Reading many of the posts here I see a misconceptions that runs through them. Firstly, I am not a Biologist/Biochemist when I say this: but DNA does not define who we are, proteins make up who we are. Of course, where do proteins come from? DNA of course. It's a chicken and egg dilemma. Which came first?
Regardless, know that we have HGP completed, we can start finding what sections of our DNA make what proteins. This will allows scientists to isolate and research specific bodily fuctions. To me, someone who identifies a gene or a section of DNA really hasn't do anything until s/he (or someone else) researches the complex protein process that results from that section.
There is a reason that scientists say we are 90% similar to chimanpeez (sp?) DNA-wise. We (as humans) are about 96% similar to each other in terms of our DNA. But it is our proteins that (at fetal development) determines whether we have two arms and legs with five digits each, or fins and scales. If you think about it, there is nothing really that dissimilar between human beings and most other organisms (on a inter-cellular lever). Dogs have hemoglobin just as we do. Tulips have caroteen (sp?). I know it is hard to say humas and earthworms are that similar but the truth of the matter is we are.
So the real value of the HGP isn't necessarily the DNA but the cellular/biological processes that are governed by them.
I haven't used CorelDraw yet so I can't make any real assumptions/comparisons, but I have used Adobe Illustrator for many things and I really love it. There is something about both of Adobe's premier graphics products that appeals to me, both professionally and artistically.
I would personally love Illustrator available for Linux, but at a staggaring $350 for Illustrator (for Windows) I would have a hard time finding a real reason to but it.
BUT I do know that if companies start to use it for their graphics development, then Linux will catch one and...( blah blah blah... we have all heard this story).
I have a friend who read the book and recommended it to me. Both he and I are physics majors; I don't think he minded the math!
(the Theory of Everything [TOE], the Holy Grail of physics)
What is better known is GUT (Grand Unified Theory) which hopes to explain all four fundemental forces of the universe as one entity, that separated at the origin of the universe. It doesn't suprise some that Quantum Mechanics and General Reletivity don't coalese (sp?).
FYI, the four forces of the universe are (from strongest to weakest):
Strong Nuclear -holds protons & neutrons together, most likely with gluons (can you guess what gluons are named after?)
Electro-Mangitism (E&M) -electrons, current, fields, all that stuff you learned in high school
Weak Nuclear -primarily responcible for radiation. I am not to sure what else Weak Nuclear does -(someone wish to elaborate?)
Gravity -jump and find out; currently scientists are looking for gravity waves, using a VERY large (2+ mile) interferometer with lasers to measure the wave)
Physics has managed to combine the Weak Nuclear force and Electro-Magnitism to form: Electro-Weak force (gotta love these names). Quantum Mechanics has also helped explain how the Strong and Electro-Weak work together. However, Gravity remains elusive. General Reletivity is gravity, so the combination of the two (possible with string theory) is what excites physicists who are looking for GUT.
PS This is to the best of my knowledge what the some of the ideas is modern theoretical physics are. If you know better, please correct me.
I think a lot of the discussion on this article is missing some crucial evidence that we need to take into consideration. Specifically, that Black holes don't actaully have a mass, size, or "surface area."
Most people have the idea that black holes are either large "drains" in space or some large spherical body that sucks everything in. That is not true. Black holes are singularities. What that means is still debatable. But it also means that:
Size The size of a black hole is best described as the "radius" of the event horizon. I am sure most of us have heard of the event horizon (the point where light and mass cannot escape). What is behind the event horizon is not known.
Surface Area There is no real analoge for the surface area a black hole. Consequently, there is no true volume as well. This is because singularities are thought to be infinitly small (0-dimentional, like a point) and infinitly dense.
Mass This is the main error everyone makes when talking about a black hole. Remember, Astronomy is an observational science. Astronomers cannot pick up a black hole and weight it on a scale (like a physicist may to to find the mass). Instead, in astronomy, mass is found be measuring the speed of objects flying around the black hole(the acresion disk), then determining the rotation curve of the mass around the black hole. Think of a rotation curve as graph with the distance along the x-axis and the speed of the objects along the y-axis. With the rotation curve you can try to fit the curve to a known gravitational potential. This gravitational potention allows you to find the "mass" of the object everything is rotating about. What this means is that the actaul object inside (if it was a star or something) would have that mass. But since we know that black holes are infinitly small and infinitly dense, that wouldn't make sense. So when we say that the "mass" of a black hole is X, then we mean that there is an object inside the acresion disk that results in the objects rotating the black hole to have such-and-such velocity curve. That object (if it were a star) would have a mass of X.
I hope that helps clears things up.
PS I am not a physicist or an astronomer yet. I am currently receiving my undergraduate degree in both.
