GDG

Prior to July 4 of year 379,000 , the universe was full of free charged particles (electrons, protons, nuclei), which would be opaque to light of all frequencies. When things cooled down enough for neutral atoms to form, the universe became transparent.

I think you are confusing wave-particle duality with superposition of states. Both concepts derive from quantum mechanics. It is the superposition of states (i.e., a system with several possible states) that collapses into one state upon observation.

More like Syntax failure I think kleinwolf is trying to propose a model of visual perception, but I suspect we have a babelfish problem here (incoherent translation). In any event, the functioning of the visual system turns out to be pretty complex and non-intuitive. See, e.g., J. Repérant et al., Brain Res Rev (2007) 53:161-97 "The evolution of the centrifugal visual system of vertebrates. A cladistic analysis and new hypothesis", which describes a network of efferent nerves that run to the retina...

For starters, nobody yet agrees on what all the changes are. There are several theories that sleep is required for memory organization and consolidation. Difficult to imagine how you could speed that up substantially without overheating Besides, who wants to work an extra 7.5 hours a day?

It appears that this thread belongs in the "Speculations" area...

I think you're right that this is the source of the confusion. If you and the astronaut are in different reference frames, every measurement you make of him from your reference frame will differ from his own measurements made in his own reference frame (including time and length). To the extent he "is" what you measure, you are correct. I think most of us non-physicists limit the concept "is" to whatever the astronaut experiences in his own rest frame. This, I believe, is the source of the confusion. Certainly, the measurements in both frames are real and repeatable, but measurements made in one frame do not affect the measurements made in another frame.

I don't think anyone here would disagree that emotions are brain states. However, you may also need to account for input from the body: it is an integrated system... Unless you live next door to such a patient... I think you'll find a wide variety of opinion on that one. The pursuit of happiness, as stated above, looks more like the capitalist/materialist business model -- the vicious cycle of consumerism that at the end does not in fact bring happiness. Neurologically, it is the pursuit itself that brings reward, and this disappears as soon as the goal is achieved. What makes people actually happy (once the basic needs are satisfied) is family & friends, meaningful work & esteem, accomplishment, and contact with Nature. Euphoria and happiness are two quite different things. You can buy euphorics on the street today: they often lead to addiction and bankruptcy. When one is euphoric, one does not pay much attention to one's surroundings -- it is not a good survival strategy I think what you're looking for is more like Flow, which one can achieve without drugs.

I think you'll find your input in the other thread.

Yep: it's called roughage.

An enzyme called telomerase. Normally turned off in somatic cells, telomerase activity is often a sign of cancer (tumor cells inappropriately express telomerase, and thus extend their own lifetimes -- thus the term, "immortalized"). Of course, in humans the female is born with all the eggs she will ever use. Only male spermatogonia need to express telomerase.

Length contraction affects how he looks from another frame, not how he is in his own frame. The spaceman will not notice any amount of length contraction in himself.

You should pick up a copy of "Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World" by Jessica Snyder Sachs. It has an extensive discussion of how your natural bacteria protects you against pathogenic strains, probiotics, and other bacteria-philic facts. Extensive endnotes and references.

Discoveries of huge importance can come from just about any field. Without physics, we wouldn't have microchips, or MRI scanners (just for example). Without chemistry, we wouldn't have pharmaceuticals or plastics. Without biology, we wouldn't have modern agriculture or pharmaceuticals (sometimes takes more than one field). I suspect that there will be great demand for environmental sciences and bioinformatics over the next few decades. The former because the population has an ever-increasing appreciation for how badly we've trashed the planet, and the need to cure some of that (and/or predict what happens next, and prepare for it). Bioinformatics because genomic information is being collected at a torrential rate, but the tools for analyzing the data and figuring out what is significant still need work. We could all do nothing but mine data for years to come. But I have to echo the prior comments: do what interests you most. You are most likely to make an important contribution if you are doing something that really interests you. At the same time, read broadly, so that you are at least aware of what is going on in other fields. If your library carries the journals Science or Nature, try reading all of the articles (not just the ones in your field). If your library doesn't carry them, at least listen to their podcasts. The story I was told about the invention of NMR was that some atomic physicists were studying the interaction of hydrogen atoms with a radio-frequency source. They would use chemicals like benzene (C6H6) or ethane (C2H6), and find the resonant frequency. However, they kept getting a different resonant frequency for each different compound. Some compounds, instead of giving a nice sharp, single peak, gave them a forest of peaks. They were not interested at all in the "chemical shift" -- but the chemist next door was... Finally, whether you like it or not, learn to write well. The more effectively you can communicate, the more effective you will be in everything else.

