Global weather patterns would cause that water to mostly get carried away and end up raining back into the sea again. Even if you could prevent that, the volume of water you'd need to move to offset even a bit of sea level rise would be enormous.

An example of this in practice is the Zanclean flood that formed the Mediterranean 5.3MM years ago, and the current day Salton Sea in California.

There just isnt anywhere close to enough area to make a difference even if you could do it.

I believe it's because those wastes in the genitals often include sodium and potassium, or spare electrolytes and the idea is that the body rids itself of those electrolytes through the kidneys, and water follows because of osmotic pressure. If that happened through the anus, the large intestine would likely take up a large portion of that water and put it back into the recirculation and would also absorb the electrolytes due to diffusion so there would be minimal filtration and you would die of electrolyte imbalance.

In regards to urethra being near the anus, I think they're relatively close but you don't want them too close because feces is rife with bacteria and the urethra is an excellent environment for bacteria to multiply (dark, warm, moist) and you'd have near constant UTIs which could lead to kidney infection and damage. Some women actually deal with that fairly regularly, and is why women should always wipe from front to back after a bowel movement.

It's a complicated question since depending on the theory you use, the definition of intelligence change. The IQ is getting more and more controversed. Another concept is intelligence split in 8 sphere, (i don't recall all of them but for exemple music is one of them) being intelligent would mean to have an easier time acquiring skills in this field or to have accumulated a vast ammount of knowledge.

Let's just say that there isn't a global consensus on what define intelligence yet.

Imo, inteligence is the ability to relate information and get the results you want. A good chess player remembers how I move and is able to use that to move the situation towards his prefered state (winning).

Google "theory of multiple intelligences", it describes different areas where one can be proficient. For example, logical reasoning, social skills, music, etc. Noone has ever created a good metric for "general inteligence" or how smart you are in total, and it is debated if such a thing even makes sense.

This statement. although 25+ years old, is still pretty good.

If you take a whole bunch of things that people have to learn to do (e.g. maths, spelling, logic, speed of thought, and memory), they all correlate pretty well together. So psychologists call this statistical manifold "g" for "general intelligence".

Theories like Gardner's multiple intelligences are frankly nonsensical because it ignores statistical reality, and replaces the word "talent" or "ability" with "intelligence". Thus he refers to intelligent (meaning good) dancers with a straight face.

The biological basis of intelligence is largely unknown, although brain size, number of neurons, and amount of folding is correlated.

Cognitive abilities like how much you can hold in your working memory, and how quickly you can make decisions, although correlate and plausibly cause intelligence differences.

Humans live in social groups. Humans are also great at fighting. On top of this, humans (like other animals) have an instinct to protect and care for their young. So, given this level of protection, if a baby has a need (food, hot/cold, needs care) it is much better for a baby to loudly communicate this to nearby adults so it survives infancy, because the adults can almost always handle external threats that might arise.

It’s been found that babies that are neglected cry less because they learn that it no longer gains attention from caregivers, thus also implying that cries are sometimes literally for attention and nothing more as well, from what I have heard. Basically, scare the mother into attending to the babies needs or risk alerting a predator that will eat both the mother and the baby.

There are individual differences between babies. Not all cry loud. In addition to the mentioned facts, the nutrition that the mother had during pregnancy also plays a crucial role. For instance are babies who were exposed to Fastfood significantly more aggressive.

Probably not, given that it’s a neurodevelopmental disorder so you’re born with it.

Hopefully there is though.

AFAIK, mucous production occurs as a way to ‘trap’ pathogens. So yes, congestion is trying to do a good thing even though it’s unpleasant for us to deal with. This is why mucous can turn a certain colour when you’re sick, the pathogen can give it a particular appearance.

Your body has only a few emergency levers it can pull. It also only has a few detection systems.

It takes time for the immune system to respond. It has to recognize a problem, communicate to the immune system generals, mobilize the early troops and then start producing the rest of the defense warriors.

Mucus production is really quick to start. The detectors are nearby and all that needs to be done is open up a tap and the mucus starts flowing. It provides a protective barrier between the environment and body tissue, plus it also has a flushing effect as it moves out and down.

