Maybe it's because I use a beowulf cluster to simulate DNA 'computing'. (Not really computing..genetic regulatory networks.)
Which is faster? Guess!
Re:Personality is highly complex, Taste is Simple
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The Taste of Pain
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· Score: 1
Au' contraire!
Because of the non-linear nature of both protein folding and the dynamics of regulation and gene expression, tiny changes in the genome can result in massive changes in the organism!
So..the massive changes that are beneficial to reproduction stay and the ones that aren't don't. Evolution!
Of course, this doesn't say God doesn't exist. Evolution doesn't prove that God doesn't exist. In fact, if I was God, I would have created Evolution to do some of the work of creation for me. I think of God as a _really_ intelligent engineer.
Why instantly create and uncreate every particle of mass that exists in every moment of time? Just devise a set of laws for physics and have it do it for you. Make these laws of physics _just_ right so that biological organisms can arise. Make the biological organisms evolve themselves into a dizzying array of variety and complexity.
Or..when it all comes down to it...devise multiple universes with varying constants of physics so that at least _one_ of those universes features the necessary conditions for life to exist.
So God created the multiverse.
And there's no way to disprove that. (No way to prove it either, heh).
Personality is highly complex, Taste is Simple
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The Taste of Pain
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The taste buds on your tongue are simply sensors, like your eyes, ears, nose, and hands. In fact, taste buds represent the least of all complex sensors of the human body. A taste bud is simply a receptor, waiting to bind to a molecule in solution in your mouth. Once the receptor binds to the molecule, it generates a signal that says, "bitter!" or "sweet!". Combinations of types of "bitter" and "sweet" represent the taste of the food, excluding molecules in the gas phase which are picked up by the nose. I read there were 27 or so types of "bitter" and only two types of "sweet".
Even a human nose is more sensitive than human taste buds. There are over a hundred different types of receptors in the human nose. (And thousands in the dog nose.) Looking at one's ears or eyes, the complexity involved in generating a highly analog signal, over time, and having that signal correctly analyzed is incredible.
And..we are not yet even talking about cerebral functions like reason, imagination, moods, memory, or even behavioral instinct!
Yes, finding the genes that code for the receptors of the tongue is really great. But do not assume that the amazing complexity of the human body, even excluding the brain, will be fully understood for quite a bit of time.
Your illusion that all biological organisms are inherantly 'bio-compatible' are flawed.
To prove this, I will give you a rotten can of meat, full of the bacteria Clostridium botulism, and tell you to eat a tiny spoonful. What HARM can a tiny spoonful of such a naturally harmless biological organism do to you, another biological organism?
Biological organisms _never_ produce any sorts of toxins or poisons or inflict any physical harm upon other biological organisms. It wouldn't be "bio-compatible!".
Biological organisms produce the most effective and dangerous poisons in the world. For Plants, see ricin. For bacteria, see botulism. Snakes, Scorpions, Fish, and even certain types of algae.
A volcano spews out more carbon dioxide, sulphur, and carbon monoxide than a thousand years of operation of any single factory. The forest fires in Asia produced more carbon dioxide than a year's worth of operation of _all_ the factories in the U.S.
Before you go blaming technology for the radical destruction of the Earth, at least share blame where blame is due. The Earth itself has a cycle which has been running since before any civilization has risen. This includes massive ecological changes which have _nothing_ to do with technology. To separate the NATURAL ecological changes and the technological ones is a science that is incredibly complex and not well known to even the smartest of scientists studying it. Be careful where you place the blame. It may turn out that nature has made these changes over and over again and will continue to do so even with our puny attempts (purposeful or accidental) at technological change.
If you want to be specific about it, please refer to the Electron Carrier series and the enzyme ATP Synthase as the real reason why the body is so darned effecient. The Kreb's cycle does a wonderful job of oxidizing a multitude of energy sources and transferring the charged protons to carrier molecules (NADH, FADH), but the real supreme effeciency is in the intricate handover of those charged protons (or, from the converse view, the electrons) past a gauntlet of molecules specially designed (by evolution or elsewise) to deliver the exact amount of energy required to operate the proton pump nearby. The proton pump creates the proton gradient across the mitochondrial inner membrane, which then powers ATP Synthase to effectively produce ATP from ADP + Pi.
You're also confusing our emission of bodily heat with my equivalency of energy. All the energy that our body releases from food is not converted to heat...or we WOULD burn up like gasoline on fire. The energy is used, effeciently, as work...in the form of forming bonds, specifically the reaction ADP + Pi -> ATP, which is then used as the energetic intermediary for a host of other endothermic reactions.
