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Can water from a dehumidifier be used for non-scientific applications that require distilled water ? | Well, i dunno what kind of basement you have, but generally there is some nasty stuff lookin for a moist spit to grow. Your dehumidifier is an ideal place for that. I wouldnt drink the water in my dehumidifier. | [
"Dehumidifiers are used in industrial climatic chambers, to reduce relative humidity and the dew point in many industrial applications from waste and fresh water treatment plants to indoor grow rooms where the control of moisture is essential.\n",
"A dehumidifier is an electrical appliance which reduces and maintains the level of humidity in the air, usually for health or comfort reasons, or to eliminate musty odor and to prevent the growth of mildew by extracting water from the air. It can be used for household, commercial, or industrial applications. Large dehumidifiers are used in commercial buildings such as indoor ice rinks and swimming pools, as well as manufacturing plants or storage warehouses.\n",
"Many portable dehumidifiers can also be adapted to connect the condensate drip output directly to a drain via a hose. Some dehumidifier models can tie into plumbing drains or use a built-in water pump to empty themselves as they collect moisture. Alternatively, a separate condensate pump may be used to move collected water to a disposal location when gravity drainage is not possible.\n",
"Condensate dehumidifiers use a refrigerator to collect water known as condensate, which is normally greywater but may at times be reused for industrial purposes. Some manufacturers offer reverse osmosis filters to turn the condensate into potable water. Some designs, such as the ionic membrane dehumidifier, dispose off water as a vapor rather than liquid.\n",
"Using deionised or distilled water in appliances that evaporate water, such as steam irons and humidifiers, can reduce the build-up of mineral scale, which shortens appliance life. Some appliance manufacturers say that deionised water is no longer necessary.\n",
"For many years, desiccants have been used to control the water vapor in a closed package. A desiccant is a hygroscopic substance usually in a porous pouch or sachet which is placed inside a sealed package. They have been used to reduce corrosion of machinery and electronics and to extend the shelf life of moisture sensitive foods and drugs.\n",
"A vapor-compression evaporator, like most evaporators, can make reasonably clean water from any water source. In a salt crystallizer, for example, a typical analysis of the resulting condensate shows a typical content of residual salt not higher than 50 ppm or, in terms of electrical conductance, not higher than 10 μS/cm. This results in a drinkable water, if the other sanitary requirements are fulfilled. While this cannot compete in the marketplace with reverse osmosis or demineralization, vapor compression chiefly differs from these thanks to its ability to make clean water from saturated or even crystallizing brines with total dissolved solids (TDS) up to 650 g/L. The other two technologies can make clean water from sources no higher in TDS than approximately 35 g/L.\n"
] |
why does chocolate melt faster if it's been refrigerated? | Chocolate requires tempering, which is a processes that takes very specific high and low temperatures.
When the chocolate has been melted it ruins this tempering.
The tempering process evens out the fatty acids and ensures a uniform crystallisation. When this is consistent it requires more energy (heat) to disrupt it. | [
"Chocolate is very sensitive to temperature and humidity. Ideal storage temperatures are between , with a relative humidity of less than 50%. If refrigerated or frozen without containment, chocolate can absorb enough moisture to cause a whitish discoloration, the result of fat or sugar crystals rising to the surface. Various types of \"blooming\" effects can occur if chocolate is stored or served improperly.\n",
"As a solid piece of chocolate, the cocoa butter fat particles are in a crystalline rigid structure that gives the chocolate its solid appearance. Once heated, the crystals of the polymorphic cocoa butter are able to break apart from the rigid structure and allow the chocolate to obtain a more fluid consistency as the temperature increases – the melting process. When the heat is removed, the cocoa butter crystals become rigid again and come closer together, allowing the chocolate to solidify.\n",
"Chocolate chips can also be melted and used in sauces and other recipes. The chips melt best at temperatures between . The melting process starts at , when the cocoa butter starts melting in the chips. The cooking temperature must never exceed for milk chocolate and white chocolate, or for dark chocolate, or the chocolate will burn.\n",
"Chocolate bloom is caused by storage temperature fluctuating or exceeding , while sugar bloom is caused by temperature below or excess humidity. To distinguish between different types of bloom, one can rub the surface of the chocolate lightly, and if the bloom disappears, it is fat bloom. Moving chocolate between temperature extremes, can result in an oily texture. Although visually unappealing, chocolate suffering from bloom is safe for consumption and taste unaffected. Bloom can be reversed by retempering the chocolate or using it for any use that requires melting the chocolate.\n",
"The temperature in which the crystals obtain enough energy to break apart from their rigid conformation would depend on the milk fat content in the chocolate and the shape of the fat molecules, as well as the form of the cocoa butter fat. Chocolate with a higher fat content will melt at a lower temperature.\n",
"The cakes are heated in a liquation furnace, usually four or five at once, to a temperature above the melting point of lead (327°C), but below that of copper (1084 °C), so that the silver-rich lead melts and flows away. As the melting point of lead is so low a high temperature furnace is not required and it can be fuelled with wood. It is important that this takes place in a reducing atmosphere, i.e.one with little oxygen, to avoid the lead oxidising, the cakes are therefore well covered by charcoal and little air is allowed into the furnace. It is impossible to stop some of the lead oxidising however and this drops down and forms spiky projections known as ‘liquation thorns’ in the channel underneath the hearth.\n",
"Although convenient, melted chocolate chips are not always recommended as a substitute for baking chocolate. Because most chocolate chips are designed to retain their shape when baking, they contain less cocoa butter than baking chocolate, and so can be more difficult to work with melted.\n"
] |
Why do humans 'enjoy' the musical notes that we do? | The intervals we enjoy are generally fairly simple ratios of frequencies.
For example, an octave (C to C) is doubling the frequency. A "perfect fifth" (C to G) is multiplying by 3/2. A "perfect fourth" (C to F) is multiplying by 4/3.
As for the notes in between, these actually differ between cultures, so it is somewhat learned.
----
Some extra points: in our Western "equal temperament" scale, we don't use exact ratios. Our scale is based on the twelfth root of 2. So a perfect fifth is actually 2^7/12 = 1.49830708, instead of the "perfect" value of 1.5.
Also, I'm not entirely sure *why* simple ratios sound "good", but I think it's something like because they interfere to produce more notes with nice ratios. Or something. | [
"\"Most people like music because it gives them certain emotions such as joy, grief, sadness, and image of nature, a subject for daydreams or – still better – oblivion from “everyday life”. They want a drug – dope -…. Music would not be worth much if it were reduced to such an end. When people have learned to love music for itself, when they listen with other ears, their enjoyment will be of a far higher and more potent order, and they will be able to judge it on a higher plane and realise its intrinsic value.\" - Igor Stravinsky \n",
"There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that reading musical notation can cause musicians to sense an auditory image of the notes they are reading which is a phenomenon called notational audiation. Present studies show that only some musicians who can read musical notation can hear an inner voice emulating the melody while reading the notation which has served as an interesting mode of study to understand the way information is encoded in the brain. Musicians have their sense of notational audiation significantly impaired during phonatory distractions due to the conflicting signals induced onto a single sensory modality. Some musicians who are proficient at reading sheet music may experience an auditory image while reading over the excerpt for Symphony No. 40 from Mozart below.\n",
"Recent developments in cognitive neuroscience of music have led to a new way of looking at music and emotion. Neurologist Oliver Sacks states that music occupies more areas of the brain than language does, and that humans are primarily a musical species.\n",
"Melodic learning appears to derive its effectiveness from the special nature of music and singing's activity pattern in the human brain. A series of books published in the 2000s by noted neuroscientists document the unique relationship between music and our brains, including \"Musicophilia\" by Oliver Sacks, \"This Is Your Brain On Music\" by Daniel Levitin, and \"Music, Language, and the Brain\" by Aniudh Patel.\n",
"Recent studies have found people who do not have any issue processing musical tones or beat, yet receive no pleasure from listening to music. Specific musical anhedonia is distinct from Melophobia, the fear of music.\n",
"Music transmitted by word of mouth through a community, in time, develops many variants, because this kind of transmission cannot produce word-for-word and note-for-note accuracy. Indeed, many traditional singers are quite creative and deliberately modify the material they learn.\n",
"'Music, amongst all the great arts, is the language which penetrates most deeply into the human spirit, reaching people through every barrier, disability, language and circumstance. This is why it has been my dream to bring music back into the lives of those people whose lives are especially prone to stress and suffering... so that it might comfort, heal and bring delight.' - Yehudi Menuhin\n"
] |
If Humans were seperated on several continents, why are we not differently adapted? | We are different. African people for instance have a much higher rate of sickle cell anemia because if you have 50% sickle cell and 50% reg red cells you are immune to malaria, as well as many other blood born bacteria that are common in Africa. Similarly British people are really pale because there is not as much sun light so they need to absorb more vitamin D from the limited sun exposure. | [
"Humans may have an evolved set of psychological adaptations that predispose them to be more cooperative than otherwise would be expected with members of their tribal in-group, and, more nasty to members of tribal out groups. These adaptations may have been a consequence of tribal warfare. Humans may also have predispositions for \"altruistic punishment\" – to punish in-group members who violate in-group rules, even when this altruistic behavior cannot be justified in terms of helping those you are related to (kin selection), cooperating with those who you will interact with again (direct reciprocity), or cooperating to better your reputation with others (indirect reciprocity).\n",
"Since an organism's adaptations were suited to its ancestral environment, a new and different environment can create a mismatch. Because humans are mostly adapted to Pleistocene environments, psychological mechanisms sometimes exhibit \"mismatches\" to the modern environment. One example is the fact that although about 10,000 people are killed with guns in the US annually, whereas spiders and snakes kill only a handful, people nonetheless learn to fear spiders and snakes about as easily as they do a pointed gun, and more easily than an unpointed gun, rabbits or flowers. A potential explanation is that spiders and snakes were a threat to human ancestors throughout the Pleistocene, whereas guns (and rabbits and flowers) were not. There is thus a mismatch between humans' evolved fear-learning psychology and the modern environment.\n",
"The human body's ability to adapt to different environmental stresses is remarkable, allowing humans to acclimatize to a wide variety of temperatures, humidity, and altitudes. As a result, humans are a cosmopolitan species found in almost all regions of the world, including tropical rainforests, arid desert, extremely cold arctic regions, and heavily polluted cities. Most other species are confined to a few geographical areas by their limited adaptability.\n",
"Geographical theories such as environmental determinism also suggested that tropical environments created uncivilized people in need of European guidance. For instance, American geographer Ellen Churchill Semple argued that even though human beings originated in the tropics they were only able to become fully human in the temperate zone. Tropicality can be paralleled with Edward Said's Orientalism as the west's construction of the east as the \"other\". According to Said, orientalism allowed Europe to establish itself as the superior and the norm, which justified its dominance over the essentialized Orient.\n",
"Examples of extreme environments include the geographical poles, very arid deserts, volcanoes, deep ocean trenches, upper atmosphere, Mt Everest, outer space, and the environments of every planet in the Solar System except the Earth. Any organisms living in these conditions are often very well adapted to their living circumstances, which is usually a result of long-term evolution. Physiologists have long known that organisms living in extreme environments are especially likely to exhibit clear examples of evolutionary adaptation because of the presumably intense past natural selection they have experienced.\n",
"After humans migrated out of their ancestral environment of eastern Africa, they were exposed to new climates and challenges. Thus, Wade argues, human evolution did not end with behavioural modernity, but continued to be shaped by the different environments and lifestyles of each continent. While many adaptations happened in parallel across human populations, Wade believes that genetic isolation – either because of geography or hostile tribalism – also facilitated a degree of independent evolution, leading to genetic and cultural differentiation from the ancestral population and giving rise to different human races and languages.\n",
"Indigenous people in Asia are plagued with a wide variety of problems due to climate change, including but not limited to, lengthy droughts, floods, irregular seasonal cycles, typhoons and cyclones with unprecedented strength, and highly unpredictable weather. This has led to worsening food and water security, which in turn factor into an increase in water-borne diseases, heat strokes, and malnutrition. Indigenous lifestyles in Asia have been completely uprooted and disrupted due to the above factors, but also due to the increased expansion of monoculture plantations, hydroelectric dams, and the extraction of uranium on their lands and territories prior to their free and informed consent.\n"
] |
sleep walking and talking | Two things can occur, first is the body doesn't shut down response mechanisms when you sleep and your response functions continue functioning while you are asleep, when you sleep the brain doesn't normally send signals to the rest of the body so you don't injure yourself by flailing or kicking in your sleep, and you rarely verbalize anything. Sleep walking and talking are often caused when the brain doesn't shut down this activity, so you end up in an unconscious state of action, which can lead to injuries.
The second thing that is very common is you actually are conscious but your not in a complete state of consciousness memory wise, and thus do not remember the actions of the previous night, the same thing happens when a person get's completely drunk, they are conscious but their memory function is shut down. | [
"Somniloquy or sleep-talking is a parasomnia that refers to talking aloud while asleep. It can be quite loud, ranging from simple mumbling sounds to loud shouts and long, frequently inarticulate speeches, and can occur many times during a sleep cycle. As with sleepwalking and night terrors, sleeptalking usually occurs during delta-wave NREM sleep stages or during temporary arousals therefrom.\n",
"Normal sleep cycles include states varying from drowsiness all the way to deep sleep. Every time an individual sleeps, he or she goes through various sequences of non-REM and REM sleep. Anxiety and fatigue are often connected with sleepwalking. For adults, alcohol, sedatives, medications, medical conditions and mental disorders are all associated with sleepwalking. Sleep walking may involve sitting up and looking awake when the individual is actually asleep, and getting up and walking around, moving items or undressing themselves. They will also be confused when waking up or opening their eyes during sleep. Sleep walking can be associated with sleeptalking.\n",
"Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism or noctambulism, is a phenomenon of combined sleep and wakefulness. It is classified as a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family. It occurs during slow wave sleep stage, in a state of low consciousness, with performance of activities that are usually performed during a state of full consciousness. These activities can be as benign as talking, sitting up in bed, walking to a bathroom, and cleaning, or as hazardous as cooking, driving, violent gestures, grabbing at hallucinated objects, or even homicide.\n",
"Sleep-learning (also known as hypnopædia, or hypnopedia) is an attempt to convey information to a sleeping person, typically by playing a sound recording to them while they sleep. Although often used in pop culture as a way to introduce new information (see 'In Fiction'), sleep is considered an important period for memory consolidation.\n",
"\"Sleep Walkers\" was developed out of Forti's observations of animals at the Rome Zoo, now known as the Bioparco di Roma. Forti specifically refers to developing the movement of swinging her head back and forth and a movement called \"banking\" from watching polar bears' and elephants' repetitive pacing inside their enclosures.\n",
"Sleepwalking was initially thought to be a dreamer acting out a dream. For example, in one study published by the Society for Science & the Public in 1954, this was the conclusion: \"Repression of hostile feelings against the father caused the patients to react by acting out in a dream world with sleepwalking, the distorted fantasies they had about all authoritarian figures, such as fathers, officers and stern superiors.\" This same group published an article twelve years later with a new conclusion: \"Sleepwalking, contrary to most belief, apparently has little to do with dreaming. In fact, it occurs when the sleeper is enjoying his most oblivious, deepest sleep—a stage in which dreams are not usually reported.\" More recent research has discovered that sleepwalking is actually a disorder of NREM (non-rapid eye movement) arousal. Acting out a dream is the basis for a REM (rapid eye movement) sleep disorder called REM Behavior Disorder (or REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, RSBD). More accurate data about sleep is due to the invention of technologies, such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) by Hans Berger in 1924 and BEAM by Frank Duffy in the early 1980s.\n",
"BULLET::::- Sleepwalking or \"somnambulism\", engaging in activities normally associated with wakefulness (such as eating or dressing), which may include walking, without the conscious knowledge of the subject.\n"
] |
what vitamins and supplements i should take and why | Flintstones vitamins.
1 chewable tablet per day, unless you are significantly over/under the average weight for a five year old, in which case your parents should consult your pediatrician on your behalf.
*spelling | [
"It may be taken as a dietary supplement, as it is a source of vitamin C, B vitamins, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, potassium (475 mg), calcium, phosphorus, sulphur, iron, copper, zinc, magnesium and lactic acid.\n",
"Vitamin C dietary supplements are available as tablets, capsules, drink mix packets, in multi-vitamin/mineral formulations, in antioxidant formulations, and as crystalline powder. Vitamin C is also added to some fruit juices and juice drinks. Tablet and capsule content ranges from 25 mg to 1500 mg per serving. The most commonly used supplement compounds are ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbate and calcium ascorbate. Vitamin C molecules can also be bound to the fatty acid palmitate, creating ascorbyl palmitate, or else incorporated into liposomes.\n",
"As with the minerals discussed above, some vitamins are recognized as essential nutrients, necessary in the diet for good health. (Vitamin D is the exception: it can alternatively be synthesized in the skin, in the presence of UVB radiation.) Certain vitamin-like compounds that are recommended in the diet, such as carnitine, are thought useful for survival and health, but these are not \"essential\" dietary nutrients because the human body has some capacity to produce them from other compounds. Moreover, thousands of different phytochemicals have recently been discovered in food (particularly in fresh vegetables), which may have desirable properties including antioxidant activity (see below); experimental demonstration has been suggestive but inconclusive. Other essential nutrients not classed as vitamins include essential amino acids (see above), essential fatty acids (see above), and the minerals discussed in the preceding section.\n",
"BULLET::::- Dietary Supplements: natural-source nutrients including vitamin E, mixed tocopherols, mixed carotenoids, botanical specialties, lutein esters, alpha-lipoic acid, phytosterols, and omega-3 fatty acids\n",
"Vitamins are nutrients required in small amounts for essential metabolic reactions in the body. These are broken down in nutrition as either water-soluble (Vitamin C) or fat-soluble (Vitamin E). An adequate supply of vitamins can prevent diseases such as beriberi, anemia, and scurvy while an overdose of vitamins can produce nausea and vomiting or even death.\n",
"Manufactured foods fortified with vitamin D include some fruit juices and fruit juice drinks, meal replacement energy bars, soy protein-based beverages, certain cheese and cheese products, flour products, infant formulas, many breakfast cereals, and milk.\n",
"A vitamin is an organic compound required by an organism as a vital nutrient in limited amounts. An organic chemical compound (or related set of compounds) is called a vitamin when it cannot be synthesized in sufficient quantities by an organism, and must be obtained from the diet. The term is conditional both on the circumstances and on the particular organism. For example, ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is a vitamin for anthropoid primates, humans, guinea pigs and bats, but not for other mammals. Vitamin D is not an essential nutrient for people who get sufficient exposure to ultraviolet light, either from the sun or an artificial source, as then they synthesize vitamin D in skin. Humans require thirteen vitamins in their diet, most of which are actually groups of related molecules, \"vitamers\", (e.g. vitamin E includes tocopherols and tocotrienols, vitamin K includes vitamin K and K). The list: vitamins A, C, D, E, K, Thiamine (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Niacin (B3), Pantothenic Acid (B5), Vitamin B6, Biotin (B7), Folate (B9) and Vitamin B12. Vitamin intake below recommended amounts can result in signs and symptoms associated with vitamin deficiency. There is little evidence of benefit when consumed as a dietary supplement by those who are healthy and consuming a nutritionally adequate diet.\n"
] |
Which plant is the most effective at converting CO2 to Oxygen? | [Photosynthetic efficiency](_URL_0_) is the proper term for this and it's actually measured as sunlight to biomass. The reason is because the same amount of CO2 + (other stuff^1 ) = O2 + (other stuff^1 ), so efficient is always 1-to-1 ratio if you measure CO2 to O2 conversion.
In any case, the most efficient plant is sugar cane at around 7%. However, plants are put to same by algae have efficiency rations of up to 30%.
^1 I know "other stuff" this is not very scientifically accurate but I'm trying to simplify things. | [
"BULLET::::6. Like plants, autotrophic microorganisms are capable to grow on CO. Some of them, such as bacteria with the Wood–Ljungdahl pathway or the reductive TCA can fix CO2 between 2-3, up to 10 times more efficiently than plants when also considering the effects of photoinhibition.\n",
"Many photosynthetic organisms have not acquired CO concentrating mechanisms (CCMs), which increase the concentration of CO available to the initial carboxylase of the Calvin cycle, the enzyme RuBisCO. The benefits of a CCM include increased tolerance to low external concentrations of inorganic carbon, and reduced losses to photorespiration. CCMs can make plants more tolerant of heat and water stress.\n",
"Increased CO levels will likely have an effect on the photosynthetic activity in grapevines as photosynthesis is stimulated by a rise in CO and has been known to also lead to an increase leaf area and vegetative dry weight. Raised atmospheric CO is also believed to result in partial stomatal closure which indirectly leads to increased leaf temperatures. A rise in leaf temperatures may alter ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCo) relationship with carbon dioxide and oxygen which will also affect the plants' photosynthesis capabilities. Raised atmospheric carbon dioxide is also known to decrease the stomatal density of some grapevine varieties.\n",
"While typically limited by nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, low levels of carbon dioxide can also act as a limiting factor on plant growth. Peer-reviewed and published scientific studies have shown that increasing CO is highly effective at promoting plant growth up to levels over 300 ppm. Further increases in CO can, to a very small degree, continue to increase net photosynthetic output.\n",
"These chemical and anatomical mechanisms improve the ability of RuBisCO to fix carbon, rather than perform its wasteful oxygenase activity. The RuBisCO oxygenase activity, called photorespiration, causes the RuBP substrate to be lost to oxidation, and consumes energy in doing so. The adaptations of C4 plants provide an advantage over the C3 pathway, which loses efficiency due to photorespiration. The ratio of photorespiration to photosynthesis in a plant varies with environmental conditions, since decreased CO and elevated O concentrations would increase the efficiency of photorespiration. Atmospheric CO on Earth decreased abruptly at a point between 32-25 million years ago. This gave a selective advantage to the evolution of the C4 pathway, which can limit photorespiration rate despite the reduced ambient CO. Today, C4 plants represent roughly 5% of plant biomass on Earth, but about 23% of terrestrial carbon fixation. Types of plants which use C4 photosynthesis include grasses and economically important crops, such as maize, sugar cane, millet, and sorghum.\n",
"With the incorporation of the membrane technology, oxygen plants have outstanding technical characteristics. Membrane oxygen plants are highly reliable due to the absence of moving parts in the gas separation module.\n",
"There are currently 200 cofiring plants in the world, including 40 in the US. Studies showed that by mixing coal with biomass, we could reduce the amount of CO2 emitted. The concentration of CO2 in the flue gas is an important key to determine the efficiency of CO2 capture technology. The concentration of CO2 in the flue gas from the co-firing power plant is roughly the same as coal plant, about 15% [1]. This means that we can reduce our reliance on fossil fuel.\n"
] |
why don't cigarette packs in the us have gruesome pictures of lung cancer on them like in other countries? | Because tobacco companies have far more leverage over politicians in the United States than they do in other countries. | [
"In the United States, lung cancer incidence and mortality rates are particularly high among African American men. Lung cancer tends to be most common in developed countries, particularly in North America and Europe, and less common in developing countries, particularly in Africa and South America. Over 85% of all lung cancers are attributed to cigarette smoking; however, only a fraction of long-term cigarette smokers develop lung cancer. Cancer of the lung is occasionally observed among nonsmokers, indicating a genetic susceptibility in lung tumorigenesis. The incidence of lung cancer seems to have increased in dogs as well as in humans and cigarette smoking can hardly be incriminated.\n",
"For every 3–4 million cigarettes smoked, one lung cancer death can occur. The influence of \"Big Tobacco\" plays a significant role in smoking. Young nonsmokers who see tobacco advertisements are more likely to smoke. The role of passive smoking is increasingly being recognized as a risk factor for lung cancer, resulting in policy interventions to decrease the undesired exposure of nonsmokers to others' tobacco smoke.\n",
"The risk of lung cancer caused by smoking is much higher than the risk of lung cancer caused by indoor radon. Radiation from radon has been attributed to increase of lung cancer among smokers too. It is generally believed that exposure to radon and cigarette smoking are synergistic; that is, that the combined effect exceeds the sum of their independent effects. This is because the daughters of radon often become attached to smoke and dust particles, and are then able to lodge in the lungs.\n",
"In 1957, two years after the FTC's guidelines on cigarette advertisements were released, the Surgeon General issued the \"Joint Report of Study Group on Smoking and Health.” The report stated, \"It is clear that there is an increasing and consistent body of evidence that excessive cigarette smoking is one of the causative factors in lung cancer,\" which solidified the Surgeon General’s position on tobacco. During the same year, \"Reader’s Digest\" included tar and nicotine measurements in their magazine for the first time since the early 1950s.\n",
"Lung cancer risk is highly affected by smoking with up to 90% of cases being caused by tobacco smoking. Risk of developing lung cancer increases with number of years smoking and number of cigarettes smoked per day. Smoking can be linked to all subtypes of lung cancer. Small Cell Lung Carcinoma (SCLC) is the most closely associated with almost 100% of cases occurring in smokers. This form of cancer has been identified with autocrine growth loops, proto-oncogene activation and inhibition of tumour suppressor genes. SCLC may originate from neuroendocrine cells located in the bronchus called Feyrter cells.\n",
"Nearly all Chinese physicians (95%) believed that active smoking causes lung cancer and most believed that passive smoking causes lung cancer (89%), but current smokers were less likely to hold these health beliefs than nonsmokers were.\n",
"In 1950, Dr. Ernst Wynder and Evarts Ambrose Graham published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in which they interviewed 684 people with proven cases of lung cancer about their smoking habits. The study found that heavy and sustained usage of tobacco, especially in the form of cigarettes, increased the likelihood of developing of lung cancer. In 1952, to study the biological likelihood of cancer being linked to smoking, Wynder published an animal study in the US journal \"Cancer Research\" that found that tobacco tar was carcinogenic when applied to the skin of mice.\n"
] |
how do information leaks happen? | That all depends on which "flavor" of leak you're talking about.
There's the Edward Snowden type of leak where someone deliberately shares private and confidential information with the public because they felt the public needed to know. Conscious intent and action.
Some leaks aren't intentional at all like the Podesta emails, and are obtained through illicit means like hacking/stealing/espionage. Malicious intent and action.
Then there's the flat incompetent/accidental types of leaks like when the boss left the company's failing budget and list of people to get laid off next month on the printer for a bit too long. Genuine accident.
There are also tactical leaks used by politicians. You can spot these whenever the reporter is citing "a Senior White House Official" in their report. This lets the White House "react" to this new national issue and put public pressure on political opponents without looking like the bad guys.
Wall Street types will also use this to manipulate prices. Day traders are constantly watching company financial reports, and the pros are often looking for insider tips from big companies so they can make their plays ahead of the public. These leaks are often traders calling college buddies that work for Apple's Engineering department looking for key tips like "the next Iphone has a 2hr battery life" so they can sell before it tanks.
In all cases, reporters that get the first leaks are often personal or professional friends that have developed a trusting relationship with the leaker, who is trusting that they leak it appropriately, on their schedule, and for maximum impact. Politicians for example, may give a leak to a story, but ask the reporter to sit on it for a couple of days to avoid suspicion. Should the reporter jump to publish early, it fucks the politician and virtually guarantees the end of secret sources for that reporter. | [
"Information leakage happens whenever a system that is designed to be closed to an eavesdropper reveals some information to unauthorized parties nonetheless. For example, when designing an encrypted instant messaging network, a network engineer without the capacity to crack encryption codes could see when messages are transmitted, even if he could not read them. During the Second World War, the Japanese for a while were using secret codes such as PURPLE; even before such codes were cracked, some basic information could be extracted about the content of the messages by looking at which relay stations sent a message onward. As another example of information leakage, GPU drivers do not erase their memories and thus, in shared/local/global memories, data values persist after deallocation. These data can be retrieved by a malicious agent. \n",
"A modern example of information leakage is the leakage of secret information via data compression, by using variations in data compression ratio to reveal correlations between known (or deliberately injected) plaintext and secret data combined in a single compressed stream. Another example is the key leakage that can occur when using some public-key systems when cryptographic nonce values used in signing operations are insufficiently random.\n",
"Information leakage can sometimes be deliberate: for example, an algorithmic converter may be shipped that intentionally leaks small amounts of information, in order to provide its creator with the ability to intercept the users' messages, while still allowing the user to maintain an illusion that the system is secure. This sort of deliberate leakage is sometimes known as a subliminal channel.\n",
"An Internet leak occurs when a party's confidential information is released to the public on the Internet. Various types of information and data can be, and have been, \"leaked\" to the Internet, the most common being personal information, computer software and source code, and artistic works such as books or albums. For example, a musical album is leaked if it has been made available to the public on the Internet before its official release date.\n",
"Leaks are often made by employees of an organization who happened to have access to interesting information but who are not officially authorized to disclose it to the press. They may believe that doing so is in the public interest due to the need for speedy publication, because it otherwise would not have been able to be made public, or simply as self-promotion, to elevate the leaker as a person of importance. Leaks can be intentional or unintentional. A leaker may be doing the journalist a personal favor (possibly in exchange for future cooperation), or simply wishes to disseminate secret information in order to affect the news. The latter type of leak is often made anonymously.\n",
"A news leak is the unsanctioned release of confidential information to news media. It can also be the premature publication of information by a news outlet, of information that it has agreed not to release before a specified time, in violation of a news embargo.\n",
"Resource leaks are particularly a problem for resources available in very low quantities. Leaking a unique resource, such as a lock, is particularly serious, as this causes immediate resource starvation (it prevents other processes from acquiring it) and causes deadlock. Intentionally leaking resources can be used in a denial-of-service attack, such as a fork bomb, and thus resource leaks present a security bug.\n"
] |
why is rand paul filibustering the patriot act and how does filibustering help? | The patriot act is a surveillance act that allows the NSA to spy on Americans to catch terrorism. Obviously, people are offended by the invasion of privacy.
Now, filibustering is giving an incredibly long speech to cause the bill to run out of time to be passed. Senators are allowed to keep speaking for as long as they want, on anything they can think of, so long as they *keep speaking* and *don't sit down*. A senator can delay something nearly indefinitely so long as he doesn't sit or move from his spot.
And yes, it works. It's also annoying as hell if you actually support the bill being opposed. But in my opinion, Rand Paul is doing a good thing. | [
"The filibuster is an obstructionary tactic used to defeat bills and motions by prolonging debate indefinitely. A filibuster may entail, but does not actually require, long speeches, dilatory motions, and an extensive series of proposed amendments. The longest filibuster speech in the history of the Senate was delivered by Strom Thurmond, who spoke for over twenty-four hours in an unsuccessful attempt to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The Senate may end a filibuster by invoking cloture. In most cases, cloture requires the support of three-fifths of the Senate; however, if the matter before the Senate involves changing the rules of the body, a two-thirds majority is required. Cloture is invoked very rarely, particularly because bipartisan support is usually necessary to obtain the required supermajority. If the Senate does invoke cloture, debate does not end immediately; instead, further debate is limited to thirty additional hours unless increased by another three-fifths vote.\n",
"Political scientists have referred to McConnell's use of the filibuster as \"constitutional hardball\", referring to the misuse of procedural tools in a way that undermines democracy. By 2013, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid eliminated the filibuster for all presidential nominations except the Supreme Court, nearly half of all invocations to cloture (to end a filibuster) in the history of the Senate had occurred during Obama's presidency. McConnell delayed and obstructed health care reform and banking reform, which were the two landmark pieces of legislation that Democrats sought to get passed early in Obama's tenure. By delaying Democratic priority legislation, McConnell stymied the output of Congress. Political scientists Eric Schickler and Gregory J. Wawro write, \"by slowing action even on measures supported by many Republicans, McConnell capitalized on the scarcity of floor time, forcing Democratic leaders into difficult trade-offs concerning which measures were worth pursuing. That is, given that Democrats had just two years with sizeable majorities to enact as much of their agenda as possible, slowing the Senate's ability to process even routine measures limited the sheer volume of liberal bills that could be adopted.\"\n",
"The filibuster is a tactic used to defeat bills and motions by prolonging debate indefinitely. A filibuster may entail long speeches, dilatory motions, and an extensive series of proposed amendments. The Senate may end a filibuster by invoking cloture. In most cases, cloture requires the support of three-fifths of the Senate; however, if the matter before the Senate involves changing the rules of the body – this includes amending provisions regarding the filibuster – a two-thirds majority is required. In current practice, the threat of filibuster is more important than its use; almost any motion that does not have the support of three-fifths of the Senate effectively fails. This means that 41 senators can make a filibuster happen. Historically, cloture has rarely been invoked because bipartisan support is usually necessary to obtain the required supermajority, so a bill that already has bipartisan support is rarely subject to threats of filibuster. However, motions for cloture have increased significantly in recent years.\n",
"A filibuster in the United States Senate is a tactic used in the United States Senate to prevent a measure from being brought to a vote. The most common form of filibuster occurs when one or more senators attempt to delay or block a vote on a bill by extending debate on the measure. The Senate rules permit a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish, and on any topic they choose, unless \"three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn\" (usually 60 out of 100) bring the debate to a close by invoking cloture under Senate Rule XXII.\n",
"Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid supported the call for a filibuster, though he acknowledged it was unlikely to succeed, saying, \"Everyone knows there are not enough votes to support a filibuster.\" The effort to garner support for a filibuster indeed fizzled out, as the Senate voted to invoke cloture on the nomination 72–25, easily exceeding the 60 votes needed to pass the motion to end debate; only 24 of the Senate's 44 Democrats went along with the filibuster (the chamber's lone independent, Sen. Jim Jeffords, did as well). All of the members of the Gang of 14 voted for cloture with the majority.\n",
"On May 23, 2005, Pryor was one of the fourteen senators who forged a compromise on the Democrats' use of the judicial filibuster. This effectively ended any threat of a Democratic filibuster (and thus also avoided the Republican leadership's threatened implementation of the so-called nuclear option). Under the agreement, the Democrats would exercise the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee only in an \"extraordinary circumstance.\" The threat of a filibuster removed, Republicans were able to force cloture on the three most conservative Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and William Pryor-no close relation), who subsequently passed a vote by the full Republican-controlled Senate. He did, however, vote against the nomination of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.\n",
"In May 2005, Collins was one of fourteen senators (seven Democrats and seven Republicans) to forge a compromise on the Democrats' use of the judicial filibuster, thus allowing the Republican leadership to end debate without having to exercise the nuclear option. Under the agreement, the minority party agreed that it would filibuster President George W. Bush's judicial nominees only in \"extraordinary circumstances\"; three Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, and William Pryor) would receive a vote by the full Senate; and two others, Henry Saad and William Myers, were expressly denied such protection (both eventually withdrew their names from consideration).\n"
] |
A book about Hypatia of Alexandria | You're indeed in the right place. Fear not!
I'm not sure if there is a recent comprehensive academic study of Hypatia of Alexandria out there, but [here's](_URL_3_) a very long list of books either on her life or incorporating her into the history of mathematics.
I would caution, however, that a lot of the stuff written about her life recently has been skewed to fit the antiquated [Conflict Thesis](_URL_0_). There have been publications - some inspired by the [recent and largely fictionalized film](_URL_1_) about Hypatia - that depict her as a martyr for "science," "reason," or whatever else people want to attach to her. Avoid [books like this](_URL_2_), which have a clear ideological bias. | [
"Sotion of Alexandria (, \"gen\".: Σωτίωνος; fl. c. 200 – 170 BC) was a Greek doxographer and biographer, and an important source for Diogenes Laërtius. None of his works survive; they are known only indirectly. His principal work, the Διαδοχή or Διαδοχαί (the \"Successions\"), was one of the first history books to have organized philosophers into schools of successive influence: e.g., the so-called Ionian School of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. It is quoted very frequently by Diogenes Laërtius, and Athenaeus. Sotion's \"Successions\" likely consisted of 23 books, and at least partly drew on the doxography of Theophrastus. The \"Successions\" was influential enough to be abridged by Heraclides Lembus in the mid-2nd century BC, and works by the same title were subsequently written by Sosicrates of Rhodes and Antisthenes of Rhodes.\n",
"The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (English: Library of Alexandria; \"\", ) is a major library and cultural center located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. It is both a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, and an attempt to rekindle something of the brilliance that this earlier center of study and erudition represented.\n",
"Seleucus of Alexandria () was a Roman-era grammarian. He was nicknamed 'Homeric'. He was a sophist in Rome (Second Sophistic era). He commented on pretty well all the poets, wrote a number of exegetical and miscellaneous works, the titles of which are listed in the Suda. There are some other in significant persons of this name. (See Vossius, de Hist. Graec. p. 496, ed. Westermann ; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. i. pp. 86, 184, n., 522, vol. ii. p. 27, vol. iv. p. 10'6, vol. v. p. 107, vol. vi. p. 378.)\n",
"Alexandria is a 2009 historical mystery crime novel by Lindsey Davis and the 19th book in her Marcus Didius Falco series. Set in Egypt and Ancient Rome, the novel stars Marcus Didius Falco, informer and imperial agent. The title refers to the setting where the deaths occur.\n",
"In 2007, he published the book \"Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr\" (Prometheus Books). Aimed at a popular audience, the book is \"at least in part, a response to Maria Dzielska's \"Hypatia of Alexandria\"\", which had focused on the historical and literary legacy of Hypatia at the expense of her mathematics, and which Deakin had previously reviewed for the \"American Mathematical Monthly\". In his book, Deakin organizes the work of other scholars on Hypatia's mathematics, particularly relying on the earlier work of Wilbur Knorr, rather than formulating new theories on this aspect of Hypatia's work.\n",
"Heliodorus of Alexandria () was a Neoplatonist philosopher who lived in the 5th century AD. He was the son of Hermias and Aedesia, and the younger brother of Ammonius. His father, Hermias, died when he was young, and his mother, Aedesia, raised him and his brother in their home city of Alexandria until they were old enough to go to philosophy school. Aedesia took them to Athens where they studied under Proclus. Eventually they returned to Alexandria, where they both taught philosophy. Damascius, who was taught by Heliodorus, describes him as less gifted than his elder brother, and more superficial in his character and studies.\n",
", a Spanish astrophysicist and one of \"Agora\"'s scientific advisors, stated in an interview that \"We know that Hypatia lived in Alexandria in the IV and V centuries CE, until her death in 415. Only three primary sources mention Hypatia of Alexandria, apart from other secondary ones\". He added that none of Hypatia's work has survived but it is thought, from secondary sources, that her main fields of study and work were geometry and astronomy. Mampaso claimed that Hypatia invented the hydrometer, an instrument still in use today, and that probably her father Theon of Alexandria, together with Hypatia, invented the astrolabe. However, it is generally accepted that the astrolabe had already been invented a couple of centuries earlier, and that the instrument was known to the Greeks before the Christian era. Similarly, the hydrometer was invented before Hypatia, and already known in her time. In this regard, Pappus of Alexandria was recorded as using the hydrometer before Hypatia was even born. Synesius sent Hypatia a letter describing a hydrometer, and requesting her to have one constructed for him. There is no evidence that the historical Hypatia ever studied the heliocentric model proposed by Aristarchus of Samos or that she ever found any evidence to support it.\n"
] |
How many watts does the human body run on? | Well, they say that the recommended daily intake of calories is 2200k. This is for an average woman, I believe, so me as a big, active guy probably need more like 3000kcal. The conversion rate from kcal to kilo Joule is 4.2. Over the course of 24h, that means that my body needs, on average, a supply of 4.2\*3000 kJ /(24\*3600 s) = 145 Watts. This is roughly as much as two regular light bulbs need. | [
"Human powered direct current generators are commercially available, and have been the project of some DIY enthusiasts. Typically operated by means of pedal power, a converted bicycle trainer, or a foot pump, such generators can be practically used to charge batteries, and in some cases are designed with an integral inverter. An average \"healthy human\" can produce a steady 75 Watts (0.1 horsepower) for a full eight hour period, while a \"first class athlete\" can produce approximately 298 Watts (0.4 horsepower) for a similar period. At the end of which an undetermined period of rest and recovery will be required. At 298 Watts the average \"healthy human\" becomes exhausted within 10 minutes. The net electrical power that can be produced will be less, due to the efficiency of the generator. Portable radio receivers with a crank are made to reduce battery purchase requirements, see clockwork radio. During the mid 20th century, pedal powered radios were used throughout the Australian outback, to provide schooling (School of the Air), medical and other needs in remote stations and towns.\n",
"Active humans can produce between 1.5 W/kg (untrained) and 6.6 W/kg (top-class male athletes). 5 W/kg is about the level reachable by the highest tier of male amateurs for longer periods. Maximum power levels during one hour range from about 200 W (\"healthy men\") to 500 W (exceptionally athletic men).\n",
"BULLET::::- human equivalent (He) - the approximate human daily energy requirement of 12,500 kJ or its approximate energy generating capacity at basal metabolic rate which is equivalent to about 80 watts (3.47222kWh/day). A 100 watt light bulb therefore runs at 1.25 He.\n",
"An electric heater consuming 1000 watts (1 kilowatt), and operating for one hour uses one kilowatt hour of energy. A television consuming 100 watts operating for 10 hours continuously uses one kilowatt hour. A 40-watt electric appliance operating continuously for 25 hours uses one kilowatt hour. In terms of human power, a healthy adult male manual laborer will perform work equal to about half a kilowatt hour over an eight-hour day.\n",
"The watt-hour per kilogram (SI abbreviation: W⋅h/kg) is a unit of specific energy commonly used to measure the density of energy in batteries and capacitors. One watt-hour per kilogram is equal to 3,600 joules per kilogram.\n",
"Two thousand watts is approximately the current world average rate of total primary energy use. This compares to averages of around 6,000 watts in western Europe, 12,000 watts in the United States, 1,500 watts in China, 1,000 watts in India, 500 watts in South Africa and only 300 watts in Bangladesh. Switzerland itself, currently using an average of around 5,000 watts, was last a 2000-watt society in the 1960s.\n",
"Power was provided by four 1.8 by 1.2 meter gallium arsenide solar panels which could produce 400 watts at 2.2 AU (329,000,000 km), NEAR's maximum distance from the Sun, and 1800 W at one AU (150,000,000 km). Power was stored in a nine ampere-hour, 22-cell rechargeable super nickel-cadmium battery.\n"
] |
why the tv sometimes turns off or turns on by itself. | There are plenty of possible culprits:
* Some prankster is sending remote control commands to the TV turning it off and on
* The remote control is malfunctioning
* The timer built into the TV is turning it on and off
* The TV is picking up radio signals causing it to misbehave, are there any HAMs in the area?
* The mains power is unstable
* The components connected to the TV are causing it to misbehave
* The TV is overheating and shutting itself off to prevent damage
Note what circumstances cause the issues, and troubleshoot. Take the TV by itself to a different room on a different electrical circuit, and temporarily cover the remote control sensor with opaque tape like electrical tape. See if they still misbehave. | [
"Many televisions and monitors automatically degauss their picture tube when switched on, before an image is displayed. The high current surge that takes place during this automatic degauss is the cause of an audible \"thunk\" or loud hum, which can be heard (and felt) when televisions and CRT computer monitors are switched on. Visually, this causes the image to shake dramatically for a short period of time. A degauss option is also usually available for manual selection in the operations menu in such appliances.\n",
"Turn Out the Lights is an ITV sitcom series made by Granada Television, that was first broadcast from Monday 2 January to Monday 6 February 1967 by Rediffusion London and Tyne Tees Television, (all other regions broadcast the series between Friday 6 January and Friday 10 February 1967). The series was a spin-off from the sitcom \"Pardon the Expression\", itself a spin-off from the highly popular soap opera \"Coronation Street\".\n",
"BULLET::::- Viewers may be warned to remember to turn off their television sets just prior to the transmitter being switched off; these announcements were particularly common in the early days of television, but are still in regular practice in some places; in Russia this was common until the mid-90s, and in Japan this was also common in some prefectures when there is no 24/7-hour service available (Toyama, Nagano, etc.)\n",
"TV-B-Gone is a universal remote control device for turning off a large majority — about 85% — of the currently available brands of television sets. It was created to allow people in a public place to turn off nearby television sets. Its inventor has referred to it as \"an environmental management device\". The device is part of a key-chain, and, like other remote devices, is battery-powered. Although it can require up to 72 seconds for the device to find the proper code for a particular television receiver, the most popular televisions turn off in the first few seconds.\n",
"Earlier remotes could turn sets on/off and change channels, but were connected to the TV with a cable. The Flash-matic came in response to consumer complaints about the inconvenience of these cables running from the transmitter to the TV monitor. Earlier remotes served as the central control system for transmitting complex signals to the receiving monitor. The Flash-matic instead placed the complexity in the receiver as opposed to the transmitter. It used a directional beam of light to control a television outfitted with four photo cells in the corners of the screen. The light signal would activate one of the four control functions, which turned the picture and sound on or off, and turned the channel tuner dial clockwise and counter-clockwise. The bottom receptors received the signal to mute and power on/off, and the upper cells received signals to channel up/down. In order for the various signals to be received by the monitor, the remote control had to be directed towards one of the four photocells. The system responded to full-spectrum light so could be activated or interfered with by other light sources including indoor light bulbs and the sun. Despite these defects, the Flash-matic remained in high demand. In September 1955, Zenith released an apology for its inability to meet the high demand of consumers. The Flash-matic was quickly replaced by new control systems. The \"Zenith Space Command\" remote control went into production in 1956 with aims to improve upon the Flash-matic's design.\n",
"BULLET::::- Covert TV Clicker (a miniature remote that controls TVs). These differ from standard universal remote controls in that they blindly, without interruption, send the turn-off code for every make of television in sequence. No attempt is made to determine which is the valid code or provide any useful control other than turning the TV off.\n",
"Some remote controls can also control some basic functions of various brands of TVs. This allows the user to use just one remote to turn the TV on and off, adjust volume, or switch between digital and analog TV channels or between terrestrial and internet channels.\n"
] |
How would galactic internet work? | You can't.
