Interesting Stuff Thread

sonicthebadger*

Galvasean wrote: »

The page actually has a big disclaimer in the info section about this.

And Dades, it was set up to rub in the noses of a similar Creationist page. Evolutionary penis waving if you will...

Penis waving has come to this? It used to be such a social passtime, now it's relegated to the facebox. Just like phone sex.

Burgo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc

Genghiz Cohen

Things what show life can exist on other planets

robindch

Researchers appear to confirm that pre-verbal infants can recognize and understand ethical behavior:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?pagewanted=all

Galvasean

Colossal Squid not so tough after all...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100512-science-animals-colossal-squid-sea-monster/

Dades

Galvasean wrote: »

Colossal Squid not so tough after all...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100512-science-animals-colossal-squid-sea-monster/

I've met a few sluggish, gelatinous drifters in my time.

token56

Support for theory of evolution?

http://www.physorg.com/news192882557.html

iUseVi

This is an interesting slide show on human biases, not sure I agree with all of them, but then that's probably a bias. :P

http://www.scribd.com/documents/30548590/Cognitive-Biases-A-Visual-Study-Guide-by-the-Royal-Society-of-Account-Planning

robindch

iUseVi wrote: »

This is an interesting slide show on human biases

The full PDF can be downloaded from here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=R3CQOP92

robindch

darjeeling wrote: »

This might be of interest, given all the related threads here: a two parter Beeb R4 radio prog on scientific attempts to unpick the basis of religious belief, and what happens brainwise when people are having religious experiences.

Part one is/was available here and Part 2 is here.

Alternatively, MP3's of the two programs can be downloaded from here (part 1) and here (part 2).

The first program is the better of the two and features Scott Atran, a first-class theorizer and reserarcher into the phenomenon of religion who wrote In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, one of the top three books on, broadly, the topic of the evolution of religion and religious ideas by means of natural selection.

eoin5

The headline grabber is 'Artificial Life' but I think cell reprogramming would be more apt. Still a great achievement: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10132762.stm

Dr Venter told BBC News: "We've now been able to take our synthetic chromosome and transplant it into a recipient cell - a different organism.

"As soon as this new software goes into the cell, the cell reads [it] and converts into the species specified in that genetic code."

The new bacteria replicated over a billion times, producing copies that contained and were controlled by the constructed, synthetic DNA.

"This is the first time any synthetic DNA has been in complete control of a cell," said Dr Venter.

It goes on to list all sorts of possibilities such as fuel and climate solutions.

sink

eoin5 wrote: »

The headline grabber is 'Artificial Life' but I think cell reprogramming would be more apt. Still a great achievement: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10132762.stm


It goes on to list all sorts of possibilities such as fuel and climate solutions.

One way to look at it is this is the first life which does not share a common ancestor with all other known life. Our lineage along with all other known life until this point, stretches back 3.7 billion years. This lifeforms lineage is separate and stretches back a few days! That is pretty profound.

darjeeling

sink wrote: »

One way to look at it is this is the first life which does not share a common ancestor with all other known life. Our lineage along with all other known life until this point, stretches back 3.7 billion years. This lifeforms lineage is separate and stretches back a few days! That is pretty profound.

It's an interesting case. On the one hand, this new bacterium didn't form from a previous bacterium dividing. On the other, its genome is virtually identical* to that of the natural bacterium on which it was based. So does it or doesn't it share common ancestry with all the rest of us mere natural mortals? Call in the philosophers!

* Allowing a few gene deletions, plus insertions of encoded scientists' names, quotes etc.

eoin5

sink wrote: »

One way to look at it is this is the first life which does not share a common ancestor with all other known life. Our lineage along with all other known life until this point, stretches back 3.7 billion years. This lifeforms lineage is separate and stretches back a few days! That is pretty profound.

Yea, after thinking about it a bit life is DNA and the donor cell part of it just facilitates this new process really. Definitely profound.

iUseVi

Yeah and there was no point in reinventing the cell "casing" if there's a perfectly good one ready to use. And they have created synthetic organelles before.

darjeeling

It's been suggested that life could be seeded on other planets by bacteria travelling through space. It's also been suggested that this might be done deliberately by intelligent civilisations. And it's been suggested that this might have happened here.

Earlier this year I remember hearing someone commenting on SETI (might have been Martin Rees - I forget), and saying that if you wanted to send a signal to other planets, you'd be best off forgetting about radio beacons and instead encoding your message and packaging it in a tiny, stable, faithfully self-replicating form that might some day be decoded.

We could soon be able to do this ourselves, so it's one of those stories that's moving fast from science fiction to fact.

And as for life on our own planet, maybe we 'need'... to start 'figuring ... out' how to ... detect 'ID' after all :pac::D:eek:;):P:pac:
[apologies to non-frequenters of the BC&P thread]

Flamed Diving

'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10132762.stm


We are all god/s now.

Galvasean

Flamed Diving wrote: »

We are all god/s now.

Dibs on God of sex!

