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what makes good sushi "good"? | the freshness of the fish and how the chef cuts it, i.e. not leaving the skin on it, thick or thin slices etc. Also with nigiri sushi (fish on rice with wasabi between) the right amount of wasabi. Some bad sushi ive had had insanely big slices, like hard to eat big, the salmon still had a little silver on the side, and there was about a baseballs worth of wasabi.
| [
"Sushi has seen rapidly rising popularity recently in the Western world. A form of fast food created in Japan (where bentō is the Japanese variety of fast food), sushi is normally cold sticky rice flavored with a sweet rice vinegar and served with some topping (often fish), or, as in the most popular kind in the West, rolled in nori (dried laver) with filling. The filling often includes fish, seafood, chicken or cucumber.\n",
"The ingredients used inside sushi are called \"gu\", and are, typically, varieties of fish. For culinary, sanitary, and aesthetic reasons, the minimum quality and freshness of fish to be eaten raw must be superior to that of fish which is to be cooked. Sushi chefs are trained to recognize important attributes, including smell, color, firmness, and freedom from parasites that may go undetected in commercial inspection. Commonly used fish are tuna (\"maguro, shiro-maguro\"), Japanese amberjack, yellowtail (\"hamachi\"), snapper (\"kurodai\"), mackerel (\"saba\"), and salmon (\"sake\"). The most valued sushi ingredient is \"toro,\" the fatty cut of the fish. This comes in a variety of \"ōtoro\" (often from the bluefin species of tuna) and \"chūtoro\", meaning \"middle toro\", implying that it is halfway into the fattiness between \"toro\" and the regular cut. \"Aburi\" style refers to \"nigiri\" sushi where the fish is partially grilled (topside) and partially raw. Most nigiri sushi will have completely raw toppings, called \"neta\".\n",
"The main ingredients of traditional Japanese sushi, raw fish and rice, are naturally low in fat, high in protein, carbohydrates (the rice only), vitamins, and minerals, as are \"gari\" and \"nori\". Other vegetables wrapped within the sushi also offer various vitamins and minerals. Many of the seafood ingredients also contain omega-3 fatty acids, which have a variety of health benefits. The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish has certain beneficial property, especially on cardiovascular health, natural anti-inflammatory compounds, and play a role in brain function.\n",
"Generally sushi is not a particularly fattening food. However, rice in sushi contains a fair amount of carbohydrates, plus the addition of other ingredients such as mayonnaise added into sushi rolls might increase the caloric content. Sushi also has a relatively high sodium content, especially contributed from \"shoyu\" soy sauce seasoning.\n",
"Kelly Wetherille for CNN Travel, described Sushi Saito as a \"hidden gem\". She said that \"tender, flavorful seafood and perfectly seasoned rice are worth every penny\". Fodor's travel guide described the food there as being \"the freshest sushi available in the world\". Chef Joël Robuchon, who holds the most Michelin stars in the world of any chef, once described Sushi Saito as \"the best sushi restaurant in the world\".\n",
"Sushi originates in a Southeast Asian dish, known today as \"narezushi\" ( – \"salted fish\"), stored in fermented rice for possibly months at a time. The lacto-fermentation of the rice prevented the fish from spoiling; the rice would be discarded before consumption of the fish. This early type of sushi became an important source of protein for its Japanese consumers. The term \"sushi\" comes from an antiquated grammatical form no longer used in other contexts, and literally means \"sour-tasting\"; the overall dish has a sour and umami or savoury taste. Narezushi still exists as a regional specialty, notably as \"funa-zushi\" from Shiga Prefecture.\n",
"In Japan, sushi has traditionally been considered a delicacy. The original type of sushi, \"nare-zushi\", was first developed in Southeast Asia and then spread to southern China before its introduction to Japan sometime around the 8th century AD. Fish was salted and wrapped in fermented rice, a traditional lacto-fermented rice dish. \"Nare-zushi\" was made of this gutted fish stored in fermented rice for months at a time for preservation. The fermentation of the rice prevented the fish from spoiling. The fermented rice was discarded and fish was the only part consumed. This early type of sushi became an important source of protein for the Japanese. During the Muromachi period, another way of preparing sushi was developed, called \"namanare\". \"Namanare\" was partly raw fish wrapped in rice, consumed fresh, before it changed flavor. During the Edo period, a third type of sushi was developed, \"haya-zushi\". \"Haya-zushi\" was assembled so that both rice and fish could be consumed at the same time, and the dish became unique to Japanese culture. It was the first time that rice was not being used for fermentation. Rice was now mixed with vinegar, with fish, vegetables and dried foodstuff added. This type of sushi is still very popular today. Each region utilizes local flavors to produce a variety of sushi that has been passed down for many generations.\n"
] |
how did "*" become an understood symbol for correcting a spelling mistake made while typing? | "*" is usually used in text to [reference a footnote](_URL_0_). I assume it has derived from this as the corrections are usually placed under the text. | [
"Incorrect use of the \"ß\" letter is a common type of spelling error even among native German writers. The spelling reform of 1996 changed the rules concerning \"ß\" and \"ss\" (no forced replacement of \"ss\" to \"ß\" at word’s end). This required a change of habits and is often disregarded: some people even incorrectly assumed that the \"ß\" had been abolished completely. However, if the vowel preceding the \"s\" is long, the correct spelling remains \"ß\" (as in \"\"). If the vowel is short, it becomes \"ss\", e.g. \"Ich denke, \"dass\"…\" (I think that…). This follows the general rule in German that a long vowel is followed by a single consonant, while a short vowel is followed by a double consonant.\n",
"Each word in the spelling alphabet typically replaces the name of the letter with which it starts (acrophony). It is used to spell out words when speaking to someone not able to see the speaker, or when the audio channel is not clear. The lack of high frequencies on standard telephones makes it hard to distinguish an 'F' from an 'S' for example. Also, the lack of visual cues during oral communication can cause confusion. For example, lips are closed at the start of saying the letter \"B\" but open at the beginning of the letter \"D\" making these otherwise similar-sounding letters more easily discriminated when looking at the speaker. Without these visual cues, such as during announcements of airline gate numbers \"B1\" and \"D1\" at an airport, \"B\" may be confused with \"D\" by the listener. Spelling out one's name, a password or a ticker symbol over the telephone are other scenarios where a spelling alphabet is useful.\n",
"A number of spelling mistakes were noted in the first state of the engraving (\"\", \"\"). A second state of the engraving corrects a typographical error by inserting the letter \"e\" in \"\", and relabels the \"Episcopal\" order of periwigs as \"Episcopal and Parsonic\".\n",
"As time went on, Webster changed the spellings in the book to more phonetic ones. Most of them already existed as alternative spellings. He chose spellings such as \"defense\", \"color\", and \"traveler\", and changed the \"re\" to \"er\" in words such as \"center\". He also changed \"tongue\" to the older spelling \"tung\", but this did not catch on.\n",
"BULLET::::- The \"Chicago Tribune\" abandoned its standard practice of phonetic spelling of certain common words after 41 years. Since January 28, 1934, the \"Tribune\" had set out to simplify spelling for 80 common words, including the rendition of \"phantom\" as \"fantom\" and \"rhyme\" as \"rime\". After expanding the list in 1949, the \"Tribune\" had reversed some decisions, such as spelling \"sophomore\" as \"sofomore\", \"out of concern for schoolchildren who might be confused\". It retained, however, such spellings as \"thru\", \"altho\" and \"thoro\" (for \"through\", \"although\" and \"thorough\"). Finally, the paper announced in a September 29 editorial that \"Today we are adopting a new stylebook. \"Thru\", \"tho\" and \"thoro\" are abandoned. Regretfully we concede they have not made the grade in spelling class... Sanity some day may come to spelling, but we do not want to make any more trouble between Johnny and his teacher.\"\n",
"Traditionally, when reciting the alphabet in English-speaking schools, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself (\"A\", \"I\", and, at one point, \"O\") was repeated with the Latin expression \"per se\" (\"by itself\"). This habit was useful in spelling where a word or syllable was repeated after spelling; e.g. \"d, o, g—dog\" would be clear but simply saying \"a—a\" would be confusing without the clarifying \"per se\" added. It was also common practice to add the \"&\" sign at the end of the alphabet as if it were the 27th letter, pronounced as the Latin \"et\" or later in English as \"and\". As a result, the recitation of the alphabet would end in \"X, Y, Z, \"and per se and\"\". This last phrase was routinely slurred to \"ampersand\" and the term had entered common English usage by 1837. However, in contrast to the 26 letters, the ampersand does not represent a speech sound—although other characters that were dropped from the English alphabet did, such as the Old English thorn, wynn, and eth.\n",
"Webster was a proponent of English spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic. In \"A Companion to the American Revolution\" (2008), John Algeo notes: \"it is often assumed that characteristically American spellings were invented by Noah Webster. He was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in America, but he did not originate them. Rather […] he chose already existing options such as \"center, color\" and \"check\" for the simplicity, analogy or etymology\". William Shakespeare's first folios, for example, used spellings like \"center\" and \"color\" as much as \"centre\" and \"colour\". Webster did attempt to introduce some reformed spellings, as did the Simplified Spelling Board in the early 20th century, but most were not adopted. In Britain, the influence of those who preferred the Norman (or Anglo-French) spellings of words proved to be decisive. Later spelling adjustments in the United Kingdom had little effect on today's American spellings and vice versa.\n"
] |
How were cartoons (political or otherwise) printed in newspapers during the age of movable type? | What /u/CptBuck said. Also, cartoons don't really appear in newspapers until the 19th century, first in the form of lithographs; *Punch* in Britain and *La Caricature* and *Le Charivari* in France in the 1830s. Before that they exist as stand alone sheets. What we would recognize as political cartoons, employing caricature, don't really appear until around the 1770s in Britain, printed as etchings, usually hand-colored. | [
"Until the 1980s, most large newspapers were printed with turn-of-the-century \"letterpress\" technology using easily smudged oil-based ink, off-white, low-quality \"newsprint\" paper, and coarse engraving screens. While letterpresses produced legible text, the photoengraving dots that formed pictures often bled or smeared and became fuzzy and indistinct. In this way, even when newspapers used photographs well — a good crop, a respectable size — murky reproduction often left readers re-reading the caption to see what the photo was all about. The \"Wall Street Journal\" adopted stippled hedcuts in 1979 to publish portraits and avoid the limitations of letterpress printing. Not until the 1980s did a majority of newspapers switch to \"offset\" presses that reproduce photos with fidelity on better, whiter paper.\n",
"These newspapers used their mainstream counterparts after which to model their newspapers. According to research conducted by William David Sloan in his various historical textbooks, the first newspapers were about four pages and had one blank page to provide a place for people to write their own information before passing it along to friends and relatives. He goes even farther to discuss how the newspapers during these early days were the center of information for society and culture.\n",
"The practice of printers to use jokes and cartoons as page fillers was also widely used in the broadsides and chapbooks of the 19th century and earlier. With the increase in literacy in the general population and the growth of the printing industry, these publications were the most common forms of printed material between the 16th and 19th centuries throughout Europe and North America. Along with reports of events, executions, ballads and verse, they also contained jokes. Only one of many broadsides archived in the Harvard library is described as \"1706. Grinning made easy; or, Funny Dick's unrivalled collection of curious, comical, odd, droll, humorous, witty, whimsical, laughable, and eccentric jests, jokes, bulls, epigrams, &c. With many other descriptions of wit and humour.\" These cheap publications, ephemera intended for mass distribution, were read alone, read aloud, posted and discarded.\n",
"Japanese newspapers began in the 17th century as \"yomiuri\" (読売、literally \"to read and sell\") or \"kawaraban\" (瓦版, literally \"tile-block printing\" referring to the use of clay printing blocks), which were printed handbills sold in major cities to commemorate major social gatherings or events.\n",
"Japanese newspapers began in the 17th century as \"yomiuri\" (読売、literally \"to read and sell\") or \"kawaraban\" (瓦版, literally \"tile-block printing\" referring to the use of clay printing blocks), which were printed handbills sold in major cities to commemorate major social gatherings or events.\n",
"The visual appearance of the paper evolved. Advertising was moved out of column space and into boxes, which first appeared in June 1882. Before 1885 the paper rarely ran illustrations. By 1887 the pages were full of chalk plate drawings. The rakish and sophisticated Weather Frog appeared in cartoons from 13 January 1894, and the first political cartoon after her death on April 18, 1896. She changed the paper into a family newspaper, and, between 1880 and 1890, the circulation more than tripled while the paper grew in size and influence.\n",
"The art of the editorial cartoon was further developed with the publication of the British periodical \"Punch\" in 1841, founded by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells (an earlier magazine that published cartoons was \"Monthly Sheet of Caricatures\", printed from 1830 and an important influence on \"Punch\"). It was bought by Bradbury and Evans in 1842, who capitalised on newly evolving mass printing technologies to turn the magazine into a preeminent national institution. The term \"cartoon\" to refer to comic drawings was coined by the magazine in 1843; the Houses of Parliament were to be decorated with murals, and \"carttons\" for the mural were displayed for the public; the term \"cartoon\" then meant a finished preliminary sketch on a large piece of cardboard, or in Italian. \"Punch\" humorously appropriated the term to refer to its political cartoons, and the popularity of the \"Punch\" cartoons led to the term's widespread use.\n"
] |
what are those random sharp pains i get often on my skin almost like a big bite that catches my attention but immediately goes away? | It could be a misfire of the nerves. It could be a hair stuck and being pulled on by something. Or it could be an insect, there are many microscopic insects that live in the pores and hair follicles of your skin. | [
"Pain is very subjective and it is difficult to ascertain how much the initial piercing will hurt to a given person. Some people experience pain comparable to that of an average cartilage piercing to the helix or tragus, and others have described it as one of the most painful piercings they've ever received, either in the ear or their whole body. However, pain thresholds differ between individuals, so what may be painful to one person may be a slight tickle to someone else.\n",
"Klauber described one case in which the symptoms included instant pain \"like two hot hypodermic needles\", spontaneous bleeding from the bite site, intense internal pain, bleeding from the mouth, hypotension, a weak pulse, swelling and discoloration of the affected limb, and associated severe pain. The symptoms were further described as strongly hemolytic and hemorrhagic.\n",
"Spontaneous pain or allodynia (pain resulting from a stimulus which would not normally provoke pain, such as a light touch of the skin) is not limited to the territory of a single peripheral nerve and is disproportionate to the inciting event.\n",
"After skin comes in contact with cantharidin, local irritation begins within a few hours. (This is in contrast to Paederus dermatitis, where symptoms first appear 12–36 hours after contact with rove beetles.) Painful blisters appear, but scarring from these epidermal lesions is rare.\n",
"The sensation of pain has been described by patients as \"burning eyes\", \"terrible, unrelenting pain\", a feeling of \"a knife in my eye\" or \"paper cuts\". The pain is usually described as being located in and around the eye, but can progress to the surrounding areas of the face and head. A signature characteristic of ocular neuropathic pain is inadequately explained levels of severe, constant pain in relation to little or no sign of ocular surface damage. Providers have reported their patients describing excruciating, consistently high levels of pain, or even requesting surgical removal of the painful eye.\n",
"The most common prurigo simplex symptoms are skin nodules resembling insect bites that are intensely itchy. These nodules are frequently scratched open, becoming lesions that continue to itch. Sometimes the skin thickens and becomes discolored around the nodules. The scalp, arms, legs and trunk of the body are the most frequent sites of the bumps and lesions. Itching can become severe and habitual, worsening the condition and possibly causing infections in the open sores.\n",
"The most common symptom is mild to severe pain that is gradually progressive in the affected region and may be initially attributed to a minor injury or sports-related injury. Pain may be present for several weeks, months, or years. Other symptoms in order of most common to least commonly observed include swelling, a limp (when affected bone is in the lower extremity), joint stiffness, and a soft tissue mass.\n"
] |
Is it possible to access more of your subconscious? | The subconscious is a psuedoscientific term used by New Age types... *not* by modern psychologists.
Contemporary science doesn't really view the unconscious mind (which is the more scientific term) as some sort of powerful resource to be tapped into. | [
"Erickson maintained that it was not possible consciously to instruct the unconscious mind, and that authoritarian suggestions were likely to be met with resistance. The unconscious mind responds to openings, opportunities, metaphors, symbols, and contradictions. Effective hypnotic suggestion, then, should be \"artfully vague\", leaving space for the subject to fill in the gaps with their own unconscious understandings - even if they do not consciously grasp what is happening. The skilled hypnotherapist constructs these gaps of meaning in a way most suited to the individual subject - in a way which is most likely to produce the desired change.\n",
"In his 2012 book, \"Mindmelding: Consciousness, Neuroscience, and the Mind's Privacy\", Hirstein argues that a significant block to solving the mind–body problem can be removed if we allow that it is possible for one person to directly experience the conscious mind of another. The vast majority of philosophers and scientists writing about consciousness believe that this is impossible, but this would mean that conscious brain states are different from all other physical states, which can be known about by multiple persons. This creates a block to understanding our minds as physical systems. Hirstein describes how \"mindmelding\" could be achieved by connecting person A's prefrontal lobes to person B's posterior cortex, which would in effect connect person A's sense of self to person B's conscious thoughts and sensations.\n",
"Locke and Kristof write that there is a limit to what can be held in conscious focal awareness, an alternative storehouse of one's knowledge and prior experience is needed, which they label the subconscious.\n",
"There is only one way: through the doorway of knowledge and its correct usage, you will gradually progress into a higher state of consciousness, correctly placing your particular position in Infinity, and which is being expressed through your personal day by day experiences. All of the so-called mental sciences, occultisms, mind sciences, religions, etc., which use devices to circumvent or escape the realities of personal existence and position to the Infinite are only expressionary forms of escape mechanisms. These malpractices include prayer, concentration, affirmations, certain kinds of meditation, various other forms of self-hypnosis and are highly destructive to moral and mental integrity. They prohibit what should be a constant, constructive evaluation of experience and your position to the Infinite through this experience.\n",
"These studies point to the fact that even though we only attend to and process limited information, we have a vast amount of knowledge at our disposal through our highly unrestricted sensory registers. It is the selective attention, perception, and higher order cognitive processing that limits these inputs and it is precisely these processes that make up our conscious awareness. Thus, in order to formulate some explanations for Plato's Problem, our conscious awareness limits our experience; nevertheless, it seems as though some stimuli that are sensed by our sensory registers, although seemingly rejected by conscious awareness, are actually retained and abstracted into our memories for further processing. All of our fully functioning perceptual faculties enhance, supplement, and optimize our experiences.\n",
"The author suggests that concentrating on how the attainment would feel reprograms a person's subconscious mind so that accomplishing the goal comes more naturally. These premises are based on the philosophy that without conscious intervention, the subconscious mind ultimately controls our tendencies, habits, decisions, and results.\n",
"In addition to neural models, computational models of consciousness based on Bernard Baars' Global Workspace theory suggest that mind-wandering, or \"spontaneous thought\" may involve competition between internally and externally generated activities attempting to gain access to a limited capacity central network.\n"
] |
how did the fluoridization of water improve dental health in america; historically and scientifically? | They found that people who lived in areas with naturally high fluoride levels in their water supplies had far fewer cavities than those that lived in areas with lower levels of fluoride. So they started testing the compounds and determined that fluoride helps to strengthen enamel. It was a simple addition to the water supply that greatly increased the over-all dental health of the nation, but in particular helped with making sure soldiers were more fit when drafted and so that is why the government did it.
And you are right that drinking it is less effective than if you can make your teeth sit in fluoride solutions for a while. This is why toothpaste, and mouthwashes also tend to have fluoride. | [
"Water fluoridation is the controlled addition of fluoride to a public water supply to reduce tooth decay. Although many dental-health organizations support such fluoridation, the practice is opposed by conspiracy theorists. Allegations may include claims that it has been a way to dispose of industrial waste, or that it exists to obscure a failure to provide dental care to the poor. A further theory promoted by the John Birch Society in the 1960s described fluoridation as a communist plot to weaken the American population.\n",
"The goal of water fluoridation is to prevent a chronic disease whose burdens particularly fall on children and the poor. Another of the goals was to bridge inequalities in dental health and dental care. Some studies suggest that fluoridation reduces oral health inequalities between the rich and poor, but the evidence is limited. There is anecdotal but not scientific evidence that fluoride allows more time for dental treatment by slowing the progression of tooth decay, and that it simplifies treatment by causing most cavities to occur in pits and fissures of teeth. Other reviews have found not enough evidence to determine if water fluoridation reduces oral-health social disparities.\n",
"Much of the early work on establishing the connection between fluoride and dental health was performed by scientists in the U.S. during the early 20th century, and the U.S. was the first country to implement public water fluoridation on a wide scale. It has been introduced to varying degrees in many countries and territories outside the U.S., including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Serbia, Singapore, Spain, the UK, and Vietnam. In 2004, an estimated 13.7 million people in western Europe and 194 million in the U.S. received artificially fluoridated water. In 2010, about 66% of the U.S. population was receiving fluoridated water.\n",
"Water fluoridation is the controlled addition of fluoride to a public water supply to reduce tooth decay. Its use began in the 1940s, following studies of children in a region where water is naturally fluoridated. It is now used for about two-thirds of the U.S. population on public water systems and for about 5.7% of people worldwide. Although the best available evidence shows no association with adverse effects other than fluorosis (dental and, in worse cases, skeletal), most of which is mild, water fluoridation has been contentious for ethical, safety, and efficacy reasons, and opposition to water fluoridation exists despite its support by public health organizations. The benefits of water fluoridation have lessened recently, presumably because of the availability of fluoride in other forms, but are still measurable, particularly for low income groups. Systematic reviews in 2000 and 2007 showed significant reduction of cavities in children associated with water fluoridation.\n",
"Water fluoridation, the controlled addition of moderate concentrations of fluoride to a public water supply to reduce tooth decay, is used for about two-thirds of the U.S. population on public water systems. Almost all major public health and dental organizations support water fluoridation, or consider it safe. Nevertheless, it is contentious for ethical, safety, and efficacy reasons.\n",
"Bernays helped the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) and other special interest groups to convince the American public that water fluoridation was safe and beneficial to human health. This was achieved by using the American Dental Association in a highly successful media campaign.\n",
"FDI World Dental Federation supports water fluoridation as safe and effective. the European Academy of Paediatric Dentistry, and the national dental associations of Australia, Canada, and the U.S. The American Dental Association calls water fluoridation \"one of the safest and most beneficial, cost-effective public health measures for preventing, controlling, and in some cases reversing, tooth decay.\"\n"
] |
How did tall ships and the like leave port before the advent of modern engines? | Most of the time tall ships aren't docked, they're moored in a more accessible area and then when they push off, it's mostly a question of letting the wind and the tides do the work.
However, if that's not good enough, there is also a particular anchor called a kedging anchor which is taken out by longboat in the direction the ship wishes to go and dropped as far as they can get it away from the ship, and then the ship is warped, or pulled, over to it by hand. Rinse lather repeat until the ship is where you want her. It's a similar process if the ship does actually have to be docked - a rope is wound around something solid onshore on one end and the ship's capstan (a large drum that can be turned by hand) on the other, and the ship is warped in and out.
I had to actually do this as a trainee sailor. If you would like to learn more about it without having to pull a ship by hand, however, you can do so [here](_URL_0_). | [
"The steamship was preceded by smaller vessels designed for insular transportation, called steamboats. Once the technology of steam was mastered at this level, steam engines were mounted on larger, and eventually, ocean-going vessels. Becoming reliable, and propelled by screw rather than paddlewheels, the technology changed the design of ships for faster, more economic propulsion.\n",
"Because the cylinder was above the crankshaft in this type of engine, it had a high center of gravity, and was therefore deemed unsuitable for oceangoing service. This largely confined it to vessels built for inland waterways. As marine engines grew steadily larger and heavier through the 19th century, the high center of gravity of square crosshead engines became increasingly impractical, and by the 1840s, ship builders abandoned them in favor of the walking beam engine.\n",
"In the second half of the 19th century, the steam engine allowed the ports to strengthen their output. The first locomotive reached the city in 1865. In 1861, the original drydock was enlarged as a second one was dug out. The same year, the ironclad \"Couronne\" was built on a design directly inspired by the \"Gloire\" class, though unlike her wooden-hull predecessors, she was entirely made of iron. She was followed in 1876 by the ironclad \"Redoutable\", the first ship in the world with a steel structure.\n",
"As steamships grew steadily in size and tonnage through the course of the 19th century, the need for low profile, low centre-of-gravity engines correspondingly declined. Freed increasingly from these design constraints, engineers were able to revert to simpler, more efficient and more easily maintained designs. The result was the growing dominance of the so-called \"vertical\" engine (more correctly known as the vertical inverted direct acting engine).\n",
"In common with the first eight ships built by Western Pipe & Steel, \"West Avenal\" was powered by a single General Electric steam turbine rated at 2,500 shaft horsepower, that drove a single screw propeller, and moved the ship at a pace. These General Electric turbines proved unreliable and most of the ships powered by them were either lost or scrapped by the end of the 1920s. Later vessels of the same type built by WPS for the USSB were powered by much more reliable Joshua Hendy triple expansion steam engines, and had considerably longer service lives.\n",
"These ships are notable for being the first three U.S.-built ships to be powered by steam turbines. Design of the engines was licensed by W. & A. Fletcher from the Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company, inventor of the turbine engine. \"Governor Cobb\", a 2,700 ton passenger steamer built in 1906 for the Boston-New Brunswick trade, has the double distinction of being not only America's first turbine-powered vessel, but also of eventually becoming the world's first helicopter carrier. The ship had a top speed of . The 3,750-ton sister ships \"Yale\" and \"Harvard\"—built in 1907 for the Metropolitan Steamship Company, which operated them between New York and Boston—had a top speed of and when first entering service were the fastest American-flagged vessels afloat.\n",
"They were powered by a single marine steam engine that drove one 3-bladed screw propeller and two coal-fired trunk boilers. The first four vessels received machinery from AG Vulcan, while the last four were equipped with engines and boilers built by Schichau-Werke. The first four ships had a top speed of at , while the last four were slightly faster, at from . The ships had a designed storage capacity for of coal for the boilers, but additional spaces could be used to store up to . As built, each ship was equipped with a three-masted schooner rig; several of the class members had their rigging altered during their career, including \"Delphin\", which received a barquentine rig and \"Cyclop\", which was converted into a barque rig.\n"
] |
How much of the earths surface can we see from the moon? | From the side of the moon that is facing us, one would see about half of the earth at any single point in time, or all of the earth over a period of time.
From the side of the moon that is not facing us, one would see none of the earth ever.
Asking "How much of the earths surface can we see from the moon?" is essentially the same as asking "From where on the earth can you see the moon?" | [
"BULLET::::- The full moon covers only about 0.2 deg of the sky when viewed from the surface of the Earth. The Moon is only a half degree across (i.e. a circular diameter of roughly 0.5 deg), so the moon's disk covers a circular area of: × (), or 0.2 square degrees.\n",
"The Sun is seen from Earth at an average angular diameter of 0.5334 degrees or 9.310 radians. The Moon is seen from Earth at an average angular diameter of 9.22 radians. We can substitute these into the equation given above for the solid angle subtended by a cone with apex angle :\n",
"To put this in perspective, the full Moon as viewed from Earth is about °, or 30′ (or 1800″). The Moon's motion across the sky can be measured in angular size: approximately 15° every hour, or 15″ per second. A one-mile-long line painted on the face of the Moon would appear from Earth to be about 1″ in length.\n",
"The topography of the Moon has been measured with laser altimetry and stereo image analysis. Its most visible topographic feature is the giant far-side South Pole–Aitken basin, some in diameter, the largest crater on the Moon and the second-largest confirmed impact crater in the Solar System. At deep, its floor is the lowest point on the surface of the Moon. The highest elevations of the surface are located directly to the northeast, and it has been suggested might have been thickened by the oblique formation impact of the South Pole–Aitken basin. Other large impact basins such as Imbrium, Serenitatis, Crisium, Smythii, and Orientale also possess regionally low elevations and elevated rims. The far side of the lunar surface is on average about higher than that of the near side.\n",
"Among the most prominent features of the Moon's sky is Earth. Earth's angular diameter (1.9°) is four times the Moon's as seen from Earth, although because the Moon's orbit is eccentric, Earth's apparent size in the sky varies by about 5% either way (ranging between 1.8° and 2.0° in diameter). Earth shows phases, just like the Moon does for terrestrial observers. The phases, however, are opposite; when the terrestrial observer sees the full Moon, the lunar observer sees a \"new Earth\", and vice versa. Earth's albedo is three times as high as that of the Moon (due in part to its whitish cloud cover), and coupled with the wider area, the full Earth glows over 50 times brighter than the full Moon at zenith does for the terrestrial observer. This Earth light reflected on the Moon's un-sunlit half is bright enough to be visible from Earth, even to the unaided eye – a phenomenon known as earthshine.\n",
"Among the most prominent features of the Moon's sky is Earth. Earth's angular diameter (1.9°) is four times the Moon's as seen from Earth, although because the Moon's orbit is eccentric, Earth's apparent size in the sky varies by about 5% either way (ranging between 1.8° and 2.0° in diameter). Earth shows phases, just like the Moon does for terrestrial observers. The phases, however, are opposite; when the terrestrial observer sees the full Moon, the lunar observer sees a \"new Earth\", and vice versa. Earth's albedo is three times as high as that of the Moon (due in part to its whitish cloud cover), and coupled with the wider area, the full Earth glows over 50 times brighter than the full Moon at zenith does for the terrestrial observer. This Earth light reflected on the Moon's un-sunlit half is bright enough to be visible from Earth, even to the unaided eye – a phenomenon known as earthshine.\n",
"Earth's Moon is a grey disc in the sky with cratering visible to the naked eye. It spans, depending on its exact location, 29-33 arcminutes - which is about the size of a thumbnail at arm's length, and is readily identified. Over 27.3 days, the moon goes through a full cycle of lunar phases. People can generally identify phases within a few days by looking at the moon. Unlike stars and most planets, the light reflected from the moon is bright enough to be seen during the day. (Venus can sometimes be seen even after sunrise.)\n"
] |
why do people hate tsa soo much? | The TSA is the organization that deals with security at places like airports. The typical person's interaction with a TSA member consists of the individual having to prove that he or she is not a threat. This involves waiting in long lines and going through a metal detector. In other circumstances, people may be patted down or have seemingly harmless items taken away, like nail clippers or bottled beverages. Since many people have experiences with being bothered or inconvenienced by the TSA and few have witnessed the direct prevention of a terrorist attack or drug smuggling, they view it as a bad organization that annoys passengers instead of protecting them.
Please note that [most](_URL_0_) Americans are fine with the TSA. They're just less vocal. | [
"The entertainment industry has been accused of depicting those with TS as being social misfits whose only tic is coprolalia, which has furthered stigmatization and the general public's misunderstanding of persons with TS. The symptoms of Tourette syndrome are fodder for radio and television talk shows. Some talk shows (for example, \"Oprah\") have focused on accurate portrayals of people with TS, while others (for example, \"Dr. Phil\") have been accused of furthering stigmatization, focusing on rare and sensational aspects of the condition.\n",
"In the period between 2009-2010, Tse had faced some major setbacks in the Hong Kong market, not least including the HKRIA controversy which had caused her an important platform to promote herself, leading to a decline in popularity. She became frequently attacked in the media, especially by the publications Oriental Sunday and New Monday, which were owned by Emperor Entertainment Group. It is widely thought that this was a smear tactic by EEG who perceived Tse as a threat to their contracted artiste Joey Yung, an example being that in 2008, Tse had won six awards at the Commercial Radio's year-end award show to only two won by Yung. She admitted to Black Paper Magazine in 2011 that she had suffered depression during this time, though had recovered.\n",
"When T complains, he is labeled a troublemaker by the airline company. Soon he's chastised by his fellow pilots. When things get worse he walks out of the cockpit after multiple navigational instruments are inoperative and refuses to fly. The company simply replaces him and gets another pilot to fly. Increasingly frustrated and worried about a crash, T finally writes an angry letter to his superiors, warning that a crash is inevitable if action is not taken.\n",
"TSA agents are also accused of having mistreated passengers, and having sexually harassed passengers, having used invasive screening procedures, including touching the genitals, including those of children, removing nipple rings with pliers, misusing body scanners to ogle female passengers, having searched passengers or their belongings for items other than weapons or explosives, and having stolen from passengers.\n",
"The video media—notably the Internet, movies and television—have been criticized for sensationalizing the symptoms of Tourette syndrome and for creating inaccurate perceptions about people with TS in the minds of the public. According to Collado-Vázquez and Carrillo (2013) film representations of tics and Tourette's \"have not been adjusted to reality and have been used to ridicule a character, [and to] exaggerate symptoms in a comic or grotesque tone or [display them] as a characteristic trait of a cruel and evil individual\".\n",
"Some of the angry passengers had been waiting for as long as five days to catch flights back to their jobs in other cities after their annual trips to see family during the Chinese New Year holiday period. They were further frustrated by the lack of information from airline and airport staff while they waited. The mass incident highlighted the difficulties faced by China's commercial airline industry as more and more passengers choose to fly to their destinations; the airlines blamed the disorder on passengers' limited understanding of the nature of commercial aviation.\n",
"In April, 2007, Mr. Hawley agreed to a partially published interview conducted by Bruce Schneier regarding TSA policies and practices. Later, Schneier demonstrated the complete ineffectiveness of TSA measures by bringing a variety of objects which are classified by the TSA as dangerous through security and onto planes. Objects included box cutters and plastic \"beer belly\" filled with unexamined liquid.\n"
] |
Do we lose any weight through exhalation? | You're exactly right! We actually lose *most* of our weight through exhalation. (Sweating is the other major mechanism, but since that's mostly water it doesn't create a net loss.) This is why weight loss is so hard; all the fat molecules that your body stores have to be oxidized and exhaled. | [
"The main reason for exhalation is to rid the body of carbon dioxide, which is the waste product of gas exchange in humans. Air is brought in the body through inhalation. During this process air is taken in through the lungs. Diffusion in the alveoli allows for the exchange of O into the pulmonary capillaries and the removal of CO and other gases from the pulmonary capillaries to be exhaled. In order for the lungs to expel air the diaphragm relaxes, which pushes up on the lungs. The air then flows through the trachea then through the larynx and pharynx to the nasal cavity and oral cavity where it is expelled out of the body. Exhalation takes longer than inhalation since it is believed to facilitate better exchange of gases. Parts of the nervous system help to regulate respiration in humans. The exhaled air isn’t just carbon dioxide; it contains a mixture of other gases. Human breath contains volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These compounds consist of methanol, isoprene, acetone, ethanol and other alcohols. The exhaled mixture also contains ketones, water and other hydrocarbons. \n",
"During heavy breathing as in exertion, a large number of accessory muscles in the neck and abdomen are recruited, that during exhalation pull the ribcage down, decreasing the volume of the thoracic cavity. The FRC is now decreased, but since the lungs cannot be emptied completely there is still about a litre of residual air left. Lung function testing is carried out to evaluate lung volumes and capacities.\n",
"This happens due to elastic properties of the lungs, as well as the internal intercostal muscles which lower the rib cage and decrease thoracic volume. As the thoracic diaphragm relaxes during exhalation it causes the tissue it has depressed to rise superiorly and put pressure on the lungs to expel the air. During forced exhalation, as when blowing out a candle, expiratory muscles including the abdominal muscles and internal intercostal muscles generate abdominal and thoracic pressure, which forces air out of the lungs.\n",
"During heavy breathing, exhalation is caused by relaxation of all the muscles of inhalation. But now, the abdominal muscles, instead of remaining relaxed (as they do at rest), contract forcibly pulling the lower edges of the rib cage downwards (front and sides) (Fig. 8). This not only drastically decreases the size of the rib cage, but also pushes the abdominal organs upwards against the diaphragm which consequently bulges deeply into the thorax (Fig. 8). The end-exhalatory lung volume is now well below the resting mid-position and contains far less air than the resting \"functional residual capacity\". However, in a normal mammal, the lungs cannot be emptied completely. In an adult human there is always still at least 1 liter of residual air left in the lungs after maximum exhalation.\n",
"Inhalation is a major route of exposure that occurs when an individual breathes in polluted air which enters the respiratory tract. Identification of the pollutant uptake by the respiratory system can determine how the resulting exposure contributes to the dose. In this way, the mechanism of pollutant uptake by the respiratory system can be used to predict potential health impacts within the human population.\n",
"A person breathing at rest inhales and exhales approximately half a litre of air during each respiratory cycle, this is Tidal volume. The respiratory rate is directly affected by concentration of carbondioxide in blood.\"Lungs do not collapse after forceful respiration because of Residual volume.\" \n",
"Brain control of exhalation can be broken down into voluntary control and involuntary control. During voluntary exhalation, air is held in the lungs and released at a fixed rate. Examples of voluntary expiration include: singing, speaking, exercising, playing an instrument, and voluntary hyperpnea. Involuntary breathing includes metabolic and behavioral breathing.\n"
] |
Why are cheetahs so fast? | Cheetahs have a ton of physical adaptations for speed. Just mentioning a few here –
- extra flexible spine for long strides and quick turns
- shoulderblade doesn't attach to clavicle for added flexibility
- lighter bones
- they only run on the tips of their toes, using their claws more for traction than other big cats
- tail partially flattened for use in balancing turns
- large heart and lungs for pumping oxygen to muscles
They are not stronger than lions, and at a significant size and weight disadvantage – an unfortunate trade-off for the cheetah's light frame and speed. A lion can easily kill a cheetah if they have to go head-to-head, so cheetahs will often lose their hard-earned catches to scavenging lions and other predators. | [
"African cheetahs may achieve successful hunts only running up to a speed of while hunting due to their exceptional ability to accelerate; but are capable of accelerating up to on short distances of . It is therefore the fastest land animal. Because of its prowess at hunting, the cheetah was tamed as early as the 16th century BC in Egypt to kill game at hunts. Cheetahs have been widely depicted in art, literature, advertising and animation.\n",
"While most big cat species are individual, ambush predators, Cheetahs (\"Acinonyx jubatus\") are pursuit predators. Widely known as the fastest terrestrial animal, with speeds reaching 61–64 miles per hour, cheetahs take advantage of their speed during chases. However, their speed and acceleration also have disadvantages, as both can only be sustained for short periods of time. Studies show that cheetahs can maintain maximum speed for a distance of approximately 500 yards. Due to these limitations, cheetahs are often observed running at moderate speeds during chases. There are claims that the key to cheetahs' pursuit success may not be just their speed. Cheetahs are extremely agile, able to maneuver and change directions at very high speeds in very short amounts of time. This extensive maneuverability can make up for unsustainable high speed pursuit, as it allows cheetahs to quickly close the distance between prey without decreasing their speed when prey change direction.\n",
"The cheetah's thin and light body makes it well-suited to short, explosive bursts of speed, rapid acceleration, and an ability to execute extreme changes in direction while moving at high speed. Research has indicated that the cheetah's athleticism is critical to the cat's predatory success rate. These adaptations account for much of the cheetah's ability to catch fast-moving prey.\n",
"The cheetah is the world's fast animal and can reach speeds over 60 miles per hour. To show off this speed, White Oak hosts \"cheetah runs\", which feature cheetahs chasing lures for long distances across fields. Similar types of events are hosted by other wildlife facilities, and they provide exercise and enrichment for the cheetahs while giving people the opportunity to see the cats at full speed.\n",
"The cheetah is the fastest land animal in the world. It was previously thought that the body temperature of a cheetah increases during a hunt due to high metabolic activity. In a short period of time during a chase, a cheetah may produce 60 times more heat than at rest, with much of the heat, produced from glycolysis, stored to possibly raise the body temperature. The claim was supported by data from experiments in which two cheetahs ran on a treadmill for minutes on end but contradicted by studies in natural settings, which indicate that body temperature stays relatively the same during a hunt. A 2013 study suggested stress hyperthermia and a slight increase in body temperature after a hunt. The cheetah's nervousness after a hunt may induce stress hyperthermia, which involves high sympathetic nervous activity and raises the body temperature. After a hunt, the risk of another predator taking its kill is great, and the cheetah is on high alert and stressed. The increased sympathetic activity prepares the cheetah's body to run when another predator approaches. In the 2013 study, even the cheetah that did not chase the prey experienced an increase in body temperature once the prey was caught, showing increased sympathetic activity.\n",
"All four incarnations of the Cheetah have exhibited roughly the same abilities. Their basic attributes consists of enhanced strength and speed well beyond that of the most powerful felines, as well as heightened senses of smell and hearing for hunts and night vision for stealth. Their reflexes and agility are similarly augmented, allowing them superior gymnastic and parkour feats for inhuman mobility. These superhuman traits allow them to challenge Wonder Woman in physical battles. Additionally, their fangs and claws are preternaturally sharp and strong.\n",
"Speed and acceleration values for the hunting cheetah may be different from those for the non-hunting because, while engaged in the chase, the cheetah is more likely to be twisting and turning and may be running through vegetation. In 2012 an 11-year-old cheetah from the Cincinnati Zoo named Sarah made a world record by running in 5.95 seconds over a set run, during which she ran a recorded maximum speed of . A study of five wild cheetahs (three females, two males) during hunting reported a maximum speed of , with an average of . Speed can be increased by almost in a single stride. The average chase is and the maximum ranges from .\n"
] |
What was the first event in recorded history? | There's a discussion of dated events at _URL_0_. I was taught at school that Egypt's unification around the 32nd century BCE was the first specifically recorded "event", though the precise date is unknown. I'm not sure if we've found earlier ones in the interim - shameful, I admit! | [
"The earliest recorded event in its history is the building by Ethelfleda of a fortification at Runcorn to protect the northern frontier of her kingdom of Mercia against the Vikings in 915. The fort was built on Castle Rock overlooking the River Mersey at Runcorn Gap.\n",
"Three Plinian eruptions are known to have taken place: 3,000 years ago (3195–2830 BC), 2,150 years ago (800–215 BC), and 1,100 years ago (likely 823 AD). The latter two buried the nearby village of Tetimpa, preserving evidence of preclassical culture.\n",
"During recorded history, eruptions have consisted primarily of a central vent eruption (in the caldera) followed by an explosive eruption, then lahars. Ruiz's earliest identified Holocene eruption was about 6660 BC, and further eruptions occurred in 1245 BC ± 150 years (dated through radiocarbon dating), about 850 BC, 200 BC ± 100 years, 350 AD ± 300 years, 675 AD ± 50 years, in 1350, 1541 (perhaps), 1570, 1595, 1623, 1805, 1826, 1828 (perhaps), 1829, 1831, 1833 (perhaps), 1845, 1916, December 1984 – March 1985, September 1985 – July 1991, and possibly in April 1994. Many of these eruptions involved a central vent eruption, a flank vent eruption, and a phreatic (steam) explosion. Ruiz is the second-most active volcano in Colombia after Galeras.\n",
"The event was recorded in contemporary Chinese astronomy, and references to it are also found in a later (13th-century) Japanese document, and in a document from the Arab world. Furthermore, there are a number of proposed, but doubtful, references from European sources recorded in the 15th century, and perhaps a pictograph associated with the Ancestral Puebloan culture found near the Peñasco Blanco site in New Mexico.\n",
"Some of the stories contain temporal clues — such as an estimate of how many generations had passed since the event — which can be traced back to a date range in the late 1600s or early 1700s, or which concur with the event's timing in other ways. The Huu-ay-aht legend of a large earthquake and ocean wave devastating their settlements at Pachina Bay, for instance, speaks of the event taking place on a winter evening shortly after the village's residents had gone to sleep. Masit was the only community on Pachina Bay not to have been wiped out, as it sat on a mountainside approximately 75 feet above sea level. Nobody else from Pachina Bay survived the event — Anacla aq sop, a young woman who happened to be staying at Kiix?in on the more tsunami-sheltered Barkley Sound at the time of the event, came to be known as the last living member of her community.\n",
"A small eruption may have occurred in 1810 (give or take 10 years), but this event is uncertain. The only known eruption from Victory was a long-term eruption that lasted from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century.\n",
"The events of Surface Detail take place around 2970 AD, according to Banks. The events occur six to eight hundred years after the \"Chel Debacle\", depicted in the earlier novel \"Look to Windward\" which is set seventy-eight years after the events in \"Use of Weapons\".\n"
] |
factory method design pattern | Have you ever had to instantiate an object, and then do *something* to configure or manage it?
Let's say your application has a SoundManager object, and you need it to know about every Sound object that you create. This means that you're liable to write code like this:
mySound = new Sound( data );
mySoundManager.AddSound( mySound );
If you think about it, you're *always* going to add new Sounds to the SoundManager, right? So why not encapsulate that into a factory method? Like so:
mySound = mySoundManager.CreateSound( data );
This example is pretty simple, but I hope you get the idea.
