Marathon had a few other things that really set it apart as well:
1.) No targeting reticle, and I think it may have been the first FPS in which you had to aim vertically at enemies above or below you (Doom auto-aimed). Combined with an unfortunate lack of ability to use the mouse, and this made shooting quite a challenge.
2.) First FPS with Grenade/Rocket hopping (which inspired the phrase "Frog blast the vent core!")
3.) I think Marathon 2 was the first FPS with liquids and swimming.
For those of you who haven't played it, or wish to re-play the Marathon Trilogy, it is available as an open source free download: Aleph One
It is believed that the us Eutheria, i.e. mammals with a placenta, gained the ability to have one common circulatory system for two different organisms by using viral DNA to keep the immune system from going nuts about this.
Huh? In what way do mammals have one common circulatory system for two different organisms? The only possibility I think you might be thinking of is mother and fetus, but the mother's blood and the fetal blood do not mix. There is material exchange at the placental barrier, but the blood supplies and circulatory systems are discrete.
A copyright notice which claims more rights/restrictions than the law allows. For example, "no portion of this may be used without direct written consent" would impinge on fair use, as it is entirely legal to use portions for eduction, review, or criticism.
...those Japanese robotic/cyborg exoskeletons are AWESOME! And, they are only going to get more awesome from here on out! Mjolnir armor, here we come!
Even without the super-soldier aspect, the super-rescue-worker aspect is mind-boggling, not to mention the super-dock-worker. Alien queens better look out!
Besides, there was the other near extinction 70K years ago. Wht I find interesting is the near extinctions were probably what led to modern humans' intelligence and other traits (like humor) that makes us so different from other species.
This is not a bad hypothesis. Large populations tend to undergo strong purifying selection (selection for the "normal" of a trait and against the extremes). Because of this, any new traits that appear in a large population by random mutation have a good chance of "getting lost in the noise" so to speak. They have a smaller chance of becoming fixed in the population.
However, if you weaken the purifying selection (the two easiest ways of doing this are reducing the population through a bottleneck or by the founder effect of a small population immigrating into a new ecosystem) new traits have a better chance of getting fixed and propagating in the resulting population(s). Human populations have gone through bottlenecks and come out with new abilities on the other side, so the possibility that such a situation is what gave rise to human level intelligence is a good one.
Weakened purifying selection is the main cause of increased genome complexity and the arise of new adaptations, more powerful and "sudden" than gradual change by natural selection. Sometimes a population has to do very badly in order to have a chance to gain the adaptations necessary for survival.
Life is reponsible for the O2 we see today, it's the waste product of plants photosynthesisng CO2. It's not that farfetched to think we could terraform the venutian atmosphere to contain a lot more O2 by simply sprinkling airborne photosynthetic micro-oganisimis on it.
Granted, if the time frame were to match that of what it took on earth, it would take a billion years or two. But, yes, the high oxygen content of Earth's atmosphere is due to life, and at one point every O2 used to be two water molecules.
Plants change H2O into O2 during photosynthesis, using electrons from water to replenish those lost in the photosystems during photosynthesis and using the hydrogen ions for chemiosmosis to produce ATP. For land plants, any water they "give off" to the atmosphere is simply water they picked up from the ground but did not use.
This is really cool stuff, and I find it very interesting to scroll the timeline on Trailblazing to get an idea of the historical context of these papers. I just wish there were more than 60 of them and covering more fields. Still, I'm looking forward to reading Watson and Crick's paper, Gould and Lewontin's paper, and perhaps even Maxwell's paper if I can handle it.
I'm a really big fan of the Royal Society. They have so much high quality research available under Open Access, including any papers in Philosophical Transactions B (which I tend to get stuff from the most as my interests are more related to Biology) that are more than a year old. I'm looking forward to their 350th Anniversary Issue which comes out in 2 weeks under Open Access. It's looking to have some interesting articles. In fact, all of the things they are doing for their 350th anniversary are really cool. Check them out: http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/authors/2010.xhtml
For my own purposes, wikipedia is generally very good about getting good specific information about many topics in Biology. This affects me a lot, as I am a biology teacher, and I find Wikipedia to be an excellent place to find diagrams and such for making handouts for students. It's not that often that I find inaccuracies or outright misconceptions, and often, the more technical something is, the more accurate it is as well.
Though my expertise in other fields is not so high that I can comment on their accuracy, I find articles relating to most other sciences and math to be (or at least seem) excellent and well written (with sources well cited).