Galvasean

Looks like shaking your head in disapproval is no longer an exclusively human trait:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100520-bonobos-say-no-vin-video/

Damn apes, making us feel less special!

Dades

Galvasean wrote: »

Damn apes, making us feel less special!

You can choose your friends but not your family.

Galvasean

Male antelopes decieve females in order to have sex with them...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100521-science-animals-antelope-topi-males-trick-females/

So much like us...

Coriolanus

Careful who reads that Gal, might get slapped with a sexual harassment suit. :P

Galvasean

Nevore wrote: »

Careful who reads that Gal, might get slapped with a sexual harassment suit. :P

LOL

liamw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrNIuFrso8I

kiffer

Man... Doctors in the '50s could get away with all kinds of crazy stuff...

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
In the late 1950s, three men who identified as the Son of God were forced to live together in a mental hospital. What happened?

http://www.slate.com/id/2255105/

Mark Hamill

kiffer wrote: »

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
In the late 1950s, three men who identified as the Son of God were forced to live together in a mental hospital. What happened?

Sounds like a description of a sitcom

Genghiz Cohen

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Sounds like a description of a sitcom

One's messy, one's clean, one's the son of God!

strobe

kiffer wrote: »

Man... Doctors in the '50s could get away with all kinds of crazy stuff...

No kidding, you should check out the research they did into how people develop phobias. I'll try to dig up some clips or something, I saw a documentary about it before. One experiment involved three sets of parents of three children bringing them in once a week from the time they were babies till they were three, to see if the doctors could induce a lasting phobia into them.

They basically let the kids play with a bunny rabbit (the phobia they were trying to induce being a fear of rabbits) and at random times one of the doctors would suddenly pull the rabbit away from them while another doctor wearing a halloween monster mask would charge into the room and scream into the kids faces. When the kids eventually stopped being as frightened as they were initially of the screaming monster guy they would find a new way to terrify them during bunny rabbit playtime. Some of the most disturbing footage I have ever seen.

Turtwig

strobe wrote: »

No kidding, you should check out the research they did into how people develop phobias. I'll try to dig up some clips or something, I saw a documentary about it before. One experiment involved three sets of parents of three children bringing them in once a week from the time they were babies till they were three, to see if the doctors could induce a lasting phobia into them.

They basically let the kids play with a bunny rabbit (the phobia they were trying to induce being a fear of rabbits) and at random times one of the doctors would suddenly pull the rabbit away from them while another doctor wearing a halloween monster mask would charge into the room and scream into the kids faces. When the kids eventually stopped being as frightened as they were initially of the screaming monster guy they would find a new way to terrify them during bunny rabbit playtime. Some of the most disturbing footage I have ever seen.

Pfft,

From the Article about testing spinal anaesthesia wrote:

The procedure was simple enough. Hildebrandt had to make a lumbar puncture by plunging a large needle through the membranes that protect the spinal cord into the fluid-filled space beneath. Then he had to fit a syringe on the needle and inject a solution of cocaine. But preparations for the experiment had been less than meticulous.

Hildebrandt made the lumbar puncture. Then, with his finger over the hub of the needle to prevent fluid from leaking out, he took up the syringe of cocaine – only to find it was the wrong fit. As he fumbled with the needles, Bier's cerebrospinal fluid began to squirt out. Horrified, Hildebrandt stopped and plugged the wound. This was when the pair should have called it a day. Instead, Hildebrandt offered to take Bier's place.

At 7.38 pm, after checking the needles more carefully, Bier began. The cocaine worked fast. "After 7 minutes: Needle pricks in the thigh were felt as pressure; tickling of the soles of the feet was hardly felt." Bier jabbed Hildebrandt in the thigh with a needle. Nothing. He tried harder, stabbing the thigh with the surgical equivalent of a stiletto. Still no response. Then, 13 minutes into the experiment, Bier stubbed out a cigar on Hildebrandt's leg.

Bier now wanted to know how far the insensitivity extended, and invented a simple test. "Pulling out pubic hairs was felt in the form of elevation of a skinfold; pulling of chest hair above the nipples caused vivid pain." So now he knew. It was more than 20 minutes since Hildebrandt had stopped feeling pain. How much more could he take? Bier increased his efforts. He smashed a heavy iron hammer into Hildebrandt's shin bone and then, when that failed to have any effect, gave his testicles a sharp tug. In a final burst of enthusiasm, Bier stabbed the thigh right to the bone, squashed hard on a testicle and, for good measure, rained blows on Hildebrandt's shin with his knuckles.

After 45 minutes, the effect of the cocaine began to wear off. The two surgeons, one missing a significant amount of cerebrospinal fluid, the other battered, burnt and suffering from serious stab wounds, went out for dinner. "We drank wine and smoked several cigars," wrote Bier.

Medical science at it's very best.:)

sponsoredwalk

kiffer wrote: »

Man... Doctors in the '50s could get away with all kinds of crazy stuff...

You think doctors were bad, try psychiatrists whose methodology was so insane it attracted some friends.