When you think about it, 99.999999999% or so of the creatures that lived
on this planet died without long-term progeny, if you consider "long
term" to mean having living descendants today.  All living birds are
apparently descended from some very small population of therapod
dinosaurs, perhaps a few or few dozen individuals, and almost certainly
a single group in one area.  It's not as though multiple breeds of
dinosaurs made contributions here, so that bone structures from *this*
group could combine with the lungs of *that* group or whatever.

Similarly, eight million years ago there were no chimpanzees, no
bonobos, and no humans.  There may have been 80, or 8,000, different
species of more or less chimp-like creatures, small apes, that were not
lucky enough to have left fossils, and many others whose fossils remain
hidden so far.  None of them remain alive today.

Except:  Some small population of creatures -- with a chromosome count
of 24 pairs instead of our 23 -- gave rise to all living chimps &
humans.  (I call this parent line "chemps"; you can think of them as the
parents of "chimps" and "chumps". ];-)

At some point, a genetic accident involving a fused chromosome pair --
now a single chromosome -- created an individual almost completely
genetically isolated (and probably physically "different" and "ugly" and
"not like us") -- and chance, or perhaps common rejection by the
population, put this individual with another that was capable of
breeding, and maybe had the same deformities.

We may all, every human alive, be descendants of one such pair.  And
there are nine major transpositions and a bunch of smaller ones in all
human DNA; this pattern had to have been established while the
population was small indeed (or at least, all others left no progeny
alive today).  There were almost certainly populations that had only one
of the nine major DNA reversals.   And another, their descendants, that
had a second as well.  And so on.  They're all dead.

Such genetic accidents are not uncommon enough; a variety of "diseases"
and "syndromes" result today from similar chromosomal misfires.  It
seems to me that we are all the result of what likely would have been
considered a "birth defect".

We tend to think of evolution as large populations changing, and new
genes spreading across groups.  But, often enough, I'll bet it happens
at very individual, very personal levels.

===|================/ D. Keith Howington, CEO (CEO@...)

This is interesting. From this weeks New Scientist. Seems that
pornographic or violent images cause a short but marked degradation
in the brains ability to register what the eyes are seeing. Leaving
all the obvious pornographic jokes aside this could have major
consequences for the reliability of eye witness reports off violent
crime. Some of the eye witness reports after the shooting of the
Brazilian man on the London Underground were contradictory to say the
least. Some leaked reports from the investigation seem to indicate
the the majority of the initial reports were wrong [BTW we don't want
any discussion here of the merits of that particular event].

  From this weeks New Scientist:

> They say love is blind. Now it seems that the same is true for
> lust. Erotic images stop us registering things we see immediately
> afterwards.
>
> The effect, which also occurs with violent images, will fuel calls
> by road-safety campaigners to ban sexy billboard adverts near busy
> roads because they could distract drivers.
>
> David Zald from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and
> colleagues flashed sequences of 100-millisecond images in front of
> male volunteers. They asked the men to say in which direction a
> particular picture in the sequence had been rotated. Most images
> were of landscapes or buildings, but the psychologists included a
> few sexually provocative pics.
>
> If the target image was preceded by a neutral picture, the men were
> correct 90 per cent of the time. But if it was preceded by a
> pornographic image the subjects did no better than chance. The
> "attentional rubbernecking", as the researchers call it, lasted up
> to 800 milliseconds. The effect also occurs in women and with
> violent images.
>
> "We think there is essentially a bottleneck for information
> processing and if a certain type of stimulus captures attention it
> can jam up the bottleneck so subsequent information can't get
> through," Zald says. The team will publish their results in
> Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
>
> The effect could exacerbate the more obvious problem of drivers
> simply being distracted by large, arresting images. "We should be
> concerned if drivers are experiencing split-second breaks in
> concentration, which could result in an accident," says a
> spokeswoman from Brake, a UK road safety organisation.

Interesting stuff. There have been studies into peoples inability to
see certain things in their visual field before. Like the "Gorillas
in out midst " study [1]. Although these two studies are probably not
testing the same effect.

