Mokele

Pioneer, your entire post is based on a simple misconception - that there is such a thing as "better" or "forward progress", when in truth, neither exist beyond the most immediate level. Consider bears - one group has adapted to cold regions (polar bears, grizzlys, etc.), while another has adapted to warm regions (sun bears, sloth bears, etc.). Which is "more advanced"? Both are perfectly adapted to their environments. Are humans "better" than monkeys? Well, we have civilization and such, but our big brains and bodies are more expensive. If an asteroid struck, we'd probably die out while monkeys survive. The definition of evolution does not involve directionality or progress because there's no such thing, and any appearance of it is an illusion due to bias on the part of the viewer. Mokele

Not with our current level of knowledge. We could induce the arms to form bat-like wings, but we don't know enough to induce enough muscular growth to make them functional.

Flapping flight of any sort pretty much runs into the same problems. Different animals have different morphologies for it, but in all cases we run into the same problems when applying it to humans - we'd need huge wings and muscles to deal with the lift and power requirements, massively reworked respiratory systems, etc.

For birds, just google "birds" and "net cost of transport", but be aware that biological organisms are far more economical than anything we can build.

Yep.

I can't remember why we even have it. Does anyone really need to know? Most of the time, it's just spammers and trolls.

For birds, the generally accepted limit of wing loading is 25 kg/m2, but most of the truly huge birds have a loading of about 15 kg/m2.

AFAIK, there are no artificial muscles that don't have some sort of serious flaw that makes them effectively useless - long relaxation, weak strength, requiring large external power supplies, etc.

It depends on your propulsion - flapping flight, propeller, jet, rocket?

Well, time's up, so I'll put in the last word: Mesosalpinx

Honestly, mixed-use will be the only option. Even setting aside the technological and logistical difficulties of full conversion, there's the cost - you'd have to basically buy new cars for just about everyone in the US, all at once. Remember, a lot of people cannot afford to just go out and buy a brand new, state-of-the-art car because Uncle Sam says so.

Except that: a) trees cannot be made into biofuel b) mountains are a poor place to grow just about anything c) the crops that *can* be raised for biofuels don't grow well on mountains d) the plains, where such crops are best grown, have much lower species diversity, so growing them there has lower ecological impact. e) if the area is uninhabited, what local people will benefit?

Of what? Are you trying to work out the wings needed to lift something of a given weight? You also need to know velocity - lift increases with velocity squared, so you need much bigger wings for slow flight than for fast.

Well, evaporating the acetone would be fine - it's a naturally occuring chemical, a byproduct of chemical reactions that occur in most organisms. It's quickly broken down by UV light, and even more rapidly consumed by microorganisms (to the point that large spills are more of a problem due to oxygen depletion via microorganism bloom than any toxic effects of the acetone itself). As for volume vs mass, volume is actually very important - what determines if a landfill is full is volume, not mass. Styrofoam recycling doesn't yet exist in my city, so if it's going to go to the landfill, it'd be best if it takes up the minimum volume. Mokele

I disagree - give me a one-acre pool in florida and I can fix 2 tons of CO2 per day. Water hyacinths - they fix CO2 into plant matter at an incredible rate. Plastics could be made from plant oil just like fish oil, with the benefit that they can be grown in vast numbers and already have the biochemical machinery to produce the finished product.

Guns aren't even the issue - I can teach them how to euthanize the animals at a rate of about 40 per hour for only two workers using nothing but a table and a broom handle. It's called cervical dislocation - put the animal on the table, broom handle at the back of the skull pinning it down, then grab the body and yank backwards. Instant broken neck, quickly fatal, almost zero chance for errors. It's used on lab mice and rats, but can be used on just about any mammal up to the size of a medium sized dog. Mokele

I agree, but would add another layer - there are several possible safety mechanisms which we cannot add to current cars, but which automated cars could have, simply due to human behavior. For instance, imagine some sort of 'super-bumper', capable of safely absorbing damage and restoring itself. If we put those on automated cars, it'll save lives. If we put them on non-automated cars, the death toll will be in the millions because we've just removed the concept of 'consequences' and effectively turned the entire interstate system into the largest game of bumper cars in existence. Basically, by removing human behavior from the equation, we can do a LOT more - have the car computers talk to each other actively within a given distance to ensure safety, knowing traffic light signals far in advance and planning ahead, etc. Plus, no more drunk driving. No more teen drivers. No more old drivers. I agree that human perceptions about loss of control will be an issue, but I also think you underestimate the effectively instantaneous benefits and the possible additional safety measures possible without humans. IMHO, the big problem will be integrating automated vehicles with non-automated ones. Also, IMHO, we should split this thread.

It's an "emergent property", a property that's only expressed in a system due to interactions of the parts of the system, rather than a property of the parts themselves. Think of a point in 3-D space. It has only one property, location. But with two points, you can have 'distance'. With 3, you can have 'area'. With four, 'volume'. All of those properties (distance, area, volume) do not exist in the points themselves, but rather as a property of their interactions as a system. On a more neurobiological level, we can at the least localize it as far the a cerebrum. Destruction of the cerebrum leaves a person nothing but a vegetable, even if everything else is intact, while destruction or replacement of other body parts either has no effect or is simply instantly fatal. Mokele

No, definitely not true, and I strongly suspect that's not even an accurate quote. These animal rights groups cannot be trusted to provide accurate information, and frequently flat-out lie to serve their agenda. Mokele

That's actually why animals have 'gaits' (running vs. walking), including flying and swimming animals (whose 'gaits' are mostly described in terms of the wake pattern). For a given anatomy, each gait has an optimal speed, with cost per meter increasing away from that, and gait transitions occurring when one gait becomes less efficient than the other. Of course, for machines imitating biological systems, it's all rather theoretical - actual explorations with robot fish, walking robots, etc are pretty sparse. True, though the cost is pretty different - walking is about 7x as expensive as swimming and 3x as expensive as flying - so the headwind/current would have to be very fast to neutralize the advantage. I doubt it would be used for high-speed movement. Think more along the lines of loitering, high-altitude cell-phone and wireless networking stations. The comparison is for ecological purposes (for instance, it explains why an aquatic species can migrate farther or forage over larger distances than terrestrial species), and to answer general questions, such as the evolution of locomotor systems in general. Mokele

Thanks for the input, everyone. I don't have anywhere near 25 kg of packing peanuts, but still quite a few. Dealing with acetone or nailpolish remover shouldn't be a problem - I've got far nastier stuff around, and I can just let it evaporate off, leaving nothing but polystyrene behind. Next, I need to find out if I can put it in with the recycling. Mokele

I suspect it's a fungus, but it may be a non-photosynthetic plant (they're mutualists with fungus). It may help to know where in the world this is? Suburban New Jersey, or Thailand?

It'd be excruciatingly painful, as the severing of nerves is invariably interpreted as pain by the nervous system. What they're doing is *definitely* unethical, but only because of the half-assed euthanasia. The animal that's moving as it's skinned, is probably mostly dead, and just reflexively convulsing (spinal reflexes can persist after brain-death). If they could just spend a bit more effort on the initial kill to ensure it's final, it'd all be fine. Mokele

But would such a market be able to sustain or make it possible? Selling to such a small market (even if they can pay enough), and lacking the power to push through legislation for from-driveway-launch? So do buses and bikes. And all it will do is trade highway congestion for airway congestion. Mokele

Here's a question - how can you expect us to believe you've calculated some sort of 'Theory of Everything' when you can't even type coherent sentences?