Ok, well I'm going to try this again. I am tired of people making threads trying to discredit different aspects of science. I am also tired of seeing posts like "Science doesn't want to find the answers" or something similar to that. Wrong, you don't want to find the answers. Other people on this board have a scientific background, including me.

This thread is about clearing up everything you don't know or what to know about any science related topic.
Then post that here, but be specific. What do you think is wrong? What is your rationale for thinking this way?

If you feel this way, then tell us this and why?

Anything you have an issue with in science please post it here and I PROMISE it would be answered by me or another person who is more qualified.

But alas, this thread will probably end up on the third page with no questions

You can lead a creationist to science but you cant make them think.

How did the ear come to be? It's more complex than the eye and more delicate.

I've always wondered.

How can I prove the Poincaré conjecture?

Baby: is it really the "other", other white meat?

This forum does not (unfortunately) support proper mathematical notation, so walking you through it would be rather difficult. Here are two links to Perelman's proof via Ricci flow.
Paper 2
Paper 3

Hope that helps.

durn, forgot about Perelman... but I guess I'll find another one for you....

The ear I believe (correct me if I am wrong Cimber) is a more simple organ than the eye (at least in mammals). Anyway, there is actually a lot of transitional fossils from reptiles to mammals and much to do with how we got our ears. The lower jaw and its anatomy is actually closely related to the ear. Heres some transitional fossils.


Link

So, how about the Hodge Conjecture?

Awesome, I've bookmarked the site for reading tomorrow. I always thought it was more complicated due to the bones within the ear.

Thanks

Since there is already a bit of jest, I'll ask this.

Are the pyramidal cells in the cerbral cortex responsible for building those egyptian pyramids? Are the stellate cells that way for some other reason, such as...

Never mind. I'm obviously kidding.

That is impossible. It has yet to be proofed and is still a conjecture. Would that I could proof it, I would gladly come froward and claim the credit of proofing a millennium prize problem . Did you just want the answer to get the award?

What is zero point energy ??? and is it true that we can utilize it . cant remember where i read this but i did somewhere LOL
thanks

blessings SS79

Zero point energy refers to the lowest energy state of a system, specifically one that functions on quantum principles. Like the void of space. No we cannot utilize ZPE. It has become, like so many things in the quantum world, a piece of sci-fi culture. Lots of fake "scientific" devices exist that can magically extract the lowest energy from a system. Unfortunately, none work or have worked.

There is a whole branch involved in the study of ZPE in physics. However, they are not looking for pseudoscientific ways of 'using' this. Rather what causes this background energy to exist. Generally it was thought to be caused by vibrational interactions among atoms, however it exists even in void where the densities are extremely low. More likely, it is caused by interactions and fine vibrations in quantum particles.

On behalf of Dorothy Parker, I insist you give her credit for the basis of that remark:

speaker: "Use horticulture in a sentence."
DP: "You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think."

--Jaylemurph

nah, just have an irresistible irk to poke some fun at those who have "all the answers".

Nice thread, it will be nice actually discussing science rather than arguing about it for once. I've got three questions:

1. How are behavioural traits (i.e. instincts) inherited?
2. How do environmental factors trigger various morphs within a species, as in phenotypic plasticity?
3. How does the body go about rebuilding muscle if there's insufficient protein available?

The incubation temperature of the eggs of certain species of reptiles can determine what the sex of the individual will be, is that technically an example of phenotypic plasticity?

EDIT: Added third question.

I'm fed up. I have a very simple o-chem question that is not explicitly answered in any of the several texts I've referred to, nor can I find a satisfactory answer online.

Are alkyl groups simply alkane functional groups, or can they be alkenes and alkynes as well? Can a non-aromatic cyclic hydrocarbon (ie cyclohexane, cyclohexene) be considered an alkyl group? What about a long alkane chain with an aromatic side group (say 4-phenyl-heptane), would that be considered an alkyl group if it were bonded to another organic molecule?

