Scientific R&D At Home? 398
An anonymous reader writes "I'm currently on the cusp of getting myself a new hobby and making some investments. There are a few areas that interest me greatly, from playing with EEG/ECG and trying to put together a DIY sleep lab, to astronomy, etc. I'm somewhat hesitant to get into these fields because (despite the potentially short-lived enjoyment factor) I'm not convinced they are areas that would lend themselves to making new discoveries in the home and with home equipment, which is what I'd really like to do. I've also read quite a number of articles on 'bio hacking,' and the subject seems interesting, but it also seems futile without an expensive lab (not to mention years of experience). What R&D hobbies do Slashdotters have that provide them with opportunities to make interesting discoveries and potentially chart new territory in the home? Do such hobbies exist?"
Homemade science (Score:3, Interesting)
And you could include schools in that, there is probably a lot of stuff out to discover which requires keep observation, measurement and then perhaps the help of a statistician to help sort the data. Counting number of animals and species in different kinds of gardens (all kept clean, lot of exotic plants, with a fish(less) pond etc.), dental caries vs. preferred school meal/drink, oh, and repeating the rats on drug experiment Rat Park [wikipedia.org] - providing free heroin to rats has a remarkably unintuitive outcome. And schools collaborating nationwide and thus getting a large enough sample size could probably dig up something really remarkable. To say nothing of the large term effects wrt. science literacy.
You totally picked the wrong optical hobby, dude (Score:5, Interesting)
... lab, to astronomy, etc....
You totally picked the wrong optical hobby dude. Unless you live in some sort of paradise, its either going to be too cold, too hot, too rainy, too buggy, too cloudy, too windy for lightweight mounts, or bad temp inversions, about 99% of the time. Now, a microscope, on the other hand, maybe with a cam attachment hooked up to a PC, with some image analysis software, that could be big fun under any weather condition. And they both cost about the same, less than a car payment for junk, about a single monthly mortgage payment for the good stuff, and about one decent used car for used pro-grade hardware.
Also, we all look at the same sky. That means intense competition. But we all have different dirt and ponds. Yet another vote for microscope.
I'm not convinced they are areas that would lend themselves to making new discoveries in the home and with home equipment, which is what I'd really like to do.
Yeah well you're about to learn the hard part is not deciding what to buy, or even whipping out a credit card, the hard part is figuring out how you'll determine its something new. Pretty easy if you want to discover something new to you, look, an algae species I've never photographed before. Pretty hard if you want to darn near prove a negative, prove no human being has ever photographed that particular species of algae before.
Something New is not necessarily discovering a new individual thing. Something New might be using yer computer and some homemade software that emulates a red blood cell counter to chart the population of algae per sample vs ... something, to make interesting predictions, or discover a new effect. Or turning your computer-microscope into the worlds weirdest spectrophotometer, to measure ... something.
What R&D hobbies do Slashdotters have that provide them with opportunities to make interesting discoveries and potentially chart new territory in the home? Do such hobbies exist?
On the other hand, one good thing about the astronomy hobby is the AAVSO, American Association of Variable Star Observers. You'd never guess that their URL happens to be:
http://www.aavso.org/ [aavso.org]
I've often pondered... (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as serious "science" might I suggest this -- while groundbreaking research is mostly hi-tech requiring expensive equipment, one thing that doesn't get done much anymore is well within reach: verifying or debunking claims about various products. This can range from, say, taking time lapse photos of -- oh, I don't know, the progress of competing wart removers -- to basic qualitative chemical analysis of product ingredients (is that fish oil actually mercury-free).
Another idea might be designing coffee table doodads that show off scientific phenomena or engineering tricks.
Sounds like you need a collaborator (Score:3, Interesting)
If you read into the history of Medtronic (and the pacemaker itself) you'll find that their beginnings weren't too far from what I just described - an inventor with an interest working with a physician researcher with a need.
Days of Garage Inventor long gone(if ever existed) (Score:4, Interesting)
It's great that you'd like to tinker around and play with stuff at home. You may learn some things, and it will definitely present with some interesting engineering problems. But true scientific R&D, where you discover something new, forget about it for the most part.