Ian

[1]  Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst:
Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28,
1059-1074. PDF at <http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Ecfc/Simons1999.pdf>

--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

Ian Robinson wrote:

> This is posted to both Talk Science and Debunkcreation as it's
> relevant to both. One from a general science perspective and the other
> from a "expect creationists to distort the facts and use it" perspective.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4156544.stm>

I looked for this creature, /Vetustodermis planus/, in Google to see how
it was being treated -- and go *no* hits at all.   Even "Vetustodermis"
has, at this time, zero hits in Google except for Google News, which
points to the article you posted.  Interesting.

The name means "ancient skinned & flat" -- which is reasonable enough if
unimaginative.  It does look rather molluscan, but soft bodied creatures
in the ocean were free to try all sorts of experiments and predation was
apparently limited then.  Most of them did not survive later
developments; the arms race between multicelled predators and prey was
just getting under way.

When you think about it, 99.999999999% or so of the creatures on this
planet died without long-term progeny, if you consider "long term" to
mean having living descendants today.

Hmmm....

===|================/ D. Keith Howington, CEO (CEO@...)

On Wed, 17 Aug 2005, Ian Robinson wrote:

> Story on New Scientist about Sheep passing on BSE to their lambs:
>
> <http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7861>
>
> Ian
>

Dang! We may end up vegetarians whether we will or no! :(

I sure hope that herd does NOT spread BSE laterally.

Regards,
MB

Story on New Scientist about Sheep passing on BSE to their lambs:

<http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7861>

Ian
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

Uk Channel 4 Thursday 18th 2005

   21:00 E=mc2


   ----------

  From the producer of Touching the Void, this drama documentary tells
the story of history's most celebrated equation, and the five great
scientists who brought it to life.

Ian
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

This is posted to both Talk Science and Debunkcreation as it's
relevant to both. One from a general science perspective and the
other from a "expect creationists to distort the facts and use it"
perspective.

From:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4156544.stm>

> A strange fossil creature from the early Cambrian Period is
> baffling scientists because it does not fit neatly into any
> existing animal groups.
>
> The 525 million-year-old soft-bodied animal might have belonged to
> a now extinct mollusc-like phylum, scientists from America and
> China say.
>
>  Other researchers have suggested the creature could represent an
> early annelid or arthropod.

More at the URL given above.

Ian
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

On 17 Aug 2005, at 15:11, Ian Robinson wrote:

> What's the chances of this reception when we get to Pluto?
>

What are the chances I'll get arrested by the grammar police?

:-)

Ian
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

What's the chances of this reception when we get to Pluto?

<http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200508/df20050816.jpg>

Ian



--
Ian Robinson - Solutions Consultant - Northgate Information Solutions.
T: +44 (0)28 90859085 D: +44 (0)28 90857715 M: +44 (0)7909 900754

http://tinyurl.com/d3hva

I tried to post the article from my local paper,,,but the cheapskates
want you to register and charge you 2 bucks per archive story that
you access......

So I'm going to just 'type' a little 'excerpt' of it.

'Convergence of copperheads stumps experts...(secluded home draws
vipers)

Yellville__A Marion county man's secluded mountaintop home is at the
center of a scientific mystery that has the experts scratching their
heads.

Chuck Miller's yard is a nighttime hangout for copperhead snakes--
lots of copperheads.

Most nights, as many as two dozen of the reptiles appear, usually
under a cedar tree near his house.  Miller said they move in from all
directions.

"All of a sudden--boom!  They're everywhere, like something on TV,"
he said last week.

The snakes arive around dusk, stay for about an hour, then disappear
as abruptly as they arrived.

Most times, they rendezvous under the cedar tree about 150 feet from
Miller's two story, cedar shingled house.  He watches the activity
while standing on a nearby cedar stump a few feet off the ground.
Occasionally, Miller finds them gathered near a pond he's excavating.

Miller is an experienced outdoorsman and self-described nature lover
who had kept snakes as pets.  But he's never seen anything like it.

Neither has Stanley E. Trauth, a zoology professor and director of
the Electron Microscope Facility at the Arkansas State University in
Jonesboro.  Trauth, an expert on Arkansas snakes who literally wrote
the book on the subject, was alerted to the phenomenon by one of
Miller's friends.

