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In case any creationist tries to pull "it is just a fin" consider a Humpback whale with vestial legs complete with leg bones. Link has photograph of the leg bones. Another link (PDF) - Mike Hopkins

For example the Sloan telescope uses a 6 x 5 array of @4 megeapixels. The six rows each look at different chunk of the spectrum.
There are CCD array telescopes in the works approaching a half-gigapixel.

"This means that mammals must have existed earlier than 65 million years ago"

Mammals originated in the Triassic period over 200 million years ago, they are as old or maybe even a tad older than dinosaurs. Most known fossil mammals are small and shrew-like, but recently suprisingly large and advanced forms have been found. This new find is just the newest reason to rethink the evolution of Mesozoic mammals. Looks like they were way more diversified already in the age of dinosaurs than previously thought. However, it was the generalists that survived the KT extinction 65 mya and gave origin to modern mammals, including us.

Misunderstanding, indeed!

Well, we kinda were the reason they became extinct...

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/expeditions/treasu re_fossil/Treasures/Dodo/dodo.html?dinos

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/photo/voices/?src= e_h
-eastman kodak
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs/info/cre dits.php
-bank of america, reader's digest endowment fund
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/ocean/00 _utilities/14_swissre.php
-swiss re
http://www.amnh.org/museum/imax/?src=e_p
-conedison

do some digging and you can probably find more, but I'm lazy. Admittedly not every exhibit web page includes donor information, but there have certainly been corporate donations to other exhibits/projects this year.

It's reasonable to conclude religious controversy contributed to the Museum's inability to find a corporate donor, even if it didn't cause it outright.

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/photo/voices/?src= e_h
-eastman kodak
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs/info/cre dits.php
-bank of america, reader's digest endowment fund
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/ocean/00 _utilities/14_swissre.php
-swiss re
http://www.amnh.org/museum/imax/?src=e_p
-conedison

do some digging and you can probably find more, but I'm lazy. Admittedly not every exhibit web page includes donor information, but there have certainly been corporate donations to other exhibits/projects this year.

It's reasonable to conclude religious controversy contributed to the Museum's inability to find a corporate donor, even if it didn't cause it outright.

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/photo/voices/?src= e_h
-eastman kodak
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs/info/cre dits.php
-bank of america, reader's digest endowment fund
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/ocean/00 _utilities/14_swissre.php
-swiss re
http://www.amnh.org/museum/imax/?src=e_p
-conedison

do some digging and you can probably find more, but I'm lazy. Admittedly not every exhibit web page includes donor information, but there have certainly been corporate donations to other exhibits/projects this year.

It's reasonable to conclude religious controversy contributed to the Museum's inability to find a corporate donor, even if it didn't cause it outright.

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/photo/voices/?src= e_h
-eastman kodak
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs/info/cre dits.php
-bank of america, reader's digest endowment fund
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/ocean/00 _utilities/14_swissre.php
-swiss re
http://www.amnh.org/museum/imax/?src=e_p
-conedison

do some digging and you can probably find more, but I'm lazy. Admittedly not every exhibit web page includes donor information, but there have certainly been corporate donations to other exhibits/projects this year.

It's reasonable to conclude religious controversy contributed to the Museum's inability to find a corporate donor, even if it didn't cause it outright.

Almost every other project has corporate donors

Take a look at the museum web site: http://www.amnh.org/ Almost every other project has corporate donors. Also, fundamentalists don't have to be aware of the exhibit to scare donors away, the mere threat that a fundamentalist group will organize a boycott can be sufficient to scare off a potential donor.

http://amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/cam/

This one at the BBC discusses the find in more depth and also mentions that the feathers were primarily on smaller dinosaurs, but even our beloved T-Rex may have hatched cute li'l chicks.

And this American Museum of Natural History article discusses a diorama they're putting up based on the find, including pictures of their conceptions of the dinosaurs today.

Really, submitter could have contributed a lot more information with a little basic research.

This one at the BBC discusses the find in more depth and also mentions that the feathers were primarily on smaller dinosaurs, but even our beloved T-Rex may have hatched cute li'l chicks.

And this American Museum of Natural History article discusses a diorama they're putting up based on the find, including pictures of their conceptions of the dinosaurs today.

Really, submitter could have contributed a lot more information with a little basic research.

