Skye

Under the system of measurement adopted during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I: 1 mouthfull = 1 cubic inch 1 handfull = 2 mouthfull 1 jack = 2 handfull 1 jill = 2 jacks 1 cup = 2 jills 1 pint = 2 cups 1 quart = 2 pints If 1 cubic inch = 14.7 mL, how many cups to 1 litre? ANSWER: 1 L = 68 cubic inches = 68 mouthfull = 34 handfull = 17 jacks = 8.5 jills = 4.25 cups. Let me tell you a story about jacks and jills. Remember the nursery rhyme about: Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after. In the mid-1600s, English king Charles I placed a tax on beer and spirits to raise money for his own pleasure. At that time drinks were sold by the jackpot which had the volume of one jack, and the jill. His subjects resented this new tax. They resented it even more when he reduced the size of the jack and jill to increase his revenue even further. Under his tough rule protests had to be disguised so the people made up the rhyme about jack and jill. The words about "jack and jill went up the hill" refers to the increase in price for a jack and jill of drink as the volume was decreased; "jack came down" is about the measure returning to its original size; "broke his crown" refers to Charles I being almost toppled from the throne as the people revolted; and "jill came tumbling after" means that the jill returned to the original size. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From here ...it doesn't make alot of sense but then it was the 1600's. Also this site is interesting: http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/ENGL/courses/engl208c/esharris.htm

Looks like we have a new contender for The Worlds Dullest Man.

There's the indirect benefit of memorising the words of a whole song, and learning rhythm, rhyme and melody. Mostly they keep kids from burning things for a short stretch of time.

I think most patients with a terminal brain tumor would accept any risks given a chance of recovery but maybe it could mutate into a serious disease-causing virus that affects others.

blike posted a story about it in the news section. http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1106 It just kills the tumor cells, it doesn't fix them.

A carrier I think.

My problem with the viruses is that seem to have been left out simply because they make defining life too difficult. People look out into the world and for some reason say some things are life and some things aren't. Once we have some idea of the scope of what we consider life is, then we start trying to define it. I might be wrong but I think alot of people would consider viruses life, at least as far as they would consider any microbe life. Scientists study them as part of life sciences or biology. Aside from life then...what are they? Maybe it's good to look at what makes us think something is living in the first place. I can think of a few but they don't really seperate the living from the dead. On that, death is perhaps something that defines life, all living things die. Hmm maybe not, maybe the opposite. Maybe life could be defined by the ability to continue replicating itself indefinately. Ah well, it's been a long day and I'm starting to ramble.

Yep but being better adapted only applies to a given environment. Fish are better adapted to water than squirrels, that doesn't mean that fish are better adapted than squirrels. We have a strong reliance on being able to modify our environment to us and we always have had. The people that do this better are better adapted, and it's one of our most important adaptations, the one which has enabled us to spread over the globe. But let's say there's some disaster and we don't have any of these cool things like hospitals or insulin. Those people that can't adapt to the environment would be dead, sure. I'd still say there'd be a fair number of healthy people around. The real problem from my point of view is that most people don't have the knowledge to adapt the environment to them like our ancestors had to.

There's always something in biology that escapes the definition. I guess you can say they are people, and people generally reproduce, so they are alive by belonging to a group which has the feature of being alive. That's some fairly convoluted logic I'll grant you. Virus' are also tricky, my microbiology lecturer believes they aren't alive because they can't reproduce on their own, don't metabolise, grow, etc. I disagree but I know what I'll put on the exam;) That aside though, being sentient is not on any lists of requirements for being alive.

"Cardiac muscle cells are electrically coupled to enhance the rapid depolarisation of the whole heart. ie Between cardiac cells there are Intercalated Disks which are regions where the cell membranes come very close together. In these regions there is a reduced electrical resistance to allow rapid A.P. transfer via GAP JUNCTIONS. Therefore better flow of charged particles and hence current." From this site Basically when once a cardiac cells gets a message to contract it passes it on to it's neighbours and they do the same. Pacemaker cells rhythmically fire; their membranes allow Na ions to flow in which triggers an action potential, after which it returns to a resting state then the Na leaks in again and triggers another action potential...(also from that site) We were dissecting toads the other day that had been kept below freezing, and were brain dead, for hours. Some of them still had beating hearts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1965811.stm From that site: "...30 states conducted sterilisation programmes - in Virginia's case until 1979 - in an effort to wipe out human deficiencies and vices assumed to be hereditary.....In all more than 60,000 people are thought to have been sterilised in the US in the name of eugenics. Sixty-one-year-old Rose Brooks, herself a victim of Virginia's eugenics programme, helped unveil the memorial and declared the state governor's apology "pretty good". She was sterilised at Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded in 1957 after having twin boys out of wedlock. The children were taken from her and adopted." 200 years? It's been barely 20.