The only domains where a lone tinkerer can still make an impact and "discover" something new is in pure math, or algorithmic research. And even there, it's a rare thing.
The days of the lone researcher are long since past, if they ever really existed in modern history. Sure during the Renaissance and through the 1800s and early 1900s a lone researcher could discover/invent something new. However, even during the latter part of the aforementioned time period, the individuals in questions (Maxwell, Faraday, Watt, Bell, etc) often had years/decades of experience and/or education in the fields they made discoveries in. And the myth of the lone inventor during this latter part wasn't really true, for example Edison had a large lab full of employees for his research.
In the contemporary time period, it's HIGHLY unlikely (I'm just reluctant to say impossible). All the low level hanging fruit in most fields has been mined. There's a reason that PhDs take a long time, there's a lot to learn and catch up on. Also, most discoveries, especially in basic science ( Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy) require lots of expensive capital equipment and labs to do. And often, it's not just one scientist, but an entire team of collaborators working on a problem from many different angles.
Now, there may be some interesting inventions/engineering solutions a lone inventor can PERHAPS come up with, but they wouldn't be new scientific discoveries. Also, as another refinement of my point, there are some things an individual can still do, like say perhaps discover a new species, but not in their backyard (unless you live in Brazil). Even then, you need a commitment of resources and time to explore the still hidden parts of the world, in the rainforest, or deep under the sea.
So, while the concept of the lone scientist is romantic, exciting and inspiring, in the modern era it's unrealistic in my opinion.
Ask A Radio Ham (Score:3, Interesting)
I do research into high IP3 HF receiver front ends, other radio hams are working with software defined radios, recovering digital signals from noise, DSP chips and even the way the brain perceives sound.
Ganty HA5RXZ
Plasma Physics (Score:4, Interesting)
No, seriously, you can do it at home--get a ham radio license and start doing some experiments aimed at better understanding the behavior of the ionosphere (which is a plasma) and it's effects on radio wave propagation. No only could you make a significant contribution to science, you could have some fun in the process.
Here's the first in a series of articles [eham.net] on the topic. You might find it interesting.
Maths (Score:1, Interesting)
Mathematics. Field is huge, and generally all you need is a pen and paper, and sometimes a computer :). Works for me.
Hobby type research for fun and fun (Score:2, Interesting)
CS is an awesome field for this.... (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, for me, for the past few years I've been focusing on artificial intelligence, as in, figuring out the algorithm for how the brain works.
Another thing I've wanted to work on is figuring out if P=NP or not.
Another thing is figuring out the best way to teach programming to beginners (I even have my name on a paper in that field, for whatever it's worth)
Another thing that is relatively easy to do, and likely to get you published (which is kind of fun), is a wordprinting program on Shakespeare's works or some other works of disputed authorship.
On the more programming side, there are a number of things to do, for example, build a program to display all the temperatures taken in the world, along with pictures of the thermometers (apparently some guy went around and took pictures of them all). Show visually how the global temperature is taken.
Some of these are obviously really hard, but sometimes it's better to go for something hard that you really want to do. As the quote says, "shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll have landed among the stars." Even if you don't figure it out, you'll have learned something and pushed your limits.
This is everyone I associate with (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone who is a close friend of mine has these sorts of hobbies. My closest friend has built a complete sleep lab in his home, complete with a sensory isolation tank. This is just part of an extended effort on his part to more fully understand and explore his dreaming and other alternate states of mind.
In my opinion the most interesting things going on now are in biology and that's sort of home lab I am building.
Some specific suggestions (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, everything previous posted about doing what you love is true. Figure out what you love first.
And the way to do that is to put yourself in a situation where you can't do anything for long periods. Take a 2-week vacation somewhere w/o internet access and little interaction with others - camping, for instance. It takes a couple of days for your mind to finish processing your daily routine and calm down, but once that's over your mind will naturally start to think about things you enjoy.
(Note: This is hard. You have to force yourself to not go off to get mental stimulation somewhere.)
Some specific suggesitons:
1) I strongly believe that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in the subject of AI.