In addition to reducing code duplication, this has one other important advantage: the code which initializes your sounds is now located *in* the SoundManager object; you could modify it there, centrally, or someone else could write a subclass -- StereoSoundManager -- which creates StereoSound objects instead of the plain ones. This second advantage can be very handy when dealing with large libraries or frameworks, since you can work within the infrastructure established by the library while still providing your own object classes and constructors. | [
"The making of industrial patterns begins with an existing block pattern that most closely resembles the designer's vision. Patterns are cut of oak tag (manila folder) paper, punched with a hole and stored by hanging with a special hook. The pattern is first checked for accuracy, then it is cut out of sample fabrics and the resulting garment is fit tested. Once the pattern meets the designer's approval, a small production run of selling samples are made and the style is presented to buyers in wholesale markets. If the style has demonstrated sales potential, the pattern is graded for sizes, usually by computer with an apparel industry specific CAD program. Following grading, the pattern must be vetted; the accuracy of each size and the direct comparison in laying seam lines is done. After these steps have been followed and any errors corrected, the pattern is approved for production. When the manufacturing company is ready to manufacture the style, all of the sizes of each given pattern piece are arranged into a marker, usually by computer. A marker is an arrangement of all of the pattern pieces over the area of the fabric to be cut that minimizes fabric waste while maintaining the desired grainlines. It's sort of like a pattern of patterns from which all pieces will be cut. The marker is then laid on top of the layers of fabric and cut. Commercial markers often include multiple sets of patterns for popular sizes. For example: one set of size Small, two sets of size Medium and one set of size Large. Once the style has been sold and delivered to stores – and if it proves to be quite popular – the pattern of this style will itself become a block, with subsequent generations of patterns developed from it.\n",
"Terminology differs as to whether the concept of a factory is itself a design pattern – in the seminal book \"Design Patterns\" there is no \"factory pattern\", but instead two patterns (factory method pattern and abstract factory pattern) that use factories. Some sources refer to the concept as the factory pattern, while others consider the concept itself a programming idiom, reserving the term \"factory pattern\" or \"factory patterns\" to more complicated patterns that use factories, most often the factory method pattern; in this context, the concept of a factory itself may be referred to as a simple factory. In other contexts, particularly the Python language, \"factory\" itself is used, as in this article. More broadly, \"factory\" may be applied not just to an object that returns objects from some method call, but to a \"subroutine\" that returns objects, as in a \"factory function\" (even if functions are not objects) or \"factory method.\" Because in many languages factories are invoked by calling a method, the general concept of a factory is often confused with the specific factory method pattern design pattern.\n",
"Factories are used in various design patterns, specifically in creational patterns such as the Design pattern object library. Specific recipes have been developed to implement them in many languages. For example, several \"GoF patterns\", like the \"Factory method pattern\", the \"Builder\" or even the \"Singleton\" are implementations of this concept. The \"Abstract factory pattern\" instead is a method to build collections of factories.\n",
"The prototype pattern is a creational design pattern in software development. It is used when the type of objects to create is determined by a prototypical instance, which is cloned to produce new objects. This pattern is used to:\n",
"An important aspect of design patterns is to identify and document the key ideas that make a good system different from a poor system (that may be a house, a computer program or an object of daily use), and to assist in the design of future systems. The idea expressed in a pattern should be general enough to be applied in very different systems within its context, but still specific enough to give constructive guidance.\n",
"In class-based programming, the factory method pattern is a creational pattern that uses factory methods to deal with the problem of creating objects without having to specify the exact class of the object that will be created. This is done by creating objects by calling a factory method—either specified in an interface and implemented by child classes, or implemented in a base class and optionally overridden by derived classes—rather than by calling a constructor.\n",
"In software engineering, creational design patterns are design patterns that deal with object creation mechanisms, trying to create objects in a manner suitable to the situation. The basic form of object creation could result in design problems or in added complexity to the design. Creational design patterns solve this problem by somehow controlling this object creation.\n"
] |
I was microwaving some water, and it exploded all over the inside of the microwave with a loud "pop". What happened? | Superheating happened.
Water normally boils at 100^o C or 212^o F, but that is only if there is a nucleation site for the first bubbles to form. A nucleation site can be a defect in the vessel (your mug in this case) or contaminates in the water. If you had relatively clean water, and a nice smooth mug, it's possible to heat up your water well above the boiling point. Some substances superheat easier than others.
Once a *tiny* bubble forms, the surface tension of the water might be enough to hold that bubble in place and not let it grow too much. The temperature has to increase a bit above the regular boiling point for the bubble to keep expanding. When the bubbles grows a little bit, the surface tension decreases and then the bubble grows *rapidly* which causes that loud pop you heard.
[Here is the wiki article](_URL_0_). | [
"In a July 2012 post (which has since been removed), Hari quoted the ideas of Masaru Emoto that microwave ovens cause water molecules to form crystals that resemble crystals exposed to negative thoughts or beliefs, such as when the words \"Hitler\" and \"Satan\" were exposed to the water. Steven Novella calls Emoto's claims \"pure pseudoscience\" and states that \"Hari's conclusions about microwaves are all demonstrably incorrect and at odds with the scientific evidence\". She later described the post as not her \"most impressive piece of work\" and noted that it was written when she had first started blogging. In a widely discredited 2011 post, Hari warned readers that the air pumped into aircraft cabins was not pure oxygen, complaining it was \"mixed with nitrogen, sometimes almost at 50 per cent\" despite ambient air being 78% nitrogen. Hari deleted the post, later claiming it contained an \"inadvertent error\".\n",
"Studies have investigated the use of the microwave to clean non-metallic domestic sponges which have been thoroughly wetted. A 2006 study found that microwaving wet sponges for two minutes (at 1000 watt power) removed 99% of coliforms, \"E. coli\" and MS2 phages. \"Bacillus cereus\" spores were killed at four minutes of microwaving.\n",
"It was Denton's task to inform Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh and the President about the discovery of a possibly explosive hydrogen bubble above the cooling water, at the top of the reactor pressure vessel. The debate over whether the bubble would mix with oxygen and set off an explosion, fueled speculation of a meltdown.\n",
"Closed containers, such as eggs, can explode when heated in a microwave oven due to the increased pressure from steam. Intact fresh egg yolks outside the shell will also explode, as a result of superheating. Insulating plastic foams of all types generally contain closed air pockets, and are generally not recommended for use in a microwave, as the air pockets explode and the foam (which can be toxic if consumed) may melt. Not all plastics are microwave-safe, and some plastics absorb microwaves to the point that they may become dangerously hot.\n",
"Several methods have been used to clean sponges. Studies have investigated the use of the microwave to clean non-metallic domestic sponges that have been thoroughly moistened. A 2006 study found that microwaving wet sponges for two minutes (at 1000 watt power) killed 99% of coliforms, \"E. coli\", and MS2 phages, but \"Bacillus cereus\" spores required four minutes. After some fires were caused by people trying to replicate the results at home, the study's author urged people to make sure their sponges were wet. A 2009 study showed that the microwave and the dishwasher were both effective ways to clean domestic sponges.\n",
"Frylock discovers that the water in the area is flammable; he tries to warn Master Shake, who is drinking from a hose, and Meatwad, who is bathing at a car wash, which leads to it exploding. Shake and Frylock go next door to warn Carl, who is standing in his pool with sticks of dynamite, but Carl ignores their warning as he farts into the pool, causing a huge explosion seen from outer space.\n",
"In 1945, the specific heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered by Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine. Employed by Raytheon at the time, he noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a chocolate bar he had in his pocket. The first food deliberately cooked with Spencer's microwave was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters. To verify his finding, Spencer created a high density electromagnetic field by feeding microwave power from a magnetron into a metal box from which it had no way to escape. When food was placed in the box with the microwave energy, the temperature of the food rose rapidly. On 8 October 1945, Raytheon filed a United States patent application for Spencer's microwave cooking process, and an oven that heated food using microwave energy from a magnetron was soon placed in a Boston restaurant for testing.\n"
] |
how does the united states federal government prevent a president from assuming total control and creating a dictatorship - like the actual people, laws or processes, etc that stop a rouge president from becoming a thing? | Mostly the fact that people would not recognize his authority.
If the president ordered airstrikes or army occupation of a US city without cause, the military leadership would inform the president that is an illegal order and ignore it and likely inform congress of the president's attempt to murder US citizens so that congress could impreach him.
Legally, the President does not have the authority to make law, so he can't unilaterally change laws. Again, if he tries to enforce invalid law, congress can impeach him.
Worst comes to worst, the States or People can rebel against the president's authority using police, national guard, and privately owned weapons. | [
"In dictatorships, the title of president is frequently taken by self-appointed or military-backed leaders. Such is the case in many states: Idi Amin in Uganda, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, Ferdinand Marcos in Philippines and Saddam Hussein in Iraq are some examples. Other presidents in authoritarian states have wielded only symbolic or no power such as Craveiro Lopes in Portugal and Joaquín Balaguer under the \"Trujillo Era\" of the Dominican Republic.\n",
"The President is involved in the formation of the Federal Government and remains in close cooperation with it. Basically, the President is free to act on his own discretion. However, according to Article 58 of the German constitution, the decrees, and directives of the President require the countersignature of the Chancellor or the corresponding Federal Minister in charge of the respective field of politics. This rule ensures the coherence of government action, similar to the system of checks and balances in the United States of America. There is no need for a countersignature, if the President proposes, appointments and dismisses the Chancellor, convenes or dissolves of the Bundestag according to Article 63, declares a legislative state of emergency, calls on Chancellor and ministers to remain in office, after the end of a Chancellor's term, until a successor is elected or exercises his right to pardon on behalf of the federation, as these are exclusive powers of the President.\n",
"The president also possesses the power to manage operations of the federal government through issuing various types of directives, such as presidential proclamation and executive orders. When the president is lawfully exercising one of the constitutionally conferred presidential responsibilities, the scope of this power is broad. Even so, these directives are subject to judicial review by U.S. federal courts, which can find them to be unconstitutional. Moreover, Congress can overturn an executive order through legislation (e.g., Congressional Review Act).\n",
"Several prescribed powers put the president in a superior position vis-à-vis the legislature. The president has broad authority to issue decrees and directives that have the force of law without judicial review, although the constitution notes that they must not contravene that document or other laws. Under certain conditions, the president may dissolve the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, the Federal Assembly. The president has the prerogatives of scheduling referendums (a power previously reserved to the parliament), submitting draft laws to the State Duma, and promulgating federal laws.\n",
"The president may not prevent a member of the executive branch from performing a ministerial duty lawfully imposed upon him by Congress. (See Marbury v. Madison (1803); and Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes (1838).) Nor may the president take an action not authorized either by the Constitution or by a lawful statute. (See Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952).) Finally, the president may not refuse to enforce a constitutional law, or \"cancel\" certain appropriations, for that would amount to an extra-constitutional veto or suspension power.\n",
"In practice, elements of both systems overlap. Though a president in a presidential system does not have to choose a government under the legislature, the legislature may have the right to scrutinize his or her appointments to high governmental office, with the right, on some occasions, to block an appointment. In the United States, many appointments must be confirmed by the Senate, although once confirmed an appointee can only be removed against the president's will through impeachment. By contrast, though answerable \"to\" parliament, a parliamentary system's cabinet may be able to make use of the parliamentary 'whip' (an obligation on party members in parliament to vote with their party) to control and dominate parliament, reducing parliament's ability to control the government.\n",
"It is generally agreed that the commander-in-chief role gives the President power to repel attacks against the United States and makes the President responsible for leading the armed forces. The President has the right to sign or veto congressional acts, such as a declaration of war, and Congress may override any such presidential veto. Additionally, when the president's actions (or inactions) provide \"Aid and Comfort\" to enemies or levy war against the United States, then Congress has the power to impeach and remove (convict) the president for treason. For actions short of treason, they can remove the president for \"Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors\", the definition of which the Supreme Court has left up to Congress. Therefore, the war power was intentionally split between Congress and the Executive to prevent unilateral executive action that is contrary to the wishes of Congress.\n"
] |
how and why does mega work differently than others file hosting services? | Mega does this because the file itself is encrypted. Files are encrypted before uploading and then decrypted on your system.
What is really happening is:
The encrypted file is downloaded, this takes the time.
The file is decrypted, very fast.
The decrypted file is saved, as you noticed rather quickly.
They do this to meet some legal requirements in a rather twisted way that makes it harder on copyright holders, rather than the easier the law was intended to be. A major part of this is that the encryption makes it so Mega can not identify the content without first modifying it, but they are not required to modify to identify.
Mega slides through a loophole in the law. | [
"Open hosting servers allows people to upload files to a central server, which incurs bandwidth and hard disk space costs due to files generated with each download. Anonymous and open hosting servers make it difficult to hold hosts accountable. Taking legal action against the technologies behind unauthorized \"file sharing\" has proven successful for centralized networks (such as Napster), and untenable for decentralized networks like (Gnutella, BitTorrent).\n",
"A file hosting service, cloud storage service, online file storage provider, or cyberlocker is an internet hosting service specifically designed to host user files. It allows users to upload files that could be accessed over the internet after a user name and password or other authentication is provided. Typically, the services allow HTTP access, and sometimes FTP access. Related services are content-displaying hosting services (i.e. video and image), virtual storage, and remote backup.\n",
"Mega is known for its security feature where all files are end-to-end encrypted locally before they are uploaded. This prevents anyone (including employees of Mega Limited) from accessing the files without knowledge of the pass key used for encryption. The service was previously noted for a large 50 GB storage allocation for free accounts. Up to 8 TB is available for paid accounts. As of January 20, 2018, Mega claims to have 100 million registered users in more than 245 countries and territories, and more than 40 billion files have been uploaded to the service.\n",
"A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone else. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. There is also another level of dedicated or managed hosting commonly referred to as complex managed hosting. Complex Managed Hosting applies to both physical dedicated servers, Hybrid server and virtual servers, with many companies choosing a hybrid (combination of physical and virtual) hosting solution. There are many similarities between standard and complex managed hosting but the key difference is the level of administrative and engineering support that the customer pays for – owing to both the increased size and complexity of the infrastructure deployment. The provider steps in to take over most of the management, including security, memory, storage and IT support. The service is primarily proactive in nature. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. Dedicated servers are hosted in data centers, often providing redundant power sources and HVAC systems. In contrast to colocation, the server hardware is owned by the provider and in some cases they will provide support for operating systems or applications.\n",
"Typically, most hosting infrastructures are based on the paradigm of using a single physical machine to host multiple hosted services, including web, database, email, FTP and others. A single physical machine is not only a single point of failure, but also has finite capacity for traffic, that in practice can be troublesome for a busy website or for a website that is experiencing transient bursts in traffic.\n",
"The Mega Servers are not in the actual or constructive custody or control of the United States, but remain at the premises controlled by, and currently under the control of, Carpathia and Cogent. Should the defendants wish to obtain independent access to the Mega Servers, or coordinate third-party access to data housed on Mega Servers, the issue must be resolved directly with Cogent or Carpathia.\n",
"The Mega Servers are not in the actual or constructive custody or control of the United States, but remain at the premises controlled by, and currently under the control of, Carpathia and Cogent. Should the defendants wish to obtain independent access to the Mega Servers, or coordinate third-party access to data housed on Mega Servers, the issue must be resolved directly with Cogent or Carpathia.\n"
] |
Assuming there IS silicon based life there in the universe, what would they use as "water" or as their organic solvent? | If water is available, there's not much reason to believe they wouldn't use it - carbon and silicon have near enough identical chemistry with water.
Otherwise, your options are quite limited. If it's too hot for water, you're really too hot for most simple liquids - you also don't really expect silicon at high temperatures, as its bonds are weaker than those of carbon, so it would run the risk of breaking apart. If it's too cold for water, you could possibly use some of the simple hydrocarbons (methane, ethane) if they were around in suitable quantities. | [
"In addition to carbon compounds, all currently known terrestrial life also requires water as a solvent. This has led to discussions about whether water is the only liquid capable of filling that role. The idea that an extraterrestrial life-form might be based on a solvent other than water has been taken seriously in recent scientific literature by the biochemist Steven Benner, and by the astrobiological committee chaired by John A. Baross. Solvents discussed by the Baross committee include ammonia, sulfuric acid, formamide, hydrocarbons, and (at temperatures much lower than Earth's) liquid nitrogen, or hydrogen in the form of a supercritical fluid.\n",
"Life on Earth is based on carbon and water. Carbon provides stable frameworks for complex chemicals and can be easily extracted from the environment, especially from carbon dioxide. There is no other chemical element whose properties are similar enough to carbon's to be called an analogue; silicon, the element directly below carbon on the periodic table, does not form very many complex stable molecules, and because most of its compounds are water-insoluble, it would be more difficult for organisms to extract. The elements boron and phosphorus have more complex chemistries, but suffer from other limitations relative to carbon. Water is an excellent solvent and has two other useful properties: the fact that ice floats enables aquatic organisms to survive beneath it in winter; and its molecules have electrically negative and positive ends, which enables it to form a wider range of compounds than other solvents can. Other good solvents, such as ammonia, are liquid only at such low temperatures that chemical reactions may be too slow to sustain life, and lack water's other advantages. Organisms based on alternative biochemistry may, however, be possible on other planets.\n",
"Life on Earth requires water as a solvent in which biochemical reactions take place. Sufficient quantities of carbon and other elements, along with water, might enable the formation of living organisms on terrestrial planets with a chemical make-up and temperature range similar to that of Earth. Life based on ammonia (rather than water) has been suggested as an alternative, though this solvent appears less suitable than water. It is also conceivable that there are forms of life whose solvent is a liquid hydrocarbon, such as methane, ethane or propane.\n",
"Liquid water is thought by most astrobiologists to be an essential prerequisite for extraterrestrial life. There is growing evidence of subsurface liquid water on several moons in the Solar System orbiting the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. However, none of these subsurface bodies of water has been confirmed to date.\n",
"The basic ingredients for life—what we call 'pre-biotic chemistry'—are abundant in many solar system objects, such as comets, asteroids and icy moons. Biologists believe liquid water and energy are then needed to actually support life, so it's exciting to find another place where we might have liquid water. But, energy is another matter, and currently, Callisto's ocean is only being heated by radioactive elements, whereas Europa has tidal energy as well, from its greater proximity to Jupiter.\n",
"Scientists are excited about finding hydrated minerals such as sulfates and clays on Mars because they are usually formed in the presence of water. Places that contain clays and/or other hydrated minerals would be good places to look for evidence of life.\n",
"Scientists are excited about finding hydrated minerals such as sulfates and clays on Mars because they are usually formed in the presence of water. Places that contain clays and/or other hydrated minerals would be good places to look for evidence of life.\n"
] |
Did modesty in clothing (particularly covering the genitalia) originate from one culture or did cultures develop this fashion concurrently? | Perhaps this is a question more suited for r/askanthropology? I'd suggest cross posting this there. | [
"Early in the culture, the loincloth was used by both sexes. The women of Crete wore the garment more as an underskirt than the men, by lengthening it. They are often illustrated in statuettes with a large dagger fixed at the belt. The provision of items intended to secure personal safety was undoubtedly one of the characteristics of female clothing in the Neolithic era, traces of the practice having been found in the peat bogs of Denmark up to the Bronze Age.\n",
"From the ancient world there are extant depictions of articles of clothing designed to cover just the male genitalia; for example, archaeological recovery at Minoan Knossos on Crete has yielded figurines, some of whom wear only a garment covering the male genitalia. However, the \"codpiece\", per se, appeared in everyday European fashion for men only many centuries later, associated with hose and trousers.\n",
"One of the earliest known cultures to have females wear clothing resembling miniskirts were the Duan Qun Miao (短裙苗), which literally meant \"short skirt Miao\" in Chinese. This was in reference to the short miniskirts \"that barely cover the buttocks\" worn by women of the tribe, and which were probably shocking to observers in medieval and early modern times.\n",
"The history of nudity involves social attitudes to nudity in different cultures in history. It is not known when humans began wearing clothes, although there is some archaeological evidence to indicate that clothing may have become commonplace in human society around 72,000 years ago. Nudity (or near-complete nudity) has traditionally been the social norm for both men and women in some hunter-gatherer cultures in warm climates and it is still common among many indigenous peoples. Anthropologists believe that animal skins and vegetation were adapted into coverings as protection from cold, heat and rain, especially as humans migrated to new climates; alternatively, covering may have been invented first for other purposes, such as magic, decoration, cult, or prestige, and later found to be practical as well.\n",
"The ancient Egyptians wore the minimum of clothing, and in a number of ancient Mediterranean cultures, the athletic and/or cultist nudity of men and boys was a natural concept. In ancient Rome, nudity could be a public disgrace and might be offensive or distasteful even in traditional settings, though it could be seen at the public baths or in erotic art. In Japan, public nudity was quite normal and commonplace until the Meiji Restoration. In Europe, taboos against nudity began to grow during the Age of Enlightenment and by the Victorian era, public nakedness was considered obscene. In the early years of the 20th century, the modern naturist movement began to develop.\n",
"Fetish fashion has no specific origin point because certain fashions that were appreciated specifically for themselves or worn as part of a specific subculture have been noted since the earliest days of clothing. Some scholars, like Michael Hayworth, argue that the use of corsetry and hobble skirts back in the late 18th century was the first mainstream note of fetish fashions, because the majority of society did not have access to these articles. These items were specifically appreciated for themselves (i.e. the person liked the woman wearing the corset rather than just the woman by herself).\n",
"The premise and concepts of modesty have evolved under Hinduism. During Vedic times, both women and men wore at least two pieces of draped dress that was largely undifferentiated, voluntary and flexible. Stitched clothes such as skirts and bodices were also common in the Vedic period. However, modesty was not determined by the precepts of religion, but by local traditions, social codes, profession, circumstances and occasion. The multiple pieces of draped dress for women evolved into a single length of draped cloth among Indian Hindus, now called sari; but remained two or more pieces in Southeast Asian Hindus. For men, the draped dress reduced to one piece now called by various names such as dhoti, \"lungi\", \"pancha\", \"laacha\" and other names among Indian Hindus, and \"kamben\" among Balinese Hindu.\n"
] |
why are we not working on sending a probe towards our nearest habitable planet (gliese 581g)? | Because by the time it could get there we'd already have sent probes there using faster engines, if there's any reason to do it at all.
Current technologies would take on the order of a hundred thousand years. We can probably cut that significantly just by waiting a few decades. At that time scale, it would even make sense to wait a few centuries. Or millennia, if that's how long it happens to take to get a more economical and advanced probe.
And incidentally, there's absolutely no reason to believe it is actually habitable... | [
"Freitas finds numerous reasons why interstellar probes may be a preferred method of communication among extraterrestrial civilizations wishing to make contact with Earth. A civilization aiming to learn more about the distribution of life within the galaxy might, he speculates, send probes to a large number of star systems, rather than using radio, as one cannot ensure a response by radio but can (he says) ensure that probes will return to their sender with data on the star systems they survey. Furthermore, probes would enable the surveying of non-intelligent populations, or those not yet capable of space navigation (like humans before the 20th century), as well as intelligent populations that might not wish to provide information about themselves and their planets to extraterrestrial civilizations. In addition, the greater energy required to send living beings rather than a robotic probe would, according to Michaud, be only used for purposes such as a one-way migration.\n",
"Newly discovered planets, particularly ones that are potentially habitable, have enabled SETI and METI programs to refocus projects for communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. In 2009 A Message From Earth (AMFE) was sent toward the Gliese 581 planetary system, which contains two potentially habitable planets, the confirmed Gliese 581d and the more habitable but unconfirmed Gliese 581g. In the SETILive project, which began in 2012, human volunteers analyze data from the Allen Telescope Array to search for possible alien signals that computers might miss because of terrestrial radio interference. The data for the study is obtained by observing \"Kepler\" target stars with the radio telescope.\n",
"Once a probe has left the vicinity of Earth, its trajectory will likely take it along an orbit around the Sun similar to the Earth's orbit. To reach another planet, the simplest practical method is a Hohmann transfer orbit. More complex techniques, such as gravitational slingshots, can be more fuel-efficient, though they may require the probe to spend more time in transit. Some high Delta-V missions (such as those with high inclination changes) can only be performed, within the limits of modern propulsion, using gravitational slingshots. A technique using very little propulsion, but requiring a considerable amount of time, is to follow a trajectory on the Interplanetary Transport Network.\n",
"In 2003, NASA conducted a conceptual study called \"Human Outer Planets Exploration\" (HOPE) regarding the future human exploration of the outer solar system. The possibility was mooted of building a surface base on Callisto, because of the low radiation levels at the moon's distance from Jupiter and its geological stability. Callisto is the only one of Jupiter's Galilean satellites for which human exploration is feasible. The levels of ionizing radiation on Io, Europa and Ganymede are inimical to human life, and adequate protective measures have yet to be devised.\n",
"Remotely guided space probes have flown by all of the planets of the Solar System from Mercury to Neptune, with the New Horizons probe having flown by the dwarf planet Pluto and the Dawn spacecraft currently orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres. The most distant spacecrafts, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have left the Solar System as of while Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, and New Horizons are on course to leave it.\n",
"Astrophysicist Sten Odenwald stated that the basic problem is that through intensive studies of thousands of detected exoplanets, most of the closest destinations within 50 light years do not yield Earth-like planets in the star's habitable zones. Given the multitrillion-dollar expense of some of the proposed technologies, travelers will have to spend up to 200 years traveling at 20% the speed of light to reach the best known destinations. Moreover, once the travelers arrive at their destination (by any means), they will not be able to travel down to the surface of the target world and set up a colony unless the atmosphere is non-lethal. The prospect of making such a journey, only to spend the rest of the colony's life inside a sealed habitat and venturing outside in a spacesuit, may eliminate many prospective targets from the list.\n",
"BULLET::::- \"Travelling to Outer Planets (Worlds Apart)\" – While we may know a great deal about the planets in our \"neighborhood,\" the lonely outer stretches of the solar system are now targets for a new generation of space missions. \"Traveling to Outer Planets\" introduces viewers to scientists planning these explorations and highlights some of the mysteries they hope to solve. Does the icy surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa, contain a liquid ocean with possible life? Can water and land survive the thick, foggy atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan? What can be learned from asteroids? Scientists and researchers are preparing for the day when astronauts may visit these unexplored worlds.\n"
] |
Why is derivative notation d2y/dx2? | Often, dy/dx is written d/dx(y), where "d/dx" is an operator. It's an abuse of notation but well understood.
If you apply an operator twice it's common to write it as "squared" - another abuse of notation. e.g A(A(t)) = A^2 (t).
If you square d/dx you get d^2 /(dx) ^2.
Apply that to y and drop parentheses and you get d^2 y/dx^2 .
So it's a combination of notational abuses, but it's kind of stuck because it's cute. | [
"Partial derivatives may be combined in interesting ways to create more complicated expressions of the derivative. In vector calculus, the del operator (formula_28) is used to define the concepts of gradient, divergence, and curl in terms of partial derivatives. A matrix of partial derivatives, the Jacobian matrix, may be used to represent the derivative of a function between two spaces of arbitrary dimension. The derivative can thus be understood as a linear transformation which directly varies from point to point in the domain of the function.\n",
"Because the total derivative is a linear transformation, the functions appearing in the formula can be rewritten as matrices. The matrix corresponding to a total derivative is called a Jacobian matrix, and the composite of two derivatives corresponds to the product of their Jacobian matrices. From this perspective the chain rule therefore says:\n",
"BULLET::::- An important generalization of the derivative concerns complex functions of complex variables, such as functions from (a domain in) the complex numbers C to C. The notion of the derivative of such a function is obtained by replacing real variables with complex variables in the definition. If C is identified with R by writing a complex number \"z\" as , then a differentiable function from C to C is certainly differentiable as a function from R to R (in the sense that its partial derivatives all exist), but the converse is not true in general: the complex derivative only exists if the real derivative is \"complex linear\" and this imposes relations between the partial derivatives called the Cauchy–Riemann equations – see holomorphic functions.\n",
"Partial derivatives themselves are functions, each of which represents the rate of change of parallel to one of the axes at all points in the domain (if the derivatives exist and are continuous—see also below). A first derivative is positive if the function increases along the direction of the relevant axis, negative if it decreases, and zero if there is no increase or decrease. Evaluating a partial derivative at a particular point in the domain gives the rate of change of the function at that point in the direction parallel to a particular axis, a real number.\n",
"If the second derivative of a function changes sign, the graph of the function will switch from concave down to concave up, or vice versa. A point where this occurs is called an inflection point. Assuming the second derivative is continuous, it must take a value of zero at any inflection point, although not every point where the second derivative is zero is necessarily a point of inflection.\n",
"The partial derivative generalizes the notion of the derivative to higher dimensions. A partial derivative of a multivariable function is a derivative with respect to one variable with all other variables held constant.\n",
"A related but distinct use of second derivatives is to determine whether a function is concave up or concave down at a point. It does not, however, provide information about inflection points. Specifically, a twice-differentiable function \"f\" is concave up if formula_8 and concave down if formula_9. Note that if formula_19, then formula_20 has zero second derivative, yet is not an inflection point, so the second derivative alone does not give enough information to determine if a given point is an inflection point.\n"
] |
why will youtube show people dying but freak out over nudity even non sexual nudity? | For the exact same reason a film can have dozens of deaths depicted yet remain PG but throw a couple breasts and swear words in and it's an instant R rating. American prudishness, pure and simple. All nudity is considered inherently sexual (not long ago there was a question on here freaking out about the idea of children at nude beaches) and sex is considered inherently bad. | [
"Experts say that sexting poses a serious problem, partly because teens do not understand that the images are permanent and can be spread quickly. \"It does not click that what they're doing is destructive, let alone illegal.\" \"Once they are out there, it spreads like a virus,\" police say.\n",
"In January 2019, YouTube officially banned videos containing \"challenges that encourage acts that have an inherent risk of severe physical harm\" (such as, for example, the Tide Pod Challenge), and videos featuring pranks that \"make victims believe they're in physical danger\" or cause emotional distress in children.\n",
"The video directed by Cristóbal Zegers and Sebastián Zegers, had controversy because to the few hours of uploaded to YouTube was censored for containing nudes. The video had to be distributed by Vimeo. At present it is possible to see by YouTube only the persons of legal age.\n",
"Videos that frighten or excite children were found to receive the most views, often because of algorithm-driven demand measurement and automated editorial oversight, automated oversight that is thought to be inadequately effective and easy to avoid. Very young children tend to watch the same video many times and were thus found to be particular vulnerable, including to videos with bizarre, sexual, scatological or violent content. Researchers, parents and consumer groups say that, despite YouTube's years of vowing to police inappropriate content, the website's recommendation algorithm and default autoplay feature continue to reach children with \"violent imagery, drug references, sexually suggestive sequences and foul, racially charged language\", making parental monitoring impractical.\n",
"On November 4, 2017, \"The New York Times\" published an article about the \"startling\" videos slipping past YouTube's filters and disturbing children, \"either by mistake or because bad actors have found ways to fool the YouTube Kids algorithms\". On November 6, author James Bridle published on Medium a piece titled \"Something is wrong on the internet\", in which he commented about the \"thousands and thousands of these videos\": \"Someone or something or some combination of people and things is using YouTube to systematically frighten, traumatize, and abuse children, automatically and at scale\". Bridle also observed that the confusing content of many videos seemed to result from the constant \"overlaying and intermixing\" of various popular tropes, characters, or keywords. As a result, even videos with actual humans started resembling automated content, while \"obvious parodies and even the shadier knock-offs\" interacted with \"the legions of algorithmic content producers\" until it became \"completely impossible to know what is going on\". On November 17, Internet commentator Philip DeFranco posted a video addressing \"the insane YouTube Kids problem\".\n",
"The problem still persisted into June 2019, highlighted by a report from \"The New York Times\" which cited researchers who found that users who watched erotic videos could be recommended seemingly innocuous videos of children. As a result, Senator Josh Hawley stated plans to introduce federal legislation that would ban YouTube and other video sharing sites from including videos that predominately feature minors as \"recommended\" videos, excluding those that were \"professionally produced\", such as videos of televised talent shows. YouTube has suggested potential plans to remove all videos featuring children from the main YouTube site and transferring them to the YouTube Kids site where they would have stronger controls over the recommendation system, as well as other major changes on the main YouTube site to the recommended feature and autoplay system.\n",
"However, some nudity in public may give rise to controversy. Some people regard flashing, streaking and mooning as indecent exposure and as sexual public nudity. Similarly, some people regard dogging, exhibitionism, and voyeurism as offensive behaviour.\n"
] |
What is the volume of an inch of rain? | So, first of all, a full measure of rainfall would be "X inches in the last Y hours". (Typically, the Y is standard, particularly on local news, and many times is just 24 or however many hours since the rainfall started. But a careful weather report will make sure to indicate the value of Y.) The reason you don't need to know the area over which the rain has fallen is because it doesn't matter.
The measurement is given assuming that the rain falls straight down and remains where it lands, with no runoff into streams or lakes and no absorption into the ground. So if I say that 1 inch of rain has fallen in the last 8 hours, that means under these idealized conditions, enough rain has fallen in the last 8 hours to cover the affected area (where the rain is actually falling) evenly with 1 inch of rain. So if you leave out a container with a flat bottom and constant cross-sectional area, it should have accumulated about 1 inch of rain in the last 8 hours. The area does not matter.
If that is confusing, just consider how we are defining each of the variables. The height *h* of the water in the container is
> h = V/A
where V = volume of water and A = cross-sectional area of container. The volume of water, however, is proportional to the rate of rainfall times the area A. So the area just completely cancels from the calculation. The height h is proportional to the rate of rainfall, measured in something like raindrops per square inch. (The constant of proportionality would describe the effective volume of one raindrop in inches-cubed, which we can assume is the same for all raindrops.)
More accurate measurements can be made with a so-called [rain gauge](_URL_0_), but the principle is the same. | [
"The largest recorded raindrop was 8.8 mm in diameter, located at the base of a cumulus congestus cloud in the vicinity of Kwajalein Atoll in July 1999. A raindrop of identical size was detected over northern Brazil in September 1995.\n",
"Rain is measured in units of length per unit time, typically in millimeters per hour, or in countries where imperial units are more common, inches per hour. The \"length\", or more accurately, \"depth\" being measured is the depth of rain water that would accumulate on a flat, horizontal and impermeable surface during a given amount of time, typically an hour. One millimeter of rainfall is the equivalent of one liter of water per square meter.\n",
"Most modern rain gauges generally measure the precipitation in millimetres in height collected on each square meter during a certain period, equivalent to litres per square metre. Previously rain was recorded as inches or points, where one point is equal to 0.254 mm or 0.01 of an inch.\n",
"A typical raindrop is about 2 mm in diameter, a typical cloud droplet is on the order of 0.02 mm, and a typical cloud condensation nucleus (aerosol) is on the order of 0.0001 mm or 0.1 µm or greater in diameter. The number of cloud condensation nuclei in the air can be measured and ranges between around 100 to 1000 per cubic centimetre. The total mass of CCNs injected into the atmosphere has been estimated at 2x10 kg over a year's time.\n",
"A problem with volume clutter, e.g. rain, is that the volume illuminated may not be completely filled, in which case the fraction filled must be known, and the scatterers may not be uniformly distributed. Consider a beam 10° in elevation. At a range of 10 km the beam could cover from ground level to a height of 1750 metres. There could be rain at ground level but the top of the beam could be above cloud level. In the part of the beam containing rain the rainfall rate will not be constant. One would need to know how the rain was distributed to make any accurate assessment of the clutter and the signal to clutter ratio. All that can be expected from the equation is an estimate to the nearest 5 or 10 dB.\n",
"Where formula_12 is the liquid water content, formula_13 water density, and formula_14 0.2 is an average value of the diameter in drizzle. For rain, introducing rainrate R (mm/h), the amount of rain per hour over a standard surface:\n",
"The maximum average annual rainfall of 24h in the basin is 100-200mm, the coefficient of variation is 0.35~0.65, and the maximum annual rainfall of 24h is 848mm (Jinjiang Encheng Station). The annual variation of runoff in the basin corresponds to the rainfall, that the water volume in the flood season from April to September accounts for 70% to 80% of the total annual water. Since the large amount of rainfall and high intensity during the flood season, many tributaries are fan-shaped, and floods are easy to collect into the main stream at the same time. There are many hills in the upper and middle reaches, and the flood convergence speed is relatively fast. There is no lake storage in the middle reaches, which it is easy to form floods with high peaks and large quantities. The biggest flood peaks in Bei River and Dong River often appear from May to June, and a flood lasts about 7 to 15 days. The largest flood peak in the Xi River often appears from June to August, while the largest floods mostly occur from June to July, lasting for 30 to 45 days. The Xi flood is the main source of floods in the Pearl River Delta. Sometimes the floods of Xi River and Bei River cause serious disasters in the Pearl River Delta.\n"
] |
why does a rocking motion facilitate sleep? | I imagine that it has something to do with the development of an unborn child in the mother's womb. In what way is it comfortable to sleep? - in darkness, in warmth and with rocking motions, three attributes of the inside of the uterus. You spent the first nine months of your life sleeping inside of there. It's only logical that your subconscious pines for its relative safety and comfort. | [
"Many adults find rocking chairs soothing because of the gentle motion. Gentle rocking motion has been shown to provide faster onset of sleep than remaining stationary, mimicking the process of a parent rocking a child to sleep.\n",
"Indian people believe that the rocking motion soothes and relaxes the child and puts them to sleep quickly by replicating the comfort and security of the womb. Indian mothers claim that using a ghodiyu for their child can relieve baby colic symptoms due to the rocking motion which they believe relaxes the baby.\n",
"Children and adults will often rock themselves when distressed: there appears to be a deep comfort and security to be found in gentle movement. With its flowing and wave-like movements, Pulsing perhaps recalls a body-memory of the foetal experience in the womb, where the baby is constantly subject to rhythmic pulsation, or of being cradled and rocked during infancy. \n",
"BULLET::::- Pendulum: animals are prevented from entering into REM sleep by allowing them to sleep for only brief periods of time. This is accomplished by an apparatus that moves the animals' cages backwards and forwards in a pendular motion. At the extremes of the motion, the animals experience postural imbalance, forcing them to walk back and forth to retain their balance.\n",
"While the lifting methods can induce a flexing of the spine, this rolling method can be hazardous for several reasons: the risk of a torsion of the spine when rolling, the risk when sliding the casualty on the mattress, the risk of anteversion of the hips (and thus of flexing of the spine) due to the weight of the legs when lifting the mattress to slide the board.\n",
"The alliterative phrase \"rocking and rolling\" originally was used by mariners at least as early as the 17th century to describe the combined \"rocking\" (fore and aft) and \"rolling\" (side to side) motion of a ship on the ocean. Examples include an 1821 reference, \"... prevent her from rocking and rolling ...\", and an 1835 reference to a ship \"... rocking and rolling on both beam-ends\". As the term referred to movement forwards, backwards and from side to side, it acquired sexual connotations from early on; the sea shanty \"Johnny Bowker\" (or \"Boker\"), probably from the early 19th century, contains the lines \"Oh do, my Johnny Bowker/ Come rock and roll me over\".\n",
"The evolutionary explanation for the existence of the hypnic jerk is unclear, but a possibility is that it is a vestigial reflex humans evolved when they usually slept in trees. Experiencing a hypnic jerk prior to falling asleep may have been selected so that the individual would be able to readjust their sleeping position in the tree with a branch-grabbing response to avoid falling, much as orangutans grasp upper branches of trees while sleeping.\n"
] |
why is it that playing an online game uses less data in comparison to watching a video or browsing the internet? | Here's an analogy. You're driving down the road, talking to your mom on the phone, telling her everything you see. Your mom isn't familiar with the area, so you have to say a lot - what restaurants you're passing, what the streets are called, what the signs say, where the potholes are, etc. You have to say a lot. In other words, you have to transmit a lot of data.
Now imagine instead, you're talking to your friend who knows the area. In fact, he knows the area as well as you do. So, instead of describing everything, you can just say, "I'm crossing Main Street." He's familiar with the area, so he can imagine everything else - you don't need to describe it. In other words, you don't need to transmit as much data.
That's how games work. Your console and mine both already have the world stored in memory, so our consoles don't have to transmit everything - all they have to do is transmit our location, and the other console can extrapolate the rest.
EDIT: Did this get linked from somewhere? It got little attention when I posted it last week, but since then it's exploded. | [
"Online games are video games played over a computer network. The evolution of these games parallels the evolution of computers and computer networking, with new technologies improving the essential functionality needed for playing video games on a remote server. Many video games have an online component, allowing players to play against or cooperatively with players across a network around the world. \n",
"Some sites have extended this gaming style by allowing the players to see each other's actions as they are made. This allows for real time playing while everyone is online and active, or slower progress if not.\n",
"As online technologies advance, these online video games become more accessible to individuals across all backgrounds. While these games are often played on traditional video game consoles or on PCs (which often requires purchasing the video game software), there are many internet browser based games (such as \"RuneScape\" and \"Farmville\") that allow anyone with internet access to play for free. This widens the variety of individuals that are entering into the community.\n",
"Online gaming is the social behavior of using an online game while interacting with other users. Online gaming can be done using a multitude of different platforms; common ones include personal computers, Xbox, PlayStation, and many more gaming consoles that can be stationary or mobile.\n",
"Persistent browser-based games usually rely on some kind of server-side code, although some games use technologies like Flash, ActiveX, and Java applets to store data on the client's computer. Games relying on client-side technology are rarer due to the security aspects that must be dealt with when reading and writing from a user's local file system - the web browser doesn't want web pages to be able to destroy the user's computer, and the game designer doesn't want the game files stored in an easily accessed place where the user can edit them. The server-side code will store persistent information about players and possibly the game world in some kind of database.\n",
"The culture of online gaming sometimes faces criticisms for an environment that can promote cyberbullying, violence, and xenophobia. Some are also concerned about gaming addiction or social stigma. Online games have attracted players from a variety of ages, nationalities, and occupations. The online game content can also be studied in the scientific field, especially gamers' interactions within virtual societies in relation to the behavior and social phenomena of everyday life. It has been argued that, since the players of an online game are strangers to each other and have limited communication, the individual player's experience in an online game is not essentially different from playing with artificial intelligence players. Online games also have the problem of not being permanently playable, unlike purchased retail games, as they require special servers in order to function.\n",
"Gaming was exceptionally popular with younger Open... users. Games were generally available over the satellite transmission and as such did not require the user to go online to download game data (except when submitting high scores).\n"
] |
Is it possible to cure HIV or AIDS with a full body blood transfusion? | HIV infected cells migrate to (reside in) the lymph nodes as well as in circulation. Performing a full body transfusion, which would be difficult on its own, would not remove the infected cells which are traveling in the lymph or residing in lymph nodes.
What you may want to look into is the recent case involving a patient who underwent irradiation and a bone marrow transplant that had HIV. The last I read about him (the article was published in Blood in 2010, don't have the article saved, but googling should come up with the right thing) he had no detectable levels of HIV. They didn't call it a cure (the media is/did) because there is the high chance that he has some population of HIV+ cells in his lymphatics or some other area which was not eliminated during the radiation therapy.
