The best I have come up with in my two or three minutes of pondering is the idea that life has become cheap - essentially that DNA is now like a commodity at a supermarket.
Let's return to the original post because things appear to have gone a bit in a new direction here:
Have you've ever thought it is the failing of teachers, not of the students or tv producers? If these shows are wrong, prove it to them. Show the students how to questions these things. You could talk about media motivation, about what other scientists points of view are. You can talk about past things which were thought that were wrong. There are a lot of things that a teacher can do. Don't blame the student for being a weak teacher.
And my reply was that I emplot the methods of reductio, that is, the basis for all scientific and mathmematically proofs. Personally, if a humanoid face on Mars were really formed by some sentient beings, I believe that would be a fabulous scientific discovery. So the *method* (rhetorical - not sophist) is not a personal one, but the methodology of science itself, that is you assume the opposite, and are forced to *prove* your conclusions. To strengthen the argument, you assume the *absurd opposite* (argumentum ad absurdum), so that one can see all the possibilities that might lie between. Thus, my original reply was that I used this method frequently, ie, that I used the *backbone* of the scientific method in a science class. It doesn't matter if one is presenting evidence about apparently *fantastic* evidence or mundane things, the same method has to hold water or the proof will be found lacking.
On the matter of teacher motivation correlated with student success, there are considerable data supporting this claim. I agree that self-motivated students can obtain knowledge from other sources, but this is not the same as a successful teaching/learning experience in a classroom.
The fact that so many teachers leave the profession within 5 years to join the industrial workforce is because they are poorly prepared for the fact that much of the classroom experience has little to do with passing along knowledge, or motivating students, but in fact is about trying to deal with massive beaurocracies in which they have extremely little impact.
The reductio concept could be used with the latter point which seems to have arisen in your posts - that the quality of the teacher it would seem has little impact on whether learning has occurred - I personally don't care much about final grades, except that they accurately reflect the degree to which the student is able to articulate within the context of this discipline their evidence and conclusions (I am teaching science, not creative fiction.)
If we were to assume the *extreme* - that is, that teachers are wholly unnecessary in the learning process, then essentially, one has removed the contextual basis for schools completely. While an interesting concept, the term *learning* then changes its semantic frame of reference. The closest parallel in American culture is the home schooling experience, and numerous studies have been done that *unless one or both parents are certified teachers*, most home schoolers are behind when they enter college in areas of science and mathematics. There are some well publicized exceptions.
It would be an interesting experiment to eliminate schools altogether, and see where that leads, but my own opinion is that I would rather see highly motivated teachers there instead. The sad fact is that there are too many that are not, and that is the personal failing of those individuals - That they have been retained to teach is evidence that the education system itself is flawed.
But the methods of science are not, and a good science teacher employs these. I don't know how much more I can respond to this. I learn new things from my students every day.
The *device* of arguing that something is false, is the basis of a proof.
The only two points I get is that teenagers are argumentive (but then so are adults)
So you're right, there was no need for making a dichotomy. That was a joke.
The fact that a teacher finds their job fulfilling is the basis for a student's success, and directly addresses your parent post - that is the failure of teachers to make their subjects interesting that is the real problem. I personally read the parent post really to be less about teachers, but the fact that many kids found science boring in general compared with pseudo-science. Somehow teachers are responsible for that in your original post. What I was saying is I try to give kids the time to express all these concepts, but in the end, my job is to teach them science, which means I am presenting them evidence which runs contrary to a belief system with which some of them may have entered the classroom, and most adolescents have a tough time when their belief systems are challenged. Yes, adults do too, but in a forum - whether a classroom - or elsewhere - where blame is not placed on someone else (such as a teacher, or a parent, etc.) for their world view it usually takes a different tone.
As a teacher of 15 year olds - I would surmise either:
a. You are 15 years old.
b. You've forgotten what it's like to be 15 years old.
It is the nature of many teenagers to simply debate against whatever a teacher might present in class. I wouldn't have it any other way - It makes my job a great challenge and tremendous fun.