No, it is not, nor should it ever be, a definitive source, and I won't let my students cite it for papers. But, at least in the topic of biology, and possibly other sciences, it is an excellent starting point even for rather specific information. Definitely more than just getting "general ideas".
Even if we make the assumption of organic life, which isn't far-fetched given all of the awesome self-organizing things organic molecules (biotic or abiotic) can do, we have as yet no reason to assume that nucleic acids will be the information carrier in an alien life form. Even if we do assume that nucleic acids are the information carrier, we have no reason to assume that the genetic code is universal.
The evolution of the genetic code is perhaps the biggest mystery in the origins of life on Earth. We are only just beginning to set down a reasonable framework in which to put forth testable hypotheses, but still yet have no way of determining whether the genetic code as it evolved on Earth is the only thermodynamically favorable outcome for such a system, or if it was a fixed accident. There has been some interesting mathematical treatment of the evolution of the genetic code, but nothing conclusive on the mechanisms of its origins. It does seem that molecular biology and studies of molecular evolution are coming into their own in this respect, so answers may not be so many years off, but we still have quite a way to go in our understanding.
Considering that the genetic code itself is somewhat evolvable (there are a couple of organisms, bacteria IIRC, that have reassigned one of their duplicate codons for a 21st amino acid), there really isn't any good reason to assume that alien life forms, even if biochemically similar in most other respects, would have the same genetic code. For all we know, we may have just sent off a good bit of nonsense (genetically speaking), even if they could decode the sequence and understand it as a nucleic acid sequence.
It seems to me that it would make much more sense to send something mathematical: a sequence of primes, a Fibonacci sequence, or some other sequence that would never appear as a "natural" unintelligent signal. Something like that would be an unmistakable sign of intelligent life (at least intelligent enough to work out math and send it in a signal). Sending a genetic code seems like a complete waste of time (disregarding those who think that sending any kind of signal is a waste of time).
When you try to compare biochemistry and self-organizing systems to nuts and bolts, yes I do assume you are talking out of your ass. No, I am not a scientist, nor ever claimed to be one. I do, however, have a degree in biology and am currently a biology teacher. And, I have never said it wasn't speculation, but there is a very large difference between logical speculation based on evidence and inference from understood science and "Hand-waving, story-telling and invoking the million-year magick". That you make such a comparison further causes me to assume that you are talking out of your ass and don't have a fundamental understanding of the topic at hand.
So, if you don't want people to insinuate that you are talking out of your ass, then don't make statements that make it sound like you are talking out of your ass.
Be careful. Your ignorance of organic chemistry and biochemistry is showing. If you understood even the basics of them, then you would know that it is a bit more than "hand-waving" and "story-telling" (as in baseless straight from the imagination story-telling) and is nothing at all like claiming "a nut and a bolt" that will eventually become a car.
I'd recommend that you check out a few text books starting from a basic biology book and follow it up with some organic chemistry and then biochemistry, and then follow that by looking into self-organization in nature... I'd recommend those things, but I'm sure you'd just ignore it and rather complain about the arrogance of scientists.
I was trying to imply that unless you believe in some sort of "magical addition", there is no stark dividing line between "life" and "non-life", no "extra ingredient"
Those criteria would seem to rule out a virus as being alive, yet I'd bet there are more than a few virologists who'd dispute that:-)
And I would disagree with them by virtue of a virus not having its own internal metabolism.;) They would have to make a pretty convincing argument about why a virus should be considered alive.
Anyway, like I said, I wasn't disagreeing with your overall point. Just clarifying what biologists are talking about when they talk about life. Anyway, overall it's an arbitrary definition, but it does have its uses. As always, nature is free to completely ignore and invalidate any arbitrary definitions we try to apply to it.;)
What is life, apart from very complex chemistry? If you belief there is some "magical" ingredient (something like Élan Vital), then you're going to have problems imagining life coming from complex chemical interactions alone - who gets to put the "magic" in?:-)
Personally, I like this answer from the first of the two papers I linked above: a very simple definition of a living system might be: compartments separated from their surroundings that spontaneously multiply with energy gleaned through self-contained, thermodynamically favourable redox reactions. (Martin and Russell, 2003)
It's not just complex chemistry. It is self-organizing, self-contained complex chemistry. The standard biological definition of "life" requires the following 7 characteristics:
1.) organization - in which the cell is the fundamental unit of organization. The self contained compartments from the above definition.
