Recent content by paralith

It probably is a disadvantage, to some degree. This is one of those cases where natural selection and sexual selection can have a sort of see-saw effect on certain traits. Females can more easily see and respond to a male who flashes brightly and obviously - so that male reproduces more. But get...

This article isn't about mental retardation in general. It is about fragile X syndrome, a symptom of which is mental retardation. We don't know if all causes of mental retardation work in the same way or not. Thus we can't say one way or another.

Now it's time for one of my pet peeves: complaining about the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. You have to understand the fossil record - it is incomplete. The likelihood of any individual animal dying in such a way and place that its skeleton becomes preserved as a fossil, and...

Uh huh. So at the beginning of all life on earth, just *pop* we had complex mutlicellular organisms? The mammals, the insects, the fish...this is starting to sound like a creationist argument to me. Which is completely non-scientific and not even worth addressing.

Only a few thousand generations of directed selection will result at best in a new species - though more likely in a new subspecies, as even different breeds of dog are still the same species as they can all sill interbreed. Major macroevolutionary change of the type you are demanding to see...

If you accept that life started as unicellular organisms and evolved into all the diversity on Earth today, which the prevailing body of scientific evidence supports, then you must accept macroevolution. Are we to not believe sub-atomic particles exist simply because we lack the ability to see...

Many people in third world countries hold mistaken beliefs about the nature of HIV and many other sexually transmitted diseases. Some people in Africa believe that you can cure yourself of AIDS by having sex with a virgin. The Masai in Kenya believed that Masai simply don't get AIDS. Education...

(HIV is a virus, not a bacteria - though I assume you just had a slip up since you seem aware of this fact in your OP ^_^) Some vaccines can in themselves be dangerous. Some people may have an allergic or some other type of fatal reaction to them - that's why you usually get a long info sheet...

Immunity is complex, and I'm sure I have understated it to some degree, I will give you that. But the main reason why we are "immune" to some diseases that effect animals and vice versa is this: a given type of virus has a specific host or range of hosts that they attack. They are adapted to...

I think, Nexus, that you may be a little muddled in your understanding of the immune system. When a person's immune system is "used," it is being exposed to an environmental pathogen, and developing antibodies for it. You are not born with antibodies; you have the ability to make them, but their...

Considering the vast amount of life found underneath anatartic ice sheets that melted away, I would say yes, most likely there is life there. And introduction of sunlight will probably start to effect it. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725096.100

Also, rearrangement alone has the potential to powerfully effect transcription levels. Many regulators function via their position in relation to the genes they regulate. This is in addition to the fact that, as Cinncinnatus wonderfully put it, mutations can still be at the root of epigenetic...

writing them out in this case isn't too painful, because there's not a huge amount; but I would check out this page: http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/software/download/qmc/ch5.pdf for an explanation of permutations and combinations, which deal with probability and order. (I was never very good...

a whole animal? unless it's a very simple single celled one - but even then, I'm going to say no. we could probably greatly modify an existing one, but construct a whole new one? from scratch? there is really only a very small percentage of DNA whose complete function and/or whose product's...

it's rather like a and b combined. you have four children, but now all your possible outcomes include not only BBBB, BBBG, etc, but also the different orders each of those can come in.