As to the initial part of your question. HIV primarily infects CD4 T cells, macrophages, dendritic cells, and in some instances NK cells. Some of these cells require a co-infection with another virus in order to be infected by HIV (NK cells do not express CD4, but when infected by herpes are forced to express it and can be infected by HIV). Any cells which express CD4 and CCR5/CXCR4 are up for infection by HIV. NK cells have recently been identified as important for the maintenance of the HIV infection as they serve as a viral reservoir. | [
"Preventing the spread of these diseases by blood transfusion is addressed in several ways. In many cases, the blood is tested for the pathogen, sometimes with several different methodologies. Donors of blood are also screened for signs and symptoms of disease and for activities that might put them at risk for infection. If a local supply is not safe, blood may be imported from other areas. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) leads to the best known of the transfusion transmitted diseases, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).\n",
"A number of blood substitutes have been explored (and still are), but thus far they all suffer from many challenges. Most attempts to find a suitable alternative to blood thus far have concentrated on cell-free hemoglobin solutions. Blood substitutes could make transfusions more readily available in emergency medicine and in pre-hospital EMS care. If successful, such a blood substitute could save many lives, particularly in trauma where massive blood loss results. Hemopure, a hemoglobin-based therapy, is approved for use in South Africa.\n",
"The WHO has stated that transfusion of whole blood or purified serum from Ebola survivors has the greatest potential to be implemented immediately, and has issued an interim guideline for this therapy. A study in Sierra Leone started in November 2014, and preliminary results show an 80 percent survival rate. Trials in Liberia and Guinea started in January 2015, with funding from the Gates Foundation. Blood transfusions were also used in a 1995 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and 7 out of 8 patients survived.\n",
"BULLET::::- The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that all donated blood be tested for transfusion transmissible infections. These include HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Treponema pallidum (syphilis) and, where relevant, other infections that pose a risk to the safety of the blood supply, such as Trypanosoma cruzi (Chagas disease) and Plasmodium species (malaria). According to the WHO, 25 countries are not able to screen all donated blood for one or more of: HIV; Hepatitis B; Hepatitis C; or syphilis. One of the main reasons for this is because testing kits are not always available. However the prevalence of transfusion-transmitted infections is much higher in low income countries compared to middle and high income countries.\n",
"Although there are clinical situations where transfusion with red blood cells is the only clinically appropriate option, clinicians look at whether alternatives as feasible. This can be due to several reasons, such as patient safety, economic burden or scarcity of blood. Guidelines recommend blood transfusions should be reserved for patients with or at risk of cardiovascular instability due to the degree of their anaemia. In these cases parenteral iron is recommended.\n",
"Providing safe blood for transfusion remains a challenge despite advances in preventing transmission of hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), AIDS/HIV, HTLV-I/II, West Nile virus (WNV), syphilis, Chagas disease, Zika virus and transfusion-transmitted bacterial infection. Human errors such as misidentifying patients and drawing blood samples from the wrong person (ie, wrong blood in tube or WBIT) is more of a risk than transmissible diseases in many developed nations.\n",
"Anaplasmosis can also be contracted from blood transfusions, If the donor had contracted the disease without knowing and then their blood is given, the recipient can contract the disease as well. It can also be transmitted by the use of surgical, dehorning, castration, and tattoo instruments and hypodermic needles that are not disinfected between uses. \n"
] |
How did the religious class view Benjamin Franklin's scientific experimentations during his retirement? | I'd suggest that that documentary was probably lying, or at least misrepresenting things. People have offered naturalistic explanations of lightning for as long as people have been writing about lightning, and I don't think they would have created a dichotomy between "God did it" and "lightning is a result of X natural process," that's more of a modern hang-up. | [
"In 1743, Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society to help scientific men discuss their discoveries and theories. He began the electrical research that, along with other scientific inquiries, would occupy him for the rest of his life, in between bouts of politics and moneymaking.\n",
"He was part of a pioneering effort to map colonial churches. He wrote about slavery and conversion to Christianity in the United States. He also wrote about the veracity of Benjamin Franklin's supposed experiments with a kite to demonstrate electricity.\n",
"The focus on Franklin's experiments influenced the reception of his work in Europe. Priestley's famous text supported the distribution of Franklin's research, which helped it becoming one of the most important works on electricity in the late 18th century.\n",
"Unlike many intellectuals of his era, the amateur physicist didn't travel much out of his home region. When he was made a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1764 to honor his electrical kite experiments, he went to Paris. For that purpose, he had to prove that his experiments were conducted without knowledge of the similar breakthroughs of Franklin in the English colonies. The commission acknowledged this after studying his reports and letters to different fellow scientists.\n",
"Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was an activist and theorist of American philanthropy. He was much influenced by Daniel Defoe's \"An Essay upon Projects\" (1697) and Cotton Mather's \"Bonifacius: an essay upon the good.\" (1710). Franklin attempted to motivate his fellow Philadelphians into projects for the betterment of the city: examples included the Library Company of Philadelphia (the first American subscription library), the fire department, the police force, street lighting and a hospital. A world-class physicist himself, he promoted scientific organizations including the Philadelphia Academy (1751) – which became the University of Pennsylvania – as well as the American Philosophical Society (1743) to enable scientific researchers from all 13 colonies to communicate.\n",
"Franklin distributed copies of the electrostatic machine to many of his close associates to encourage them to study electricity. Between 1747 and 1750, Franklin sent many letters to his friend Collinson in London about his experiments with the electrostatic machine and the Leyden jar, including his observations and theories on the principles of electricity. These letters were collected and published in 1751 in a book entitled \"Experiments and Observations on Electricity.\"\n",
"Now the \"Autobiography\" discusses \"the Rise and Progress of [Franklin's] Philosophical Reputation.\" He starts experiments with electricity and writes letters about them that are published in England as a book. Franklin's description of his experiments is translated into French, and Abbé Nollet, who is offended because this work calls into question his own theory of electricity, publishes his own book of letters attacking Franklin. Declining to respond on the grounds that anyone could duplicate and thus verify his experiments, Franklin sees another French author refute Nollet, and as Franklin's book is translated into other languages, its views are gradually accepted and Nollet's are discarded. Franklin is also voted an honorary member of the Royal Society.\n"
] |
Why do we build larger particle colliders with bigger diameters instead smaller diameters traveled multiple times? | To go to higher energies at a fixed bending radius, you need stronger bending magnets. The momentum per unit charge of a particle along the central orbit inside a bending element is called its *magnetic rigidty*: Bρ = p/q.
B is the magnetic field strength of the bending magnet, ρ is the bending radius of the central orbit, p is the momentum of the test particle, and q is the charge of the test particle.
If you want to increase p while leaving ρ fixed, you need to increase the magnetic field strength proportionally to p (or in terms of energy, sqrt[E^(2) - m^(2)]).
We can only make our bending magnets so strong, and it ends up being better just to increase the bending radius. That means that if you need a larger diameter accelerator.
Or you could sidestep the need to bend the beam entirely by using a linear accelerator. But then you lose the ability to put the beam particles on target (or collide them with another beam) more than once. | [
"The shape of the collider is also important. High energy physics colliders collect particles into bunches, and then collide the bunches together. However, only a very tiny fraction of particles in each bunch actually collide. In circular colliders, these bunches travel around a roughly circular shape in opposite directions and therefore can be collided over and over. This enables a high rate of collisions and facilitates collection of a large amount of data, which is important for precision measurements or for observing very rare decays. However, the energy of the bunches is limited due to losses from synchrotron radiation. In linear colliders, particles move in a straight line and therefore do not suffer from synchrotron radiation, but bunches cannot be re-used and it is therefore more challenging to collect large amounts of data.\n",
"Because the size of the dispersed phase may be difficult to measure, and because colloids have the appearance of solutions, colloids are sometimes identified and characterized by their physico-chemical and transport properties. For example, if a colloid consists of a solid phase dispersed in a liquid, the solid particles will not diffuse through a membrane, whereas with a true solution the dissolved ions or molecules will diffuse through a membrane. Because of the size exclusion, the colloidal particles are unable to pass through the pores of an ultrafiltration membrane with a size smaller than their own dimension. The smaller the size of the pore of the ultrafiltration membrane, the lower the concentration of the dispersed colloidal particles remaining in the ultrafiltered liquid. The measured value of the concentration of a truly dissolved species will thus depend on the experimental conditions applied to separate it from the colloidal particles also dispersed in the liquid. This is particularly important for solubility studies of readily hydrolyzed species such as Al, Eu, Am, Cm, or organic matter complexing these species.\n",
"A variation commonly used for particle physics research is a collider, also called a \"storage ring collider\". Two circular synchrotrons are built in close proximityusually on top of each other and using the same magnets (which are then of more complicated design to accommodate both beam tubes). Bunches of particles travel in opposite directions around the two accelerators and collide at intersections between them. This can increase the energy enormously; whereas in a fixed-target experiment the energy available to produce new particles is proportional to the square root of the beam energy, in a collider the available energy is linear.\n",
"This means that changing to particles that are half as big, keeping the size of the column the same, will double the performance, but increase the required pressure by a factor of four. Larger particles are used in preparative HPLC (column diameters 5 cm up to 30 cm) and for non-HPLC applications such as solid-phase extraction.\n",
"Collisions at velocities that would result in the fragmentation of equal sized particles can instead result in growth via mass transfer from the small to the larger particle. This process requires an initial population of 'lucky' particles that have grown larger than the majority of particles. These particles may form if collision velocities have a wide distribution, with a small fraction occurring at velocities that allow objects beyond the bouncing barrier to stick. However, the growth via mass transfer is slow relative to radial drift timescales, although it may occur locally if radial drift is halted locally at a pressure bump allowing the formation of planetesimals in 10^5 yrs.\n",
"Colliders are used as a research tool in particle physics by accelerating particles to very high kinetic energy and letting them impact other particles. Analysis of the byproducts of these collisions gives scientists good evidence of the structure of the subatomic world and the laws of nature governing it. These may become apparent only at high energies and for tiny periods of time, and therefore may be hard or impossible to study in other ways.\n",
"It is the very large difference in size between the colloidal particle, which may be 1μm across, and the size of the ions or molecules, which are less than 1 nm across, that makes diffusiophoresis closely related to diffusioosomosis at a flat surface. In both cases the forces that drive the motion are largely localised to the interfacial region, which is a few molecules across and so typically of order a nanometer across. Over distances of order a nanometer, there is little difference between the surface of a colloidal particle 1 μm across, and a flat surface.\n"
] |
why do people tap the top of their soda cans before opening them? | If bubbles have formed on the side of the can, tapping the can may dislodge them and cause them to pop at the surface. Since the can is usually somewhat pressurized, any gas in the can will expand when you open it. If the gas expands under liquid (the bubbles stuck to the side of the can), the gas might carry the liquid with it, making a foamy mess. If the gas is all at the top, then it will hiss out as you open it, but there won't be any liquid coming with it. | [
"Cans are filled before the top is crimped on. The filling and sealing operations need to be extremely fast and precise. The filling head centers the can using gas pressure, purges the air, and lets the drink flow down the sides of the can. The lid is placed on the can, and then crimped in two operations. A seaming head engages the lid from above while a seaming roller to the side curls the edge of the lid around the edge of the can body. The head and roller spin the can in a complete circle to seal all the way around. Then a pressure roller with a different profile drives the two edges together under pressure to make a gas-tight seal. Filled cans usually have pressurized gas inside, which makes them stiff enough for easy handling.\n",
"Early metal drink cans had no tabs; they were opened by a can-piercer or churchkey, a device resembling a bottle opener with a sharp point. The can was opened by punching two triangular holes in the lid—a large one for drinking, and a second (smaller) one to admit air.\n",
"Some cans, such as those used for sardines, have a specially scored lid so that the user can break out the metal by the leverage of winding it around a slotted church key. Until the mid-20th century, some sardine tins had solder-attached lids, and the winding key worked by forcing the solder joint apart.\n",
"The term \"soda jerk\" was a pun on \"soda clerk\", the formal job title of the drugstore assistants who operated soda fountains. It was inspired by the \"jerking\" action the server would use to swing the soda fountain handle back and forth when adding the soda water. The soda fountain spigot itself typically was a sturdy, shiny fixture on the end of a pipe or other similar structure protruding above the counter, curving towards where the glasses would be filled. All of the drinks were made with unflavored carbonated water. Consequently, the tap handle was large, as the soda jerker would use it frequently. This made the mixing of drinks a center of activity at the soda fountain.\n",
"In 2005, Jolt Cola revamped its product line. Jolt Cola changed its logo, and came in \"battery bottles\" (that resemble the shape of a AA battery) which make a loud popping sound when opened. The cans are resealable aluminum bottles; the body of the bottle was similar to that of a standard aluminum can, but the top had a twist-off aluminum cap with a plastic gasket liner, and in smaller \"Quick Fix\" cans ( single-use pull-tab aluminum cans, similar to those used for Red Bull) and \"battery\" cans ( resealable aluminum cans with the same twist-off top as the battery bottles). The Jolt Cola website claimed that the \"Quick Fix\" sizes were available at establishments that serve \"adult beverages,\" for use as a mixer. The flavors of Jolt offered were also changed. Flavors offered were Cola, Blue Raspberry, Cherry Bomb (cherry cola), Silver (lemon-lime), Wild Grape, Orange Blast, Passionfruit (featuring a yellow can) and Ultra (a diet drink with Splenda as its artificial sweetener alongside guarana, ginseng, taurine, and vitamin B complex).\n",
"Canned drinks were factory-sealed and required a special opener tool in order to consume the contents. Cans were typically formed as cylinders, having a flat top and bottom. They required a can piercer, colloquially known as a \"church key\", that latched onto the top rim for leverage; lifting the handle would force the sharp tip through the top of the can, cutting a triangular hole. A smaller second hole was usually punched at the opposite side of the top to admit air while pouring, allowing the liquid to flow freely.\n",
"The tip jar has become a source of controversy. Customers may feel discouraged from patronizing establishments using them. They may also feel that tip jars are inappropriate at certain types of establishments such as movie-theater concession counters, dry cleaners, take-out restaurants, gym locker rooms or grocery bagger's work stations. Many feel social pressure to use them, or that they are paying too high a total price when purchasing a simple item.\n"
] |
Why can't we make a camera that captures images that look the same as how we see them? | What you should be asking is, "why can't we make a camera that captures images exactly how we see them and reproduce them in a medium which is visually indistinguishable from the original scene?"
Designing a camera that captures information identical to the photoreceptor layer of your retina is simply a matter of engineering four sensors with the same sensitivity vs wavelength functions as your photoreceptors. This isn't perfectly accurate due to temporal effects, but suffices as a first approximation. Difficulty of engineering aside, this is perfectly feasible from a theoretical standpoint.
Reproduction, on the other hand, is a much more daunting task. Current display or printing methods rely on representing different perceptual hues, which are the result of activation levels for each of three different cones, as the weighted sum of three or more components, each of which has its own distinct spectral characteristics. Disregarding rods for the moment due to their relative absence in the fovea, the implication of this is that each has a single, 3-dimensional response vector which represents the activation of your different photoreceptors to that particular component. You might think that any three components with linearly independent response vectors would suffice to produce the full gamut of colors that we can observe, but this fails due to the fact that we cannot have negative coefficients when mixing. Because of the overlap of the wavelength response curves for different cones, it is very difficult to choose a limited number of components that can reproduce any photoreceptor response. For example, violet is impossible to reproduce in the RGB color space. Two solutions to this would be to either to design a technology capable of reproducing exact spectra in the visible range, or to use direct stimulation of photoreceptors, which would in effect give you the component bases [1, 0, 0], [0, 1, 0], and [0, 0, 1]. | [
"Photographic technology employs different physical methods than the human eye in order to capture images. Thus, manufacturing optics which produce images that appear natural to human vision is problematic.\n",
"Certain image capturing devices are capable of producing images through materials that are opaque to visible light, including clothing. These devices form images by using electromagnetic radiation outside the visible range. Infrared and terahertz-wave cameras are capable of creating images through clothing, though these images differ from what would be created with visible light.\n",
"Alternatively, a multiple-camera setup can be used, with the cameras showing the subject at different sizes. The footage from both cameras is then edited together to create the effect. As the cameras cannot occupy the same space, there will always be a slight deviation from the axis. Moving the cameras further away from the subject and using telephoto lenses can reduce the deviation.\n",
"For capturing a moving object, photographers must use a high shutter speed. However, the image can be very dark. Low shutter speed must be used when capturing a clear image or object under the harsh condition, but it is hard to capture the moving objects.\n",
"While dedicated digital cameras suitable for advanced use are available, there are advantages in being able to use a film camera to take digital photographs. A single camera can be used for both film and digital photography. Cameras with features not available on digital cameras (e.g., view cameras) can be used to make digital images.\n",
"Cameras range from conventional single picture cameras to 'movie cameras' that take over 2 million pictures per second. Specialized optics, illuminations, and films are used to record images of things that the eye cannot see such as movement of air, surface temperature of objects, and stress patterns. Cameras can be used in environments where humans cannot go.\n",
"Both digital camera images and scanned film images are usually adjusted in image processing software to improve the image in some way. Images can be brightened and manipulated in a computer to adjust color and increase the contrast. More sophisticated techniques involve capturing multiple images (sometimes thousands) to composite together in an additive process to sharpen images to overcome atmospheric seeing, negating tracking issues, bringing out faint objects with a poor signal-to-noise ratio, and filtering out light pollution. Digital camera images may also need further processing to reduce the image noise from long exposures, including subtracting a “dark frame” and a processing called \"image stacking\" or \"\"Shift-and-add\"\". There are several commercial, freeware and free software packages available specifically for astronomical photographic image manipulation.\n"
] |
I have a question about Pavlovian conditioning. | It could get generalized to either of the two responses. It is more likely that it will not bring forth any response, though that may depend on how the middle C functioned during the conditioning process. If there was no stimulous matched with it then there would be no reason for the dog to expect anything.
I dont know how sound is percieved by dogs, but for humans we can hear multiple distinct sounds at once. So what would be interesting is to sound both high and low Cs at once and see how the dog reacts. | [
"Pavlov proposed that conditioning involved a connection between brain centers for conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. His physiological account of conditioning has been abandoned, but classical conditioning continues to be to study the neural structures and functions that underlie learning and memory. Forms of classical conditioning that are used for this purpose include, among others, fear conditioning, eyeblink conditioning, and the foot contraction conditioning of \"Hermissenda crassicornis\", a sea-slug. Both fear and eyeblink conditioning involve a neutral stimulus, frequently a tone, becoming paired with an unconditioned stimulus. In the case of eyeblink conditioning, the US is an air-puff, while in fear conditioning the US is threatening or aversive such as a foot shock.\n",
"As Pavlov's work became known in the West, particularly through the writings of John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner, the idea of \"conditioning\" as an automatic form of learning became a key concept in the developing specialism of comparative psychology, and the general approach to psychology that underlay it, behaviorism. Pavlov's work with classical conditioning was of huge influence to how humans perceive themselves, their behavior and learning processes and his studies of classical conditioning continue to be central to modern behavior therapy. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell observed that \"[w]hether Pavlov's method's can be made to cover the whole of human behaviour is open to question, but at any rate they cover a very large field and within this field they have shown how to apply scientific methods with quantitative exactitude\".\n",
"The basics of Pavlov's classical conditioning serve as a historical backdrop for current learning theories. However, the Russian physiologist's initial interest in classical conditioning occurred almost by accident during one of his experiments on digestion in dogs. Considering that Pavlov worked closely with animals throughout many of his experiments, his early contributions were primarily about animal learning. However, the fundamentals of classical conditioning have been examined across many different organisms, including humans. The basic underlying principles of Pavlov's classical conditioning have extended to a variety of settings, such as classrooms and learning environments.\n",
"BULLET::::- Rescorla, R.A., & Wagner, A.R. (1972). A theory of Pavlovian conditioning: Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement. In A.H. Black & W.F. Prokasy (Eds.), Classical conditioning II: Current theory and research (pp. 64–99). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.\n",
"Usually the conditioned response is similar to the unconditioned response, but sometimes it is quite different. For this and other reasons, most learning theorists suggest that the conditioned stimulus comes to signal or predict the unconditioned stimulus, and go on to analyze the consequences of this signal. Robert A. Rescorla provided a clear summary of this change in thinking, and its implications, in his 1988 article \"Pavlovian conditioning: It's not what you think it is\". Despite its widespread acceptance, Rescorla's thesis may not be defensible.\n",
"BULLET::::- Rescorla, R.A. & Wagner, A.R. (1972) \"A theory of Pavlovian conditioning: Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement\", Classical Conditioning II, A.H. Black & W.F. Prokasy, Eds., pp. 64–99. Appleton-Century-Crofts.\n",
"BULLET::::- Wagner, A.R., & Brandon, S.E., (2001) A componential theory of Pavlovian Conditioning. In R.R. Mowrer and S.B. Klien (Eds.) Handbook of Contemporary Learning Theories (pp. 23–64) Mahwah, NJ. Erlbaum.\n"
] |
Parsley can cause a miscarriage? | [There is some evidence that parsley might be partially effective in inducing abortion, but it doesn't appear to be very safe.](_URL_0_)
That "infographic" is at least ill-advised and possibly dangerous. | [
"Miscarriage, also known as spontaneous abortion and pregnancy loss, is the natural death of an embryo or fetus before it is able to survive independently. Some use the cutoff of 20 weeks of gestation, after which fetal death is known as a stillbirth. The most common symptom of a miscarriage is vaginal bleeding with or without pain. Sadness, anxiety and guilt often occur afterwards. Tissue and clot-like material may leave the uterus and pass through and out of the vagina. When a woman keeps having miscarriages, infertility is present.\n",
"Miscarriage has an emotional effect and can also lead to psychological disorders. One discorder that can develop is primary maternal preoccupation. This is defined as a \" ...'special psychiatric condition' in which the pregnant woman identifies with her baby, highlights the crisis a woman faces when the baby with whom she is preoccupied and identified dies...\" Grieving manifests itself differently for each woman after miscarriage. It may often go unrecognized. The grief that follows a miscarriage resembles, but is not the same as, the grief experienced after the loss of a family member. Disbelief, depression, anger, and yearning, are described as being a part of the normal grieving process. These reactions remain from three to nine months after the loss. Forty-one percent of parents experience a normal, expected decline in grief in the first two years while 59% were delayed in the resolution of their grief.\n",
"Physical recovery from miscarriage can have an effect on emotional disturbances. The body has to recover from the sudden pregnancy loss. In some instances fatigue is present. Insomnia can be a problem. The miscarriage is very upsetting to the family and can generate very strong emotions. Some women may feel that the miscarriage occurred because they somehow had caused it. Others may blame the father or partner for the miscarriage. Coping with a miscarriage can very greatly between women and families. Some find it difficult to talk about the miscarriage. The narratives of women tend to coincide with quantified and measurable effects. Some women engage in activities that are believed to aid in recovery such as therapy, religion and art.\n",
"Risk factors for miscarriage include an older parent, previous miscarriage, exposure to tobacco smoke, obesity, diabetes, thyroid problems, and drug or alcohol use. About 80% of miscarriages occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy (the first trimester). The underlying cause in about half of cases involves chromosomal abnormalities. Diagnosis of a miscarriage may involve checking to see if the cervix is open or closed, testing blood levels of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), and an ultrasound. Other conditions that can produce similar symptoms include an ectopic pregnancy and implantation bleeding.\n",
"Recurrent miscarriage is two or more consecutive pregnancy losses. Infertility differs because it is the inability to conceive. In many cases the cause of RPL is unknown. After three or more losses, a thorough evaluation is recommended by American Society of Reproductive Medicine. About 1% of couples trying to have children are affected by recurrent miscarriage.\n",
"Women experiencing miscarriage are at risk for grief reactions, anxiety or depression. Obsessiveness regarding the miscarriage can develop. Primary maternal preoccupation is also considered a consequence of miscarriage. This condition can occur if a woman who develops a close bond \"with her baby\" experiences the loss of the pregnancy.\n",
"BULLET::::- Abortion (spontaneous), also referred to as miscarriage. One study came to the result that the risk of miscarriage during the course of the pregnancy with just spotting during the first trimester was 9%, and with light bleeding 12%, compared to 12% in pregnancies without any first trimester bleeding. However, heavy first trimester bleeding was estimated to have a miscarriage risk of 24%.\n"
] |
why can't i just hit the "off" button on my computer rather than "shut down" | + Pressing shut down
Will terminate all system and user processes normally. Exiting processes have time to write logs and results in the primary memory. Some of it can be important, but 95% of the time you won't notice a difference, if you are a casual home user and not involved in servers or programing projects etc.
It will also do what I describe in the next section
+ Pressing down the power button
Gives enough time for the mechanical parts of your computer (HDD mostly) to power down safely.
+ Just pulling the plug
Will cause the mechanical parts of your PC to lose power while still working, possibly damaging them or wearing them down (if they power down at an active position. | [
"In Apple macOS the computer can be shut down by choosing \"Shut Down…\" from the Apple Menu or by pressing the power key to bring up the power management dialog box and selecting button \"Shut down\". An administrator may also use the Unix codice_1 command as well. It can also be shut down by pressing [Alt]+[Command]+[Eject optical disc on optical drive] but this will not prompt the user anything at all.\n",
"The reset button could be an actual button or concept. The reset button would typically kick off a soft boot, instructing the computer to go through the process of shutting down, which would clear memory and reset devices to their initialized state. Contrary to the 'Power Button', which would simply remove power immediately.\n",
"Many newer computers have no separate button for resetting the computer; it is integrated with the power button. On most newer operating systems, the user can customize what happens when they press the power button. For example, they may set it to 'Do nothing', 'restart', 'shutdown', or 'stand by'. This is only for pressing the button once; on most computers the power button can remove power immediately if held down for a few seconds. When the OS hangs, the reset button is no longer \"integrated with the power button\".\n",
"In electronics and technology, a reset button is a button that can reset a device. On video game consoles, the reset button restarts the game, losing the player's unsaved progress. On personal computers, the reset button clears the memory and reboots the machine forcibly. Reset buttons are found on circuit breakers to reset the circuit. This button can cause data corruption so this button often doesn't exist on many machines. Usually, in computers and other electronic devices, it is present as a small button, possibly recessed into the case or only accessible by a pin or similar thin object, to prevent it being pressed accidentally.\n",
"The screen turns itself off when a person is on a call. This is to prevent the screen accepting unwanted inputs from the user's face when they are making a call, but it also requires the user to turn the screen back on if they want to use the screen. Removing the stylus when in a phone call both turns on the screen and starts up the notes application (if so selected as an option by the user).\n",
"Pressing the key in the Linux console while text is scrolling through the screen freezes the console output (but not input) during which no further text is sent to the screen, while the program continues running as usual. When is pressed again, the screen is unfrozen and all text generated during the freeze is displayed at once. This allows the user to pause the display and read long messages that scroll through the screen too quickly to read, such as for example when the system is booting up (provided the keyboard driver has already been loaded). If not configured otherwise, and can be used instead of Scroll Lock in any terminal in Linux to freeze and unfreeze the terminal output respectively.\n",
"For devices with gesture navigation and no home button (iPhone X and later), users can now force quit applications by swiping up from the bottom of the screen (without having to press and hold on them when in the app switcher).\n"
] |
Could a planet be 'locked' in orbit between two stars? | ~~Yes but~~ no because it would be unstable meaning if there were any gravitational fluctuations at all from anything it would perturb the system pulling the planet towards one of the Stars slightly more than towards the other which would increase the Gravity from the one-star and decrease it from the other until the planet was engulfed. Worse yet is it would be impossible for a planet like this to form because when it was attempting to coalesce one of his particles would be closer to one star and one of them would be closer to the other and the two would never meet. | [
"The two stars orbit each other with a period of only 2.15 days and an eccentricity of zero, indicating their orbit is close to circular. They are orbiting sufficiently close to each other that their rotation periods have most likely become tidally locked—meaning they always maintain the same face toward each other.\n",
"The separation between stars in a binary may range from less than one astronomical unit (AU, the average Earth–Sun distance) to several hundred. In latter instances, the gravitational effects will be negligible on a planet orbiting an otherwise suitable star and habitability potential will not be disrupted unless the orbit is highly eccentric (see Nemesis, for example). However, where the separation is significantly less, a stable orbit may be impossible. If a planet's distance to its primary exceeds about one fifth of the closest approach of the other star, orbital stability is not guaranteed. Whether planets might form in binaries at all had long been unclear, given that gravitational forces might interfere with planet formation. Theoretical work by Alan Boss at the Carnegie Institution has shown that gas giants can form around stars in binary systems much as they do around solitary stars.\n",
"Close binary stars throughout the universe are expected to be tidally locked with each other, and extrasolar planets that have been found to orbit their primaries extremely closely are also thought to be tidally locked to them. An unusual example, confirmed by MOST, may be Tau Boötis, a star that is probably tidally locked by its planet Tau Boötis b. If so, the tidal locking is almost certainly mutual. However, since stars are gaseous bodies that can rotate with a different rate at different latitudes, the tidal lock is with Tau Boötis's magnetic field.\n",
"Another scenario would be two stars that would be closer to one another at a distance of only a few million miles. A planet orbiting far enough away would be affected by their gravitational fields almost as if there were one. If the distance between the two stars was a small fraction of the distance between them and the planet, it would be stable for the planet. Dawn and dusk would occur on such a planet as they would on Tatooine.\n",
"Just as planets can be gravitationally bound to stars, pairs of stars can orbit each other. Some binary stars are visual binaries, meaning they can be observed orbiting each other through a telescope. Some binary stars, however, are too close together to be resolved. These two stars, when viewed through a spectrometer, will show a composite spectrum: the spectrum of each star will be added together. This composite spectrum becomes easier to detect when the stars are of similar luminosity and of different spectral class.\n",
"A star system of two stars is known as a \"binary star\", \"binary star system\" or \"physical double star\". If there are no tidal effects, no perturbation from other forces, and no transfer of mass from one star to the other, such a system is stable, and both stars will trace out an elliptic orbit around the barycenter of the system indefinitely. \"(See Two-body problem)\". Examples of binary systems are Sirius, Procyon and Cygnus X-1, the last of which probably consists of a star and a black hole.\n",
"Terrestrial planets in multiple star systems, those containing three or more stars, are not likely to have stable orbits in the long term. Stable orbits in binary systems take one of two forms: S-Type (satellite or circumstellar) orbits around one of the stars, and P-Type (planetary or circumbinary) orbits around the entire binary pair. Eccentric Jupiters may also disrupt the orbits of planets in habitable zones.\n"
] |
Why is history's calendar based off a religion that not everybody follows? | Well it has been the tradition, and from a long history of western colonial dominance it has become (generally) the worldwide norm, the same way that western dress and the English language have become dominant in governments worldwide. Some countries, (Saudi Arabia is the best example) don't use the Gregorian calendar, and have their own variants, often based on the local majority religion.
That's not to say there haven't been major attempts to change the calendar and use a secular one. After the French Revolution, as part of a massive Enlightenment effort to secularize and rationalize the state, a secular calendar was created that lasted until 1805. (Another, much more successful product of this effort was the metric system.) The calendar featured a ten day work week, and had days and months named after the natural world at that time of year. Year one in the calendar was 1792, the year the French Republic was declared. It's pretty interesting, and the wikipedia article is pretty good: _URL_0_.
The calendar was brought in mainly for, as you mentioned, a desire for a secular calendar not based on Christianity. The main problem was that the calendar was poorly designed, and unpopular. It featured a longer working week and was relatively awkward to use, so many people opposed it.
While we basically use a Christian calendar because it's what's easy and no one really wants to undertake a massive effort to change it for no major benefits, it's not outside the realm of possibility that had a more popular universal calendar been adopted in the French revolution, we might all be using a secular calendar. | [
"[T]he Christian calendar no longer belongs exclusively to Christians. People of all faiths have taken to using it simply as a matter of convenience. There is so much interaction between people of different faiths and cultures – different civilizations, if you like – that some shared way of reckoning time is a necessity. And so the Christian Era has become the Common Era.\n",
"BULLET::::- Christian, Islamic and Jewish leaders are historically opposed to the calendar, as their tradition of worshiping every seventh day would result in either the day of the week of worship changing from year to year, or eight days passing when \"The Festival of All the Dead” or “The Festival of Holy Women\" occurs.\n",
"The main opponents of The World Calendar in the 20th century were leaders of religions that worship according to a seven-day cycle. For Jews, Christians and Muslims, particular days of worship are ancient and fundamental elements of their faith.\n",
"BULLET::::- Christian, Islamic and Jewish leaders are historically opposed to the calendar, as their tradition of worshiping every seventh day would result in either the day of the week of worship changing from year to year, or eight days passing when Year Day or Leap Day occurs.\n",
"BULLET::::- Christian, Islamic and Jewish leaders are historically opposed to the calendar, as their tradition of worshiping every seventh day would result in either the day of the week of worship changing from year to year, or eight days passing when Armstrong Day or Aldrin Day occurs.\n",
"The familiar terms \"calendar\" and \"era\" (within the meaning of a coherent system of numbered calendar years) concern two complementary fundamental concepts of chronology. For example, during eight centuries the calendar belonging to the Christian era, which era was taken in use in the 8th century by Bede, was the Julian calendar, but after the year 1582 it was the Gregorian calendar. Dionysius Exiguus (about the year 500) was the founder of that era, which is nowadays the most widespread dating system on earth. An epoch is the date (year usually) when an era begins.\n",
"The calendar question reflects the dispute between those who wish to use a calendar which is reformed yet not Gregorian (effectively gaining the perceived benefits of the Gregorian calendar without disregarding the three anathemas issued against it in the sixteenth century), something which opponents consider unnecessary and damaging to continuity, and those who wish to maintain the traditional ecclesiastical calendar (which happens to be based on the Julian calendar), arguing that such a modern change goes against 1900 years of church tradition and was in fact perpetrated without an ecumenical council, which would surely have rejected the idea.\n"
] |
What causes logs to turn white while burning, and why do moving black patches appear? | The ash that is produced is composed of several products. Some of of it is incompletely combusted carbon which tends to be black. Other components are due to other elements in the wood such as magnesium which forms white magnesium oxide when burned. The colour fluctuations you see while it is burning is due to blackbody radiation. When a surface doesn't emit light of its own (luminescence) it is considered black. When heated, the body starts to emit radiation at low frequency first (infrared, which we feel as heat). As it gets hotter, the frequency of the radiation increases to red, orange, and then white. The hotter the object the higher the frequency of radiation emitted. The temperature in the fire fluctuates due to convection currents causing areas of the wood to change temperature resulting in the colour of the blackbody radiation to change as well. When it's very hot it appears white, if it cools off it appears black again. | [
"Logs that are cut from the butt forest, brought to a mill or to a log-house construction yard, have their bark removed and are used to build a log-house shell (handcrafted log houses), or sent through profiling machines (manufactured logs) are usually referred to as \"green\" logs if they have not been air- or kiln-dried. \"Green\" does not refer to color, but to moisture content (MC). The actual moisture content of \"green\" logs varies considerably with tree species (cedar, fir, spruce, pine etc.), the season in which it was cut, and whether sapwood or heartwood is being measured. Green logs may have a moisture content ranging from about 20% to 90% (the oven-dry method of measuring MC).\n",
"The composition of particulate matter that generally causes visual effects such as smog consists of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, mineral dust, organic matter, and elemental carbon also known as black carbon or soot. The particles are hygroscopic due to the presence of sulfur, and SO is converted to sulfate when high humidity and low temperatures are present. This causes the reduced visibility and yellow color.\n",
"Whitedamp is a noxious mixture of gases formed by the combustion of coal, usually in an enclosed environment such as a coal mine. The most toxic constituents are carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide. Coal frequently starts to burn slowly in mines when it is exposed to the atmosphere.\n",
"The black color effect was achieved by means of changing the amount of oxygen present during firing. This was done in a process known as three-phase firing and was likely accomplished with multiple firings of the pottery. First, the kiln was heated to around 920–950 °C, with all vents open bringing oxygen into the firing chamber and turning both pot and slip a reddish-brown (oxidising conditions) due to the formation of hematite (FeO) in both the paint and the clay body. Then the vent was closed and green wood introduced, creating carbon monoxide which turns the red hematite to black magnetite (FeO); at this stage the temperature decreases due to incomplete combustion. In a final reoxidizing phase (at about 800–850 °C) the kiln was opened and oxygen reintroduced causing the unslipped reserved clay to go back to orange-red.\n",
"The darkening of the colour relies on the ammonia reacting with tannins in the wood. The process is usually applied to white oak, as this wood has a high tannin content. Red oak may turn greenish rather than deep brown. Other species may not darken as noticeably as white oak, depending on the tannin content. The effect of fuming can be enhanced in non-tannic woods by applying a coat of tannic acid to the surface before fuming.\n",
"When smog levels are high, the sky appears yellowish-grey because nitrogen oxides are yellow. In contrast, sulfur oxides are colorless and vog looks grey. Once the vog layer dissipates, grey spots of vog in the sky may, for a time, remain trapped in the inversion layer.\n",
"The mottled white pockets and bleaching effect seen in spalted wood is due to white rot fungi. Primarily found on hardwoods, these fungi \"bleach\" by consuming lignin, which is the slightly pigmented area of a wood cell wall. Some white rotting can also be caused by an effect similar to pigmentation, in which the white hyphae of a fungus, such as \"Trametes versicolor\" (Fr.) Pil., is so concentrated in an area that a visual effect is created. \n"
] |
why right before you go to sleep do you feel heightened emotions that you normally don't feel during the day? either motivation for making a life change, fear for a test, regret for a decision etc. | Do some meditation and you'll see that this doesn't have to happen only at night. The sad fact is that people are scared to be alone with themselves and their thoughts. We find distractions to fill our minds every minute of every day. Have you ever seen the running joke on reddit that people HAVE to take something to the bathroom with them to read, even resorting to reading shampoo bottles if there is nothing else. We have to be distracted even when taking a poop.
It happens when you are about to sleep because that is the first time in the whole day that you are just alone in the quiet and can think about important stuff without distraction. | [
"Sleep plays a role in emotion regulation, although stress and worry can also interfere with sleep. Studies have shown that sleep, specifically REM sleep, down-regulates reactivity of the amygdala, a brain structure known to be involved in the processing of emotions, in response to previous emotional experiences. On the flip side, sleep deprivation is associated with greater emotional reactivity or overreaction to negative and stressful stimuli. This is a result of both increased amygdala activity and a disconnect between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, which regulates the amygdala through inhibition, together resulting in an overactive emotional brain. Due to the subsequent lack of emotional control, sleep deprivation may be associated with depression, impulsivity, and mood swings. Additionally, there is some evidence that sleep deprivation may reduce emotional reactivity to positive stimuli and events and impair emotion recognition in others.\n",
"The circadian rhythm provides a person with a signal for when to sleep and when to wake up. If circadian rhythm and sleep-wake cycle are misaligned, this might lead to negative affect and emotional instability. It has been found that emotions vary depending on the circadian rhythm and the duration of how long one was awake. Circadian sleep-rhythm disorders like shift-work disorder or Jetlag-disorder have been found to similarly contribute to the Dysregulation of affect, with symptoms like irritability, anxiety, apathy and dysphoria.\n",
"Sleep has a complex, and as of yet not fully elucidated, relationship with mood. Most commonly if a person is sleep deprived he/she will become more irritable, angry, more prone to stress, and less energized throughout the day. \"Studies have shown that even partial sleep deprivation has a significant effect on mood. University of Pennsylvania researchers found that subjects who were limited to only 4.5 hours of sleep a night for one week reported feeling more stressed, angry, sad, and mentally exhausted. When the subjects resumed normal sleep, they reported a dramatic improvement in mood.\" Generally, evening oriented people, as compared to morning ones, show decreased energy and pleasantness and heightened tension.\n",
"Scientists offer two explanations for the effects of sleep loss on emotions. One explanation is that sleep loss causes disinhibition of emotional brain regions, leading to an overall increase in emotional intensity (also referred to as Dysregulation Model). The other explanation describes how sleep loss causes an increase in fatigue and sleepiness, coupled with an overall decrease in energy and arousal, leading to an overall decrease in emotional intensity (also referred to as Fatigue Model).\n",
"Sleep allows people to rest and re-energize for another day filled with interactions and tasks. If someone is stressed it is extremely important for them to get enough sleep so that they can think clearly. Unfortunately, chemical changes in the body caused by stress can make sleep a difficult thing. Glucocorticoids are released by the body in response to stress which can disrupt sleep.\n",
"The circadian rhythm taking hold is responsible for the feeling of fatigue. Our body naturally starts to shut down, around the time that the sun starts to take its dip into the horizon. The primary chemical for this happening is melatonin, so it would seem natural to wonder if melatonin has some effect on learning and memory formation as well. Every animal that sleeps also exhibits some bodily concentration of melatonin. When studying the effects of sleepiness on fish, it was found that any significant amount of melatonin causes a \"dramatic decrease\" in learning and memory formation.\n",
"Sexual intercourse, and specifically orgasm, may have an effect on the ability to fall asleep for some people. The period after orgasm (known as a refractory period) is often a time of increased relaxation, attributed to the release of the neurohormones oxytocin and prolactin.\n"
] |
how to christians justify strict adherence to one part of the bible (e.g. homosexuals not allowed to marry) and complete disregard for another (e.g. bible says you cannot get a divorce, etc.)? | Because people tend to not follow rules/laws they don't want to follow. Every religion has the rules that only the most devout people follow because those rules are inconvenient. And you'd have trouble finding someone who doesn't J-walk even though it's against the law, because it's an inconvenient law. | [
"Christian marriage is to be between one woman (adult female) and one man (adult male) and that God Himself joined them and that no human is to separate them, according to Christ (Matthew 19:4-6). The Holy New Testament states that an unmarried Christian woman is to celibate or is to become the Christian wife of one Christian husband to avoid sexual immorality and for sexual passion (1 Cor 7:1-2 & 8-9). Holy New Testament permits divorce of a Christian wife by a Christian husband only if she has committed adultery (Matthew 5:32). The Holy New Testament allows a Christian widow to (re)marry any Christian man she chooses (1 Cor 7:39) but forbids a divorced Christian woman to (re)marry a Christian man because she would be committing adultery if she did (Matthew 5:32), she is to remain unmarried and celibate or be reconciled with her Christian husband (1 Cor 7:1-2 & 8-9 and 1 Cor 7:10-11). A Christian wife can divorce a non-Christian husband if he wants a divorce (1 Cor 7:12-16). Christian husbands are to love their Christian wives as Christ loved the Church (Ephesians 5:25) and as he loves himself (Ephesian 5:33). The Christian wife is to respect her Christian husband (Ephesians 5:33). Christian husbands are to not be harsh with their Christian wives (Colossians 3:19) and to treat them as a delicate vessel and with honor (1 Peter 3:7). Females are equal to males (Galatians 3:28). \n",
"BULLET::::- The bishops of the Anglican Communion in 1998 upheld the traditional Christian teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman and that those who are not called to marriage so defined should remain celibate. A resolution was passed stating that \"homosexual acts\" are \"incompatible with Scripture\" by a vote of 526–70; however, it also contained a statement which \"calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals, violence within marriage and any trivialisation and commercialisation of sex,\" and noted importantly: \"We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ.\" The Lambeth Conference is \"not an executive which imposes doctrine or discipline but it is a forum where the mind of the Communion can be expressed on matters of controversy\". Over 100 bishops, including some who voted in favour of the resolution, immediately repudiated it and signed a letter of apology to gay and lesbian Anglicans. However over 80% of the bishops did not do so.\n",
"The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that two partners commit adultery when they have sexual relations, even transient ones, while at least one of them is married to another party. There, adultery is defined as an injustice because it is an injury of the covenant of the marriage bond, a transgression of the other spouse, an undermining of the institution of marriage and a compromising of the welfare of children who need their parents' stable union.\n",
"Most Christians teach that sexual intercourse should occur exclusively within marriage, and that sexual abstinence is the norm outside of that. Sex between people not married to each other is either fornication or adultery. But for married couples, Paul of Tarsus wrote that they should not deprive each other, except for a short time for devotion to prayer.\n",
"In a case concerning a married lesbian pastor, the Western Cape High Court determined that \"the Methodist church did not have a rule prohibiting its ministers from marrying someone of the same sex\". Additionally, another court determined that the denomination \"even accepts same-sex relationships (as long as such relationships are not solemnised by marriage), which means it is not at the core of the Church’s beliefs\". At the Constitutional Court, the Church said that \"it tolerates homosexual relationships but requires its ministers not to enter into same-sex marriages.\" Regarding a specific case involving a lesbian minister, the MCSA \"allowed her to be in a homosexual relationship whilst being a minister, and allowed her to stay in the Church’s manse with her partner, but drew the line at recognising her same-sex marriage.\" In 2016, the Rev Londiwe Zulu, an openly lesbian Methodist pastor, participated in a panel on human sexuality.\n",
"On various occasions LDS church leaders have taught that members should not masturbate as part of obedience to the LDS law of chastity. The LDS church believes that sex outside of opposite-sex marriage is sinful and that any same-sex sexual activity is a serious sin. God is believed to be in a heterosexual marriage with Heavenly Mother and Mormons believe that opposite-sex marriage what God wants for all his children. Top LDS church leaders used to teach that attractions to those of the same sex were a sin or disease that could be changed or fixed, but now have no stance on the etiology of homosexuality, and teach that therapy focused on changing sexual orientation is unethical. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual members are, thus, left with the option of attempting to change their sexual orientation, entering a mixed-orientation opposite-sex marriage, or living a celibate lifestyle without any sexual expression (including masturbation).\n",
"In 2013, the Western Cape High Court found that \"the Methodist Church did not have a rule prohibiting its ministers from marrying someone of the same sex\". Additionally, in 2015, another court determined that the denomination \"even accepts same-sex relationships (as long as such relationships are not solemnised by marriage), which means it is not at the core of the Church’s beliefs\". At the Constitutional Court, the church stated that the church \"tolerates homosexual relationships but requires its ministers not to enter into same-sex marriages.\" The Church allowed [gay ministers] to be in a homosexual relationship whilst being a minister, and allowed [a gay minister] to stay in the Church’s manse with [a] partner, but drew the line at recognising her same-sex marriage.\"\n"
] |
What speed and distance units were used to measure speed before cars? | Speed limits for horses were often expressed in terms of the horse's gait: walking only, no trotting or running, etc. Certainly by 1905, towns were posting speed limits for autos in mph.