2.) metabolism - both anabolism and catabolism
3.) homeostasis - maintaining its own internal balance
4.) growth - defined as "anabolism > catabolism"
5.) response to stimuli - very wide open definition, could be as simple as an enzyme changing conformation in the presence of a substrate
6.) adaptation - changing to fit ones surroundings, both in the sense of acclimation and evolution
7.) be the product of reproduction - this used to be "be able to reproduce" but it would be nonsense to argue that a mule is not alive.
For a very good look at what it takes to be a living cell, I recommend this paper for a fascinating read:
Anyway, for those following along, these ideas are what biologists are talking when they talk about life and the formation of life. (Not disagreeing with the parent post... simply clarifying, expanding, and explaining).:)
Scientists have not been able to talk the raw components, which we already have access to, and get them to form a something living, have they?
Not a full on living system, no. However, the components, such as evolving self-replicators (in the form of RNA) have been made in labs. Pretty amazing stuff. (linkylinky)
This is one of the things that annoys me about those kinds of creationist/ID arguments. It took nature on the order of 400(+/- 100) million years to go from inorganic geochemistry to free living chemoautotrophs, and yet, they somehow expect scientists to be able to replicate that in the lab in the half-century or so that we've been able to study such things, and state that scientists' inability to do it so far means that it was impossible for nature. I mean, jeez, give 'em at least a million years to run some experiments, eh? It's only fair.
Yes, I realize that if they cared about fairness, then they wouldn't spread deliberate lies about science and specifically about studies of evolution in order to push their agenda.
I have a feeling that this will lead to the speculation that Earth was therefore seeded with fundamental biomolecules from space and this paved the way for life to begin on Earth. I hope people don't jump to this conclusion too quickly. Personally, I find it unlikely and think there is a more likely interpretation, which I will get to in a moment. The reason this is unlikely is that just having biomolecules is not enough to start life processes. Especially in the time frame when life is hypothesized to have originated (~3.8Gya), as the surface of the Earth was completely covered by ocean at that time, and any seeding of organic molecules from external sources runs into the concentration problem: the problem of getting enough of the right molecules in the right place with the right concentration and the right inputs of energy and raw materials for biochemistry to begin. Any such seeding from external sources would end up very dilute, and biomolecules would likely break down before they could be gathered in sufficient concentrations.
Personally, one possible interpretation which I prefer is that these findings (and similar ones of finding amino acids in comets and such) indicate that organic biomolecules are fairly common and will form anywhere you have C, O, H, N, S, etc and energy. Not only would this indicate that biomolecules could form fairly easily on Earth, but that they are common in the universe, and organic life may arise just about anywhere you have an input of energy and raw materials and a way of concentrating those molecules so they will react and form self-organizing and self-replicating biochemistry.
My current favorite hypothesis about the origins of life on Earth are those championed by Martin and Russell. They hypothesize that life on Earth began and alkaline hydrothermal vents in the ocean, around which porous rocks of iron and nickel sulfide would form semi-permeable cell-like compartments in which basic organic molecules formed by the geochemistry of the vent could concentrate and react with each other. Raw materials would be constantly input from the vent, and there would be a constant energy gradient in the form of heat, pH, and proton-motive force. This neatly solves several problems of many hypotheses of abiogenesis: the energy problems, the raw materials problem, and the concentration problem to name a few. They outline the overall picture of going from geochemistry to biochemistry to prokaryotes to eukaryotes in this 2003 paper:
A search for either of those followed by clicking on the "Cited By" link on Google Scholar will yield many papers, including some actual experiments supporting them, which expand and clarify these hypotheses. Definitely worth a read if you are interested in the possible origins of life on Earth, as well as perhaps some ideas of what to look for when looking for life elsewhere.
Anyway, point being, this is fantastic work by NASA, and an excellent example of showing that these molecules can form naturally. Just be careful about drawing any definite conclusions from them other than the simple conclusion that Uracil can form in these natural conditions, and possibly or probably others.
Does it directly answer your question? No, it does not. However it will give you the framework necessary for understanding answers when they come along. And it is a good overview of where we are in the studies of evolution, what has been refuted in older theories, and what directions future studies will be taking.
The scientists say these new findings support the theory that asteroids brought both water and organic compounds to the early Earth, helping lay the foundation for life on the planet.