So, yes, I have picked up a biochemistry book. But, I was not concerning myself with biochemistry, but with thermodynamics. And..I made a stupid error. It's actually 261 g of gasoline.;) If you burned 261 g of gasoline, you would release enough energy to run a human body for a day. Of course, unless you use that energy to power an engine, it is converted to heat and becomes useless. The only difference between our bodies and a car engine is that our bodies utilize more of that energy in the form of useful work and engines release more of it as heat. And that is the only difference.
You'd have to go to nuclear reactions to get a better payout of effeciency. It would take ~1.0*10^-4 grams of hydrogen undergoing fusion in order to 'power' one human body for a day.
And, btw, not all fat has the same density nor the same energy of oxidation. Saturated fats provide more energy per volume because their lack of double bonds (unsaturated bonds) make them pack more tightly. Fats also have different lengths. A 3xC-12 fat has less energy than a 3xC-18, of course. The reaction pathway that the body uses to metabolize fat is extremely ingenious and relies on a recursive process of breaking the next two carbons off the fatty acid (3 fatty acids plus a glycerol make a fat molecule) and funneling them to the Krebs cycle. It's all done by multiple bindings to a complex of 3-4 proteins which rotates around the fatty acid.
Ok, I'm done being specific. I will now go back to being facetious...like I said I was being before.:P It really was a hint.
Let me be facetious for once and spell out the environmental impact for a human body as this article seemingly does...
The Human Body requires about 2 kg of water of consumption, 120 g of carbohydrates, ~60 g of protein, 60 g of fat, totalling approximately 2000-3000 Calories (that's 2-3*10^6 calories) a day. The equivalent of hydrocarbon (gasoline) is about 41.5 kg. Among the noxious and toxic (yes toxic) chemicals that it excretes are ammonia and urea.
The usual Human Body also requires at least 128 kg of water to safely and convienantly dilute the toxic execretions and transport them to a processing plant. It's called a toilet.
There are 6 billion Human Bodies functioning on Earth and they are reproducing faster than microchips are being produced.:)
The fallacy of this argument is that the process (a human body functioning or the production of a microchip) counts only the materials being inputted and the harmful substances being outputted. It also counts only the amount of water used in the process and not the amount of water leaving the process clean.
The silane and other harmful chemicals used never leave the factory harmful. Whatever is leftover and not used is converted to something harmless through a series of chemical reactions expressly designed to make the factory environmentally friendly. In addition, factories clean up all of their outputted chemicals, including water, so that they cause no enviromental damage.
This is especially true for microchip plants where the profit margin is so high and the cost of bad publicity is so devastating. The extra cost of building an ecofriendly factory is miniscule compared to the profits these companies enjoy.
I'm a graduate student in the University of Minnesota Chemical Engineering department and I've seen some of this work demonstrated and explained in a few presentations. There is a joint project between Dr. "Skip" Scriven and Dr. M. Flickinger that seeks to imprint cells within a fluid that may be printed onto paper or other materials using standard inkjet technology.
Although I don't work on the project, the goal is to maintain the viability of the cells as they are mixed with the fluid and layered onto the paper. The paper may not be completely covered in cells (called confluency), but will have enough cells adhered to the paper so that numerous applications are possible:
Biosensors: Make the cells physically respond to outside environmental stimuli, which may include pathogens, proteins, minerals, etc. Put the paper (or other material) on something that you wish to perform as a biosensor. Think super fast and cheap blood testing or a really quick and effective way to test the air for anthrax. A LOT of possibilities here.
Reactive Materials: Have the cells absorb and metabolize certain harmful chemicals or excrete other useful chemicals. The paper (or other material) is easier to handle, distribute, and install than a solution of cells. Cells imprinted onto the paper would also be in a 'dormant' state, having a lower metabolism, utilizing less nutrients, and having a longer life-span than cells in solution. The cells would be exposed to a much larger surface area, making them more effective in uptaking chemicals from the environment.
While I don't work on this project, I am working on a project that seeks to design the gene 'circuitry' that controls the metabolism of the cell and the function it performs. The biosensor part, the specific reactive function part. I'm purposely not going into details.:)
Biomedical Eng. is still too new to have accurate reported numbers.
Compare this to other average salaries for BAs in the liberal arts or B.Ss in the softer sciences (Psychology, Biology). You're lucky to break $30k coming out of undergraduate schooling with those types of degrees. Even the worst engineer can break $30k easily.
The average Doctor may make over $100k, but that's after 4 years of medical school ($30k/year tuition), 1-2 years of residency (~$30k/year salary), and then an additional year or two for specializations. Doctors, nowadays, don't make nearly as much as they used to, especially with insurance costs, even after all of the costs of schooling.
While everyone might believe lawyers make a bundle, the average salary of a starting lawyer is probably much less than what people think. Add in the costs of schooling and the amount of lawyers out there in competition and the prospects of a new lawyer don't sound so hot.
