Mokele

Plants use the CO2 (along with water) to make sugars (which can be linked together to form starches). When animals eat plants, we break down the starches and sugars to release the stored energy, turning them back into CO2 and H2O.

The reliance of life on liquid, as well as the inhospitable conditions for life's origin in air or on dry land, makes a liquid origin very, very probable. Tide pool vs. open ocean vs. deep sea vent is still unresolved, of course. Panspermia is mostly irrelevant - life must have originates *somewhere*, even if not here, so the fundamental problems of abiogenesis remain. The only thing panspermia contributes to the argument is widening the possible search parameters to include environmental conditions off Earth. Furthermore, panspermia is, for now, and untestable hypothesis at best. The only possible evidence for it is if we a) find that some part of abiogenesis could not have occured in the environment of early Earth and/or b) we find alien life that has the same characteristics as our own (DNA, RNA, ribosomes, same codons etc.) As such, the only sensible methodology is to ignore panspermia and proceed with abiogenesis research as we are doing, and only consider it if we genuinely hit a roadblock (or suddenly find life elsewhere).

Here's a good link. Basically, the cat bends it's back, and then rotates the fore and hand parts of the body around, producing a 'zero angular momentum maneuver'. The same mechanism is used bu human high divers and gymnasts, as well as by crocodiles performing a 'death roll'.

Spider bite would be my first guess, or maybe a wasp or bee sting.

Well, you could always do something with frog jumping, though I'm biased because that's my PhD work. Perhaps compare the jump distance of frogs vs toads you can catch, then look at things like leg length, etc. It's especially nice because it unifies physics (balistic trajectories, force, power, acceleration, etc.) with biology (muscle properties, anatomy, etc.)

Well, the growth of the muscles is primarily due to increase in the size of muscle cells after microtears - the actual number of cells is fixed. The microtears are caused by exercise at close to maximal conditions for the muscle. A big factor will be muscle fiber type. The muscles of all humans are a mix of fast, intermediate, and slow fibers. Slow fibers have higher endurance, but lower power, and their strength is "diluted" by the fact that much of the muscle volume is occupied by non-contractile stuff to allow this endurance (extra blood vessels, extra mitochondria, etc). Fast fibers have high power and higher strength (due to lack of 'dilution'), but have lower endurance. Intermediate fibers are, as you can guess, intermediate. You can change your fiber type, but not by much - it's mostly fixed by genetics. If you naturally have mostly slow-twitch, and your brother naturally has mostly fast-twitch, you'll simply never catch up in strength (but he'll never be able to run as far as you). Oh, and I wouldn't get your fiber type tested - it basically involves stabbing you with a *very* big needle to remove a cylinder of muscle tissue. It's agonizingly painful. Another factor is tendon length - long tendons help reduce the muscle work needed for cyclic contractions by storing energy like a spring, but also reduce total muscle mass, which reduces the total work you can do. You can't do squat about it, though, outside of major surgical alteration. So basically, high force and low reps stimulates increase in both muscle size and fast-twitch fiber type, but you'll eventually hit a limit, and once you do, that's it. Special training regimes and supplements may shift the limit a little, but not a significant amount. A great myth of sports is that training conquers all, when in fact, in all sports, genetics = destiny. Training can help you achieve your potential, but people's potential is drastically different, and usually under genetic control.

Are you looking for any subject in particular? Physics, biology, chemistry?

Yep, see here.

IME, it actually *is* the sex that bothers most people. The US, particularly the religious segment of the population, has a very puritanical view towards sex, even safe sex.

Actually, the averages eliminate oscilations, not enhance them. Think of it like seasons of the year - temperature oscilates, but if you average over the entire year, you can eliminate those oscillations and meaningfully compare the temperature of one year to another.

Old text on plant tumors and something newer

So "rigorous" means "making things up"? And "debate" means "repeating the same baseless speculation, in spite of having been proven wrong"? I've seen creationists with better debating skills than you, scrappy.

Fairly straightforward question: why do solenoid actuators always have such short displacements? Is it due to the limitations of their typically small size? Could you theoretically design one that has a longer displacement, especially if you can make the moving shaft longer than the magnetic region? I'm partially thinking in terms of the jumping ring demo that's standard in first-year Physics labs. Also, why does the ring jump higher with AC? Is it greater voltage?

Yep.

No, even opinions. Anything contradicted by evidence deserves no respect, no deference, nothing but to be burned from human consciousness.

Except when it actually *is* bullshit - baseless speculation flatly contradicted by empirical evidence. If someone doesn't want their opinion called bullshit, they should try actually thinking it through and checking the evidence, rather than spouting off any foolish idea that wanders through their head.

Being shocking or not is irrelevant - the point is that you asked for examples, and I provided one from direct personal experience, yet you blithely ignored it and kept repeating the same old crap. You don't get to ignore something because it's 'shocking'. And frankly, if that's shocking, I could tell you stories that would put you into a coma. yeah, those pesky "facts" and "logic" always get in the way of dogmatic belief. Also, note that legal principles have nothing to do with this. My sole contributions to this thread have been calling you on your "gay not poly" bullshit, and are indisputable on the basis of "been there, done them".

Scrappy, your intellectual dishonesty is truly staggering. You've been provided with *FIRST HAND* evidence of same sex relationships which not only support poly, but engage in it, along with data that this actually *not* atypical - IME, many same-sex couples are far less stringent about monogamy than opposite-sex couples. Yet, you continue to trot out the same tired bullshit, assuming that just because there's not a major movement (yet), this somehow evidences a disgust or opposition, rather than just a realistic acknowledgment that the time simply hasn't come yet. If you aren't going to deal with evidence, you have no place here.

Oh scrappy? Care to own up to the fact that you were *wrong* about your claim? Or are you just going to just hope the replies bury that?

I was in a poly relationship for several years. Nobody involved was straight, and everyone favored marriage rights regardless of number or sex. In fact, IME, many poly relationships include at least one non-heterosexual relationship, simply due to odds, and I'm aware of far more homosexual-only poly relationships than straight-only (though part of this may be due to the tendency of straight couples interested in non-monogamy to gravitate towards the swinger culture instead).

That was my experience, too. I know from at least two schools that low GRE scores count more heavily against a student than high GRE scores count for them - often there's a minimum score, below which the application goes in the 'rejection' pile automatically.

Moontanman has a very good point - it may have more to do with being liquid than what the particular liquid actually *is*.

Don't be glib. You've made the sweeping generalization that gay couples will be equally or less likely to favor extending marriage to multiple partners. You have been asked to support this claim by no less than 4 posters, counting myself, and in return, have posted nothing but more vague, unsupported assumptions. Post empirical evidence to support your claim, or retract it. There is no third option.

Charon's right - compare it to ecology, when experiments literally need years to run, or my field (functional morphology) where most papers seem to represent 1-2 years of solid effort on that topic alone.