That's the argument of people for physically disiplining a child, that it is reasonable because of the good intent, and neccessary. Those against think it's absolutely unreasonable, and unneccessary. The context, or the individual interpretation of the context, are going to decide the best choice of words, that's semantics for you...I'll use physical discipline because it's a particular sterile term that no one can really disagree with. The point at which it becomes abusive is up to the individual, and law of course. Most people (and law) use their society as a basis. I think the widely differring views are largely due to the established tradition of physical discipline of children, which is contrasted with the lack of comparable physical discipline in any other social context. I'd hope that everyone agrees that, given the choice, verbal discipline is preferrable to physical. If so, then physical discipline is only justified by it's neccessity, or by the benefits outweighing the detriments. Clearly, physical disipline isn't neccessary in all cases, at the same time there are situations in which verbal discipline just doesn't work. In those situations where verbal discipline is ineffective, how well does physical discipline work? Is it neccessary? Is it a better of two evils?

That would be the case if the plane was flying straight into the wind but it's flying into the wind at an angle. You just have to draw a triangle as you would to find the bearing, but use it to find the ground speed instead.

Drugs, brain and behaviour

Any answers will depend on how you define evolution. A common definition is that evolution is any change in the frequency of alleles (i.e. different genes that could occupy the position, or locus, on an organisms genome) in a population over time. It could also be a process where variable traits are passed on through successive generations and are subject to selective forces which alter the frequency of the different varieties. The first definition is based on a measurable change, the second is a process that leads to change. Which do you mean? Or do you mean something else (these are only two common definitions)? Is evolution inevitable? Pretty much. If you include mutations then it's almost impossible for any population to remain the same over time. Can emotional evolution be included in the same category of change that physical evolution is? By the two definitions I gave, no (remember they aren't the only possible definitions), since there is no process by which emotions are passed on through successive generations, and there are no equivalents to genes. You could theorise that emotions change over time through successive generations, whether they do or not I don't know. This could be called evolution but it would be of a different class. Can evolution be a bad thing? (detrimental to human race) It can be a bad thing if a population evolves to a particular environment and then that environment changes, or they move to a new environment, where their traits are now disadvantagous. Sickle cell anemia is an example. Has evolution, either emotionally or physically, happened in the past? Because emotional evolution doesn't seem to fit in with either of the two definitions I gave, then no. Physically it has occurred many times, the different breeds of domestic dogs are an example of evolution as a process. Particularly fast genetic evolution occurs in viruses, in which genetic mutations lead to slightly different protein coats evolving pretty much every year. Is it possible to de-evolve (become a lower life-form)? It's quite possible, if you mean by changing to an earlier evolved structure. Most of the boundaries between the levels of life have some structural basis. A common structural feature of 'higher' animals is bilateral symmetry, only symmetrical along one plane. Starfish (and other echinoderms) have changed back to radial symmetry. This doesn't mean they are less well suited to their environment. Radial symmetry is probably great if you don't move much. I'ld keep the ideas of evolution and improving your evolutionary fitness seperate, it starts getting very confusing.

Why don't you give it a try? Live without numbers or anything that has been designed using numbers. Post your experiences when you finish. I knew a particularly intelligent (and crazy) guy who, after finishing high school, decided to see if he could live without modern society for a year. He went and lived at some remote beach and lived off food he caught.

A gene can be defined as the DNA that codes for a protein. DNA is a seemingly universal language, so splicing a gene into different organisms genome will result in that gene coding for the same protein as it did in the original. But what that protein does in the new organism isn't neccessarily the same as what it did in the original, since the protein will be interacting with very different proteins that are the product of the new organisms genome. The differences in the rabbit and piranha genomes relating to behaviour would probably be so great as to render the piranhas genes nonsensical, or for them to have very different effects.

Interesting question, and not one I'd really read much about (I'm not really into astrophysics). The differences seem to occur when comparing different methods of calculating the Hubble constant. Estimates using the same method seem to agree, at least from the little I've read. Using Cepheid variables (young stars which have a fairly constantly fluctuating luminosity which allows their absolute luminosity to estimated) the Hubble constant has been estimated at 83 +/- 13 and 81 +/- 8. Using supernovae it's estimated at 57 +/- 4. From this site. Using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (don't ask me to even attempt to explain it) H is estimated at 38 +17/-12 and 47 +18/-12. From this site. Given that each method obtains similar results, the error would seem to be in some factor that accounts for the variation between the methods.

You can't really fault the origin of life by chemical processes on probabilty while believing a supreme being created life, since I can't see a way of calculating the chance of a supreme being even existing.

