gib65

The only thing I know about color perception in the occipital lobe is that there are neural circuits which seem to be associated with our perception of the three primary colors - red, green, and blue. But what about other colors? Does our perception of colors other than the 3 primary ones also have corresponding neurological circuits, or do we perceive non-primary colors just by having 2 (or 3) of the primary color neural circuits activated at the same time? Let me ask this in a different way: When we perceive a non-primary color, like yellow, obviously it requires that the neural circuits for red and green must be active, but is this enough? Or does it require a third neural circuit, one directly associated with the perception of yellow, to be activated from the red and green neural circuits? Let me ask this in a third way: When we look at something yellow, are we seeing a raw color, or are we actually seeing red and green without knowing it (i.e. "yellow" is an optical illusion)? I would think that all the distinctive colors of the rainbow (plus a few extra like brown, black, white, pink, etc.) have their own specialized sites in the brain for being perceived. How is it that we see them as distinct otherwise, instead of just certain variants of the more primary colors. I've been told that some non-primary colors, like brown, need their own specialized circuitry in the brain in order for their perception to stand out (for seeing dirt in the case of brown, I suppose). These specialized circuits need not process color signals on the same level as the primary color circuits, but instead process signals on a secondary level (i.e. after they've been processed by the primary color level). Other colors like mauve, turquoid, or beige, are more often perceived as subclasses of more basic colors like purple, blue, and yellow (respectively), suggesting that they don't necessarily have their own specialized neural circuitry. Are there more color neural circuits in the brain besides the 3 primary ones?

I'm looking for some good easy-to-read books on brain anatomy and functionality. Something that explains clearly (for an average educated person) what parts of the brain are responsible for what functions. Can anyone help me out here? PS - websites might do just as well as books.

How 'bout just a technology forum?

The theory of the Big Bang not only says that matter and energy went through a sudden expansion, but that space and time were also created in that instant, and spacetime is also continually expanding with all the matter and energy in the universe (that's actually how all the matter and energy are expanding). I see no reason to believe there had to be any time before the Big Bang, but I do understand that the human mind can't imagine anything without there being time to go along with it.

It just breaks my heart to hear this. Being unusual or unique makes for a very rough life - I've had my fair share of experiences with this. The simplicity with being normal is that you're almost placed into your proper niche by everyone and everything around you. For people who don't quite fit the mold, a lot more effort on their part is required to find their niche, and everything in life seems to fly in the face of any such efforts. But you'll find your niche. I'm sure you'll find a use for your empathic abilities that's self-gratifying and makes for a sense of fulfillment in your life. You're young, right? 17? And very intellegent I might add, based on what you have written. Life will get better. PS - Sorry for digressing, but I thought the above comment deserved a response.

Not only do I think your theory is out to lunch, but it's not even internally consistent. How does gravity push on you if it is a thin layer above the atmosphere? That's just like saying my ceiling is keeping me on the ground by pushing on me even though it's not touching me. Same with being above the "gravitonic line" - how could it be pulling on you even if you were just an inch above it? If there's some kind of mysterious force emanating from it that does the pulling/pushing, how do you explain that? We've already got that without a gravitational-blanket, and it's what we call "gravity".

OK, that answers my question to some degree, but can anyone complete the following sentence? Einstein is to the Theory of Relativity, as Darwin is to the Theory of Evolution, as Copernicus is to the Theory of a Heliocentric Universe, as Stephen Hawkings is to the Theory of...

As I am familiar with.

I was thinking about how they say the quantum theory of the atom saved atomism from collapse by suggesting a way electrons can stay in orbit around their nucleus without falling into it. If energy can only come in discrete amounts, then electrons can only exist in discrete energy levels in their orbits around nuclei. But, in my understanding, this doesn't resolve the problem of electrons falling into the nucleus unless it means that the lowest energy level must still contain some energy. If you can have an energy level with 0 energy, that level would equate with the electron falling into the nucleus. Therefore, particles (or at least electrons) cannot have 0 energy. Is this right?

This is going to sound like a stupid question, but what is Stephen Hawkings known for?

I was just wondering this because I would be a case in point. Neither one of my parents could program a computer if their lives depended on it, but I have an aptitude for computer science and it's what I've earned by degree in. Could it be that a combination of genes leads to unique phenotypes? If this usually doesn't happen, then I must have been adopted!

But rakuenso brings up a good point. Even if we get stem cells from a fetus, couldn't we mass produce them to such a degree that we no longer need fetuses, bone maro, or cord blood? It's still an ethically questionable to get them from a fetus, but the problem is immensely mitigated by requiring (ideally) only one fetus.

Engineering is a general but well defined methodology for building or developing something physical. It goes far beyond guys in hard hats laying brick and putting steel pipes together.

Thanks for the website. It looks like an easy read and I'll take a look at it later.

What I really wanted to ask about was how they derived those funny looking shapes for orbitals. I understand it has something to do with quantum physics (hence the reason I posted this in QM). The funny looking shapes I'm refering to are the regions of highest probability where you'll find an electron around a nucleus. It used to be described as a spherical cloud of negative charge surrounding a nucleus, but now you've got some that look like donuts, others that look like light bulbs stemming off one side of the nucleus. Some have several such light bulbs stemming 90 degrees from each other, and so on. How did they derive these shapes?

