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caters

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Quark

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  1. I was thinking about how the aliens in my generation ship story sterilize people that have a genetic disease but don't sterilize carriers. The complete spermicide for males makes perfect sense. But with females, it is more complicated. What complicates things with females? The menstrual cycle of course. What I am aiming for is a way to inhibit ovulation without also inhibiting menstruation. So I looked at graphs of the menstrual cycle and the hormones and thought that since LH is the 1 hormone that triggers ovulation in the first place, an LH inhibitor would stop ovulation from happening at LH levels that would normally trigger ovulation. And because it is not estrogen or progesterone(both of which stop periods and estrogen, if taken at the right time can actually act as a natural fertility drug, raising the chances of having twins and higher order multiples), those 2 hormones should still cycle as normal with dips corresponding to menstruation. So basically, ovulation has stopped but there is still a menstrual cycle. But could a direct inhibitor of LH stop ovulation without stopping periods? Or would it have the same amenorrhea effects as estrogen and progesterone do along with the direct effect of anovulation?
  2. I was thinking about maybe using capacitors connected to the accelerator, steering wheel, and brake along with some variable resistors. Specifically, when you push on the accelerator, because more voltage is needed, more electricity goes from the capacitors to the motors and this adds voltage to what is already there. When the brake is pushed, less voltage is needed and so more electricity gets stored in the capacitors. When the steering wheel is turned left or right, the resistors get involved as well as the capacitors. Like with the accelerator, more electricity is sent from capacitors towards the motors. But these capacitors are connected to variable resistors. When the steering wheel is turned left, the left variable resistor has a decreased resistance whereas the right variable resistor has a higher resistance. This causes there to be a voltage difference that causes the car to turn to the left. Similar thing with turning right except which resistor has higher resistance and which one has lower resistance is switched.
  3. Why is is not as simple as increasing the voltage increases speed? I have seen demonstrations of a motor connected to a power supply where they kept increasing the voltage and as the voltage increased, the rotational speed of the motor increased. Now yes, it was a small motor like what you would use in a robot but still, increased voltage caused the speed to increase. And given that the 2 motors in the car are mechanically connected to the wheels, when the motor's rotational speed increases, so does the wheel's rotational speed and that rotational speed determines the speed of the car.
  4. I know that but my solar car design has 2 motors and electric cars in existence only have 1 motor. And assuming that the surface area problem can be fixed by coating the outside of the car in microscopic solar panels, this voltage controlling the turning direction and speed would be a challenge, but only at high speeds. And nobody would want a highway with a speed limit that is way below the normal highway speed limit just because voltage has a problem at high speeds. Then, you would get nowhere fast. Going to the doctor downtown if you are not downtown might take several hours if you have to go slow on the highways due to a limit of voltage reasonably controlling torque. As to how voltage controls the speed regardless of turning? The more voltage, the higher the speed.
  5. Really? Because I have posted about this on other forums and they all said that the problem lies in the turning mechanism(voltage difference causing a difference in rotational speed between the 2 motors and those motors being mechanically connected and thus causing a torque on the wheels which in turn causes a torque on the whole car that causes it to turn). They all said that the differential speed due to voltage would produce too small of a torque for high speeds and so while you might turn just fine at 5 mph, increase that speed to 45 mph and the car will crash because a small torque at a fast speed would require a turn that barely even looks like a turn and most roads have a 90 degree angle at intersections. So they basically said that voltage difference and a 90 degree turn just aren't compatible at high speeds.