I'd Google for more references, but I have a plane to catch...

I have used Clustal for multiple sequence alignments. There is a gui (ClustalX) and a scriptalbel command line version (ClustalW). Available for all platforms and source included with the download.

Also keep an eye on POY that does direct optimization on sequences. Also available for all platforms with BSD style licence.

For just viewing and manual editing of alignments there is BioEdit. Free, but not open source. Windows only.

For a general sequence assembly/analysis/kitchen sink approach try the Staden Project. Open source and available for Windows, Linux and OSX.

Hope this is useful. I have never worked with protein sequences, but I have done a lot of DNA sequenceing and alignment!

Diamond: 0.5 Tonnes p.a
-Your figures given above

I call shenanigans!

Two points:
1. Your math is way off.
2. You don't know what you're talking about.

First, the math. We're not talking about diamonds, we're talking about finsihed diamonds. Diamonds that have been cut and polished, and those are rare. But if you want to do the math based on my figures, it goes like this:

1 mine = roughly .88 kilograms of cut and polished stones per week.

.88kg X 52 weeks = 45.76kg/year

45.76 kg/year x 24 mines (ballpark number, probably lowballing it) = 1098.24 kg/year total of cut and polished diamonds

1 kg = 2.2 lbs, so 1098.24 kg/year = 2416.128 pounds of cut and polished diamonds a year, or roughly 1.2 tons, not the .5 tons that you claim.

Also note that I am speaking not of the quantitiy of diamonds mined, but the quantity of cut and polished stones. As stated previously, 50-60% of the rough is lost in cutting. So now you're looking at 2.4 tons of rough, gemstone quality diamonds.

I also pointed out that only about 20% of mined diamonds are of gemstone quality. So if we multiply 2.4 tons x 5 = 12 tons of diamonds mined per year. So you were only off by a factor of 24 when you were going off of my figures. Trying to make your argument look better?

Now regarding the rarity of diamonds: why is heavy water so much more uncommon than regular water? It's all just hydrogen and oxygen. The answer is that the conditions required to get the extra water molecule to accept a second oxygen atom are very rare.

In the same sense, the conditions under which diamonds are formed are also rare. Diamonds are not just simple collections of carbon atoms. They are crystalized forms of carbon molecules, and the levels of pressure that are required to cause carbon to crystalize into a diamond only occur in the earth's mantle. If you recall from geology 101, the earth's mantle starts at approximately 35km below the earth's surface and extends down another 3000km. Scientists estimate that minimum depth required to create a diamond is actually closer to 150km. Coal and graphite formations are created at much lower pressure levels than diamonds, and consequently are widely abundant in the earth's crust. That's why diamonds are so much more rare than other natural forms of carbon.

But wait you say? Diamonds are formed over 150km below the earth's surface, and yet they can be mined from the surface. And since we don't tunnel 150km below the earth's surface I must be wrong, right? Wrong. Diamonds are brought to the earth's surface from the mantle by magma flows through kimberlite structures called "pipes" in active volcanos. Long after the volcano has gone extinct the kimberlite and diamond deposits are left on or just below the earth's surface, where they can be (relatively) easily mined. However, since these are secondary deposits (i.e., the diamonds are not found where they were formed), they are found in much lower quantities than they would be if they were primary deposits (like the deposits where coal and graphite are found).

Now none of this is top secret information closely guarded by the evil DeBeers conspiracy. In fact, if you had taken half as much time to research diamonds as your did coal and graphite production, you would have found that out. Heck, here's a nice link to the American Museum of Natural History that explains it all quite nicely.

...and coal is composed primarily of carbon. The carbon involved in diamond formation can be inorganic or organic in nature. Any organic carbon, including that in coal, that is caught in a subduction zone may be turned into a diamond and blown out in kimberlite later.

And what do you know, there's even data to support that natural diamonds are composed heavily of organic carbon. You know, like coal.

Of course, squeezing a lump of coal until the carbon in it turned into diamond would probably result in a pretty impure diamond.

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/global/mc carthy.php

yes, yes he did

This was right after he won the Nobel Prize in Physics and some people credit his time at Caltech as to convince him to move to the US before the Nazi party took over in germany (and I'm supposing he'd have a much harder time leaving with the Nazis in charge).