Trauth was intrigued and perplexed.

Copperheads are common in the Ozarks, "but nothing to the extent of
this number moving through someone's property," Trauth said last week.

"We have no idea where they're headed or what their intent is."

Miller, 35, owns a construction firm and lives between Flippin and
Yellvile on 30 acres of a remote, rugged mountain with spectacular
Ozark views.

His five pit bulls first alerted him to the snakes about July 20th.
The dogs were barking at something, and Miller went to investigate.
It was about 9 p.m. he recalled.

He spotted one copperhead right away.  "Then I noticed there was
another one. And another one."

He counted 20 that night.

Since then, the snakes have been frequent nighttime visitors.
The "MO" is always the same: They appear suddenly near dusk, stay for
about an hour, then depart abruptly.  The frequency of the visits and
the number of snakes have dwindled in recent days, however.

Trauth has verified more than 60 snakes on Millers property.  Miller
puts the number at 100 or more, and Trauth called that a good
estimate.

Copperheads congregate in the fall as they head to winter hibernation
sites.  They also gather in the spring.  Trauth said scientists have
not observed this behavior during the summer months.

"We've never seen them like this before," Trauth said, "We've never
seen them in large numbers like this before."

Miller gathered many of the snakes in coolers and trash cans with
plans to release them on 1,500 adjoining acres that he leases.
Trauth and one of his students took a number of those snakes to his
university laboratory for analysis.

One of Trauth's graduate students placed a radio transmitter in the
body cavity of a snake at Miller's property and tracked it for a
night.

Some snakes were "tagged" by clipping some of their scales.  Miller
said that two of those tagged snakes returned to his property last
week.

Trauth has ruled out some possible causes for the nighttime
gatherings:  The occurrences probably aren't related to breeding or
feeding, he said.  It's the wrong time of year for breeding, and the
female snakes captured on Miller's property and studied in Trauth's
lab at Jonesbory were too young to mate.

No mature females have been found at Miller's place.  Trauth said at
this time of the year, mature female copperheads are pregnant and
preparing to give birth.

Feeding patterns probably aren't a factor, either.

Copperheads seek out cicadas to eat in the summer.  But a preliminary
analysis of the snakes stomach contents at Trauth's lab has revealed
few cicadas.

Trauth said he believes the snakes are following scent trails left by
other copperheads.  Beyond that, more study is needed.

..........

anyway that's about half the article..but it covers the important
points...  I thought some of you might be interested in this story.

Any thoughts?

The only thing I can say is that its been pretty hot and dry this
summer...

wes

This is probably blindingly obvious to everyone but maths is not my
thing (although I do plan to do a mathematical physics degree at some
indeterminate time in the future - bit of  Mount Everest syndrome:
climb it because it's there).

Anyway. If you have a quadratic equation:

(x-1)(x-2)=0

then you can see that the 2 solutions for x are either 1 or 2 from
inspection without having to expand the brackets and multiply it out.
For the simple reason that anything multiplied by zero is zero. So if
you set x=1 then (1-1) = 0 so therefore (1-1)(1-2)=0. Same is true
for x=2.

I'd solved it for x=1 by the long method before it was pointed out
that you don't need to do all that work! Amazing what you can learn
in uk.comp.sys.mac usenet group.

All the math gurus are now saying, "well that's bleedin' obvious!" now.

Ian
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

>
> >
> > We can learn a lot from yeast.


Just ask a homebrewer.   :>



===================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Creation "Science" Debunked
http://www.geocities.com/lflank

My Reptile Page
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/herp.html

Isabelle wrote:

> Keith,
> 1. Great to see you again:)

Thank you. OT -- but did you get hitched?

> 2. Many thanks for this. I'm an utter novice in all this and don't
> really read much on the topic beyond what's in the news, so it's
> always great to learn more.