  6. I have come up with an idea for a solar car. Now I am not going to build it because it would require welding and although my dad knows how to use a welder and a plasma cutter, I still think it would be too dangerous for even my dad to build, not to mention expensive. Even if he cut all the metal himself, the metal would be expensive. Not to mention it could start a fire which would mean no more solar car. But just because me and my dad can't build it doesn't mean I can't come up with an idea for it. So here is my idea. I was thinking that maybe voltage could determine velocity. When the car is charging, it is connected to a solar panel via a cord which plugs into the top of the car. Then, wires within the chassis send electricity to the battery to charge it up. Once it is fully charged, it won't overcharge. There are 4 different situations that can happen with the battery based on amperage and voltage. Those are: High voltage and High amps(doesn't need recharged) Low voltage and Low amps(needs recharged) Low voltage and High amps(needs recharged and is being used a lot(that or resistance is too low) High voltage and Low amps(Resistance is too high, even the high voltage can't overcome the sheer resistance) So anyway, I know that the circuit would be a lot more complicated than I am showing in the image but it will be easier to understand this way and just so you know, I am using electron current(the true current) so polarity being backwards is because of that. Electrons flow from negative to positive. A big misconception to physics students is that positive charges move but they don't, they are too massive. Conventional current though forces students to think backwards is forwards. This world would be a much better place if we just used electron current. Then there wouldn't be this "positive charges move" misconception. Anyway, here is the simplified circuit(this actually is the original circuit, I will draw a more complicated one just to show how complicated it is): Basic car circuit.pdf From the negative terminal, through the negative wires(those black wires), the electrons flow to the 2 motors(LM means left motor and RM means right motor) and the built in multimeter. Then they flow through the positive wires(those red wires) to the positive terminal. This is all in terms of electron current(here negative wires to negative terminal makes perfect sense). As the voltage on the motors increases, the speed increases. If the voltage difference is 0, the car goes straight. If it is non-zero however, there is more of a torque on the motor with more voltage. Since the motors are mechanically connected to the wheels, this also means more of a torque on the wheels that are on the same side as the motor with higher voltage(so if the right motor has a higher voltage, the right wheels will have a higher torque and thus a higher rotational speed. And while individual torques on the wheels may cancel out, there is 1 more torque caused by all these other torques. That is a torque on the entire car. This 1 torque(which remember originates from the voltage difference), determines whether the car will turn left or right and like the wheel torques, is also in the direction of the higher voltage(so if the right motor has a higher voltage, the car will turn right). What do you think? Is this a good idea as to how voltage can determine velocity?
  7. My Kepler Bb humanoids which are a species I made to be Human version 2.0, have development that is different from ours. There are actually 2 different timelines. 1 of them has to do with gender determination and the other has to do with developmental milestones. For developmental milestones, they have the same number of years for the first 2(infant and toddler) but their years are longer than ours. Much longer in fact. About 8 times longer. Their day is longer also but not near 8 times longer. Childhood for them goes from 3 years to 15 years. Adolescence is 15 years to 25 years. Then there is a 1 year period between adolescence and adulthood. With gender determination, there are 2 stages. Gender neutral and known gender. The gender neutral stage goes from conception, through the whole pregnancy, and all the way until the child's 5th birthday. Then the child starts to show signs that it is male or female and thus the parents know whether it is a boy or a girl at 5 years. A doctor might know right at birth from medical imaging the gender of the child but the parents won't know until the child is 5 years old. Male development In children who are internally male but are externally gender neutral, there are 2 urethras, a primary and a secondary. 1 of them is in the little nub while the other is further back and goes straight down from the bladder. Because the nub is not a penis yet, there isn't the characteristic spray of urine like there is in male human babies, it just flows out. The testicles, along with the rest of the male reproductive organs are in the abdomen at this point. There is no need for them to descend yet so they don't. Once the child turns 5 years old, a small surge of testosterone changes everything about the urethras and testicles. This increase in testosterone causes the straight urethra to die off and the testicles to physiologically herniate out of the abdomen and the skin to stretch around the hernia to form the scrotum. The nub also grows into a penis. Female development In children who are internally female but externally gender neutral, they basically look the same as those that are internally male but externally gender neutral. However, an abdominal scan for medical purposes will show for certain what gender the child is before it becomes visible to the naked eye. Once the child turns 5 years old, the testosterone levels stay low and estrogen rises. This increased estrogen causes the nub to stay about the same size and become the clitoris as well as causes the urethra within the nub to die off. The skin and muscle that originally covered the vagina also dies off at this point while other areas of skin and muscle right around it stretch to form the labia minora and the labia majora. What should I call this gender neutral stage before 5 years? I mean, yes, if I write about how Kepler Bb humanoids develop, I would certainly use externally gender neutral to describe this stage and then just refer to the stage as whatever I decide to call it. Any ideas as to what I should call this stage when gender can only be known via medical imaging of the abdomen?
