Mokele

Huh, odd, but looks reasonable, though obviously not a primary sense like the inner ear. What might make this actually interesting is if such visceral graviception is at play in insects, which lack any known graviception method.

Likely headline: "Al-Qaeda Leader Shot In Mugging 3 Hours After His Escape."

However, those don't actually 'sense gravity', only it's effects. You could also say those same senses detect water, because we can feel when we move through it, or that our eyes detect gravity, because we can see the direction objects fall.

Actually, the molecular clock for mammals isn't accurate - it places divergences prior to the KT boundary for many, many lineages, and would require vast and diverse lineages to remain "hidden" for over 50 million years. We actually have a very good fossil record for this time period, including for small animals that fossilize poorly (such as snakes, lizards, frogs, birds, etc.), so the idea that these lineages have simply been 'missed' in fossil collection requires an implausible level of special pleading. It's also worth noting that the fossil-based divergence times haven't changed in over 50 years, in spite of massive increases in specimens and numerous new deposits. The problem is the adherence to an underlying assumption, that of constant mutation rates, which is extremely unlikely to hold true in such extreme circumstances as the death of every terrestrial animal larger than a few dozen kg in mass. It's also worth noting that it's unlikely any fossil is the *actual* organism that another evolved from. It's very possible that the "transitional fossil" may be a late-surviving descendant of the *actual* transitional form. As such, forms that look "transitional" or "primitive"

Breed one from wild stock. Lab and pet mice are famously inbred, which results in shorter lifespan. For really high-level genetic tinkering, make it an ectotherm. A long-lived mouse can reach up to 4 years old, while a comparably sized lizard can live for 20 years.

Well, yes, but using such distances isn't really feasible for a biological organism.

I'm pretty sure that alcohol messes with the brain's interpretation of the signals, rather that the sensory system itself.

Oh, is that all? And here I thought it might be difficult to make...

Our sole sense of gravity comes from the inner ear. That sensory input is then integrated with visual input to determine our overall orientation in space (hence why disruption of either results in falling over and/or puking). That information is then integrated with current positions of body parts in the cerebral motor cortex and the cerebellum, which in turn send commands to the muscles to maintain posture and balance. The muscles themselves have various receptors, including golgi tendon organs, intrafusal muscle fibers, and muscle spindles, but all deal with muscle tension, stretch, force generation, etc. None sense gravity directly, though of course the act of supporting oneself against gravity will result in feedback about the force, length, etc. of the muscles involved in doing so. Interestingly, crustaceans have a gravity sense that acts in a similar mechanism to plants - a hollow sphere of touch sensors, with a grain of sand inside (acquired during molting).

Eh, yes and no. The retina doesn't simply detect photons like a CCD, nor does it actually transmit information directly to the brain without filters. In order for a rod to fire (you see stars with mostly rods, largely due to their superior sensitivity in low-light conditions), it has to be hit by a certain number of photons within a given space of time, and the closer those photons are to 498 nm, the more effect they'll have. Furthermore, multiple rods need to be stimulated in order to result in stimulation of the nerve associated with them. If a star is emitting very few photons, chances are they would either fail to result in a nerve impulse, or be filtered out at the level of the ganglion or brain. There's a LOT of processing that goes into creating visual perception, and a lot of information gets thrown out in that processing, especially weak signals.

So, let me get the NIMBY reasoning straight: If you squeeze off a few rounds at US troops in Afganistan, you're a menace that no penal system can hold, especially not anywhere near civilization. If you upholster your chair in human skin, we have no problem with putting you in a facility within a few miles of a major city and all the corpses you can desecrate.