Just to make things interesting - I make us of use argumentum ad absurdum rhetorical devices frequently - it's the backbone of science and mathematics - if you can't show the possible flaws of your own points - or even more - let others point them out - then that's a pretty shitty lesson in science education.
I would say the biggest problem is there is just not enough time in the average 40 minute class to properly follow the tangents where every kid wants to take them. That would be really great. Usually 2 or 3 students tend to want to dominate in a discussion in a class of 20 - 30 kids. Every day I have to keep checking in for misconceptions, while simultaneously trying to keep them all engaged. I have degrees in science, history, and science education, and have worked most of my life in industry. I managed a job that had over a hundred employees in a dangerous environment and was responsible for about 10^9 USD worth of data transfer every week - and I worked on fishing boats where every moment seemed like a fight for your life, and teaching is hands down more engaging, more tedious, and more rewarding than anything I've done. Hope it's making a difference to some student or another.
I'm on about 15 listservs with hundreds of subscribers - mostly for science and math education - Your strong personal preferences noted, but without having a threading feature - or equivalent - sorting through these would be very tedious.
And if found guilty - their service will likewise protect their rights as their sentences are carried out - even if the guilty ones have sworn those same oaths themselves in the past - even if the guilty ones may be on the list you provided.
Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. Taguba's report listed some of the wrongdoing:
Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time.
Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;
Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
Writing 'I am a Rapest' (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;
Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;
A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;
Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
...
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
Pouring cold water on naked detainees;
Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
Threatening male detainees with rape;
Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;
Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
From what has been posted so far, it looks like the information was already available, and the request was pretty aimless in intent - to not investigate could have potential security problems. But like one poster said - students at some universities frequently use tunnels for all manner of reasons - weren't cables strung on campus by individuals this way before the present state of affairs? The problem is those days are gone, and many places simply will never allow that degree of freedom - for access to places - or information - anymore.
My brother is an ex-pat - works all over the world - and a few years before 9/11, on a visit home he said *people in this country have no idea how loose our security is viewed worldwide. Something big will happen and the attitudes in the country will change forever*. That was about the time of the Oklahoma City bombings, when - if you were watching the first reports and speculations - everyone believed it *had* to an international organization. Palestine got the first blame - then nobody really woke up to the idea that people in our country could be every bit as extremist as is *others* are portayed in a xenophobic cultural lens.
I am generally very suspicious of all these government investigations - they make me uneasy in too many ways because the Patriot Act has been too loosely applied in ways that have already been well reported - and in fact have become good sport - as they should be in an open and free society.
Had the request had some intent - like the student was an architecture major - technically - not that he had to be to make the request, I think this would have just faded away very quickly.
I wonder though if a large group of individuals - say if a group as large as that as subscribe to/. could actually agree on something to file massive FOI requests for a single item - what type of response that would bring. I'm sure it would be a total cog in the system. The point is that when an individual who is fanatically devoted to some cause - they may have lived for years building a *clean* life just to act on that one moment - and in fact plans on not living through the time of carrying it out - if they can slip something though - they may have just what they need.
Almost all apple seeds will bear crab apples if planted, so a tree that bears edible fruit in the wild is truly unique. Orchard trees are grafts, usually they have a crab root (or another suitable apple tree) and the fruiting portion is whatever type is desired. Very few apple trees self pollinate so crab apples(which stay in bloom longer), or other varieties that are in bloom at the same time as the variety planted are needed nearby. All that's needed to finish the mix is a healthy hive of bees.
Mensching: "I am not well versed in all of the licenses used by the Shared Source Initiative. As I described above, I went to the Shared Source Initiative team with the goals of my project and we agreed that the CPL was an appropriate license for the Windows Installer XML toolset."
