A science nerd thread.

[Arete]

No, no asumptions, just saying it's there, can one of you guys/girls explain it for me?

What exactly is it you want explained?

 

[FR Drew]

for bermshot

I believe that he's wanting to know why the "centre seam" for want of a better word, runs from his perineum over his scrotum and up his penis.

If this is the case, it is because at a certain point in development, a foetus begins to develop either male or female genitals. The line in question is where, if you had been born female, the two halves of your genitals would have separated to either side and a vagina would have formed.

It's nothing to do with evolution/creation.

 

[wombat]

I believe that he's wanting to know why the "centre seam" for want of a better word, runs from his perineum over his scrotum and up his penis.

If this is the case, it is because at a certain point in development, a foetus begins to develop either male or female genitals. The line in question is where, if you had been born female, the two halves of your genitals would have separated to either side and a vagina would have formed.

It's nothing to do with evolution/creation.

Pfft, don't lie to me heathen! It's totally the seam where they close up the body after stuffing it full of sunshine!


Ok, I know I shouldn't have derailed the thread, but really, 'dick-seam'? How could I not?

 

[martinpb]

And Martin, my point was also kind of directed at the number of odours that are around these days. I'm sure that we secrete some sort of chemical signal, but what receptors can pick this up over, say, the overpowering scent of many deodorants and colognes and what effect does this actually have on a practical sense?

I can't say for certain (and i'm even too lazy to google/WoS it ;-) but...
as the example with the sychronised menstration shows, our senses are highly attunded to the biochemical goings on of other humans. I'd guess that we evolved to react to highly specific stymuli and ignore all of the others. I know an immunologist who followed a bloke around the city because she said he smelled right for her...

I'd also be interested to know (a genuine question brought up by Mattdev's post) if we really are exposed to more different chemicals at a human-sense detectable levels (even sub-concious level) in cities than we would be out on the savanah (or even just up in the cool/temperate rain forests in the hills around Melbourne).

 

[FR Drew]

Pfft, don't lie to me heathen! It's totally the seam where they close up the body after stuffing it full of sunshine!

Alternatively, it could just be where god sewed Adam back shut after taking the rib out. The very first keyhole surgery!

 

[RYDA]

Global warming... yay or nay?

 

[Pebble]

Global warming... yay or nay?

can of worms that one!

I'm sitting on the fence, I say climate is changing but not convinced how much it's due to human activities.

 

[martinpb]

can of worms that one!

I'm sitting on the fence, I say climate is changing but not convinced how much it's due to human activities.

I'll go with the hardcore conservative stand point espoused by M.H. Thatcher:

"[the] uncertainties about climate change are not all in one direction. The IPCC report is very honest about the margins of error. Climate change may be less than predicted. But equally it may occur more quickly than the present computer models suggest. Should this happen it would be doubly disastrous were we to shirk the challenge now. I see the adoption of these policies as a sort of premium on insurance against fire, flood or other disaster. It may be cheaper or more cost-effective to take action now than to wait and find we have to pay much more later"
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108237

 

[Arete]

Scientifically speaking - if you consider peer reviewed publication to represent broad scientific opinon, the evidence for a correlation anthropogenic carbon release and global warming is overwhelmingly positive. Irrefutably, overwhelmingly positive to the tune of 3500 empirical studies from institutions all over the world funded by all sorts of bodies that reject a null hypothesis of no correlation to less than 10 that don't. HOWEVER, the the ramifications, effective mitigation and timing are very difficult to accurately predict and model.

A timely press release by AAAS: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6011/1623.full

Most insights come as a surprise: a burst of understanding, an elegant solution to a problem. This decade's main insight in climate science was a different breed. For 40 years, researchers had wrestled with three big questions: Is the world warming? If so, are humans behind the warming? And are natural processes likely to rein it in? In the past few years, climate scientists finally agreed on solid answers: yes, yes, and no—just as they had suspected.

There were surprises, and they were bad ones. The effects of rising greenhouse gases on oceans and polar ice were swifter than models had predicted. Yet, faced with the obvious remedy—cutting carbon emissions—the world balked. In the United States, even as the science grew stronger, a political backlash forced climate scientists to defend their credibility and motives.

The sudden reversal blindsided global-warming researchers. They had been issuing assessments of the state of greenhouse-warming science under the aegis of one organization or another since 1979; in 1990, the new United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took the lead. IPCC's second assessment, released in 1995, asserted mildly that “the balance of evidence suggests” that humans were influencing global climate. But by 2007, IPCC had reached a solid scientific consensus: Warming was “unequivocal,” it was “very likely” due mostly to human beings, and natural processes were “very unlikely” to blunt its strength. The breadth and depth of the IPCC process seemed to drown out the small but well-publicized chorus of climate contrarians.

Developments around the globe amplified the message. In the 1980s and '90s, most researchers thought the projected impacts of rising greenhouse gases wouldn't hit hard until well into the 21st century. But by the mid-2000s, summertime Arctic sea ice was obviously disappearing, ice shelves were falling apart, and Greenland and West Antarctic glaciers were rushing to the sea. Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans just as scientists were debating how the greenhouse could intensify and multiply hurricanes. Even ocean acidification was an observational fact by decade's end. In April 2006, a cover story in Time magazine treated global warming as a given and warned starkly: “Be Worried. Be Very Worried.”

But powerful nations were acting anything but. As a presidential candidate in 2000, George W. Bush had pledged to regulate CO2; as president, he swiftly reneged and refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, an emissions-limiting treaty that 187 countries had ratified 3 years earlier. There followed years of efforts by the Bush Administration to alter a handful of climate science reports to downplay the possible effects of climate change, while lawmakers in Washington and negotiators overseas repeatedly failed to pass comprehensive U.S. or international regulations. Europe had some initial success with its cap-and-trade system, but even the World Wildlife Fund says there is “no indication that the scheme is as yet influencing longer-term investment decisions.”