The demand for engineers will always be great because the requirements for becoming one will always supercede the average person's abilities.
I have no idea how this relates to the post, but to make a correction to your reply..
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy may only increase, within a system, if work or energy is inputted.
Using your example, crystal growth may result in an increase in entropy but requires an input in energy or work. For most crystals, the energy input is provided by heat (temperature), and can be measured in a heat of crystallization.
The 'Free Energy' of crystallization is then Heat of Crystallization - Temperature * Entropy Change. The Free energy must be zero or negative in order for the crystallization to occur.
I've used both and I usually prefer Matlab over Mathematica, although I started using Matlab first so that could be a bias.
Here's my breakdown of the main differences (to me):
Matlab is great for numerical simulation of _anything_. It offers the ability to go very quickly from model developement to programming and implementation to analyzing the results. Matlab has a very good GUI creator and offers _very_ good ordinary and partial differential equation solvers. Matlab's programming language is very similiar to C/C++ and it has the ability to link with C/C++ programs.
Matlab's original use was for the quick calculation of Matrix algebra. (MATrix LAB) You can do a lot with matrice algebra and matrix operators. If your application uses matrices, matlab will speed up the processing and computation by quite a bit, which includes ODEs and PDEs.
Mathematica, I found, has a slightly higher learning curve because of the symbolic language syntax. It can analytically solve very complex problems and display the results graphically pretty easily.
Matlab seems to have more additions in the form of modules that come with the professional version. The source code for all matlab functions and modules are viewable, making modification of the modules/core functions possible.
Honestly, I haven't had as much experience with Mathematica, but I find that most research groups choose matlab for numerical solutions/simulations and mathematica for analytical solutions.
The best way to make an intelligent choice is to pick up/browse Wolfram's book on mathematica (he created it) and the latest Using Matlab manual. Just remember that Matlab also contains about two dozen extra toolboxes/modules that were created by research groups for specific purposes. There is a neural network toolbox, if I remember, although I don't know if it's applicable to Bayesian networks.
Finally, the amount of quantitative experimental data and the rate of its acquisition can support a a full strength thrust into the accurate simulation of cell processes, from first principles of reaction kinetics and structural dynamics.
If you like biology, but also enjoy mathematics, I suggest you explore this area of research. To gain understanding of the fundamentals, the best route through an undergraduate degree would be either chemical, mechanical, or electrical/computer engineering. Chemical, if you're interested in the metabolic networks inside cells, protein folding, protein interactions, or cell process regulation. Mechanical, if you're interested in mostly structural dynamics and the use of artificial or grown materials to be used inside a biological setting (biomaterials). Electrical/Computer, if you're more interested in the data mining/bioinformatics aspect of the research, where analyzing huge sets of data and applying revealing search algorithms is your piece of cake.
Notice how I left out biology, biochemistry, genetics, and microbiology, the three former maintstays of the biological sciences. If you want to get involved in simulations or anything remotely quantitative, engineering is the way to go. You will never learn the necessary mathematics as a straight biological science major. You have been warned!
Btw, I'm a chemical engineering graduate student who is currently heading in this very direction of research.
First phase: Stochastic simulations of cell processes!
Last phase: Complete simulation of structural dynamics, transcription/translation regulation, dna structure dynamics, signal transduction, cell-cell interactions, extra-cellular matrix formation and dynamics, tissue and organ functionality, developemental dynamics, and complete simulation of protein folding (on the fly, hehe).
You're completely missing the point that most American media is _Liberal_ because the journalists who are most interested in aggressive news reporting and research are those who have a beef against the around them. This also stems from the overwhelming fact that most American Universities are _Liberal_ and this where most journalists get their prime political influence.
Frankly, you're just full of it...trying to prove something which is not remotely true.
I heard Henry Fineberg speak at the University of Minnesota and he told that us that himself, the other authors, and the federal government reached a compromise where the report on agricultural bioterrorism will be published, but sections containing detailed examples of the means of bioterrorism will be left out. Those sections left out will be available to people who contact the Department of Agriculture and request the information. They, of course, must need the information and have a no-red flag background.
It's on the coast of New Jersey so it was pretty traveled at the time. I also found a great map of the movement of Washington's troops through my general area. I'm thinking of getting a professionally made print out of the full size maps. The resolution on all of them is simply GREAT. You can zoom in five times over with no pixellation.
If only launching things into orbits were that easy.;)
Friction, viscous stresses, and drag (all really the same thing), would significantly reduce the velocity of the high flying balls so that they would not go near as high.