I am a teacher, and joining this discussion late. My issue is not with file sharing; I think whatever legal things are going to finally resolve about that, will apply to situations outside the school setting. I don't think anyone should be using school servers for those purposes at any time
My insight is more that there is a movement going on throughout the schools to gradually erode access to the web in schools across the board. More and more sites are blocked, even those to respected journals because they meet a classification of *magazine* online. I think in the not so distant future administrators will be scared off the web entirely, opting instead for expensive commercial closed *intranet* packages that guarantee test results and meet national standards. I realize this is somewhat outside the present discussion, but if I were an administrator, I would be looking hard at how a raid by the FBI would look on my career record. Nearly every software company even remotely connected to education now has a department devoted to development of a product such as that mentioned. And schools will pay for the *privilege* of denying themselves the access - and the headaches.
I can't imagine the FBI raiding schools to check how many copies were being run on the copy machines of copyrighted materials. Yet in terms of sheer volume, the number of books that would have to be purchased to stop this practice should give one pause. The total number of pages would be in the billions I am sure. It is basically the same violation, but why isn't it prosecuted? Why the emphasis on the web? I am just that cynical to see that there are literally thousands of new products waiting on the wings. Just one educator's observations.
It depends on the plants and concentrations - You're right with almost all land plants - some aquatic species don't fare so well though -
"However, differing sensitivities to cyanide can result in changes to plant community structure, with cyanide exposures leaving a plant community dominated by less sensitive species."
in which case you could probably make money quicker by selling the land
Good point - and if you just happened to be selling to one large corporation that was looking to buy out the whole village - recover these valuable nanoparticles - and then turn it over to another division - or corporation - for agri-business...
The process really doesn't make a lot of sense to speak about in the scale of a tiny plot - Most people just *live with* the threat - even if they have been told about it - rather than move.
Bioremediation has been around for quite a while - it is a good idea in many situations.
There are a couple of things that really come out in the article is this - "First, he treats the contaminated soil with chemicals that break the gold down into water-soluble particles. Then he introduces the crops"
Gold and mercury in the soil is a pretty nasty amalgam - and gold being otherwise so *noble* - so I'm wondering how he's mobilizing it - The article says the plants had purple leaves - "The plants he harvested had purple leaves because they contained gold nanoparticles" - again not totally breaking news - but he must be using something that can break the gold down *that* small (when there is a lot of gold in mercury, you can literally strain the gold out essentially with a filter like a cheesecloth - that is the technique that is being used by most miners of this sort in the first place. Then they literally *cook* the amalgam covered pice of gold in a frying pan (though it could be done with nitric acid - or other things to remove the mercury from the surface) In the process, a lot of mercury ends up spilled - and the residue from the *cook* is dense and fuming - and ends up not far away (like in the soil, the streams, or the miner's brain before too long) - Gold too small to picked up in the straining - In fact any microscale gold has been the subject of pretty intense interest because it is much more abundant than the occasional nugget -
Cyanide leaching is a very common process in areas where there is a lot of sunlight, since the cyanide can break down in holding pools - I highly doubt he would be using any cyanide - even if it could be shown to break down - it would most likely do very poorly on the plant side. Some halide - Bromides? Let's hope not. AuCl ion? - That's the most likely - or probably the most hoped for. There really aren't that many things that can dissolve gold - But there are actually quite a few ways to do what is being suggested with plants - here's one using geraniums.
Slashdot Mirror
we have at least enough oil for 50-100 more years, unless everyone in China & India start to drive.
China's economy is growing exponentially at a rate of about 7% a year - That's a doubling time of about ten years.
It's now estimated that China will require about 80% of the world's oil exports by 2015 if this trend is continued.
Okay - I'm really trying to see the point here.
The best I have come up with in my two or three minutes of pondering is the idea that life has become cheap - essentially that DNA is now like a commodity at a supermarket.
If that's not it - I'm stumped.
China's economy is growing exponentially at a rate of about 7% a year - That's a doubling time of about ten years.
It's now estimated that China will require about 80% of the world's oil exports by 2015 if this trend is continued.
He could claim a dingo made off with his business plan.
