07 AUG 2017 by ideonexus
The Double Multiplicative Nature of Fraction or Ratio Equ...
Most real-world numbers aren’t always so nice and neat, with wholenumber multiples. If, say, Plant A grew from 2 to 3 feet, and Plant B grew from 6 to 8 feet, then we would say that Plant A grew 1/2 of its original height, whereas Plant B only grew 1/3 of its original height. Such reasoning exemplifies multiplicative thinking and necessarily involves rational numbers.
Consider a final example. If you ask a rising 6th grader to compare 13/15 and 14/ 16, chances are that the student will say... 1 
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notes22 JUL 2014 by ideonexus
Human Respiration is Carbon Neutral
The very first time you learned about carbon dioxide was probably in grade school: We breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Any eight-year-old can rattle off this fact. More specifically, the mitochondria within our cells perform cellular respiration: they burn carbohydrates (in the example shown below, glucose) in the oxygen that we breathe in to yield carbon dioxide and water, which we exhale as waste products, as well as energy, which is required to maintain...
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1 We exhale carbon and that carbon is sequestered in the next plant we eat.
17 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Life in a Nebula Evolves to Maneuver into It
"Tell me what happened!"
"The tree came apart.
"Why?"
"Maybe the fire set it off, but it was ready. Clave, everythiiing in the Smoke Ring has some way of getting around. Some way to stay near the median... middle, where there's warater and air. Where do you think jet pods come from?" The hanand relaxed a little, and the Grad kept talking. "It's a plant's way of gettmg around. If a plant wanders out of the median, t too far into the gas torus region--"
"The what?"
Alfin asked, "What o... 1 notes
notesThe integral tree has just broken in half, and the scientist explains this is a survival mechanism because it was moving to far out of the nebula to survive.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Becoming More by Dying
I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I became man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? An interesting poem.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Importance of Surfaces
I would like to start by emphasizing the importance of surfaces. It is at a surface where many of our most interesting and useful phenomena occur. We live for example on the surface of a planet. It is at a surface where the catalysis of chemical reactions occur. It is essentially at a surface of a plant that sunlight is converted to a sugar. In electronics, most if not all active circuit elements involve non-equilibrium phenomena occurring at surfaces. Much of biology is concerned with reacti... 1 notes
notesSurfaces are where are the interesting scientific stuff is taking place.
03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Skrodes
Ravna looked across the surf. When the waves backed down the sand, she could see the Skroderiders’ fronds peeping out of the spray. How she envied them; if tensions annoyed them, they could simply turn them off. The Skroderiders were one of the most common sophonts in the Beyond. There were many varieties, but analysis agreed with legend: very long ago they had been one species. Somewhere in the off-Net past, they had been sessile dwellers of sea shores. Left to themselves, they had develop... 1 notes
notesAn alien species that looks like plant and lacks short-term memory is given mechanical mobility and mechanical memory to help them learn how to use their mobility by a more advanced alien race.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Garden of the Night Sky
This method of viewing the galaxies (‘to continue the simile I have borrowed from the vegetable kingdom’) presented the entire universe in a new kind of light, with the most radical implications. ‘The heavens are now seen to resemble a luxuriant garden which contains the greatest variety of productions, in different flourishing beds … and we can extend the range of our experience [of them] to an immense duration.’ In a garden we may live ‘successively to witness the germination, b... 1 notes
notesA description of the variety found in the night sky through the newly invented telescope.
21 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Barriers that Keep Different Species from Interbreeding
What keeps members of two related species from mating with each
other? There are many different reproductive barriers. Species might not
interbreed simply because their mating or flowering seasons don’t overlap.
Some corals, for example, reproduce only one night a year, spewing
out masses of eggs and sperm into the sea over a several-hour period.
Closely related species living in the same area remain distinct because
their peak spawning periods are several hours apart, preventing eggs
of on... 1 notes
notesDifferent pheremones, blooming times, geographical isolation can keep members of two different species from breeding.
09 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
An Ancient Observation of Life from Lifelessness.
Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie. Thus, next after lifeless things comes the plant, and of plants one will differ from another as to its amount of apparent vitality; and, in a word, the whole genus of plants, whilst it is devoid of life as compared with an animal, is endowed with life as compared with other corporeal enti... 1 notes
notesFrom Aristotle's "History of Animals". From mineral to plant to animal; this could be seen as an early view of evolution.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Science Builds Up, Opinion Does Not
Signs also are to be drawn from the increase and progress of systems and sciences. For what is founded on nature grows and increases, while what is founded on opinion varies but increases not. If therefore those doctrines had not plainly been like a plant torn up from its roots, but had remained attached to the womb of nature and continued to draw nourishment from her, that could never have come to pass which we have seen now for twice a thousand years; namely, that the sciences stand where t... 1 notes
notesIdeas rooted in reality may be built upon like a solid foundation of truth, while opinions do no grow upward, but spread out thin and varied.