Re:What's Really Important Here
on
Virtual War
·
· Score: 5
Whoa, the War in the Gulf was directly about fringe groups? I think it was about two things:
Oil
Regional Stability
1. We (United States) may not get our Oil supply from Kuwait, and while you are correct that Iraq supplied more Oil to the US before the war began, the threat of Iraq was not against Kuwait but against Saudi Arabia, which supplies the largest percent of Oil to the US (check out http://www.energy.ca.go v/database/multisector/usoilimp.html). While Iraw did not invade Saudi Arabia the problem is that Amiercan Foreign policy is all about...
2. Regional Stability. As long as the US maintains hegomony (sp?) it will want to preserve its "Spheres of Influence" on parts of the world. In the middle east, the US has definite interests in keeping the Oil trade open, with US control over the region.
(asise)Take Saudi Arabia, look at its Human rights record. Here is a country with a emmensly rich royal family that controls the government 100%, a country were corperal punishment is still on the books, a country were NO ONE has the right to vote (according to the CIA), but the US sends millions of dollars to, sells modern military weapons, and even looks the other way on human rights! But since they supply so much Oil, we let them get away with it.
So why did we get involved with in the Gulf? Lets take a view point from a Foreign policy/politician standpoint:
Iraq invaded Kuwait, CIA reports that they may be building chemical and biological weapons (true)
Iraq's leader frequency refers to the United States as an enemy, conlusion: he is not a friend (very true)
Iraq threatens Isreal (verbally); an ally of the US, and asks other Arab nations to join (Jordan)
So what do US planners think?
They think Iraq may threaten Isreal, an ally
They think Iraq may threaten Saudi Arabia, a major trade partner
They think Iraq may be building Weapons of Mass Destruction (WoMD)
Iraq is definatly threatening regional stability!
Conclusion: Iraq must be stopped
So the Bush administration turnes to the military. The resulting war is fought with weapons that (as you said correctly) were not as preceice as the Amiercan public was lead to believe. And ironically in the end, although Saddam Hussain is still in power, US planer probably achieved their goals:
Iraq is no longer threatening Saudi Arabia or Isreal
Iraq is no longer buildings WoMD (well, at least as of recent, UN inspectors were doing their best to shut down production facilities, but now...)
For all Intents and Purposes these goals were achieved for about 10 years. The region is stable (for now).
So what is the cost of regional stability? about a couple hundred American casulaties (and others from the coalition nations), and the popluation of Iraq which must suffer under a trade embargo and die of starvation, disease, and persecution.
And what about the oil? Go to a gas station and find out.
The quote is from "Life of Brian" by Monty Python.
FYI, The Buddy Bears quote is: "I have an indivudual opinion!"-BB1 (Buddy Bear 1) "I too have an individual opinion!" -BB2 "We are all individuals!" -BB3
Ironically, the method that has sucesfully worked in slowing corperate domination of the world is collective bargining.
While other methods do exsist and work (such as government intervention and muck-racking) unless people get together and work for a common goal, the coperation (as an entity) will always be stronger. However, if people are to band together , how does that help individuality?
Consider this, industry has been around for over 300 years, and only NOW has it begun to colglomerate into mega-corperation? Definatly not. Think of the British East-India Company. This "corperation" basically owned India, controlled all the products, and even had its own army to put down revolts.
Why isn't there a British East-India Company today? Besides the obvious answer that India is an independent nation, in the end, large mega-corperation don't function.
South Koera is another example of a country with huge Mega-conglomerates. For a while there were only 6 major compaies that controlled all sectors of industry. They became corrupt and inefficent, and when the East Asian recession came in 1998-98, they wound up dying, needing government intervention.
It's the money that corperations are after.
"Money has the power to let people forget the difference between good and evil." How true.
I really hope that Mozilla doesn't get the short end of the stick here. I downloaded M15 and it looks real nice. I think it's really promising what they can/will produce. However, if Real.com takes their product and creates a Web+Media browser that does everything, and Microsoft follows suit, where does that leave Mozilla?
Coming from a family of techies, we have gone through at least a dozen processors in six years. Over those years AMD has been our processor of choice (although we own Intel stock!). AMD has consistantly outpriced Intel, but until recently has always lagged behind Intel in their clock speeds. However, the new Althon chips and AMD's new marketing strategy may undermine Intel's dominance of the market.