*also* referring to the article - that was a joint UC group too... So 2 different research groups within UC -
Let's return to the original post because things appear to have gone a bit in a new direction here:
Have you've ever thought it is the failing of teachers, not of the students or tv producers? If these shows are wrong, prove it to them. Show the students how to questions these things. You could talk about media motivation, about what other scientists points of view are. You can talk about past things which were thought that were wrong. There are a lot of things that a teacher can do. Don't blame the student for being a weak teacher.
And my reply was that I emplot the methods of reductio, that is, the basis for all scientific and mathmematically proofs. Personally, if a humanoid face on Mars were really formed by some sentient beings, I believe that would be a fabulous scientific discovery. So the *method* (rhetorical - not sophist) is not a personal one, but the methodology of science itself, that is you assume the opposite, and are forced to *prove* your conclusions. To strengthen the argument, you assume the *absurd opposite* (argumentum ad absurdum), so that one can see all the possibilities that might lie between. Thus, my original reply was that I used this method frequently, ie, that I used the *backbone* of the scientific method in a science class. It doesn't matter if one is presenting evidence about apparently *fantastic* evidence or mundane things, the same method has to hold water or the proof will be found lacking.
On the matter of teacher motivation correlated with student success, there are considerable data supporting this claim. I agree that self-motivated students can obtain knowledge from other sources, but this is not the same as a successful teaching/learning experience in a classroom.
The fact that so many teachers leave the profession within 5 years to join the industrial workforce is because they are poorly prepared for the fact that much of the classroom experience has little to do with passing along knowledge, or motivating students, but in fact is about trying to deal with massive beaurocracies in which they have extremely little impact.
The reductio concept could be used with the latter point which seems to have arisen in your posts - that the quality of the teacher it would seem has little impact on whether learning has occurred - I personally don't care much about final grades, except that they accurately reflect the degree to which the student is able to articulate within the context of this discipline their evidence and conclusions (I am teaching science, not creative fiction.)
If we were to assume the *extreme* - that is, that teachers are wholly unnecessary in the learning process, then essentially, one has removed the contextual basis for schools completely. While an interesting concept, the term *learning* then changes its semantic frame of reference. The closest parallel in American culture is the home schooling experience, and numerous studies have been done that *unless one or both parents are certified teachers*, most home schoolers are behind when they enter college in areas of science and mathematics. There are some well publicized exceptions.
It would be an interesting experiment to eliminate schools altogether, and see where that leads, but my own opinion is that I would rather see highly motivated teachers there instead. The sad fact is that there are too many that are not, and that is the personal failing of those individuals - That they have been retained to teach is evidence that the education system itself is flawed.
But the methods of science are not, and a good science teacher employs these. I don't know how much more I can respond to this. I learn new things from my students every day.
I share your abhorence with this act - done by terrorists. They should be identified and brought to justice.
The situation is a total mess.
The *device* of arguing that something is false, is the basis of a proof.
The only two points I get is that teenagers are argumentive (but then so are adults)
So you're right, there was no need for making a dichotomy. That was a joke.
The fact that a teacher finds their job fulfilling is the basis for a student's success, and directly addresses your parent post - that is the failure of teachers to make their subjects interesting that is the real problem.
I personally read the parent post really to be less about teachers, but the fact that many kids found science boring in general compared with pseudo-science. Somehow teachers are responsible for that in your original post.
What I was saying is I try to give kids the time to express all these concepts, but in the end, my job is to teach them science, which means I am presenting them evidence which runs contrary to a belief system with which some of them may have entered the classroom, and most adolescents have a tough time when their belief systems are challenged.
Yes, adults do too, but in a forum - whether a classroom - or elsewhere - where blame is not placed on someone else (such as a teacher, or a parent, etc.) for their world view it usually takes a different tone.
As a teacher of 15 year olds - I would surmise either:
a. You are 15 years old.
b. You've forgotten what it's like to be 15 years old.
It is the nature of many teenagers to simply debate against whatever a teacher might present in class. I wouldn't have it any other way - It makes my job a great challenge and tremendous fun.
