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in hollywood, why are successful people in offices always portrayed in context while drinking some alcohol like scotch/whiskey etc? is that really even a thing anymore and if so where did it start? | it may be a sign of wealth to have some expensive whiskey around and to be able to enjoy an expensive lifestyle. I can't tell you if there are really people how have alcohol in their offices, but it is a move hollywood makes to show that a person is rich and successful. | [
"\"The funny thing about Hollywood is that they are interested in having you do one thing and do it well and do it ever after,\" said O'Brien. \"That's the sad thing about being a leading man – while the rewards may be great in fame and finances, it becomes monotonous for an actor. I think that's why some of the people who are continually playing themselves are not happy.\"\n",
"Hollywood publicists create and manage relationships between film stars and the array of other media channels through which the identities of stars are circulated. Stars have a dual relationship with publicity, for they publicize films but also, and importantly in the freelance market, have an interest in self publicity. It is for the latter reason that while many stars continue to regard managers as an optional luxury, today the majority of stars in Hollywood hire publicists to manage their media visibility. In other words, celebrities hire publicists who will be able to get their name out to the public preferably in a positive light.\n",
"The role of a publicist in Hollywood has changed and has become more challenging in recent years. With the enormous increase of entertainment news outlets such as Perez Hilton, TMZ, and Page Six, it has become much more difficult for publicists to control negative stories. Publicists must also work much harder to keep some of their star clients relevant in the media with the entertainment options in Hollywood continuously growing. Even booking a star for an interview or on a television talk show has become a challenging task, because if something goes awry, the publicist and the star could both be highly criticized by the media.\n",
"\"Hollywood was getting to be a grind\", he said at the time. \"They had me doing five and six pictures a year. Some of them looked all right on paper but they had the habit of slipping down into programmer class. Only once in three years would I get a part that I cared about. I kept going up and down the ladder and not getting any place. There was nothing stable about my career in Hollywood.\"\n",
"Particularly popular were the dinner theaters that used former movie actors to star in the productions. Van Johnson, Lana Turner, Don Ameche, Eve Arden, Mickey Rooney, June Allyson, Shelley Winters, Dorothy Lamour, Tab Hunter, Betty Grable, Sandra Dee, Mamie Van Doren, Joan Blondell, Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse, Kathryn Grayson, Betty Hutton, Jane Withers, Martha Raye, Elke Sommer, Donald O'Connor, Roddy McDowall, Jane Russell, Cesar Romero, and Ann Miller are just a few Hollywood stars who were featured in dinner theatre. Actors from well remembered television series, such as Betty White, Ann B. Davis, Vivian Vance, Bob Denver, JoAnne Worley, Bernie Kopell, Dawn Wells, Ken Berry, Gavin MacLeod, Nancy Kulp, and Frank Sutton were also used as headliners. Burt Reynolds owned a dinner theater in Jupiter, Florida from 1979 to 1997, as did actor Earl Holliman, who owned the \"Fiesta Dinner Playhouse\" in San Antonio, Texas.\n",
"The film serves as a satire of the social conditions, dominant practices, and ideologies of Hollywood, as well as the film industry's perceived mistreatment of actors. Filmmaking was becoming more expensive and requiring larger technical resources, particularly with the rise of sound production, making it increasingly difficult for amateur filmmakers to enter the profession. This deepened a divide between amateurs and Hollywood professionals, and as a result, a growing number of amateurs started lampooning Hollywood in their films, including \"A Hollywood Extra\". The subject of the film is an extra who starts his Hollywood career with hopes and dreams, but ultimately finds himself used and discarded by the industry, and his artistic ambitions destroyed. At the start of the film, the protagonist has a name (Mr. Jones) and a letter of recommendation outlining his talents, but his abilities are ignored and he is reduced to a number, symbolizing his dehumanization.\n",
"In a 1952 newspaper column distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association, Holden attributed the difficulties in her film career to the fact that she started in comedy films. \"It's murder when a young actress is stamped as a comedienne in Hollywood,\" she said. \"My big mistake was in showing I had a comedy flair. There's no chance in Hollywood for an actress who starts out in comedy. You graduate into it.\"\n"
] |
how have the names for the six trigonometric functions originated? (sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant and cosecant?) | It's pretty hard to give an ELI5 explanation, as you will see with the fairly elucidating Wikipedia explanation of the etymology.
The word sine derives from Latin sinus ("bend", "bay", "the hanging fold of the upper part of a toga", "the bosom of a garment"). The use of sinus originates in twelfth-century European translations of the Arabic word jaib ("pocket" or "fold").[29] This was in turn based on a misreading of the Arabic written form j-y-b, which itself originated as a transliteration from Sanskrit, of either jyā (the standard Sanskrit term for the sine) or the synonymous jīvā (both literally meaning "bowstring").[30]
The word tangent comes from Latin tangens meaning "touching", since the line touches the circle of unit radius, whereas secant stems from Latin secans — "cutting" — since the line cuts the circle.[31]
The prefix "co-" (in "cosine", "cotangent", "cosecant") is found in Edmund Gunter's Canon triangulorum (1620), which defines the cosinus as an abbreviation for the sinus complementi (sine of the complementary angle) and proceeds to define the cotangens similarly. | [
"BULLET::::- Trigonometric functions : The trigonometric functions \"sine\" and \"versine\" originated in Indian astronomy, adapted from the full-chord Greek versions (to the modern half-chord versions). They were described in detail by Aryabhata in the late 5th century, but were likely developed earlier in the Siddhantas, astronomical treatises of the 3rd or 4th century. Later, the 6th-century astronomer Varahamihira discovered a few basic trigonometric formulas and identities, such as sin^2(x) + cos^2(x) = 1.\n",
"Jyā, koti-jyā and utkrama-jyā are three trigonometric functions introduced by Indian mathematicians and astronomers. The earliest known Indian treatise containing references to these functions is Surya Siddhanta. These are functions of arcs of circles and not functions of angles. Jyā and kotijyā are closely related to the modern trigonometric functions of sine and cosine. In fact, the origins of the modern terms of \"sine\" and \"cosine\" have been traced back to the Sanskrit words jyā and kotijyā.\n",
"In mathematics, the trigonometric functions (also called circular functions, angle functions or goniometric functions) are real functions which relate an angle of a right-angled triangle to ratios of two side lengths. They are widely used in all sciences that are related to geometry, such as navigation, solid mechanics, celestial mechanics, geodesy, and many others. They are among the simplest periodic functions, and as such are also widely used for studying periodic phenomena, through Fourier analysis.\n",
"The functions sine, cosine and tangent of an angle are sometimes referred to as the \"primary\" or \"basic\" trigonometric functions. Their usual abbreviations are , and , respectively, where denotes the angle. The parentheses around the argument of the functions are often omitted, e.g., and , if an interpretation is unambiguously possible.\n",
"All six trigonometric functions in current use were known in Islamic mathematics by the 9th century, as was the law of sines, used in solving triangles. Al-Khwārizmī produced tables of sines, cosines and tangents.\n",
"Trigonometry (from Greek \"trigōnon\", \"triangle\" and \"metron\", \"measure\") is a branch of mathematics that studies relationships between side lengths and angles of triangles. The field emerged in the Hellenistic world during the 3rd century BC from applications of geometry to astronomical studies. In particular, 3rd-century astronomers first noted that the ratio of the lengths of two sides of a right-angled triangle depends only on one acute angle of the triangle. These dependencies are now called trigonometric functions.\n",
"The oldest definitions of trigonometric functions, related to right-angle triangles, define them only for acute angles. For extending these definitions to functions whose domain is the whole projectively extended real line, one can use geometrical definitions using the standard unit circle (a circle with radius 1 unit). Modern definitions express trigonometric functions as infinite series or as solutions of differential equations. This allows extending the domain of the sine and the cosine functions to the whole complex plane, and the domain of the other trigonometric functions to the complex plane from which some isolated points are removed.\n"
] |
why is it so difficult to get bicycle grease off your hands? | This grease is designed to stay in place and keep your bicycle's gears well lubricated for a long time between reapplication.
This stickiness is a good thing and is a desirable product of modern chemistry.
Fun Fact: in the "old days" gears would have to be re-lubricated on a frequent basis. | [
"EP grease contains solid lubricants, usually graphite and/or molybdenum disulfide, to provide protection under heavy loadings. The solid lubricants bond to the surface of the metal, and prevent metal-to-metal contact and the resulting friction and wear when the lubricant film gets too thin.\n",
"BULLET::::- invented the Grease Guard Bearing System that allows bicyclists to completely replace with clean grease in seconds the dirty grease that always gets into bicycle bearings...thus extending component life and saving significant time and money spent overhauling and/or replacing parts. Grease Guard's effect on component longevity conflicted with the bike industry's needs. The industry requires that bike parts wear out, thus necessitating replacement.\n",
"Bicycles are often used by people seeking to improve their fitness and cardiovascular health. In this regard, cycling is especially helpful for those with arthritis of the lower limbs who are unable to pursue sports that cause impact to the knees and other joints. Since cycling can be used for the practical purpose of transportation, there can be less need for self-discipline to exercise.\n",
"A thin layer of grease made for this application can be applied to the ground glass surfaces to be connected, and the inner joint is inserted into the outer joint such that the ground glass surfaces of each are next to each other to make the connection. In addition to making a leak-tight connection, the grease lets two joints be later separated more easily. A potential drawback of such grease is that if used on laboratory glassware for a long time in high-temperature applications (such as for continuous distillation), the grease may eventually contaminate the chemicals. Also, reagents may react with the grease, especially under vacuum. For these reasons, it is advisable to apply a light ring of grease at the fat end of the taper and not its tip, to keep it from inside the glassware. If the grease smears over the entire taper surface on mating, too much was used. Using greases specifically designed for this purpose is also a good idea, as these are often better at sealing under vacuum, thicker and so less likely to flow out of the taper, become fluidic at higher temperatures than Vaseline (a common substitute) and are more chemically inert than other substitutes.\n",
"Gear greases consist of rosin oil, condensed with lime and stirred with mineral oil, with some percentage of water. Special-purpose greases contain glycerol and sorbitan esters. They are used, for example, in low-temperature conditions. Some greases are labeled \"EP\", which indicates \"extreme pressure\". Under high pressure or shock loading, normal grease can be compressed to the extent that the greased parts come into physical contact, causing friction and wear. \n",
"Silicone grease is commonly used for lubricating and preserving rubber parts, such as O-rings. Additionally, silicone grease does not swell or soften the rubber, which can be a problem with hydrocarbon based greases. It functions well as a corrosion-inhibitor and lubricant for purposes that require a thicker lubricant.\n",
"A \"true\" grease consists of an oil and/or other fluid lubricant that is mixed with a thickener, typically a \"soap\", to form a solid or semisolid. Greases are a type of \"shear-thinning\" or pseudo-plastic fluid, which means that the viscosity of the fluid is reduced under shear. After sufficient force to shear the grease has been applied, the viscosity drops and approaches that of the base lubricant, such as the mineral oil. This sudden drop in shear force means that grease is considered a plastic fluid, and the reduction of shear force with time makes it thixotropic. It is often applied using a grease gun, which applies the grease to the part being lubricated under pressure, forcing the solid grease into the spaces in the part.\n"
] |
what are vitamin supplements made out of? | In the example you cited, bacteria. There is a non-animal source for every vitamin we need. | [
"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",
"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",
"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",
"BULLET::::- Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is a water-soluble compound that fulfills several roles in living systems. Sources include citrus fruits (such as oranges, sweet lime, etc.), green peppers, broccoli, green leafy vegetables, black currants, strawberries, blueberries, seabuckthorn, raw cabbage and tomatoes.\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",
"Vitamins and minerals are required for normal metabolism but which the body cannot manufacture itself and which must therefore come from external sources. Vitamins come from several sources including fresh fruit and vegetables (Vitamin C), carrots, liver (Vitamin A), cereal bran, bread, liver (B vitamins), fish liver oil (Vitamin D) and fresh green vegetables (Vitamin K). Many minerals are also essential in small quantities including iron, calcium, magnesium, sodium chloride and sulfur; and in very small quantities copper, zinc and selenium. The micronutrients, minerals, and vitamins in fruit and vegetables may be destroyed or eluted by cooking. Vitamin C is especially prone to oxidation during cooking and may be completely destroyed by protracted cooking. The bioavailability of some vitamins such as thiamin, vitamin B6, niacin, folate, and carotenoids are increased with cooking by being freed from the food microstructure. Blanching or steaming vegetables is a way of minimizing vitamin and mineral loss in cooking.\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"
] |
Why does your computer screen look 'liquidy' when you apply pressure to it (i.e. pressing your fingernail against your pc monitor)? | Because it *is* liquidy. The screen uses something called a "liquid crystal", which is a layer of a special liquid sandwiched between two pieces of glass or plastic (or one piece of glass and one piece of plastic).
This liquid is what forms the image, by changing how it interacts with polarized light depending on the electric field applied. | [
"A capacitive touchscreen panel consists of an insulator, such as glass, coated with a transparent conductor, such as indium tin oxide (ITO). As the human body is also an electrical conductor, touching the surface of the screen results in a distortion of the screen's electrostatic field, measurable as a change in capacitance. Different technologies may be used to determine the location of the touch. The location is then sent to the controller for processing. Touchscreens that use silver instead of ITO exist, as ITO causes several environmental problems due to the use of Indium.\n",
"Generally, flat-panel membrane keyboards do not produce a noticeable physical feedback. Therefore, devices using these issue a beep or flash a light when the key is pressed. They are often used in harsh environments where water- or leak-proofing is desirable. Although used in the early days of the personal computer (on the Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and Atari 400), they have been supplanted by the more tactile dome and mechanical switch keyboards.\n",
"It splits the touch surface away from the screen, so that user fatigue is reduced and the users' hands don't obstruct the display. Instead of placing windows all over the screen, the windowing manager, Con10uum, uses a linear paradigm, with multi-touch used to navigate between and arrange the windows. An area at the right side of the touch screen brings up a global context menu, and a similar strip at the left side brings up application-specific menus.\n",
"The cause of this tendency is unclear. It might be due to accumulation of ionic impurities inside the LCD, electric charge building up near the electrodes, parasitic capacitance, or \"a DC voltage component that occurs unavoidably in some display pixels owing to anisotropy in the dielectric constant of the liquid crystal\".\n",
"On iPhones, the capacitive sensors are directly integrated into the display. When a press is detected, these capacitive sensors measure microscopic changes in the distance between the back light and the cover glass. On the Apple Watch, a series of electrodes line the curvature of the screen. When a press is detected, these electrodes determine the pressure applied. The trackpads deploy a similar mechanism, although sensory information is determined by a series of four sensors that align with the corners of the trackpad. The detected pressure is then relayed to the Taptic Engine, which is Apple's haptic feedback engine. The electromagnetic linear actuator within the Taptic engine is capable of reaching its peak output in just one cycle and producing vibrations that last 10 milliseconds. Unlike typical motors, the linear actuator does not rotate but oscillates back and forth. The Taptic Engine produces immediate haptic feedback, without the need to offset the balance of mass. The haptic feedback produced may be accompanied by an audible tone. This helps in gaining the user’s attention in order to convey an important information such as a success, warning or a failure. Each haptic type is defined for a specific purpose, to convey a specific meaning.\n",
"A combination of a monitor with a graphics tablet. Such devices are typically unresponsive to touch without the use of one or more special tools' pressure. Newer models however are now able to detect touch from any pressure and often have the ability to detect tilt and rotation as well.\n",
"Because of the reflective nature of the display, in most lighting conditions that include direct light sources facing the screen, glossy displays create reflections, which can be distracting to the user of the computer. This can be especially distracting to users working in an environment where the position of lights and windows is fixed, such as in an office, as these create unavoidable reflections on glossy displays.\n"
] |
why are there no freshwater sharks? | Their called River Sharks and they exist.
_URL_1_
But basically the problem is that it is difficult for a species to live in both freshwater and salt water it requires really specific adaptation. This is called Euryhaline _URL_0_ and is relatively rare in nature. For large carnivorous it's especially difficult to hunt in fresh water because of the size of the prey. In the ocean your not restricted by the depth of of the water, but in river the walk can be much shallower which doesn't support as large animals and make shark body less adaptable to the environment. | [
"Sharks are one of the ocean's most threatened species because they are mistakenly caught by vessels searching for fish, and end up getting tossed back into the ocean dead or dying This disappearance of sharks has enabled prey animals like rays to multiply, which alters the ecological food chain.\n",
"With its small size, non-cutting teeth, and oceanic habitat, the crocodile shark is not considered dangerous to humans. However, it has a powerful bite that invites caution. This species is a common bycatch of various pelagic longline fisheries meant for tuna and swordfish. The largest numbers are caught by the Japanese yellowfin tuna fishery and the Australian swordfish fishery, both operating in the Indian Ocean. This species is also sometimes caught on squid jigs and in tuna gillnets. It is usually discarded due to its small size and low-quality meat. However, its oily liver is potentially valuable. No data is available on the population status of the crocodile shark, though it is probably declining from bycatch mortality. Coupled with its low reproductive rate, this has led the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to assessed it as Near Threatened. In June 2018 the New Zealand Department of Conservation classified the crocodile shark as \"Data Deficient\" with the qualifier \"Secure Overseas\" under the New Zealand Threat Classification System. \n",
"Young bull sharks have been known to prefer low-salinity or brackish water, and in 2015 one was found in the lake. A Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Marine Fisheries Biologist stated that bull sharks are one of the more aggressive shark species worldwide. Biologist manager Shane Granier stated, \"It’s not necessarily a common occurrence, but it’s not unheard of [to find sharks in the lake.]\" \n",
"These observations argue against traditional theories that white sharks are coastal territorial predators, and open up the possibility of interaction between shark populations that were previously thought to have been discrete. The reasons for their migration and what they do at their destination is still unknown. Possibilities include seasonal feeding or mating.\n",
"These sharks are often seen during the night,day, and morning in big schools, sometimes numbering hundreds, most likely because large groups can obtain food easier than singles or small groups, especially larger and trickier prey, as commonly seen. The younger the sharks, the closer to the surface they tend to be, while the adults are found much deeper in the ocean. They are not considered dangerous and are normally not aggressive towards humans.\n",
"When sharks have been finned, they are likely to die from lack of oxygen because they are not able to move to filter the water through their gills, or are eaten by other fish that have found them defenseless at the bottom of the ocean. Though studies suggest that 73 million sharks are finned each year, scientists have noted that the numbers may actually be closer to the 100 million mark. The majority of shark species exhibit slow growth rates and low reproductive rates, and the rate of reproduction cannot keep pace with the current mortality rate.\n",
"BULLET::::- Sharks, rays, and chimaeras: are deep water pelagic species, which makes them difficult to study in the wild. Not a lot is known about their ecology and population status. Much of what is currently known is from their capture in nets from both targeted and accidental catch. Many of these slow growing species are not recovering from overfishing by shark fisheries around the world.\n"
] |
why do fake elections in many regimes end up with 99% and not a 100% of the votes for the candidate? (north korean elections, third reich,...) | Probably to make it seem at least a tiny bit legitimate. Like "see, we didn't even get 100% of the votes, we're totally a democracy." | [
"In some cases, show elections can backfire against the party in power, especially if the regime believes they are popular enough to win without coercion or fraud. The most famous example of this was the [[1990 Myanmar general election]].\n",
"In Vietnam, proxy voting was used to increase turnout. Presently, proxy voting is illegal, but it has nonetheless been occurring since before 1989. It is estimated to contribute about 20% to voter turnout, and has been described as \"a convenient way to fulfil one's duty, avoid possible risks, and avoid having to participate directly in the act of voting\". It is essentially a compromise between the party-state, which wants to have high turnouts as proof of public support, and voters who do not want to go to the polling stations. In the Soviet Union, proxy voting was also illegal but done in order to increase turnout figures.\n",
"Vote fraud can also take place in legislatures. Some of the forms used in national elections can also be used in parliaments, particularly intimidation and vote-buying. Because of the much smaller number of voters, however, election fraud in legislatures is qualitatively different in many ways. Fewer people are needed to 'swing' the election, and therefore specific people can be targeted in ways impractical on a larger scale. For example, Adolf Hitler achieved his dictatorial powers due to the Enabling Act of 1933. He attempted to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority to pass the Act by arresting members of the opposition, though this turned out to be unnecessary to attain the needed majority. Later, the Reichstag was packed with Nazi party members who voted for the Act's renewal.\n",
"One-party states can restrict nominees to one per seat in elections and use compulsory voting or electoral fraud to create an impression of popular unanimity. The 1962 North Korean parliamentary elections reported a 100% turnout and a 100% vote for the Workers' Party of Korea. 100% votes have also been claimed by Ahmed Sékou Touré in Guinea in 1975 and 1982, Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Côte d'Ivoire in 1985, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2002.\n",
"A voter may cross off the candidate's name to vote against him or her, but in most polling stations the voter must do so with a red pen next to the ballot box in sight of electoral officials. In recent elections, there have been separate boxes for \"no\" votes. Many North Korean defectors claim such an act of defiance is too risky to attempt. Indeed, voting against the official candidate is considered an act of treason, and those who do face the loss of their jobs and housing, along with extra surveillance.\n",
"The voting method is a departure from prior elections. In previous elections, the system consisted of two ballot boxes at each polling station. The boxes, one black and one white, were to indicate support for or against a candidate. There is no system in place to handle absentee ballots for North Koreans living abroad and there does not appear to be a system of advanced voting in place. Proxy votes were ordered cast by family members of North Korean defectors who were detained in prisons within China. All voting and the validation of official returns is overseen by the Central Election Committee.\n",
"Proxy voting is particularly vulnerable to election fraud, due to the amount of trust placed in the person who casts the vote. In several countries, there have been allegations of retirement home residents being asked to fill out 'absentee voter' forms. When the forms are signed and gathered, they are secretly rewritten as applications for proxy votes, naming party activists or their friends and relatives as the proxies. These people, unknown to the voter, cast the vote for the party of their choice. In the United Kingdom, this is known as 'granny farming.'\n"
] |
those black rubber tubes that cross the road and appear to count cars. why are they counting and who puts them there? | They're very simple and cheap methods to gather traffic data for road and traffic planning. They're generally put down by local government and/or highways agencies, or companies working under contract to them. Potential questions they could be asking:
* There are planned road works on this road. How much traffic will we need to account for to divert on to other roads?
* There are high rates of accidents near this point. How fast are people generally travelling?*
* The signals down the road are often getting jammed up. How many cars regularly pass this area?
* Are large numbers of people using this side street as a cut-through to avoid a main road?
* Are the traffic signals further down the road creating enough natural gaps for pedestrians to cross, or do we need a specific pedestrian crossing here?
In short, those tubes are an extremely cheap and effective way of measuring lots of things about traffic for planning purposes. There's also no potentially identifying information collected, so nobody tends to care about being monitored by them.
[Edit]
*To answer a very common followup question, these lines are usually put down in pairs a few yards apart so that speed can be measured. Measuring speed with a single line is indeed very unreliable because of varying wheelbase lengths, but with two lines you're literally measuring the time to travel between two points which is exactly what speed is. | [
"Tall (1.15 meter/4 foot) slim (10 cm/4 inch) fluorescent red or orange plastic bollards with reflective tape and removable heavy rubber bases are frequently used in road traffic control where traffic cones would be inappropriate due to their width and ease of movement. Also referred to as \"delineators\", the bases are usually made from recycled rubber, and can be easily glued to the road surface to resist movement following minor impacts from passing traffic. The term \"T-top bollards\" refers to the T-bar moulded into the top for tying tape. Bollards are regarded as an economical and safe delineation system for motorways and busy arterial roads; and, in conjunction with plastic tape, for pedestrian control.\n",
"BULLET::::- Botts' dots (low rounded white or yellow dots), named for the California Caltrans engineer Elbert Botts, who invented the epoxy that keeps them glued down, are one type of a mechanical non-reflective raised marker. Generally they are used to mark the edges of traffic lanes, frequently in conjunction with raised reflective markers. Botts' dots are also used across a travel lane to draw the drivers attention to the road. They are frequently used in this way to alert drivers to toll booths, school zones or other significant reduction of speed limit. They are normally only used in warm climates since snow plows usually remove them along with the snow.\n",
"The traffic sign are divided into three classes; circles gives orders, triangles warns of possible dangers and rectangles gives information. Different colours are use within these shapes; blue circles are mandatory signs, it gives positive instructions, while red circles are prohibitory signs, it give negative instructions. Blue rectangles give general information while green rectangles are use for direction sign on main roads. However, there are two exception for these shapes and colour rules; that is the octagonal Stop sign and the inverted red triangle Give way sign.\n",
"These TMC's are square shaped boxes that have buttons for each direction of traffic flow. For example, east bound traffic entering an intersection has a button for those vehicles that turn, left, right or continue straight. Furthermore, an additional button is used for each direction to add the number of pedestrian and bicyclist movement. Typically automated traffic counters assess traffic flows, however, due to the differing angles of vehicles entering an intersection the present technology available is not able to quantify the traffic without major error. Traditional automated traffic counters have rubber tubes which are laid out across the road generally in a straight portion in order to have the wheels on the same axle hit at about the same time. When turning in an intersection the tires hit individually and the amount of error in the counter is increased. This means that TMC's are the only present option for quantifying traffic flows. They are used manually by an individual pressing the correlating button for every vehicle that enters and moves through the intersection. \n",
"Before 1987, most road signs had black backgrounds – diamonds indicated warnings, and rectangles indicated regulatory actions (with the exception of the Give Way sign (an inverted trapezium), and Stop sign and speed limit signs (which were the same as today)). Information signs were yellow, and direction signage was green on motorways and black everywhere else.\n",
"The initial dots were made of glass and were attached to the road by nails or tacks, as suggested by Botts. The nails were soon abandoned: his team discovered that when the dots popped loose under stress, the nails punctured tires. Contrary to a common myth, the published record does not make clear whether Botts invented the famous epoxy that solved the problem; some sources indicate that one of his protégés was responsible for the epoxy. In September 1966, the California State Legislature mandated that Botts' dots be used for lane markings for all state highways in all non-snowfall areas.\n",
"State and local governments frequently perform traffic surveys with a pneumatic road tube traffic counter. Rubber hoses are stretched across a road and wheels of passing vehicles create air pulses that are recorded by a roadside counter. In the 1970s the counts were mechanically recorded on a roll of paper tape. The time and number of axles were punched as a 16-bit pattern into the paper tape. (The common Teletype paper tape uses only 8 bits.) Cities would hire private companies to translate the data into reports that traffic engineers could use to adjust traffic lights or improve roads.\n"
] |
why are drag queens so easily distinguishable from women in equal makeup? | **Yes, it's the face structure.**
Humans are quite good at recognising small details in faces. Our brains are "programmed" that way.
Men and women typically have different facial characteristics. To an alien or another animal we all look the same, but we can usually tell the difference. | [
"Drag queens are performance artists, almost always male, who dress in women's clothing and often act with exaggerated femininity and in feminine gender roles with a primarily entertaining purpose. They often exaggerate make-up such as eyelashes for dramatic, comedic or satirical effect. Drag queens are closely associated with gay men and gay culture, but can be of any sexual orientation or gender identity. They vary widely by class, culture, and dedication, from professionals who star in films to people who try drag very occasionally.\n",
"The process of getting into drag or into character can take hours. A drag queen may aim for a certain style, celebrity impression, or message with their look. Hair, make-up, and costumes are the most important essentials for drag queens. Drag queens tend to go for a more exaggerated look with a lot more makeup than a typical feminine woman would wear.\n",
"In the drag queen world today, there is an ongoing debate about whether transgender drag queens are actually considered \"Drag Queens\". This subject is argued because Drag Queens are defined as a man portraying a woman. Since transgender queens are women, many people do not consider them drag queens because they are not men dressing as women. Drag Kings are biological females who assume a masculine aesthetic. However this is not always the case, because there are also biokings, bio-queens, and faux queens, which are people who perform their own biological sex through a heightened or exaggerated gender presentation.\n",
"Generally, drag queens dress in a female gender role, often exaggerating certain characteristics for comic, dramatic or satirical effect. Other drag performers include drag kings, who are women who perform in male roles, faux queens, who are women who dress in an exaggerated style to emulate drag queens and faux kings, who are men who dress to impersonate drag kings.\n",
"A drag queen is a person, usually a man, who dresses, and usually acts, like a woman often for the purpose of entertaining or performing. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly from professionals who have starred in movies to people who just try it a few times. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and can vary even within the same city. Although many drag queens are presumed to be gay men or transgender people, there are drag artists of all genders and sexualities who do drag for many reasons.\n",
"A drag queen (first use in print, 1941) is a man that dresses in drag, either as part of a performance or for personal fulfillment. Though many of these men are in fact cisgender, the term \"drag queen\" distinguishes such men from transvestites, transsexuals or transgender people. Those who \"perform drag\" as comedy do so while wearing dramatically heavy and often elaborate makeup, wigs, and prosthetic devices (breasts) as part of the performance costume.\n",
"\"Drag\" is a term applied to clothing and makeup worn on special occasions for performing or entertaining, unlike those who are transgender or who cross-dress for other reasons. Drag performance includes overall presentation and behavior in addition to clothing and makeup. Drag can be theatrical, comedic, or grotesque. Drag queens have been considered caricatures of women by second-wave feminism. Drag artists have a long tradition in LGBT culture. Generally the term \"drag queen\" covers men doing female drag, \"drag king\" covers women doing male drag, and \"faux queen\" covers women doing female drag. Nevertheless, there are drag artists of all genders and sexualities who perform for various reasons. Some drag performers, transvestites, and people in the gay community have embraced the pornographically-derived term \"tranny\" to describe drag queens or people who engage in transvestism or cross-dressing; however, this term is widely considered offensive if applied to transgender people.\n"
] |
how do dan aykroyd and eddy murphy make mortimer and randolph go broke at the end of trading places.. how did they get rich? | Short selling.
