Proteus

That's very enlightening. Thank you very much.

You mean, if the antiproton were part of an antimatter atom? I meant, is it possible for free antiprotons to have sufficiently low momentum that they will not react with surrounding atomic protons, except for those in hydrogen? In particular, could they be of sufficiently low momentum that they will not react with protons in metals? Thanks for clarifying. So the range of the charge of an electron in noncharged matter is too close to stop the antiproton? Thanks to you all for all the information, by the way!

Hm, that would be another interesting ratio: that of normal (ie, not dark) matter in stars compared to interstellar normal matter.

Yes, but as I said, I did mean react, not interact. With react, I mean "interact and undergo a physical change." Or did you mean that while the electrons would slow the protons down, they would not cast them back but on the contrary ensure that they wouldn't miss the much smaller nucleus?

What if the antiprotons have low momentum? Or is any level of momentum that is obtainably low still be too high? H0? Is that hydroxyl radical you're talking about? I realized hydrogen would be vulnerable, as would be the protons from cosmic rays, but what if the antiprotons were kept away from them? More specifically, could antiprotons be stored, in another way than through electrostatic repulsion in vacuum?

Typo. For interaction read reaction. With "stable," I meant they wouldn't react. Do electrons form a reliable barrier between the protons or antiprotons?

You're right, it's apparently called a partial mole, a kind of hydatidiform mole. The change in electric charge is very interesting. If it's an electrichemical mechanism it would surely explain how it can happen fast enough.

How much more abundant are protons in the universe than neutrons? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged(Forgot to set instant email notification.)

Since there is no reaction between antiprotons and electrons, could it be said that antiprotons would remain stable as long as they were kept away from cosmic rays and hydrogen? Antiprotons and electrons have the same charge, so they'd repell one another, and a reaction between antiprotons and protons would be about as unlikely as interaction between electrons and protons, right?

In micrographs, you always see a large number of spermatozoids penetrate the oval wall, not one. What happens to all that DNA, and what determines which genome is used? http://www.falki-design.ch/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/befruchtung.jpg

A sleeping person is conscious, especially in REM sleep. A puddle of mud is by far not as complex as the human brain. A puddle of mud is complex on atomic scale, but the human brain even more so. With the complexity of the brain, I refer to the amount of information contained in it. Clearly, the more synapses, the more information can be processed in the brain, and one would assume this amount of information to be correlated to the degree of consciousness, since consciousness is basically the interpretation of that information.

Instinct is any innate information that is present before birth and before being memorized. There's no way our DNA could contain everything we would only later learn in advance. My point was that some abilities may not be acquired later in life but instead be available from birth, giving an illusive image of intelligence. Good question. My idea was that consciousness is a degree of complexity, and therefore should be correlated to the degree of complexity in the brain, at least the areas that are part of the conscious mind. Methought the number of connections between nerve endings was a decent measure of that degree of complexity.

Again, I'm sorry to have misused the word intelligence while meaning consciousness. Consciousness would be the whole package of information-processing in the brain, whereas intelligence is constrained to problem-solving skills. It's basically impossible to compare intelligences from different species because each has a different kind of intelligence, which is why I would rather compare their total consciousness. Having a large optic lobe may not directly be useful as a means of problem-solving, but it may still give than an expanded visual awareness. Do you know anywhere where I can find information about this extraordinarily high intelligence in crocodiles? I can't seem to find it anywhere. The size of the brain still doesn't tell how many synapses there are, however. Mice are pretty intelligent despite having a small brian, because they compensate with increased synapse count. They have been trained to detect landmines, and have even eluded their researchers during their training.

Thanks, it was an interesting read. The basic idea of the theory proposed in that article, however, I already knew. The only thing that wasn't clear to me was the involvement of depolarization, which is the only thing which wasn't mentioned in the article. I wouldn't recommend searching for articles if you don't know the answer, since I've been searching myself and, furthermore, I could search further, too, if I'd think that would be any help. If someone knows the answer, though, please do share.

Why is our heart on our left, and not on our right? One would say that there could be some evolutionary advantage to this, since dextrocardia situs inversus totalis rarely occurs. I understand that there's normally less space on the right side because of the liver (the stomach is compressible), but what if all visceral organs are inverted? Is this merely a result of genetic drift?

Hm, yes, I was wondering if there really is any way of comparing intelligence based on brain morphology. Isn't the number of synapses the best measure we have of intelligence? The brain size isn't correlated to the number of synapses, though. Women have smaller brains than men but have the same amount of synapses, increasing the number of synapses per neuron to compensate for the decrease in neuron somas. Maybe it depends on what is meant by intelligence. With intelligence, I actually meant consciousness. An obvious misnomer, my bad. Crocodiles may exhibit cunning behaviors, but maybe these were genetically programmed into their brain, ie, instincts. It's a lot harder to consciously think of what you should do than to act on instincts. Sucklings have no idea why they suck the breast until they find that it feeds them. Maybe, similarly, crocodiles act on instinct when they stay low under the water and then suddenly take their prey by surprise, for instance.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0165-0270(97)00058-7 Interesting ciphers. Not what I was looking for, but interesting. I want to compare primate to dolphin intelligence, however, and dolphins have no neocortex like land animals do. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9023726 I'm not paying. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109690094/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 Error message. Says I have disabled cookies, which I have not. Thanks! I'll try using those keywords.

Neither resolves the issues I have mentioned. The former didn't mention polarization at all, and the latter was where I found the information which raised the questions I mentioned. Thanks anyway, though.

If anyone comes across reports of the numbers of synapses in animal species (any at all) please let me know.

What is the variation in number of synapses in the human cortex, and what is the relation between this number and IQ?

As the zygote divides into an embryo, how does the embryo know which genes it is to turn on or off in which cell?

You mean the bell curve would not only shift but might also either become flatter or steeper? Hadn't thought of that.

If the frequencies within one, two and three standard deviations of the average are known (34,1%, 13,6% and 2,1%), can one calculate the frequency from a certain value? More specifically, I want to know if, if it is true that Ashkanazi Jews are 10% more intelligent, how much percent is gifted. Normally, that's 2,1%. If the average IQ in Ashkenazis really is 110, then the Bell curve shifts 10 points and 13,6% should have an IQ from 125 to 135. Subtract the frequency of IQs from 125-130, add the other 2,1%, and you have the frequency of giftedness. How do I know the frequency of IQs from 125-130? And please, no paranoid ragings about racialism here. I'm not Jewish myself and was merely curious about this hypothesis.

I read that migraine is caused by inhibition followed by hyperactivity, associated with vasodilation followed by vasoconstriction. How does this work? And how does depolarization fit in all this?

Why are we conscious of only some of our nervous signals and not of all at the same time? Obviously, we are only conscious of what is passing "now" in our consciousness, yet at the same time, we have countless memories stored elsewhere in our brain of which we are not aware. Yet memories are nervous signals like any else, except that they are channeled back and forth from neuron to neuron instead of taking part in a more complex calculation. I guess this is kind of similar to a computer: it's either currently processing information, or else has the information stored in its memory. But in a computer, the difference between information being processed and stored information is that stored information is static, whereas information being processed is active, in the form of moving signals. In the brain, however, all signals are basically signals. What is it that "activates" a nerve signal so that one becomes conscious of it? No philosophy, please. All I'm asking is what the fundamental neurological difference is between the two. When is a signal part of the greater system that is our current awareness?