My high school physics teacher, once we got to the section on Newton's laws, did this every year...for real:
First he would take out a large 'Bed of Nails', a body length piece of wood with nails evenly spaced out over the wood with the pointy-sides faced upwards, and lay down on it. Then he would take another, smaller piece of wood with nails driven into it and put it on his chest, with the pointy-sides facing his chest. Then another teacher would come into the room, bringing in a **CINDER BLOCK** and put it directly on top of the nail-laden wood on top of the physics teacher's chest. Then the assistant would pull out a _Sledgehammer_ and give the cinderblock a hit with full force.
The cinderblock breaks, the physics teacher survives, and his shirt is only slightly imprinted with a grid of pointy impressions. The force of the sledgehammer's impact is completely absorbed by the cinderblock and not the teacher's body. If the cinderblock did NOT break, the teacher would receive a hundred holes in his body.
He did this every year and never received a wound. Amazing, really.
The next step is to quantify the signals (chemicals) responsible for triggering the series of events that are called apoptosis and to elucidate just how transcription switches work. All 'switches' in the body are based off the concentration of various molecules, be they enzymes, cofactors, structural proteins, minerals (Na+, K+, Ca+), etc. The most interesting exploration would entail studying how a concentration of a signal yields a binary switch, that an event either be triggered or not.
The cell widely uses feedback loops, both positive and negative, to exponentially increase and decrease the amount of signal that is being produced at any one time. This signal may interact with other signal-producers to give a multi-signal, multi-enzyme response system that, through the non-linear dynamics of the system, yields a definitive high and low concentration of signal that determines whether an event is to be triggered or not.
To fully understand the mind-boggling complexity of a single cell, imagine a system composed of 5000 enzymes (or more) all interacting with 10,000 molecules (or more) with thousands of possible reactions. Now try to simulate this all at the same time, using non-linear kinetics, and predict the outcome of an initial state.
A lot of crazy things happen, including shifts in entire groups of genes (responsible for protein & sRNA synthesis) caused by very tiny disturbances. The non-linear dynamics of the cell are set up so perfectly that its self-regulation is simply amazing.
My Two Cents...not meant to be a full explanation of why apoptosis is so cool or where the research is going from there.
Salis
Re:broadcast maybe not gpl
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Open Source TV
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· Score: 1
I think what Cringeley meant is that if broadcast stations want a broadcast-quality version of the show, all they need to do is ask in order to get it. The rest of us will suffer with a much lower res quality video...because we all don't have fat pipes.:)
Try that the real plural of the word virus is virii and only idiots like you can't remember it. What's the plural of fish, NOT fishes. What's the plural of dwarf, NOT dwarfs.
There's a reason why there's a dictionary. Go look up the word virus in the Oxford English Dictionary. You'll be happily surprised that, somewhere in the world, people actually care about words.
And the people who refer to the plural of virus as viruses in medical journals are often foreign. I don't blame them for knowing the difference, but they're usually smart enough to look up such words in an english dictionary before proclaiming the rest of the english-speaking world idiots...like you have just done.
You moron, Virii is the proper plural of virus. You know, the biological virus came before the computer one. Yes, it's true. So buy a dictionary and spare us your inane babble.
Rofl, don't talk ethics about growing food vs. growing energy. Look at the ethics conundrum involved in buying Oil from Saudia Arabia. A majority of the 9-11 hijackers were from Saudia Arabia...do you think it's ethical to do business with people who support active terrorism against the U.S and its allies?
When we have to debate eating corn vs. using corn to power my car, I will beat my gun into a ploughshare. I will, really.
Hydrogen powered fuel cells will do more than operate cars. In fact, cars will probably be the last application of hydrogen fuel cells, partly because carrying a tank of compressed hydrogen around in your car is rather cumbersome. But, imagine all of the factories, manufacturers, refineries, power plants, etc that exist in the U.S? Refineries alone consume something like 5% of the US Oil consumption.
Now instead of buying that oil from Saudia Arabia, wouldn't it be so much better to grow it in the MidWest? The US already produces more corn than it can consume and so finding new ways to use it to supplement our energy consumption is TRULY amazing.
Once the effeciency of the involved catalysts increases and the large-scale process is designed you can say BYE BYE to our growing dependency on the MidEast Arab countries and their autocratic governments. The only resource they have is Oil. The only reason why their government is stable is Oil. The only reason why the United States tolerates their lack of civil rights is Oil.
Bye Bye Oil, Bye Bye Tyranny!
Say Hello to Mr. & Mrs. Smith of Indiana who farm 1500 acres of corn.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it funny. :P
Maybe it's because I use a beowulf cluster to simulate DNA 'computing'. (Not really computing..genetic regulatory networks.)
Which is faster? Guess!
Au' contraire!
Because of the non-linear nature of both protein folding and the dynamics of regulation and gene expression, tiny changes in the genome can result in massive changes in the organism!
So..the massive changes that are beneficial to reproduction stay and the ones that aren't don't. Evolution!