At the beginning of the trading day, the Dukes have a fake, unreleased forecast report saying that there will be a shortage of oranges, and therefore the price of frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ) will go up.
The Dukes' goal is to buy as much FCOJ as they can before the report is released and take advantage of the price increase.
Lewis instead waits for the price to go way high and then starts *selling* FCOJ he doesn't even own. Basically, he's borrowing shares and promising to buy them back later.
The real crop report comes out, saying there is no shortage of oranges. The price of FCOJ tanks, and Lewis finishes his short sale by buying back the shares he has to own to cover his earlier sale.
Lewis sold high and bought low, in that order. The Dukes bought high, much more than they could actually afford, and what they own now is worthless, so they can't pay back the exchange (the "margin call"). This bankrupts them.
_URL_0_ | [
"Series 2, Mortimer's Mine, also twelve episodes, tells the story of an immense hole which appears under Rumbury Town, right in front of the Jones' house, which Mortimer decides to fill up with everything he can get his claws on...meanwhile an American millionaire is in town also trying to get his hands on everything he can, and the two are soon in competition. Everything comes to a dramatic finish at the Town Music Festival.\n",
"The salesman immediately went to Leadville, where Duggan was not popular. He filed charges of robbery and assault against Duggan, who appeared in court to face the charges along with a string of dance hall girls as witnesses. The judge acquitted Duggan on the charge of robbery, but fined him $10 for assault. Duggan flew into a rage, demanding that if anyone should pay, it should be the salesman. Seeing Duggan's temper, the salesman dropped the charges and fled town.\n",
"Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor) returns to Gotham City. A breaking news report on a nearby TV reports that a businessman Ronald Danzer (Jack Koenig), is out on bail awaiting trial for a Ponzi scheme bilked a half a billion dollars. He tries to escape when he is intercepted outside the building by a man with a pig mask. The man ties Danzer to a weather balloon and Danzer floats in the sky.\n",
"In 1982, Berdella began renting his own booth at the Westport Flea Market. This store was named Bob's Bazaar Bizarre, and primarily sold and traded primitive art, jewelry, and antiques. Although occasionally making a generous monthly profit, the income he typically generated via this business was often not sufficient to maintain his daily expenses and to make ends meet. Resultingly, Berdella would occasionally have to either sell goods to fellow merchants at a profit loss, or steal or scavenge for items to sell at his booth. Additionally, he would often take lodgers at his home as a means of gaining additional income.\n",
"He started his working life as a butcher's boy in Toronto, until he saved enough money to purchase his own butcher shop for $50. The earning from that business allowed him to purchase property which became the source of his eventual wealth.\n",
"He subsequently had a number of legal difficulties associated with this company. The Tapie group also tried to dabble in the online poker world when they tried to acquire Full Tilt Poker. However, they were not able to negotiate a successful deal with the United States Department of Justice, and the deal fell through.\n",
"Mortimer states that there “is a fair amount of information about what he bought (…), but not much about where he put them or what their fate was. He was essentially a collector (and a muddler), buying one of everything he hadn't got”.\n"
] |
What's the evidence behind diet causing acne? | So this one is actually pretty well documented with Google Searches:
_URL_0_
**Foods that aid skin care:** These foods increase overall skin health
Vitamin A,E, & C rich foods
Zinc & Selenium
Proper Hydration
**Foods that may worsen acne**
Milk which comes from cows that have hormone supplements, there is still on going research into how these hormones given to cows affect humans, especially adolescent women.
Excessive simple sugars which can raise insulin levels will degrade overall skin health. Increased androgens stimulate sebum production and clog pores.
Disclaimer: Generally speaking the foods I've listed here deal with overall skin health, and are not acne specific.
| [
"The relationship between diet and acne is unclear, as there is no high-quality evidence that establishes any definitive link between them. High-glycemic-load diets have been found to have different degrees of effect on acne severity. Multiple randomized controlled trials and nonrandomized studies have found a lower-glycemic-load diet to be effective in reducing acne. There is weak observational evidence suggesting that dairy milk consumption is positively associated with a higher frequency and severity of acne. Milk contains whey protein and hormones such as bovine IGF-1 and precursors of dihydrotestosterone. These components are hypothesized to promote the effects of insulin and IGF-1 and thereby increase the production of androgen hormones, sebum, and promote the formation of comedones. Available evidence does not support a link between eating chocolate or salt and acne severity. Chocolate does contain varying amounts of sugar, which can lead to a high glycemic load, and it can be made with or without milk. Few studies have examined the relationship between obesity and acne. Vitamin B may trigger skin outbreaks similar to acne (acneiform eruptions), or worsen existing acne, when taken in doses exceeding the recommended daily intake. Eating greasy foods does not increase acne nor make it worse.\n",
"Genetics is thought to be the primary cause of acne in 80% of cases. The role of diet and cigarette smoking is unclear, and neither cleanliness nor exposure to sunlight appear to play a part. In both sexes, hormones called androgens appear to be part of the underlying mechanism, by causing increased production of sebum. Another frequent factor is excessive growth of the bacterium \"Cutibacterium acnes\", which is normally present on the skin.\n",
"There are many treatments available for acne from reducing sugars in the diet, to medications that include antibiotics, benzoyl peroxide, retinoids and hormonal treatments. Retinoids reduce the amount of sebum produced by the sebaceous glands. Should the usual treatments fail, the presence of the Demodex mite could be looked for as the possible cause.\n",
"Acne is a very common problem, particularly during puberty in teenagers, and is thought to relate to an increased production of sebum due to hormonal factors. The increased production of sebum can lead to a blockage of the sebaceous gland duct. This can cause a comedo, (commonly called a \"blackhead\" or a \"whitehead\"), which can lead to infection, particularly by the bacteria \"Cutibacterium acnes\". This can inflame the comedones, which then change into the characteristic acne lesions. \"Comedones\" generally occur on the areas with more sebaceous glands, particularly the face, shoulders, upper chest and back. Comedones may be 'black' or 'white' depending on whether the entire pilosebaceous unit, or just the sebaceous duct, is blocked. Sebaceous filaments—innocuous build-ups of sebum—are often mistaken for \"whiteheads\".\n",
"NOC are found in some foods (bacon, sausages, cheese) and tobacco smoke, and are formed in the gastrointestinal tract, especially after consumption of red meat. In addition, endogenous nitric oxide levels were found to be enhanced under chronic inflammatory conditions, and this could favor NOC formation in the large intestine.\n",
"Scientists initially hypothesized that acne represented a disease of the skin's hair follicle, and occurred due to blockage of the pore by sebum. During the 1880s, bacteria were observed by microscopy in skin samples affected by acne and were regarded as the causal agents of comedones, sebum production, and ultimately acne. During the mid-twentieth century, dermatologists realized that no single hypothesized factor (sebum, bacteria, or excess keratin) could completely explain the disease. This led to the current understanding that acne could be explained by a sequence of related events, beginning with blockage of the skin follicle by excessive dead skin cells, followed by bacterial invasion of the hair follicle pore, changes in sebum production, and inflammation.\n",
"\"C. acnes\" bacteria secrete many proteins, including several digestive enzymes. These enzymes are involved in the digestion of sebum and the acquisition of other nutrients. They can also destabilize the layers of cells that form the walls of the follicle. The cellular damage, metabolic byproducts and bacterial debris produced by the rapid growth of \"C. acnes\" in follicles can trigger inflammation. This inflammation can lead to the symptoms associated with some common skin disorders, such as folliculitis and acne vulgaris.\n"
] |
How do we know how intelligent Dinosaurs were? Also were there any that were on the same level as, say, dolphins or really smart dogs? | As a note, we don't generally measure against *absolute* brain size, but we note that most animals fall along a fit of brain size to body mass ratio. Some animals lying above or below this line (humans being reasonably well above it, if I recall correctly) seem to indicate more or less intelligence. Sorry on a mobile device so can't link, but check out wiki for brain to body ratio | [
"Dinosaur intelligence has been a point of contention for paleontologists. Non-avian dinosaurs were once regarded as being unintelligent animals but have largely been appraised more generously since the dinosaur renaissance. This new found optimism for dinosaur intelligence has led to highly exaggerated portrayals in pop-cultural works like \"Jurassic Park\". Paleontologists now regard dinosaurs as being very intelligent for reptiles, but generally not as smart as their avian descendants. Some have speculated that if the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event had not occurred, the more intelligent forms of small theropods might have eventually evolved human-like levels of intelligence. Popular misconceptions of dinosaur neurology include the concept of a second brain in the pelvis of stegosaurs and sauropods.\n",
"Reptiles are generally considered less intelligent than mammals and birds. The size of their brain relative to their body is much less than that of mammals, the encephalization quotient being about one tenth of that of mammals, though larger reptiles can show more complex brain development. Larger lizards, like the monitors, are known to exhibit complex behavior, including cooperation. Crocodiles have relatively larger brains and show a fairly complex social structure. The Komodo dragon is even known to engage in play, as are turtles, which are also considered to be social creatures, and sometimes switch between monogamy and promiscuity in their sexual behavior. One study found that wood turtles were better than white rats at learning to navigate mazes.\n",
"Since it is unknown how dinosaurs moved in real life, the team had to use their imagination and animals such as crocodiles and dogs as reference. The animators first scanned in drawings, then used animation tools to see what was possible to animate. The dinosaur artificial intelligence was based on lions, tigers, and other carnivores that are not afraid of humans. Mikami's vision for the dinosaurs was not completely fulfilled. He wanted to include more complex dinosaur artificial intelligence, with the dinosaurs each having individual personalities that could understand the player's condition and ambush them. The dinosaur animations and cries also did not turn out as he originally envisioned them. The number of dinosaurs in the North American version was increased from the Japanese version, although the number of species remained the same.\n",
"A guide narrative intervenes, explaining that while humanity had always assumed that it was the most intelligent species on Earth, in fact the dolphins were more intelligent, and had left the planet some time before. However, both the dolphins and humans were less intelligent than the mice.\n",
"Interest in primate studies has increased with the rise in studies of animal cognition. Other animals thought to be intelligent have also been increasingly studied. Examples include various species of corvid, parrots — especially the grey parrot — and dolphins. Alex (Avian Learning EXperiment) is a well known case study (1976–2007) which was developed by Pepperberg, who found that the African gray parrot Alex did not only mimic vocalisations but understood the concepts of same and different between objects. The study of non-human mammals has also included the study of dogs. Due to their domestic nature and personalities, dogs have lived closely with humans, and parallels in communication and cognitive behaviours have therefore been recognised and further researched. Joly-Mascheroni and colleagues (2008) demonstrated that dogs may be able to catch human yawns and suggested a level of empathy in dogs, a point that is strongly debated. Pilley and Reid found that a Border Collie named Chaser was able to successfully identify and retrieve 1022 distinct objects/toys.\n",
"American psychologist Harry Jerison suggested the possibility of sapient dinosaurs. In 1978, he gave a presentation titled \"Smart dinosaurs and comparative psychology\", at a meeting of the American Psychological Association. According to his speech, \"Dromiceiomimus\" supposedly could have evolved into a highly intelligent species like human beings.\n",
"Dolphins are often regarded as one of Earth's most intelligent animals, though it is hard to say just how intelligent. Comparing species' relative intelligence is complicated by differences in sensory apparatus, response modes, and nature of cognition. Furthermore, the difficulty and expense of experimental work with large aquatic animals has so far prevented some tests and limited sample size and rigor in others. Compared to many other species, however, dolphin behavior has been studied extensively, both in captivity and in the wild. See cetacean intelligence for more details.\n"
] |
as a non-american, please explain to me what's all this "hobby lobby" hullabaloo. | The new Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) requires some private corporations to offer specific healthcare options to their employees. The required coverage includes prophylactics and birth control pills, some of which can be used to induce abortion (i.e. the "morning after" pill).
Hobby Lobby is a Christian-owned privately-held business that objected to this part of the law on religious grounds. Generally in the US, there are no religious exceptions granted for generally applicable laws: even if your religion expressly condones slavery, you are not allowed to buy, sell or own slaves in the US (at least since 1865).
A law passed in 1993, tendentiously named "The Religious Freedom Restoration Act," requires the government to refrain from infringing on people's (or businesses') religious freedom unless a) doing so serves a compelling government interest and b) there is no "less restrictive" method available to achieve the same end.
Yesterday's Supreme Court decision simply applied the RFRA law, and didn't reach the deeper constitutional questions implicated by the case.
**TL;DR - It is the RFRA law that opens the door for religious exceptions to US public laws, not the SCOTUS decision.** | [
"Hobby Lobby is an arts and crafts company founded by self-made billionaire David Green and owned by the Evangelical Christian Green family with about 21,000 employees. It provided health insurance covering the contraceptives Plan-B and Ella until it dropped its coverage in 2012, the year it filed its lawsuit. The Hobby Lobby case also involved Mardel Christian and Educational Supply, which is owned by Mart Green, one of David's sons.\n",
"Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., formerly called Hobby Lobby Creative Centers, is a private for-profit corporation which owns a chain of American arts and crafts stores that are managed by corporate employees. The company is based in Oklahoma City.\n",
"The chamber promotes the economic growth and development of entrepreneurs and represents the interests of nearly 4.37 million Hispanic owned businesses in the US that contribute in excess of $700 billion to the American economy. It serves as the umbrella organization for more than 200 local chambers and business associations in the United States and Puerto Rico. Additionally, it advocates for the 259 major American companies who are its supporting members.\n",
"Squire Patton Boggs is currently the third-largest lobbying firm in the U.S. after Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. The lobbying arm, long managed by Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., is managed by former United States Senators John Breaux and Trent Lott.\n",
"Lobbying in the United States describes paid activity in which special interests hire professional advocates to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies such as the United States Congress. Lobbying in the United States could be seen to originate from Amendment I of the Constitution of the United States, which states: Congress shall make no law…abridging the right of the people peaceably…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Some lobbyists are now using social media to reduce the cost of traditional campaigns, and to more precisely target public officials with political messages.\n",
"The project is named for K Street in Washington, D.C., where the largest lobbying firms once had their headquarters. Lobbyists are, in some circles, referred to as the \"fourth branch of government,\" as some have great influence in U.S. national politics due to their monetary resources and the \"revolving-door\" practice of hiring former government officials.\n",
"The lobbying industry is especially affected by the revolving door concept, as the main asset for a lobbyist is contacts with and influence on government officials. This industrial climate is attractive for ex-government officials. It can also mean substantial monetary rewards for the lobbying firms and government projects and contracts in the hundreds of millions for those they represent.\n"
] |
In theory, could our blood flow in a constant stream as opposed to at the rhythm the heart pumps it at? If it is possible what would be the advantages and disadvantages of this? | Continuous flow pumps are used routinely in any surgery requiring cardiopulmonary bypass - congenital heart defect repairs in children, valve replacement surgeries in adults, and so on. These pumps are quite large and are operated by a specialist with (in the United States) a specialized college degree. The longer-term extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) pump can replace heart and lung function for a considerable period of time - up to a few months if required. Both of these pumps provide continuous flow but also come with some significant challenges and incur substantial risk.
There are a number of implantable pumps that can take over some portion of heart function. The Berlin Heart Excor device provides pulsatile flow, but requires an external drive unit about the size of a rolling suitcase. The HeartMate is an implantable impeller device that provides continuous flow. Its support equipment is considerably smaller. There are newer devices hitting the market all the time, many of which are considerably smaller and more portable than devices only a few years older. Collectively, these are called ventricular assist devices.
There is considerable debate regarding the need for pulsatile flow. It is claimed that continuous flow interferes with the kidney’s ability to regulate blood pressure. There does appear to be some evidence for long term kidney injury without pulsatile flow, but there are many individuals who have been supported by continuous flow devices for protracted periods without major loss of renal function.
The advantages to continuous flow are mainly in that it is mechanically much simpler to provide continuous flow rather than pulsatile flow. The power requirements generally are less, and the devices themselves can be made much smaller. | [
"The final rhythm is Ventricular Standstill this rhythm will appear as a flat line, but may have a few non conducted p waves, the heart rate of this will be 0 and be supplying no blood through the body like ventricular fibrillation.\n",
"The idea of flow theory as first conceptualized by Csikszentmihalyi. Flow in the context of motivation can be seen as an activity that is not too hard, frustrating or madding, or too easy boring and done too fast. If one has achieved perfect flow, then the activity has reached maximum potential.\n",
"In a normal circulatory system, the volume of blood returning to the heart each minute is approximately equal to the volume that is pumped out each minute (the cardiac output). Because of this, the velocity of blood flow across each level of the circulatory system is primarily determined by the total cross-sectional area of that level. This is mathematically expressed by the following equation:\n",
"Steiner described the heart not as a pump, but as a regulator of flow, such that the heartbeat itself can be distinguished from the circulation of blood. Anthroposophic medicine claims the flow in the blood of the circulatory system is, as Marinelli put it, \"\"propelled with its own biological momentum, as can be seen in the embryo, and boosts itself with \"induced\" momenta from the heart\"\".\n",
"Thirdly there is another \"bulk flow\" process. The pumping action of the heart then transports the blood around the body. As the left ventricle of the heart contracts, the volume decreases, which increases the pressure in the ventricle. This creates a pressure gradient between the heart and the capillaries, and blood moves through blood vessels by bulk flow down the pressure gradient.\n",
"Also, unlike the arterial ultrasound examination, blood velocity in veins has no diagnostic meaning. Veins are a draining system similar to a low pressure hydraulic system, with a laminar flow and a low velocity. This low velocity is responsible for the fact that it can only be detected spontaneously with the Doppler effect on the proximal and larger femoral and iliac veins. Here the flow is either modulated by the respiratory rhythm or is continuous in cases where the flow is high. The thinner veins do not have a spontaneous flow. However, in some circumstances the blood flow is so slow that it can be seen as some echogenic material moving within the vein, in \"spontaneous contrast\". This material can easily be mistaken for a thrombus, but can also easily be discounted by testing the vein's compressibility.\n",
"Poiseuille's law on blood circulation in the body is dependent on laminar flow. In turbulent flow the flow rate is proportional to the square root of the pressure gradient, as opposed to its direct proportionality to pressure gradient in laminar flow.\n"
] |
r/askscience, is it normal to see different hues of color in each eye? | This was asked last week … *twice.* [Here's the one that survived](_URL_0_), I think. | [
"The characteristic colors are, from long to short wavelengths (and, correspondingly, from low to high frequency), red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Sufficient differences in wavelength cause a difference in the perceived hue; the just-noticeable difference in wavelength varies from about 1 nm in the blue-green and yellow wavelengths, to 10 nm and more in the longer red and shorter blue wavelengths. Although the human eye can distinguish up to a few hundred hues, when those pure spectral colors are mixed together or diluted with white light, the number of distinguishable chromaticities can be quite high.\n",
"It is based on the Young-Helmholtz theory that the normal human eye sees color because its inner surface is covered with millions of intermingled cone cells of three types: in theory, one type is most sensitive to the end of the spectrum we call \"red\", another is more sensitive to the middle or \"green\" region, and a third which is most strongly stimulated by \"blue\". The named colors are somewhat arbitrary divisions imposed on the continuous spectrum of visible light, and the theory is not an entirely accurate description of cone sensitivity. But the simple description of these three colors coincides enough with the sensations experienced by the eye that when these three colors are used the three cones types are adequately and unequally stimulated to form the illusion of various intermediate wavelengths of light.\n",
"The range of all colors contains a continuous series of innumerable shades that blend into each other. Why are red, green, orange, blue, yellow, and violet given names and considered to be the most important? Because they represent the retina's activity in the simplest fractions or ratios. The same is true of the seven keynotes in the musical diatonic scale: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti. Color is the qualitatively divided activity of the retina. The retina has a natural tendency to display its activity entirely. After the retina has been partly stimulated, its remaining complement is active as the physiological spectrum or afterimage. In this way, the retina is fully and wholly active.\n",
"The phenomenon is not entirely understood. One possible reason people see colors may be that the color receptors in the human eye respond at different rates to red, green, and blue. More specifically, the latencies of the center and the surrounding mechanisms differ for the different types of color-specific ganglion cells.\n",
"BULLET::::2. Colors that cannot be seen directly from any combination of retina signal output from one place in one eye, but can be generated in the brain's visual cortex by mixing color signals from the two eyes, or from more than one part of the same eye. Examples of these colors are yellowish-blue and reddish-green. Those colors that appear to be similar to, for example, both red and green, or to both yellow and blue. (This does not mean the result of mixing paints of those two colors in painting, or the result of mixing lights of those two colors on a screen.)\n",
"According to Jay Neitz, each of the three standard color-detecting cone cells in the retina – blue, green and red—can pick up about 100 different gradations of color. But, he says, the brain can combine those variations exponentially, multiplying each new variety of cone by 100, so that the average human trichromat can distinguish about one million different hues.\n",
"A spectrum obtained using a glass prism and a point source is a continuum of wavelengths without bands. The number of colours that the human eye is able to distinguish in a spectrum is in the order of 100. Accordingly, the Munsell colour system (a 20th-century system for numerically describing colours, based on equal steps for human visual perception) distinguishes 100 hues. The apparent discreteness of main colours is an artefact of human perception and the exact number of main colours is a somewhat arbitrary choice.\n"
] |
Is every nerve ending in the hand connected to the brain? | I'm not entirely sure of your question. All sensory nerve endings do eventually end up in the CNS (even though each sense may go through different tracts/paths to get to where they end up), where sensory information is processed.
In the case of the hand in particular, you have the Ulnar nerve that innervates your hand and receives sensory input. It originates from the mess of afferent/efferent signals carried by your spinal cord. All sensory nerves of the upper/lower limbs originate from a [spinal nerve](_URL_0_) which then send information toward the brain (afferent). So if you get some sort of sensory information from your hands, the signal gets carried from your hand, back to your spinal cord, up toward your brain where it gets processed. There are multiple synapses from nerve ending at the tip of your fingers to the sensory processing in the cortex.
Not sure if that answers your question well enough with respect to the optic nerve (I don't understand what your question is with regards to that)
| [
"BULLET::::- Many neurons connect to the brain on one end, with the other end connected to another neuron, with the outside (the brain) junction located within the spinal column. Other neurons bundles which are labeled cranial nerves, connect to the brain on one end, and to locations outside the brain on the other, without having a junction inside the spinal column. Cranial nerves are actually huge collections of vast numbers of individual neurons that have found common routes though the body. They branch several times into smaller bundles which eventually reach many endpoints. With one exception, the optic nerve, they are all considered part of the peripheral nervous system.\n",
"In human anatomy, the left and right posterior communicating arteries are arteries at the base of the brain that form part of the circle of Willis. Each posterior communicating artery connects the three cerebral arteries of the same side. Anteriorly, it connects to the internal carotid artery (ICA) prior to the terminal bifurcation of the ICA into the anterior cerebral artery and middle cerebral artery. Posteriorly, it communicates with the posterior cerebral artery.\n",
"The median nerve arises from the branches from lateral and medial cords of the brachial plexus, courses through the anterior part of arm, forearm, and hand, and terminates by supplying the muscles of the hand.\n",
"Branches from the posterior spinal arteries form a free anastomosis around the posterior roots of the spinal nerves, and communicate, by means of very tortuous transverse branches, with the vessels of the opposite side.\n",
"The nervous system consists of a main nerve ring which runs around the central disk. At the base of each arm, the ring attaches to a radial nerve which runs to the end of the limb. The nerves in each limb run through a canal at the base of the vertebral ossicles.\n",
"Despite this lukewarm response, Charles Bell continued to study the anatomy of the human brain and laid his focus upon the nerves connected to it. In 1821, Bell published the \"“On the Nerves: Giving an Account of some Experiments on Their Structure and Functions, Which Lead to a New Arrangement of the System”\" in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. This paper held Bell's most famous discovery, that the facial nerve or seventh cranial nerve is a nerve of muscular action. This was quite an important discovery because surgeons would often cut this nerve as an attempted cure for facial neuralgia, but this would often render the patient with a unilateral paralysis of the facial muscles, now known as Bell's Palsy. Due to this publication, Charles Bell is regarded as one of the first physicians to combine the scientific study of neuroanatomy with clinical practice.\n",
"The nerve continues through the carpal tunnel into the hand, lying in the carpal tunnel anterior and lateral to the tendons of the flexor digitorum superficialis. Once in the hand, the nerve splits into a muscular branch and palmar digital branches. The muscular branch supplies the thenar eminence while the palmar digital branch supplies sensation to the palmar aspect of the lateral 3 ½ digits and the lateral two lumbricals.\n"
] |
What factors cause the cake batter to change from liquid to solid? | Most baking is about the gelatinization of starch (from flour). This is what forms the crumb in bread and firms up the foam structure of cakes (the foam coming from the action of leavening agents like baking soda/powder). Each little piece of flour is basically a tiny starch granule. When it is heated sufficiently it will gelatinize and become soft and pliable.
Starch gelatinization occurs over a range of temperatures, finishing at around 95 deg. C. During the process the starch will usually absorb water. Also, the presence and quantity of other substances such as fats, sugars, proteins, etc. will affect the temperatature and degree of gelatinization.
Note that when a baked good goes "stale" that's usually the gelatinized starch reverting to its granulated form. | [
"The flour plays an important role in the texture, structure, and elasticity of an angel food cake. Minimal folding of the flour allows cell walls to form when it comes in contact with the egg protein foam and sugar mixture. If the batter is over-mixed, the egg white proteins may coagulate causing the bubbles to break during baking, or the cell walls may become too rigid, lacking elasticity. This would reduce the volume and result in a coarse texture. However, if the batter is under-mixed, a weak foam will form.\n",
"The batter is a pound cake, a cake made of equal amounts by weight of butter, flour, eggs and sugar, which is then divided into two parts, one of which is colored with cocoa. The two batters are spread in layers onto the baking sheet, the chocolate batter above the plain batter, before the top is strewn with sour cherries. During baking, the cherries sink to the bottom of the cake, causing the wavy pattern. After the cake has cooled it is decorated with a thick layer of buttercream and iced with a chocolate glaze which may then be ornamented in a wavy manner with a fork.\n",
"The baking process causes the batter to expand and go from a liquid to a solid foam. The proteins will not start to denature until the temperature reaches around 158 °F. During this rise in temperature the air bubbles will either expand, coalesce, or break. An egg white foam will continue to expand uniformly until the internal temperature reaches 176 – 185 °F. Based on the ideal gas law, as the temperature increases, the volume of the air bubbles will expand. The temperature will continue to rise, causing the cake to expand at different rates and egg white proteins will gradually denature. Some of the egg white proteins will start to denature and coagulate at around 135 °F. This establishes the setting of the foam structure. By the time the temperature reaches 180 °F, all of the egg white proteins will have set in place.\n",
"The foam structure will decrease slightly or collapse in order to form a solid foam of less volume. This occurs while the cake is still baking, not when it is cooling. The combination of protein denaturation and starch gelatinization determines whether the cake will set or collapse. When proteins denature, they are not in a stable state. In order to stabilize, the denatured proteins will aggregate around air bubbles and within the continuous phase of the batter. The aggregation and overlapping of the proteins forms a very stable network.\n",
"Once the cake has been baked, or when leftovers from an existing cake have been collected, it is crumbled into pieces. These crumbs are mixed into a bowl of frosting and the resulting mixture is shaped into balls, cubes or other shapes. Each ball is attached to a lollipop stick dipped in melted chocolate, and put in the fridge to chill. Once the mixture solidifies, it is dipped in melted chocolate to form a hard shell, and decorated with sprinkles or decorative sugars. The cake balls can be frozen to speed the solidification process.\n",
"Since there is no shortening, butter, fat, or oil, sugar is the only tenderizer. The more sugar added, the more tender the cake will be. However, if too much is added, the cake may collapse because the foam structure is not strong enough to support itself.\n",
"When a dough or batter is mixed, the starch in the flour and the water in the dough form a matrix (often supported further by proteins like gluten or polysaccharides, such as pentosans or xanthan gum). Then the starch gelatinizes and sets, leaving gas bubbles that remain.\n"
] |
how come things like washing machines and cars always stay at high prices, meanwhile things like radios and tvs get cheaper and cheaper? | Cost of things are proportional to the cost of their base materials. Things like electronics become cheaper because they are used in technology that allows you to make NEW technology (like whats used in electronics) faster, smaller and cheaper.