I was thinking about this in detail this morning, and I think I've found two major reasons (in addition to my prior point) that this information strikes me as "bad": 1) Foreign relations - If you recall, back when these two wars started up, and particularly with the Iraq war, a lot of time had to be spent assuring our allies in the Middle East that this wasn't a "War Against Islam", especially in light of some of the more crusade-ish quotes from the White House and pundits. This revelation basically implies that those assurances were BS, and that it was/is a war against Islam, especially given the nature of the quotes used. I'm not saying that we did start the war to crush Islam, but those that were already suspicious of our motives and only barely convinced by our assurances may find this to be a confirmation of their worst suspicions, and make diplomacy substantially more difficult. 2) Command decisions - Whether or not it's constitutional, having people high up in the chain of command viewing a war from a religious perspective is a bad thing. And not because it's religion. It'd be just as bad if they viewed the war as some sort of personal vendetta for the same reason: it's likely to result in command decisions made out of desire to fulfill some personal, secondary objective rather than to actually accomplish what needs to be accomplished. At best, this could compromise mission success, at worst, lives could be lost out of a desire to push forward and fulfill prophecy or in a refusal to retreat and let the forces of evil have even a momentary success. Whether it's religious, personal, political, or otherwise, if you have an axe to grind in a combat situation, you'll make bad moves, and the influence may be too subconscious for you to counter. I'm not saying we need to force officers to abandon their faiths, but rather that we should not be encouraging *any* sort of framework which puts the situation in anything beyond the most calculated, tactical perspective.

With this incident, or with the pervasive strong-arming of enlisted men and women to convert to far-right christianity by their own superior officers, as detailed in my links? Aside from the fact that such a statement is blatantly wrong (as evidenced by the MANY atheist servicemembers who have fought and died without wavering in their convictions), it's an extremely offensive and bigoted statement which inevitably shows the biases and misperceptions of whoever utters it. I'll repeat what I said in my earlier post, for those who wish to plug their ears and ignore the problem: This is only the most recently visible part of a larger, and much more destructive, pattern of behavior which has been extensively documented.

I think bascule is correct, but not solely based on this. There have been complaints streaming in for over a decade of far-right Christianity using the military for recruiting and proselytizing, including overt and explicit pressure from team-mates and superior officers for non-christians and even those who don't subscribe to this particular brand of christianity to convert. One expose' on the subject And the Pentagon being sued over overt pressure to conform I'd figure I hear about some sort of news of this sort of thing every few months via several sources, and there seems to be a broad and deliberate movement to make the military an 'Army for God' or somesuch. As such, this release fits into a much broader, more insidious, and more blatantly unconstitutional pattern of behavior. That this exists proves the this pattern has permeated to the highest levels, and is sufficiently widespread that such documents would not raise eyebrows.

I'd avoid the PhD. If money is your primary objective, not love of the subject, you're going to be miserable spending 4 years living on Ramen noodles in a tiny apartment.

I doubt the fur's weight will be a problem, but it may pose serious aerodynamic challenges - bat flight relies upon having a flexible, adjustable membrane that can be dynamically adjusted.

Wait, so if science is hard, I can just substitute vague assertions and anecdotes? Wow, that'll make my thesis go a LOT faster! Take 2 books on The Scientific Method and call us when you understand it.

Poor and infrequent use of cremation. All this blather about laws and ethical systems will cease to matter when the dead rise from their graves and eat our brains.

Technically, no animals have cellulase - it's produced by bacteria that live in the gut. Thing is, it takes a long time to digest cellulose, even if you have loads of the necessary bacteria, which is why most pure herbivores, such as cows, have tremendously long and convoluted digestive systems, with very long gut passage times (time from ingestion to excretion). We have the gut of an omnivore, so we can't keep food inside us long enough to actually digest a significant fraction of the cellulose. Also, you're right in that we digest the other nutrients - plants have a lot more in them than just cellulose, and we can get at that fairly easily.

All fossils are actually made of rock or mineral which seeps in a replaces the actual animal. In pyrite fossils, it's the same process, just with iron pyrite. I even recall seeing an ammonite made of opal.

If the OP lives in florida, there is often a large quantity of Hydrogen Sulfide in the groundwater. When frozen, it comes out of solution, resulting in a foul smell.

It should be noted, also, that some experts in a field will take it upon themselves to make sure a section is correct and up to date. I've done this for snake locomotion, and I've completely re-written some of the other biomechanics articles. I keep an eye on all of them, to ensure continued accuracy.

Absorbing more CO2 pretty much just means a higher growth rate, and we already have plenty of plants with rapid growth, such as water hyacinth and kudzu vines. For an animal, chloroplasts are useless, and especially for an endotherm. The rate at which animals use energy vastly surpasses the rate photosynthesis can produce it.

Yes, yes, in 2012, the great big boogey-man will come eat us all. Did you misread the URL and think this was Baseless Speculations Forum?

Care to explain this flaming pile of gibberish? And by "explain" I mean "actually address the questions posed to you, rather than posting yet another useless list".