Of course, this doesn't say God doesn't exist. Evolution doesn't prove that God doesn't exist. In fact, if I was God, I would have created Evolution to do some of the work of creation for me. I think of God as a _really_ intelligent engineer.
Why instantly create and uncreate every particle of mass that exists in every moment of time? Just devise a set of laws for physics and have it do it for you. Make these laws of physics _just_ right so that biological organisms can arise. Make the biological organisms evolve themselves into a dizzying array of variety and complexity.
Or..when it all comes down to it...devise multiple universes with varying constants of physics so that at least _one_ of those universes features the necessary conditions for life to exist.
So God created the multiverse.
And there's no way to disprove that. (No way to prove it either, heh).
The taste buds on your tongue are simply sensors, like your eyes, ears, nose, and hands. In fact, taste buds represent the least of all complex sensors of the human body. A taste bud is simply a receptor, waiting to bind to a molecule in solution in your mouth. Once the receptor binds to the molecule, it generates a signal that says, "bitter!" or "sweet!". Combinations of types of "bitter" and "sweet" represent the taste of the food, excluding molecules in the gas phase which are picked up by the nose. I read there were 27 or so types of "bitter" and only two types of "sweet".
Even a human nose is more sensitive than human taste buds. There are over a hundred different types of receptors in the human nose. (And thousands in the dog nose.) Looking at one's ears or eyes, the complexity involved in generating a highly analog signal, over time, and having that signal correctly analyzed is incredible.
And..we are not yet even talking about cerebral functions like reason, imagination, moods, memory, or even behavioral instinct!
Yes, finding the genes that code for the receptors of the tongue is really great. But do not assume that the amazing complexity of the human body, even excluding the brain, will be fully understood for quite a bit of time.
Salis
Your illusion that all biological organisms are inherantly 'bio-compatible' are flawed.
To prove this, I will give you a rotten can of meat, full of the bacteria Clostridium botulism, and tell you to eat a tiny spoonful. What HARM can a tiny spoonful of such a naturally harmless biological organism do to you, another biological organism?
Biological organisms _never_ produce any sorts of toxins or poisons or inflict any physical harm upon other biological organisms. It wouldn't be "bio-compatible!".
Biological organisms produce the most effective and dangerous poisons in the world. For Plants, see ricin. For bacteria, see botulism. Snakes, Scorpions, Fish, and even certain types of algae.
A volcano spews out more carbon dioxide, sulphur, and carbon monoxide than a thousand years of operation of any single factory. The forest fires in Asia produced more carbon dioxide than a year's worth of operation of _all_ the factories in the U.S.
Before you go blaming technology for the radical destruction of the Earth, at least share blame where blame is due. The Earth itself has a cycle which has been running since before any civilization has risen. This includes massive ecological changes which have _nothing_ to do with technology. To separate the NATURAL ecological changes and the technological ones is a science that is incredibly complex and not well known to even the smartest of scientists studying it. Be careful where you place the blame. It may turn out that nature has made these changes over and over again and will continue to do so even with our puny attempts (purposeful or accidental) at technological change.
Salis
If you want to be specific about it, please refer to the Electron Carrier series and the enzyme ATP Synthase as the real reason why the body is so darned effecient. The Kreb's cycle does a wonderful job of oxidizing a multitude of energy sources and transferring the charged protons to carrier molecules (NADH, FADH), but the real supreme effeciency is in the intricate handover of those charged protons (or, from the converse view, the electrons) past a gauntlet of molecules specially designed (by evolution or elsewise) to deliver the exact amount of energy required to operate the proton pump nearby. The proton pump creates the proton gradient across the mitochondrial inner membrane, which then powers ATP Synthase to effectively produce ATP from ADP + Pi.
;) If you burned 261 g of gasoline, you would release enough energy to run a human body for a day. Of course, unless you use that energy to power an engine, it is converted to heat and becomes useless. The only difference between our bodies and a car engine is that our bodies utilize more of that energy in the form of useful work and engines release more of it as heat. And that is the only difference.
:P It really was a hint.
You're also confusing our emission of bodily heat with my equivalency of energy. All the energy that our body releases from food is not converted to heat...or we WOULD burn up like gasoline on fire. The energy is used, effeciently, as work...in the form of forming bonds, specifically the reaction ADP + Pi -> ATP, which is then used as the energetic intermediary for a host of other endothermic reactions.
So, yes, I have picked up a biochemistry book. But, I was not concerning myself with biochemistry, but with thermodynamics. And..I made a stupid error. It's actually 261 g of gasoline.
You'd have to go to nuclear reactions to get a better payout of effeciency. It would take ~1.0*10^-4 grams of hydrogen undergoing fusion in order to 'power' one human body for a day.