So, the reason why a washing machine or car raises price with inflation is because the raw materials like steel, aluminum, and plastic are also rising in price with inflation and supply and demand. But, you cant develop new technology to "make" more steel or plastic faster, cheaper or smaller, you have to acquire it the old fashioned way.
| [
"Small appliances can be very inexpensive, such as an electric can opener, hot pot, toaster, or coffee maker which may cost only a few U.S. dollars, or very expensive, such as an elaborate espresso maker, which may cost several thousand U.S. dollars. Most homes in developed economies contain several cheaper home appliances, with perhaps a few more expensive appliances, such as a high-end microwave oven or mixer.\n",
"Due to the increasing cost of repairs relative to the price of a washing machine, there has been a major increase in the number of defective washing machines being discarded, to the detriment of the environment. The cost of repair and the expected life of the machine may make the purchase of a new machine seem like the better option.\n",
"For example, when televisions are displayed next to each other on the sales floor, the difference in quality between two very similar, high-quality televisions may appear great. A consumer may pay a much higher price for the higher-quality television, even though the difference in quality is imperceptible when the televisions are viewed in isolation. Because the consumer will likely be watching only one television at a time, the lower-cost television would have provided a similar experience at a lower cost.\n",
"Clean prices are more stable over time than dirty prices – when clean prices change, it is for an economic reason, for instance a change in interest rates or in the bond issuer's credit quality. Dirty prices, on the other hand, change day to day depending on where the current date is in relation to the coupon dates, in addition to any economic reasons.\n",
"Rapidly rising utility charges, premises rent and a lower purchase cost of domestic machines have been noted as principal reasons for the recent decline. High initial launch costs, specifically for commercial washing machines and dryers, have also been commented on as reasons for fewer new entrants into the market. Furthermore, machine updates can be prohibitively expensive, which has held back premises investment.\n",
"Most television viewers in this country were unable to buy goods at low prices because of the remoteness from major cities and regional centers. The range of local shops is rarely updated, and beautiful and affordable clothing needs for everyone.\n",
"The major benefits of these machines are efficiency in time, energy, and cleaning ability as well as low maintenance requirements and costs. The major disadvantage is purchase cost which can range from $500 for floor-cleaning-only machines to over $2,000 for the most sophisticated residential units.\n"
] |
Why did the US government refuse to support Chiang Kai-Shek after WW2, and was this a major cause of the victory of the Chinese Revolution? | The US government refused to support CSK after WW2? What? The US sent a whopping $4 billion to him within two years after the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The US gave him military hardware and trained his troops. The US airlifted Nationalists forces to liberated areas, including Manchuria, and also stationed US troops in strategic areas. | [
"During World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt had assumed that China, under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership, would become a great power after the war, along with the U.S., the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. John Paton Davies Jr., was among the \"China Hands\" who were blamed for the loss of China. However, while they predicted a Communist victory they did not advocate one. They reported to Washington that material support to Chiang Kai-shek during the war against Japan in the 1930s and 1940s would not transform the inefficient and corrupt Nationalist government. However, Roosevelt's poor choice of personal emissaries to China contributed to the failure of his policy.\n",
"In 1949, Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek's United States-backed Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China, and the Soviet Union promptly created an alliance with the newly formed People's Republic of China. According to Norwegian historian Odd Arne Westad, the communists won the Civil War because they made fewer military mistakes than Chiang Kai-Shek made, and because in his search for a powerful centralized government, Chiang antagonized too many interest groups in China. Moreover, his party was weakened during the war against Japan. Meanwhile, the communists told different groups, such as the peasants, exactly what they wanted to hear, and they cloaked themselves under the cover of Chinese nationalism. Chiang and his KMT government retreated to the island of Taiwan.\n",
"Most observers expected Chiang's government to eventually fall in response to a Communist invasion of Taiwan, and the United States initially showed no interest in supporting Chiang's government in its final stand. Things changed radically with the onset of the Korean War in June 1950. At this point, allowing a total Communist victory over Chiang became politically impossible in the United States, and President Harry S. Truman ordered the United States Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan straits to prevent the ROC and PRC from attacking each other.\n",
"Most observers expected Chiang's government to eventually fall in response to a Communist invasion of Taiwan, and the United States initially showed no interest in supporting Chiang's government in its final stand. Things changed radically with the onset of the Korean War in June 1950. At this point, allowing a total Communist victory over Chiang became politically impossible in the United States, and President Harry S. Truman ordered the United States Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan straits to prevent the ROC and PRC from attacking each other.\n",
"Most observers expected Chiang's government to eventually fall in response to a Communist invasion of Taiwan, and the United States initially showed no interest in supporting Chiang's government in its final stand. Things changed radically with the onset of the Korean War in June 1950. At this point, allowing a total Communist victory over Chiang became politically impossible in the United States, and President Harry S. Truman ordered the United States Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the ROC and PRC from attacking each other.\n",
"Like other similar clashes immediately after the end of World War II between the communists and the nationalists in China, this conflict showed that Chiang Kai-shek's attempt to simultaneously solve China's long-standing warlord problem and to exterminate communism proved to be a critical mistake. Although the result of the campaign turned out exactly like Chiang Kai-shek and his subordinates had predicted, reducing the power of the warlords in the region, the positive impact of any secondary objectives were negated by the loss of primary ones. The people of the region had already blamed the nationalists for the previous loss to the Japanese invaders, and the reassignment of the former nationalist forces to fight the communists only further alienated the local populace and strengthened popular resentment of Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist regime.\n",
"Over the ensuing years, the hope that U.S. support of the Chinese Republic would lead to the return of Chiang Kai-shek to the China Mainland never gained sufficient American backing to prevent the unrelenting growth of the Chinese Communists. Despite periodic revivals of plans to return to the Mainland, Chiang Kai-shek maintained his Presidency of the Chinese Republic on Taiwan until his death in 1975.\n"
] |
How much water does it take to offset sodium intake? | A "normal" blood panel sodium level is ~140 mmol/L, sea water has a salt concentration of ~600 mol/L, so it has about 4.3 times as sodium as blood.
As I understand it, as your salt intake increases, the concentrations in your urine will rise without you needing to increase your water intake, until it hits the maximum concetration level you kindeys are capable of filtering at.
However, different sources had different levels: one said [~280 mmol/L](_URL_0_), another said [~500 mmol/L](_URL_1_) while noting that one human subject managed to hit 610 mmol/L in his urine.
While it's expected that there be generic variants that result in more or less efficient kidneys, this seems like an overly wide variation to me | [
"While reduction of sodium intake to less than 2,300 mg per day is recommended by developed countries, one review recommended that sodium intake be reduced to at least 1,200 mg (contained in 3g of salt) per day, as a further reduction in salt intake the greater the fall in systolic blood pressure for all age groups and ethinicities. Another review indicated that there is inconsistent/insufficient evidence to conclude that reducing sodium intake to lower than 2,300 mg per day is either beneficial or harmful.\n",
"The minimum physiological requirement for sodium is between 115 and 500 milligrams per day depending on sweating due to physical activity, and whether the person is adapted to the climate. Sodium chloride is the principal source of sodium in the diet, and is used as seasoning and preservative, such as for pickling and jerky; most of it comes from processed foods. The Adequate Intake for sodium is 1.2 to 1.5 grams per day, but on average people in the United States consume 3.4 grams per day, the minimum amount that promotes hypertension. (Note that salt contains about 39.3% sodium by massthe rest being chlorine and other trace chemicals; thus the UL of 2.3g sodium would be about 5.9g of saltabout 1 teaspoon)\n",
"The CDC recommends limiting daily total sodium intake to 2,300 mg per day, though the average American consumes 3,500 mg per day. Because the amount of sodium present in drinking water—even after softening—does not represent a significant percentage of a person's daily sodium intake, the EPA considers sodium in drinking water to be unlikely to cause adverse health effects.\n",
"As of 2009 the average sodium consumption in 33 countries was in the range of 2,700 to 4,900 mg/day. This ranged across many cultures, and together with animal studies, this suggests that sodium intake is tightly controlled by feedback loops in the body. This makes recommendations to reduce sodium consumption below 2,700 mg/day potentially futile. Upon review, an expert committee that was commissioned by the Institute of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there was no health outcome-based rationale for reducing daily sodium intake levels below 2,300 milligrams, as had been recommended by previous dietary guidelines; the report did not have a recommendation for an upper limit of daily sodium intake.\n",
"As stated by Sacks, F. et al., reductions in sodium intake by this amount per day correlated with greater decreases in blood pressure when the starting sodium intake level was already at the U.S. recommended dietary allowance, than when the starting level was higher (higher levels are the actual average in the U.S.). These results led researchers to postulate that the adoption of a national lower daily allowance for sodium than the currently held 2,400 mg could be based on the sound scientific results provided by this study. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend eating a diet of 2300 mg of sodium a day or lower, with a recommendation of 1500 mg/day in adults who have elevated blood pressure; the 1500 mg/day is the low sodium level tested in the DASH-Sodium study.\n",
"Sodium absorption occurs in two stages. The first is via intestinal epithelial cells (enterocytes). Sodium passes into these cells by co-transport with glucose, via the SGLT1 protein. From the intestinal epithelial cells, sodium is pumped by active transport via the sodium-potassium pump through the basolateral cell membrane into the extracellular space.\n",
"Sodium and potassium occur in all known biological systems, generally functioning as electrolytes inside and outside cells. Sodium is an essential nutrient that regulates blood volume, blood pressure, osmotic equilibrium and pH; the minimum physiological requirement for sodium is 500 milligrams per day. Sodium chloride (also known as common salt) is the principal source of sodium in the diet, and is used as seasoning and preservative, such as for pickling and jerky; most of it comes from processed foods. The Dietary Reference Intake for sodium is 1.5 grams per day, but most people in the United States consume more than 2.3 grams per day, the minimum amount that promotes hypertension; this in turn causes 7.6 million premature deaths worldwide.\n"
] |
why do smoke detectors emit the same noise regardless wether they are out of battery or there is an actual fire? | It would cost more to produce a smoke alarm which emitted two different signals. The goal is an alarm which works for a low cost. So it is cheaper to produce one with one alarm sound. If it goes off, look around for a fire. If no fire, change the battery. | [
"Traditional smoke detectors are technically ionisation smoke detectors which create an electric current between two metal plates, which sound an alarm when disrupted by smoke entering the chamber. Ionisation smoke alarms can quickly detect the small amounts of smoke produced by fast-flaming fires, such as cooking fires or those fueled by paper or flammable liquids. A newer, and perhaps safer, type is a photoelectric smoke detector. It contains a light source in a light-sensitive electric sensor, which is positioned at a 90-degree angles to the sensor. Normally, light from the light source shoots straight across and misses the sensor. When smoke enters the chamber, it scatters the light, which then hits the sensor and triggers the alarm. Photoelectric smoke detectors typically respond faster to a fire in its early, smoldering stage – before the source of the fire bursts into flames.\n",
"A smoke detector is a device that senses smoke, typically as an indicator of fire. Commercial security devices issue a signal to a fire alarm control panel as part of a fire alarm system, while household smoke detectors, also known as smoke alarms, generally issue a local audible or visual alarm from the detector itself.\n",
"False alarms are also common with smoke detectors and building fire alarm systems. They occur when smoke detectors are triggered by smoke that is not a result of a dangerous fire. Smoking cigarettes, cooking at high temperatures, burning baked goods, blowing out large numbers of birthday candles, fireplaces and woodburners when used around a smoke detector can all be causes of these false alarms. Additionally, steam can trigger an ionisation smoke detector that is too sensitive, another potential cause of false alarms.\n",
"Ionization smoke detectors are usually cheaper to manufacture than optical detectors. They may be more prone to false alarms triggered by non-hazardous events than photoelectric detectors, and have been found to be much slower to respond to typical house fires.\n",
"Smoke detectors are housed in plastic enclosures, typically shaped like a disk about in diameter and thick, but shape and size vary. Smoke can be detected either optically (photoelectric) or by physical process (ionization); detectors may use either, or both, methods. Sensitive alarms can be used to detect, and thus deter, smoking in areas where it is banned. Smoke detectors in large commercial, industrial, and residential buildings are usually powered by a central fire alarm system, which is powered by the building power with a battery backup. Domestic smoke detectors range from individual battery-powered units, to several interlinked mains-powered units with battery backup; with these interlinked units, if any unit detects smoke, all trigger even if household power has gone out.\n",
"Optical beam smoke detectors work on the principle of light obscuration, where the presence of smoke blocks some of the light from the beam, typically through either absorbance or light scattering. Once a certain percentage of the transmitted light has been blocked by the smoke, a fire is signalled. Optical beam smoke detectors are typically used to detect fires in large commercial and industrial buildings, as components in a larger fire alarm system.\n",
"An ionization chamber type smoke detector is technically a product of combustion detector, not a smoke detector. Ionization chamber type smoke detectors detect particles of combustion that are invisible to the naked eye. This explains why they may frequently false alarm from the fumes emitted from the red-hot heating elements of a toaster, before the presence of visible smoke, yet they may fail to activate in the early, low-heat smoldering stage of a fire.\n"
] |
how do people get drugs into prison? | Up the butt. | [
"Consuming any drug (personal use or not) is illegal and requires juridical process. Possessing, purchasing or receiving any illegal drug, including Cannabis, is punishable by 1–2 years in prison; there is also the option of treatment and/or probation for up to three years. If users refuse treatment or do not comply with probation requirements, the courts can decide on sentencing.\n",
"Drug Courts are a relatively new form of 'punishment' in the justice system with roots that date back to earlier centuries. Drug Courts are meant to keep offenders in the real world, instead of in jail or prison. By keeping minor offenders on the street, they can continue being effective members of society, hold down jobs, pay taxes, and often receive better drug treatment than they would in prison or jail. Drug Court is assigned by a judge who sees an offender who has the opportunity to become a successful functioning citizen in society. Drug Court is sentenced by an offender agreeing to a guilty plea to the offense they committed. As long as the offender successfully completes drug court, the offense is often removed from their record. Drug Court is completed along with probation, with mandatory drug and alcohol urine analysis, treatment programs, counseling, mandatory work, and often educational training. Drug Courts are incredibly successful so far with reducing recidivism amongst offenders by solving the issue causing the criminal activity: the drug and alcohol addiction.\n",
"People who are addicted to drugs or alcohol may be voluntarily or involuntarily admitted to a residential facility for treatment. Prescribed drugs are sometimes used to get people off illegal or addictive drugs, and to prevent the withdrawal symptoms of such drugs. The length of stay may be determined by the patient's needs or by external factors. In many cases the patient's insurance will cover such treatment in private facilities for only a limited period of time, and public rehabilitation facilities often have long waiting lists.\n",
"specialists, supervision officers, law enforcement agencies, corrections officials, and others. In exchange for successfully completing this intensive program, the Court may dismiss the charge, reduce the sentence, or offer a combination of other incentives. The police have estimated that 85% of drug dealers and prostitutes are themselves under the influence of drugs or are users trying to get money to purchase drugs.\n",
"Drug trafficking is commonly known in the republic as a criminal offence punishable by hanging, which is enforced under Schedule 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, any person importing, exporting, or found in possession of more than the threshold quantities of illegal drugs can a mandatory death sentence. Examples of high-profile cases such as the capital punishment of drug traffickers Van Tuong Nguyen and Shanmugam Murugesu.\n",
"Under the 1988 Antinarcotics Law, drug traffickers could be sentenced to prison for anywhere between five and twenty-five years; manufacturers of controlled substances, five to fifteen years; sowers and harvesters of illicit coca fields, two to four years; transporters, eight to twelve years; and pisadores (coca stompers), one to two years. Minors under the age of sixteen who were found guilty of drug-related crimes would be sent to special centers until they were completely rehabilitated.\n",
"If the person is addicted to drugs, they may be admitted to a drug rehabilitation facility or be given community service, if the dissuasion committee finds that this better serves the purpose of keeping the offender out of trouble. The committee cannot mandate compulsory treatment, although its orientation is to induce addicts to enter and remain in treatment. The committee has the explicit power to suspend sanctions conditional upon voluntary entry into treatment. If the offender is not addicted to drugs, or unwilling to submit to treatment or community service, he or she may be given a fine.\n"
] |
Abolitionists vs Anti-Slavery? | You might start [at the American Memory collection](_URL_1_). The way to think about this is that Abolition=immediate end of slavery because slavery is bad (usually on moral grounds, ie Fredrick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison) while Anti-Slavery=ending slavery for the US. An antislavery person might think Africans are inferior and so ending slavery might stop their population growth in the US. They might see it as a policy problem, and be willing to be gradual. There are better examples when you look at the stances of politicians. Even Jefferson can seem like an antislavery person at times (later in life). See Ron Takaki's [A Different Mirror](_URL_0_). | [
"Abolitionists included those who joined the American Anti-Slavery Society or its auxiliary groups in the 1830s and 1840s as the movement fragmented. The fragmented anti-slavery movement included groups such as the Liberty Party; the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society; the American Missionary Association; and the Church Anti-Slavery Society. Historians traditionally distinguish between moderate antislavery reformers or gradualists, who concentrated on stopping the spread of slavery, and radical abolitionists or immediatists, whose demands for unconditional emancipation often merged with a concern for black civil rights. However, James Stewart advocates a more nuanced understanding of the relationship of abolition and antislavery prior to the Civil War:\n",
"While instructive, the distinction [between antislavery and abolition] can also be misleading, especially in assessing abolitionism's political impact. For one thing, slaveholders never bothered with such fine points. Many immediate abolitionists showed no less concern than did other white Northerners about the fate of the nation's \"precious legacies of freedom\". Immediatism became most difficult to distinguish from broader anti-Southern opinions once ordinary citizens began articulating these intertwining beliefs.\n",
"\"Abolitionist\" had several meanings at the time. The followers of William Lloyd Garrison, including Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, demanded the \"immediate abolition of slavery\", hence the name. A more pragmatic group of abolitionists, like Theodore Weld and Arthur Tappan, wanted immediate action, but that action might well be a program of gradual emancipation, with a long intermediate stage. \"Antislavery men\", like John Quincy Adams, did what they could to limit slavery and end it where possible, but were not part of any abolitionist group. For example, in 1841 Adams represented the Amistad African slaves in the Supreme Court of the United States and argued that they should be set free. In the last years before the war, \"antislavery\" could mean the Northern majority, like Abraham Lincoln, who opposed \"expansion\" of slavery or its influence, as by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, or the Fugitive Slave Act. Many Southerners called all these abolitionists, without distinguishing them from the Garrisonians. James M. McPherson explains the abolitionists' deep beliefs: \"All people were equal in God's sight; the souls of black folks were as valuable as those of whites; for one of God's children to enslave another was a violation of the Higher Law, even if it was sanctioned by the Constitution.\"\n",
"Although some abolitionists opposed slavery for purely philosophical reasons, anti-slavery movements attracted strong religious elements. Throughout Europe and the United States, Christians, usually from 'un-institutional' Christian faith movements, not directly connected with traditional state churches, or \"non-conformist\" believers within established churches, were to be found at the forefront of the abolitionist movements.\n",
"Abolitionism in the United States continued until the end of the American Civil War. Among others Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, were two of many American Abolitionists who helped win the fight against slavery. Douglass was an articulate orator and incisive antislavery writer; while Tubman's efforts was by using a network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.\n",
"Abolitionists also attacked slavery as a threat to the freedom of white Americans. Defining freedom as more than a simple lack of restraint, antebellum reformers held that the truly free man was one who imposed restraints upon himself. Thus, for the anti-slavery reformers of the 1830s and 1840s, the promise of free labor and upward social mobility (opportunities for advancement, rights to own property, and to control one's own labor), was central to the ideal of reforming individuals.\n",
"The book has also been seen as an attempt to redefine masculinity as a necessary step toward the abolition of slavery. In this view, abolitionists had begun to resist the vision of aggressive and dominant men that the conquest and colonization of the early 19th century had fostered. In order to change the notion of manhood so that men could oppose slavery without jeopardizing their self-image or their standing in society, some abolitionists drew on principles of women's suffrage and Christianity as well as passivism, and praised men for cooperation, compassion, and civic spirit. Others within the abolitionist movement argued for conventional, aggressive masculine action. All the men in Stowe's novel are representations of either one kind of man or the other.\n"
] |
What is the smallest animal that can hear? | Whether a longitudinal wave is a "sound" or a "vibration" is a matter of scale. We can't hear sound on the order of 10Hz (wavelength of about 30 meters) but we can feel it. Similarly, a 1cm insect couldn't "hear" sounds where the wavelength is much larger than their body, but could feel them. From the perspective of subjective experience the difference may be irrelevant, and can never really be known to us anyway.
A few insects have organs similar to human ears, i.e., tympani / eardrums, such as crickets. Most others detect vibrations with external cilli, somewhat similar to the "hairs" in a human's inner ear. Each of these organs can detect vibrations on the same order of magnitude as their size.
There's a chart of frequency ranges for various animals on this Wikipedia page:
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
No insects are listed, but physiologicaly insects would be most similar to the bat, shifted upward as their size decreases.
| [
"Several animal species are able to hear frequencies well beyond the human hearing range. Some dolphins and bats, for example, can hear frequencies up to 100,000 Hz. Elephants can hear sounds at 14–16 Hz, while some whales can hear infrasonic sounds as low as 7 Hz (in water).\n",
"Toothed whales, including dolphins, can hear ultrasound and use such sounds in their navigational system (biosonar) to orient and to capture prey. Porpoises have the highest known upper hearing limit at around 160 kHz. Several types of fish can detect ultrasound. In the order Clupeiformes, members of the subfamily Alosinae (shad) have been shown to be able to detect sounds up to 180 kHz, while the other subfamilies (e.g. herrings) can hear only up to 4 kHz.\n",
"Frequencies capable of being heard by humans are called audio or sonic. The range is typically considered to be between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. Frequencies higher than audio are referred to as ultrasonic, while frequencies below audio are referred to as infrasonic. Some bats use ultrasound for echolocation while in flight. Dogs are able to hear ultrasound, which is the principle of 'silent' dog whistles. Snakes sense infrasound through their jaws, and baleen whales, giraffes, dolphins and elephants use it for communication. Some fish have the ability to hear more sensitively due to a well-developed, bony connection between the ear and their swim bladder. The \"aid to the deaf\" of fishes appears in some species such as carp and herring.\n",
"Several primates, especially small ones, can hear frequencies far into the ultrasonic range. Measured with a signal, the hearing range for the Senegal bushbaby is 92 Hz–65 kHz, and 67 Hz–58 kHz for the ring-tailed lemur. Of 19 primates tested, the Japanese macaque had the widest range, 28 Hz–34.5 kHz, compared with 31 Hz–17.6 kHz for humans.\n",
"Fish have no dedicated auditory epithelium, but use various vestibular sensory organs that respond to sound. In most teleost fishes it is the saccular macula that responds to sound. In some, such as goldfishes, there is also a special bony connection to the gas bladder that increases sensitivity allowing hearing up to about 4 kHz.\n",
"Although many fish are capable of hearing, the lagena is, at best, a short diverticulum of the saccule, and appears to have no role in sensation of sound. Various clusters of hair cells within the inner ear may instead be responsible; for example, bony fish contain a sensory cluster called the macula neglecta in the utricle that may have this function. Although fish have neither an outer nor a middle ear, sound may still be transmitted to the inner ear through the bones of the skull, or by the swim bladder, parts of which often lie close by in the body.\n",
"Not all sounds are normally audible to all animals. Each species has a range of normal hearing for both amplitude and frequency. Many animals use sound to communicate with each other, and hearing in these species is particularly important for survival and reproduction. In species that use sound as a primary means of communication, hearing is typically most acute for the range of pitches produced in calls and speech.\n"
] |
faq on united kingdom vote to remain in the european union, or leave. aka brexit | Why is this vote happening and why should I care/not care as someone who doesn't live in UK? | [
"The British government led by David Cameron held a referendum on the issue in 2016; a majority voted to leave the European Union. On 29 March 2017, Theresa May's administration invoked Article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union in a letter to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk. The UK was due to cease being a member at 00:00, 30 March 2019 Brussels time (UTC+1), which would have been 23:00 on 29 March British time. Following the UK parliament's failure to ratify the leaving deal negotiated with the European Council by the UK government, an extension of the deadline was agreed.\n",
"The British government led by David Cameron held a referendum on the issue in 2016; a majority voted to leave the European Union. On 29 March 2017, Theresa May's administration invoked Article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union in a letter to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk. The UK was set to leave on March 29, 2019, unless the Brexit Withdrawal agreement was adopted by the House of Commons, in which case the UK would have left in May 2019.. With the failure to ratify the withdrawal agreement by the British Parliament, the Prime Minister negotiated a further extension until 31st October 2019 \n",
"The United Kingdom was a co-founder of EFTA in 1960, but ceased to be a member upon joining the European Economic Community. The country held a referendum in 2016 on withdrawing from the EU (popularly referred to as \"Brexit\"), resulting in a 51.9% vote in favour of withdrawing. A 2013 research paper presented to the Parliament of the United Kingdom proposed a number of alternatives to EU membership which would continue to allow it access to the EU's internal market, including continuing EEA membership as an EFTA member state, or the Swiss model of a number of bilateral treaties covering the provisions of the single market.\n",
"Following the referendum result and the verdict of the R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union case in January 2017 the UK Government led by Prime Minister Theresa May passed the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 which legally allowed the UK to formally begin the process and formally notified the European Union of the United Kingdom's intention to leave both the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community by triggering Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union on Wednesday 29 March 2017.\n",
"The United Kingdom renegotiation of European Union membership was a package of changes to the United Kingdom's terms of European Union (EU) membership and changes to EU rules which was first proposed by Prime Minister David Cameron in January 2013, with negotiations beginning in the summer of 2015 following the outcome of the UK General Election. The package was agreed by the President of the European Council Donald Tusk, and approved by EU leaders of all 27 other countries at the European Council session in Brussels on 18–19 February 2016 between the United Kingdom and the rest of the European Union. The changes were intended to take effect following a vote for \"Remain\" in the UK's in-out referendum, at which point suitable legislation would be presented by the European Commission. Due to the Leave result of the referendum, the changes were never implemented.\n",
"The issue of the United Kingdom withdrawal from the European Union had been ongoing for many years before the 2010 general election, arguably since the 1975 United Kingdom European Communities membership referendum. In 2013 David Cameron pledged to renegotiate the United Kingdom's terms of membership with the European Union. In May 2013, the Conservative Party published a draft EU referendum bill and outlined their plans for renegotiation and then an in-out vote if returned to office in 2015. The draft bill stated that the referendum must be held no later than 31 December 2017. The draft was taken forward as a private member's bill in the House of Commons by the Conservative member James Wharton who had come top of a ballot of backbench MPs, entitling him to introduce a bill during the 2013–14 parliamentary session. His bill attempted to enshrine the Conservative Party Position into law before the 2015 general election. A spokesman for prime minister and Leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, said he was \"very pleased\" and would ensure the bill was given \"the full support of the Conservative Party\".\n",
"On Thursday 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum in which the electorate voted, by 17,410,742 to 16,141,241 to leave the European Union, with a turnout of 72.2%. As a result, on 29 March 2017 the UK Government invoked Article 50 to inform the European Council that they intended to leave the union on 29 March 2019. The European Council subsequently agreed that this deadline could be extended, and UK law changes are planned to do that. Following a ruling in December 2018 by the European Court of Justice that the United Kingdom may legally revoke Article 50, the petition to do so was started on 20 February 2019 by a former college lecturer. At first slow to accrue signatures, it grew in popularity after British Prime Minister Theresa May claimed that she would not be asking the EU for a prolonged extension to Article 50.\n"
] |
Did Ancient Israelites Write in Egyptian? Was Egyptian (or any form of it) known in Israel during biblical times and was it utilized in writing? | Am I correct in assuming that by written Egyptian you are referring to Egyptian hieroglyphics in particular? And not to later Egyptian adaptations of other scripts/languages?
[New Kingdom Egypt](_URL_1_) (c.1500-1000 BCE) was a garrison power in the Levant alongside their military rivals, the Hittites. Both Egyptian records and archaeological sites in the Levant (including Modern Israel and the Palestinian Territories) corroborate this, and multiple extant archaeological sites therein contain examples of hieroglyphics.
However, most modern [scholarly attempts to date the composition of the Hebrew Scriptures](_URL_0_) - which mostly diverge markedly from the supposed dates of composition the text itself alleges - suggest that written composition (as opposed to the likely earlier oral composition) occurred after this period of Egyptian hegemony from the 8th through 1st Centuries BCE, when Egypt was either weakened, divided, dominated by outside powers, or a combination of the three.
