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Comment Re:Nature uses life friendly.. (Score 4, Informative) 128

Actually, a good part of the chemistry occurs in or around oil based membranes.
And biological toxins are all around us. I am not talking just about toxic fungi, pathogenic bacteria or poisonous animals. The very potato chips she mentions are toxic if eaten uncooked, as well as soya beans and many others. Those compounds prevent the plants from being eaten. So we cook our foods to inactivate toxic compounds (and kill pathogens). There exists an arms race out there in the wild, and she's a biologist, she knows how it works.

Comment Re:"Natural" manufacturing is material-limited (Score 1) 128

You speak so 20th century...
Current trends in materials use carbon nanotubes and proteins which make lighter and stronger structures, and also have some interesting electrical properties. But of course, these can't stand very hight temperatures.
For computing power there are neural networks and even some processes using RNA molecules. But of course silicon based computers are still very efficient at what they do, and quantum computers will be even better.
So in the end, the best is to develop the both worlds, organic and inorganic based chemistry.

Comment Re:Well... (Score 1) 770

It's actually related to different evolutionary strategies. Men are "parasites" and the real cost of reproduction is paid by the females. A male's genes (actually alleles) will increase in frequence in the population if it "parasites" as many females as possible. A female's alleles will increase in frequence in the population if can produce as many kids as possible, but with having sex a few times a year is enough. The main difference in behavior is due to different reproduction costs for males and females.
This is an oversimplification, of course. Females also have sex to bond with the male and get protection, food, shelter, etc. Individuals who do not reproduce can help raise their relatives. In current societies the real cost is in money for raising each kid, and that is shared between both parents, but OTOH our brains have not adapted yet...

Comment Re:Statistical power (Score 1) 113

I completely agree. Actually, I made a very similar post (post no. 6 "misleading statistics", score:0) but got buried and nobody modded it up. This and the quality of the comments shows how ./ has changed over the years.
Back to the study, the number of people who behaved socially per group were less than 5 in most cases, so doing any form of test of fit is just plainly wrong. And I blame Plos ONE for publishing it, as their criteria for acceptance is "Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls and replication. Sample sizes must be large enough to produce robust results, where applicable." (http://www.plosone.org/static/publication#technical)
They define prosocial behavior as handing a pen that has fallen, based on a published paper about mimicry (http://pss.sagepub.com/content/15/1/71). The thing is that the researcher waits for up to 5 seconds. Count them, it's really long when confronted face to face. I'm not saying it's wrong, but that they could be measuring submission instead.
And finally, they did not test for increased violent behavior which should be the most obvious consequence of playing violent games.
So failing to find a difference when testing for something not completely related with violence using a an underpowered experimental design... to me, that's propaganda for the gaming industry.

  an increase in prosocial behaviour is misleading to say the least, or propaganda for the gaming industry.

Comment Re:3D printing was interesting last year. (Score 1) 91

You are missing it's main niche: fast prototyping, that shortens design time. The objects are not intended to be used, but to see an approximation of their shape.
And there is the matter of printing cost: ABS/PLA is cheap.
Sure, flying cars will be much better than ground going ones, and wheeled vehicles are a dead end. Maybe, but not it 5 years.

Comment Ultimaker. Period. (Score 2) 91

Let's see... a layer size of 40 microns, maximum speed of 250 mm/s, build volume of 21x21x21 cm for only 1200 euros the DYI kit (or EUR 1700 pre-built). It beats everyone else in every department. Period.
Ok, it is still missing a second extruder or hotbed, and printing is still an art that takes skill and patience, as with any of the 3D printers in this price range.
Disclaimer: I own an Ultimaker, oh yeah.

Comment Re:Nutrients (Score 1) 60

How silly I am! My mistake. And my point is weakened, but still valid.
Regulations in Argentina call for a maximum of "2 microbes / 100 mL". That is 0.02 microbes/ml and is correct (I hope this time it is!).
So at 10 microbes/ml = 1000 microbes / 100 mL the water from this lake is not allowed for dinking in Argentina.
I am a biologist working at a molecular biology lab. One test I did on water from a mountain river surrounded only by wildlife had 23 microbes / 100 mL, and that is clearly not a clean room! Another test on very stinky urban runoff water had 800 000 microbes per 100 ml.
At 1000 microbes / 100 ml, this lake has 43 times more microbes than a mountain river, but 800 times less than very stinky water.
If instead of ml it were ul, it would be 1 microbe / 100 ml, so it will be safe for dinking (provided there are no fecal coliform bacteria).

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