And, btw, not all fat has the same density nor the same energy of oxidation. Saturated fats provide more energy per volume because their lack of double bonds (unsaturated bonds) make them pack more tightly. Fats also have different lengths. A 3xC-12 fat has less energy than a 3xC-18, of course. The reaction pathway that the body uses to metabolize fat is extremely ingenious and relies on a recursive process of breaking the next two carbons off the fatty acid (3 fatty acids plus a glycerol make a fat molecule) and funneling them to the Krebs cycle. It's all done by multiple bindings to a complex of 3-4 proteins which rotates around the fatty acid.
Ok, I'm done being specific. I will now go back to being facetious...like I said I was being before.
Erp, tiny correction. That's 260 kg of gasoline per day equivalent.
:)
Makes you wonder how far your car might go if it oxidized food like we do.
Let me be facetious for once and spell out the environmental impact for a human body as this article seemingly does...
:)
The Human Body requires about 2 kg of water of consumption, 120 g of carbohydrates, ~60 g of protein, 60 g of fat, totalling approximately 2000-3000 Calories (that's 2-3*10^6 calories) a day. The equivalent of hydrocarbon (gasoline) is about 41.5 kg. Among the noxious and toxic (yes toxic) chemicals that it excretes are ammonia and urea.
The usual Human Body also requires at least 128 kg of water to safely and convienantly dilute the toxic execretions and transport them to a processing plant. It's called a toilet.
There are 6 billion Human Bodies functioning on Earth and they are reproducing faster than microchips are being produced.
The fallacy of this argument is that the process (a human body functioning or the production of a microchip) counts only the materials being inputted and the harmful substances being outputted. It also counts only the amount of water used in the process and not the amount of water leaving the process clean.
The silane and other harmful chemicals used never leave the factory harmful. Whatever is leftover and not used is converted to something harmless through a series of chemical reactions expressly designed to make the factory environmentally friendly. In addition, factories clean up all of their outputted chemicals, including water, so that they cause no enviromental damage.
This is especially true for microchip plants where the profit margin is so high and the cost of bad publicity is so devastating. The extra cost of building an ecofriendly factory is miniscule compared to the profits these companies enjoy.
Salis
I'm a graduate student in the University of Minnesota Chemical Engineering department and I've seen some of this work demonstrated and explained in a few presentations. There is a joint project between Dr. "Skip" Scriven and Dr. M. Flickinger that seeks to imprint cells within a fluid that may be printed onto paper or other materials using standard inkjet technology.
:)
Although I don't work on the project, the goal is to maintain the viability of the cells as they are mixed with the fluid and layered onto the paper. The paper may not be completely covered in cells (called confluency), but will have enough cells adhered to the paper so that numerous applications are possible:
Biosensors: Make the cells physically respond to outside environmental stimuli, which may include pathogens, proteins, minerals, etc. Put the paper (or other material) on something that you wish to perform as a biosensor. Think super fast and cheap blood testing or a really quick and effective way to test the air for anthrax. A LOT of possibilities here.
Reactive Materials: Have the cells absorb and metabolize certain harmful chemicals or excrete other useful chemicals. The paper (or other material) is easier to handle, distribute, and install than a solution of cells. Cells imprinted onto the paper would also be in a 'dormant' state, having a lower metabolism, utilizing less nutrients, and having a longer life-span than cells in solution. The cells would be exposed to a much larger surface area, making them more effective in uptaking chemicals from the environment.
While I don't work on this project, I am working on a project that seeks to design the gene 'circuitry' that controls the metabolism of the cell and the function it performs. The biosensor part, the specific reactive function part. I'm purposely not going into details.
Salis
As a recent graduate in Chemical Engineering, I am well aware of the average starting salaries of the engineering professions. Here's the real info:
Even in this economic slump, having only your B.S, straight out of undergraduate, here's the salary table.
Chemical Eng. $48k-52k/year
Electrical/Computer Eng. $46-50k/year
Mechanical Eng. $44k-48k/year
Civil Eng. $38k-44k/year
Biomedical Eng. is still too new to have accurate reported numbers.
Compare this to other average salaries for BAs in the liberal arts or B.Ss in the softer sciences (Psychology, Biology). You're lucky to break $30k coming out of undergraduate schooling with those types of degrees. Even the worst engineer can break $30k easily.
The average Doctor may make over $100k, but that's after 4 years of medical school ($30k/year tuition), 1-2 years of residency (~$30k/year salary), and then an additional year or two for specializations. Doctors, nowadays, don't make nearly as much as they used to, especially with insurance costs, even after all of the costs of schooling.
While everyone might believe lawyers make a bundle, the average salary of a starting lawyer is probably much less than what people think. Add in the costs of schooling and the amount of lawyers out there in competition and the prospects of a new lawyer don't sound so hot.