2) If you live near mountains, find an isolated ecological niche and catalog the species there. For instance, find a tall vertical rock cliff with niches which have captured trees and plants fallen from the top. Being essentially isolated from the larger ecology, speciation occurs at these places. Catalog the new species.
3) Go into the woods and find some sort of overhanging rock shelter - of the sort that a hunter-gatherer society might take refuge in during a thunderstorm. Do an archaeological excavation at that spot: Divide it up into rectangles using string, dig down an inch at a time and put the dirt through a sieve and see what you can find. Get any fireplace remains carbon dated.
New cellular automata rules (Score:3, Interesting)
While Conway's Life has been studied to death for 40 years and some wider categories of simple rules have been studied exhaustively by others, Golly [sf.net] enables you to explore much wider rule sets in the quest of some that are significantly more productive that Life.
For the past 18 months I've been using it to study just one of the Generations rules which were initially surveyed, especially by Mirek Wojtowicz [mirekw.com], around 2000. I'm focused almost entirely on Generations 345/3/6, running it on 3 machines including one added just for that purpose. But I've recently noted [youtube.com] that 345/2/4 may be even more productive in terms of novel phenomena, although I'm not planning to switch my own research which is nowhere near finished, let alone properly reported.
Beyond that, Golly also supports RuleTable and RuleTree algorithms which allow you to try an unlimited number of new rules, a few more of which are sure to be a lot more interesting than LIfe itself.
Been there, done that, writing the first paper (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Days of Garage Inventor long gone(if ever exist (Score:4, Interesting)
In Bio, you can probably discover a dozen novel microorganisms is just about any pool of slimy water large enough to drown in. You'll have to do a lot of slogging to learn enough about it to publish(if there were a faster way, grad students would be graduating faster), and you probably won't be lucky enough to find one that does anything wildly cool; but simply finding one should be doable enough. Even larger stuff like insects is pretty under-cataloged in many locations. Again, your odds of finding a particularly notable bug aren't huge; but enough slogging will almost certainly yield pictures and specimens of something that nobody has ever come up with a latinate name for. Whether this motivates you is another question; but the sample set is just so enormous that, as long as you have a decent microscope/camera, and perhaps a budget for ordering genetic sequences of stuff, a novel organism should just be a matter of effort.
Assuming you have some requisite talent, and enough budget for a decent tinkering shop, you can probably do some novel applied science/engineering(albeit probably not based on novel principles), as long as you stay away from areas of commercial interest. The field of "best approximation, for ~$100, of Thing X that normally starts at ~$20,00" has been a tinker's classic for ages. Your work won't exactly represent an advance(the usual price tag isn't just because the commercial guys are price gouging); but it may well be novel and creative. In certain cases, often being pursued by deeply underfunded NGOs, such work could even be of humanitarian significance(think solar ovens, for instance, the field of solar power is overwhelmingly dominated by semiconductor guys doing stuff with novel quantum-well fabrication in order to eke out that extra
what about bioinformatics? (Score:1, Interesting)
After spending almost fifteen years in academic biomedical wet research I quit my position last year to work in the industry in a completely different activity. Now, in my free time (which I do have now, not like when I worked in the academia), I am doing very interesting (at least for me) in silico experimentation. I believe that there is a great potential for bioinformatics, and most biologists have no training at all in computer science, alghorithms, maths, etc. For me its great, I can do only what I really like, do not have to waste my time in the very low probability of success grant writing, no distraction in academic bureaucracy, and still produce high quality science. Of course, one of the keys for me is a great relationship with a very close scientist that still has a wet lab and no informatics skills. When we need to confirm some of the in silico findings she has the capacity to do the experiments.
In conclusion, based on my experience, team up with someone that has the capacity to generate experimental data, there a lot of biologists that are eager to work and developed new techniques to extract information from their experimental activities. Of course, for me was easy because I had the collaborators to work with and a lot of experience in the biology of the issues at study.
I am now enjoying the science that I do at home as I had never enjoyed science before, and although my discoveries are probably more limited than what you can do working at a university, they are still interesting, useful, and good contributions to the scientific knowledge.