Admittedly this could be somewhat confusing for someone who doesn't know the history and might help to explain to such a person why the Einstein Papers Project is housed at Caltech, with the backup at Princeton instead of the other way around.

Of course not everyone went there to get a degree, but quite a few prominant scientists have visited from time to time...

For your bemusement, here's an interesting summary of the life and times of Mr. Einstein...

And if you are ever in NYC, be sure to visit the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the Natural History Museum and see the Full Moon Exhibition -- glorius photos from the Apollo missions. The finely detailed images from the best large-format cameras ever made were pretty convincing for me!

No, they do create aerosols, but not CFCs, and some of those aersols help speed up the interaction of CFCs with ozone. CFCs are man made.

http://earthbulletin.amnh.org/D/3/3/
http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/search.php?di splay_article=vn504ozoneed

Patrik

Hmm, let's see:

* Bible code? -check-
* Nostradamus? -check-
* this thingy -check-

"When your model predicts something only after it has happened then you have instead made a 'postdiction.'" - Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Well then technically all life on this planet is fusion powered...

These "spots" of super heated water occur around what are called black smokers. The magma, or more accurately, mantle, is drawn up at mid ocean ridges due to the top-cooled convection of which plate tectonics is a direct result.

Mid Ocean Ridges rarely heat water beyond 400 degress C, but even so there could be potential there, since it's already heated to a great degree, requiring less energy investment. Plus, there's tens of thousands of kms worth of MORs on Earth.

Actually, I thought public museums have "strongly recommended donation policies" in lieu of "required admission". At least that's how it was at the American Museum of Natural History, Metropolitan Museum of Art, or actually, a lot of places...

Legand has it that it references the place where "the holy grail" is, so mix in the possibility of any number of those words being the names of people or cities anywhere in Europe or Asia, from any number of centuries ago. It could even be a city that was completely destroyed in any number of wars, forgotten, and now the new home of Austria's newest Super-WalMart.

In a few thousand more years, people may not even know where Austria or England are, it may simply be referenced as the possible home of the empire previously known as Erope. (mispelled on purpose). It happens. Ask the residents or descendents of Petra

Except any life on Europa will have evolved away from that radiation since its protected by almost 20km of ice.

The real threat of any contamination from a probe is not so much from radiation as from heavy metals leaching into the environment, but then if the floor of the Europan ocean is anything like the black smokers of Earth's oceans any life should be used to heavy metals.

Best wishes,
Mike.

The last SCO's customer can be found in the same place as this guy.

That is far too low for life by any measure.

Is it really? Since the last serious attemt to look for traces of life on Mars (the Viking probes), we have found life on earth living under conditions we previously thought it was impossible for life to exist under; in black smokers, in the middle of hot geysirs, inside rocks in the middle of saltlakes and so on. Life is amazingly adaptable, and - despite what some biblethumpers says - able to evolve to suit the place it exists. And martian life, if it exists, have evolved on Mars and as such will be adapted to the contitions there.

Or to qoute someone most /.ers know who are: "It's life Jim, but not as we know it."

That's two stories in a row related to the AMNH (where the Hayden Planetarium is). Some groups get all the press.

That's two stories in a row related to the AMNH (where the Hayden Planetarium is). Some groups get all the press.

I used to subscribe to that. Now that you reminded me, I think I will again. :)

Another good science magazine is Natural History, which combines excellent columns (Stephen Jay Gould wrote a regular column until 2000) with very good natural science reporting and most importantly, bloody gorgeous photos. Their articles are frequently written by the researchers and I find them quite approachable.

(I have to admit though, when I look at the pictures of monkeys in the current issue's article on Vietnam, all I can think of is the stewed monkey brains from the Temple of Doom.)

Bill Gates holds 611,963,928 shares of MSFT or about 12%. At today's price that's about $29 billion.

Even if MSFT stock was destroyed and dropped to $1/share he would still have more money then he could spend in 5 lifetimes. And of course, that's just his holdings in Microsoft, he has some $15 billion dollars in outside investments.

Hell, he could just sell the Codex Leicester for half what he paid for it and still have more money, $15 million, then most of us will see in our lifetimes.

So before anyone here gets too excited about the idea of Bill Gates in the poor house, really try to undertand just how much money $1 billion is and then realize Gates has over 30 times that much.

there is an exibition in AMNH in NY. The article is just a review of this exibition.