The demand for engineers will always be great because the requirements for becoming one will always supercede the average person's abilities.
I have no idea how this relates to the post, but to make a correction to your reply..
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy may only increase, within a system, if work or energy is inputted.
Using your example, crystal growth may result in an increase in entropy but requires an input in energy or work. For most crystals, the energy input is provided by heat (temperature), and can be measured in a heat of crystallization.
The 'Free Energy' of crystallization is then
Heat of Crystallization - Temperature * Entropy Change. The Free energy must be zero or negative in order for the crystallization to occur.
I've used both and I usually prefer Matlab over Mathematica, although I started using Matlab first so that could be a bias.
Here's my breakdown of the main differences (to me):
Matlab is great for numerical simulation of _anything_. It offers the ability to go very quickly from model developement to programming and implementation to analyzing the results. Matlab has a very good GUI creator and offers _very_ good ordinary and partial differential equation solvers. Matlab's programming language is very similiar to C/C++ and it has the ability to link with C/C++ programs.
Matlab's original use was for the quick calculation of Matrix algebra. (MATrix LAB) You can do a lot with matrice algebra and matrix operators. If your application uses matrices, matlab will speed up the processing and computation by quite a bit, which includes ODEs and PDEs.
Mathematica, I found, has a slightly higher learning curve because of the symbolic language syntax. It can analytically solve very complex problems and display the results graphically pretty easily.
Matlab seems to have more additions in the form of modules that come with the professional version. The source code for all matlab functions and modules are viewable, making modification of the modules/core functions possible.
Honestly, I haven't had as much experience with Mathematica, but I find that most research groups choose matlab for numerical solutions/simulations and mathematica for analytical solutions.
The best way to make an intelligent choice is to pick up/browse Wolfram's book on mathematica (he created it) and the latest Using Matlab manual. Just remember that Matlab also contains about two dozen extra toolboxes/modules that were created by research groups for specific purposes. There is a neural network toolbox, if I remember, although I don't know if it's applicable to Bayesian networks.
Salis
Finally, the amount of quantitative experimental data and the rate of its acquisition can support a a full strength thrust into the accurate simulation of cell processes, from first principles of reaction kinetics and structural dynamics.
:)
If you like biology, but also enjoy mathematics, I suggest you explore this area of research. To gain understanding of the fundamentals, the best route through an undergraduate degree would be either chemical, mechanical, or electrical/computer engineering. Chemical, if you're interested in the metabolic networks inside cells, protein folding, protein interactions, or cell process regulation. Mechanical, if you're interested in mostly structural dynamics and the use of artificial or grown materials to be used inside a biological setting (biomaterials). Electrical/Computer, if you're more interested in the data mining/bioinformatics aspect of the research, where analyzing huge sets of data and applying revealing search algorithms is your piece of cake.
Notice how I left out biology, biochemistry, genetics, and microbiology, the three former maintstays of the biological sciences. If you want to get involved in simulations or anything remotely quantitative, engineering is the way to go. You will never learn the necessary mathematics as a straight biological science major. You have been warned!
Btw, I'm a chemical engineering graduate student who is currently heading in this very direction of research.
First phase: Stochastic simulations of cell processes!
Last phase: Complete simulation of structural dynamics, transcription/translation regulation, dna structure dynamics, signal transduction, cell-cell interactions, extra-cellular matrix formation and dynamics, tissue and organ functionality, developemental dynamics, and complete simulation of protein folding (on the fly, hehe).
Time in between phases: 40? years.
Hsalis
Any intelligent questions, feel free to email!
You're completely missing the point that most American media is _Liberal_ because the journalists who are most interested in aggressive news reporting and research are those who have a beef against the around them. This also stems from the overwhelming fact that most American Universities are _Liberal_ and this where most journalists get their prime political influence.
Frankly, you're just full of it...trying to prove something which is not remotely true.
Salis
I heard Henry Fineberg speak at the University of Minnesota and he told that us that himself, the other authors, and the federal government reached a compromise where the report on agricultural bioterrorism will be published, but sections containing detailed examples of the means of bioterrorism will be left out. Those sections left out will be available to people who contact the Department of Agriculture and request the information. They, of course, must need the information and have a no-red flag background.
Salis
Yeah, and Europeans think 200 miles (or even kilometers!!!) is a long way to drive!!!
:P
So
Hsalis
Yay old towns and cities! ;)
It's on the coast of New Jersey so it was pretty traveled at the time. I also found a great map of the movement of Washington's troops through my general area. I'm thinking of getting a professionally made print out of the full size maps. The resolution on all of them is simply GREAT. You can zoom in five times over with no pixellation.
Hsalis
If only launching things into orbits were that easy. ;)
Friction, viscous stresses, and drag (all really the same thing), would significantly reduce the velocity of the high flying balls so that they would not go near as high.