A new Administration in Washington brought a change in tone but not in course. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama pledged to cut U.S. emissions 80% by 2050 relative to 1990; after the election, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a law that did basically that. But the bill died in the Senate this year, after President Obama failed to secure a binding treaty on emissions at key negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009.

That November, the release of e-mail correspondence among scientists, taken from the servers of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, had given climate science a jolt of bad publicity. Five panels of experts later absolved the scientists of scientific malfeasance. Even so, the event may have profoundly damaged public views of climate science, with political repercussions yet to unfold. Last month's U.S. congressional elections may hint at things to come: Most Republicans who won election to the House and nearly all Republican Senate candidates have questioned the fundamental science behind climate change, and a few of them denounce the entire field as a conspiracy. “The war on climate science and scientists that's going on now makes the Bush Administration look moderate,” says Rick Piltz, a White House climate official from 1995 to 2005 who now heads the watchdog group Climate Science Watch in Washington, D.C.

There are hints of movement. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is girding for battle to cut emissions of big power plants, and China, Indonesia, Brazil, and India have recently made their first-ever commitments to tackle emissions. But “climate hawks” have lost time and momentum, and many experts now think that adapting to a warming planet, not mitigating emissions, will dominate policy discussions in the decade ahead.

 

[thecat]

To quote some polly

To do nothing about climate change is like continuing to smoke. My uncle smoked until he was 90 and didn't have any ill effects but the overwhelming evidence suggested if I didn't do something my health would suffer. That wasn't 100% ensured but the ramifications were enough that I quit just in case.

Adjusting for climate change just in case will cost us a bit of money.
Not adjusting may well ruin our society

 

[Cypher]

Happy solstice everyone!

Also have a great luna eclipse tonight. Looks like Sydney skies will be clear too

 

[jackmac91]

What time does this happen?!

 

[Cypher]

What time does this happen?!

Just as the moon rises this evening. It will already be partially eclipsed as it rises (looking a dusty red).

Edit....

Whoops That really didn't tell you anything. The moon can rise at anytime

Tonight, just on sunset, when it gets dark the moon will rise. It will be partially eclipsed then.

 

[Binaural]

There are many of your equally outlined methods debunked.

Darwinism works for a while but it doesn't explain the line from your dot and up and over through your ball line. That's when I become questionable.

(A) It's called evolution, not Darwinism. Only idiot creationists call it that, and you're not one of those, are you? No such debunking exists.
(B) You are indeed questionable.

From what I understand that has more to do with organ size and availability. Pointless transplanting a chimps heart if it's only half the size and harvesting organs from rare apes like an orangutan would not have the good news story feel

It also has to do with the proteins on the surface of the organs, at least in pigs, who at this point seem to be the best candidates for xenotransplantation (not cute, plentiful, organs right size). Last I saw anthing on this topic, scientists were discussing genetic modifications to avoid these.

Alright science/engineering nerds, here's a simple materials science question for you.

Say that I have a square plate of steel with a hole drilled through the metal. When you heat said plate of steel, it would expand. This means that in theory the external perimeter of the plate would get bigger. Does this then mean that the hole in the centre would then expand (giving it a larger radius) OR go in towards its centre, because the expansion of the metal is forcing it inward?

This is a well-known old chestnut they ask pretty much every engineering student at some time or the other. The hole definitely gets bigger!

 

[jackmac91]

Just as the moon rises this evening. It will already be partially eclipsed as it rises (looking a dusty red).

Edit....

Whoops That really didn't tell you anything. The moon can rise at anytime

Tonight, just on sunset, when it gets dark the moon will rise. It will be partially eclipsed then.

Cool thanks man.. to bad I'm in melbourne where summer seems to have abandoned us this year.

 

[3viltoast3r]

I believe about 7:30 it's meant to eclipse - Heard this on the news..

 

[Cypher]

Bum. I forgot about it and only caught the last little bit. It was rather cool though.

 

[Arete]

I’m currently working on a project about species delimitation and it reminded me of a heated conversation I had with a fellow scientist –

Him: “So it’s a new species?”
Me: “Yes”
Him: “So how do you tell them apart?”
Me: “You can’t. They look identical.”
Him: “So they can’t hybridize?”
Me: “No, they interbreed.”
Him: “Then it’s not a new species. Fucking gel jockeys (derogatory term for lab based biologist)…”

I was a bit taken aback by a relatively educated person’s utter lack of understanding of the general lineage concept of species… in that all a species needs to be a species is the long term maintenance of an independent evolutionary history and the “operational secondary characters” like reproductive isolation, physical differences, genetic differentiation, different ecology etc and so are simply things which can assist us in discovering and recognizing species.

Therefore it’s interesting rather than problematic that there can be two groups of organisms with identical distributions that freely interbreed and look identical, but have maintained different evolutionary trajectories. I’m always concerned/amused by the heated reaction I get from amateur enthusiasts and on-the-ground type biologists like park rangers/environmental consultants upon the suggestion that the two organisms can be considered species – with no possible way for a field guide to provide a method of distinguishing them in the wild.

It the possibility of indistinguishable species really that challenging for the general community (or at least the section of the community who might give a toss about how many species of lizard/frog/fish there are in a given area)?

 

[Rider_of_Fast]

Capitalism is the human form of survival of the fittest...

 

[Pebble]

Pretty cool (or hot)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0_nuvPKIi8