True Story: At a computer show, the guy next to me instisted on buying a 400Mhz computer with an Intel ship, even though the price of the AMD computer was $100 cheaper. Why? Intel has managed to market themselves as the processor company. That little jingle Intel has advertisers play is highly recognizable. The fact of the matter is that the people who unwillingly use Microsoft products probably buy computers with Intel processors, simply because of Intel's marketing strategy. (no offense to people who use Microsoft products)
Recently, television commericals for DELL now feature AMD processors. AMD is catching on, now that their processor chips are faster and cheaper than Intels, they should probably start a much more aggresive advertising campaign.
I hope that AMD really become a competitor for Intel; because in the end, competition benifits us, the comsumer. We will wind up paying less for better chips, since the two companies must compete for our business.
BTW, I actaully own a PII-400 now, ending the "family" tradition of buying AMD processors, since I though Intel was going to jump ahead in processor speed. Boy was I wrong!
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Reading many of the posts here I see a misconceptions that runs through them. Firstly, I am not a Biologist/Biochemist when I say this: but DNA does not define who we are, proteins make up who we are. Of course, where do proteins come from? DNA of course. It's a chicken and egg dilemma. Which came first?
Regardless, know that we have HGP completed, we can start finding what sections of our DNA make what proteins. This will allows scientists to isolate and research specific bodily fuctions. To me, someone who identifies a gene or a section of DNA really hasn't do anything until s/he (or someone else) researches the complex protein process that results from that section.
There is a reason that scientists say we are 90% similar to chimanpeez (sp?) DNA-wise. We (as humans) are about 96% similar to each other in terms of our DNA. But it is our proteins that (at fetal development) determines whether we have two arms and legs with five digits each, or fins and scales. If you think about it, there is nothing really that dissimilar between human beings and most other organisms (on a inter-cellular lever). Dogs have hemoglobin just as we do. Tulips have caroteen (sp?). I know it is hard to say humas and earthworms are that similar but the truth of the matter is we are.
So the real value of the HGP isn't necessarily the DNA but the cellular/biological processes that are governed by them.
I haven't used CorelDraw yet so I can't make any real assumptions/comparisons, but I have used Adobe Illustrator for many things and I really love it. There is something about both of Adobe's premier graphics products that appeals to me, both professionally and artistically.
I would personally love Illustrator available for Linux, but at a staggaring $350 for Illustrator (for Windows) I would have a hard time finding a real reason to but it.
BUT I do know that if companies start to use it for their graphics development, then Linux will catch one and...( blah blah blah... we have all heard this story).
I have a friend who read the book and recommended it to me. Both he and I are physics majors; I don't think he minded the math!
(the Theory of Everything [TOE], the Holy Grail of physics)
What is better known is GUT (Grand Unified Theory) which hopes to explain all four fundemental forces of the universe as one entity, that separated at the origin of the universe. It doesn't suprise some that Quantum Mechanics and General Reletivity don't coalese (sp?).
FYI, the four forces of the universe are (from strongest to weakest):
Physics has managed to combine the Weak Nuclear force and Electro-Magnitism to form: Electro-Weak force (gotta love these names). Quantum Mechanics has also helped explain how the Strong and Electro-Weak work together. However, Gravity remains elusive. General Reletivity is gravity, so the combination of the two (possible with string theory) is what excites physicists who are looking for GUT.
PS This is to the best of my knowledge what the some of the ideas is modern theoretical physics are. If you know better, please correct me.
I think a lot of the discussion on this article is missing some crucial evidence that we need to take into consideration. Specifically, that Black holes don't actaully have a mass, size, or "surface area."
Most people have the idea that black holes are either large "drains" in space or some large spherical body that sucks everything in. That is not true. Black holes are singularities. What that means is still debatable. But it also means that:
The size of a black hole is best described as the "radius" of the event horizon. I am sure most of us have heard of the event horizon (the point where light and mass cannot escape). What is behind the event horizon is not known.
There is no real analoge for the surface area a black hole. Consequently, there is no true volume as well. This is because singularities are thought to be infinitly small (0-dimentional, like a point) and infinitly dense.
This is the main error everyone makes when talking about a black hole. Remember, Astronomy is an observational science. Astronomers cannot pick up a black hole and weight it on a scale (like a physicist may to to find the mass). Instead, in astronomy, mass is found be measuring the speed of objects flying around the black hole(the acresion disk), then determining the rotation curve of the mass around the black hole. Think of a rotation curve as graph with the distance along the x-axis and the speed of the objects along the y-axis. With the rotation curve you can try to fit the curve to a known gravitational potential. This gravitational potention allows you to find the "mass" of the object everything is rotating about.
What this means is that the actaul object inside (if it was a star or something) would have that mass. But since we know that black holes are infinitly small and infinitly dense, that wouldn't make sense. So when we say that the "mass" of a black hole is X, then we mean that there is an object inside the acresion disk that results in the objects rotating the black hole to have such-and-such velocity curve. That object (if it were a star) would have a mass of X.