Thanks,

Dane

Alkane, alkene and alkyne refers to bonds associated with a carbon. Alkane being a single bond (C-C), alkene being a double bond (C=C) and alkyne being a triple bond (which we can represent with a plus sign) (C+C).

An alkyl group refers to a carbon radical with 3 or less associated hydrogens. The number of hydrogens designates what prefix you use to describe the alkyl group.

Lets look at some examples.
Here we have 3-methyl-1-butene.

If I ask you if this has an alkyl functional group. The answer is yes. It does.
What is the alkyl group?
A methane located at butene's 3rd carbon.


Its actually really easy to get. We call alkanes full saturated carbon chains. Alkane simply refers to the whole group. In the alkanes you have methane, propane, butane, pentane, hexane, heptane, octane, nonane, decane.

If one of these are a radical (only 3 valence electrons being used, which means it is short 1 hydrogen) then we call it an alkyl functional group. So the names would methyl, propyl, butyl, pentyl, hexyl, heptyl, octyl, nonyl, decyl

A. What does Creationism have to do with Science?


B. Why do scientists feel the need to correct Creationist more than those members of the field of Evolution who make declarative statements about theory.



Thanks for starting this thread!!! What a great idea! Off to think of more questions.

Sorry I dont think I answered your question I do now see what you are asking.

For example,

The compound


We would call that 3-ethyl-2-methylhexane.

Now I think you are asking is what if the ethane here on carbon 3 was a double bond CH=CH2?

That would change the whole name convention. Because, if the ethane there contained a double bond it would change the priority in which we label the molecule. We would need to call carbon 1 the 2nd carbon of the ethane. Then we would have
3-isopropyl-1-hexene



If it is a cyclic compound you name it as a cyclic compound. For example


Here we would say the functional groups are a carboxyl group and a cyclic alkane.

The thread title


The anything does not refer to literally anything, rather to anything about science.

It says ANYTHING!!!! And it IS about Science?



and I thought you might like to answer the question that I've been asking you for nearly a month now?

But sorry, my bad. Only ones you like to answer. ooops

Ok here's one Why does Science fake the data sometimes and what does Peer review do to prevent this from happening?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/08/fak...te_science.html


http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/sc...-fake-data.html


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4608352.stm

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tkJNyQfAprY

Scientifically speaking:

How much wood could a Wood Chuck chuck if a Wood Chuck could chuck wood?

I will answer to the best of my ability, but I am going to hope Cimber comes to give you more detail if you need it.

1. Firstly lets define instinct. An instinct (too put it simply) is a behavior which is inherited and requires no learning for an organism to be capable of doing it. How developed an organisms brain is at birth, correlates to the amount of instinct (unlearned behaviors) it has. We know brain development is ultimately controlled by an organisms genes. So the genes responsible for brain development are likely responsible (at least partly) for unlearned behaviors. I am willing to bet that maternal RNA's also play a crucial role in instinct. We see mRNA's being responsible for things such as biological symmetry, determining ventral vs dorsal etc.

In the case of humans, we are born with little instincts. A human baby is born into the world at the mercy of it's caretakers. It takes some over a year to learn to walk. Most animal babies are up and walking around within days of their birth.

Also, I think many times "instinct" is misinterpreted. Say a social animal like a Chimp. You would think that a chimp has the behavioral instincts to interact in chimp society. This is not the case, this interaction is a learned behavior. There have been some garden experiments done to verify this (though experiments like this are not done much anymore). The basic premise being if you take a chimp from birth and remove it from any kind of social contact, then attempt to reintegrate it back into a chimp society it will not know how to interact.

Anyway, I would say instincts are inherited as genes that control the brain and also a given rise to by maternal RNA's or the environment of the womb (the latter not being inheritance). Though I am sure Cimber can elaborate more?


2. It depends on what we are talking about is how the trigger is accepted. I think this would be best illustrated with examples, but first lets define again.
We can say phenotypic plasticity is the ability of a single genotype to express different phenotypes depending on varying environmental conditions.