Uhhh... I have a hard time necessarily accepting this. Another perfectly plausible hypothesis is that water and simple organic molecules are fairly common in the solar system (and perhaps beyond), and therefore it is not surprising for it to be everywhere. Earth formed in the right place and under the right conditions for a lot of it to condense into oceans, oceans that are hypothesized to have once covered the entire surface of the planet. These findings equally "support" this hypothesis, as do the findings of amino acids and water in some comets.
It seems to me that the best they can say is that these findings do not refute the hypothesis that asteroids brought water and organic compounds to Earth. There is plenty of geochemistry on Earth to make its own organic compounds and turn them into biochemistry. Citation provided.
Basic K-12 and Undergrad materials and course work do not change that much. Why shouldn't there be open source materials available? If they are publicly funded in any way, it should have been a requirement long ago. I for one used to refuse to sell my books back to the store for pennies on the dollar. It was always better to keep them or give to another student. With open source, more people could afford to go to university.
This isn't necessarily directly under the scope of this, as I'm not sure if it counts as "publicly funded", but there is open content for K-12 science and math materials, including a decent system to put your own books together. Check this out:
As a high school biology teacher in Thailand, where it is actually difficult to get decent biology books for a reasonable price, I have found this to be incredibly useful, and as far as I can tell the content is accurate. The book layout isn't tops, but, the pictures are pretty and the content works. I've also been checking out their physics and math books to refresh myself on a lot of things I have forgotten.
Point being, there are open materials out there, freely accessible. I would like to see more teachers using them.:)
Wow. Did we read the same article and same abstract? (I admit I have not read the full study because I don't have access to the full text of the paper -- if anyone has access and wants to email it to me, I'd appreciate it) Because you are drawing conclusions that I didn't see, aside from the crap opening paragraph of the article (and I hate how NewScientist often does that -- it's like they are catering to be posted on Fark or something). The talk of the research itself suggested no such thing as "Gamers are mean to strangers", at least based on the abstract. What it seemed to show is that gamers appear to show an increased testosterone response, which may be tied to aggression, when *competing* with strangers. I.e. Gamers are more aggressive in their competition with strangers than with friends and acquaintances. I'm not sure how you or anyone else draws the general conclusion that "gamers are aggressive to strangers" from that, but the authors of the original paper do not appear to draw anything of the sort.
It's interesting how different people draw different conclusions from the same information. If only there were some field of study which might address this. But, no, I guess we have to ignore because it isn't hard science.:-/
Disclaimer: yes, I understand that psychology is often "soft" science and doesn't always have an empirical basis. I also think that people who actually do research in psychology understand this and make their conclusions that much more tentative (remember: all scientific conclusions are tentative). However, to equate it with pseudo-science is a disservice, and with advances in neurology, psychology is getting closer and closer to completely "hard" science every day. In the meantime, those who are studying it do the best they can with the means they have available.
Disclaimer 2: I am not a psychologist. I am a marine biologist with a general interest in all science.
Knowledge, yes. Data, no. Data is something you'll lose if you don't have backup. Knowledge is information you can use to obtain more knowledge or useful things. We don't need research to tell us what we already know, we need research to tell us new things.
You cannot do science without data, and by data, I very specifically mean empirical observation. Anecdote has never been and will never be the singular of data. Common knowledge should never be mistaken for data unless it has empirical backing.
As for not needing research to tell us what we already know, I'm sure people said the same thing when Galileo took a heavy object and a ligher object up the tower of Pisa to drop them: "Look, Galileo. This is obvious. We know this. A heavier thing will fall faster than a lighter thing. Why are you wasting your time?" The history of science is filled with people seeking data to show empirically what we "already know" and then finding that what we "knew" was wrong.
I'm sorry if it bothers you or if you think it slows our progress or wastes our time, but we simply cannot draw scientific conclusions or increase scientific knowledge without DATA. Even for things that are "obvious" or things that we "already know".
Slashdot Mirror
Marathon had a few other things that really set it apart as well:
1.) No targeting reticle, and I think it may have been the first FPS in which you had to aim vertically at enemies above or below you (Doom auto-aimed). Combined with an unfortunate lack of ability to use the mouse, and this made shooting quite a challenge.
2.) First FPS with Grenade/Rocket hopping (which inspired the phrase "Frog blast the vent core!")
3.) I think Marathon 2 was the first FPS with liquids and swimming.
