Hey all,

it's a question I keep coming back to as I work on my thesis and I do not yet have a solid idea about this.

Say, on a behavioral level person A has a significantly smaller difference than person B in reaction times between the congruent and incongruent conditions in a Stroop-test (indicating better inhibitory control). How would you imagine they would differ in an EEG recording?

I tried my best in researching this myself, but all I could find sound evidence for is the association between n2/n4 and inhibition as a cognitive process.

Looking forward to your answers!

I know it makes animals more nurturing but I can't find much regarding its effect on humans, only its part in pair bonding.

If the sand is to dry or too wet the sand castle will slump -what determines the optimal dampness and does it vary for different types of sand?

Are we the only species with specialized brain hemispheres or are there others? Are they specialized in the same way as ours (holistic vs fine grained, roughly speaking)?

I’m curious if there is an evolutionary analogy to piranhas, but for the oceans.
I know piranhas are not mindless buzzsaw fish that kill everything in their path. But the cliche feeding frenzy school is something they actually do from time to time. This behaviour means they can tackle large live prey and large pieces of carrion.
So, is there a kind of ocean fish that is similar to piranhas in this respect? A small, schooling fish that has sharp teeth and engages in feeding frenzy behaviour in large numbers.
Note: This question specifically excludes sharks as they are large and, even though they sometimes form groups, are not a schooling fish. This question is specifically about little guys in large numbers that tackle large prey en masse.

I understand that these comparisons are metaphorical since the brain and computers work very differently. However, I'm curious to know how much "memory" our brains would hold if we were to estimate it in terms understandable to us in the tech world (like GBs or TBs). Similarly, what would the equivalent "RAM" be, based on our ability to simultaneously process information?

Thank you!

More specifically, if you had sets of standalone physical cubic cells, independent of a computer, that were all hooked up in a grid and wired together, each having on/off states and the inputs and outputs to follow the correct rules for the Game of Life, wouldn't that qualify for having a very low phi value according to IIT?

I know that it happens because of increased glucose intanke, but in what way are they damaged? Like which part of the structure is damaged and how? I've tried to find out but its hard to find information like this.

When I'm scuba diving it's a huge time consuming pain in the ass to keep my ears equalized and I have to understand the process that I'm doing.

How would a deep diving animal do that?

Does DNA carry the blueprints for very specific behaviors like a bird's drive and know-how to build a nest or are there other factors that pass instincts through generations?

I'm wondering if happy people are more or less creative. I tried googling for it but, as you can imagine, the answers are wildly conflicting.

I wonder if any serious data exists on this topic.

I read a comment recently that said:

“…the clean air act in the 1960s which regulates sulfur dioxide emissions, the cause of acid rain, removed a lot of the particular matter from the air which reflected away from the surface or the earth—it was partially responsible for the earth warming.—We screwed with the atmosphere and in trying to do good, it did clean up the acid rain (somewhat) but came back and bit us in the a** with a warming effect as it let more of the sun’s rays through”

Is this true to some extent? Did the clean air act, which I always thought was an amazing policy because of the wonders it did for our air quality, have the unintended effect of accelerating global warming by boosting the greenhouse effect?

I know if I looked this up, I would only get a bunch of hard to understand research papers, so I am asking it here. Any answers are greatly appreciated.

I feel that a lot of the marketing behind these therapies seem to be exaggerated.

If yes why did they evolve?

https://www.mlive.com/news/2023/05/when-to-look-for-junes-full-strawberry-moon-this-week.html

I've found some information on the topic but can't seem to find anything relating to why the colour appears as it does.

First time posting on this sub, don't go to hard on me if I do something wrong please!

I was thinking about this while looking at a lightning strike that curved quite weirdly, and struck something that really didn't seem like the most optimal point. I had never really thought to look deeper into how it, and the whole "path of least resistance" thing worked and accepted that statement at face value. While thinking about how it would work, I tried to picture the below experiment in my head, but couldn't quite make sense of it. I don't have the means to actually do it myself, but I'm still burningly curious and google has not helped.

Two long rods of different conductive materials are connected in the middle of their length by a strip of a third conductive material. One of the two rods is made of a material with "medium" conductivity, while the other is substantially more conductive. The strip in the middle is still conductive but is much poorer at it than either of the other two. Attached to the "medium" conductivity rod is a source of electricity. For instance a Car Battery.

How would electricity flow in this situation? Would it follow the "medium" rod to it's end, ignoring the bridge over? Personally I am not sure if it would be able to realize that there is a potentially "better" path for it on the other side of this obstacle, obviously since there is no intelligence to it. But would it do so if the other side is "worth it" anyways? Or would it spread throughout the entire device like a liquid through a series of tubes, only being slowed down not stopped entirely by the resistive bridge?

If it does flow only or primarily down the "worse" path because a seemingly terrible obstacle is all it can "see", the situation would remind me of the False Peak concept, which I primarily know from exposure to Ai Learning, or in the context of trying to find the highest point in a given map.

Thank you in advance for your answers, I hope I was not just spouting easily explained nonsense.

I've been reading recently that sound absorption in the ocean has been decreasing with ocean acidification, due to a lack of borate ions. I understand that it has something to do with a reaction between borate ions and boric acid which absorbs sound in the process but I don't really understand the mechanics. I'm very curious, could anyone help me?

I'm a pescatarian, so I eat a lot of seafood. Of course, most seafood contains mercury thanks to methylmercury absorption by plankton/fish which are subsequently eaten by predatory fish (bioaccumulation). Most of the time, the mercury content won't have an impact on humans. However, humans start suffering from the mercury content once they consume too many "apex fish predators" (sharks, baraccuda, tuna, etc).

Those predatory fish, especially sharks, don't suffer from mercury poisoning despite their high mercury consumption.

I know our biology isn't the same as fish, but why is it that we can't build up a resistance to mercury (or other heavy metals) to the same degree as predatory fish? I've heard it might be possible (the Japanese have been eating seafood heavy diets for tens of thousands of years), but it seems as if we can only "evolve" so much in this regard. I'd imagine if anyone could build up an exceptional tolerance, it would probably be East Asians or Polynesians considering they've been eating predatory fish for longer than anyone else...but their mercury tolerance doesn't seem that much higher than anyone else's.

Hi, as a popsci reader, I don't really have any insight on current research in psychology, so I would love some input. I read Kahnemanns 'Thinking, fast and slow' maybe 10 years ago and just finished a book about Acceptance & Commitment therapy and to me it seems like the ideas in each synergize very well.

E.g. ACT talks about 'fusion' of cognitive processes with behavior - a system 1 acting automatically - and proposes 'observing' your cognitive processes and 'defusing' these with behavior - a more deliberate and conscious system 2. Has there been any research into this? It seems like it could help therapy if the ways to assist system 2 are employed?

I'm not sure of the scientific standing of either of these models, especially in the face of the replication crisis but any input is appreciated. Thanks!

When the tires rotate, does the air "follow" it or does it stay static ?

Hello, just a question that’s been on my mind for a while.

I’m familiar with the theories of abiogenesis, as familiar as Wikipedia and the occasional listening to academic conferences on YouTube can get me, anyway, but I’ve never been able to figure out whether scientists believe each step was happening everywhere.

Were the chemical precursors of life and nucleobases being synthesised all over the Earth, with all of the planet’s oceans teeming with protocells forming and evolving?

Was the RNA world likely just one or a small number of “warm little ponds”, or were many different versions of self-replicating RNA and ribozymes floating around all over the oceans?

Is the idea of the Miller-Urey experiment to examine what the entire Earth’s oceans would have been like?