The only way to rapidly communicate over distances that long is to somehow overcome the limitation of the speed of light. But that is firmly in the realm of science fiction.
A regular internet request from Proxima Centauri (and whatever orbits that star) will take more than 8 years. 4 years for the request to reach Earth and 4 years for the reply to get back to P.C. You can cut that in half for some services by preemptively sending data from Earth. For example news reports or emails could be sent without anyone on the other side having requested them and they're kept in cache on P.C. until needed. But this would be limited to anything that has been picked beforehand to be preloaded. Anything else would still take the full 8 years.
Space-internet is already an issue within our own solar system. The Moon is doable, signals would take about a second to propagate from the Moon to Earth or backwards, so 2 seconds for roundtrips. You could still do realtime voice and video chat provided there is enough bandwidth.
Mars, on the other hand, is a different story. The distance between Earth and Mars varies depending on where both planets are in their orbit around the Sun. But at its closest, a signal from Mars to Earth (or vice versa) would need a bit more than 2 minutes. On average, it's more than 10 minutes. At maximum distance, a reload of r/askscience would take more than 40 minutes. With those delays, using the internet on Earth is definitely possible, but the way the users browses the web will be quite different as he has to be far more direct in loading the content he wants.
Clearly, in this case, there is much to gain from a smart caching system where the Mars ISP holds copies of all the recently requested webpages and content, as well as preemptively loads links on pages that are requested by the user (bandwidth permitting). It would also be configured, along with the transmitting station on Earth, to preemptively transmit things like emails, social media updates for accounts of colonists, etc...
So internet on Mars that is connected to Earth is still doable, with some large tweaks. But anything beyond that will become rapidly less usable. And interstellar communication with reasonable latency is out of the question until we make one of the many sci-fi tricks become reality. | [
"The first Internet link into low earth orbit was established on January 22, 2010 when astronaut T. J. Creamer posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account from the International Space Station, marking the extension of the Internet into space. (Astronauts at the ISS had used email and Twitter before, but these messages had been relayed to the ground through a NASA data link before being posted by a human proxy.) This personal Web access, which NASA calls the Crew Support LAN, uses the space station's high-speed Ku band microwave link. To surf the Web, astronauts can use a station laptop computer to control a desktop computer on Earth, and they can talk to their families and friends on Earth using Voice over IP equipment.\n",
"In 2012 the first publicly accessible Internet based observatory, working in partnership with the RSAA, was commissioned by iTelescope.Net with over 25 telescopes housed in a large roll-off roof (ROR) observatory near the base of the UK Schmidt Telescope.\n",
"Science writer Timothy Ferris has posited that since galactic societies are most likely only transitory, an obvious solution is an interstellar communications network, or a type of library consisting mostly of automated systems. They would store the cumulative knowledge of vanished civilizations and communicate that knowledge through the galaxy. Ferris calls this the \"Interstellar Internet\", with the various automated systems acting as network \"servers\". If such an Interstellar Internet exists, the hypothesis states, communications between servers are mostly through narrow-band, highly directional radio or laser links. Intercepting such signals is, as discussed earlier, very difficult. However, the network could maintain some broadcast nodes in hopes of making contact with new civilizations.\n",
"Several projects to bring internet to the entire world with a satellite constellation have been devised in the last decade, one of these being Starlink by Elon Musk's company SpaceX. Unlike Free Basics, it would provide people with a full internet access and would not be limited to a few selected services. In the same week Starlink was announced, serial-entrepreneur Richard Branson announced his own project OneWeb, a similar constellation with approximately 700 satellites that has already procured communication frequency licenses for their broadcast spectrum and could possibly be operational as early as in 2019.\n",
"Other potential competitors in the satellite internet space are SpaceX's proposed 12000-satellite Starlink constellation and a 2015 proposal from Samsung outlining a 4600-satellite constellation orbiting at that could bring 200 gigabytes per month of internet data to \"each of the world's 5 billion people\".\n",
"Satellite Internet generally relies on three primary components: a satellite, typically in geostationary orbit (sometimes referred to as a geosynchronous Earth orbit, or GEO), a number of ground stations known as gateways that relay Internet data to and from the satellite via radio waves (microwave), and a small antenna at the subscriber's location, often a VSAT (very-small-aperture terminal) dish antenna with a transceiver. Other components of a satellite Internet system include a modem at the user end which links the user's network with the transceiver, and a centralized network operations center (NOC) for monitoring the entire system. Working in concert with a broadband gateway, the satellite operates a Star network topology where all network communication passes through the network's hub processor, which is at the center of the star. With this configuration, the number of remote VSATs that can be connected to the hub is virtually limitless.\n",
"On March 27, 2014, Facebook announced a connectivity lab as part of the Internet.org initiative, with the goal of bringing the Internet to everybody via drones, acquired from the company Ascenta. It is also communicated by the Connectivity Lab, that, besides using drones, low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous satellites would also be part of the project, for establishing internet connectivity in other areas. All three systems would rely on free space optics (FSO). In free space optics, the signal is sent in a compact bundle of infrared light\n"
] |
why we don't we use nitrogen for capital punishment? | Nitrogen doesn't kill people as quickly and flawlessly as lethal injection, and comes with some major safety issues which would tend to make it undesirable. Of course if someone is exposed to a pure nitrogen atmosphere indefinitely they will surely die, but how long exactly will that take? 10 minutes? 15 to be really sure they aren't just severely brain damaged? 20 minutes of the witnesses staring at an unconscious body which may or may not be a corpse? It is much easier to inject something that will surely kill them rather than keep administering something until they are dead. It avoids the whole "Oops, they woke back up, kill them again," problem.
Gasses also have the safety issue of being dangerous to handle. What if your gas canisters start to leak, or the mask leaks and fills up the execution chamber? What about the observers, are they at risk to your gas hazard? It is much easier and less hazardous to simply avoid getting an IV drug in your arm and you don't really need guards to have special training. | [
"Nitrogen asphyxiation has been suggested by a number of lawmakers and other advocates as a more humane way to carry out capital punishment. In April 2015, the Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed a bill authorizing nitrogen asphyxiation as an alternative execution method in cases where the state's preferred method of lethal injection was not available as an option. In March 2018, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and Corrections Director Joe M. Allbaugh announced a switch to nitrogen gas as the primary method of execution.\n",
"The blanket of inert nitrogen gas that saturates the cell suspension and the homogenate offers protection against oxidation of cell components. Although other gases: carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide and compressed air have been used in this technique, nitrogen is preferred because of its non-reactive nature and because it does not alter the pH of the suspending medium. In addition, nitrogen is preferred because it is generally available at low cost and at pressures suitable for this procedure.\n",
"Some ovens are designed to reflow PCBs in an oxygen-free atmosphere. Nitrogen (N) is a common gas used for this purpose. This minimizes oxidation of the surfaces to be soldered. The nitrogen reflow oven takes a few minutes to reduce Oxygen concentration to acceptable levels within the chamber. Thus nitrogen ovens typically have nitrogen injection in at all times which decreases defect rates.\n",
"BULLET::::- Petroleum industry: In the petroleum industry, nitrogen is an indispensable component in a number of processes. Most commonly, nitrogen is used to create an inert environment for preventing explosions and for fire safety and to support transportation and transfer of hydrocarbons. Additionally, nitrogen is used for pipeline testing and purging, cleaning technological vessels and cleaning liquefied gas carriers and hydrocarbon storage facilities.\n",
"Negative nitrogen balance is associated with burns, serious tissue injuries, fevers, hyperthyroidism, wasting diseases, and during periods of fasting. This means that the amount of nitrogen excreted from the body is greater than the amount of nitrogen ingested. A negative nitrogen balance can be used as part of a clinical evaluation of malnutrition.\n",
"BULLET::::- Pharmaceutical industry: In the pharmaceutical industry, nitrogen finds application in pharmaceuticals packaging, and ensuring against explosion and fire safety in activities where fine dispersed substances are used.\n",
"Nitrogen itself is relatively non-toxic, but in high concentrations it can displace oxygen, creating a suffocation hazard. Liquid nitrogen (−195.8 °C) presents a significant risk of frostbite or cold burn if mishandled. Proper protective clothing, such as long sleeves and gloves, should always be worn when handling these products. Liquid nitrogen is stored in compressed cylinders, and therefore presents all the hazards attendant to materials under pressure and should be handled accordingly.\n"
] |
Was Marx racist? | The problem really is the time period, as there wasn't a concept of "racism" in the 19th century. [(Oxford dictionary cites "racialism" as the first use in the early 1900s.)](_URL_1_) Basically, from what I've read, Marx uses the word "nigger" as a descriptive term, and there is little concept for a kind of supremacy of whites over blacks. He often supports black people while using the word, so this is clearly not damning evidence of a racist Karl Marx.
> Mr Johnson’s policy is less and less to my liking, too. Nigger-hatred is coming out more and more violently, and he is relinquishing all his power vis-à-vis the old lords in the South. If this should continue, all the old secessionist scoundrels will be in Congress in Washington in 6 months time. Without coloured suffrage nothing can be done, and Johnson is leaving it up to the defeated, the ex-slaveowners, to decide on that. It is absurd. Nevertheless, one must still reckon on things turning out differently from what these barons imagined. After all, the majority of them have been completely ruined and will be glad to sell land to immigrants and speculators from the North. The latter will arrive soon enough and make a good number of changes. I think the mean whites will gradually die out. Nothing more will become of this race; those who are left after 2 generations will merge with the immigrants to make a completely different race.
> The niggers will probably turn into small squatters as in Jamaica. Thus ultimately the oligarchy will go to pot after all, but the process could be accomplished immediately at one fell swoop, whereas it is now being drawn out.
Source: _URL_0_
As far as I understand it, many who campaigned for black rights in the 19th century, including Lincoln, did not desire full equality between the races. Accusing someone of racism from the 19th century is anachronistic, and it is better to evaluate someone by their actions and ideas towards black people at the time, rather to take a modern perspective.
| [
"Weyl's 1979 book \"Karl Marx - Racist\" contains a summary and critique of Marx's views on race and the role of Jews in modern capitalism, and a discussion of later refutations of Marx's economic views. At the same time, Weyl himself supported white minority-rule regimes in southern Africa against \"communist terrorists\" like Nelson Mandela, preferring the whites of Rhodesia, South Africa, and Portuguese colonial rule. Thinking that the struggle of Communist liberation movements was essentially destroyed by 1970, he published \"Traitor's End\" and intended the book to be the white anti-Communists' celebration of the supposed destruction of the black majority's liberation movements.\n",
"Marx described society as having nine \"great\" classes, the capitalist class and the working class, with the middle classes falling in behind one or the other as they see fit. He hoped for the working class to rise up against the capitalist class in an attempt to stop the exploitation of the working class. He blamed part of their failure to organize on the capitalist class, as they separated black and white laborers. This separation, specifically between Blacks and Whites in America, contributed to racism. Marx attributes capitalism's contribution to racism through segmented labor markets and a racial inequality of earnings.\n",
"The German economist and philosopher Karl Marx is sometimes mistakenly characterized as an egalitarian and a proponent of equality of outcome and the economic systems of socialism and communism are sometimes misconstrued as being based on equality of outcome. In reality, Marx eschewed the entire concept of equality as abstract and bourgeois in nature, focusing his analysis on more concrete issues such as opposition to exploitation based on economic and materialist logic. Marx renounced theorizing on moral concepts and refrained from advocating principles of justice. Marx's views on equality were informed by his analysis of the development of the productive forces in society.\n",
"In the ethnological notebooks, he commented upon the archæological reportage of \"The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man: Mental and Social conditions of Savages\" (1870), by John Lubbock. In the \"Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy\" (Grundrisse, 1859), he criticized the statist, anti-socialist arguments of the French economist Frédéric Bastiat; and about fetishes and fetishism Marx said:\n",
"Although ideologically rooted in a similar Marxist intellectual tradition, he saw the student organisations as \"socialist snobs\" who decree from \"the premise that only they have read and can understand Marx\". This intellectual snobbery was, according to Egbuna, \"doing a great harm to the cause they claim to be upholding\" by ignoring race as a key reason for oppression of black workers:\n",
"Hedges contended at the Left Forum in 2015 that with the \"denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism\", Karl Marx has been \"vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic\". He said that Marx \"foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites.\"\n",
"Karl Marx's book \"Herr Vogt\", published in 1860, included a personal anti–Semitic attack on Levy, after the \"Daily Telegraph\" reprinted an article by Karl Vogt critical of Marx. After criticising the \"Telegraph\"'s 'determination to be Anglo-Saxon', Marx continues:\n"
] |
With regards to the SCC aliens meme, what do you see if you're 65 million light years away from Earth, but are travelling towards it at a very high speed? | Yes. The light would also: _URL_0_ | [
"BULLET::::- In the \"Stargate SG-1\" episode \"Sight Unseen\", an alien device is accidentally activated that allows members of SG-1 to see, but not interact with, strange insect-like creatures who inhabit a dimension parallel to our own. Though originally confined to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, the phenomenon of this \"second sight\" is also spread by touch. It quickly spreads to nearby populations, mostly by way of a \"sight-infected\" conspiracy theorist who stumbles upon a real government conspiracy concerning aliens and the SG-1. Parts of Colorado and Wyoming are \"quarantined\" until the process can be reversed. Hallucinogenic chemicals are used for a cover-up story.\n",
"The \"Voyager 1\" probe and Gliese 445 will pass one another within 1.6 light-years in about 40,000 years. By that time Gliese 445 will be in a part of the sky different from its present location. The probe will no longer be operational. Also, given the star's inherent low brightness, even at that distance it would be barely visible to the naked eye of a hypothetical human being, with an apparent magnitude of only 5.72.\n",
"Earth sends out a spaceship to investigate starfaring in far distance space of which traces have been found. The ship \"Envoy\", manned by a crew of six men and four women, travels at speed close to the speed of light. At the end of the journey the crew meets a Centaur-like species on a planet they call Tahir that has left spacefaring behind. Sentient life is also detected in connection with at a nearby black hole, a reading confirmed by the Tahirans. Their interest aroused, the Earthlings can send a combined crew to investigate.\n",
"BULLET::::- When an Earth ship enters a star system that should have been devoid of life, the crew discovers millions of aliens living in small space habitats. And if these strange creatures manage to steal Earth's faster-than-light drive technology, they will make Machiavelli look like a kindergartner.\n",
"Trevize mentions that no human ship has ever penetrated the Magellanic Clouds, nor the Andromeda Galaxy or galaxies beyond that. Intelligent aliens have been mentioned in the short story \"Blind Alley\" (who end up fleeing to the Magellanic Clouds). No reason is given why humans have not visited other galaxies, which would seem to be within range of the hyperspace drive.\n",
"BULLET::::- The crew of a Pan American flight from Honolulu to San Francisco encountered a UFO at 21,000 feet over the Pacific, and the sighting was confirmed by pilots on two other airlines. Captain George Wilson told reporters \"There was an extremely bright light surrounded by small lights\" and that the object traveled at \"inconceivable\" speed, and added \"I'm a believer now.\"\n",
"The beings show the two visitors hyperspacial sighters (valuable instruments for galactic navigation), despite the planet never having been visited by humans before. They indicate that more of the instruments are to be found on the neighbouring planet and the explorers leave in a hurry to visit it, never stopping to consider the impossibility of the situation. On the second planet, they meet aquatic snake-like creatures who offer them more sighters.\n"
] |
why does light from the sun make the sky look blue, but light from the moon does not? | It does make the sky look blue, but our blue photoreceptors aren't sensitive to low light levels, so we can't see it. If you take a long exposure at night, the sky will look blue. | [
"In locations with little light pollution, the moonlit night sky is also blue, because moonlight is reflected sunlight, with a slightly lower color temperature due to the brownish color of the moon. The moonlit sky is not perceived as blue, however, because at low light levels human vision comes mainly from rod cells that do not produce any color perception (Purkinje effect).\n",
"The nighttime sky on Earth is black because the part of Earth experiencing night is facing away from the Sun, the light of the Sun is blocked by Earth itself, and there is no other bright nighttime source of light in the vicinity. Thus, there is not enough light to undergo Rayleigh scattering and make the sky blue. On the Moon, on the other hand, because there is no atmosphere to scatter the light, the sky is black both day and night. This phenomenon also holds true for other locations without an atmosphere.\n",
"The daytime sky on Earth is blue because light from the Sun strikes molecules in Earth's atmosphere scattering light in all directions. Blue light is scattered more than other colors, and reaches the eye in greater quantities, making the daytime sky appear blue. This is known as Rayleigh scattering.\n",
"The Moon's atmosphere is negligibly thin, essentially vacuum, so its sky is always black, as in the case of Mercury. However, the Sun is so bright that it is impossible to see stars during the daytime, unless the observer is well shielded from sunlight (direct or reflected from the ground). The Moon has a southern polar star, δ Doradus, a magnitude 4.34 star. It is better aligned than Earth's Polaris (α Ursae Minoris), but much fainter.\n",
"During daylight, the sky appears to be blue because air scatters more blue sunlight than red. At night, the sky appears to be a mostly dark surface or region spangled with stars. During the day, the Sun can be seen in the sky unless obscured by clouds. In the night sky (and to some extent during the day) the Moon, planets and stars are visible in the sky. Some of the natural phenomena seen in the sky are clouds, rainbows, and aurorae. Lightning and precipitation can also be seen in the sky during storms. Birds, insects, aircraft, and kites are often considered to fly in the sky. Due to human activities, smog during the day and light pollution during the night are often seen above large cities.\n",
"This is why the sky appears blue and the sun yellow — more of the higher-frequency blue light arrives at the observer via indirect scattered paths; and less blue light follows the direct path, giving the sun a yellow tinge.\n",
"The Sun looks the same from the Moon as it does from Earth's orbit, somewhat brighter than it does from the Earth's surface, and colored pure white, due to the lack of atmospheric scattering and absorption.\n"
] |
why would large successful companies that are not in need of money sell shares of their company? | You have to separate an offering from normal trading. Normal trading is where people (not the company) who own stock trade it on the private market. This has nothing to do with the company who's stock it is, though some of the private individuals selling might be employed by said company.
Offerings are when the company puts more shares up for sale by either creating them or by selling off shares they hold in reserve. There are many reasons for this, such as a need for capital, a feeling that the liquidity isn't high enough or the issuing of new stock grants/options to employees. | [
"This is a disadvantage to companies and the market at large because it allows profit to be made without any successful business practice being conducted. The ethics of firms are compromised in the interest of increasing share value.\n",
"When a company wants to raise money for long-term investment, one of its first decisions is whether to do so by issuing bonds or shares. If it chooses shares, it avoids increasing its debt, and in some cases the new shareholders may also provide non-monetary help, such as expertise or useful contacts. On the other hand, a new issue of shares will dilute the ownership rights of the existing shareholders, and if they gain a controlling interest, the new shareholders may even replace senior managers. From an investor's point of view, shares offer the potential for higher returns and capital gains if the company does well. Conversely, bonds are safer if the company does poorly, as they are less prone to severe falls in price, and in the event of bankruptcy, bond owners may be paid something, while shareholders will receive nothing.\n",
"If the market is not efficient, the company's shares may be underpriced. In that case a company can benefit its other shareholders by buying back shares. If a company's shares are overpriced, then a company is actually hurting its remaining shareholders by buying back stock.\n",
"Some companies nevertheless avoid publicity in fields that are ordinarily not secretive. Among the reasons, a small, relatively unfunded company may wish to avoid giving companies with more resources time to develop competing technologies. The very announcement that a larger or better-known company is working on a competing product may damp interest in the smaller upstart. If the innovative company has no realistic means of protecting its new intellectual property, it may seek to obtain a \"first-mover advantage\" by waiting until the company or its products are ready to sell before they are announced. This gives as long a lead as possible before others may copy its products, distribution channels, brand, or other business advantages. Conversely, companies with a protectable new technology may nevertheless wish to wait until they have filed or obtained a patent.\n",
"In 1993 Akerlof and Paul Romer brought forth \"\", describing how under certain conditions, owners of corporations will decide it is more profitable for them personally to 'loot' the company and 'extract value' from it instead of trying to make it grow and prosper. For example:\n",
"Because investment firms offering nominee services are the legal owners of the shares, there remains a risk of improper behavior causing the shares to be lost. For example, the investment firm may use the shares it holds for short selling transactions and be unable to replace the shares if the investment firm becomes insolvent. The UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme compensates investors on the failure of an investment firm. However the limit in June 2015 stood at only £50,000 per person per investment firm and losses above this amount would not be covered. This risk of the shares being lost through malfeasance does not apply when the shares are held by the investor in certificated form.\n",
"Although many companies offer courses in stock picking, and numerous experts report success through technical analysis and fundamental analysis, many economists and academics state that because of the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) it is unlikely that any amount of analysis can help an investor make any gains above the stock market itself. In the distribution of investors, many academics believe that the richest are simply outliers in such a distribution (i.e. in a game of chance, they have flipped heads twenty times in a row). When money is put into the stock market, it is done with the aim of generating a return on the capital invested. Many investors try not only to make a profitable return, but also to outperform, or beat, the market. However, market efficiency - championed in the EMH formulated by Eugene Fama in 1970, suggests that at any given time, prices fully reflect all available information on a particular stock and/or market.\n"
] |
if the big 3 religions and their denominations all worship the same god, how can there be so much violence and disagreement between them (and even within them between denominations)? considering that they have the biggest part in common (the deity), can't they agree to disagree on other stuff? | The Abrahamic religions only worship the same god insofar as they all believe in the Old Testament, but they have drastically different views on what was divinely revealed after that. The Christians believe Jesus came down and was the son of God and thus that God is a trinity and that you need to worship Jesus, while the Muslims believe that Jesus was just a prophet and actually Muhammad was the final prophet and you need to follow him, and that God is not a trinity, which is to say that they don't really have the same idea of God. And the Jews don't believe any of that is legitimate. Aside from this they all have substantially different religious practices, hierarchies, and attitudes toward evangelism.
Because each religion takes its own doctrines so seriously, they all view each other as false religions, and also have internal fighting over specific doctrines. To top it off, they have a long history of fighting over the same lands, especially in the Middle East and Europe, and thus tend to see each other as enemy factions. | [
"Wherever people of different religions live in close proximity to each other, religious sectarianism can often be found in varying forms and degrees. In some areas, religious sectarians (for example Protestant and Catholic Christians) exist peacefully side-by-side for the most part, although these differences have resulted in violence, death, and outright warfare as recently as the 1990s. Probably the best-known example in recent times were The Troubles.\n",
"Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheistic religions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as God), polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as aspects of the same divine principle; and nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity but accept a pantheon of deities which live, die and may be reborn like any other being.\n",
"Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheistic religions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as God), polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as equivalent aspects of the same divine principle; and nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity but accept a pantheon of deities which live, die, and are reborn just like any other being.\n",
"Wherever religious sectarians compete, religious sectarianism is found in varying forms and degrees. In some areas, religious sectarians (for example Protestant and Catholic Christians in the United States) now exist peacefully side-by-side for the most part. In others, some nominal Catholics and Protestants have been in fierce conflict – one recent example of this was in Northern Ireland, although the conflict was condemned by some Catholic and Protestant leaders. Within Islam, there has been conflict at various periods between Sunnis and Shias; Shi'ites consider Sunnis to be Muslim but \"non-Believers\". Many Sunni religious leaders, including those inspired by Wahhabism and other ideologies have declared Shias (and sometimes mainstream Sunnis) to be heretics and/or apostates. Iraq and Pakistan are two notable contemporary examples.\n",
"Adherents of different religions generally disagree as to how to best worship God and what is God's plan for mankind, if there is one. There are different approaches to reconciling the contradictory claims of monotheistic religions. One view is taken by exclusivists, who believe they are the chosen people or have exclusive access to absolute truth, generally through revelation or encounter with the Divine, which adherents of other religions do not. Another view is religious pluralism. A pluralist typically believes that his religion is the right one, but does not deny the partial truth of other religions. An example of a pluralist view in Christianity is supersessionism, i.e., the belief that one's religion is the fulfillment of previous religions. A third approach is relativistic inclusivism, where everybody is seen as equally right; an example being universalism: the doctrine that salvation is eventually available for everyone. A fourth approach is syncretism, mixing different elements from different religions. An example of syncretism is the New Age movement.\n",
"Multiple religious belonging refers to the idea that individuals can belong to more than one religious tradition. While this is often seen as a common reality in regions such as Asia with its many religions, religious scholars have begun to discuss multiple religion belonging with respect to religious traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.\n",
"It has been noted that \"religious\" conflicts are not exclusively based on religious beliefs but should instead be seen as clashes of communities, identities, and interests that are secular-religious or at least very secular.\n"
] |
What happens to a currency when physical tender is destroyed while in circulation? | Different countries (central banks) have different ways of handling this. In most countries they have rules and regulations on how to deal with this issue. Some just write off an estimate of what is in circulation.
I'd suggest that you simply contact the central bank that represents your market and ask them. They do answer to public inquiries.
Here is a little info on the controlled form of introduction of money the the destruction in the US, conducted by the FED: _URL_1_ and what happens to the currency deemed to poor to re-use: _URL_0_
If there is a knowledge of how much money that got destroyed and what batch they simply remove those notes from the system and print new ones.
Edit: An interesting fact is that all US currency is legal tender regardless of when it was issued. So if you find an really old dollar bill somewhere you can still get the face value of it. But if you find a really old bill I'd personally check if it is rare and worth more than its face value :) | [
"A fiat-money currency greatly loses its value should the issuing government or central bank either lose the ability to, or refuse to, further guarantee its value. The usual consequence is hyperinflation. Some examples where this has occurred are the Zimbabwean dollar, China in 1945 and the mark in the Weimar Republic in 1923.\n",
"Currency withdrawn from circulation remains legal tender, but this does not oblige any creditor to accept it as a medium of exchange. Withdrawn currency is usually exchanged at commercial bank branches, though some banks require that exchangers be bank customers. The bank then returns the withdrawn currency, together with worn out currency, to the Bank of Canada for destruction.\n",
"Currently all the old krona coins are invalid since 2017, and they can not be used for payments, nor can they be exchanged for legal tender in any bank, and are instead instructed to be recycled as metal.\n",
"For example, a bank that chose to borrow entirely in US dollars and lend in Russian rubles would have a significant currency mismatch: if the value of the ruble were to fall dramatically, the bank would lose money. In extreme cases, such movements in the value of the assets and liabilities could lead to bankruptcy, liquidity problems and wealth transfer.\n",
"Metallic coins were rapid casualties of hyperinflation, as the scrap value of metal enormously exceeded its face value. Massive amounts of coinage were melted down, usually illicitly, and exported for hard currency.\n",
"Fiat money can sometimes be destroyed by converting it into commodity form, rather than completely forfeiting the value of the money. Sometimes, currency intended for use as fiat money becomes more valuable as a commodity, usually when inflation causes its face value to fall below its intrinsic value. For example, in India in 2007, Rupee coins disappeared from the market when their face value dropped below the value of the stainless steel from which they were made. Similarly, in 1965, the US government had to switch from silver to copper-nickel clad quarter coins because the silver value of the coins had exceeded their face value and were being melted down by individuals for profit. At the peak of inflation in the Weimar Republic, people burned banknotes for warmth, as their face value had fallen below their value as fuel. The same occurred to 5-franc coins of Switzerland, which up to the year 1969 were minted using a silver alloy.\n",
"When the value of the metal in nickel-alloy coins exceeded face value, the coins began disappearing (and were completely gone by the time the metal was worth more than twice face in 1989). The severe shortage of change that resulted was met by issuing bank notes for 1, 2, and 5 bolívares.\n"
] |
[Mathematics] If I roll a six-sided die 6 times, what is the probably that it will land on a particular face at least one time? | the trick is to flip the problem...instead of thinking "what is the probability it will land on this face" instead think, what is the probability it WON'T land on some face.
so, what is the probability of NOT landing on some face (we'll say...2) for a single roll....obviously it's 5/6...because 5 out of 6 times, it will land on some other face
so given that, what is the probability it WON'T land on that face 6 times in a row?
(5/6)^6
because the probability of two independent events A and B occurring is A*B, so we end up multipleying 5/6 by itself 6 times, once for each roll
so we have the probability of it NOT landing on that face for 6 rolls, the the probability of it landing on that face is just 1-(5/6)^6
since the probabilities of ALL outcomes must add up to 1, and the only two possibilities are 1) the face doesn't come up, or 2) the face comes up at least once, then we just subtract the probability of the face not coming up from one.....so 1-(5/6)^6, or about 66%
66% | [
"The player then rolls a 6-sided die. The numbers 1-4 correspond to the 4 pages of cards sleeves and the pages are turned to the corresponding number. A 5 or 6 result means that the page is not changed.\n",
"The players take turns rolling a six-sided die and then moving the matching cube. If the matching cube is no longer on the board, the player moves a remaining cube whose number is next-higher or next-lower to the rolled number. The player starting in the top-left may move that cube one square to the right, down, or on the diagonal down and to the right; the player starting in the bottom-right may move that cube one square to the left, up, or on the diagonal up and to the left. Any cube which already lies in the target square is removed from the board.\n",
"A fairly consistent arrangement of the faces on ten-digit dice has been observed. If one holds such a die between one's fingers at two of the vertices such that the even numbers are on top, and reads the numbers from left to right in a zigzag pattern, the sequence obtained is 0, 7, 4, 1, 6, 9, 2, 5, 8, 3, and back to 0. The even and odd digits are divided among the two opposing \"caps\" of the die, and each pair of opposite faces adds to nine. When casting a 10-sided die, if numbered from 0-9, two are commonly used to obtain a percentage roll. Rolling 2 of these are attributed in the results 00-99, where 00 can be also viewed as a 100 as the result in some games. Alone casting a 0-9 ten sided dice, the 0 face is valued at 10.\n",
"Suppose we have a fair six-sided die. The value of a dice roll is a discrete uniform random variable formula_27 with probability mass function formula_28The probability of rolling a 4 is formula_29, as for any other valid roll. The information content of rolling a 4 is thusformula_30of information.\n",
"Opposite sides of a modern die traditionally add up to seven, requiring the 1, 2, and 3 faces to share a vertex. The faces of a die may be placed clockwise or counterclockwise about this vertex. If the 1, 2, and 3 faces run counterclockwise, the die is called \"right-handed\". If those faces run clockwise, the die is called \"left-handed\". Western dice are normally right-handed, and Chinese dice are normally left-handed.\n",
"Consider an experiment in which a fair die is rolled 20 times. Each roll will produce one whole number between 1 and 6, and the hypothesized mean value is 3.5. The results of the rolls are then averaged together, and the mean is reported as 3.48. This is close to the expected value, and appears to support the hypothesis. However, a GRIM test reveals that the reported mean is mathematically impossible: the result of dividing any whole number by 20, written to 2 decimal places, must be of the form X.X0 or X.X5; it is impossible to divide any integer by 20 and produce a result with an \"8\" in the second decimal place.\n",
"Normally, the faces on a die will be placed so opposite faces will add up to one more than the number of faces. (This is not possible with 4-sided dice and dice with an odd-number of faces.) Some dice, such as those with 10 sides, are usually numbered sequentially beginning with 0, in which case the opposite faces will add to one less than the number of faces.\n"
] |
how does a high profile trial such as george zimmerman's affect the personal lives of the jurors? | In some cases, their lives really are put on complete hold. They can be 'sequestered' by the judge, which basically puts them on lock-down, sometimes in a local hotel, to keep them away from ANY media coverage about the case, so as to remain as impartial as possible. For these big, high profile cases, it can be very taxing.
Employers, I believe (at least in some/most states?) are required by law to grant you time off for jury duty. All you can tell your employer is that you have jury duty and will be out for an indeterminate amount of time. You're not allowed to tell anyone which case you're sitting on, as they could have an interest in swaying your decision (plus it's dangerous to be exposed in high profile cases where one party has good...connections) | [
"The first important paper on the findings of the CJP so far documents that jurors do not rely on expert testimony to evaluate the defendant's dangerousness but are influenced by expert testimony regarding the defendant's mental illness and mental instability. Jurors accept that mental health professionals have expertise on issues of mental illness and tend to accept expert testimony on the subject. However, expert testimony on the potential dangerousness of the defendant was not related to jury opinion. On these issue it appears that jurors rely on common sense since there is no evidence that experts of any kind can predict dangerousness and jurors disregard expert testimony accordingly.\n",
"In Congressional testimony, Ted Poe stated: When I was Assistant District Attorney, I spent my career trying criminal cases, and based on my experiences, I actually feel the cameras in the courtroom benefit a defendant. A public trial ensures fairness. That is the purpose of a public trial. It ensures professionalism by the lawyers and the judge, and a camera in the courtroom protects the defendant’s right to a public trial. Poe also opined that lawyers play to the jury, not to the camera, and that jurors stated they liked the camera inside the courtroom because they wanted the public to know what they heard \"instead of waiting to hear a 30-second sound bite from a newscaster who may or may not have the facts correct.\" Judge John R. Tunheim opposed the bill, stating that it could deny some defendants a fair trial; e.g. a defendant corporation might forgo its right to a trial because it does not want its president to be cross-examined on television. He also expressed concern that televising trials could increase the incidence of threats against federal judges.\n",
"BULLET::::- George Zimmerman's defense team, in Zimmerman's trial for the shooting of Trayvon Martin (\"State of Florida v. George Zimmerman\"), had requested an anonymous jury, arguing that the jurors may be subject to intimidation due to the intense media and public scrutiny in the case.\n",
"Attorney and author Mark Lane said that he interviewed several jurors after the trial. Although these interviews have never been published, Lane said that some of the jurors believed that Garrison had in fact proven to them that there really was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, but that Garrison had not adequately linked the conspiracy to Shaw or provided a motive. Author and playwright James Kirkwood, who was a personal friend of Clay Shaw, said that he spoke to several jury members who denied ever speaking to Lane. Kirkwood also cast doubt on Lane's claim that the jury believed there was a conspiracy. In his book \"American Grotesque\", Kirkwood said that jury foreman Sidney Hebert told him: \"I didn't think too much of the Warren Report either until the trial. Now I think a lot more of it than I did before...\"\n",
"An example of how this change in the rules of evidence can affect trial testimony is demonstrated in an analysis of the 1979 trial of Jeffrey R. MacDonald, a physician, for the murder of his wife and children, if his trial occurred today. In that trial, an expert testified in support of the defense hypothesis that someone else committed the murders. Expert testimony that the defendant had a \"personality configuration inconsistent with the outrageous and senseless murders of [his] family\" was not allowed under the rules of evidence in effect at the time because it was considered confusing and misleading. However, under Rule 704(b) this character testimony would not be barred since testimony regarding \"personality configuration\" is general psychological evidence unrelated to any ultimate issues such as intent or malice aforethought. Also, an expert witness would not be in violation of 704(b) in use today if he gave testimony regarding the defendant's positive behaviors, such as acting like a loving father and husband, which might create the impression that he was not capable of committing such a crime, but is an opinion unrelated to guilt.\n",
"In addition, the President pointed out the concern about the influence that both judges and jurors had inevitably been exposed through the media's mentions of the case over the nearly eight months since the arrest. Directly addressing to the jurors, he said: \"\"By your subsequent decision in the case, they must not take into account anything that you have NOT been informed here in the courtroom, TV, etc. They also have to look away from what you had to hear or see outside the courtroom during the course of the trial.\"\"\n",
"There is empirical evidence that expert testimony on future dangerousness has less effect on jury decisions than does expert testimony on the defendant's mental functioning. However, there is no evidence so far that expert testimony does influence the jury on sentencing outcomes in death penalty cases.\n"
] |
At any given moment in time, are there a finite number of planets in the universe? | Let me just try and address this more abstract part of your question, regarding "counting up" the planets:
> I understand that the universe is infinite (sort of) and ever-expanding, but if we could magically freeze time and use GoogleGalaxy (tm) to fly around the universe, wouldn't we able to establish a finite number of planets that existed for that precise moment in time?
> Maybe the problem stems from my inability to truly understand the concept of infinity.
It sounds as though you think that, even if the universe is infinite, if we could somehow freeze time, then we'd be able to "count up" all the planets. Let me know if that's (in)correct.
If so, let's imagine something simpler instead: a checkerboard that extends infinitely in all directions, and let's try and count all the squares. If we kind of work our way outward in a kind of spiral, we won't miss any of the squares, and given a particular square, it will be counted after some finite amount of time. (there are, of course, other patterns we could use to count the squares).
BUT! There's no finite time after which we will have counted **all** the squares. The planets (if the universe is infinite and homogeneous) are pretty much the same way - we have to spend some time finding the next planet to count, but freezing time still doesn't help the duration of the overall count - it still takes an infinite amount of time to count them all up.
Aside: this idea is what mathematicians call "countably infinite". There are infinitely many things, but at least there's some way to enumerate ("count") them. Common examples are the integers, and (perhaps surprisingly) the set off all fractions (specifically, numbers of the form p/q where both p and q are integers).
There are still "greater" infinities, for instance there are so many real numbers that one cannot even come up with a method for enumerating them; we say the real numbers are "uncountably infinite". | [
"Two months later, Harvard University astronomy professor Harlow Shapley speculated on the number of inhabited planets in the universe, saying \"The universe has 10 million, million, million suns (10 followed by 18 zeros) similar to our own. One in a million has planets around it. Only one in a million million has the right combination of chemicals, temperature, water, days and nights to support planetary life as we know it. This calculation arrives at the estimated figure of 100 million worlds where life has been forged by evolution.\"\n",
"In 2013, astronomers reported, based on \"Kepler\" space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth- and super-Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarfs within the Milky Way. 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting Sun-like stars. The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists. However, this does not give estimates for the number of extrasolar terrestrial planets, because there are planets as small as Earth that have been shown to be gas planets (see KOI-314c).\n",
"There is at least one planet on average per star. About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an \"Earth-sized\" planet in the habitable zone, with the nearest expected to be within 12 light-years distance from Earth. Assuming 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, that would be 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way, rising to 40 billion if red dwarfs are included. The rogue planets in the Milky Way possibly number in the trillions.\n",
"Hundreds of thousands of minor planets have been discovered within the Solar System and thousands more are discovered each month. The Minor Planet Center has documented over 213 million observations and 794,832 minor planets, of which 541,128 have orbits known well enough to be assigned permanent official numbers. Of these, 21,922 have official names. , the lowest-numbered unnamed minor planet is , and the highest-numbered named minor planet is 518523 Bryanshumaker.\n",
"Because Eris appeared to be larger than Pluto, NASA initially described it as the Solar System's tenth planet. This, along with the prospect of other objects of similar size being discovered in the future, motivated the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term \"planet\" for the first time. Under the IAU definition approved on August 24, 2006, Eris is a \"dwarf planet\", along with objects such as Pluto, Ceres, Haumea and Makemake, thereby reducing the number of known planets in the Solar System to eight, the same as before Pluto's discovery in 1930. Observations of a stellar occultation by Eris in 2010 showed that its diameter was , very slightly less than Pluto, which was measured by \"New Horizons\" as in July 2015.\n",
", there were a total of 2,321 candidates. Of these, 207 are similar in size to Earth, 680 are super-Earth-size, 1,181 are Neptune-size, 203 are Jupiter-size and 55 are larger than Jupiter. Moreover, 48 planet candidates were found in the habitable zones of surveyed stars. The Kepler team estimated that 5.4% of all stars host Earth-size planet candidates, and that 17% of all stars have multiple planets.\n",
"Based on observations from the \"Hubble Space Telescope\", there are between 125 and 250 billion galaxies in the observable universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all Sun-like stars have a system of planets, i.e. there are stars with planets orbiting them in the observable universe. Even if it is assumed that only one out of a billion of these stars has planets supporting life, there would be some 6.25 billion life-supporting planetary systems in the observable universe.\n"
] |
if the earth's rotation is 23 hours and 56 minutes long per cycle, how come we do not see days where the clock says it is nighttime or vice versa during the year? | The Earth moves roughly one degree per day around its orbit, so the Earth has to rotate 361 degrees for the same point on the surface to be pointing at the Sun again. That extra degree(ish) takes the extra 4 minutes. | [
"Earth makes one rotation around its axis in a sidereal day; during that time it moves a short distance (about 1°) along its orbit around the Sun. So after a sidereal day has passed, Earth still needs to rotate slightly more before the Sun reaches local noon according to solar time. A mean solar day is, therefore, nearly 4 minutes longer than a sidereal day.\n",
"Earth rotates once in about 24 hours with respect to the Sun, but once every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds with respect to other, distant, stars (see below). Earth's rotation is slowing slightly with time; thus, a day was shorter in the past. This is due to the tidal effects the Moon has on Earth's rotation. Atomic clocks show that a modern-day is longer by about 1.7 milliseconds than a century ago, slowly increasing the rate at which UTC is adjusted by leap seconds. Analysis of historical astronomical records shows a slowing trend of about 2.3 milliseconds per century since the 8th century BCE.\n",
"Although the Sun appears to rotate uniformly about the Earth, in reality this motion is not perfectly uniform. This is due to the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit (the fact that the Earth's orbit about the Sun is not perfectly circular, but slightly elliptical) and the tilt (obliquity) of the Earth's rotational axis relative to the plane of its orbit. Therefore, sundial time varies from standard clock time. On four days of the year, the correction is effectively zero. However, on others, it can be as much as a quarter-hour early or late. The amount of correction is described by the equation of time. This correction is equal worldwide: it does not depend on the local latitude or longitude of the observer's position. It does, however, change over long periods of time, (centuries or more,)\n",
"The hemisphere of the Earth experiencing daytime at any given instant changes continuously as the planet rotates on its own axis. The axis of the Earth's rotation is not perpendicular to the plane of its orbit around the Sun (which is parallel with the direction of sunlight), and so the length of the daytime period varies from one point on the planet to another. Additionally, since the axis of rotation is relatively fixed in comparison to the stars, it moves with respect to the Sun as the planet orbits the star. This creates seasonal variations in the length of the daytime period at most points on the planet's surface.\n",
"Earth's rotation period relative to the Sun (solar noon to solar noon) is its \"true solar day\" or \"apparent solar day\". It depends on Earth's orbital motion and is thus affected by changes in the eccentricity and inclination of Earth's orbit. Both vary over thousands of years, so the annual variation of the true solar day also varies. Generally, it is longer than the mean solar day during two periods of the year and shorter during another two. The true solar day tends to be longer near perihelion when the Sun apparently moves along the ecliptic through a greater angle than usual, taking about longer to do so. Conversely, it is about shorter near aphelion. It is about longer near a solstice when the projection of the Sun's apparent motion along the ecliptic onto the celestial equator causes the Sun to move through a greater angle than usual. Conversely, near an equinox the projection onto the equator is shorter by about . Currently, the perihelion and solstice effects combine to lengthen the true solar day near by solar seconds, but the solstice effect is partially cancelled by the aphelion effect near when it is only longer. The effects of the equinoxes shorten it near and by and , respectively.\n",
"Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance of about every 365.2564 mean solar days, or one sidereal year. This gives an apparent movement of the Sun eastward with respect to the stars at a rate of about 1°/day, which is one apparent Sun or Moon diameter every 12 hours. Due to this motion, on average it takes 24 hours—a solar day—for Earth to complete a full rotation about its axis so that the Sun returns to the meridian. The orbital speed of Earth averages about , which is fast enough to travel a distance equal to Earth's diameter, about , in seven minutes, and the distance to the Moon, , in about 3.5 hours.\n",
"The rotation of the Earth is somewhat irregular, and is very gradually slowing due to tidal acceleration. Furthermore, the length of the second was determined from observations of the Moon between 1750 and 1890. All of these factors cause the mean solar day, on the average, to be slightly longer than the nominal 86,400 SI seconds, the traditional number of seconds per day. As UT is slightly irregular in its rate, astronomers introduced Ephemeris Time, which has since been replaced by Terrestrial Time (TT). Because Universal Time is synchronous with night and day, and more precise atomic-frequency standards drift away from this, however, UT is still used to produce a correction (called a leap second) to atomic time, in order to obtain a broadcast form of civil time that carries atomic frequency. Thus, civil broadcast standards for time and frequency usually follow International Atomic Time closely, but occasionally step (or \"leap\") in order to prevent them from drifting too far from mean solar time.\n"
] |
Was there ever any domestic opposition to imperialism in Europe? | Actually, New Zealand is an almost perfect example of this. Australia had been set up as a penal colony in 1787 when the "First Fleet" arrived, and much persecution of native Aborigines followed. At this time Britain had recently lost the American Colonies, and though there had been a lot of domestic support for the American revolution, the feeling was still very much that colonies fared better under British influence. By the 1830's however attitudes began to change. Britain abolished slavery, repealed many oppressive laws designed to keep Catholics down, and the idea of Humanism was beginning to establish itself in London. The topic of New Zealand cropped up a lot in parliamentary debates, many Radical members (Forerunners of the Liberal Party) thought something out to be done to protect Maori interests and sovereignty.