Yeah, I realized re the von Braun quote after I hit submit. It's still a good "quote." It's a lot funnier than his early career.

There was a lot of history after 1945:

Oppenheimer wigged out after the bomb was dropped; Truman called him a "crybaby." He eventually was even denied his security clearance, for hazy reasons.

Einstein was VERY active in the peace effort after the war, warned of nuclear Armageddon, and advocated abolishing nuclear weapons. Here is a quickie story from Google. Einstein was even investigated by the FBI for his alleged subversive activities. This was no political wallflower.

I'm pretty sure I've read the Rhodes book -- "Making of the Atomic Bomb" or something?

So, if all we have with this new thingie is the second largest Kuiper Belt object after Pluto - so what? Isn't the news play just about trying to get more funding from the fine fellows who've identified it, which is more likely if the headlines scream "Tenth Planet!" What a cynical abuse of the press. Science should stop grubbing, and strive for purity of purpose, lest the results themselves be corrupted. Prostitution just isn't the same as free love.

So, if all we have with this new thingie is the second largest Kuiper Belt object after Pluto - so what? Isn't the news play just about trying to get more funding from the fine fellows who've identified it, which is more likely if the headlines scream "Tenth Planet!" What a cynical abuse of the press. Science should stop grubbing, and strive for purity of purpose, lest the results themselves be corrupted. Prostitution just isn't the same as free love.

> I have an idea, you take a spear, and stick it
> in the asscheek of a full grown bull elephant.

I suspect that prehistoric humans did not have a taste for bull fighting. I think that their idea of hunting is more along the lines of use overwhelming force and/or stealth.

If my protein consumption, and that of my family, depended upon my ability to hunt mega fauna, I would not be walking up to a mammoth and "stick[ing a spear] in the asscheek of an elephant [or mammoth]." I would get a group of people, lie in wait in sheltered areas (behind rocks, trees, on cliff ledges) in areas downwind from watering holes and wait for a laggard. Ideally, nobody would be anywhere near the mammoth.

Atlatls would be used to chuck "darts" (some can be as long as 6 feet and fly at speeds of about 50 feet per second) to hit the mammoth's exposed vital areas (bodies are not armor-plated tanks -- they have weak points between ribs, on the legs, the neck, etc.). I imagine that tactics would get very, very good after a period of hundreds or thousands of years of coexistence.

I would not need to walk up to the elephant to stick the spear in its asscheek -- I would be flinging it from a protected amubush area well out of reach of the mammoth's tusks, feet, and asscheeks. Probably some 15-25 meters away, depending on the terrain. Wounding and waiting would be just as effective as killing outright. The mammoth doesn't need to drop over dead instantly for me to eat.

> Do you have any idea what type of
> bullet it requires, to do any significant
> damage to one of these things?

Keep in mind that it is not necessarily how hard the weapon strikes, but where it strikes that matters when hunting. A 6' spear/dart traveling at 50'/second would do nicely for killing. It killed armor-plated Spaniards per Bernial Diaz' account of the conquest of Mexico.

I do not have any problem accepting that isolated or ambushed prey could easily fall to a small group of experienced hunters with little or no risk to the hunters.

I don't think that one mammoth or even a small group of them would present an especially difficult task for, say, seven to ten humans to kill with atlatls.

Atlatls aside, there are many, many proponents of the disease theory that know much more about this issue than I do. It is threatening to displace the "overkill" theory which matched nicely with the general contemporary ecological politics of the sixties and seventies.

An excellent website on the hyperdisease hypothesis can be found here. It is good reading and it makes me wonder whether, like the American Chestnut blight, a mammoth (or 80% mammoth or whatever is ultimately the result of this project), may still fall victim to the pathogen that killed it originally, if that is what happened. Just because the mammoth is gone doesn't mean that the pathogen is gone. Some chestnuts keep sprounting from their stumps, just to get killed back again by the blight.

guac-foo

As mentioned here, if the diamond's pink or purple, it's almost certainly from the Argyle diamond pipe in Australia. There's a nice picture of one at the 247k site.

Actually, the odds of getting a sleaze-free coloured diamond are reasonably good. Quote from the 247 site:

Each year almost half of the world's total diamond production comes from Argyle making Australia the largest diamond exporting country and the only commercial source of these miraculous coloured stones.