Nasal congestion not only is just for viruses, it is also for bacteria, pollen and foreign objects. Sometimes a good flushing is all that is required.

Absolutely! Despite the Symptoms it's important to remember that you're only considered mentally "sick" if the impairment outweighs your ability to cope with it and live a fulfilling life requiring you to reach out for external help.

If at any point you manage to cope with your initial diagnosis despite the severity of the symptoms and manage to live a happy and fulfilling life you're no longer considered clinically sick.

That's the outcome one would hope when starting a therapy journey.

[deleted]

Does our body register pains in different ways? Well yes and no. We long thought no, but in a way we do. Hot and cold are same signals but faster and slower, and pinching is again another rhythm. We have mostly one type of pain receptor but recently it seems like we have some others after all.

Painkillers work in various ways so it's hard to answer your question. There's many painkillers and many answers. A paracetamol has a completely different working mechanism than morphine.

[deleted]

[removed]

You might be interested in...

Abiogenesis: The process by which dead matter formed life. There are a plethora of theories as to how.

LUCA: The Last Universal Common Ancestor of all currently living beings. We can infer some characteristics it may have possesed. Note that LUCA is not the same as the first living being, but instead the last life form from which we all (plants, animals, fungi, prokaryotes, archea) descend.

RNA world: The theory of the origin of life explained by the other commenter.

[removed]

If you ask me, it's parrots and corvids. I haven't seen an intelligent behaviour that apes or cetaceans can do that these birds cannot.

Depends on your definitions, but likely great apes. Evolutionary pressure, like pretty much everything else. Bigger brains mean better survival for certain niches.

Why would that be an issue? Insects are plenty nutritious and there are some fairly large insectivores like anteaters.

I don't know what the cutoff is, but to compare animals, the most common way is to align their DNA sequence and then have a percentage of similarity. I do this as part of early research in drug discovery to have a look at how much alike some human molecules are to other species (eg monkeys, mice)

Evolutionary biology categorizes speciation by two organisms’ ability or inability to reproduce and have viable, fertile offspring. So, donkey and horse make mule but mule infertile, so different species. In biology we align DNA sequences to determine genetic similarity and can make “tree” diagrams demonstrating how closely related two organism might be. We can also look at enzymes two organisms share and the differences in their amino acid sequence but also physical structure but neither of these will tell you about whether two organisms are part of the same species, it tells you a beautiful story about evolution though

Splice-switching antisense oligonucleotide (SSOs) technology utilize modified RNA to disrupt pre-mRNA splicing. When mRNA is first transcribed from DNA, it contains regions known as introns, which do not contribute to the final protein product. These introns are removed, and the regions that do contribute to the finalized protein product, exons, are ligated together. Aberrations in pre-mRNA splicing contribute to a myriad of human diseases, such as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Cryptic splice sites are when a pre-mRNA has incorrect splicing sequences in a pre-mRNA. This can be a result of a single point mutation, causing a deletion in the entire pre-mRNA, leading to a truncated protein.

SSOs are engineered to bind to these faulty pre-mRNAs, and disrupt the intron splicing machinery from binding and creating an aberrant transcript. They can modulate splicing patterns to create an mRNA that produces a “lesser of two evils (less worse)” protein.

Of course, CRISPR is likely more suited to alter single nucleotide substitution mutations, but that’s an application of RNA-based technologies that isn’t talked about as much. Splicing can be a big problem, especially with cryptic splice sites.

There are other gene editing systems out there, such as zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENS.) ZFNs are nucleases fused to a zinc finger DNA binding domain. You can engineer ZFNs to target a specific nucleic acid, just as CRISPR-Cas9 does. However, CRISPR-Cas9 systems are revered for their simplicity, essentially just needing the DNA sequence you want to target. TALENs functions like ZFNs, a nuclease bound to a TAL (transcription activator-like effector), which recognizes a specific DNA site. There are other gene editing tools, you can see that among Cas9, ZFNs, and TALENs, the structure/function of the tool is conserved.

