18 JAN 2017 by ideonexus

 Using Feedback to Control Weight

Recent research has shown that exhaust from lungs (part of excretion) is a major factor in weight loss. Burning 10 kg human fat requires inhalation of 29 kg oxygen. This produces 28 kg carbon dioxide and 11 kg water. As food and drinks are temporarily stored in the human stomach and bowels, the body weight is instantaneously increased with the weight of any food or drink consumed. Metabolism is usually divided into catabolism and anabolism, where catabolism is the process of breaking down org...
Folksonomies: health diet weight loss
Folksonomies: health diet weight loss
  1  notes
 
29 NOV 2013 by ideonexus

 Survival of the Stable

Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable. The universe is populated by stable things. A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name. It may be a unique collection of atoms, such as the Matterhorn, that lasts long enough to be worth naming. Or it may be a class of entities, such as rain drops, that come into existence at a sufficiently high rate to deserve a collective name,...
Folksonomies: evolution stability
Folksonomies: evolution stability
  1  notes

One of the characteristics of a successful species is stability.

17 MAR 2012 by ideonexus

 The Sequence Hypothesis and The Central Dogma

My own thinking (and that of many of my colleagues) is based on two general principles, which I shall call the Sequence Hypothesis and the Central Dogma. The direct evidence for both of them is negligible, but I have found them to be of great help in getting to grips with these very complex problems. I present them here in the hope that others can make similar use of them. Their speculative nature is emphasized by their names. It is an instructive exercise to attempt to build a useful theory ...
Folksonomies: genetics information dna
Folksonomies: genetics information dna
  1  notes

Crick describes two guiding principles of understanding how DNA produces proteins. The second is interesting for the use of the term 'information.'

04 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 Organic Chemists Merely Increase the Probability of Results

It is, I believe, justifiable to make the generalization that anything an organic chemist can synthesize can be made without him. All he does is increase the probability that given reactions will 'go.' So it is quite reasonable to assume that given sufficient time and proper conditions, nucleotides, amino acids, proteins, and nucleic acids will arise by reactions that, though less probable, are as inevitable as those by which the organic chemist fulfills his predictions. So why not self-dupli...
  1  notes

In nature, with enough time and proper conditions, the results would happen eventually without him, including self-duplicating molecular systems like viruses.