  8. The thing that would worry me about a quantum mechanical sunlight source is waste energy. I mean the sun produces energy in pretty much the entire EM spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays. Not only that but the sun is the strongest radio source in the sky because of its mass and relatively close distance to us. Radio waves and microwaves would be just a waste of energy that could have been used to produce infrared, visible, and UV light. X rays, UVC, and gamma rays would be an extreme waste of energy but not only that but they are much more carcinogenic than UVB and UVA. UVC has a wavelength between 280 and 100 nm. This is energetic enough to age UV resistant plastics, kill bacteria and viruses, and if a human is exposed to it, it can cause: Rapid sunburn Skin cancer Inflamed cornea Temporary or permanent vision loss, even blindness Damage to the retina UVC exposure has a maximum time of 8 hours before it is considered unsafe due to these skin and eye injuries. And there is no doubt that the humans on the generation ship would get more than 8 hours of exposure. However, UVB is essential for life. 10-15 minutes of exposure can produce up to 20,000 IU of vitamin D. And UVB can be used to treat some conditions like: Jaundice Rickets Psoriasis Eczema Vitiligo Atopic dermatitis Scleroderma And infrared is basically heat so it would help the humans stay warm. X rays as background radiation or as just a plain X ray have a 1 in 1,000,000 lifetime cancer risk but at the doses for CT and Fluoroscopy, it can easily be 1 in 1,000 lifetime cancer risk. Not only that but if the X rays are not shielded it can cause radiation burns which can deform you. This is way worse than the sunburn from UV. Gamma rays are even worse than this. Gamma rays can cause radiation poisoning where no matter how the person is treated, they will inevitably die from the radiation. And a bit ironically, high dose damage is easier for the body to repair than low dose damage. So there would have to be a way to restrict the frequencies of light that are emitted to infrared, visible, UVA, and UVB. Lower than this and the energy is just a waste. Higher and cancer, burns, and poisoning are going to have a much higher chance of occurring. The only way I can think of to restrict the radiation emitted to this narrow range is to not use a source of lower or higher energy radiation. LEDs are an easy way to avoid this waste energy and medical risk.
  9. My Kepler Bb humanoids have a digestive system that is similar to ours but also in 2 anatomical ways, different. The 1 anatomical difference that gives these humanoids more energy is, wait for it, their appendix. Now this is a normal human appendix, only a few inches long. But a Kepler Bb humanoid's appendix is at least 3 times as long. With this added length, more good bacteria can be safely tucked away when the humanoid is ill and cellulose can be digested into simple sugars and absorbed into the bloodstream. This coupled with an overall higher BMR(basal metabolic rate) means that they get more energy from the same kinds of food than we do, particularly from plants. Now their other anatomical difference related to digestion is that they have 2 stomachs, 1 of which is just like ours and the other being inverted along the L->R axis. As you can see here, the gastric sphincter between the 2 stomachs is right in the middle of the first stomach. Now most of the time, food just gets digested in the first stomach both mechanically and chemically. But there are 3 cases in which the gastric sphincter will open and food will go into the second stomach. 1 of those is gluttony in which the gastric sphincter will stay open until there is a more comfortable amount in the first stomach. The other is illness during which any food that is eaten will go into the second stomach with as little time in the first stomach as possible to avoid vomiting up food. In fact both of these cases are to avoid vomiting up food. But there is 1 other case that is more interesting. Digestion of bone. You see, these humanoids eat a lot of bone, especially when they are either children going through growth spurts or pregnant women. Now the lower age limit for eating bone is 5 years and it is that way for a good reason. Any younger than 5 years and the esophagus will literally be scraped to the point of bleeding by eating bone. If this happens, a lot of blood can get into the first stomach and the child will vomit the blood back up. This can aggravate the esophageal scrape and thus worsen the bleeding which leads to more vomiting. While yes, with rehydration therapy the bone will get digested and the esophagus will heal, the child can easily become anemic this way. And yes bone marrow has a high iron content so the anemia would easily be corrected. But it is just not worth it to eat bone when the humanoid is below 5 years old. An anemic humanoid below 5 would be better off eating liver than bone to correct their low iron because then at least there won't be bleeding and vomiting. Anyway, the digestion of bone in the second stomach is very slow. Even with the bone digesting enzymes it secretes, it can still take hours to digest the amount of bone in an average meal depending on how thick the bone is. The meat itself, the muscle is digested much faster than this. And even though a higher amount of stomach acid speeds up the process, it doesn't speed it up by all that much. Once the bone has been digested, the gastric sphincter opens to let the second stomach push the digested bone into the first stomach to let it out into the intestines via the pyloric sphincter. But I was wondering, is there a better way to digest bone without risking bleeding in the intestines and while still having the defense against vomiting food provided by the second stomach being in the position that it is? Could anything other than enzymes and amount of stomach acid speed up the process?