But miles per hour were certainly well known for trains, and speeds for ships were similarly measured in knots. It's just that steam engines didn't commonly have speedometers, so an engineer interested in his speed had to count telegraph poles or mileposts passed in a certain amount of time. | [
"Speed is the change in distance to an object with respect to time. Thus the existing system for measuring distance, combined with a memory capacity to see where the target last was, is enough to measure speed. At one time the memory consisted of a user making grease pencil marks on the radar screen and then calculating the speed using a slide rule. Modern radar systems perform the equivalent operation faster and more accurately using computers.\n",
"Another common unit of speed is meters per second (m/s), used especially for lifts and cable cars. Odometers are permitted to record miles or kilometers, but must be clearly labeled as to which unit they record.\n",
"A speedometer or a speed meter is a gauge that measures and displays the instantaneous speed of a vehicle. Now universally fitted to motor vehicles, they started to be available as options in the 1900s, and as standard equipment from about 1910 onwards. Speedometers for other vehicles have specific names and use other means of sensing speed. For a boat, this is a pit log. For an aircraft, this is an airspeed indicator.\n",
"U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 101, which governs vehicle controls and displays, permits speedometers to display miles per hour (MPH) or both MPH and km/h. In practice, most U.S.-market vehicles have mile odometers and dual-labeled speedometers with miles-per-hour as the primary calibration. Some 2000s era Buicks have a single speed gauge with a button on the instrument panel to switch the scale between MPH and km/h. Other vehicles have digital speedometers which can be set to read out speeds in either MPH or km/h.\n",
"Distance signs had displayed kilometres since the 1970s but road speed limits were in miles per hour until January 2005, when they were finally changed to kilometres per hour. Since 2005 all new cars sold in Ireland have speedometers that display only kilometres per hour; odometers generally became metric as well.\n",
"BULLET::::- \"Time mean speed\" is measured at a reference point on the roadway over a period of time. In practice, it is measured by the use of loop detectors. Loop detectors, when spread over a reference area, can identify each vehicle and can track its speed. However, average speed measurements obtained from this method are not accurate because instantaneous speeds averaged over several vehicles do not account for the difference in travel time for the vehicles that are traveling at different speeds over the same distance.\n",
"In the 1940s and 1950s it was renowned for the number of speed records set on a measured kilometer of highway. Not just absolute speed records, manufacturers wanted each model's maximum speed measured and certified by the Royal Automobile Club of Belgium. For example, the Healey Elliott with 110.65 mph in 1946, at the time the 'fastest car in the world in series production', the Jaguar XK120 achieved an officially timed ; the \"Jabbeke Speed Record\" Triumph TR2 (124.889 mph) car was driven by Ken Richardson; André Pilette set a Belgian record in the 2 litre class in the Veritas RS ; in 1952 the Rover JET 1 turbine driven by Spen King set the first speed record for gas turbine cars at over the flying kilometre; and the exotic Pegaso Z-102 clocked to make it the 'fastest production car in the world'.\n"
] |
what does a light scratch hurt more than a deep cut? | Because most of the pain receptors are found near the surface of your skin, , so a wide superficial cut will trigger a lot more pain receptors than a small but deep puncture. | [
"Low levels of damaging forces produce small bruises and generally cause the individual to feel minor pain straight away. Repeated impacts worsen bruises, increasing the harm level. Normally, light bruises heal nearly completely within two weeks, although duration is affected by variation in severity and individual healing processes; generally, more severe or deeper bruises take somewhat longer.\n",
"For those with a dermal punch in the area, the \"piercing\" is so large that it isn't strictly necessary to wear jewelry. The wound will in fact heal faster without jewelry, but one runs the risk of uneven healing, making for a less-than-circular hole and possibly leading to ill-fitting jewelry.\n",
"Bruises often induce pain immediately after the trauma that results in their formation, but small bruises are not normally dangerous alone. Sometimes bruises can be serious, leading to other more life-threatening forms of hematoma, such as when associated with serious injuries, including fractures and more severe internal bleeding. The likelihood and severity of bruising depends on many factors, including type and healthiness of affected tissues. Minor bruises may be easily recognized in people with light skin color by characteristic blue or purple appearance (idiomatically described as \"black and blue\") in the days following the injury.\n",
"Physical or chemical injuries of the eye can be a serious threat to vision if not treated appropriately and in a timely fashion. The most obvious presentation of ocular (eye) injuries is redness and pain of the affected eyes. This is not, however, universally true, as tiny metallic projectiles may cause neither symptom. Tiny metallic projectiles should be suspected when a patient reports \"metal on metal\" contact, such as with hammering a metal surface. Intraocular foreign bodies do not cause pain because of the lack of nerve endings in the vitreous humour and retina that can transmit pain sensations. As such, general or emergency department doctors should refer cases involving the posterior segment of the eye or intraocular foreign bodies to an ophthalmologist. Ideally, ointment would not be used when referring to an ophthalmologist, since it diminishes the ability to carry out a thorough eye examination.\n",
"The very worst part was, after that surgery they had to take all my bandages off in this place called the whirlpool room. That was pure hell because it felt like they were just ripping my skin off. The pain wasn’t like anything I’ve ever felt. It’s so different from anything that I’ve ever felt happen to me on a skateboard. It felt like it was constantly burning, like I was still on fire.\n",
"Activation of nociceptors is not necessary to cause the sensation of pain. Damage or injury to nerve fibers that normally respond to innocuous stimuli like light touch may lower their activation threshold needed to respond; this change causes the organism to feel intense pain from the lightest of touch. Neuropathic pain syndromes are caused by lesions or diseases of the parts of the nervous system that normally signal pain. There are four main classes: \n",
"Cutaneous loxoscelism results from serious bites causing a necrotising skin ulcer in about 50% of bites with destruction of soft tissue and may take months, and rarely years to heal, leaving deep scars. The damaged tissue will become gangrenous black and eventually slough away. Initially there may be no pain from a bite, but over time the wound may grow to as large as 10 inches (25 cm) in extreme cases. Bites are felt initially but may take up to seven hours to cause visible damage; more serious systemic effects may occur before this time, as venom of any kind spreads throughout the body in minutes. \n"
] |
I have an AP US History exam tomorrow, what is one bit of US History you feel is important for me to know? | Alexander Hamilton shows up all the time. On every practice exam I took, he was on it. So I'd know who he is and why he's important (and why he's the most awesome founding father ever, but that's just me.)
The other guy who will show up all the time is Henry Clay. That dude lived for a long time. | [
"The AP U.S. History exam lasts 3 hours and 15 minutes and consists of two sections; additionally, each section is divided into two parts. Section I, part A includes 55 multiple choice questions with each question containing four choices. The multiple choice questions cover American History from just before European contact with Native Americans to the present day. Moreover, section I, part B includes three short-answer questions. The first two questions are required, but students choose between the third and fourth questions. In total, students are given 95 minutes (55 for the multiple choice section and 40 for three short-answer questions) to complete section I.\n",
"The College Board suggests as preparation for the test a year-long course in United States History at the college preparatory level. The test requires understanding of historical data and concepts, cause and effect relationships, geography, and the ability to effectively synthesize and interpret data from charts, maps, and other visual media. However, most questions from this test are derived from/similar to the AP US History Multiple Choice questions from 2014 and earlier (the 2015 exam has been revised). By taking an AP class, IB History of the Americas, or a class with similar rigor, the chances at doing well on this test are much improved.\n",
"In the 2008-2009 school year, Townsend Harris is offering the following Advanced Placement (AP) classes: World History, United States History, United States Government, Environmental Science, Psychology, Calculus AB/BC, Computer Science, Japanese Language and Culture, , Statistics, French Language, Art History, and Spanish Language, Spanish Literature.\n",
"The AP U.S. History course is designed to provide the same level of content and instruction that students would face in a freshman-level college survey class. AP U.S. History classes generally use a college-level textbook as the foundation for the course.\n",
"The College Board recommends a one-year preparatory course in World History, as well as independent reading on material related to historical content. However, the questions are very similar to the AP World History Exam, and it is recommended a student do significant outside study by reading and working questions from a commercially available SAT World History, an AP World History preparation book, various online test preparation resources, or an AP Textbook if that student has not taken an AP course in World History.\n",
"For the 2010-11 academic year, the District offered five advanced placement (AP) courses. For 2011 the administration plans to provide 11 courses. These courses will include: U.S. history, U.S. government, world history, chemistry, physics, biology, English III, English IV, Spanish, statistics, and calculus AB.\n",
"BULLET::::- The College Board, AP® Art History Course and Exam Description, Effective Fall 2015, November 20, 2015; revised and corrected edition April 21, 2017. Includes sample tests and curricula, with appendices on 250 required works.\n"
] |
what is the difference between an emoji and an emoticon? | An emoji is a little picture, while an emoticon is a collection of letters and symbols which look like a little picture (;-) | [
"Emoticons is a Unicode block containing graphic representations of faces, which are often associated with classic emoticons. They exist largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' implementations of Shift JIS.\n",
"An emoticon (, , rarely pronounced ), short for \"emotion icon\", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings or mood, or as a time-saving method. The first ASCII emoticons, codice_1 and codice_2, were written by Scott Fahlman in 1982, but emoticons actually originated on the PLATO IV computer system in 1972.\n",
"Emoticons may be used to express a wider range of responses, usually expressed by non-verbal communication: for example to soften negative statements, or to express enthusiastic approval or humour (Bell & Zaitseva, 2005) . On the other hand, emoticons may be perceived as childish, or not appropriate in formal education. Emoticons are routinely available in chat rooms and forums in the public domain, but are not currently embedded in every VLE. For example, Moodle has emoticons but they are not available in current versions of Blackboard.\n",
"One of the most popular emoticon used by Hongkongers. It was originated from the emoji input code (a crown emoji will shown automatically after typing these characters) in the Hong Kong Golden Forum. This is an ironic emoticon as the central meaning of this emoji is to deride a person who did something stupid.\n",
"Emoji are pictograms that can be used and displayed inline with text. They are similar to previous symbol typefaces, but with a much larger range of characters, such as symbols for common objects, animals, food types, weather and emotions. Originally developed in Japan, they are now commonly installed on many computer and smartphone operating systems. Following standardisation and inclusion in the Unicode standard, allowing them to be used internationally, the number of Emoji characters has rapidly increased to meet the demands of an expanded range of cultures using them; unlike many previous symbol typefaces, they are interchangeable with the ability to display the pictures of the same meaning in a range of fonts on different operating systems. The popularity of emoji has meant that characters have sometimes gained culture-specific meanings not inherent to the design. Both colour and monochrome emoji typefaces exist, as well as at least one animated design.\n",
"Also of note is Emoji, based on a vocabulary of 722 emoticons, and popular in electronic communications throughout Japan. Emoji icons are heavily slanted toward conveying emotional \"punctuation,\" and more useful in augmenting SMS than in communicating complete stand-alone messages.\n",
"BULLET::::- Emoji: These pictographic characters are often mistakenly believed to be a simplified form of the word emoticon, itself a portmanteau of \"emotional icon\". However, \"emoji\" is a Japanese term composed from \"e\" (image) and \"moji\" (character).\n"
] |
why is there always construction being done on roads that had nothing wrong with them? | Yes, that happens. But preventative maintenance is still a thing.
Also, sometimes they have to work on something under the road (sewer/gas line, etc) and there's nothing to be done but to tear up the road to do it. | [
"When roads are built by engineers with capital to support their work, they are successfully able to build roads across difficult soils. Modern road builders have less need to seek out easy geological conditions. When roads were made not by civil engineers but by people walking on the ground, the road followed the soils which were found to be easiest under foot.\n",
"The design, construction and management of roads, parking and other related facilities as well as the design and regulation of vehicles can change their effect. Roads are known to cause significant damage to forests, prairies, streams and wetlands. Besides the direct habitat loss due to the road itself, and the roadkill of animal species, roads alter water-flow patterns, increase noise, water, and air pollution, create disturbance that alters the species composition of nearby vegetation thereby reducing habitat for local native animals, and act as barriers to animal movements. Roads are a form of linear infrastructure intrusion that has some effects similar to infrastructure such as railroads, power lines, and canals, particularly in tropical forests.\n",
"Roads are in poor shape, reducing the opportunity to sell goods and increasing costs of purchases, but a project by the Concern charity achieved improvements in 2008. of roads and 54 small bridges were rehabilitated using local labor, which helped feed money into the local economy.\n",
"The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 created over 12,600 road construction projects, over 10,000 of which were in progress as of 2010. Workers in highway work zones are exposed to a variety of hazards and face risk of injury and death from construction equipment as well as passing motor vehicles. Workers on foot are exposed to passing traffic, often at high speeds, while workers who operate construction vehicles are at risk of injury due to overturn, collision, or being caught in running equipment. Regardless of the task assigned, construction workers work in conditions in poor lighting, poor visibility, inclement weather, congested work areas, high volume traffic and speeds. In 2011, there were a total of 119 fatal occupation fatalities in road construction sites. In 2010 there were 37,476 injuries in work zones; about 20,000 of those were to construction workers. Causes of road work site injuries included being struck by objects, trucks or mobile equipment (35%), falls or slips (20%), overexertion (15%), transportation incidents (12%), and exposure to harmful substances or environments (5%). Causes of fatalities included getting hit by trucks (58%), mobile machinery (22%), and automobiles (13%).\n",
"The road has been in poor condition for years. Travel for most of 2015 proved quite difficult for many motorist who did not have large vehicles such as farm equipment or a truck. As of May 2016 the road decay and hazards have become more numerous. Within this time, repair work of patching and removal of asphalt has created additional hazards as the patching lasted only about week before falling apart and has been done poorly enough to create an even greater uneven surface. Many motorists may be forced to slow to in many areas.\n",
"Bernard Hunt, of HTA Architects noted that: \"We have theories, specialisms, regulations, exhortations, demonstration projects. We have planners. We have highway engineers. We have mixed use, mixed tenure, architecture, community architecture, urban design, neighbourhood strategy. But what seems to have happened is that we have simply lost the art of placemaking; or, put another way, we have lost the simple art of placemaking. We are good at putting up buildings but we are bad at making places.\"\n",
"Although some roads have much older origins, the network was subject to major development from the 1950s to the mid-1990s. From then, construction of roads has become increasingly controversial with direct action campaigns by environmentalists in opposition.\n"
] |
if looked at under an extremely powerful microscope, what would sub-atomic particles look like? what would the space between them look like? | Part of the problem with you question is that "looking" is something that is not independent of size.
Visible light has a wavelength from 390 to 700 nm (3.9 to 4 x 10^−7 m) while atoms have a radius of 30 to 300 pm (3 to 30 x10^-11 m).
So seeing is not really applicable here visible light does not work at this scale.
| [
"Because of their extremely small size, the study of microscopic and subatomic particles fall in the realm of quantum mechanics. They will exhibit phenomena demonstrated in the particle in a box model, including wave–particle duality, and whether particles can be considered distinct or identical is an important question in many situations.\n",
"Atomic dimensions are thousands of times smaller than the wavelengths of light (400–700 nm) so they cannot be viewed using an optical microscope. However, individual atoms can be observed using a scanning tunneling microscope. To visualize the minuteness of the atom, consider that a typical human hair is about 1 million carbon atoms in width. A single drop of water contains about 2 sextillion () atoms of oxygen, and twice the number of hydrogen atoms. A single carat diamond with a mass of contains about 10 sextillion (10) atoms of carbon. If an apple were magnified to the size of the Earth, then the atoms in the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple.\n",
"Nucleic acid structures can be directly imaged by atomic force microscopy, which is well suited to extended two-dimensional structures, but less useful for discrete three-dimensional structures because of the microscope tip's interaction with the fragile nucleic acid structure; transmission electron microscopy and cryo-electron microscopy are often used in this case. Extended three-dimensional lattices are analyzed by X-ray crystallography.\n",
"Fig. 4 is a \"space-filling\" representation of formic acid, where atoms are drawn as solid spheres to suggest the space they occupy. This and all space-filling models are necessarily icons or abstractions: atoms are nuclei with electron \"clouds\" of varying density surrounding them, and as such have no actual surfaces. For many years the size of atoms has been approximated by physical models (CPK) in which the volumes of plastic balls describe where much of the electron density is to be found (often sized to van der Waals radii). That is, the surface of these models is meant to represent a specific \"level of density\" of the electron cloud, not any putative physical surface of the atom.\n",
"With J. J. Thomson's discovery of the electron in 1897, it became clear that atoms were not the smallest building blocks of nature, but were rather composite particles. The newly discovered structure within atoms tempted many to imagine how the atom's constituent parts might interact with each other. Thomson theorized that multiple electrons revolved in orbit-like rings within a positively charged jelly-like substance, and between the electron's discovery and 1909, this \"plum pudding model\" was the most widely accepted explanation of atomic structure.\n",
"Increasingly small particles have been discovered and researched: they include molecules, which are constructed of atoms, that in turn consist of subatomic particles, namely atomic nuclei and electrons. Many more types of subatomic particles have been found. Most such particles (but not electrons) were eventually found to be composed of even smaller particles such as quarks. Particle physics studies these smallest particles and their behaviour under high energies, whereas nuclear physics studies atomic nuclei and their (immediate) constituents: protons and neutrons.\n",
"It may not be possible to observe every atom in the asymmetric unit. In many cases, Crystallographic disorder smears the electron density map. Weakly scattering atoms such as hydrogen are routinely invisible. It is also possible for a single atom to appear multiple times in an electron density map, e.g., if a protein sidechain has multiple (4) allowed conformations. In still other cases, the crystallographer may detect that the covalent structure deduced for the molecule was incorrect, or changed. For example, proteins may be cleaved or undergo post-translational modifications that were not detected prior to the crystallization.\n"
] |
why jeremy johnson is being jailed for contempt of court after invoking his 5th amendment rights? | From the article:
> After being sworn in and refusing to answer basic questions, the judge found Johnson in contempt.
Your 5th Amendment rights don't apply to basic questioning, only to questions asked that could incriminate you while you are in custody. | [
"The Fifth Amendment protects against double jeopardy and self-incrimination and guarantees the rights to due process, grand jury screening of criminal indictments, and compensation for the seizure of private property under eminent domain. The amendment was the basis for the court's decision in \"Miranda v. Arizona\" (1966), which established that defendants must be informed of their rights to an attorney and against self-incrimination prior to interrogation by police.\n",
"Relying on the authoritative construction of the acts by the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, Brennan noted that merely telling another individual that their rights have been violated and referring that person to an attorney or group of attorneys became a crime under the five statutes. This chilled the lawyers' and individual's First Amendment rights, and made the individual's ability to enforce its Fourteenth Amendment rights difficult, both of which were unconstitutional: \"There thus inheres in the statute the gravest danger of smothering all discussion looking to the eventual institution of litigation on behalf of the rights of members of an unpopular minority.\"\n",
"In the majority opinion written by Justice Stanley Forman Reed, the Supreme Court found that while Adamson's rights may have been violated had the case been tried in federal court, the rights guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment did not extend to state courts based on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.\n",
"The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ensures that \"the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.\" The Fourth Amendment as the Framers' attempt to protect each citizen's spiritual and intellectual integrity. A government that violates the Fourth Amendment in order to use evidence against a citizen is also violating the Fifth Amendment.\n",
"Critics of his imprisonment claimed his civil rights were violated and that he was denied due process of law under the U.S. Constitution. They said his imprisonment without formal charges and denial of right to counsel was illegal.\n",
"Harlan reiterated that the Court's opinion was based purely on the Fourth Amendment claim DeForte had made, the only one before them. There was no need to decide a Fifth Amendment question, nor whether Fourth Amendment rights were primarily personal, or whether he could have asserted them on the union's behalf as well as his own. The Court considered only whether DeForte had standing to challenge the search, and if so, whether it had been illegal.\n",
"A considerable aspect of this work requires the US criminal defense lawyer to have a clear understanding of the United States Constitution. Specifically, the Fourth Amendment protects against unlawful searches and seizures, while the Fifth and Sixth Amendments govern the right to remain silent so one does not become a witness against himself. All of the Amendments to the United States Constitution are guaranteed to the criminal accused against the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, a criminal defense lawyer must understand each of these rights. Initial work on any criminal case involves review of the charges and the claimed facts, and analysis of constitutional violations, the \"prima facie\" burden of the prosecution, defenses, and affirmative defenses; as well as potential sentence and sentencing issues. Early stages of a criminal case may involve a grand jury or preliminary hearing to determine if there exists probable cause for the case to continue. A violation of the Fourth or Fifth Amendment, or other illegally obtained evidence could result in evidence being inadmissible at trial. Accordingly, a criminal defense lawyer often spends a considerable amount of time reviewing all documentation to determine if the case can be won on constitutional grounds due to illegal conduct by the government.\n"
] |
do the wings on my paper/plastic/model airplane work like the wings on a real airplane? if not, how does it fly? | Model airplanes, yes. They use a specially shaped wing to produce lift (see: airfoil). A paper airplane, however, is acting more like a parachute, using the large surface area to slow its descent. | [
"The wing box of an airplane is the structural component from which the wings extend. It is usually limited to the section of the fuselage between the wing roots, although on some aircraft designs, such as the Boeing 787, it may be considered to extend further.\n",
"\"Note on terminology:\" Most fixed-wing aircraft have left hand and right hand wings in a symmetrical arrangement. Strictly, such a pair of wings is called a wing plane or just plane. However, in certain situations it is common to refer to a plane as a wing, as in \"a biplane has two wings\", or to refer to the whole thing as a wing, as in \"a biplane wing has two planes\". Where the meaning is clear, this article follows common usage, only being more precise where needed to avoid real ambiguity or incorrectness.\n",
"The wings of a fixed-wing aircraft are static planes extending either side of the aircraft. When the aircraft travels forwards, air flows over the wings, which are shaped to create lift. This shape is called an airfoil and is shaped like a bird's wing.\n",
"A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft that has no definite fuselage. The crew, payload, fuel, and equipment are typically housed inside the main wing structure, although a flying wing may have various small protuberances such as pods, nacelles, blisters, booms, or vertical stabilizers.\n",
"Conversely there have been a small number of aircraft designs which have no separate wing, but use the fuselage to generate lift. Examples include National Aeronautics and Space Administration's experimental lifting body designs and the Vought XF5U-1 Flying Flapjack.\n",
"Altogether, the aerodynamic forces co-interact, creating turbulence that amplifies small changes in the surface of the paper aircraft. Modifications can be made to most paper airplanes by bending, curving or making small cuts in the trailing edges of wings and in the airplane's tail, if it has one.\n",
"Whether flexible or rigid, most wings have a strong frame to give them their shape and to transfer lift from the wing surface to the rest of the aircraft. The main structural elements are one or more spars running from root to tip, and many ribs running from the leading (front) to the trailing (rear) edge.\n"
] |
How do pebbles on the beach get those tiny holes through them? | The stones aren't the same stuff through and through. Sometimes there's an inclusion or patch or bit of other mineral that's more soluble or less resilient than the surrounding mineral, leaving a gap, hole, or pit. | [
"Pebbles are found in two locations – on the beaches of various oceans and seas, and inland where ancient seas used to cover the land. When then the seas retreated, the rocks became landlocked. They can also be found in lakes and ponds. Pebbles can also form in rivers, and travel into estuaries where the smoothing continues in the sea.\n",
"Beach pebbles and river pebbles are used for a variety of purposes, both outdoors and indoors. They can be sorted by colour and size, and they can also be polished to improve the texture and colour. Outdoors, beach pebbles are often used for landscaping, construction and as decorative elements. Beach pebbles are often used to cover walkways and driveways, around pools, in and around plant containers, on patios and decks. Beach and river pebbles are also used to create water-smart gardens in areas where water is scarce. Small pebbles are also used to create living spaces and gardens on the rooftops of buildings. Indoors, pebbles can be used as bookends and paperweights. Large pebbles are also used to create \"pet rocks\" for children.\n",
"Beach pebbles form gradually over time as the ocean water washes over loose rock particles. The result is a smooth, rounded appearance. The typical size range is from 2 mm to 50 mm. The colors range from translucent white to black, and include shades of yellow, brown, red and green. Some of the more plentiful pebble beaches are found along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, beginning in the United States and extending down to the tip of South America in Argentina. Other pebble beaches are found in northern Europe (particularly on the beaches of the Norwegian Sea), along the coast of the U.K. and Ireland, on the shores of Australia, and around the islands of Indonesia and Japan.\n",
"Pebbles come in various colors and textures and can have streaks, known as veins, of quartz or other minerals. Pebbles are mostly smooth but, dependent on how frequently they come in contact with the sea, they can have marks of contact with other rocks or other pebbles. Pebbles left above the high water mark may have growths of organisms such as lichen on them, signifying the lack of contact with seawater.\n",
"Pebbles were dredged from the seabed to provide the building materials needed, although most modern pebbledash is actually not pebbles at all, but small and sharp flint chips, and should correctly be called Spar dash or spa dash.\n",
"A particular feature of the beach is the unusual natural phenomenon, pertaining to the carefully graded size of the pebbles from which it is composed. These pebbles are no bigger than shingle at the West Bay end, and gradually increase in size to that of a baked-potato, at its Southernmost end, on the Isle of Portland.\n",
"Holes could be ground out of stones with the use of sharp pointed stones or hardened sticks. By spinning the ground stone with one's hands and applying substantial pressure to the sharp point into the ground stone, a hole could be drilled into the stone with a large amount of time and effort. Sand would be used to help quicken the process by putting it in the partially formed hole as the sharp point was being pressed. The sand would help grind more of the stone away. To put a hole all the way through a piece of stone, it would be first drilled half way in one direction and be finished on the opposite side.\n"
] |
does keeping someone "awake", keep them from dying like in movies? | > You know that thing they do in movies where people are like: "Hey, stay with me?" as if they're trying to keep someone from falling asleep? Does that actually prevent someone from passing away?
It does not. It is used to determine the patients ability to stay conscious. If it doesn't work anymore, the situation has gotten worse. As a side note, this method only tests their response to verbal stimuli. Another method is testing their response to painful stimuli, such as pinching the trapezius muscle or sternal rubs. These allow medics to place a patient on the AVPU scale of alert, responds to verbal, responds to pain, unresponsive.
Source: 5 years as a paramedic | [
"The Dead Sleep Easy is a 2007 Canadian drama film, a co-production of Odessa Filmworks and Zed Filmworks produced on location in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Its tagline is \"When you're this far south, sometimes it's better to be dead than alive.\"\n",
"BULLET::::- Waking sleepwalkers does not harm them. While it is true that a person may be confused or disoriented for a short time after awakening, this does not cause them further harm. In contrast, sleepwalkers may injure themselves if they trip over objects or lose their balance while sleepwalking.\n",
"BULLET::::- 3 The people belonging to the middle group, were “mentally healthy” people, which having suffered a serious injury are now unconscious. If they ever awake, they \"will awake to a nameless suffering\".\n",
"Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (, \"Do Not Profane the Sleep of the Dead\"; , \"Do Not Profane the Sleep of the Dead\"), also known as The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue and Don't Open the Window, is a 1974 Spanish-Italian science fiction zombie horror film written and directed by Jorge Grau and starring Ray Lovelock, Arthur Kennedy and Cristina Galbó. The film focuses on two protagonists who are harassed by a local police investigator in the English countryside and are implicated in murders committed by zombies who have been brought to life by a farming tool designed to kill insects via ultra-sonic radiation.\n",
"Dutt's son, Arun Dutt, considered the death to be an accident. Dutt had scheduled appointments for the next day with actress Mala Sinha and actor Raj Kapoor for his movie \"Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi\", to discuss the making of colour films. According to him, \"My father had sleeping disorders and popped sleeping pills like any other person. That day he was drunk and had taken an overdose of pills, which culminated in his death. It was a lethal combination of excessive liquor and sleeping pills.\"\n",
"It is also worth noting that Time Lords appear to have the ability to stay conscious for moments after events that would outright kill other lifeforms instantly, giving them the opportunity to regenerate. In \"Logopolis\", the Fourth Doctor falls hundreds of feet to the ground, yet is still conscious and able to talk to his companions when they find him minutes later before he regenerates. In \"The Caves of Androzani\", the Fifth Doctor remains conscious throughout the entire course of his (eventually fatal) spectrox toxaemia, while his human companion Peri loses consciousness as the disease worsens. In \"The Stolen Earth\", the Tenth Doctor is shot by a Dalek's energy weapon, which has almost always been shown to instantly kill any other lifeform, yet is still conscious and able to return, with some assistance, to the TARDIS in order to regenerate. However, he was skimmed by the energy shot, while all others were shot in the middle of the back or in the chest, closer to vital organs. The Eleventh Doctor is also shot squarely by a weakened Dalek in \"The Big Bang\" and severely injured, but he manages to execute his plan to restart the universe nonetheless.\n",
"BULLET::::- \"I'm starting to think that I'm dead. | Doesn't it make sense that death too would be wrapped in dream? That after death, your conscious life would continue in what might be called a dream body? It would be the same dream body you experience in your everyday dream life. Except that in the post-mortal state, you could never again wake up.\"\n"
] |
How does my brain instantly calculate that I can toss an object into a small area from several feet away while walking? | It's an interesting question; do you mean for something you are doing for the first time, something you have practiced, or something you do often without thinking too much about?
The same question could be asked about how people are able to react in sports to balls, for example. How does a tennis player know exactly how and when to hit a ball, how do they calculate in real-time, the exact direction and path of an incoming ball etc.
Is the answer simply trial and error? Are our brains simply advanced enough to calculate spatial awareness, coupled with intuitive movements that we know we are capable of? | [
"Cells in the M pathway have the ability to detect high temporal frequencies and can thus detect quick changes in the position of an object. This is the basis for detecting motion. The information sent to the Intraparietal Sulcus (IPS) of the posterior parietal cortex allows the M pathway to direct attention and guide saccadic eye movements to follow important moving objects in the visual field. In addition to following objects with the eyes, the IPS sends information to parts of the frontal lobe that allows the hands and arms to adjust their movements to correctly grasp objects based on their size, position, and location. This ability has led some neuroscientists to hypothesize that the purpose of the M pathway is not to detect spatial locations, but to guide actions related to the position and motion of objects.\n",
"We get our sense of direction when we match up spatial maps we have stored in the hippocampus, to the pattern of firing neurons when we are trying to find our way back or trying to find our car in the parking lot.\n",
"Some researchers such as Anjan Chatterjee at the University of Pennsylvania and Jonathan Fugelsang at the University of Waterloo are using neuroscience techniques to investigate the neural and psychological underpinnings of causal launching events in which one object causes another object to move. Both temporal and spatial factors can be manipulated.\n",
"If you know which way a target will move, or know the target trajectory (because it is periodic for instance), you can initiate pursuit before the target motion actually starts, especially if you know exactly when the motion will start.\n",
"HOD records for each moving point: how much it moves in each range of directions. HOD has a clear physical interpretation. It proposes that, a simple way to describe the motion of an object, is to indicate how much distance it moves in each direction. If the movement in all directions are saved accurately, the movement can be repeated from the initial position to the final destination regardless of the displacements order. However, the temporal information will be lost, as the order of movements is not stored-this is what we solve by applying the temporal pyramid, as shown in section \\ref{sec:temp-pyramid}. If the angles quantization range is small, classifiers that use the descriptor will overfit. Generalization needs some slack in directions-which can be done by increasing the quantization range.\n",
"This form of adaptation holds true only when the shift is small compared to the distance the person has to reach to hit the target. A person reaching for a target 15 cm away would adapt to a 2 cm shift of the cursor in a Bayesian way. However, if the target were only 5 cm away, a 2 cm shift cursor position (visual information) would be recognized and the person would realize the visual information does not accurately show hand position. Instead, the person would rely on proprioception and prior knowledge to move the hand to the target.\n",
"The premise of the method is that the human brain thinks in a number of distinct ways which can be deliberately challenged, and hence planned for use in a structured way allowing one to develop tactics for thinking about particular issues. De Bono identifies six distinct directions in which the brain can be challenged. In each of these directions the brain will identify and bring into conscious thought certain aspects of issues being considered (e.g. gut instinct, pessimistic judgement, neutral facts). None of these directions is a completely natural way of thinking, but rather how some of us already represent the results of our thinking.\n"
] |
Footage of people being knocked out by a 'sucker punch' usually shows their legs instantly going rigid. Why is this? | The nerves for conscious motor control originate in the "top" of the brain at the cortex and make up the corticospinal tract, but there are also subconscious reflex arcs that help you maintain your balance in the vestibulospinal tract.
These reflex arcs originate much lower in the brainstem and often even in the spinal cord itself. Their main way of maintaining posture is to extend the contralateral muscles when you lean too far to one side. This is why people sway side to side when standing with their eyes closed.
When the brain is traumatized to the point of unconsciousness, the corticospinal tract is overwhelmed by the vestibulospinal tract and the "extend" messages are the only messages the legs receive. Stiff legs are an indicator of damage to parts of the brain closer to the top of the head.
Source: [_URL_0_](_URL_1_) | [
"David Boreanaz's stunt double, Mike Massa, says the scene in which he is tossed across the room upside down is his favorite stunt of this season. To get the effect, he was shot across the room using an air ram. \"The reason I like it so much is because it really knocked the heck out of me,\" he says. \"It was 900 pounds of thrust on the air-ram. I had to hit the corner just right. If I was off, if I hit dead center of the corner with my shoulders spread it could have broken a collarbone. I had to hit it sideways, my back flat to the wall and kind of skip into it, but it just pile drove me right to the ground.\" Director Jim Contner \"was jumping up and down... He thought that was the best stunt he'd ever seen.\"\n",
"-Finally, the Dodgers used to play a game called \"flinch\", where a person would fake throwing a punch at another and, if the other person flinched, the one who faked the blow would get to punch the other in the chest. Orel Hershiser tried this with Gibson, and Gibson responded by shoving Hershiser with his forearm (\"forearm shiver\") and telling him sternly, \"I don't play 'Flinch'!\"\n",
"Later on in \"Wacaday\"'s run, Mallett's infamous routine of hitting people over the head with his giant foam mallet was changed slightly, particularly in the \"Mallett's Mallet\" game, where he would instead hit large buttons on a machine to keep score, as the producers feared that young viewers at home might try and copy the routine by hitting people over the head with heavy objects.\n",
"Among causes of fatal crushes, sometimes described as \"crazes\", is when a large crowd is trying to get \"toward\" something; typically occurring when members at the back of a large crowd continue pushing forward not knowing that those at the front are being crushed, or because of something that forces them to move.\n",
"The twister (a similar move in wrestling is known as a guillotine) is a sideways body bend and neck crank, which involves forcing the head towards the shoulder while controlling the body, hence causing lateral hyperflexion of the cervical spine. The technique involves tension in several body parts, and depending on the flexibility of the recipient, can also involve pain in the knees, abdominals and torso. The twister is often confused as being a spine crank since it involves a degree of lateral non-cervical spinal flexion. The main pressure is however on the cervical spine, hence making it a neck crank. It is performed from a back mount single vine ride position, where the top man has one \"hook\" threaded through the bottom man's legs and secured behind the ankle. The top man then pulls the bottom man's opposite arm behind his own head and grabs hold of his opponent's head, pulling it down to his shoulder. Popularized by Eddie Bravo and the 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu system. On March 26, 2011 Chan Sung Jung finished Leonard Garcia at in round 2 of their fight using a twister, the first, and as of 2019, the only twister finish in UFC history. Prior to this, Shuichiro Katsumura defeated Hiroyuki Yamashiro with a twister in ZST 20 on May 24, 2009. On December 31, 2014, Shinya Aoki scored a first-round twister win over Yuki Yamamoto at Inoki Genome Federation's \"Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye 2014\". At the 2015 ADCC tournament in São Paulo, Vinny Magalhaes submitted Rodrigo Artilheiro in the quarterfinals using a twister. Angela Lee defeated Natalie Hills by a Twister at One FC : Pride of Lions. \n",
"BULLET::::- The aforementioned hippopotamus driving most of the other patrons out of the theater by various means, including sitting on the feet of the person behind him (bending the feet into a 90-degree angle), smacking a spectator hard enough to squash his entire upper body into his hat, and elbowing an entire row hard enough to push them out through the theater wall\n",
"In 2005, JM released \"Donkey Punch\", which features actresses receiving a donkey punch. Actress Alex Divine reportedly posted on ExtremeGirlForum.com that \"\"Donkey Punch\" was the most brutal, depressing, scary scene that I have ever done.\" Although she initially agreed to be hit on the head during the scene, she claimed to have misunderstood exactly how physical the scene would be.\n"
] |
what does western society have against the female nipple? (serious responses only) | It's not so much that society is *against* the female nipple. It's more that society is against public sexuality. A fully nude man is, broadly speaking, no more acceptable in public than a fully nude woman. But female nudity has become so fetishised that the default assumption is that bare skin on a woman is sexual in nature.
The result is that bare chests on men are not seen as *automatically* sexual, but bare chests on women are. So bare nipples in public are commonly more accepted on men than they are on women. | [
"The culture tendency to hide the female nipple under clothing has existed in Western culture since the 1800s. As female nipples are often perceived an intimate part, covering them might originate as a Victorian taboo just as was riding side saddle. Exposing the entire breast and nipple is a form of protest for some and a crime for others. The exposure of nipples is usually considered immodest and in some instances is viewed as lewd or indecent behavior.\n",
"Social conventions requiring females to cover their breasts in public have been widespread throughout history and across cultures. Contemporary Western cultures usually regard the exposure of the nipples and areolae as immodest and sometimes prosecute it as indecent exposure. However, the covering of the nipples and areolae in some manner is regarded as sufficient to maintain modesty and decency, at least within the letter if not the spirit of the censors' guidelines.\n",
"Some cultures have even begun to expand social prohibitions on female toplessness to prepubescent and even infant girls. This trend toward covering the female nipple from infancy onward is particularly noticeable in the United States, Eastern Asia and the Middle East, but is much less common in Europe.\n",
"In many cultures it is not acceptable to bare the buttocks in public; deliberately doing so is sometimes intended as an insult. In public, Western standards of decency expect people to cover their genitalia, and women to cover their breasts. In the early twenty-first century, public breastfeeding has become increasingly acceptable, sometimes protected by law. President Barack Obama's health care bill from 2010 provides additional support to nursing mothers, requiring employers to provide a private and shielded space for employees to use in order to nurse.\n",
"In much of contemporary Western society, it is not culturally acceptable for women to expose their nipples and areola in public. In most Western societies, once girls enter adolescence, it is the social norm for them to behave modestly and cover their breasts in public. Until recent times, women who went topless were cited for indecent exposure or lewdness. Women and the law in most western countries generally do not regard breasts as indecent. However, wearing a top in public is a social norm and most women are reluctant to go against it. The strictness of the etiquette varies depending on the social context. For example, at specific cultural events the norm may be relaxed, such as at Fantasy Fest, at Mardi Gras in New Orleans and at the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro. The same may also apply at designated topless beaches.\n",
"Many cultures, including Western cultures in North America, associate breasts with sexuality and tend to regard bare breasts as immodest or indecent. In some cultures, like the Himba in northern Namibia, bare-breasted women are normal. In some African cultures, for example, the thigh is regarded as highly sexualised and never exposed in public, but breast exposure is not taboo. In a few Western countries and regions female toplessness at a beach is acceptable, although it may not be acceptable in the town center.\n",
"The legality around the exposure of nipples are inconsistently regulated throughout the US. Some states do not allow the visualization of any part of the breast. Other jurisdictions prohibit any female chest anatomy by banning anatomical structures that lie below the top of the areola or nipple. Such is the case in West Virginia and Massachusetts. West Virginia's regulation is very specific and is not likely to be misinterpreted, stating: \"[The] display of 'any portion of the cleavage of the human female breast exhibited by a dress, blouse, skirt, leotard, bathing suit, or other wearing apparel [is permitted] provided the areola is not exposed, in whole or in part.'\"\n"
] |
Does an increase in energy also increases the amount of entropy in a system? | Generally speaking, yes. When increasing the internal energy of a system increases its entropy, that system is said to be at positive (absolute) temperature.
Certain systems can be arranged in a way that increasing their energy decreases their entropy. Then it would have a negative temperature.
So any system with positive temperature behaves as you described. | [
"This effect can be explained by looking at the change in entropy of the system. At zero temperature only the lowest energy level is occupied, entropy is zero, and there is very little probability of a transition to a higher energy level. As the temperature increases, there is an increase in entropy and thus the probability of a transition goes up. As the temperature approaches the difference between the energy levels there is a broad peak in the specific heat corresponding to a large change in entropy for a small change in temperature. At high temperatures all of the levels are populated evenly, so there is again little change in entropy for small changes in temperature, and thus a lower specific heat capacity. \n",
"The common argument used to explain this is that, locally, entropy can be lowered by external action, e.g. solar heating action, and that this applies to machines, such as a refrigerator, where the entropy in the cold chamber is being reduced, to growing crystals, and to living organisms. This local increase in order is, however, only possible at the expense of an entropy increase in the surroundings; here more disorder must be created. The conditioner of this statement suffices that living systems are open systems in which both heat, mass, and or work may transfer into or out of the system. Unlike temperature, the putative entropy of a living system would drastically change if the organism were thermodynamically isolated. If an organism was in this type of “isolated” situation, its entropy would increase markedly as the once-living components of the organism decayed to an unrecognizable mass.\n",
"The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases over time. Such systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium, the state with maximum entropy. Non-isolated systems may lose entropy, provided their environment's entropy increases by at least that amount so that the total entropy increases. Entropy is a function of the state of the system, so the change in entropy of a system is determined by its initial and final states. In the idealization that a process is reversible, the entropy does not change, while irreversible processes always increase the total entropy.\n",
"The entropy of a system depends on its internal energy and its external parameters, such as its volume. In the thermodynamic limit, this fact leads to an equation relating the change in the internal energy \"U\" to changes in the entropy and the external parameters. This relation is known as the \"fundamental thermodynamic relation\". If external pressure \"p\" bears on the volume \"V\" as the only external parameter, this relation is:\n",
"Thermal energy in equilibrium at a given temperature already represents the maximal evening-out of energy between all possible states. because it is not entirely convertible a \"useful\" form, i.e. one that can do more than just affect temperature. The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system can never decrease. For this reason, thermal energy in a system may be converted to other kinds of energy with efficiencies approaching 100% only if the entropy of the universe is increased by other means, in order to compensate for the decrease in entropy associated with the disappearance of the thermal energy and its entropy content. Otherwise, only a part of that thermal energy may be converted to other kinds of energy (and thus useful work). This is because the remainder of the heat must be reserved to be transferred to a thermal reservoir at a lower temperature. The increase in entropy for this process is greater than the decrease in entropy associated with the transformation of the rest of the heat into other types of energy.\n",
"The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time. The total entropy of a system and its surroundings can remain constant in ideal cases where the system is in thermodynamic equilibrium, or is undergoing a (fictive) reversible process. In all processes that occur, including spontaneous processes, the total entropy of the system and its surroundings increases and the process is irreversible in the thermodynamic sense. The increase in entropy accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, and the asymmetry between future and past.\n",
"This means that as the time or system size increases (since formula_4 is extensive), the probability of observing an entropy production opposite to that dictated by the second law of thermodynamics decreases exponentially. The FT is one of the few expressions in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics that is valid far from equilibrium.\n"
] |
video aspect ratios | It adds dramatic quality to the video. Epic and dramatic scenes and movies will be filmed in a wider aspect ratio than say a comedy or something. There are many movies where aspect ratios change dynamically throughout more intense/epic scenes and you wouldn’t even notice unless you were told. You would notice the scene was more intense but you wouldn’t even be able to notice the black bars changing size, making you feel that way.
It also can just makes things feel more expensive or of a higher quality.
Edit: added a thing | [
"Cinematographic aspect ratios are usually denoted as a (rounded) decimal multiple of width vs unit height, while photographic and videographic aspect ratios are usually defined and denoted by whole number ratios of width to height. In digital images there is a subtle distinction between the \"display\" aspect ratio (the image as displayed) and the \"storage\" aspect ratio (the ratio of pixel dimensions); see Distinctions.\n",
"The 64:27 aspect ratio is the logical extension of the existing video aspect ratios 32:27, 4:3 and 16:9. It is twice the pixel width of 32:27, and third power of 4:3, where as 16:9 of widescreen HDTV is 4:3 squared. This allows electronic scalers and optical anamorphic lenses to use an easily implementable 4:3 (1.3:1) scaling factor.\n",
"Aspect ratio describes the proportional relationship between the width and height of video screens and video picture elements. All popular video formats are rectangular, and so can be described by a ratio between width and height. The ratio width to height for a traditional television screen is 4:3, or about 1.33:1. High definition televisions use an aspect ratio of 16:9, or about 1.78:1. The aspect ratio of a full 35 mm film frame with soundtrack (also known as the Academy ratio) is 1.375:1.\n",
"The 64:27 aspect ratio is an extension of the existing video aspect ratios 4:3 and 16:9, as it is the third power of 4:3, where 16:9 of traditional HDTV is 4:3 squared. This allows electronic scalers and optical anamorphic lenses to use an easily implementable 4:3 (1.3:1) scaling factor.\n",
"Pixel aspect ratio is often confused with different types of image aspect ratios; the ratio of the image width and height. Due to non-squareness of pixels in Standard-definition TV, there are two types of such aspect ratios: \"storage aspect ratio\" (\"SAR\") and \"display aspect ratio\" (abbreviated \"DAR\", also known as \"image aspect ratio\" and \"picture aspect ratio\"). Note the reuse of the abbreviation \"PAR\". This article uses only the terms pixel aspect ratio and display aspect ratio to avoid ambiguity.\n",
"Pixel aspect ratio must be taken into consideration by video editing software products that edit video files with non-square pixels, especially when mixing video clips with different pixel aspect ratios. This would be the case when creating a video montage from various cameras employing different video standards (a relatively rare situation). Special effects software products must also take the pixel aspect ratio into consideration, since some special effects require calculation of the distances from a certain point so that they look visually correct. An example of such effects would be radial blur, motion blur, or even a simple image rotation.\n",
"Pixel aspect ratio value is used mainly in digital video software, where motion pictures must be converted or reconditioned to use video systems other than the original. The video player software may use pixel aspect ratio to properly render digital video on screen. Video editing software uses pixel aspect ratio to properly scale and render a video into a new format.\n"
] |
why do our tongues get stuck on poles. | Because your tongue is wet, and metal is extremely heat-conductive. So, the metal cools your saliva faster than your tongue can warm it up. At low enough temperatures, the saliva freezes to both the pole and tongue, so you're stuck.
