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Ah, but would going into space trigger the Dive Reflex. This is an important part of free-diving as it switched the body to oxygen conservation mode,i.e., heart rate change and peripheral vasoconstriction amongst other things. The trigger, if I recall is specific to submerging the face.

The next point is the partial pressure of O2 across the aveoli. Gas exchange due to the difference in partial pressures. The capacity of the lungs is reduced but there is still air at whatever the external pressure is in there. Even after you have breathed out, when diving there is always some O2 in your lungs. In space, you cannot hold your breath, so in practice, gas exchange must go in the reverse direction so O2 is being actively drawn out of your bloodstream.

A similar problem occurs at high altitude.

Have you even been to the site? Here it is:

http://slam.bs.jhmi.edu/gd/

Here's a little snippet from the manual if you are too dense to find it:

"GeneDesign will perform stepwise modifications to an amino acid sequence to produce a codon-optimized nucleotide sequence that codes for the specified protein. The modified nucleotide sequence can have dozens of customizations that will allow users to proceed to complex experimental work designed to quickly elucidate the structure and function of the gene in question. The final nucleotide sequence will be comprised of segments linked by restriction sites, allowing users to swap synthetic segments with native segments or to easily introduce mutations, in order to help determine which regions are necessary for the function of the gene. "

Considering you can't even understand what the site can do, how can you possibly make something equivalent to it? Cheeky bastard.

Here's a link to the source code: http://slam.bs.jhmi.edu/gd/source/

Source code

Source code -> http://slam.bs.jhmi.edu/gd/source/ (at the bottom of the GeneDesign page)

Here is a link to GeneDesign: http://slam.bs.jhmi.edu/gd/

Here is a link to GeneDesign: http://slam.bs.jhmi.edu/gd/

How to get a Newton connected to a Linux machine.
http://newtonlink.sourceforge.net/Newton_and_Linux -mini-HOWTO.html


How to get a Newton connected to a Windows machine.
http://www.chuma.org/newton/ncage/
http://www.mug.jhmi.edu/mirrors/InfoAlley/0696/25/ newton.html
http://www.panix.com/~clay/newton/query.cgi?commun ications+comm_software
http://mirrors.unna.org/ftp.bitcon.no/pub/pdacentr al/newton/newtwindows_license.html

Hope some of this helps.

Actinomycosis

Actually, I have to admit that the first thought that came to mind when you mentioned hair in the context of growing teeth was that of a dermoid cyst, which then led me to thinking about what might happen if, say, the programming of the stem cell were to have been a little "buggy". I mean really - tinkering with totipotential cells and having them implanted in your mouth? What if it turns into some kind of giant tumorous megatooth? You'd have to drink thousands of litres of cola to kill it...

AFAIK, Copland didn't make it into the hands of many :( There's a little out there, though:

Here and here were 2 googled-up quickies.

The Wayback Machine only goes back to '96, after the NeXT deal had been made.

An open architecture doesn't mean it isn't proprietary: Firewire, 802.11b, PDF, and Java all have licensors, patents, and other restrictions around them, but unlike Microsoft's toys, you *can* license, implement, and use them. Microsoft won't let you license the Office formats, won't let you license or implement the DirectX interfaces, they don't give you access to the core source of their OS or web browser or web server, much less any of their tools...

BTW, Microsoft licenses it's Windows Media codecs for Unix platforms. It seems to be encouraging Mono (don't know how true that is) and has openly documented some Office formats (IIRC: Office 97, and just recently, the XML schema for Office 2003). IE has probably the best Javascript support in modern browsers (not sure if mozilla is better now).

Apple has proprietary hardware. Apple refused to licensed out their hardware to other manufacturers, then did so, only to later pull the rug from under those manufacturer's feet.

Earlier, when they started getting badly beat by the Wintel platforms, they also started adopting "PC technologies" (eg. their adoption of PCI) to try and leverage the PC juggernaut (which has worked out pretty well for them - PCI, PCMCIA, USB (an Intel-created standard, royalty-free as opposed to Firewire), AGP/graphics cards, Ethernet, IDE/ATA(not sure?), ...)
However, their hardware platform itself is still proprietary, though mostly the product of their partner's innovation (eg: IBM -> Power4, AMD -> Hypertransport). Apple's innovations seem to occur in software, and in non-PC hardware (with Firewire being a recent exception).

Like Microsoft, Apple too has proprietary software: I don't know of Apple licensing Quartz out, for example. Do you know if their presentation app (Keynote?) has a documented file format?

Most of Apple's open-source efforts have been in BSD-licensed software (which allow Apple to close-source any changes they make). Yes, they seem more favorably disposed to "open-source" (eg: thier contributions to Konqueror v/s little or nothing coming out from MS), but it could just be the underdog effect. At the end of the day, they're a company selling you well-designed products at a price. My advice is not to be too starry eyed about them.

To understand genetic engineering you need to understand the technology and also the organism on which it is being used. A fair grounding in general biology, the model organisms used to develop the technology, the basics of molecular biology, some genetics and cell biology is needed. Most genetic engineering is developed by finding out how some portion of biology works, and then imitating it for human purposes. Genetic engineering is like copying source code--scientists study the organism (the original code), and then crudely copy it giving a new genetic engineering technology.

These links can give you a start, but if you are seriously interested, pick up an introductory college text with molecular biology, cell biology, or genetics in the title.

Here are some resources available on the web:

Primer on Molecular Genetics (Department of Energy)

MIT Biology Hypertextbook

Primer on Molecular Genetics from the U.S. Department of Energy

Biotech Applied follow the Biotech Applied and Biotech Chronicles links

(Small) glossary of genetic terms put together by the National Human Genome Research Institute

Info on research (with great graphics) funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Jim Lund