Stuff we don't know

[PsychoSarah]

An honest thread for posting questions about scientific topics in the hopes someone has an answer for our question.

Rules:
1. I highly advise the answers be sourced, and people should not expect people to take their answers at face value.
2. A statement of "that question has yet to be scientifically answered in any satisfactory way" is an acceptable answer, though it's subject to be refuted by another poster.
3. No god of the gaps fallacy, please.
4. You can answer your own questions on your own if you so choose, but for the sake of the spirit of this thread, I do ask that people not post questions they already know the answer to.
5. no huge discussion of defenses of answers here, as the ultimate point of the thread would be lost if they went on too long.

I'll start out: does anyone know of a site that holds a library of articles on abiogenesis experiments akin to the Miller-Urey one? I'm sick of often hearing about some of them second hand, and being unable to find the scientific literature due to vagueness.

 

[Ophiolite]

I'll start out: does anyone know of a site that holds a library of articles on abiogenesis experiments akin to the Miller-Urey one? I'm sick of often hearing about some of them second hand, and being unable to find the scientific literature due to vagueness.

This:

T.M.McCollom, Miller-Urey and Beyond: What Have We Learned About Prebiotic Organic Synthesis Reactions in the Past 60 Years?
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences Vol. 41: 207-229, 2013

should contain many relevant references. Unfortunately it is behind a pay wall.

 

[Chesterton]

Food scientists fortify certain foods like breakfast cereals with vitamins. Why don't they fortify everything, like potato chips, candy bars, colas? Could they fortify a city's water as with fluoridation? Do some foods not lend themselves chemically to fortification, or is it costly, or what?

 

[DaisyDay]

Food scientists fortify certain foods like breakfast cereals with vitamins.

Lightly processed whole wheat naturally contains vitamins that highly processed white flour does not. Certain highly processed foods like bread, white rice and breakfast cereals were mandated to put back the vitamins processed out so kids didn't get rickets, beriberi, etc. Some breakfast manufacturers took it a step further and put extra helpings of B vitamins in the cereals (along with the sugar and high-fructose corn syrup).

Why don't they fortify everything, like potato chips, candy bars, colas? Could they fortify a city's water as with fluoridation? Do some foods not lend themselves chemically to fortification, or is it costly, or what?

It does cost money and too much is a bad thing - how do control the dosages is problematic. The fat-soluble vitamins can build up to toxic levels, but that may even be true of the water-soluble ones as well. Too much niacin, for example, can adversely affect people taking statins. Megadoses in everything is a bad idea.

On that note, there is a new hypothesis that autism might have been partly caused by too much folic acid during gestation.

 

[jayem]

There are some interesting theories about the physiology of aging. The glycation (or glycosylation) hypothesis is intriguing. The idea is that over time, glucose or fructose molecules become bound to proteins. Which in the case of enzymes, impair their functions. Lipids, which are major cell membrane components, can also be glycosylated. Which can affect cellular integrity. The article mention the antidiabetic drug metformin, which inhibits glycosylation. In one study, it prolonged survival in a group of diabetics even beyond that of a non-diabetic control group. The science of aging is very cool and still in its...uh, infancy.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/researchers-study-3-promising-anti-aging-therapies/

 

[AV1611VET]

An honest thread for posting questions about scientific topics in the hopes someone has an answer for our question.

What kept the Y2K problem from materializing?

 

[freezerman2000]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That's computer science,which is different from life and physical sciences.

 

[freezerman2000]

Maybe there is an answer for this,but here goes.
What if any were the physical properties if any of the singularity,pre-expansion?

 

[AV1611VET]

That's computer science,which is different from life and physical sciences.

Oh, sorry!

 

[freezerman2000]

Just pickin' with ya my friend!

 

[MrSpikey]

What kept the Y2K problem from materializing?

From someone who worked to resolve my then employers Y2K issues, the answer is that we knew many years in advance that there might be an issue. That was our job. It got fixed well before it might have been a problem. This was a common approach.

The media might have had a different view on it, however.

Having said that, if certain companies are still using the same mainframe software in 34 years time, I might be wary of dealing with them... I doubt that will be the case, though.

 

[AV1611VET]

Just pickin' with ya my friend!

I know!

 

[AV1611VET]

From someone who worked to resolve my then employers Y2K issues, the answer is that we knew many years in advance that there might be an issue. That was our job. It got fixed well before it might have been a problem. This was a common approach.

The media might have had a different view on it, however.

Having said that, if certain companies are still using the same mainframe software in 34 years time, I might be wary of dealing with them... I doubt that will be the case, though.

I started my career on an IBM 370/148 mainframe!

 

[Kenny'sID]

Why was a men's bicycle designed in such a way that seems to invite damage to his manhood? When it seems perfectly logical, if there must be a difference in design between the men's and women's bike, the men's bike should be the woman's bike and vice versa?

May not be pure science, but it staggers the mind nonetheless, so I'm hoping an acceptation will be made for the inquiry.

 

[Chesterton]

Why was a men's bicycle designed in such a way that seems to invite damage to his manhood? When it seems perfectly logical, if there must be a difference in design between the men's and women's bike, the men's bike should be the woman's bike and vice versa?

May not be pure science, but it staggers the mind nonetheless, so I'm hoping an acceptation will be made for the inquiry.

Yep, I remember the first time my foot slipped off the pedal and I was subjected to that wholly unique pain that only 50% of us can know. I wished my biked was designed like Suzy's over there. It's believed it's just because girls used to wear dresses and skirts more than pants and getting on and off the bike was easier and more seemly without a girl having to lift her leg over the bar, thus potentially flashing her undies. The higher bar makes the bike more structurally sound and stronger, but it was probably thought girls wouldn't be riding as aggressively as boys anyway.

 

[Kenny'sID]

Yep, I remember the first time my foot slipped off the pedal and I was subjected to that wholly unique pain that only 50% of us can know. I wished my biked was designed like Suzy's over there. It's believed it's just because girls used to wear dresses and skirts more than pants and getting on and off the bike was easier and more seemly without a girl having to lift her leg over the bar, thus potentially flashing her undies. The higher bar makes the bike more structurally sound and stronger, but it was probably thought girls wouldn't be riding as aggressively as boys anyway.

You verified my reasoning as to what their thinking was perfectly. One consolation, at least today's mountain bike lowers the bar so to speak.

 

[trunks2k]

What kept the Y2K problem from materializing?

Billions and billions of dollars spent on fixing the issue before it happened.

While y2k was not goin to be the sort of global disaster portrayed by the media, it WAS a serious issue that had a lot of unknown consequences given the amount of code lying around. So we spent a lot of time and money addressing it before it became a problem. Properly dealing with time is a big issue in computers. In one company I worked at a simple change in the day daylight savings time started required us to investigate the potential effects and we did indeed find a serious bug and had to issue a fix.

Just wait until 32 signed bit time overflows and a bunch of computers suddenly think it's the early teens.