[bondserv]

PING!

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

Intelligent Design (ID) Ping

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

Intelligent Design (ID) ping

Thought you would want to see this and know that you'd have done the same for me.

K4

[Tom Bombadil]

Each problem was a show stopper, yet his show went on.

Molecular Chomsky.

[general_re]

His name will be withheld for this report...

How convenient. Not only is it withheld from this "report", but there's no mention of it at all in recent issues of JPL's employee newsletter, not even a squib about such an upcoming event. More proof of the Darwin conspiracy, no doubt....

[Selkie]

life didn’t form in the water, but in a desert>>>>>

Fascinating stuff ! Thanks for posting this.

[RadioAstronomer]

At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Great place to work. :-)

[AndrewC]

It seems evident that the scientist mentioned in the article is very likely to be this person.

Steven A. Benner

He presented(along with others) this paper, Borate Minerals Stabilize Ribose, in January of this year.

Some people that have commented on this thread are so close minded that they cannot rationally discuss this topic because it was presented by a creationist. It is typical of them.

[Right Wing Professor]

Genetic takeovers:  He chided those whose models invoke genetic takeovers: i.e., starting with another sugar then switching to ribose, starting with another informational macromolecule then switching to DNA, etc.  For instance, some flippantly suggest to get DNA’s sugar, “just add an OH to ribose....”  The professor got animated.  That adds a charge to the molecule, he exclaimed, and what is more important to the behavior of a molecule than its electrostatic charge?  You can’t just add a charge to a molecule and expect it to keep behaving like it did before.

This is nonsense. You replace a H on DNA with an OH, you don't change the charge. Either the seminar-giver, or the reporter, doesn't know what he's talking about. I strongly suspect it's the latter.

I did a search at the JPL website for a seminar held on Novmber 5 2004 that fits this description. I couldn't find one. Perhaps someone else might have better luck?

[AndrewC]

Polar Protic Solvents
Let's start with the meaning of the adjective protic. In the context used here, protic refers to a hydrogen atom attached to an electronegative atom. For our purposes that electronegative atom is almost exclusively oxygen. In other words, polar protic solvents are compounds that can be represented by the general formula ROH. The polarity of the polar protic solvents stems from the bond dipole of the O-H bond. The large difference in electronegativities of the oxygen and the hydrogen atom, combined with the small size of the hydrogen atom, warrant separating molecules that contain an OH group from those polar compounds that do not. Examples of polar protic solvents are water (HOH), methanol (CH3OH), and acetic acid (CH3CO2H).

[js1138]

placemarker

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[onedoug]

Je suis la, voila!