Cancer cells and cells infected with HIV have shown to respond promisingly to CRISPR-Cas9 treatment. Ironically, CRISPR systems originated in prokaryotic species, as a defense against mobile genetic elements (MGEs), like viruses or bacteriophages. But CRISPR-Cas9 is being studied as a defense against viral infections, targeting the viral nucleic acids at different stages.

Proteasomes are complexes that degrade proteins rather than nucleic acids. For cleavage of nucleic acids, you’d want to look at endonuclease or exonucleases, restriction enzymes. Proteasomes typically are involved in degrading misfolded proteins (look into prions!), or proteins that are no longer needed in the cell. Just a minor correction, hope it helped. :3

Basically what Marie said. You usually need enzymes to cut and edit DNA. You can cut some out to stop a function of a piece of DNA or even add some in. ZFNs, TALENs are slightly 'older' technologies and CRISPR is the new technology, which is being used for the purposes above. It may be enhanced/improved in the coming years and I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't other DNA editing technologies that appear in the future too.

Bear in mind plenty of viruses do not have any DNA, using RNA instead. But there are other Cas proteins that cut RNA, so you can still apply that kind of approach.

It's not necessarily going to be all that effective for typical viral infections, as it's hard to deliver a lot of CRISPR-Cas machinery in vivo, whereas a viral infection can create huge numbers of viruses.

Where it could be exciting is in potentially permanently curing HIV infection. You use other drugs to knock the infection down, but some of the viruses have integrated into the DNA of host cells, where drugs do no good. But CRISPR-Cas9 could come along and destroy those viral DNA sequences.

First, DNA/RNA can actually enter the nucleus. Nuclear import is controlled by special amino acid sequences known as nuclear localization sequences. This, along with importin (transport protein) allows macromolecules to enter the nucleus through the nuclear pore complexes. tRNA, for example, are imported back into the nucleus, which has been shown in yeast. Plasmid DNA import has also been demonstrated.

When a cell divides, it’s nuclear envelope breaks down, so the mitotic spindle apparatus can invade and attach to the chromosomes. Then, the viral nucleic acids can interact with the hosts’. HIV, howeve, can enter the nucleus even if the cell isn’t dividing. It’s thought that the HIV genome uses the host’s cellular machinery to move into the nucleus. The HIV cDNA (result of reverse transcription) is coated with a myriad of proteins which allow it to cross into the nucleus.

Figure 1 in this paper should give you a good visualization: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3325773/

TL;DR: HIV sneaky. :( The idea of the central dogma of biology has some loopholes, with reverse transcription, and direct translation from DNA to protein. Always* exceptions to rules, that’s what makes science so amazing.

About the central dogma of molecular biology, it doesn’t necessarily specify locations. Prokaryotes lack a nucleus and instead have a nucleoid, yet still follow the general basis of the central dogma. The central dogma moreso specifies products, DNA to RNA to protein.

Angiogenesis inhibitors are a thing that we use to "pull the plug" on certain types of cancers. If you look up the hallmarks of cancer, there are about 10 attributes which a cancer possesses that makes it able to grow, with one being angiogenesis, others being evasion of the immune system, resistance to apoptosis etc. Each of these attributes have been targeted in the pursuit to fight cancer. Axitinib is an example of a angiogenesis inhibitor.

Hypertumors are tumors that invade and disrupt the growth of an already existing tumor. Hypertumors essentially “steal” nutrients from the “host tumors.” The host tumor and hypertumors essentially compete for resources.

See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060950/

Guess what, there is an entire wikipedia page devoted to your questions. A history of malaria vaccines.

> do what we have always done with bacteria: target cell membrane, burst the cell and rinse and repeat?

Not quite correct. Majority of antibacterial drugs leave the bacteria intact. Instead they interefere with the reproduction rate. Either slowling it enough for the immune system to clear, or metaphorically putting a condom on to stop reproduction.

