jimmydasaint

This is one scenario/hypothesis for the short-lived survival period which adds to the answers above. In short, there is a component of self-attack by white blood cells cells which appears to exacerbate symptoms of inflammation (irritation and swelling of tissues) which surface after a relatively long "incubation" period:

I attended a seminar many moons ago which discussed something similar and exposing novel enzyme activities. However, you could cross-reference the following paper: http://www.hoajonline.com/orgchem/2053-7670/1/1

Please read the follwoing and, if it does not make sense, come back and aask some further questions so we can help you to find out the answers: http://oregonstate.edu/dept/biochem/hhmi/hhmiclasses/biochem/lectnoteskga/2kjan14lecturenotes.html

You should start with easy sites then build up to more difficult material. This site may help you. If you need more information, please post again: http://www.s-cool.co.uk/a-level/biology/biological-molecules-and-enzymes/revise-it/carbohydrates

I could be highly thrilled at the breaking of new frontiers by these scientists but this bit worries the hell out of me and I wonder if we will end up with Big Brother in our homes:

A heartfelt thank you mate. My friends have never had a loss such as I have had recently so it is out of their scope entirely to give any advice but they do listen. I am dreading Christmas when I will have time to reflect on things because it will not be a pleasant experience and involve some soul searching. We had good times but I wish we could have had more.

I lost my mother at the relatively tender age of 67 a few years ago. I lost my 24 year old son 3 months ago unexpectedly. I am struggling to cope with the grief and my moods are rollercoasting like a teenager. At least my mother had a reasonably good run but aged 24? How have others coped with grief? Can things get any worse?

I am confused that there is a lack of clear papers from my preliminary search that deal with the calculation of the efficiency of working human or animal muscle. This is important not only from the viewpoint of the effectiveness of exercise regimes but also the efficiency of quadripedal gait compared to bipedal gait. Any references to papers or thoughts welcomed

Hi, I hope you got the answer eventually. I am not allowed to explain the answers. However, I can point you to a website and ask you to read their answer: http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/A-Trihybrid-Cross-Example-Using-Mendel%E2%80%99s-Sweet-Peas.pdf Also, there may be some confusion about incomplete dominance (partial expression from both alleles rather than complete expression from both) from your question so I have this explanatory link: http://biology.about.com/od/geneticsglossary/g/incompletedom.htm Finally, phenylketonuria is autosomal recessive. This means that it is not linked to X chromosomes and is a simple monohybrid cross. The outcomes are probabilities and if the probability of a child inheriting phenylketonuria from 2 heterozygous parents is 0.25, go back to your Maths books and see how to work out the probability of independent events. http://www.stsci.edu/~tbeck/genetics.html I am not allowed to help more, but if this is not helpful, ask me for more vague hints...

I have to be honest and state that both Penrose and Hameroff use a bit of semantic obfuscation and semantic acrobatics to keep the concept of "another world" function causing a conscious thought to occur. However, if I remember correctly, the microtubules in the brain are thought to be quasi crystalline due to the strange arrangement of water molecules around them. Additionally, there are several different hypotheses of what is meant by consciousness and, IMHO, epiphenomenalism or the emergence of consciousness from complex brain chemical reactions in feedback/feedforward loops seems to be the most popular. Hameroff and Penrose state: http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/quantumcomputation.html

I don't know. If there is a superior intellect. What makes us think that they are any less liable than us to enter into internecine warfare and conflict. If intellect and emotion go hand in hand with the development of a larger brain and intellect, then they would have nothing to say to us - they have their own problems. If there was ever a time to guide humanity, WW1, WW2 and every war since then would be a good time to intervene.

