"Fact: Germs [including the flu virus] can live on surfaces for up to 
two days.

Fact: Dettol kills 99.9% of gems, including the flu virus."

Uh, yeah, erm...

Fact: Dettol kills 99.9% of bacteria. As does vineger, bleack, salt 
water, soap, alcohol, and actually just about anything with an 
osmolarity different from fresh water. :-P

Fact: Virii are not "alive" in the first place, so it is not possible to 
"kill" them.

It does irritate me when commercial entities pray on public anxiety and 
ignorance to try to peddle their wares.

And it /really/ irritates me when they pretend to be all scientific. 
Seen any beauty products lately? Skin moisturisers have existed for over 
a century, and they're all basically a specific mixture of water and 
various oils. And yet, if you watch TV you see stuff like "Loreal 
Age-Reperfect(tm) derma-active(r) hydro-therapy(tm)". All of which 
/sounds/ really impressive and sciency, but is actually empty marketing 
gibberish.

On reflection, maybe the problem isn't that commercial entities try to 
exploit people. Maybe it's that the general populus are stupid enough to 
not see though this...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Fact: Virii are not "alive" in the first place, so it is not possible to 
> "kill" them.

It think if you have some unicellular organism (without being pedantic about 
"cell" there, which after all just means "room" in latin), and you apply a 
chemical that breaks up the cell and prevents it from reproducing, I think 
it's safe for purposes of that discussion at least to say it was alive and 
no longer is.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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"As you bite through the crisp, chunky shell, the soft dreamy center 
starts to melt, gently caressing *all* your senses."

I don't know about you, but if a chocolate starts "caressing" my sense 
of proprioception, there's something very wrong...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Le 14/11/2010 20:22, Darren New a écrit :
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Fact: Virii are not "alive" in the first place, so it is not possible
>> to "kill" them.
> 
> It think if you have some unicellular organism (without being pedantic
> about "cell" there, which after all just means "room" in latin), 

But virii are not unicelluar organism. They are very far from even being
one.
Virii are more like toxin: a chain of molecules, with the added bonus
that when encountering the right cells, they get replicated by the cells
(usually at the cost of the other functions of the cell, which induce
the exhaustion of the cell and its death).

>and you
> apply a chemical that breaks up the cell and prevents it from
> reproducing, I think it's safe for purposes of that discussion at least
> to say it was alive and no longer is.

Breaking a cell is easy, as the OP says.
Breaking a molecule requires to have an actual chemical reaction, which
usually means exhausting the reacting components. Moreover, you cannot
break a molecule and hope that the results will not be a toxic (or you
just lost in another way). You need to identify the molecule, then use
the right chemical to modify the molecule... the sad thing is that what
would break a virus would also usually break far more easily the
components of your cells.

UV-light might be of some help, if the radiation is strong enough, to
tear apart some virii (but not all). But beware also to not create a new
stronger one in the process.


-- 
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.<br/>
Q: Why is it such a bad thing?<br/>
A: Top-posting.<br/>
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

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On 15-11-2010 8:54, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> Le 14/11/2010 20:22, Darren New a écrit :
>> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Fact: Virii are not "alive" in the first place, so it is not possible
>>> to "kill" them.
>>
>> It think if you have some unicellular organism (without being pedantic
>> about "cell" there, which after all just means "room" in latin),
>
> But virii are not unicelluar organism. They are very far from even being
> one.
> Virii are more like toxin: a chain of molecules, with the added bonus
> that when encountering the right cells, they get replicated by the cells
> (usually at the cost of the other functions of the cell, which induce
> the exhaustion of the cell and its death).

Contrary to chemicals they will only replicate if the set of molecules 
is in a specific configuration. If the case is broken they won't work, 
nor if the DNA is broken up in parts or all aminoacids scrambled, etc.
In most cases people like them in the broken form. You might call that 
dead, just as you might call a radio dead when in one tube the filament 
is broken. Or you might prefer to use dead and alive only for 
prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
De gustibus non est disputandum.

