About the only way I see the gradient forming. Sadly that would mean we couldnt use the birthdaystones, as it would be a single material.

Maybe use a stone assosiated with the day the ring will be gifted, so a stone can be chosen that has the right properties for the colours.

One stone beginning thin where the other will be thick and slowly reversing that until we get to a single material. Could work if both gems are really clear?

Probably better than my idea of cutting the high temperature gem into a halve band and encasing it in the lower melting one. Then you only have to cut a ring from that stone. I dont know if you can make a gradient that way tho.

Would that even work? Gems generaly produce a different colour powder than what we see from a single crystal. Could potentially ruin your gem.

Soviets followed that line of inquiry during the cold war. Dont remember why they stopped. Most likely a combination of funds running out, political upheaval, and capitalism prefering antibiotics and antiviroids because they are better for profit.

Well, I understood dna to mean genetic basis in the context of this discussion, but yes. There are in fact RNA and DNA Viruses, which can further be divided in coding and non-coding strand (+ and -) based "liveforms".

There are also Prions, proteins that fold others with the same base aminoacid-chain into the same 3D struckture, in a kind of replication.

Viroids are naked, or non protein or membrane, associated chains of RNA, able to infect plants and responsible for some interesting patterns on some flowers.

To complete the picture there are also gigant virus out there, with their own molecular maschinery responsible for about halve of our atmospheric O2.

These are complex little suckers. And I both love them for it and hate them with a passion.

I try to put it into words like this:

A virus can be understood to undergo different developmental stages. Much like an insekt goes from egg to larvar to adult, a virus goes from virus particle, floating alone and, debatably, dead in their environment, to integrating itself into the host. It quite litteraly overlapes with their victim, the cell becomes, to an extend, two individuals rolled into one.

Plants have an exclusive cancer prevention in the rigidity of their bodys. The solid cellwalls and hydrostatic pressure prevent a lot of deseases from moving inside of them. Cancer too is inhibited by this, and is forced to grow localy. As you might guess, that isnt exactly possible for use in animals.

Plants can in fact develop cancer. The bulbous growths near the ground are often exactly that. They can among other things be caused by the bacterium agrobacterium tumefaciens. We use them for genetic editing of plants.

When we want to grow a lot of similar plants, like orchids for example, we start with a single cell and, with different hormons, go from meristemic cultures to callus cultures. Those are basically cancerballs.

Not that I know. Radiation would disproportionatly affekt the genes of the host, rarely getting the genes of the host that both use and very rarely destroying the genes of the virus. The hallmark of a good medizin is that it only targets the parts it should. Radiation is really really reaaaly bad at selectivity.

Jup. We are an ecosystem, with things living not just around and on top of us, but also inside of the very individuals that make up the hive from which the WE/I emerge. There is no seperating line between us and the environment. And if THAT is not freaking you out, I dont know what will.

Well, trying to answer from a different point of view: Vaccines have to help the body kill the intruder, while leaving the patient intakt.

A virus can be understood to undergo different developmental stages. Much like an insekt goes from egg to larvar to adult, a virus goes from virus particle, floating alone and, debatably, dead in their environment, to integrating itself into the host. It quite litteraly overlapes with their victim, the cell becomes, to an extend, two individuals rolled into one. Targetting one while keeping the other is quite the challenge.

I hope I magaged to express myself clearly enough to be understood. I am still trying to put it into words in my native language, so I hope I didnt sow too much confusion. I am open to questions.

Bit scify, hope it still counts.

A Woman finds herself alone, after her husband gets murdered. Technological imortality was invented, but the assasins were thorough. She decides to make the hundred year trip between stars to see the copy of her husband, who left for a colony, for just a chance to see the love ofher live again. Faster than light (FTL) was never invented, so she will have to do this the hard way.

Will they find themselvs again? Or will her love and effort even be aprecheated? Will they even be the same person after all this time?