Sounds sort of like the halting problem to me. It is possible that the amount of available (useful) energy in the universe is limited: at some point at the colder end of time, you're going to start running out of power to do computations. Then the question becomes whether we have enough time to obtain all scientific knowledge before the last brownout... I suspect that, no matter how long you study, it will always be possible to draw one more unexpected correlation between two sets of data

It's the dictionary paradox: how do you find the spelling of a word if you don't know how to spell it? For example, if you were talking to somebody (orally), and they told you about an ox-like animal with a name something like "new", how would you look it up? Looking under "new" or "knew" or "nu" would not be fruitful; "gnu" would probably be the last thing you'd expect. With many scientific concepts, it is easy to find the answers once you know enough about the field to know the terms. Not so easy when you start out. Some of the questions I've seen here are d@mn near impossible to parse: I can't imagine that google is much help to those questioners... As we wander seriously OT...

Once the balloon is inflated, V does not increase. Hot air balloons do not work the same way as toy rubber balloons. The bottom of a hot air balloon is open: it has a burner suspended below the opening, which the operator (pilot?) flicks on every few minutes to heat the air inside the balloon. (Believe me, riding in a hot air balloon is a much noisier experience than you would expect. The burners are surprisingly noisy.) The balloon fabric does not stretch. Since P and V are constant, n must decrease with increasing T. Thus, hot air escapes from the bottom of the balloon, leaving a smaller mass of (hot) air inside the balloon.

A YouTube video proves absolutely nothing: it is all too easy to fake such things. For example, do you believe that you can , just because it is shown in a YouTube video? The dearth of interest here is probably because too many of us have seen too many scams already. "Gasoline from water", or some variation, comes around every year or so. The way this story has been presented fits the usual mold: hype without publication in a peer-reviewed journal. A legitimate scientist would be measuring (and reporting!) the power input, and quantifying the amount (and the exact identity) of the gas produced. Most likely, a real scientist would not be releasing results until he or she had at least a theory that explained the effect. Knowing the laws of thermodynamics, we know that even if the effect is real, the rf transmitter must be consuming more electricity than the hydrogen produced. I suspect that the ratio is probably ridiculous, like using a 500 W transmitter to produce less than 1 W worth of hydrogen. The handling of this story appears more calculated to attract funds from credulous investors.

No problem: just trying to set things out systematically, so that one can follow the whole process with a consistent use of terms. The communication here is probably the best feature of this website, and one that makes it much more useful than wikipedia. Wikipedia is great for browsing, or if you already know something about your question and are just looking for details. If you are just getting started, this is a great place to come first.

"Nits" are the eggs laid by lice. The eggs are tiny, and are attached to the base of a hair shaft. Thus, picking at nits (or "nit picking") refers to picking at something insignificant, something that does not matter. DNA is normally in the form of euchromatin: it only condenses into chromosomes when it is time for the cell to divide. "Chromosome" refers to the condensed version, but euchromatin and chromosomes contain the same DNA, just different proteins are attached to wind it up. The egg and sperm (of humans) each have 23 chromosomes.

This is probably due to tannins. You would probably notice the same effect after drinking strong tea or red wine, or after eating cranberries.

Probably a homework question, better posted in the homework section? Since you're using mice, I assume you can postulate mice with any desired combination of MHC antigens. Then, it is just a matter of determining a suitable grafting experiment that demonstrates their differences...

I'm not following your question: perhaps you could rephrase? In particular, what do you mean by the A and C "modus", and what are the S and A referring to? In terms of split brain experiments, note that input from each eye goes to each hemisphere. The left half of the visual field from both eyes goes to the right hemisphere, while the right half of the visual field from both eyes goes to the left hemisphere.

According to the Merck Index (12th ed., 1996): See also Wikipedia on Methanol toxicity. Try to avoid breathing it: I would do all handling in a fume hood, to the extent possible.

2nd and 3rd paragraphs:

I stand corrected: humid air just feels twice as dense as dry air I've been to Texas: I know