The only safe option for releasing the frozen saliva is to heat up the pole above freezing, usually by pouring hot water on it at the point where the tongue is stuck; just pulling will tear off the tip of the tongue where it is frozen. | [
"The practice is associated with significant health risks, as tongues are coated with a film of microorganisms, which may cause infections in the eye, such as conjunctivitis, herpes and chlamydia. It also carries the risk of corneal abrasion and corneal ulcers. Oral bacteria on the tongue can potentially enter corneal scratches caused by licking the eye, which then lead to infection.\n",
"Often sticking one's tongue out at another is seen as mocking the other. A variation of this is also known as blowing a raspberry. It can also be wagged in a manner suggesting cunnilingus which is usually seen as highly vulgar.\n",
"The cause is unknown. Geographic tongue does not usually cause any symptoms, and in those cases where there are symptoms, an oral parafunctional habit may be a contributory factor. Persons with parafunctional habits related to the tongue may show scalloping on the sides of the tongue (crenated tongue). Some suggest that hormonal factors may be involved, because one reported case in a female appeared to vary in severity in correlation with oral contraceptive use. People with geographic tongue frequently claim that their condition worsens during periods of psychologic stress. Geographic tongue is inversely associated with smoking and tobacco use. Sometimes geographic tongue is said to run in families, and it is reported to be associated with several different genes, though studies show family association may also be caused by similar diets. Some have reported links with various human leukocyte antigens, such as increased incidence of HLA-DR5, HLA-DRW6 and HLA-Cw6 and decreased incidence in HLA-B51. Vitamin B2 deficiency (ariboflavinosis) can cause several signs in the mouth, possibly including geographic tongue, although other sources state that geographic tongue is not related to nutritional deficiency. Fissured tongue often occurs simultaneously with geographic tongue, and some consider fissured tongue to be an end stage of geographic tongue.\n",
"Sticking one's tongue out at someone is considered a childish gesture of rudeness and/or defiance in many countries; the act may also have sexual connotations, depending on the way in which it is done. However, in Tibet it is considered a greeting. In 2009, a farmer from Fabriano, Italy was convicted and fined by the country's highest court for sticking his tongue out at a neighbor with whom he had been arguing. Proof of the affront had been captured with a cell phone camera. Blowing a raspberry can also be meant as a gesture of derision.\n",
"Fissured tongue is a benign condition characterized by deep grooves (fissures) in the dorsum of the tongue. Although these grooves may look unsettling, the condition is usually painless. Some individuals may complain of an associated burning sensation.\n",
"This doubling of tongues evokes negative associations with serpents, which have forked tongues, a metaphoric reference to dishonest human beings. The expression 'forked tongues' is an ancient one and is found in the Bible (Nordenfalk 1975, n. 15).\n",
"\"Tip of My Tongue\" is a song written by Lynsey de Paul and Barry Blue (originally registered as \"On the Tip of My Tongue\"). It was first released as the fifth single by Brotherly Love (a Liverpool-based group composed of three brothers, Mike, Ronnie and Lee Carroll, who are brothers of impressionist Faith Brown) with the song \"I Love Everything About You\" as the flip side on CBS Records in 1973 and was produced by Phil Wainman. The group performed the song on the Granada TV programme \"Lift Off With Ayshea\" on 22 June 1973. The song received positive reviews from the British music press, and the brothers were interviewed about the single but it did not reach the UK Singles Chart. Barry Blue was credited as \"Barry Green\" on this release. \n"
] |
musical chord progressions. | Your question is pretty vague but I'll give it a shot!
A chord progression is essentially a sequence of chords, often repeating multiple times throughout the duration of a song, that have been selected and placed in a specific order due to their relationship to one another.
To break it down further; a chord itself is a collection of multiple notes (often 3 or 4) which are played together. Chords are usually built from a sequence of notes known as a "scale" as those particular notes sound pleasant (harmonious) when played together, as opposed to unpleasant (dissonant).
In a chord progression, different chords have different roles, also known as harmonic functions, which gives the progression its feeling. For instance, the second to last chord in the progression may be "unresolved", which gives a feeling of incompleteness that is then satisfied by the final chord in the sequence. The exact same chord can have different roles in different progression depending upon where it is placed in relation to other chords, as well as what the other chords are.
In practice, an example of a common chord progression is C-G-Am-F (in the key of C). This means that the instrumentalist in question will play a C Major chord (i.e. the notes C, E and G) followed by a G Major, then an A Minor and finally an F Major. This progression is extremely widespread in popular music due to it's harmonious quality when repeated.
Hope that makes sense! | [
"Harmonically, in rock music, the most common way to construct chord progressions is to play major and minor \"triads\", each comprising a root, third and fifth note of a given scale. An example of a major triad is C major, which contains the notes C, E and G. An example of a minor triad is the A minor chord, which includes the notes A, C and E. Interspersed are some four-note chords, which include the root, third and fifth, as well as a sixth, seventh or ninth note of the scale. The most common chord with four different notes is the dominant seventh chord, which include a root, a major third above the root, a perfect fifth above the root and a flattened seventh. In the key of C major, the dominant seventh chord is a G7, which consists of the notes G, B, D and F. \n",
"Three-chord progression are more common since a melody may then dwell on any note of the scale. They are often presented as successions of four chords (as shown below), in order to produce a binary harmonic rhythm, but then two of the four chords are the same.\n",
"Major-chord progressions are constructed in the harmonization of major scales in triads. For example, stacking the C-major scale with thirds creates a chord progression, which is traditionally enumerated with the Roman numerals I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii; its sub-progression C-F-G (I-IV-V) is used in popular music, as already discussed. Further chords are constructed by stacking additional thirds. Stacking the dominant major-triad with a minor third creates the dominant seventh chord, which shall be discussed after minor chords.\n",
"In a musical composition, a chord progression or harmonic progression is a succession of chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition from the common practice era of Classical music to the 21st century. Chord progressions are the foundation of Western popular music styles (e.g., pop music, rock music) and traditional music (e.g., blues and jazz). In these genres, chord progressions are the defining feature on which melody and rhythm are built.\n",
"Chord progressions may be constructed with borrowed chords, including two progressions common in rock music, I–VII–VI–VII, common everywhere, and I–VI–IV (), used by bands like Genesis, Yes, and Nirvana. VII is from Mixolydian and VI is found in both Aeolian and Phrygian. The VII–I cadence with VII substituting for V is common, as well as II–I, III–I, and VI–I. In popular music, the major triad on the lowered third scale degree (III), the major triad on the lowered sixth scale degree (VI) and the major triad on the lowered seventh scale degree, or \"flat seven\" (VII) are common.\n",
"In tonal music, chord progressions have the function of establishing or contradicting a tonality, the technical name for what is commonly understood as the \"key\" of a song or piece. Chord progressions are usually expressed by Roman numerals in Classical music theory. For example, the common chord progression I–vi–ii–V. In many styles of popular and traditional music, chord progressions are expressed using the name and \"quality\" of the chords. For example, the previously mentioned chord progression, in the key of C major, would be written as C major–A minor–D minor–G major in a fake book or lead sheet. In the first chord, C major, the \"C\" indicates that the chord is built on the root note \"C\" and the word \"major\" indicates that a major chord is built on this \"C\" note. \n",
"The last chord is the dominant (V) turnaround, marking the transition to the beginning of the next progression. The lyrics generally end on the last beat of the tenth bar or the first beat of the 11th bar, and the final two bars are given to the instrumentalist as a break; the harmony of this two-bar break, the turnaround, can be extremely complex, sometimes consisting of single notes that defy analysis in terms of chords.\n"
] |
why does america have such a higher report of children with autism and adhd compared to other countries? | There is so many things that play a role, it is hard to name them all.
- Overall, the USA does have a very high quality medical system compared to certain countries. Doctors are available here and know what Autism/ADHD is. You can't say the same about certain other countries. Sometimes they do not have doctors, of when they do, they either have bigger fish to fry than autism/ADHD or they might not have the knowledge to diagnose it.
- In the USA, there is less stigma regarding these diagnoses than in other countries. People are more willing to admit that they or their children have this disorder, whereas in certain other places, that sort of information is kept secret.
- Higher maternal and paternal age increases the risk of kids ending up with these kind of disorders. In the USA, many people are having kids later in life. That might be something that fits better into the culture, but you cannot deny that it also has effects on the quality of the eggs/sperm production.
- And yes, there is also some over-diagnosis going on (among certain groups, other groups are under-diagnosed). | [
"The best-known example is that of the increasing rates of autism in developed countries such as the United States, which some studies suggest is at least partly a result of people substituting diagnoses of autism for mental retardation and learning disabilities. While a pilot study by the MIND Institute published in 2002 concluded that \"There is no evidence that loosening in diagnostic criteria contributed to an increase in the number of children with autism,\" this study used data from the California Department of Developmental Services database, which, according to a study by Paul Shattuck, is unreliable because \"...the administrative prevalence figures for most states are well below epidemiological estimates.\" With regard to the role of diagnostic substitution in the increase in reported cases of autism, Dorothy Bishop has said, \"This could be in part because of new conceptualisations of autism, but may also be fuelled by strategic considerations: resources for children with ASD tend to be much better than those for children with other related conditions, such as language impairment or intellectual handicaps, so this diagnosis may be preferred.\" Bishop has herself published a small study concluding that people who would now be diagnosed as autistic would, in the past, have been diagnosed with developmental language disorder. Emily Willingham has noted that at the time autism was first reported by Leo Kanner in 1943, while autistic people existed before that time, they had historically been referred to as insane, schizophrenic, mentally retarded, or language impaired.\n",
"ASDs continue to be over 4 times more common among boys (1 in 37) than among girls (1 in 151), and they are reported in all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Studies have been conducted in several continents (Asia, Europe and North America) that report a prevalence rate of approximately 1 percent. A 2011 study reported a 2.6 percent prevalence of autism in South Korea.\n",
"ASD averages a 4.3:1 male-to-female ratio. The number of children known to have autism has increased dramatically since the 1980s, at least partly due to changes in diagnostic practice; it is unclear whether prevalence has actually increased; and as-yet-unidentified environmental risk factors cannot be ruled out. The Centers for Disease Control’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network reports that in 2014, approximately 1 in 59 children in the United States (1 in 37 boys, and 1 in 151 girls), has been identified with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This estimate is a 15% increase from the 1 in 68 rate in 2010, 86% increase from the 1 in 110 rate in 2006 and 154% increase from the 1 in 150 rate in 2000. Diagnostic criteria of ASD has changed significantly since 1980s; for example, U.S. special education autism classification was introduced in 1994. \n",
"Globally, autism is estimated to affect 24.8 million people . In the 2000s, the number of people affected was estimated at 1–2 per 1,000 people worldwide. In the developed countries, about 1.5% of children are diagnosed with ASD , from 0.7% in 2000 in the United States. It occurs four-to-five times more often in males than females. The number of people diagnosed has increased dramatically since the 1960s, which may be partly due to changes in diagnostic practice. The question of whether actual rates have increased is unresolved.\n",
"Children in North America appear to have a higher rate of ADHD than children in Africa and the Middle East - however, this may be due to differing methods of diagnosis used in different areas of the world. If the same diagnostic methods are used rates are more or less the same between countries.\n",
"In October 2002, the institute released a study appearing to confirm that the prevalence of autism has risen steeply. The study was led by Robert Byrd, whose team gathered information on 684 children with developmental disabilities from California's Department of Developmental Services regional centers. Byrd's team's reported autism was on the rise in California, and that some of the increase was real and could not be explained by artificial factors such as misclassification and diagnostic criteria changes, nor by migration of children into California. However, a 2006 analysis found that special education data poorly measured prevalence because so many cases were undiagnosed, and that the 1994–2003 U.S. increase was associated with declines in other diagnostic categories, indicating that diagnostic substitution had occurred in the U.S. overall (though not in California in particular). The current consensus is that the rise in the number of autism cases is largely attributable to changes in diagnostic practices, referral patterns, availability of services, age at diagnosis, and public awareness, though as-yet-unidentified contributing environmental risk factors cannot be ruled out.\n",
"Most recent reviews tend to estimate a prevalence of 1–2 per 1,000 for autism and close to 6 per 1,000 for ASD, and 11 per 1,000 children in the United States for ASD as of 2008; because of inadequate data, these numbers may underestimate ASD's true rate. Globally, autism affects an estimated 24.8 million people , while Asperger syndrome affects a further 37.2 million. In 2012, the NHS estimated that the overall prevalence of autism among adults aged 18 years and over in the UK was 1.1%. Rates of PDD-NOS's has been estimated at 3.7 per 1,000, Asperger syndrome at roughly 0.6 per 1,000, and childhood disintegrative disorder at 0.02 per 1,000. CDC estimates about 1 out of 59 (1.7%) for 2014, an increase from 1 out of every 68 children (1.5%) for 2010.\n"
] |
How did Harald Hardrada escape from Constantinople? | > The same night King Harald and his men went to the house where Maria slept and carried her away by force. Then they went down to where the galleys of the Varings lay, took two of them and rowed out into Sjavid sound. When they came to the place where the iron chain is drawn across the sound, Harald told his men to stretch out at their oars in both galleys; but the men who were not rowing to run all to the stern of the galley, each with his luggage in his hand. The galleys thus ran up and lay on the iron chain. As soon as they stood fast on it, and would advance no farther, Harald ordered all the men to run forward into the bow. Then the galley, in which Harald was, balanced forwards and swung down over the chain; but the other, which remained fast athwart the chain, split in two, by which many men were lost; but some were taken up out of the sound. Thus Harald escaped out of Constantinople and sailed thence into the Black Sea...
From "Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway" by Snorri Sturluson (~1230) _URL_0_ | [
"The crusaders reached Constantinople on 23December 1096. The Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos demanded an oath of allegiance from their leaders and imposed a blockade on their camp to enforce it. Baldwin made raids against the suburbs, compelling Alexios to lift the blockade. The Emperor also agreed to hand over his son and heir, John, as a hostage, who was entrusted to Baldwin's care.\n",
"Vasiliev points out that the brothers occupied Trebizond too early to have done so in response to the Crusaders capturing Constantinople; Alexios and David began their march on Trebizond before news of the sack of Constantinople on 13 April 1204 could reach either Trebizond or Georgia. According to Vasiliev, however, their original intention was not to seize a base from which they could recover the capital of the Byzantine Empire, but rather to carve out of the Byzantine Empire a buffer state to protect Georgia from the Seljuk Turks. Kuršanskis, while agreeing with Vasiliev that Tamar was motivated by revenge for Alexios Angelos's insult, proposed a more obvious motivation for the brother's return to Byzantine territory: they had decided to raise the banner of revolt, depose Alexios Angelos, and return the imperial throne to the Komnenos dynasty. However, not long after they had gained control of Trebizond and the neighboring territories, news of the Latin conquest of Constantinople reached them, and the brothers entered the competition for recovery of the imperial city against Theodore I Laskaris in western Anatolia (ruler of the \"Empire of Nicaea\") and Michael Komnenos Doukas in mainland Greece (ruler of the \"Despotate of Epirus\").\n",
"Vasiliev points out that the brothers occupied Trebizond too early to have done so in response to the Crusaders capturing Constantinople; Alexios and David began their march on Trebizond before news of the sack of Constantinople on 13 April 1204 could reach either Trebizond or Georgia. According to Vasiliev, however, their original intention was not to seize a base from which they could recover the capital of the Byzantine Empire, but rather to carve out of the Byzantine Empire a buffer state to protect Georgia from the Seljuk Turks. Kuršanskis, while agreeing with Vasiliev that Tamar was motivated by revenge for Alexios Angelos's insult, proposed a more obvious motivation for the brother's return to Byzantine territory: they had decided to raise the banner of revolt, depose Alexios Angelos, and return the imperial throne to the Komnenos dynasty. However, not long after they had gained control of Trebizond and the neighboring territories, news of the Latin conquest of Constantinople reached them, and the brothers entered the competition for recovery of the imperial city against Theodore I Laskaris in western Anatolia (ruler of the \"Empire of Nicaea\") and Michael Komnenos Doukas in mainland Greece (ruler of the \"Despotate of Epirus\").\n",
"The Siege of Smyrna (December 1402) was fought between the Knights of Rhodes, who held the harbour and sea-castle of Smyrna (now İzmir) in western Anatolia, and the army of the Turco-Mongol emir Timur. The Turco-Mongols blockaded the harbour and attacked the fortifications with stone-throwing siege engines, while the defenders, numbering only about 200 knights, countered with arrows and incendiary projectiles. After two weeks of strong resistance against a far superior adversary, the outer wall was destroyed by mining and breached. Some of the garrison managed to escape by sea, but the inhabitants and the city itself were destroyed.\n",
"Harald's unorthodox departure from Constantinople is featured in music by the Finnish folk metal band Turisas in the song \"The Great Escape\"; in addition, he is followed loosely throughout the story of the albums \"The Varangian Way\" (2007) and \"Stand Up and Fight\" (2011).\n",
"Fearing a possible naval attack along the shores of the Golden Horn, Emperor Constantine XI ordered that a defensive chain be placed at the mouth of the harbour. This chain, which floated on logs, was strong enough to prevent any Turkish ship from entering the harbour. This device was one of two that gave the Byzantines some hope of extending the siege until the possible arrival of foreign help. This strategy was enforced because in 1204 the armies of the Fourth Crusade successfully circumvented Constantinople's land defences by breaching the Golden Horn Wall. Another strategy employed by the Byzantines was the repair and fortification of the Land Wall (Theodosian Walls). Emperor Constantine deemed it necessary to ensure that the Blachernae district's wall was the most fortified because that section of the wall protruded northwards. The land fortifications comprised a wide moat fronting inner and outer crenellated walls studded with towers every 45–55 metres.\n",
"After a few years in Kievan Rus', Harald and his force of around 500 men moved on south to Constantinople (\"Miklagard\"), the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (later known as the Byzantine Empire), probably in 1033 or 1034, where they joined the Varangian Guard. Although the \"Flateyjarbók\" maintains that Harald at first sought to keep his royal identity a secret, most sources agree that Harald and his men's reputation was well known in the east at the time. While the Varangian Guard was primarily meant to function as the emperor's bodyguard, Harald was found fighting on \"nearly every frontier\" of the empire. He first saw action in campaigns against Arab pirates in the Mediterranean Sea, and then in inland towns in Asia Minor / Anatolia that had supported the pirates. By this time, he had according to Snorri Sturluson become the \"leader over all the Varangians\". By 1035, the Byzantines had pushed the Arabs out of Asia Minor to the east and southeast, and Harald took part in campaigns that went as far east as the Tigris River and Euphrates River in Mesopotamia, where according to his skald (poet) Þjóðólfr Arnórsson (recounted in the sagas) he participated in the capture of eighty Arab strongholds, a number which historians Sigfus Blöndal and Benedikt Benedikz see no particular reason to question. Although not holding independent command of an army as the sagas imply, it is not unlikely that King Harald and the Varangians at times could have been sent off to capture a castle or town. During the first four years of the reign of Byzantine Emperor Michael IV the Paphlagonian, Harald probably also fought in campaigns against the Pechenegs.\n"
] |
Can all life be explained by chemical reactions/processes? | Although we can't recreate all elements of it (ie throw a bunch of components together and have it work as a eukaryotic cell) science and physics adequately explains every component of the life of a cell and all of the functions of life | [
"In the same way, biology cannot be fully reduced to chemistry despite the fact that the machinery that is responsible for life is composed of molecules. For instance, the machinery of evolution may be described in terms of chemistry by the understanding that it is a mutation in the order of genetic base pairs in the DNA of an organism. However, chemistry cannot fully describe the process since it does not contain concepts such as natural selection that are responsible for driving evolution. Chemistry is fundamental to biology since it provides a methodology for studying and understanding the molecules that compose cells.\n",
"Research on how life might have emerged from non-living chemicals focuses on three possible starting points: self-replication, an organism's ability to produce offspring that are very similar to itself; metabolism, its ability to feed and repair itself; and external cell membranes, which allow food to enter and waste products to leave, but exclude unwanted substances. Research on abiogenesis still has a long way to go, since theoretical and empirical approaches are only beginning to make contact with each other.\n",
"A fundamental difference exists between chemistry as it is performed in most laboratories and chemistry as it occurs in life. Laboratory processes are mostly designed such that the (closed) system goes thermodynamically downhill; i.e. the product state is of lower Gibbs free energy, yielding stable molecules that can be isolated and stored. Yet the chemistry of life operates in a very different way: Most molecules from which living systems are constituted are turned over continuously and are not necessarily thermodynamically stable. Nevertheless, living systems can be stable, but in a homeostatic sense. Such homeostatic (open) systems are far-from-equilibrium and are dissipative: they need energy to maintain themselves. In dissipative controlled systems the continuous supply of energy allows a continuous transition between different supramolecular states, where systems with unexpected properties may be discovered. One of the grand challenges of Systems Chemistry is to unveil complex reactions networks, where molecules continuously consume energy to perform specific functions.\n",
"Highly energetic chemistry is thought to have produced a self-replicating molecule around 4 billion years ago, and half a billion years later the last common ancestor of all life existed. The current scientific consensus is that the complex biochemistry that makes up life came from simpler chemical reactions. The beginning of life may have included self-replicating molecules such as RNA and the assembly of simple cells.\n",
"Chapter two entitled \"Looking to the Rocks: Molecular Clues to the Origin of Life\" looks at the findings of Sir Robert Robinson and Melvin Calvin discoveries of organic compounds in petrol and the conversion of CO to organic molecules during photosynthesis. Early experiments had shown that organic compounds can form spontaneously under conditions similar to the pre-biotic era of earth. These findings led to speculation on the possible discovery on the origins of life. The chapter ends with the authors saying as a precursor to the next chapter\n",
"Scientists during the 19th century stated macroscopic chemical processes consist of many elementary chemical reactions that are themselves simply a series of encounters between atomic or molecular species. In order to understand the time dependence of chemical reactions, chemical kineticists have traditionally focused on sorting out all of the elementary chemical reactions involved in a macroscopic chemical process and determining\n",
"The first step in the emergence of life may have been chemical reactions that produced many of the simpler organic compounds, including nucleobases and amino acids, that are the building blocks of life. An experiment in 1953 by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey showed that such molecules could form in an atmosphere of water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen with the aid of sparks to mimic the effect of lightning. Although atmospheric composition was probably different from that used by Miller and Urey, later experiments with more realistic compositions also managed to synthesize organic molecules. Computer simulations show that extraterrestrial organic molecules could have formed in the protoplanetary disk before the formation of the Earth.\n"
] |
what does it mean for a watch to be waterproof up to "200ft"? | After that the water pressure is great enough to break whatever seal was protecting the goods | [
"In horology, the waterproofness of a watch is defined by its resistance under pressure. The manufacturers indicate mostly the degree of waterproofness in metres (m), feet (ft) or atmospheres (atm). Watches with the \"waterproof\" name, with or without indication of overpressure, have to be complied and have to undergo successfully the tests planned in the standard ISO-2281. These watches are intended for a current daily use and have to resist to the water during exercises such as the short-term swimming.\n",
"The International Organization for Standardization issued a standard for water-resistant watches which also prohibits the term \"waterproof\" to be used with watches, which many countries have adopted. This standard was introduced in 1990 as the ISO 2281:1990 and only designed for watches intended for ordinary daily use and are resistant to water during exercises such as swimming for a short period. They may be used under conditions where water pressure and temperature vary; German Industrial Norm DIN 8310 is an equivalent standard. However, whether they bear an additional indication of overpressure or not, they are not intended for submarine diving.\n",
"Normal surface air filled watch cases and crystals designed for extreme depths must be dimensionally large to cope with the encountered water pressure. To obtain its water resistance the CX Swiss Military Watch 20'000 FEET solid titanium watch case has a diameter of 46.0 mm, thickness of 28.5 mm (domed crystal thickness 10 mm) and the case and bracelet weigh 265 g.\n",
"Watches are often classified by watch manufacturers by their degree of water resistance which, due to the absence of official classification standards, roughly translates to the following (1 metre ≈ 3.29 feet). These vagueries have since been superseded by ISO 22810:2010, in which \"any watch on the market sold as water-resistant must satisfy ISO 22810 – regardless of the brand.\"\n",
"Water Resistant is a common mark stamped on the back of wrist watches to indicate how well a watch is sealed against the ingress of water. It is usually accompanied by an indication of the static test pressure that a sample of newly manufactured watches were exposed to in a leakage test. The test pressure can be indicated either directly in units of pressure such as bar, atmospheres, or (more commonly) as an equivalent water depth in metres (in the United States sometimes also in feet).\n",
"The standards for diving watches are regulated by the ISO 6425 international standard. The watches are tested in static or still water under 125% of the rated (water) pressure, thus a watch with a 200 m rating will be water resistant if it is stationary and under 250 m of static water. The testing of the water resistance is fundamentally different from non-dive watches, because every watch has to be fully tested.\n",
"The standards for diving watches are regulated by the ISO 6425 international standard. The watches are tested in static or still water under 125% of the rated (water) pressure, thus a watch with a 200-metre rating will be water resistant if it is stationary and under 250 metres of static water. The testing of the water resistance is fundamentally different from non-dive watches, because every watch has to be fully tested. Besides water resistance standards to a minimum of 100-metre depth rating ISO 6425 also provides eight minimum requirements for mechanical diver's watches for scuba diving (quartz and digital watches have slightly differing readability requirements). For diver's watches for mixed-gas saturation diving two additional requirements have to be met.\n"
] |
In his time was Shakespere's writings difficult to understand? | Hi, FYI there have been some earlier posts asking this question
* [When Shakespeare's plays were first performed, was the average theater goer able to sufficiently understand the dialog to be able to follow the plot and understand the character's motivations?](_URL_0_) - featuring /u/texpeare
* [Did people actually talk how Shakespeare wrote?](_URL_1_)
* [Could the average person in the Globe Theatre during the Elizabethan era literally understand Shakespeare?](_URL_2_) | [
"Besides the publications cited above, he revised and edited Charles Hole's \"Brief Biographical Dictionary\" (1866), and the \"Dickens Dictionary\" (1873), and began a \"Cyclopædia of Shakespearian Literature\". He edited \"Mother Goose Melodies\" (with antiquarian and philological notes, 1869). He left unfinished an index to the principal works of ancient and modern literature, to be entitled \"Who Wrote It?\" This was completed by C. G. Wheeler, and published in 1881. He edited \"Familiar Allusions\" (1882).\n",
"The following year, after the second edition of Hazlitt's \"Characters of Shakespear's Plays\" had just been published, Gifford followed it with a review that resulted in the near drying-up of the sales of that book. This was followed in 1819 by an attack on \"Lectures on the English Poets\" and finally on Hazlitt's \"Political Essays\".\n",
"As a writer he wrote a musical treatise, political tracts, and fiction. In 1687 he published a treatise on music that is considered useful in understanding Middle Baroque music. His writing on music would influence German Baroque trombone works for over a century. In non-musical writing his political tracts led to his being imprisoned for a year and a half. In literature he is known for three or four autobiographical novels that give a feel of the musical scene of his era and make use of humor. In them the narrator is referred to as Daniel Simplex. His novels had largely become obscure until rediscovery in the 1930s.\n",
"Most of his work has been lost. However, some of it has been recovered, and because of them it is known that he wrote baroque style prose about literature and philosophical topics. His most famous writing was a sonnet to Virgen de Guadalupe, published by father Florencia and later reproduced by Antonio Mendoza in 1725. He also wrote \"Panegírico a la paciencia\", published in 1645, and a few comedies. Alfonso Plancarte discovered 29 sonnets written by him. His works were edited in 1986 by José Pascual Buxó, and reflect the creole thinking and intellectuality that are aware of the European style and events. There are some Sandoval's works that were dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, that were awarded in a Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico contest. He also has sonnets, octaves and a romance entitled \"Relación fúnebre a la infeliz, trágica muerte de dos caballeros...\" (\"Funeral relation to the unhappy, tragic death of two gentlemen...\"), in which he describes the Martín Cortés' (son of Hernán Cortés) and brothers Ávila's conspiration, both creoles sons of conquistadors.\n",
"His most elaborately written work was \"The History of the Excellence and Decline of the Institutions, Religion, Laws, Manners, and Genius of the Sumatrans, and of the Restoration thereof in the reign of Amurath the Third\", 2 vols. 1763. It is a skilful exposure of the weak points in whig policy and administration, followed by a panegyric on George III and his ministers. In style it is a colourable imitation of Bolingbroke.\n",
"His way of writing was based on oral discourse, and, on every page, it revealed his roots among the common people. He is one of the fathers of the European historiography, or a precursor of the scientific historiography, basing his works always on the documental proof, and, as he said, on his pages \"one cannot find the beauty of words but the nudity of the truth.\" He was an autodidact. By the time of his death, a new kind of knowledge was arising, a Latinized scholasticism that involved imitations of the classics.\n",
"\"Epigrams\" (published in the 1616 folio) is an entry in a genre that was popular among late-Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, although Jonson was perhaps the only poet of his time to work in its full classical range. The epigrams explore various attitudes, most from the satiric stock of the day: complaints against women, courtiers and spies abound. The condemnatory poems are short and anonymous; Jonson’s epigrams of praise, including a famous poem to Camden and lines to Lucy Harington, are longer and are mostly addressed to specific individuals. Although it is included among the epigrams, \"On My First Sonne\" is neither satirical nor very short; the poem, intensely personal and deeply felt, typifies a genre that would come to be called \"lyric poetry.\" It is possible that the spelling of 'son' as 'Sonne' is meant to allude to the sonnet form, with which it shares some features. A few other so-called epigrams share this quality. Jonson's poems of \"The Forest\" also appeared in the first folio. Most of the fifteen poems are addressed to Jonson's aristocratic supporters, but the most famous are his country-house poem “To Penshurst” and the poem “To Celia” (\"Come, my Celia, let us prove\") that appears also in \"Volpone\".\n"
] |
If we were to discover tomorrow that a huge asteroid is going to hit Earth, could we do something about it? | there have been a lot of theories of how we would be able to deter an asteroid, most people first think to blow it up but if it's too close to earth then that isn't going to do us much good. The best plan that I've seen (works only if there's enough time before it gets to earth) is to land a vehicle on the asteroid and, once it's secured onto the surface, it uses it's rockets to over time nudge the asteroid's orbit path just far enough away from earth that we're safe | [
"In 2016, a NASA scientist warned that the Earth is unprepared for such an event. In April 2018, the B612 Foundation reported \"It's 100 per cent certain we'll be hit [by a devastating asteroid], but we're not 100 per cent sure when.\" Also in 2018, physicist Stephen Hawking, in his final book \"Brief Answers to the Big Questions\", considered an asteroid collision to be the biggest threat to the planet. Several ways of avoiding an asteroid impact have been described. Nonetheless, in March 2019, scientists reported that asteroids may be much more difficult to destroy than thought earlier. In addition, an asteroid may reassemble itself due to gravity after being disrupted.\n",
"Sub-150m impacting asteroids would not cause global damage but are still locally catastrophic. They can, by contrast to larger ones, only be detected when they come very close to the Earth, which in most cases only happens during their final approach. Those impacts therefore will always need a constant watch and typically cannot be identified earlier than a few weeks in advance, far too late for interception. According to expert testimony in the United States Congress in 2013, NASA would presently require at least five years of preparation before a mission to intercept an asteroid could be launched. Meeting the asteroid and deflecting it by least the diameter of the Earth after its interception would then needs several additional years.\n",
"In April 2018, the B612 Foundation stated \"It's 100 per cent certain we'll be hit [by a devastating asteroid], but we're not 100 per cent sure when.\" Also in 2018, physicist Stephen Hawking, in his final book \"Brief Answers to the Big Questions\", considered an asteroid collision to be the biggest threat to the planet. In June 2018, the US National Science and Technology Council warned that America is unprepared for an asteroid impact event, and has developed and released the \"\"National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy Action Plan\"\" to better prepare.\n",
"A number of considerations arise concerning means for avoiding a devastating collision with an asteroidal object, should one be discovered on a trajectory that were determined to lead to Earth impact at some future date. One of the main challenges is how to transmit the impulse required (possibly quite large), to an asteroid of unknown mass, composition, and mechanical strength, without shattering it into fragments, some of which might be themselves dangerous to Earth if left in a collision orbit.\n",
"Future impacts are bound to occur, with much higher odds for smaller regionally damaging asteroids than for larger globally damaging ones. The 2018 final book of physicist Stephen Hawking, \"Brief Answers to the Big Questions\", considers a large asteroid collision the biggest threat to our planet. In April 2018, the B612 Foundation reported \"It's a 100 per cent certainty we'll be hit [by a devastating asteroid], but we're not 100 per cent sure when.\" In June 2018, the US National Science and Technology Council warned that America is unprepared for an asteroid impact event, and has developed and released the \"\"National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy Action Plan\"\" to better prepare.\n",
"BULLET::::- 17 July – Astronomers rule out the chances of ~ asteroid 's hitting Earth in September 2019 by eliminating the possibility of its passing through an area where it would have to be if it were on an impacting orbit. Prior to this, the asteroid had been given a one-in-7,000 chance of hitting Earth.\n",
"Cumulatively among the asteroids listed below, there is a roughly 1 in 16,500 chance that any of the asteroids will impact Earth in 2019. Most of this comes from asteroid which has a 1 in 20,000 chance of impact on 9 September 2019. An impact from this asteroid is highly unlikely as there is only a 0.4% chance that the observations made of it in 2006 would fit to the 'impacting' orbit.\n"
] |
what is a "principal component analysis"? | Hard to explain without using images.
See:
_URL_0_ | [
"Principal component analysis is used to study large data sets, such as those encountered in bioinformatics, data mining, chemical research, psychology, and in marketing. PCA is also popular in psychology, especially within the field of psychometrics. In Q methodology, the eigenvalues of the correlation matrix determine the Q-methodologist's judgment of \"practical\" significance (which differs from the statistical significance of hypothesis testing; cf. criteria for determining the number of factors). More generally, principal component analysis can be used as a method of factor analysis in structural equation modeling.\n",
"Principal component analysis (PCA) is a statistical procedure that uses an orthogonal transformation to convert a set of observations of possibly correlated variables (entities each of which takes on various numerical values) into a set of values of linearly uncorrelated variables called principal components. This transformation is defined in such a way that the first principal component has the largest possible variance (that is, accounts for as much of the variability in the data as possible), and each succeeding component in turn has the highest variance possible under the constraint that it is orthogonal to the preceding components. The resulting vectors (each being a linear combination of the variables and containing \"n\" observations) are an uncorrelated orthogonal basis set. PCA is sensitive to the relative scaling of the original variables.\n",
"BULLET::::- Principal component analysis – (PCA), is a statistical procedure that uses an orthogonal transformation to convert a set of observations of possibly correlated variables (entities each of which takes on various numerical values) into a set of values of linearly uncorrelated variables called principal components. This transformation is defined in such a way that the first principal component has the largest possible variance (that is, accounts for as much of the variability in the data as possible), and each succeeding component, in turn, has the highest variance possible under the constraint that it is orthogonal to the preceding components. The resulting vectors (each being a linear combination of the variables and containing \"n\" observations) are an uncorrelated orthogonal basis set. PCA is sensitive to the relative scaling of the original variables.\n",
"Fundamental analysis, in accounting and finance, is the analysis of a business's financial statements (usually to analyze the business's assets, liabilities, and earnings); health; and competitors and markets. It also considers the overall state of the economy and factors including interest rates, production, earnings, employment, GDP, housing, manufacturing and management. There are two basic approaches that can be used: bottom up analysis and top down analysis. These terms are used to distinguish such analysis from other types of investment analysis, such as quantitative and technical.\n",
"In general, principal components analysis is used to construct overarching variables that take the place of multiple correlated variables in order to reveal the underlying structure of the dataset. This is helpful in geometric morphometrics where a large set of landmarks can create correlated relationships that might be difficult to differentiate without reducing them in order to look at the overall variability in the data. Reducing the number of variables is also necessary because the number of variables being observed and analyzed should not exceed sample size. Principal component scores are computed through an eigendecomposition of a sample’s covariance matrix and rotates the data to preserve procrustes distances. In other words, a principal components analysis preserves the shape variables that were scaled, rotated, and translated during the generalize procrustes analysis. The resulting principal component scores project the shape variables onto low-dimensional space based on eigenvectors. The scores can be plotted various ways to look at the shape variables, such as scatterplots. It is important to explore what shape variables are being observed to make sure the principal components being analyzed are pertinent to the questions being asked. Although the components might show shape variables not relevant to the question at hand, it is perfectly acceptable to leave those components out any further analysis for a specific project.\n",
"Principal component analysis (PCA) is often used for dimension reduction. Given an unlabeled set of \"n\" input data vectors, PCA generates \"p\" (which is much smaller than the dimension of the input data) right singular vectors corresponding to the \"p\" largest singular values of the data matrix, where the \"k\"th row of the data matrix is the \"k\"th input data vector shifted by the sample mean of the input (i.e., subtracting the sample mean from the data vector). Equivalently, these singular vectors are the eigenvectors corresponding to the \"p\" largest eigenvalues of the sample covariance matrix of the input vectors. These \"p\" singular vectors are the feature vectors learned from the input data, and they represent directions along which the data has the largest variations.\n",
"R&D expenditure and R&D intensity are two of the key indicators used to monitor resources devoted to science and technology worldwide. R&D intensity has been defined as \"the ratio of expenditures by a firm on research and development to the firm's sales.\" William Leonard has described research intensity as \"measured usually by ratios of scientific personnel to total employment or by R&D expenditures/sales\" to gains in such variables as productivity, profits, sales, and asset status. R&D intensity is therefore a measure of a company's R&D spending toward activities aimed at expanding sector and product knowledge, manufacturing, and technology, and so aimed at spurring innovation in and through basic and applied research. Furthermore, it is aimed at increasing \"factor productivity and salable output\".\n"
] |
why do "800 service" call me every day but nobody is ever on the line? | If you let it go to voice mail, they'll play a prerecorded message. But they know that trying to play a prerecorded message when there's a human on the other end doesn't work, so the computer making the call is programmed to hang up if someone answers. | [
"AT&T Phone (formerly AT&T U-verse Voice) is a voice communication service delivered over AT&T's IP network (VoIP). This phone service is digital and provides a voicemail service accessed by *98 from the home number. Customers who subscribe to both AT&T Phone and U-verse TV get features such as call history on channel 9900, which displays the last 100 missed and answered calls on the customer's TV, and \"Click to Call\" from the TV history. AT&T Phone includes Caller ID, Call Blocking, Anonymous Call Blocker, and many other calling features. AT&T Phone was first available in Detroit, on January 22, 2008.\n",
"Widely recognized for the tens of thousands of recordings she has made for US telephone companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, the former Bell System companies, and others since 1981, she is still most recognized as the person who says \"AT&T\" in the company's sound trademark played prior to any operator assisted or credit card paid call, and on answer when calling AT&T customer service numbers. She is also the voice for most \"star\" services (e.g. last-call return, call blocking, etc.) for AT&T local telephone companies, and the voice heard when making AT&T handled calls through 1-800-CALL-ATT (225-5288) and through international AT&T access numbers such as USADirect.\n",
"At the onset of service, as a way to gain more users, they offered a free long distance call feature. Callers would call Tellme and were given 1 free minute of long distance call time to their desired phone number. That service was later stopped while other services persisted.\n",
"In order for LucyPhone to function successfully, it needs the assistance of customer service agents. The reason is that when the agents answer a call, LucyPhone's recorded message asks them to press 1 to receive a call from the anticipating customers. The call center agents sometimes hang up on LucyPhone's request because they are used to interacting solely with humans. The company reported that fewer than 10% of the calls are terminated by customer service agents. Government agencies such as the IRS, are instructed not to accept Lucyphone calls.\n",
"There is not a simple way to call a 1-800 number in the USA or make a reverse charge call for free in India. In early 2019 a private tech company launched services to enable a person to make an overseas reverse charge call. AT&T also provides a number to make collect calls from India to the United States. The number is 000-117.\n",
"In 1992, AT&T introduced a 700-number service branded as \"AT&T EasyReach 700\". It provided a service for subscribers to forward calls placed to a personal 700-number to any domestic telephone number. Either the caller or the subscriber could be set up to pay for the incoming calls. If the call originated from a telephone not pre-subscribed to AT&T as its interexchange carrier, the caller was required to dial 10-ATT prior to dialing the 700-number.\n",
"Domestically, there are also a number of special service numbers such as 100 for the operator, 123 for the speaking clock and 155 for the international operator, as well as 118 AAA for various directory enquiry services, and 116 AAA for various helplines. For some services, the number you call will depend on which operator you use to connect the call. 112 and 999 work for calling the emergency services. These numbers cannot be called from abroad.\n"
] |
so how does the body 'die'? also what does it feel like just before a person is about to die? | Neuroscience PhD here.
We have learned a lot from near-death experiences (NDEs). The body dies from the outside in.
For most people, your heart is the first to stop. It just gets tired and worn out having been in use continually for 80+ years. Because blood is your body's way of heating the whole system, you start to cool down. This means your nerves send and receive signals more slowly. Your extremities are sending signals a long distance and so you notice the delay a lot more. This is perceived as a numbness by your brain.
As your brain gets deprived of oxygen-rich blood you slowly lose consciousness. Its like going to sleep, or under anaesthetic. Some people are still aware of the next changes that happen.
The first thing is your inner ear system turns off. With no feedback coming in about the direction of gravity, your body interprets this to mean you're airborne (hence the "floating" feeling some NDE survivors describe).
Then your eyes stop sending signals. Many people don't know this, but nerves in your eye send signals only when there is dark. This is economical for an animal which is active during the day as it saves resources. So as your eyes stop sending signals, your brain interprets this as white light which grows in size as the nerves continue to die.
The next thing to die are inhibitory interneurons. This then permits the spontaneous activation of thousands of excitatory neurons, including the ones which encode your long-term memories. The "seeing my life flash before my eyes" is likely due to this.