For those of you who haven't played it, or wish to re-play the Marathon Trilogy, it is available as an open source free download: Aleph One
It is believed that the us Eutheria, i.e. mammals with a placenta, gained the ability to have one common circulatory system for two different organisms by using viral DNA to keep the immune system from going nuts about this.
Huh? In what way do mammals have one common circulatory system for two different organisms? The only possibility I think you might be thinking of is mother and fetus, but the mother's blood and the fetal blood do not mix. There is material exchange at the placental barrier, but the blood supplies and circulatory systems are discrete.
A copyright notice which claims more rights/restrictions than the law allows. For example, "no portion of this may be used without direct written consent" would impinge on fair use, as it is entirely legal to use portions for eduction, review, or criticism.
...those Japanese robotic/cyborg exoskeletons are AWESOME! And, they are only going to get more awesome from here on out! Mjolnir armor, here we come!
Even without the super-soldier aspect, the super-rescue-worker aspect is mind-boggling, not to mention the super-dock-worker. Alien queens better look out!
not only that, but knowing a hack is coming is not exactly realistic.
Indeed. They should launch the simulation without warning on Sunday or Monday and see how prepared they really are. ;)
Besides, there was the other near extinction 70K years ago. Wht I find interesting is the near extinctions were probably what led to modern humans' intelligence and other traits (like humor) that makes us so different from other species.
This is not a bad hypothesis. Large populations tend to undergo strong purifying selection (selection for the "normal" of a trait and against the extremes). Because of this, any new traits that appear in a large population by random mutation have a good chance of "getting lost in the noise" so to speak. They have a smaller chance of becoming fixed in the population.
However, if you weaken the purifying selection (the two easiest ways of doing this are reducing the population through a bottleneck or by the founder effect of a small population immigrating into a new ecosystem) new traits have a better chance of getting fixed and propagating in the resulting population(s). Human populations have gone through bottlenecks and come out with new abilities on the other side, so the possibility that such a situation is what gave rise to human level intelligence is a good one.
Weakened purifying selection is the main cause of increased genome complexity and the arise of new adaptations, more powerful and "sudden" than gradual change by natural selection. Sometimes a population has to do very badly in order to have a chance to gain the adaptations necessary for survival.
Life is reponsible for the O2 we see today, it's the waste product of plants photosynthesisng CO2. It's not that farfetched to think we could terraform the venutian atmosphere to contain a lot more O2 by simply sprinkling airborne photosynthetic micro-oganisimis on it.
Granted, if the time frame were to match that of what it took on earth, it would take a billion years or two. But, yes, the high oxygen content of Earth's atmosphere is due to life, and at one point every O2 used to be two water molecules.
Here and There.
Plants change H2O into O2 during photosynthesis, using electrons from water to replenish those lost in the photosystems during photosynthesis and using the hydrogen ions for chemiosmosis to produce ATP. For land plants, any water they "give off" to the atmosphere is simply water they picked up from the ground but did not use.
Why would anyone want to live on one of those rocks?
Because they are there. Duh.
This is really cool stuff, and I find it very interesting to scroll the timeline on Trailblazing to get an idea of the historical context of these papers. I just wish there were more than 60 of them and covering more fields. Still, I'm looking forward to reading Watson and Crick's paper, Gould and Lewontin's paper, and perhaps even Maxwell's paper if I can handle it.
I'm a really big fan of the Royal Society. They have so much high quality research available under Open Access, including any papers in Philosophical Transactions B (which I tend to get stuff from the most as my interests are more related to Biology) that are more than a year old. I'm looking forward to their 350th Anniversary Issue which comes out in 2 weeks under Open Access. It's looking to have some interesting articles. In fact, all of the things they are doing for their 350th anniversary are really cool. Check them out: http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/authors/2010.xhtml
For my own purposes, wikipedia is generally very good about getting good specific information about many topics in Biology. This affects me a lot, as I am a biology teacher, and I find Wikipedia to be an excellent place to find diagrams and such for making handouts for students. It's not that often that I find inaccuracies or outright misconceptions, and often, the more technical something is, the more accurate it is as well.
Though my expertise in other fields is not so high that I can comment on their accuracy, I find articles relating to most other sciences and math to be (or at least seem) excellent and well written (with sources well cited).
No, it is not, nor should it ever be, a definitive source, and I won't let my students cite it for papers. But, at least in the topic of biology, and possibly other sciences, it is an excellent starting point even for rather specific information. Definitely more than just getting "general ideas".
In my experience...
