AskScience AMA Series: I'm Ken Kosik, a neuroscientist and neurologist studying the vast landscape of Alzheimer's disease. AMA! |
- AskScience AMA Series: I'm Ken Kosik, a neuroscientist and neurologist studying the vast landscape of Alzheimer's disease. AMA!
- "Our Sun is unusually metal-rich for a star of its age and type." -- What does this mean?
- why "Steam" is the driving force of most of the power plants for more than 150 years? Does no other fluid has capability to replace it?
- Does a sonic boom become louder as the object producing it becomes faster?
- Is the glass on my phone screen getting worn away by my scrolling thumb?
- How exactly does chronic high blood sugar cause damage to the body?
- When humming in the shower or in an echoey room, why does one tone seem to reverberate more than any other tone?
- Is it possible to know the wavelength of a laser just by knowing the material of the active laser medium?
- What is the purpose of a neuron's baseline firing rate?
- How will the alpha-centauri nanoprobes handle the enormous amounts of acceleration to get to 20% the speed of light in a matter of minutes?
- How strong are duck legs?
- The nano-particles heading to Alpha Centauri are going to travel at relativistic speeds, arriving in ~20 years. If they're going at relativistic speeds, wouldn't that seem like much longer to us here on Earth?
- If the universe is bound to collapse, could it be possible that the universe is already collapsing?(more details)
- How much of the universe is, by mass, not planets, stars, asteroids, etc.?
- With regards to tapping CSF with a lumbar puncture: how do they teach students not to hit the spinal nerves?
- What happens to a photon as it travels directly towards the center of a blackhole or massive object?
- Why does winter get colder after the solstice when days start to become longer?
- What keeps our stomach acid in our stomach but passes other liquids?
- Is it possible for a large object to orbit a smaller object? or will the smaller object always orbit larger ones?
- What is the scientific reasoning behind why we can't create artificial enzymes to catalyze specific reactions?
- How does quantum tunnelling work?
- What happens when you sprinkle iron filings on a superconductor?
| Posted: 13 Apr 2016 04:53 AM PDT My name is Ken Kosik. I'm a neuroscientist and neurologist at University of California, Santa Barbara. I'm fascinated by nearly every facet of Alzheimer's disease and other cognitive disorders. I tend to think about the nervous system in terms of genetics and cellular and molecular biology, but also find the clinical questions compelling. AMA! The incidence of Alzheimer's disease is spiraling upward. By age 85 the likelihood of getting the disease approaches 50%, a grim reward for the octogenarian. Few diseases are as simultaneously cruel and mysterious as Alzheimer's for its ability to obliterate a lifetime of memories and destroy histories even as it robs the person of his or her capacity to function in the present. And because we use memory to envision the future, Alzheimer's disease also takes away expectations, anticipation, and hope. Nearly 25 years ago, on a trip to Colombia, Dr. Francisco Lopera introduced me a family he had been tracking for the previous decade. We began a collaboration to find the cause of their early onset dementia, which turned out to be Alzheimer's disease, and to identify the mutation responsible for the autosomal dominant inheritance pattern. The mutation turned out to be the substitution of glutamic acid for an alanine at position 280 of the presenilin I gene. The large extended family that harbors this mutation consists of about 5000 people whose lineage can be traced to a single founder, probably a conquistador who came from Spain not long after Christopher Columbus. Those family members who harbor the mutation are genetically determined to get a particularly aggressive early onset form of Alzheimer's disease with the first symptoms apparent by age 45. The hallmark amyloid begins to collect in the brain about a decade earlier. Recently, this large Colombian family has begun to participate in a clinical trial that is testing an antibody directed at amyloid in the hope that the drug can reduce the amyloid burden and retard disease progression. This story and others related to Alzheimer clinical trials is the subject of a NOVA PBS documentary titled "Can Alzheimer's Be Stopped?" produced by Sarah Holt. I hope you will be able to watch it on the evening of April 13 at 9/8c on PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/alzheimers-be-stopped.html By the way, this is AMA so please feel free to ask me about my other research interests, which include brain evolution and a research project on how the earliest cells during human development become neurons. I'll be back at 12 pm EDT to answer your questions, ask me anything! [link] [comments]  |
| "Our Sun is unusually metal-rich for a star of its age and type." -- What does this mean? Posted: 12 Apr 2016 05:59 AM PDT Source: http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/galactic-habitable-zones/ The statement is found almost midway down the article. What metallicity would be expected for a star a) of the Sun's age and b) of the Sun's type? Is there any implication here? E.g., Was the sun likely formed elsewhere in the galaxy, such as the galactic center, etc. Wikipedia says: "Population I, or metal-rich stars, are young stars with the highest metallicity out of all three populations. The Earth's Sun is an example of a metal-rich star. These are common in the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy." So it's common to find young, metal-rich stars in the spiral arms. The sun is located just outside of a spiral arm. The sun is young and metal-rich. So what exactly would make the sun's metallicity unusual? It seems to be exactly what one would expect based on the sun's location and age... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2016 04:53 AM PDT |
| Does a sonic boom become louder as the object producing it becomes faster? Posted: 12 Apr 2016 06:09 AM PDT |
| Is the glass on my phone screen getting worn away by my scrolling thumb? Posted: 13 Apr 2016 05:47 AM PDT |
| How exactly does chronic high blood sugar cause damage to the body? Posted: 12 Apr 2016 06:16 AM PDT I know high blood sugar can cause organ damage, eye damage and can lead to people needing amputations, but why is this exactly? Whats going on in the body? Edits: Thank you all so much for your responses, I'm reading through all of them. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Apr 2016 06:58 AM PDT |
| Posted: 12 Apr 2016 07:03 PM PDT |