New Zealand, by 1835, was essentially a lawless land where merchant ships often traded muskets or alcohol with local Maori for women and land. So in 1835 New Zealand was declared independent from Australia (previously it had been under the jurisdiction of the government of New South Wales) and formed a colony in it's own right. People debate the reasons for this, but it's generally accepted this was a measure to reduce lawlessness and protect Maori from getting swindled. Certainly the first two governors, Hobson and Fitzroy, did a lot of work in protecting Maori interests as well as preventing tribes from warring and the French attempting to establish a colony on the South Island.
In 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between the British Crown and many Maori chiefs (Though certainly not all, and controversy surrounds the Maori translations of the English text). One of the main clauses of the treaty was that Maori would only be allowed to sell land to the Crown and any and all previous land deals were considered void. Prior to this and for a long time after Maori chiefs travelled to London, held audiences with British Royalty, and were basically treated as 19th century celebrities. | [
"Walter Rodney, in his 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, proposes the idea that imperialism is a phase of capitalism \"in which Western European capitalist countries, the US, and Japan established political, economic, military and cultural hegemony over other parts of the world which were initially at a lower level and therefore could not resist domination.\" As a result, Imperialism \"for many years embraced the whole world – one part being the exploiters and the other the exploited, one part being dominated and the other acting as overlords, one part making policy and the other being dependent.\"\n",
"The political imperialism followed the economic expansion, with the \"colonial lobbies\" bolstering chauvinism and jingoism at each crisis in order to legitimise the colonial enterprise. The tensions between the imperial powers led to a succession of crises, which finally exploded in August 1914, when previous rivalries and alliances created a domino situation that drew the major European nations into World War I. Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia to avenge the murder by Serbian agents of Austrian crown prince Francis Ferdinand, Russia would mobilise to assist allied Serbia, Germany would intervene to support Austria-Hungary against Russia. Since Russia had a military alliance with France against Germany, the German General Staff, led by General von Moltke decided to realise the well prepared Schlieffen Plan to invade and quickly knock France out of the war before turning against Russia in what was expected to be a long campaign. This required an invasion of Belgium which brought Britain into the war against Germany, Austria-Hungary and their allies. German U-Boat campaigns against ships bound for Britain eventually drew the United States into what had become World War I. Moreover, using the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as an excuse, Japan leaped onto this opportunity to conquer German interests in China and the Pacific to become the dominating power in the Western Pacific, setting the stage for the Second Sino-Japanese War (starting in 1937) and eventually World War II.\n",
"This Timeline of European imperialism covers episodes of imperialism by western nations since 1400 but does not take into account imperialism by other nations such as the Inca, the Chinese Empire or Japanese Imperialism, to give only a few of many examples. As such, readers may wish to treat it with some caution if using it as a resource to understand the complete phenomena of imperialism and colonialism.\n",
"Sidqi distinguished two kinds of imperialism: the classical, somewhat aged form of colonialism practiced by the English, French and Dutch, and German imperialism (\"ak-isti'mār al-almānī\"). The former recognized that the nations they occupied were destined to achieve independence, whereas Nazi imperialism was using unprecedented violence to annihilate smaller nations. A Nazi takeover of Islamic countries would lead only to the people's enslavement (\"'ubūdiyya\"), as it had in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Force, which in Islam was directed against the ignorant who refused the enlightenment of monotheism, had, in Nazism, assumed a cultic value, as an end in itself, directed towards the subjection of people both within territories Germany controlled and beyond. Nazism's Arabic broadcasts with their anti-Semitic propaganda were designed to incite Arabs to turn upon their own minorities. Muslims the world over must, he concluded, back the fight against Nazism, as indeed hundreds of thousands already were (Indians and Arabs) in combating 'shoulder to shoulder with English, French, Polish and Czech soldiers'. Such support was anchored in three principles: a shared respect for democracy, a cultural affinity with democratic nations, and the aspiration for independence at war's end.\n",
"At the end of the 19th century, in conjunction with uprisings against the British (among them the Indians', the Zulus', the Boxer Rebellion, and the Muslim revolt led by Muhammad Ahmed in the Sudan), many European scholars, writers, and artists, began to question Europe's colonial imperialism. This led the Meynells and others in their circle to speak out for the oppressed. Alice Meynell was a vice-president of the Women Writers' Suffrage League, founded by Cicely Hamilton and active 1908–19.\n",
"Of all the areas of the world that scholars have claimed to be adversely affected by imperialism, Africa is probably the most notable. In the expansive \"age of imperialism\" of the nineteenth century, scholars have argued that European colonization in Africa has led to the elimination of many various cultures, worldviews, and epistemologies, particularly through neocolonization of public education. This, arguably has led to uneven development, and further informal forms of social control having to do with culture and imperialism. A variety of factors, scholars argue, lead to the elimination of cultures, worldviews, and epistemologies, such as \"de-linguicization\" (replacing native African languages with European ones), devaluing ontologies that are not explicitly individualistic, and at times going as far as to not only define Western culture itself as science, but that non-Western approaches to science, the Arts, indigenous culture, etc. are not even knowledge. One scholar, Ali A. Abdi, claims that imperialism inherently \"involve[s] extensively interactive regimes and heavy contexts of identity deformation, misrecognition, loss of self-esteem, and individual and social doubt in self-efficacy.\"(2000: 12) Therefore, all imperialism would always, already be cultural.\n",
"A strong resentment of what came to be regarded as foreign rule began to develop. In Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Poland, Hungary,and Norway local hostility to alien dynastic authority started to take the form of nationalist agitation. The first revolt in the Ottoman Empire to acquire a national character was the Serbian Revolution (1804–17), which was the culmination of Serbian renaissance which had begun in Habsburg territory, in Sremski Karlovci. The eight-year Greek War of Independence (1821–29) against Ottoman rule led to an independent Greek state, although with major political influence of the great powers. The Belgian Revolution (1830–31) led to the recognition of independence from the Netherlands in 1839. Over the next two decades nationalism developed a more powerful voice, spurred by nationalist writers championing the cause of self-determination. The Poles attempted twice to overthrow Russian rule in 1831 and 1846. In 1848, revolutions broke out across Europe, sparked by severe famine and economic crisis and mounting popular demand for political change. In Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini used the opportunity to encourage a war mission: \"A people destined to achieve great things for the welfare of humanity must one day or other be constituted a nation\".\n"
] |
How close is the measurement of horsepower to the power output of an actual horse? | [Stevenson and Wassersug](_URL_0_) state that the peak power output for a horse could reach 15hp, but that this was not sustainable (much like you could push a car uphill for a short amount of time, but doing it all day would be rather difficult). They then cite contemporary publications from the 19th/early 20th century, which recommend work equalling about 1hp for healthy working horses, implying that a horse could manage a horsepower on a regular basis without trouble. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Nominal horse power\"– nhp is the typical way that traction engines are rated. However, it has long been accepted that nominal horse power greatly understates the actual power of the engine. There are many ways to estimate the actual horse power but none of them gives an accurate answer, for example, a 4 nhp engine is said to be approximately ; however a 4 nhp engine can easily pull a laden 8-wheeler lorry while a diesel engine of cannot. Thus, many have resigned themselves that this debate will never be settled and, while nominal horsepower gives a convenient way of rating traction engines, it may never be converted accurately into diesel HP.\n",
"This theory was also used to determine horse power (hp), which was defined as the amount of work a horse could do with a given load over time. The wheel that the horse turned in Watt's original experiment put a certain load on the horse's muscles, and the horse could do a certain amount of work with this load in a minute. Provided the horse was a perfect machine, it would be capable of a constant maximum workload, so increasing the load by a given percentage would result in the possible work done decreasing by the same percentage, so that it would still equal \"1 hp\". Horses are, obviously, not perfect machines and over short time periods are capable of as much as 14 hp, and over long periods of exertion output an average of less than 1 hp.\n",
"The various units used to indicate this definition (\"PS\", \"cv\", \"hk\", \"pk\", \"ks\" and \"ch\") all translate to \"horse power\" in English. British manufacturers often intermix metric horsepower and mechanical horsepower depending on the origin of the engine in question. Sometimes the metric horsepower rating of an engine is conservative enough so that the same figure can be used for both 80/1269/EEC with metric hp and SAE J1349 with imperial hp.\n",
"The nominal horsepower quoted for each engine size comes from the British method of power calculation for road taxation purposes, and bears no relationship with the actual power output. Displacement, cylinder diameter, stroke, and number of cylinders determined the power for road taxation purposes.\n",
"A horsepower-hour (hph or hp⋅h) is an outdated unit of energy, not used in the SI system of units. The unit represents an amount of work a horse is supposed capable of delivering during an hour (1 (one) horsepower integrated over a time interval of an hour). Based on differences in the definition of what constitutes the 'power of a horse', a horsepower-hour differs slightly from the German \"Pferdestärkenstunde\" (PSh):\n",
"Indicated horsepower was a better measure of engine power than nominal horsepower (nhp) because it took account of steam pressure. But unlike later measures such as shaft horsepower (shp) and brake horsepower (bhp), it did not take into account power losses due to the machinery internal frictional losses, such as a piston sliding within the cylinder, plus bearing friction, transmission and gear box friction, etc.\n",
"Horsepower claims vary widely—from 6,978 to 8,897—but are probably around 8,000 HP. Supercharged, nitromethane-fueled motors of this type also have a very high torque, which is estimated at about . They routinely achieve a 6G acceleration from a standing start.\n"
] |
do all muslims follow sharia law or is it more comparable to all christians following the 10 commandments. | First, Sharia law is more like a set of rules and guidelines derived from multiple sources. It is less like the ten commandments and more like the Talmud or the collected decisions of the Catholic Church.
Second, individual Muslims interpret and abide by the rules to different measures and degrees, just as is the case for Christians, Jews, and members of other faiths. So there isn't really a general answer for how "muslims" treat these rules, and within Islamic communities people will differ.
Third, to illustrate that, not all of your list of bullets reflect clear aspects of sharia. The discussion on the [wiki page for FGM](_URL_0_) for instance, points out that even though many schools of Islamic thought view FGM as permissible or even required, not all do and that the specific Hadith cited is viewed by scholars as weakly supported. Likewise Taqiyya isn't really a part of Islamic law, but a component of Islamic ethics/theology about when it is acceptable to lie to defend one's faith. There are parallel discussions in Christianity and Judaism, as well as secular systems of ethics. (Even the most orthodox jew, for instance, is permitted to break an ethical rule to save someone's life, even very important ones like keeping Kosher or eating on a fast day. It's not required, but it's allowed.) | [
"Muslims believe \"sharia\" is God's law, but they differ as to what exactly it entails. Modernists, traditionalists and fundamentalists all hold different views of sharia, as do adherents to different schools of Islamic thought and scholarship. Different countries, societies and cultures have varying interpretations of sharia as well.\n",
"Sharia or sharia law is the basic Islamic religious law derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the opinions and life example of Muhammad (Hadith and Sunnah) which are the primary sources of sharia. For topics and issues not directly addressed in these primary sources, sharia is derived. The derivation differs between the various sects of Islam (Sunni and Shia are the majority), and various jurisprudence schools such as Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali and Jafari. The sharia in these schools is derived hierarchically using one or more of the following guidelines: Ijma (usually the consensus of Muhammad's companions), Qiyas (analogy derived from the primary sources), Istihsan (ruling that serves the interest of Islam in the discretion of Islamic jurists) and Urf (customs). Sharia is a significant source of legislation in various Muslim countries. Some apply all or a majority of the sharia, and these include Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen and Mauritania. In these countries, sharia-prescribed punishments such as beheading, flogging and stoning continue to be practiced judicially or extrajudicially. The introduction of sharia is a longstanding goal for Islamist movements globally, but attempts to impose sharia have been accompanied by controversy, violence, and even warfare.\n",
"Based on Quranic verses and Islamic traditions, classical sharia distinguishes between Muslims, followers of other Abrahamic religions, and pagans or people belonging to other polytheistic religions. As monotheists, Jews and Christians have traditionally been considered \"People of the Book,\" and afforded a special status known as \"dhimmi\" derived from a theoretical contract—\"dhimma\" or \"residence in return for taxes\". In Yemenite Jewish sources, a treaty was drafted between Muhammad and his Jewish subjects, known as \"kitāb ḏimmat al-nabi\", written in the 17th year of the Hijra (638 CE), which gave express liberty to Jews living in Arabia to observe the Sabbath and to grow-out their side-locks, but required them to pay the jizya (poll-tax) annually for their protection. There are parallels for this in Roman and Jewish law. Muslim governments in the Indus basin readily extended the dhimmi status to the Hindus and Buddhists of India. Eventually, the largest school of Islamic scholarship applied this term to all non-Muslims living in Islamic lands outside the sacred area surrounding Mecca, Arabia.\n",
"Sharia is the religious law forming part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. In Arabic, the term \"sharīʿah\" refers to God's divine law and is contrasted with \"fiqh\", which refers to its scholarly interpretations. The manner of its application in modern times has been a subject of dispute between Muslim traditionalists and reformists.\n",
"Shari'a is applied in all matters relating to family law involving Muslims or the children of a Muslim father, and all citizens, including non-Muslims, are subject to Islamic legal provisions regarding inheritance. According to the law, all minor children of male citizens who convert to Islam are considered to be Muslim. Adult children of a male Christian who has converted to Islam become ineligible to inherit from their father if they do not also convert to Islam. In cases in which a Muslim converts to Christianity, the authorities do not recognize the conversion as legal, and the individual continues to be treated as a Muslim in matters of family and property law.\n",
"Based on Quranic verses and Islamic traditions, classical sharia distinguishes between Muslims, followers of other Abrahamic monotheistic religions, and pagans or people belonging to other polytheistic religions. As monotheists, Jews and Christians have traditionally been considered \"People of The Book,\" and afforded a special status known as dhimmi derived from a theoretical contract - \"dhimma\" or \"residence in return for taxes\". There are parallels for this in Roman and Jewish law. Muslim governments in the Indus basin readily extended the dhimmi status to the Hindus and Buddhists of India. Eventually, the largest school of Islamic scholarship applied this term to all non-Muslims living in Islamic lands outside the sacred area surrounding Mecca, Saudi Arabia.\n",
"Because Shari'a governs the personal status of Muslims, converting from Islam to Christianity and proselytism of Muslims are not allowed. Muslims who convert to another religion face societal and governmental discrimination. Under Shari'a, converts are regarded as apostates and may be denied their civil and property rights. The Government maintains it neither encourages nor prohibits apostasy. The Government does not recognize converts from Islam as falling under the jurisdiction of their new religious community's laws in matters of personal status; converts are still considered Muslims. Converts to Islam fall under the jurisdiction of Shari'a courts. Shari'a, in theory, provides for the death penalty for Muslims who apostatize; however, the Government has never applied such punishment. The Government allows conversion to Islam.\n"
] |
Do birds ping? | Sounds like contact calls to me! Though I am unsure if a species specific call has been studied or described for caiques in particular, I know for a fact that many other parrot species (parakeets, budgies, amazons) use contact calls regularly to maintain their pairs or groups. In fact, on a recent trip to Nicaragua my lab and I collected data on contact call dialects in wild Yellow-naped amazons. With this species at least, birds in different areas show structural variations in contact calls which functionally serve the same purpose. So I can imagine that if your birds are using a contact call (that they didn't learn from their wild brethren), it might be a particular variant for your home flock. A home dialect of sorts. :) | [
"Their most distinctive behaviour is the beating and whistling sound their wings make when they take off. This is most likely to draw the attention of predators to birds on the wing, and away from any birds remaining on the ground, and as an alarm call to other pigeons. When the birds land, their tails tilt upwards and the flight patterns are similar to those of the spotted turtle dove. They are generally solitary. Although they can be seen in pairs, they can be highly social and tend to be seen in flocks. They are highly gregarious birds when in contact with humans.\n",
"If startled, the crested pigeon takes to the air with a distinctive whistling 'call', the source of the noise can be attributed to the way the air rushes over a modified primary feather found on the wings.\n",
"Its flight is quick, performed by regular beats, with an occasional sharp flick of the wings, characteristic of pigeons in general. It takes off with a loud clattering. It perches well, and in its nuptial display walks along a horizontal branch with swelled neck, lowered wings, and fanned tail. During the display flight the bird climbs, the wings are smartly cracked like a whiplash, and the bird glides down on stiff wings. The common wood pigeon is gregarious, often forming very large flocks outside the breeding season. Like many species of pigeon, wood pigeons take advantage of trees and buildings to gain a vantage point over the surrounding area, and their distinctive call means that they are usually heard before they are seen.\n",
"The New Zealand pigeons make occasional soft \"coo\" sounds (hence the onomatopoeic names), and their wings make a very distinctive \"whooshing\" sound as they fly. The bird's flight is also distinctive. Birds will often ascend slowly before making impressively steep parabolic dives; it is thought that this behaviour is often associated with nesting, or nest failure.\n",
"One or two birds and small flocks are usually found; large flocks are occasionally seen. The pigeon flies swiftly and directly. It plucks fruits from branches in the canopy, and it flies across the sea to search for food. Its calls include a rising and repeated \"c-wooooohooo\" given when the bird is upright, a loud series of descending coos while bobbing up and down, and a high-pitched \"crrrrrurrr\". In display, it flies up at an angle of 70° and then glides. Breeding has been observed from June to September and in March. The nest is built at the end of a branch and made of twigs. One egg is laid.\n",
"This bird has an aerial display, which involves flying high in circles, followed by a powerful stoop during which the bird makes a \"drumming\" sound, caused by vibrations of modified outer tail feathers.\n",
"This bird has a spectacular aerial display, which involves flying high in circles, followed by a powerful stoop during which the bird makes a drumming sound, caused by vibrations of modified outer tail feathers.\n"
] |
what exactly does it mean when one country 'recognises' another country? conversely, what does it mean when one country refuses to recognise another country? | Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:
1. [ELI5: What does it mean when one country refuses to acknowledge the existence of another country? ](_URL_0_) ^(_8 comments_)
1. [ELI5: How does international recognition of a country differ (e.g. South Sudan, Kosovo)? ](_URL_1_) ^(_8 comments_)
| [
"Saying that a country \"does not recognize\" multiple citizenship is a confusing and ambiguous term. Often, it is simply a restatement of the Master Nationality Rule, whereby a country treats a person who is a citizen of both that country and another in the same way as one who is a citizen only of the country. In other words, the country \"does not recognize\" that the person has any other citizenship for the purposes of the country's laws. In particular, citizens of a country may not be permitted to use another country's passport or travel documents to enter or leave the country, or be entitled to consulate assistance from the other country. Also, the dual national may be subject to military service if they visit the previous nationality country.\n",
"Diplomatic recognition in international law is a unilateral political act with domestic and international legal consequences whereby a state acknowledges an act or status of another state or government in control of a state (may be also a recognized state). Recognition can be reaccorded either \"de facto\" or \"de jure\". Recognition can be a declaration to that effect by the recognizing government, or an act of recognition such as entering into a treaty with the other state. A vote by a country in the United Nations in favour of the membership of another country is an implicit recognition of that country by the country so voting, as only states may be members of the UN.\n",
"Diplomatic recognition must be distinguished from formal recognition of states or their governments. The fact that states do not maintain bilateral diplomatic relations does not mean that they do not recognize or treat one another as states. A state is not required to accord formal bilateral recognition to any other state, and some have a general policy of not doing so, considering that a vote for its membership of an international organisation restricted to states, such as the United Nations, is proof of recognition.\n",
"Diplomatic recognition is an explicit, official, unilateral act in the foreign policy of states in regards to another party. Not having issued such a statement does not necessarily mean the state has objections to the existence, independence, sovereignty or government of the other party. Some states, by custom or policy, do not extend formal recognitions, on the grounds that a vote for membership in the UN or another organisation whose membership is limited to states is itself an act of recognition.\n",
"Recognition can be implied by other acts, such as the visit of the head of state, or the signing of a bilateral treaty. If implicit recognition is possible, a state may feel the need to explicitly proclaim that its acts do not constitute diplomatic recognition, like when the United States commenced its dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1988.\n",
"State practice relating to the recognition of states typically falls somewhere between the declaratory and constitutive approaches. International law does not require a state to recognise other states. Recognition is often withheld when a new state is seen as illegitimate or has come about in breach of international law. Almost universal non-recognition by the international community of Rhodesia and Northern Cyprus are good examples of this, the former only having been recognized by South Africa, and the latter only recognized by Turkey. In the case of Rhodesia, recognition was widely withheld when the white minority seized power and attempted to form a state along the lines of Apartheid South Africa, a move that the United Nations Security Council described as the creation of an \"illegal racist minority régime\". In the case of Northern Cyprus, recognition was withheld from a state created in Northern Cyprus. International law contains no prohibition on declarations of independence, and the recognition of a country is a political issue. As a result, Turkish Cypriots gained \"observer status\" in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and their representatives are elected in the Assembly of Northern Cyprus; and Northern Cyprus became an observer member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Economic Cooperation Organization.\n",
"Besides recognizing other states, states also can recognize the governments of states. This can be problematic particularly when a new government comes to power by illegal means, such as a coup d'état, or when an existing government stays in power by fixing an election. States once formally recognized both the government of a state and the state itself, but many no longer follow that practice, even though, if diplomatic relations are to be maintained, it is necessary that there be a government with which to engage in diplomatic relations. Countries such as the United States answer queries over the recognition of governments with the statement: \"The question of recognition does not arise: we are conducting our relations with the new government.\"\n"
] |
How many different types of visible light are there? | There are an infinite number of frequencies of light. By themselves they don't group into colors, they're just a frequency (wavelength). We perceive colors because of the nature of our eyes. We have receptors that are differentially sensitives. Most people have three different types, corresponding to the three different primary colors. Colorblind people have fewer. Some women have four types and presumably see colors based on four primaries rather than three. | [
"Light is electromagnetic radiation within a certain portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The word usually refers to visible light, which is the visible spectrum that is visible to the human eye and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), or 4.00 × 10 to 7.00 × 10 m, between the infrared (with longer wavelengths) and the ultraviolet (with shorter wavelengths). This wavelength means a frequency range of roughly 430–750 terahertz (THz).\n",
"Visible-light astronomy encompasses a wide variety of observations via telescopes that are sensitive in the range visible light (optical telescopes). Visible-light astronomy is part of optical astronomy, and differs from astronomies based on invisible types of light in the electromagnetic radiation spectrum, such as radio waves, infrared waves, ultraviolet waves, X-ray waves and gamma-ray waves. Visible light ranges from 380 to 750 nanometers in wavelength.\n",
"Light, or visible light, is the very narrow range of electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye (about 400–700 nm), or up to 380–750 nm. More broadly, physicists refer to light as electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths, whether visible or not.\n",
"Visible light is an electromagnetic wave, consisting of oscillating electric and magnetic fields traveling through space. The frequency of the wave determines its color: is red light, is violet light, and between these (in the range 4-) are all the other colors of the visible spectrum. An electromagnetic wave can have a frequency less than , but it will be invisible to the human eye; such waves are called infrared (IR) radiation. At even lower frequency, the wave is called a microwave, and at still lower frequencies it is called a radio wave. Likewise, an electromagnetic wave can have a frequency higher than , but it will be invisible to the human eye; such waves are called ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Even higher-frequency waves are called X-rays, and higher still are gamma rays.\n",
"[[Electromagnetic radiation]] is characterized by its [[wavelength]] (or [[frequency]]) and its [[Luminous intensity|intensity]]. When the wavelength is within the visible spectrum (the range of wavelengths humans can perceive, approximately from 390 [[nanometre|nm]] to 700 nm), it is known as \"visible light\".\n",
"Electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 380 nm and 760 nm (400–790 terahertz) is detected by the human eye and perceived as visible light. Other wavelengths, especially near infrared (longer than 760 nm) and ultraviolet (shorter than 380 nm) are also sometimes referred to as light, especially when the visibility to humans is not relevant. White light is a combination of lights of different wavelengths in the visible spectrum. Passing white light through a prism splits it up into the several colors of light observed in the visible spectrum between 400 nm and 780 nm.\n",
"Light, or visible light, is a very narrow range of electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is visible to the human eye, or 380–750 nm which equates to a frequency range of 790 to 400 THz respectively. More broadly, physicists use the term \"light\" to mean electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths, whether visible or not.\n"
] |
When, and why, did the US close its borders to Mexico. | Around Reagan's presidency, drug trafficking was popular. Pablo Escobar and the rest of the Medellín cartel were bringing 15 tons of cocaine to America a day. Many of their trade routes went through the Mexican-American border. This was a big factor to having heavy control over the border during Reagan's War on Drugs.
But even in the past we see that the border has been in constant dispute. The annexation of Texas led to the Mexican-American War, which ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) where America also gained New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Then the U.S. bought Tucson and Sierra Vista in the Gadsden Purchase in 1854 to build a railway. America gained a lot of land and it's kinda been America's mission to keep it for ourselves, away from the Confederate States during the Civil War, the French, and the Mexicans. | [
"On 12 January 1828, in Mexico City, Poinsett signed the first treaty between the United States and Mexico, the Treaty of Limits, a treaty that recognized the U.S.-Mexico border established by the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty between Spain and the U.S.\n",
"BULLET::::2. Mexico severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. in 1845 upon the annexation of Texas by the U.S. Relations were reestablished in 1848 following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the Mexican–American War.\n",
"The Treaty of Limits between the United Mexican States and the United States of America is an 1828 treaty between Mexico and the United States that confirmed the borders between the two states. The Treaty of Limits was the first treaty concluded between the two countries.\n",
"After the 1846 U.S. invasion of Mexico, the U.S. annexed what is now the Southwest U.S. in 1848. San Ysidro found itself on an international border. The border was marked in the mid-1860s and the first customs building was erected in 1873. The border was unfenced until one was built in 1910 from the Pacific Ocean to Otay Mountain.\n",
"The United States has notably increased measures taken in border control on the Canada–United States border and the United States–Mexico border during its War on Terrorism (See Shantz 2010). One American writer has said that the US-Mexico border is probably \"the world's longest boundary between a First World and Third World country\".\n",
"The international border between the United States and Mexico runs from San Diego–Tijuana eastward towards the Gulf of Mexico. The Pacific Ocean terminus of the border was defined as a line passing from the confluence of the Colorado and Gila rivers (now the southeastern corner of the U.S. State of California) to the Pacific Ocean such that it would pass one Spanish league south of the southern end of San Diego Bay. This ensured that the United States received the natural harbor at San Diego.\n",
"As the result of the Texas Revolution and Texas annexation, the United States inherited border disputes of the Republic of Texas with Mexico, which was the factor to the eruption of the Mexican–American War (1846–48). After the United States' victory over Mexico, Mexicans signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This treaty entailed that Mexico cede over half its land to the United States in exchange for 15 million dollars but also guaranteed that Mexican citizens living in ceded lands would retain full property rights and would be granted United States citizenship if they remained in the ceded lands for at least one year. This Treaty and others led to the establishment of the International Boundary and Water Commission in 1889 which was tasked with the maintenance of the border, the allocation of river waters between the two nations, and provision for flood control and water sanitation.\n"
] |
why california hasn't embraced desalinization to deal with the water shortage? | It does if you're dying if thirst, but not if you just need people to not waste water on their silly lawns and 30 minute showers. | [
"In response to water shortages in the state, some water districts are looking to desalination as a way to provide water for residents. Supporters view seawater desalination as a safer water source, since it draws its water from the ocean and thus, is not affected by periods of drought like other sources of water are. Another incentive for desalination is the ability for localities to be more self-sufficient with their water supply, thus improving their drought resilience. However, desalination has been the subject of scrutiny by opponents, who believe that the costs and possible environmental effects of desalination are indicators that California should continue to pursue other alternatives.\n",
"A proposed alternative to desalination in the American Southwest is the commercial importation of bulk water from water-rich areas either by oil tankers converted to water carriers, or pipelines. The idea is politically unpopular in Canada, where governments imposed trade barriers to bulk water exports as a result of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) claim.\n",
"Water reuse has been an important part of California's water plan due to efforts to reduce over-drafted ground and surface water supplies, but also as a safe and environmentally responsible means of waste disposal. It also helps to address the unique challenge that California faces in providing water to its densely populated cities and millions of acres of farmland in areas where precipitation scarcely falls. In 2012, California reused nearly three quarters of a million acre feet of water, enough for about three million Californians for the year.\n",
"Historically the predominant response to increasing water demand in the U.S. has been to tap into ever more distant sources of conventional water supply, in particular rivers. Because of environmental concerns and limitations in the availability of water resources, including droughts that may be due to climate change, this approach now is in many cases not feasible any more. Still, supply-side management is often being pursued tapping into non-conventional water resources, in particular seawater desalination in coastal areas with high population growth. California alone had plans to build 21 desalination plants in 2006 with a total capacity of per day, which would represent a massive 70-fold increase over current seawater desalination capacity in the state. In 2007 the largest desalination plant in the United States is the one at Tampa Bay, Florida, which began desalinating of water per day in December 2007.\n",
"Although the response to desalination has been mixed, some areas of California are moving forward with seawater desalination. In December 2015, Poseidon Water completed the construction of the Claude \"Bud\" Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant. This facility, which was approved by the San Diego Water Authority, is responsible for providing water for about 8% of San Diego County's water by the year 2020. The facility cost $1 billion to build and is the largest desalination facility in the Western Hemisphere producing up to 50 million gallons (190,000 m) of water per day. As of December 2015, there are 6 additional seawater desalination plants currently in operation in the state of California. As of May 2016, there are also 9 more proposed desalination plants.\n",
"In recent decades, California has been struck with a series of severe droughts. In order to facilitate continued deliveries of water to the thirsty southern half of the state, the Central Valley and State Water Projects have been forced to cut water supplies for agriculture in much of the San Joaquin Valley. Annual deficits of water in the state are projected to rise from in 1998 to an estimated by 2025. The state has proposed three or four solutions to the shortfall. One, the Peripheral Canal, would facilitate water flow from the water-rich north to the dry south, but has never been built due to environmental concerns. The raising of Shasta Dam on the Sacramento or New Melones Dam on the Stanislaus, or the building of Sites Reservoir, has also been proposed. Lastly, the Auburn Dam has also been revived in light of this. According to supporters, it would cause the least environmental destruction of the multitude of choices, and would give the most reliable water yield, regardless of its skyrocketing costs.\n",
"In the early 1970s, the SWP system still had a lot of \"surplus\" – water supply developed through the construction of Oroville Dam, which was running unused to the Pacific Ocean because the water delivery infrastructure for Southern California had not yet been completed (and when it was, southern California was slow to use the water). The surplus water was given for irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley instead. Because the water would only be a temporary supply, farmers were advised to use it for seasonal crops (such as alfalfa or hay) rather than permanent crops such as orchards. Nevertheless, many farmers used the water to develop new permanent crops, creating a dependency on SWP water that is technically part of Southern California's entitlement, This is now causing tensions as Southern California continues to increase its use of SWP water, decreasing the amount of surplus available to the system, especially in years of drought.\n"
] |
Why isn't cloud seeding more common? | For the most part, we don't know if it works. Would it have rained or snowed without the seeding? Who knows? While research is ongoing, seeding has been used for well over half a decade now, with no conclusively convincing evidence of its effectiveness. Weather is pretty complex, and it's really hard to determine if seeding contributes significantly enough to well... be statistically significant. | [
"Cloud seeding is a common technique to enhance precipitation. Cloud seeding entails spraying small particles, such as silver iodide, onto clouds to affect their development, usually with the goal of increasing precipitation. Cloud seeding only works to the extent that there is already water vapor present in the air. Critics generally contend that claimed successes occur in conditions which were going to lead to rain anyway. It is used in a variety of drought-prone countries, including the United States, the People's Republic of China, India, and the Russian Federation. In the People's Republic of China there is a perceived dependency upon it in dry regions, and there is a strong suspicion it is used to \"wash the air\" in dry and heavily polluted places, such as Beijing. In mountainous areas of the United States such as the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, cloud seeding has been employed since the 1950s.\n",
"Cloud seeding has been the focus of many theories based on the belief that governments manipulate the weather in order to control various conditions, including global warming, populations, military weapons testing, public health, and flooding.\n",
"Cloud seeding is a type of weather modification that aims to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, which alter the microphysical processes within the cloud. The usual intent is to increase precipitation (rain or snow), but hail and fog suppression are also widely practised in airports where harsh weather conditions are experienced.\n",
"Since the 1940s, cloud seeding has been used to change the structure of clouds by dispersing substances into the air, potentially increasing or altering rainfall. In spite of experiments dating back to at least the start of the 20th century, however, there is much controversy surrounding the efficacy of cloud seeding, and evidence that cloud seeding leads to increased precipitation on the ground is highly equivocal. One difficulty is knowing how much precipitation might have fallen had any particular cloud not been seeded. Operation Popeye was a US military rainmaking operation to increase rains over Vietnam during the Vietnam War in order to slow Vietnamese military truck activity in the region. Rainmaking is not climate engineering, which seeks to alter climate, but a form of weather modification, as it seeks only to change local weather.\n",
"The largest cloud seeding system is in the People's Republic of China. They believe that it increases the amount of rain over several increasingly arid regions, including its capital city, Beijing, by firing silver iodide rockets into the sky where rain is desired. There is even political strife caused by neighboring regions that accuse each other of \"stealing rain\" using cloud seeding. About 24 countries currently practice weather modification operationally. China used cloud seeding in Beijing just before the 2008 Olympic Games in order to have a dry Olympic season. In February 2009, China also blasted iodide sticks over Beijing to artificially induce snowfall after four months of drought, and blasted iodide sticks over other areas of northern China to increase snowfall. The snowfall in Beijing lasted for approximately three days and led to the closure of 12 main roads around Beijing. At the end of October 2009 Beijing claimed it had its earliest snowfall since 1987 due to cloud seeding.\n",
"Clouding agents or cloudifiers are a type of food additive used to make beverages such as fruit juices to look more cloudy, and thus more natural-looking and visually appealing, typically by creating an emulsion of oil droplets. \n",
"Cloud computing: It can make infrastructures more resilient to attacks and functions as data backup as well. However, as the Cloud concentrates more and more sensitive data, it becomes increasingly attractive to cybercriminals.\n"
] |
why is increasing your heart rate through physical activity good and for anxiety reasons bad? | The main reason is that it's better to have relaxed artery walls. Increasing heart rate through physical activity causes arteries to relax. In anxiety, it causes them to constrict. | [
"Lifestyle factors including: stress management, stress reduction, relaxation, exercise, sleep hygiene, caffeine, and alcohol can influence the persistence of anxiety. Stress is a factor that can trigger anxiety. Therefore, keeping stress levels low through stress management, stress reduction, and relaxation may be beneficial. Physical activity has shown to have a positive impact whereas low physical activity may be a risk factor for anxiety disorders.\n",
"Meta-analyses published between 2013 and 2017 show that exercise is associated with reductions in depressive symptoms, fatigue and QoL plus improvements in attention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, social functioning, schizophrenic symptoms, and verbal fluency in various special populations. However, aerobic exercise has no significant effect on anxiety disorders.\n",
"Studies have shown that exercise reduces stress. Exercise effectively reduces fatigue, improves sleep, enhances overall cognitive function such as alertness and concentration, decreases overall levels of tension, and improves self-esteem. Because many of these are depleted when an individual experiences chronic stress, exercise provides an ideal coping mechanism. Despite popular belief, it is not necessary for exercise to be routine or intense in order to reduce stress. As little as five minutes of aerobic exercise can begin to stimulate anti-anxiety effects. Further, a 10-minute walk may have the same psychological benefits as a 45-minute workout, reinforcing the assertion that exercise in any amount or intensity will reduce stress.\n",
"Hormones like epinephrine and norepinephrine can affect the cardiovascular centre and cause it to increase the rate of impulses sent to the sinoatrial node, or pacemaker, resulting in faster and stronger cardiac muscle contraction and thus increasing the heart rate.\n",
"During exercise, the body undergoes a stress response in which more oxygen and energy is needed for physical activity. The stress induced during exercise results in an increase in the hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine, which are known for the body’s \"fight or flight\" response. As a result, the body’s heart rate increases allowing for more blood to pump through the body system and carry oxygen needed for breathing to enhance cardiorespiratory function. In exercise trained individuals, levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine are lower compared to those who do not actively train as much. This is due to untrained individuals undergoing greater amounts of stress on their body and the greater need for oxygen and energy to perform rigorous activities. Trained individuals become accustomed to utilizing less oxygen such as when performing anaerobic exercises so that their body will eventually feel the stress on their body over a longer period of time. Along with an increase in epinephrine and norepinephrine, increased sympathoadrenal activity results in an increase in glycogen which ultimately increases glucose release needed for energy.\n",
"In vivo however, extrinsic factors such as an increase in activity of the sympathetic nerves, and a decrease in vagal tone cause the heart to beat more frequently and more forcefully. This alters the cardiac function curve, shifting it upwards. This allows the heart to cope with the required cardiac output at a relatively low right atrial pressure. We get what is known as a family of cardiac function curves, as the heart rate increases before the plateau is reached, and without the RAP having to rise dramatically to stretch the heart more and get the Starling effect.\n",
"Exercise and fitness levels, age, body temperature, basal metabolic rate, and even a person's emotional state can all affect the heart rate. High levels of the hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine, and thyroid hormones can increase the heart rate. The levels of electrolytes including calcium, potassium, and sodium can also influence the speed and regularity of the heart rate; low blood oxygen, low blood pressure and dehydration may increase it.\n"
] |
if every household collected rainwater, would it hurt the environment? how does this work? | It depends on how they were going about doing it.
If everyone covered all their lands with plastic tarps and took all the rain water than less of it would be flowing into streams and lakes.
But this would require extreme amounts of collection.