I have a sort of "lay person's explanation" for people who are not hip
deep into this aspect of biology, but I don't know quite what the
protocol is here yet. I wrote this a couple of years ago, and it's below
your own level of studies, but you may find it amusing:

> Here's a brief crude analogy about the differences.
>
> A cell is a tremendous factory around a set of blueprints. The
> blueprints, which contain not only plans but procedures and quality
> control, are contained in DNA. Working copies are distributed to the
> factory in RNA.
>
> A virus is a single sheet of blueprints contained in a small shipping
> container, with a mechanism that substitutes its own blueprint for one
> in the standard set in the cell. There's nothing more to it than that.
>
> Sometimes the blueprint replaces a master sheet of DNA, but often they
> simply pretend to be an RNA working sheet. Either way, the cell's
> factory is confused and starts making virus parts in addition to cell
> parts. Since the virus parts include the fake blueprint, this
> ultimately results in the cell's resources being dedicated to the
> making of viruses. The cell fills up and dies, and the viruses are on
> their way to infiltrate the next jobsite.
>
> But a prion is different. It is not DNA, nor RNA. It's a protein with
> a misshapen section. It's almost like a piece of scaffolding that is
> bent in such a way that every new scaffolding you attach to it gets
> bent the same way.
>
> Normally, the body dismantles such scaffolding when it's done using it
> -- but the disassembly crew misses the bent ones and do not recognize
> them as scaffolding. In the mean time, the fabrication crew doesn't
> see any good scaffolding around and makes more.
>
> The new pieces attach to the old, get bent, get ignored, and get
> replaced -- and soon the cell starts filling up with endless rows of
> bent scaffolding.
>
> The cell starts getting distorted out of shape, eventually dies, and
> the scaffolding pieces that get picked up by other cells start the
> same process all over again.
>
> Now, this particular model of scaffolding -- with very specific
> interconnectors that other types don't connect to -- is only used in
> some parts of the nervous system. Eventually, it damages enough of
> these cells that the brain itself starts malfunctioning. This causes
> the symptoms of the disease.
>
> But the bizarre part is that there are no blueprints involved, other
> than the normal ones that the cell uses to create good scaffolding
> pieces -- these are still the factory originals.



> > Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease, kuru,

This is an inherited prion disease. Apparently, the protein involved is
easier to convert into prion form (remember that a prion is a
counterpart to a regular protein with a different shape). Particular
slight mutations in the protein's coding can apparently make it easier
-- if one is unlucky -- to have this wrong bend.

GSS usually becomes visible when one is in the 40's or 50's, and takes 5
to 10 years to kill you. It is, I am told, rather like Alzheimer's in
symptoms.

This description is of CJD, but is pretty much applicable to all five
variants:

> At age 47, a woman feeling depression sought professional help at
> Massachusetts General Hospital (Scully et al., 1993). She became
> hypoactive, noticed impairment of her recent memory, and had urinary
> incontinence (Scully et al., 1993). Within a few months she became
> dizzy and had an unstable gait (Scully et al., 1993). At this point a
> computed tomographic scan (CAT scan) of the brain showed slight
> cerebral and central atrophy; delusion began to set in (Scully et al.,
> 1993). According to Scully et al. (1993), by age 50 the patient’s
> cranial-nerve functions were still normal, as well as motor power,
> sensation, and coordination. The next symptom to appear was the
> occurrence of inappropriate laughter, and her replies to questions
> became irrelevant and incorrect (Scully et al., 1993). Mild tremor was
> noted, although the cranial-nerve functions, strength, coordination,
> and sensation were still intact (Scully et al., 1993). At this time
> another CAT scan was performed, and the results were the same as the
> year before (Scully et al., 1993). Within a week after this scan, she
> was readmitted with shaking spells (Scully et al., 1993). There was a
> constant alteration between laughing and crying, but reflexes were
> still normal (Scully et al., 1993). By the age of 51 and a half years,
> her speech had deteriorated rapidly, and a new CAT scan showed marked
> cerebral and cerebellar atrophy (Scully et al., 1993). According to
> Scully et al. (1993), gradual deterioration continued up until her
> death four months prior to her fifty-fourth birthday.



