Former antenna engineer here. I had a passing interest in knowing how safe I was in my work. Unfortunately, research in the field resulted in very much the kind of answers that are presented here. One researcher would present a paper saying, as long as you’re not getting warm, your fine. Another would say were already all dead. Microwaves ARE harmful. It’s a matter of degree. Tissue heating and damage to DNA were two modes of harm. There was a third I can’t remember at the moment. I’ve never really understood why tissue heating was considered harmful if it wasn’t, you know, burning you, but scientists seem to think so.
Bottom line is, I think more research is needed on the subject. Until then pretty much every country has rules about the power level that is safe for humans. I had to routinely calculate the minimum safe distance from a radiator for testing and installation purposes. They also have rules about the amount of power allowed to be radiated into ones head. This is called SAR (specific absorption rate). In the US it is the FCC that regulates these values. You can look them up there.
My advice, until someone can clearly provide a super accurate answer, I would err on the side of caution. Whenever I can, I use the speaker phone on my cell phone to keep it away from my head and when I get to where I’m going, I take it out of my pocket and keep it nearby, but not directly against my skin (power level drops significantly with distance). And I would NEVER voluntarily get warmed by a microwave device. But, if you have a liberal attitude toward your children being born with flippers, you do you.
You would be more likely to destroy your sperm and become infertile before your children have flippers. (Which is an extremely unlikely thing to happen. The vast majority of us have a phone next to our bits at all times, even with all the plastic in us it hasn’t detrimental affected our ability to procreate yet.)
Your cell phone isn’t going to create enough power to do damage to yourself, unless the battery explodes.
A “decision” is highly complex emergent behaviour. Looking for it in a single neuron is like asking if there’s a single air molecule where a gale started. We almost certainly will never identify single neurons corresponding to single mental ideas. A “go to the cinema” neuron versus “go to the park” likely don’t exist. What is more likely is that large ‘flows’ of neutral activity correspond to these things or to what we call ‘decisions’. However when we think of more and more specific mechanical things (like lifting a finger) then it’s more likely this corresponds to very small areas of neurons that controlled their activation and it makes a bit more sense to talk about that being a switch to ‘decide’ to move a finger. But the decision itself is actually the vast cloud of neutral activity leading into it not a single thing.
Interesting! This is what I was getting at. I’m trying to figure out at what level decisions are made and how are they made. From what I can tell so far, it seems like neurons act as nodes that either fire or not based on the information they receive from previous neurons. The information they receive from previous neurons either encourage or discourage activation, each at a different strength. Once a neuron receives enough encouragement to fire from the previous neurons, it fires and sends its signal to the neurons it is connected to, which they take as encouragement or discouragement. In a sense, decision-making is a series of very long logistic regression models. Each previous neuron serves as a predictive factor with it’s own polarity (encouragement or discouragement) and coefficient (magnitude of signal). Learning is changing the values of coefficients so that predictive factors have different impacts on the outcome variable. With this in mind, then at least 2 neurons are needed to make a decision. The more neurons, the more variables can be included in the decision making process. Does that make sense?
That’s how neurons work, yes. But you can’t reduce a “decision” down to a single neuron. It depends what you mean by decision really. Do you mean “the smallest thing that can affect something else”, in which case, yes, neurons are the smallest unit (it seems) of brain function. But not consciously so.
Or do you mean the collective input that goes into the brain generating an output? In which case, the brain appears to function more with swarms of neurons firing together. You won’t find any examples of a single neuron affecting, say, the choice of going to the cinema. We don’t know the brain in enough detail for that, nor does it seem possible for it to work that way (neurons die and are replaced but our behaviour and decisions seems far more stable).
Or do you mean the conscious experience of making a decision (free choice)? Which is a different thing again. The mechanics of the brain operating input and output and the conscious experience of it are not the same thing. They may be generated by distinct but overlapping parts of the brain. Often in step but not always. Conscious choice can’t have elements of it reduced to single neurons, brain experiments seem to frustrated any attempt to turn up evidence for that.
Whatever it is we colloquially mean by making a conscious decision about something doesn’t exist on the neuron level. It exists on the millions of neurons acting simultaneously level.
By decision, I meant anything that was more than mere chemical or mechanical reaction. Another way of separating it is the point where we can say there is a purpose or difference between dead molecules and being alive. In this case, going to the cinema is wayyy too advanced a decision to help define. More like a cell or group of cells that recognizes its environment and has the opportunity to decide to go towards one direction over another rather than respond merely because a chemical in their environment reacted with their body in a way that gave them an impulse.
But in the larger picture, it seems like there are many decisions that occur for us to commit a behavior. For example, we have to decide what we perceive, decide what our emotional state is, decide what our memories are, decide our personal taste for movies, decide our current motivational state, decide if we have enough time, etc, be fore we decide to go to the movies. All those have to happen prior to deciding on the cinema, and the majority of them occur simultaneously with a central network organizing them into a coherent process, correct? Omg, is this central network what people call executive functioning‽
I’m afraid you are not going to find anything in the brain except “dead molecules”. There isn’t anything in there except the laws of physics and chemistry acting out like clockwork.
But in terms of the scale of how “decisions” work. Then, yes, far simpler decisions (perhaps better to say “reactions”) happen with relatively few neurons. The complete brains of small insects have been mapped by researchers, maybe several million neurons. They can detect movement reactions happening in response to stimuli.
This though is a very different thing to what people mean when referring to their conscious decision to do something.
ah see. you knew the magic word was lift. I was using things like “what kind of motor is used in mattress adjustable bases” And I was getting no where. The word lift didn’t even occur to me. Thanks.
My guess would be a 120v electric motor using a screw gearing.
Screw gearing can transfer torque very well in one direction, and you can use very small motors because they’re usually a very high gear ratio (so they don’t move quickly).
The uni-directional torque transfer is why screw gearing keeps the bed from collapsing, and why screw gear is extensively used in steering systems (especially for heavier vehicles, like trucks).
screw motor. Thanks. I googled an image of that and it all made sense. Pretty sweet. And based on that, the motor doesn’t seem like it would have any impact on the minimum difference between height settings. It would just a question of some kind of control that converts the remote signal into a burst of on or off for the motor. So likely there are an infinite number of positions the bed could achieve because holding the the button would be nondeterministic as to how far it would move. Thanks.
Yes. It’s a science known as plant grafting. Though usually the process is used to attach one plant to grow from a completely different plant, it can be easily used to reattach a limb to the same/original plant.
not an expert, but the fictional part isn’t the suit, it’s the miniaturized high energy production courtesy of stark building it in a cave from scraps.
we have mech suits. we have flight helmets with sophisticated Ai and we have privatized versions of personal assistants.
I was throwing a shoe at a chicken in my yard and accidentally hit a lemon tree sapling tearing a big branch off. I just electrical tapped it back together and it was good as new within a few months
Closer than what? In the past? Yes, of course. We’ll always be closer, unless there is some cataclysmic event that causes us to lose knowledge and regress.
Yes, absolutely it’s possible. You can take the leg of a lion and attach it directly to the neck of a lizard. You can take the lung of a poodle and put it in a fish. It’s called electrical taping.
askscience
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.