Can a model be generated, using an Island landmass within a vast ocean, to represent the encompassing of the entire range of human occupation, as it copes with discoveries. Can the figurative launch from land to sea , be helped by considering the discipline of symmetry breaking, phase transition, complexity, and chaos . Will the model offer help in dealing with our place in the Universe. Hi Mike, I started off thinking that you were one sandwich short of a picnic. You have a way of using Physics to explain how human endeavour copes with making new discoveries - in short the human interaction of consciousness and how it interacts with the physical environment. Am I correct? If not, feel free to enlighten me on this point. I have been reading up about Hameroff and Penrose's theory about quantum consciousness arising from neurons (nerve cells) in the brain. The nerve cells are peculiar to the brain and contain a peculiar form of microtubules (like a celllular skeleton) which is made of building blocks of a protein called tubulin. In between neighbouring neurons there are gaps called synapses. IIRC, the neurons start off vibrations in the microtubules which are orchestrated and then, the tubulin molecules (which number in the trillions easily) start to go into a shape which is similar to computer switches in "on", "off" or both due to quantum vibrations. At some point, something called quantum gravity (which I do not understand) causes a final "setting" of the switches (objective reduction) and gives rise to a conscious thought (e.g. "I need ice cream"). What I don't understand, amongst a whole multitude of things, is why everything around us physically cannot be explained in quantum terms - I thought it was quantum all the way up from subatomic particles to the largest objects in the cosmos. It seems to me that what you are doing, and I commend you for it, is applying laws of physics to human behaviour as physical beings. IF that is true, you cannot avoid the indeterminate nature of the quantum world. But then, what do I know. I'm only a biologist...

In my opinion, Penrose has pointed out microtubules in the brain as behaving like switches in a quantum computer due to the sheer number of tubulin subunits (the building blocks of microtubules) which are found within neurons (nerve cells) in the brain. I don't understand much about classical computation but I though binary used by computers had switches in a "1" or "0" position but, due to the special conditions in the brain where the conformation (specific protein shape) of the tubulin subunits can vary, they could adopt a position of "1", "0" or in between, generating a lot of information holding capacity. The work has been criticised by Tegmark et al due to the insistence of the authors of the original theory that the quantum vibration of the tubulin subunits could be maintained for a relatively long period in the warm, wet and noisy environment of the brain. However, since then, it has been shown that bacteriochlorophyll also uses quantum vibrations at room temperature when electrons arising from light excitation go through the most efficient energy harvesting processes and the paper in the O.P. suggests that vibration is a "natural" quality of microtubules in brain neurons. Additionally, a protein complex that contributed to the process of how long term potentiation (or memory) seemed to fit spatially on to brain neuron microtubule subunits perfectly. In my view, the hypothesis has stood the test of time and now needs confirmation, affirmation and recognition as a robust theory by the general scientific community. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/publications.html

My original assumptions about the Turing Test are that there is a pre-requisite for human experience. Not only in terms of syntax and semantics of human linguistic discourse but also in human responses to stimuli. For example, how would a computer answer the following question: "Rate the following on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being the most pleasant: a) waking up to a sunny autumn day; b) smelling toast and eggs in the morning; c) eating a dried out orange; d) eating a burned marshmallow" The elements of human experience would, on average (from a representatively large sample) indicate favour of the first two statements but not with the latter two. There are limitations, of course, with this part of the test but, there is a vast range of questions which can be asked in order to establish if the comunicator is human or not. These are my opinions and, IMHO, the Turing has has not been passed according to the over-optimistic OP. `

A brilliant find! Penrose and Hameroff's Orch OR model finally finds substantial evidence to back it. I find this news to be exciting and wonderful.. Really, it deserves a Nobel prize.

OK, a bit of reading makes a little bit more sense. Back to the initial O.P. SNP's are single nucleotide polymorphisms, where different forms of the same gene for eye colour differ by one base. For example, these can be thought of as SNP's 1. ...CTGAATGA... 2 ...CTGATTGA... 3 ...CTGACTGA... 4 ...CTGAGTGA... These can be detected in Europeans so that blue, brown or any combination can be detected using two techniques. This means that, at a crime scene, DNA can be extracted from body tissues and the eye colour can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy. The first technique uses a short DNA primer which is a short piece of DNA complementary to the DNA sequence containing the SNP. The reaction mixture also contains DNA polymerase which is an enzyme that extends the DNA. It also contains nucleotides called dideoxynucletide phosphates which which stop the DNA polymerase after it adds the base complementary to the DNA sequence containing the SNP. These dideoxynucleotide phosphates contain a fluorescent compound which can be detected by a laser. Each dideoxynucleotide phosphate is attached to a different fluorescent marker. Next, let's imagine that we use a short DNA primer containing the following sequence: ....GACTT after binding to SNP No. 1, the DNA extension by the DNA polymerase is stopped and the fluorescent marker is identified by a laser when DNA's are separated by a technique called capillary electrophoresis which I do not understand. http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/pharma/snips/ Any thoughts and corrections to what I have written are welcome.