A more likely scenario is that all those collection of standing fresh water will breed mosquitoes, potentially spreading mosquito borne diseases faster. | [
"While rainwater itself is a clean source of water, often better than groundwater or water from rivers or lakes, the process of collection and storage often leaves the water polluted and non-potable. Rainwater harvested from roofs can contain human, animal and bird feces, mosses and lichens, windblown dust, particulates from urban pollution, pesticides, and inorganic ions from the sea (Ca, Mg, Na, K, Cl, SO), and dissolved gases (CO, NO, SO). High levels of pesticide have been found in rainwater in Europe with the highest concentrations occurring in the first rain immediately after a dry spell; the concentration of these and other contaminants are reduced significantly by diverting the initial flow of run-off water to waste. Improved water quality can also be obtained by using a floating draw-off mechanism (rather than from the base of the tank) and by using a series of tanks, withdraw from the last in series. Prefiltration is a common practice used in the industry to keep the system healthy and ensure that the water entering the tank is free of large sediments.\n",
"Because impervious surfaces (parking lots, roads, buildings, compacted soil) do not allow rain to infiltrate into the ground, more runoff is generated than in the undeveloped condition. This additional runoff can erode watercourses (streams and rivers) as well as cause flooding after the stormwater collection system is overwhelmed by the additional flow. Because the water is flushed out of the watershed during the storm event, little infiltrates the soil, replenishes groundwater, or supplies stream baseflow in dry weather.\n",
"Pollutants entering surface waters during precipitation events is termed polluted runoff. Daily human activities result in deposition of pollutants on roads, lawns, roofs, farm fields, etc. When it rains or there is irrigation, water runs off and ultimately makes its way to a river, lake, or the ocean. While there is some attenuation of these pollutants before entering the receiving waters, the quantity of human activity results in large enough quantities of pollutants to impair these receiving waters.\n",
"In natural landscapes such as forests, the soil absorbs much of the stormwater and plants help hold stormwater close to where it falls. In developed environments, unmanaged stormwater can create two major issues: one related to the volume and timing of runoff water (flooding) and the other related to potential contaminants that the water is carrying (water pollution).\n",
"Generally, rainwater collection is a safe method when the water is filtered and purified. However, contaminants may be present through urban pollution, or chemical toxins it may have picked up as it flows down the atmosphere. Water mixes with both soluble and insoluble substances from roofs, gutters, and other collection surfaces. The collection method the cleanliness of the water. In order to have great quality water, the systems must be maintained and the water must be filtered appropriately. \n",
"Flooding can be a major cause of recurring crop loss—particularly in heavy soils—and can severely disrupt urban economies as well. Subsurface drainage to ditches offers a way to remove excess water from agricultural fields, or vital urban spaces, without the erosion rates and pollution transport that results from direct surface runoff. However, excess drainage results in recurring drought induced crop yield losses and more severe urban heat or desiccation issues.\n",
"Drainage systems are a crucial compromise between human habitability and a secure, sustainable watershed. Paved areas and lawns or turf do not allow much precipitation to filter through the ground to recharge aquifers. They can cause flooding and damage in neighbourhoods, as the water flows over the surface towards a low point.\n"
] |
What is the effect of air pressure on melting point of water? | If you look at the [phase diagram of water](_URL_0_) you can see that the melting point decreases weakly as pressure is increased, reaching a minimum of about -20 C at extremely high pressure. [Here](_URL_1_) is a zoomed in version but I don't trust the scale. | [
"Physicist Lei Xu and coworkers at the University of Chicago discovered that the splash due to the impact of a small drop of ethanol onto a dry solid surface could be suppressed by reducing the pressure below a specific threshold. For drops of diameter 3.4 mm falling through air, this pressure was about 20 kilopascals, or 0.2 atmosphere.\n",
"The dependence of the water ionization on temperature and pressure has been investigated thoroughly. The value of p\"K\" decreases as temperature increases from the melting point of ice to a minimum at c. 250 °C, after which it increases up to the critical point of water c. 374 °C. It decreases with increasing pressure.\n",
"Interference between the densely populated bubbles inhibits the motion of liquid near the surface. This is observed on the graph as a change in the direction of the gradient of the curve or an inflection in the boiling curve. After this point, the heat transfer coefficient starts to reduce as the surface temperature is further increased although the product of the heat transfer coefficient and the temperature difference (the heat flux) is still increasing.\n",
"Since heat does not leave the affected air mass, this change of pressure is adiabatic, with an associated change of temperature. In humid air, the drop in temperature in the most rarefied portion of the shock wave can bring the air temperature below its dew point, at which moisture condenses to form a visible cloud of microscopic water droplets. Since the pressure effect of the wave is reduced by its expansion (the same pressure effect is spread over a larger radius), the vapor effect also has a limited radius. Such vapor can also be seen in low pressure regions during high–g subsonic maneuvers of aircraft in humid conditions.\n",
"An additional source of increased pressure is hydrometeor loading, the weight of precipitation increasing the speed of the downdraft, leading to increased pressure as the air converges at the surface. While hydrometeor loading is not a main contributor of increased pressure to the mesohigh, and it is a non-hydrostatic process, it can increase the pressure as much as 2 mb.\n",
"Increasing the pressure has a more dramatic effect on the boiling point, that is about at 220 atm. This effect is important in, among other things, deep-sea hydrothermal vents and geysers, pressure cooking, and steam engine design. At the top of Mount Everest, where the atmospheric pressure is about 0.34 atm, water boils at .\n",
"BULLET::::- Oxygen: If oxygen makes up part of the process recipe during wet oxidation, it will reduce the water vapor partial pressure, slowing the overall growth rate. Because the oxidation rate of silicon with oxygen molecules to water molecules is almost ten times slower, variability in the oxygen to water vapor pressure can lead to process variability. This is frequently a problem when the operating pressure is kept at ambient pressure. Water vapor pressure is a function of the temperature of the water source while the overall process pressure is a function of atmosphere. As the atmosphere varies the oxygen pressure will increase or decrease relative to the water vapor pressure, leading to changes in the overall oxidation growth rate of the film.\n"
] |
why was "smells like teen spirit" considered such a revolutionary song? and what's so special about kurt cobain? | Nirvana gets a lot of the credit for starting the "grunge" movement. What makes smells like teen spirit so different is it's grunge sound and lyrical content. This was the first mainstream song to sort of glorify angsty, awkward teenagers and give them a coherent voice. It probably rings less with you because so much music has been heavily influenced by it. As far as his legacy is concerned, as one of the pillars of grunge music he has had a major impact on the last 20 or so years of rock music, most specifically alt/college rock. | [
"In the wake of Nirvana's success, Michael Azerrad wrote in a 1992 \"Rolling Stone\" article: \"'Smells Like Teen Spirit' is an anthem for (or is it against?) the 'Why Ask Why?' generation. Just don't call Cobain a spokesman for a generation.\" Nevertheless, the music press awarded the song an \"anthem-of-a-generation\" status, placing Cobain as a reluctant spokesman for Generation X. \"The New York Times\" wrote that Smells Like Teen Spirit' could be this generation’s version of the Sex Pistols' 1976 single, 'Anarchy in the U.K.', if it weren’t for the bitter irony that pervades its title ... as Nirvana knows only too well, teen spirit is routinely bottled, shrink-wrapped and sold.\"\n",
"Cobain expressed fondness for the song, telling David Fricke in a 1993 \"Rolling Stone\" interview that he thought it was as good, if not better, than the band's biggest hit, \"Smells Like Teen Spirit.\" I love the lyrics, and I never get tired of playing it,\" he said. \"Maybe if it was as big as 'Teen Spirit, I wouldn’t like it as much.\"\n",
"Cobain came up with the song's title when his friend Kathleen Hanna, at the time the lead singer of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, wrote \"Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit\" on his wall. Hanna meant that Cobain smelled like the deodorant Teen Spirit, which his then-girlfriend Tobi Vail wore. Cobain said he was unaware of the deodorant until months after the single was released, and had interpreted it as a revolutionary slogan, as they had been discussing anarchism and punk rock.\n",
"In the years following Cobain's 1994 suicide and Nirvana's breakup, \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" has continued to garner critical acclaim, and is often listed as one of the greatest songs of all time. It was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of \"The Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll\" in 1997. In 2000, VH1 rated the song at number forty-one on its \"100 Greatest Rock Songs\" list, while MTV and \"Rolling Stone\" ranked it third on their joint list of the \"100 Greatest Pop Songs\". The Recording Industry Association of America placed \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" at number eighty on their 2001 \"Songs of the Century\" list. In 2002, \"NME\" awarded the song the number two spot on its list of \"100 Greatest Singles of All Time\", with \"Kerrang!\" ranking it at number one on its own list of the \"100 Greatest Singles of All Time\". VH1 placed \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" at number one on its list of \"100 Greatest Songs of the Past 25 Years\" in 2003, while that same year, the song came third in a \"Q\" poll of the \"1001 Best Songs Ever\". In 2004, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" ninth on its list of \"The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time\", and described its impact as \"a shock wave of big-amp purity\", noting that \"[it] wiped the lingering jive of the Eighties off the pop map overnight.\" The song was placed at number six in \"NME\"s \"Global Best Song Ever Poll\" in 2005.\n",
"\"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" has inspired a few parodies. \"Weird Al\" Yankovic parodied the song in 1992 with \"Smells Like Nirvana\", a song about Nirvana itself. Yankovic parodied the difficulty in understanding Cobain's singing as well as the lyrics and their meaning. Yankovic has said Cobain told him he realized that Nirvana had \"made it\" when he heard the parody. In 1995, the queercore band Pansy Division recorded a parody of the song called \"Smells Like Queer Spirit\" for its \"Pile Up\" album. Pansy Division guitarist Jon Ginoli insisted that his band's version of the song was not a parody but \"an affectionate tribute\". In 2018, a video of the original Nirvana version was posted on Vimeo that had been auto-tuned to be in a major key. This resulted in the song sounding like a \"mainstream pop song\" or a Top 40 Rock song.\n",
"\"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" was, along with \"Come as You Are\", one of several songs written following Nirvana's first recording sessions with producer Butch Vig in 1990. Cobain began writing it a few weeks before recording Nirvana's second album, \"Nevermind\", in 1991. When he presented the song to his bandmates, it comprised just the main guitar riff and the chorus vocal melody, which bassist Krist Novoselic dismissed as \"ridiculous\". In response, Cobain made the band play the riff for an hour and a half. Eventually, Novoselic began playing the riff more slowly, inspiring drummer Dave Grohl to create the drum beat. As a result, it is the only song on \"Nevermind\" to credit all three band members as writers.\n",
"\"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" received critical plaudits, including topping the \"Village Voice\" Pazz & Jop critics' poll and winning two MTV Video Music Awards for its music video, which was in heavy rotation on music television. The song was dubbed an \"anthem for apathetic kids\" of Generation X, but the band grew uncomfortable with the attention it brought them. In the years since Kurt Cobain's death, listeners and critics have continued to praise \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" as one of the greatest songs in the history of rock music.\n"
] |
i've heard that roads tend to be safer without speed limits. why does the us still have them? | Because roads *are* safer with speed limits. There are many scientists who work in road safety, and they would be in 99% agreement over this. The European and Scandanavian countries that have the lowest fatality rates in the world also have the lowest speed limits (UK, Netherlands, Sweden). | [
"BULLET::::- A 1998 report in the \"Wall Street Journal\" titled \"Highways are safe at any speed\", stating when speed limits are set artificially low, tailgating, weaving and speed variance (the problem of some cars traveling significantly faster than others) make roads less safe.\n",
"Worldwide, road traffic is becoming ever safer, in part due to efforts by the government to implement safety features in cars (e.g., seat belts, air bags, etc.), reduce unsafe driving practices (e.g., speeding, drinking and driving and texting and driving) and make road design more safe by adding features such as speed bumps, which reduce vehicle speed, and roundabouts, which reduce the likelihood of a head-on-collision (as compared with an intersection).\n",
"Another independent report challenged the government's claim that falling casualty rates meant that roads were becoming 'much safer'. Mayer Hillman, John Adams and John Whitelegg suggest that roads may actually be felt to be sufficiently dangerous as to deter pedestrians from using them. They compared rates for those whose transport options are most limited, the elderly and children and found that:\n",
"As it is in the United States, Canada or most countries in Europe, larger/wider highways have higher speed limits than normal urban roads (typically between 80 km/h and 120 km/h), although minor highways, unpaved highways and sections of major highways running inside urban areas have a lower speed limit in general. The national speed limit for cars driving in non-urban roads is 110 km/h unless otherwise stated, regardless of the road design, weather or daylight.\n",
"For road traffic safety purposes it can be helpful to classify roads into three usages: built-up urban streets with slower speeds, greater densities, and more diversity among road users; non built-up rural roads with higher speeds; and major highways (motorways/ Interstates/ freeways/ Autobahns, etc.) reserved for motor-vehicles, and which are often designed to minimize and attenuate crashes. Most injuries occur on urban streets but most fatalities on rural roads, while motorways are the safest in relation to distance traveled. For example, in 2013, German autobahns carried 31% of motorized road traffic (in travel-kilometres) while accounting for 13% of Germany's traffic deaths. The autobahn fatality rate of 1.9 deaths per billion-travel-kilometres compared favorably with the 4.7 rate on urban streets and 6.6 rate on rural roads.\n",
"BULLET::::- Vehicle speed is the most important regulating factor for a safe road traffic. It should be determined by the technical standard of both roads and vehicle so as not to exceed the level of violence that the human body can tolerate.\n",
"Another monetary difference came from the fact that the Interstate Highways were to be designed to be high-speed and safe expressways. This meant that they needed to have much wider open strips of land along their sides, because this created safety zones on each side of the highways so that vehicles that were in accidents or simply lost control would have somewhere to go, to slow down gradually, and not crash into trees, boulders, light poles, buildings, parked vehicles, fire hydrants, and other kinds of obstacles. Roadway interchanges for Interstate Highways were also to be very large (and over the decades, they became a lot larger than anyone had anticipated in the 1950s). With so much land being taken away for the highways, the only way to justify it and to make it politically palatable was for the Federal and State governments to outright purchase all of the land. There could be no question of just having an easement for the highway and its right-of-way. All of the land within the right-of-way would be permanently owned by the governments, until such time that they decided to get rid of the highway and sell the land.\n"
] |
If the universe is infinite in all directions, does that mean no matter where you move you will always be in the exact center? | If the universe is infinitely big (which is the go-to assumption nowadays, and at least somewhat supported by evidence, but it has not been proven yet), then there is no center. Talking about the center of the entire universe becomes pretty meaningless.
You will always appear to be in the center of your observable universe. This is true regardless of whether the universe is infinite or not. | [
"Simplicio now gives the greatest argument against the annual motion of the Earth that if it moves then it can no longer be the center of the zodiac, the world. Aristotle gives proofs that the universe is finite bounded and spherical. Salvatius points out that these disappear if he denies him the assumption that it is movable, but allows the assumption initially in order not to multiply disputes.\n",
"\"Only the Pythagoreans place the infinite among the objects of sense (they do not regard number as separable from these), and assert that what is outside the heaven is infinite. Plato, on the other hand, holds that there is no body outside (the Forms are not outside because they are nowhere), yet that the infinite is present not only in the objects of sense but in the Forms also. (Aristotle)\"\n",
"\"If there was a single Earth revolving at some distance from the center of space, then the universe's center of gravity, located in the Earth as its only dense body, would not coincide with its spatial center ... The universe, consequently, would be off center, so to speak—lopsided and asymmetric—a notion repugnant to any Greek, and doubly so to a Pythagorean.\" \n",
"Since there is believed to be no \"center\" or \"edge\" of the Universe, there is no particular reference point with which to plot the overall location of the Earth in the universe. Because the observable universe is defined as that region of the Universe visible to terrestrial observers, Earth is, because of the constancy of the speed of light, the center of Earth's observable universe. Reference can be made to the Earth's position with respect to specific structures, which exist at various scales. It is still undetermined whether the Universe is infinite. There have been numerous hypotheses that the known universe may be only one such example within a higher multiverse; however, no direct evidence of any sort of multiverse has been observed, and some have argued that the hypothesis is not falsifiable. \n",
"I might very rationally put it in dispute, whether there be any such centre in nature, or no; being that neither you nor any one else hath ever proved, whether the World be finite and figurate, or else infinite and interminate; yet nevertheless granting you, for the present, that it is finite, and of a terminate Spherical Figure, and that thereupon it hath its centre...\n",
"In standard Big Bang cosmology, the universe has no center and no edge. A third idea for potentially solving the distant starlight problem, put forward by Russell Humphreys in 1994 and refined by others since, sets this assumption aside and proposes that the Earth is located near the center of a finite and bounded (i.e. spherical) universe. Time dilation would have allowed billions of years of time to elapse at the edge of the universe in its own reference frame, while only a few days passed on Earth. Humphreys also finds a place for the \"waters above (and below) the Earth,\" locating them at the edge (\"above\") and the centre (\"below\") of the universe.\n",
"Proclus's universe unfolds according to the smallest steps possible, from unity to multiplicity. With Intellect emerges the multiplicity which allows one being to be different from another being. But as a divine mind, Intellect has a complete grasp of all its moments in one act of thought. For this reason, Intellect is outside of Time.\n"
] |
if reddit only has user-driven content with highly upvoted posts receiving the most attention, why does it have mods removing posts and banned websites? | Reddit is not a democracy. Each subreddit is run by the mods according to their wishes. If a mod team thinks that links to certain sites are harming the discussion in their subreddit somehow (false information, biased source, etc.) then they ban it because they think it will make the sub better. The democratic part comes back in though because if you don't like the mods of a certain subreddit, you can always make your own. | [
"In accordance with the site's policies on free speech, Reddit's admins say that they do not ban communities solely for featuring controversial content. Reddit's general manager Erik Martin noted that \"having to stomach occasional troll [sub]reddits like r/picsofdeadkids or morally questionable [sub]reddits like r/jailbait are part of the price of free speech on a site like this,\" and that it is not Reddit's place to censor its users. The site's former CEO, Yishan Wong, stated that distasteful subreddits would not be banned because Reddit as a platform should serve the ideals of free speech. Critics of this position have argued that Reddit has not been consistent in following its free speech philosophy.\n",
"Activities by members and moderators of the subreddit have been controversial, and site-wide administrators have taken steps, including an overhaul of the Reddit software, to prevent the subreddit from having popular content displayed on Reddit's r/all forum, which the company's motto describes as \"the front page of the Internet.\" A quarantine of the subreddit was imposed in June 2019, requiring users to click an opt-in button to view the subreddit and preventing the subreddit from appearing in Reddit's and Google's search results and recommendations.\n",
"There is a common demand, especially among internet users, to have protection against accidentally seeing material considered to include \"spoiler\" information, even in the internet version of settings where such material has conventionally and historically appeared, such as discussion groups or literary reviews. As a result of this level of objection to spoilers, trolls may post them purely for their own pleasure, finding amusement in believing they are completely ruining a narrative experience for others. On reputable websites, these can be reported to moderators and such posts taken down, the posters blacklisted, but only after the fact. Most such websites provide a means of tagging certain threads as containing spoilers for those who wish to discuss a fictional work in depth, including the outcomes of events and the handling of the narrative resolution. Some have felt compelled to avoid participating on public websites altogether, set up \"closed\" websites to exclude those who are sensitive about spoilers, or decided they had to unilaterally blog at the expense of public exchange.\n",
"The most popular posts from the site's numerous subreddits are visible on the front page to those who browse the site without an account. By default for those users, the front page will display the subreddit r/popular, featuring top-ranked posts across all of Reddit, excluding not-safe-for-work communities and others that are most commonly filtered out by users (even if they are safe for work). The subreddit r/all does not filter topics. Registered users who subscribe to subreddits see the top content from the subreddits to which they subscribe on their personal front pages.\n",
"On 10 June 2015, Reddit banned four subreddits, citing an anti-harassment policy. The largest of the banned subreddits, r/fatpeoplehate, had an estimated 151,000 subscribers at the time of its banning. The other three subreddits were r/hamplanethatred, r/neofag, and r/shitniggerssay. A Reddit admin said, \"We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don’t take action\".\n",
"The website generally lets moderators on individual subreddits make editorial decisions about what content to allow, and has a history of permitting some subreddits dedicated to controversial content. Many of the default pages are highly moderated, with the \"science\" subreddit banning climate change denialism, and the \"news\" subreddit banning opinion pieces and columns. Reddit has changed its site-wide editorial policies several times, sometimes in reaction to controversies. Reddit has had a history of giving a platform to objectionable but legal content, and in 2011, news media covered the way that jailbait was being shared on the site before the site changed their policies to explicitly ban \"suggestive or sexual content featuring minors\". Following some controversial incidents of Internet vigilantism, Reddit introduced a strict rule against the publication of non-public personally-identifying information via the site (colloquially known as doxxing). Those who break the rule are subject to a site-wide ban, and their posts and even entire communities may be removed for breaking the rule.\n",
"Regardless of the circumstances, controversial posts may attract a particularly strong response from those unfamiliar with the robust dialogue found in some online, rather than physical, communities. Experienced participants in online forums know that the most effective way to discourage a troll is usually to ignore it, because responding tends to encourage trolls to continue disruptive postshence the often-seen warning: \"Please do not feed the trolls\". Some believe this to be bad or incomplete advice for effectively dealing with trolls.\n"
] |
According to the BBC, the average life expectancy for an Allied pilot in 1915 was just 11 days; how were they able to recruit pilots? Was it understood just how hazardous a posting it was? What major technical advances (if any) were made through the course of the war to make it safer? | Was that 11 days on which combat occurred or 11 days in a row? I ask because I once read something like the average life expectancy of American bomber crews in combat in WWII Europe was something like 35 seconds, but this was because of the strict definition of what constituted “combat” and the funny ways averages sometimes behave in certain datasets. | [
"In April 1917, during a brief period of German aerial supremacy a British pilot's average life expectancy was 93 flying hours, or about three weeks of active service. More than 50,000 airmen from both sides died during the war.\n",
"Reconnaissance flying, like all kinds, was a hazardous business. In April 1917, the worst month for the entire war for the RFC, the average life expectancy of a British pilot on the Western Front was 69 flying hours.\n",
"Some forty thousand airmen died by the end of World War Two, or one in three crewmen. A World War Two bomber crew member's life expectancy was fifteen missions. At the beginning of the war, twenty-five missions was considered a full tour of duty, but once pilots became more efficient and effective in air combat, the standard increased to thirty-five missions. \n",
"In his career, he clocked up over 5,600 flying hours, which is the equivalent of taking off in an aircraft on 1 January and landing at the end of October. This is the highest amount of flying hours currently achieved by any test pilot. By 1946 he had tested 310 different aircraft.\n",
"At the end of the war there were 5,182 pilots in service (constituting 2% of total RAF personnel). In comparison, the casualties from the RFC/RNAS/RAF for 1914–18 totalled 9,378 killed or missing, with 7,245 wounded. Some 900,000 flying hours on operations were logged, and 6,942 tons of bombs dropped. The RFC claimed some 7,054 German aircraft and balloons either destroyed, sent 'down out of control' or 'driven down'. \n",
"These airmen repeatedly went to the sky in defense of their country, family and other loved ones knowing that the life expectancy of an Allied bomber crewman flying in the European Theater during World War II was 12 missions and for a tail gunner like Peter McNulty much, much shorter.\n",
"In January 1942 it was decided that the limit of long-range aircraft endurance should be the crew's limits, (due to extreme aircrew fatigue seriously effecting efficiency) not the fuel supply of the aircraft. De la Ferté decided, on 7 January, sorties should not exceed 14 hours, which reduced flying hours by four per mission. This was despite the entry of the very long-range Liberators in June 1941. The Liberator Mk I had a stated Air Ministry range of 2,720 miles, but crew endurance methods now meant it would be airborne for just 2,240. De la Ferté wrote to the Ministry arguing the Liberator should be used for reconnaissance work, rather than bomb load for the solitary squadron being accepted at that time. The Liberator would assist in closing the 'Mid-Atlantic Gap' which U-boats could operate in without worrying about air interdiction. After replacing Bowhill in 1941, de la Ferté had issued a directive on 12 June 1941 to use Wellingtons and Whitleys as an interim solution to unrestricted submarine warfare now practised by the Germans. Their uneconomical operational cost meant immediate replacement of these medium-range machines was pressing. Some Avro Lancasters and Halifaxes, with some difficulty, were seconded from Bomber Command.\n"
] |
If your skin temperature is lower than usual and you stick your hand/foot in hot water, does it do actual damage? | Sensory or neural adaptation is a change in time in responsiveness to a constant stimulus, for example, what your clothes feel like on your skin. When your feet are cold, the neurons that transmit a feeling of warmth are not firing. When you submerge them in warm water, these warm-sensing neurons begin firing rapidly signaling heat, but you're also signaling a rapid temperature change. Because of the rapidity with which your body was sensing the rise in temperature, nociceptors, or receptors that signal pain, became activated, warning you that something may be potentially wrong.
Unless you are actually using boiling water, there is likely no damage being caused. | [
"Fluid loss also can occur from the skin. In a hot and dry climate, skin fluid losses can be as high as 1 to 2 liters/hour. Patients with a skin barrier interrupted by burns or other skin lesions also can experience large fluid losses that lead to hypovolemic shock. \n",
"Other risk factors include perspiring heavily, being in a humid or moist environment, psoriasis, wearing socks and shoes that hinder ventilation and do not absorb perspiration, going barefoot in damp public places such as swimming pools, gyms and shower rooms, having athlete's foot (tinea pedis), minor skin or nail injury, damaged nail, or other infection, and having diabetes, circulation problems, which may also lead to lower peripheral temperatures on hands and feet, or a weakened immune system.\n",
"BULLET::::- Non-pharmacological treatment: In the absence of sweat, cold-water sprays and wet towels can be used to increase the evaporative loss of heat from the skin. Shifting to a cooler or air-conditioned environments when necessary can also reduce discomfort. In the event of severe hyperthermia (body temperature 106 °F/41 °C), drastic measures such as immersion in ice-cold water are necessary to prevent irreversible brain damage.\n",
"At temperatures greater than , proteins begin losing their three-dimensional shape and start breaking down. This results in cell and tissue damage. Many of the direct health effects of a burn are secondary to disruption in the normal functioning of the skin. They include disruption of the skin's sensation, ability to prevent water loss through evaporation, and ability to control body temperature. Disruption of cell membranes causes cells to lose potassium to the spaces outside the cell and to take up water and sodium.\n",
"Erythema disappears on finger pressure (blanching), while purpura or bleeding in the skin and pigmentation do not. There is no temperature elevation, unless it is associated with the dilation of arteries in the deeper layer of the skin.\n",
"Hypothermia is reduced body temperature that happens when a body loses more heat than it generates. Hypothermia is a major limitation to swimming or diving in cold water. The reduction in finger dexterity due to pain or numbness decreases general safety and work capacity, which in turn increases the risk of other injuries. Body heat is lost much more quickly in water than in air, so water temperatures that would be tolerable as outdoor air temperatures can lead to hypothermia, which may lead to death from other causes in inadequately protected divers.\n",
"The ability of the skin to hold water is primarily due to the stratum corneum and is critical for maintaining healthy skin. Lipids arranged through a gradient and in an organized manner between the cells of the stratum corneum form a barrier to transepidermal water loss.\n"
] |
Why is it that gravity slingshots work? Don't the violate conservation of energy? | No scientist here, but I'm pretty sure that the conservation of energy is true with planets as well. The amount Neptune slowed down is probably like 0.0000000000000000001% but that was enough to propel voyager further. | [
"In orbital mechanics and aerospace engineering, a gravitational slingshot, gravity assist maneuver, or swing-by is the use of the relative movement (e.g. orbit around the Sun) and gravity of a planet or other astronomical object to alter the path and speed of a spacecraft, typically to save propellant and reduce expense.\n",
"In orbital mechanics and aerospace engineering, a gravitational slingshot, gravity assist maneuver, or swing-by is the use of the relative movement and gravity of a planet or other celestial body to alter the path and speed of a spacecraft, typically in order to save propellant, time, and expense. Gravity assistance can be used to accelerate, decelerate and/or re-direct the path of a spacecraft.\n",
"A gravitational slingshot can carry a space probe onward to other destinations without the expense of reaction mass. By harnessing the gravitational energy of other celestial objects, the spacecraft can pick up kinetic energy. However, even more energy can be obtained from the gravity assist if rockets are used.\n",
"The buoyant force is usually small compared to the drag and Magnus forces and can often be neglected. However, in the case of a basketball, the buoyant force can amount to about 1.5% of the ball's weight. Since buoyancy is directed upwards, it will act to increase the range and height of the ball.\n",
"This maneuver can only change an object's velocity relative to a third, uninvolved object, – possibly the “centre of mass” or the Sun. There is no change in the velocities of the two objects involved in the maneuver relative to each other. The Sun cannot be used in a gravitational slingshot because it is stationary compared to rest of the Solar System, which orbits the Sun. It may be used to send a spaceship or probe into the galaxy because the Sun revolves around the center of the Milky Way.\n",
"BULLET::::- For a moving gravity-source the gravitational field can be considered as an extension of the object, and carries inertia and momentum - since a direct collision with the moving object can impart momentum to an external particle, interaction with the object's gravitational field should allow \"momentum exchange\" too. Consequently, a moving gravitational field drags light and matter. This general effect is used by NASA to accelerate space probes, using the gravitational slingshot effect.\n",
"The g-force experienced by an object is due to the vector sum of all non-gravitational and non-electromagnetic forces acting on an object's freedom to move. In practice, as noted, these are surface-contact forces between objects. Such forces cause stresses and strains on objects, since they must be transmitted from an object surface. Because of these strains, large g-forces may be destructive.\n"
] |
who, or what, is citizens united, and why have they all of a sudden been in the news so much lately? | Citizens United refers to a court decision *Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission*.
Citizens United was making a movie that was critical of Hillary Clinton and wanted to advertise it before the 2008 democratic national convention. Before the ruling, it would have been illegal to do so within 80 days of an election and within 30 days of a primary.
The Supreme Court ruled that preventing a group of people (Citizens United) from expressing their opinions during an 80 day window or 30 day window was a violation of free speech.
The decision *does not* have anything to do with whether or not money is speech or corporations are people.
I know this isn't ELI5 friendly. | [
"Citizens United is known for its support of conservatives in politics. The group produced a television advertisement that reveals several legislative actions taken by John McCain, which aired on Fox News Channel. On October 2, 2006, in reaction to revelations of a cover-up of inappropriate communications between Republican Congressman Mark Foley and United States House of Representatives Page, Citizens United president David Bossie called on Dennis Hastert to resign over his role in covering up the scandal.\n",
"Citizens United's stated mission is to restore the United States government to \"citizens' control, through a combination of education, advocacy, and grass-roots organization\" seeking to \"reassert the traditional American values of limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families, and national sovereignty and security.\" Citizens United is a conservative political advocacy group organized under Section 501(c)4 of the federal tax code, meaning that donations are not tax deductible. To fulfill this mission, Citizens United produces television commercials, web advertisements, and documentary films. CU films have won film festival awards, including \"Perfect Valor\" (Best Documentary at the GI Film Festival) and \"Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny\" (Remi Award at Houston Worldfest International Festival).\n",
"Citizens United is a conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization in the United States founded in 1988. In 2010 the organization won a U.S. Supreme Court case known as \"Citizens United v. FEC\", which struck down as unconstitutional a federal law prohibiting corporations and unions from making expenditures in connection with federal elections. The organization's current president and chairman is David Bossie.\n",
"\"We the People\" was an NEH special funding stream initiated by NEH Chair Coles, using dedicated funds available to each Chair of the NEH, which was designed to encourage and enhance the teaching, study, and understanding of American history, culture, and democratic principles. The initiative supports projects and programs that explore significant events and themes in American nation's history, which advance knowledge of the principles that define America.\n",
"Citizens United was the plaintiff in a Supreme Court case that began as a challenge to various statutory provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), known as the \"McCain-Feingold\" law. The case revolved around the documentary \"Hillary: The Movie\", which was produced by Citizens United. Under the McCain-Feingold law, a federal court in Washington D.C. ruled that Citizens United would be barred from advertising its film. The case ([ 08-205], 558 U.S. 50 (2010)) was heard in the United States Supreme Court on March 24, 2009. During oral argument, the government argued that under existing precedents, it had the power under the Constitution to prohibit the publication of books and movies if they were made or sold by corporations. After that hearing, the Court requested re-argument specifically to address whether deciding the case required the Court to reconsider those earlier decisions in \"Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce\" and \"McConnell v. FEC\". The case was re-argued on September 9. On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court overturned the provision of McCain-Feingold barring corporations and unions from paying for political ads made independently of candidate campaigns. A dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens was joined by Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor. \n",
"The members of the society are male descendants of people who served in the American Revolutionary War or who contributed to establishing the independence of the United States. It is dedicated to perpetuating American ideals and traditions, and to protecting the Constitution of the United States; the official recognition of Constitution Day, Flag Day, and Bill of Rights Day were established through its efforts. It has members in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.\n",
"Citizens UK is a community organising group in the United Kingdom. It started as London Citizens in 1996, and came to national prominence during the 2010 United Kingdom general election when all three leaders of the UK's three largest political parties addressed a large meeting of its members in what it billed as the \"fourth debate\", in reference to the three TV debates. The event was notable for Gordon Brown giving what was widely described as his best speech of the campaign.\n"
] |
how do monarch butterflies migrate through multiple generations, considering that one of them can only make it part of the way? | Genetically learned traits. Basically they've been doing it so long it's become ingrained in their core. They even fly around an obsticle (can't remeber if it was a mountain or lake) that's not even there any more! A million (or whatever) years ago this feature of the Earth went away, but the butterflies still circle where it once was. | [
"Monarch butterflies are especially noted for their lengthy annual migration. In North America they make massive southward migrations starting in August until the first frost. A northward migration takes place in the spring. The monarch is the only butterfly that migrates both north and south as the birds do on a regular basis. But no single individual makes the entire round trip. Female monarchs deposit eggs for the next generation during these migrations. The length of these journeys exceeds the normal lifespan of most monarchs, which is less than two months for butterflies born in early summer. The last generation of the summer enters into a non-reproductive phase known as diapause and may live seven months or more. During diapause, butterflies fly to one of many overwintering sites. The generation that overwinters generally does not reproduce until it leaves the overwintering site sometime in February and March. It is the second, third and fourth generations that return to their northern locations in the United States and Canada in the spring. How the species manages to return to the same overwintering spots over a gap of several generations is still a subject of research; the flight patterns appear to be inherited, based on a combination of the position of the sun in the sky and a time-compensated Sun compass that depends upon a circadian clock that is based in their antennae.\n",
"In some migratory butterflies, such as the monarch butterfly and the painted lady, no individual completes the whole migration. Instead the butterflies mate and reproduce on the journey, and successive generations travel the next stage of the migration.\n",
"Monarch butterfly migration is the phenomenon, mainly across North America, where the subspecies \"Danaus plexippus plexippus\" migrates each summer and autumn to and from overwintering sites on the West Coast of California or mountainous sites in Central Mexico. Other subspecies perform minor migrations or none at all. This massive movement of butterflies has been called \"one of the most spectacular natural phenomena in the world\".\n",
"Large white butterfly migration patterns are typically observed only when there is a disturbance. In general, the large white butterfly's migratory patterns are atypical; normally, butterflies fly towards the poles in the spring, and towards the more temperate Equator during the fall. However, they fly in random directions, excluding north, in the spring, and there is little return migration observed. However, it has been hard to track entire migratory paths, since these butterflies can migrate more than 800 kilometres; thus, individual butterflies may not migrate the 800 kilometres, but rather that other butterflies start their migrations from where the other butterflies ended.\n",
"Since 2002, Reppert and coworkers have pioneered the study of the biological basis of monarch butterfly migration. Each fall, millions of monarchs from the eastern United States and southeastern Canada migrate as much as 4,000 km to overwinter in roosts in Central Mexico. Monarch migration is not a learned activity, given that migrants flying south are at least two generations removed from the previous year's migrants. Thus, migrating monarchs must have some genetically based navigational mechanism.\n",
"Many butterflies, such as the painted lady, monarch, and several danaine migrate for long distances. These migrations take place over a number of generations and no single individual completes the whole trip. The eastern North American population of monarchs can travel thousands of miles south-west to overwintering sites in Mexico. There is a reverse migration in the spring. It has recently been shown that the British painted lady undertakes a 9,000-mile round trip in a series of steps by up to six successive generations, from tropical Africa to the Arctic Circle — almost double the length of the famous migrations undertaken by monarch. Spectacular large-scale migrations associated with the monsoon are seen in peninsular India. Migrations have been studied in more recent times using wing tags and also using stable hydrogen isotopes.\n",
"The distance and length of these journeys exceeds the normal lifespan of monarchs, which is less than two months for butterflies born in early summer. The first generation leaving the overwintering sites only migrates as far north as Texas and Oklahoma. The second, third and fourth generations return to their northern breeding locations in the United States and Canada in the spring.\n"
] |
in factory shows like how it's made, who plans those assembly machines that know how to perfectly do everything? | It's usually a mechanical engineer who designs the actual machine, or an engineer in the field of what it will be making. Very complex processes are researched by engineers with a master's degree or a PhD at a university or private research company. Once they show that whatever it is they're making can be profitable, they usually sell the technology to a company who has its engineers make it faster and cheaper.
As far as the assembly line, plant layout, and human-machine interfaces, it's usually an industrial engineer. If it's a chemical plant with reaction chambers, pressure tanks, and chemical flow, it's usually a chemical engineer. Of course, being one type of engineer doesn't stop you from knowing all the things. | [
"In \"Star Trek\" a replicator is a machine that can create (and recycle) things. Replicators were originally seen to simply synthesize meals on demand, but in later series much larger non-food items appear. The technical aspects of replicated vice \"real\" things is sometimes a plot element.\n",
"Inside the Factory is a television series produced by Voltage TV for BBC. Each episode explores how a specific product is made inside a factory. The series is presented by Gregg Wallace and Cherry Healey, with historian Ruth Goodman providing a look at how products came to exist as we know them today.\n",
"The factory was one of the first factories to be designed on a factory 'Product Model' (part of the factory schema), and the factory provides a logical architectural view (and supporting runtime) for creating/modifying the work products of the factory, for the developer. This logical model separates the logical design of the factory product ‘Product Explorer’ from the physical implementation normally viewed and modified in ‘Solution Explorer’ of Visual Studio. In this way the physical structure of the solution artifacts could be separated from the logical architectural structure of the work products of the product. The factory user could now focus upon the architecture of the product, and author it using models and other abstractions, whilst the factory manages the creation, and placement of its source artifacts.\n",
"Most factories use guide rails convey products and component parts along an assembly line. This conveyor system propels products of various sizes, shapes, and dimensions through the factory over the course of their assembly.\n",
"Factory Bot, originally known as Factory Girl, is a software library for the Ruby programming language that provides factory methods to create test fixtures for automated software testing. The fixture objects can be created on the fly; they may be plain Ruby objects with a predefined state, ORM objects with existing database records or mock objects.\n",
"An assembler is used to convert assembly code into machine code (object code). A linker links several object (and library) files to generate an executable. Assemblers can also assemble directly to machine code executable files without the object intermediary step.\n",
"The machine tools often make interchangeable parts, which are assembled into subassemblies or finished assemblies, ending up sold to consumers, either directly or through other businesses at intermediate links of a value-adding chain. Alternatively, the machine tools may help make molds or dies, which then make the parts for the assemblies.\n"
] |
when a study says "n=979", what is the significance of the n? | Usually it's the amount of people that are being subjects in the study.
If you're talking about the r/science article on teens and young adults and solitude, the n=979 means that 979 teens and young adults were looked at in the study. | [
"\"N\" is the Avogadro constant (the ratio of the number of particles, \"N\", which is unitless, to the amount of substance, \"n\", in units of moles), and \"e\" is the elementary charge or the magnitude of the charge of an electron. This relation holds because the amount of charge of a mole of electrons is equal to the amount of charge in \"one\" electron multiplied by the number of electrons in a mole.\n",
"\"N\"(\"d\") is a measure of the area of the tail of the distribution relative to that of the entire distribution, e.g. the probability of tail of the distribution, at time \"t\". The tail of the distribution is delineated by , the present value of the strike price. Figure 4, Right. The true probability of expiring in-the-money in the real (“physical”) world is calculated at time \"T\", the launch date, measured by area of the tail of the distribution delineated by \"X\". \"N\"(\"d\") is the value of the option payoff relative to that of the asset; , where \"MT\" is the mean of the tail at time \"t\". Using the DM Method, the value of a call option can be understood as .\n",
"The \"n\"th term is the number of triangles with integer sides and perimeter \"n\". It is also the number of triangles with \"distinct\" integer sides and perimeter \"n\" + 6, i.e. number of triples (\"a\", \"b\", \"c\") such that 1 ≤ \"a\" \"b\" \"c\" \"a\" + \"b\", \"a\" + \"b\" + \"c\" = \"n\" + 6.\n",
"N is the number of days since midnight UT as January 1 begins (i.e. the days part of the ordinal date −1) and can include decimals to adjust for local times later or earlier in the day. The number 2, in (N-2), is the approximate number of days after January 1 to the Earth's perihelion. The number 0.0167 is the current value of the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit. The eccentricity varies very slowly over time, but for dates fairly close to the present, it can be considered to be constant. The largest errors in this equation are less than ± 0.2°, but are less than ± 0.03° for a given year if the number 10 is adjusted up or down in fractional days as determined by how far the previous year's December solstice occurred before or after noon on December 22. These accuracies are compared to NOAA's advanced calculations which are based on the 1999 Jean Meeus algorithm that is accurate to within 0.01°.\n",
"For argon, the values of k has been determined for v=33, 60 and 75. Their values, respectively, are (17 ± 5); (31 ± 9) and (43 ± 10) cm. Other authors placed the figure for k between (10 and 15) agreeing on the order of magnitude.\n",
"The distribution of the \"n\"-th digit, as \"n\" increases, rapidly approaches a uniform distribution with 10% for each of the ten digits, as shown below. Four digits is often enough to assume a uniform distribution of 10% as '0' appears 10.0176% of the time in the fourth digit while '9' appears 9.9824% of the time.\n",
"Here, \"n\" is the amount of the solute in moles, \"N\" is the number of molecules present in vol (in litres), the ratio \"N\"/\"V\" is the number concentration \"C\", and \"N\" is the Avogadro constant, approximately 6.022 mol.\n"
] |
why does our brain tune out sound that we’re constantly exposed to? | That's what our brains are designed to do. If a constant sensory input is eventually regarded as something to be ignored, your brain will do just that.
For some people, this mechanism doesn't work properly. In some cases of autism and schizophrenia for example, their brains have a hard time ignoring excess sensory input so they become very overwhelmed and over-excited. | [
"Misophonia's mechanism is not known, but it appears that, like hyperacusis, it may be caused by a dysfunction of the central auditory system in the brain and not of the ears. The perceived origin and context of the sound appears to be essential to trigger a reaction.\n",
"Auditory processing disorder is when a person \"is perfectly aware of sounds\" yet their brain abnormally deciphers the sounds. This could easily be confused with pseudo-listening because it effects a listeners' reading comprehension. The two differ because auditory processing disorder uncontrollable and unintentional, while pseudolistening is typically done purposely.\n",
"Due to plasticity of central nervous system inactive hearing centers of the brain cortex switch over to processing of sound stimuli of another frequency and intensity. The brain start perceiving sounds amplified by the hearing aid right after the initial adjustment, however, it may not process them correctly at once.\n",
"When exposed to noise, the human ear's sensitivity to sound is decreased, corresponding to an increase in the threshold of hearing. This shift is usually temporary but may become permanent. A natural physiological reaction to these threshold shifts is vasoconstriction, which will reduce the amount of blood reaching the hair cells of the organ of Corti in the cochlea. With the resultant oxygen tension and diminished blood supply reaching the outer hair cells, their response to sound levels is lessened when exposed to loud sounds, rendering them less effective and putting more stress on the inner hair cells. This can lead to fatigue and temporary hearing loss if the outer hair cells do not get the opportunity to recover through periods of silence. If these cells do not get this chance to recover, they are vulnerable to death.\n",
"Many studies have been conducted to identify the relationship between acoustics and cognition, or more commonly known as psychoacoustics, in which what one hears is a combination of perception and biological aspects. The information intercepted by the passage of sound waves through the ear is understood and interpreted through the brain, emphasizing the connection between the mind and acoustics. Psychological changes have been seen as brain waves slow down or speed up as a result of varying auditory stimulus which can in turn affect the way one thinks, feels, or even behaves. This correlation can be viewed in normal, everyday situations in which listening to an upbeat or uptempo song can cause one's foot to start tapping or a slower song can leave one feeling calm and serene. In a deeper biological look at the phenomenon of psychoacoustics, it was discovered that the central nervous system is activated by basic acoustical characteristics of music. By observing how the central nervous system, which includes the brain and spine, is influenced by acoustics, the pathway in which acoustic affects the mind, and essentially the body, is evident.\n",
"The sensitivity of a neuron increases when information from many receptors is collected and integrated - an event called pooling. While this allows a cell to focus predominantly on the actions that are directly involved with the stimulus, it also combines the noise, which increases the overall amount of noise present in the system.\n",
"Psychological noise results from preconceived notions we bring to conversations, such as racial stereotypes, reputations, biases, and assumptions. When we come into a conversation with ideas about what the other person is going to say and why, we can easily become blinded to their original message. Most of the time psychological noise is impossible to free ourselves from, and we must simply strive to recognize that it exists and take those distractions into account when we converse with others.\n"
] |
why is tomato sauce (ketchup) so ubiquitous? what is it about the flavour of tomatoes in particular that makes it so universally used with such a range of other foods? | I don't think it's the flavour of tomatoes per se (because ketchup *doesn't* taste like tomato) so much as the availability and relative cheapness of ketchup's key ingredients that makes it so common. It's easy to produce in large quantities, it's inexpensive, and it has a long shelf life.
You might also be able to sell the idea that the bright colour appeals to children, so they "like" it and parents decide to put it on anything their child refuses to eat in order to get them to choke it down. That's what my parents did, after all. | [
"Prior to Heinz (and his fellow innovators), commercial tomato ketchups of that time were watery and thin, in part due to the use of unripe tomatoes, which were low in pectin. They had less vinegar than modern ketchups; by pickling ripe tomatoes, the need for benzoate was eliminated without spoilage or degradation in flavor. But the changes driven by the desire to eliminate benzoate also produced changes that some experts (such as Andrew F. Smith) believe were key to the establishment of tomato ketchup as the dominant American condiment.\n",
"In countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the term \"tomato sauce\" is used to describe a condiment similar to ketchup. In some of these countries, both terms are used for the condiment.\n",
"Tomato sauce (also known as Neapolitan sauce, salsa roja in Spanish, or salsa di pomodoro in Italian) can refer to a large number of different sauces made primarily from tomatoes, usually to be served as part of a dish, rather than as a condiment. Tomato sauces are common for meat and vegetables, but they are perhaps best known as bases for Mexican salsas or sauces for pasta dishes. Tomatoes have a rich flavor, high water content, soft flesh which breaks down easily, and the right composition to thicken into a sauce when they are cooked (without the need of thickeners such as roux). All of these qualities make them ideal for simple and appealing sauces.\n",
"\"Tomato sauce\" is more common in English-speaking countries outside North America, including Australia and New Zealand. However, in Canada and the United States, \"tomato sauce\" is not a synonym for ketchup but a sauce made from tomato paste and commonly eaten with pasta.\n",
"Most jarred, canned, and bottled salsa and picante sauces sold in the United States in grocery stores are forms of \"salsa cruda\" or \"pico de gallo\", and typically have a semi-liquid texture. To increase their shelf lives, these salsas have been cooked to a temperature of , and are thus not truly \"cruda\" (raw). Some have added vinegar, and some use pickled peppers instead of fresh ones. Tomatoes are strongly acidic by nature, which, along with the heat processing, is enough to stabilize the product for grocery distribution.\n",
"Just like tomato puree or tomato paste, tomato sauce may be one of the ingredients in other dishes, like a tomato-based soup. The sauce is thinner than either the puree, or the paste (which is the thickest), and it may have additional flavors.\n",
"Tomato ketchup is most often used as a condiment to dishes that are usually served hot and may be fried or greasy: french fries, hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken tenders, tater tots, hot sandwiches, meat pies, cooked eggs, and grilled or fried meat. Ketchup is sometimes used as the basis for, or as one ingredient in, other sauces and dressings, and the flavor may be replicated as an additive flavoring for snacks such as potato chips.\n"
] |
how does money get printed and why isn't the technology used to do it commercialized? | If you want to be blunt, money printing technology IS commercialised. There are only a handful of companies around the world who manufacture the machinery for the production process, but they ARE companies. Selling to all the government customers who need their products.
But, you know. One of the reasons that they are still in business is that they flat out refuse to sell their products if you can't provide proof that you indeed are a government entity who is actually authorised to produce money for a country's central bank.
If you boil it down, every time there is new, fancy production abilities that roll out to government customers, counterfeiters start to look at and analyse the new bills in an attempt to copy the manufacturing process close enough that it's difficult to tell the bills apart.
Which means that every few years, the official manufacturers have to come up with a new, fancy anti-counterfeit measure. And every few years, the circulated money has to start being replaced with bills that are a hint more difficult to copy than last years money.
Occasionally, it comes to the point where you just can't keep the old ones in circulation any longer because they are too easy to copy; Every 10-15 years or so, central banks tend to issue bulletins where they declare that a certain bill design is going to have it's value nulled and voided. | [
"Print-on-demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies (or other documents) are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of single or small quantities. While other industries established the build to order business model, \"print-on-demand\" could only develop after the beginning of digital printing, because it was not economical to print single copies using traditional printing technology such as letterpress and offset printing.\n",
"Printed media is the most basic form of media advertising. It is the most challenging to create strong imagery with, due to its lack of sensory stimulation, but can be effective in efficient, clear information communication and message delivery. Where a consumer may miss a message in video or audio (perhaps a loud noise interrupts, or someone blocks their view) in print the message remains visible indefinitely. Aspects such as size, colour and style can be used to increase effectiveness relative to other print advertisements, which is important as despite being a basic media communication channel, print is the second largest medium after television (Ang, 2014. \"Principles of Integrated Marketing Communications\". Page 126.).\n",
"This technology is often leveraged in web-to-print solutions for corporate intranets to enable customization and ordering of printed materials, advertising automation workflows inside of advertising agencies, catalog generation solutions for retailers and variable digital print on demand solutions for highly personalized one to one marketing. The output from these solutions is often printed by a digital printing press.\n",
"The advances made by technology in print also impact anyone using cell phones, laptops, and personal digital organizers. From novels being delivered via a cell phone, the ability to text message and send letters via e-mail clients, to having entire libraries stored on PDAs, print is being influenced by devices.\n",
"Although not a digital storage medium in itself, printing hard-copies of documents and images remains a popular means of representing digital data and possibly acquires the qualities associated with original documents especially their potential for endurance. More recent advances in printer technology have raised the quality of photographic images in particular. Unfortunately the permanence of printed documents cannot be easily discerned from the documents themselves.\n",
"Print media are paper based media methods like magazines, newspaper, books, flyers or posters. Therefore, print advertising generally includes a higher resource use in terms of paper, compared to digital radio and television campaigns.\n",
"For the roughly 20% of demand which is not purchased by a daily newspaper, common end uses include the printing of weekly newspapers, advertising flyers and other printed products, generally by a commercial printer, a company whose business consists largely of printing products for other companies using its presses. In such a case, the newsprint may be purchased by the printer on behalf of an advertiser or a weekly newspaper publisher, or it may be purchased by the client and then ordered to be shipped to the printer's location.\n"
] |
why are so many bombs that are dropped from planes duds? | No, we look for stable explosives. These things get shipped and stored (and reshipped, re-stored) possibly being handled dozens or hundreds of times before use or disposal.