Although many of the people living in the Levant at the time certainly had dealings with the Egyptians and probably knew their language at least in terms of speaking ability, writing/reading ability is another matter and if it occurred would certainly have been more limited. Additionally, hieroglyphics were a less efficient script than others present in the Middle East at this time so adopting them may not have made much sense. It is also important to note that much of the Hebrew Scripture was not written in the Levant at all, but in Babylon.
The Christian Scriptures emerged long after the end of Egyptian prominence, so it is unnecessary to address them here. | [
"The first use of grapheme-based writing originated in the area, probably among Canaanite peoples resident in Egypt. All modern alphabets are descended from this writing. Written evidence of the use of Classical Hebrew exists from about 1000 BCE. It was written using the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.\n",
"Egyptian hieroglyphs, a phonetic writing system, have served as the basis for the Egyptian Phoenician alphabet from which the later Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets were derived. The city of Alexandria retained preeminence with its library, which was damaged by fire when it fell under Roman rule, being completely destroyed before 642. With it a huge amount of antique literature and knowledge was lost.\n",
"There are numerous Egyptian loanwords in the Torah. For instance, in the account of Moses being placed in the river in an ark (basket) behind the bullrushes (Sh'mot/Exodus 2:3), the words for ark, river, and bullrushes are all transliterated into Hebrew from Egyptian. Yahuda counts at least eighteen Egyptian loanwords in the full account of Moses’ infancy. Large sections of Daniel and Ezra, as well as portions of Jeremiah and Nehemiah are written directly in Aramaic, as well as a few phrases found in the Synoptic Gospels and the Pauline epistles. Other languages that are very important for linguistic criticism include Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Latin. Moreover, Arabic, Hittite, Eblamite, Canaanite, and Phoenician may be helpful depending on the interests of the critic.\n",
"While no extant inscription in the Phoenician alphabet is older than c. 1050 BC, \"Proto-Canaanite\" is a term used for the early alphabets as used during the 13th and 12th centuries BC in Phoenicia. However, the Phoenician, Hebrew, and other Canaanite dialects were largely indistinguishable before the 11th century BC. A possible example of \"Proto-Canaanite\" was found in 2012, the Ophel inscription, when during the excavations of the south wall of the Temple Mount by the Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar in Jerusalem on a storage jar made of pottery. Inscribed on the pot are some big letters about an inch high of which only five are complete and traces of perhaps three additional letters written in Proto-Canaanite script.\n",
"The Phoenicians were among the first state-level societies to make extensive use of alphabets: the family of Canaanite languages, spoken by Israelites, Phoenicians, Amorites, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites, was the first historically attested group of languages to use an alphabet, derived from the Proto-Canaanite script, to record their writings. The Proto-Canaanite script uses around 30 symbols but was not widely used until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The Proto-Canaanite script is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.\n",
"The Egyptian hieroglyphic text Hieroglyphs Without Mystery: An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Writing, is one of the modern primers on the Egyptian language hieroglyphs, from the late 20th to early 21st century. The text is a German text authored by Karl-Theodor Zauzich, c. 1992, and translated into English by Ann Macy Roth.\n",
"The language of the Canaanites may perhaps be best described as an \"archaic form of Hebrew, standing in much the same relationship to the Hebrew of the Old Testament as does the language of Chaucer to modern English.\" The Canaanites were also the first people, as far as is known, to have used an alphabet, as early as the 12th century BCE\n"
] |
Why do some people still believe that the South won the Civil War? | After reading your question and explanation, I can only come up with one plausible explanation.
The Civil War was a war fought (essentially) over the equality and humanity of African-Americans. The North argued that blacks shared certain common rights with whites, where the South disagreed (this is a *major* oversimplification, mind you). But then if we examine the final settlement of the Civil War/Reconstruction conflict, we see that blacks have actually gained little. They enjoyed temporary political equality, but things like Grandfather Clauses and Poll Taxes destroyed many black's political representation. Then, Jim Crow reestablished blacks as secondary citizens. Finally, the sharecropping system (and southern culture in general) placed blacks back into virtual slavery and servitude. So what did the North really gain from the War? They ended chattel slavery, and little else (I would argue thats all they really wanted).
But look, if your friends have these beliefs, just ask them why exactly they say the crazy shit they say. Then youll know, why they say the crazy shit they say. | [
"During the Civil War, many in the North believed that fighting for the Union was a noble cause – for the preservation of the Union and the end of slavery. After the war ended, with the North victorious, the fear among Radicals was that President Johnson too quickly assumed that slavery and Confederate nationalism were dead and that the southern states could return. The Radicals sought out a candidate for President who represented their viewpoint.\n",
"In the United States, increasingly divided by sectional rivalry, the war was a partisan issue and an essential element in the origins of the American Civil War. Most Whigs in the North and South opposed it; most Democrats supported it. Southern Democrats, animated by a popular belief in Manifest Destiny, supported it in hope of adding slave-owning territory to the South and avoiding being outnumbered by the faster-growing North. John L. O'Sullivan, editor of the \"Democratic Review\", coined this phrase in its context, stating that it must be \"our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.\"\n",
"BULLET::::- \"Civil War Military Campaigns: The Union\" is a chapter in the book \"A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction\" edited by Lack K. Ford. Reardon's chapter analyzes the shifting views of why the North won the Civil War. Immediately, after the Civil War few explored the reasons that the North had won one reason is because many did not find the reasons relevant. The first inquiries as to why the North won came from military leaders in the late 19th Century and the early 20th century and those authors believed that President Abraham Lincoln was a greater reason for winning the war than General Ulysses S. Grant. In the 1950s, Authors Bruce Catton, Allan Nevins, and T. Harry Williams demonstrated that there were greater reasons for winning the war than just the fact that the North had more resources than the South possessed. The Civil War centennial promoted more academic discussion of the Northern victory. Most agreed that it was possible for the South to win. Furthermore, many argued that the North had a better management system with soldiers and civilians. Finally, between 1900-2000 there was a rise in the study of Civil War battle studies and authors found that the North adopted quicker to the rifle and had access to better military technology than the South, which was a large reason for the Northern victory.\n",
"Many scholars argue that the Union held an insurmountable long-term advantage over the Confederacy in industrial strength and population. Confederate actions, they argue, only delayed defeat. Civil War historian Shelby Foote expressed this view succinctly: \"I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back ... If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that War.\"\n",
"The Lost Cause belief has several historically inaccurate elements. These include claiming that the reason the Confederacy started the Civil War was to defend state's rights rather than to preserve slavery, or claiming that slavery was benevolent, rather than cruel.\n",
"Historians debating the origins of the American Civil War focus on the reasons why seven Southern states declared their secession from the United States (the Union), why they united to form the Confederate States of America (simply known as the \"Confederacy\"), and why the North refused to let them go. While most historians agree that conflicts over slavery caused the war, they disagree sharply regarding which kinds of conflict—ideological, economic, political, or social—were most important.\n",
"Popular opposition to the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865, was widespread. Although there had been many attempts at compromise prior to the outbreak of war, there were those who felt it could still be ended peacefully or did not believe it should have occurred in the first place. Opposition took the form of both those in the North who believed the South had the right to be independent and those in the South who wanted neither war nor a Union advance into the newly declared Confederate States of America.\n"
] |
why are there lawsuits against google promoting its own services on search results? | When a company becomes big and powerful enough to exert control of all the elements of an industry, it will monopolize that industry unless stopped by the political system in which it operates. Monopolies destroy one of the essential facets of capitalism; competition. Competition is the best way yet discovered to cause businesses to innovate, work hard and grow thereby increasing the wealth of a nation and raising the standard of living for the general population. | [
"On 10 November 2010, the European Commission opened a formal investigation into Google's search algorithm, following a number of complaints issued by smaller web companies that Google was downgrading their placement in results returned in Google's search results, and that Google was preferentially favoring their own products over competitors. The EC's investigation also considered if there were issues with Google's terms of use for Google AdSense that prevented those using AdSense to not use advertising from Google's competitors.\n",
"Another example of privacy issues, with concern to Google, is tracking searches. There is a feature within searching that allows Google to keep track of searches so that advertisements will match your search criteria, which in turn means using people as products. Google was sued in 2018 due to tracking user location without permission.\n",
"For some search results, Google provides a secondary search box that can be used to search within a website identified from the first search. It sparked controversy among some online publishers and retailers. When performing a second search within a specific website, advertisements from competing and rival companies often showed up together with the results from the website being searched. This has the potential to draw users away from the website they were originally searching. \"While the service could help increase traffic, some users could be siphoned away as Google uses the prominence of the brands to sell ads, typically to competing companies.\" In order to combat this controversy, Google has offered to turn off this feature for companies who request to have it removed.\n",
"While on Google's search results page, Plaintiff clicked on advertisements that led her to allegedly fraudulent websites. She then entered her cell phone number on the allegedly fraudulent sites to download ringtones, an action for which she was unknowingly charged. Plaintiff filed a lawsuit against Google on April 13, 2008, claiming that she was an intended third-party beneficiary of Google's AdWords Content Policy that Google failed to adequately enforce by aiding and abetting the fraud sites. Google asserted that each of Plaintiff's claims was barred by the CDA, which prevents a website from being treated as the \"publisher or speaker\" of third-party content. The court rejected Plaintiff's \"artful\" pleading and dismissed her complaint with leave to amend in a decision issued on December 17, 2008.\n",
"In response to complaints, including one from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Google added an explanation to searches for the site. They said their results are automatically ranked by computer algorithms, and that they do not approve of any of the results.\n",
"A stock corporation, which sold food supplements and cosmetics online, and its chairman filed an action for an injunction and financial compensation against Google based on a violation of their right of personality. Google runs a web search engine under the domain “www.google.de” (among others), which allows Internet users to search for information online and access third party content through a list of search results.\n",
"In November 2017, Hawley opened an investigation into whether Google's business practices violated state consumer protection and anti-trust laws. The investigation was focused on what data Google collects from users of its services, how it uses content providers' content, and whether its search engine results are biased.\n"
] |
How difficult is it to create an accurate text to speech from our own voices? | Very difficult.
I am a programmer and once tried to make my own text to speech program. Its difficult because for a text to speech software you need to either record a database of every word in the dictionary in every possible tone (which is really not efficient because it s very expensive and time consuming since you need one voice actor to say words perfectly all day long) or you need to build a perfect phonetic alphabet and create rules to stitch these phonetics together in forming words. The main problem arising not from the words themselves but when you try to stitch them together. We humans don't always follow our own grammar rules when speak because we want to maintain a natural tone. This makes it hard for the computer to mimic because then we would need to create rules for the computer to follow for every exception in our grammar which unfortunately, isn't all written in books. | [
"One of the fundamental problems in the study of speech is how to deal with noise. This is shown by the difficulty in recognizing human speech that computer recognition systems have. While they can do well at recognizing speech if trained on a specific speaker's voice and under quiet conditions, these systems often do poorly in more realistic listening situations where humans would understand speech without relative difficulty. To emulate processing patterns that would be held in the brain under normal conditions, prior knowledge is a key neural factor, since a robust learning history may to an extent override the extreme masking effects involved in the complete absence of continuous speech signals.\n",
"While real-time speech-to-text serves many with hearing loss and deafness, it is also useful for people whose first language is different from the language being used, to understand speakers with different voices and accents in many group situations (at work, in education, community events), to have a \"transcript', and for learning languages. CART professionals have qualifications for added expertise (speed and accuracy) as compared to court reporters and other stenographers. \n",
"Voice writers enjoy very high accuracy rates, based upon pure physiology. The route taken by a person's words goes from the mouth to the reporter's ear, brain, and \"inner\" voice. This form of repetition is naturally effortless; it is what we all do in our daily conversation, as we listen to a person speak, or when we read a book. So the most natural extension of this process is to psychologically switch the repetition mechanism from \"inner voice\" to the physiological \"spoken voice.\" Therefore, we minimize the introduction of cognitive overhead in our task of routing the spoken word to its permanent destination as printed words. This streamlined process allows voice writers to achieve excellent performance for many continuous hours and greater than 98 percent accuracy at speeds as high as 350 words per minute.\n",
"Voice writers enjoy very high accuracy rates, based upon pure physiology. The route taken by a person's words goes from the mouth to the reporter's ear, brain, and \"inner\" voice. This form of repetition is naturally effortless; it is what we all do in our daily conversation, as we listen to a person speak, or when we read a book. So the most natural extension of this process is to psychologically switch the repetition mechanism from \"inner voice\" to the physiological \"spoken voice.\" Therefore, we minimize the introduction of cognitive overhead in our task of routing the spoken word to its permanent destination as printed words. This streamlined process allows voice writers to achieve excellent performance for many continuous hours and greater than 98 percent accuracy at speeds as high as 350 words per minute.\n",
"A major disadvantage of using only recorded speech is that users are unable to produce novel messages; they are limited to the messages pre-recorded into the device. Depending on the device, there may be a limit to the length of the recordings.\n",
"Identify the main point that the speaker is trying to bring across. When the main point has been deduced, one can begin to sort out the rest of the information and decide where it belongs in the mental outline. Before getting the big picture of a message, it can be difficult to focus on what the speaker is saying, because it is impossible to know where any particular piece of information fits.\n",
"While lipread speech can carry useful speech information, it is inherently less accurate than (clearly) heard speech because many distinctive features of speech are produced by actions of the tongue within the oral cavity and are not visible. This is a limitation imposed by speech itself, not the expertise of the speechreader. It is the main reason why the accuracy of a speechreader working on a purely visual record cannot be considered wholly reliable, however skilled they may be and irrespective of hearing status. The type of evidence and the utility of such evidence varies from case to case.\n"
] |
lake effect snow over 6 feet of snow across a wide region. do the great lakes actually measurably lose the volume of water? | Technically yes, but the difference would almost certainly be negligible.
Snow [according to here](_URL_1_) is about 5-20% of the density of water. So if you have 6 feet of snow, you will end up with 3.6-14.4 inches of water. Meanwhile, the [Great lakes have a tidal variation of less than 5cm or ~2 inches](_URL_0_) which is apparently masked by wind and barometric pressure causing lake level variations. So losing 3.6 inches, or even 14.4 inches would probably be unnoticeable.
Also, as best as I can tell, the Great lakes have a greater surface area compared to the area blanketed by the snow, so the loss would be even less (if they were twice the size, the depth decrease would be cut in half and so on)
So yes, if you have precise enough instruments (based on the second link, they have that level of precision), they would measurably lose that volume of water. But in reality, having precise enough instruments and reducing the data isn't very useful so we almost certainly don't have them monitoring the Great Lakes water level. | [
"The first lake-effect snow event around the Great Lakes occurred as cold air swept through the region. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan saw up to a foot of snow, while up to of snow fell in northern Pennsylvania. Significant snow also fell in western New York in the typical snowbelt regions. Areas on the southern shores of Lake Superior and Georgian Bay in Ontario also received significant amount of snows in excess of 6 inches (15 cm). The low pressure disturbance continued eastward to produce significant snowfalls across the mountains of central Quebec in excess of 12 inches (30 cm), disrupting traffic in several areas.\n",
"Increased water runoff due to snowmelt was a cause of many famous floods. One well-known example is the Red River Flood of 1997, when the Red River of the North in the Red River Valley of the United States and Canada flooded. Flooding in the Red River Valley is augmented by the fact that the river flows north through Winnipeg, Manitoba and into Lake Winnipeg. As snow in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota begins to melt and flow into the Red River, the presence of downstream ice can act as a dam and force upstream water to rise. Colder temperatures downstream can also potentially lead to freezing of water as it flows north, thus augmenting the ice dam problem. Some areas in British Columbia are also prone to snowmelt flooding as well.\n",
"The areas affected by lake-effect snow are called snowbelts and deposition rate of many inches (centimetres) of snow per hour are common in these situations. In order for lake-effect snow to form, the temperature difference between the water and 850 mbar should be at least 23 °F (13 °C), surface temperature be around the freezing mark, the lake unfrozen, the path over the lake at least 100 km, and the directional wind shear with height should be less than 30° from the surface to 850 millibars. Extremely cold air over still warm water in early winter can even produce thundersnow, snow showers accompanied by lightning and thunder.\n",
"Lake effect snow squalls are generated by cold arctic air moving over unfrozen water of lake or sea. These will reduce visibility to less than 1 km and produce large accumulations of snow on the ground along narrow corridors in lee of the waters. Duration of these events can extend for days.\n",
"A major lake effect snow event, titled Lake Storm \"Locust\", occurred across the Great Lakes regions for several days. Areas most affected by the localized heavy burst of snows were just east of Georgian Bay area near Parry Sound, east of Lake Huron near Wiarton, in western Michigan, and in north central New York.\n",
"Heavy lake-effect snowfalls can occur when cold air travels or longer over a large unfrozen lake. Lake-effect snow makes Buffalo and Erie the eleventh and thirteenth snowiest places in the entire United States respectively, according to data collected from the National Climatic Data Center. Since winds blow primarily west–to–east along the main axis of the lake, lake effect snow effects are more pronounced on the eastern parts of the lake such as cities such as Buffalo and Erie. Buffalo typically gets of snow each winter, and sometimes of snow; the snowiest city is Syracuse, New York, which can receive heavy snowfall from both the lake effect process and large coastal cyclones. A storm around Christmas in 2001 pounded Buffalo with seven feet of snow.\n",
"On October 6, 2006, the first concerns of a possible lake effect snow (LES) event were raised, as medium and long range numerical weather models began to indicate conditions would be potentially favorable for lake effect precipitation, resulting in mixed snow-rain conditions. The long term forecast from the Buffalo office of the National Weather Service (NWS), as well as the Environment Canada discussion, both indicated possible LESs, but predicted that accumulations would be minimal.\n"
] |
Did past civilizations have different attitudes to charity? | Sorry, we don't allow "throughout history" questions. It's not that your question was bad; it's that these kinds of questions tend to produce threads that are collections of disjointed, partial, inadequate responses. If you have a question about a specific historical event, period, or person, feel free to rewrite your question and submit it again. If you don't want to rewrite it, you might try submitting it to /r/history, /r/askhistory, or /r/tellmeafact.
Good luck! | [
"Anthropologist David Graeber has argued that the great world religious traditions on charity and gift giving emerged almost simultaneously during the \"Axial age\" (the period between 800 and 200 BCE), which was the same period in which coinage was invented and market economies established on a continental basis. These religious traditions on charity emerge, he argues, as a reaction against the nexus formed by coinage, slavery, military violence and the market (a \"military-coinage\" complex). The new world religions, including Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam all sought to preserve \"human economies\" where money served to cement social relationships rather than purchase things (including people).\n",
"In the ancient world there was not always room for the sick, suffering, disabled, aged, or the poor—these were often not part of the cultural consciousness of societies . Early methods of protection, aside from the normal support of the extended family, involved charity; religious organizations or neighbors would collect for the destitute and needy. By the middle of the 3rd century, 1,500 suffering people were being supported by charitable operations in Rome . Charitable protection remains an active form of support in the modern era , but receiving charity is uncertain and is often accompanied by social stigma. Elementary mutual aid agreements and pensions did arise in antiquity . Early in the Roman empire, associations were formed to meet the expenses of burial, cremation, and monuments—precursors to burial insurance and friendly societies. A small sum was paid into a communal fund on a weekly basis, and upon the death of a member, the fund would cover the expenses of rites and burial. These societies sometimes sold shares in the building of columbāria, or burial vaults, owned by the fund . Other early examples of mutual surety and assurance pacts can be traced back to various forms of fellowship within the Saxon clans of England and their Germanic forebears, and to Celtic society .\n",
"In medieval Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, Latin Christendom underwent a charitable revolution. Rich patrons founded many leprosaria and hospitals for the sick and poor. New confraternities and religious orders emerged with the primary mission of engaging in intensive charitable work. Historians debate the causes. Some argue that this movement was spurred by economic and material forces, as well as a burgeoning urban culture. Other scholars argue that developments in spirituality and devotional culture were central. For still other scholars, medieval charity was primarily a way to elevate one's social status and affirm existing hierarchies of power.\n",
"Charity organizations began developing at a time when a major demographic shift was occurring in American society. As industrialization began to replace an agrarian economy, many citizens left their rural communities only to find themselves unprepared to deal with urban life. Later events in the nation's history, including wars and the Depression, also caused similar de-stabilization in the society. Effects of society in transition are most affecting to those without adequate economic resources. Poverty, illness, addictions, and desertions left families bereft of shelter, food, and fuel.\n",
"Charities at the time, including the Charity Organization Society (established in 1869) tended to discriminate between the \"deserving poor\" who would be provided with suitable relief and the \"underserving\" or \"improvident poor\" who were regarded as the cause of their own woes through their idleness. Charities tended to oppose the provision of welfare by the state, due to the perceived demoralizing effect. Although minimal state involvement was the dominant philosophy of the period, there was still significant government involvement in the shape of statutory regulation and even limited funding.\n",
"Historians record that, prior to Christianity, the ancient world left little trace of any organized charitable effort. Christian charity and the practice of feeding and clothing the poor, visiting prisoners, supporting widows and orphan children has had sweeping impact.\n",
"Philanthropy has played a major role in American history, from the Puritans of early Massachusetts who founded Harvard College, down to the present day. Since the late 19th century philanthropy has been a major source of income for religion, medicine and health care, fine arts and performing arts, as well as educational institutions.\n"
] |
why can't use power bank or phone in airplane mode on plane? | Regarding the power banks it have become very popular with lithium ion batteries which can put out a lot of power. The disadvantage to this is that they may overheat and cause a fire. It may be that the battery is damaged and a heating it during normal operation might bring two internal wires too close together. The lower pressure in the cabin is not helping either as it can make the internals of the battery to change a bit more then usual. When these batteries catch fire you can not stop it but have to let it burn out. All the heat, fuel and oxidizer is stored inside so a fire extinguisher will not help. And a small fire on an airplane can quickly become a death trap as it may take tens of minutes for the airplane to land so you can evacuate. So be careful when using batteries on airplanes and try to do all your charging at the airport. You do not want to be the first one to cause an aircraft disaster because you were charging your phone, people who smoke in the bathroom have already done it.
As for using your electronic devices this is usually fine withing some constraints. Most airliners are instructing their flight attendants to even ignore airplane mode as it does not matter and some are even installing wifi on the airplanes. Putting your phone in airplane mode does however save battery life as the phone usually turns the radio to maximum in order to get some signal but still fails. The only time you are not allowed to use your phone is when the airplane is taking off or landing or if you are annoying other passenger or the flight attendants. Most airplane crashes happen close to the ground. So to make evacuations easier passengers are asked to pay attention during these periods of the flight. In theory reading books or sleeping is just as bad as playing on your phone but there are cultural and historical reasons why the rules are as they are. If you were told to turn off your phone in the middle of a flight it is likely that you were annoying people around you. | [
"ESCs designed for radio-control airplanes usually contain a few safety features. If the power coming from the battery is insufficient to continue running the electric motor the ESC will reduce or cut off power to the motor while allowing continued use of ailerons, rudder and elevator function. This allows the pilot to retain control of the airplane to glide or fly on low power to safety.\n",
"When the \"Aeroplane mode\" is activated, it disables all voice, text, telephone, and other signal-transmitting technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can be enabled separately even while the device is in airplane mode; this is acceptable on some aircraft. Receiving radio-frequency signals, as by radio receivers and satellite navigation services, is not inhibited. However, even receiving telephone calls and messages without responding would require the phone to transmit.\n",
"Many radio-controlled aircraft, especially the toy class models, are designed to be flown with no movable control surfaces at all. Some model planes are designed this way because it is often cheaper and lighter to control the speed of a motor than it is to provide a moving control surface. Instead, \"rudder\" control (control over sideslip angle) is provided by differing thrust on two motors, one on each wing. Total power is controlled by increasing or decreasing the power on each motor equally. Usually, the planes only have only these two control channels (total throttle and differential throttle) with no elevator control. Turning a model with differential thrust is \"equivalent\" to and just as effective as turning a model with rudder. Lack of elevator control is sometimes problematic if the phugoid oscillation isn't well-damped leading to unmanageable \"porpoising\". See \"Toy class RC\" section.\n",
"Nevertheless, the top concern for computerized, digital, fly-by-wire systems is reliability, even more so than for analog electronic control systems. This is because the digital computers that are running software are often the only control path between the pilot and aircraft's flight control surfaces. If the computer software crashes for any reason, the pilot may be unable to control an aircraft. Hence virtually all fly-by-wire flight control systems are either triply or quadruply redundant in their computers and electronics. These have three or four flight-control computers operating in parallel, and three or four separate data buses connecting them with each control surface.\n",
"On airliners or business jets with powered flight controls, it is typical to have at least two hydraulic power control units (actuators) for each critical flight control surface - these are the elevators, rudder and ailerons. Only two sources might be used if some form of mechanical reversion is present. (i.e. the pilot can still fly the aeroplane manually with no hydraulic power, but with some difficulty, via mechanical linkages and cables if hydraulic power is lost)\n",
"Because this type of aircraft control (with loss of control surfaces) is difficult for humans to achieve, some researchers have attempted to integrate this control ability into the computers of fly-by-wire aircraft. Early attempts to add the ability to real airplanes were not very successful; the software was based on experiments conducted in flight simulators where jet engines are usually modeled as \"perfect\" devices with exactly the same thrust on each engine, a linear relationship between throttle setting and thrust, and instantaneous response to input. Later, computer models were updated to account for these factors, and planes have been successfully flown with this software installed.\n",
"As of 2007, several airlines are experimenting with base station and antenna systems installed on the airplane, allowing low power, short-range connection of any phones aboard to remain connected to the aircraft's base station. Thus, they would not attempt connection to the ground base stations as during take off and landing. Simultaneously, airlines may offer phone services to their travelling passengers either as full voice and data services, or initially only as SMS text messaging and similar services. The Australian airline Qantas is the first airline to run a test aeroplane in this configuration in the autumn of 2007. Emirates has announced plans to allow limited mobile phone usage on some flights. However, in the past, commercial airlines have prevented the use of cell phones and laptops, due to the assertion that the frequencies emitted from these devices may disturb the radio waves contact of the airplane.\n"
] |
why certain applications *must* drop everything and shut down when they encounter certain kinds of errors. why can't they just muddle through, or revert to the most recent error-free state? | Some kinds of errors are relatively benign, kind of like you getting a papercut. You either grimace and continue what you're doing, or you take a few moments to put on a bandaid. Either way, it doesn't much impact your life.
Other kinds of errors are critical, sort of like a heart attack, or getting shot in the guts. When these kinds of injuries happen, you have to get medical treatment, ASAP. Nothing else is more important. You could be in the middle of some billion dollar business negotiation, but it doesn't matter, you have to get to a hospital, NOW.
Similarly, computer errors can be relatively benign, such as "can't find that file", or "couldn't connect to _URL_0_". These are recoverable, and application developers have planned for their occurrence.