As for Argyle being sleaze-free, a quote from the mine owner, Rio Tinto.

The entire diamond recovery operation is controlled by state of the art computer technology. In particular, ingenious x-ray technology identifies the diamonds and removes them from the concentrated ore.Argyle markets all its gem and industrial quality diamonds independently through its own sales office in Antwerp, Belgium.

From the article:

The diamond engagement ring is a 63-year-old invention of N.W.Ayer advertising agency. The De Beers diamond cartel contracted N.W.Ayer to create a demand for what are, essentially, useless hunks of rock.

63 years old? That wouldn't explain the Crown Jewels of England or the historicity of diamonds' value dating back hundreds of years.

You can only sell it at a diamond purchasing center or a pawn shop where you will receive a tiny fraction of its original "value."

...or because it takes a professionally-certified gemologist to discern the actual quality of a gem. Of course diamonds have no value on eBay - people don't want to buy them without certificates of authenticity, an AGA-backed jeweler to verify them, etc.

Of course, if this were true it would mean that apparantely all insurance companies have been duped as well.

The valid points of the objections are that the diamond trade has been used to propagate slavery, fuel wars, etc. Many jewelers can now tell you the exact origin of your diamond, from mine to showroom.

Scutosaurus and other pareiasaurs [...] Several genera had bony plates in the skin, possibly the first signs of a turtle shell.

Deltavjatia vjatkensis [...] numerous turtle-like skull features

Proganochelys [...] fully turtle-like skull, beak, and shell, but with some primitive traits such as rows of little palatal teeth, a still-recognizable clavicle, a simple captorhinid-type jaw musculature, a primitive captorhinid- type ear, a non-retractable neck

Nice idea, but it is not going to happen. For example, take deep sea hydrothermal vents. The life around these was completely unexpected (different species, but similar to other species else where). There is a high probability that other such unexpected islands of life remain to be discovered.

Secondly, take places like Lake Vostok. Possibly there is life in here, and if there is there is possibly life elsewhere entombed under a million years of ice.

Added to this is there is a certain vagueness as to what a species actually is. I can't remember the details, but there is a species of bird (a gull I think) that is present round to world. As you go from east to west the individuals change slightly, but can still interbreed (which is, more or less, the definition of what a species is). Whoever, once you go round the world you get back to where you started, the individuals either side of the start line can no longer interbreed with those on the other side of the line. (I'd draw an ascii diagram but I can't really be bothered fighting the lameness filter). Are all these individuals one species or not? (A good analogy is a line of individuals - each one is within an inch in height of both neighbours (== can interbreed). When you form the line into a circle the two former end members are two feet apart in height (== can't interbreed)).

Then you have just the sheer practical difficulty of getting to places where there might be life - Challenger Deep? The seabed under Challenger deep? Oil bearing shale 3 miles down? We know (from our sole visit to Challenger Deep) that there is some sort of life down there, but have no clue as to what species.

A worthwhile undertaking, but doomed from the start - we can't, currently, get definite about giant squid, nevermind microscopic sea creatures.

There was one which was part of the The Genomic Revolution at the The American Muesum of Natural History where a couple chose thier baby based on its ability to provide a necessary blood or marrow transplant to thier already born daughter that really struck me. Interesting but somewhat scary stuff.

There was one which was part of the The Genomic Revolution at the The American Muesum of Natural History where a couple chose thier baby based on its ability to provide a necessary blood or marrow transplant to thier already born daughter that really struck me. Interesting but somewhat scary stuff.

Try this, and this, and this. (Just a little googleing ;-)

You either have to admire or despair at the man's sheer bloody mindedness and the way the men died, or perhaps both. I think I agree that Amundsen was far better prepared, actually spending time with people who lived in these conditions and learning from them.

I have to say as a character I much prefer Ernest Shackleton and his great achievement of salvaging a failed mission and bringing back all his men alive.

Sorry, I should have added, "Be sure to visit the Division of Paleontology link at the bottom of that site, for a nice collection of close-ups of the fossil."

--

You can see a couple of photos of the fossil and a drawing of the reconstructed critter at the American Museum of Natural History's Website.

Kinda cute, doncha think? Probably worse than a cat about tearing up the furniture, though.

--