Re:Arrest! (Score:4, Interesting)
Luckily, they can still wave "don't tread on me" flags with impunity, so it's ok...
Re:Arrest! (Score:5, Interesting)
I have tons of lab glassware, scary sounding chemicals like potassium ferricyanide and benzotriazole, lots of white powder and digital scales to measure them, high powered power supplies, RF and electronics equipment, lasers, casks of gunpowder and stockpiles of lead and bullets, and more stuff that would make for damn fine TV on the evening news--"Potential terrorist killed in struggle with police--an arsenal of weapons, dangerous chemicals that could be used for chemical weapons, bomb making materials, and communications equipment for communicating with terrorists across the globe were siezed....
My hobbies are photography, shooting/reloading, robotics, and radio.
It's a dangerous world for people that do anything interesting or innovative. In complete seriousness, be careful.
Alternative energy (Score:3, Interesting)
The alternative energy movement was started at the grass roots, and continues to be led by backyard intentors. See youtube for micro hydro, solar concentrators, stirling engines, tesla turbines, and more. Fascinating area of science.
Don't discover: Innovate. (Score:3, Interesting)
Engineering on the other hand--coming up with a new way to use new tools--well, that's a very broad field, and the technologies are always so new that a novice can get in SOMEwhere. Some people say software engineering; if it was me, I'd look into the Makerbot project. If you can find ways to improve the production of Makerbots, or reduce the cost of their expensive components, you can help make them more ubiquitous in homes nationwide...and THAT will probably change the world a lot more than a fair number of scientific endeavors. Alternately, things like that protein folding game (Foldit?) that was mentioned on Slashdot a day or two ago could be a place to start.
Associate yourself with a team that can find a job for amateurs. Even if it's a very loose association, you'll need a support network in your field of choice...and, well, you need people to tell you when you're barking up the wrong tree. For example, if even half the backyard geniuses who try to expand on Tesla's creations had someone telling them which parts of their work had already been duplicated long, long ago, chasing them out of that line of questioning and onto another, we'd probably have mars colonies by now...
Re:Do what you enjoy... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well, it would seem to me... (Score:4, Interesting)
The GP may have put it badly, but he does have a point: you don't go out looking for something to do to "make a significant discovery." You try a few things, find something you like, and do it. If you do it really well, maybe you'll find something novel.
The amateur planet and supernova finders didn't go out and buy a telescope because they wanted to find planets and get their names in journals, they were already accomplished amateur astronomers and started looking for planets or supernovae for the challenge.
Re:I've often pondered... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Do what you enjoy... (Score:4, Interesting)
You've hit on kind of the sweet spot there. I agree with you that the scientific world seems to have had many of its boundaries pushed beyond the capacity of the average home experimenter, but the artistic world has no such boundaries. Fun and artistic electromechanical toys and hacks are still novel. Look at shows like Burning Man, sites like hackaday, magazines like Make:. They're filled with people interested in the act of creation. And last night my brother-in-law introduced me to Farm Show magazine (farmshow.com) which is a compendium of hacks and homebuilt machines that farmers have created out of necessity and imagination. It has a lot of really cool homemade things in it.
And if you're looking to monetize it, handmade and homemade mechanical equipment has a very visceral appeal to a lot of people. The potential to sell a unique device is high. And you can get involved for any amount of money, from repurposing junk bits from broken VCRs to building a nicely equipped machine shop.
Re:Of course there are opportunities. (Score:3, Interesting)
A space elevator is a straightforward materials problem. Make the right material, the problem is solved. Current candidates for materials include carbon nanotubes. Which, among other places, can be found in candle soot. I wouldn't rule out the garage as a source for ground breaking discoveries here.
AI... again, all you need is a PC that can address lots of RAM, and a goodly amount of RAM. Guaranteed. I may be overestimating the amount of RAM. Go ahead, ask me why. I love that question. :)
Fusion... you can put a fusion reaction on your desktop with a Farnsworth Fusor. Look it up. You can build a high powered laser. Water is readily available. Who's to say what you can, and cannot, do? I'm not saying you could make a commercially viable reactor (or that you couldn't), but I am saying that you might find a fundamental reaction or process.
