illini319

well let all of us know once someone tries this with a non-diet soda. heck go purist. Try club soda! that should be different. also... add just a little bit of soap before you add the mentos. make sure the soap is fully dispersed and when you mix it try not to make too many bubbles or release too much CO2. The soap may change the chemistry.... Let us know what you find!

I don't think it is particularly useful for cloning an entire human. I don't even see the true purpose of it (cost/effective ratio). Surely, I can see how people might want to grow organs that are genetically similar to theirs. In such cases, growing an entire human being doesn't seem particularly useful when all I need is a heart... or a kidney etc. So, when I said there isn't any problem with cloning... I meant that I don't have any problem with cloning within the definition of 'organ' backup.

tumor microenvironments are now fully understood. acidic microenvironments may have been described for tumors but this is a gross overinterpretation of what really is happening. I assure you that attempting to make yourself more alkaline will just get you in more trouble than necessary. if there is anything that may be more useful than what you say... it would be to prevent inflammation. inflammations in all its forms are a dangerous reaction to injury that often causes secondary and tertiary effects.

viruses are parasitic organisms. by this definition, they live but only through a parasitic relationship with a host organism.

Yes. Something useful to consider is not quantity but quality. I'd love to live 80 great years and not have to deal with another 20 years of declining health and a painful exit. Give me an honorable and dignified death over more years. Plain and simple.

hydrogen, as an alternative to current fuels, is a promising concept. how will they serve the space issue? liquid h2? what about the infrastructure? how easy will it be to transport h2 or would it be better to just purify H2 out of the air (at purifying/refueling stations) rather than transporting it? and if this is possible... why bother having refueling stations? if the technology could be improved to the point where H2 could be directly purified and concentrated by the car that uses it.... then wow.

wow! I didn't quite quantify it like this... but certainly from the point I wake up I'm already checking my email. I get to work and I'm constantly online doing random things related to work. I should mention now that I'm not even remotely close to the IT field. I get home... and now I'm leisurely surfing. when I'm firing something up on my barbecue, I often kick back outside while surfing the web. If I had to give it a number, I would say that I'm online at least 10-12 hours a day. Not with 100% of my attention but certainly for that amount of time in a day.

I didn't quite realize that it was unique to diet coke versus coke. perhaps the sugars greatly stabilize the CO2; something which aspartame cannot replace? clearly, if there is a difference in the way mentos reacts with coke versus diet coke then it must lie in the differences of their ingredients (or in their amounts). if someone wants to test this, try 7up versus diet 7up. would this change the game? what about pepsi?

i highly doubt we could ever quantify/define soul with anything scientific. so i'll leave that one alone. to get back at the cloning issue...there is nothing wrong with cloning; only in how it is used. the fastest way to make something dangerous is to outlaw it. Establish ethical regulations and enforce these rules.

I absolutely agree. A bit earlier in the year, NBC had the privilege of being toured inside a space shuttle. during the tour the NASA officer was bragging about the heat tiles at the bottom of the shuttle. that every single tile had its own code because every damn tile was unique. now.... what genius engineer thought this was a good thing. and what genius PR of NASA thought that this was something to brag about!!! absolutely... only in America.

cost/effective ratio. that's the bottom line. whether it's hydrogen, ethanol, bio-diesel or whatever. the future will be in whatever is cheap enough to replace gasoline.

to put it simply, mentos causes an instability to the solubility of carbon dioxide in the soda resulting in the rapid release of gas. because there is only a small opening and a relatively small surface area. the carbon dioxide doesn't quite fully release but remains encapsulated in tiny bubbles.... these tiny bubbles of rapidly expanded gas has a much greater volume than the 2l bottle.... and voila!!!

Define perfect! even perfect beauty has changed throughout the years... By this alone, the topic to this question is lost. morality and ethics, while absolutely necessary to have as a scientist, should not be left to scientists when it comes to questions of this magnitude. society must weigh these lofty ideas and vote for it. so, as much as I am all for cloning and the benefits of stem cell research... I am but one vote.

I don't own the video ipod, although I do own an ipod. I use the ipod, of course, to listen to music, books, etc. I use it at work when I don't want to be bothered. I use it when I am in between places; usually when i'm travelling. I use it when I work out. These, I'm sure, are not unique to me. In every case though, I use it because I want to add a little 'soundtrack' to my day. nothing too obtrusive. Just to lighten the day. Meaning... I don't want to know that I'm using my iPod. I don't want to focus on my ipod. I want to focus on my life. So, in my opinion, how could a video iPod ever be a must have gadget??? And i haven't even talked about battery life yet!

Certainly, if we argue over semantics, any discussion quickly becomes pointless. I was simply trying to question how astronomists define other worlds; and if these criteria really generate something meaningful. If size were the simplest criterion to something being a planet, then large 'moons' that circle gas objects like Jupiter should be considered planets as some of them are pretty big. but somehow this is not a sufficient definition. so a planet must be large and orbiting a star. but why? Why should an orbit around a star have anything to do with an object's categorization of being a planet? I can't seem to find any physical constraints to a satellite, orbiting a gas giant, actually developing life. While these questions may sound meaningless to some... please don't forget that much of how new planets are being found today require that it is orbiting a star. How foolish would it be if all along, there are countless examples of 'satellites' harboring life?