Even if we make the assumption of organic life, which isn't far-fetched given all of the awesome self-organizing things organic molecules (biotic or abiotic) can do, we have as yet no reason to assume that nucleic acids will be the information carrier in an alien life form. Even if we do assume that nucleic acids are the information carrier, we have no reason to assume that the genetic code is universal.
The evolution of the genetic code is perhaps the biggest mystery in the origins of life on Earth. We are only just beginning to set down a reasonable framework in which to put forth testable hypotheses, but still yet have no way of determining whether the genetic code as it evolved on Earth is the only thermodynamically favorable outcome for such a system, or if it was a fixed accident. There has been some interesting mathematical treatment of the evolution of the genetic code, but nothing conclusive on the mechanisms of its origins. It does seem that molecular biology and studies of molecular evolution are coming into their own in this respect, so answers may not be so many years off, but we still have quite a way to go in our understanding.
Considering that the genetic code itself is somewhat evolvable (there are a couple of organisms, bacteria IIRC, that have reassigned one of their duplicate codons for a 21st amino acid), there really isn't any good reason to assume that alien life forms, even if biochemically similar in most other respects, would have the same genetic code. For all we know, we may have just sent off a good bit of nonsense (genetically speaking), even if they could decode the sequence and understand it as a nucleic acid sequence.
It seems to me that it would make much more sense to send something mathematical: a sequence of primes, a Fibonacci sequence, or some other sequence that would never appear as a "natural" unintelligent signal. Something like that would be an unmistakable sign of intelligent life (at least intelligent enough to work out math and send it in a signal). Sending a genetic code seems like a complete waste of time (disregarding those who think that sending any kind of signal is a waste of time).
When you try to compare biochemistry and self-organizing systems to nuts and bolts, yes I do assume you are talking out of your ass. No, I am not a scientist, nor ever claimed to be one. I do, however, have a degree in biology and am currently a biology teacher. And, I have never said it wasn't speculation, but there is a very large difference between logical speculation based on evidence and inference from understood science and "Hand-waving, story-telling and invoking the million-year magick". That you make such a comparison further causes me to assume that you are talking out of your ass and don't have a fundamental understanding of the topic at hand.
So, if you don't want people to insinuate that you are talking out of your ass, then don't make statements that make it sound like you are talking out of your ass.
Be careful. Your ignorance of organic chemistry and biochemistry is showing. If you understood even the basics of them, then you would know that it is a bit more than "hand-waving" and "story-telling" (as in baseless straight from the imagination story-telling) and is nothing at all like claiming "a nut and a bolt" that will eventually become a car.
I'd recommend that you check out a few text books starting from a basic biology book and follow it up with some organic chemistry and then biochemistry, and then follow that by looking into self-organization in nature... I'd recommend those things, but I'm sure you'd just ignore it and rather complain about the arrogance of scientists.
Oh, right. Yeah, um I get it. So.... what you're saying is: God did it
Illiteracy is such a sad thing to witness. :(
I was trying to imply that unless you believe in some sort of "magical addition", there is no stark dividing line between "life" and "non-life", no "extra ingredient"
Those criteria would seem to rule out a virus as being alive, yet I'd bet there are more than a few virologists who'd dispute that :-)
And I would disagree with them by virtue of a virus not having its own internal metabolism. ;) They would have to make a pretty convincing argument about why a virus should be considered alive.
Anyway, like I said, I wasn't disagreeing with your overall point. Just clarifying what biologists are talking about when they talk about life. Anyway, overall it's an arbitrary definition, but it does have its uses. As always, nature is free to completely ignore and invalidate any arbitrary definitions we try to apply to it. ;)
What is life, apart from very complex chemistry? If you belief there is some "magical" ingredient (something like Élan Vital), then you're going to have problems imagining life coming from complex chemical interactions alone - who gets to put the "magic" in? :-)
Personally, I like this answer from the first of the two papers I linked above: a very simple definition of a living system might be: compartments separated from their surroundings that spontaneously multiply with energy gleaned through self-contained, thermodynamically favourable redox reactions. (Martin and Russell, 2003)
It's not just complex chemistry. It is self-organizing, self-contained complex chemistry. The standard biological definition of "life" requires the following 7 characteristics:
1.) organization - in which the cell is the fundamental unit of organization. The self contained compartments from the above definition.