An example of this is sex changes. Some animals, when faced with low numbers of one sex, are able to change to the opposite sex.

Another great example is beetle horns. The length of a beetles horn is dependent upon nutritional availability during the larval stage. Particularly there is a sensitive period at the end of the larval stage. In this example, nutrition mediates developmental proteins which effect the length of the horn.
For a detailed explanation click HERE

So really it depends on what morph we are talking about for what species.

3. Simple, It doesn't. Proteins are constructed by amino acids. Some amino acids we can make, some we require. That is why we need to ingest protein, to provide us with amino acids we can not manufacture. If you experience a protein deficiency it is because your body lacks the relevant amino acids to manufacture and repair.


To the last question I believe that is an example of gene-environment interaction and not phenotypic plasticity (Though I could be wrong). Gene-environment interaction means the phenotype of all organisms is a result of the environment interacting with one’s genes. Neither produces a trait without the effect of the other. A great example of this is the coat color of Siamese cats. Siamese cats have a light colored body and darker colored paws, ears, tail, and face. A mutation in one of the genes that produces pigment in Siamese cats only works well at cool temperature. Since the skin over the extremities is cooler than the body, those areas are usually darker.

True,
Play nice. We have plenty of threads open in the Spirituality vs. Skepticism section where you are free to express whatever drivel you like. I believe the point of Cimber's thread was to clarify any questions people had about the science of these theories, not for you to ramble, derail and crybaby your way to having everyone lose interest.

Feel free to return to one of those threads and continue with your drivel.

Now now, you know better than that.

......

Edit: Dumb quote tags!

Camlax, thanks for addressing my question. I still don't feel satisfied though, maybe it would help to be more specific.

I am a chemistry tutor, and I've completed the 3-quarter organic chemistry series. Earlier today a student I was tutoring came across a problem referring to alkyl halides, and she asked for clarification on just what that includes.

I know bromononane, fluoroheptane, dichlormethane etc are alkyl halides...but what about something like 1-bromo-3-hexene? Bromine is not attached to an alkane, but an alkene. Is it still an alkyl halide, or is it something different, perhaps an "alkenyl halide"? How about bromocyclohexane, can that be referred to as an alkyl halide? If not, what should it be called, cyclo-alkyl halide?

I understand that bromobenzene would be an aryl halide as opposed to an alkyl halide. But is any non-aromatic hydrocarbon group considered an alkyl group or are there further classifications for groups with pi bonds and/or rings?

Thanks again,

Dane

Right got ya.
Alkyl halide really means an alkane with a halide attached. The halide is the important part and tells us about the functional group.
So for the example of 1-bromo-3-hexene, we would call it an alkenyl halide.

If we had 1-bromo-3-hexyne we would call it an alkynyl halide.

So something like
bromocyclohexane
Would be a cycloakyl haldie
A cyclohexene would be a cycloalkenyl halide and so on.

The most important part in this naming convention though, is halide. Not the actual class of the molecule. I took a full year of science majors organic chemistry (for biologists and chemists), rarely do you have to class a molecule according to the group it belongs. Normally you would class it by its function group.


-Cam

Edit:
You could also call bromobenzene a Benzyl halide. aryl refers to it being aromatic. For non-aromatic rings we designate them cycloX
Hope that helps

BTW, forgot to congratulate you for starting a really sensible thread.

Can someone please explain to me in layman's terms how is it that scientists will say they can Date something from 3 billion years ago?

I don't understand this very much.