Inhibitory interneurons also regulate the release of neurotransmitters involved in the reward pathway. So you get a huge rush of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. This is related to the "feeling of euphoria" that NDE survivors sometimes report. | [
"In a certain philosophical context, death can be seen as the ultimate existential moment in one's life. Death is the deepest cause of a primordial anxiety (\"Die Anfechtung\") in a person's life. In this emotional state of anxiety, \"the Nothing\" is revealed to the person. According to twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger, And thus, for Heidegger, humans finds themselves in a very precarious and fragile situation (constantly hanging over the abyss) in this world. This concept can be simplified to the point where at bottom, all that a person has in this world is his or her Being. Regardless of how individuals proceed in life, their existence will always be marked by finitude and solitude. When considering near-death experiences, humans feels this primordial anxiety overcome them. Therefore, it is important for healthcare providers to recognize the onset of this entrenched despair in patients who are nearing their respective deaths.\n",
"Death is not supposed to happen in the open, along highways and in sight of others. Everything is in the process of dying all around us, though we keep it hidden from our sight and minds. Death is part of the cycle and we need to understand we are part of a larger process. The process of dying is necessary for the birth of the new and we will all experience it together.\n",
"As D. S. Hutchinson wrote concerning this line, \"While you are alive, you don't have to deal with being dead, but when you are dead you don't have to deal with it either, because you aren't there to deal with it.\" In Epicurus' own words in his Letter to Menoeceus, \"Death means nothing to us...when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist,\" for there is no afterlife. Death, says Epicurus, is the greatest anxiety of all, in length and intensity. This anxiety about death impedes the quality and happiness of one's life by the theory of afterlife: the worrying about whether or not one's deeds and actions in life will translate well into the region of the gods, the wondering whether one will be assigned to an eternity of pain or to an eternity of pleasure.\n",
"Death is presented in a manner that is less distant and threatening. Because Death narrates and explains the reasons behind each character's destruction, as well as explains how he feels that he must take the life of each character, Death is given a sense of care rather than fear. At one point, Death states \"even death has a heart,\" which reaffirms that there is a care present in the concept of death and dying.\n",
"Other definitions for death focus on the character of cessation of something. More specifically, death occurs when a living entity experiences irreversible cessation of all functioning. As it pertains to human life, death is an irreversible process where someone loses their existence as a person.\n",
"Death – particularly the death of humans – has commonly been considered a sad or unpleasant occasion, due to the affection for the being that has died and the termination of social and familial bonds with the deceased. Other concerns include fear of death, necrophobia, anxiety, sorrow, grief, emotional pain, depression, sympathy, compassion, solitude, or saudade. Many cultures and religions have the idea of an afterlife, and also hold the idea of reward or judgement and punishment for past sin.\n",
"Death is a situation that no one can completely prepare for. Additionally, many people don't have much experience with people close to them dying. Because of this, when it comes to the time to deal with dying there are a lot of questions and uncertainty. Pain management is only one part of end of life care; another part, of equal or greater importance at the end of their life, is the psychological aspects,\n"
] |
do blind people need to close their eyes to go to sleep if so why? if they already see pitch black? | Because eyes need moisture and the only way to do that it to close your eyes so that your tears can cover the entire surface of your eye. | [
"Another study has indicated that sleeping with the light on may protect the eyes of diabetics from retinopathy, a condition that can lead to blindness. However, the initial study is still inconclusive.\n",
"Night blindness is the difficulty for the eyes to adjust to dim light. Affected individuals are unable to distinguish images in low levels of illumination. People with night blindness have poor vision in the darkness, but see normally when adequate light is present.\n",
"People who are blind from degradation or damage to the visual cortex, but still have functional eyes, are actually capable of some level of vision and reaction to visual stimuli but not a conscious perception; this is known as blindsight. People with blindsight are usually not aware that they are reacting to visual sources, and instead just unconsciously adapt their behavior to the stimulus.\n",
"Children who are blind not only have the educational disadvantage of not being able to see – they also miss out on fundamental parts of early and advanced education if not provided with the necessary tools. Children who are blind or visually impaired can begin learning pre-braille skills from a very young age to become fluent braille readers as they get older.\n",
"When a person has become blind, in order to “see” the world, their other senses become heightened. An important sense for the blind is their sense of touch, which becomes more frequently used to help them perceive the world. People that are blind have displayed that their visual cortices become more responsive to auditory and tactile stimulation. Braille allows the blind to be able to use their sense of touch to feel the roughness, and distance of various patterns to be used as a form of language. Within the brain, the activation of the occipital cortex is functionally relevant for tactile braille reading, as well as the somatosensory cortex. These various parts of the brain function in their own way, in which they each contribute to the effectiveness of how braille is read by the blind. People that are blind also rely heavily on Tactile Gnosis, Spatial discrimination, Graphesthesia, and Two-point discrimination. Essentially, the occipital cortex allows one to effectively make judgements on the distance of braille patterns, which is related to spatial discrimination. Meanwhile, the somatosensory cortex allows one to effectively make judgements on the roughness of braille patterns, which is related to two-point discrimination. The various visual areas in the brain are very essential for a blind person to read braille, just as much as it is for a person that has sight. Essentially, whether one is blind or not, the perception of objects that involves tactile discrimination is not impaired if one cannot see. When comparing people that are blind to people that have sight, the amount of activity within the their somatosensory and visual areas of the brain do differ. The activity in the somatosensory and visual areas are not as high in tactile gnosis for people that are not blind, and are more-so active for more visual related stimuli that does not involve touch. Nonetheless, there is a difference in these various areas within the brain when comparing the blind to the sighted, which is that shape discrimination causes a difference in brain activity, as well as tactile gnosis. The visual cortices of blind individuals are active during various vision related tasks including tactile discrimination, and the function of the cortices resemble the activity of adults with sight.\n",
"In another case study, a girl had brought her grandfather in to see a neuropsychologist. The girl's grandfather, Mr. J., had had a stroke which had left him completely blind apart from a tiny spot in the middle of his visual field. The neuropsychologist, Dr. M., performed an exercise with him. The doctor helped Mr. J. to a chair, had him sit down, and then asked to borrow his cane. The doctor then asked, \"Mr. J., please look straight ahead. Keep looking that way, and don't move your eyes or turn your head. I know that you can see a little bit straight ahead of you, and I don't want you to use that piece of vision for what I'm going to ask you to do. Fine. Now, I'd like you to reach out with your right hand [and] point to what I'm holding.\" Mr. J. then replied, \"But I don't see anything—I'm blind!\" The doctor then said, \"I know, but please try, anyway.\" Mr. J then shrugged and pointed, and was surprised when his finger encountered the end of the cane which the doctor was pointing toward him. After this, Mr. J. said that \"it was just luck\". The doctor then turned the cane around so that the handle side was pointing towards Mr. J. He then asked for Mr. J. to grab hold of the cane. Mr. J. reached out with an open hand and grabbed hold of the cane. After this, the doctor said, \"Good. Now put your hand down, please.\" The doctor then rotated the cane 90 degrees, so that the handle was oriented vertically. The doctor then asked Mr. J. to reach for the cane again. Mr. J. did this, and he turned his wrist so that his hand matched the orientation of the handle. This case study shows that—although (on a conscious level) Mr. J. was completely unaware of any visual abilities that he may have had—he was able to orient his grabbing motions as if he had no visual impairments.\n",
"Patients with blindsight have damage to the visual system that allows perception (the visual cortex of the brain and some of the nerve fibers that bring information to it from the eyes) rather than the system that controls eye movements. This phenomenon shows how, after the more complex visual system is damaged, people can use the latter visual system of their brains to guide hand movements towards an object even though they cannot see what they are reaching for. Hence, visual information can control behavior without producing a conscious sensation. This ability of those with blindsight to \"see\" objects that they are unconscious of suggests that consciousness is not a general property of all parts of the brain; yet it suggests that only certain parts of the brain play a special role in consciousness.\n"
] |
what do the numbers mean in reference to eyesight? eg. 20/20 | According to below, 20/20 essentially means the person can see an image 20 ft in front of them the same way someone with 'normal' vision would see the image. if they had 30/20 vision for example, this person would see an image 30 ft away the same way someone with 'normal' vision would see the same image from 20 ft away.
More explanations below.
source : _URL_0_ | [
"The standard definition of normal visual acuity (20/20 or 6/6 vision) is the ability to resolve a spatial pattern separated by a visual angle of one minute of arc. The terms 20/20 and 6/6 are derived from standardized sized objects that can be seen by a \"person of normal vision\" at the specified distance. For example, if one can see at a distance of 20 ft an object that normally can be seen at 20 ft, then one has 20/20 vision. If one can see at 20 ft what a normal person can see at 40 ft, then one has 20/40 vision. Put another way, suppose you have trouble seeing objects at a distance and you can only see out to 20 ft what a person with normal vision can see out to 200 feet, then you have 20/200 vision. The 6/6 terminology is more commonly used in Europe and Australia, and represents the distance in metres.\n",
"BULLET::::- In some countries, the number 20 is used as an index in measuring visual acuity. 20/20 indicates normal vision at 20 feet, although it is commonly used to mean \"perfect vision\". (Note that this applies only to countries using the Imperial system. The metric equivalent is 6/6.) When someone is able to see only after an event how things turned out, that person is often said to have had \"20/20 hindsight\".\n",
"where formula_2 is the optotype height or width (which are the same due to the optotype being on a square grid), formula_3 is the distance from eye to chart, and formula_4 is the angle subtended by the optotype, which is 5 arcminutes as specified by Snellen. Another calculation for United States clinics using 20-foot chart distances (slightly more than 6 m), and using a 17 mm model eye for calculations, and a letter which subtends 5 minutes of arc, gives a vertical height of the 20/20 letter to be 8.75 mm.\n",
"The f-number of the human eye varies from about 8.3 in a very brightly lit place to about 2.1 in the dark. Note that computing the focal length requires that the light-refracting properties of the liquids in the eye are taken into account. Treating the eye as an ordinary air-filled camera and lens results in a different focal length, thus yielding an incorrect f-number.\n",
"At exactly 6 metres' distance from the patient, the letters on the 6/6 line shall subtend 5 minutes of arc (such that the individual limbs of the letters subtend 1 minute of arc), which means that the chart should be sized such that these letters are 8.73 mm tall and the topmost (6/60) \"E\" should be 87.3 mm tall. Putting it another way, the eye should be at a distance 68.76 times the height of the top (6/60) letter. The formula is\n",
"Visual acuity is a quantitative measure of the ability to identify black symbols on a white background at a standardized distance as the size of the symbols is varied. It is the most common clinical measurement of visual function. In the term \"20/20 vision\" the numerator refers to the distance in feet from which a person can reliably distinguish a pair of objects. The denominator is the distance from which an 'average' person would be able to distinguish —the distance at which their separation angle is 1 arc minute. The metric equivalent is 6/6 vision where the distance is 6 meters. The 20/\"x\" number does not directly relate to the eyeglass prescription required to correct vision; rather an eye exam seeks to find the prescription that will provide at least 20/20 vision.\n",
"The fastest f-number for the human eye is about 2.1, corresponding to a diffraction-limited point spread function with approximately 1 μm diameter. However, at this f-number, spherical aberration limits visual acuity, while a 3 mm pupil diameter (f/5.7) approximates the resolution achieved by the human eye. The maximum density of cones in the human fovea is approximately 170,000 per square millimeter, which implies that the cone spacing in the human eye is about 2.5 μm, approximately the diameter of the point spread function at f/5.\n"
] |
how does kelvin work? | Kelvin is a temperature scale that start with absolute zero and has uses the same degrees as Celsius.
Celsius has water freeze at 0° and boil at 100° absolute zero is at -273.16° C.
So in Kelvin absolute Zero is a 0 K, water freezes at 273.16 K and boils at 373.16 K
There is a corresponding temperature scale that also starts at absolute zero but uses Farenheit degrees called Rankine, but it is rarely used.
Here is a chart:
Celsius | Kelvin | Fahrenheit | Rankine
---:|---:|----:|----:
-273.16°C | 0 K | −459.67 °F | 0 °R
-40°C| 233.15 K| -40 °F | 419.67 °R
-17.78°C| 255.37 K | 0 °F| 459.67 °R
0 °C | 273.15 K| 32 °F |491.67 °R
100 °C | 373.15 K| 212 °F | 671.67 °R
| [
"The Kelvin transform is a device used in classical potential theory to extend the concept of a harmonic function, by allowing the definition of a function which is 'harmonic at infinity'. This technique is also used in the study of subharmonic and superharmonic functions.\n",
"The kelvin is the base unit of temperature in the International System of Units (SI), having the unit symbol K. It is named after the Belfast-born, Glasgow University engineer and physicist William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (1824–1907).\n",
"The Kelvin equation describes the change in vapour pressure due to a curved liquid–vapor interface, such as the surface of a droplet. The vapor pressure at a convex curved surface is higher than that at a flat surface. The Kelvin equation is dependent upon thermodynamic principles and does not allude to special properties of materials. It is also used for determination of pore size distribution of a porous medium using adsorption porosimetry. The equation is named in honor of William Thomson, also known as Lord Kelvin.\n",
"Kelvin is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the Boltzmann constant to be 1.380 649×10 when expressed in the unit J⋅K, which is equal to kg⋅m⋅s⋅K, where the kilogram, metre and second are defined in terms of the Planck constant(\")\", speed of light\"(\"\")\" and caesium-133 ground-state hyperfine transition duration() respectively. \n",
"While the Kelvin functions are defined as the real and imaginary parts of Bessel functions with \"x\" taken to be real, the functions can be analytically continued for complex arguments With the exception of Ber(\"x\") and Bei(\"x\") for integral \"n\", the Kelvin functions have a branch point at \"x\" = 0.\n",
"The definition of the kelvin underwent a fundamental change. Rather than using the triple point of water to fix the temperature scale, the new definition uses the energy equivalent as given by Boltzmann's equation.\n",
"A Kelvin wave is any progressive wave that is channeled between two boundaries or opposing forces (usually between the Coriolis force and a coastline or the equator). There are two types, coastal and equatorial. Kelvin waves are gravity driven and non-dispersive. This means that Kelvin waves can retain their shape and direction over long periods of time. They are usually created by a sudden shift in the wind, such as the change of the trade winds at the beginning of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.\n"
] |
why commercial airplanes are usually white while military airplanes are usually grey? | 3 main reasons :
1. Minimizing visual signature . Aircraft operating over sea can be camouflaged by painting them blue\-grey.
2. Blending of aircraft with the tarmac. Parked aircraft outlines are harder to see if the aircraft color doesn't provide sharp contrast with the surface they are on.
3. Modern military aircraft are painted with radar absorbent paint . The paint is most effective with darker colors and a matte finish. Hence, grey aircraft. | [
"Originally, many aircraft in service retained the basic color scheme they were acquired in. Prior to World War II, combat aircraft were given a green and brown top scheme with white or sky blue underside, similar to the Royal Air Force. After the war, jet fighter aircraft such as the Sabre and Starfighter would serve in a polished metal scheme. Later, most aircraft received green and brown camouflage again, consistent with the United States Air Force's South East Asia scheme, referred to as Vietnam camouflage in Greece. A-7 Corsair IIs would be some of the last aircraft to fly with this scheme, retaining it until their retirement, long after all-over grey schemes had become the normal application for Greek aircraft. C-130 Hercules transports which used South East Asia early in their careers were repainted in an overall grey theme.\n",
"Aggressor aircraft in the United States are typically painted in colorful camouflage schemes, matching the colors of many Soviet aircraft and contrasting with the gray colors used in most operational US combat aircraft. Camouflage schemes that consist of many shades of blue (similar to those used in Sukhoi fighters) or of green and mostly-light brown (similar to the colors used in many Middle Eastern countries' combat aircraft) are most common.\n",
"Camouflage for an airborne aircraft may attempt to provide concealment with colors resembling the background. For example, until 1941, Royal Air Force fighters were painted in ground colors (dark green and brown) above, and sky colors below. However, aircraft were being lost, and pilots reported that the colors used made their fighters conspicuously darker than the sky. The Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford studied the problem, and in the summer of 1941 replaced the dark brown with a paler color, \"ocean grey\"; the sky blue on the underside was similarly replaced by a paler \"sea grey\" to reduce visibility against the bright sky. Similar adjustments were made by the Luftwaffe. Towards the end of the war, allied air superiority made visible light camouflage less important, and some American aircraft were flown in unpainted (silver colored) metal to save weight.\n",
"Aircraft camouflage is the use of camouflage on military aircraft to make them more difficult to see, whether on the ground or in the air. Given the possible backgrounds and lighting conditions, no single scheme works in every situation. A common approach has been a form of countershading, the aircraft being painted in a disruptive pattern of ground colors such as green and brown above, sky colors below. For faster and higher-flying aircraft, sky colors have sometimes been used all over, while helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft used close to the ground are often painted entirely in ground camouflage. Aircraft flying by night have often been painted black, but this actually made them appear darker than the night sky, leading to paler night camouflage schemes. There are trade-offs between camouflage and aircraft recognition markings, and between camouflage and weight. Accordingly, visible light camouflage has been dispensed with when air superiority was not threatened or when no significant aerial opposition was anticipated.\n",
"During filming, as war preparations ramped up, the U.S. Navy ordered a new grey color camouflage for all its sea-based aircraft, with the associate producer Robert Lord scrambling to have a concession made where a few aircraft in each squadron would retain their colorful schemes in order to match previously shot footage. The film ultimately uses footage that includes aircraft in this new uniform light-grey color scheme especially in the carrier sequence.\n",
"After the aircraft was unveiled, its livery and color scheme attracted criticism. Some deemed it \"unattractive\", while others noted the similarity of sky blue color scheme to the United States Air Force One, and others suspected a political connotation. Minister of State Secretary Sudi Silalahi, responded that the sky blue color was chosen for safety and security reasons, as a sky-colored camouflage. The color is also widely used as the uniform of the Indonesian Air Force personnel who operate the aircraft. It was also chosen as a unique identity, since there are no Indonesian commercial aircraft using this color in their livery.\n",
"Air transports of heads of state and government are often painted in unique color schemes. The US President's aircraft, Air Force One, uses a light-blue and sky-blue color scheme, with the Seal of the President of the United States just above the front gear and the flag of the United States on the tailfin. The livery was designed by French-American industrial designer Raymond Loewy at the instigation, and with the help of, then-First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.\n"
] |
how do websites, particularly like instagram and tumblr, deal with constant additions in content? is their storage virtually unlimited? | those are so tiny compared to youtube.
youtube adds storage space at the rate of petabytes a day. there's a module in a shipping container that house storage for 12petabytes. drop one of those in, you're good for another couple of days
| [
"Web Storage is a W3C standard API that enables key-value storage in modern browsers. The API consists of two objects, sessionStorage (that enables session-only storage that gets wiped upon browser session end) and localStorage (that enables storage that persists across sessions).\n",
"BULLET::::- One file per article is the oldest storage scheme, still in common use on smaller servers and replicated in many clients. Its performance capability is a direct function of the underlying operating system's ability to create, remove and locate files within a directory, and often this scheme is insufficient to keep up with modern Usenet traffic. It does, however, allow for the greatest flexibility in managing the amount and location of storage used by the server. Nearly all current software using this scheme stores articles using the B News 2.10 layout.\n",
"Storage purchases renew automatically at the end of the subscription period. Users can upgrade their storage plan anytime, with the new storage tier taking effect immediately. Storage can also be shared with up to 5 family members, with each person getting the default 15 gigabytes. Files count towards the default storage before counting towards shared storage. Many items do not take up any space. These include Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms and Sites. Shared files or files in \"Shared with me\" only use up the owner's quota. Photos and videos using the \"High Quality\" setting do not take up any space, but may be in a lower quality than the original version. Google Pixel phones allow users to backup an unlimited number of videos and photos without counting towards the quota. Users of the Google One service also see an addition to their account's avatar icon of a four-color circular surround made up of the company's blue-red-yellow-green color scheme to denote their status.\n",
"Some online file storage services offer space on a per-gigabyte basis, and sometimes include a bandwidth cost component as well. Usually these will be charged monthly or yearly. Some companies offer the service for free, relying on advertising revenue. Some hosting services do not place any limit on how much space the user's account can consume. Some services require a software download which makes files only available on computers which have that software installed, others allow users to retrieve files through any web browser. With the increased inbox space offered by webmail services, many users have started using their webmail service as an online drive. Some sites offer free unlimited file storage but have a limit on the file size. Some sites offer additional online storage capacity in exchange for new customer referrals.\n",
"Because local storage can be used to save information on a computer that is later retrieved by the same site, a site can use it to gather user statistics, similar to how HTTP cookies and Web Storage can be used. With such technologies, the possibility of building a profile based on user statistics is considered by some a potential privacy concern. Users can disable or restrict use of local storage in Flash Player through a \"Settings Manager\" page. These settings can be accessed from the Adobe website or by right-clicking on Flash-based content and selecting \"Global Settings\".\n",
"This is a comparison of file hosting services which are currently active. File hosting services are a particular kind of online file storage; however, various products that are designed for online file storage may not have features or characteristics that others designed for sharing files have.\n",
"BULLET::::1. In practice, the \"vast majority\" of users do not have any significant long term private storage capability. Continued storage is dependent upon regular downloads of the file occurring. Files not downloaded are rapidly removed in most cases, whereas popular downloaded files are retained. (items 7 – 8)\n"
] |
why do home appliances all hum at the same tone frequency? | Your electrical power is alternating current - switching back and forth 60 times per second. You will hear that 60 Hz tone, as well as overtones of 60 Hz (such as 120, 180, 240 Hz).
edit: typo in overtone frequencies. | [
"Digital alarm clocks can make other noises. Simple battery-powered alarm clocks make a loud buzzing or beeping sound to wake a sleeper, while novelty alarm clocks can speak, laugh, sing, or play sounds from nature.\n",
"Some central office switches in the United States, notably older GTD-5 EAX systems, utilize a single frequency tone, 480 Hz, known as \"High Tone\" for this purpose. In either case, the tone is substantially louder than any other signal transmitted over a copper POTS circuit; loud enough to be heard across a room from an unused off-hook telephone.\n",
"AC-powered appliances can give off a characteristic hum, often called \"mains hum\", at the multiples of the frequencies of AC power that they use (see Magnetostriction). It is usually produced by motor and transformer core laminations vibrating in time with the magnetic field. This hum can also appear in audio systems, where the power supply filter or signal shielding of an amplifier is not adequate.\n",
"A small amount of noise is generated by an internal cooling fan. Audible electromagnetic noise (a hum or buzz) may be produced by cookware exposed to high magnetic fields, especially at high power if the cookware has loose parts; cookware with welded-in cladding layers and solid riveting is less likely to produce this type of noise. Some users may detect a whistling or whining sound from the cookware or from the powered electronic devices.\n",
"BULLET::::- Noise : A single source of tractive power (i.e., motors in one place), is quieter than multiple operational power units, where one or more motors are located under every carriage. The noise problem is particularly noticeable in diesel multiple units.\n",
"Mains hum, electric hum, or power line hum is a sound associated with alternating current at the frequency of the mains electricity. The fundamental frequency of this sound is usually double of fundamental 50 Hz or 60 Hz, 100 Hz or 120 Hz depending on the local power-line frequency. The sound often has heavy harmonic content above 50–60 Hz. Because of the presence of mains current in mains-powered audio equipment as well as ubiquitous AC electromagnetic fields from nearby appliances and wiring, 50/60 Hz electrical noise can get into audio systems, and is heard as mains hum from their speakers. Mains hum may also be heard coming from powerful electric power grid equipment such as utility transformers, caused by mechanical vibrations induced by magnetostriction in magnetic core. Onboard aircraft (or spacecraft) the frequency heard is often higher pitched, due to the use of 400 Hz AC power in these settings because 400 Hz transformers are much smaller and lighter.\n",
"A-weighted SPL measurements of noise level are increasingly to be found on sales literature for domestic appliances such as refrigerators and freezers, and computer fans. Although the threshold of hearing is typically around 0 dB SPL, this is in fact very quiet indeed, and appliances are more likely to have noise levels of 30 to 40 dB SPL.\n"
] |
What are some examples of artwork by historical leaders? | Winston Churchill did [a lot of painting](_URL_0_) too. | [
"Its name honors the politician and historian Diogo de Vasconcelos, which stood out as a pioneer in defense of the historical and artistic heritage, mining and national level and is considered the first historian of art in Brazil.\n",
"Among the most representative works available to the public, we find historical events such as the hanging of Murillo or martyrdom Tupac Katari; outstanding characters from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries made of clay; a miniature replica, made of ceramic, the foundation of La Paz. In addition to pre-Columbian pictures of drums, some paintings of old La Paz and scenes of the old city tram.\n",
"But his main art legacy resides in creating many portraits of the personalities of his time (Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Andrei Mureşanu, Vasile Alecsandri, etc.) and of some famous historical figures, such as Michael the Brave, inspired from a contemporary engraving of the voivode.\n",
"Paintings are mostly portraits such as those of Pedro Sainz de Baranda y Borreyro, Blas Godínez Brito, José Sebastián Holzinger, Lieutenant José Azueta Abad, Cadete Virgilio and Uribe Roble and of historical events such as the defense of the Fort of San Juan de Ulúa during the French Intervention in Mexico, the bombing of the Port of Veracruz in 1846, the lake battle of the Spanish Conquest of Tenochtitlan, the naval battle between the \"Tampico\" and the \"Guerrero\", and the sinking of the \"Potrero del Llano.\"\n",
"Arcimboldo created a number of portraits of people by painting an assemblage of objects such as fruits and vegetables, flowers, or in this case, books; the objects typically had some connection to the person's life or depiction. Benno Geiger called it a \"triumph of abstract art in the 16th century\". In 1957, art historian Sven Alfons was the first to conclude that this was specifically a portrait of Lazius. The work has been interpreted as both a celebration and a satirical mocking of librarians and scholarship. K. C. Elhard suggests that it may be specifically a parody of \"materialistic book collectors more interested in acquiring books than in reading them.\"\n",
"The museum has over 4,000 works of art, ranging from the 16th century to the present, and is best known for its extensive collection of Haitian, Colonial Mexican and Midwestern art, particularly pieces by Thomas Hart Benton, Marvin Cone and Grant Wood, including the only self-portrait Wood ever painted. In 1990, Grant Wood's estate, which included his personal effects and various works of art, became the property of the Figge Art Museum through his sister Nan Wood Graham, the woman portrayed in American Gothic.\n",
"Originally called the Kiev City Museum of Antiques and Art, the founders set out to put together a collection of pieces representative of Ukrainian fine art. Ranging from medieval icons to portraits of military and church leaders during Cossack times, some depicting caricatures of Mamay. Present time famous artist works included those of Taras Shevchenko, Ilya Yefimovich Repin, Vladimir Borovikovsky, Vasily Andreevich Tropinin, Mykola Pimonenko, Mikhail Vrubel, Nikolai Ge, Serhiy Svetoslavsky, and Oleksandr Murashko among many others. \n"
] |
Who was General Tso? | [Tso Tsung-t'ang](_URL_1_) (alternately Zuo Zongtang) was a Chinese general during the late Qing dynasty, most famous for helping to quell the Taiping rebellion.
I'm about to commit a horrible sin for /r/AskHistorians by linking to a TED talk. Nevertheless, this [talk by Jennifer 8. Lee](_URL_0_) (coincidentally titled "Who was General Tso?") is actually rather informative on the subject of American "Chinese" cuisine.
To answer the sub-question, "General Tso's chicken" is an entirely American invention. | [
"General Xu Yongchang (15 December 188512 July 1959) (Hsu Yung-chang; ; style name: Cichen (Tzu-chen)) was the Minister of Board of Military Operations of the Republic of China between December 22, 1948, and April 22, 1949, and the representative of the Republic of China on September 2, 1945, at the signing of the Instrument of Surrender of Japan that ended World War II.\n",
"The general served in Korea as assistant commander of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing from April to October 1951. In World War II, when the Marines were fighting at Guadalcanal in America's first offensive against Japan, he commanded all United States Army, Navy, Marine and Royal New Zealand Air Force search, bombing and torpedo planes based on that island. He also headed Marine Aircraft Group 14 during its support of the New Georgia and Bougainville invasions and directed all Solomons-based Army, Navy, Marine and New Zealand fighter operations against Rabaul, Japan's biggest base in the Southwest Pacific.\n",
"The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) (originally briefly styled Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers) was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the Allied occupation of Japan following World War II. It issued SCAP Directive (alias SCAPIN, SCAP Index Number) to the Japanese government, aiming to transform it into a non-terrorist nation.\n",
"General Emmett E. \"Rosie\" O'Donnell Jr. (September 15, 1906 – December 26, 1971) was a United States Air Force four-star general who served as Commander in Chief, Pacific Air Forces (CINCPACAF) from 1959 to 1963. He also led the first B-29 Superfortress attack against Tokyo during World War II.\n",
"Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was named the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in the China war zone (CBI) on 1942. However, US forces in practice were usually overseen by General Joseph Stilwell, the Deputy Allied Commander in China and South East Asia Command (SEAC). Until late 1944 that the land forces chain of command was clarified, after Stilwell was recalled to Washington. His overall role, and the CBI command were then split among three people: Lt Gen. Raymond Wheeler became Deputy Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia; Maj. Gen. Albert Wedemeyer became Chief of Staff to Chiang, and commander of US Forces, China Theater (USFCT). Lt Gen. Daniel Sultan was promoted, from deputy commander of CBI to commander of US Forces, India-Burma Theater (USFIBT) and commander of the NCAC.\n",
"George Churchill Kenney (6 August 1889 – 9 August 1977) was a United States Army Air Forces general during World War II. He is best known as the commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA), a position he held between August 1942 and 1945.\n",
"Eric Ken Shinseki (; born November 28, 1942) is a retired United States Army general who served as the seventh United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs (2009–2014). His final United States Army post was as the 34th Chief of Staff of the Army (1999–2003). Shinseki is a veteran of two tours of combat in the Vietnam War, in which he was awarded three Bronze Star Medals for valor and two Purple Hearts. He was the first Asian-American four-star general, and the first Asian-American Secretary of Veterans Affairs.\n"
] |
How do we have so many pictures and videos of the treatment of Jews in europe during the Nazi-era? | Much of the footage that you see was done by the Nazis themselves. Their plan was to destroy the Jewish people and wanted to have evidence of how they had done so in a very thorough and efficient way. There was also a plan for Führermuseum - a museum whose purpose was to display a selection of the art bought, confiscated or stolen by the Nazis from throughout Europe during World War II. While ultimately the war ended before they could wipe out the Jews and build a museum, they had created a very significant amount of visual evidence of what they had been doing. | [
"The attitude of German soldiers towards atrocities committed on Jews and Poles in World War II was also studied using photographs and correspondence left after the war. Photographs serve as a valuable source of knowledge; taking them and making albums about the persecution of Jews was a popular custom among German soldiers. These pictures are not the official propaganda of the German state but represent personal experience. Their overall attitude is antisemitic.\n",
"The Encyclopedia of Jews in Music (\"Lexikon der Juden in der Musik\") was a Nazi-sponsored encyclopedia first published in Germany in 1940, which listed individuals involved in the music industry who were defined under Nazi racial laws as 'Jewish' or 'half-Jewish'. It was edited by Herbert Gerigk and Theophil Stengel and published in Berlin in 1940 by Bernhard Hahnefeld, with official support from the Nazi Party's \"Institute for Study of the Jewish Question\". The book's subtitle declared that it was produced \"on behalf of the national leadership of the Nazi Party for official reasons, partly officially certified documents\".\n",
"Jewish collections were looted the most throughout the war. German Jews were ordered to report their personal assets, which were then privatized by the country. Jewish owned art galleries were forced to sell the works of art they housed. The Nazis concentrated their efforts on ensuring that all art within Germany would be Aryan in nature, speaking to the might of the Germanic state rather than Jewish art which was deemed as a blight on society. In a feat to \"purge\" German museums and collections, confiscation committees seized approximately 16,000 items within Germany. The remaining unexploited art was destroyed in massive bonfires. As the war progressed, the Nazi party elite ordered the confiscation of cultural property throughout various European countries.\n",
"The Jewish Historical Documentation Centre (Zentrum für jüdische historische Dokumentation) was an office headed by Simon Wiesenthal in Linz. The centre collected and promulgated information about war crimes, specific mainly to crimes against the Jewish people as perpetrated by the Nazi Regime in Europe during the Second World War.\n",
"The footage that Hippler shot in the Jewish ghettos of those cities in German occupied Poland was the only footage shot specifically for the purpose of the film. At the beginning of the film, animated text informs the audience that this \"documentary footage\" shows Jews in their original state \"before they put on the mask of civilized Europeans.\" In the Nazi press, Hippler expanded on this claim, asserting that his filming techniques captured Jews \"in an unprejudiced manner, real to life as they live and as they react in their own surroundings.\"\n",
"This book also reveals often-ignored aspects of the Nazi plan to rid Europe of its Jewish population. Photographs showing warehouses of furniture and household items from pianos to children's toys, all of which had been looted from Jewish families, symbolize the reach and extent of the Holocaust. Museums and mines full of stolen paintings show the work of the ERR, the organization in France that \"legalized\" the seizure of Jewish collections and property.\n",
"Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. The British historian Martin Gilbert wrote that no event in the history of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported as it was happening, and the accounts from foreign journalists working in Germany sent shockwaves around the world. \"The Times\" of London observed on 11 November 1938: \"No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenseless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday.\"\n"
] |
how do doctors choose which of several medicines that do the same thing they should prescribe? | Medicines will be ranked as first, second or third choice, etc., for a given condition. Doctors will work through the line until they get a solution.
This is why you should never give up on meds just because they don't work for you. Second line meds might work far better than first line meds for any given person. | [
"In pharmacy, a formulation is a mixture or a structure such as a capsule, tablet, or an emulsion, prepared according to a specific procedure (called a “formula”). Formulations are a very important aspect of creating medicines, since they are essential to ensuring that the active part of the drug is delivered to the correct part of the body, in the right concentration, and at the right rate (not too fast and not too slowly). A good example is a drug delivery system that exploits supersaturation. They also need to have an acceptable taste (in the case of pills, tablets or syrups), last long enough in storage still to be safe and effective when used, and be sufficiently stable both physically and chemically to be transported from where they are manufactured to the eventual consumer. Competently designed formulations for particular applications are safer, more effective, and more economical than any of their components used singly.\n",
"Pharmaceutical corporations may seek to entice doctors to favor prescribing their drugs over others of comparable effectiveness. If the medicine is prescribed heavily, they may seek to reward the individual through gifts. The American Medical Association has published ethical guidelines for gifts from industry which include the tenet that physicians should not accept gifts if they are given in relation to the physician's prescribing practices. Doubtful cases include grants for traveling to medical conventions that double as tourist trips.\n",
"Physicians in the United Kingdom can prescribe medications off-label. According to General Medical Council guidance, the physician must be satisfied that there is sufficient evidence or experience of using the medicine to demonstrate safety and efficacy. Prescribing may be necessary when no suitably licensed medicine is available to meet the patient's need (or when the prescribing is part of approved research).\n",
"When new drugs come to market, the pharmacy and therapeutics committee evaluates the drug's clinical and economic benefits and drawbacks to determine whether the drug will be added to the organization's formulary. Most generic drugs are available on formularies, except in cases where that class of drugs are no longer considered safe and efficacious. Medications under formulary restrictions may be used only by specific physicians, patient care area or disease states.\n",
"Hence, making truly patient-customized products with particular drug(s)/dosage(s) upon receiving valid prescriptions from a physician is likely to be acceptable, especially if the ingredients are FDA approved, etc.\n",
"However, once a drug has been approved for sale for one purpose, physicians are free to prescribe it for any other purpose that in their professional judgment is both safe and effective, and are not limited to official, FDA-approved indications. This off-label prescribing is most commonly done with older, generic medications that have found new uses but have not had the formal (and often costly) applications and studies required by the FDA to formally approve the drug for these new indications. However, there is often extensive medical literature to support the off-label use.\n",
"Many brand name drugs have cheaper generic drug substitutes that are therapeutically and biochemically equivalent. Prescriptions will also contain instructions on whether the prescriber will allow the pharmacist to substitute a generic version of the drug. This instruction is communicated in a number of ways.\n"
] |
why do many americans support a 2-term limit on presidents? | If you take a good hard look at this current election, do you really think the logic of "if people don't want a president, they won't vote for them" always plays out perfectly?
There are many reasons why term limits are important. Why, look no further than the Senate. The Senate is useless, constantly gridlocked, and full of apathetic legislators more vested in their own interests than the good of the country.
Why? Because they have no term limits. And sitting in those seats of power allows them to slowly amass power, influence, and sway over their electorate.
If a President can sit in the seat of power indefinitely, *his primary motivation will be keeping that seat*. It incentivizes him to be selfish, to pay off in favors people who can keep him there, and to wage private wars with opponents and up-and-comers.
This is the problem with career senators. If they can make a career out of it, they're going to focus much more on that than doing their actual fucking job. They'll vote along party lines (because the party will cut their funding or kick them out if they rebel), rather than having the guts to vote pragmatically, and to write legislation that helps us, rather than secures their seat of power. | [
"Many modern presidential republics employ term limits for their highest offices. The United States placed a limit of two terms on its presidency by means of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1951. There are no term limits for Vice Presidency, Representatives and Senators, although there have been calls for term limits for those offices. Under various state laws, some state governors and state legislators have term limits. Formal limits in America date back to the 1682 Pennsylvania Charter of Liberties, and the colonial frame of government of the same year, authored by William Penn and providing for triennial rotation of the Provincial Council, the upper house of the colonial legislature. (See also term limits in the United States).\n",
"BULLET::::- Iowa Senator Albert B. Cummins proposed a constitutional amendment limiting the president to one term only. \"Human frailities are too great to stand the strain which the presidency places on a man\", Cummins said. \"We should limit the President to one term. It might be made a six year term, but I am not so sure about that even.\"\n",
"The Twenty-second Amendment (1951) limits an elected president to two terms in office, a total of eight years. However, under some circumstances it is possible for an individual to serve more than eight years. Although nothing in the original frame of government limited how many presidential terms one could serve, the nation's first president, George Washington, declined to run for a third term, suggesting that two terms of four years were enough for any president. This precedent remained an unwritten rule of the presidency until broken by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to a third term as president 1940 and in 1944 to a fourth.\n",
" says George Washington did not set the informal precedent for a two-term limit for the Presidency. He only meant he was too worn out to personally continue in office. It was Thomas Jefferson who made it a principle in 1808. He made many statements calling for term limits in one form or another.\n",
"Following an amendment in 2000, the constitution limits presidents to two terms of five years. However, the restrictions were not applied retroactively, allowing President Blaise Compaoré, who had been in office since 1987, to run for a further two terms and be re-elected in 2005 and 2010.\n",
"Notwithstanding that the Twenty-second Amendment was clearly a reaction to Franklin D. Roosevelt's election to an unprecedented four terms as president, the notion of presidential term limits has long been debated in American politics. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 considered the issue extensively (alongside broader questions, such as who would elect the president, and the president's role). Many—including Alexander Hamilton and James Madison—supported a lifetime appointment for presidents, while others favored fixed terms appointments. Virginia's George Mason denounced the life-tenure proposal as tantamount to establishment of an elective monarchy. An early draft of the United States Constitution provided that the President was restricted to a single seven-year term. Ultimately, the Framers approved four-year terms with no restriction on the amount of time a person could serve as president.\n",
"Following an amendment in 2000, the constitution limits presidents to two terms of five years. However, the restrictions were not applied retrospectively, allowing President Blaise Compaoré, who had been in office since 1987, to run for a further two terms; accordingly, he was re-elected in 2005 and 2010.\n"
] |
How intelligent are giant octopuses? | I don't know, but increased body and brain size don't correlate with higher intelligence so you can't really infer anything from that alone. | [
"Octopuses are ranked as the most intelligent invertebrates. Giant Pacific Octopuses are commonly kept on display at aquariums due to their size and interesting physiology, and have demonstrated the ability to recognize humans that they frequently come in contact with. These responses include jetting water, changing body texture, and other behaviors that are consistently demonstrated to specific individuals. They have the ability to solve simple puzzles, open childproof bottles and use tools. The octopus brain has folded lobes (a distinct characteristic of complexity), visual and tactile memory centers. They have about 300 million neurons. They have been known to open tank valves, disassemble expensive equipment, and generally wreak havoc in labs and aquaria. Some researchers even claim that they are capable of motor play and having personalities.\n",
"Octopuses are highly intelligent, possibly more so than any other order of invertebrates. The level of their intelligence and learning capability are debated, but maze and problem-solving studies show they have both short- and long-term memory. Octopus have a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in their brain. Two-thirds of an octopus' neurons are found in the nerve cords of their arms. Octopus arms show a variety of complex reflex actions that persist even when they have no input from the brain. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses are not organized in their brain using an internal somatotopic map of their body, instead using a non-somatotopic system unique to large-brained invertebrates. Some octopuses, such as the mimic octopus, move their arms in ways that emulate the shape and movements of other sea creatures.\n",
"Like most octopuses, \"O. rubescens\" is thought to be among the most intelligent of invertebrates. The presence of individual personalities is a hallmark of intelligence, and \"O. rubescens\" was the first invertebrate in which individual personalities were demonstrated.\n",
"The octopus (along with cuttlefish) has the highest brain-to-body mass ratios of all invertebrates; it is also greater than that of many vertebrates. It has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localised in its brain, which is contained in a cartilaginous capsule. Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons are found in the nerve cords of its arms, which show a variety of complex reflex actions that persist even when they have no input from the brain. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses are not organised in their brain via an internal somatotopic map of its body, instead using a nonsomatotopic system unique to large-brained invertebrates.\n",
"Octopuses offer many possibilities in biological research, including their ability to regenerate limbs, change the colour of their skin, behave intelligently with a distributed nervous system, and make use of 168 kinds of protocadherins (humans have 58), the proteins that guide the connections neurons make with each other. The California two-spot octopus has had its genome sequenced, allowing exploration of its molecular adaptations. Having independently evolved mammal-like intelligence, octopuses have been compared to hypothetical intelligent extraterrestrials. Their problem-solving skills, along with their mobility and lack of rigid structure enable them to escape from supposedly secure tanks in laboratories and public aquariums.\n",
"Training experiments have shown the common octopus can distinguish the brightness, size, shape, and horizontal or vertical orientation of objects. They are intelligent enough to learn how to unscrew a jar and are known to raid lobster traps. \"O. vulgaris\" was the first invertebrate animal protected by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 in the UK; it was included because of its high intelligence.\n",
"Drake Baer in \"New York Magazine\" compares octopuses and philosophers: \"They are both given to exploring their worlds, they both have a reputation for peculiarity, they both handle multiple subjects with ease.\" Octopus eyes, too, look and work much like those of vertebrates; but there, Baer remarks, the similarities end. Cephalopods are \"immensely foreign\", with \"a distributed sense of self\" and a \"lived reality\" quite unlike human consciousness, a feature that, he notes, Godfrey-Smith calls \"the most difficult aspect of octopus experience to imagine\".\n"
] |
How can a curve in spacetime make a a force (gravity)? | The rubber-sheet analogy is an extreme simplification that doesn't really shed much light on the underlying mechanism. It gives a bit of intuitive justification for how the paths of objects can be curved, but as you correctly observe, it doesn't provide any explanation for where their motion comes from, or why gravity appears to be a "force".
The key is that it's not space that's curved, it's *spacetime*. Objects are always moving "timewards" in spacetime, at a rate of one year per year. But because of the curvature of spacetime, those timewards paths aren't necessarily parallel. If you put two massive objects at rest near each other, each of their worldlines appears locally straight, but the curvature brings them closer and closer together as time goes on. Gravity feels like a force because if you wanted to keep the objects separated, you'd have to continually apply an opposing force to keep the worldlines separated.
This is much easier to explain visually, so look at the last diagram on [this page.](_URL_0_) Imagine that the north-south axis is time, and the east-west axis is one-dimensional space. Each particle is moving north (into the future) along as straight a path as it possibly can, with no east-west deviations; nevertheless, they collide at the north pole.
Of course, the actual geometry of the universe is more complicated than a sphere; it's a 4-D space with curvature that changes over time depending on the mass distribution. But if the universe were ever to suffer a [Big Crunch](_URL_1_) (which seems unlikely) that diagram is a decent geometric analogy for what it would look like, with all world-lines being forced to intersect at the "future-most" point. | [
"In Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravitation is an attribute of curved spacetime instead of being due to a force propagated between bodies. In Einstein's theory, masses distort spacetime in their vicinity, and other particles move in trajectories determined by the geometry of spacetime. The gravitational force is a fictitious force. There is no gravitational acceleration, in that the proper acceleration and hence four-acceleration of objects in free fall are zero. Rather than undergoing an acceleration, objects in free fall travel along straight lines (geodesics) on the curved spacetime.\n",
"In general relativity, gravity can be regarded as not a force but a consequence of a curved spacetime geometry where the source of curvature is the stress–energy tensor (representing matter, for instance). Thus, for example, the path of a planet orbiting a star is the projection of a geodesic of the curved 4-D spacetime geometry around the star onto 3-D space.\n",
"Given the mass-energy distribution provided by the stress–energy tensor , the Einstein field equations are a set of non-linear second-order partial differential equations in the metric, and imply the curvature of space time is equivalent to a gravitational field (see equivalence principle). Mass falling in curved spacetime is equivalent to a mass falling in a gravitational field - because gravity is a fictitious force. The \"relative acceleration\" of one geodesic to another in curved spacetime is given by the \"geodesic deviation equation\":\n",
"In general relativity, gravity can be regarded as not a force but a consequence of a curved spacetime geometry where the source of curvature is the stress–energy tensor (representing matter, for instance). Thus, for example, the path of a planet orbiting around a star is the projection of a geodesic of the curved 4-dimensional spacetime geometry around the star onto 3-dimensional space.\n",
"These equations are dependent on the distribution of matter and energy in a region of space, unlike Newtonian gravity, which is dependent only on the distribution of matter. The fields themselves in general relativity represent the curvature of spacetime. General relativity states that being in a region of curved space is equivalent to accelerating up the gradient of the field. By Newton's second law, this will cause an object to experience a fictitious force if it is held still with respect to the field. This is why a person will feel himself pulled down by the force of gravity while standing still on the Earth's surface. In general the gravitational fields predicted by general relativity differ in their effects only slightly from those predicted by classical mechanics, but there are a number of easily verifiable differences, one of the most well known being the bending of light in such fields.\n",
"These objections were explained by Einstein's theory of general relativity, in which gravitation is an attribute of curved spacetime instead of being due to a force propagated between bodies. In Einstein's theory, energy and momentum distort spacetime in their vicinity, and other particles move in trajectories determined by the geometry of spacetime. This allowed a description of the motions of light and mass that was consistent with all available observations. In general relativity, the gravitational force is a fictitious force due to the curvature of spacetime, because the gravitational acceleration of a body in free fall is due to its world line being a geodesic of spacetime.\n",
"In Einstein's general theory of relativity, gravity is treated as a phenomenon resulting from the curvature of spacetime. This curvature is caused by the presence of mass. Generally, the more mass that is contained within a given volume of space, the greater the curvature of spacetime will be at the boundary of its volume. As objects with mass move around in spacetime, the curvature changes to reflect the changed locations of those objects. In certain circumstances, accelerating objects generate changes in this curvature, which propagate outwards at the speed of light in a wave-like manner. These propagating phenomena are known as gravitational waves.\n"
] |
Is anything still named after Hitler? | Maybe not entirely irrelevant to your question would be the story of the Viale delle cave ardeatine in Rome.
You might have guessed this road was formerly named 'Viale Adolfo Hitler'. And was part of the greatest charm offensive in history.
Mussolini wanted to impress Hitler so badly that he invited him over on a tour of Italy that took almost 2 years in preparation. The enitire length of railroad Hitler would travel in Italy was meticulously checked for buildings that weren't up to standard. Shabby looking houses were torn down or obscured from view by massive posters. Every town the train went through was adorned with Italian and Swastika flags and thousands of people were recruited to cheer at Hitlers train in every town.
In Rome Mussolini had roads specially constructed that would appeal to Hitlers love for wide boulevards and because the Termini train station was in an area surrounded by 19th century housing blocks Mussolini built an entire railway station, Roma Ostiense, in an area that showed Italy's new industrial zone and that had an appealing route into the city that passed all the great monuments.
The entire city was all flags and every monument was lit up using gas lamps and airial search lights. The road from the station Ostiense towards the ancient city gate Porta Sao Paulo was named after Hitler himself.
After the war it was renamed after the Cave Ardeatini, the location where the biggest massacre inflicted by German forces on Roman citizens had taken place. 335 Citizens where massacred as retribution for a bomb attack on a German army collumn. The Germans tried covering their deed up by blowing up the cave.