If just dropping things made them explode, we would have lost at least one of the Carolinas to dropped nukes. Nuclear weapons are triggered using more conventional explosives.
Since we are trying to make the accidental rate zero, it works out pretty well that so few weapons turn out to be 'duds'. | [
"In military parlance an aircraft-dropped 'dibber bomb' is an anti-runway penetration bomb which destroys runways by first penetrating below the tarmac before exploding, cratering, and displacing the surface, making repairs difficult and time consuming, during which conventional airplanes can neither land nor takeoff.\n",
"BULLET::::- February 28 – Aircraft of the U.S. Army Air Forces Eleventh Air Force have dropped of bombs on Japanese bases in the Aleutian Islands during the month, although half of their sorties have suffered from icy and corroded bomb racks that fail to release bombs.\n",
"A flying bomb is a manned or unmanned aerial vehicle or aircraft carrying a large explosive warhead, a precursor to contemporary cruise missiles. In contrast to a bomber aircraft, which is intended to release bombs and then return to its base for re-use, a flying bomb crashes into its target and is therefore itself destroyed in its attack.\n",
"In low-altitude attacks, there is a danger of the attacking aircraft being caught in the blast of its own weapons. To address this problem, GP bombs are often fitted with \"retarders\", parachutes or pop-out fins that slow the bomb's descent to allow the aircraft time to escape the detonation.\n",
"Initially, this was effected by multiple aircraft, often returning to the target in waves. Nowadays, a large bomber or missile can be used to create the same effect on a small area (an airfield, for example) by releasing a relatively large number of smaller bombs.\n",
"On 30 June an HRW report stated that US-made bombs were being used in attacks indiscriminately targeting civilians and violating the laws of war. The report photographed \"the remnants of an MK-83 air-dropped 1,000-pound bomb made in the US\".\n",
"Fuzes for air-dropped bombs have generally used an internally mounted inertia fuze, triggered by the sudden deceleration on impact. Owing to the risk of an aircraft crash, or even the need to land with an undropped bomb still on board, these are protected by sophisticated safety systems so that the fuze can only be triggered after it has been dropped intentionally.\n"
] |
In the middle ages, was romantic love between spouses encouraged or considered profane? | "Middle ages" covers a huge amount of time; could you be more specific? Also, where? | [
"Since at the time some marriages among nobility had little to do with modern perspectives of what constitutes love, courtly love was also a way for nobles to express the love not found in their marriage. \"Lovers\" in the context of courtly love need not refer to sex, but rather to the act of loving. These \"lovers\" had short trysts in secret, which escalated mentally, but might not physically. On the other hand, continual references to beds and sleeping in the lover's arms in medieval sources such as the troubador \"albas\" and romances such as Chrétien's \"Lancelot\" imply at least in some cases a context of actual sexual intercourse.\n",
"The conception of romantic love was popularized in Western culture by the concept of courtly love. Chevaliers, or knights in the Middle Ages, engaged in what were usually non-physical and non-marital relationships with women of nobility whom they served. These relations were highly elaborate and ritualized in a complexity that was steeped in a framework of tradition, which stemmed from theories of etiquette derived out of chivalry as a moral code of conduct.\n",
"In the Middle Ages and Early Modern European history, it was unusual to marry out of love, but then doing so became an influential ideal. During this period, a husband in a heterosexual marriage had more opportunities in society than his wife, who was not recognized as legally independent.\n",
"The purpose of marriage between the medieval elites was to secure land. Girls were married in their teens, but boys did not marry until they came of age. There is a popular conception that women played a peripheral role in the medieval castle household, and that it was dominated by the lord himself. This derives from the image of the castle as a martial institution, but most castles in England, France, Ireland, and Scotland were never involved in conflicts or sieges, so the domestic life is a neglected facet. The lady was given a dower of her husband's estates – usually about a third – which was hers for life, and her husband would inherit on her death. It was her duty to administer them directly, as the lord administered his own land. Despite generally being excluded from military service, a woman could be in charge of a castle, either on behalf of her husband or if she was widowed. Because of their influence within the medieval household, women influenced construction and design, sometimes through direct patronage; historian Charles Coulson emphasises the role of women in applying \"a refined aristocratic taste\" to castles due to their long term residence.\n",
"Louise Sylvester, in a study of heterosexuality in medieval romance, argues that the love affair between Melydor and Degrevant develops according to stereotypical masculinist heterosexual Western patterns. Love happens to people and is not an act of will; Degrevant, as a strong knight, is undone by his feelings and loses all interest in other activities, such as hunting; he vehemently denies the suggestion by his squire that he be interested in the daughter because of the earl's wealth; at least the initial encounter between the two lovers is completely dominated by his perspective and his feelings. Moreover, she notes after a linguistic analysis that even Melydor's very language (which has more slips and meaningless tags than Degrevant's), which Sylvester qualifies as \"powerless speech,\" serves to deny her an independent and powerful status.\n",
"Romance was connected with magic and sorcery even until the 18th century when it became a prevalent literary theme. Neighbors suspected magic to be the cause of people so passionate they lost their senses. Christianity supported marriage and child-bearing, but it did not support the pursuit of pleasures of the flesh. This ban did not stop people from employing the Devil to get their share of pleasure. For men the usual aim was sex, but for women it could have been to get married, exact revenge, or regain a husband’s affection.\n",
"Courtly love ( ; ) was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various deeds or services for ladies because of their \"courtly love\". This kind of love is originally a literary fiction created for the entertainment of the nobility, but as time passed, these ideas about love changed and attracted a larger audience. In the high Middle Ages, a \"game of love\" developed around these ideas as a set of social practices. \"Loving nobly\" was considered to be an enriching and improving practice.\n"
] |
How were the relative abundances of chemical isotopes discovered (without sampling every atom on earth)? | Statistical Sampling. Take a bunch of randomly selected lumps of earth and see what they contain. The error between measured values and the true values will decease in proportion to the square root of the number of samples taken. This is the same reason that voter surveys don't have to ask every voter to come up with a reliable result. | [
"The relative abundances of different isotopes are then used to describe the chemical fractionation of different isotopes, travel in different reservoirs of non-radiogenic isotopes, and age or origins of solar system objects by the presence of radiogenic daughter isotopes.\n",
"The tabulated atomic masses of elements are averages that account for the presence of multiple isotopes with different masses. Before the discovery of isotopes, empirically determined noninteger values of atomic mass confounded scientists. For example, a sample of chlorine contains 75.8% chlorine-35 and 24.2% chlorine-37, giving an average atomic mass of 35.5 atomic mass units.\n",
"For a single given sample, the relative atomic mass of a given element is the weighted arithmetic mean of the masses of the individual atoms (including their isotopes) that are present in the sample. This quantity can vary substantially between samples because the sample's origin (and therefore its radioactive history or diffusion history) may have produced unique combinations of isotopic abundances. For example, due to a different mixture of stable carbon-12 and carbon-13 isotopes, a sample of elemental carbon from volcanic methane will have a different relative atomic mass than one collected from plant or animal tissues.\n",
"While experimenting with the products of radioactive decay, in 1913 radiochemist Frederick Soddy discovered that there appeared to be more than one type of atom at each position on the periodic table. The term isotope was coined by Margaret Todd as a suitable name for different atoms that belong to the same element. J.J. Thomson created a technique for isotope separation through his work on ionized gases, which subsequently led to the discovery of stable isotopes.\n",
"The existence of isotopes was first suggested in 1913 by the radiochemist Frederick Soddy, based on studies of radioactive decay chains that indicated about 40 different species referred to as \"radioelements\" (i.e. radioactive elements) between uranium and lead, although the periodic table only allowed for 11 elements from uranium to lead.\n",
"This method is widely used in radiometric dating, where the sample is ionized under vacuum. The ions being produced at the filament are focussed into an ion beam and then passed through a magnetic field to separate them by mass. The relative abundances of different isotopes can then be measured, yielding isotope ratios.\n",
"For many geologic applications, isotope ratios of radioactive elements are measured in minerals that give the amount of time that has passed since a rock passed through its particular closure temperature, the point at which different radiometric isotopes stop diffusing into and out of the crystal lattice. These are used in geochronologic and thermochronologic studies. Common methods include uranium-lead dating, potassium-argon dating, argon-argon dating and uranium-thorium dating. These methods are used for a variety of applications. Dating of lava and volcanic ash layers found within a stratigraphic sequence can provide absolute age data for sedimentary rock units that do not contain radioactive isotopes and calibrate relative dating techniques. These methods can also be used to determine ages of pluton emplacement.\n"
] |
how do air conditioners work? is the working of a window ac different from a split ac? | Both work in the same way, although a split system is obviously more aesthetic and flexible (although also more difficult to install).
The basic concept is simple. When you compress a gas it gets hotter, when you decompress it it gets colder: this is doubly true if it transitions to liquid when compressed (gas does this: water can boil at low enough pressure at room temp). You might have experienced this with deodorant, the liquid decompresses into gas and it's cold on the skin, near the end of the can it starts to feel almost warm (actually just room temp but you expect cold).
An A/C just works by cycling a refrigerant fluid (generally one with a boiling point near room temperature so it responds a lot to pressure changes) around. On one side it's compressed, then ran through a radiator to cool it. This is the hot side. On the other side it's decompressed, then ran through a radiator to warm it, this is the cold side.
Thus an A/C is a heat pump that can move heat from A to B. The cold side faces inwards, with fans blowing air over the cold "radiator" to cool the air. The outward side has fans to keep the warm side radiator as close to ambient temperature as possible, to keep efficiency up.
In the States normally to cool a room by removing heat. In New Zealand lots of people get general purpose heat pumps that can cool the room in summer, but also pump in heat efficiently in the Winter (heat pump efficiency is dependent on the difference in temperature, NZ has quite mild winters so it's much more efficient that just using an electric heater). | [
"Air conditioners often use a fan to distribute the conditioned air to an occupied space such as a building or a car to improve thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Electric refrigerant-based AC units range from small units that can cool a small bedroom, which can be carried by a single adult, to massive units installed on the roof of office towers that can cool an entire building. The cooling is typically achieved through a refrigeration cycle, but sometimes evaporation or free cooling is used. Air conditioning systems can also be made based on desiccants (chemicals which remove moisture from the air). Some AC systems reject or store heat in subterranean pipes.\n",
"Split-system air conditioners come in two forms: mini-split and central systems. In both types, the inside-environment (evaporative) heat exchanger is separated by some distance from the outside-environment (condensing unit) heat exchanger.\n",
"BULLET::::- Air conditioner – Air conditioning (often referred to as AC, A/C, or air con) is the process of removing heat and moisture from the interior of an occupied space, to improve the comfort of occupants. Air conditioning can be used in both domestic and commercial environments.\n",
"Unlike residential air conditioners, most modern commercial air conditioning systems do not transfer heat directly into the exterior air. The thermodynamic efficiency of the overall system can be improved by utilizing evaporative cooling, where the temperature of the cooling water is lowered close to the wet-bulb temperature by evaporation in a cooling tower. This cooled water then acts \n",
"Window unit air conditioners are installed in an open window. The interior air is cooled as a fan blows it over the evaporator. On the exterior the heat drawn from the interior is dissipated into the environment as a second fan blows outside air over the condenser. A large house or building may have several such units, allowing each room to be cooled separately.\n",
"Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the technology of indoor and vehicular environmental comfort. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. HVAC system design is a subdiscipline of mechanical engineering, based on the principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and heat transfer. \"Refrigeration\" is sometimes added to the field's abbreviation, as HVAC&R or HVACR or \"ventilation\" is dropped, as in HACR (as in the designation of HACR-rated circuit breakers).\n",
"Inverter air conditioners use the inside coil temperature sensor to keep the evaporator as cold as possible. When the evaporator is too cold, the compressor is slowed or stopped with the indoor fan running.\n"
] |
how is a qubit in a quantum computer physically represented? | Well, first off, voltage actually *can* be analog. It is simply less efficient to do that. You can have 1 volt, 2 volts, or 1.26947298 volts. In quantum computers, the quibit is stored in a quantum state of a particle. I'll use photons as an example because I actually understand them: Photons can be polarized. Their polarity is basically a direction. If we choose two directions and say they represent 1 and 0, then anything between these two is a little bit of both. If it is closer to 1, then it is a higher percentage 1. The bit is represented by the polarity of the photon. | [
"In a quantum computer, the fundamental unit of information (called a quantum bit or qubit), is not binary but rather more quaternary in nature. This qubit property arises as a direct consequence of its adherence to the laws of quantum mechanics, which differ radically from the laws of classical physics. A qubit can exist not only in a state corresponding to the logical state 0 or 1 as in a classical bit, but also in states corresponding to a blend or quantum superposition of these classical states. In other words, a qubit can exist as a zero, a one, or simultaneously as both 0 and 1, with a numerical coefficient representing the probability for each state. A quantum computer manipulates qubits by executing a series of quantum gates, each a unitary transformation acting on a single qubit or pair of qubits. In applying these gates in succession, a quantum computer can perform a complicated unitary transformation to a set of qubits in some initial state.\n",
"In quantum computing, a qubit () or quantum bit (sometimes qbit) is the basic unit of quantum information—the quantum version of the classical binary bit physically realized with a two-state device. A qubit is a two-state (or two-level) quantum-mechanical system, one of the simplest quantum systems displaying the peculiarity of quantum mechanics. Examples include: the spin of the electron in which the two levels can be taken as spin up and spin down; or the polarization of a single photon in which the two states can be taken to be the vertical polarization and the horizontal polarization. In a classical system, a bit would have to be in one state or the other. However, quantum mechanics allows the qubit to be in a coherent superposition of both states/levels simultaneously, a property which is fundamental to quantum mechanics and quantum computing.\n",
"Take a qubit for example. It can be represented by two complex numbers, called probability amplitudes (normalised to 1), that is three real numbers (two polar angles and one radius). Copying three numbers on a classical computer using any copy and paste operation is trivial (up to a finite precision) but the problem manifests if the qubit is unitarily transformed (e.g. by the Hadamard quantum gate) to be polarised (which unitary transformation is a surjective isometry). In such a case the qubit can be represented by just two real numbers (one polar angle and one radius equal to 1), while the value of the third can be arbitrary in such a representation. Yet a realisation of a qubit (polarisation-encoded photon, for example) is capable of storing the whole qubit information support within its \"structure\". Thus no single universal unitary evolution \"U\" can clone an arbitrary quantum state according to the no-cloning theorem. It would have to depend on the transformed qubit (initial) state and thus would not have been \"universal\".\n",
"A physical qubit is a physical device that behaves as a two-state quantum system, used as a component of a computer system. A logical qubit is a physical or abstract qubit that performs as specified in a quantum algorithm or quantum circuit subject to unitary transformations, has a long enough coherence time to be usable by quantum logic gates (c.f. propagation delay for classical logic gates).\n",
"A classical computer has a memory made up of bits, where each bit is represented by either a one or a zero. A quantum computer, on the other hand, maintains a sequence of qubits, which can represent a one, a zero, or any quantum superposition of those two qubit states; a pair of qubits can be in any quantum superposition of 4 states, and three qubits in any superposition of 8 states. In general, a quantum computer with formula_1 qubits can be in any superposition of up to formula_2 different states. (This compares to a normal computer that can only be in \"one\" of these formula_2 states at any one time).\n",
"A quantum computer with a given number of qubits is fundamentally different from a classical computer composed of the same number of classical bits. For example, representing the state of an \"n\"-qubit system on a classical computer requires the storage of 2 complex coefficients, while to characterize the state of a classical \"n\"-bit system it is sufficient to provide the values of the \"n\" bits, that is, only \"n\" numbers. Although this fact may seem to indicate that qubits can hold exponentially more information than their classical counterparts, care must be taken not to overlook the fact that the qubits are only in a probabilistic superposition of all of their states. This means that when the final state of the qubits is measured, they will only be found in one of the possible configurations they were in before the measurement. It is generally incorrect to think of a system of qubits as being in one particular state before the measurement. The qubits are in a superposition of states before any measurement is made, which directly affects the possible outcomes of the computation.\n",
"Qubits are fundamental to quantum computing and are somewhat analogous to bits in a classical computer. Qubits can be in a 1 or 0 quantum state. But they can also be in a superposition of the 1 and 0 states. However, when qubits are measured the result is always either a 0 or a 1; the probabilities of the two outcomes depends on the quantum state they were in.\n"
] |
What Are The Long Term (Next 100 years) Implications For The Higgs Boson Discovery? | _URL_0_
You'll see that the question of future implication has been asked many times there as well.
The problem with trying to predict future implication is that there are too many unknowns. If you ask about the implications of quantum mechanics 80 years ago, it is not immediately obvious that tunnelling electron microscopes and MRIs will become mainstream instruments. | [
"An initial focus of research was to investigate the possible existence of the Higgs boson, a key part of the Standard Model of physics which is predicted by theory but had not yet been observed before due to its high mass and elusive nature. CERN scientists estimated that, if the Standard Model were correct, the LHC would produce several Higgs bosons every minute, allowing physicists to finally confirm or disprove the Higgs boson's existence. In addition, the LHC allowed the search for supersymmetric particles and other hypothetical particles as possible unknown areas of physics. Some extensions of the Standard Model predict additional particles, such as the heavy W' and Z' gauge bosons, which are also estimated to be within reach of the LHC to discover.\n",
"Following the 2012 discovery, it was still unconfirmed whether or not the 125 GeV/\"c\" particle was a Higgs boson. On one hand, observations remained consistent with the observed particle being the Standard Model Higgs boson, and the particle decayed into at least some of the predicted channels. Moreover, the production rates and branching ratios for the observed channels broadly matched the predictions by the Standard Model within the experimental uncertainties. However, the experimental uncertainties currently still left room for alternative explanations, meaning an announcement of the discovery of a Higgs boson would have been premature. To allow more opportunity for data collection, the LHC's proposed 2012 shutdown and 2013–14 upgrade were postponed by 7 weeks into 2013.\n",
"On 8 October 2013, following the discovery at CERN's Large Hadron Collider of a new particle that appeared to be the long-sought Higgs boson predicted by the theory, it was announced that Peter Higgs and François Englert had been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics.\n",
"Baggott felt that the CERN people were getting really close to discovering the Higgs boson and approached his editor about writing on the topic. His idea was to start writing the book, get about 95% done, and then, when the discovery was announced, he would be able to finish the last 5% and the book would be on the shelves very soon after the announcement. Throughout 2011 and 2012 he kept updating the book, leaving the last 1,500 words unsaid. He watched CERN's live webcast announce the discovery of the boson on 4 July and finished writing the book the next day.\n",
"After the discovery of the Higgs boson, he computed the probability that the Higgs vacuum undergoes quantum tunnelling, finding that the universe is in a critical state which will eventually end in a cosmic collapse. He joined the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)'s theory division as a fellow in 2000, and as a member of the CMS Collaboration, he was a credited coauthor on the paper which announced the Higgs boson discovery; his primary affiliation was Estonia's National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics. Along with Joseph Lykken and other collaborators, he later proposed the \"modified naturalness\" hypothesis for the Higgs boson's mass. \n",
"Her research on the Higgs boson, which she presented in Vilamoura, Portugal, in 2011, predicted with high accuracy the mass of the Higgs boson. Her prediction was identical to the value later reported on July 4, 2012, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider.\n",
"On July 2, 2012, anticipating an announcement from CERN of the discovery of the Higgs boson, the DØ and CDF collaborations announced their evidence (at about three standard deviations) for Higgs bosons decaying into the dominant b quark final states, which indicated that the particle had a mass between 115 and 135 GeV/c. On July 4, 2012, CERN's ATLAS and CMS experiments announced their discovery of the Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV/c.\n"
] |
why is evolution banned in some schools? | Okay, so there are a sub-group of Christians called "Fundamentalists". They believe that the Bible is *literally* true. And Genesis says that the Earth was created in 6 days, along with humans and all the animals. They were literally created, in six days.
But Evolution specifically says that animals (and since humans are animals) change and evolve over time from other animals. Humans too would logically have developed from some sort of lower form of animal.
This directly contradicts the *literal* interpretation of Biblical creation, since evolution takes far longer than the 6 days + ~6000 years of human civilization.
So thats the basic idea. In some areas of America, Fundamentalists are extremely politically powerful, so they want to keep kids from learning about "dangerous" beliefs. | [
"BULLET::::- 2004 - On January 30, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter released a statement condemning the suggestion that the word \"evolution\" be banned from textbooks used in schools in the state of Georgia.\n",
"An objection is often made in the teaching of evolution that evolution is controversial or contentious. Unlike past creationist arguments which sought to abolish the teaching of evolution altogether, this argument makes the weaker claim that evolution should be presented alongside alternative views since it is controversial, and students should be allowed to evaluate and choose between the options on their own.\n",
"These books became widely used in the nation's high schools, and as a consequence, the public controversy about the teaching of evolution in public schools re-ignited. After a 1968 Supreme Court decision nullified decades-old laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution in many places of the country, some evolution opponents turned their efforts against the public funding of evolutionary teaching, including publicly funded textbooks. The BSCS textbooks were featured in the 1973 case \"Willoughby v. Stever\", a suit filed by an evangelical opponent of evolution who attempted, and failed, to have the evolution instruction in the textbook legally recognized as an unconstitutional establishment of religious secularism. The case was dismissed as meritless, and was cited as legal precedent in other groundbreaking decisions in the American cultural battle over evolution in the schools.\n",
"Assuming for the purposes of argument, however, that evolution is a religion or religious tenet, the remedy is to stop the teaching of evolution, not establish another religion in opposition to it. Yet it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause, Epperson v. Arkansas, supra, Willoughby v. Stever, No. 15574-75 (D.D.C. May 18, 1973); aff'd. 504 F.2d 271 (D.C. Cir. 1974), cert. denied , 420 U.S. 924 (1975); Wright v. Houston Indep. School Dist., 366 F. Supp. 1208 (S.D. Tex 1978), aff.d. 486 F.2d 137 (5th Cir. 1973), cert. denied 417 U.S. 969 (1974).\n",
"For example, the Democratic Party politician William Jennings Bryan \"became convinced that the teaching of Evolution as a fact caused the students to lose faith in the Bible, first, in the story of creation, and later in other doctrines, which underlie the Christian religion.\"\n",
"Internationally, evolution is taught in science courses with limited controversy, with the exception of a few areas of the United States and several Islamic fundamentalist countries. In the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled the teaching of creationism as science in public schools to be unconstitutional, irrespective of how it may be purveyed in theological or religious instruction. In the United States, intelligent design (ID) has been represented as an alternative explanation to evolution in recent decades, but its \"demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions\" have been ruled unconstitutional by a lower court.\n",
"The precedent set in \"Epperson\", in which the Court concluded the sole motive behind the ban against evolution teaching in Arkansas was to protect a particular religious view, effectively nullified all other related evolution education prohibitions throughout the United States. Within a short time of the \"Epperson\" decision, religious opponents of the teaching attempted through other means to lessen its influence in the curriculum, including requiring schools to teach biblical creation alongside evolution or forcing schools to provide disclaimers that evolution was \"only a theory\". These attempts eventually resulted in precedent-setting court decisions including \"McLean v. Arkansas\", and ultimately \"Edwards v. Aguillard\", which struck down a Louisiana statute as unconstitutional.\n"
] |
Will we ever be able to reach The Core of the Earth? | It is impossible.
Why?
No material can survive the temperatures at the center of the Earth. Even the strongest therotical chemical bond degrades at about 4000 degrees C. Tungsten melts at 3400 degrees C.
This means that even a craft build out of the strongest materials physically possible will melt before it reaches the outer core.
The other option is ablative armor. It is armor designed to sacrificially melt away and protect the lower layers. The problem is that you would need a craft that either makes the down and up trip very very quickly... or is kilometers thick at the start, and returns as a stick. | [
"A novel method of exploring the uppermost few hundred kilometres of the Earth was proposed in 2005, consisting of a small, dense, heat-generating probe which melts its way down through the crust and mantle while its position and progress are tracked by acoustic signals generated in the rocks. The probe consists of an outer sphere of tungsten about one metre in diameter with a cobalt-60 interior acting as a radioactive heat source. This should take half a year to reach the oceanic Moho.\n",
"The Earth was discovered to have a solid inner core distinct from its molten outer core in 1936, by the Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann, who deduced its presence by studying seismograms from earthquakes in New Zealand. She observed that the seismic waves reflect off the boundary of the inner core and can be detected by sensitive seismographs on the Earth's surface. She inferred a radius of 1400 km for the inner core, not very far from the currently accepted value of 1221 km. In 1938, B. Gutenberg and C. Richter analyzed a more extensive set of data and estimated the thickness of the outer core as 1950 km with a steep but continuous 300 km thick transition to the inner core; implying a radius between 1230 and 1530 km for the inner core.\n",
"Herndon suggested that the composition of the inner core of Earth is nickel silicide; the conventional view is that it is iron–nickel alloy More recently, he has suggested \"georeactor\" planetocentric nuclear fission reactors as energy sources for the gas giant outer planets. \n",
"A novel method of exploring the uppermost few hundred kilometres of the Earth was proposed in 2005, consisting of a small, dense, heat-generating probe which melts its way down through the crust and mantle while its position and progress are tracked by acoustic signals generated in the rocks. The probe consists of an outer sphere of tungsten about one metre in diameter with a cobalt-60 interior acting as a radioactive heat source. It was calculated that such a probe will reach the oceanic \"Moho\" in less than 6 months and attain minimum depths of well over in a few decades beneath both oceanic and continental lithosphere.\n",
"The understanding of what is at the centre of the earth, the earth core, requires the framework of density gradients in which elements and compounds then interact. Fast breeder nuclear reactor at the core of the earth is one theory by reason of density gradient and supported and espoused by J. Marvin Herndon (7 & 8).\n",
"Theories about the age of the core are necessarily part of theories of the history of Earth as a whole. This has been a long debated topic and is still under discussion at the present time. It is widely believed that the Earth's solid inner core formed out of an initially completely liquid core as the Earth cooled down. However, there is still no firm evidence about the time when this process started.\n",
"Almost all direct measurements that we have about the physical properties of the inner core are the seismic waves that pass through it. The most informative waves are generated by deep earthquakes, 30 km or more below the surface of the Earth (where the mantle is relatively more homogeneous) and recorded by seismographs as they reach the surface, all over the globe.\n"
] |
Did the Nazis ever seriously consider invading Ireland? | I don't think so. Because the German Navy suffered such heavy losses to the Royal Navy in the Invasion of Norway in mid 1940, the Nazis never again had the power to contest the Allies at sea. To somewhat circumvent this, the Blitz was meant to gain air superiority over a potential invasion of England over the English Channel. Operation Sea Lion, however, was postponed on September 15, 1940 when the Luftwaffe incurred a particularly heavy defeat at the hands of the Royal Air Force. By October, Operation Sea Lion was called off completely by Hitler. So as to a potential invasion of Ireland, The Luftwaffe could not support any potential sea landing because it would be outside of their range and the Nazis also did not have a Navy that could contest the Royal Navy. One of the United Kingdom's greatest strengths in World War II turned out to be its island nation that the Wehrmacht could not take advantage of.
Zeiler, Thomas. "Annihilation A Global Military History of World War II". Oxford University Press, 2011. | [
"Discussions over the possible German invasion of Ireland had been ongoing in Britain since the beginning of 1939. In June 1940, Britain's political and military establishment had witnessed the seemingly invincible German Blitzkrieg which led to the defeat of Poland, the Low Countries, and France, and the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. The British suspected that, following their defeat in France, the next step would be a German invasion of Britain – Operation Sea Lion. They did not know, but also suspected, that there was a plan to invade neutral Ireland – Operation Green.\n",
"Although the British action was to forestall any risk of a German invasion, there is no evidence that the Germans had an invasion planned. There was however German \"interest\" in seizing Iceland. In a postwar interview with an American, Walter Warlimont claimed, \"Hitler definitely was interested in occupying Iceland prior to [British] occupation. In the first place, he wanted to prevent \"anyone else\" from coming there; and, in the second place, he also wanted to use Iceland as an air base for the protection of our submarines operating in that area\". After the British invasion, the Germans drew up a report to examine the feasibility of seizing Iceland, Operation Ikarus. The report found that while an invasion could be successful, maintaining supply lines would be too costly and the benefits of holding Iceland would not outweigh the costs (there was, for instance, insufficient infrastructure for aircraft in Iceland).\n",
"Although the British action was to forestall any risk of a German invasion, there is no evidence that the Germans had an invasion planned. There was, however, German \"interest\" in seizing Iceland. In a postwar interview, Walter Warlimont claimed that \"Hitler definitely was interested in occupying Iceland prior to [British] occupation. In the first place, he wanted to prevent \"anyone else\" from coming there; and, in the second place, he also wanted to use Iceland as an air base for the protection of our submarines operating in that area\".\n",
"The German military also drew up plans detailing how an invasion of Ireland might take place. These plans were titled Plan Green and any invasion was to act as a diversionary attack in support of a main attack to conquer Britain titled Operation Sea Lion. Both of these plans were shelved by 1942. Germans also came to Ireland, the most notable of whom was Hermann Görtz, who was captured in possession of \"Plan Kathleen\" — an IRA plan that detailed a Nazi supported invasion of Northern Ireland.\n",
"Green dealt only with the plan for invasion, as no details on any subjugation of the population and eventual conquest of the entire island were included. Among the Irish population, however, there was an element of support for the Third Reich due to resentment of British rule. Sketchiness with regards to the plan has contributed to an assessment that it was more a diversionary attack than actual attempt to take over the island, although once committed it may have been hard for the German forces to withdraw.\n",
"Although Ireland was officially neutral, after the German Blitzkriegs of 1939–40 that resulted in the defeat of Poland, the Low Countries and France, the British recognised that Germany planned an invasion of Britain (Operation Sea Lion) and were also concerned about the possibility of a German invasion of Ireland. German planning for Operation Green began in May 1940 and the British began intercepting communications about it in June. The British were interested in securing Ireland, as its capture by German forces would expose their western flank and provide a base of operations for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of the Atlantic and in any operations launched to invade Great Britain as part of Operation Sea Lion.\n",
"The Irish Government chose to interpret this sentence as a threat of invasion. Some sort of armed occupation was a real possibility, but the balance of evidence is that there was never a serious threat. Large elements of the British cabinet and government and those of its allies were opposed to any armed intervention in Ireland; however, in late 1940 and early 1941, relations between the two countries did worsen. The British stopped informing Ireland of its order of battle in Northern Ireland, while the Irish Army drew up plans for defence against the British. The United Kingdom also started to restrict trade to Ireland, reasoning that if Ireland would not do anything to protect the lives of those bringing in supplies, it should at least share in the deprivations being felt in the UK. Relations between the UK and Ireland only really eased in the middle of 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany and an agreement to allow Irish immigration to Britain to work in the war industries, resulting in up to 200,000 Irish people doing so by 1945.\n"
] |
how is baldness determined by our mothers? | It's a concept called sex-linkage. Females have two X sex chromosomes (so are known as homogametic) and males have and X and a Y sex chromosome. The Y chromosome has fewer genes than the X so some genes are only present on the X chromosome. Since women lack a Y chromosome all males get their Y chromosome from their fathers, and therefore the X from their mothers, and as the gene for baldness is only on the X chromosome in all males the gene for baldness comes from the maternal side of the family. | [
"Balding's well-documented aristocratic lineage on her mother's side can be seen in records that TheGenealogist has identified in research. Researchers found Balding's maternal line reveals that she is the great-granddaughter of Sir Malcolm Bullock whose sexuality was investigated in her episode of the \"Who Do You Think You Are?\" programme first broadcast in July 2017. Balding's paternal grandfather Gerald Barnard Balding Sr, was a 10-goal polo player who travelled to play polo in America in the 1920s when he was in his 20s. Outbound passenger lists on a genealogy website include Balding's grandfather and it was at this time that Gerald Balding Sr met and later married the American heiress, Eleanor Hoagland.\n",
"The fetal head, from an obstetrical viewpoint, and in particular its size, is important because an essential feature of labor is the adaptation between the fetal head and the maternal bony pelvis. Only a comparatively small part of the head at term is represented by the face. The rest of the head is composed of the firm skull, which is made up of two frontal, two parietal, and two temporal bones, along with the upper portion of the occipital bone and the wings of the sphenoid. \n",
"Although primates do not go bald, their hairlines do undergo recession. In infancy the hairline starts at the top of the supraorbital ridge, but slowly recedes after puberty to create the appearance of a small forehead.\n",
"Head entrapment is caused by the failure of the fetal head to negotiate the maternal midpelvis. At full term, the fetal bitrochanteric diameter (the distance between the outer points of the hips) is about the same as the biparietal diameter (the transverse diameter of the skull)—simply put the size of the hips are the same as the size of the head. The relatively larger buttocks dilate the cervix as effectively as the head does in the typical head-down presentation. In contrast, the relative head size of a preterm baby is greater than the fetal buttocks. If the baby is preterm, it may be possible for the baby’s body to emerge while the cervix has not dilated enough for the head to emerge.\n",
"Luteoma is frequently asymptomatic; only 36% of women actually show signs of masculinization. These signs include acne, the growth of dark hair (especially on the face), deepening of the voice, temporal balding, and clitoromegaly. An increase in testosterone levels in the mother doesn't necessarily mean masculinization will occur. During a normal pregnancy, the testosterone level will increase slightly in the first and second trimester, but doubles in the third trimester. The testosterone level also depends on the sex of the fetus; male fetuses cause a bigger increase in testosterone levels than female fetuses.\n",
"Although men grow hair faster than women, baldness is much more common in males than in females. The main cause for this is \"male pattern baldness\" or androgenic alopecia. Male pattern baldness is a condition where hair starts to get lost in a typical pattern of receding hairline and hair thinning on the crown, and is caused by hormones and genetic predisposition.\n",
"There are two types of identification tests for female pattern baldness: the Ludwig Scale and the Savin Scale. Both track the progress of diffused thinning, which typically begins on the crown of the head behind the hairline, and becomes gradually more pronounced. For male pattern baldness, the Hamilton–Norwood scale tracks the progress of a receding hairline and/or a thinning crown, through to a horseshoe-shaped ring of hair around the head and on to total baldness.\n"
] |
Why did Pope Alexander II give approval to William's conquer of England | He didnt hate Harold, was probably barely aware of him. Simplistically put however there had been an ongoing dispute over who was Pope, Alexander II or Honorius II. The former elected by the Church, the latter elected by the German court of Henry IV, via his mother as he was still a kid. The Sicilian Normans, once in disagreement with the Papacy, were now aligned and supportive of Alexander II. Its therefore no surprise that when the Norman Normans turned up wanting a favour that the Pope would agree. Firstly because it kept the Sicilian Normans onside and secondly because it 'proved' that he was the Pope with Authority, unlike that other Pope. Additionally when you only hear one side of the story you may be more inclined to believe it.
Theres no primary source I've come across that will say 'and so Pope Alexander II, who hated the Anglesaxon King...', as its more inferred by surrounding issues and events. However this is a start.
_URL_0_ | [
"William of Poitiers states that William obtained Pope Alexander II's consent for the invasion, signified by a papal banner, along with diplomatic support from other European rulers. Although Alexander did give papal approval to the conquest after it succeeded, no other source claims papal support before the invasion. William's army assembled during the summer while an invasion fleet in Normandy was constructed. Although the army and fleet were ready by early August, adverse winds kept the ships in Normandy until late September. There were probably other reasons for William's delay, including intelligence reports from England revealing that Harold's forces were deployed along the coast. William would have preferred to delay the invasion until he could make an unopposed landing.\n",
"William the Conqueror had accepted a papal banner and the distant blessing of Pope Alexander II upon his invasion, but had successfully rebuffed the pope's assertion after the successful outcome, that he should come to Rome and pay homage for his fief, under the general provisions of the \"Donation of Constantine\".\n",
"After his victory at Hastings, William expected to receive the submission of the surviving English leaders, but instead Edgar the Ætheling was proclaimed king by the Witenagemot, with the support of Earls Edwin and Morcar, Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Ealdred, the Archbishop of York. William therefore advanced, marching around the coast of Kent to London. He defeated an English force that attacked him at Southwark, but being unable to storm London Bridge he sought to reach the capital by a more circuitous route.\n",
"Magnus wanted to reunite Cnut the Great's entire North Sea Empire by also becoming king of England. When Harthacnut died, the English nobles had chosen as their king Æthelred the Unready's son Edward (later known as Edward the Confessor); Magnus wrote to him that he intended to attack England with combined Norwegian and Danish forces and \"he will then govern it who wins the victory.\" The English were mostly hostile to Magnus; Sweyn was made welcome there, although Edward's mother, Emma, curiously favored Magnus and in 1043 the king confiscated her property, with which by one report she had promised to assist Magnus.\n",
"Pope Alexander VI made many alliances to secure his position. He sought help from Charles VIII of France (1483–1498), who was allied to Ludovico \"Il Moro\" Sforza (the Moor, so called because of his swarthy complexion), the \"de facto\" Duke of Milan, who needed French support to legitimise his rule. As King Ferdinand I of Naples was threatening to come to the aid of the rightful duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza, the husband of his granddaughter Isabella, Alexander encouraged the French king in his plan for the conquest of Naples.\n",
"Pope Alexander then turned his attention, stimulated by the Venetians, to the threat of the Osmanli Turks. In the autumn of 1499 he called for a crusade, and sought aid and money from all Christendom. The rulers of Europe paid little attention, but to show his sincerity Alexander imposed a tithe on all the residents of the Papal States and a tithe on the clergy of the entire world. A list of cardinals and their incomes, drawn up for the occasion, shows that Cardinal della Rovere was the second-richest cardinal, with an annual income of 20,000 ducats.\n",
"In 1066, he entertained an embassy from William, Duke of Normandy, after his successful invasion of Brittany. The embassy had been sent to obtain his blessing for William's prospective invasion of Anglo-Saxon England. Alexander gave it, along with a papal ring, the Standard of St. George, and an edict to the autonomous Old English clergy guiding them to submit to the new regime. These favors were instrumental in the submission of the English church following the Battle of Hastings. Count Eustace carried his papal insignia, a gonfanon with three tails charged with a cross, which William of Poitiers says was given to William I to signify the pope's blessing of his invasion to secure a submission to Rome.\n"
] |
How do we track our own stealth aircraft? | It's a transponder, the signal is encrypted. The transponder uses spread spectrum communications so it is difficult to see the signal if you do not know what your looking for.