I hope that helps clears things up.
PS I am not a physicist or an astronomer yet. I am currently receiving my undergraduate degree in both.
Whoa, the War in the Gulf was directly about fringe groups? I think it was about two things:
1. We (United States) may not get our Oil supply from Kuwait, and while you are correct that Iraq supplied more Oil to the US before the war began, the threat of Iraq was not against Kuwait but against Saudi Arabia, which supplies the largest percent of Oil to the US (check out http://www.energy.ca.go v/database/multisector/usoilimp.html). While Iraw did not invade Saudi Arabia the problem is that Amiercan Foreign policy is all about...
2. Regional Stability. As long as the US maintains hegomony (sp?) it will want to preserve its "Spheres of Influence" on parts of the world. In the middle east, the US has definite interests in keeping the Oil trade open, with US control over the region.
(asise)Take Saudi Arabia, look at its Human rights record. Here is a country with a emmensly rich royal family that controls the government 100%, a country were corperal punishment is still on the books, a country were NO ONE has the right to vote (according to the CIA), but the US sends millions of dollars to, sells modern military weapons, and even looks the other way on human rights! But since they supply so much Oil, we let them get away with it.
So why did we get involved with in the Gulf? Lets take a view point from a Foreign policy/politician standpoint:
So what do US planners think?
So the Bush administration turnes to the military. The resulting war is fought with weapons that (as you said correctly) were not as preceice as the Amiercan public was lead to believe. And ironically in the end, although Saddam Hussain is still in power, US planer probably achieved their goals:
For all Intents and Purposes these goals were achieved for about 10 years. The region is stable (for now).
So what is the cost of regional stability? about a couple hundred American casulaties (and others from the coalition nations), and the popluation of Iraq which must suffer under a trade embargo and die of starvation, disease, and persecution.
And what about the oil? Go to a gas station and find out.
God bless America.
The quote is from "Life of Brian" by Monty Python.
FYI,
The Buddy Bears quote is:
"I have an indivudual opinion!"-BB1 (Buddy Bear 1)
"I too have an individual opinion!" -BB2
"We are all individuals!" -BB3
Ironically, the method that has sucesfully worked in slowing corperate domination of the world is collective bargining.
While other methods do exsist and work (such as government intervention and muck-racking) unless people get together and work for a common goal, the coperation (as an entity) will always be stronger. However, if people are to band together , how does that help individuality?
Consider this, industry has been around for over 300 years, and only NOW has it begun to colglomerate into mega-corperation? Definatly not. Think of the British East-India Company. This "corperation" basically owned India, controlled all the products, and even had its own army to put down revolts.
Why isn't there a British East-India Company today? Besides the obvious answer that India is an independent nation, in the end, large mega-corperation don't function.
South Koera is another example of a country with huge Mega-conglomerates. For a while there were only 6 major compaies that controlled all sectors of industry. They became corrupt and inefficent, and when the East Asian recession came in 1998-98, they wound up dying, needing government intervention.
It's the money that corperations are after.
"Money has the power to let people forget the difference between good and evil."
How true.
I really hope that Mozilla doesn't get the short end of the stick here. I downloaded M15 and it looks real nice. I think it's really promising what they can/will produce. However, if Real.com takes their product and creates a Web+Media browser that does everything, and Microsoft follows suit, where does that leave Mozilla?
Hopefully not in the dust.
Coming from a family of techies, we have gone through at least a dozen processors in six years. Over those years AMD has been our processor of choice (although we own Intel stock!). AMD has consistantly outpriced Intel, but until recently has always lagged behind Intel in their clock speeds. However, the new Althon chips and AMD's new marketing strategy may undermine Intel's dominance of the market.
True Story: At a computer show, the guy next to me instisted on buying a 400Mhz computer with an Intel ship, even though the price of the AMD computer was $100 cheaper. Why? Intel has managed to market themselves as the processor company. That little jingle Intel has advertisers play is highly recognizable. The fact of the matter is that the people who unwillingly use Microsoft products probably buy computers with Intel processors, simply because of Intel's marketing strategy. (no offense to people who use Microsoft products)
Recently, television commericals for DELL now feature AMD processors. AMD is catching on, now that their processor chips are faster and cheaper than Intels, they should probably start a much more aggresive advertising campaign.
I hope that AMD really become a competitor for Intel; because in the end, competition benifits us, the comsumer. We will wind up paying less for better chips, since the two companies must compete for our business.
BTW, I actaully own a PII-400 now, ending the "family" tradition of buying AMD processors, since I though Intel was going to jump ahead in processor speed. Boy was I wrong!