So it's not really named after Hitler anymore. The station still remains as a piece of History that is hidden in plain sight, though.
Source: *Capturing the Fascist Moment: Hitler's Visit to Italy in 1938 and the Radicalization of Fascist Italy* by Paul Baxa.
For anyone that wants to see a good movie about the visit of Hitler to Rome I can advice watching 'Una Giornata Particulare' (or 'A Special Day' in English) it makes use of acutal newsreel footage of Hitlers entry into Rome. _URL_0_
*Edits* Spelling is hard. | [
"\"Schicklgruber\" is the surname Adolf Hitler's father, Alois Hitler carried for the first 40 years of his life, until he took the name Hitler (Hiedler) from his stepfather. While Adolf Hitler himself never carried the surname, the British made use of it for propaganda purposes since even to Germans, the name is laughable. The Stooges used it numerous times as the only name by which they would refer to Hitler.\n",
"In the spring of 1941, Rommel's name began to appear in the British media. In the autumn of 1941 and early winter of 1941/1942, he was mentioned in the British press almost daily. The \"Daily Express\" and \"The Cairns Post\" wrote: \"No 'von' nonsense about Erich, nor the code of conduct—such as it was—that most Prussian officers have honoured in war. He is a gangster general, trained in a harder school than Chicago. He was Hitler's thug organiser before he came to power ... So Erich became leader of the S.S. Black Guard, Hitler's private army, which executes his private revenges and guards his person ... When at last Poland made a stand for democracy, it was Rommel who led a panzer corps against the Polish horse cavalry with conspicuous gallantry. Later in France Hitler made him a Knight of the Iron Cross for breaking through the Maginot Line at Maubeuge with the 7th Armoured Division. True, French resistance was almost at an end then, but Erich was entitled to his decoration, too.\" Toward the end of the year, the Reich propaganda machine also used Rommel's successes in Africa as a diversion from the Wehrmacht's challenging situation in the Soviet Union with the stall of Operation Barbarossa. The American press soon began to take notice of Rommel as well, following the United States' entry into the war on 11 December 1941, writing that: \"The British ... admire him because he beat them and were surprised to have beaten in turn such a capable general\". General Claude Auchinleck distributed a directive to his commanders seeking to dispel the notion that Rommel was a \"superman\". The Battle of Kasserine Pass during the Tunisian Campaign intensified the GIs' admiration towards Rommel. The cult of personality was so strong that, according to Peter Schrijvers, \"for the remainder of the war, German POWs would part with pictures of Rommel as reluctantly as GIs were eager to get them\". While Allied troops respected Rommel, civilians held the \"widely accepted\" negative image of Rommel's origin and his connection with the Nazis. As described by Rosie Goldschmidt Waldeck (who debunked the invented story) and \"The New York Times in 1943\", \"It has been said that Rommel started his career as a Hitler hoodlum and owes his quick rise to his early collaboration with Himmler.\" This line of propaganda perpetuated until the war ended. According to Atkinson, to counter the \"perverse chivalry\" (\"war without hate\", in Rommel's words) that Rommel promoted, the British and American authorities instituted hate training and tried to raise the eagerness to kill the enemies by stressing enemy brutality, as well as spatterring slaughterhouse blood in assault training courses. General John Strawson notes the same difference in attitudes to war between the leaderships of the two sides.\n",
"The name \"Hitler\" is widely used for anyone is overly authoritarian in manner, but it does not have the same negative connotation as in the West. For example in the 1998 film \"Hitler\", the disciplinarian hero nicknamed Hitler is simply a person with staunch traditional values. There are at least three other Indian films entitled \"Hitler\", in all of which the Hitler character is the hero (\"Hitler\" (1996 film); \"Hitler\" (film); \"Hitler Umanath\"). \"Hitler Didi\" (My Sister Hitler) is a TV show about a character with a domineering elder sister.\n",
"Artur Axmann (18 February 1913 – 24 October 1996) was the German Nazi national leader (\"Reichsjugendführer\") of the Hitler Youth (\"Hitlerjugend\") from 1940 to the war's end in 1945. He was the last living Nazi with a rank equivalent to \"Reichsführer\".\n",
"Adolf Hitler, Führer (\"leader\") of Nazi Germany, was referenced by Nazi propaganda in a number of honorary titles (\"Supreme Judge of the German People\", \"First Soldier of the German Reich\", \"First Worker of the New Germany\", \"Greatest Military Commander of All Time\", \"Military Leader of Europe\", \"High Protector of the Holy Mountain\", etc.). Numerous works in popular music and literature featured Adolf Hitler prominently. Hitler was usually depicted as a heroic, god-like figure, loved, feared and respected by the German people.\n",
"Note concerning the name: The first compound, \"Führer\", does not as elsewhere refer to \"the Leader\" Adolf Hitler, to whom the members of the Leaders Reserve were no more directly subject than were any other officers; it is plural and refers to the members themselves.\n",
"Hitler personally awarded to him, on 10 April 1937, date of Kirdorf's 90th birthday, the Order of the German Eagle, the highest distinction of the Third Reich. He benefited on 13 July 1938 from a state funeral in Gelsenkirchen, with Hitler deposing a crown on his coffin.\n"
] |
What would stop an AI system with greater-than-human intelligence from being detrimental to humanity? | This question is difficult, mostly because of the notion of "greater-than-human intelligence". What does this mean?
In some sense it seems to imply that intelligence is a unidimensional quantity, and everything fits neatly onto some scale with humans at the top (currently). This is obviously wrong, though. Computers already possess "greater-than-human intelligence" when it comes to arithmetic or any rote computational task. Whereas humans are unbelievably better than computers at other things, such as spatial reasoning. (Of course this could change quickly.)
Even if we were to grant that computers would become more intelligent than humans in _every conceivable way_, this by itself would pose no innate threat. So long as computers remained tools for human use--they only solved problems we set them to solve--we are fine.
The real question seems to be: What would happen if a super-AI system was given free will? What would motivate the AI--what would it want? Would its needs support human well being or oppose it? Would humans maintain a dominant role in the relationship? How would our ethical systems adjust?
These are philosophical questions outside the domain of computing. Within the domain of computing (and neuroscience, to be honest), what we can say is that we are far, far away from achieving them. (Even the energy requirements of simulating a human brain on modern processors would be prohibitive.) For the moment they are not a practical concern.
I'd recommend posing this to /r/askphilosophy as well. | [
"A survey of AI experts estimated that the chance of human-level machine learning having an \"extremely bad (e.g., human extinction)\" long-term effect on humanity is 5%. A 2008 survey by the Future of Humanity Institute estimated a 5% probability of extinction by superintelligence by 2100. Eliezer Yudkowsky believes that risks from artificial intelligence are harder to predict than any other known risks due to bias from anthropomorphism. Since people base their judgments of artificial intelligence on their own experience, he claims that they underestimate the potential power of AI.\n",
"Many researchers have argued that, by way of an \"intelligence explosion\" sometime in the 21st century, a self-improving AI could become so vastly more powerful than humans that we would not be able to stop it from achieving its goals.\n",
"Anders Sandberg has also elaborated on this scenario, addressing various common counter-arguments. AI researcher Hugo de Garis suggests that artificial intelligences may simply eliminate the human race for access to scarce resources, and humans would be powerless to stop them. Alternatively, AIs developed under evolutionary pressure to promote their own survival could outcompete humanity.\n",
"The most realistic risks about the dangers of artificial intelligence are basic mistakes, breakdowns and cyberattacks, Thomas Dietterich, an expert in the field says – more so than machines that become super powerful, run amok and try to destroy the human race.\n",
"While approving of the increase in efficiency that humans reap by using resources such as expert systems in medicine or GPS in navigation, Dennett sees a danger in machines performing an ever-increasing proportion of basic tasks in perception, memory, and algorithmic computation because people may tend to anthropomorphize such systems and attribute intellectual powers to them that they do not possess. He believes the relevant danger from AI is that people will misunderstand the nature of basically \"parasitic\" AI systems, rather than employing them constructively to challenge and develop the human user's powers of comprehension.\n",
"In his book \"\", Nick Bostrom provides an argument that artificial intelligence will pose a threat to humankind. He argues that sufficiently intelligent AI, if it chooses actions based on achieving some goal, will exhibit convergent behavior such as acquiring resources or protecting itself from being shut down. If this AI's goals do not reflect humanity's—one example is an AI told to compute as many digits of pi as possible—it might harm humanity in order to acquire more resources or prevent itself from being shut down, ultimately to better achieve its goal.\n",
"Dietterich's perspective of problems with AI, however, is a little more pedestrian that most – not so much that it will overwhelm humanity, but that like most complex engineered systems, it may not always work.\n"
] |
Why was American Revolution helped by European powers, but French Revolution was feared? | The reason is that the American revolution wasn't viewed as a revolution. The American revolutionaries legitimised their actions by claiming that the England had encroached on their traditional rights as Englishmen. The monarch had acted as a tyrant and rebellion could therefore be defensible, if the aim was to *restore* their rights. The French revolution was a true revolution; society itself was transformed. The sovereign, the King ordained by God, was replaced by a new sovereign, the nation. The American revolution did not change the basis for society itself (atleast until the constitution was ratified); the French revolution overturned the ideology of the ancien régime itself, threatening every society in Europe. One way to exemplify this is to look at the foreign policy of the United States and revolutionary France. The former never tried to export its ideas, but many of the most outspoken proponents of the latter wanted to spread the ideas of the revolution throughout Europe by force.
I hope that makes sense.
Source: Max Edling, 2009: "Den konstitutionella revolutionens startskott", in *Maktbalans och kontrollmakt*, eds. M. Brundin & M. Isberg. Edling is the foremost Swedish expert on the American revolution and a researcher at King's College, London. His dissertation, "A Revolution in Favour of Government", is an eminently readable revisit of the American revolution from a state formation perspective. | [
"French support of the American Revolution was probably a significant factor in shaping American's feelings towards France. Prior to that, the French had been seen as rivals for control of North America until their decisive defeat in the French and Indian War. With the elimination of France as a major colonial power in North America, the rivalry between American colonists and British interests became primary, and France's role switched to that of a counter to British power.\n",
"After the American Revolution began in 1775, the United States courted European powers for help in the war against the Kingdom of Great Britain. Benjamin Franklin negotiated an alliance with the Kingdom of France in 1778, and the French played a decisive role in the American victory in the war. Enlightenment-era Spain and the Dutch Republic also aided the U.S. cause, while other European countries joined the First League of Armed Neutrality to protect neutral shipping against the Royal Navy. The war came to an end with the signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, under which the United States gained control of territory as far west as the Mississippi River. In the five years after the end of the war, relations with Great Britain and Spain were key issues; both countries hindered U.S. settlement in the west through control of strategic locations and by cultivating alliances with Native Americans. The United States expanded trade with various countries. Partly due to the lack of a strong central government, was unable to negotiate a commercial treaty with Great Britain or retaliate against high British tariffs.\n",
"In the wake of the Seven Years' War, the American Revolution began across the Atlantic. Britain's victory against France and its allies in the war made the French feel vulnerable to British power. The French saw the American Revolution as a way to strengthen itself and cripple the British Empire. At the beginning, the French helped fuel the American war effort but never came out as an official ally on the side of the Americans. American envoys to France, namely Silas Deane, feared that the French would never join the war. They were so fearful, they thought of telling the French that if the French didn't sufficiently support the war effort, the Americans would begin peace talks with Britain.\n",
"International affairs, especially the French Revolution and the subsequent war between Britain and France, decisively shaped American politics in 1793–1800, and threatened to entangle the nation in potentially devastating wars. Britain joined the War of the First Coalition after the 1793 execution of King Louis XVI of France. The Louis XVI had been decisive in helping America achieve independence, and his death horrified many in the United States. Federalists warned that American republicans threatened to replicate the excesses of the French Revolution, and successfully mobilized most conservatives and many clergymen. The Democratic-Republicans, many of whom were strong Francophiles, largely supported the French Revolution. Some of these leaders began backing away from support of the Revolution during the Reign of Terror, but they continued to favor the French over the British. The Republicans denounced Hamilton, Adams, and even Washington as friends of Britain, as secret monarchists, and as enemies of the republican values.\n",
"In the late 18th century, the American Revolution and the French Revolution were both additional steps in the weakening of power of European monarchies. Each in its different way exemplified the concept of popular sovereignty upheld by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1848 then ushered in a wave of revolutions against the continental European monarchies.\n",
"In the decade after the end of the Revolutionary War, the United States benefited from a long period of peace in Europe, as no country posed a direct threat and immediate threat to the United States. Nevertheless, the weakness of the central government, and the desire of localists to keep the national government from assuming powers held by the state governments, greatly hindered diplomacy. In 1776, the Continental Congress had drafted the Model Treaty, which served as a guide for U.S. foreign policy during the 1780s. The treaty sought to abolish trade barriers such as tariffs, while avoiding political or military entanglements. In this, it reflected the foreign policy priorities of many Americans, who sought to play a large role in the global trading community while avoiding war. Lacking a strong military, and divided by differing sectional priorities, the U.S. was often forced to accept unfavorable terms of trade during the 1780s.\n",
"The French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars had engulfed Europe since the early 1790s. Napoleon had won a decisive victory at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, and as a consequence Europe remained mostly at peace for the next few years, but tensions continued on the high seas, where the United States had long traded with both France and Britain. The United States benefited from these wars for much of period prior to 1807, as American shipping expanded and Napoleon sold Louisiana Territory to the United States. In 1807, the British announced the Orders in Council, which called for a blockade on the French Empire. The French announced a policy that allowed for attacks on any American ships that visited British ports, but this policy had relatively little effect as Britain had established naval dominance at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar. In response to subsequent British and French attacks on American shipping, the Jefferson administration had passed the Embargo Act of 1807, which cut off trade with Europe. Congress repealed this act shortly before Madison became president. In early 1809, Congress passed the Non-Intercourse Act, which opened trade with foreign powers other than France and Britain. Aside from U.S. trade with France, the central dispute between the Great Britain and the United States was the impressment of sailors by the British. During the long and expensive war against France, many British citizens were forced by their own government to join the navy, and many of these conscripts defected to U.S. merchant ships. Unable to tolerate this loss of manpower, the British seized several U.S. ships and forced captured crewmen, some of whom were not in fact not British subjects, to serve in the British navy. Though Americans were outraged by this impressment, they also refused to take steps to limit it, such as refusing to hire British subjects. For economic reasons, American merchants preferred impressment to giving up their right to hire British sailors.\n"
] |
Would it be possible to build a magnetic shield for earth to protect us from solar flares? | Yes it is possible, and the earth already has one! The part of the earths atmosphere that protects us from radiation from the sun and other sources of radiation is called the [magnetosphere](_URL_0_). We could build an artificial magnetic shield by wrapping massive wires around the earth several times and inducing a missive current in the wires. Saying this is "possible" is not necessarily saying it's probable though. Building a global magnetic shield is far beyond our current engineering and resource capabilities. Other methods could be used such as an array of satellites all with massive magnetic fields, but these would face the same issues with availability of resources and modern engineering capabilities. | [
"CME radiation is dangerous to astronauts on a space mission who are outside the shielding produced by the Earth's magnetic field. Future mission designs (\"e.g.\", for a Mars Mission) therefore incorporate a radiation-shielded \"storm shelter\" for astronauts to retreat to during such an event.\n",
"Another study proposes the possibility of deployment of a magnetic dipole shield at the L1 Lagrange point, thereby creating an artificial magnetosphere that would protect the whole planet from solar wind and radiation.\n",
"Furthermore, without Earth's surrounding magnetic field as a shield, solar radiation has much harsher effects on biological organisms in space. The exposure can include damage to the central nervous system, (altered cognitive function, reducing motor function and incurring possible behavioral changes), as well as the possibility of degenerative tissue diseases.\n",
"Solar storm shielding would only be needed occasionally and it would also be easier to protect against in a shelter settlers could retreat to during a major storm. Cosmic radiation doses build up more slowly over years of exposure, and would need a couple of meters or more of shielding. Designs for space habitats usually supply this with an external shield of regolith or other materials.\n",
"Laboratory tests reported in the Journal of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion indicate that a magnetic \"umbrella\" could be developed to deflect harmful space radiation away from the spacecraft. Such an \"umbrella\" would protect astronauts from the super-fast charged particles that stream away from the Sun. It would provide a protective field around the spacecraft similar to the magnetosphere that envelops the Earth. This form of control against solar radiation will be necessary if man is to explore the planets and reduce the health risks from exposure to the deadly effects of radiation. More research is necessary to develop and test a practical system.\n",
"Although spacecraft are protected by Whipple shields, solar panels, which are exposed to the Sun, wear from low-mass impacts. These produce a cloud of plasma which is an electrical risk to the panels.\n",
"BULLET::::4. Electromagnetic radiation created by lightning in clouds only a few miles high can create a safe zone in the Van Allen radiation belts that surround the earth. This zone, known as the \"Van Allen Belt slot\", may be a safe haven for satellites in medium Earth orbits (MEOs), protecting them from the Sun's intense radiation.\n"
] |
semiconductors and doping | Si has 4 electrons in its outer shell, and they bind up with other Si atoms in the crystal pretty well, so it is hard for them to move around. If you introduce a few atoms with 5 valence band electrons, those extra 5th electrons are like free agents. They aren't all that needed to bond the crystal together, so they are relatively free to move about. They are said to be in the "conduction band" of energy, and you've created an n-type semiconductor.
Do the same thing with a dopant with 3 valence band electrons and you get the opposite situation...a "hole". It acts a lot like the opposite of a conduction band electron, except they are slower to move about. And you get p-type semiconductor.
Now what happens if you abut the two types? The conduction band electrons and holes can combine. But the Si in the two areas doesn't have all of the *other* charges equally distributed around...the charges associated with the atomic nucleii. (Those atoms with an extra valence band electron also had an extra proton in the nucleus.) The overall charge of the Si material is neutral, but now you've got one area that has more positive atomic nucleii and one area with more negative. This creates a built-in electric field (called the "space-charge region" or "depletion layer").
Now if you want to have current flow through the diode, you first have to overcome that built-in field if you have the diode hooked up in the reverse bias direction. In the forward bias direction, it doesn't cause a problem and current can flow easily. (I'm vastly simplifying this.)
The [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) article on this is pretty good, and it has pictures that might help. | [
"Doping is the key to the extraordinarily wide range of electrical behavior that semiconductors can exhibit, and extrinsic semiconductors are used to make semiconductor electronic devices such as diodes, transistors, integrated circuits, semiconductor lasers, LEDs, and photovoltaic cells. Sophisticated semiconductor fabrication processes like photolithography can implant different dopant elements in different regions of the same semiconductor crystal wafer, creating semiconductor devices on the wafer's surface. For example a common type of transistor, the n-p-n bipolar transistor, consists of an extrinsic semiconductor crystal with two regions of n-type semiconductor, separated by a region of p-type semiconductor, with metal contacts attached to each part.\n",
"Introducing impurities in a semiconductor which are used to set free additional electrons in its conduction band is called doping with donors. In a group IV semiconductor like silicon these are most often group V elements like arsenic or antimony. However, these impurities introduce new energy levels in the band gap affecting the band structure which may alter the electronic properties of the semiconductor to a great extent.\n",
"Unlike in metals, the atoms that make up the bulk semiconductor crystal do not provide the electrons which are responsible for conduction. In semiconductors, electrical conduction is due to the mobile charge carriers, electrons or holes which are provided by impurities or dopant atoms in the crystal. In an extrinsic semiconductor, the concentration of doping atoms in the crystal largely determines the density of charge carriers, which determines its electrical conductivity, as well as a great many other electrical properties. This is the key to semiconductors' versatility; their conductivity can be manipulated over many orders of magnitude by doping.\n",
"At moderate doping levels the dopant atoms create individual doping levels that can often be considered as localized states that can donate electrons or holes by thermal promotion (or an optical transition) to the conduction or valence bands respectively. At high enough impurity concentrations the individual impurity atoms may become close enough neighbors that their doping levels merge into an impurity band and the behavior of such a system ceases to show the typical traits of a semiconductor, e.g. its increase in conductivity with temperature. On the other hand, a degenerate semiconductor still has far fewer charge carriers than a true metal so that its behavior is in many ways intermediary between semiconductor and metal.\n",
"Semiconductor doping is the process that changes an intrinsic semiconductor to an extrinsic semiconductor. During doping, impurity atoms are introduced to an intrinsic semiconductor. Impurity atoms are atoms of a different element than the atoms of the intrinsic semiconductor. Impurity atoms act as either donors or acceptors to the intrinsic semiconductor, changing the electron and hole concentrations of the semiconductor. Impurity atoms are classified as either donor or acceptor atoms based on the effect they have on the intrinsic semiconductor.\n",
"Semiconductor materials are useful because their behavior can be easily manipulated by the deliberate addition of impurities, known as doping. Semiconductor conductivity can be controlled by the introduction of an electric or magnetic field, by exposure to light or heat, or by the mechanical deformation of a doped monocrystalline silicon grid; thus, semiconductors can make excellent sensors. Current conduction in a semiconductor occurs due to mobile or \"free\" electrons and electron holes, collectively known as charge carriers. Doping a semiconductor with a small proportion of an atomic impurity, such as phosphorus or boron, greatly increases the number of free electrons or holes within the semiconductor. When a doped semiconductor contains excess holes, it is called a p-type semiconductor (\"p\" for positive electric charge); when it contains excess free electrons, it is called an n-type semiconductor (\"n\" for negative electric charge). A majority of mobile charge carriers have negative charge. The manufacture of semiconductors controls precisely the location and concentration of p- and n-type dopants. The connection of n-type and p-type semiconductors form p–n junctions.\n",
"Doping a semiconductor in a good crystal introduces allowed energy states within the band gap, but very close to the energy band that corresponds to the dopant type. In other words, electron donor impurities create states near the conduction band while electron acceptor impurities create states near the valence band. The gap between these energy states and the nearest energy band is usually referred to as dopant-site bonding energy or \"E\" and is relatively small. For example, the \"E\" for boron in silicon bulk is 0.045 eV, compared with silicon's band gap of about 1.12 eV. Because \"E\" is so small, room temperature is hot enough to thermally ionize practically all of the dopant atoms and create free charge carriers in the conduction or valence bands.\n"
] |
Why is South Africa the most developed African country? | This might be better suited to /r/asksocialscience.
Also, you might want to re-frame the question - by any metric of development I'm aware of (for example, [HDI](_URL_0_)), South Africa *isn't* the most developed African country. | [
"South Africa is the most structurally and economically developed nation on the African continent. As such, its major cities have experienced construction booms that most other cities of similar size in Africa have not. Advanced development is significantly localised around five areas: Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Bloemfontein and Pretoria/Johannesburg. Beyond these five economic centres, development is marginal and poverty is still prevalent despite government efforts. Consequently, the vast majority of South Africans are poor. However, key marginal areas have experienced rapid growth. Such areas include the Garden Route (Mossel Bay to Plettenberg Bay), Rustenburg area, Nelspruit area, Cape West Coast, and the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast.\n",
"Moreover, South Africa's unique status as an African nation with incredible wealth and incredible poverty provides fertile ground for challenging discourses of afro-pessimism and neo-colonialist attitudes towards Africa. Exhibitions such as Swedish photographer Jens Assur's \"Africa is a Great Country,\" seek to dismantle essentialist notions of Africa as a poverty-stricken, war-torn continent, by drawing on impulses of the African Renaissance, to project images of everyday life, of a continent of real and normal people, whose lives are as rich and as varied as anyone's. As an influential voice on the continent, the artistic output of South Africa has a key role in forging new ways of imagining Africa that complicate received notions of a ‘struggling’ continent. Paul Weinberg's photo-essay \"Durban: Portrait of an African City\" exemplifies this new current of work that refuses to constrain engagement with African art to the familiar tropes of poverty and violence, depicting instead the dynamism and vivacity of life on the continent.\n",
"South Africa is one of the most structurally and economically developed nation on the African continent. As such, its major cities have experienced construction booms that most other cities of similar size in Africa have not. Advanced development is significantly localised around five areas: Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Johannesburg and Sandton. Beyond these five economic centres, development is marginal and poverty is still prevalent despite government efforts. Consequently, the vast majority of South Africans are poor. However, key marginal areas have experienced rapid growth recently. Such areas include Mossel Bay to Plettenberg Bay; Rustenburg area; Nelspruit area; Bloemfontein; Cape West Coast; and the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast.\n",
"One of the greatest challenges facing Africa today is to upgrade sustainable development in areas where poverty and other economic problems are pronounced. The issue of environmental development needs to be enforced, especially as the world is today speaking the environmental language. It might be surprising to note that, only a few countries in Africa have concrete spatial development plans, most of them situated in the extreme South and North of the continent. Good examples are seen in the Republic of South Africa where there is a development plan at the national level called Spatial Development Initiative (SDI), presently known as, the National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP). The main aim of these plans is to encourage integrated development within a given space defined by its economic potential rather than by political boundaries. Most of the present day spatial development policies in African countries are linked to their colonial history. That is, development plans mainly in the form of transport and infrastructure were focused along the coast and other sources of raw materials in the hinterlands. This is one of the reasons for spatial inequality in most African countries. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new approaches of spatial development to obtain equity in enhancement.\n",
"Nevertheless, South Africa is falling behind other emerging markets, such as India and China, owing to several factors: the country is relatively small, without the advantage of a huge domestic customer base; it has had for decades an unusually low rate of saving and investment, partly because of low disposable income; an inadequate education system results in an acute shortage of skilled manpower; a strong and volatile currency deters investors and makes its exports less competitive; the infrastructure, though far better than in the rest of Africa, suffers from severe bottlenecks, including scheduled power shortages, and urgently needs upgrading.\n",
"The World Bank classifies South Africa as an upper-middle-income economy, and a newly industrialised country. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world. In terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed and living on less than US$1.25 a day. Nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence.\n",
"South Africa has a mixed economy, the second largest in Africa after Nigeria. It also has a relatively high gross domestic product (GDP) per capita compared to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa (US$11,750 at purchasing power parity as of 2012). Despite this, South Africa is still burdened by a relatively high rate of poverty and unemployment, and is also ranked in the top ten countries in the world for income inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient.\n"
] |
why do non-native english speakers make the "their vs. there" confusion less often than natives? | Native speakers learn the language mainly through listening and speaking as a child. As there, their and they're are pronounced the same they may not be distinguished from each other for many years until a child starts learning grammar.
On the other hand when you are learning a foreign language you tend to begin with a greater focus on the grammar than a native speaker and this saves a lot of the confusion with these words | [
"Because of the use of English as a lingua franca, native speakers are outnumbered by non-native speakers of English, which is a situation that is quite atypical for western European languages. A consequence of this is a sense of ownership of the language by different communities, which is reflected in the way English has become ‘multiplex’.\n",
"\"...soon knew a great deal more about the language than most English people do. And cared more too. One can understand this. It's galling, when you've taken the trouble to learn that \"an alibi\" is not the same as \"an excuse\", to find that the natives themselves seem to have forgotten the difference.\"\n",
"In the English language, there are grammatical constructions that many native speakers use unquestioningly yet certain writers call incorrect. Differences of usage or opinion may stem from differences between formal and informal speech and other matters of register, differences among dialects (whether regional, class-based, or other), and so forth. Disputes may arise when style guides disagree with each other, or when a guideline or judgement is confronted by large amounts of conflicting evidence or has its rationale challenged.\n",
"The following is a list of common non-native pronunciations that English speakers make when trying to speak foreign languages. Many of these are due to transfer of phonological rules from English to the new language as well as differences in grammar and syntax that they encounter.\n",
"While native speakers pronounce the sequences differently in different contexts, non-native speakers and voice-synthesis software can make them \"sound very unnatural\", making it \"extremely difficult for the listener\" to grasp the intended meaning.\n",
"BULLET::::- The numerous communities of English native speakers in countries all over the world also have some noticeable differences like Irish English, Australian English, Canadian English, Newfoundland English, etc. For instance, following are words that only make meaning in originating culture: Toad in the hole, Gulab jamun, Spotted Dick, etc.\n",
"More transparently, differing phonological distinctions between a speaker's first language and English create a tendency to neutralize such distinctions in English, and differences in the inventory or distribution of sounds may cause substitutions of native sounds in the place of difficult English sounds and/or simple deletion. This is more common when the distinction is subtle between English sounds or between a sound of English and of a speaker's primary language. While there is no evidence to suggest that a simple absence of a sound or sequence in one language's phonological inventory makes it difficult to learn, several theoretical models have presumed that non-native speech perceptions reflect both the abstract phonological properties and phonetic details of the native language.\n"
] |
what is cosmic radiation and why is it harmful to life? | Cosmic rays originate from outside of the Solar System, and it's essentially high-energy radiation coming from space. Because of how powerful it is, it's not only bad for life, but it's also bad for electronics because it can alter circuit components in them.
As for life, it's the main barrier for space travel because it's essentially space's form of ionizing radiation; That is, radiation that can separate electrons from atoms. With that said, long-term exposure to cosmic rays (and thus radiation) would lead to acute radiation sickness, and eventually death. | [
"Space radiation comes from cosmic rays emitted by our local star, the Sun, and from stars beyond the Solar System as well. Space radiation can trigger cancer and cause damage to the central nervous system. Similar instruments are flown on the Space Shuttles and on the International Space Station (ISS), but none have ever flown outside Earth's protective magnetosphere, which blocks much of this radiation from reaching the surface of our planet.\n",
"The Earth, and all living things on it, are constantly bombarded by radiation from outside our solar system. This cosmic radiation consists of relativistic particles: positively charged nuclei (ions) from 1 amu protons (about 85% of it) to 26 amu iron nuclei and even beyond. (The high-atomic number particles are called HZE ions.) The energy of this radiation can far exceed that which humans can create, even in the largest particle accelerators (see ultra-high-energy cosmic ray). This radiation interacts in the atmosphere to create secondary radiation that rains down, including x-rays, muons, protons, antiprotons, alpha particles, pions, electrons, positrons, and neutrons.\n",
"The Earth and all living things on it are constantly bombarded by radiation from outer space. This radiation primarily consists of positively charged ions from protons to iron and larger nuclei derived from outside the Solar System. This radiation interacts with atoms in the atmosphere to create an air shower of secondary radiation, including X-rays, muons, protons, alpha particles, pions, electrons, and neutrons. The immediate dose from cosmic radiation is largely from muons, neutrons, and electrons, and this dose varies in different parts of the world based largely on the geomagnetic field and altitude. For example, the city of Denver in the United States (at 1650 meters elevation) receives a cosmic ray dose roughly twice that of a location at sea level. This radiation is much more intense in the upper troposphere, around 10 km altitude, and is thus of particular concern for airline crews and frequent passengers, who spend many hours per year in this environment. During their flights airline crews typically get an additional occupational dose between per year and 2.19 mSv/year, according to various studies.\n",
"Radiation is a carcinogen and causes numerous effects on living organisms and systems. The environmental impacts of nuclear power plant disasters such as the Chernobyl disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and the Three Mile Island accident, among others, persist indefinitely, though several other factors contributed to these events including improper management of fail safe systems and natural disasters putting uncommon stress on the generators. The radioactive decay rate of particles varies greatly, dependent upon the nuclear properties of a particular isotope. Radioactive Plutonium-244 has a half-life of 80.8 million years, which indicates the time duration required for half of a given sample to decay, though very little plutonium-244 is produced in the nuclear fuel cycle and lower half-life materials have lower activity thus giving off less dangerous radiation.\n",
"The health threats from cosmic rays is the danger posed by galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and solar energetic particles to astronauts on interplanetary missions or any missions that venture through the Van-Allen Belts or outside the Earth's magnetosphere. They are one of the greatest barriers standing in the way of plans for interplanetary travel by crewed spacecraft,\n",
"Spacecraft, both manned and unmanned, must cope with the high radiation environment of outerspace. Radiation emitted by the Sun and other galactic sources, and trapped in radiation \"belts\" is more dangerous and hundreds of times more intense than radiation sources such as medical X-rays or normal cosmic radiation usually experienced on Earth. When the intensely ionizing particles found in space strike human tissue, it can result in cell damage and may eventually lead to cancer.\n",
"Nuclear radiation is harmful to the environment over immediate (seconds or fractions thereof) as well as long-term (years or centuries) timescales, and it affects the environment on both microscopic (DNA) and macroscopic (population) levels. Degrees of these effects are dependent on external factors, especially in the case of humans. Radioecology encompasses all radiological interactions affecting biological and geological material as well as those between different phases of matter, as each is capable of carrying radionuclides.\n"
] |
why do some governments call snap elections, even if they have a chance of losing? | Sometimes, governments are forced into positions where they have to make unpopular decisions.
Some people will see how the government's hand has been forced and will accept it. But other people might object to the decision they've made, and feel the government is not acting for the thing it claimed to stand for when it was elected.
In this case, the legitimacy of the government might be called into question. This can result in them losing control, not being able to pass laws, and not being able to effectively govern.
They might then call an election. They'd hope to be re-elected, and, if they are, they will regain their legitimacy because the public have still voted for them even though they've seen what the government have had to do previously. Even if they lose, this will probably be less damaging than trying to govern without support. | [
"Since the power to call snap elections usually lies with the incumbent, they usually result in increased majorities for the party already in power having been called at an advantageous time. However, snap elections can also backfire on the incumbent resulting in a decreased majority or even the opposition winning or gaining power. As a result of the latter cases there have been occasions in which the consequences have been the implementation of fixed term elections.\n",
"Former Premier, Ralph T. O'Neal, had warned of the possibility of the Government calling a snap election. President of the opposition Virgin Islands Party, Carvin Malone, had predicted an election on 6 or 13 July 2015. Although it became common parlance to refer to the election as a \"snap\" election in local media, it is not entirely clear that it was. The ruling party announced candidates for an \"upcoming election\" over a month prior to dissolution of the House, and all parties claimed that they had anticipated the announcement.\n",
"In Japan, a snap election is called when a Prime Minister dissolves the lower house of the Diet of Japan. The act is based on Article 7 of the Constitution of Japan, which can be interpreted as saying that the Prime Minister has the power to dissolve the lower house after so advising the Emperor. Almost all general elections of the lower house have been snap elections since 1947, when the current constitution was enacted. The only exception was 1976 election, when the Prime Minister Takeo Miki was isolated within his own Liberal Democratic Party. The majority of LDP politicians opposed Miki's decision not to dissolve the lower house until the end of its 4-year term.\n",
"Early or \"snap\" elections have occurred at least three times in New Zealand's history: in 1951, 1984 and 2002. Early elections often provoke controversy, as they potentially give governing parties an advantage over opposition candidates. Note that of the three elections in which the government won an increased majority, two involved snap elections (1951 and 2002 – the other incumbent-boosting election took place in 1938). The 1984 snap election backfired on the government of the day: many believe that the Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, called it while drunk. \"See Snap election, New Zealand.\" The 1996 election took place slightly early (on 12 October) to avoid holding a by-election after the resignation of Michael Laws.\n",
"The conditions for when a snap election can be called have been significantly restricted by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 to occasions when the government loses a confidence motion or when a two-thirds supermajority of MPs vote in favour. Prior to this, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had the de facto power to call an election at will by requesting a dissolution from the monarch – the limited circumstances where this would not be granted were set out in the Lascelles Principles. There was no fixed period for holding elections, although between 1997 and 2015 there was a convention that the government should hold elections on the same date as local elections on the first Thursday of May. Since World War II, only the 2015 general election was held on the latest possible date (7 May 2015), due to being the first general election at the end of a fixed-term Parliament.\n",
"The snap elections were called after the government, a coalition of the Christian Social Party and the liberal Party for Freedom and Progress led by Christian Democrat Paul Vanden Boeynants, fell due to the Leuven Crisis.\n",
"In the Philippines, the term \"snap election\" usually refers to the 1986 presidential election, where President Ferdinand Marcos called elections earlier than scheduled, in response to growing social unrest. Marcos was declared official winner of the election but was eventually ousted when it was alleged that he cheated in the elections.\n"
] |
Who do you think is Jack the Ripper? | Academic historians tend to be fairly unconcerned with who the murderer really was. This is partly because we'll never know for sure, and partly because the myth of the Ripper is far more interesting than any reality. As a cultural historian of late-Victorian Britain, I'm fascinated by the response to the murders and what it reveals about British culture and society at the time. The failure of the police to apprehend the murderer created a void; a blank space into which people poured their fears and fantasies. It's a great way to explore ideas about gender, race, crime, the city, and the press. This is much more interesting (to me at least) than desperately speculating about the identity of the killer. Historians tend to leave this stuff to the Ripperologists... | [
"There are many and varied theories about the identity and profession of Jack the Ripper, but authorities are not agreed upon any of them, and the number of named suspects reaches over one hundred. Despite continued interest in the case, the Ripper's identity remains unknown.\n",
"Jack the Ripper features in hundreds of works of fiction and works which straddle the boundaries between fact and fiction, including the Ripper letters and a hoax Diary of Jack the Ripper. The Ripper appears in novels, short stories, poems, comic books, games, songs, plays, operas, television programmes, and films. More than 100 non-fiction works deal exclusively with the Jack the Ripper murders, making it one of the most written-about true-crime subjects. The term \"ripperology\" was coined by Colin Wilson in the 1970s to describe the study of the case by professionals and amateurs. The periodicals \"Ripperana\", \"Ripperologist\", and \"Ripper Notes\" publish their research.\n",
"Jack the Ripper appears inexplicably in a sterile futuristic metropolis, where anyone is free to do what they want however arcane or immoral. He is brought before Juliette, a girl who is named after the Marquis de Sade's Juliette.\n",
"In the video game \"\", the protagonist is occasionally referred to as \"Jack the Ripper\", which is a reference to Raiden's proper name and a traumatic incident in his past. One antagonist, however, briefly calls him \"Saucy Jack\".\n",
"BULLET::::- Knows \"Jack the Ripper\"; He Is Hopelessly Insane, Says Dr. Forbes Winslow of London. Confined In An English Asylum – He Was a Medical Student, and Religious Mania Caused Him to Butcher the Women of the Streets. \"The New York Times\" 1 September 1895/a\n",
"In 1970, British surgeon Thomas E. A. Stowell published an article entitled \"Jack the Ripper – A Solution?\" in the November issue of \"The Criminologist\". In the article, Stowell proposed that the Ripper was an aristocrat who had contracted syphilis during a visit to the West Indies, that it had driven him insane, and that in this state of mind he had perpetrated the five canonical Jack the Ripper murders. Although Stowell did not directly name his suspect in the article, he described in detail the suspect's family and his physical appearance and nicknames, all of which pointed to Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale. Stowell wrote that following a double murder on 30 September 1888, his suspect was restrained by his own family in an institution in the south of England, but later escaped to commit a final murder on 9 November before ultimately dying of syphilis. To back up his theory, Stowell drew comparisons between the evisceration of the women and the disembowelment of deer shot by the aristocracy on their estates. Stowell said his information came from the private notes of Sir William Gull, a reputable physician who had treated members of the royal family. Stowell knew Gull's son-in-law, Theodore Dyke Acland, and was an executor of Acland's estate.\n",
"BULLET::::- Jack the Ripper: The serial killer who strikes at the sinister district of Whitechapel. He kills prostitutes with no mercy and mocks the police, and is regarded both as a madman and a genius.\n"
] |
[Meta] Can we start a FAQ link of Recommended History Books? | we have a link on the sidebar for finding good resources, however compiling a list of books can get unwieldy quick. WARFTW alone would contribute like 40 books just on the Battle of Kursk. | [
"The book, written in the satirical paper's editorial voice, contains entries for nearly every country on Earth, including detailed maps, feature articles, and humorous stereotyped descriptions of regional history and customs. For example, Romania's entry is subtitled, \"Bram Stoker's Romania.\"\n",
"The book compiles a precise (and often quoted directly from the books concerned) definition of words, lives of historical people, geography of places and events that have appeared in at least one \"Discworld\" novel, map, diary, non-fiction book and the short stories \"Troll Bridge\", \"Theatre of Cruelty\", and \"The Sea and Little Fishes\".\n",
"The book has six chapters, organized chronologically. The book includes sidebar texts, documents, photographs, footnotes, a newspaper scan, and first-hand accounts. Mitchell Wong, a reviewer for the \"Amerasia Journal\", stated the book is intended to be a \"relatively short, illustrated\" book that highlights key points of history, in a manner similar to that of \"Longtime Californ'\", instead of having analytical depth in the manner of \"\" by Patricia Roy. Anthony B. Chan of California State University, Hayward wrote that \"This was never intended to be a scholarly book.\" Judy Yung of the University of California, Santa Cruz wrote that \"Saltwater City\" is \"not as scholarly\" as Roy's book, \"From China to Canada\", or \"\" by Chuenyan Lai.\n",
"The series publishes one book per month. Topics include history, literature and comparative studies, cultural studies, philosophy, the history of the book, theatre, arts and visual studies, and gender studies. Several of its books have won awards, such as the Society for the History of Natural History's Thackray Medal for \"Jean-Jacques Rousseau and botany: the salutary science\" (Alexandra Cook), and the Prix Marianne Roland Michel for \"The Profession of sculpture in the Paris 'Académie\"' (Tomas Macsotay).\n",
"The book contains a Historical Note, in which the author sets out what is documented history (not very much) and what he made up to fill in the gaps. As an example, a usurper called Marcus existed, but nothing is known of him.\n",
"Thus, the book presents an overview of the themes and lessons observed from 5,000 years of world history, examined from 12 perspectives: geography, biology, race, character, morals, religion, economics, socialism, government, war, growth and decay, and progress.\n",
"The book begins with a bibliography arranged by author's name in alphabetical order, followed by a Guide to Dynasties and States, a 150-page section giving brief descriptions and indicating where the related list(s) can be found. It is a good reference for finding the main rulers of a particular part of the world at various times. Tapsell briefly describes some royal family ties and attempts to help the reader locate many of the early realms of the world using the modern map, providing some history on each country or province. Minor criticisms of the book center on the complicated nature of locating exactly what is sought.\n"
] |
the congressional vote to repeal no child left behind, and the impact it will have on the federal push for common core standards implementation. | Remember during the Bush administration when a school's funding was to be based on test scores, and all the kids who failed the tests still got to move on to the next grade? That was no child left behind.
Now that they are finally acknowledging our failing education system, they want to make kids pass the tests in order to move on like they did when our education system wasnt such a joke, and steer funding away from being solely dependant on testing results.
