AskScience AMA Series: I am Dr. Nina Kraus and will talk about how music and concussion impact brain health. Ask Me Anything! |
- AskScience AMA Series: I am Dr. Nina Kraus and will talk about how music and concussion impact brain health. Ask Me Anything!
- Can you use a regular compass on Mars?
- AskScience AMA Series: I am Professor Kartik Hosanagar and I'm here to discuss how algorithms and AI control us and how we can control them. Ask Me Anything!
- Is it possible to give a planet without an active core a magnetic field?
- How are various sea creatures such as dolphins and whales, able to "hold their breath" for so long under water?
- How do aeroplane black boxes withstand crashes which otherwise destroy the plane and everything inside of it?
- Are drops of water consistent in size? How big is that, and why? And what about other substances like oil, or molten metal?
- “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment — How does this suggest objective facts don't exist?
- Do insects need to sleep too?
- Why do some quantum interactions cause entanglement, and some interactions cause wave function collapse?
- If carbon dioxide is only 0.0391 percent of the atmosphere, how does it have such a big impact on climate change?
- Can the new fission reactor designs completely guard against nuclear meltdowns?
- How to turn a sphere inside out?
- Are autoimmune diseases and allergies related? How do they differ?
- Who invented or discovered the concept of mass as distinct from weight?
- In massive stars, hydrogen fuses into helium, then carbon, neon, and oxygen before eventually fusing into iron. During the oxygen fusion phase, why doesn't all the oxygen simply ignite/catch fire?
- The male hormone testosterone causes hair loss at males, but increases the beard growth. How does that work? Isnt hair=hair, no matter if in the face or at the head?
- Are there any major cases of speciation/evolution in invasive species that we know of?
- [Physics] Spin - If I give Sally an electron in the morning, can I tell if Sally rotated an even number of times at the end of the day?
- How are modern processor architectures tested and refined?
- How do counterweights at the tops of tall buildings such as a pendulum or pool of water counteract the buildings swaying?
- Why do people say it’s the current that kills you and not the voltage?
| Posted: 08 Mar 2019 04:00 AM PST How do our experiences, such as learning how to play music and playing sports, affect our brain? Although we are surrounded by sound all of the time, we rarely give much thought to this invisible yet powerful companion. The auditory system is a uniquely complex sensory system and the ability to make sense of sound relies on exquisite precision by the brain. Given the complexity and precision of the auditory system, accurate sound processing is particularly vulnerable to head injury. On the other hand, its precision can be honed by activities that exercise the auditory brain such as playing a musical instrument. We have discovered a way to objectively capture the imprint that sounds leave on our brains. This biological approach empowers us to learn more and more about this invisible ally and enemy of brain health. Dr. Kraus will examine the promise of measuring soundprints in the brain to assess and manage sports-related concussions. She will discuss how music training is beneficial for the brain, strengthens our communication skills, and can inform health care, education, and social policy. Dr. Kraus will be here at 2:00 CT (3 ET, 19 UT). Ask her anything! Links:
articles: Kraus N, White-Schwoch T (2017) Neurobiology of everyday communication: what have we learned from music? *The Neuroscientist(. 23(3): 287-298. Kraus N, Nicol T (2017) The power of sound for brain health. Nature Human Behaviour. 1: 700-702 Kraus N, Thompson EC, Krizman J, Cook K, White-Schwoch T, LaBella CR (2016) Auditory biological marker of concussion in children. Nature: Scientific Reports. 6: 39009. [link] [comments]  |
| Can you use a regular compass on Mars? Posted: 12 Mar 2019 02:15 PM PDT |
| Posted: 13 Mar 2019 04:00 AM PDT Through the technology embedded in web-enabled devices, algorithms and the programs that power them make a staggering number of everyday decisions for us, from what products we buy, to where we decide to eat, to how we consume our news, to whom we date, and how we find a job. We've even delegated life-and-death decisions to algorithms-decisions once made by doctors, pilots, and judges. In my new recently published book, ``A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms Are Shaping Our Lives and How We Can Stay in Control'', I have surveyed this brave new world and revealed the potentially dangerous biases they can give rise to as they increasingly run our lives. I make the compelling case that we need to arm ourselves with a better, deeper, more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon of artificial intelligence. I have examined episodes like Microsoft's chatbot Tay, (which was designed to converse on social media like a teenage girl, but instead turned sexist and racist), the fatal accidents of self-driving cars, and even our own common, and often frustrating, experiences on services like Netflix and Amazon. I will be available fro 3-5PM ET (19-21 UT). Ask me anything! [link] [comments]  |
| Is it possible to give a planet without an active core a magnetic field? Posted: 13 Mar 2019 04:48 AM PDT I'm mostly thinking of Mars, inspired by a top post in this sub about compass use on the planet. I know the reason Mars is barren is it's lack of a protective magnetosphere, but could the planets core be jump started or an artificial field be developed? Obviously both require vast amounts energy but let's pretend such energy is available for said purposes. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Mar 2019 01:25 AM PDT What is different about their physiology that allows them to stay under water for so long? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2019 02:49 PM PDT I get that they are built to a higher specification, but not how that is achieved. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2019 04:04 PM PDT |