Artificial meat... this field is *definitely* ripe (hah!) for garage work. It consists of getting cells to grow outside the body. In order to be practical, it *requires* that the process be simple. We already know how to culture in a small plate; we know how to stimulate muscles so they have tone; so a lot of research is concentrated on how to scaffold the cells and this may turn out to be very simple - can't say until its done - but again, nothing about it screams "not in the garage."
And nothing about them says you can't have an idea and chase venture capital, either. The bottom line is that these are presently unsolved problems that need solutions, and none of them are either impossible or even unlikely. Fusion? Look up. Space elevator? The math works. Ai? You're intelligent, so we know it can be done at least one way. Artificial meat -- almost the same answer.
Yet each of these presents an industry-launching potential, reputation, fame, money, service... the world is full of things like this. But every time you look at something and go "aw, can't do THAT without a lab, you fulfill your own expectations. Einstein did his most interesting work while employed as a patent clerk. Many discoveries came about as accidental consequences of other work. Not saying you can't discover stuff with a huge staff and a big budget, I'm just saying it's no certainty that you have to have them. Finally, given the right intellectual gifts, you may figure it out with zero lab work at all. Clarke worked out geostationary satellites with no particular lab work.
Speaking as an engineer, I've worked on problems and had at least four (that I recall) of them spring, as far as I could tell, completely solved into my mind after a good sleep, while driving, and once while walking into the kitchen. The only thing remaining for each of those four ideas was implementation using well known and rather vanilla techniques and/or parts. But all of those ideas were new, commercially viable, and served me *extremely* well.
One was specific to ham radio and while it got me mentioned in the "Amateur Radio Handbook" and won me some awards, didn't make a whole lot of money.
One of them (in the realm of dithering palettes for color) remains the best approach, by far, that I've ever been able to find, but has few applications today because images created through color palettes are generally obsolete.
Another was so obscure and specific that the market for it only existed as long as a certain set of other-party hardware was being sold. But it was a hell of a money maker.
The remaining one continues to pay off today, almost ten years after it popped into my head and I almost drove off the road. I spent the next hour babbling about it to my long-suffering and ultra loyal ladyfriend, who was at the time a captive audience as we were driving about three hours to visit her kids. Today, she lives in a fully paid off, 5,000 sq foot home with me, bought with income leveraged with that idea. And she drives the car she always wanted, also fully paid off. Apparently it was worth it. :)
So my personal experience tell
Re:Well, it would seem to me... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's what I get for posting before morning coffee... :)
Yes, the post was probably a bit hard-nosed, but I'm glad you recognized my point: it's what interests you that takes you to interesting places. There are two kinds of achievers: 1) Those that work hard at something, and 2) those that work hard as something that interests them. The latter benefit from the leverage of intrinsic motivation.
For my situation, I modify #2 slightly: Those that work hard at what comes easy to them. I am definitely a poster child for that... well, delete "work hard" and replace with "piddle at"...
build your own satellite (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to go the mad scientist route, build a satellite in your basement. It's about the same cost as buying a motorcycle ($8K including launch) and, as far as mid-life crises go, a lot cooler. I'm doing it ( http://projectcalliope.com/ [projectcalliope.com] ), and blogging about how it goes at http://scientificblogging.com/satellite_diaries [scientificblogging.com]
You get to learn neat stuff about electronics, Arduino-level programming, and HAM radio.
It's worth it just for when people ask what I do for fun...
Re:Special Equipment (Score:5, Interesting)
Obligatory non-attorney forum safe harbor clause from Ohio: You may need some kind of EPA or local permit for certain stuff, I have a metal finishing lab in my "laboratory" barn as that's my business, and it's where I test some ideas. I needed a permit from Ohio EPA, it was a total B**ch to get, but I really only needed it to make Sigma Aldrich happy. OEPA was mostly annoyed by my requests since I'm not a significant source of anything. It's really just a small fume hood, laboratory bench, power supply and beakers, but it works.
However, every summer I go through about 3 gallons of Clorox bleach per week for my pool, along with other household chemicals that could look specious to some people. Hey, a guy wants his pool to be comfortable.
