How do they make Corn Flakes?
Funk500: No, they don’t cancel each other out. they will in fact be additively painful. the majority of the pain from a bee sting and from a wasp sting come from toxins, not the acidity or alkilinity of the venom. bee venom has, among others, a venom protein called mellitin that activates many kinds of nerve fibres, including the small naked nerve fibres that lead you to feel pain. wasp venoms have thei own kind of protein toxins that also activate nerve fibres, so they have more widespread effects. they can activate sympathetic nervous system motor nerves (sweating, raised hairs), some muscle fibres, leading to tremor, and pain fibres, leading to pain and itchiness and tingling. asp venoms are more interesting than bee venoms, but bees kill many more people annually, mostly due to allergy rather than directly by toxic effects. in fact, bees kill more people than any other animal apart from malaria parastites and other people.
poisons and venoms are different only in location and mode of delivery. venoms are manufactured in discrete locations, stored, and then injected into their prey by a specific delivery system. fangs in spiders and snakes (hence snake BITE) stingers in scorpions, wasps, bees, etc, (hence bee STING), nematocystst in cnidarians and jellyfish and bluebottles (also STUNG). they are usually part of an active system of delivery.
poisons are in the animal or plant as passive defence rather than active offence (not always). cane toads mae a poisonous secretion from their parotid glands that oozes onto the skin. poison arrow frogs do the same. nettles have a poisonous chemical in their hair glands that transfers by touch when the poisonous hairs break off in your skin. pufferfish cultivate a bacteria in their ovaries, livers, bile ducts, and salivary nd mucus glands that creates tetrodotoxin, so named after the fish’s genus name of ‘four tooth’: tetra dont (Latin stems).
toxins are the specific individual chemicals with the toxic effects in the venom or the poison. most venoms and poisons are a cocktail of different toxins, only a minority of which are not proteins. the non-protein toxins include things like citric acid, tetrodotoxin, many of the bacterial toxins, poison arrow toxins, bufotenine and bufotoxin from toads, ricin, tetanus toxin, serotonin, histamine, etc.
the protein toxins are far more dangerous in most cases (except perhaps for ricin), needing less for a kill as they have beend honed by years of evolution between predator and prey. most of them attack nerves but others attack other important processes like clotting or muscle contraction. there is far more scope fr the creation of protein toxins than for the creation of non-protein toxins, as each protein toxin needs just a single gene, and multiple families of related toxins can evolve following gene duplication, a very common mutation. non-protein toxins generally need a many genes, one to code for each enzyme in the manufacture pathway of that toxin.
some Urodacus scorpions that i have studied have more than 400 different protein toxins in their venom, which is handy in a lifestyle where you have to be able to eat anything that comes along as food is so scarce. that’s a record as far as i know. many spiders have dozens or so, while some spiders and many wasps and ants get by with six or seven different toxins. snakes have correspondingly fewer again (often 3-4, less than 10, normally).
What’s wrong with this blasted transporter?
where’s that damn bridge
If you caught James Bond would you kill him quickly (perhaps with urodacus venom) and then make sure he was dead or would you leave him unguarded in a room with something that would kill him in a slower, more painful way but possibly give him a chance to escape?
Would you explain your evil world domination plan to him first, secure in the knowledge that as he would soon be dead there was no risk of him using that information to foil you?
well, you did do remarkably well compared to past performances, but still lagging well behind on a per capita basis, as i recall. 
does that answer your first question? i think we aussies are better than the Brits at sports as we took the lightest fingered runners and the most courageous villains that poor old mother england had to offer, tested them in the harsh environment of the aussie outback, and then cross bred the survivors with talented migrants from other nations. that must be the secret…
yes, what the hell happened to the aussies in the velodrome? pussies. not a single medal in any track cycling events. unexpected to say the least. at least i was spared the shame as nobody here saw fit to broadcast any of it.
so, the bridge is lost then?
will the universe expand forever? good question. do you wish to discuss this under the closed universe model, the cyclic model, or the expansionist model?
corn flakes are made from flaked corn. D’uh. oh, and then they’re toasted.
bridges and transporters are an engineering problem. go and annoy Scottie.
James Bond, OTOH, is a far more obvious problem, and one i will be happy to help with. the only possible answer is the second option:
“leave him unguarded in a room with something that would kill him in a slower, more painful way but possibly give him a chance to escape” of course he does escape. from the hollowed-out volcano. with my girl (after seducing her to stop the damned lasers.) and only after having explained in great detail my evil world domination plan to him, secure in the knowledge that as he would soon be dead there was no risk of him using that information to foil me. that’s the only way the viewers can understand the movie, now innit? that’s just Hollywood doing what Hollywood does best: bad editing, bad script, snappy oneliners and eye popping special effects and bustlines.
You know I’ve always been bothered by the idea of transporters. How could you ever know what it feels like subjectively to be transported? Maybe the dissasembly process feels like death, in which case the copy of you that is assembled at the destination isn’t much of a compensation. Or maybe you’re consciousness jumps to the destination and the process is just like walking through a door.
Stephen King wrote a short story about that. If you transported while you were awake, it would seem like an eternity. So they knocked people out with gas first.
it does raise a big philosophical question about the soul… if we do manage to make a transporter, by sending the information of the states of various particles in this location (perhaps by entanglement) and then reassembling other particles in the new location with the same state function, will the consciousness reappear spontaneously? i believe it will, but then that raises a question about the soul: is the new you possessed of the same soul? then what was transferred? is the soul simply the information that makes you, is your soul simply your Eigenvector? then what is religion based on?
single particles have already been instanteously transferred several metres and reappeared in the correct spin state.
Stephen King wrote a short story about that. If you transported while you were awake, it would seem like an eternity. So they knocked people out with gas first.[/quote]
The Jaunt? Yeah, I liked that. But that’s not really what I’m getting at. I’m concerned that a Star Trek style transport is more of a copy and then delete rather than a move. Actually The Prestige touches on this idea even if it gets there in a rather odd way.
Hell of a way to travel–scattering a man’s molecules across the universe.
How much does the Eiffel tower’s height change over a year?
Why do men have nipples?
Good question! And why are we not allowed to see nipples on TV? Even in wet T-sirt competitions there are no nipples. Is it because people here don’t have nipples?
Annually it changes several inches in height, taller in summer and shorter in winter, and cycles between those two extremes. (iron expands with temperature). specific details? probably only an inch or two, but go and ask an engineer.
then there’s paint added each year or so, and the accumulated dirt that collects on the paint. but that’s only a mm or two i’d guess. then there’s the extra bits they graft on, like more radio towers and so on.
geez, too many engineering questions!
niples, though, are better to talk about by far.
we are all based on the female body plan, but most men don’t activate the breast growing component unless they have their hormones altered by disease, emasculation, or steroid therapy. some men do grow breasts. men are just as likely as women to get breast cancer in breast tissue (but have less tissue so their incidence is lower).
and why are there no nipples, even in a wet T shirt competition? padded breast liners for modesty, or taping: not fair really, as there’s no telling how big the bra liner is… the $10,000 goes to the girl with the biggest bra liner. oh mi god, they sure do have the most prudish hussies here, don’t they.
Twat. That’s not a science question, so I have the answer: They’re born, not made. Look at the metrosexual or Hartley Pool threads for additional illumination.
How much do they pay you for this gig?
Are you a Scorpio?
This thread is the best! :bouncy:
not enough, and funnily, yes.
do i really get to choose my own bike? whooppee!