For rocks that old they usually use Uranium-Lead radiometric dating. Uranium 238 slowly decays into Lead 206. U235 decays into Pb207. This happens through radioactive decay where the nucleus of the parent nucleotide (U in this case) gives up energy to become a more stable and in doing so becomes a new element called the daughter nucleotide (Pb in this case). Radioactive elements do this of their own accord which is what makes them useful in this case. The time it takes for half of a mass of a parent nucleotide to decay into its daughter nucleotide is call it's half-life and this is what's used for dating thing. The halflife of U238 is 4.46 billion years and the half-life of U235 is 704 million years. The fact that these two isotopes exist with each other is what makes U-Pb dating so accurate, but I'll get to that. Now the "clock", so to speak, starts as a rock cools after the last time it was heated to its blocking temperature. The blocking temperature for a material is the level that it diffuses it's daughter nucleotides, which essentially starts the clock over. Lead diffuses easily and cleanly so this is another reason this method is used so much.

The actual process uses a mass spectrometer which sends the ions of the sample into different sampling units and essentially counts the atoms of each element in the sample. By comparing the U to the Pb we can tell, given the standard rate of decay, how old the sample is (or really how long since the sample has reached it's blocking temp). And with U-Pb testing you have two scales to compare to each other in the same sample for an added level of calibration.

Camlax wrote some great information about radiometric dating in this thread.



Thanks for taking the time to answer, I appreciate it. I've got a lot of questions in mind so I'm not going to pursue everything for now or else we'll be here forever.

Now time for an evolutionary question: Visceral pain. I can understand why we would have evolved somatic senses for the surface of our body; you're walking and you step on a thorn, you feel the pain and quickly pull the thorn out. Now the injury is less likely to cause a problem, great. But having the sense of visceral pain is harder for me to explain, it's only in modern times with the advent of surgery and medicine that it appears to be advantageous. An animal or even a human living in the wilderness wouldn't benefit significantly from knowing that there's something wrong inside it's own body, it can't perform surgery in order to fix anything; so why do we have it? Why was it selected for? See what I'm getting at?

The only explanation I can provide is that the somatosensory system is perhaps integrated in to the entire peripheral nervous system by default; so the PNS would extend across the body in order to perform other functions and the somatic senses would follow , but that's just an uneducated guess. Any idea?

How would an animals survival chances not increase from knowing it has internal injuries? Sensations such as broken or fractured bones, torn muscles or an internal infection or bleeding incite the animal to rest and not move or not put pressure on a limb in order to lessen the pain, which promotes speedier healing. Also animals learn not to eat something that makes them sick.



In all actuality the density of nociceptors is very low in the trunk of the body as compared to the skin and periosteum around the bones but I can still see how internal pain would be beneficial. Just guesses by the way.

Capeo's post is good, there are more than just uranium techniques as well. If you read that whole first post in the radiometric thread I started (follow the link by Raptor) it explains more of them. You can post in that thread if you wish for more in depth explanations or less in depth ones. I would gladly provide it.

What is junk DNA and why do cells have junk DNA?
Whats the difference between siRNA and microRNA?
Which organs are vestigial and why?
Have we found the Higgs Boson yet? If not when?

Please no links, just simplified explanations from members if possible. Thanks

I expect that you know how RNAi works, right? These small strands of RNA combine to a complementary mRNA, and degrade it...in simplest terms. So siRNA are double-stranded lengths of RNA about 20-30bp long with a Hydroxyl 3' overhang. miRNA are single-stranded RNA about 20-24bp long.

siRNA is involved primarily in RNAi, while miRNA is involved in gene regulation. miRNA are encoded by genes that transcribe in non-coding RNA.


In humans or other animals?


Junk DNA, or non-coding DNA, is DNA in which no protiens are coded for, or protiens in which no use are coded for (transposons). Many researchers believe that junk DNA is an evolutionary artifact that may have once served an important purpose. basically, we don't know much about junk DNA.

Uhh yeah I'd just like to ask two questions ..

1) The Cambrian Explosion, when I first read about the person who wrote it used to the words 'happened over night'
I don't think that many different kind of species could just 'Appear' overnight .. ( And any other rational person wouldn't think that )
So whats the go with that ..?

2) The Big Bang -- I've also read that this wasn't an explosion .. But there is still radiation from it I hear?