Other than some weird looks from Walmart employees, I haven't had the Feds knocking on my door, and if they did I'd invite them to a cool dip in my crystal clear water heated by my DIY solar exchanger. After that they can take a look at my hydroponics lab with many gallons of nasty chemicals - such as Ammonia, HCL and various nitrates. On my bench in the greenhouse there's enough glassware to make any meth-manufacturer blush, all ordered from China via e-bay many times without so much as a what-for from anyone.
While they try to figure out what laws I may have broken, they can indulge on the myriad of nuts, citrus, and other good stuff I've got growing in northern Ohio. And before they leave I'd be happy to treat them to a rocket launch or two, as everyone loves those.
Long story short, it's still a mostly free country for the intrepid individual. Perhaps a survey course in physics, chemistry or biology at a local college is in your future?
IMO, and experience, any hobby that turns serious will burn your bank account like a NASA moon shot. If your married, I hope your wife is understanding, or at least has a separate bank account... otherwise you and your family may starve because of that last experiment you've got cooking in the barn.
Lighting (Score:3, Interesting)
Just playing around with lights and plants got me one sweet job designing LED panels for growing stuff. Hopefully I get it ultra-efficient and get to put it in space one day!
West Meets East w/ EEG & Video... R-Mind & (Score:1, Interesting)
( remember OpenEEG, AND its limitation: it filters-out Gamma-waves! :)
My plan is to record both through the OpenEEG second-stage AND
to record through a multi-channel sound-card rig,
so that both the low-frequencies & the Gamma-waves get captured
Here's an experiment I intend to do in a half-year or so, :)
maybe a bit longer, depending on resources
( it's part of a more-complex experiment, for me,
but if you beat me to the punch on this one, good for you
Find someone who can switch between *strong* Left-Brain-Mode Mind
( logic/reductionism/fixed-symbol/words ),
and *strong* Right-Brain-Mode Mind
( timless-wholeness/all-at-onceness/Totality/depth+texture/BEing ).
Or, manufacture one ( *work through*, instead of merely "reading",
"The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards, Ph.D,
and use charcoal instead of pencil, because it works better for R-Mind,
and true "toothy" sketch-paper, too: Stack the odds for victory! ).
Rig a system so that you get simultaneous EEG & Video,
then record someone sketching,
SHOWING the different brain-modes when they *can't* draw
( L-Mind, which only holds symbols, and cannot *tolerate* what-itself-is ),
and when the *can* draw ( R-Mind ),
and showing the oscillation between modes.
Many dismiss this shift as pop-psychology-BS,
but it's directly experienceable!
Anyways, I found out within this last year that
*some* people simply *can't feel* the shift from one mode to the other,
so as far as *they* are concerned, since *they* can't feel the shift,
that proves it doesn't exist!
pseudoscience, of course...
Also note that it's been mathematically-proven that any
self-consistent-system-of-knowing ( like either R-Mind or L-Mind )
can ONLY know what fits within its system, and cannot know what doesn't.
This is why anyone "educated" into blocking their R-Mind mode
( notice how *small* kids *can* draw balanced looking drawings,
but *educated* people almost always *can't*:
the *L-Mind conditioning* produced the result,
as working-through "The New Drawing..." will prove to anyone who honestly does it ).
So, if a *Westerner* puts out EEG+Video *showing* this difference,
it'll be accepted in the west, but until then...
The reason I'm going to be doing this experiment, though,
is that R-Mind is the basis of the Tibetan-style intensity-meditation
( that produces Gamma-waves ).
( notice that meditation evolved in the ideogram + visual-languages cultures .. MOAR CAFFEINE & DISTRACTIONSES!!! ...
of the East, and Westerners tend to rabidly hate/prevent stillness & tranquility,
doing EVERYthing necessary to eradicate 'em from our world
as for India being a place of ideograms or visual-languages?
Take a good look at the visual-language of the thanka/thangka paintings,
the *visual*-representations "shiva", etc. among India:
you'll see that *many* developed their R-Mind wholeness there,
in spite of their alphabetic conditioning...