Spread spectrum signals use many parts of the spectrum and low power so the signal appears as background noise.
| [
"However, as stealth technology grows, so does anti-stealth technology. Multiple transmitter radars such as those from bistatic radars and low-frequency radars are said to have the capabilities to detect stealth aircraft. Advanced forms of thermographic cameras such as those that incorporate QWIPs would be able to optically see a Stealth aircraft regardless of the aircraft's Radar Cross-Section (RCS). In addition, Side looking radars, High-powered optical satellites, and sky-scanning, high-aperture, high sensitivity radars such as radio telescopes, would all be able to narrow down the location of a stealth aircraft under certain parameters. The newest SAMs have a claimed ability to be able to detect and engage stealth targets, with the most notable being the Russian S-400, which is claimed to be able to detect a target with a 0.05-metre squared RCS from 90 km away.\n",
"The surveillance aircraft are equipped with Raytheon SeaVue surface search radars with additional Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR), Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and Moving target indication (MTI) capability, advanced electro-optical sensors and sophisticated communications suites. They can operate day and night close to land below lowest safe altitude. These aircraft can search an area of 110,000 km² per flight.\n",
"While no aircraft is totally invisible to radar, stealth aircraft make it more difficult for conventional radar to detect or track the aircraft effectively, increasing the odds of an aircraft successfully avoiding detection by enemy radar and/or avoiding being successfully targeted by radar guided weapons. Stealth is the combination of passive low observable (LO) features and active emitters such as low-probability-of-intercept radars, radios and laser designators. These are usually combined with active measures such as carefully planning all mission maneuvers in order to minimize the aircraft's radar cross-section, since common actions such as hard turns or opening bomb bay doors can more than double an otherwise stealthy aircraft's radar return. It is accomplished by using a complex design philosophy to reduce the ability of an opponent's sensors to detect, track, or attack the stealth aircraft. This philosophy also takes into account the heat, sound, and other emissions of the aircraft as these can also be used to locate it. Sensors made to reduce the impact of current low observable technologies exist or have been proposed such as IRST (infrared search and track) systems to detect even reduced heat emissions, long wavelength radars to counter stealth shaping and RAM focused on shorter wavelength radar, or radar setups with multiple emitters to counter stealth shaping. However these do so with disadvantages compared to traditional radar against non-stealthy aircraft.\n",
"Some analysts claim infra-red search and track systems (IRSTs) can be deployed against stealth aircraft, because any aircraft surface heats up due to air friction and with a two channel IRST is a CO2 (4.3 µm absorption maxima) detection possible, through difference comparing between the low and high channel.\n",
"Stealthy strike aircraft such as the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, are usually used against heavily defended enemy sites such as Command and control centers or surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries. Enemy radar will cover the airspace around these sites with overlapping coverage, making undetected entry by conventional aircraft nearly impossible. Stealthy aircraft can also be detected, but only at short ranges around the radars; for a stealthy aircraft there are substantial gaps in the radar coverage. Thus a stealthy aircraft flying an appropriate route can remain undetected by radar. Even if a stealth aircraft is detected, fire-control radars operating in C, X and Ku bands cannot paint (for missile guidance) low observable (LO) jets except at very close ranges. Many ground-based radars exploit Doppler filter to improve sensitivity to objects having a radial velocity component with respect to the radar. Mission planners use their knowledge of enemy radar locations and the RCS pattern of the aircraft to design a flight path that minimizes radial speed while presenting the lowest-RCS aspects of the aircraft to the threat radar. To be able to fly these \"safe\" routes, it is necessary to understand an enemy's radar coverage (see electronic intelligence). Airborne or mobile radar systems such as AWACS can complicate tactical strategy for stealth operation.\n",
"The high level of computerization and large amount of electronic equipment found inside stealth aircraft are often claimed to make them vulnerable to passive detection. This is highly unlikely and certainly systems such as Tamara and Kolchuga, which are often described as counter-stealth radars, are not designed to detect stray electromagnetic fields of this type. Such systems are designed to detect intentional, higher power emissions such as radar and communication signals. Stealth aircraft are deliberately operated to avoid or reduce such emissions.\n",
"Air searches can be done for magnetic targets using magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) systems, which use a sensitive magnetometer carried by an aircraft. These can be done for static targets following search patterns similar to those used by surface craft, or for moving targets such as submarines by search patterns optimised to improve the probability of identifying the position of a moving target. MAD detection of submarines is used to track down the current position of a submarine known to be in the area for purposes of identification, confirmation of suspected presence, tracking of movements and launching of weaponry.\n"
] |
Why is China considered the oldest continuous country when thorough it's history it's been shattered and conquered? | Because the Roman Empire wasn't just taken over wholesale by one barbarian tribe - then it probably wouldn't have been considered to have fallen completely. Instead, it splintered and the government and culture gradually faded away and ceased to exist. China, from the Qin dynasty to the end of the Qing, always had a more or less consistent culture among its people, a consistent (written) language, a consistent form of bureaucracy, and at least among the citizens, a consistent national identity. Outsiders conquer and replace the Chinese government, but they get assimilated into Chinese culture rapidly. As for Roman culture? When the Visigoths and the Vandals and whatnot came in, it splintered and basically ceased to be. They didn't keep a consistent cultural identity with Rome, instead brought in new institutions and new traditions that's inconsistent with Roman traditions. Latin also became a dead language. The Mongols as well as the Manchus and Jurchens and whoever else took over "China" quickly reverted into using Chinese bureaucracy, the Chinese language, the Chinese system of everything, and more importantly, considered themselves as a direct successive dynasty to the last Chinese dynasty.
| [
"According to Jacques, China's history as a nation-state only dates back to around 120 years, perhaps with the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, paving the way for the Republic of China (1912–1949) and then the People's Republic of China. However China's history as a civilization is much longer, with many Chinese dating it to at least 5000 years. Jacques says that Chinese people refer to China not just as a country or nation, but as Chinese civilization altogether--including its history, dynasties, food, Chinese characters, Confucius, Mencius, guanxi, legalism, daoism, filial piety, etc.\n",
"Chinese history has alternated between periods of political unity and peace, and periods of war and failed statehood – the most recent being the Chinese Civil War (1927–1949). China was occasionally dominated by steppe peoples, most of whom were eventually assimilated into the Han Chinese culture and population. Between eras of multiple kingdoms and warlordism, Chinese dynasties have ruled parts or all of China; in some eras control stretched as far as Xinjiang and Tibet, as at present. Traditional culture, and influences from other parts of Asia and the Western world (carried by waves of immigration, cultural assimilation, expansion, and foreign contact), form the basis of the modern culture of China.\n",
"Ancient China was one of the world's oldest empires. Due to its long history of imperialist expansion, China has been seen by its neighboring countries as a threat due to its large population, giant economy, large military force as well as its territorial evolution throughout history.\n",
"The oldest surviving republic in East Asia, the Republic of China was formally established on 1January 1912 in mainland China following the Xinhai Revolution, which itself began with the Wuchang Uprising on 10October 1911, replacing the Qing Dynasty and ending over two thousand years of imperial rule in China. Central authority waxed and waned in response to warlordism (1915–28), Japanese invasion (1937–45), and the Chinese Civil War (1927–49), with central authority strongest during the Nanjing Decade (1927–37), when most of China came under the control of the Kuomintang (KMT) under an authoritarian one-party state.\n",
"China is one of the world's oldest and most complex civilizations, whose culture dates back thousands of years. Overseas Han Chinese maintain cultural affinities to Chinese territories outside of their host locale through ancestor worship and clan associations, which often identify famous figures from Chinese history or myth as ancestors of current members. Such patriarchs include the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor, who according to legend lived thousands of years ago and gave Han people the sobriquet \"\"Descendants of Yan and Huang Emperor\"\" (; ), a phrase which has reverberative connotations in a divisive political climate, as in that of between Mainland China and Taiwan. \n",
"Huang Ping writes that China is 'living history'. Jin Guantao argues that China's 'only mode of existence is to relive the past'. Tu Wei-ming adds that the Chinese tradition is preserved in the longevity of Chinese characters (hanzi, 漢字) used since at least the time of the Shang dynasty. Guang Xia notes that it is a writing system accessible to both 'literati and laypeople'.\n",
"While vibrant and growing, China remained isolated from the world until only the last few centuries. This special exhibit allowed visitors to view the ancient art and culture of the world's most populated nation as it rose from isolation into a leading global power. \"Opening an Empire\" explored China from its first emperor to Kublai Khan to the Boxer rebellion. China's emergence into the 20th century and unique relations with the United States were also featured. Artifact highlights included: weapons used during the Boxer Rebellion, Chairman Mao items, the 1844 Treaty of Wangxia (the first treaty signed between China and the U.S.), early tea trade artifacts, Head of State gifts to ten different U.S. Presidents, and artifacts from every Chinese Dynasty.\n"
] |
why do tv shows now divide themselves into yearly "half seasons" instead of yearly seasons? | Fall spring is divided into two because usually there is more holiday programming, and in the case of the US football heads into the playoffs, which decreases viewership of competing shows. And by splitting it into two, they can potentially create more viewers through reruns between and hold onto viewers through cliff hangers. Or alternatively, if a show is failing, a half season is less expensive than a full one. | [
"A full season is sometimes split into two separate units with a hiatus around the end of the calendar year, such as the first season of \"Jericho\" on CBS. When this split occurs, the last half of the episodes sometimes are referred to with the letter B as in \"The last nine episodes (of \"The Sopranos\") will be part of what is being called either \"Season 6, Part 2\" or \"Season 6B\", or in \"\"Futurama\" is splitting its seasons similar to how \"South Park\" does, doing half a season at a time, so this is season 6B for them.\" Since the 1990s, these shorter seasons also have been referred to as \".5\" or half seasons, where the run of shows between September and December is labeled \"Season X\", and the second run between January and May labeled \"Season X.5\". Examples of this include the 2004 incarnation of \"Battlestar Galactica\", ABC's \"FlashForward\", and ABC Family's \"Make It or Break It\".\n",
"In the United Kingdom and other countries, these sets of episodes are referred to as a \"series\". In Australia, the broadcasting may be different from North American usage; however, the terms \"series\" and \"season\" are both used and are the same. For example, \"Battlestar Galactica\" has an original series as well as a remake, both are considered a different series each with their own number of individual seasons.\n",
"The standard broadcast television season in the United States consists of 22 episodes (which are typically broadcast over a period of nine months from September to May, depending on the date on which the program begins its season), although prior to the 1970s, a single season of a weekly television program consisted of as many as 40 episodes, with few breaks in the show's airing schedule. Sitcoms may have 24 or more; animated programs may have more (or fewer) episodes (some are broken up into two 11-minute shorts, often with separate self-contained storylines, that are folded into a single half-hour episode); cable networks with original programming seem to have settled on about 10 to 13 episodes per season, much in line with British television programming, though there are exceptions (particularly with cable networks specializing in children's programming, which utilize the network television model of total per-season episode counts, but spread out the episodes over a single calendar year).\n",
"In the United States, currently running shows will rerun older episodes from the same season to fill the time slot with the same program. This is often done for headliner shows because the length of the year (52 weeks) is far more than the length of a pick-up (from six to 13 episodes – usually one per week) or a full season (usually from 22 to 24 episodes or weeks). Shows will tend to start rerunning episodes after the November sweeps period and usually show only reruns from mid-December until mid-January or even February sweeps (where a show will return to airing new episodes in order to increase its ratings, which will determine the cost of a commercial run during that time slot). This winter (or \"mid-season\") phase is also used to try out new shows that did not make it onto the fall schedule to see how they fare with the public. These series usually run six to 13 episodes. If they do well with the public, they may get a renewal for a half (13 weeks) or full season in the new fall schedule. Major shows that are already a hit with audiences will return from February sweeps until the end of the season (which sometimes ends before May sweeps) with only limited reruns used.\n",
"A standard television season in United States television runs predominantly across the fall and winter, from September to May. Historically, the US networks filled their summer schedules primarily by airing reruns of their fall and winter shows, although they now typically air a more diverse mixture of reruns, burnoff runs of cancelled series, new limited or event series or reality shows, and other specials.\n",
"Season splitting is the practice of broadcasting one season of a series in two parts, with a scheduled break in between. This allows for the second half of the season to be programmed strategically separately from the first.\n",
"Many television viewers, however, regard the most appropriate organization to consist of three seasons. The first season consisting of 7 episodes was shown in the period 22 January 2008 to 4 March 2008. This was followed by a hiatus of 7.5 months where no new programs were shown. The second season consisted of 7 episodes in the period 29 October 2008 to 10 December 2008. Again, there was a hiatus, this time for over five months, until a third season, consisting of 8 episodes, was shown in the period 18 May 2009 to 6 July 2009. No further new episodes were shown after this date.\n"
] |
why aren't foreign words originating from non-latin alphabets (e.g. yarmulke) spelled more phonetically? | The major reason for this is that many languages contain sounds that don't exist in English, and cannot be represented with the English alphabet. So the typical solution is to decide "these characters mean this sound, and these other characters mean this other sound", even when doing so isn't strictly phonetic to how English is normally pronounced.
However, your example is kind of a poor one for this, because "yarmulke" **is** spelled phonetically. In Hebrew, you pronounce the 'r' and 'l' sounds. We just tend to pronounce it wrong in English. | [
"Additionally, in languages for which the Latin alphabet has been adapted only recently, has been used for various sounds, in some cases inspired by European usage, but in others, for consonants uncommon in Europe. For these no Latin letter stands out as an obvious choice, and since most of the various European pronunciations of can be written by other means, the letter becomes available for more unusual sounds.\n",
"Among non-European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet, represents a variety of sounds. Yup'ik, Indonesian, Malay, and a number of African languages such as Hausa, Fula, and Manding share the soft Italian value of . In Azeri, Crimean Tatar, Kurmanji Kurdish, and Turkish stands for the voiced counterpart of this sound, the voiced postalveolar affricate . In Yabem and similar languages, such as Bukawa, stands for a glottal stop . Xhosa and Zulu use this letter to represent the click . In some other African languages, such as Berber languages, is used for . In Fijian, stands for a voiced dental fricative , while in Somali it has the value of .\n",
"If the source language uses a non-Latin script (Greek, Russian, Chinese etc.) words are respelled phonetically. This does not always mean exact transliteration: sometimes the foreign pronunciation is bent to conform to Hungarian phonology better (e.g. \"szamovár\", \"tájfun\" 'samovar', 'typhoon'). In practice, English transliterations are also often used, such as \"gyros\" instead of \"gírosz\").\n",
"BULLET::::- On the basis that the British, French, Germans, Spanish, Polish and Czechoslovakians have all modified the Latin alphabet for their own usage, and because the Latin alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet, which, in turn came from Phoenician and Egyptian, there is as much shame attached to using the Latin alphabet as there is in using Arabic numerals and the conventional mathematical symbols, regardless of their point of origin.\n",
"Latin words in common use in English are generally fully assimilated into the English sound system, with little to mark them as foreign, for example, \"cranium\", \"saliva\". Other words have a stronger Latin feel to them, usually because of spelling features such as the digraphs \"ae\" and \"oe\" (occasionally written as ligatures: \"æ\" and \"œ\", respectively), which both denote in English. The digraph \"ae\" or ligature \"æ\" in some words tend to be given an pronunciation, for example, \"curriculum vitae\".\n",
"Foreign words are transliterated according to pronunciation, for which Arab students at the University of Münster were consulted. This means that the sounds , , , , , , and , which are used in Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation among well-educated and careful speakers, but cannot be easily represented in standard Arabic script (even with full vowel diacritics), can be unambiguously indicated.\n",
"The issue is particularly complex because there are several different ways in which an originally foreign word can be used within a language, depending on the extent to which it has been integrated, and this extent varies continuously from the word being considered not a true part of the language at all to its being considered so much a part of the language that few who haven't studied linguistics even know that it ever was foreign.\n"
] |
In the early 1900's ,Were there any religious or cultural resistance towards the use of flying machines such as Bi planes? | There was no widespread "flying is evil! down with planes!" movement in the early 1900s... but by then, humans had been flying for [more than 100 years](_URL_0_).
The airplane had to have shown up in a few sermons in the first decades of the 20th century, but was generally treated more like a novelty - not so many hymns as funny songs like ["Come Josephine in my Flying Machine"](_URL_2_).
Perhaps it helped that the Wright Brothers' [father was bishop in the United Brethren](_URL_1_).... | [
"The aircraft has been popular with flying schools — especially from the pre-World War II existence of the Civilian Pilot Training Program using them in the United States — and remains so with private individuals, into the 21st century.\n",
"After the Wright brothers first flight the opportunity of flight raced across the nation. Especially in Pennsylvania, many inventors began working on designs for their own flying machines. The public thought flying was abnormal. So these inventors across the state held public air shows to show off their machines to the public and media. Around this time in the 1910s and 1920s many of the states airports were founded. Thus thrusting the aviation industry into the spotlight across the state.\n",
"BULLET::::- The animated television series \"The Jetsons\", premiered in 1962, reflected the idea that flying cars would become a significant means of transportation in the future. Flying cars were also featured in .\n",
"In the 1900s the young Harry Ferguson became fascinated with the newly emerging technology of powered human flight and particularly with the exploits of the Wright brothers, the American aviation pioneers who made the first plane flight in 1903 in North Carolina, USA.\n",
"Vaimānika Shāstra is one of the earliest native books on aviation, dated to 1904, with the designs of aircraft, which are deemed unrealistic by the experts. The vimanas (flying palaces or chariots) are described in Hindu texts, Jain texts and Sanskrit epics, such as Pushpaka Vimana of the king Ravana (who took it from Lord Kubera; Lord Rama returned it to Kubera) is the most quoted example of a vimana.\n",
"In 1915, the first airliner (for commercial use) was used by Elliot Air Service. The aircraft was a Curtiss JN-4, a small biplane which was used mainly in World War I as a trainer. Later, it was also used as a tour and familiarization flight aircraft in the early 1920s.\n",
"After the end of World War I in November 1918, civil aviation in the United States was primarily unregulated and was primarily made up of \"barnstormers,\" who were transient pilots flying inexpensive military surplus aircraft from city to city, often landing in farm fields on the outskirts of a town because airports were scarce at that time. These traveling aviators offered airplane rides and aerobatic flight demonstrations, and they frequently collaborated as \"flying circuses\" and performed impromptu airshows for the townsfolk, charging whatever the local economic conditions would allow. As a result, mechanics and early flight instructors moved around with the aircraft and had no established business in any one location.\n"
] |
where do nuns(roman chatolic) outfits originate from (design)? | since most religious habits were patterned on the garb for either unmarried women or widows in their own cultures, I imagine only religious orders that began in Middle Eastern countries have (or had) habits patterned on typical female garb in those countries, and what may still be traditional in those societies that are not westernized, whether Muslim or Christian. Orders that began in western Europe would have had their original habits based on whatever the modest, unostentatious garb for widows or virgins was at that time and place, and I don't know that those "fashions" were based on middle Eastern patterns. | [
"The traditional dress for women in religious communities consists of a tunic, which is tied around the waist with a cloth or leather belt. Over the tunic some nuns wear a scapular which is a garment of long wide piece of woolen cloth worn over the shoulders with an opening for the head. Some wear a white wimple and a veil, the most significant and ancient aspect of the habit. Some Orders – such as the Dominicans – wear a large rosary on their belt. Benedictine abbesses wear a cross or crucifix on a chain around their neck.\n",
"Different orders adhered to different styles of dress; these styles have changed over time. In the 12th century the German abbess Hildegard von Bingen, for example, advocated a style for her nuns that included extravagant and lavish white silk habits worn with golden head pieces designed to present the nun to Christ in her most beautiful form.\n",
"Mobile's mystic societies give formal masquerade balls, known as \"bal masqués\", which are almost always invitation only and are oriented to adults. Attendance at a ball requires that a strict dress code, or costume \"de rigueur\", be followed. The formal dress code usually involves full-length evening gowns for women and white tie with tails for male invited guests, and masked costumes for society members. The balls feature dramatic entertainment, music, dancing, food, and drinks. Balls are usually based upon a theme which is carried out through scenery, decorations, costumes, and a \"tableau vivant\".\n",
"In Roman Catholic tradition, the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs is Honoratus of Amiens (Honoré), a sixth-century bishop of Amiens in northern France for whom the St. Honoré cake is named. Lazarus of Bethany (Lazare) was originally a competitor to Honoré for the title of patron saint of bakers, but in the 17th century the French bakers' guild settled in favor of Honoré.\n",
"Matisse designed the priests' vestments for the chapel, using the traditional ecclesiastical colors of the religious seasons: purple, black, rose, green, and red. Pope Pius XII requested that the nuns send the vestments to Rome to be put in the Vatican's new museum of modern religious art. The nuns made copies of five of the sets of vestments, including chasubles, maniples, stoles, and coverings of the chalice, and sent them to Rome.\n",
"Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were conscious archaizers, emulating the work of the \"old masters\" and choosing romantic, medieval subjects. They dressed their models in long flowing gowns loosely inspired by styles of the Middle Ages. These styles were then adopted by the painters' wives and models for everyday dress. Dresses were loosely fitted and comparatively plain, often with long puffed sleeves; they were made from fabric in muted colors derived from natural dyes, and could be ornamented with embroidery in the art needlework style. Artistic dress was an extreme contrast to the tight corsets, hoop skirts and bustles, bright synthetic aniline dyes, and lavish ornamentation seen in the mainstream fashion of the period.\n",
"Several generations ago, the appropriate dress for a competition was simply \"Sunday best\" (clothes one would wear to church). Irish Dance schools generally have school dresses, worn by lower-level competitors and in public performances. As dancers advance in competition or are given starring roles in public performances, they may get a solo dress of their own design and colours or wear the team dress. In the 1970s and 1980s, ornately embroidered dresses became popular. Today even more ornamentation is used on girls' dresses. Solo dresses are unique to each dancer. Today most women and girls wear a wig, a bun or hairpiece for a competition, but some still curl their own hair. Costumes are heavily integrated into the Irish dance culture and feature traditional elements of classic peasant wear adorned with Celtic designs. Most men wear a shirt, vest, and tie paired with black trousers. Each Irish dance school has its own distinctive full skirted dress, often featuring lace or an embroidered pattern copied from the medieval Irish Book of Kells.\n"
] |
Why do they elevate bruised areas of the body to decrease blood flow? Why isn't the opposite more beneficial? | Elevating an injured limb is not to decrease blood flow. It's to decrease pooling and swelling.
Recall that blood is pumped outward to your limbs in pressurized arteries, but it returns in veins, which aren't under much pressure and have less motive force to move the blood along.
If the injured limb is allowed to hang downward, then gravity works against the flow of blood in the veins, slowing down the flow. More blood stays in the veins and capillaries, increasing swelling and pain.
By elevating the limb we can make gravity work for us instead of against us. Pressure in the arteries easily pushes the blood uphill, and then gravity helps it drain back through the veins. There's no chance for it to pool in place and cause swelling, and because there's less resistance, the total blood flow may be greater. | [
"Compression aims to reduce the edematous swelling that results from the inflammatory process. Although some swelling is inevitable, too much swelling results in significant loss of function, excessive pain and eventual slowing of blood flow through vessel restriction.\n",
"Angiogenesis may be a target for combating diseases characterized by either poor vascularisation or abnormal vasculature E.g Heart Disease sufferers. Application of specific compounds that may inhibit or induce the creation of new blood vessels in the body may help combat such diseases. The presence of blood vessels where there should be none may affect the mechanical properties of a tissue, increasing the likelihood of failure. The absence of blood vessels in a repairing or otherwise metabolically active tissue may inhibit repair or other essential functions. Several diseases, such as ischemic chronic wounds, are the result of failure or insufficient blood vessel formation and may be treated by a local expansion of blood vessels, thus bringing new nutrients to the site, facilitating repair. Other diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration, may be created by a local expansion of blood vessels, interfering with normal physiological processes.\n",
"Downstream tissue damage occurs due to (a) closure of downstream microvascular and/or (b) closure of the lumen at the rupture, both resulting in loss of blood flow to downstream capillary microvasulature. This is the principal mechanism of myocardial infarction, stroke or other related cardiovascular disease problems.\n",
"The characteristics of the tissue injured also help determine the severity of the injury; for example, the denser the tissue, the greater the amount of energy transmitted to it. Skin, muscles, and intestines absorb energy and so are resistant to the development of temporary cavitation, while organs such as the liver, spleen, kidney, and brain, which have relatively low tensile strength, are likely to split or shatter because of temporary cavitation. Flexible elastic soft tissues, such as muscle, intestine, skin, and blood vessels, are good energy absorbers and are resistant to tissue stretch. If enough energy is transferred, the liver may disintegrate. Temporary cavitation can be especially damaging when it affects delicate tissues such as the brain, as occurs in penetrating head trauma.\n",
"When blood vessels dilate, the flow of blood is increased due to a decrease in vascular resistance and increase in cardiac output. Therefore, dilation of arterial blood vessels (mainly the arterioles) decreases blood pressure. The response may be intrinsic (due to local processes in the surrounding tissue) or extrinsic (due to hormones or the nervous system). In addition, the response may be localized to a specific organ (depending on the metabolic needs of a particular tissue, as during strenuous exercise), or it may be systemic (seen throughout the entire systemic circulation).\n",
"If the blood viscosity increases (gets thicker), the result is an increase in arterial pressure. Certain medical conditions can change the viscosity of the blood. For instance, anemia (low red blood cell concentration), reduces viscosity, whereas increased red blood cell concentration increases viscosity. It had been thought that aspirin and related \"blood thinner\" drugs decreased the viscosity of blood, but instead studies found that they act by reducing the tendency of the blood to clot.\n",
"Because veins are more easily compressed than arteries, blood flow to the bone would be less obstructed than blood flow from the bone. This would cause a buildup of pressure within the navicular bone. The navicular bone, in response to both the increased pressure and overall decreased blood supply, would absorb mineral from its center.\n"
] |
who are some of the contenders in the 2016 u.s. presidential election that have a strong foothold in the door? how well do they reflect the values of their party? | Super, super early, but some of the strong possiblities:
Hillary Clinton will almost certainly run in 2016. She did very well as Secretary of State, but a possible issue will be Benghazi. That's one of the reasons the GOP has been stretching out what seems to be a non issue for so long. She'll have strong challengers of course, but as of right now it's hers to lose.
Some other possibilities (sorry, not much to add to these guys as the Democrat is much less wide open than the GOP race):
Elizabeth Warren
Martin O'Malley
Mark Warner
For the GOP:
Marco Rubio will have a big following and has all but stated he's going to run. As a Hispanic, he represents a major growing part of the electorate who the GOP has been awful with recently. They know that they need to stop the bleeding in this community, and Rubio is generally liked. One issue is that a lot of Hispanics don't necessarily identify as well with the Cuban diaspora in the US.
Chris Christie may run, but he has some issues in his own party. Insanely enough, a lot of people were pissed that he wasn't critical of President Obama's handling of Sandy, and instead gratefully accepted federal assistance in the aftermath. A lot of more moderate Republicans and Independents probably gained a lot of respect for him, as it was a great case of governance over politics (which in time, might turn out to be a greater political boon than if he had just been petty and insulted President Obama).
Jeb Bush could be an interesting candidate as well. His last name is going to be an issue, though not nearly what it was in 2008 or 2012. Bush bashing is no longer in vogue, and Jeb sems like a capable and intelligent governor (much more so than his bro).
Rand Paul will also likely run, and will do better than his father ever did. He's young and charismatic. He's had some really *REALLY* bad gaffes, though, and it's unlikely he'll win much of anything. His supporters will be the loudest and most obnoxious. | [
"During the U.S. presidential election of 2016 he was the only Arizona Republican to have held high office who endorsed the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. Regarding the two presidential candidates, he wrote, \"Hillary Clinton is one of the most qualified nominees to ever run for president. Donald Trump is the least qualified ever. The stakes are too high to stand on the sideline. I stand with Hillary Clinton for president.\"\n",
"In the 2016 presidential election, the GOP had numerous young candidates, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. An early contender was Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, son of former president George H. W. Bush, and brother of former president George W. Bush. The uninspiring Bush attracted little interest from an electorate tired of political dynasties, and he dropped out of the race early in the year. Ted Cruz enjoyed widespread popularity among conservatives, namely the Christian right.\n",
"Widely viewed as a very open contest with no clear front-runner, potential candidates fluctuated in the polls for an extended period from late 2012 to the end of 2015. In the year prior to the election season, a total of 17 major candidates campaigned for the nomination, thus making it the single largest presidential primary field in American history at the time. However, by the time the primary season started in early 2016, three candidates had clearly emerged ahead of the rest of the field: Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and New York businessman Donald Trump. Trump maintained wide poll leads throughout 2015 and into 2016, primarily due to his brash and unapologetic style of speaking and campaigning. Trump emphasized a disregard for political correctness, as well as populist and nativist policies; he earned the support of working-class voters and voters without college educations, among other demographics. However, Trump's brash attitude and polarizing policy stances generated numerous controversies in the media, and many of the other candidates sought to become the \"anti-Trump\" candidate by condemning his rhetoric and policies. Senators Cruz and Rubio emphasized their youth in comparison to most other candidates and their possible appeal to Hispanic voters. Additionally, Ohio governor John Kasich, a moderate Republican, remained in the race for an extended period despite being viewed as having little to no chance of winning the nomination.\n",
"The race was widely considered one of 2016's most competitive congressional elections. \"Roll Call\" journalist Alex Roarty wrote that Lewis had not openly embraced Donald Trump, but that he had been \"unafraid to embrace many of the presumptive presidential nominee's trademarks: tough talk, an aversion to political correctness, and a focus on border security.\"\n",
"Besides the 2 major candidates, more than 100 other candidates who did not meet the criteria above to be deemed major, also filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for president in the Republican Party primary. Other notable candidates who remain active in the campaign include:\n",
"Following the landslide defeat of incumbent president Herbert Hoover by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Republican Party sought its first nominee to attempt to unseat the largely popular incumbent president. There were six candidates in total, but four of them were seen as \"favorite son\" candidates who only won their respective home states: Earl Warren of California, Frank Knox of Illinois, Stephen A. Day of Ohio, and Warren E. Green of South Dakota. Thus, the only two serious candidates were Governors William Borah of Idaho and Alfred \"Alf\" Landon of Kansas. Although Borah won more states' primaries, more total popular votes, and a larger percentage overall (with 5 states to Landon's 2), Landon managed to use his connections to the party machinery to secure a majority of necessary delegates at the convention, and became the nominee. Knox was chosen as Landon's running mate.\n",
"Peter Skewes (born 1957) is an American university professor and political activist best known for his candidacy for president of the United States as the nominee of the American Party of South Carolina in the 2016 presidential election.\n"
] |
can kings and queens be removed from power due to deteriorative illnesses of the brain and such? | That fully depends on the country and the rules that they have set up for succession. Virtually all have the ability for voluntary abdication which would be used for severe illness or anything that rendered them incapable of fulfilling their duty. Most would also have some method of forced abdication if they were not coherent enough to voluntarily step down, or if they were refused to do so. But there are a few that historically required death for the monarch to change. | [
"She was deposed twice, each time by her own husband, forcing her to stand up against him and quite possibly her own courtiers who conspired against her. She successfully deposed three Kings; her brother and two husbands. Despite successfully managing to assassinate three Kings, it is impressive how she managed to escape a similar fate. \n",
"BULLET::::- Article 11: If the King can not perform its normal functions of head of state because of a serious illness certified by a group of medical experts appointed by the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the Assembly and the Prime Minister, the President of the Senate shall serve as head of state in place of King as Regent.\n",
"The king could be appointed only with the concurrence of the \"patra mantris\" (council of ministers—Burhagohain, Borgohain, Borpatrogohain, Borbarua and Borphukan). During three periods in the 14th century, the kingdom had no kings when acceptable candidates were not found. The ministers could remove unacceptable kings, and it used to involve executing the erstwhile king. In the 17th century a power struggle and the increasing number of claimants to the throne resulted in kings being deposed in quick succession, all of whom were executed after the new king was instated. To prevent this bloody end, a new rule was introduced during the reign of Sulikphaa Lora Roja—claimants to the throne had to be physically unblemished—which meant that threats to the throne could be removed by merely slitting the ear of an ambitious prince. Rudra Sinha, suspecting his brother Lechai's intention, mutilated and banished him. The problem of succession remained, and on his deathbed he instructed that all his sons were to become kings. One of his sons, Mohanmala, was superseded, who went on to lead a rebel group during the Moamoria rebellion. The later kings and officers exploited the unblemished rule, leading to weak kings being instated. Kamaleswar Singha (2-year-old son of Kadam Dighala) and Purandar Singha (10-year-old son of Brajanath and one of the last kings of this dynasty) came into office because their fathers were mutilated.\n",
"Meanwhile, the queen showed increasing signs of mental instability. On , seventeen doctors signed a document declaring her unable to manage the kingdom, with no prospect for her condition to improve. John was reluctant to take the reins of power, rejecting the idea of a formal regency. This opened the way for elements of the nobility to form a \"de facto\" government via a Council. Rumors circulated that John exhibited symptoms of the same insanity, and that he might be prevented from ruling. According to longstanding laws that guided the institution of regency, were the regent to die or become incapable for any reason, and having children of less than fourteen years (which was John's situation at the time), government would be exercised by the guardians of those children or, if guardians had not been formally named, by the wife of the regent. In John's case, that would have been a Spanish infanta. Fear, suspicion and intrigue engulfed the entire institutional framework of the nation.\n",
"Their perception to the Monarchy appears to have been variable, but generally unfavourable. On the one hand, a number of them called Louis XV a \"criminal\" who would suffer God's wrath. They compared him to the Egyptian Pharaoh or even to the Antichrist. On the other hand, some convulsionnaire women dedicated their personal suffering and torture to the King after the attempted assassination of 1757 by Damiens.\n",
"[The queen] owes it to her husband at all times to conserve the peace in the kingdom and ensure swift, righteous, and clear justice to their peoples, and not under any circumstances act as a tyrant, but rather to show herself likable and dear to her people, and take counsel from a small group chosen from among them, and fearing God, and eschewing greed, and who are committed to the common good and not their own affairs.\n",
"In the summer of 1788 the King's mental health deteriorated, possibly as the result of the hereditary disease porphyria. He was nonetheless able to discharge some of his duties and to declare Parliament prorogued from 25 September to 20 November. During the prorogation he became deranged, posing a threat to his own life, and when Parliament reconvened in November the King could not deliver the customary speech from the throne during the State Opening of Parliament. Parliament found itself in an untenable position: according to long-established law it could not proceed to any business until the delivery of the King's Speech at a State Opening.\n"
] |
How does the melt rate change based on the mass of ice and the temperature of the surrounding air? | There are definitely equations that can describe what is going on! Heat and mass transfer are an important part of physics and engineering.
In order to melt, the ice must be raised to its melting point temperature, then given enough energy to melt into liquid. This energy needs to come from somewhere. Heat moves from hotter to colder places, so the warm air will give energy to the ice (and water) until they are the same temperature.
There are some complications in calculating all this, however. For example, if the air is stagnant then it will get colder as it gives up energy, which means transfer to the sculpture will slow down. If the air is moving, we also have to think about how fast it's going and if it's removing some of the water as vapour too.
There are many more and less detailed ways of describing what's going on, but in the very simplest terms, the bigger the temperature difference between the air and the ice, the faster energy will transfer. The lower the ice temperature is below its melting point, the more energy needs to be added to make it warm up and melt. | [
"Estimates on future contribution to sea level rise from Greenland range from , for the year 2100. The contribution of the Greenland ice sheet on sea level over the next couple of centuries can be very high due to a self-reinforcing cycle (a so-called positive feedback). After an initial period of melting, the height of the ice sheet will have lowered. As air temperature increases closer to the sea surface, more melt starts to occur. This melting may further be accelerated because the color of ice is darker while it is melting. There is a threshold in surface warming beyond which a partial or near-complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet occurs. Different research has put this threshold value as low as 1 °C (2 ℉), and definitely 4 °C (7 ℉), above pre-industrial temperatures.\n",
"The growth and melt rate are also affected by the state of the ice itself. During growth, the ice thickening due to freezing (as opposed to dynamics) is itself dependent on the thickness, so that the ice growth slows as the ice thickens. Likewise, during melt, thinner sea ice melts faster. This leads to different behaviour between multiyear and first year ice. In addition, melt ponds on the ice surface during the melt season lower the albedo such that more solar radiation is absorbed, leading to a feedback where melt is accelerated. The presence of melt ponds is affected by the permeability of the sea ice- i.e. whether meltwater can drain- and the topography of the sea ice surface, i.e. the presence of natural basins for the melt ponds to form in. First year ice is flatter than multiyear ice due to the lack of dynamic ridging, so ponds tend to have greater area. They also have lower albedo since they are on thinner ice, which blocks less of the solar radiation from reaching the dark ocean below. \n",
"If the entire of ice were to melt, global sea levels would rise . At the current rate of melting this would take over 14,000 years. Recently, fears have grown that continued climate change will make the Greenland Ice Sheet cross a threshold where long-term melting of the ice sheet is inevitable. Climate models project that local warming in Greenland will be to during this century. Ice sheet models project that such a warming would initiate the long-term melting of the ice sheet, leading to a complete melting of the ice sheet (over centuries), resulting in a global sea level rise of about . Such a rise would inundate almost every major coastal city in the world. How fast the melt would eventually occur is a matter of discussion. According to the IPCC 2001 report, such warming would, if kept from rising further after the 21st Century, result in 1 to 5 meter sea level rise over the next millennium due to Greenland ice sheet melting. Some scientists have cautioned that these rates of melting are overly optimistic as they assume a linear, rather than erratic, progression. James E. Hansen has argued that multiple positive feedbacks could lead to nonlinear ice sheet disintegration much faster than claimed by the IPCC. According to a 2007 paper, \"we find no evidence of millennial lags between forcing and ice sheet response in paleoclimate data. An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway.\"\n",
"Models predict a sea-level contribution of about from melting in Greenland during the 21st century. It is also predicted that Greenland will become warm enough by 2100 to begin an almost complete melt during the next 1,000 years or more. In early July 2012, 97% percent of the Ice Sheet experienced some form of surface melt including the summits.\n",
"Sea ice mass balance is the balance of how much the ice grows in the winter and melts in the summer. For Arctic sea ice virtually all of the growth occurs on the bottom of the ice. Melting occurs on both the top and the bottom of the ice. In the vast majority of cases all of the snow melts during the summer, typically in just a couple of weeks. The mass balance is a powerful concept since it is the great integrator of the heat budget. If there is a net increase of heat, then the ice will thin. A net cooling will result in thicker ice.\n",
"Meier and Post suggest that once mass accumulates to a critical point, basal melting begins to occur. This provides a buoyancy force, \"lifting\" the glacier from the bed and reducing the friction force.\n",
"The IPCC AR4 estimates explicitly exclude the influence of the melting of ice sheets. These ice sheets include most notably the Greenland ice sheet, and both the east and west Antarctic ice sheets, as well as numerous glaciers. This may result in a major underestimate of the upper limit for sea level rise in the long term. Due to Arctic melting the Greenland ice sheet is particularly vulnerable, and a study by climatologist James E. Hansen states that \"we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway.\", the melting of the Greenland ice sheet would result in an increase in sea level rise of over 7m. Melting of the west Antarctic ice sheet would cause a similar, if slightly smaller rise in sea levels due to being grounded below sea level, whilst the effect of the melting of the east Antarctic, although less probable would be an order of magnitude greater.\n"
] |
fps in film | The reason why 29.97 FPS has historically been such a common frame-rate in North America is quite complicated.
Firstly, the reason why ~30 FPS has been the North American standard for TV (compared to the 25 FPS standard used in Europe) has to do with the electrical power system.
Back in the old days, TV's relied on counting the power cycle oscillations (from the AC electrical outlet) as a timing device to trigger the refresh of the display. In North America, power systems used 60 Hz cycles, but filming and distributing TV at 60 FPS at that time just wasn't feasible (too costly/complicated), so they opted for half of that (30 FPS) to be the standard. TV sets would then display one frame for every two power cycles counted.
This was all fine until color TV came around. Engineers discovered a problem. The carrier signal used to carry color information in the TV broadcasts was interacting with the carrier signal used to carry audio information. This resulted in huge distortions in the video quality that had to be remedied. The fix was to slow down the frame-rate by a very small amount to bring the two signals out of phase of each other so they would no longer cause interference. | [
"FP is a cubic-grain black-and-white film from Ilford Photo with a long history. It originated as Fine grain Panchromatic roll film in 1935. Like its faster partner product, HP film, it has gone through a number of versions since then, with the latest being FP4 plus (FP4+ for short).\n",
"Upon its theatrical release, \"The FP\" received mixed reviews from critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 48% approval rating, with an average rating of 5.2/10 based on 23 reviews. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 based on reviews from critics, the film has a score of 48 based on 11 reviews, which is considered to be \"mixed or average reviews\".\n",
"Director of photography Brandon Trost shot \"The FP\" using digital cinematography with Canon XH-A1 cameras, which he had recently used while filming \"Crank: High Voltage\". Using a single-camera setup, he filmed \"The FP\" using 35mm film to evoke the traditional look of films such as \"The Warriors\" and \"Total Recall\". Trost ignored camera and lighting errors to make the film \"feel genuine\".\n",
"\"The FP\" premiered on , 2011, at South by Southwest. It was later screened at several events, including the Fantasia Festival, the Lund International Fantastic Film Festival, the Philadelphia Film Festival, and Cinefamily. The Trosts held a free screening of \"The FP\" in Frazier Park, California as part of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema's Rolling Roadshow. The film began its limited theatrical run in the United States on , 2012.\n",
"The FP is a 2011 American comedy film written and directed by Brandon and Jason Trost. The film focuses on two gangs, the 248 and the 245, fighting for control of Frazier Park (the FP). The gangs settle their disputes by playing \"Beat-Beat Revelation\", a music video game similar to \"Dance Dance Revolution\". Gang member JTRO (Jason Trost) trains to defeat L Dubba E (Lee Valmassy), the leader of a rival gang. The film also features Caitlyn Folley, Art Hsu, Nick Principe and Dov Tiefenbach.\n",
"The film was one of the first studio motion pictures to be edited using Final Cut Pro. Using a beta version of FCP 3, it demonstrated to the film industry that successful 3:2 pulldown matchback to 24fps could be achieved with an off-the-shelf product. Roger Avary, the film's director, became a spokesperson for FCP, appearing in print ads worldwide.\n",
"In film projection, 24 fps is the norm, except in some special venue systems, such as IMAX, Showscan and Iwerks 70, where 30, 48 or even 60 frame/s have been used. Silent films and 8 mm amateur movies used 16 or 18 frame/s.\n"
] |
Is it possible to create diamond like crystals from other elements? | Yes. Diamond has a structure called [FCC(face centered cubic)](_URL_1_) with two atoms in the base. That means for each "spot" in an fcc, there are two atoms - one on the spot and one shifted along the diagonal of the unit cell (1/4, 1/4, 1/4).
To answer your question: Yes. [To quote wikipedia:](_URL_0_)
> While the first known example was diamond, other elements in group 14 also adopt this structure, including α-tin, the semiconductors silicon and germanium, and silicon/germanium alloys in any proportion.