Just to make things interesting - I make us of use argumentum ad absurdum rhetorical devices frequently - it's the backbone of science and mathematics - if you can't show the possible flaws of your own points - or even more - let others point them out - then that's a pretty shitty lesson in science education.
I would say the biggest problem is there is just not enough time in the average 40 minute class to properly follow the tangents where every kid wants to take them. That would be really great. Usually 2 or 3 students tend to want to dominate in a discussion in a class of 20 - 30 kids. Every day I have to keep checking in for misconceptions, while simultaneously trying to keep them all engaged. I have degrees in science, history, and science education, and have worked most of my life in industry. I managed a job that had over a hundred employees in a dangerous environment and was responsible for about 10^9 USD worth of data transfer every week - and I worked on fishing boats where every moment seemed like a fight for your life, and teaching is hands down more engaging, more tedious, and more rewarding than anything I've done. Hope it's making a difference to some student or another.
I'm on about 15 listservs with hundreds of subscribers - mostly for science and math education - Your strong personal preferences noted, but without having a threading feature - or equivalent - sorting through these would be very tedious.
...of all the e-mail accounts I have.
Maybe google can finally find them.
This has been released very recently - it's based on PbSe crystals instead - at Los Alamos but also through University of California.
The stuff I see in these photos is about the same as some people pay good money for. I've seen FAR worse on some porn websites.
Besides the obvious stupidity of the post - There is a financial cost to what is happening here too...
"White House breakdown of $87 bln anti-terror money
"- In Iraq, about $51 billion will support ongoing military operations"
And if found guilty - their service will likewise protect their rights as their sentences are carried out - even if the guilty ones have sworn those same oaths themselves in the past - even if the guilty ones may be on the list you provided.
...
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. Taguba's report listed some of the wrongdoing:
Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time.
Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;
Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
Writing 'I am a Rapest' (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;
Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;
A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;
Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
Pouring cold water on naked detainees;
Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
Threatening male detainees with rape;
Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;
Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
From what has been posted so far, it looks like the information was already available, and the request was pretty aimless in intent - to not investigate could have potential security problems. But like one poster said - students at some universities frequently use tunnels for all manner of reasons - weren't cables strung on campus by individuals this way before the present state of affairs? The problem is those days are gone, and many places simply will never allow that degree of freedom - for access to places - or information - anymore.
/. could actually agree on something to file massive FOI requests for a single item - what type of response that would bring. I'm sure it would be a total cog in the system. The point is that when an individual who is fanatically devoted to some cause - they may have lived for years building a *clean* life just to act on that one moment - and in fact plans on not living through the time of carrying it out - if they can slip something though - they may have just what they need.
My brother is an ex-pat - works all over the world - and a few years before 9/11, on a visit home he said *people in this country have no idea how loose our security is viewed worldwide. Something big will happen and the attitudes in the country will change forever*. That was about the time of the Oklahoma City bombings, when - if you were watching the first reports and speculations - everyone believed it *had* to an international organization. Palestine got the first blame - then nobody really woke up to the idea that people in our country could be every bit as extremist as is *others* are portayed in a xenophobic cultural lens.
I am generally very suspicious of all these government investigations - they make me uneasy in too many ways because the Patriot Act has been too loosely applied in ways that have already been well reported - and in fact have become good sport - as they should be in an open and free society.
Had the request had some intent - like the student was an architecture major - technically - not that he had to be to make the request, I think this would have just faded away very quickly.
I wonder though if a large group of individuals - say if a group as large as that as subscribe to
Like this...
Almost all apple seeds will bear crab apples if planted, so a tree that bears edible fruit in the wild is truly unique. Orchard trees are grafts, usually they have a crab root (or another suitable apple tree) and the fruiting portion is whatever type is desired. Very few apple trees self pollinate so crab apples(which stay in bloom longer), or other varieties that are in bloom at the same time as the variety planted are needed nearby. All that's needed to finish the mix is a healthy hive of bees.
(4179) Toutatis 2453278.07 2004 Sept.29.57 0.01036 8 oppositions, 1988-2000 MPO 6175 (4179) Toutatis
From this link.