2.) metabolism - both anabolism and catabolism
3.) homeostasis - maintaining its own internal balance
4.) growth - defined as "anabolism > catabolism"
5.) response to stimuli - very wide open definition, could be as simple as an enzyme changing conformation in the presence of a substrate
6.) adaptation - changing to fit ones surroundings, both in the sense of acclimation and evolution
7.) be the product of reproduction - this used to be "be able to reproduce" but it would be nonsense to argue that a mule is not alive.
For a very good look at what it takes to be a living cell, I recommend this paper for a fascinating read:
Molecules into Cells: Specifying Spatial Architecture - Harold, Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, December 2005, p. 544-564, Vol. 69, No. 4
Anyway, for those following along, these ideas are what biologists are talking when they talk about life and the formation of life. (Not disagreeing with the parent post... simply clarifying, expanding, and explaining). :)
Scientists have not been able to talk the raw components, which we already have access to, and get them to form a something living, have they?
Not a full on living system, no. However, the components, such as evolving self-replicators (in the form of RNA) have been made in labs. Pretty amazing stuff. (linky linky)
This is one of the things that annoys me about those kinds of creationist/ID arguments. It took nature on the order of 400(+/- 100) million years to go from inorganic geochemistry to free living chemoautotrophs, and yet, they somehow expect scientists to be able to replicate that in the lab in the half-century or so that we've been able to study such things, and state that scientists' inability to do it so far means that it was impossible for nature. I mean, jeez, give 'em at least a million years to run some experiments, eh? It's only fair.
Yes, I realize that if they cared about fairness, then they wouldn't spread deliberate lies about science and specifically about studies of evolution in order to push their agenda.
I have a feeling that this will lead to the speculation that Earth was therefore seeded with fundamental biomolecules from space and this paved the way for life to begin on Earth. I hope people don't jump to this conclusion too quickly. Personally, I find it unlikely and think there is a more likely interpretation, which I will get to in a moment. The reason this is unlikely is that just having biomolecules is not enough to start life processes. Especially in the time frame when life is hypothesized to have originated (~3.8Gya), as the surface of the Earth was completely covered by ocean at that time, and any seeding of organic molecules from external sources runs into the concentration problem: the problem of getting enough of the right molecules in the right place with the right concentration and the right inputs of energy and raw materials for biochemistry to begin. Any such seeding from external sources would end up very dilute, and biomolecules would likely break down before they could be gathered in sufficient concentrations.
Personally, one possible interpretation which I prefer is that these findings (and similar ones of finding amino acids in comets and such) indicate that organic biomolecules are fairly common and will form anywhere you have C, O, H, N, S, etc and energy. Not only would this indicate that biomolecules could form fairly easily on Earth, but that they are common in the universe, and organic life may arise just about anywhere you have an input of energy and raw materials and a way of concentrating those molecules so they will react and form self-organizing and self-replicating biochemistry.
My current favorite hypothesis about the origins of life on Earth are those championed by Martin and Russell. They hypothesize that life on Earth began and alkaline hydrothermal vents in the ocean, around which porous rocks of iron and nickel sulfide would form semi-permeable cell-like compartments in which basic organic molecules formed by the geochemistry of the vent could concentrate and react with each other. Raw materials would be constantly input from the vent, and there would be a constant energy gradient in the form of heat, pH, and proton-motive force. This neatly solves several problems of many hypotheses of abiogenesis: the energy problems, the raw materials problem, and the concentration problem to name a few. They outline the overall picture of going from geochemistry to biochemistry to prokaryotes to eukaryotes in this 2003 paper:
On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells - Martin and Russell, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 29 January 2003 vol. 358 no. 1429 59-85
They further clarify the possible pathways for a shift from geochemistry to biochemistry in this 2006 paper:
On the origin of biochemistry at an alkaline hydrothermal vent - Martin and Russell, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 29 October 2007 vol. 362 no. 1486 1887-1926
A search for either of those followed by clicking on the "Cited By" link on Google Scholar will yield many papers, including some actual experiments supporting them, which expand and clarify these hypotheses. Definitely worth a read if you are interested in the possible origins of life on Earth, as well as perhaps some ideas of what to look for when looking for life elsewhere.
Anyway, point being, this is fantastic work by NASA, and an excellent example of showing that these molecules can form naturally. Just be careful about drawing any definite conclusions from them other than the simple conclusion that Uracil can form in these natural conditions, and possibly or probably others.
