SMF

Fett_arsch: Let me get this straight-- You came to this website to ask a question and you now wish that we all should have just referred you to the internet? If you are an honest poster, the least you could do is summarize and post the information you have found for others to learn. SM

Your statement-- "One Eye takes the full load of seeing, The other Eye works only to give depth" is not correct. Even though most folks have a dominant eye, it takes both eyes working together equally to produce normal vision. When you hear statements like this you should be skeptical. Another example is the silly suggestion that we only use 10% of our brain. The evolutionary process specifically works against inefficiency like this. SM

In the most general sense, brain "plasticity" refers to changes in the wiring, or connectivity, of neurons. This was originally studied as the response to damage, such as a stroke or impact injury, but has progressed to mean just about any change in neurons in number and the interconnections between them, especially at the synapse level. If you think about it, every change in our behavior that involves learning and memory, including motor memory, have to involve some sort of molecular, physiological, or anatomical change in the brain. Further, having thought about it, you have made a change in your brain. SM

First of all, as a cyclops you should say "commuting with your eye closed." Sorry, I couldn't resist. There is research into various types of after images and hallucinations, but it is pretty hard to penetrate. One general organizing principle is that starting in the retina and in all subsequent levels of visual processing, the signals from the receptors are processed to detect edges, lines, and colors (for example), and this information is assembled into objects and images in tertiary cortical visual areas. Another important fact is that the system is set up such that many processes are signaled by both increases and decreases of an ongoing rate of action potentials, and it slowly adapts to signal a mid level stimulus as a mid level amount of neural activity. This means that the system is humming along in both daylight and in total darkness. In a well lighted scene the visual system can process an image with good accuracy. Without a strong stimulus the brain tries to process images from the ongoing activity, but under normal circumstances the ongoing signal is too low and uniform in darkness. When there are very slight deviations in this dark signal the brain creates an image for you. The most common example is pressing your eyeball through your eyelid to create lights and patterns. You are seeing increased action potentials in a subset of retinal processing cells (probably ganglion cells). Some drugs, such as LSD, cause random activity in the visual system and this can cause elaborate hallucinations to be generated. When neurons are excited for a long time they can be suppressed after stimulation ceases, by an adaptation process, and this can cause negative aftereffects. Conversely some neural circuits seem to become overexcited by long stimulation and it takes a while to for them to calm down (the mechanism for this is not fully understood), and this can produce positive after effects. These effects are very small so that one doesn't see their result unless the eyes are closed. Your visual system may be tuned a little more sensitive in some aspect than other people. I have experienced something similar to your experience when driving for long periods down a straight road in a dead to the world, eyes glued open, dangerous state. When I stop, get out of the car, and stand still I still perceive the world as rushing by even with the scene is standing still. SM

Lemur. You could accomplish what you suggest with an automatic transmission. That is, a fluid coupled torque converter between the engine and transmission in place of a manual clutch. However, the real problem is that gasoline (and propane and methane) ICEs produce very little torque at low RPMs, thus the transmission. Electric motors and steam engines produce maximum torque at 0 RPM and wouldn't need a transmission, while diesel engines are somewhere in between with higher torque, than gasoline, at low RPM, but limited high RPM horsepower. If I were going to make an extremely light, high efficiency car I would either do what the X-Prize 100 MPG winners did with a gasoline car, or make an electric car with a very low weight, high RPM, ICE for occasional charging and include a solar panel in the package. SM

Many cars are running 1:1 through the transmission in the highest (lowest ratio) gear that is not overdrive. There is another gear reduction in the differential. SM

This will be my last response. Cells operate at a much higher level of organization than particles, photons, or whatever. Ask the physicists here if a polypeptide or a calcium or sodium ion in a cell normally travels as a particle or a wave. What you are proposing appears to me to be equivalent to suggesting that I will be stabilized as a particle, rather than a wave, if somebody observes me crossing a street. SM

Neurtransmitters are made of one or multiple amino acids made of a collection of atoms. These molecules are not particles. They are not traveling across synapses as a wave during any part of the transit, they just diffuse across the synaptic cleft. SM

Steevey. I just gave you a simple explanation of a synapse. This is what you are talking about. It is the place between two neurons where information is transmitted from one to another. Neuron to neuron synaptic transmission is primarily a mechanical process. The neurotransmitter molecules are released by exocytosis. They travel to the next neuron by diffusion. They transmit information by a "lock and key" binding process with the next neuron. There are no electrical currents in this neurotransmission and no waves and particles, and if there were a minor disruption in the timing of a synaptic event it would have no effect. I described this already. SM

Marat. And, another similar version by G. H. Mead-- http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Mead/socialself.htm Perhaps recognizing an image in a mirror as one's self might be a primitive test of self awareness. Humans between 6 and 18 months and adult gorillas can do this, but a pencil and my dog Sherman, a very bright specimen of his species, cannot. SM