Kuru was the famous disease among members of a particular tribe -- the
South Fore-Highland tribe of New Guinea. To venerate their dead, they
(forgive me) passed around and ate their brains in a ceremony. This
transmitted the disease. This variant of the prion disease set is almost
extinct now.

Here are more details, if you'd like.
<http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant570/Papers/McGrath/McGrath.htm>

>
>
> what on earth are these?
> And what's fatal insomnia? I never thought insomnia could be fatal.

It is actually a particular area of the brain failing -- from build up
of a prion version of the protein -- that in this case interferes with
the sleep regulating mechanism. It drives you insane as your brain fails
from other reasons. My understanding is that patients cannot tell dreams
from wakefulness, but that this is not at all the same as other
psychoses. Again, a variant of prion disease.

===|================/ D. Keith Howington, CEO (CEO@...)

> How about "blackballs"? ];-)
>
> Or, for the purist, "hawkingballs" -- since black holes are thought to
> produce "Hawking radiation", a stream of particles that are one-half
> of a newly created matter-antimatter pair (when the other drops into
> the black hole itself).
>


Or "bald balls", since black holes, um, have no hair.  ;>



===================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Creation "Science" Debunked
http://www.geocities.com/lflank

My Reptile Page
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/herp.html

Keith,
1. Great to see you again:)
2. Many thanks for this. I'm an utter novice in all this and don't
really read much on the topic beyond what's in the news, so it's always
great to learn more.


> Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease, kuru,

what on earth are these?
And what's fatal insomnia? I never thought insomnia could be fatal.

Seems we live in a barred galaxy. See story at New Scientist:

<http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7854>

Ian
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

Surely all this depends not only on the size of the object but also its
path around the sun and also the influence it exerts on other objects
(such as Pluto on Neptune) ?

Isabelle wrote:

> The world's first pure batch of nerve stem cells made from human stem
> cells has been created at Edinburgh University, scientists have reported.
>
> Rest at:
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4155016.stm
>
> This sounds v. interesting.


Indeed.   It will be intriguing to see if they can "model in vivo" the
buildup of lipofuscin in the nerve cell body, and other
Alzheimer's-related work.  Also, the protein involved in the human
equivalent to "mad cow disease" is apparently restricted to some types
of nerve tissue; this might allow some therapy studies there as well.

Since "mad cow" is part of a pattern that affects many animals from
people to cattle to deer and elk and mink even cats, learning to
interrupt this prion chain using tests on externally cultured nerve
cells might make the whole issue evaporate.  An annual injection might
do it; in most larger animals, it takes a number of years for the
protein masses to build up to levels producing symptoms.

There are five prion diseases known to affect humans - CJD,
Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease, kuru, nvCJD, and fatal
insomnia.  They all seem to arise from "bent" proteins in nerve cells
that cause other (chemically identical) proteins adopt their wrong
shape.  Apparently no DNA or RNA is involved in the infection process --
merely contact from a misshapen protein turns its normal counterpart
into a fellow attacker.  It's rather like a zombie movie played out in
miniature.

We're making progress, and the nerve stem lines described above could
speed things up.  These studies are tough when they're required to leave
your brain in your head. ];-)

===|================/ D. Keith Howington, CEO (CEO@...)

New article posted to the Apple Science site -

> Dr. Jackie Vogel examines cell division in yeast at McGill
> University using microscopes and Macs.
>
> We can learn a lot from yeast. At a cellular level, the tiny
> organisms mimic many of the processes found in every life form on
> earth. That’s why Vogel and a team of biologists at McGill
> University in Montreal are trying to understand exactly how yeast
> cells divide. In doing so, they hope to disentangle the complex
> molecular activities that cause cancer.

<http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/vogel/>

Remember that we don't do platform wars here.

Ian
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

MB wrote:

> On Tue, 16 Aug 2005, Ian Robinson wrote:
>
> > So I think we should classify the Solar System as having 4 inner
> > rocky planets, 4 outer gas giants with a large population of other
> > bodies such as asteroids, comets, Kuiper belt objects and Oort-Opik
> > [2]  cloud objects.
> >
>
>
> On another list we've had some of this discussion and the following
> classification was offered:
>
> || I even wish we didn't distinguish between stars, moons and
> ||  planets.  We should describe objects based on their
> ||  characteristics.  I would prefer a system like this:
> ||
> ||  X-rayballs: Quasars, Blackholes, etc.