Anyone with an interest in evolution and what modern studies of evolution are all about really should read this:
Darwinian Evolution in the light of Genomics, EV Koonin, Nucleic Acids Research 2009 37(4):1011-1034; doi:10.1093/nar/gkp089
Does it directly answer your question? No, it does not. However it will give you the framework necessary for understanding answers when they come along. And it is a good overview of where we are in the studies of evolution, what has been refuted in older theories, and what directions future studies will be taking.
The scientists say these new findings support the theory that asteroids brought both water and organic compounds to the early Earth, helping lay the foundation for life on the planet.
Uhhh... I have a hard time necessarily accepting this. Another perfectly plausible hypothesis is that water and simple organic molecules are fairly common in the solar system (and perhaps beyond), and therefore it is not surprising for it to be everywhere. Earth formed in the right place and under the right conditions for a lot of it to condense into oceans, oceans that are hypothesized to have once covered the entire surface of the planet. These findings equally "support" this hypothesis, as do the findings of amino acids and water in some comets.
It seems to me that the best they can say is that these findings do not refute the hypothesis that asteroids brought water and organic compounds to Earth. There is plenty of geochemistry on Earth to make its own organic compounds and turn them into biochemistry. Citation provided.
Basic K-12 and Undergrad materials and course work do not change that much. Why shouldn't there be open source materials available? If they are publicly funded in any way, it should have been a requirement long ago. I for one used to refuse to sell my books back to the store for pennies on the dollar. It was always better to keep them or give to another student. With open source, more people could afford to go to university.
This isn't necessarily directly under the scope of this, as I'm not sure if it counts as "publicly funded", but there is open content for K-12 science and math materials, including a decent system to put your own books together. Check this out:
CK-12.org
As a high school biology teacher in Thailand, where it is actually difficult to get decent biology books for a reasonable price, I have found this to be incredibly useful, and as far as I can tell the content is accurate. The book layout isn't tops, but, the pictures are pretty and the content works. I've also been checking out their physics and math books to refresh myself on a lot of things I have forgotten.
Point being, there are open materials out there, freely accessible. I would like to see more teachers using them. :)
Wow. Did we read the same article and same abstract? (I admit I have not read the full study because I don't have access to the full text of the paper -- if anyone has access and wants to email it to me, I'd appreciate it) Because you are drawing conclusions that I didn't see, aside from the crap opening paragraph of the article (and I hate how NewScientist often does that -- it's like they are catering to be posted on Fark or something). The talk of the research itself suggested no such thing as "Gamers are mean to strangers", at least based on the abstract. What it seemed to show is that gamers appear to show an increased testosterone response, which may be tied to aggression, when *competing* with strangers. I.e. Gamers are more aggressive in their competition with strangers than with friends and acquaintances. I'm not sure how you or anyone else draws the general conclusion that "gamers are aggressive to strangers" from that, but the authors of the original paper do not appear to draw anything of the sort.
It's interesting how different people draw different conclusions from the same information. If only there were some field of study which might address this. But, no, I guess we have to ignore because it isn't hard science. :-/
Disclaimer: yes, I understand that psychology is often "soft" science and doesn't always have an empirical basis. I also think that people who actually do research in psychology understand this and make their conclusions that much more tentative (remember: all scientific conclusions are tentative). However, to equate it with pseudo-science is a disservice, and with advances in neurology, psychology is getting closer and closer to completely "hard" science every day. In the meantime, those who are studying it do the best they can with the means they have available.
Disclaimer 2: I am not a psychologist. I am a marine biologist with a general interest in all science.
Knowledge, yes. Data, no. Data is something you'll lose if you don't have backup. Knowledge is information you can use to obtain more knowledge or useful things. We don't need research to tell us what we already know, we need research to tell us new things.
You cannot do science without data, and by data, I very specifically mean empirical observation. Anecdote has never been and will never be the singular of data. Common knowledge should never be mistaken for data unless it has empirical backing.
As for not needing research to tell us what we already know, I'm sure people said the same thing when Galileo took a heavy object and a ligher object up the tower of Pisa to drop them: "Look, Galileo. This is obvious. We know this. A heavier thing will fall faster than a lighter thing. Why are you wasting your time?" The history of science is filled with people seeking data to show empirically what we "already know" and then finding that what we "knew" was wrong.
I'm sorry if it bothers you or if you think it slows our progress or wastes our time, but we simply cannot draw scientific conclusions or increase scientific knowledge without DATA. Even for things that are "obvious" or things that we "already know".