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askscience

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SorteKanin , in How do different body parts (specifically shape) emerge from our genes?
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

After some reading today, there isn’t much info on how cells form into specific shapes for arms, hands, organs, etc. (I am sure there is a ton of data, but I don’t know what subject to Google.)

Perhaps the term you’re looking for is morphogenesis.

remotelove OP ,

Yes, thank you. That is exactly what I am looking for. I dunno what I expected, but I was hoping that I was going to avoid a ton of maths. Alas, everything seems to be math. /s

For those who are interested, this led me directly to these:

www.mdpi.com/2079-3197/3/2/197

github.com/topics/morphogenesis

BlueLineBae , in Is there any scientific study about where should the bed be facing?
@BlueLineBae@midwest.social avatar

The only real effects that I know of are light related. If you’re trying to sleep, making it as dark as possible is best. So using an eye cover or blackout curtains can help. But when you want to wake up, sunlight helps us wake up easier. This can be tricky in the winter when the sun rises later and doesn’t peek into your window until after you’ve already had to wake up. I think there are some phone alarms that will slowly add a warm light to the room to help with this, but I couldn’t say if they actually work or not. Hope this helps.

MrJameGumb ,
@MrJameGumb@lemmy.world avatar

I got some Cync adjustable light bulbs and I set them up in the app on my phone to turn on low and slowly get brighter when I need to wake up

Steve , in Is the "Tromatz" bioelectric wave toothbrush legit, or snake oil?

“The new TROMATZWAVE® technology uses a hybrid electrostatic force, simultaneously imposing both AC and DC on a micro frequency of 0.7 V to disturb the electric charges and subsequently break the EPS barrier”

This is mostly gibberish, especially the part where they describe a frequency in volts. (Completely incorrect)

zeppo , in Why are we so concerned with oxygen production yet we never hear about nitrogen production, though we actually need 78% nitrogen vs 21% oxygen to survive?
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

Is there some threat to the worlds supply of atmospheric nitrogen?

LillyPip OP ,

My climate example was poor, I’m sorry. A better example of what I mean is that when we look for habitable planets, our focus is ‘oxygen rich atmosphere’, not ‘nitrogen rich’, though most of our breathable air is nitrogen and too much oxygen will actually kill us.

zeppo ,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

I suppose because we don’t really use the nitrogen - it’s inert, unlike oxygen which is part of vital respiration. I’m no expert but it’s conceivable some other mix of gases could work as the inert portion besides nitrogen, but oxygen is required. Seems like it would take a lot of luck to find the right concentration though.

lolcatnip ,

Calling it “inert” is misleading. It’s involved in all kinds of chemical reactions that are essential for life (and lots of non-biological reactions, too). It’s only inert in the sense that most living things can’t use it directly from the air and rely on nitrogen-fixing plants and bacteria to make it into molecules we can use.

zeppo ,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

Sure, I understand it’s one of the 3 basic plant fertilizers and plays a role in human biology. I’m referring nitrogen as a gas and its role in human respiration. It’s commonly referred to as an inert gas. I think that mainly refers to respiration and combustion.

DharmaCurious ,
@DharmaCurious@startrek.website avatar

Now I’m imagining a planet with a helium atmosphere that’s breathable for humans. Best. Episode. Of. Star Trek. Ever. I’m envisioning TOS, super serious scenes where Scotty has fallen near dead, Kirk looks to Bones for some reassurance, and in Mickey Mouses voice Bones mournfully tells him “He’s dead, Jim”

zeppo ,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

I think it could work? Not really sure. Probably sound enough scientifically for a 1st gen Star Trek episode.

roguetrick ,

It would work in the sense that you could breathe it. It would not work in the sense that the gravity of a planet that actually holds a helium atmosphere (as opposed to it flying off into space) would be uncomfortable.

zeppo ,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

Would argon work?

LillyPip OP , (edited )

This needs to be an episode of Lower Decks.

e: and Boimler’s voice doesn’t change.

randombullet , in Does a (phone|laptop) charger plugged in the socket but not connected to the device still consume electricity?

My office when everything is off consumes 7w total.

That’s 2 high end computers, 3 monitors in sleep mode, 2 phone chargers a laptop charger.

7w is more than tolerable for me

Unforeseen ,

Yeah both the monitors and computers will consume a bit. Even a modern PC when turned off is in a type of deep sleep mode, for stuff like wake on LAN.

The chargers will hardly even register anything, except maybe in some rare case where its a special one that is doing some sort of passive listening (like the PC’s)

randombullet ,

I think my monitors are rated at 0.5w each

I actually think the biggest drain are the power strips with built in USB adapters. Maybe 1w each

TauZero ,

A funny culprit I found during my own investigation was the GFCI bathroom outlet, which draws an impressive 4W. The status light + whatever the trickle current it uses to do its function thus dwarfs the standby power of any other electronic device.

kakes , in If GPTs only predict the next word how do they decide between "a" and "an". Wouldn't this have massive effect on their abilities?

They’re very good at predicting the next word, so their choice of “a” or “an” is likely to make sense in context. But you can absolutely ask a GPT to continue a sentence that appears to use the wrong word.

For instance, I just tried giving a GPT this to start with:

My favorite fruit grows on trees, is red, and can be made into pies. It is a

And the GPT finished it with:

delicious and versatile fruit called apples!

So as you can see, language is malleable enough to make sense of most inputs. Though occasionally, a GPT will get caught up in a nonsensical phrase due to this behavior.

mvirts , in Is there an easy way to generate a list of CMYK color values that will appear identical to the human eye under 589nm light?