This thread is the first time that I consciously saw the plural virii. I 
studied latin when I was younger (indeed at the end of the age of the 
vacuum tube) so this strikes me as odd. Googling it reveals that only 
the pedantic complain that this is wrong to the point of being silly. So 
I won't complain.

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On Sun, 14 Nov 2010 20:06:06 +0200, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

> "Fact: Germs [including the flu virus] can live on surfaces for up to  
> two days.
>
> Fact: Dettol kills 99.9% of gems, including the flu virus."
>
> Uh, yeah, erm...
>
> Fact: Dettol kills 99.9% of bacteria. As does vineger, bleack, salt  
> water, soap, alcohol, and actually just about anything with an  
> osmolarity different from fresh water. :-P
>
> Fact: Virii are not "alive" in the first place, so it is not possible to  
> "kill" them.
>
> It does irritate me when commercial entities pray on public anxiety and  
> ignorance to try to peddle their wares.
>
> And it /really/ irritates me when they pretend to be all scientific.  
> Seen any beauty products lately? Skin moisturisers have existed for over  
> a century, and they're all basically a specific mixture of water and  
> various oils. And yet, if you watch TV you see stuff like "Loreal  
> Age-Reperfect(tm) derma-active(r) hydro-therapy(tm)". All of which  
> /sounds/ really impressive and sciency, but is actually empty marketing  
> gibberish.
>
> On reflection, maybe the problem isn't that commercial entities try to  
> exploit people. Maybe it's that the general populus are stupid enough to  
> not see though this...
>

Are viruses and germs the same thing?

-Nekar Xenos-

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Le_Forgeron wrote:
> But virii are not unicelluar organism. They are very far from even being
> one.

That's why I said "for sufficiently loose definitions of unicelluar". 
They're certainly a "cell" in the original sense of the word "little room". 
They have walls, and a content.

> Virii are more like toxin: a chain of molecules, with the added bonus
> that when encountering the right cells, they get replicated by the cells

Well, there's a small collection of chemicals with a distinct boundary that 
self-replicate in the right environment. I think that's close enough to 
"alive" for purposes of advertising.

> Breaking a cell is easy, as the OP says.

Yep.

> Breaking a molecule requires to have an actual chemical reaction, which
> usually means exhausting the reacting components. Moreover, you cannot
> break a molecule and hope that the results will not be a toxic 

They're unlikely to self-replicate after you break them, tho.

> would break a virus would also usually break far more easily the
> components of your cells.

We *are* talking about Dettol, right?

"Like other household cleaners, Dettol is poisonous and should not be ingested."

So, yeah, but that's a *good* thing.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Nekar Xenos wrote:
> Are viruses and germs the same thing?

Generally not. A virus is basically a little bottle of DNA that replicates 
by injecting itself (with the help of the "bottle" part) into a complete 
cell. The cell then gets hijacked by the virus DNA into creating more viruses.

A "germ" usually refers to something that includes the ability to replicate 
all by itself.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Le_Forgeron <lef### [at] freefr> wrote:
> But virii are not unicelluar organism. They are very far from even being
> one.
> Virii are more like toxin: a chain of molecules, with the added bonus
> that when encountering the right cells, they get replicated by the cells
> (usually at the cost of the other functions of the cell, which induce
> the exhaustion of the cell and its death).

  I wouldn't say they are like toxins, nor are they "very far from even
being a cell". Virii have genetic material in the form of DNA or RNA, as
well as a protein coating. That's way, way more complex than a simple
chemical compound such as a toxin.

  Prions also replicate (well, kind of), but are way simpler than virii
because they are, basically, just one single protein and has no genetic
material at all.

  But even proteins are way more complicated than simple chemical compounds
such as toxins.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 15/11/2010 07:02 PM, Warp wrote:

>    But even proteins are way more complicated than simple chemical compounds
> such as toxins.

Except, of course, for those proteins that /are/ toxins. ;-)

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