But the critical errors are things that application developers didn't plan for. They never foresaw an error of that sort. And so when one of them happens, there's no code to handle the error. The application goes into heart attack mode, and the operating system, or OS, kills the application (the OS is a lot less willing to deliver life support than an emergency room is). | [
"If the program receiving the error does not handle it, the operating system performs a default action, typically involving the termination of the running process that caused the error condition, and notifying the user that the program has malfunctioned. Recent versions of Windows often report such problems by simply stating something like \"this program must close\" (an experienced user or programmer with access to a debugger can still retrieve detailed information). Recent Windows versions also write a minidump (similar in principle to a core dump) describing the state of the crashed process. UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems report these conditions to the user with error messages such as \"segmentation violation\", or \"bus error\", and may also produce a core dump.\n",
"BULLET::::- No unnecessary checks: Trusting that other software components behave as specified, so to not paper over any unknown problem, is the basic principle. In particular, some errors may already be guaranteed to crash the program (depending on programming language or running environment), for example dereferencing a null pointer. As such, null pointer checks are unnecessary for the purpose of stopping the program (but can be used to print error messages).\n",
"In software, 'the blinking twelve problem' thus refers to any situation in which features or functions of a program go unused for reasons that the designers never anticipated, largely because developers were unable to anticipate the level of understanding the users would have of the technology. The term may also refer to the challenge faced by developers of addressing the real causes of users' difficulties, as well as the challenge of providing helpful documentation or technical support without knowing beforehand how well the user understands their own problem.\n",
"If creation or destruction fail, error reporting (often by raising an exception) can be complicated: the object or related objects may be in an inconsistent state, and in the case of destruction – which generally happens implicitly, and thus in an unspecified environment – it may be difficult to handle errors. The opposite issue – incoming exceptions, not outgoing exceptions – is whether creation or destruction should behave differently if they occur during exception handling, when different behavior may be desired.\n",
"In situations where software must not crash for any reason, error swallowing is a practice that a programmer can easily fall into. For example, a plugin that is running inside another application is expected to handle all errors and exceptions in such a way as to not crash the application in which it is embedded. Blanket catching of errors and exceptions is a pattern that is easy to fall into when attempting to prevent crashes at all costs, and when you combine that with poor logging tools, error swallowing can happen.\n",
"When showing errors to users, it's important to turn cryptic technical errors into messages that explain what happened and what actions the user can take, if any, to fix the problem. While performing this translation of technical errors into meaningful user messages, specific errors are often grouped into more generic errors, and this process can lead to user messages becoming so useless that the user doesn't know what went wrong or how to fix it. As far as the user is concerned, the error got swallowed.\n",
"The first solution is less risky because if something goes wrong with the code, it is easier to look for the problem in the smaller bits, since the segment with the problem will be the one that does not work, while in the latter solution, the programmer may have to look through the entire code to search for a single error, which proves time consuming. The same reasoning goes for writing use cases in UCD. Lastly, use cases convey useful and important tasks where the designer can see which one are of higher importance than others. Some drawbacks of writing use cases include the fact that each action, by the actor or the world, consist of little detail, and is simply a small action. This may possibly lead to further imagination and different interpretation of action from different designers.\n"
] |
how do warring countries share borders? | The borders in question were sites of cross border raids and shellings in both directions for years, until an uneasy peace settled in as a result of larger conflicts. Today the borders are constantly patrolled. The border between Jordan and Israel was mostly quiet after 1967, and no major flare-ups until the peace treaty in 1993. Syria withdrew forces several km after 1973 and its border was mostly patrolled by the UN on the Syrian side, and the Israelis on theirs. When Israel finally withdrew from South Lebanon, the UN took on a role as an observation force (mostly ineffective) while Israel constantly patrols the border. The consensus between the two sides is that they have little to gain from bombing eachother, and are mostly in favor of an uneasy peace as opposed to another conflict. | [
"The following is a list of border conflicts between two or more countries. The list includes only those fought because of border disputes. See List of territorial disputes for those that do not involve fighting.\n",
"Apart from the aforementioned wars, there have been skirmishes between the two nations from time to time. Some have bordered on all-out war, while others were limited in scope. The countries were expected to fight each other in 1955 after warlike posturing on both sides, but full-scale war did not break out.\n",
"BULLET::::- The term border dispute (or border conflict) applies to cases where a limited territory is disputed by two or more states, each contending state would publish its own maps to include the same region which would invariably lie along or adjacent to the recognised borders of the competing states, such as the Abyei region which is contested between Sudan and South Sudan. With border conflicts, the existence of the rival state is not being challenged (such as the relationship between the Republic of China and People's Republic of China, or the relationship between South Korea and North Korea), but each state will merely recognise the shape of the rival state as not containing the claimed territory - this in spite of who actually governs the land and how it is recognised in the international community.\n",
"\"The Bloody Borderland\" is a cycle of fantasy stories which take place in the place called Borderland. In \"The Bloody Borderland \"the borders lead along territories of people, elves and hobgoblins. The borders are bloody because there are never-ceasing struggles for these borders (for its shifts, crossing the border, keeping). People fight with people, people fight with hobgoblins, people with elves, hobgoblins with hobgoblins and elves with hobgoblins. During which time individual fractions conclude temporary truce and alliances.\n",
"In military terminology, a two-front war is a war in which fighting takes place on two geographically separate fronts. It is usually executed by two or more separate forces simultaneously or nearly simultaneously, in the hope that their opponent will be forced to split their fighting force to deal with both threats, therefore reducing their odds of success. Where one of the contending forces is surrounded, the fronts are called interior lines.\n",
"During a war, the player may attempt to offer a ceasefire with the enemy state, or vice versa. Once a ceasefire is signed between the warring states, diplomatic relations will be restored to Satisfactory, but often with the opposing country's diplomats acting aggressively toward Israel. This will once again plunge both countries into war within the next couple of turns.\n",
"Factions primarily interact with each other through diplomacy. Diplomatic actions include the creation of alliances, the securing of trade rights, and the giving or receiving of tribute. Factions may go to war with one another to secure more settlements or other concessions. Factions that are at war can use their armies to fight each other, which incorporates the battle mechanic of the game into the campaign. Several factions in the campaign are either not present or \"dormant\" when the game begins. The Mongols will invade at some point after the campaign has begun, often posing a serious threat to factions in their path. Later on, the Timurids will also invade, bringing war elephants with them. Late in the game, factions may also sail to the Americas, where they can encounter the Aztecs.\n"
] |
whenever i hear the same song twice from the same source in a short amount of time, it sometimes sounds like it's being played at a lower pitch or slower tempo. why does this happen? | I've never experienced this. Are you a drummer? | [
"Because when we sing a nenano melody, we don’t end on the tone, from which we started, but if you look at it closer, you will find that we come down to a somewhat lower pitch. The reason for this is the nenano interval; for it seems to be in some way halved, even if we are not aware of it; in other words, we perform the nenano intervals weakly in upward direction, in order to give the characteristic colour of nenano, but in downward direction [we perform them] correctly, and this causes the melody to get out of tune.\n",
"Listeners tend to perceive fast melodic sequences which contain tones from two different registers as two melodic lines. The greater the distance between groups of tones in a melody, the more likely they will be heard as two different and interrupted streams instead of one continuous stream. Studies involving the interleaving of two melodies have found that the closer the melodies are in register, the more difficult it is for listeners to perceptually separate the melodies. Tempo is important, as the threshold for registral distance between melodic phrases still perceived as one stream increases as the tempo of the melody decreases.\n",
"In later interviews, Tate did explain the title. In May 2013, he said: \"When you are making music and you are putting a song together you have all these different parts that are supposed to work together. Sometimes when you are listening back to it something’s doesn’t click. There is a theory in the engineering world if you dial in these unknown frequencies nobodies knows what it is you find the weak spot of the song. It kind of gels together and all of a sudden it is now great. Like there it is it all comes together because I dialed in this frequency. But no one can tell you what this frequency is. It is an unknown thing. That became a little studio phrase that got thrown around while we were working on the project and that became the title of the record.\" Later, he called it... \"...this certain frequency of equalization that brings all the notes and the whole mix together; it becomes incredibly focused at that point. It’s this unknown frequency that you’re always looking for, and nobody knows what it is. You just start fiddling with the dials until it sounds good to everybody.\"\n",
"One example of this is the phenomenon of streaming, also called \"stream segregation.\" If two sounds, A and B, are rapidly alternated in time, after a few seconds the perception may seem to \"split\" so that the listener hears two rather than one stream of sound, each stream corresponding to the repetitions of one of the two sounds, for example, A-A-A-A-, etc. accompanied by B-B-B-B-, etc. The tendency towards segregation into separate streams is favored by differences in the acoustical properties of sounds A and B. Among the differences classically shown to promote segregation are those of frequency (for pure tones), fundamental frequency (for complex tones), frequency composition, source location. But it has been suggested that about any systematic perceptual difference between two sequences can elicit streaming, provided the speed of the sequence is sufficient.\n",
"The song consists of low-pitched fast trills, about 14-21 notes per second. These are maintained several seconds, during which they rise in pitch and become louder. Trills are repeated after a pause of a few to about a dozen seconds, which varies irregularly throughout the length of the song. \n",
"If two sounds of two different frequencies are played at the same time, two separate sounds can often be heard rather than a combination tone. The ability to hear frequencies separately is known as \"frequency resolution\" or \"frequency selectivity\". When signals are perceived as a combination tone, they are said to reside in the same \"critical bandwidth\". This effect is thought to occur due to filtering within the cochlea, the hearing organ in the inner ear. A complex sound is split into different frequency components and these components cause a peak in the pattern of vibration at a specific place on the cilia inside the basilar membrane within the cochlea. These components are then coded independently on the auditory nerve which transmits sound information to the brain. This individual coding only occurs if the frequency components are different enough in frequency, otherwise they are in the same critical band and are coded at the same place and are perceived as one sound instead of two.\n",
"This phenomenon is best known in acoustics or music, though it can be found in any linear system: \"According to the law of superposition, two tones sounding simultaneously are superimposed in a very simple way: one adds their amplitudes\". If a graph is drawn to show the function corresponding to the total sound of two strings, it can be seen that maxima and minima are no longer constant as when a pure note is played, but change over time: when the two waves are nearly 180 degrees out of phase the maxima of one wave cancel the minima of the other, whereas when they are nearly in phase their maxima sum up, raising the perceived volume.\n"
] |
benjamin libet's free will experiment. | I'll try. Libet instructed his subjects to make a small wrist movement whenever they felt like it. He also instructed them to note the time on a clock regarding the moment they first became aware of deciding when to move. Of course they were all wired up to have their brains activity recorded.
Turns out that Libet consistently found an electrical spike called the readiness potential (RP) 200ms before the subjects reported becoming aware of their decision to move. This strongly suggests that at least some of what we assume to be free and conscious decisions are actually pre-decided unconsciously.
Libet himself didn't interpret the results as a refutation of free will, and has argued against those who have. He believes that we have free will in the form of veto power over unconsciously directed decisions. Critics say that even this "free won't" is nevertheless a product of unconscious activity and effectively the equivalent of free will.
Others have followed up on Libet's work and have found even greater lag times between the RP spikes and subjects' conscious awareness of having made a decision. | [
"In 2004, Conway and Simon B. Kochen, another Princeton mathematician, proved the free will theorem, a startling version of the 'no hidden variables' principle of quantum mechanics. It states that given certain conditions, if an experimenter can freely decide what quantities to measure in a particular experiment, then elementary particles must be free to choose their spins to make the measurements consistent with physical law. In Conway's provocative wording: \"if experimenters have free will, then so do elementary particles.\"\n",
"David Corfield, a philosopher of mathematics writing in \"The Guardian\", questions the veracity of the book's reported speech. He relates how, during Slater's discussion with Harvard University psychologist Jerome Kagan, she recalled how Kagan had suddenly dived under his desk to illustrate a point about free will. However, Kagan told Corfield that he had not done this but only suggested that he could do so if he wanted.\n",
"Van Inwagen concludes that \"Free Will Remains a Mystery.\" In an article written in the third person called \"Van Inwagen on Free Will,\" he describes the problem with his incompatibilist free will if random \"chance directly causes our actions\". He imagines that God causes the universe to revert a thousand times to \"exactly the same circumstances\" that it was in at some earlier time and we could observe all the \"replays.\" If the agent's actions are random, she sometimes \"would have agent-caused the crucial brain event and sometimes (in seventy percent of the replays, let us say) she would not have... I conclude that even if an episode of agent causation is among the causal antecedents of every voluntary human action, these episodes do nothing to undermine the prima facie impossibility of an undetermined free act.\"\n",
"Compton was one of a handful of scientists and philosophers to propose a two-stage model of free will. Others include William James, Henri Poincaré, Karl Popper, Henry Margenau, and Daniel Dennett. In 1931, Compton championed the idea of human freedom based on quantum indeterminacy, and invented the notion of amplification of microscopic quantum events to bring chance into the macroscopic world. In his somewhat bizarre mechanism, he imagined sticks of dynamite attached to his amplifier, anticipating the Schrödinger's cat paradox, which was published in 1935.\n",
"In his 1985 book \"Free Will and Values\", aware of earlier proposals by neurobiologist John Eccles, Popper, and Dennett, but working independently, Kane proposed an ambitious amplifier model for a quantum randomizer in the brain - a spinning wheel of fortune with probability bubbles corresponding to alternative possibilities, in the massive switch amplifier (MSA) tradition of Compton.\n",
"Kane is one of several philosophers and scientists to propose a two-stage model of free will. The American philosopher William James was the first (in 1884). Others include the French mathematician and scientist Henri Poincaré (about 1906), the physicist Arthur Holly Compton (1931, 1955), the philosopher Karl Popper (1965, 1977), the physicist and philosopher Henry Margenau (1968, 1982), the philosopher Daniel Dennett (1978), the classicists A. A. Long and David Sedley (1987), the philosopher Alfred Mele (1995), and most recently, the neurogeneticist and biologist Martin Heisenberg (2009), son of the physicist Werner Heisenberg, whose quantum indeterminacy principle lies at the foundation of indeterministic physics.\n",
"Robert Kane (editor of the \"Oxford Handbook of Free Will\") is a leading incompatibilist philosopher in favour of free will. Kane seeks to hold persons morally responsible for decisions that involved indeterminism in their process. Critics maintain that Kane fails to overcome the greatest challenge to such an endeavor: \"the argument from luck\". Namely, if a critical moral choice is a matter of luck (indeterminate quantum fluctuations), then on what grounds can we hold a person responsible for their final action? Moreover, even if we imagine that a person can make an act of will ahead of time, to make the \"moral\" action more probable in the upcoming critical moment, this act of 'willing' was itself a matter of luck.\n"
] |
Are rocket launches (to space) generally straight or curved? | As I understand it, getting something into orbit is more about going sideways really fast than going up really high. You have to go a bit up to get above the atmosphere but then go mad fast in the same direction as the Earth is spinning.. That spin gives a nice like speed boost.
Put those 2 needs together and you get a curved flight path. | [
"The diagram illustrates three cases. The middle rocket shows the straight-line flight configuration in which the direction of thrust is along the center line of the rocket and through the center of gravity of the rocket. On the rocket at the left, the nozzle has been deflected to the left and the thrust line is now inclined to the rocket center line at an angle called the gimbal angle. Since the thrust no longer passes through the center of gravity, a torque is generated about the center of gravity and the nose of the rocket turns to the left. If the nozzle is gimballed back along the center line, the rocket will move to the left. On the rocket at the right, the nozzle has been deflected to the right and the nose is moved to the right.\n",
"While some claim that the basic shape was based on a submarine, the design has most often been described as a \"gun in space\" due to the elongated form resembling the pulse rifles used in the movie—with Syd Mead agreeing that (in addition to Cameron's preferences) this was one of the reasons for the switch from the spherical form. Other film analysts have remarked on how the opening shot of the ship as something sinister and weaponlike presages Ripley's transformation during the movie into a warrior figure, akin to the hardened Marines the \"Sulaco\" already carries. The opening shot of the ship travelling through space has also been called \"fetishistic\" and \"shark-like\", \"an image of brutal strength and ingenious efficiency\"—while the rigid, mechanic, militarized interior of the \"Sulaco\" (designed by Ron Cobb) is contrasted to the somewhat more organic and friendly interior of the \"Nostromo\" in the first movie (also designed by Ron Cobb). Other sources have also noted the homage the initial scenes pay to the opening tour through the \"Nostromo\" in \"Alien\".\n",
"The pitchover maneuver consists of the rocket gimbaling its engine slightly to direct some of its thrust to one side. This force creates a net torque on the ship, turning it so that it no longer points vertically. The pitchover angle varies with the launch vehicle and is included in the rocket's inertial guidance system. For some vehicles it is only a few degrees, while other vehicles use relatively large angles (a few tens of degrees). After the pitchover is complete, the engines are reset to point straight down the axis of the rocket again. This small steering maneuver is the only time during an ideal gravity turn ascent that thrust must be used for purposes of steering. The pitchover maneuver serves two purposes. First, it turns the rocket slightly so that its flight path is no longer vertical, and second, it places the rocket on the correct heading for its ascent to orbit. After the pitchover, the rocket's angle of attack is adjusted to zero for the remainder of its climb to orbit. This zeroing of the angle of attack reduces lateral aerodynamic loads and produces negligible lift force during the ascent.\n",
"Stabilisation of the rocket in flight was not by means of fins, but by four small angled holes drilled around the exhaust. A small proportion of the rocket's thrust was thus converted into rotational thrust, spinning the missile along its axis. This imparted stability through spin, just like rifling in a gun barrel.\n",
"Unguided rockets are normally spin stabilized, like a rifle bullet. The spin is imparted by small fins at the rear of the rocket body that flip out into the airstream once the rocket leaves its launch tube. The fins take a short time to open, and more time to start the rocket spinning. During this period the rockets can drift significantly from their original aim point. The CRV7 solved this problem by adding small vanes projecting into the rocket exhaust to start the rocket spinning even before it left the launch tube, greatly increasing accuracy. A salvo of CRV7's will impact the target area in one-third the footprint of older designs.\n",
"The main rocket was angled downward at 45 degrees in order to give the missile the necessary lift and to propel the missile forward. While the six “tangential rocket nozzles” stabilized the missile by controlling the pitch, roll, and yaw. While in flight the missile is guided by means of joystick and binoculars.\n",
"In a gimbaled thrust system, the exhaust nozzle of the rocket can be swiveled from side to side. As the nozzle is moved, the direction of the thrust is changed relative to the center of gravity of the rocket.\n"
] |
Need access to archives, what should I do? | I'm a librarian and an archivist. First off: contact your library. If librarians only advised on issues we were personally subject experts on we'd have to shut down right now. You think I answer questions about eunuchs all day? Of course not. Librarians are familiar with how to find anything, that's what we're trained on, not subject expertise. I can just as easily answer your question as help someone find car repair manuals for a 1988 Honda Accord, having no expertise in either, it is the same essential task to us. Also you're almost certainly going to need ILL with this, since it sounds like your school doesn't support a strong East Asian program? And you'll probably need help working with ILL because we don't typically teach it to freshman library instructional classes, usually just grad students.
Second: this is way too much for a freshman, slow your roll! No one expects a freshman to be churning out original archival research in a language they don't fluently read! There would be way less college graduates if so. I do archives instructionals with freshman and they typically are me presenting a single document (in English) carefully selected to relate to their classroom topics, and a worksheet with questions like "Who wrote this document? Who did the writers intend to read or use this document?" etc. [Talking this level](_URL_1_) is what I expect from a freshman, as an archivist working with freshmen.
What you can reasonably use at your level (though this is somewhat advanced for a freshman, but not crazy advanced) is translated published primary source collections. [Here is a good guide to what these are and how to find them.](_URL_0_) The main words to use when searching are "sources" and "documents." [This example search turns up what you should be looking for.](_URL_2_) | [
"These online archives serve many needs, such as storing the scholarly works of university authors; preserving information from specific research disciplines; and disseminating new scholarly work quickly, without a lengthy publication process.\n",
"Your Archives is a wiki for the National Archives on-line community which was launched in May 2007; it was closed for editing on 30 September 2012 in preparation of archiving on the Government web archive. The contributions are made by users to give additional information to that which is available on the other services provided by the National Archives, including the catalogue, research guides, documentonline and National Register of Archive. Your Archives encourages users to create articles not only about historical records held by the National Archives, but those held in other archive repositories.\n",
"If an archives cannot be found through online search or a publicly listed collection a researcher may have to track down its existence through other means, such as following other researcher's citations and references. This is particularly true for materials held by corporations or other organizations that may not employ an archivist and thus be unaware of the extent or contents of their materials. \n",
"Active archives provide online access, searchability and retrieval of long-term data and enable virtually unlimited scalability to accommodate future growth. In addition, active archives enhance the business value of the data by enabling users to directly access the data online, search it and use it for their business purposes.\n",
"Archives in colleges, universities, and other educational facilities are typically housed within a library, and duties may be carried out by an archivist. Academic archives exist to preserve institutional history and serve the academic community. An academic archive may contain materials such as the institution's administrative records, personal and professional papers of former professors and presidents, memorabilia related to school organizations and activities, and items the academic library wishes to remain in a closed-stack setting, such as rare books or thesis copies. Access to the collections in these archives is usually by prior appointment only; some have posted hours for making inquiries. Users of academic archives can be undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff, scholarly researchers, and the general public. Many academic archives work closely with alumni relations departments or other campus institutions to help raise funds for their library or school. Qualifications for employment may vary. Entry-level positions usually require an undergraduate diploma, but typically archivists hold graduate degrees in history or library science (preferably certified by a body such as the American Library Association). Subject-area specialization becomes more common in higher ranking positions.\n",
"Archival materials are usually held in closed stacks and non-circulating. Users request to see specific materials from the archives and may only consult them on-site. After locating the relevant record location using a finding aid or other discovery tool a user may then have to submit the request to the archives, such as using a request form. If an archives has part of its holdings located in a separate building or facility, it make take days or weeks to retrieve materials, requiring a user to submit their requests in advance of an on-site consultation.\n",
"The National Archives website provides information about the archives and catalog data which allow the holdings to be searched online. The site offers English and Japanese versions, the holdings themselves are, of course, mainly in Japanese. The website facilitates access to brief descriptions and some images of documents, books, and cultural properties. The Digital Gallery may be searched using keywords or various categories, opening access to digitised images of scrolls; maps; photographs; drawings; posters; and documents. English summaries of publications from the National Archives (journal and annual report) are available for downloading from the site.\n"
] |
if salt is so bad for cars, why do we use it on the roads? | salt is good for not dying in car crashes and car crashes are worse for cars then salt.
Some places use other things, but salt is really cheap compared to most alternatives, although sand is pretty good. | [
"As a result of Canada's icy winters, salt is needed in order to deice slippery roads. The primary ingredient of road salt is sodium chloride. Road salt, while helping cars and people to gain traction in the winter, can have serious consequences for soil. As National Geographic found, \"Road salt can pollute soil at every stage in the deicing process.\" This pollution is a result of numerous factors such as runoff, application and spray from vehicles. In Canada, there has been research that shows that \"salt run-off from roads can increase local chloride levels to between 100 and 4,000 times normal levels.\" Salt can have adverse effects on soil and soil composition. Significant levels of chloride (one of the main components in salt) can \"alter the soil ‘s pH chemistry and elevate levels of heavy metal pollutants, while at the same time causing a loss of soil structure and killing off micro-organisms\". These effects can have dire consequences for plants rendering them unable to grow or stunting their growth.\n",
"Road salt is a common cause for corrosion of automobile parts, and cars in the salt belt often experience more rapid rusting compared to other regions of the country rendering them unsafe as brake lines, electrical wiring, and structural components are adversely affected. Manufacturer recalls for corrosion issues often target only vehicles operated within salt belt states.\n",
"De-icing of roads has traditionally been done with salt, spread by snowplows or dump trucks designed to spread it, often mixed with sand and gravel, on slick roads. Sodium chloride (rock salt) is normally used, as it is inexpensive and readily available in large quantities. However, since salt water still freezes at , it is of no help when the temperature falls below this point. It also has a strong tendency to cause corrosion, rusting the steel used in most vehicles and the rebar in concrete bridges. Depending on the concentration, it can be toxic to some plants and animals, and some urban areas have moved away from it as a result. More recent snowmelters use other salts, such as calcium chloride and magnesium chloride, which not only depress the freezing point of water to a much lower temperature, but also produce an exothermic reaction. They are somewhat safer for sidewalks, but excess should still be removed.\n",
"The second major application of salt is for de-icing and anti-icing of roads, both in grit bins and spread by winter service vehicles. In anticipation of snowfall, roads are optimally \"anti-iced\" with brine (concentrated solution of salt in water), which prevents bonding between the snow-ice and the road surface. This procedure obviates the heavy use of salt after the snowfall. For de-icing, mixtures of brine and salt are used, sometimes with additional agents such as calcium chloride and/or magnesium chloride. The use of salt or brine becomes ineffective below .\n",
"Sea salt may not be used, as it is too fine and dissolves too quickly, so all salt used in gritting comes from salt mines, a non-renewable source. As a result, some road maintenance agencies have networks of ice prediction stations, to prevent unnecessary gritting which not only wastes salt, but can damage the environment and disrupt traffic.\n",
"If an increase in traffic follows the development in the vicinity of the aquifer, there will be an increased risk of contamination by road salt which is, according to Environment Canada, a known toxic substance. Road salt is a form of chloride that kills fish and pollutes area creeks and streams.\n",
"Road salt ends up in fresh-water bodies and could harm aquatic plants and animals by disrupting their osmoregulation ability. The omnipresence of salt poses a problem in any coastal coating application, as trapped salts cause great problems in adhesion. Naval authorities and ship builders monitor the salt concentrations on surfaces during construction. Maximal salt concentrations on surfaces are dependent on the authority and application. The IMO regulation is mostly used and sets salt levels to a maximum of 50 mg/m soluble salts measured as sodium chloride. These measurements are done by means of a Bresle test. Salinization (increasing salinity, aka \"freshwater salinization syndrome\") and subsequent increased metal leaching is an ongoing problem throughout North America and European fresh waterways.\n"
] |
How could have people found and colonized islands in the Pacific almost 2000 years ago while it have took much more effort to do the same with the America? | 2 things:
To this day, the colonisation of the pacific islands stands as one of the most brillant feats of navigation. The time scale you describe speaks far more to the excellence and motivation of the Pacific islanders as navigators than it does to any ability of the Europeans. Cook established through his first contacts with Pacific islanders that they could navigate extraordinarily accurately using simply the stars and swells on the ocean as guides. The use of wave patterns in particular is not unlike the way waterstriders use triangulation to locate floating objects. It seems Pacific islanders used similar methods to locate new islands.
2 - There were other Europeans between the Vikings and Columbus, such as the Basque. | [
"The aim of the expeditions was to prove that the Pacific Islands could have been populated by migrations from South America in the centuries before the Spanish Conquistadors arrived. Alsar maintained that ancient mariners knew the Pacific currents and winds as well as modern humans know road maps.\n",
"Spaniards, who in the early 16th century were the first Europeans to arrive, eventually annexed and colonized the archipelago. These were the first islands Magellan found after crossing the Pacific and the fruits found here saved the crew. The indigenous inhabitants are the Chamorro people. Archaeologists in 2013 reported findings which indicated that the people who first settled the Marianas arrived there after making what was at the time the longest uninterrupted ocean voyage in human history. They further reported findings which suggested that Tinian is likely to have been the first island in Oceania to have been settled by humans.\n",
"Many of the present-day Pacific Island nations in the Oceania region were originally populated by Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian peoples over the course of thousands of years. European colonial expansion in the Pacific brought many of these under non-indigenous administration. During the 20th century several of these former colonies gained independence and nation-states were formed under local control. However, various peoples have put forward claims for Indigenous recognition where their islands are still under external administration; examples include the Chamorros of Guam and the Northern Marianas, and the Marshallese of the Marshall Islands.\n",
"Evidence suggests that around 3,000 years ago successive waves of human migrants from Southeast Asia spread across the Western Pacific Ocean, populating its many small islands. The Marshall Islands were settled by Micronesians in the 2nd millennium BC. Little is known of the islands' early history. Early settlers traveled between the islands by canoe using traditional stick charts.\n",
"Both Australia and the islands of the Pacific Ocean were colonized in waves of migrations from Southeast Asia spanning many centuries. European and Japanese colonial expansion brought most of the region under foreign administration, in some cases as settler colonies which displaced or marginalized the original populations. During the 20th century several of these former colonies gained independence and nation-states were formed under local control. However, various peoples have put forward claims for indigenous recognition where their islands are still under external administration; examples include the Chamorros of Guam and the Northern Marianas, and the Marshallese of the Marshall Islands and the Native Hawaiians of Hawaii.\n",
"BULLET::::- In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl's raft Kon-Tiki crossed the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Tahiti proving the practical possibility that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times, rather than South-East Asia as it was previously believed\n",
"In 1935, colonists from the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project arrived on the island to establish a permanent U.S. presence in the Central Pacific. It began with a rotating group of four alumni and students from the Kamehameha School for Boys, a private school in Honolulu. Although the recruits had signed on as part of a scientific expedition and expected to spend their three-month assignment collecting botanical and biological samples, once out to sea they were told, \"Your names will go down in history\" and that the islands would become \"famous air bases in a route that will connect Australia with California\".\n"
] |
how can websites display an overloaded page if they're overloaded? | Modern websites, especially popular ones are not a standalone computer running a webserver. They're usually part of a full network of servers.
Front end web servers that receive a request from users. Web caches that store commonly requested pages and data. Databases and file servers for a lot of the back end data.
So front end webserver can be programmed to follow this sequence:
1. check if page is available in the web cache, use that if possible.