Hmmmmmmmmm… From a high level perspective you need to know the reflectivity of your combined pigments at that wavelength. If it’s the same, they will look the same.

I don’t know of anything easy you can use, but would suggest trying to find reflectance curves for each pigment you have available and making combinations that subtract to the same value at 589nm, or since 589 should be basically yellow, make up some colors where Y is constant and you change the ratio of C to R and try them out?

TauZero ,

That’s true! Using RGB alone will not be enough to calculate this! Two materials that might appear equally yellow under white sunlight may appear different shades of yellow under sodium light. Technology Connections did a great video about the difference: piped.video/watch?v=uYbdx4I7STg

edit: he starts talking about sodium light in particular at 11:14

dave , in If we have such a high field of vision, why can't we focus on everything within the vision simultaneously?
@dave@feddit.uk avatar

Your eyes have a central area of the retina called the fovea which is more densely packed and has much higher acuity than the rest of your retina. That’s the area you use to pay close attention such as for reading or hunting for food. The rest of the wide field of view is more useful for detecting movement than anything else.

It’s not a flaw—it’s just the best solution for the problem of survival.

CanadaPlus , (edited ) in If two identical radios are side by side and tuned to the same frequency, will they both pick up the signal at 100%, or will they wrestle for the same radio waves?

How side-by-side are we talking? If the antennas are closer than their size, yeah, it won’t necessarily work the same way because they’ll act like one antenna. If they’re too far apart for “near field” effects (or if your antenna was tiny relative to the wave to start with, like with AM radio) it won’t matter, because the wave in question will just kind of ooze around any obstruction, and received power will just go with inverse square of distance to source again.

In practice, it’s unlikely to matter so much how loud the signal is, because (unless you’re using a crystal radio) you are definitely going to amplify it quite a lot before it’s useful, anyway. More of concern is how loud it is relative to any random noise that’s present, which is not so dependent on antenna area.

Edit: I suppose if it’s between you and the source, it will dim the signal a tiny, tiny little bit. Not the way a bigger thing can cast a shadow, though; think more like a slightly dirty lens.

catloaf , (edited ) in Do we have any estimates as to how long it takes for a species of bacteria to go technically extinct entirely via genetic drift?

Speciation is really a judgment call. We don’t really have objective criteria that says “99% or more genetic similarity is the same species”.

But that assumes that there is evolution happening in the first place. Plenty of organisms are quite happily living in the same form as they did hundreds of millions of years ago. The nautilus, for example, evolved about 500 mya, and remains largely unchanged today (though many of its siblings are extinct, and the nautilus itself is endangered). For simpler organisms, you can probably find examples much older.

Edit: forgot to answer your question directly. It could be never.

Telorand , (edited )

If I could add, it’s likely impossible to say, because evolution is driven by selection pressures.

If the original strain AA has descendent strains AA, AB, and AC, we can’t know with any certainty which is more fit to survive, because it could be one, two, or all of them simultaneously.

Edit: typo

catloaf ,

Yes, natural selection isn’t really survival of the fittest, it’s survival of the good enough.

(Also I assume you meant descendant; decedent is someone who is deceased.)

Telorand ,

Ah, goddamn autocorrect! Yes, that’s what I meant.

xkforce , in How long will the Great Lakes last?

At the current rate of sediment accumulation in lake Erie, it would accumulate enough fine grained materialto fill its volumein less than 70,000 years.

This assumes a lot i.e that we wouldnt dredge material, that something else doesnt wipe them out first etc.

zkfcfbzr , in What happens when you apply a force to an object at close to the speed of light?

Touching on the second question, since the ship would never actually reach the speed of light, the trip would not seem instantaneous to the people on board. However, the trip would seem much shorter to the people on board than it would to external observers. The people on board the ship would experience length contraction in the direction of travel making their destination closer to themselves, while external observers would notice the people onboard the ship moving slowly, ie, experiencing time at a reduced rate. Either way, the effect is that the people on board perceive the trip to be much shorter (in terms of both distance and time) than an external observer watching their ship. In principle you can get the perceived length of the trip (both distance and time) to approach but not equal zero, though in practice this would involve killing everyone on board and destroying the ship (and maybe even the galaxy).

I agree with the other commenters that the people on board will experience a consistent acceleration of 9.81 m/s² in your described scenario. It might help, conceptually, to imagine an external observer watching someone on the ship jumping up and down at this near-light speed, taking into account the severe time dilation they’d be experiencing: The difference in perception comes because, from the external observer’s point of view, the person on the ship is moving in extreme slow motion.

meco03211 , in What mechanism is the source for Earth's Nitrogen?

sciencefocus.com/…/where-does-the-nitrogen-in-the…

This says most of earth’s nitrogen was present when earth formed. The nitrogen cycle eventually leads to atmospheric nitrogen which can be stripped by solar winds except earth has a magnetosphere that shields us. So planets with no or a weak induced magnetosphere lose nitrogen. Earth does not.

bizzle , in What causes fish tank water to react to UV(A?)
@bizzle@lemmy.world avatar

It’s all sorts of fish-related detritus. You can use your yucky fish water to water your plants and they will love you for it, fish pretty much poop finished compost. Like rabbits.

Kyrgizion , in How can you replace your addiction with a more healthy one? And will this lead to a negative spiral? Can you break from an addictive personality?

Any addiction can be broken (the mental part, at least). The real hard part is you have to truly WANT it. You can’t magically wish discipline into existence where there was none before.

That said, I can’t seem to get rid of mine, but I acknowledge that my underlying problem is a profound lack of willpower.

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