Science

[Janny]

Originally posted by The Gaffer
Yes, that's right, a Mac.

Right now, MacOS 9.2, but I also use X and am forced into Windoze XP most of the time. Used to be a Unix admin, so have some rather basic but seemingly unrealistic expectations of what an OS should be able to do (how I long for the simplicity of "chmod").

Aw... I'm ever so slightly disappointed... most people say: 'Computer?... that's not... windows? No sorry, you've lost me'.

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by Janny
Incidentally, Freudianly, I meant to write all humans created equal... gee I'm such a sillyhead...

So you use linux then Gaffer?

Well, whaddaya get when yer a shortsighted git? Actually, I read it to be 'equal' as well. *snicker*

Now Gaffer, why have you not upgraded to OSX?

Ooers, we're ot. *drags thread back on topic* So... anyone done any studies on how many man hours are wasted on windoze 'updates'? (BoP fondly remembers attempting to 'fix' the parents stupid PC )

[The Gaffer]

LOL. Inflicting Bush on 'em would indeed constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

[Janny]

Yeah... I was gonna say that you all read it as equal, but I didn't really wanna sound like I knew anything about anything incase someone challanged me...

You weird people... fantasising about inflicting... oh well never mind...

On topic-ish... what do windows updates actually do?

[The Gaffer]

Some of them are rubbish but some close the security doors after the horse has bolted. Best to use the update manager utility thingie if you want to choose which ones you install. Frankly, who can be arsed with that?

Back-of-the-fag-packet calculations tell me that I waste at least two weeks a year because of M$ incompetence and unusability. That means that the opportunity cost to my company is over ten grand (30k if you use our charge-our rate instead of costs) per year, or around 3% of turnover.

[Blackheart]

Windows works fine.

If you know the secret codes and signed the contract in blood, and read the dread books of Skelos so that you can safely remove all of the inane crap that they put in to bedazzle idiot consumers...

I really wish they'd put out a stripped down version, instead of forcing me to create my own custom installs everytime.


As for prisoner abuse, I thought Rumsfield was in charge of that. It's silly to blame Bush, because that would mean that you think he has enough on the ball to actually figure out what's really going on...

Not that incompetance is a virtue, mind you. But every time I see that man, I get the impression of a child who's been playing soldier, and is frustrated because the other kids won't lie down when he yells bang...

[ayarella]

Whoa! I leave the thread for a few weeks and the topics have ranged in all areas non-scientific. Thank you for the interesting opinions though. Today I am beginning an upper level physics course so I am excited to be exposed to this area of science! Is anyone else taking or teaching any science courses over the summer? If so what? I would love to share the experiences misery, pain, and occasional excitement that summer classes have to offer

[Janny]

I have GCSE science exams the week after next. Does that qualify as pain?

[ayarella]

It definitely does, welcome! Keep me updated on the results ...

[Insidious Rex]

Interesting…

Tiny fossils reveal key step in animal evolution


19:00 03 June 04

NewScientist.com news service

Tiny fossils less than a fifth of a millimetre across may reveal a critical step in the early evolution of animals. They show that internal complexity came before large size, suggesting paleontologists may have missed the earliest animals because they were microscopic.

Biologists believe multicelled animals divided into two groups when some evolved a new body plan. The first animals were simple radially symmetric blobs like sponges.

The big evolutionary step was bilateral symmetry, which creatures from nematodes and worms to starfish and humans have during some stage of their life cycle. Analysis of genetic divergence indicated the split came about 600 million years ago, but fossil evidence had been sorely lacking.


The mouth of the creature occurs at the point of the oval body shape (Image: Science)
The oldest macroscopic fossils that are clearly bilateral are of a mollusc-like creature called Kimberella that lived about 555 million years ago. To look earlier, David Bottjer, of the University of Southern California, decided to study older Chinese deposits which had previously yielded the oldest known multicelled embryos.


Snowball Earth


The Chinese deposits date from 580 to 600 million years ago, and come from just 10 metres above the last glacial deposits from the final "Snowball Earth" episode when glaciers covered the planet. The phosphorite rock that formed in a shallow sea preserved the microscopic embryos very well, although it contains no large fossils.

Bottjer, with Jun-Yuan Chen of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China and others, sliced thousands of thin slices from the rock and examined them under a microscope.

As well as many microscopic sponges, they found 10 tiny oval fossils of animals with a multilayered body including a mouth, gut and anus - the hallmarks of bilateral animals.

The researchers named the animal Vernanimalcula, for "small spring animal" after the long winter of Snowball Earth. It probably resembled a minute legless horseshoe crab or trilobite and moved through the water by flexing its body. The mouth formed a point on the oval, with pits on either side that Bottjer says may have been sense organs.

"These animals had the ability to make complex bodies, but not large ones," Bottjer says. He speculates the rapid diversification of bilateral animals in the Cambrian explosion, which started 543 million years ago, may have come when some environmental restriction was removed, such as low oxygen levels.


Mineral deposits


Guy Narbonne of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, is impressed by the fossils.

"What I find most intriguing is how closely it matches the most recent predictions of molecular and developmental biology," he told New Scientist. "And what a far cry from the predictions of biology even a few years ago," which did not envisage the first bilateral animals being microscopic, soft-bodied sea-floor dwellers.

However, some remain sceptical. Stefan Bengston of the Swedish Museum of Natural History believes the internal structures are in fact minerals deposited after death inside simpler microfossils.

Bottjer wants to look further back. "Older stuff should help to understand better the big questions," he told New Scientist. "There's surely more to be found."

Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1099213)

[Insidious Rex]

This ones from sminty. Interesting isn’t it that such basic gene variation can cause such dramatic change in such a “complex� behavior. One that so many humans hold sacrosanct and think is completely “free will� driven and cognitive.