Read "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess" for how history shows
L-Mind made prevalent & dominant in a population produces pogrom/holocaust,
EVERY time. )
And, of course, since our MIND is our most powerful resource,
anyone who can produce a bunch of MIND-powerful people,
all committed to changing the world somehow,
is more likely to produce intended kind of effect than any equal number of "regulars", yes?
Whomever of us strikes first with the results, Win!
Re:Special Equipment (Score:3, Interesting)
Heck, around here (Montana), if you buy a bottle of NyQuil at one pharmacy, then go to another and buy one, you're going to be arrested almost immediately.
That's nothing. Just north of you in Alberta if you ask for nasal decongestant without paracetemol (which I think you call acetominophen in the US) you get the third degree from the pharmacist because the paracetemol, as well as its medical effects, makes it harder to use for Meth manufacture. I've even had one pharmacist tell me to just get the stuff with the paracetemol added...at least until I asked him whether it was ethical for him to advise me to take unnecessary medication simply because he did not want to fill out the paperwork. Judging by his immediate capitulation I'm guessing that it wasn't...
Open source science is the answer (Score:2, Interesting)
There is lots of scientific progress being done in home and it would be possible to do even more, if few obstacles were removed. As noted, one of the biggest problem in doing home science is the cost of access to research knowledge. Pubmed etc, requires great deal of money to get papers out, or some connection to university with subscription. What if all of scientific knowledge, papers, reports, raw data were publicly available for everyone. Like some kind of addition to wikipedia, "wikiscience". Novadays scientific publications often obtain some sort of copyright to published papers and it reduces the chance to get this information out freely... but when you think of it, if everything was "free", science would advance much more faster.
How could "normal people" help science? For example, medicine would progress much more faster if people with certain illness could use their own brain to help solve the mystery. Often when person is diagnosed (or even long before this), his interest for his disease is greatly increased, and even normal people can have huge knowledge of this certain disease. If there was an open forum where this kind of people could ask questions from "academia", where normal people with smart brains could contradict "concensus" with hard facts, read from hundreds of papers... what would happen? One scientist is just one mind, and 100 sick people with smart questions can open whole new possibilities in research for this one scientist. Multiple sclerosis, cancers... when it's your life on the line, you'd rather find a cure than do anything else?
There are communities in internet where people have more knowledge about certain research chemicals (DRUGS!?) than scientific community itself, because certain kind of research is hard to do inside money-hungry academic circles. Human guinea pigs you might think, but they do it because they want to. Huge deal of sick people would want to be guinea pig if there was any theoretical possibility of cure even if it wouldn't be 100% safe.
So what needs to be done is offer open scientific hub which would expand at exponential rates, where every scientific paper is released, where everyone can contribute, and where everyone is peer-reviewer. Some kind of addition to wikipedia maybe? Open up the science for collective conciousness, and new ideas will flow.
And what would be academia's part in all this? To do expensive lab research, use expensive machinery to find answers to questions which will arise from the collective...
Re:Speaking from my Personal Interests... (Score:4, Interesting)
A wonderful way to be a real hero in aquaculture right now would be to figure out how to discourage overrunning of popular native game and commercial fish by less desirable invasive species in the wild.
Snakehead are a real problem in the Southeastern US and silver carp are having a terrible effect in the Midwest. Snakehead are aggressive towards other fish, towards frogs, turtles, and all sorts of other creatures, and both parents protect the brood, too. They also have crude air-breathing capabilities so they can live in oxygen-poor water and move easily through shallows. Silver carp are better filter-feeders than native species, mass in huge numbers, and are actually a bit dangerous to small boats. They grow to about 40 pounds and all tend to jump out of the water as boats approach. Boats get damaged, and people in small boats have been knocked overboard.
Re:Arrest! (Score:3, Interesting)
"Not arms a militia would keep" and "not arms" are still two distinct sets with differing membership.
Glass flasks, BTW, can be useful for making your own ammunition. There's nothing in the Commerce Clause which prevents a reloader from mixing his own smokeless in his own state with his own materials and equipment, and banning ammo is just like banning the gun.
Is it a "reasonable regulation" to say a guy can buy commercial ammo but not make his own?