2. if web cache is unavailable or slow to respond query database and file server, use that if possible
3. Fall back to an error page of "overloaded" or "down for maintenance" | [
"Consider a web browser which attempts to load a page while the network is unavailable. The browser will receive an error code indicating the problem, and may display this error message to the user in place of the requested page. However, it is incorrect for the browser to place the error message in the page cache, as this would lead it to display the error again when the user tries to load the same page - even after the network is back up. The error message must not be cached under the page's URL; until the browser is able to successfully load the page, whenever the user tries to load the page, the browser must make a new attempt.\n",
"During the same run we also fill the dirty page table by adding a new entry whenever we encounter a page that is modified and not yet in the DPT. This however only computes a superset of all dirty pages at the time of the crash, since we don't check the actual database file whether the page was written back to the storage.\n",
"After the first page load, all subsequent page and content changes are handled internally by the application, which should simply call a function to update the analytics package. Failing to call said function, the browser never triggers a new page load, nothing gets added to the browser history, and the analytics package has no idea who is doing what on the site.\n",
"In some cases, while users input search strings, the results of that string would also present on the content area too. However, if the page choose this way to show results to users, the loading time is pretty slow and sometimes it may cause freezing state or browser crash. Hence, it is not recommend for small and medium size webpage.\n",
"BULLET::::- Loading new page content or submitting data to the server via Ajax without reloading the page (for example, a social network might allow the user to post status updates without leaving the page).\n",
"A pageview or page view, abbreviated in business to PV and occasionally called page impression, is a request to load a single HTML file (web page) of an Internet site. On the World Wide Web, a page request would result from a web surfer clicking on a link on another \"page\" pointing to the page in question.\n",
"Page view can be manipulated or boosted for specific purposes. For example, a recent incident, called 'page view fraud', compromised the accuracy of measurement of page view by boosting the page view. Perpetrators used a tool called 'a bot' to buy fake page-views for attention, recognition, and feedback, increasing the site's value.\n"
] |
what is stopping me from taking a loan out to pay another loan and then taking a loan out to pay that loan? | This is commonly done and is sometimes called *rolling over* a loan. The problem is that the amount due will keep increasing due to interest charge, and eventually it will be so large that no one will be willing to loan you that much. | [
"Borrowers can either opt for a short-term relief by having their mortgage payment suspended for a short period of time (known as forbearance in the U.S.), or they can apply for reduced payments over the life of the loan’s term (known as loan modification in the U.S.). Lenders are required to give a particular reason as to why an application for hardship variation was being turned down by them. Borrowers are encouraged to talk to their internal complaints section of their respective bank or file a dispute.\n",
"The claim made is that by using a particular type of loan in a particular way (often following a “program”), the borrower can cut many years off the mortgage without making additional repayments – or similarly, that although additional payments are made, the savings increase significantly due to the use of a particular loan and/or strategy.\n",
"From the borrower's perspective, this means failure to make their regular payment for one or two payment periods or failure to pay taxes or insurance premiums for the loan collateral will lead to substantially higher interest for the entire remaining term of the loan.\n",
"Some loaning institutions offer a variety of repayment plans for your term loan. Commonly, you may choose to pay off your debt in even amounts, or the amount you pay will gradually increase over the loan period. If you expect that you will be more financially able to repay in the future, causing an incremental increase may help you and save you interest. If you are unsure of your future monetary position, even payments may help prevent defaulting on the loan if things go badly.\n",
"Borrowers complained that they had complied with the monetary conditions of the loans: they had kept up interest payments and repayments, and disputed whether it was reasonable to apply penalty interest and require early repayment for non-monetary issues (for example, not having invested the funds for the purpose borrowed, or no longer having adequate security to back the loan).\n",
"Prepayment of the loan—when the borrower pays the loan back before it reaches term—may incur penalties, depending on the loan. An additional fee could also be imposed in the event of a redraw. Under the National Credit Code, penalties for early repayment are illegal on new loans since September 2012; however, a bank may charge a reasonable administration fee for preparation of the discharge of mortgage.\n",
"A loan by itself is neither gross income to the borrower, nor a tax deduction to the lender. This is because there is \"symmetry\" of assets and liabilities on both side: the borrower's increased wealth when the loan is taken out is offset by an obligation to repay that same amount. Likewise, the lender's loss of wealth by lending out that money is offset by the borrower's promise to pay back the entire amount. Ignoring interest, both sides will be in exactly the same position when the loan is repaid as they were in before the loan was even made.\n"
] |
why do scuba divers go into the water backwards instead of front first? | If they don't go back first, they go feet first. Both for several reasons.
1. Out of the water, the tank is **heavy**. Imagine doing a belly flop while wearing a backpack full of cinder blocks. You hit the water, then the pack hits you. Ouch.
2. Hitting the water face first means you get the mask smacked into your face. Ouch again.
3. Some kinds of SCUBA gear will have bits extending behind your head. Going face first means you have a good chance of smacking the back of your head on them. Not fun.
4. When you hit the water, you are less concerned about landing on the guy that is already in the water than you are about the next guy in line landing on *you*. Going back first means you can see what's going on above you and move if needed.
5. Lastly, sometimes shit happens and you need to quickly ditch your gear. If you are face down, you have to get out from under the stuff after you undo the buckles, risking getting something getting caught in a stray loop. Face up means everything is below you, thus much less risk of getting snagged. | [
"Because of the direction of thrust is mostly in line with the diver, or slightly upwards, it is suitable for situations where disturbing the silt on the bottom can cause dramatic loss in visibility, such as inside wrecks and caves, and at any other time when the diver needs to swim close to a silty substrate. Some divers will use it as their standard kick even in more forgiving environments, as the resting position is identical for other kicks that increase underwater mobility, such as the backwards kick and the helicopter turn.\n",
"Once a diver is completely under the water they may choose to roll or scoop in the same direction their dive was rotating to pull their legs into a more vertical position. Apart from aesthetic considerations, it is important from a safety point of view that divers reinforce the habit of rolling in the direction of rotation, especially for forward and inward entries. Back injuries hyperextention are caused by attempting to re-surface in the opposite direction. Diving from the higher levels increases the danger and likelihood of such injuries.\n",
"Getting into a kayak is the reverse of getting off. It is relatively easy to climb onto them from the side as the freeboard is low, but they are not very stable and are easy to capsize. The diver's weights are usually removed first and secured on the boat. Other loose equipment may be loaded at this stage. The scuba set is removed and clipped to a tether. Sufficient air to float the set must be in the buoyancy compensator. The fins are kept on the feet as they are used to boost the diver onto the kayak. Boarding is usually done by holding onto the kayak and using the fins to get roughly horizontal at right angles to the boat, then boosting over the kayak so that the hips are over the cockpit, face down, then rolling face up and sitting before swinging the legs onto the boat.\n",
"Most scuba diving training organizations are agnostic as to kick techniques, and thus most underwater divers utilize the flutter kick of surface swimmers. However, as divers use swimfins, propulsion occurs almost entirely from the kick. Divers that subscribe to the Doing It Right approach and many other cave and wreck divers use a modified flutter kick or frog kick, done entirely with bent knees, pushing water up and behind the diver to avoid stirring up sediment on the bottom.\n",
"The scuba diver generally has an operational need to control depth without resorting to a line to the surface or holding onto a structure or landform, or resting on the bottom. This requires the ability to achieve neutral buoyancy at any time during a dive, otherwise the effort expended to maintain depth by swimming against the buoyancy difference will both task load the diver and require an otherwise unnecessary expenditure of energy, increasing air consumption, and increasing the risk of loss of control and escalation to an accident.\n",
"In some circumstances, submerged open-circuit scuba divers can be followed by their bubbles until they run out of air and have to surface, and then tackled on the water surface or as they come ashore.\n",
"A diving stage or basket is used to lower divers to the underwater work site and raise them back to the surface after the dive. This provides a relatively safe and easy way of entering the water and getting out again onto the deployment platform. In-water decompression is facilitated as the stage can be held at a reasonably constant depth. The divers' umbilicals are continuous and are tended from the surface. \n"
] |
how is it that we are still discovering galaxies that are relatively close to our own galaxy when we’ve discovered millions of galaxies that are much farther away? | So... look at the sky.
Now. With your hand make a circle
Now through that circle, focus on only the sky you can see in the perimeters of your hand. Imagine zooming in almost endlessly, finding millions of different cosmic clusters just in those small confines.
Now pick another random part of sky. Do it again and voila! You found a new galaxy. | [
"BULLET::::- Astronomers report that the most distant known galaxy, UDFj-39546284, is now estimated to be even further away than previously believed. The galaxy, which is estimated to have formed around \"380 million years\" after the Big Bang (about 13.75 billion years ago), is approximately 13.37 billion light years from Earth. (\"Space.com\")\n",
"Scientists hope to find older galaxies; however, closer to the Big Bang, fewer exist and they are dimmer on average. They will therefore be increasingly difficult to find, since they would be very faint with fewer observable stars. Trenti says that new \"most distant\" record holders will soon be announced, but only incremental distance gains will be realized until NASA's James Webb Space Telescope becomes operational in 2021.\n",
"The majority of active galaxies are very distant and show large Doppler shifts. This suggests that active galaxies occurred in the early Universe and, due to cosmic inflation, are receding away from the Milky Way at very high speeds. Quasars are the furthest active galaxies, some of them being observed at distances 12 billion light years away. Seyfert galaxies are much closer than quasars. Because light has a finite speed, looking across large distances in the Universe is equivalent to looking back in time. Therefore, the observation of active galactic nuclei at large distances and their scarcity in the nearby Universe suggests that they were much more common in the early Universe, implying that active galactic nuclei could be early stages of galactic evolution. This leads to the question about what would be the local (modern-day) counterparts of AGNs found at large redshifts. It has been proposed that NLSy1s could be the small redshift counterparts of quasars found at large redshifts (z4). The two have many similar properties, for example: high metallicities or similar pattern of emission lines (strong Fe [II], weak O [III]). Some observations suggest that AGN emission from the nucleus is not spherically symmetric and that the nucleus often shows axial symmetry, with radiation escaping in a conical region. Based on these observations, models have been devised to explain the different classes of AGNs as due to their different orientations with respect to the observational line of sight. Such models are called unified models. Unified models explain the difference between Seyfert I and Seyfert II galaxies as being the result of Seyfert II galaxies being surrounded by obscuring toruses which prevent telescopes from seeing the broad line region. Quasars and blazars can be fit quite easily in this model. The main problem of such an unification scheme is trying to explain why some AGN are radio loud while others are radio quiet. It has been suggested that these differences may be due to differences in the spin of the central black hole.\n",
"The James Webb telescope should be able to detect galaxies more than 13.4 billion light years away, less than 300 million years after the Big Bang. Bremer states that it, and eventually the European Extremely Large Telescope, which will have a mirror five times the diameter of Yepun's, and is tentatively scheduled for first light in 2024, will enable more detailed study of galaxies at such great distances. Lehnert states that this discovery is not \"the limit, perhaps not even that close to it\".\n",
"The list aims to reflect current knowledge: not all galaxies within the 3.59 Mpc radius have been discovered. Nearby dwarf galaxies are still being discovered, and galaxies located behind the central plane of the Milky Way are extremely difficult to discern. It is possible for any galaxy to mask another located beyond it.\n",
"BULLET::::- 2013 — The galaxy Z8 GND 5296 is confirmed by spectroscopy to be one of the most distant galaxies found up to this time. Formed just 700 million years after the Big Bang, expansion of the universe has carried it to its current location, about 13 billion light years away from Earth.\n",
"The \"distance\" of a far away galaxy depends on how it is measured. With a redshift of 1, light from this galaxy is estimated to have taken around 7.7 billion years to reach Earth. However, since this galaxy is receding from Earth, the present comoving distance is estimated to be around 10 billion light-years away. In context, Hubble is observing this galaxy as it appeared when the Universe was around 5.9 billion years old.\n"
] |
do animals have body clock? | Well seeing as how humans are mammals. And mammals are animals. And we have have one.
Yes other animals do too | [
"Most animals and other organisms have \"built-in clocks\" in their brains that regulate the timing of biological processes and daily behavior. These \"clocks\" are known as circadian rhythms. They allow maintenance of these processes and behaviors relative to the 24-hour day/night cycle in nature. Although these rhythms are maintained by the individual organisms, their length does vary somewhat individually. Therefore, they must, either continually or repeatedly, be reset to synchronize with nature's cycle. In order to maintain synchronization (\"entrainment\") to 24 hours, external factors must play some role. The human circadian rhythm occurs typically in accordance with nature's cycle. The average activity rhythm cycle is 24.18 hours in adulthood but is shortened as age increases. One of the various factors that influence this entrainment is light exposure to the eyes. When an organism is exposed to a specific wavelength of light stimulus at certain times throughout the day, the hormone melatonin is suppressed, or prevented from being secreted by the pineal gland.\n",
"Different organisms such as bacteria, plants, fungi, and animals, show genetically-based near-24-hour rhythms. Although all of these clocks appear to be based on a similar type of genetic feedback loop, the specific genes involved are thought to have evolved independently in each kingdom. Many aspects of mammalian behavior and physiology show circadian rhythmicity, including sleep, physical activity, alertness, hormone levels, body temperature, immune function, and digestive activity. The SCN coordinates these rhythms across the entire body, and rhythmicity is lost if the SCN is destroyed. For example, total time of sleep is maintained in rats with SCN damage, but the length and timing of sleep episodes becomes erratic. The SCN maintains control across the body by synchronizing \"slave oscillators,\" which exhibit their own near-24-hour rhythms and control circadian phenomena in local tissue.\n",
"The behavior of most animals is synchronized with the earth's daily light-dark cycle. Thus, many animals are active during the day, others are active at night, still others near dawn and dusk. Though one might think that these \"circadian rhythms\" are controlled simply by the presence or absence of light, nearly every animal that has been studied has been shown to have a \"biological clock\" that yields cycles of activity even when the animal is in constant illumination or darkness. Circadian rhythms are so automatic and fundamental to living things – they occur even in plants – that they are usually discussed separately from cognitive processes, and the reader is referred to the main article (Circadian rhythms) for further information.\n",
"Sleep in non-human animals refers to a behavioral and physiological state characterized by altered consciousness, reduced responsiveness to external stimuli, and homeostatic regulation. Sleep is observed in mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and some fish, and, in some form, in insects and even in simpler animals such as nematodes. The internal circadian clock promotes sleep at night for diurnal organisms (such as humans) and in the day for nocturnal organisms (such as rodents). Sleep patterns vary widely among species. It appears to be a requirement for all mammals and most other animals.\n",
"Humans are normally diurnal creatures, that is to say they are active in the daytime. As with most other diurnal animals, human activity-rest patterns are endogenously controlled by biological clocks with a circadian (~24-hour) period. Chronotypes have also been investigated in other species, such as fruit flies and mice.\n",
"Humans, like most living organisms, have various biological rhythms. These biological clocks control processes that fluctuate daily (e.g. body temperature, alertness, hormone secretion), generating circadian rhythms. Among these physiological characteristics, our sleep-wake propensity can also be considered one of the daily rhythms regulated by the biological clock system. Our sleeping cycles are tightly regulated by a series of circadian processes working in tandem, which allow us to experience moments of consolidated sleep during the night and a long wakeful moment during the day. Conversely, disruptions to these processes and the communication pathways between them can lead to problems in sleeping patterns, which are collectively referred to as Circadian rhythm sleep disorders.\n",
"Biological clocks are an ancient and adaptive sense of time innate to an organism that allows them to anticipate environmental changes and cycles so they are able to physiologically and behaviorally respond to the expected change. Evidence of circadian rhythms controlling DVM, metabolism, and even gene expression have been found in copepod species, \"Calanus finmarchicus\". These copepods were shown to continue to exhibit these daily rhythms of vertical migration in the laboratory setting even in constant darkness, after being captured from an actively migrating wild population. An experiment was done at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography which kept organisms in column tanks with light/dark cycles. A few days later the light was changed to a constant low light and the organisms still displayed diel vertical migration. Thus suggestions that some type of internal response was causing the migration.\n"
] |
why does your appetite decrease in extreme heat? | Your metabolism's job is to regulate the temperature of your body. "Metabolizing" food is basically like setting it on fire in your body and using the heat for energy.
In the extreme heat, your body temperature is already high. So your body doesn't burn the energy it has as aggressively (your metabolism slows down) so that you don't overheat. This decreases your appetite.
It's also why you have less energy and feel wiped out after a hot day. You still needed that energy, but your body converted less to avoid overheating. Basically put you in low power mode. | [
"BULLET::::4. Thermostatic hypothesis: According to this hypothesis, a decrease in body temperature below a given set-point stimulates appetite, whereas an increase above the set-point inhibits appetite.\n",
"The cessation of a desire to eat after a meal \"satiation\" is likely to be due to different processes and cues. More palatable foods reduce the effects of such cues upon satiation causing a larger food intake. In contrast, unpalatability of certain foods can serve as a deterrent from feeding on those foods in the future. For example, the Variable Checkerspot butterfly contains iridoid compounds that are unpalatable to avian predators, thus reducing the risk of predation.\n",
"Both genetic and environmental factors may regulate appetite, and abnormalities in either may lead to abnormal appetite. Poor appetite (anorexia) can have numerous causes, but may be a result of physical (infectious, autoimmune or malignant disease) or psychological (stress, mental disorders) factors. Likewise, hyperphagia (excessive eating) may be a result of hormonal imbalances, mental disorders (e.g., depression) and others. Dyspepsia, also known as indigestion, can also affect appetite as one of its symptoms is feeling \"overly full\" soon after beginning a meal. Taste and smell (\"dysgeusia\", bad taste) or the lack thereof may also effect appetite.\n",
"This appetite inhibition is long-term, in contrast to the rapid inhibition of hunger by cholecystokinin (CCK) and the slower suppression of hunger between meals mediated by PYY3-36. The absence of leptin (or its receptor) leads to uncontrolled hunger and resulting obesity. Fasting or following a very-low-calorie diet lowers leptin levels. \n",
"It has been suggested that energy intake also increases during conditions of extreme or prolonged cold temperatures. Relatedly, researchers have posited that reduced variability of ambient temperature indoors could be a mechanism driving obesity, as the percentage of US homes with air conditioning increased from 23 to 47 percent in recent decades. In addition, several human and animal studies have shown that temperatures above the thermoneutral zone significantly reduce food intake. However, overall there are few studies indicating altered energy intake in response to extreme ambient temperatures and the evidence is primarily anecdotal.\n",
"The physical sensation of hunger is related to contractions of the stomach muscles. These contractions—sometimes called hunger pangs once they become severe—are believed to be triggered by high concentrations of the ghrelin hormone. The hormones Peptide YY and Leptin can have an opposite effect on the appetite, causing the sensation of being full. Ghrelin can be released if blood sugar levels get low—a condition that can result from long periods without eating. Stomach contractions from hunger can be especially severe and painful in children and young adults.\n",
"Both energy metabolism and body temperature increases are observed in humans following extracted capsinoids or CH-19 Sweet administration. Animal studies also demonstrate these increases, as well as suppressed in body fat accumulation following capsinoids intake. The exact mechanisms and the relative importance of each remain under investigation, as are the effects of capsinoids on appetite and satiation.\n"
] |
what exactly is petrified wood and how does it become petrified? | It's when it's turned to stone after millions of years. The wood becomes buried underground where it's preserved because of the lack of oxygen, and as water flows through the ground on top, the minerals enter the wood and replace the organic material. Eventually all of the organic material is replaced by mineral, and the wood is now stone which has kept its original structure. | [
"Petrified wood are fossils of wood that have turned to stone through the process of permineralization. All organic materials are replaced with minerals while maintaining the original structure of the wood.\n",
"Petrified wood (from the Latin root \"petro\" meaning \"rock\" or \"stone\"; literally \"wood turned into stone\") is the name given to a special type of fossilized remains of terrestrial vegetation. It is the result of a tree or tree-like plants having completely transitioned to stone by the process of permineralization. All the organic materials have been replaced with minerals (mostly a silicate, such as quartz), while retaining the original structure of the stem tissue. Unlike other types of fossils which are typically impressions or compressions, petrified wood is a three-dimensional representation of the original organic material. \n",
"Petrified wood is common in some parts of the world, and is most frequently found in arid or desert areas where it is more readily exposed by erosion. Petrified wood is often heavily silicified (the organic material replaced by silicon dioxide), and the impregnated tissue is often preserved in fine detail. Such specimens may be cut and polished using lapidary equipment. Fossil forests of petrified wood have been found in all continents.\n",
"Petrified wood is a fossil in which the organic remains have been replaced by minerals in the slow process of being replaced with stone. This petrification process generally results in a quartz chalcedony mineralization. Special rare conditions must be met in order for the fallen stem to be transformed into fossil wood or petrified wood. In general, the fallen plants get buried in an environment free of oxygen (anaerobic environment), which preserves the original plant structure and general appearance. The other conditions include a regular access to mineral rich water in contact with the tissues, replacing the organic plant structure with inorganic minerals. The end result is petrified wood, a plant, with its original basic structure in place, replaced by stone. Exotic minerals allow the red and green hues that can be seen in rarer specimens.\n",
"The petrifaction process occurs underground, when wood becomes buried under sediment or volcanic ash and is initially preserved due to a lack of oxygen which inhibits aerobic decomposition. Mineral-laden water flowing through the covering material deposits minerals in the plant's cells; as the plant's lignin and cellulose decay, a stone mold forms in its place. The organic matter needs to become petrified before it decomposes completely. Under ideal conditions it can also occur rapidly. A forest where such material has petrified becomes known as a petrified forest.\n",
"In 2005 scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) reported that they had successfully petrified wood samples artificially. Unlike natural petrification, though, they infiltrated samples in acidic solutions, diffused them internally with titanium and carbon and fired them in a high-temperature oven (circa 1400 °C) in an inert atmosphere to yield a man-made ceramic matrix composite of titanium carbide and silicon carbide still showing the initial structure of wood. Future uses would see these artificially petrified wood-ceramic materials eventually replace metal-based superalloys (which are coated with ultrahard ceramics) in the tool industry. Other vegetal matter could be treated in a similar process and yield abrasive powders. Scientists attempted to artificially petrify organisms as early as the 18th century, when Girolamo Segato claimed to have supposedly \"petrified\" human remains. His methods were lost, but the bulk of his \"pieces\" are on display at the Museum of the Department of Anatomy in Florence, Italy. More recent attempts have been both successful and documented, but should be considered as semi-petrifaction or incomplete petrifaction or at least as producing some novel type of wood composite, as the wood material remains to a certain degree; the constituents of wood (cellulose, lignins, lignans, oleoresins, etc.) have not been replaced by silicate, but have been infiltrated by specially formulated acidic solutions of aluminosilicate salts that gel in contact with wood matter and form a matrix of silicates within the wood after being left to react slowly for a given period of time in the solution or heat-cured for faster results. Hamilton Hicks of Greenwich, Connecticut, received a patent for his \"recipe\" for rapid artificial petrifaction of wood under US patent 4,612,050 in 1986. Hicks' recipe consists of highly mineralized water and a sodium silicate solution combined with a dilute acid with a pH of 4.0-5.5. Samples of wood are penetrated with this mineral solution through repeated submersion and applications of the solution. Wood treated in this fashion is - according to the claims in the patent - incapable of being burned and acquires the features of petrified wood. Some uses of this product as suggested by Hicks include use by horse breeders who desire fireproof stables constructed of nontoxic material that would also be resistant to chewing of the wood by horses.\n",
"Petrified palmwood is a favorite of rock collectors because it is replaced by silica and exhibits well-defined rod-like structures and variety of colors. As a result, it exhibits a wide range of colors and designs when cut that can be incorporated into jewelry and other ornamental items. Because it is composed of silica, it is hard enough to polish and withstand the wear and tear of normal use.\n"
] |
Generation War or Our Mothers Our Fathers | Disclaimer: I liked Generation War, for what it was, a piece of entertainment; and fairly decent combat scenes.
Now, with that out of the way, I do agree there needed to be a huge suspension of disbelief. My eyebrows merged with my hairline when the 'Token Jewish Friend' made his first appearance. This was unheard of; the Series begins prior to Barbarossa so you wouldn't risk much more than negative attention from the regime at that time, but association or hiding of Jewish persons later on would be a death sentence. It wasn't just farfetched it was insulting; It *really* did seem like it was an alleviation of German guilt.
Others have taken issue with this as well. Poland did not take well to the depiction of the RKA. There has been arguments that there was heavy anti-semitism before and after WWII in Poland, but the series depicts them as so *collectively* anti semitic that it accomplishes nothing more but to say "See look, we weren't the only ones!" Its intellectually dishonest, and the Polish Newspaper "The Catholic Weekly" wrote a [good review](_URL_0_) (Use a good translator there) that echoes these sentiments and has some nuggets of info on the actual RK.
If I could inject my opinion here; I don't think the producers of Generation War meant to deliberately alleviate German guilt, however, based on how it was recieved abroad and the general touchiness of the subject, it certainly appeared that way. As a piece of entertainment, *of course* you need to be able to sympathize, empathize and relate to the main characters - so they become essentially decent people. The 5 main characters are meant to represent ''the typical Germans'' however, so its one big foggy looking-glass. | [
"Generation War (, literally \"Our mothers, our fathers\") is a German World War II TV miniseries in three parts. It was commissioned by public broadcasting organization ZDF, produced by the UFA subsidiary TeamWorx, and first aired in Germany and Austria in March 2013. The series tells the story of five German friends, aged around 20, on their different paths through Nazi Germany and World War II: as Wehrmacht soldiers on the Eastern Front, a war nurse, an aspiring singer, and a Jewish tailor. The narrative spans four years, starting in 1941 Berlin, when the friends meet up for a last time before embarking on their journeys, enthusiastically vowing to meet up again the following Christmas. The story's conclusion is set shortly after the end of the war in 1945.\n",
"The American War Mothers was founded in 1917 and given a Congressional charter on February 24, 1925. It is a perpetual patriotic, 501(c) 4 non-profit, non-political, non-sectarian, non-partisan organization whose members are mothers of children who have served or are serving in the Armed Services during a time of conflict.\n",
"Some of the mothers gave their war child to a home of public welfare. Others tried to integrate the child into the family formed with their new partner and children (step family). Some of the mothers died during the war.\n",
"Generation Jones is the social cohort of the latter half of the Baby boomers to the first years of Generation X. The term was first coined by the cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell, who identified the cohort as those born from 1954 to 1965 in the U.S. who came of age during the oil crisis, stagflation, and the Carter presidency, rather than during the 1960s, but slightly before Gen X. Other sources place the starting point at 1956 or 1957. Unlike older baby boomers, most of Generation Jones did not grow up with World War II veterans as fathers, and for them there was no compulsory military service and no defining political cause, as opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War had been for the older boomers.\n",
"Our Father is a 2015 British short war drama film written and directed by Calum Rhys. The film stars Luke Goddard, Ross O'Hennessy, Aaron Jeffcoate, Jonas Daniel Alexander and Mark Anthony Games. The film follows a detached British Army section in France during World War II. The film premiered at the 69th Cannes Film Festival.\n",
"\"Dad's Army\" ends with the Second World War still in progress, Mainwaring giving Mrs Fox away when she marries Corporal Jones, because her father is dead. As shown at the start of the first episode, set in 1968, Mainwaring, who was born in 1885, would have been 82 years old then and 60 at the end of the Second World War.\n",
"Generation X is the generation born after the Western post-World War II Baby Boomers between approximately 1965 and 1983. The term was noted by photographer Robert Capa in the early 1950s. Of the generation, Capa said \"We named this unknown generation, The Generation X, and even in our first enthusiasm we realised that we had something far bigger than our talents and pockets could cope with.\"\n"
] |
why can they lose 10lbs+ a week on the biggest loser when weight loss resources for us normals say not to lose more than 2lbs a week? | What's more discouraging is the more common scenario, where you think you're going to lose 10 pounds a week and then gain 1 because you don't realize how hard dieting is.
The Biggest Loser, like all TV, is about entertainment. A realistic diet program would have half the people losing no weight and maybe the best 1% losing 2 pounds a week; that would be incredibly uninteresting to watch. | [
"According to LiveScience.com, \"physicians and nutritionists worry the show's focus on competitive weight loss is, at best, counterproductive and, at worst, dangerous\". Contestants on the show lose upwards of 10 pounds per week (in the very first week, some contestants have lost 20–30+ pounds in that one week alone), whereas the established medical guidelines for safe weight loss are between 1 and 2 pounds per week. This is true even though that weight-loss rate originates from an examination of the database from the National Weight Control Registry, where members have lost a minimum of 30 pounds and maintained that weight loss for a minimum of a year. So while researchers did find a correlation between that rate, on average, with members of the Registry, all this correlation can mean—if there is any causal correlation at all (there is no control group) -- is that it is more likely, on average, for someone to be successful at losing a large amount of weight, and more successful at maintaining that weight loss. There is no way of stating whether this rate is more \"healthy\" than any other rate, simply because (a) there is no comparison with any other rate, and not even any comparison between disease or mortality rates of members of this Registry and any other random group.\n",
"\"The Biggest Loser\" has been fairly popular for some of its run, ranking among the top 50 shows in the United States from 2004 to 2005 and again from 2009 to 2011. It has also attracted significant controversy, including both general critiques of its approach of rapid weight loss, and specific allegations that contestants have been malnourished, dehydrated, overexerted and, in some cases, been given weight loss pills, in order for them to lose as much weight as possible.\n",
"A number of \"The Biggest Loser\" records were set during the first week, with contestant Wal losing , the most weight lost by any contestant in one week; together with the greatest total weight loss for all contestants with ; and the Blue team losing the most weight by a single team with . Kristie lost the most percentage of body weight in the first week of any show. In later shows, Shane, Fiona and Kristie were the only contestants to gain weight, Shane gaining and Fiona gaining - both \"Water Loaded\" so they could lose more weight the following week. Similarly, a contestant on US season 4 utilized the same strategy, water loading to gain in one week and then losing the following week, although unlike Kristie, he did not have immunity, and gained the weight not to lose extra the next week, but to sabotage another player.\n",
"BULLET::::- \"The Biggest Loser: The Weight Loss Program to Transform Your Body, Improve Your Health, and Add Years to Your Life\", contributor/recipe developer (Rodale 2005 \"New York Times\" bestseller)\n",
"In a July 2011 press conference with the Television Critics Association, comedian and actor Jerry Lewis was critical of the competitive nature of \"The Biggest Loser\", claiming that the show is about contestants \"knocking their brains out trying to see how we beat the fat lady at 375 pounds, and in four months she's going to be 240. Who cares? It's ridiculous.\"\n",
"Mike's weigh in from week 9 is revealed to be 11 pounds. Because the contestants have lost more than 77 pounds combined, they all are safe and no one is eliminated for week 9. However, because there is no elimination, Week 10 begins immediately. As a twist for the week, elimination will be based on contests between two individuals, one from each team. Whoever has the higher percentage weight loss will get one point for their team and the first team to reach three points will be safe from elimination. There is a pop-challenge: contestants have a wall-sit while balancing a medicine ball on their laps – the winner will decide the matchups. Tara wins the challenge and therefore is allowed to choose the match-ups for the upcoming elimination. Because the Black Team has one more member, one person from the team will not have a match-up. Tara's choices are: Mike vs. Cathy, Sione vs. Mandi, Filipe vs. Kristin, Helen vs. Ron, and Laura vs. Aubrey, with herself being exempt from any face-off.\n",
"Wing recognized that maintenance of weight loss is an important issue when it comes to the treatment of obesity. She is the founder of the National Weight Control Registry, which has a registry of over 5,000 people who have lost over at least 30 pounds, with an average loss of 70 pounds, and kept that weight off for at least one year, with an average of 5.7 years. Information has been collected on the various behaviors that are correlated with long-term maintenance of weight loss through self-reported data. Wing has proven that it is possible to teach the strategies of successful weight losers, resulting in improving others' ability to maintain their own personal weight loss.\n"
] |
how do some cities (e.g.) baltimore, washington, d.c., st. louis, etc. have neighborhoods that are very well developed and safe, but then, just a mere 5 or 10 miles away, there be a very impoverished and dangerous neighborhood? | 1. Wealth distribution and property values make a self-feeding cycle. More money in one neighborhood means better upkeep of buildings and infrastructure. This increases property value, which in turn encourages developers to invest more money into high-end developments.