I chuckled at the list.  But it occurs to me that, while quasars
certainly qualify as "xrayballs" -- the other does not put out xrays
directly.  Those are from accretion disks, and only form if there's a
ready supply of matter close by to feed the beast.

How about "blackballs"? ];-)

Or, for the purist, "hawkingballs" -- since black holes are thought to
produce "Hawking radiation", a stream of particles that are one-half of
a newly created matter-antimatter pair (when the other drops into the
black hole itself).

===|================/ D. Keith Howington, CEO (CEO@...)

On 16 Aug 2005, at 13:11, MB wrote:

> I don't expect to see official change in my lifetime! :)))
>

I do. In your lifetime I mean. It has to change.

Ian
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

On 16 Aug 2005, at 13:03, Lenny Flank wrote:

> I think you are right.  But alas, the temptation is very very strong
> for people who discover large Kuiper Belt objects to win immortality
> by naming the "new planet".

If theory is correct (and it looks good so far) then there will be
lots and lots of these discovered over the next few decades. It'll
get silly...

BTW: Anyone looking for some really good books on Planetary Science,
Cosmology, Stellar astronomy and some astrobiology should check out
the books at:

<http://www.cambridge.org:80/uk/stm/outextbooks/ouastrotexts/>

I've got the AstroBiology and Solar system titles from a course I
took in 2003. I've just bought the Cosmology and Sun & Stars titles
for general reading (ie not as part of an examined course - I took
the astronomy course in the 1990's that these books course replaced).

The Observing the Universe title is for a OU course that is based on
a weeks residential school at an observatory in the Canary Islands.
That'd be fun...

Ian
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005, Ian Robinson wrote:

> So I think we should classify the Solar System as having 4 inner
> rocky planets, 4 outer gas giants with a large population of other
> bodies such as asteroids, comets, Kuiper belt objects and Oort-Opik
> [2]  cloud objects.
>


On another list we've had some of this discussion and the following
classification was offered:

|| I even wish we didn't distinguish between stars, moons and
||  planets.  We should describe objects based on their
||  characteristics.  I would prefer a system like this:
||
||  X-rayballs: Quasars, Blackholes, etc.
||  Neutronballs: Neutron stars, collapsed stars, etc.
||  Lightballs:  Sun, stars, etc.
||  Heatballs: Brown Dwarfs, Jupiter, Saturn?, etc.
||  Gasballs: Uranus, Neptune, etc.
||  Dirtballs: Earth, Ganymede, Luna, Ceres, etc.
||  Iceballs: Pluto, Charon, 2003UB313, 2003EL61, Sedna, Varuna,
||  Quaoar  etc.
||  Nonballs(fragments): Irregularly shaped moons, asteroids,
||  fragments, debris
||
|
|  one suggested change :
|
|  Oddballs : Irregularly shaped moons, asteroids, fragments, debris

I 'spect a good deal of it was tongue-in-cheek, but there's something
to be said for a reclassification if it helps make sense of what we're
looking at. However, our present use of "planet" does imply "going
round a star/sun", and the above does not give that information at
all.

I don't expect to see official change in my lifetime! :)))

Regards,
MB



> Thoughts?
>
> Ian
>
> [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt>
> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud>
>

> So I think we should classify the Solar System as having 4 inner
> rocky planets, 4 outer gas giants with a large population of other
> bodies such as asteroids, comets, Kuiper belt objects and Oort-Opik
> [2]  cloud objects.
>
> Thoughts?
>

I think you are right.  But alas, the temptation is very very strong
for people who discover large Kuiper Belt objects to win immortality
by naming the "new planet".