EDIT: Accidentally a word. | [
"Solid foreign crystals are commonly present in diamond. They are mostly minerals, such as olivine, garnets, ruby, and many others. These and other inclusions, such as internal fractures or \"feathers\", can compromise the structural integrity of a diamond. Cut diamonds that have been enhanced to improve their clarity via glass infilling of fractures or cavities are especially fragile, as the glass will not stand up to ultrasonic cleaning or the rigors of the jeweler's torch. Fracture-filled diamonds may shatter if treated improperly.\n",
"Most gem-quality diamond crystals are octahedra in their rough state (see material properties of diamond). These crystals are usually cut into \"round brilliants\" because it is possible to cut two such stones out of one octahedron with minimal loss of weight. If the crystal is malformed or twinned, or if inclusions are present at inopportune locations, the diamond is more likely to receive a \"fancy cut\" (a cut other than a round brilliant). This is especially true in the case of macle, which are flattened twin octahedron crystals. Round brilliants have certain requisite proportions that would result in high weight loss, whereas fancy cuts are typically much more flexible in this regard. Sometimes the cutters compromise and accept lesser proportions and symmetry in order to avoid inclusions or to preserve carat weight, since the per-carat price of diamond is much higher when the stone is over one carat (200 mg).\n",
"Synthetic diamond can exist as a single, continuous crystal or as small polycrystals interconnected through the grain boundaries. The inherent spatial separation of these subunits causes the formation of grains, which are visible by the unaided eye due to the light absorption and scattering properties of the material.\n",
"Various elemental analyses of diamond reveal a wide range of impurities. They mostly originate, however, from inclusions of foreign materials in diamond, which could be nanometer-small and invisible in an optical microscope. Also, virtually any element can be hammered into diamond by ion implantation. More essential are elements which can be introduced into the diamond lattice as isolated atoms (or small atomic clusters) during the diamond growth. By 2008, those elements are nitrogen, boron, hydrogen, silicon, phosphorus, nickel, cobalt and perhaps sulfur. Manganese and tungsten have been unambiguously detected in diamond, but they might originate from foreign inclusions. Detection of isolated iron in diamond has later been re-interpreted in terms of micro-particles of ruby produced during the diamond synthesis. Oxygen is believed to be a major impurity in diamond, but it has not been spectroscopically identified in diamond yet. Two electron paramagnetic resonance centers (OK1 and N3) have been assigned to nitrogen–oxygen complexes. However, the assignment is indirect and the corresponding concentrations are rather low (few parts per million).\n",
"Naturally occurring diamond is almost always found in the crystalline form with a purely cubic orientation of sp bonded carbon atoms. Sometimes there are lattice defects or inclusions of atoms of other elements that give color to the stone, but the lattice arrangement of the carbons remains cubic and bonding is purely sp. The internal energy of the cubic polytype is slightly lower than that of the hexagonal form and growth rates from molten material in both natural and bulk synthetic diamond production methods are slow enough that the lattice structure has time to grow in the lowest energy (cubic) form that is possible for sp bonding of carbon atoms. In contrast, DLC is typically produced by processes in which high energy precursive carbons (\"e.g.\" in plasmas, in filtered cathodic arc deposition, in sputter deposition and in ion beam deposition) are rapidly cooled or quenched on relatively cold surfaces. In those cases cubic and hexagonal lattices can be randomly intermixed, layer by atomic layer, because there is no time available for one of the crystalline geometries to grow at the expense of the other before the atoms are \"frozen\" in place in the material. Amorphous DLC coatings can result in materials that have no long-range crystalline order. Without long range order there are no brittle fracture planes, so such coatings are flexible and conformal to the underlying shape being coated, while still being as hard as diamond. In fact this property has been exploited to study atom-by-atom wear at the nanoscale in DLC.\n",
"The similar atomic sizes of boron, carbon and nitrogen, as well as the similar structures of carbon and boron nitride polymorphs, suggest that it might be possible to synthesize diamond-like phase containing all three elements. It is also possible to make compounds containing B-C-O, B-O-N, or B-C-O-N under high pressure, but their synthesis would expect to require a complex chemistry and in addition, their elastic properties would be inferior to that of diamond.\n",
"Diamonds may exist in carbon-rich stars, particularly white dwarfs. One theory for the origin of carbonado, the toughest form of diamond, is that it originated in a white dwarf or supernova. Diamonds formed in stars may have been the first minerals.\n"
] |
why do the police follow me for a while before pulling me over? | They're looking up your plate to see if your car has any violations or if the registered owner has a warrant or had reported the car stolen. | [
"There have been cases where criminals have pulled over motorists while pretending to be driving unmarked police cars, a form of police impersonation. Some US police officers advise motorists that they do not have to pull over in a secluded location and instead can wait until they reach somewhere safer. In the UK, officers must be wearing uniform in order to make traffic stops. Motorists can also ask for a police badge. Motorists often have the option to call a non-emergency number (like Police 101 in the UK) or, if the country does not have one, the emergency number. This telephone call can then be used verify that the police car ( and officer(s) ) is genuine.\n",
"Following the \"Inside Edition\" investigation, many magazines also focused on the team and their extreme stunt riding. One crew member is quoted saying \"Most normal people pull over when they see lights or hear sirens, we immediately drop a gear and hammer it. There isn’t a police car out there that can keep up with these bikes, so it’s a no-brainier. You have to constantly scan for police. If you see one, run the other way regardless – don’t wait for them to find a reason to pull you over. The police are here to f--k you over, so whey give them the chance?”\n",
"For their own protection, after a person has been stopped, police may perform a quick surface search of the person's outer clothing for weapons if they have reasonable suspicion that the person stopped is armed. This reasonable suspicion must be based on \"specific and articulable facts\" and not merely upon an officer's hunch. This permitted police action has subsequently been referred to in short as a \"stop and frisk,\" or simply a \"\"Terry\" frisk\". The \"Terry\" standard was later extended to temporary detentions of persons in vehicles, known as traffic stops; see Terry stop for a summary of subsequent jurisprudence.\n",
"The officers followed the two individuals for approximately 5 minutes or one mile, and then pulled the men over. They ordered the men out of the car and conducted a pat down search, which turned no weapons or contraband. The officers then seized the driver's keys and handcuffed both men. The officers told them men that they were not under arrest, but were being detained incident to the execution of the search warrant.\n",
"After stopping a person based upon the reasonable belief that the person might be engaged in unlawful activity, or following a routine encounter such as a traffic stop, the police in the United States may perform a cursory search of the persons outer clothing for their own safety. Terry v. Ohio. However, unless the object is reasonably identified by feel as a possible weapon or contraband, they may not remove objects from pockets, as that would constitute a search. Minnesota v. Dickerson. When performing a pat-down following a Terry stop that results in the officer identifying a weapon by feel, a police officer is allowed to remove the weapon from the person's clothing.\n",
"Lacking reasonable suspicion, police may stop an individual based on a hunch, constituting a \"consensual\" stop. \"United States v. Mendenhall\" found that police are not generally required to advise an individual that he has been stopped on a consensual basis and that he may leave at any time. An individual can typically determine if a stop is consensual by asking, \"Am I free to go?\" If the officer responds in the negative or does not respond, the individual is being detained under a Terry stop; otherwise the individual may leave. \"Mendenhall\" also found that a consensual stop can be converted into an unconstitutional Terry stop by circumstances such as \"the threatening presence of several officers, the display of a weapon by an officer, some physical touching of the person of the citizen, or the use of language or tone of voice indicating that compliance with the officer's request might be compelled.\" Police who conduct an unconstitutional Terry stop can face administrative discipline and a civil suit.\n",
"The following day, Fancy called the officers in, claiming that they had overreacted pulling them over and treating them as if they were suspects in an armed robbery. After questioning the officers, Fancy concluded that he and his wife were pulled over at gunpoint strictly on the basis of their race. The senior officer, Szymanski, vehemently denied pulling them over on the basis of their race and claimed they did that to every suspect as a precaution.\n"
] |
why do many people see policing and military as necessary things to support with their tax dollars, but see a more subsidized healthcare system as a form of communism? | Because everyone needs the police and the military. The rich and the upper middle class dont need subsidized health care and dont want to help fund it. | [
"Other factors of spending are largely political in the sense that politicians who can effectively argue for more spending get the most spending for their states. Some trends of spending as of 1999 are as follows: defense spending in the South and the national capital, non-defense discretionary spending between the Midwest and the Rockies, most Medicare and Social Security is located in the East and Central/Midwest, and other assistance programs following the Appalachian Mountains from Louisiana/Mississippi to Maine (Leonard and Walder, Page 30).\n",
"There remains considerable controversy regarding policies on who would be paying the costs of medical care for all people and under what circumstances. For example, government spending on healthcare is sometimes used as a global indicator of a government's commitment to the health of its people. On the other hand, one school of thought emerging from the United States rejects the notion of health care financing through taxpayer funding as incompatible with the (considered no less important) right of the physician's professional judgment, and the related concerns that government involvement in overseeing the health of its citizens could erode the right to privacy between doctors and patients. The argument furthers that universal health insurance denies the right of individual patients to dispose of their own income as per their own will.\n",
"While the government stressed efficiency and the maximization of supplies for the army, the working class was largely committed to a traditional sense of consumer rights, whereby it was the duty of the government to provide the basic food, housing and fuel for the city. There was also a sense that hoarding and profiteering were evils that citizens should organize to combat.\n",
"Villacampa notes that consumers with large amounts of wealth would likely pay more for private defense, stating \"There is no reason for someone void of valuable assets to hire a defense agency that is meant to protect assets other than oneself; but, in an involuntary government payment is demanded for the services regardless of whether they are use or not.\" He argues an alliance of aggressor private defense agencies would likely be unprofitable: \"Chances are high that a mobilization of a mass army of defense agencies will cost more to each individual than his gain from gold, land, and such divided equally amongst themselves. If the region being attacked has large stashes of valuable goods, they will most likely have very effective defense agencies (stronger defense agencies for more valuable assets are logical) and thus the fight against the invading defense agencies will inflict more cost upon the invaders.\"\n",
"In the Neoclassical theory, military spending can be considered as a public good. The government acts as a rational agent, trying to maximise the welfare of society by taking into account the security benefits, the opportunity costs and the trade-off between military and civil spending. This theory is often criticized because of its unrealistic assumptions, for example (its assumption) about the rational agent (theory).\n",
"Spending is not so easily located geographically. The breakdown of federal spending is done in the following ways: defense (military), non-defense discretionary, Social Security, Medicare, grants, and various other programs. Defense spending is the most volatile, as it is usually found to be higher in states with established defense contractors and other defense facilities. Areas of higher social insurance spending are typically seen in areas of larger elderly population. Social security is the dominant expenditure of per dollar federal expenditures.\n",
"One problem with military spending is waste that comes from poor cost estimation. The armed forces are seemingly unable to properly estimate costs, which ends up wasting billions of dollars annually. What is more, there are instances such as in the research and development department where costs are underestimated, which leads to a waste of a different kind: time. Without the appropriate resources, researchers cannot do their job adequately. What this can lead to is employees not working as efficiently as possible.\n"
] |
why are streets and housing developments in residential areas across the us named so consistently and generically, often with no relation to geographic features? e.g., hillcrest, hillview, pinewood, oakwood, lakeview, fairview, etc.? does this happen in other countries? | The joke I heard is that streets and housing developments are named after whatever natural things were removed to make room for the streets and houses. | [
"Neighborhood names and boundaries vary in their formality some are well defined and long established, while others are more informal. Further names and boundaries have evolved over time due to development or changes in demographics. Woodward Avenue, a major a north-south thoroughfare, serves as a demarcation for neighborhood areas on the east side and west side of the city.\n",
"A narrow grid system of streets was approved by the District government for undeveloped areas in 1886 and imposed on the Marshall Heights area, ignoring the steep hills rather than going around them. Street names originally reflected major cities in the United States (Atlanta, Baltimore, Columbus, Charleston, Mobile, Newark, Trenton, Raleigh, Richmond, St. Louis, Wilmington), with a few named for trees (Beech, Mulberry, Palm, Sycamore, Walnut). Except for the new Central Avenue and St. Louis Street, every new road in the area would later be renamed.\n",
"The city is divided into 79 neighborhoods. The divisions have no legal standing, although some neighborhood associations administer grants or hold veto power over historic-district development. Nevertheless, the social and political influence of neighborhood identity is profound. Some hold avenues of massive stone edifices built as palaces for heads of state visiting the 1904 World's Fair. Others offer tidy working-class bungalows, loft districts, or areas hard-hit by social problems and unemployment. Many of them have retained - quite consciously and deliberately - a camaraderie that is missing from many American towns today.\n",
"Common types are the building blocks of the city. Usually, a neighborhood streets and lots are laid out so that the common type can be built there. This occurs today in suburban subdivisions, but it has been a pattern in history, as well. This combination of types, streets and lots is called an urban tissue, or a plan unit. When studying a city, a designer identifies the common tissue patterns in place and may decide to link to them, imitate them, or otherwise recognize them as an historical artifact. A movement of urban theorists and practitioners in the US, New Urbanism, has identified building typology as a key to defining more user-friendly places. In trying to preserve neighborhoods or building new ones, building types once again become the building blocks of the city, and may be codified in law as form-based codes.\n",
"Place names in the United States tend to be more easily traceable to their origins, such as towns simply named after the founder or an important politician of the time, with no alterations except a simple suffix, like -town. Carson City, for instance, was named for Kit Carson.\n",
"Towns and cities listed have names of a common origin across an international boundary; matching pairs across provincial or state boundaries (such as Kansas City or Lloydminster) are common but are not listed here.\n",
"This is a list of US places named for non-US places. In the case of this list, \"place\" means any named location that's smaller than a county or equivalent: cities, towns, villages, hamlets, neighborhoods, municipalities, boroughs, townships, civil parishes, localities, Census Designated Places, and some districts. Also included are country homes, castles, palaces, and similar institutions.\n"
] |
In terms of physique, would real gladiators have been more similar to Andy Whitfield of TV's 'Spartacus' or to Russell Crowe of the film 'Gladiator'? | _URL_0_
Apparently, they wouldn't have looked beefy at all.
> **New evidence indicates gladiators may not quite match Hollywood's interpretation.**
> The researchers expected gladiators would need a protein-rich diet to build muscle - however their analysis of the bones in fact suggested a vegetarian diet...
> Plants contain higher levels of the element strontium than animal tissues. So, people who consume more plants and less meat will build up measurably higher levels of strontium in their bones. Levels of strontium in the gladiators' bones were two times higher than the bones of contemporary Ephesians...
> This agrees with some historical reports of gladiators eating a diet of mainly barley, beans and dried fruit, says Grossschmidt.
> It would have given them a lot of strength, but may also have contributed to the tooth decay found in teeth in the cemetery and **potentially made the men fat.** However, a little extra weight could actually have had benefits in protecting vital organs from cutting blows during fights, argue the researchers.
Basically, gladiators would have had great muscle strength and exceptional muscular endurance. But they also would have had quite a bit of fat, caused by a diet that was really high in carbohydrates. | [
"Inspired by the success of \"Spartacus\", there were a number of Italian peplums that heavily emphasized the gladiatorial arena in their plots, with it becoming almost a peplum subgenre in itself; One group of supermen known as \"The Ten Gladiators\" appeared in a trilogy, all three films starring Dan Vadis in the lead role.\n",
"Irrespective of their origin, gladiators offered spectators an example of Rome's martial ethics and, in fighting or dying well, they could inspire admiration and popular acclaim. They were celebrated in high and low art, and their value as entertainers was commemorated in precious and commonplace objects throughout the Roman world.\n",
"GLaDOS has been compared to characters in fiction, including HAL 9000 from the film \"2001: A Space Odyssey\" by LucasArts designer Noah Falstein. He wrote that GLaDOS was \"more convincingly psychotic\" than HAL and that her dialogue was not typical \"like HAL['s]\". Falstein described her as the best AI he had ever encountered – \"more convincingly psychotic than HAL, with a more emotionally engaging death than Floyd, and funnier than C-3PO and R2-D2.\"\n",
"Before his rise to fame he owned several gyms until he secured his first contract with his long term employer \"Gladiators\". According to a Sky One interview, producers refused to allow Van Wijk to be mean as a Gladiator, but he soon persuaded them to let him try it. This distinctive persona led him to be the most popular Gladiator in the history of the show, although he courted controversy.\n",
"The social relevance of \"The Gladiator\" is unquestionable. Spartacus is the “underdog who through thirst for individual freedom and love of family risks all in taking on a tyrannical government”. Certainly, 19th century American theater patrons could identify to this as the young country was still figuring out how to live up to the “promises of the Revolution”. But the impact reached far beyond the confines of mainstream American theater goers. Dealing with slave insurgency in Ancient Rome, \"The Gladiator\" implicitly attacks the institution of Slavery in the United States by “transforming the Antebellum into neoclassical rebels”. Spartacus was born free just like the first generation of slaves in America and he valued that freedom above anything but family. Unquestionably, the play deals with many of the issues faced by the African slaves of the time including the inevitable shattering of family units resulting from individual slave sales. Spartacus’ yearning for his wife and son mirrored the plight of many slaves with family members scattered across multiple households or plantations. Although Spartacus finds himself “removed from anything like liberty and dignity”, he manages to rise from the “lowest of the low to become an inspiring role model who comes close to achieving freedom for himself and others”.\n",
"\"The Gladiator\" tells the story of a man yearning to live freely and removed from the oppression of totalitarian masters. Spartacus is a gladiator who initially refuses to fight because he will not “slay a man for the diversion of Romans”.\n",
"Gladiator appears in the animated television series \"X-Men\". His first appearance is in the episode \"Mojovision\", but only as one of Mojo's robots programmed to look like Gladiator. The real Gladiator first appears in the episode \"Phoenix Saga (Part 3): The Cry of the Banshee.\"\n"
] |
why do sirens sound like they do? why do they vary by country? | They are designed to get your attention - simple as that.
Why do they vary by country? Because there's more than one way of getting someone's attention! I know that here in the UK, they use a variety of sirens because they found that changing from one to another actually gets people's attention better than playing any single one continuously. You'll often hear emergency vehicles change their siren at crucial times, eg when they're just about to go through a red light. | [
"Today, signals are determined by state and local authorities and can vary from one region to another. The most common tones produced by sirens in the United States are \"alert\" (Steady) and \"attack\" (wail). Other tones include Westminster Chimes (commonly used for the testing of electronic sirens), Hi-Lo, Whoop, Pulse, Air Horn, and fast wail.\n",
"In the United States, there is no national level alert system. Normally, sirens are controlled on a county or local level, or in Hawaii, on a state level. Sirens are usually used to warn of impending natural disasters. They are also used to warn of threats of military attacks, which in the United States are rare. Throughout the Great Plains, Midwest, and South, they are used to warn the public to take cover when a tornado warning is issued. They are generally required in areas within a ten-mile radius of nuclear power plants. In the South and East Coast (except from Texas, Maine, Florida and New Hampshire), they use sirens to inform people about approaching hurricanes. Also in Pierce County, Washington there is a system of sirens set up along the Puyallup and Carbon River valleys to warn residents of volcanic eruptions and lahars (giant mudslides) from Mt. Rainier.\n",
"China has sirens located in most cities and towns, particularly those located in or near disputed territories. If the state declares a state of emergency due to attacks, invasion, or when there is a very high risk of military conflict, sirens will warn the public of possible attacks or invasion. The sirens are controlled by the People's Liberation Army.\n",
"A siren is a loud noise-making device. Civil defense sirens are mounted in fixed locations and used to warn of natural disasters or attacks. Sirens are used on emergency service vehicles such as ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks. There are two general types: pneumatic and electronic.\n",
"Air raid sirens used are typically sounded to warn of air raids or missile attacks on civilian population. Most of the sirens in urban areas are German-made HLS (supercharged) sirens, model F71. The Air Raid Sirens are called אזעקה (\"Az'aka\", literally \"alarm\"), and consist of a continuous, ascending and descending tone. The \"all-clear\" signal (called צפירת הרגעה, \"Tzfirat Harga'ah\") is a continuous single-pitch sound. However, in recent conflicts use of the \"all-clear\" signal has been discontinued, as it was seen as causing needless confusion and alarm.\n",
"In Christianity, the ringing of church bells is traditionally believed to drive out demons and other unclean spirits. Inscriptions on church bells relating to this purpose of church bells, as well as the purpose of serving as a call to prayer and worship, were customary, for example \"the sound of this bell vanquishes tempests, repels demons, and summons men\". Some churches have several bells with the justification that \"the more bells a church had, the more loudly they rang, and the greater the distance over which they could be heard, the less likely it was that evil forces would trouble the parish.\"\n",
"BULLET::::- Sirens - These can be fully electronic, electric, or manual, but are all designed to create changing sound patterns. These patterns vary by model of siren. Emergency drivers are often trained to use different siren tones in different conditions, to achieve maximum effectiveness through traffic. A long-standing problem for emergency services has been traffic being unable to determine the direction a siren is approaching from, and different tones have been developed on some electronic sirens to help combat this, such as the use of white or pink noise in between more conventional siren noises, which helps people to pinpoint their origin.\n"
] |
How long did it take for the relations between England and America to recover after the revolutionary war? And what were some significant milestones in that process? | On a government level, we signed the Jay Treaty during the Washington administration which gave favorable trade terms to the British.
Under John Quincy Adams, we drafted the Monroe doctrine (JQA doesn't get credit for it since he lost re-election soon after it was ratified) which told Europe to stay out of the western hemisphere. Since we really had no army or navy though, we couldn't enforce it. The British navy was the enforcer, less because they felt the need to back our tough words and more to keep their rivals from gorging and enriching themselves in any more new world colonies.
As far as reestablishing relations on a social level, where the hoople-heads weren't damning England in the streets, I don't know. | [
"During the 1760s and 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's ability to tax American colonists without their consent. Disagreement turned to violence and in 1775 the American War of Independence began. The following year, the colonists declared the independence of the United States and with economic and naval assistance from France, would go on to win the war in 1783. The Treaties of Versailles were signed, also ending war with the French and Spanish. The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War ended the following year.\n",
"The official end to the American Revolutionary War did not occur until 1783 when the Treaty of Paris was signed. Until then, British troops, ships and Tories were present and active in New York City, and in fact, Britain would maintain a presence in the United States until 1815 when the War of 1812 ended.\n",
"The coming of the American Revolution had a great impact across the continent. Most importantly it directly led to the creation of the United States of America. However, the associated American Revolutionary War was an important war that touched all corners of the region. The flight of the United Empire Loyalists led to the creation of English Canada as a separate community\n",
"During the 1760s and 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of opposition to Parliament's repeated attempts to tax American colonists without their consent. Disagreement turned to violence and in 1775 the American Revolutionary War began. In 1776 the Patriots expelled royal officials and declared the independence of the United States of America. After capturing a British invasion army in 1777, the US formed an alliance with France (and in turn Spain aided France), evening out the military balance. The British army controlled only a handful of coastal cities. 1780–81 was a low point for Britain. Taxes and deficits were high, government corruption was pervasive, and the war in America was entering its sixth year with no apparent end in sight. The Gordon Riots erupted in London during the spring of 1781, in response to increased concessions to Catholics by Parliament. In October 1781 Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown, Virginia. The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, formally terminating the war and recognising the independence of the United States.\n",
"By 1790, England had thirty years and all of continental Europe's many canals to draw on for experience. In the years after the American Revolutionary War, the young United States began a period of economic expansion away from the coast. American men of influence had always kept an eye on news from Europe, especially that from Great Britain, so when in the four years 1790–1794 the British Parliament passed eighty-one canal and navigation acts, American leaders were paying attention.\n",
"Following the end of the French and Indian War (the North American theater of the Seven Years' War) in 1763, relations between the colonies and Britain had been deteriorating. Because the war had plunged the British government deep into debt, Parliament enacted a series of measures to increase tax revenue from the colonies. These acts, such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767, were seen as legitimate means of collecting revenues to pay off the nearly two-fold increase in British debt stemming from the war.\n",
"BULLET::::- American Revolution – The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which the Thirteen Colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America.\n"
] |
If two people, A and B, ate the same amount of food in terms of caloric intake and quantity but A exercised and B didn't, would both defecate the same amount of feces in terms of weight? | Someone please answer this man, I'm incredibly interested | [
"Based on extrapolation from studies done on animals, the maximum tolerable daily intake of coumestrol for human beings has been estimated at 22 μg per kg of body mass. This was calculated by extrapolating from the lowest level at which adverse effects were seen in animals. Although, due to the variability of the human diet, the exact amount of coumestrol the average person consumes has not been calculated, studies of phytoestrogen intake suggest that most human diets result in a negligible intake of coumestrol relative to the maximum tolerable daily intake.\n",
"\"Ad libitum\" is also used in psychology and biology to refer to the \"free-feeding\" weight of an animal, as opposed, for example, to the weight after a restricted diet or pair feeding. For example, \"The rat's \"ad libitum\" weight was about 320 g.\" In nutritional studies, this phrase denotes providing an animal free access to feed or water, thereby allowing the animal to self-regulate intake according to its biological needs. For example, \"Rats were given \"ad libitum\" access to food and water.\"\n",
"In daily diary studies, individuals have been found to eat from 30 to 40-50 percent more while in the presence of others versus eating alone. In fact, some research has indicated that the rate of intake is best described as a linear function of the number of people present, such that meals eaten with one, four, or seven other people were 33, 69, and 96 percent larger than meals eaten alone, respectively. In addition to these observational findings, there is also experimental evidence for social facilitation effects.\n",
"A number of theories in evolutionary psychology that are hinged on the assumption that sheer number of calories constitute the only important bottleneck in nutrition are challenged by research on hidden hunger, types of malnutrition in which deficits of specific essential micronutrients cause diseases or even death despite a suitable number of calories. Comparisons between species show that although human brains consume more nutrients than the brains of other species, human brains consuming roughly 20% of the body's total calory requirements in adult humans and 60% in young children, there are other organs in many other species that consume more calories than their human counterparts. This means that humans do not stand out in requirements for calories at any stage of life, though human brains stand out in requiring higher amounts of many different essential nutrients while other organs in other species may require higher amounts of two or three specific micronutrients. While studies of blood flow in the brain's dura mater in fossil humans show a negligible difference in oxygen and with it caloric requirements between Neanderthals and modern humans, the fact that some Neanderthal groups in Belgium lived exclusively of large land animal meat while other Neanderthal groups in Spain lived exclusively of plants that were present there at the time with a much narrower range of nutrients than the diets vegans eat today shows that although Neanderthals were capable of varying their diets, they could also survive off non-varied diets that would cause lethal deficits in modern humans. Since many micronutrient deficits in modern humans cause neurological symptoms, this is explainable as a result of less flexible synapses in Neanderthal brains requiring lower levels of many specific mincronutrients than the highly flexible synapses of modern humans. This contradicts the claim that human females were under unique selection pressure to evolve curvy shapes for fat storage for fetal brain development, as fat would only store calories and not micronutrients which could be stored without affecting body shape and nonhuman animals with other high fetal calory requirements do not have curvy females. The claim that human females evolved large breasts to feed infants needing many calories is also challenged, empirically citing the human example that while most asian women have small breasts, asian people do not have smaller brains than other people and that explaining it away as a \"trade-off\" would be a misuse of the term as the observation is one trait (brain size) being unaffected by a dramatic reduction of another trait (breast size) as opposed to the correct definition of \"trade-off\" which is an otherwise adaptive trait being reduced by a change of something else. The distribution of essential nutrients between different types of food varied dramatically between regions in the paleolithic before the exchange of breeding stock of domestic and feral plants and animal species over long distances at the dawn of agriculture and the many micronuitrients required in higher levels by sapiens than by archaics meant that in every region, one or more types of food became narrower bottlenecks for sapiens group size than for archaic group size though the specific bottleneck food varied from region to region. This contradicts evolutionary psychology's claim that sapiens evolved in larger group sizes and since many essential nutreients are in types of food that cannot be prevented from going rancid in short times while other essential nutrients degrade fast even if the food in which they are contained does not become rancid, trade over long distances could not address the problem. The discovery of stone tools further from the origin of the stone at sapiens sites than at archaic sites is therefore not explainable by trade between tribes, but can be explained by people moving further to eat the essential nutrients and that the same movement patterns in other sapiens groups making them less capable of consistent territorial defense than archaics were, allowing sapiens to move longer and take their tools with them. It also challenges evolutionary psychology's claim of an universal exchange value of animal versus vegetable food that would have maintained an universal division of labour between hunting men and gathering women and/or a need for stable pair bonds in a context of paying for guard services with food within the tribe, as the most valuable essential micronutrient food would have been animal in some regions yet vegetable in other regions and such differences were commonly found between different localities within the relatively large part of Africa in which Homo sapiens evolved as a number of interbreeding groups.\n",
"The tautological phrase means that regardless of the form of food calorie a person consumes (whether a carbohydrate, protein or fat calorie) the energetic value of such a calorie, is identical to any other. One dietary calorie contains 4,184 joules of energy. With this knowledge, it is easy to assume that all calories have equal value.\n",
"Mentzer believed that carbohydrates should make up the bulk of the caloric intake, 50–60%, rather than protein as others preferred. Mentzer's reasoning was simple: to build 10 pounds of muscle in a year, a total of 6000 extra calories needed to be ingested throughout the year, because one pound of muscle contains 600 calories. That averages 16 extra calories per day, and only four of them needed to be from protein—because muscle is 22% protein, about one quarter.\n",
"Most people would have consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. \"Puls\" (pottage) was considered the aboriginal food of the Romans. The basic grain pottage could be elaborated with chopped vegetables, bits of meat, cheese, or herbs to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto.\n"
] |
If there is a breach in a fusion reactor, what will happen? | If you remove a part of the wall but not the magnets the fusion reaction will heat the magnets until they stop being superconducting. The magnetic field breaks down, the reaction stops - essentially instantaneous, probably before you even managed to fully remove the wall segment.
The energy stored in the plasma at any given point in time is small - less than the energy in a hand grenade probably. Fusion reactors cannot explode or do anything else dangerous. | [
"Unlike nuclear fission, fusion requires extremely precise and controlled temperature, pressure and magnetic field parameters for any net energy to be produced. If a reactor suffers damage or loses even a small degree of required control, fusion reactions and heat generation would rapidly cease. Additionally, fusion reactors contain only small amounts of fuel, enough to \"burn\" for minutes, or in some cases, microseconds. Unless they are actively refueled, the reactions will quickly end. Therefore, fusion reactors are considered immune from catastrophic meltdown.\n",
"In the case of an accident (or sabotage), it is expected that a fusion reactor would release far less radioactive pollution than would an ordinary fission nuclear station. Furthermore, ITER's type of fusion power has little in common with nuclear weapons technology, and does not produce the fissile materials necessary for the construction of a weapon. Proponents note that large-scale fusion power would be able to produce reliable electricity on demand, and with virtually zero pollution (no gaseous CO, SO, or NO by-products are produced).\n",
"In general terms, fusion reactors would create far less radioactive material than a fission reactor, the material it would create is less damaging biologically, and the radioactivity \"burns off\" within a time period that is well within existing engineering capabilities for safe long-term waste storage.\n",
"Nuclear reactors can be susceptible to prompt-criticality accidents if a large increase in reactivity (or \"k-effective\") occurs, e.g., following failure of their control and safety systems. The rapid uncontrollable increase in reactor power in prompt-critical conditions is likely to irreparably damage the reactor and in extreme cases, may breach the containment of the reactor. Nuclear reactors' safety systems are designed to prevent prompt criticality and, for defense in depth, reactor structures also provide multiple layers of containment as a precaution against any accidental releases of radioactive fission products.\n",
"A technical concern is that the 14 MeV neutrons produced by the fusion reactions will damage the materials from which the reactor is built. Research is in progress to determine whether and how reactor walls can be designed to last long enough to make a commercial power station economically viable in the presence of the intense neutron bombardment. The damage is primarily caused by high energy neutrons knocking atoms out of their normal position in the crystal lattice. A related problem for a future commercial fusion power station is that the neutron bombardment will induce radioactivity in the reactor material itself. Maintaining and decommissioning a commercial reactor may thus be difficult and expensive. Another problem is that superconducting magnets are damaged by neutron fluxes. A new special research facility, IFMIF, is planned to investigate this problem.\n",
"Nuclear reactors can fail in a variety of ways. Should the instability of the nuclear material generate unexpected behavior, it may result in an uncontrolled power excursion. Normally, the cooling system in a reactor is designed to be able to handle the excess heat this causes; however, should the reactor also experience a loss-of-coolant accident, then the fuel may melt or cause the vessel in which it is contained to overheat and melt. This event is called a nuclear meltdown.\n",
"In a modern reactor, a nuclear meltdown, whether partial or total, should be contained inside the reactor's containment structure. Thus (assuming that no other major disasters occur) while the meltdown will severely damage the reactor itself, possibly contaminating the whole structure with highly radioactive material, a meltdown alone should not lead to significant radioactivity release or danger to the public.\n"
] |
Were presidents Garfield and McKinley "sainted" after their assassinations in the same way as Lincoln and Kennedy? | Garfield was already a beloved national hero due to his service in the American Civil War. He was only president for a few months before his assassination.
Source: Destiny of the Republic
That being said, I believe his reputation has actually suffered due to his assassination. He wasn't in office long enough to create any sweeping legislative changes like Kennedy or Lincoln, so there is less memory of his achievements. Any that were made have certainly not been as long lasting.
I made short write up of it here as well. _URL_0_ | [
"President McKinley was enjoying great popularity as he began his second term, but it would be cut short. In September 1901, while attending an exposition in Buffalo, New York, McKinley was shot by an anarchist. He was the third President to be assassinated, all since the Civil War. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency.\n",
"For a few years after his assassination, Garfield's life story was seen as an exemplar of the American success story—that even the poorest boy might someday become President of the United States. Peskin noted that, \"In mourning Garfield, Americans were not only honoring a president; they were paying tribute to a man whose life story embodied their own most cherished aspirations.\" As the rivalry between Stalwarts and Half-Breeds faded from the scene in the late 1880s and after, so too did memories of Garfield. Beginning in 1882, the year after Garfield's death, the U.S. Post Office began issuing postage stamps honoring the late president. Despite his short term as president, nine different issues were printed over the years. In the 1890s, Americans became disillusioned with politicians, and looked elsewhere for inspiration, focusing on industrialists, labor leaders, scientists, and others as their heroes. Increasingly, Garfield's short time as president was forgotten.\n",
"President Garfield came to the Sixth Street Station on his way to his alma mater, Williams College, where he was scheduled to deliver a speech. Garfield was accompanied by two of his sons, James and Harry, and Secretary of State Blaine. Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln waited at the station to see the president off. Garfield had no bodyguard or security detail; with the exception of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, early U.S. presidents never used any guards.\n",
"Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881. After eleven weeks of intensive and other care Garfield died in Elberon, New Jersey, the second of four presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln.\n",
"Lincoln's assassination had taken place roughly sixteen years before in the closing stages of the Civil War. On the other hand, Garfield's term was marked (for the most part) by peacetime, and a general complacency with respect to presidential security had developed by this time. Garfield, like many other presidents, often preferred to interact directly with the public, and although some form of security was almost certainly in place, a comprehensive security detail had not been seriously considered by either Congress or the president up to that point. Remarkably, it would not be until the assassination of William McKinley some twenty years later that Congress would finally task the United States Secret Service (founded to prevent counterfeiting) with the responsibility of ensuring the president's personal safety.\n",
"Garfield's assassination was instrumental to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act on January 16, 1883. Garfield himself had called for civil service reform in his inaugural address and supported it as President in the belief that it would make government more efficient. It was passed as something of a memorial to the fallen President. Arthur lost the Republican Party nomination in 1884 to Blaine, who went on to lose a close election to Democrat Grover Cleveland.\n",
"The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was deemed a fluke due to the Civil War, and Garfield, like most people, saw no reason why the president should be guarded; Garfield's movements and plans were often printed in the newspapers. Guiteau knew the president would leave Washington for a cooler climate on July 2, and made plans to kill him before then. He purchased a gun he thought would look good in a museum, and followed Garfield several times, but each time his plans were frustrated, or he lost his nerve. His opportunities dwindled to one—Garfield's departure by train for New Jersey on the morning of July 2, 1881.\n"
] |
how does this "cure" for tinnitus work? | Tinnitus isn't fully understood, but one of the hypothesis for its cause include a problem in the amplifier part of our ear.
Our ears are pretty sophisticated, and including in them essentially a biological amplifier which, when there's no ambient sound around, increases sensitivity so that we can pick up quiet sounds, but when there's a lot of ambient noise tamps back on the sensitivity so that we're not overwhelmed.
A problem with that leads to what is essentially feedback hum.
I would imagine that this little trick helps to properly calibrate this system for at least a short time, eliminating the feedback. | [
"If there is an underlying cause, treating it may lead to improvements. Otherwise, the primary treatment for tinnitus is talk therapy, sound therapy, or hearing aids. There are no effective medications or supplements that treat tinnitus.\n",
"The best supported treatment for tinnitus is a type of counseling called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) which can be delivered via the internet or in person. It decreases the amount of stress those with tinnitus feel. These benefits appear to be independent of any effect on depression or anxiety in an individual. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) also shows promise in the treatment of tinnitus. Relaxation techniques may also be useful. A clinical protocol called Progressive Tinnitus Management for treatment of tinnitus has been developed by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.\n",
"BULLET::::- alternative medicine – vitamin, antioxidant and herbal preparations (notably \"Ginkgo biloba\" extract, also called EGb761) are advertised as treatments or cures for tinnitus. However, none are approved by the FDA, and controlled clinical trials on their efficacy are lacking.\n",
"The American Tinnitus Association (ATA) purpose is to promote relief, help prevent, and find cures for tinnitus. Starting in 1980, the association has granted close to $6 million in funding for tinnitus research. Many of these researchers have gone on to receive larger grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) based on ATA-funded research. Contributions to the association also go towards advocacy work in Washington, D.C.\n",
"Objective tinnitus can be detected by other people and is sometimes caused by an involuntary twitching of a muscle or a group of muscles (myoclonus) or by a vascular condition. In some cases, tinnitus is generated by muscle spasms around the middle ear.\n",
"Tinnitus retraining therapy is a form of habituation therapy designed to help people who experience tinnitus, a ringing, buzzing, hissing, or other sound in the ears when no external sound is present. Two key components of TRT directly follow from the neurophysiological model of tinnitus. One of these principles includes directive counseling aimed at reclassification of tinnitus to a category of neutral signals, while the other includes sound therapy which is aimed at weakening tinnitus related neuronal activity.\n",
"It has been proposed that tinnitus is caused by mechanisms that generate abnormal neural activity, specifically one mechanism called discordant damage (dysfunction) of outer and inner hair cells of the cochlea.\n"
] |
what is that line in the roof of your mouth and what is it for? | You mean the ridge on your palate that runs from front to back? That's called the palatine raphe. It's just where the 2 halves of our face meet. When we're embryos, our faces are 2 separate halves that sort of fold in and meet in the middle. The palatine raphe is just where the bone and soft tissue of the mouth meet and fuse. Sometimes it doesn't quite close all the way and you can end up with a cleft palate or a cleft lip. | [
"The roof of the mouth is termed the palate and it separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. The palate is hard at the front of the mouth since the overlying mucosa is covering a plate of bone; it is softer and more pliable at the back being made of muscle and connective tissue, and it can move to swallow food and liquids. The soft palate ends at the uvula. The surface of the hard palate allows for the pressure needed in eating food, to leave the nasal passage clear. The lips are the mouth's front boundary and the fauces (the passageway between the tonsils, also called the throat), mark its posterior boundary.\n",
"The mouth, consists of 2 regions, the vestibule and the oral cavity proper. The vestibule is the area between the teeth, lips and cheeks. The oral cavity is bounded at the sides and in front by the alveolar process (containing the teeth) and at the back by the isthmus of the fauces. Its roof is formed by hard palate at the front, and a soft palate at the back. The uvula projects downwards from the middle of the soft palate at its back. The floor is formed by the mylohyoid muscles and is occupied mainly by the tongue. A mucous membrane – the oral mucosa, lines the sides and under surface of the tongue to the gums, lining the inner aspect of the jaw (mandible). It receives the secretions from the submandibular and sublingual salivary glands.\n",
"The alveolar ridge (; also known as the alveolar margin) is one of the two jaw ridges, extensions of the mandible or maxilla, either on the roof of the mouth between the upper teeth and the hard palate or on the bottom of the mouth behind the lower teeth. Most of the roof of one's mouth is the hard palate and the soft palate. The alveolar ridges contain the sockets (alveoli, singular \"alveolus\") of the teeth. They can be felt with the tongue in the area right above the top teeth or below the bottom teeth. Its surface is covered with little ridges.\n",
"The face is the anterior part of the head, containing the eyes, nose, and mouth. On either side of the mouth, the cheeks provide a fleshy border to the oral cavity. The ears sit to either side of the head.\n",
"Above and to the back, the bony upper part of the nasal septum is made up of the perpendicular plate of the ethmoid bone, and the bony lower part is made up of the vomer bone that lies below. The floor of the nose is made up of the incisive bone and the horizontal plates of the palatine bones, and this makes up the hard palate of the roof of the mouth. The two horizontal plates join together at the midline and form the posterior nasal spine that gives attachment to the musculus uvulae in the uvula.\n",
"A saw-tooth roof is a roof comprising a series of ridges with dual pitches either side. The steeper surfaces are glazed and face away from the equator to shield workers and machinery from direct sunlight. This kind of roof admits natural light into a deep plan building or factory.\n",
"The mouth lies in the centre of the oral surface in regular urchins, or towards one end in irregular urchins. It is surrounded by lips of softer tissue, with numerous small, embedded bony pieces. This area, called the peristome, also includes five pairs of modified tube feet and, in many species, five pairs of gills. The jaw apparatus consists of five strong arrow-shaped plates known as pyramids, the ventral surface of each of which has a toothband with a hard tooth pointing towards the centre of the mouth. Specialised muscles control the protrusion of the apparatus and the action of the teeth, and the animal can grasp, scrape, pull and tear. The structure of the mouth and teeth have been found to be so efficient at grasping and grinding that similar structures have been tested for use in real-world applications.\n"
] |
Are lightnings three-dimensional or two-dimensional? | The shape you are looking for is ["dendritic"](_URL_1_). That's greek for tree-like, and it is the term used for anything that branches (crystals, nerve cells, lightning strikes, fractures, and so on).
As has already been mentioned, lightning typically follows a complex 3D path, but it can also be 2D if you confine it (see [these images](_URL_0_)).
The lightning channel itself tend to be very narrow. We can model it as a series of cylinders, but I hesitate to call it cylindrical because that implies a lightning surface, which is not the case. Lightning is simply defined by where the electrons flow - there will be more electrons toward the center of the narrow cylinder, and less towards the edges. And the electrons don't all move in the same direction together, that's why you get the branching effect as different pockets of charge move in very erratic patterns. | [
"In three-dimensional space, 0-blades are again scalars and 1-blades are three-dimensional vectors, and 2-blades are oriented area elements. 3-blades represent volume elements and in three-dimensional space; these are scalar-like—i.e., 3-blades in three-dimensions form a one-dimensional vector space.\n",
"In three-dimensional geometry, skew lines are two lines that do not intersect and are not parallel. A simple example of a pair of skew lines is the pair of lines through opposite edges of a regular tetrahedron. Two lines that both lie in the same plane must either cross each other or be parallel, so skew lines can exist only in three or more dimensions. Two lines are skew if and only if they are not coplanar.\n",
"Two lines in three-dimensional space are coplanar if there is a plane that includes them both. This occurs if the lines are parallel, or if they intersect each other. Two lines that are not coplanar are called skew lines.\n",
"In two dimensions, there are infinitely many regular polygons. In three and four dimensions, there are several more regular polyhedra and 4-polytopes besides these three. In five dimensions and above, these are the only ones. See also the list of regular polytopes.\n",
"In three dimensions, the geometry of the field lines become more complicated than the two-dimensional case and it is possible for reconnection to occur in regions where a separator does not exist, but with the field lines connected by steep gradients. These regions are known as quasi-separatrix layers (QSLs), and have been observed in theoretical configurations and solar flares.\n",
"In geometry, parallel lines are lines in a plane which do not meet; that is, two lines in a plane that do not intersect or touch each other at any point are said to be parallel. By extension, a line and a plane, or two planes, in three-dimensional Euclidean space that do not share a point are said to be parallel. However, two lines in three-dimensional space which do not meet must be in a common plane to be considered parallel; otherwise they are called skew lines. Parallel planes are planes in the same three-dimensional space that never meet.\n",
"In Euclidean geometry, a kite is a quadrilateral whose four sides can be grouped into two pairs of equal-length sides that are adjacent to each other. In contrast, a parallelogram also has two pairs of equal-length sides, but they are opposite to each other rather than adjacent. Kite quadrilaterals are named for the wind-blown, flying kites, which often have this shape and which are in turn named for a bird. Kites are also known as deltoids, but the word \"deltoid\" may also refer to a deltoid curve, an unrelated geometric object.\n"
] |
why do some chemicals change colours when mixed with other chemicals? | These changes are do to new molecules being formed, making light react differently to the product. Different atoms and molecules radiate different colors of light, and the colors they radiate depend on their particular atomic and molecular structure. Specifically, the more electrons are confined, the closer the spacings between their energy levels allowing shorter wavelengths to be absorbed. | [
"Chemical colors are more durable properties of an external object, such as the red color of an apple. A chemical color is incomprehensible because we don't know its cause. Its appearance is only known from experience and it is not an essential part of the object. Chemical colors result from changes in an object's surface. A slight change in the surface may result in a different color. Color, therefore, is not an essential property of an object. This confirms the subjective nature of color.\n",
"The color of chemicals is a physical property of chemicals that in most cases comes from the excitation of electrons due to an absorption of energy performed by the chemical. What is seen by the eye is not the color absorbed, but the complementary color from the removal of the absorbed wavelengths. This spectral perspective was first noted in atomic spectroscopy.\n",
"The colour change of halochromic substances occur when the chemical binds to existing hydrogen and hydroxide ions in solution. Such bonds result in changes in the conjugated systems of the molecule, or the range of electron flow. This alters the wavelength of light absorbed, which in turn results in a visible change of colour. Halochromic substances do not display a full range of colour for a full range of pH because, after certain acidities, the conjugated system will not change. The various shades result from different concentrations of halochromic molecules with different conjugated systems.\n",
"Ionochromic materials, similar to photochromic, thermochromic and other chromic materials, alter colour in the presence of a factor and reverse to their initial state when the factor is removed. The factor which causes colour change in ionochromic substances are ions. A flow of ions through an ionochromic material results in a reaction/colour change from the material. This material is in many ways similar to electrochromic materials which change colour when electrons flow through them. Electrons, just like anions, carry a negative charge. Both electrochromic and ionochromic substances have their colour change activated by the flow of charged particles. Ionochromic substances are suitable for detection of charged particles. Some ionochromic substances can be used as indicators for complexometric titrations.\n",
"Chemical substances exist as solids, liquids, gases, or plasma, and may change between these phases of matter with changes in temperature or pressure. Chemical substances may be combined or converted to others by means of chemical reactions.\n",
"Some chemical compounds experience solvatochromism, which is a change in color due to solvent polarity. This phenomenon illustrates how different solvents interact differently with the same solute. Other solvent effects include conformational or isomeric preferences and changes in the acidity of a solute.\n",
"Chemical reactions may lead to a substitution of a group in a molecule or a ligand in a complex, to the elimination of a group of the molecule or a ligand, or to a rearrangement of a molecule or complex. An electron-transfer reaction may, however, also cause simply an exchange of charges between the reactants, and these redox reactions without making or breaking a bond seem to be quite simple in inorganic chemistry for ions and complexes. These reactions often become manifest by a change of colour, e.g. for ions or complexes of transition metal ions, but organic molecules, too, may change their colour by accepting or giving away an electron (like the herbicide Paraquat (\"N\",\"N\"-dimethyl-4,4'-bipyridinium dichloride) which becomes blue when accepting an electron, thence the alternative name of methyl viologen). For this type of electron-transfer reactions R.A. Marcus has developed his theory. Here the trace of argument and the results are presented. For the mathematical development and details the original papers should be consulted.\n"
] |
when completing in luge, what exactly are the athletes doing to control themselves and maximize their speed? | The sled rides on two sharp-bottomed blades known as runners, the only part of the sled that makes contact with the ice.
In order to steer the sled, the slider uses his or her calves to apply pressure to one of the runners, or shifts their weight using their shoulders. Considering the extreme speed, athletes only need to make slight adjustments in order to steer.
| [
"3. Extreme speed is used by the martial artist - by perfecting their relaxation skills thereby allowing the kick to be sent unhindered by muscle - until the moment of contact, where the Wing-Chun base posture, provides target-ground-target energy. \n",
"Players need to readjust the distance of their bounces when running at different paces. When running faster, the ball must be bounced further in front of the player, and when running slower, the ball must be bounced closer. At very slow or stationary paces, this correction is more difficult, because it is difficult to correctly angle the ball for the return bounce at such a short distance.\n",
"BULLET::::- Task checkpoints - In some races upon arriving at a checkpoint the rider may have to perform a task or trick before being given the next location. This allows organizers to be as creative as they desire. Task checkpoints can involve physical tasks, such as climbing stairs, taking a shot of alcohol or hot sauce, performing a skillful trick, or can test the racer's mind, such as reciting trivia or messenger-related knowledge. Often there is not a task at all of the checkpoints in a race and tasks/checkpoints can sometimes be skipped (potentially at a loss of points) if a rider feels that time to complete a task is not worth the points they would earn.\n",
"BULLET::::- Follow a wheel: The ability to follow a wheel is the ability to match the pace of riders who are setting the tempo. Following is easier than pulling or setting the tempo and the term can be used in a derogatory manner, e.g. \"S/he only ever followed\".\n",
"Once a player has the ball, that player cannot dribble or walk with it; however, the player can move one foot as long as the foot on which the player landed when catching the ball stays in the same spot. Therefore, tactical and efficient teamwork is required, because players need each other in order to keep the ball moving. \n",
"To make things a little more interesting, each team, no matter what type of exchange they are doing, has to perform their exchange in the distance of two pits. The action of slowing is not part of the exchange, but the first rider is not allowed to begin getting off the bike until one pit ahead of their team's and the second rider must have complete control of the bike by the end of the team's pit. For bike-to-bike exchanges, the second person CANNOT move until tagged by the first person and the first person MUST stop before end of her team's pit. Failure to do either of these things will result in a penalty for the team.\n",
"The athletes ride in a flat, aerodynamic position on the sled, keeping their heads low to minimize air resistance. They steer the sled mainly with their calves by applying pressure on the runners—right calf to turn left, left calf to turn right. It takes a precise mix of shifting body weight, applying pressure with calves and rolling the shoulders. There are also handles for minor adjustments. A successful luger maintains complete concentration and relaxation on the sled while traveling at high speeds. Most lugers \"visualize\" the course in their minds before sliding. Fastest times result from following the perfect \"line\" down the track. Any slight error, such as brush against the wall, costs time. Track conditions are also important. Softer ice tends to slow speeds, while harder ice tends to lead to faster times. Lugers race at speeds averaging around high banked curves while experiencing a centripetal acceleration of up to 5g. Men's Singles have their start locations near where the bobsled and skeleton competitors start at most tracks, while both the Doubles and Women's Singles competition have their starthouse located farther down the track. Artificial track luge is the fastest and most agile sledding sport.\n"
] |
why is latin, arguably a dead language, is still so prevalent in medicine, law, and even science? | That is one of the reasons they started using it, because dead languages doesn't change!