I may be confused about what is being asked, but DNA replication occurs in an already existing cell for cell division. Prior to division all the enzymes, and the other proteins that are required (e.g. tubulin for making the mitotic spindle), are made (translated) by the usual method using messenger, transfer, and ribosomal RNA in the cytosol. SM

This could vary between a large negative and a large positive net force depending upon the shape of the roof relative to the wind direction. SM

Steevey, there are no electrical currents between neuron ends, this is not how it works. A neuron connection (a synapse) involves the release of a packet of molecules (neurotransmitter) that diffuse to the post-synaptic membrane of the neuron receiving the information and bind to specific neurotransmitter receptors. The binding of a neurotransmitter alters the receptor protein such that the membrane potential of the post-synaptic cell is changed. The membrane potential change can increase or decrease the probability that the post-synaptic cell will initiate an action potential that will be sent to the next neuron in the circuit. It is very unlikely that the change in state of a single particle that participates in any of the molecules that make up the synaptic mechanism would affect neural function. This is because there are many thousands of neurotransmitter molecules and hundreds of receptors involved in any single synaptic event. Single synapses usually transmit trains of action potentials that can sum depending upon a time function, so any momentary timing alteration of a single action potential in a train that might occur from altering a single molecule among many is likely to be minimal to nonexistent. Further, any one neuron can have as many as 20K synapses on it and how a neuron responds to input is a nonlinear summation of the activity of all of the synapses it receives. And, the final nail in this coffin is the fact that if one were to find a way to specifically delete a single neuron from a brain, along with all of its multiple input and output connections, it would not have any detectable affect because of redundancy. SM

I don't know much about particle physics, but I do know that brain function operates at, at least, two levels of complexity higher than this. What a single particle does will not have any effect whatsoever on any decisions made by a neural circuit. SM

There are certainly some brain systems that contribute more toward supporting consciousness than others, but the mass of brain tissue is also a very necessary component. There are no current computer systems that are complex enough to duplicate the neural processing done by a house fly, much less consciousness. SM

Lemur, as a Ph.D. scientist and teacher I can say with knowledge and conviction that much of what you have said about my profession has very little relationship to reality. SM

Dean, I presume you are talking about consciousness. There is no consciousness center in the brain and this function is an emergent property of all of the different brain systems working together. It is not possible to duplicate all brain functions with a computer, but this is a technical problem, and if it were done you would have a working brain. SM

The reason that evolution appears to progress toward complexity is that it started from a very simple beginning and there is no other direction to go. Evolution is not directional in any larger perspective, it is opportunistic. Ecological niches that are immediately available get filled if a species can make the transition. The intelligence niche was available and was opportunistically filled, but if the bottleneck that squeezed human ancestors into something like our present form had failed, and there is some evidence that this was a close call, we wouldn't be here. That intelligence is a trait that can be sustained is yet to be proved. Maybe the SETI project will tell us someday. SM

The question hard to understand. I assume that gravity and rotation are main components of the orbiting disk like spiral shape, but I would like to know how the organization became flattened into a disk (like the solar system) rather than many different random orbits about the center. This appears to be a common motif. SM

Tony McC and John Cuthber, I just don't see how the heat content of the rock could affect the linear kinetic energy of the rock. Molecular movement from heat is random. SM

Many years ago I had an Aus Jena surgical microscope. Aus Jena was the portion of the Zeiss microscope company, in Jena, that was left in East Germany when the company split in two after WWII. Almost all Aus Jena scopes were made in East Germany prior the fall of the Soviet Union, and production stopped when reunification recombined the east and west portions of Zeiss. They were a bit clunky but of high quality and even as old as they are $400 is a good price. The biggest problem would be finding parts, such as illuminator bulbs, and adapting a modern camera to the trinocular mount. A good source of information is Martin Microscope, the original importer of Aus Jena instruments. They still have some old ones for sale and I am sure that they would be willing to help out an amateur with problems or questions. Web site at- http://www.martinmicroscope.com SM

Tony McC, you are talking about loss of heat from the earth's core, how would this effect the oscillating rock? SM

Marat, having dealt with the nasty and extended death of my parents and beginning to look at my own future, I pretty much agree with you. You can see the attraction of the technological fundamentalists who think that technology will cure all, especially because there is a fair amount of support for some of their positions, but most folks just don't seem to be looking at the big picture. SM

I am willing to accept trillions of years, or even quite a bit less. I thought you might be suggesting some more immediate mechanism that I hadn't thought of. SM

Insane_alien, air resistance and possible interaction with the earth's magnetic field or the side of the tunnel, yes. But what if, as I mentioned above and in the "gravity train" references I cited, the tube contained a vacuum and was large enough (or whatever) to eliminate contact? Theoretically the rock should bounce back and forth between the north and south pole surfaces indefinitely. SM