===================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Creation "Science" Debunked
http://www.geocities.com/lflank

My Reptile Page
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/herp.html

How many planets are there in the Solar System? This is a bit of a
hot topic at present in the planetary science community. The recent
discoveries of new Kuiper Belt [1] objects such as Quaoar, Sedna and
the other large object have raised the question of what we should
call these objects?

currently we have 9 planets including Pluto. In my opinion Pluto, and
it's moon Charon, should be classed as Kuiper belt objects along with
the others in that region. It's not even as if Pluto is the largest
object of the same class as the other Kuiper belt objects out in the
Neptunian and further out region. Neptune's moon Triton is larger
than Pluto and is almost certainly a gravitationally captured Kuiper
belt object. It has a retrograde orbit for example.

So I think we should classify the Solar System as having 4 inner
rocky planets, 4 outer gas giants with a large population of other
bodies such as asteroids, comets, Kuiper belt objects and Oort-Opik
[2]  cloud objects.

Thoughts?

Ian

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt>
[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud>
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

The world's first pure batch of nerve stem cells made from human stem
cells has been created at Edinburgh University, scientists have
reported.

Rest at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4155016.stm

This sounds v. interesting.

On 16 Aug 2005, at 01:25, MB wrote:

> Weighty evidence on testicular cancer
>
> New evidence supports a theory that men who were exposed to excess
> estrogenic hormones at an early stage of fetal development may face an
> elevated risk of testicular cancer.

Thanks for that. I'll forward it to a TC list I'm on that is
associated with the Testicular Cancer Resource Centre at <http://
tcrc.acor.org/>

There is also some evidence that TC risk is raised in boys who had an
undescended testicle and also some evidence that it's familial as
well. I'm not aware of any breakdown in the data for the various
types of TC. As most people are aware cancer is a catch all term for
many different abnormal cell growth conditions.

I had a seminoma in 2003. This is more common in people around 40 and
is almost completely curable with surgery, radiotherapy and in some
cases chemotherapy. other forms of TC are much more aggressive and
have different prognoses than seminoma.

Even though I've used the word common in the above paragraph it
should be noted that that are only about 2000 cases of TC in the UK
each year. IIRC the figure for the USA is about 6000 per year. So as
cancers go it's rare. Somebody suggested to me a few days ago that
there should be a screening program for it. Given the numbers I'd say
the resource that would be used for such a program would be better
spent on a prostrate cancer screening program and printing of
leaflets showing men how to do a monthly check.

For a cell to become cancerous and lead to a tumour it has to undergo
a series of step. The steps are (simplified):

1) Genetic instability - gene damage that is not repaired before cell
division
2) Attain self sufficiency in growth signals
3) Insensitivity to growth inhibitory signals
4) Evasion of apoptosis (cell death)
5) Avoidance of senescence
6) Sustained angiogenesis (creating blood supply)
7) Tissue invasion and metastasis (spreading)

It's a really interesting area.

Ian
--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050730/note14ref.asp

Weighty evidence on testicular cancer

New evidence supports a theory that men who were exposed to excess
estrogenic hormones at an early stage of fetal development may face an
elevated risk of testicular cancer.

References:

Aschim, E.L., T. Grotmol, S. Tretli, and T.B. Haugen. 2005. Is there
an association between maternal weight and the risk of testicular
cancer? An epidemiologic study of Norwegian data with emphasis on
World War II. International Journal of Cancer 116(Aug. 20):327-330.
Abstract available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ijc.21044 .

Sources:

Tom Grotmol
Cancer Registry of Norway
Montebello
0310 Oslo
Norway

From Science News, Vol. 168, No. 5, July 30, 2005, p. 77.


Regards,
MB

Came across this a few days ago by accident. Richard Feynman's 1979
Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures delivered in Auckland, New Zealand.
I've only had time to watch the first one so far but it was very
good. An excellent example, as it says on the page below, of giving a
technical lecture with paper notes and a blackboard from the days
before "death by PowerPoint"!


You can watch them via RealPlayer at the URL:

<http://www.vega.org.uk/series/lectures/feynman/index.php>

Ian

--
Ian Robinson - Belfast - UK <http://www.canicula.com>
Soapbox - <http://homepage.mac.com/ianrobinson/index.html>

Not surprisingly this is a seed message to test the email delivery
etc.

Normal activity will start soon and ramp up over the next few days...

Ian
Moderator