Those routes don't work for plasmodium. Unlike bactera which are very uniform, plasmodium are very diverse within their own culture. You can spot bacteria onto a plate and it usually grows one big blob; do that for plasmodium and you find lots of little and big blobs. Any route that targets plasmodium reproduction will fail because there is a huge evolutionary pressure to develop drug resistance. All those mixed genetics clusters in the same infection will compete and at least one will be drug resistant.

A human who is infected with malaria and recovers will be immune to the disease. However, they aren't immune to the parasite. They can be reinfected and asymptomatic, spreading it to other people. A person can even be permanently infected.

A salt is a compound composed of two charged groups. One positively charged, one negatively charged. For drugs such as adderall, one is a positively charged amphetamine (with an extra hydrogen as a proton) and the other half is a negatively charged counter ion (either sulfate, sacharate or aspartate). The reason it is given as a salt, is that charged molecules dissolve more easily in water. If it was not charged, it would not dissolve and be less effective when taken orally.

​

In the case of lithium, it is usually lithium cations (positively charged) with carbonate, bromide or other counter anions. The truth is, we don't really know exactly how lithium works in the brain. It interacts with a number of things but we can't pin down which affects particularly help with mood stabilization.

We colloquially refer to sodium chloride as “salt” and it leads many people to associate the word salt with food. For everyday purposes, that meaning is perfectly fine. However the word “salt” as used in chemistry simply means a neutrally charged compound consisting of positive cation(s) and negative anion(s). Sodium chloride (NaCl, or Na ^+ Cl ^- ) meets this criteria, hence it being called salt.

The same chemical definition fits amphetamine salts and the formulation of lithium used clinically, however that’s the end of their similarity with food items. When using these medications, it isn’t the fact that patients get a “salt” that’s causing a clinical change, but rather that the medications have specific mechanisms of action (e.g. Lithium reduces excitatory stimulation of dopamine and glutamate and up-regulates GABA, though it’s actual mechanism of action is largely unknown).

That doesn’t mean that diet could not, or does not, affect mental health disorders, just that diet’s effect is a completely different topic.

Sperm has to swim to reach the egg, so it would be a disadvantage to be carrying a lot of cargo.

[removed]

Most likely a difference in hair or shoes.

Static shocks are caused when someone accumulates excess electrical charge and is insulated from the environment. When that insulating material touches something conductive, the transfer of charge happens.

Thick soled shoes and synthetic fabrics such as nylon and polyester are insulating, allowing for larger buildup of charge.

If you have long hair and use a brush, or brushing-like activity, that can cause a buildup.

Your moisturizer may be in play, but not much. The moisturizer does trap water and sweat/salt which acts as a conductor. A person with dry skin would have worse static shocks.

Behaviour may be a factor. Someone regularly grounding themselves on metal structures will reduce their static buildup, think of someone working at a desk with a metal frame and brushing their leg against it. Some teen with shuffling gait scuffing their shoes on the carpet will have a higher static buildup.

> would an object in the right conditions decompose into gaseous molecules?

Eample: a candle.

Most smell molecules are very light. LEGO analogy, it's mostly 1 piece blocks and not 2x4's.

If you take a piece of wood, you can set it on fire and break those big pieces into smaller. You then lose most of the mass into the form of a gas.

Not only anaerobic, the empty spaces should be sterile!

You have two major cavities in your body: your gut area on the front and the area on your back from your butt up to your brain.

There is no circulation, everything moves by diffusion.

Your organs are lined in a membrane called "peritoneum". It sweats out a special liquid called "peritoneal fluid." You can think of it as fancy lubrication for inside human bodies.

The peritoneal liquid in the spaces between organs is really small volume, maybe 50 ml in a human. It contains neutrophils, mononuclear cells, eosinophils, macrophages, lymphocytes, desquamated mesothelial cells, and an average of 3.0 g/mL of protein. -> blah blah blah that is mostly immune system stuff and dead outer skin cells from your organs.

Electrolytes and small molecules can diffuse into/out of your blood, so composition of those is similar enough.

Overall: it's mostly blood liquid minus the blood cells, plus some immune system stuff.

[removed]