| “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment — How does this suggest objective facts don't exist? Posted: 13 Mar 2019 06:06 AM PDT I understand that according to the laws of quantum mechanics, the photon exists in a superposition until it's measured. If Wigner's Friend measures it and Wigner doesn't, doesn't Wigner just have a lack of information? Wigner hasn't taken the next step to get the answer. Can his friend measure the polarization and get a different result each time? I'm having a difficult time reconciling how this is different than if Wigner looked into the distance and couldn't give a measurement for where the horizon disappeared, but his Friend could because he DID measure it. His Friend has more information — it doesn't mean objective facts don't exist. I have to be missing something super simple here or the experiment wouldn't have credence. I'm not trying to say it's wrong I just don't understand. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2019 04:57 PM PDT As in, does the mosquito that pesters me when I sleep need to sleep as well or do small lifespans of some insects means they die before they need to sleep (if they do sleep). [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2019 11:22 PM PDT Two particles interacting can enter a superposition / become entangled. But also, some interactions are an observation / measurement that cause wave function collapse. How does this work? What's special about 'observations', why don't they just become entangled with the system rather than causing wave function collapse? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2019 02:22 PM PDT Hi everyone, I have a teacher who believes that humans are not to blame for climate change and that climate change is not a real thing due to the fact that carbon dioxide only makes up a very small part of the atmosphere. I have tried to research this, but found conflicting results. Can you please help me to find an answer? [link] [comments]  |
| Can the new fission reactor designs completely guard against nuclear meltdowns? Posted: 13 Mar 2019 04:58 AM PDT Hi all, I hope some of you can clarify a discussion I had with a colleague. We talked about the safety of Nuclear Fission Reactors. And my colleagues contention is that the new fission reactors are completely safe. That they can't melt down. Which I highly doubt. His argument is that the new reactors are designed to remove fuel materials from one another, and thus stopping the reaction (as opposed to fuel control rods), and that by removing the fuel material from eachother would cause the fuel to stop generating heat, and thus would never get hot enough to melt the material. But my counter is that the residual heat from the fuel elements would be enough to melt the fuel material in case of a completely loss of coolant. Now I get that the newer tier IV reactor designs incorporate security measures, such as a closed loop system without the needing of pumps etc. - Which does make the design much more secure. But can someone clarify whether a core meltdown can be avoided by separating the fissionable material even if there is a loss of coolant? [link] [comments]  |
| How to turn a sphere inside out? Posted: 12 Mar 2019 11:49 AM PDT I recently saw an animation in which they said mathematicians have figured out how to turn a sphere inside out. The material was stated to be an abstract elastic material that can stretch, bend and pass through itself. The rules of the game were: - You cannot rip or puncture the material without destroying it. - You cannot crease or sharply bend the material without destroying it. I wondered if someone could either explain the maths behind it or how the mathematicians came to the conclusion it was possible. Here's the link to a similar video from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CymaticUniverse/videos/330251244444076/ [link] [comments]  |
| Are autoimmune diseases and allergies related? How do they differ? Posted: 12 Mar 2019 04:07 PM PDT |
| Who invented or discovered the concept of mass as distinct from weight? Posted: 12 Mar 2019 12:56 PM PDT If all early science took place on earth where gravity is constant, mass and weight are seemingly interchangeable. So, someone at a certain point had to make the distinction between the two. It seems likely that this couldn't happen until after Newton. Did he discover this distinction? It doesn't seem completely necessary for him to discover this. F=ma looks a lot like F=wa when gravity is constant. This is a fundamental unit of science and the history of the distinction doesn't seem well documented based on some searching. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2019 01:59 PM PDT |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2019 11:51 AM PDT |
| Are there any major cases of speciation/evolution in invasive species that we know of? Posted: 12 Mar 2019 04:20 PM PDT Are any invasive species known to have diverged substantially from original populations after years of isolation? Obviously evolution is ongoing and continuous but what about obvious physical differences that are already the result of a species being relocated by humans? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2019 01:39 PM PDT This is what my Naive pop-sci knowledge of spin tells me. We would some measuring device that first measures some quantity ( call it electron-rotation) of the electron and then measures it again at the end of the day. We can only tell the difference between the number of rotations mod 720° though. Now, a different question. If before measuring Sally, I grabbed my device and I did a 360° rotation. And then I measured Sally. Would it add 360° to the measured electron rotation? So if I could paint electrons with rotation between 0°,360° as green, and 360°,720° as blue, then if I did a 360° rotation they would all swap colors right? [link] [comments]  |
| How are modern processor architectures tested and refined? Posted: 12 Mar 2019 10:06 AM PDT |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2019 10:02 AM PDT |
| Why do people say it’s the current that kills you and not the voltage? Posted: 12 Mar 2019 10:24 AM PDT |
| You are subscribed to email updates from AskScience: Got Questions? Get Answers.. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
