fairly obviously going through a period of declining growth right now. If the US slides into recession, I don't see any reason for any change in the way that decisions have been made than if grwoth is just stagnant. Obviously it's worse than stagnant growth, but the way to treat a declining economy that is in recession or just stagnant should be much the same.

Right now we have great stores of energy in fossil fuels. But if we are going to move towards sustainability then we'll need other stores. The thing is that most of the renewable sources of energy come as flows. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc. Biomass comes as a store, and that's about it. I'm guessing that we'll probably want to be able to create more stores of energy. Not just for things like bateries, but because of the inherent variability of the flow of energy coming from renewables. This is all long term stuff, but it isn't a bad idea to keep the ball rolling along.

Well it seems to have worked. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h7aoM2ii3QVBCAV8m2HtJSuPxPNwD8UUMS5G2

Is there any way to view all new blog posts?

He can concentrate on what's needed to win the election now. I'm not sure he'll drift too far away from the right though, at least if there are real concerns over the 'right-wing angst'. But you'd expect him to put more effort into the issues and states that are going to be crucial in the election.

Romney has suspended his campaign. Pretty much locks McCain in you'd have to think. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jWbI2rULUHnQwe-83Fd1Pb2lT8-wD8ULMSNO1

I was surprised to see conservatives say that they'd vote for Clinton over McCain. I've seen it in other discussions. I think the issue is that McCain is seen as a traitor to the cause. Aside from some 'liberal' social issues he champions, he's not well liked for seemingly trying to block the release of MIA/POW records. Shades of John Kerry. However with McCain there's a more significant military voting base in the Republicans. Realistically these people wont vote for Clinton, they'll probably not vote at all. And that's probably the biggest issue for McCain, getting people to come and vote for him. He's done a good job so far though.

It's a 'G-suit' for pilots, to overcome the effects of high G forces. Not to levitate.