2. Cities (and states and countries) have a different attitude and approach to wealthy and poor areas. This is why government housing (projects) and industrial zones still exist and are built in poor areas, while nicer areas become zoned for parks, schools, and high-end businesses and residences.
3. Natural economics means the liquor stores and pawn shops continue popping up in bad areas, while designer clothing stores and fancy cupcake bakeries open in good areas. | [
"The city is known for a great diversity of neighborhoods and land uses very close to one another. Within its borders are the prominent Hackensack University Medical Center, a trendy high-rise district about a mile long, classic suburban neighborhoods of single-family houses, stately older homes on acre-plus lots, older two-family neighborhoods, large garden apartment complexes, industrial areas, the Bergen County Jail, a tidal river, Hackensack River County Park, Borg's Woods Nature Preserve, various city parks, large office buildings, a major college campus, the Bergen County Court House, a vibrant small-city downtown district, and various small neighborhood business districts.\n",
"Residential neighbourhoods include precincts beyond the historic city centre are historically or socially noteworthy neighbourhoods – namely Lakeview and The Crescents, both of which lie directly south of downtown. Immediately to the north of the central business district is the old warehouse district, increasingly the focus of shopping, nightclubs and residential development; as in other western cities of North America, the periphery contains shopping malls and big box stores.\n",
"Each neighborhood is able to maintain its identity due to the tribal nature of the city. Several dozen extended families living in close proximity will typically identify with one local sheikh who takes it upon himself to serve as steward of the neighborhood’s citizens and liaison to the local government. The layout of the town consists of densely packed buildings, often constructed so closely to each other that they share common load-bearing walls and supports. The city streets further physically define each neighborhood by separating it from other groups of buildings, since they cut through the town in irregular patterns.\n",
"The character of the neighborhoods varies significantly from one to another and includes everything from large skyscrapers to houses from the late 19th century to modern, suburban-style developments. Generally, the neighborhoods closest to the city center are denser, older and contain more brick building material. Many neighborhoods away from the city center were developed after World War II, and are built with more modern materials and style. Some of the neighborhoods even farther from the city center, or recently redeveloped parcels anywhere in the city, have either very suburban characteristics or are new urbanist developments that attempt to recreate the feel of older neighborhoods. Most neighborhoods contain parks or other features that are the focal point of the neighborhood.\n",
"In the United States, most cities have zoning codes that set the minimum size for a housing unit (often 400 square feet) as well as the number of non-related persons who can live together in one unit. \n",
"St. Louis is divided into 79 neighborhoods. Census data is collected for each neighborhood, as well as crime data, historic property data, and dining establishment health ratings. National historic neighborhoods are identified by the official neighborhood to which they belong.\n",
"The city is very self-sufficient with most of the population consuming goods produced from nearby family farms in rural neighborhoods. Most of the formal businesses are owned by the city's upper middle class residence. Their homes are usually located near the downtown area; just like Port-au-Prince most of the upper-middle-class homes are surrounded by large cement walls with iron gates or some sort of fences.\n"
] |
What was the first song with the I-V-vi-IV chord progression? | [Andalusian Cadence!](_URL_2_) Also known as the Diatonic Phrygian Tetrachord--sometimes written as i-bVII-bVI-V (or, in the key of A, the descending sequence A, G, F, E)
[the Dorian tetrachord--](_URL_1_) A popular melodic pattern of Ancient Greece[5] offers a possible starting point for the Andalusian cadence. A sequence more or less close to the Greek tetrachord structure might have been known to the[ Moors in Southern Spain](_URL_0_) and spread from there through Western Europe. The French troubadours were influenced by the Spanish music. | [
"The I–V–vi–IV progression is a common chord progression popular across several genres of music. It involves the I, V, vi, and IV chords; for example, in the key of C major, this would be: C–G–Am–F. Uses based on a different starting point but with the same order of chords, include:\n",
"In music, the vi–ii–V–I progression is a chord progression (also called the circle progression for the circle of fifths, along which it travels). A vi–ii–V–I progression in C major (with inverted chords) is shown below.\n",
"I–V–VII–IV may be viewed as a variation of I–V–vi–IV, replacing the submediant with the subtonic. It consists of two I-V chord progressions, the second a whole step lower (A–E–G–D = I–V in A and I–V in G), giving it harmonic drive. There are few keys in which one may play the progression with open chords on the guitar, so it is often portrayed with barre chords (\"Lay Lady Lay\"). The use of the flattened seventh may lend this progression a bluesy feel or sound, and the whole tone descent may be reminiscent of the ninth and tenth chords of the twelve bar blues (V-IV). The progression also makes possible a chromatic descent over a contiguous heptachord (minor third): formula_1–formula_2–formula_2–formula_4. The roots of the chords are in Mixolydian, which is used in \"Lay Lady Lay\", though the progression contains one note outside of Mixolydian (the third of V, see Phrygian dominant scale) and other modes, such as major, may be used when performing the progression.\n",
"The official sheet music folio lists the chord progression as D, to D/C, to D/B (enharmonic to a B minor seventh chord), to D/B♭ (enharmonic to a B♭ augmented major seventh chord), and video exists of Ocasek performing the song, solo on acoustic guitar, according to this progression. However, other transcriptionists describe the chord progression as D to D/C, to G/B, or to Gm/B♭. Either way, the last chord of the verse is a G minor sixth chord, in transition to the chorus in B minor. Each verse is introduced with a guitar melody from Elliot Easton, who layers several clean-tone guitar parts over the synthesizer-dominated arrangement. There is also a horn-like synthesizer solo by Greg Hawkes, played over the chorus progression.\n",
"A common ordering of the progression, \"vi–IV–I–V\", was dubbed the \"sensitive female chord progression\" by \"Boston Globe\" Columnist Marc Hirsh. In C major this would be Am–F–C–G. Hirsh first noticed the chord progression in the song \"One of Us\" by Joan Osborne, and then other songs. He named the progression because he claimed it was used by many performers of the Lilith Fair in the late 1990s.\n",
"The composition is known for its harmonic sophistication and extensive use of inverted chords, including third inversions such as B/A. The first chord of the verse (D major/A) is a non-diatonic chord. The tonic chord (E major) usually only appears with the major 3rd or the 5th in the bass. The entire verse progression sounds restless and ambiguous, until the line \"\"God only knows what I'd be without you\"\" when the chord progression finally reaches a clear goal (A–E/G–Fm–E). This has been cited by musicologists as a good example of how lyrical meaning can be supported and enhanced by a chord progression—along with the melody hook which also provides an example of \"a sense of increasing melodic energy that comes by way of the gradually ascending line\". Stephen Downes similarly named the song's \"tonal plasticity\" emphasized by the disuse of authentic cadences and root-position tonics as the reason for its \"expansiveness\". In musicologist Philip Lambert's opinion, the song's vocal counterpoint evokes the sacred traditions of a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach or an oratorio by George Frideric Handel. Andy Gill of the post-punk band Gang of Four describes the composition:\n",
"The chord progression over the verses includes a descending bass of A-G-F#-F (8–7–6-6) over an A-minor chord, leading to F-major on the F bass note. According to musicologist Dominic Pedler, the 8–7–6–6 progression represents a hybrid of the Aeolian and Dorian modes. The change to the parallel major key is heralded by a C chord as the verse's penultimate chord (replacing the D used in the second phrase of each verse) before the E that leads into the bridge. Musicologist Alan Pollack views this combination of C and E as representing a sense of \"arrival\", after which the bridge contains \"upward [harmonic] gestures\" that contrast with the bass descents that dominate the verse. Such contrasts are limited by the inclusion of minor triads (III, VI and II) played over the E chord that ends the bridge's second and fourth phrases.\n"
] |
If the Moon was created by an asteroid hitting the Earth, why didn't Earth get knocked out of its orbit around the Sun? | Because the earth is a whole lot heavier than the moon. Even an asteroid large enough to crash and knock out a moon-sized piece of the Earth would barely change the orbital speed of the Earth. Think of it like standing on the highway and throwing a rock as hard as you can at an oncoming semi-truck. Then you wonder why the truck didn't slow down. Sure, you probably made a dent in the metal wherever you hit it, and it slowed down *a little*, but not nearly enough to send it hurdling into the sun (ok, the analogy falls apart there). Also, because of the mathematics of orbital mechanics, orbits can change considerably and still remain stable, so even if something so large were to hit us that our momentum changed by a considerable amount, the Earth wouldn't get "knocked out" of its orbit | [
"The carbonaceous boulder that would have been captured by the mission (maximum 6 meter diameter, 20 tons) is too small to harm the Earth because it would burn up in the atmosphere. Redirecting the asteroid mass to a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon would ensure it could not hit Earth and also leave it in a stable orbit for future studies.\n",
"The asteroid's orbit also undergoes a slow, back-and-forth twist over multiple decades. \"The asteroid's loops around Earth drift a little ahead or behind from year to year, but when they drift too far forward or backward, Earth's gravity is just strong enough to reverse the drift and hold onto the asteroid so that it never wanders farther away than about 100 times the distance of the moon\", said Chodas. \"The same effect also prevents the asteroid from approaching much closer than about 38 times the distance of the moon. In effect, this small asteroid is caught in a little dance with Earth.\"As of now, it has by far the most stable quasi-satellite of Earth discovered, in terms of orbit.\n",
"According to the giant impact hypothesis, the Moon formed after a collision between two co-orbital objects—Theia, thought to have had about 10% of the mass of Earth (about as massive as Mars), and the proto-Earth—whose orbits were perturbed by other planets, bringing Theia out of its trojan position and causing the collision.\n",
"If the Moon was formed by such an impact, it is possible that other inner planets also may have been subjected to comparable impacts. A moon that formed around Venus by this process would have been unlikely to escape. If such a moon-forming event had occurred there, a possible explanation of why the planet does not have such a moon might be that a second collision occurred that countered the angular momentum from the first impact. Another possibility is that the strong tidal forces from the Sun would tend to destabilize the orbits of moons around close-in planets. For this reason, if Venus's slow rotation rate began early in its history, any satellites larger than a few kilometers in diameter would likely have spiraled inwards and collided with Venus.\n",
"Originally, the hypothesis supposed that Theia had struck Earth with a glancing blow and ejected many pieces of both the proto-Earth and Theia, those pieces either forming one body that became the Moon or forming two moons that eventually merged to form the Moon. Such accounts assumed that if Theia had struck the proto-Earth head-on both planets would have been destroyed, creating a short-lived second asteroid belt between the orbits of Venus and Mars.\n",
"The asteroid was first discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona. It was determined that the object would make a pass well within the orbit of the Moon, but would not strike Earth. The object passed so close to Earth that its orbit was modified by Earth's gravity.\n",
"In 2017, planetary researchers at Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel offered a new theory that suggests the Moon was forged in a violent rain of cosmic debris that repeatedly hammered the fledgling Earth over millions of years. They determined that a series of smaller impacts, which were likely more common in the early Solar System, could blast enough Earth rocks and dirt into orbit to form a small moonlet. As repeated impacts created more balls of debris, the moonlets could merge over time into one large moon.\n"
] |
why do most foods taste terrible while going through chemo, but others have no change at all? | "Everything changed for me"
"I'll never forget the day that everything tadted like tofu. Everything tasted like nothing."
Source, wife who went through chemo last year.
Tastebuds are fast turnover cells that regenerate and die quickly. Chemo kills the tastebuds before they can develop and mature. What taste you lose is specific to you individually.
Source, same wife who is also a doctor. | [
"This may be done for medically necessary reasons, such as to change the form of the medication from a solid pill to a liquid, to avoid a non-essential ingredient that the patient is allergic to, or to obtain the exact dose(s) needed or deemed best of particular active pharmaceutical ingredient(s). It may also be done for more optional reasons, such as adding flavors to a medication or otherwise altering taste or texture. \n",
"Salicylate-containing foods include apples, citrus fruits, strawberries, tomatoes, and wine, while reactions to chocolate, cheese, bananas, avocado, tomato or wine point to amines as the likely food chemical. Thus, exclusion of single foods does not necessarily identify the chemical responsible as several chemicals can be present in a food, the patient may be sensitive to multiple food chemicals and reaction more likely to occur when foods containing the triggering substance are eaten in a combined quantity that exceeds the patient's sensitivity thresholds. People with food sensitivities have different sensitivity thresholds, and so more sensitive people will react to much smaller amounts of the substance.\n",
"A 2016 study suggested that humans can taste starch (specifically, a glucose oligomer) independently of other tastes such as sweetness. However, no specific chemical receptor has yet been found for this taste.\n",
"In food preparation, a rough or absorbent material may cause the strong flavour of a past ingredient to be tasted in food prepared later. Also, the food particles left in the mortar and on the pestle may support the growth of microorganisms. When dealing with medications, the previously prepared drugs may interact or mix, contaminating the currently used ingredients.\n",
"BULLET::::- Chelation: The presence of di- or trivalent cations can cause the chelation of certain drugs, making them harder to absorb. This interaction frequently occurs between drugs such as tetracycline or the fluoroquinolones and dairy products (due to the presence of Ca).\n",
"Other studies have shown that marketing for food products has demonstrated an effect on consumers’ perceptions of purchase intent and flavor. One study in particular performed by Food and Brand Lab researchers at Cornell University looked at how an organic label affects consumers’ perceptions. The study concluded that the label claiming the product was “organic” altered perceptions in various ways. Consumers perceived these foods to have fewer calories and stated they were willing to pay up to 23.4% more for the product. The taste was supposedly “lower in fat” for the organic products as opposed to the regular ones. Finally, the study concluded that people who do not regularly read nutrition labels and who do not regularly buy organic food products are the most susceptible to this example of the health-halo effect.\n",
"In the care of paediatric patients, young children may be unwilling to take medication with an unpleasant taste or smell, or due to fear of the unfamiliar. In these cases, the medication is mixed with food or drink to make it more acceptable.\n"
] |
Happy New Year, AskHistorians! You may now have historical relations with 1998. | To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Askhistorians comments. The historical analysis is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of Critical Theory most of the posts will go over a typical reader's head. There's also the mod team's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into their content curation - their personal philosophy draws heavily from Pyrrhonic literature, for instance. The flairs understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these stickied comments, to realize that they're not just warnings against shitposting- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike the Askhistorians mod team truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Automod's existencial catchphrase "[deleted]", which itself is a cryptic reference to Abelard's epic *Logica nostrorum petitioni sociorum*. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as /u/sunagainstgold's genius unfolds itself on their computer screens. What fools... how I pity them. And yes by the way, I DO have a complete Subreddit Rules tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 karma points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. | [
"Happy New Year, America is an American television special that aired on the CBS television network to celebrate the New Year. It first aired on December 31, 1979 (leading into 1980), and last aired December 31, 1995 (leading into 1996).\n",
"Ron Grossman, writing for the \"Chicago Tribune\", opined that the spirit of '76 is often lost in the fanfare over the Fourth of July, noting that \"historians and descendants of the first American citizens wonder if modern celebrations--from food fests and rock concerts to fishing tournaments and car rallies--are missing the point.\"\n",
"In 1970, the group began performing at an annual Independence Day festival in Gypsy Hill Park in Staunton. The event, known as \"Happy Birthday USA\", lasted for 25 years and included many country music figures, including Mel Tillis, Charley Pride and many others. The event drew as many as 100,000 fans each year. The group also honored their hometown with the song \"Staunton, Virginia\" on their 1973 album \"Do You Love Me Tonight\".\n",
"The historic weekend began Friday with a private luncheon at [Winfrey]'s Montecito home where the \"legends\" were greeted by the \"young'uns\" -- acclaimed stars, including Alicia Keys, Ashanti, Angela Bassett, Halle Berry, Mary J. Blige, Brandy, Naomi Campbell, Mariah Carey, Natalie Cole, Kimberly Elise, Missy Elliott, Tyra Banks, Iman, Janet Jackson, Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen and Alfre Woodard, among others. Throughout the weekend, the \"young'uns\" paid homage to the \"legends\" for their great contributions. World-renowned event planner Colin Cowie attended to every detail, and Grammy Award-winner John Legend performed his hit song, \"Ordinary People.\"\n",
"The show was commissioned to replace Guy Lombardo's New Year specials. Though Lombardo had died in 1977, Guy's brother, Victor Lombardo, led the Royal Canadians band for two more New Year specials (1977 and 1978) after that. \"Happy New Year, America\" featured coverage of the Times Square Ball in New York City and the party in the ballroom of The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, both of which were also covered during the Lombardo years. However, the show also featured pre-taped segments from Billy Bob's Texas and Walt Disney World. (Billy Bob's was a location made popular as a result of CBS's hit TV series \"Dallas\".)\n",
"1967 is remembered as one of the most notable years in Canada. It was the centenary of Canadian Confederation and celebrations were held throughout the nation. The most prominent event was Expo 67 in Montreal, the most successful World's Fair ever held up to that time, and one of the first events to win international acclaim for the country. The year saw the nation's Governor General, Georges Vanier, die in office; and two prominent federal leaders, Official Opposition Leader John Diefenbaker, and Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson announced their resignations. The year's top news-story was French President Charles de Gaulle's \"Vive le Québec libre\" speech in Montreal. The year also saw major changes in youth culture with the \"hippies\" in Toronto's Yorkville area becoming front-page news over their lifestyle choices and battles with Toronto City Council. A new honours system was announced, the Order of Canada. In sports, the Toronto Maple Leafs won their 13th and last Stanley Cup.\n",
"In her acceptance speech, Williams said, \"That first week will always be remembered of course for something else besides the birth of the Peace People. For those most closely involved, the most powerful memory of that week was the death of a young republican and the deaths of three children struck by the dead man's car. A deep sense of frustration at the mindless stupidity of the continuing violence was already evident before the tragic events of that sunny afternoon of August 10, 1976. But the deaths of those four young people in one terrible moment of violence caused that frustration to explode, and create the possibility of a real peace movement...As far as we are concerned, every single death in the last eight years, and every death in every war that was ever fought represents life needlessly wasted, a mother's labour spurned\".\n"
] |
do animals see different stars than those we see? | There are two reasons why they see the same stars.
1. Pretty much every star gives off light in the visible spectrum.
2. Pretty much every animal can see the visible spectrum.
So effectively, we all see the same stars. The only reason some animals might see more or less is their sensitivity to a star's brightness. Some stars that are just barely fainter than our sensitivity to light will be visible to more sensitive animals and vice versa. Stars might also look a little different if animals are colorblind to certain regions of the spectrum relative to others, but they will continue to be visible. | [
"Research shows that animals sensitive to more than three color channels are likely to see the world in a very different way from humans. These animals are likely to experience different and more numerous unique hues, along with additional ways of mixing them.\n",
"Other animals, such as tropical fish and birds, have more complex color vision systems than humans. There is evidence that ultraviolet light plays a part in color perception in many branches of the animal kingdom, especially for insects; however, there has not been enough evidence to prove this. It has been suggested that it is likely that pigeons are pentachromats. \"Papilio\" butterflies apparently have tetrachromatic color vision despite possessing six photoreceptor types. The most complex color vision system in animal kingdom has been found in stomatopods with up to 12 different spectral receptor types which are thought to work as multiple dichromatic units.\n",
"These sea stars are similar one to each other and it can be difficult to determine with certainty the species only from a photograph. To have a certain determination, in some cases, animals should be analyzed in the laboratory or using genetic testing, but often it isn’t possible. In order to determine the species, with a reasonable margin of error, it’s necessary to observe the appearance of the animal, in particular, based on some typical features described by principal authors that have analyzed over the years a large number of specimens in the laboratory.\n",
"Animals can also appear coloured due to structural colour, the result of coherent scattering perceived as iridescence. The structures themselves are colourless. Light typically passes through multiple layers and is reflected more than once. The multiple reflections compound one another and intensify the colours. Structural colour differs according to the observer's position whereas pigments appear the same regardless of the angle-of-view. Animals that show iridescence include mother of pearl seashells, fish, and peacocks. These are just a few examples of animals with this quality, but it is most pronounced in the butterfly family.\n",
"Typically the animals can see each other, all rewards, and all parts of the apparatus. To assess the role of visual communication, sometimes an opaque divider is placed such that the animals can no longer see each other, but can still see both rewards.\n",
"Stars with planets may also show brightness variations if their planets pass between Earth and the star. These variations are much smaller than those seen with stellar companions and are only detectable with extremely accurate observations. Examples include HD 209458 and GSC 02652-01324, and all of the planets and planet candidates detected by the Kepler Mission.\n",
"Starlings are small to medium-sized passerines with strong feet. Their flight is strong and direct and they are very gregarious. Their preferred habitat is fairly open country, (occasionally seen in open desert, semi-grassland) and they eat insects and fruit. Plumage is typically dark with a metallic sheen. There are 125 species worldwide and 3 North American species.\n"
] |
time crystals, can this idea be simplified? | > Time crystals, can this idea be simplified?
Think about a salt crystal, it has a regular cubic structure which repeats in each of the three spatial dimensions. You can imagine a 3D lattice with each axis having a repeating sequence of atoms bonded together.
Now imagine that time is a dimension just like the spatial ones. A crystal in the dimension of time would have a repeating structure over time; basically it would cycle between states in a regular fashion. A "time crystal" then is a form of matter which cannot exist in a static equilibrium and instead cycles between states over time. | [
"The idea of a time crystal was first described by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012. Later work developed a more precise definition for time crystals. It was proven that they cannot exist in equilibrium. Then, in 2014 Krzysztof Sacha predicted the behaviour of discrete time crystals in a periodically-driven many-body system. and in 2016, Norman Yao et al. proposed a different way to create time crystals in spin systems. From there, Christopher Monroe and Mikhail Lukin independently confirmed this in their labs. Both experiments were published in \"Nature\" in 2017.\n",
"A time crystal or space-time crystal is a structure that repeats in time, as well as in space. Normal three-dimensional crystals have a repeating pattern in space, but remain unchanged as time passes. Time crystals repeat themselves in time as well, leading the crystal to change from moment to moment. A time crystal never reaches thermal equilibrium, as it is a type of non-equilibrium matter, a form of matter proposed in 2012, and first observed in 2017. This state of matter cannot be isolated from its environment—it is an open system in non-equilibrium.\n",
"Time crystals do not violate the laws of thermodynamics: energy in the overall system is conserved, such a crystal does not spontaneously convert thermal energy into mechanical work, and it cannot serve as a perpetual store of work. But it may change perpetually in a fixed pattern in time for as long as the system can be maintained. They possess \"motion without energy\"—their apparent motion does not represent conventional kinetic energy.\n",
"BULLET::::- Existence of time crystals (2012–2016): In 2016, the idea of time-crystals was proposed by two groups independently Khemani et al. and Else et al. Both of these groups showed that in small systems which are disordered and periodic in time, one can observe the phenomenon of time crystals. Norman Yao et al. extended the calculations for a model (which has the same qualitative features) in the laboratory environment. This was then used by two teams, a group led by Christopher Monroe at the University of Maryland and a group led by Mikhail Lukin at Harvard University, who were both able to show evidence for time crystals in the lab-setting, showing that for short times the systems exhibited the dynamics similar to the predicted one.\n",
"Time crystals seem to break \"time-translation symmetry\" and have repeated patterns in time even if the laws of the system are invariant by translation of time. Actually, studied time crystals shows \"discrete\" time-translation symmetry breaking: they are periodically driven systems oscillating at a \"fraction\" of the frequency of the driving force. The initial symmetry is already a discrete time-translation symmetry (formula_1), not a continuous one (formula_2), which are instead described by magnetic space groups.\n",
"Several realizations of time crystals, which avoid the equilibrium no-go arguments, were later proposed. Krzysztof Sacha at Jagiellonian University in Krakow predicted the behaviour of discrete time crystals in a periodically driven system of ultracold atoms. Later works suggested that periodically driven quantum spin systems could show similar behaviour.\n",
"Time crystals show a broken symmetry analogous to a discrete space-translation symmetry breaking. For example, the molecules of a liquid freezing on the surface of a crystal can align with the molecules of the crystal, but with a pattern \"less\" symmetric than the crystal: it breaks the initial symmetry. This broken symmetry exhibits three important characteristics:\n"
] |
why do i shake when i'm really hungry | Sounds like low blood sugar. You may have a prediabetic condition. It would be good to see a doctor. | [
"BULLET::::- Louder rumbles may occur when one is hungry. Around two hours after the stomach has been emptied, it sends signals to the brain, which tells the digestive muscles to restart peristalsis in a wave called the migrating motor complex. Food left behind after the first cycle is swept up, and the vibrations of the empty stomach cause hunger. Appetite plays a big role in this situation. Peristalsis recurs about every hour, and one's appetite may cause 10- to 20-minute food cravings.\n",
"The physical sensation of hunger is related to contractions of the stomach muscles. These contractions—sometimes called hunger pangs once they become severe—are believed to be triggered by high concentrations of the ghrelin hormone. The hormones Peptide YY and Leptin can have an opposite effect on the appetite, causing the sensation of being full. Ghrelin can be released if blood sugar levels get low—a condition that can result from long periods without eating. Stomach contractions from hunger can be especially severe and painful in children and young adults.\n",
"Now it is the nature of man that when he is hungry he will desire satisfaction, when he is cold he will desire warmth, and when he is weary he will desire rest. This is his emotional nature. And yet a man, although he is hungry, will not dare to be the first to eat if he is in the presence of his elders, because he knows that he should yield to them, and although he is weary, he will not dare to demand rest because he knows that he should relieve others of the burden of labor. For a son to yield to his father or a younger brother to relieve his elder brother — acts such as these are all contrary to man's nature and run counter to his proper forms enjoined by ritual principles.\n",
"BULLET::::- Due to the warmness in their body they soon digest food and as they don't have adequate amount of nutrient supply to provide the energy needs of the body they soon get hungry and irritated if they don't get enough food timely.\n",
"Emotional hunger does not originate from the stomach, such as with a rumbling or growling stomach, but tends to start when a person thinks about a craving or wants something specific to eat. Emotional responses are also different. Giving in to a craving or eating because of stress can cause feelings of regret, shame, or guilt, and these responses tend to be associated with emotional hunger. On the other hand, satisfying a physical hunger is giving the body the nutrients or calories it needs to function and is not associated with negative feelings.\n",
"There are numerous signals given off that initiate hunger. There are environmental signals, signals from the gastrointestinal system, and metabolic signals that trigger hunger. The environmental signals come from the body’s senses. The feeling of hunger could be triggered by the smell and thought of food, the sight of a plate, or hearing someone talk about food. The signals from the stomach are initiated by the release of the peptide hormone ghrelin. Ghrelin is a hormone that increases appetite by signaling to the brain that a person is hungry.\n",
"BULLET::::- Satiation occurs when the brain acknowledges that enough food has been eaten; there are triggers in the body that send these signals to the brain. Sizer and Whitney say a, “Greater exposure of the mouth to food triggers increased satiation. When the stomach stretches to accommodate a meal, nerve receptors in the stomach fire, sending a signal to the brain that the stomach is full”. Healthy snacks are ones that leave the body feeling filled so that it does not continue to signal to the brain that it still wants food.\n"
] |
During World War II on the Pacific Front, how did American fighter planes get on equal footing with superior Japanese A6M2 Zeros? | [By developing this.](_URL_0_)
Also by [capturing one of them,](_URL_2_).
