jimmydasaint

Yes I am. I am looking at the present and only in the present at the moment. To be honest I do prescribe to Prof Penrose's theory about the limitations of AI. http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/schneider20160322 And where do instincts evolve from? Why do they evolve? I don't know, but I hope you can help me out here. Would it not make sense to be a Terminator-like machine which senses its environment and acts accordingly to ensure its own survival at all costs? Showing philanthropic behaviour seems to be a waste of time at an individual level.

This is not a literary discussion but a question that arises in my mind about the extra "stuff" that makes us humans. Having just read "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/786 one of the major characters is a man of reason called Gradgrind, who believes that facts and figures are solely what is required to turn out a well-rounded individual who has reasoning capacities. One of his quotes is as follows: Towards the end of this proto-Socialist exposition, Gradgrind gets a tough reminder that humans cannot live on facts alone by his own daughter whose life has been ruined by parental insistence on pure reason: Don't species have other priorities, for example, survival, rather than wasting time with all this other extraneous human stuff? The question is, why did Natural Selection (and Genetic Drift) not cause humans just to function in a reasoned self interest in the same way as a robot? Why do we have feelings of love, of empathy, of compassion of being upset, being happy, being blue? Don't species have other priorities, for example, survival, rather than wasting time with all this other extraneous human stuff?

Without giving the answer away, see if you understand the following and think what is meant by an allele in terms of gene sequence:

Ed, this philanthropic work is certainly a superb addition to field tools for, IMO, one of the biggest problems in developing nations, which is diagnosis of communicable disease. I love the cheap and easy solution. The problems I can see with the device are twofold. Firstly, what is the maximum acceptable fluid volume which can be centrifuged on one disc?. Also, there is the problem of stability as it spins and how samples can be attached to the disc. I suppose these are not insuperable problems and can be solved with a bit of trial and error. Great find!

Who said there was no room for instrumental music? Probably no-one. Nevertheless, this kicks ass!

What caused the temperature dip between 2013-14 (if I have read it correctly)? Can we influence the dip by replicating conditions in a model system?

Growing up in Glasgow, as a young schoolboy I was told about shoplifting tricks from a friend who was part of a shoplifting group in the school, who would attend until lunch time, take orders for trousers, jackets etc... and steal them in the afternoon for delivery next morning at school, to be sold at discount prices. Quite good customer service really. I cannot tell you any of the tricks as I would be encouraging the breaking of laws. Nevertheless, I take the point that mistakes could be made and that the implicit honesty of the shopper is relied upon.

Pure coincidence I am sure....

Are there concepts which are too difficult to explain to a layman (except for mathematical concepts)? I don't know the answer. However, I would say that there are situations where there are two levels of explanations. For example, most people on this forum could probably write a manual for a car, a fridge-freezer or a computer without the understanding of how any of them works in detail. IMO, I would posit that most phenomena are explicable, although some need words and others need a diagram. Think of explaining an electromagnetic wave to someone as opposed to drawing a representation of an EM wave on a piece of paper.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/design/electronics/calculationsrev1.shtml

As a former PhD and postdoc, I was so used to the language of scientific papers, which is often convoluted and aimed at specialists that I found it difficult to adjust my level to normal conversation and bored my wife and other family members with the results of my, no doubt highly important, cogitations. When I started teaching, I thought I could aim high and let the children rise up to the level I expected linguistically. It failed completely! As a consequence, after a month I had to re-adjust to "student speak" and, 18 years later, it seems to work, most of the time. However, in this august and most- esteemed science forum, I notice that specialists quite frequently refer to specialist sites to explain what they are elucidating, as if it is obvious to a layman. Is this a sort of blindness to audience level from specialists or is it habit, or both?

In the UK, my stores self checkout line have a full time assistant on hand who helps people when they mess up. They mess up about 50% of the time and slow down the line considerably. I have this down to a fine art now if I really need to. Normally I only use them when I want to make a package for some homeless person(s) outside the store. What a saint eh?

Mate, the current splits up for each branch at the right and then comes together on the left. The current is different depending on the size of the resistance. As an easy example see the following: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/standard/physics/using_electricity/useful_circuits/revision/3/

There is a very rare case of paternal mitochondrial inheritance. Whilst extremely rare, it also calls into question some of the hypotheses of evolutionary biologist that depend upon exclusively maternal inheritance of mitochondria. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2716-mitochondria-can-be-inherited-from-both-parents/

frame question

This is an awesome quote. Inspiring! I think I have had a life full of ups and downs. Every time, I think my intellectual, moral and spiritual core has been changed/evolved until I am a better man rather than a bitter man overall. My present self is far superior to my previous self, but I think that is the purpose of life itself, to learn and adjust until the personality gains from the experience. Adversity hurts like hell but it also accelerates learning.

Moontanman, I am just a biologist and didn't understand about half of what I read but my main points would be: 1. Is the research reproducible and replicable? (can it be repeated by other laboratories and also in the original laboratory) 2. Can the method be scaled up for actual energy production? If the answer to either 1 or 2 is "no" then look for a new energy resource. Wasn't that the main point of the research? The two original authors had to take a lot of crap from their contemporaries but I liked the look of this theory: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/its-not-cold-fusion-but-its-something/

But, it is impersonal contact. No one asks you if you need anything and you are being watched by a computer eye - this is pretty creepy in my opinion. There probably would have to be increased security to stop people from sneaking in and stealing things etc... I like talking to store clerks as part of my interaction with people. I suppose that this is a function of increasing age and I now have more time to speak with people and have meaningful exchanges rather than the brief, mandatory exchanges of impetuous youth. Shoplifters would need an Amazon account to enter but, if they wish to shoplift, it could be done if the item is concealed. I am not a shoplifter by the way...

I am sorry but I am an oldie who didn't have a bloody clue what the art was about. My children used to watch Japanese cartoons when they were young and I did not have a bloody clue what they were about either. Creativity, in my opinion, is essential to mainstream Science (whatever that is). Gene editing, which is set to revolutionise medicine, is highly creative and even artistic, as an expression of human creativity (which is my definition of art). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pp17E4E-O8

This is an awful dystopian future. One of the benefits of shopping is human contact, no matter how brief. Sitting isolated at my computer all day causes a change in my mindset and makes me feel quite lonely actually. I miss human interaction and need to get out of the house to experience sensory stimuli. Imagine sitting in all day buying crap I don't actually need - I can't. My opinion is that we are gregarious animals who need to meet in groups called families or groups called colleagues, or groups called friends. This is not a positive trend in my opinion and could atomise society even further until we feel no need to treat our neighbours with concern because all we are doing is protecting our little corner of privacy. I don't mean any disrespect to you because you seem keen on the idea of this level of automation but I have to say it as I see it.

Thunder, just another under-rated British band:

I thought SJ's explanation was pretty clear. Bacteria that operate in anaerobic conditions are found in the animal manure by the millions. These comprise acidogenic bacteria which make acid compounds from the waste products that are used to produce biofuel, and also methanogenic bacteria which use the products of the acidogenic bacteria to make methane and carbon dioxide. If you want to grow bacteria in larger and larger numbers, you always start with a small (seeding) population found in a small sample (inoculum). As soon as you drop the inoculum into a suitable nutrient liquid, the bacteria multiply in numbers at a logarithmic rate. The process by which the inoculum seeding population would work is mentioned in this wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_digestion