  10. I am pretty sure it would have the same meaning.
  11. I was thinking about my aliens and their generation ship. I did a lot of research on light in general as well as sunlight in particular. Since the aliens are moving away from the sun and facing away from the sun and towards the outer planets when they start their trip with the humans in space, that already dramatically decreases the amount of sunlight that reaches them. But that intensity goes down with the square of the distance. So if you go twice as far from the light source the light source will be 4 times dimmer and if you go 3 times as far the light source will be 9 times dimmer, etc. It eventually gets to a point where it is not visible anymore because only individual photons are reaching you. This dimming as you go further until you can't see it is why I thought of having, at least in some rooms, sunlight-mimicking LEDs So I did some research on LEDs and it turns out that different LEDs need different voltages to work. An infrared LED needs less than 1.6 volts so it could easily be powered by a AA battery(or any 1.5 volt battery for that matter). Ultraviolet LEDs on the other hand need 3 to 4.1 volts depending on the type of ultraviolet LED which is equivalent to 2-3 AA batteries. Then I did some research on how much sunlight reaches the surface and it turns out to roughly be in these proportions: 53% infrared 44% visible 3% ultraviolet And I did some more research on ultraviolet light and it turns out that no UVC reaches the surface, it is all absorbed by the time it reaches the stratosphere. Of the UV that does reach the surface, it is in roughly these proportions: 95% UVA 5% UVB So I figured that the aliens should have lightbulbs with lots of LEDs in them(like thousands) so that they can get the LEDs in roughly those proportions and as close as possible to evenly distributed. Of course that won't be a problem with the infrared and visible light. It is really the ultraviolet that they have to worry about getting evenly distributed. And I also figured that these LEDs should vary in duration and intensity over a 24 hour period to mimic the day-night cycle. Infrared and Ultraviolet LEDs should always be on and be at their lowest intensities at night. Visible light LEDs should be off at night and be on at varying intensities throughout the 2 twilights(morning and evening twilight) and be at their highest intensities after morning twilight and before evening twilight. Infrared should rise in intensity during morning twilight and lower in intensity during evening twilight and also be at its highest intensity at the same time the visible light is at its highest intensity. Ultraviolet should spike up during morning twilight and then stabilize until midmorning when it should spike up again and then stabilize. When it is late afternoon/early evening the ultraviolet should spike back down and stabilize until the end of evening twilight when it should spike back down to night intensity. With visible light it is a bit more complicated but basically, all the rainbow colors should be off at night and then as morning twilight starts the red LEDs should turn on first, closely followed by orange, yellow, green, and blue. Purple should be the very last light to turn on and since it only increases the intensity of already white light, it can rise in intensity slower than the other colors. Anyway, what do you think about having these sunlight-mimicking LEDs on the generation ship?
  12. I was thinking about all the excretions and body fluids that end up in sewage and thought "Bacteria and oxygen might do it for less cost but it is less efficient than my method" So here is what I was thinking. At some point in the pipes there is a poop catcher and right next to it a valve that will only open when there is no fluid. This diverts the poop to a different set of pipes that eventually leads to making a human poop biosolid. Meanwhile, the rest of the fluid continues on through a series of 7 filters each designed to catch something you don't want in the water and is microscopic. The first filter blocks cells(so blood cells, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, endothelial cells of the bladder and digestive tract, etc.) The second filter blocks viruses so now you don't have to worry about waterborne transmission of a stomach virus. The third filter blocks pepsin and other enzymes. This is exclusively from vomit. The fourth filter blocks undigested nutrients(so triglycerides, polysaccharides, polypeptides, and DNA and RNA sequences). The fifth filter blocks unabsorbed nutrients(so amino acids, simple sugars, glycerol and fatty acids, and nucleotides along with any vitamins that didn't get absorbed. Minerals like iron are so small that they pass right through). The very last filter blocks urea molecules. Now all that is left is saltwater, HCl, and ions. This acidic saltwater then goes into an area where there is a precisely controlled acid base reaction so that no HCl or NaOH is left after the reaction. Then the saltwater that has ions like potassium and iron gets deionized and you have pure water. But is this doable?