The parent page has many links of interest.
and the FCC is still in on the act - then will the user licenses have *decency clauses* written into them?
Mensching: "I am not well versed in all of the licenses used by the Shared Source Initiative. As I described above, I went to the Shared Source Initiative team with the goals of my project and we agreed that the CPL was an appropriate license for the Windows Installer XML toolset."
Other types of shared source license programs at Microsoft, and further links in the Shared Source Initiative.
Not to fear - They'll find the supplier with the $600/oz cornstarch
I am a teacher, and joining this discussion late. My issue is not with file sharing; I think whatever legal things are going to finally resolve about that, will apply to situations outside the school setting. I don't think anyone should be using school servers for those purposes at any time
My insight is more that there is a movement going on throughout the schools to gradually erode access to the web in schools across the board. More and more sites are blocked, even those to respected journals because they meet a classification of *magazine* online. I think in the not so distant future administrators will be scared off the web entirely, opting instead for expensive commercial closed *intranet* packages that guarantee test results and meet national standards. I realize this is somewhat outside the present discussion, but if I were an administrator, I would be looking hard at how a raid by the FBI would look on my career record. Nearly every software company even remotely connected to education now has a department devoted to development of a product such as that mentioned. And schools will pay for the *privilege* of denying themselves the access - and the headaches.
I can't imagine the FBI raiding schools to check how many copies were being run on the copy machines of copyrighted materials. Yet in terms of sheer volume, the number of books that would have to be purchased to stop this practice should give one pause. The total number of pages would be in the billions I am sure. It is basically the same violation, but why isn't it prosecuted? Why the emphasis on the web? I am just that cynical to see that there are literally thousands of new products waiting on the wings. Just one educator's observations.
It depends on the plants and concentrations - You're right with almost all land plants - some aquatic species don't fare so well though -
"However, differing sensitivities to cyanide can result in changes to plant community structure, with cyanide exposures leaving a plant community dominated by less sensitive species."
Will there be interference?
in which case you could probably make money quicker by selling the land
Good point - and if you just happened to be selling to one large corporation that was looking to buy out the whole village - recover these valuable nanoparticles - and then turn it over to another division - or corporation - for agri-business...
The process really doesn't make a lot of sense to speak about in the scale of a tiny plot - Most people just *live with* the threat - even if they have been told about it - rather than move.
Bioremediation has been around for quite a while - it is a good idea in many situations.
There are a couple of things that really come out in the article is this - "First, he treats the contaminated soil with chemicals that break the gold down into water-soluble particles. Then he introduces the crops"
Gold and mercury in the soil is a pretty nasty amalgam - and gold being otherwise so *noble* - so I'm wondering how he's mobilizing it -
The article says the plants had purple leaves - "The plants he harvested had purple leaves because they contained gold nanoparticles" - again not totally breaking news - but he must be using something that can break the gold down *that* small (when there is a lot of gold in mercury, you can literally strain the gold out essentially with a filter like a cheesecloth - that is the technique that is being used by most miners of this sort in the first place.
Then they literally *cook* the amalgam covered pice of gold in a frying pan (though it could be done with nitric acid - or other things to remove the mercury from the surface)
In the process, a lot of mercury ends up spilled - and the residue from the *cook* is dense and fuming - and ends up not far away (like in the soil, the streams, or the miner's brain before too long) - Gold too small to picked up in the straining - In fact any microscale gold has been the subject of pretty intense interest because it is much more abundant than the occasional nugget -
Cyanide leaching is a very common process in areas where there is a lot of sunlight, since the cyanide can break down in holding pools - I highly doubt he would be using any cyanide - even if it could be shown to break down - it would most likely do very poorly on the plant side. Some halide - Bromides? Let's hope not. AuCl ion? - That's the most likely - or probably the most hoped for. There really aren't that many things that can dissolve gold - But there are actually quite a few ways to do what is being suggested with plants - here's one using geraniums.