Why? Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.
Why, there's no drugs, no drug dealers, no gangs, no porn, no cigarettes and no terrorists on Mars.
There's a flow of ions; it's not conventional electricity, because there's no loop,
Yes, there actually is a loop, albeit a tiny one - between the depolarized and the not-yet-but-soon-to-be depolarized part of the axon. The myelin sheath (with its gaps) increases the length of this loop and allows the signal to travel faster.
but George Orwell was what we would today call a neocon wingnut.
Yeah, and that was exactly why he joined a Marxist party and fought on the side of the Republicans (left-wing guys in this context) in the Spanish Civil War.
Signal transmission between two nerve cells is a chemical process that happens in the synaptic cleft, involving neurotransmitters and enzymes to break them down.
Addition - there are also electric synapses that transmit the signal electrically. However, they lack all the ways to influence/modulate signal transmission in the synaptic cleft, and therefore are rare compared to the chemical synapses.
The human nervous system is not based on electricity, but on ions; the application of electricity to the skin will cause those ions to move, since they're charged particles, but the nervous system itself is purely chemical.
Actually, it's electro-chemical. Signal transmission along the axon works by having a depolarized zone travelling down the axon. The depolarization happens electrically, this is why having a myelin sheath around the axon will speed up signal transmission (the depolarization can "skip" the parts of the axon covered by the myelin sheath).
Signal transmission between two nerve cells is a chemical process that happens in the synaptic cleft, involving neurotransmitters and enzymes to break them down.
What matters here is the synapses. When these are ripped out of place by medical trauma, it's damn hard to fit them back together again - in the rest of the body, it works, but in the spinal cord there's other cells present that effectively inhibit this healing.
Actually, no, the synapses are not the biggest problem. They're simply a connection between two cells that can be reformed fairly easily (nerve cells have a natural tendency to try to establish meaningful connections with other nerve cells). The big problem is having nerve fibers that are cut - the usual healing process of the body consists of disposing of damaged cells and replacing them with newly formed cells. This obviously doesn't work with neurons as they usually cannot be re-grown. Therefore, if a neuron is damaged, it has to be _repaired_, not _replaced_, and this is the hard part.
Has any research been done to find out why the body didn't/hasn't adapted to work around the reasoning for said nerves not regrowing?
Simply because such a mechanism would not have provided any significant evolutionary advantage, because damage to the central nervous system usually resulted in death long before the body's repair mechanism can do their thing.
Of course, the latter part is no longer true for humans today, but ~100 years are merely a blip on the timescale of evolution.
Go to ebay and buy an inexpensive playpen, stroller, chair, highchair and overnight bag, and store them at your folks' house. It's amazing how much time, hassle and nerves this small investment will save you... trust me (9 month-old son here).
The "lets both get hurt equally" arguement is total sh*t for brains.
Actually, it's "lets both of us not get hurt", but that seems to totally contradict the American "me first" mentality and is therefore distorted into a complete strawman.
According to this link, there were 598 million metric tons of corn produced globally in 2002. (That was the first year I came across. Let's assume it's typical.)
The link refers to the "cereal", i.e. maize kernels for human consumption, not raw biomass or feed corn.
Your math might be right, but your facts are somewhat blurry.
I.e. I think it's more efficient to travel 60 miles in 60 minutes than it is to travel 60 miles in 80 minutes, as the extra 20 minues of fuel burn time will eat up any savings made by reducing RPM and wind resistance.
Then you're basically thinking rubbish. The real world disagrees with you delusions.
There is however a big difference between US and European diesel: US diesel is typcially high-sulfur and European diesel is typically low-sulfur (except for trucks, afaik, but I wouldn't bet on it)
US diesel is pretty much piss compared to its European counterpart, as far as impurities etc go. A buddy of mine works on diesel fuel injection pumps... this difference is one of his main headaches.
Why don't they engineer their cars to be as light as a European or Japanese built car?
It's not just the weight, but also the grade of the gasoline. Most European cars nowadays run on "super" (95 octane roz) or even "super plus" (98 octane roz), while pretty much any American car runs on 91 or less octane roz stuff.
So, those people who choose air travel expect to cash in on their life insurance plans (as opposed to their medical insurance) in the event of mechanical failure?
Whoa, that's a far stretch. What cloud are you on, and what are you smoking ?
And those people who drive cars instead of motorcycles expect to destroy and kill the drivers of those motorcycles they hit?
Ok, that's better. And the answer is: No. Because you can hit a motorcycle with pretty much anything (other motorcycle, small car, large car, truck) and expect the rider to be seriously injured or killed. How badly depends largely on how fast the motorcycle was going, not what it got hit by.
Or am i to belive movies that anything bigger than you average bird would bring down the plane in a huge-spectacular-surround-sound-slow-motion-moving -fireball?
Movies ? How about the Concorde disaster ? It was just a big piece of _rubber_ that penetrated the fuel tank. And yes, the fireball thing really happened.
This seems similar to how the Mongol empire worked.
No, it is more similar to the way "vengeance quotas" were used against partisans.
Partisans kill X of your soldiers - round up (vengeance quota) times X male civilians and shoot them. Usually, the quota was around 10, but I've heard rumors that threats of up to 100 were used in WWII.
but are designed to pump out a crapload of neutrons
Yes. And by pumping a crapload of neutrons into a nuclear warhead, you might just split enough uranium atoms to render the thing unable to detonate. At least that's what the theory is.
He's going to nail it when it's 1000 yards away,
That still gives the system several seconds to do its thing. Missiles are not bullets - they need to accelerate and (at least for manpads) reach slower speeds (~500 m/s).
don't think you can turn a rich man into a suicide bomber/pilot. You might get that man to give over his money, but when you get down to it, rich people aren't the footsoldier types. For one, they tend to be grateful for their circumstances. For another, they tend not to want to stand in harm's way. Imagine Al Franken doing a ride-along in Iraq with a US Army convoy.