I have recently read about a method for detection of blue and brown colour in Europeans using DNA samples. Apparently the iris colour (eye colour) has different forms of the same gene called alleles. There seem to be a number of alleles for brown or blue iris colour which differ apparently by a single base on the DNA (called Single Nucleotide Polymorphism IIRC). However the technique is not explained in the abstract well and I want to understand it better, Can someone with a better knowledge help me understand it? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20457092

I would suggest that you read the following and it should clarify your thoughts: http://www.s-cool.co.uk/a-level/biology/biological-molecules-and-enzymes/revise-it/carbohydrates Additionally, I would be prepared to repeat tests if possible. Good luck.

I realise that you are posting speculations at present,, and I wish that modern surgery was equipped to perform what you are suggesting. Clearly you believe that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain and can be replicated somehow, Your thoughts are bold and forthright and I think scientists need this type of thinking to bolt them out of dogmatic slumber. 1. I thought immortal cells were mostly grown in vitro and showed properties not common to normal cells with Hayflick limits. 2. Can a computer model consciousness that represents a human brain without thorough mapping of brain functions? I don't know. 3. I think stem cells were found in the brain with a reapir function but someone could correct me on that supposition What are nanobots? And have any been made that are capable of repair of cells and transport of metabolites? I think we need some expert input here. Interesting thoughts...

IMHO, I suppose if a machine could be found that was capable of scanning the brain from a distance and then the brain was examined for electrical activity changes in the neurons, then it is feasible. For example, this method, from 2007: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11144-brain-scans-reveal-intentions-of-calculating-minds.html

Well done! I find that there seems to be confusion over the words: "chromatid" and "chromosome" and they tend to be used loosely. The way I see it, all cells have 23 pairs of chromatids before interphase and then the chromatids are doubled after DNA replication before meiosis.

This seems more like a homework question, but I won't get paranoid about that. Take a look at the animation in the link and, if there is still confusion, tell us where the problem lies. https://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072495855/student_view0/chapter28/animation__how_meiosis_works.html

A superb reply and a green mark duly given as deserved. I will get back to you once I have read all the links and figured out what you mean by the "Ship of Theseus" paradox.

No problem. There is evidence that microalgae can turn CO2 into plastic subunits that can later be recovered and turned into plastic. http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/web/FILES/Resources/algal-biofuels.pdf and this link on bioplastics: http://bioplasticsnews.com/2014/02/24/bioplastic-made-from-algae/ Also there are microorganisms that can digest plastics, presumably for energetic purposes to answer your initial point: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/boy-discovers-microbe-that-eats-plastic Coula algae be genetically engineered to do the same? I don't know. I think it is important to look at the metabolic pathways that allow digestion of plastics in bacteria and see if these can be accommodated in algae by genetic engineering.

I am encouraged that you are thinking of solutions. I take it that you are a young and idealistic person. If not I apologise and am encouraged at older idealists. The idea about algae that take in carbon dioxide and produce plastic monomers sounds good. With the clouds idea, what about the algae in the Oceans that take up and incorporate huge amounts of CO2? I was amazed, even with a simple search, how much humanity can benefit from using algae. I urge you to do some extra reading because this is so exciting! http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/9/722.full http://allaboutalgae.com/benefits/ http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1104772/Amazing-discovery-green-algae-save-world-global-warming.html http://inhabitat.com/living-microalgae-lamp-absorbs-co2-from-the-air/pierre-calleja-inspects-a-prototype-street-lamp-in-his-laboratory-in-libourne/