Sorry!
Salis
My high school physics teacher, once we got to the section on Newton's laws, did this every year...for real:
First he would take out a large 'Bed of Nails', a body length piece of wood with nails evenly spaced out over the wood with the pointy-sides faced upwards, and lay down on it. Then he would take another, smaller piece of wood with nails driven into it and put it on his chest, with the pointy-sides facing his chest. Then another teacher would come into the room, bringing in a **CINDER BLOCK** and put it directly on top of the nail-laden wood on top of the physics teacher's chest. Then the assistant would pull out a _Sledgehammer_ and give the cinderblock a hit with full force.
The cinderblock breaks, the physics teacher survives, and his shirt is only slightly imprinted with a grid of pointy impressions. The force of the sledgehammer's impact is completely absorbed by the cinderblock and not the teacher's body. If the cinderblock did NOT break, the teacher would receive a hundred holes in his body.
He did this every year and never received a wound. Amazing, really.
Salis
Good post.
:)
I like to pronounce it a-pop-tosis because it really helps to imagine the cell going *pop*.
Yay mnemonics!
The next step is to quantify the signals (chemicals) responsible for triggering the series of events that are called apoptosis and to elucidate just how transcription switches work. All 'switches' in the body are based off the concentration of various molecules, be they enzymes, cofactors, structural proteins, minerals (Na+, K+, Ca+), etc. The most interesting exploration would entail studying how a concentration of a signal yields a binary switch, that an event either be triggered or not.
The cell widely uses feedback loops, both positive and negative, to exponentially increase and decrease the amount of signal that is being produced at any one time. This signal may interact with other signal-producers to give a multi-signal, multi-enzyme response system that, through the non-linear dynamics of the system, yields a definitive high and low concentration of signal that determines whether an event is to be triggered or not.
To fully understand the mind-boggling complexity of a single cell, imagine a system composed of 5000 enzymes (or more) all interacting with 10,000 molecules (or more) with thousands of possible reactions. Now try to simulate this all at the same time, using non-linear kinetics, and predict the outcome of an initial state.
A lot of crazy things happen, including shifts in entire groups of genes (responsible for protein & sRNA synthesis) caused by very tiny disturbances. The non-linear dynamics of the cell are set up so perfectly that its self-regulation is simply amazing.
My Two Cents...not meant to be a full explanation of why apoptosis is so cool or where the research is going from there.
Salis
I think what Cringeley meant is that if broadcast stations want a broadcast-quality version of the show, all they need to do is ask in order to get it. The rest of us will suffer with a much lower res quality video...because we all don't have fat pipes. :)
Salis
Try that the real plural of the word virus is virii and only idiots like you can't remember it. What's the plural of fish, NOT fishes. What's the plural of dwarf, NOT dwarfs.
There's a reason why there's a dictionary. Go look up the word virus in the Oxford English Dictionary. You'll be happily surprised that, somewhere in the world, people actually care about words.
And the people who refer to the plural of virus as viruses in medical journals are often foreign. I don't blame them for knowing the difference, but they're usually smart enough to look up such words in an english dictionary before proclaiming the rest of the english-speaking world idiots...like you have just done.
What are you, 12?
You moron, Virii is the proper plural of virus. You know, the biological virus came before the computer one. Yes, it's true. So buy a dictionary and spare us your inane babble.
Rofl, don't talk ethics about growing food vs. growing energy. Look at the ethics conundrum involved in buying Oil from Saudia Arabia. A majority of the 9-11 hijackers were from Saudia Arabia...do you think it's ethical to do business with people who support active terrorism against the U.S and its allies?
When we have to debate eating corn vs. using corn to power my car, I will beat my gun into a ploughshare. I will, really.
Salis
Hydrogen powered fuel cells will do more than operate cars. In fact, cars will probably be the last application of hydrogen fuel cells, partly because carrying a tank of compressed hydrogen around in your car is rather cumbersome. But, imagine all of the factories, manufacturers, refineries, power plants, etc that exist in the U.S? Refineries alone consume something like 5% of the US Oil consumption.
Now instead of buying that oil from Saudia Arabia, wouldn't it be so much better to grow it in the MidWest? The US already produces more corn than it can consume and so finding new ways to use it to supplement our energy consumption is TRULY amazing.
Once the effeciency of the involved catalysts increases and the large-scale process is designed you can say BYE BYE to our growing dependency on the MidEast Arab countries and their autocratic governments. The only resource they have is Oil. The only reason why their government is stable is Oil. The only reason why the United States tolerates their lack of civil rights is Oil.
Bye Bye Oil, Bye Bye Tyranny!
Say Hello to Mr. & Mrs. Smith of Indiana who farm 1500 acres of corn.
Which would you prefer to do business with?
Salis