Ideally, such a drug will go through rigorous clinical trials and come out showing improved efficacy over current standard of care. Let's hope for the best on this front. there are other drugs that I'm aware of, in various stages of development, that also work towards neurologic homeostasis. I certainly wouldn't say 'cure'. But these therapies will be a great addition to treating patients with these terrible diseases.

purely semantics. the definition of planet is pretty pointless, at least in the context of space exploration and colonization. we define mercury mars venus and earth as planets. i can see this. they are all spheroid. they all have rock and circle the sun. notwithstanding technological limitations, one could imagine living in mars or any of the other planets (provided we can contain the temperature/atmosphere problem). so why are gas giants considered planets? many of them are considered failed stars. what do they have in common with rocky planets? how useful are they to space colonization? pluto, to me, would be a much more viable planet than jupiter...

As far as I know, in the world, there are no government sponsored 'genetic engineering' priorities of which you speak. i.e. eugenics. Those who are in the field of genetics are trying to understand physiology and pathology; not enhancements of any kind. You could make the argument that they are considering 'enhancements' within the context of bringing someone from abnormal to normal; but not 'super' human...

can we please stop saying a 'cure for cancer' as if cancer is a singular disease with a singular solution...the greatest minds in our world are in the midst of interpreting the explosion of genomic data that has come to past in th recent years. as taxpayers you should all encourage the scientific enterprise as I can't imagine any other way to combat cancer. when we have administrations, as we currently have in the US, who are more apt to throw a bible at someone who has cancer (rather than having science help him) it becomes exceedingly difficult to find therapies for cancer. the scientific enterprise in the united states is at a terrible plateu due to decreased funding... because all the money is going to Iraq. Because, apparently, terrorism kills more people everyday than cancer.... figure that one out...

The population genetics you mention are based on simple mendelian ratios. Unfortunately, complex genetic interactions do not necessarily make it a straight punnet square equation when calculating the possibility of inheriting a trait. Penetrance and expressivity heavily dictate the final outcome of any given trait. So if we were to assume that X-men traits are superhuman, would that then be considered a favorable trait? As any fan of the x-men know... mutants tend to be called freaks. So how would any given x-men trait have the 'time' to evolve into a true x-men trait if it isn't something that gives the bearer a seletive advantage? Spontaneous mutations would not create the kind of traits that one sees in the x-men. Nearly all of their superhuman powers isn't any single genetic trait but a combination of many (as one could surmise would be required, for example, for exceptionally fast healing (wolverine)). So... to simplify all this, do not underestimate the power of the 'normal curve' in discussing the evolutionary future of humankind. Perhaps this would be greatest tragedy of the commons.

who cares whether the earth is warming or not? Humans may survive or find some technology which scours the CO2 out of the air (hint, plant more trees). In either case, (if) when it becomes popularly unbearable, then things will start moving. too late? maybe. Unlikely. The earth is too damn big for us to irreversibly make it uninhabitable.

With regards to planet colonization: I'm wondering what our first step would be to make Mars habitable. I've watched enough Discovery shows to realize that most experts think that atmosphere and temperature needs to be ameliorated before anything else. But how? Some say that you need to release the frozen carbon dioxide, apparently trapped under Martian soil, to elevate global temperatures. This would hopefully lead to the thawing of the polar ice caps and release the water. Then what? Plant some trees? How will we start generating enough oxygen on that planet to get the atmosphere to an acceptable level for human survival? It seems to me that this is a LONG term project that needs to start ASAP given that it will take decades (perhaps centuries) to accomplish...

I find it particularly humorous that, by and large, environmentalists are lumped in the 'liberal' category wherease those who disagree are in the 'conservative' category. What are you trying to 'conserve'??? I agree, in principle, that the earth's temperature occilates and is ACUTELY affected by things larger than humans can muster; as in volcanoes. I don't exactly agree that petrochemical emissions are not affecting global climate change. I absolutely think that man has had a direct impact on global climates. But, at the same time, I don't think this spells the end for the earth. It would be quite arrogant for us to think, that even if all the ice caps melted, that humans could so destroy the earth that no life would ever exist again on this planet. Ask the dinosaurs. Most, if not all of, humanity may disappear from this planet (good riddance, I say) but life will go on; the earth will continue spinning.

I can't imagine any job, these days, that doesn't require the use of the internet for some tasks. I'm online before work (checking email), during work (10-12 hrs) and after dinner (checking email/surfing/working; 1-2hrs). Is this bad?

Well the interesting thing about the idea is that it is the logical extension of the trash chute; instead of ending up in a trashbin at an alley, trash continues below the ground into some conveyor system of centralizing trash. Of course what about blockages.... And repairs... and the smell! Some of the infrastructure already exists, at least in large cities. The sewer system may be able to accomodate a conveyor system.