I remember learning about this in a biology course. Blood (the red kind) is essential to larger animals because we need some way to carry nutrients and other essentials around the body, whereas in smaller animals like insects, the foods they ingest and the oxygen they breath doesn't need to travel far and can be transported to all parts of the body by simple osmosis. It is the red blood cells which are specialized for carrying around nutrients and other such important goodies for the body.

What do you think of this idea? Although I'll describe this concept in terms of the US system, it could apply to any democracy. Why not make it mandatory that before anyone gets to run for president he/she must take a psychological test that measures leadership qualities and skills, and the results of the test must be made public. At first, it may sound like this is an infringement against the right to run for president and an invasion of privacy, but when you think about it, running for president is still a choice any candidate to make freely knowing full well that he/she must take this test, and regardless of the results of the test, the candidate can still run - nothing's stopping him/her. The upside is that voters would be more informed about who they're voting for, and it would pull in more candidates who truly feel qualified and confident that they would pass the test. And as I said, nothing's stopping them from running, even after they take the test and possibly fail miserably, although if they did fail miserably, they'd be more likely to withdraw before election day. When it comes to selecting a good leader to guide your country into this brave new world, testing for their leadership qualities isn't something to be taken lightly. The only drawback I can see to this is that there are not a lot of people who deem psychological tests as reliable. Psychology is not an exact science, and this would be true in this case as well. But most psychological tests which are used today have a fairly high level of reliability (often greater than 98%) and there is no reason a leadership test (or maybe even the MMPI) couldn't be tweaked to achieve a reliability measure of this degree. Besides, as I said, you're electing the leader of your country, so you'd want something that would give you more certainty that empty campaign promises.

In computer science, high level means how abstract the language is. The easy way to think of it is how close to plain English the language is (where VB would take the cake, in my opinion), whereas the low level languages are closer to 1's and 0's. The more complicated way of thinking of it is to image that all languages fall on a spectrum with 1's and 0's at one extreme and human language at the other (which, of course, doesn't exist as a programming language yet). The reason why we have high level languages is because nobody wants to program in 1's and 0's, and so languages that consisted of token-like keywords were invented to mimic something closer to human language. The first high level languages invented in the early days were called assembly languages, and it consisted of instruction sets that spoke in terms of the computer hardware - that is, store xxx at address yyy in memory, read address zzz, send data ddd through chip ccc, bit shift the result by 1, etc. In order for the computer to execute such programs they had to be compiled, which means converted into 1's and 0's which is really the only language computers really understand. This means that high level languages are built on top of low level languages and before execution, must be converted to low level languages. Eventually, even assembly became too cumbersome to program, and even higher level language evolved that were based on assembly. C and Fortran come to mind. These languages are characterized as being more abstract - so instead of instructing the computer on what to do physically, it tells it to carry out abstract operation such as add x plus y, print "hello world" to the screen, prompt the user for input, etc. Then, even higher level languages came along, such as C++ and Java, and most recently HTML and other web languages. All these high level languages are still based on low level languages in the end, and must be compiled or interpreted in order to be executed.

What I'm really trying to ask is, does QM say that spacetime is quantum too, or is it still thought to be continuous? For example, we know that QM says that an object can only have discrete amounts of energy such that if something was accelerating from n km/hr to m km/hr, the increments in its velocity can be no smaller than some amount q - that is, as it goes from n km/hr to m km/hr, its velocity will change from n to n+q to n+2q, to n+3q, and so on, but it will never be n + cq + r, where c is an integer and r is some amount less than q. So my quesion is: would QM apply a similar formula to the same object's position in space as it accelerated? Suppose, during the acceleration, it travelled from point x to point y. Is there some smallest increment in its position, say s, such that it could only be at points x + cs but never at x + cs + b (again, where c is an integer and b is some amount less than s)? And how about for time?

I think that would be it. Each half would retain the memories, skills, ideas, etc. that you had on that particular side of the brain before the split. Each half would probably remember being you, but now feel parts of itself are missing (at least, if it still retained the ability to introspect and ponder such things). The actual "you" from before the split would be gone, and two new "you's" would fill the void. Because they'd probably share some of the memories of the old "you", they'd probably still feel like they are the same "you" as before.

GOT IT!!!

That seems to describe the second scenario I mentioned.

Imagine that you had one photon traveling alone in space. Because of the particle-wave duality of photons (and pretty much every type of particle), this photon would not only travel as a particle, but as a wave too. There are 2 ways that I can imagine this, and I'd like to know which one seems more accurate. 1) As a wave, the photon propagates from a central point of emmission in all directions, and as a particle, it exists at a point somewhere on the crest of the propagating wave. It doesn't have an exact position being in a state of superposition, and only has a probable position. 2) As a particle and as a wave, it is at a precise position in space and traveling with a precise velocity and momentum. As a wave, it does not propagate, but travels in a specific direction, much like a wave traveling down a river. Which one of these sounds more accurate?

Isn't it just the plank length?

space.