Scientists find gene cure for cheating lover voles

LONDON (Reuters) - What would you give for a simple injection that would stop your lover from cheating?

Well, at least it works for meadow voles.

A single gene inserted into the brain can change promiscuous male rodents into faithful, monogamous partners, scientists said Wednesday.

It may not be as easy to rein in human philanderers but researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University and Atlanta's Center for Behavioral Neuroscience said their rodent results could help to explain the neurobiology of romantic love.

"Our study ... provides evidence in a comparatively simple animal model, that changes in the activity of a single gene profoundly can change a fundamental social behavior of animals within a species," said Larry Young a researcher at the university.

He and his colleagues, who reported their research in the science journal Nature, used a harmless virus to transfer the gene for a key hormone involved in sexual behavior from monogamous prairie voles into the brains of their randy relatives, the meadow voles.

After the gene transfer, the previously promiscuous meadow voles had less of a roving eye and showed a distinct preference for their current partners.

Earlier research had shown that prairie voles, which form life-long partnerships, had higher levels of receptors for the hormone vasopressin in an area of the brain called the ventral pallidum, than meadow voles.

Introducing the gene increased the natural levels of the receptor and enhanced the meadow voles' ability to form pair bonds.

Previous studies have also suggested that the receptors may play a role in disorders such as autism, and that brain pathways involved in romantic relationships also play a part in drug addiction.

"It is intriguing," said Young, "to consider that individual differences in vasopressin receptors in humans might play a role in how differently people form relationships."
06/16/04 14:50

[Rían]

by IRex
This ones from sminty. Interesting isn’t it that such basic gene variation can cause such dramatic change in such a “complex� behavior. One that so many humans hold sacrosanct and think is completely “free will� driven and cognitive.

This little article only shows that :

Voles don't have Souls. (hey, that rhymes!)


Seriously, I don't think human love/sexual drives are completely "free will" driven and cognitive (did you have me in mind when you wrote that? Hmm? ). The key word is "driven". Clearly genetic makeup and chemical input influences the desires of humans. However, that doesn't negate free will - it just makes a free-will decision harder or easier to carry out. After all, one can decide to stay monogamous and yet behave in a promiscuous manner.

And another indicator of the HUGE difference between humans and animals - you won't see a vole pondering over the ramifications of his sexual life, while you'll see a human do so. And if a human who WANTS to remain monogamous is DRIVEN by genetic/chemical influences to be promiscuous, he/she will do so, yet will regret the behavior and wish they could have abided by their free-will decision. Again, a big difference to what we can see in animals.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
This little article only shows that :

Voles don't have Souls.

Well I dont think the scientists in this study had any intention in determining anything about souls so Id dare say thats irrelevant to the sciene involved here. But what it does show you is that single genes CAN create HUGE differences in complex behavior patterns. And thats something thats all too often discounted or panned as ridiculous by many people. So its good to see that what some of us have been saying is indeed quite factual. And sure it wasnt done with humans (how unethical would that be) but it certainly makes you think about the effect of genetic make up on human behavior doesnt it? massive ramifications there...

[Rían]

Originally posted by Insidious Rex
Well I dont think the scientists in this study had any intention in determining anything about souls so Id dare say thats irrelevant to the sciene involved here.

(I know, I was just jokin'!)

But what it does show you is that single genes CAN create HUGE differences in complex behavior patterns. And thats something thats all too often discounted or panned as ridiculous by many people. So its good to see that what some of us have been saying is indeed quite factual. [/B]

Oh, I certainly agree that genetics can have a large influence on behavior, as I said up above. However, it seems to me that you seem to entirely discount free will; you seem to think that behavior is entirely driven by genetics; is this right?

[Rían]

*muses: Do Voles / Have Souls? / Who Knows? / *

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
Oh, I certainly agree that genetics can have a large influence on behavior, as I said up above. However, it seems to me that you seem to entirely discount free will; you seem to think that behavior is entirely driven by genetics; is this right?

I think we can never escape genetics no matter how much we ignore it. And that what you call free will is confined firmly within the borders of genetics.

[Rían]

So there is NO such thing as "free will" (as it is commonly defined), IYO?

[Lizra]

We think it's free! I imagine "true" free will to be very rare, very difficult, if not impossible. Everybody has their own unique set of genetic (physical) predispositions, brain set ups and brain chemical leanings that keep your emotional dials set on certain levels, physical attributes that systematically favor certain behaviors over others, plus there's all the "nurture" stuff which colors your opinion of good/bad. You can pick or choose what to do, certainly...but the reasons why you pick are (deep down) influenced strongly by chemical and physical *dials* built into your body as it develops. IMO, the vast/infinite # of possible mixes that makes us all unigue is fascinating. Thank goodness our genetic codes have been modified somewhat by natural selection to favor (more or less ) "good" behavior. I think! I hope!

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
So there is NO such thing as "free will" (as it is commonly defined), IYO?

well there is this notion that free will is the equivilant of human conciousness and the opposite of free will is mindlessness and thats a misconception. free will exists of course. but it is confined. and in the end something of an illusion because the full range of what we call "free will" (and the likelihood of any given action) is predetermined by the limits of our genetic make. And after that it is further dampened by and/or reinforced by our environment. So the idea that free will is this panaceac 360 degree completely possible range of choices for everything we do and that is totally unaffected by anything genetic or physiological at all is completely bogus. In every single conscious action we take there is more going on then just careful consideration. we humor ourselves by thinking we are always in control.

[Rían]

So there's no reason to praise my children when they act unselfishly towards their siblings? There was no choice involved?