  13. This is 1 thing that I haven't been able to decide on. Whether or not external defects get repaired. Now of course cleft lip and cleft palate which are external defects get repaired but what about other external defects? For example a baby could be missing an entire arm and just have a shoulder on that side. This is just 1 baby that is missing an arm, in this case, its right arm. And it was born that way. But should my aliens repair all external defects or just leave them as they are? I know that they repair all internal defects like for example having 1 ventricle in the heart with no ventricular septum. Forming a ventricular septum is relatively fast. Even forming a whole lung is relatively fast. But forming an arm is much more complicated. They would have to form all these in proportion: Bones Muscles Tendons Ligaments Arteries Veins Cappilaries Nerves Skin Lymph vessels Lymph nodes That is a lot and it could take years to form an arm and then hours to attach the arm and make sure it is working. But they can't just let the baby be in surgery for years, that is impractical. Besides the aliens don't have formula so the babies have to be breastfed or they die. No matter how much pain it is for the baby or the mom, they have to get breastmilk into the baby. Of course there is 1 exception to this. Babies born with a digestive system defect like a volvulus or atresia or pyloric hypertrophy and stenosis won't be breastfed until the defect is fixed. But otherwise, the baby must be breastfed. And there are a lot of things that could go wrong in surgery or after surgery. The baby could bleed out due to a microscopic size hole in the blood vessels and even if the baby didn't bleed to death, it would most likely lead to Iron Deficiency Anemia. The baby could become cyanotic in that arm due to a blood vessel mismatch, the arm could be permanently numb, and the list of complications just goes on and on. While some things like Iron Deficiency Anemia are easy to treat, other things like numbness are so complicated to treat that it isn't worth it. So should my aliens repair all external defects despite the complications that could result and the time it takes or should they just leave them as is(except for cleft lip and cleft palate which always get repaired)?
  14. O=Cl=O → O--Cl-O- → (cyclic)O-Cl-O This is an intramolecular reaction which isn't all that common. The double bonds break, causing the O's to each have a negative charge. This forms an ion. The ion bends and eventually the 2 O's bond with each other forming a ring. But would this really happen? I mean yes, sunlight is enough to split Cl2 into 2 Cl radicals but would it be enough to break the O-Cl double bond so that the ion can form? I have heard that this won't happen due to the negative charges. But really, this conserves octets and hypervalency(ability to have more electrons than an octet). But surely this intramolecular reaction where the oxygens bond with each other is how cyclic peroxides form no matter the R group if you already have 2 oxygens bonded to the R group in the same place. I mean, how else could you form a cyclic peroxide besides adding hydrogen peroxide to a molecule that doesn't have a peroxide group?
  15. Here is my formula for the area of n layers of appolonian gasket(assuming no circles past the nth layer): $$πR^2 - (πR^2 - (\sum_{0}^{n} x_n*πr_{n}^2))$$ Here R is the radius of the outer circle, r is the radius of an inner circle, x is a function that represents the number of circles in a given layer and n is the number of layers. I know this is right as far as calculating area is concerned but how would I actually represent this if I wanted to show someone else this formula? The reason I only have $πr_{n}^2$ once is because here is what the sum would be like for a successive number of layers. If I assume I have this kind of Apollonian gasket: then the area formula is like this as n increases: n=0 $$πR^2 - (πR^2 - (πR^2)) = πR^2$$ n=1 $$πR^2 - (πR^2 - (πr_{1}^{2}))$$ n=2 $$πR^2 - (πR^2 - (πr_{1}^2 + 8*πr_{2}^2))$$ n=3 $$πR^2 - (πR^2 - (πr_{1}^2 + 8*πr_{2}^2 + 8*πr_{3}^2))$$ etc. But I could easily replace each of those multipliers with $x_1$, $x_2$, $x_3$ etc. So basically every time n increases by 1 is a time when the radius changes in an Apollonian gasket as you get more and more circles inside that 1 outer circle. Would the general formula for any Apollonian gasket I have at the top of this post be the best way to represent this area formula
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