Thats it ..

WAIT

Don't answer number one ..

I just found out it lasted more than 30 million years

Right for number 1, the Cambrian "explosion" could have lasted between 30-40 million years with conservative estimates while some paleontologist even say it was on the order of 50 million.


The big bang was not an explosion per say, Explosion is really a poor word choice used by popular culture. BB theory describes the expansion of the universe. The early universe was a hot plasma, a mixture of photons, electrons and a mix baryons, both exotic and not so exotic ones (There is a good list of baryons we have found to date HERE).

As the universe began to cool, Hydrogen was formed in the plasma from interactions between protons (a type of baryon) and electrons. In this original mixture the amount of hydrogen being formed was vast. Because of the formation of nuclei, photons became "decoupled" from the early atoms. These decoupled photons are what we see as "background" radiation, in the form of microwaves.

This was actually a prediction of BB theory, that the universe would be covered in this background radiation. And in 1965 we were able to observe it, and still do to this day.

Ok. I'll bite,

(BTW, I do believe evolution is the best theory)

I would like to know how exactly the first cells of life began, or the current theory.
(don't want to hear something "implausible" like "God waved his hand", or "it just happened")
I'd like to hear how cells became into being.

Thank you capeo for the reply and Raptor for adding to it.

Now, if you could explain, seems to me its based on the decay of the Uranium or whatnot. Don't you have to already know how old the earth is to know how fast the Uranium will decay?

See a large part of this stuff comes across as circular logic to me.

What is the objective indicator when it comes to dating?

I'll tag another question onto that: Do we even have enough evidence to call anyone of our ideas a theory, or is the best we have a hypothesis?

Campbell's Biology (a general biology text for science majors) is quite reserved about the origins of the cell, making it sound as if we really have no clue how it did happen, just incomplete ideas on how it could have happened.

I'm not an expert, but until one chimes in I can tell you that protobionts are believed to have been involved:

HI Cimber, good idea with the topic! I was going to take this question over to baut, but it's not cosmic-y enough:
Why does laser light look granular? I have also noticed that some of the more expensive LEDs disply the same granular thing.
Tanks Cimber

Well what I've heard is a lot about chemical reactions, however I was wondering if there was some solid proof on the subject.
I'm a scifi writer, so I'm collecting info, tho its well known that I'm open to theories, including theories its was initially created by something (be it God/Alien/Chance) I'm trying to figure out the chance part, or the most scientific aspect of life being made from...

No you don't. Firstly there are many more techniques than U-Pb or U-Th. Secondly you do not need to know the age of the earth to calculate the rate of decay. I covered some simply math of it (least I thought I did) in the radiometric thread.

Half-lives can be calculated both experimentally and observed in the lab as well. Once you know the half-life, that is a constant rate of decay for the isotope. Nothing, nothing, nothing, will change that. It holds true for all atoms of that particular isotope.

I am going to assume you are talking about simple diode lasers such as laser pointers? These lases are produced by laser diodes. Basically, electrons travel through a p-n junction of a semiconductor material. When electrons fill the "holes" in the overlay of the p-n regions of the semiconductor a photon is emitted. The specific energy of the photon is equal to the recombination energy and in this way we can get specific color lasers. The photons are emitted in random directions and are unpolarized light. The photons bounce around an optical cavity filled with mirrors. The mirrors help align the light waves in the same directions.

The Light waves are then emitted through a lens. Aligning the laser "beam" does not happen perfectly, there is some loss on diffraction in the optical cavity of the laser. Once the beam passes through the lens, the lens acts a a slit. The slit produces an interference pattern with the propagating wave fronts. Just like with Young's double slit experiment.

When we see the red light it appears "granny" because there are darker spots (areas where there are wave-particle destructive interference) mixed in with the bright spots.

Speaking of Young's double slit experiment here is a great little java applet (maybe its flash I can't remember).CLICK ME