Imagine Pat Tillman turning down a 3.6 M$ contract in order to enlist in the US Army.
They are designed to withstand things like engines disintegrating and spewing turbine blades all over the place, bird strikes and other random foreign object impacts, lightning strikes, landing gear tire explosions, and miscellaneous failures like random hydraulic line ruptures or doors not properly latched.
Yeah like.. the Concorde ? That was just a bit of metal rupturing a tire. No biggie, eh ?
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No, that only happens in a vacuum. That is, the total intellectual vacuum of movie physics, not an actual physical vacuum.
Why? Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. Why, there's no drugs, no drug dealers, no gangs, no porn, no cigarettes and no terrorists on Mars.
Well ... these people exist, but aren't called doctors, but nurses, midwives, paramedics, assistants, etc ...
Please, do the world a favor and have your cardiac bypass done by a dermatologist should you ever need one.
Yes, there actually is a loop, albeit a tiny one - between the depolarized and the not-yet-but-soon-to-be depolarized part of the axon. The myelin sheath (with its gaps) increases the length of this loop and allows the signal to travel faster.
Yeah, and that was exactly why he joined a Marxist party and fought on the side of the Republicans (left-wing guys in this context) in the Spanish Civil War.
Addition - there are also electric synapses that transmit the signal electrically. However, they lack all the ways to influence/modulate signal transmission in the synaptic cleft, and therefore are rare compared to the chemical synapses.
Actually, it's electro-chemical. Signal transmission along the axon works by having a depolarized zone travelling down the axon. The depolarization happens electrically, this is why having a myelin sheath around the axon will speed up signal transmission (the depolarization can "skip" the parts of the axon covered by the myelin sheath).
Signal transmission between two nerve cells is a chemical process that happens in the synaptic cleft, involving neurotransmitters and enzymes to break them down.
What matters here is the synapses. When these are ripped out of place by medical trauma, it's damn hard to fit them back together again - in the rest of the body, it works, but in the spinal cord there's other cells present that effectively inhibit this healing.
Actually, no, the synapses are not the biggest problem. They're simply a connection between two cells that can be reformed fairly easily (nerve cells have a natural tendency to try to establish meaningful connections with other nerve cells). The big problem is having nerve fibers that are cut - the usual healing process of the body consists of disposing of damaged cells and replacing them with newly formed cells. This obviously doesn't work with neurons as they usually cannot be re-grown. Therefore, if a neuron is damaged, it has to be _repaired_, not _replaced_, and this is the hard part.
Simply because such a mechanism would not have provided any significant evolutionary advantage, because damage to the central nervous system usually resulted in death long before the body's repair mechanism can do their thing.
Of course, the latter part is no longer true for humans today, but ~100 years are merely a blip on the timescale of evolution.
Go to ebay and buy an inexpensive playpen, stroller, chair, highchair and overnight bag, and store them at your folks' house. It's amazing how much time, hassle and nerves this small investment will save you ... trust me (9 month-old son here).
* Repeated stopping and accelerating. Eats gas like crazy. * Non-distance-related energy sinks like air conditioning.
Of course, you can build a car that that has an insanely high crossover point (poke a few holes in the gas tank, for example).
The "lets both get hurt equally" arguement is total sh*t for brains. Actually, it's "lets both of us not get hurt", but that seems to totally contradict the American "me first" mentality and is therefore distorted into a complete strawman.
The link refers to the "cereal", i.e. maize kernels for human consumption, not raw biomass or feed corn.
Your math might be right, but your facts are somewhat blurry.
Then you're basically thinking rubbish. The real world disagrees with you delusions.
US diesel is pretty much piss compared to its European counterpart, as far as impurities etc go. A buddy of mine works on diesel fuel injection pumps ... this difference is one of his main headaches.
It's not just the weight, but also the grade of the gasoline. Most European cars nowadays run on "super" (95 octane roz) or even "super plus" (98 octane roz), while pretty much any American car runs on 91 or less octane roz stuff.
Whoa, that's a far stretch. What cloud are you on, and what are you smoking ?
And those people who drive cars instead of motorcycles expect to destroy and kill the drivers of those motorcycles they hit?
Ok, that's better. And the answer is: No. Because you can hit a motorcycle with pretty much anything (other motorcycle, small car, large car, truck) and expect the rider to be seriously injured or killed. How badly depends largely on how fast the motorcycle was going, not what it got hit by.
Movies ? How about the Concorde disaster ? It was just a big piece of _rubber_ that penetrated the fuel tank. And yes, the fireball thing really happened.
No, it is more similar to the way "vengeance quotas" were used against partisans.
Partisans kill X of your soldiers - round up (vengeance quota) times X male civilians and shoot them. Usually, the quota was around 10, but I've heard rumors that threats of up to 100 were used in WWII.
Yes. And by pumping a crapload of neutrons into a nuclear warhead, you might just split enough uranium atoms to render the thing unable to detonate. At least that's what the theory is.
He's going to nail it when it's 1000 yards away, That still gives the system several seconds to do its thing. Missiles are not bullets - they need to accelerate and (at least for manpads) reach slower speeds (~500 m/s).
Most likely, they will use chemically-powered lasers, or use really huge capacitors to store the electric power.
So the laser, if aimed at an aircraft (NOT a missile), will not heat up the aircraft ?
Imagine Pat Tillman turning down a 3.6 M$ contract in order to enlist in the US Army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman
Rich doesn't mean cowardly.
And the 9/11 terrorists weren't exactly recruited from the dumb and poor masses, either.
Yeah like