Recent content by Patzee

We had a chance to make a 6" telescope in class run by Dobson himself. Lot of work, but so worth it. Not sure we saved any money, but really learned a lot.

Thank you, Simon. I'll read the links to learn more and take a close look at the photos to see how they compare with the pieces she displays. I had no idea that it was so common, but now that you noted the resin was "sweet", it makes sense. So glad I posted the question on this forum!

How common is it to find fossilized insects entombed in Amber? I ask because there is a jewelry vendor here in Maui who claims that her amber jewelry encapsulating a variety of insects were created naturally, mined in the Baltic area and are thousands of years old. She sure has a lot of these...

Thanks, Superposed_Cat. This brings to mind the PBS special that recently aired about the growing problem of drug resistant bacteria and at the same time pointing out that Pfizer is yet another major drug company that was stopping research and development of new traditional types of...

Thanks, jarekd. Ah, so the terminology is "Horizontal Gene Transfer". Thanks for the excellent link and sending me in right direction! Looks like a lot of transferring has been going on, ha, ha. Yes, I've read a lot about GMOs, of course, but didn't know much about natural gene swapping, aka...

Microbes and Gene Swapping -- How Common Is This? The article Sub-zero heroes: extremophiles call salty Antarctic lakes home reporting about: "The halophilic (Greek for “salt-loving”) extremophiles in Deep Lake belong to a group of microbes called haloarchaea. Due to much higher rates of...

Darwin123...thank you for the additional info. This is exciting stuff to learn about!

Ah! Thanks so much for both answers. The Wikipedia page for autotroph was very helpful, well written for the novice reader and the type of info I was looking for. It's a new term for me, plus, I also learned that "autos" is Greek for self and "trophe" is Greek for nutrition which is also good to...

As you can tell from the question, my science knowledge is lacking. :confused: I can see that mammals, reptiles, etc. must eat other living creatures (mammals, insects, plants, etc.) for energy. But do plants, microbes and other types of life forms all depend on eating other life forms? For...

Borek, thanks! That's very helpful!

In a New Scientist article (also posted on many other sites): "Lab yeast make evolutionary leap to multicellularity" (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028184.300-lab-yeast-make-evolutionary-leap-to-multicellularity.html)... there is the statement: "Multicellularity has evolved at...