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/I&Iexperiments.pdf

If you believe in evolution it seems obvious that behaviour must have some evolutionary basis, since it must have evolved at some point. Seemingly, social scientists were simply fed up by this time with Darwinism being used to explain behaviour, from what I've read. As an example from this site "...the late D.G. MacRae, refers in Ideology And Society (1961) to the regrettable `tendency of social scientists to whore after theories drawn from natural science...'. The resulting `mass of consequent error', he concluded, had proved too high a price for any insight thereby gained. He had in mind the infatuation with Darwinism of an earlier generation of social scientists." Sociobiology developed from Wilson's observations of social insects and kin selection, a theory proposed by William Hamilton in 1964. Kin selection was thought of in vague terms before Hamilton, but he was able to provide the mathematical basis. While the theory seemed quite sound many people were alarmed at sociobiology being able to validate things like racism and sexism.

Well at least some people reference or else it would all degenerate into implausible theories and pseudoscience.

I just assumed 'if the sun went out...' to mean no more light. Or maybe the sun figures that as it's been producing light for billions of years, it's earned a night out.

I recall reading that social systems are thought to have evolved around a dozen seperate times in insects, so there would have to be a good reason to do so. While social insects do seem to be more productive than individuals, which gives the system as a whole an advantage, it's probably more due the fact females are so much better off looking after their sisters. A female worker is actually being 'selfish' (in Dawkins' terminology) in looking after her sisters rather than her own daughters. She is helping to pass on more of her genes this way. This is counter-intuitive to us, and a little tricky to get your mind around. I'll try to flesh out my explanation so it makes a little more sense. If a particular man and woman have a child the offspring, on average, share 50% of their genes with each other. This is because, as diploids, we have two sets of genes, one on each chromosome. These genes are fairly randomly divided up during the production of gametes, which combine to form offspring. So you and a sibling have a 50% chance of sharing any one gene, and thus share an average of 50% of your genes overall. Female Hymenoptera (ants, wasps, bees, termites) are diploid like us, they have two sets of chromosomes. They get an equal amount of genes from each parent, in exactly the same way as we do. Males, however, only have one set of chromosomes, which they get from their mother. They result from a single unfertilised egg, which contains a random half of the females genes. When a male mates they pass on all their genetic information onto their daughter, and each daughter gets exactly the same genes as her sisters. This leads to the interesting part. If a male and female mate, all the female offspring are receiving the exact same genes from the father. This means that each female is assured that 50% of her genes are the exact same as her sisters. She also shares an average of 50% of the remaining 50% (i.e. 25%) of her total genes. This adds to give a total of 75% of genes are shared. So a female is actually caring for more of her genes when she cares for her sister than her daughter. Presumably females that have done this have had an advantage in the past, spreading heir genes more effectively. Interestingly many species of Hymenoptera are solitary and don't form colony but can be induced to if they are put into an inclosure with only one nesting space. In some species colony structure varies, it may be a swarm of several queens and many workers, it may be a single queen giving rise to a colony of her offspring. In honeybees the queen alone can mate, workers can only produce males, and in ants (except poonerine ants) the workers cannot produce eggs at all. In these situation the queen will mate will several males, which reduces the relatedness of workers significantly, and also between daughters and their brothers. They are stuck with it, and their sisters sons (if they can produce eggs) are even less related to them so they tend to eat their sisters eggs, which reinforces the social structure. Honeybees sometimes break out into anarchy where all the workers start reproducing males, though this usually destroys the hive since no one is working. Anarchy aside though, most advanced social structures in insects function as a cohesive single entity. Obviously this has an appeal for studying human social systems. One of the main ant researchers over the past 50 years, Edward O. Wilson, introduced the concept sociobiology, applying evolutionary principles to social science, which died with Social Darwinism. It also has alot of use is designing interacting robots. As decentralised information processor it can serve as a model for the brain. I find this very interesting because there are many areas where you get unexpected results. When an ant finds a large amount of food it returns to the nest an gathers a group to retrieve it. The original ant is crucial to the retrieval (even if it barely retrieves any food) and if removed the retrieval of the food usually fails, even if the retrieval group has actually reached the food. I think these kinds of behaviour, which aren't heirachical but provide a structure to ant groups, are interesting in themselves but also show ways in which the brain could have an information processing structure that divides roles up due to chance events and provides an added level of complexity from uniform componants. K I'm starting to ramble....

Energy would be more of a problem than freezing for life to continue. Things can live in both ice and boiling water (well up to 113 C around hydrothermal vents). Without sunlight only life relying on chemical energy would survive, even in the short term. Energy derived from reducing sulphur, such as in archaea in hydrothermal vents, might be the only way to maintain life indefinately.