Of course there is A LOT more going on, but this is the main point. | [
"The No Child Left Behind Act(NCLB) legislation was signed by President Bush in January 2002 and dramatically expanded federal influence over the nation's more than 90,000 public schools. The main implications of this legislation was states had to conduct annual student assessments linked to state standards to identify schools failing to make \"adequate yearly progress\" (AYP) toward the stated goal of having all students achieve proficiency in reading and math by 2013–2014 and to institute sanctions and rewards based on each school's AYP status. One of the motivations for this reform is that publicizing detailed information on school-specific performance and linking that \"high-stakes\" test performance to the possibility of sanctions will improve the focus and productivity of public schools. However, critics charge that test-based school accountability has several negative consequences for the broad cognitive development of children.\n",
"Until the Every Student Succeeds Act was passed in December 2015, the US Department of Education had encouraged states to adopt the Common Core Standards by tying the grant of waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act to adoption of the Standards. However, the Every Student Succeeds Act not only replaced the No Child Left Behind Act, it also expressly prohibits the Department of Education from attempting to \"influence, incentivize, or coerce State adoption of the Common Core State Standards ... or any other academic standards common to a significant number of States.\"\n",
"The National Education Association (NEA) wrote an open letter to the House opposing H.J.Res 59. The NEA urged representatives to vote no because the bill \"continues the devastating cuts to education set in motion by the sequester and permanently defunds the Affordable Care Act.\" The organization states that they may decide to use the vote on this bill in their NEA Legislative Report Card for the 113th Congress.\n",
"President Barack Obama released a blueprint for reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the successor to No Child Left Behind, in March 2010. Specific revisions include providing funds for states to implement a broader range of assessments to evaluate advanced academic skills, including students' abilities to conduct research, use technology, engage in scientific investigation, solve problems, and communicate effectively.\n",
"The No Child Left Behind Act was due for reauthorization in 2007, but was not pursued for a lack of bipartisan cooperation. Many states failed to meet the NCLB's standards, and the Obama Administration granted waivers to many states for schools that showed success but failed under the NCLB standards. However, these waivers usually required schools to adopt academic standards such as the Common Core. The NCLB was generally praised for forcing schools and states to become more accountable for ensuring the education of poor and minority children. However, the increase in standardized testing that occurred during the presidencies of Bush and Obama met with resistance from many parents, and many called for a lessened role for the federal government in education.\n",
"On January 8, 2002, George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act. According to Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, it has created an artificial goal of proficiency that actually encouraged states to lower their standards to make it easier for students to meet goals and bring the school to meet AYP. Duncan also believes that this kind of system narrows curriculum and mislabels schools as failing, even though they may be demonstrating academic growth in other ways other than state tests. Over the years since NCLB has been in place, 44 states have made strides in raising their standards but are now having to explain why their schools are \"failing\". To fix this, the secretary of state believes the law needs to be less prescriptive and allow school districts to create their own improvement plans unique to their needs. In 2015, the Obama administration offered states flexibility from NCLB in exchange for their own fair and flexible plans to raise standards. So far, 42 states have shown interest in this system and are currently working with the Department of Education. Congress's efforts to reauthorize NCLB ultimately led in 2015 to the Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced it, modifying but not replacing provisions related to standardized testing.\n",
"In December 2015, Ryan led the bipartisan effort to pass the Every Student Succeeds Act, which, among other things, fully repealed No Child Left Behind and severely limited the federal government's ability to impose and enforce national education standards such as Common Core.\n"
] |
Can light waves experience interference? | Yes, one of the most well known phenomena is [two slit interference](_URL_0_) | [
"Interference of light is a common phenomenon that can be explained classically by the superposition of waves, however a deeper understanding of light interference requires knowledge of wave-particle duality of light which is due to quantum mechanics. Prime examples of light interference are the famous double-slit experiment, laser speckle, anti-reflective coatings and interferometers. Traditionally the classical wave model is taught as a basis for understanding optical interference, based on the Huygens–Fresnel principle.\n",
"Interference is the process by which two waves superimpose to form a resultant wave of greater or less amplitude. Interference usually refers to the interaction of waves that are correlated or coherent with each other. In constructive interference, the two waves are of the same phase interfere in a way such that the resultant amplitude will be equal to the sum of the individual amplitudes. As the light in an optical ring resonator completes multiple circuits around the ring component, it will interfere with the other light still in the loop. As such, assuming there are no losses in the system such as those due to absorption, evanescence, or imperfect coupling and the resonance condition is met, the intensity of the light emitted from a ring resonator will be equal to the intensity of the light fed into the system.\n",
"In physics, interference is a phenomenon in which two waves superpose to form a resultant wave of greater, lower, or the same amplitude. Constructive and destructive interference result from the interaction of waves that are correlated or coherent with each other, either because they come from the same source or because they have the same or nearly the same frequency. Interference effects can be observed with all types of waves, for example, light, radio, acoustic, surface water waves, gravity waves, or matter waves. The resulting images or graphs are called interferograms.\n",
"The interference phenomenon in optics occurs as a result of the wave propagation of light. When light of a given wavelength is reflected back upon itself by a mirror, standing waves are generated, much as the ripples resulting from a stone dropped into still water create standing waves when reflected back by a surface such as the wall of a pool. In the case of ordinary incoherent light, the standing waves are distinct only within a microscopically thin volume of space next to the reflecting surface.\n",
"The phenomenon of interference between waves is based on this idea. When two or more waves traverse the same space, the net amplitude at each point is the sum of the amplitudes of the individual waves. In some cases, such as in noise-cancelling headphones, the summed variation has a smaller amplitude than the component variations; this is called \"destructive interference\". In other cases, such as in a line array, the summed variation will have a bigger amplitude than any of the components individually; this is called \"constructive interference\".\n",
"These requirements are inter-related, and it is essential to understand the nature of optical interference to see this. Interference is the variation in intensity which can occur when two light waves are superimposed. The intensity of the maxima exceeds the sum of the individual intensities of the two beams, and the intensity at the minima is less than this and may be zero. The interference pattern maps the relative phase between the two waves, and any change in the relative phases causes the interference pattern to move across the field of view. If the relative phase of the two waves changes by one cycle, then the pattern drifts by one whole fringe. One phase cycle corresponds to a change in the relative distances travelled by the two beams of one wavelength. Since the wavelength of light is of the order of 0.5 μm, it can be seen that very small changes in the optical paths travelled by either of the beams in the holographic recording system lead to movement of the interference pattern which is the holographic recording. Such changes can be caused by relative movements of any of the optical components or the object itself, and also by local changes in air-temperature. It is essential that any such changes are significantly less than the wavelength of light if a clear well-defined recording of the interference is to be created.\n",
"BULLET::::- Constructive interference (a): In areas where the path length difference between the two rays is equal to an odd multiple of half a wavelength (λ/2) of the light waves, the reflected waves will be in phase, so the \"troughs\" and \"peaks\" of the waves coincide. Therefore, the waves will reinforce (add) and the resulting reflected light intensity will be greater. As a result, a bright area will be observed there.\n"
] |
For some species of ant, like Army Ants, what determines whether they become a small worker, a large soldier, a male, or a queen? Is it random or do queen ants choose which profession ants will be when they lay the eggs? | It depends on the species, but among many species of ants the caste that an egg develops into is based on differences in nutrition received through care and feeding by other ants as the larvae develops -- not by anything that the queen does. | [
"Not all ants follow the basic pattern described above. In army ants only males are alates, having wings. They fly out from their parent colony in search of other colonies where wingless virgin queens wait for them. A colony with an old queen and one or more mated young queens then divides, each successful queen taking a share of the workers. The reason for this behavior is the fact that army ants do not have a physical nest. The queens are thus absolutely dependent on workers to protect them.\n",
"Colonies of real army ants always have only one queen, while some other ant species can have several queens. The queen is dichthadiigyne (a blind ant with large gaster) but may sometimes possess vestigial eyes. The queens of army ants are unique in that they do not have wings, have an enlarged gaster size and an extended cylindrical abdomen. They are significantly larger than worker army ants and possess 10–12 segments on their antennae. Queens will mate with multiple males and because of their enlarged gaster, can produce 3 to 4 million eggs a month, resulting in synchronized brood cycles and colonies composed of millions of individuals all related to a single queen.\n",
"Ant colonies have a complex hierarchical social structure. Ants jobs are determined and can be changed by age. As ants grow older their jobs move them further from the queen, or center of the colony. Younger ants work within the nest protecting the queen and young. Sometimes, a queen is not present and is replaced by egg-laying workers. These worker ants can only lay haploid eggs producing sterile offspring. Despite the title of queen, she doesn't delegate the tasks to the worker ants; however, the ants choose their tasks based on personal preference.\n",
"In these ant species, there is also a variation that exists to this mating strategy. There can exist large female workers that are smaller than winged queens yet larger than small workers. They also have many anatomical features that are intermediate to small workers and the queen, including ovary size and composition, and patches. These females can produce unfertilized eggs that can eventually develop into males in colonies that do not have a queen. If these eggs are produced in a colony with a queen, the queen can devour them. Larvae can also devour the eggs. Large workers will normally produce more eggs in ant colonies that are queenless. Large workers can be tended to by small workers in a similar manner to ant queens.\n",
"As with most eusocial insects, acrobat ants tend to form castes based on labor duties. This division is normally behavioral but also has a physical basis, including size or age. Soldiers are typically larger with a more developed metapleural gland specialized for colony defence or food acquisition. A worker ant is generally smaller than soldiers and queens, and its main task is to assist the queen in rearing the young. Workers vary in size more than soldiers. This considerable variation in size may have played a considerable role in the evolution of \"large workers\" in this genus.\n",
"A queen ant can be distinguished from a worker ant by the relatively larger size of the thorax (which at this point contains the wing muscles of the queen), and the enlarged abdomen which contains eggs. Beware that certain species have large workers similar in size to a queen, if the possible queen you are looking at has marks on either side of the thorax (Wing scars, where the wings of the queen were) it is a queen. If not, it's a supermajor; a larger worker of the colony.\n",
"Being the largest ants on Earth, army ants, such as African \"Dorylus\" queens have the greatest reproductive potential among the insects, with an egg-laying capacity of several millions per month. Army ant queens never have to leave the protection of the colony, where they mate with foreign incoming males which disperse on nuptial flights. The exact mating behaviour of the army ant queen is still unknown, but observations seem to imply that queens may be fertilized by multiple males. Due to the queen's large reproductive potential, one colony of army ants can be descended from a single queen.\n"
] |
how are professionals able to spot counterfeit signatures if a person can't sign their name exactly the same each time? | It's more about finding consistent patterns than about finding perfectly consistent shapes to each figure. Maybe the signer does wide, loopy lowercase L's. They won't all be exactly the same, but they're always wide and loopy. If the L on a signature is thin and stunted, then it casts doubt on the signature.
Maybe he lifts his pen between a specific two letters every time, maybe he dots the i as he makes it, instead of after finishing the word. Maybe the pen moves slower on one letter, and leaves a thicker line of ink because of it. All of these little things are more consistent than the shape exactly matching every time - find them all to be consistent, and it's almost certainly real. Find several discrepancies, and there's a good reason to doubt the signature. | [
"While many people sign their names enough that it becomes very routine, it is still an important skill to have. A \"false signature\", forgery, is a punishable by law offense. Writing a check, signing a credit slip, signing a marriage certificate, and signing an apartment lease are just a few of the occasions when a valid signature is necessary. Signatures are reflections of the identity of a person and that person as a professional.\n",
"When used in conjunction with an electronic signature, it can provide evidence whether data received has been tampered with after being signed by its original sender. In a time where fraud and identity theft has become rampant, electronic authentication can be a more secure method of verifying that a person is who they say they are when performing transactions online.\n",
"Special signature machines, called autopens, are capable of automatically reproducing an individual's signature. These are typically used by people required to sign a lot of printed matter, such as celebrities, heads of state or CEOs. More recently, Members of Congress in the United States have begun having their signature made into a TrueType font file. This allows staff members in the Congressman's office to easily reproduce it on correspondence, legislation, and official documents. In the East Asian languages of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, people traditionally use stamp-like objects known as \"name-seals\" with the name carved in \"tensho\" script (\"seal script\") in lieu of a handwritten signature. \n",
"Several different methods can be used to forge signatures. One method is the \"freehand method\", whereby the forger, after careful practice, replicates the signature by freehand. Although a difficult method to perfect, this often produces the most convincing results. \n",
"In 1989, he (with Hans van Antwerpen) introduced undeniable signatures. This form of digital signature uses a verification process that is interactive, so that the signatory can limit who can verify the signature. Since signers may refuse to participate in the verification process, signatures are considered valid unless a signer specifically uses a disavowal protocol to prove that a given signature was not authentic.\n",
"An ink signature could be replicated from one document to another by copying the image manually or digitally, but to have credible signature copies that can resist some scrutiny is a significant manual or technical skill, and to produce ink signature copies that resist professional scrutiny is very difficult.\n",
"It is also used as a replacement for a signature for a person who is blind or illiterate and thus cannot write his or her name. Typically, the writing of an X used for this purpose must be witnessed to be valid.\n"
] |
why is low blood pressure and a low heart rate good, if that means that your heart is pumping less often and not pushing as hard? | As long as your body functions normally at a lower pressure or pulse, that means it's doing what it needs to with less effort and less strain that could be damaging over time. It also means there is more room for pressure or pulse to increase later in life without necessarily becoming a problem.
But there are people whose hearts underperform and their pressure or pulse is *too* low, causing them problems with circulation, and they take medication to correct it. | [
"Some heart conditions can lead to low blood pressure, including extremely low heart rate (bradycardia), heart valve problems, heart attack and heart failure. These conditions may cause low blood pressure because they prevent the body from being able to circulate enough blood.\n",
"When the heart beats excessively or rapidly, the heart pumps less efficiently and provides less blood flow to the rest of the body, including the heart itself. The increased heart rate also leads to increased work and oxygen demand by the heart, which can lead to rate related ischemia.\n",
"Increasing the heart rate serves to decrease the pressure in the superior and inferior venae cavae by drawing more blood out of the right atrium. This results in a decrease in atrial pressure, which serves to bring in more blood from the vena cavae, resulting in a decrease in the venous pressure of the great veins. This continues until right atrial blood pressure returns to normal levels, upon which the heart rate decreases to its original level.\n",
"Observational studies demonstrate that people who maintain arterial pressures at the low end of these pressure ranges have much better long-term cardiovascular health. There is an ongoing medical debate over what is the optimal level of blood pressure to target when using drugs to lower blood pressure with hypertension, particularly in older people.\n",
"For some people who exercise and are in top physical condition, low blood pressure is a sign of good health and fitness. A single session of exercise can induce hypotension and water-based exercise can induce important hypotension response.\n",
"Physical fitness has proven to result in positive effects on the body's blood pressure because staying active and exercising regularly builds up a stronger heart. The heart is the main organ in charge of systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure. Engaging in a physical activity raises blood pressure. Once the subject stops the activity, the blood pressure returns to normal. The more physical activity that one engages in, the easier this process becomes, resulting in a more ‘fit’ individual. Through regular physical fitness, the heart does not have to work as hard to create a rise in blood pressure, which lowers the force on the arteries, and lowers the overall blood pressure.\n",
"Because there are no symptoms with high blood pressure, people can have the condition without knowing it. Diagnosing high blood pressure early can help prevent heart disease, stroke, eye problems, and chronic kidney disease.\n"
] |
i try to light my gas stove, but it doesn't light. i smell the gas several seconds later. i turn on another one, and that ones lights. why doesn't that flame blow my house up? | They put bitterants in the gas that humans are *extremely* sensitive to. You smell amazingly small traces of it.
You need a decent amount to get a decent bang.
Certainly you could do some damage if you were trying but the gas needed for the stove for a few seconds isn't really that dangerous. Be safe and give a bit for it to clear out, but it's no that big of a deal if you just flip the gas on and off. | [
"BULLET::::- Gasifier stoves force the gases and smoke that result from incomplete combustion of fuels such as biomass back into the cookstove's flame, where the heat of the flame then continues to combust the particles in the smoke until almost complete combustion has occurred, reducing emissions. Typical gasifier stoves are known as Top Lit Updraft (TLUD) stoves because some fuel is lit on top of the stove, forcing combustible products to pass through the flame front before being emitted into the air.\n",
"To light the stove, the user pours a small amount of alcohol into a circular \"spirit cup\" just below the burner and lights it to heat the burner assembly. When it is hot, the user pressurizes the tank by means of a small hand pump integrated into the housing, which forces kerosene from the tank up through the rising tube (A) and the ascending pipe (B) to the pre-heated burner head (C), where the fuel is heated and vaporized. The kerosene vapour is then forced under pressure through the descending tube (D) to the vapor nozzle (E); here it sprays through a jet in the middle of the burner, where it mixes with air and burns in a sootless blue flame. The heat from that flame vaporizes more fuel to sustain the process when the spirit cup burns out. The user can pump the tank more to increase the pressure and make the flame larger; turning a small \"air screw\" (usually located in the filler cap) will release pressure from the tank and make the flame smaller.\n",
"Gas stoves became more wieldy when the oven was integrated into the base and the size was reduced to better fit in with the rest of the kitchen furniture. By the 1910s, producers started to enamel their gas stoves for easier cleaning. Ignition of the gas was originally by match and this was followed by the more convenient pilot light. This had the disadvantage of continually consuming gas. The oven still needed to be lit by match and accidentally turning on the gas without igniting it could lead to an explosion. To prevent these types of accidents, oven manufacturers developed and installed a safety valve called a flame failure device for gas hobs (cooktops) and ovens. Most modern gas stoves have electronic ignition, automatic timers for the oven and extractor hoods to remove fumes.\n",
"Gas stoves today use two basic types of ignition sources, standing pilot and electric. A stove with a standing pilot has a small, continuously burning gas flame (called a pilot light) under the cooktop. The flame is between the front and back burners. When the stove is turned on, this flame lights the gas flowing out of the burners. The advantage of the standing pilot system is that it is simple and completely independent of any outside power source. A minor drawback is that the flames continuously consume fuel even when the stove is not in use. Early gas ovens did not have a pilot. One had to light these manually with a match. If one accidentally left the gas on, gas would fill the oven and eventually the room. A small spark, such as an arc from a light switch being turned on, could ignite the gas, triggering a violent explosion. To prevent these types of accidents, oven manufacturers developed and installed a safety valve called a flame failure device for gas hobs (cooktops) and ovens. The safety valve depends on a thermocouple that sends a signal to the valve to stay open. Although most modern gas stoves have electronic ignition, many households have gas cooking ranges and ovens that need to be lit with a flame. Electric ignition stoves use electric sparks to ignite the surface burners. This is the \"clicking sound\" audible just before the burner actually lights. The sparks are initiated by turning the gas burner knob to a position typically labeled \"LITE\" or by pressing the 'ignition' button. Once the burner lights, the knob is turned further to modulate the flame size. Auto reignition is an elegant refinement: the user need not know or understand the wait-then-turn sequence. They simply turn the burner knob to the desired flame size and the sparking is turned off automatically when the flame lights. Auto reignition also provides a safety feature: the flame will be automatically reignited if the flame goes out while the gas is still on—for example by a gust of wind. If the power fails, surface burners must be manually match-lit.\n",
"Some stoves use a catalytic converter, which causes combustion of the gas and smoke particles not previously burned. Other models use a design that includes firebox insulation, a large baffle to produce a longer, hotter gas flow path. Modern enclosed stoves are often built with a window to let out some light and to enable the user to view progress of the fire.\n",
"To use the stove, a small amount of fuel (preferably 2% salicylic acid in alcohol) is poured into the stove and ignited. The pot is then placed above the stove, on a windscreen or stand. The flame is small at first, only burning from the inner chamber. Once the fuel has warmed up (requiring about one minute) its vapor will pass through the perforations and form a ring of flame. Enough heat from the flame is passed to the fuel to maintain full combustion until the fuel runs out.\n",
"The stove is connected by ventilating stove pipe to a suitable flue, which will fill with hot combustion gases once the fuel is ignited. The chimney or flue gases must be hotter than the outside temperature to ensure combustion gases are drawn out of the fire chamber and up the chimney.\n"
] |
Why are water droplets equal distance apart? | Imagine instead of liquid water, we have the flow of identical marbles out of a spigot. That is, one successive marble after the other with the same initial horizontal velocity. The time between successive marbles starting to fall will be constant, let's call it Δ*t*. All marbles will follow the same trajectory, so the separation between successive marbles at any time is just the amount of distance corresponding to Δ*t* along the trajectory. This means that at any fixed point in the trajectory (e.g., the ground), the separation between successive marbles will be the same. Also the separation increases as the marbles fall further (at least until they've reached terminal velocity).
In fact, we can easily solve for the vertical separation between successive marbles neglecting air resistance. If the distance to the ground is a height *h*, then the time for one marble to reach the ground is sqrt(2 *h* / *g*). The next marble will have been airborne for sqrt(2 *h* / *g*) - Δ*t*, which means it will have fallen a distance *h* - Δ*t* sqrt(2 *g h*) + *g* (Δ*t*)^2 / 2. So the vertical separation is just Δ*t* sqrt(2 *g h*) - *g* (Δ*t*)^2 / 2 (as we expected it increases with drop height *h*).
Now, the question is why a continuous stream of water breaks up into droplets, [which is not quite as simple to answer](_URL_0_). Naively, the stream has surface tension holding it together, but the acceleration will cause the stream to stretch for the same reasons as above. [At some point](_URL_1_) surface tension is overcome and we get water droplets for which the marble analysis holds. BTW, certain fluids (such as honey) are viscous enough to disfavor the formation of droplets, and instead exhibit [other interesting phenomena](_URL_2_). | [
"When a single stream of water hits a surface the water must go somewhere, and because the stream is uniform the water will tend to go mostly in the same direction. If a single stream hits a surface which is curved, then the stream will conform to the shape and be easily redirected with the force of the volume of water falling. Adding the aerator does two things; reduces the volume of falling water which reduces the splash distance, and creates multiple \"mini-streams\" within the main stream. Each mini-stream, if it were falling by itself would splash or flow in a unique and different way when it hit the surface, as compared to the other mini-streams. Because they are all falling at the same time, the streams will splash in their own way but end up hitting other splash streams. The resulting interference cancels out the majority of the splashing effect.\n",
"The high surface tension of water causes droplets to assume a nearly spherical shape, since a sphere has minimal surface area, and this shape therefore demands least solid-liquid surface energy. On contact with a surface, adhesion forces result in wetting of the surface. Either complete or incomplete wetting may occur depending on the structure of the surface and the fluid tension of the droplet.\n",
"Droplets are formed using the surface tension properties of a liquid. For example, water placed on a hydrophobic surface such as wax paper will form spherical droplets to minimize its contact with the surface. Differences in surface hydrophobicity affect a liquid’s ability to spread and ‘wet’ a surface by changing the contact angle. As the hydrophobicity of a surface increases, the contact angle increases, and the ability of the droplet to wet the surface decreases. The change in contact angle, and therefore wetting, is regulated by the Young-Lippmann equation.\n",
"Surface tension is responsible for the shape of liquid droplets. Although easily deformed, droplets of water tend to be pulled into a spherical shape by the imbalance in cohesive forces of the surface layer. In the absence of other forces, including gravity, drops of virtually all liquids would be approximately spherical. The spherical shape minimizes the necessary \"wall tension\" of the surface layer according to Laplace's law.\n",
"The shape of a sessile droplet is directly proportional to whether the radius is greater than or less than the capillary length. Microdrops are droplets with radius smaller than the capillary length, and their shape is governed solely by surface tension, forming a spherical cap shape. If a droplet has a radii larger than the capillary length, they are known as macrodrops and the gravitational forces will dominate. Macrodrops will be 'flattened' by gravity and the height of the droplet will be reduced.\n",
"In 2006, Couder and Fort demonstrated that walking droplets passing through one or two slits exhibit similar interference behavior. They used a square shaped vibrating fluid bath with a constant depth (aside from the walls). The “walls” were regions of much lower depth, where the droplets would be stopped or reflected away. When the droplets were placed in the same initial location, they would pass through the slits and be scattered, seemingly randomly. However, by plotting a histogram of the droplets based on scattering angle, the researchers found that the scattering angle was not random, but droplets had preferred directions that followed the same pattern as light or electrons. In this way, the droplet may mimic the behavior of a quantum particle as it passes through the slit.\n",
"The surface tension of a liquid tends to assume the smallest possible size, acting as a membrane under tension. Any portion of the liquid surface exerts a tension upon adjacent portions or upon other objects that it contacts. This force is in the plane of the surface, and its amount per unit of length is surface tension. The value for water is about 0.073 N/m at 21 °C. The main effects of surface tension are on minimum operating pressure, spray angle, and drop size. Surface tension is more apparent at low operating pressures. A higher surface tension reduces the spray angle, particularly on hollow cone nozzles. Low surface tensions can allow nozzles to be operated at lower pressures.\n"
] |
What was the siege of Malta significance in WW2 and what are some good sources to read on the subject? | Malta had a great strategic significance for the British in the Mediterranean, as a result of its geographical position. Being in the centre of the Mediterranean, aircraft, ships and submarines based there could interdict any shipping trying to move past it. This proved to be especially valuable, as it controlled the shipping lanes from Italy to North Africa. The RN based two main forces there - Force K, and the 10th Submarine Flotilla. Force K was a surface force, based around two light cruisers, *Penelope* and *Aurora*. It destroyed several Axis convoys, before increased German and Italian bombing forced a retreat. The 10th Submarine Flotilla was based in the old lazarette on Manoel Island in Marsamxett Harbour. Composed mainly of small U-class submarines, it was highly effective at interdicting shipping to and from North Africa. The flotilla produced some highly successful submarines, including HMS Upholder, which sank ~120,000 tons of shipping, making it the most successful British sub of the war. It provided a base for the RAF to launch raids on the Italian coast, and for repairing ships damaged in the waters around it. The British carrier *Illustrious*, heavily damaged by Stukas while escorting a convoy to Alexandria, received major repairs in Valetta's Grand Harbour. Aerial reconnaissance from Malta also proved useful. For example, Martin Maryland recon aircraft from Malta were able to confirm the presence of the Italian fleet at Taranto before the RN launched their raid. Once the siege had been broken, Malta also provided an excellent base for offensive operations against Sicily and southern Italy. The Italians and Germans were, of course, trying to prevent the British from using all of these functions. As far as books go, the big recommendation is James Holland's *Fortress Malta*, which is an excellent popular overview of the siege. Bradford's *Siege Malta 1940-1943* is also worth a read. If you can find them, the British official histories *The Air Battle of Malta 1940-1942* and *The Mediterranean Fleet* will give a good overview of the British side of the battle.
| [
"The Siege of Malta began on 11 June 1940 following Italy's entry into the war. The island was dependent on supply convoys fighting their way through from Gibraltar or Alexandria, and meanwhile, the garrison and people were subjected to some of the heaviest bombing of the war for a period of over two years. For its part, the island provided a base for air and sea attacks on supply convoys to the Italian and German forces fighting in North Africa. On 27 July 1941 de la Bere, by now a Colonel (promoted 27 July 1940), was placed in command of a new Central Infantry Brigade, formed by a brigade headquarters that had come out from the United Kingdom and by infantry battalions that had been brought in as reinforcements from Egypt. De la Bere was injured in November 1941, but returned to duty within three weeks, and commanded the brigade until the end of the war, ending as an Acting Major-General. Central Brigade was redesignated 3rd (Malta) Infantry Brigade in 1942 and later became 233rd Infantry Brigade. During the siege de la Bere organised gifts and activities to maintain the morale of the civil population.\n",
"The Siege of Malta is a historical novel by Walter Scott written from 1831 to 1832 and first published posthumously in 2008. It tells the story of events surrounding the Great Siege of Malta by the Ottoman Turks in 1565.\n",
"The Siege of Malta in the Second World War was a military campaign in the Mediterranean Theatre. From 1940–42, the fight for the control of the strategically important island of Malta, then a British colony, pitted the air forces and navies of Italy and Germany against the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Navy.\n",
"The siege of Malta in the Second World War concluded in November 1942. During this time, Malta experienced a total of 3,000 bombing raids over a period of two years in an effort to destroy Royal Air Force defences and the ports. For enduring this, King George VI of the United Kingdom awarded the George Cross to the entire island and the design of the George Cross was incorporated into the Maltese flag.\n",
"The Great Siege of Malta () took place in 1565 when the Ottoman Empire tried to invade the island of Malta, then held by the Knights Hospitaller. The Knights, with approximately 2,000 footsoldiers and 400 Maltese men, women and children, withstood the siege and repelled the invaders. This victory became one of the most celebrated events in sixteenth-century Europe. Voltaire said, \"Nothing is better known than the siege of Malta\", and it undoubtedly contributed to the eventual erosion of the European perception of Ottoman invincibility and marked a new phase in Spanish domination of the Mediterranean.\n",
"The Siege of Malta, also known as the Siege of Valletta or the French Blockade (), was a two-year siege and blockade of the French garrison in Valletta and the Three Cities, the largest settlements and main port on the Mediterranean island of Malta, between 1798 and 1800. Malta had been captured by a French expeditionary force during the Mediterranean campaign of 1798, and garrisoned with 3,000 men under the command of Claude-Henri Belgrand de Vaubois. After the British Royal Navy destroyed the French Mediterranean Fleet at the Battle of the Nile on 1 August 1798, the British were able to initiate a blockade of Malta, assisted by an uprising among the native Maltese population against French rule. After its retreat to Valletta, the French garrison faced severe food shortages, exacerbated by the effectiveness of the British blockade. Although small quantities of supplies arrived in early 1799, there was no further traffic until early 1800, by which time starvation and disease was having a disastrous effect on health, morale, and combat capability of the French troops.\n",
"Initially during the early stage of the Siege of Malta (World War II), Malta was not much of an offensive threat early in the North African Campaign. However it was considered an essential Allied stronghold as exemplified by Operation Pedestal and the other, often very costly, efforts to resupply the island.\n"
] |
What are the consequences of significantly skewed gender ratio among human population? Are there any documented cases? | Check out [this article on missing women of Asia](_URL_0_) and China's [one-child policy](_URL_1_), both of which outline actual cases of sex disparity and consequences of such. | [
"Although there is significant evidence of the prevalence of sex-selective abortions in many nations (especially India and China), there is also evidence to suggest that some of the variation in global sex ratios is due to disparate access to resources. As MacPherson (2007) notes, there can be significant differences in gender violence and access to food, healthcare, immunizations between male and female children. This leads to high infant and childhood mortality among girls, which causes changes in sex ratio.\n",
"For example, the incidence of breast cancer in a woman in the United Kingdom at age 55 to 59 is estimated at approximately 280 cases per 100.000 per year, and the risk factor of having been exposed to high-dose ionizing radiation to the chest (for example, as treatments for other cancers) confers a relative risk of breast cancer between 2.1 and 4.0, compared to unexposed. Because a low fraction of the population is exposed, the prevalence in the unexposed population can be assumed equal to the prevalence in the general population. Subsequently, it can be estimated that a woman in the United Kingdom that is aged between 55 and 59 and that has been exposed to high-dose ionizing radiation should have a risk of developing breast cancer over a period of one year of between 588 and 1.120 in 100.000 (that is, between 0,6% and 1.1%).\n",
"Some of the variation in birth sex ratios and implied female foeticide may be due to disparate access to resources. As MacPherson (2007) notes, there can be significant differences in gender violence and access to food, healthcare, immunizations between male and female children. This leads to high infant and childhood mortality among girls, which causes changes in sex ratio.\n",
"Olyslager and Conway presented a paper at the WPATH 20th International Symposium (2007) arguing that the data from their own and other studies actually imply much higher prevalence, with minimum lower bounds of 1:4,500 male-to-female transsexual people and 1:8,000 female-to-male transsexual people for a number of countries worldwide. They estimate the number of post-op women in the US to be 32,000 and obtain a figure of 1:2500 male-to-female transsexual people. They further compare the annual incidences of sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and male birth in the U.S. to obtain a figure of 1:1000 MTF transsexual people and suggest a prevalence of 1:500 extrapolated from the rising rates of SRS in the US and a \"common sense\" estimate of the number of undiagnosed transsexual people. Olyslager and Conway also argue that the US population of assigned males having already undergone reassignment surgery by the top three US SRS surgeons alone is enough to account for the entire transsexual population implied by the 1:10,000 prevalence number, yet this excludes all other US SRS surgeons, surgeons in countries such as Thailand, Canada, and others, and the high proportion of transsexual people who have not yet sought treatment, suggesting that a prevalence of 1:10,000 is too low.\n",
"The estimated figures for the prevalence of fibrocystic breast changes in women over lifetime vary widely in the literature, with estimates ranging from about 30 to 60 % over about 50 to 60 % to about 60 to 75% of all women.\n",
"Several key features of human societal collapse can be related to population dynamics. For example, the native population of Cusco, Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest was stressed by an imbalance in the sex ratio between men and women.\n",
"There are several social consequences of an imbalanced sex ratio. It may also become a factor in societal and demographic collapse. For example, the native population of Cusco, Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest was stressed by an imbalance in the sex ratio between men and women. High ratios of males make it easier for women to marry, but harder for men. In parts of China and India, there is a 12–15% excess of young men. These men will remain single and will be unable to have families, in societies where marriage is regarded as virtually universal and social status and acceptance depend, in large part, on being married and creating a new family. Analyses of how sex ratio imbalances affect personal consumption and intra-household distribution were pioneered by Gary Becker, Shoshana Grossbard-Shechtman, and Marcia Guttentag and Paul Secord. High ratios of males have a positive effect on marital fertility and women's share of household consumption and negative effects on non-marital cohabitation and fertility and women's labor supply. It has been shown that variation in sex ratio over time is inversely related to married women's labor supply in the U.S.\n"
] |
On average, how accurate is the modern ascribing of medical conditions to historical figures? | Even in situations where an accurate diagnosis can be made, the utility of this kind of diagnosis can be questionable.
All diseases are, to some extent, culture-bound. How we interpret and feel about symptoms and treatments, and how those feelings and interpretations inform our actions are directly tied to what we believe to be happening. For example, there was a time and place in which finding suppurating sores on one's skin would be a relief (it means that the bad stuff is coming out!).
While there's perhaps some ways that knowing what a historical figure "really" was suffering from might help us better understand the past, it can also get in the way of understanding it if you apply it too rigidly.
Sometimes it works best to accept that what someone was suffering from was exactly what they and their contemporaries believed it to be, even if it's not a real thing anymore. If there's no context to understand, say, fibromyalgia, in the 19th century, declaring that a case of hysteria was 'really' fybromyalgia might obscure more about lived experience and context than it reveals. | [
"His landmark paper \"Phthisiologica, seu exercitationes de phthisi libris comprehensae. Totumque opus variis histories illustratum\" was published in Latin in 1689, with an English translation appearing in 1694. A second English edition was published in 1720. Its significance is partly due to the disease receiving little study by other doctors of the time despite it being a major cause of death; accounting for over 18% all deaths in the City of London in 1700. The paper is also significant in that it also contains the first recognised medical descriptions of the wasting condition now known as Anorexia Nervosa. \n",
"Contemporary and historic views regarding diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of medical conditions have been documented for thousands of years. The Edwin Smith papyrus is the first known medical treatise. Ancient medical literature often described inflictions related to warfare.\n",
"In a 1908 review, the eminent physician William Osler said of this paper: \"In the history of medicine, there are few instances in which a disease has been more accurately, more graphically or more briefly described.\"\n",
"The \"British Medical Journal\" and \"The Lancet\" gave favourable reviews and the \"Journal of the American Medical Association\" recommended it to all physicians, but the \"Bulletin of the History of Medicine\" responded more critically, identifying a number of inaccurate names and dates. This intense criticism came from George Rosen, who was of the opinion that Guthrie should have included social context. Guthrie's response, as documented in his scrapbook, described it as \"the only really adverse criticism, obviously by a disgruntled reviewer who thinks he could have done better himself\".\n",
"Despite the increasing emphasis on diagnostic technology, many physicians perceive the medical family history as the preeminent source of information with a much higher value in diagnosis than either the physical examination or laboratory and radiography information because it is well known that many medical conditions, including heart disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, alcoholism, Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease, hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and high blood pressure all have been shown to have links to our past.\n",
"He was not completely at ease with the growing trend to apply a social context to medical history but his work in the history of medicine was still described as \"seminal\" and his scholarship as exhibiting \"timeless qualities of accuracy and care\". \n",
"Albert Jonsen, University of Washington historian of medicine, says “the second great sweep of medical history begins at the end of the fourth century, with the founding of the first Christian hospital at Caesarea in Cappadocia, and concludes at the end of the fourteenth century, with medicine well ensconced in the universities and in the public life of the emerging nations of Europe.” After the death of Eusebios in 370 and the election of Basil as bishop of Caesarea, Basil established the first formal soup kitchen, hospital, homeless shelter, hospice, poorhouse, orphanage, reform center for thieves, women's center for those leaving prostitution and many other ministries. Basil was personally involved and invested in the projects and process giving all of his personal wealth to fund the ministries. Basil himself would put on an apron and work in the soup kitchen. These ministries were given freely regardless of religious affiliation. Basil refused to make any discrimination when it came to people who needed help saying that “the digestive systems of the Jew and the Christian are indistinguishable.” \"...there is a striking resemblance between [Basil's] ideals and those of modern times. ...certainly he was the most modern among the pioneers of monasticism, and for this reason, if for none other, his work has a permanent interest...\"\n"
] |
Darwin's use of "Natural Selection" | Is there a question here? I'm having a little trouble figuring out what kind of answer you're looking for. | [
"Darwin thought of natural selection by analogy to how farmers select crops or livestock for breeding, which he called \"artificial selection\"; in his early manuscripts he referred to a \"Nature\" which would do the selection. At the time, other mechanisms of evolution such as evolution by genetic drift were not yet explicitly formulated, and Darwin believed that selection was likely only part of the story: \"I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.\" In a letter to Charles Lyell in September 1860, Darwin regretted the use of the term \"Natural Selection\", preferring the term \"Natural Preservation\".\n",
"Natural selection is a cornerstone of modern biology. The concept, published by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in a joint presentation of papers in 1858, was elaborated in Darwin's influential 1859 book \"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life\". He described natural selection as analogous to artificial selection, a process by which animals and plants with traits considered desirable by human breeders are systematically favoured for reproduction. The concept of natural selection originally developed in the absence of a valid theory of heredity; at the time of Darwin's writing, science had yet to develop modern theories of genetics. The union of traditional Darwinian evolution with subsequent discoveries in classical genetics formed the modern synthesis of the mid-20th century. The addition of molecular genetics has led to evolutionary developmental biology, which explains evolution at the molecular level. While genotypes can slowly change by random genetic drift, natural selection remains the primary explanation for adaptive evolution.\n",
"Natural selection is one of the cornerstones of modern biology. The term was introduced by Darwin in his groundbreaking 1859 book \"On the Origin of Species\", in which natural selection was described by analogy to artificial selection, a process by which animals and plants with traits considered desirable by human breeders are systematically favored for reproduction. The concept of natural selection was originally developed in the absence of a valid theory of heredity; at the time of Darwin's writing, nothing was known of modern genetics. The union of traditional Darwinian evolution with subsequent discoveries in classical and molecular genetics is termed the \"modern evolutionary synthesis\". Natural selection remains the primary explanation for adaptive evolution.\n",
"Scientific readers were already aware of arguments that species changed through processes that were subject to laws of nature, but the transmutational ideas of Lamarck and the vague \"law of development\" of \"Vestiges\" had not found scientific favour. Darwin presented natural selection as a scientifically testable mechanism while accepting that other mechanisms such as inheritance of acquired characters were possible. His strategy established that evolution through natural laws was worthy of scientific study, and by 1875, most scientists accepted that evolution occurred but few thought natural selection was significant. Darwin's scientific method was also disputed, with his proponents favouring the empiricism of John Stuart Mill's \"A System of Logic\", while opponents held to the idealist school of William Whewell's \"Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences\", in which investigation could begin with the intuitive idea that species were fixed objects created by design. Early support for Darwin's ideas came from the findings of field naturalists studying biogeography and ecology, including Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1860, and Asa Gray in 1862. Henry Walter Bates presented research in 1861 that explained insect mimicry using natural selection. Alfred Russel Wallace discussed evidence from his Malay archipelago research, including an 1864 paper with an evolutionary explanation for the Wallace line.\n",
"Charles Darwin himself described natural selection as being \"the main but not exclusive means of modification\" of species. The modern theory of evolution includes natural selection and genetic drift as mechanisms, and does not conclude that \"the ability of random mutation and natural selection\" accounts \"for the complexity of life.\" Southeastern Louisiana University philosophy professor Barbara Forrest and deputy director of the National Center for Science Education Glenn Branch comment on the ambiguity of the statement and its use in the original advertisement:\n",
"Darwin's aims were twofold: to show that species had not been separately created, and to show that natural selection had been the chief agent of change. He knew that his readers were already familiar with the concept of transmutation of species from \"Vestiges\", and his introduction ridicules that work as failing to provide a viable mechanism. Therefore, the first four chapters lay out his case that selection in nature, caused by the struggle for existence, is analogous to the selection of variations under domestication, and that the accumulation of adaptive variations provides a scientifically testable mechanism for evolutionary speciation.\n",
"Darwin's theory of natural selection is a profoundly powerful explanation of how evolution works; its undoubted success strongly suggests an inherently antagonistic relationship between unrelated individuals. Yet cooperation is prevalent, seems beneficial, and even seems to be essential to human society. Explaining this seeming contradiction, and accommodating cooperation, and even altruism, within Darwinian theory is a central issue in the theory of cooperation.\n"
] |
if sugar is so bad why should i eat fruit? what does it give me that vegetables don't? | It's not that sugar is bad; it's that sugars in certain capacities are bad.
If you drink a soda that has 20g of sugar, those 20g of sugar are going to be immediately and instantaneously absorbed by your body. On the other hand, let's say you eat a piece of fruit that contains 20g of sugar - that sugar will be digested over an hour or so, meaning it won't cause that significant spike the soda's sugar did.
Your body needs sugar. Just make sure you give it the right kind in the right form. | [
"A 2003 World Health Organization technical report provided evidence that high intake of sugary drinks (including fruit juice) increased the risk of obesity by adding to overall energy intake. By itself, sugar is not a factor causing obesity and metabolic syndrome, but rather – when over-consumed – is a component of unhealthy dietary behavior. Meta-analyses showed that excessive consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages increased the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome – including weight gain and obesity – in adults and children.\n",
"The earliest cultures have used sugar as a preservative, and it was commonplace to store fruit in honey. Similar to pickled foods, sugar cane was brought to Europe through the trade routes. In northern climates without sufficient sun to dry foods, preserves are made by heating the fruit with sugar. \"Sugar tends to draw water from the microbes (plasmolysis). This process leaves the microbial cells dehydrated, thus killing them. In this way, the food will remain safe from microbial spoilage.\" Sugar is used to preserve fruits, either in an antimicrobial syrup with fruit such as apples, pears, peaches, apricots, and plums, or in crystallized form where the preserved material is cooked in sugar to the point of crystallization and the resultant product is then stored dry. This method is used for the skins of citrus fruit (candied peel), angelica, and ginger. Also, sugaring can be used in the production of jam and jelly.\n",
"Many popular vegetable juices, particularly ones with high tomato content, are high in sodium, and therefore consumption of them for health must be carefully considered. Some vegetables such as beets also contain large amounts of sugar, so care must be taken when adding these to juices. \n",
"Sugar is added to fruit to protect against microbial contamination and reduce water activity in the fruit. This allows the fruit to be more stable at room temperature. Some examples are strawberries, prunes, peaches, apricots, and pineapples. IMF blueberries are prepared by osmotic dehydration. They are soaked in sugar for one to two days followed by a freeze drying process until the desired moisture level is reached.\n",
"The developing case against sugar was also manifest in the 2003 version of WHO's \"Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases\", which recognised that there were good reasons for restricting sugar intakes to less than 10% of total calories, not just because of dental caries, but “on nutritional grounds alone”. These grounds specifically included obesity. The subsequent controversy with the food industry over the global strategy to achieve this target was a turning point for some companies, who recognised that sugar and sweet products were now irremovably on the nutrition agenda.\n",
"Sugars are commonly associated with dental cavities. Other carbohydrates, especially cooked starches, e.g. crisps/potato chips, may also damage teeth, although to a lesser degree (and indirectly) since starch has to be converted to glucose by salivary amylase (an enzyme in the saliva) first. Sugars that are higher in the stickiness index, such as toffee, are likely to cause more damage to teeth than those that are lower in the stickiness index, such as certain forms of chocolate or most fruits.\n",
"According to US Food and Drug Administration reports, Fruits are known to be rich in nutrients such as Vitamin A, C and Calcium. This is why in addition to its communication as containing No Added Sugar, No Preservative, No Artificial Colours, Chivita 100% Fruit Juice also considers its 100% juice a Nutrient density beverage, poised to address the nutritional needs of its consumers at every stage of their lives.\n"
] |
what is a virtual cpu ? | > Virtual CPUs or vCPU are the brand name of NetLogic for its SMT implementation, like Intels HyperThreading. The concept is easy: For each CPU core you have several vCPU's, which are simulated and share the hardware of the one core. The software that runs on such a architecture "sees" x vCPU's altough there are only y physical cores present. This is done for performance optimization.
^_URL_0_
Considering that you have an i7, this is presumably from HyperThreading, which is only present in i7 series processors.
**Why badly optimized games lag a lot?** Because they're unoptimized! More accurately, an unoptimized speed can be though of as the "base" or default speed. Optimization improves the performance, causing the game to run faster. As a result, an optimized game has better performance than an unoptimized game, in comparison.
**Why does it over-heat fast?** Laptops don't have very efficient cooling systems (compared to desktops). That's part of the reason that processors and such for laptops are slower than their desktop variants. For comparison, my i7-2600K runs at 3.4 GHz by default, but can be easily overclocked to 4 GHz (the "K" means the chip is unlocked and can be overclocked).
To prevent overheating, get a cooling pad for laptops. And avoid blocking the air intake at the bottom of the laptop. Contrary to their name, they shouldn't go on your lap. | [
"General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU, rarely GPGP) is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU), which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditionally handled by the central processing unit (CPU). The use of multiple video cards in one computer, or large numbers of graphics chips, further parallelizes the already parallel nature of graphics processing. In addition, even a single GPU-CPU framework provides advantages that multiple CPUs on their own do not offer due to the specialization in each chip.\n",
"Graphics Virtualization Technology was introduced with Intel Iris Pro. Intel's integrated GPU can be either dedicatedly assigned to a virtual machine (GVT-d), shared between multiple virtual machines on a time-sharing basis while using native graphics driver (GVT-g), or shared between multiple virtual machines by using a virtual graphics driver (GVT-s).\n",
"The GPU, or graphics processing unit, is the unit that allows the graphics card to function. It performs a large amount of the work given to the card. The majority of video playback on a computer is controlled by the GPU. Once again, a GPU can be either integrated or dedicated.\n",
"The system allows for the GPU to directly read data produced by the CPU without going to main memory. In this specific case of data streaming, called Xbox procedural synthesis (XPS), the CPU is effectively a data decompressor, generating geometry on-the-fly for consumption by the GPU 3D core.\n",
"Some virtual machines, such as QEMU, are designed to also emulate different architectures and allow execution of software applications and operating systems written for another CPU or architecture. Operating-system-level virtualization allows the resources of a computer to be partitioned via the kernel. The terms are not universally interchangeable.\n",
"A virtual console (VC) – also known as a virtual terminal (VT) – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some Unix-like operating systems such as BSD, Linux, illumos and UnixWare in which the system console of the computer can be used to switch between multiple virtual consoles to access unrelated user interfaces. Virtual consoles date back at least to Xenix and Concurrent CP/M in the 1980s.\n",
"A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. Modern GPUs are very efficient at manipulating computer graphics and image processing. Their highly parallel structure makes them more efficient than general-purpose central processing units (CPUs) for algorithms that process large blocks of data in parallel. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present on a video card or embedded on the motherboard. In certain CPUs, they are embedded on the CPU die.\n"
] |
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