To make it short, a swede named Carl Linnaeus got tired of the confusion that plants having different names in different languages caused, so he gave them all latin names. Most scientists at that time knew latin anyway.
That removed a lot of confusion, causing other branches of science to follow suit. | [
"Because it gave rise to many modern languages, Latin did not \"die\"; it merely evolved over the centuries in different regions in diverse ways. The local dialects of Vulgar Latin that emerged eventually became modern Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, Romansh, Dalmatian, Sardinian, and many others.\n",
"Although Latin is an extinct language with very few contemporary fluent speakers, it remains in use in many ways. In particular, Latin has survived through Ecclesiastical Latin, the traditional language of the Roman Catholic Church and one of the official languages of the Vatican City. Although distinct from both Classical and Vulgar Latin in a number of ways, Ecclesiastical Latin was more stable than typical Medieval Latin. More Classical sensibilities eventually re-emerged in the Renaissance with Humanist Latin. Due to both the prevalence of Christianity and the enduring influence of the Roman civilization, Latin became western Europe's \"lingua franca\", a language used to cross international borders, such as for academic and diplomatic usage. A deep knowledge of classical Latin was a standard part of the educational curriculum in many western countries until well into the 20th century, and is still taught in many schools today. Although it was eventually supplanted in this respect by French in the 19th century and English in the 20th, Latin continues to see heavy use in religious, legal, and scientific terminology, and in academia in general.\n",
"During modern times Europe has largely abandoned Latin as a scholarly language (most scientific studies and scholarly publications are printed in English), but a variety of fields still use Latin terminology as the norm. By tradition, it is still common in some fields to name new discoveries in Latin. And because Western science became dominant during the 18th and 19th centuries, the use of Latin names in many scholarly fields has gained worldwide acceptance, at least when European languages are being used for communication.\n",
"A diminishing audience combined with diminishing production of Latin texts pushed Latin into a declining spiral from which it has not recovered. As it was gradually abandoned by various fields, and as less written material appeared in it, there was less of a practical reason for anyone to bother to learn Latin; as fewer people knew Latin, there was less reason for material to be written in the language. Latin came to be viewed as esoteric, irrelevant, and too difficult. As languages like French, German, and English became more widely known, use of a 'difficult' auxiliary language seemed unnecessary—while the argument that Latin could expand readership beyond a single nation was fatally weakened if, in fact, Latin readers did not compose a majority of the intended audience.\n",
"From 1066, Latin was the language of formal records and statutes, and was replaced by English in the Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1730. However, because only learned persons were fluent in Latin, it never became the language of legal pleading or debate. The influence of Latin can be seen in a number of words and phrases such as \"ad hoc\", \"de facto\", \"bona fide\", \"inter alia\", and \"ultra vires,\" which remain in current use in legal writing (see Legal Latin).\n",
"The term \"Latin\" has survived much longer as a unifying term for the West because the Latin language survived until very recently as a scholarly and liturgical language despite the fragmentation and religious changes in Western Europe. The Greek language, by contrast, died out somewhat quickly in the Arab lands, and the Slavic nations never fully embraced the language despite their long religious affiliation with the Eastern Romans/Byzantines.\n",
"Medieval Latin is the written Latin in use during that portion of the postclassical period when no corresponding Latin vernacular existed. The spoken language had developed into the various incipient Romance languages; however, in the educated and official world Latin continued without its natural spoken base. Moreover, this Latin spread into lands that had never spoken Latin, such as the Germanic and Slavic nations. It became useful for international communication between the member states of the Holy Roman Empire and its allies.\n"
] |
in the usa, what are the guidelines on having a lawyer during interactions with law enforcement? | You don't have to go down to the station at all.
If they ask you to come down to answer questions, just ask "Am I being arrested?" if they say no, then say "Then please leave me alone" if they say yes just say "I want a lawyer" | [
"The right to consult a lawyer is considered to be important, and the courts have been understanding if, even in cases in which the person arrested or detained preferred not to see any lawyer, it is later argued section 10 is violated because the arrested or detained person did not know any better. This applies, for example, to cases in which the arrested or detained person has a low IQ.\n",
"In the United States, criminal defense lawyers deal with the issues surrounding an arrest , a criminal investigation, criminal charges, sentencing, appeals, and post-trial issues. Often an attorney will specialize in a niche within criminal defense, such as drug defense or DUI defense. They could work for the local, state, or federal government or they could work for private law firms. \n",
"As stated in \"Brewer v. Williams\", , the right to counsel \"[means] at least that a person is entitled to the help of a lawyer at or after the time that judicial proceedings have been initiated against him, whether by formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.\" \"Brewer\" goes on to conclude that once adversary proceedings have begun against a defendant, he has a right to legal assistance when the government interrogates him and that when a defendant is arrested, \"arraigned on [an arrest] warrant before a judge\", and \"committed by the court to confinement\", \"[t]here can be no doubt that judicial proceedings ha[ve] been initiated.\"\n",
"BULLET::::- Bar Counsel is available by phone and email to provide informal advice to lawyers with questions about ethics. The Bar provides free ethics programs to assist attorneys in meeting their yearly mandatory ethics CLE requirements. ABA Ethics Opinions are available online.\n",
"The Duty Counsel lawyer is often the first point of contact for legal advice provided to a detained or arrested individual. People arrested by police services across the province of Ontario, as well as by Canada Border Services Agency officers at land, air, and sea ports of entry in Ontario also have the right to contact Duty Counsel. Any person arrested or detained in Canada has the right to speak to a lawyer without delay (with very narrow exceptions), and the police are required to inform them of that right, and facilitate access to a lawyer. The Duty Counsel system is the way in which these rights are implemented in Ontario.\n",
"A criminal defense lawyer is a lawyer (mostly barristers) specializing in the defense of individuals and companies charged with criminal activity. Some criminal defense lawyers are privately retained, while others are employed by the various jurisdictions with criminal courts for appointment to represent indigent persons; the latter are generally called public defenders. The terminology is imprecise because each jurisdiction may have different practices with various levels of input from state and federal law or consent decrees. Some jurisdictions use a rotating system of appointments, with judges appointing a private practice attorney or firm for each case.\n",
"As stated in \"Brewer v. Williams\", , the right to counsel “[means] at least that a person is entitled to the help of a lawyer at or after the time that judicial proceedings have been initiated against him, whether by formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.” \"Brewer\" goes on to conclude that once adversarial proceedings have begun against a defendant, he has a right to legal representation when the government interrogates him and that when a defendant is arrested, “arraigned on [an arrest] warrant before a judge,” and “committed by the court to confinement,” “[t]here can be no doubt that judicial proceedings ha[ve] been initiated.”\n"
] |
why is the dead sea not overflooding? | The dead sea evaporates away leaving salt. It only has tributaries which is why the salt content is so high. | [
"In 2016, the DESERVE institute constructed a network of scientific monitoring stations around the Dead Sea, expanding our understanding of declining water levels, freshwater pollution, and the increased occurrence of sinkholes. Their findings have confirmed previous estimates of water level decline, by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, of approximately a meter a year. This is due, in part, to over pumping of surface water connected to the Jordan River, which leads directly into the Dead Sea. Additionally, the decline of the Dead Sea is correlated with increased sinkhole formation, although the mechanisms through which this occurs have not been confirmed. These sinkholes have caused significant damage to infrastructure and industry surrounding the Dead Sea region.\n",
"Since 1930, when its surface was and its level was below sea level, the Dead Sea has been monitored continuously. In recent decades, the Dead Sea has been rapidly shrinking because of diversion of incoming water from the Jordan River to the north. The southern end is fed by a canal maintained by the Dead Sea Works, a company that converts the sea's raw materials. From a water surface of below sea level in 1970 it fell to below sea level in 2006, reaching a drop rate of per year. As the water level decreases, the characteristics of the Sea and surrounding region may substantially change.\n",
"The Dead Sea is receding at a swift rate; its surface area today is , having been in 1930. The recession of the Dead Sea has begun causing problems, and multiple canals and pipelines proposals exist to reduce its recession. One of these proposals is the Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance project, carried out by Jordan, which will provide water to neighbouring countries, while the brine will be carried to the Dead Sea to help stabilise its water level. The first phase of the project is scheduled to begin in 2018 and be completed in 2021.\n",
"In modern times, the waters are 70% to 90% used for human purposes and the flow is greatly reduced. Because of this and the high evaporation rate of the Dead Sea, as well as industrial extraction of salts through evaporation ponds, the Dead Sea is rapidly shrinking.\n",
"The Dead Sea is formed in a pull-apart basin due to the left-stepping offset between the Wadi Arabah and Jordan Valley segments. The part of the basin with a sedimentary fill of more than 2 km is 150 km long and 15–17 km wide in its central part. In the north, the fill reaches its maximum thickness of about 10 km. The sequence includes Miocene fluvial sandstones of the Hazeva Formation overlain by a sequence of Late Miocene to early Pliocene evaporites, mainly halite, the Sedom Formation, and a lacustrine to fluvial sequence of Pliocene to recent age.\n",
"The Dead Sea occupies the deepest depression on the land surface of the earth. The depth of the depression is accentuated by the surrounding mountains and highlands that rise to elevations of 800 to 1,200 meters above sea level. The sea's greatest depth is about 430 meters, and it thus reaches a point more than 825 meters below sea level. A drop in the level of the sea has caused the former Lisan Peninsula to become a land bridge dividing the sea into separate northern and southern basins.\n",
"The Dead Sea level drop has been followed by a groundwater level drop, causing brines that used to occupy underground layers near the shoreline to be flushed out by freshwater. This is believed to be the cause of the recent appearance of large sinkholes along the western shore—incoming freshwater dissolves salt layers, rapidly creating subsurface cavities that subsequently collapse to form these sinkholes.\n"
] |
Can Dogs Count? | Important to note that there's a difference between counting *n* entities and realizing it should be *n+1*, and seeing a group of familiar people and noting that one or more are absent.
Like I show you a picture of Larry and Curly, you aren't counting them, you are *identifying* them and basing your conclusion that Moe is missing from that, not from the much more abstract conversion to pure number theory.
Take [these](_URL_1_) guys. There's some controversy around the specifics, but basically they don't have words for exact numbers at all, just "many" and "fewer". So if you asked them how many people lived in the tribe (or even just how many fingers are on each of their hands), they couldn't tell you. But if you asked to name them all, or identify which ones were missing from a photo, no problem.
In many ways, counting puppies would be an inferior technique for a daddy dog. Recall the head-counting snafu from Home Alone. Numbers are generic and anonymous. Recognition and identity is a much surer thing, at least [within the range that you can keep it all in your head](_URL_0_). | [
"A sense of number has also been found in dogs. For example, dogs were able to perform simple additions of two objects, as revealed by their surprise when the result was incorrect. It is however argued that wolves perform better on quantity discrimination tasks than dogs and that this could be a result of a less demanding natural selection for number sense in dogs.\n",
"Dogs have demonstrated episodic-like memory by recalling past events that included the complex actions of humans. In a 2019 study, a correlation has been shown between the size of the dog and the functions of memory and self-control, with larger dogs performing significantly better than smaller dogs in these functions. However, in the study brain size did not predict a dog's ability to follow human pointing gestures, nor was it associated with their inferential and physical reasoning abilities.\n",
"Suppose a computer program for recognizing dogs in photographs identifies 8 dogs in a picture containing 12 dogs and some cats. Of the 8 identified as dogs, 5 actually are dogs (true positives), while the rest are cats (false positives). The program's precision is 5/8 while its recall is 5/12. When a search engine returns 30 pages only 20 of which were relevant while failing to return 40 additional relevant pages, its precision is 20/30 = 2/3 while its recall is 20/60 = 1/3. So, in this case, precision is \"how useful the search results are\", and recall is \"how complete the results are\".\n",
"The analysis of variance can be used as an exploratory tool to explain observations. A dog show provides an example. A dog show is not a random sampling of the breed: it is typically limited to dogs that are adult, pure-bred, and exemplary. A histogram of dog weights from a show might plausibly be rather complex, like the yellow-orange distribution shown in the illustrations. Suppose we wanted to predict the weight of a dog based on a certain set of characteristics of each dog. One way to do that is to \"explain\" the distribution of weights by dividing the dog population into groups based on those characteristics. A successful grouping will split dogs such that (a) each group has a low variance of dog weights (meaning the group is relatively homogeneous) and (b) the mean of each group is distinct (if two groups have the same mean, then it isn't reasonable to conclude that the groups are, in fact, separate in any meaningful way).\n",
"The frequency range of dog hearing is between 16-40 Hz (compared to 20–70 Hz for humans) and up to 45–60 kHz (compared to 13–20 kHz for humans), which means that dogs can detect sounds far beyond the upper limit of the human auditory spectrum.\n",
"BULLET::::- Size/breed specific calculators – These try to factor in the size or breed as well. These are the most accurate types. They typically work either by expected adult weight or by categorizing the dog as \"small\", \"medium\", or \"large\".\n",
"Dog intelligence is the ability of the dog to perceive information and retain it as knowledge for applying to solve problems. Dogs have been shown to learn by inference. A study with Rico showed that he knew the labels of over 200 different items. He inferred the names of novel items by exclusion learning and correctly retrieved those novel items immediately and also 4 weeks after the initial exposure. Dogs have advanced memory skills. A study documented the learning and memory capabilities of a border collie, \"Chaser\", who had learned the names and could associate by verbal command over 1,000 words. Dogs are able to read and react appropriately to human body language such as gesturing and pointing, and to understand human voice commands. After undergoing training to solve a simple manipulation task, dogs that are faced with an insolvable version of the same problem look at the human, while socialized wolves do not. Dogs demonstrate a theory of mind by engaging in deception.\n"
] |
why do people put salt in cakes meant to be sweet? | Salt removes bitterness. I add salt to coffee and lemonade as well. Since dark chocolate, fresh citrus, etc can be pretty bitter it allows the cake to have flavor without the bite. | [
"The cakes are typically served in the paper they were baked in. Found in bakeries, the cakes are typically eaten during breakfast, or teatime. Because of the cakes’ light flavouring, it is possible to eat much of the cake without getting sick because of an overly sugary taste.\n",
"The most variety comes in sweet breads because of the wide variety of flavorings and fillings. Vanilla and cinnamon are important ingredients in many of the sweet breads. Other important flavorings include almonds, coconut, sesame, peanuts, walnuts, chocolate, tequila, rum, orange peel, strawberry preserves, quince jelly, apricot preserves, apple and pineapple. In some breads, which need to puff greatly, finely ground \"tequesquite\" (saltpeter or potassium/sodium nitrate) is used. The use of this ingredient has been documented since the 1700s. Most sweet breads are baked but some are fried, usually using beef or pork fat, sometimes butter. The most popular of these are churros and buñuelos.\n",
"Desserts with high sugar are commonly consumed for hedonistic rewards, especially among women. However, high sugar intake tends to increase risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardio-metabolic diseases and compromised oral health. Instead, research showed that honey is beneficial to health with its \"gastroprotective, hepatoprotective, reproductive, hypoglycemic, antioxidant, antihypertensive, antibacterial, anti-fungal and anti-inflammatory. Under that circumstance, honey can be replaced to add sweet flavor, such as dressing on smoothies, spreading on bread, etc. \n",
"Welsh cakes are served hot or cold dusted with caster sugar. Unlike scones, they are not usually eaten with an accompaniment, though they are sometimes sold ready split and spread with jam, and they are sometimes buttered.\n",
"The cakes are usually filled with allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger or other sweet spices, raisins or currants, and before baking are topped with the mark of a cross to signify that these were alms. They were traditionally set out with glasses of wine, an offering for the dead as in early Christian tradition, and either on All Hallows' Eve (Halloween), All Saints' Day or All Souls' Day, children would go \"souling\", or ritually begging for cakes door to door.\n",
"Powdered sugar is utilized in industrial food production when a quick-dissolving sugar is required. Home cooks use it principally to make icing or frosting and other cake decorations. It is often dusted onto baked goods to add a subtle sweetness and delicate decoration.\n",
"Cakes are sweet tender breads made with sugar and delicate flour. Cakes can vary from light, airy sponge cakes to dense cakes with less flour. Common flavorings include dried, candied or fresh fruit, nuts, cocoa or extracts. They may be filled with fruit preserves or dessert sauces (like pastry cream), iced with buttercream or other icings, and decorated with marzipan, piped borders, or candied fruit. Cake is often served as a celebratory dish on ceremonial occasions, for example weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays. Small-sized cakes have become popular, in the form of cupcakes and petits fours.\n"
] |
When listening to music, individual areas of the brain are "activated" for melody, rhythm and pitch. Are these areas in the exact same place in my brain and yours? | Okay, so first, caveat, I'm a bit of an fMRI skeptic. This is not to say I think it's all lies, but it is the number 1 area of neuroscience that science writers tend to run with, and the authors never make any attempt to correct them.
Whenever you read anything the that talks about fMRI, you need to remember they are reporting to you a *difference*. Everything in fMRI is a difference. What do I mean? I mean that those glowing areas of brain you see are areas where the activity is different between two situations. For instance, the "melody" part was probably "found" when the played the subjects a melodious tune, and one where they chopped up the sound, so that it no longer had melody, but had all the same pitch and rhythm components. Then the bit of brain that was active in the first case, and not the second is now supposed to be coding for melody. Maybe it just codes for "I'm sick of listening to the nonsense noise"? Who knows? Moreover, this is a best case example. The scientists could have been stupid and just played a highly melodious piece of music and an atonal piece of music, and looked at the brain difference. Maybe one was louder than the other, or higher pitched, or different timbre?
So the point is, fMRI experiments are really difficult to design, because you can only ever look at difference in activation.
Also: _URL_0_
But to answer your other question, are these parts the same in everyone? See the bit that is highlighted at 6:02. That is primary auditory cortex. Is is in the same part of the brain in everyone (well, 99%), as are all the primary cortices. What about other areas? Here is it harder to say because it is harder to design experiments to activate parts of the brain that might code for "The smell of the slightly shinny red handbag my grandmother had" across different subjects, but it certainly appears that there is some degree of overlap between people. | [
"Human brain scans indicated that a peripheral bit of this brain region is active when trying to identify musical pitch. Individual cells consistently get excited by sounds at specific frequencies, or multiples of that frequency.\n",
"The perception of music has a quickly growing body of literature. Structurally, the auditory system is able to distinguish different pitches (sound waves of varying frequency) via the complementary vibrating of the eardrum. It can also parse incoming sound signals via pattern recognition mechanisms. Cognitively, the brain is often constructionist when it comes to pitch. If one removes the fundamental pitch from a harmonic spectrum, the brain can still “hear” that missing fundamental and identify it through an attempt to reconstruct a coherent harmonic spectrum.\n",
"Music-specific neural networks exist in the brain for a variety of music-related tasks. It has been shown that Broca's area is involved in the processing of musical syntax. Furthermore, brain damage can disrupt an individual's ability to tell the difference between tonal and atonal music and detect the presence of wrong notes, but can preserve the individual's ability to assess the distance between pitches and the direction of the pitch. The opposite scenario can also occur, in which the individual loses pitch discrimination capabilities, but can sense and appreciate the tonal context of the work. Distinct neural networks also exist for music memories, singing, and music recognition. Neural networks for music recognition are particularly intriguing. A patient can undergo brain damage that renders them unable to recognize familiar melodies that are presented without words. However, the patient maintains the ability to recognize spoken lyrics or words, familiar voices, and environmental sounds. The reverse case is also possible, in which the patient cannot recognize spoken words, but can still recognize familiar melodies. These situations overturn previous claims that speech recognition and music recognition share a single processing system. Instead, it is clear that there are at least two distinct processing modules: one for speech and one for music.\n",
"The primary auditory cortex is tonotopically organized, which means that neighboring cells in the cortex respond to neighboring frequencies. Tonotopic mapping is preserved throughout most of the audition circuit. The primary auditory cortex receives direct input from the medial geniculate nucleus of the thalamus and thus is thought to identify the fundamental elements of music, such as pitch and loudness.\n",
"Many aspects of language and musical melodies are processed by the same brain areas. In 2006, Brown, Martinez and Parsons found that listening to a melody or a sentence resulted in activation of many of the same areas including the primary motor cortex, the supplementary motor area, the Brocas area, anterior insula, the primary audio cortex, the thalamus, the basal ganglia and the cerebellum.\n",
"Even while enjoying the simplest of melodies there are multiple brain processes that are synchronizing to comprehend what is going on. After the stimulus enters and undergoes the processes of the ear, it enters the auditory cortex, part of the temporal lobe, which begins processing the sound by assessing its pitch and volume. From here, brain functioning differs amongst the analysis of different aspects of music. For instance, the rhythm is processed and regulated by the left frontal cortex, the left parietal cortex and the right cerebellum standardly. Tonality, the building of musical structure around a central chord, is assessed by the prefrontal cortex and cerebellum (Abram, 2015). Music is able to access many different brain functions that play an integral role in other higher brain functions such as motor control, memory, language, reading and emotion. Research has shown that music can be used as an alternative method to access these functions that may be unavailable through non-musical stimulus due to a disorder. Musicology explores the use of music and how it can provide alternative transmission routes for information processing in the brain for diseases such as Parkinson's and dyslexia as well.\n",
"MIT researchers conducted a study to examine this notion. The results showed six neural clusters in the auditory cortex responding to the sounds. Four were triggered when hearing standard acoustic features, one specifically responded to speech, and the last exclusively responded to music. Researchers who studied the correlation between temporal evolution of timbral, tonal and rhythmic features of music, came to the conclusion that music engages the brain regions connected to motor actions, emotions and creativity. The research indicates that the whole brain \"lights up\" when listening to music. This amount of activity boosts memory preservation, hence pattern recognition. \n"
] |
How did the fallen angel Lucifer end up as Satan/the Devil - red-faced, horned, hooved and not what he originally was? | Different people say different stuff because it's a form of Christian mythology, and different people have different explanations depending on where they were raised, the denomination or congregation they attend. It's the same reason why folk songs have many different lyrics, e.g. whether Barbary Allen's boyfriend is named William Green or Jimmy Green or Johnny Green, and whether the rose grows from his grave or her grave. Another popular example would be how the four Gospels do not tell precisely the same Passion story or Nativity -- in no gospel do the "three wise men" and the shepherds appear at the same time.
Last year, I addressed this question as [How did the mythology of the Bible develop...?](_URL_2_), also featuring the work of /u/sunagainstgold, /u/lcnielsen and /u/idjet. You might like [this thread about whether to take Dante seriously.](_URL_0_)
I have not encountered more answers addressing *Paradise Lost* since then, so an answer derived from Milton in particular would be good.
& #x200B;
EDIT: This is not /r/eli5, others may go into greater depth than I, aiming for nuance and rich detail.
EDIT2: Found [another answer about Paradise Lost/Lucifer](_URL_1_) by sunagainstgold | [
"Some Christian writers have applied the name \"Lucifer\" as used in the Book of Isaiah, and the motif of a heavenly being cast down to the earth, to Satan. Sigve K Tonstad argues that the New Testament War in Heaven theme of Revelation 12 (), in which the dragon \"who is called the devil and Satan … was thrown down to the earth\", was derived from the passage about the Babylonian king in Isaiah 14. Origen (184/185 – 253/254) interpreted such Old Testament passages as being about manifestations of the devil; but writing in Greek, not Latin, he did not identify the devil with the name \"Lucifer\". Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 225), who wrote in Latin, also understood (\"I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High\") as spoken by the devil, but \"Lucifer\" is not among the numerous names and phrases he used to describe the devil. Even at the time of the Latin writer Augustine of Hippo (354–430), \"Lucifer\" had not yet become a common name for the devil.\n",
"In some Marvel Comics publications, a \"Lucifer\" has been mentioned as being a Hell-lord with the same \"fallen from Heaven\" backstory. In the \"Ghost Rider\" series, Johnny Blaze faces a demon who claims to be Lucifer. In other Marvel plotlines, several high-level demons, such as Mephisto, Azazel, Marduk Kurios, and Satannish, have claimed to be the biblical Satan. In Marvel Comics, the Norse trickster-god Loki is shown as the main adversary of his adopted brother Thor and a common enemy of both Earth and Asgard. Although Loki has conjured up somewhat demonic magic, he is not a demon, but a misshapen frost giant. Among the characters related to Norse mythology, the fire giant Surtur is more reminiscent of a demon. The Egyptian demon-god Seth and the Japanese demon-god Amatsu-Mikaboshi have Satan-like roles in Marvel Comics.\n",
"Satan, formerly called Lucifer, is the first major character introduced in the poem. He was once the most beautiful of all angels, and is a tragic figure who famously declares: \"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.\" Following his failed rebellion against God, he is cast out from Heaven and condemned to Hell. Satan's desire to rebel against his creator stems from his unwillingness to be subjugated by God and his Son, claiming that angels are \"self-begot, self-raised,\" and thereby denying God's authority over them as their creator.\n",
"Lucifer, portrayed primarily by Mark Pellegrino, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins, Rick Springfield and David Chisum, is the second oldest archangel, the first fallen angel, introduced as a recurring character in the fifth season of the series. From his prison in hell, he orchestrated events not only seen in seasons one through four, but decades prior, to eventually lead to his release by breaking the 66 seals. In the episode \"Sin City\", he was described as the 'father' and god of the demons, the one who gave them their form and purpose. Azazel reinforced this by referring to him as \"My Father\" while possessing a priest before slaughtering a convent of nuns. However, in \"Abandon All Hope...\", Crowley remarks that Lucifer views demons with contempt and his cannon fodder and will destroy them once he has eliminated humanity.\n",
"–15 has been the origin of the belief that Satan was a fallen angel, who could also be referred to as Lucifer. It refers to the rise and disappearance of the morning star Venus in the phrase \"O light-bringer, son of the dawn.\" (\"Helel ben Shaḥar\", translated as Lucifer in the Vulgate and preserved in the early English translations of the Bible.) This understanding of seems to be the most accepted interpretation in the New Testament, as well as among early Christians such as Origen, Eusebius, Tertullian, and Gregory the Great. It may be considered a Christian \"remythologization\" of Isaiah 14, as the verse originally used Canaanite mythology to build its imagery of the hubris of a historical ruler, \"the king of Babylon\" in Isaiah 14:4. It is likely that the role of Venus as the morning star was taken by Athtar, in this instance referred to as the son of Shahar. The reference to Shahar remains enigmatic to scholars, who have a wide range of theories on the mythological framework and sources for the passage in Isaiah.\n",
"In Hell, Lucifer looked nothing like the angel he once was. He and all of his Lieutenants had degenerated into demons; some through instruction, others adapted more naturally. But they had all over time changed into twisted creatures of evil.\n",
"Lucifer has kept his true history mysterious throughout the years through deceit and deception. It is believed that he was once an angel who led other angels in banishing the N'Garai from Earth and led a group of followers in a rebellion against \"God\" during the great war in Heaven, thus essentially representing the true \"devil\" in the Marvel Universe of Christian theology. Following his defeat, Lucifer and his lieutenants Beelzeboul, Kazann, Malachi, Pazuzu, Xaphan and others were all cast down to Hell as punishment. During this time, he became the demon known as the Prince of Lies, ruling a realm in Hell.\n"
] |
How does the theory of wave/particle duality do away with the need to find a wave medium for light, i.e. ether? | The aether was supposed to be some sparse gas through which light was an oscillation. But modern physics has things called [fields](_URL_0_). And you can think of the universe as all of these overlaid fields for electrons and quarks and electromagnetism and gluons and so on. And light, photons, are an oscillation in the electromagnetic field. | [
"In physics, two wave sources are perfectly coherent if they have a constant phase difference and the same frequency, and the same waveform. Coherence is an ideal property of waves that enables stationary (i.e. temporally and spatially constant) interference. It contains several distinct concepts, which are limiting cases that never quite occur in reality but allow an understanding of the physics of waves, and has become a very important concept in quantum physics. More generally, coherence describes all properties of the correlation between physical quantities of a single wave, or between several waves or wave packets.\n",
"It seems clear then that in the quantum theory of light detection, the particle and wave pictures are united as two sets of relative features of the same field in different frames of detection; thus they can be related to each other in such a way that Eq. (1) is left invariant - \"the principle of relativity\". This unification can be characterized by a term called \"particle-wave\" rather than 'particle or/and wave', the hyphen emphasizing the new kind of unification. \n",
"The wave model can be used to make predictions about how an optical system will behave without requiring an explanation of what is \"waving\" in what medium. Until the middle of the 19th century, most physicists believed in an \"ethereal\" medium in which the light disturbance propagated. The existence of electromagnetic waves was predicted in 1865 by Maxwell's equations. These waves propagate at the speed of light and have varying electric and magnetic fields which are orthogonal to one another, and also to the direction of propagation of the waves. Light waves are now generally treated as electromagnetic waves except when quantum mechanical effects have to be considered.\n",
"The concept of wave–particle duality says that neither the classical concept of \"particle\" nor of \"wave\" can fully describe the behavior of quantum-scale objects, either photons or matter. Wave–particle duality is an example of the [[complementarity (physics)|principle of complementarity]] in quantum physics. An elegant example of wave–particle duality, the double slit experiment, is discussed in the section below.\n",
"The HJE is also the only formulation of mechanics in which the motion of a particle can be represented as a wave. In this sense, the HJE fulfilled a long-held goal of theoretical physics (dating at least to Johann Bernoulli in the 18th century) of finding an analogy between the propagation of light and the motion of a particle. The wave equation followed by mechanical systems is similar to, but not identical with, Schrödinger's equation, as described below; for this reason, the HJE is considered the \"closest approach\" of classical mechanics to quantum mechanics.\n",
"Wave–particle duality is the concept in quantum mechanics that every particle or quantum entity may be partly described in terms not only of particles, but also of waves. It expresses the inability of the classical concepts \"particle\" or \"wave\" to fully describe the behaviour of quantum-scale objects. As Albert Einstein wrote:\n",
"Finally, since the gravitational potential is linked to the wave-function in the picture of the Schrödinger–Newton equation, the wave-function must be interpreted as a real object. Therefore, at least in principle, it becomes a measurable quantity. Making use of the nonlocal nature of entangled quantum systems, this could be used to send signals faster than light, which is generally thought to be in contradiction with causality. It is, however, not clear if this problem can be resolved by applying the right collapse prescription, yet to be found, consistently to the full quantum system. Also, since gravity is such a weak interaction, it is not clear that such an experiment can be actually performed within the parameters given in our universe (cf. the discussion about a similar thought experiment proposed by Eppley and Hannah).\n"
] |
Just how much of an impact did Alexander Hamilton have? | Although I'm not an expert on the American Revolutionary War, I am an economic historian and have extensively studied Alexander Hamilton's absolutely pivotal role in the creation of the modern american political and economic system.
Hamilton's close personal relationship with Washington and his role as Secretary of the Treasury (the government's money guy) led several scholars to call him Washington's "Prime Minister." In spite of opposition by the likes of influential figures like Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton managed to construct a large, powerful Federal government to the detriment of individual states, with a consolidated national debt structure and a standing army. John L. Harper in his "The American Machiavelli," concludes that Hamilton not only was a central, indispensable figure in the construction the apparatus of the American government, but also lay the foundation for the underlying philosophies which would guide American foreign policy: opportunistic but pragmatic, both imperialist and isolationist, "strength through peace and peace through strength."
I'm sorry if this sounds vague, but Hamilton's exploits has filled entire volumes, like Harper's book cited above. Is there anything specific you're interested in? | [
"Hamilton appears to have hoped in 1796 that his influence within an Adams administration would be as great as or greater than in Washington's. By 1800, Hamilton had come to realize that Adams was too independent and thought the Federalist vice presidential candidate, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, more suited to serving Hamilton's interests. In his third sabotage attempt toward Adams, Hamilton quietly schemed to elect Pinckney to the presidency. Given Pinckney's lack of political experience, he would have been expected to be open to Hamilton's influence. However, Hamilton's plan backfired and hurt the Federalist party, particularly after one of his letters, a scathing criticism of Adams that was fifty-four pages long, fell into the hands of a Democratic-Republican and soon after became public. It embarrassed Adams and damaged Hamilton's efforts on behalf of Pinckney, not to mention speeding Hamilton's own political decline.\n",
"Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757July 12, 1804) was an American statesman and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was an influential interpreter and promoter of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the founder of the nation's financial system, the Federalist Party, the United States Coast Guard, and the \"New York Post\" newspaper. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the main author of the economic policies of George Washington's administration. He took the lead in the Federal government's funding of the states' debts, as well as establishing a national bank, a system of tariffs, and friendly trade relations with Britain. His vision included a strong central government led by a vigorous executive branch, a strong commercial economy, a national bank and support for manufacturing, and a strong military. Thomas Jefferson was his leading opponent, arguing for agrarianism and smaller government.\n",
"Alexander Hamilton was born and raised in the West Indies and came to New York in 1772 at age 17 to study at King's College (now Columbia University). During his career, Hamilton was a military officer, lawyer, member of the United States Constitutional Convention, American political philosopher, war hero, initiator and author of the majority of the pivotal and influential \"The Federalist Papers\", and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury.\n",
"Among those whose lives were influenced by Hamilton's writings was U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In the months after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated, Robert was consumed with grief. Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave him a copy of \"The Greek Way,\" which she felt was certain to help him. Political commentator David Brooks reported that Hamilton's essays helped him better understand and then recover from his brother's tragic death. Hamilton's writings remained important to him over time, as Brooks explains, and changed Kennedy's life. \"He carried his beaten, underlined and annotated copy around with him for years, reading sections aloud to audiences in a flat, unrhythmic voice with a mournful edge\" and could recite from memory various passages of Aeschylus that Hamilton had translated.\n",
"Alexander Hamilton is a 2004 biography of American statesman Alexander Hamilton, written by historian and biographer Ron Chernow. Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, was an instrumental promoter of the U.S. Constitution, founder of the nation's financial system, and its first Secretary of the Treasury. \n",
"Hamilton aided in all areas of the army's development, and after Washington's death he was by default the Senior Officer of the United States Army from December 14, 1799, to June 15, 1800. The army was to guard against invasion from France. Adams, however, derailed all plans for war by opening negotiations with France that led to peace. There was no longer a need for the army Hamilton was running. Adams discovered that key cabinet members were more loyal to Hamilton rather than himself; he fired several of them including Timothy Pickering.\n",
"In a letter to Rufus King, Robert Troup wrote of Alexander Hamilton, \"Never did I see a man so completely overwhelmed with grief as Hamilton had been.\" Nevertheless, after Philip's death, the elder Hamilton was said to be civil and professional in his relationship with Eacker. Hamilton would later die in a duel with Aaron Burr only a few years later, on July 11, 1804, on the same dueling ground in Weehawken.\n"
] |
Theoretical physics- What if there was no speed limit like the speed of light? | TL;DR: In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, particles can't decay.
If you take the limit where the speed of light goes to infinity, but you keep ["Galilean relativity"](_URL_0_) (the notion of relativity we'd been using before special relativity), a very large change occurs at the level of elementary particle physics.
In particular, there's a theorem that allows you to classify what kind of states you can have in a quantum mechanical theory given the symmetries of your system. If you apply the symmetries associated with special relativity, you find that states "look like" particles - they're characterized by a mass and a spin, massless particles move at the speed of light, and particles can be created and destroyed. You can also define the "chirality" of particles.
In contrast, if you use the symmetries associated with just Galilean relativity, some of this changes. First, you have no massless particles, and everything must be massive. Second, chirality goes away, though spin is still there. Most drastically, you cannot have any particle decays - every particle must be infinitely stable. So a non-relativistic quantum theory of particle physics is extremely different from a relativistic one like our universe, where everything but the least massive particles decay very quickly. | [
"These considerations show that the speed of light as a limit is a consequence of the properties of spacetime, and not of the properties of objects such as technologically imperfect space ships. The prohibition of faster-than-light motion, therefore, has nothing in particular to do with electromagnetic waves or light, but comes as a consequence of the structure of spacetime.\n",
"The paradoxical aspect of each of the described thought experiments arises from Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which proclaims the speed of light (approx. 300,000 km/s) is the upper limit of speed in our universe. The uniformity of the speed of light is so absolute that regardless of the speed of the observer as well as the speed of the source of light the speed of the light ray should remain constant.\n",
"Yet, this impassable threshold was obliterated in 1996 : \"Modern physics holds the speed of light as an insurmountable barrier. A German laboratory has nevertheless succeeded in making a particle travel 4.7 times faster than the speed of light.\"\n",
"In Galilean relativity, it was considered \"obvious\" that we could add speeds without limit (\"w\" = \"u\" + \"v\"). This composition laws for speed was not challenged. However, Poincaré and Einstein did challenge it with special relativity, setting a maximum speed on movement, the speed of light. Formally, if \"v\" is a velocity, \"v + c = c\". The status of the speed of light in special relativity is a horizon, unreachable, impassable, invariant under changes of movement.\n",
"The fastest possible speed at which energy or information can travel, according to special relativity, is the speed of light in a vacuum \"c\" = metres per second (approximately or ). Matter cannot quite reach the speed of light, as this would require an infinite amount of energy. In relativity physics, the concept of rapidity replaces the classical idea of speed.\n",
"In special relativity, there is an unreachable speed, the speed of light. We can add speeds without end, but they will always be less than the speed of light. The sums of all speeds are limited by the speed of light. Additionally, the composition of two velocities is inferior to the sum of those two speeds.\n",
"Special relativity postulates that the speed of light in vacuum is invariant in inertial frames. That is, it will be the same from any frame of reference moving at a constant speed. The equations do not specify any particular value for the speed of the light, which is an experimentally determined quantity for a fixed unit of length. Since 1983, the SI unit of length (the meter) has been defined using the speed of light.\n"
] |
when i'm about to fall asleep, i sometimes have a semi-dream that i'm walking. then i stumble and my leg jerks and wakes me up. why? | It's called a [hypnic jerk](_URL_0_). They're associated with anxiety, but they occur essentially at random even if you're not stressed. Personally, I enjoy them. | [
"Sleepwalking was initially thought to be a dreamer acting out a dream. For example, in one study published by the Society for Science & the Public in 1954, this was the conclusion: \"Repression of hostile feelings against the father caused the patients to react by acting out in a dream world with sleepwalking, the distorted fantasies they had about all authoritarian figures, such as fathers, officers and stern superiors.\" This same group published an article twelve years later with a new conclusion: \"Sleepwalking, contrary to most belief, apparently has little to do with dreaming. In fact, it occurs when the sleeper is enjoying his most oblivious, deepest sleep—a stage in which dreams are not usually reported.\" More recent research has discovered that sleepwalking is actually a disorder of NREM (non-rapid eye movement) arousal. Acting out a dream is the basis for a REM (rapid eye movement) sleep disorder called REM Behavior Disorder (or REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, RSBD). More accurate data about sleep is due to the invention of technologies, such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) by Hans Berger in 1924 and BEAM by Frank Duffy in the early 1980s.\n",
"The RBD1Q queries dream-enactment behavior of RBD with a single yes/no question:“Have you ever been told, or suspected yourself, that you seem to ‘act out your dreams’ while asleep (for example, punching, flailing your arms in the air, making running movements, etc.)?”\n",
"Normal sleep cycles include states varying from drowsiness all the way to deep sleep. Every time an individual sleeps, he or she goes through various sequences of non-REM and REM sleep. Anxiety and fatigue are often connected with sleepwalking. For adults, alcohol, sedatives, medications, medical conditions and mental disorders are all associated with sleepwalking. Sleep walking may involve sitting up and looking awake when the individual is actually asleep, and getting up and walking around, moving items or undressing themselves. They will also be confused when waking up or opening their eyes during sleep. Sleep walking can be associated with sleeptalking.\n",
"BULLET::::- 3rd Gate of Dreaming (traveling): This is what is often known as an \"Out of body experience\". Arrived at when one dreams of looking at oneself. Solved when the dreaming and physical bodies become one. Crossed when one is able to control the dreaming body in the physical realm and move around at ease. Location in the body – at the lowest part of the spinal column.\n",
"Occasionally, late at night, while trying to sleep and failing, people experience an anxiety of existence, they are aware of their entire body, the entire world, and the whole of reality itself. It's like waking from a dream, or a light going on, or a giant \"\"You are here\"\" sign appearing in the sky. The mere fact that I'm actually real and actually breathing suddenly hits me in the head with a thwack. It leaves me giddy. It causes a brief surge of clammy, bubbling anxiety, like the opening stages of a panic attack. The moment soon passes, but while it lasts it's strangely terrifying.\n",
"Type 1 is the more common, in which the dreamer seems to wake up, but not necessarily in realistic surroundings, that is, not in their own bedroom. A pre-lucid dream may ensue. More commonly, dreamers will believe they have awakened, and then either wake up for real in their own bed or \"fall back asleep\" in the dream.\n",
"\"Few more days, and you realise you're walking different. your back is straighter. You feel tall, tall. You're tired when you settle down to sleep at night, just like here on the plantation, but you fall asleep thinking of all the things your labour will bring for you. Not for you master. For you. That's what it's like\" (pg. 372). (His description of life in the bush, away from the plantation and free from enslavement.)\n"
] |
So... does every (soft drink/water) bottle I drink from have BPA in it? If so, just how bad is this shit for you, and does anyone know what brands do not use a BPA-laden plastic? | Many do not these days, at least to my knowledge. The most common way to find out in my experience is to check the number on the bottle. Look for a 7 in the recycle sign, if it has a that, the bottle most likely has BPA in it.
As far as brands, not so sure.
Edit: typos | [
"Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical used to make plastics, and is frequently used to make baby bottles, water bottles, sports equipment, medical devices, and as a coating in food and beverage cans. Scientists are concerned about BPA's behavioral effects on fetuses, infants, and children at current exposure levels because it can affect the prostate gland, mammary gland, and lead to early puberty in girls. BPA mimics and interferes with the action of estrogen—an important reproduction and development regulator. It leaches out of plastic into liquids and foods, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found measurable amounts of BPA in the bodies of more than 90 percent of the U.S. population studied. The highest estimated daily intakes of BPA occur in infants and children. Many plastic baby bottles contain BPA, and BPA is more likely to leach out of plastic when its temperature is increased, as when one warms a baby bottle or warms up food in the microwave.\n",
"BPA is a starting material for the synthesis of plastics, primarily certain polycarbonates and epoxy resins, as well as some polysulfones and certain niche materials. BPA-based plastic is clear and tough, and is made into a variety of common consumer goods, such as plastic bottles including water bottles, sports equipment, CDs, and DVDs. Epoxy resins containing BPA are used to line water pipes, as coatings on the inside of many food and beverage cans and in making thermal paper such as that used in sales receipts. In 2015, an estimated 4 million tonnes of BPA chemical were produced for manufacturing polycarbonate plastic, making it one of the highest volume of chemicals produced worldwide.\n",
"BPA (Bisphenol A) is the monomer used to manufacture polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins used as a lining in most food and beverage cans. BPA global capacity is in excess of per year and thus is one of the highest-volume chemicals produced worldwide. The ester bonds in the BPA-based polycarbonates could be subject to hydrolysis and leaching of BPA. But in the case of epoxypolymers formed from bisphenol A, it is not possible to release bisphenol A by such a reaction. It is also noteworthy that, of the bisphenols, bisphenol A is a weak xenoestrogen. Other compounds, such as bisphenol Z, have been shown to have stronger estrogenic effects in rats.\n",
"BPA is a commonly well-known substance that is an ingredient used to harden plastic that can also cause a wide range of disorders. Cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and abnormalities in liver enzymes are a few disorders that can arise from even small exposure to this chemical. Although these effects have been more widely studied than other types of plastics, it is still used in the production of much clothing (polyester).\n",
"Some \"BPA free\" plastics are made from epoxy containing a compound called bisphenol S (BPS). BPS shares a similar structure and versatility to BPA and has been used in numerous products from currency to thermal receipt paper. Widespread human exposure to BPS was confirmed in an analysis of urine samples taken in the U.S., Japan, China, and five other Asian countries. Researchers found BPS in all the receipt paper, 87 percent of the paper currency and 52 percent of recycled paper they tested. The study found that people may be absorbing 19 times more BPS through their skin than the amount of BPA they absorbed, when it was more widely used.\n",
"In 2012, the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of BPA in baby bottles intended for children under 12 months. The Natural Resources Defense Council called the move inadequate, saying the FDA needed to ban BPA from all food packaging. The FDA maintains that the agency continues to support the safety of BPA for use in products that hold food.\n",
"Bisphenol-A (BPA) is an industrial chemical and organic compound that has been used in the production of plastics and resins for over a half-century. It is used in products such as toys, medical devices, plastic food and beverage containers, shower curtains, dental sealants and compounds, and register receipts. BPA has been shown to seep into food sources from containers or into the body just by handling products made from it. Certain researchers suggest that BPA actually decreases the fat cell count in the body, but at the same time increasing the size of the ones remaining; therefore, no difference in weight is shown, and an individual is even likely to gain more.\n"
] |
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