| What is the purpose of a neuron's baseline firing rate? Posted: 12 Apr 2016 06:58 PM PDT Why do neurons exhibit baseline firing rates when stimuli aren't present? Could this potentially be explained in some measure as to how consciousness or subconsciousness are interpolated in the brain? Or do they have a more obvious significance in maintaining healthy functioning and preventing neuronal degradation as well as allowing information to be interpreted and processed more quickly when a stimulus is presented? Does it hold no known function at all? As a final thought, there seems to be very little information on this topic, other than the fact that it exists. Am I missing something obvious or is this just not a very interesting topic for the science community? Thank you in advance to anyone who answers! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Apr 2016 11:16 AM PDT According to this article the nanoprobes that Hawking just announced that are to be sent to Alpha Centauri will be accelerated to .2c in just a matter of minutes. Back of the envelope calculations show that this will require something on the order of 1000g or more sustained acceleration for those minutes. How can those probes be made to survive something like this? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Apr 2016 06:47 PM PDT Watching Planet Earth, and noticed that a duckling was capable of jumping at least twice it's height. So, exactly how strong are duck legs? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Apr 2016 05:44 PM PDT ...or do I have it backwards? If I learned anything from Planet of the Apes, (spoiler alert) it's that I shouldn't travel too fast compared to the Earth unless I want to propel myself far into the future. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2016 12:14 AM PDT im going with the assumption that we find new stars in the distance after a few years because it takes a long time for light to travel to earth. after all the millions (billions?) of years that it took for light to travel to earth, the universe has expanded alot more.could it be possible that through all those years the expansion stopped and started collapsing? [link] [comments]  |
| How much of the universe is, by mass, not planets, stars, asteroids, etc.? Posted: 12 Apr 2016 07:14 PM PDT Obviously these celestial bodies are much denser, but so much of space is "mostly empty" I'm wondering how they compare. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Apr 2016 06:14 AM PDT I know headaches are quite frequent, but nerve root damage is actually really low, from what I have seen less than 1%. How do they know and train people to hit just the right spot? It seems to me that a millimeter too far, and you are scratching a nerve. [link] [comments]  |
| What happens to a photon as it travels directly towards the center of a blackhole or massive object? Posted: 12 Apr 2016 02:29 PM PDT This is a question that has been bugging me, and I have not been able to find an answer to it yet. I am most likely thinking about something the wrong way, making the wrong assumptions, or am just generally uninformed about the topic, as it is not my area. But let me try to ask it in the clearest way possible (which admittedly might not be all that clear), and hopefully someone more versed on the topic can answer this for me. Background
Specific Theoretical Situation In Question In general, I am thinking of a theoretical case where there is some immensely massive object that can bend the light from another object directly behind it. I.E. i am thinking of a star that is directly behind, say a blackhole, or galaxy, other more massive object relative to our line of sight. (Though I know we haven't been able to observe gravitational lensing with black holes) Let's say we have some huge spherical gravitational anomaly such that, for a star directly behind it, in a straight line with our viewpoint: (1) The anomaly physically blocks the object completely (if gravitational lensing is ignored) (2) The star behind the object is completely visible to us with gravitational lensing (i.e. all the light from the star travels around the anomaly to make it visible, [which I am not sure is physically possible]), such that the light from the "left" side of the star travels around the "left" side of the object, following the shortest path in space [I am also not sure this is how it works], same with the "right" side and "top", etc. Question(s)
Hopefully this made some sense. Something seems off about this situation, and I have a feeling that it has to do with the assumption I made about how gravitational lensing works, or if it is possible to see an object directly behind another if there is enough gravity, or something along those lines. If someone could set me straight on the issue, I would really appreciate it. Sorry for such a wordy question. [link] [comments]  |
| Why does winter get colder after the solstice when days start to become longer? Posted: 12 Apr 2016 05:00 PM PDT Similarly, why does summer get hotter after the other solstice when days start to become shorter? [link] [comments]  |
| What keeps our stomach acid in our stomach but passes other liquids? Posted: 12 Apr 2016 05:21 AM PDT Or are we on a constant cycle of passing the stomach acid and producing more? Do absorptive foods like bread or oats soak up stomach acid? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Apr 2016 10:25 AM PDT |
| Posted: 12 Apr 2016 04:53 AM PDT |
| How does quantum tunnelling work? Posted: 12 Apr 2016 05:58 AM PDT I am currently studying physical chemistry: considering a particle in a one dimensional box with walls of finite heigth, one can demonstrate that the probability of finding the particle outside the box is nonzero, even though its energy is lower than the potential of the wall. I understand that this is the prove that the phenomenon exists and that we cannot know all of it because of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. My question is: do we really have no idea how a particle quantum tunnels? Do we have any hypothesis? How does a particle simply go through a barrier? I read that Scanning Tunneling Microscope implies that some electrons can surpass the Fermi Level and go on the electrically charged tip of the microscope because the electrons actually "borrow" energy from the tip itself. Generally speaking, does it happen because the particle borrows energy from its surroundings to surpass the barrier? Thanks for any future answers. [link] [comments]  |
| What happens when you sprinkle iron filings on a superconductor? Posted: 12 Apr 2016 01:02 PM PDT I was watching an episode of QI (Series L: 4. Levity) where Stephen Fry demonstrates a (super cold) super conductor levitating. The scientist present said (from memory, not verbatim) it bent magnetic fields around itself. Would this show up if you sprinkled the super conductor with iron filings like you can with a regular magnet? [link] [comments]  |
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