What was known was that the thing could turn like a beast and climb like a Valkyrie. It was very maneuverable and fast. Nothing the US had could come close to it. However once the US captured one they found that it could turn great but when forced to roll it performed horrible. Also if you dove and made them chase you the engine of the Zero would stall out. With this knowledge strategies where adopted. Once the F6F came into the picture it was game over.
Also of note was that like with almost EVERYTHING in military terms the best pilots/soldier wins. The Japanese had pilots that where REALLY good and experienced that flew the Zero's. Once they started losing them they where not able to refill their ranks fast enough and keep the staffed long enough before the US killed them. This led to a feedback loop of great planes being staffed by worse and worse pilots while the US got better and better pilots.
Edit: Also to Add to Backgrinders comment [Joe Foss](_URL_1_) a Marine Pilot ripped 4 Zero's apart in one pass to show you how vulnerable they where. Also I may be incorrect but Zeros did not have resealing gas tanks so one bullet = bad news. | [
"At the start of the war, the United States and Japan were well matched in aircraft carriers, in terms of numbers and quality. Both sides had nine, but the Mitsubishi A6M Zero carrier fighter plane was superior in terms of range and maneuverability to its American counterpart, the F4F Wildcat. By reverse engineering a captured Zero, the American engineers identified its weaknesses, such as inadequate protection for the pilot and the fuel tanks, and built the Hellcat as a superior weapon system. In late 1943 the Grumman F6F Hellcats entered combat. Powered by the same 2,000 horsepower Pratt and Whitney 18-cylinder radial engine as used by the F4U Corsair already in service with the Marine Corps and the UK's allied Fleet Air Arm, the F6Fs were faster (at 400 mph) than the Zeros, quicker to climb (at 3,000 feet per minute), more nimble at high altitudes, better at diving, had more armor, more firepower (6 machine guns fired 120 bullets per second) than the Zero's two machine guns and pair of 20 mm autocannon, carried more ammunition, and used a gunsight designed for deflection shooting at an angle. Although the Hellcat was heavier and had a shorter range than the Zero, on the whole it proved a far superior weapon. Japan's carrier and pilot losses at Midway crippled its offensive capability, but America's overwhelming offensive capability came from shipyards that increasingly out produced Japan's, from the refineries that produced high-octane gasoline, and from the training fields that produced much better trained pilots. In 1942 Japan commissioned 6 new carriers but lost 6; in 1943 it commissioned 3 and lost 1. The turning point came in 1944 when it added 8 and lost 13. At war's end Japan had 5 carriers tied up in port; all had been damaged, all lacked fuel and all lacked warplanes. Meanwhile, the US launched 13 small carriers in 1942 and one large one; and in 1943 added 15 large and 50 escort carriers, and more arrived in 1944 and 1945. The new American carriers were much better designed, with far more antiaircraft guns, and powerful radar.\n",
"After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Islands, the United States entered the war. The Japanese used the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, an extremely lightweight fighter known for its exceptional range and maneuverability. The U.S. military tested out the Akutan Zero, a Mitsubishi A6M2 which was captured intact in 1942, advising—along the same lines that General Claire Chennault, commander of the Kunming-based Flying Tigers had already advised his pilots over a year before—\"Never attempt to dogfight a Zero.\" Even though its engine was rather low in power, the Zero had very low wing loading characteristics, a small turn radius, a top speed over , and could climb better than any fighter used by the U.S. at that time, although it was poorly armored compared to U.S. aircraft.\n",
"By 1943, the Allies began to gain the upper hand in the Pacific Campaign's air campaigns. Several factors contributed to this shift. First, second-generation Allied fighters such as the Hellcat and the P-38, and later the Corsair, the P-47 and the P-51, began arriving in numbers. These fighters outperformed Japanese fighters in all respects except maneuverability. Other problems with Japan's fighter aircraft also became apparent as the war progressed, such as their lack of armor and light armament, which made them inadequate as bomber interceptors or ground-attack planes – roles Allied fighters excelled at. Most importantly, Japan's training program failed to provide enough well-trained pilots to replace losses. In contrast, the Allies improved both the quantity and quality of pilots graduating from their training programs.\n",
"By mid-1942, the Allies began to regroup and while some Allied aircraft such as the Brewster Buffalo and the P-39 were hopelessly outclassed by fighters like Japan's Zero, others such as the Army's P-40 and the Navy's Wildcat possessed attributes such as superior firepower, ruggedness and dive speed, and the Allies soon developed tactics (such as the Thach Weave) to take advantage of these strengths. These changes soon paid dividends, as the Allied ability to deny Japan air superiority was critical to their victories at Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal and New Guinea. In China, the Flying Tigers also used the same tactics with some success, although they were unable to stem the tide of Japanese advances there.\n",
"In the summer of 1942, the Americans recovered the Akutan Zero, an almost intact Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighter. This enabled the Americans to test-fly the Zero and contributed to improved fighter tactics later in the war.\n",
"The only combat by U.S.-operated P-36s took place during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Five of the 39 P-36A Hawks at Pearl Harbor, delivered previously by the USS \"Enterprise\", were able to take off during the attack and were credited with shooting down two Japanese Mitsubishi A6M2 Zeros for the loss of one P-36, thereby scoring U.S. aerial victories that were among the first of World War II.\n",
"By mid-1944, Allied fighters had gained air superiority throughout the theater, which would not be contested again during the war. The extent of Allied quantitative and qualitative superiority by this point in the war was demonstrated during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, a lopsided Allied victory in which Japanese fliers were downed in such numbers and with such ease that American fighter pilots likened it to a great turkey shoot.\n"
] |
If the Hubble Telescope was in orbit around Alpha Centauri, pointing at our solar system, how many of the planets and other orbiting bodies could it see? | If we were lined up just right then they could probably see a transit of Venus and Earth. Essentially a mini-eclipse as the planets crossed the disk of the sun. The problem with Jupiter and Saturn is their years are so long they would take a long time to be confirmed. Jupiter takes 12 years to go around the sun, so you'd need to be observing for at least 36 years to confirm a transit. (2 times to determine a year length and a third to confirm it was a planet and not a large sunspot)
As for seeing the planets directly, nope. The glare from the sun is way too much. If you look at the list of exoplanets which have been directly observed, they are very far out (most are more than Pluto distances away) and much larger than Jupiter. Also the planets are relatively young, so they are hotter and are seen because of the energy emitted by the planet, not reflected from the star.
_URL_0_ | [
"More recent (and accurate) astrometric observations by the Hubble Space Telescope ruled out the existence of such an object entirely. The 1995 study predicted an astrometric movement of roughly 90 mas (0.09 arcseconds), but Hubble was unable to detect any location anomaly to an accuracy of 5 mas (0.005 arcsec). This ruled out any objects orbiting Sirius A with more than 0.033 solar masses orbiting in 0.5 years, and 0.014 in 2 years. The study was also able to rule out any companions to Sirius B with more than 0.024 solar masses orbiting in 0.5 years, and 0.0095 orbiting in 1.8 years. Effectively, there are almost certainly no additional bodies in the Sirius system larger than a small brown dwarf or large exoplanet.\n",
"On November 13, 2008, astronomers announced an object, which they assumed to be an extrasolar planet, orbiting just inside the outer debris ring. This was the first extrasolar orbiting object to be seen with visible light, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. A planet's existence had been previously suspected from the sharp, elliptical inner edge of that disk. The mass of the planet, Fomalhaut b, was estimated to be no more than three times the mass of Jupiter, but at least the mass of Neptune. There are indications that the orbit is not apsidally aligned with the dust disk, which may indicate that additional planets may be responsible for the dust disk's structure.\n",
"On August 7, 2010, the Infrared Array Camera aboard the Spitzer Space Telescope was used to find the centroid, the point in space around which both of the Kepler-14 stars orbit. Analysis of the collected data determined which component of the binary star system was the site of the transit signal, and, additionally, that the transit signal came from the primary star in the system (as opposed to the fainter, less prominent star).\n",
"A visual search using the ESO's Very Large Telescope found one potential candidate. However, a subsequent examination by the Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS showed that this was a background object. As of 2009, a search for an unseen companion at 4 μm failed to detect an orbiting object. These observations further constrained the hypothetical object to be 5–20 times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting between 10–20 AU and have an inclination of more than 20°. Alternatively, it may be an exotic stellar remnant.\n",
"The VLBI radio observations of Sagittarius A* could also be aligned centrally with the images so S2 could be seen to orbit Sagittarius A*. From examining the Keplerian orbit of S2, they determined the mass of Sagittarius A* to be solar masses, confined in a volume with a radius no more than 17 light-hours (120 AU). Later observations of the star S14 showed the mass of the object to be about 4.1 million solar masses within a volume with radius no larger than 6.25 light-hours (45 AU) or about 6.7 billion kilometres. S175 passed within a similar distance. For comparison, the Schwarzschild radius is 0.08 AU. They also determined the distance from Earth to the Galactic Center (the rotational center of the Milky Way), which is important in calibrating astronomical distance scales, as . In November 2004 a team of astronomers reported the discovery of a potential intermediate-mass black hole, referred to as GCIRS 13E, orbiting 3 light-years from Sagittarius A*. This black hole of 1,300 solar masses is within a cluster of seven stars. This observation may add support to the idea that supermassive black holes grow by absorbing nearby smaller black holes and stars.\n",
"In 2001, preliminary astrometric measurements made by the Hipparcos probe suggested the orbit of 47 UMa b is inclined at an angle of 63.1° to the plane of the sky, implying the planet's true mass is around 2.9 times that of Jupiter. However, subsequent analysis suggested the Hipparcos measurements were not precise enough to accurately determine the orbits of substellar companions, and the inclination and true mass remain unknown.\n",
"Scientists interpreted that a 0.81-day orbit of a possible planet from the data, and followed up with observations using the CORALIE spectrograph on the Leonhard Euler Telescope at Chile's La Silla Observatory. CORALIE provided radial velocity measurements that indicated that WASP-43 was being transited by a planet that was 1.8 times Jupiter's mass, now dubbed WASP-43b. Another follow-up using the TRAPPIST telescope further defined the light curve of the body transiting WASP-43.\n"
] |
why does medicine get into your system faster than food? | Most pills are basically small molecules designed to disolve and go right in. Most food is large molecules that need to be broken down first. | [
"Some drugs, such as the prokinetic agents increase the speed with which a substance passes through the intestines. If a drug is present in the digestive tract's absorption zone for less time its blood concentration will decrease. The opposite will occur with drugs that decrease intestinal motility.\n",
"The amount of time required for absorption varies dependent upon many factors including drug solubility, gastrointestinal motility and pH. If a medication is administered orally the amount of food in the stomach may also affect the rate of absorption. Once absorbed medications must be distributed throughout the body, or usually with the case of psychiatric medication, past the blood–brain barrier to the brain. With all of these factors affecting the rapidity of effect, the time until the effects are evident varies. Generally, though, the timing with medications is relatively fast and can occur within several minutes. As an example, physicians usually expect to see a remission of symptoms thirty minutes after haloperidol, an antipsychotic, is administered intramuscularly. Antipsychotics, especially Haloperidol, as well as assorted benzodiazepines are the most frequently used drugs in emergency psychiatry, especially agitation.\n",
"The oral route is generally the most convenient and costs the least. However, some drugs can cause gastrointestinal tract irritation. For drugs that come in delayed release or time-release formulations, breaking the tablets or capsules can lead to more rapid delivery of the drug than intended. The oral route is limited to formulations containing small molecules only while biopharmaceuticals (usually proteins) would be digested in the stomach and thereby become ineffective. Biopharmaceuticals have to be given by injection or infusion. However, recent research (2018) found an organic ionic liquid suitable for oral insulin delivery (a biopharmaceutical) into the blood stream.\n",
"The drug is quickly and almost completely (98%) absorbed from the gut. Food intake slows down absorption, but does not decrease it. Due to its first-pass effect, bioavailability is lower: about 24–30% according to different sources. Over 98% of the substance is bound to plasma proteins.\n",
"Mixing medications with food or drink may also affect the metabolism of the drug. For example, grapefruit juice changes the bioavailability of many medicines by decreasing the rate of elimination. This alters drug levels in the blood which may cause side effects or make the drug less effective.\n",
"SMEDDS offer numerous advantages: spontaneous formation, ease of manufacture, thermodynamic stability, and improved solubilization of bioactive materials. Improved solubility contributes to faster release rates and greater bioavailability. For many drugs taken by mouth, faster release rates improve the drug acceptance by consumers. Greater bioavailability means that less drug need be used; this may lower cost, and does lower the stomach irritation and toxicity of drugs taken by mouth.\n",
"The absolute bioavailability of a drug, when administered by an extravascular route, is usually less than one (i.e., \"F\" 100%). Various physiological factors reduce the availability of drugs prior to their entry into the systemic circulation. Whether a drug is taken with or without food will also affect absorption, other drugs taken concurrently may alter absorption and first-pass metabolism, intestinal motility alters the dissolution of the drug and may affect the degree of chemical degradation of the drug by intestinal microflora. Disease states affecting liver metabolism or gastrointestinal function will also have an effect.\n"
] |
what are the actual benefits to eating ones placenta? | Despite the belief of the many health benefits of eating your placenta, there is no conclusive evidence that placentophagy provides any substantial nutritional value. In fact the preparation process (cooking the placenta or drying it for encapsulation) removes a large portion of its nutrients by reducing protein hormones and other things.
Some suggest that the health benefits perceived by people who consume their placenta is caused by the placebo effect.
Eating your placenta will provide you with about enough caloric energy and nutrition to make it to your next meal in the day (which is the most likely reason wildlife can be observed performing this practice as well). | [
"Those who advocate placentophagy in humans believe that eating the placenta prevents postpartum depression and other pregnancy complications. Obstetrician and spokesperson for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Maggie Blott disputes the post-natal depression theory, stating there is no medical reason to eat the placenta: \"Animals eat their placenta to get nutrition - but when people are already well-nourished, there is no benefit, there is no reason to do it.\" While no scientific study has proven any benefits, a survey was conducted by American Medical anthropologists at the University of South Florida and University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Among the respondents, about 3/4 claimed to have positive experiences from eating their own placenta, citing \"improved mood\", \"increased energy\", and \"improved lactation\".\n",
"The placenta transports nutrients to the fetus during gestation. Proponents of modern placentophagy argue that the placenta retains some of these substances after delivery, and that consumption of the placenta by the mother will help her recover more quickly following childbirth by replenishing nutrients and hormones lost during parturition. One birthing website run by two Minnesota doulas lists possible health benefits including replenishing lost nutrients, increasing milk production, curbing postpartum depression and slowing postpartum hemorrhage. However, scientific study has found very limited and inconclusive evidence for any health benefits of placentophagy. A 2012 study by Michaelle Beacock out of Edge Hill University found that evidence to support midwives' and mothers' reported experiences of placentophagy is limited, dated, and ultimately inconclusive. A 2015 review of placentophagy research since 1950 again found limited and inconclusive evidence for placentophagy's health benefits, while also stating that its potential risks are yet unclear.\n",
"Placentophagy (from 'placenta' + , to eat; also referred to as placentophagia) is the act of mammals eating the placenta of their young after childbirth. The placenta contains small amounts of oxytocin which eases birth stress and causes the smooth muscles around the mammary cells to contract and eject milk. There have been no studies of whether placentophagy provides hormonal effects in humans.\n",
"Some research has shown that ingestion of the placenta can increase the pain threshold in pregnant rats. Rats that consumed the placenta experienced a modest amount of elevation of naturally occurring opioid-mediated analgesia. Endogenous opioids, such as endorphin and dynorphin, are natural chemicals, related to the opium molecule, that are produced in the central nervous system. Production of these endogenous opioids is increased during the birthing process. They have the ability to raise the threshold of pain tolerance in the mother. When coupled with ingested placenta or amniotic fluid, the opioid effect on pain threshold is dramatically increased. Rats that were given meat instead of the placenta showed no increase in the pain threshold. There are no studies that show any benefits of placenta ingestions in humans. There have been no scientific studies which show that placentophagy enhances analgesia in humans or that it has any other benefits.\n",
"Human placentophagy, or consumption of the placenta, is defined as \"the ingestion of a human placenta postpartum, at any time, by any person, either in raw or altered (e.g., cooked, dried, steeped in liquid) form\". Numerous historical occurrences of placentophagy have been recorded throughout the world, whereas modern occurrences of placentophagy are rare since most contemporary societies do not promote its practice. Since the 1970s, however, consumption of the placenta believing that it has health benefits has been a growing practice among clients of midwives and alternative-health advocates in the U.S. and Mexico.\n",
"The following characteristics of placentas have been said to be associated with placental insufficiency, however all of them occur in normal healthy placentas and full term healthy births, so none of them can be used to accurately diagnose placental insufficiency:\n",
"Modern practice of placentophagy is rare, as most contemporary human cultures do not promote its consumption. Placentophagy did receive popular culture attention in 2012, however, when American actress January Jones credited eating her placenta as helping her get back to work on the set of \"Mad Men\" after just six weeks.\n"
] |
Why did Saudi Arabia back Communist South Yemen against the US backed Republic of Yemen in the 1994 Yemeni Civil War? | The Saudis had long backed and had long-standing connections with traditionalist forces in North Yemen. In the 1962-70 North Yemen Civil War (really a proxy war) they backed the Zaydi Shia Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen against the Egyptian-backed Yemen Arab Republic. The death of Nasser in 1970 helped bring an end to the hottest phase of the Arab Cold War and Saudi Arabia recognized the victorious Yemen Arab Republic and worked in coordination with various factions in North Yemen, preferring it over the Marxist South.
Yemen's unification in 1990 came at a precarious time. The overall Cold War was ending with a Soviet collapse and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait threatened to rip apart the Middle East. The president of the newly re-united Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, backed Saddam in sharp contrast to the rest of the Gulf States.
Partly as a result of that the GCC countries split from Saleh, and flirted with the secessionist movement in 1994. As it happened, the 1994 Civil War so brief that I'm not sure you should quite read into it the way the wording of your question suggests.
[Saleh claimed US support](_URL_2_) but it wasn't a major break from the rest of the US' GCC partners.
Saleh won so quickly that the war couldn't become the kind of protracted proxy conflict that characterized the North Yemen Civil war decades prior, or for that matter that characterizes the conflict in Syria today.
The other motivating issue that remains relevant are accusations that Saudi Arabia is concerned about the potential power of a united Yemen on its southern border. The population of Yemen is at least equal to Saudi Arabia, and that's only if you believe the official Saudi population figures, which are dubious and likely inflated.
You're not likely to find much in the way of concrete discussion/documentation of any of these factors from Saudi officials, however. Saudi Arabia remains one of the most opaque polities in the world, these Carnegie Endowment articles would be a good overview though:
_URL_0_
_URL_1_
| [
"Southern leaders, supported by the Saudis, declared secession and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Yemen (DRY) on May 21, 1994, but the Democratic Republic of Yemen was not recognized by the international community. Although the southerners had their own motives for fighting, northern leaders have long maintained that the Saudis supported the southern cause as a way of furthering their own border dispute with the Republic of Yemen. Ali Nasir Muhammad’s supporters greatly assisted military operations against the secessionists and Aden was captured on July 7, 1994. Other resistance quickly collapsed and thousands of southern leaders and military went into exile.\n",
"The Saudis' increase of oil production to stabilize the oil price and the support of anti-communism have all contributed to closer relations with the U.S. In January 1979, the U.S. sent F-15 fighters to Saudi Arabia for further protection from communism. Furthermore, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were both supporting anti-communist groups in Afghanistan and struggling countries, one of those groups later became known as the Al-Qaida terrorist organization.\n",
"During Yemen's 1994 civil war, the Wahhabis, an Islamic group adhering to a strict version of Sunni Islam found in neighboring Saudi Arabia, helped the government in its fight against the secessionist south. Zaidis complain the government has subsequently allowed the Wahhabis too strong a voice in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, for its part, worries that strife instigated by the Zaidi sect so close to Yemen's border with Saudi Arabia could stir up groups in Saudi Arabia itself.\n",
"Saudi Arabia and its oil policy are thought to have contributed to the downfall of Soviet Communism in the late 1980s and early 1990. Saudi helped to finance not just the Afghan Mujahideen but non-Muslims anti-communists. It also seriously harmed the Soviet Communist cause by stabilizing oil prices \"throughout the 1980s, just when the Russians were desperate to sell energy in order to keep up with huge hikes in American military spending.\"\n",
"Yemen has been called one of the major fronts in the conflict as a result of the revolution and subsequent civil war. Yemen had for years been within the Saudi sphere of influence. The decade-long Houthi insurgency in Yemen stoked tensions with Iran, with accusations of covert support for the rebels. A 2015 UN report alleged that Iran provided the Houthi rebels with money, training, and arms shipments beginning in 2009. However, the degree of support has been subject to debate, and accusations of greater involvement have been denied by Iran. The 2014–2015 coup d'état was viewed by Saudi leadership as an immediate threat, and as an opportunity for Iran to gain a foothold in the region. In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition of Arab states, including all GCC members except Oman, intervened and launched airstrikes and a ground offensive in the country, declaring the entire Saada Governorate a military target and imposing a naval blockade.\n",
"Simultaneously PRSY-Saudi relations had been incredibly tense, with Faisal of Saudi Arabia regarding the left-wing government with extreme hostility, which was in turn reciprocated by the PRSY, which supported the overthrow of the Gulf monarchies. The Saudi government went so far as to fund and arm South Yemeni dissidents, and encouraged them to conduct raids across the border into South Yemen. The PRSY accused the Saudi government of planning further attacks in November 1969.\n",
"The Federation of South Arabia and the Protectorate of South Arabia merged to become South Yemen on 30 November 1967 and became a Marxist socialist republic in 1970 supported by the Soviet Union. Despite its efforts to bring stability into the region, it was involved in a brief civil war in 1986. With the collapse of communism, South Yemen was unified with the Yemen Arab Republic (commonly known as \"North Yemen\") on 22 May 1990, to form the present-day Yemen. After four years, however, South Yemen declared its secession from the north, which resulted in the north occupying south Yemen and the 1994 civil war. Another attempt to restore South Yemen continues on since 2017.\n"
] |
how are asynchronous calls used? | Synchronous call - I'll drop you off at the store and wait her until you come back
Asynchronous call - I'll drop you off at the store and periodically check to see if you are done
Most calls are synchronous because the caller usually wants something right now and can't really proceed without it.
But if what the call is doing is low priority, can take a long time, or is outside the control of the system, asynchronous calls make more sense. The drawback is they require extra logic to periodically check to see if the call has completed, or if it fails to complete. | [
"In Windows, an asynchronous procedure call (abbreviated APC) is a function that executes asynchronously in the context of a specific thread. APCs can be generated by the system (kernel-mode APCs) or by an application (user mode APCs).\n",
"In multithreaded computer programming, asynchronous method invocation (AMI), also known as asynchronous method calls or the asynchronous pattern is a design pattern in which the call site is not blocked while waiting for the called code to finish. Instead, the calling thread is notified when the reply arrives. Polling for a reply is an undesired option.\n",
"Asynchronous systems provide a mechanism for submission and retrieval of messages, where the sender can send information whenever he likes and the recipient will only retrieve it and reply when he is available. This form of communication can be used to have a discussion or convey information about less urgent matters, since no answer is guaranteed promptly. It is useful in a distributed development process specially because most of the times the different teams working on a project don't do so simultaneously, and matters that are not urgent can be discussed asynchronously.\n",
"A common way for dealing with asynchrony in a programming interface is to provide subroutines (methods, functions) that return to their caller an object, sometimes called a future or promise, that represents the ongoing events. Such an object will then typically come with a synchronizing operation that blocks until the operation is completed. Some programming languages, such as Cilk, have special syntax for expressing an asynchronous procedure call.\n",
"Asynchronous procedure call is a unit of work in a computer. Usually a program works by executing a series of synchronous procedure calls on some thread. But if some data are not ready (for example, a program waits user to reply), then keeping thread in wait state is impractical, as a thread allocates considerable amount of memory for procedure stack, and this memory is not used. So such a procedure call is formed as an object with small amount of memory for input data, and this object is passed to the service which receive user inputs. When the user's reply is received, the service puts it in the object and passes that object to an execution service. Execution service consists of one or more dedicated worker threads and a queue for tasks. Each worker thread reads in a loop task queue and, when a task is retrieved, executes it. When there is no tasks, worker threads are waiting and so their memory is not used, but the number of worker threads is small enough (no sense to have more threads than there are processors on the machine).\n",
"In the example program only normal calls are used, so all the information will be on a single stack. For asynchronous calls, the stack would be split into multiple stacks so that the processes share data but run asynchronously.\n",
"Asynchronous communication is typically performed on channels. Communication is used both to synchronize operations of the concurrent system as well as to pass data. A simple channel typically consists of two wires: a request and an acknowledge. In a '4-phase handshaking protocol' (or return-to-zero), the request is asserted by the sender component, and the receiver responds by asserting the acknowledge; then both signals are de-asserted in turn. In a '2-phase handshaking protocol' (or transition-signalling), the requester simply toggles the value on the request wire (once), and the receiver responds by toggling the value on the acknowledge wire. Channels can also be extended to communicate data.\n"
] |
how when using a proxy such as tunnelbear, google maps can still pinpoint my correct location. | can't be sure of the exact method, but at the very least you can be sure that Google Maps was not relying on the IP address of your http request to determine your location. | [
"Location inference is the method of identifying the location profiles of users on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook from their message content, friends' network and social interaction even when they did not explicitly disclose such on their account profiles or geotag their messages.\n",
"Probably the most common use of map-matching is where a traveller has some mobile computer giving him or her directions across a street network. In order to give accurate directions, the device must know exactly where in the street network the user is. A GPS location has positional error though, so picking the nearest street segment and routing from there will likely not work. Instead, the history of locations reported by the GPS can be used to guess a plausible route and infer the current location more accurately.\n",
"Location finders often operate in conjunction with a well-known online map service, such as Google Maps, MapQuest, or Bing Maps, allowing the user to see on a map where the particular location is found on a map.\n",
"PlaceMap: is a freely available standalone Google Maps Packet sniffer application for Windows that captures network traffic and maps nodes to the Google Map. PlaceMap is a notable example of extensibility in that it uses exactly the same Google Map plugin that is also available for the Omnipeek, and is uses the peek driver API to capture packets.\n",
"As an alternative to the regular 'list view' of property results, users can also opt to see the search results plotted on Bing Maps (previously they used Google map) to allow users to look for property by location. (Some users are unimpressed with the lack of precision of the inferior Bing offering, which often manages to put the marker in a field, compared to the accuracy and ease of use of Googlemaps). Users are able to drag and zoom the map, with relevant properties automatically placed in view. It is also possible for users to draw a catchment area directly onto the map of where they would like to search.\n",
"The IETF has defined an architecture and protocols for acquiring location information from a LIS. A LIS in the immediate access network is automatically discovered and location information is retrieved using the HELD protocol. Location information can be retrieved directly—known as by value—or the LIS can generate a temporary URI that can be used to provide location indirectly—known as a location URI.\n",
"The Street View window of \"GeoGuessr\" does not provide any information beyond the street view images and a compass; things such as road signs, vegetation, businesses, climate, and landmarks have been suggested as some clues that may help the player determine their location. The player may also move about along the roads through the normal directional controls provided by Street View. Once the player is ready to guess the location, they will place a location marker on a zoomable Google Map. After the placed marker is submitted as a guess, \"GeoGuessr\" reveals the true geographic location and assigns the player a score depending on how far away the player's guess was from the true location. Scores range between 0 for a guess at an antipode and 5000 points if the guess is within about 150 meters of the correct location. A new location is then provided to the player, and the process repeats until the player has guessed five locations for a maximum of 25,000 possible points. Newer features include a variable time limit and grouped challenges, such as \"Famous Places\" or \"Sweden\".\n"
] |
Is there a physical reason for why some mental tasks require more effort? | The best why I can describe this is how a computer works. A computer processes data and displays that data on a screen. A single core computer is of like the windows 95 or 97 version. The more cores you have the better the computer processes data. This is kinda like what IQ means. IQ isn't how smart you are, it's how well you can process information. The Questions in an IQ test are to specifically to see what you can process and if you can come up with the right answer in a fast enough time. So basically some tasks require a deeper thinking. Those with high IQs can process high amounts of information or the core of a problem at a better rate than someone with a low IQ. Think of someone with mental disabilities. It takes them a while to do a simple task that would be a normal task for someone without those disabilities. | [
"A desirable difficulty is a learning task that requires a considerable but desirable amount of effort, thereby improving long-term performance. The term was first coined by Robert A. Bjork in 1994. As the name suggests, desirable difficulties should be both desirable and difficult. Research suggests that while difficult tasks might slow down learning initially, the long term benefits are greater than with easy tasks. However, to be desirable, the tasks must also be accomplishable.\n",
"Task difficulty is also suggested to precede high effort. The reasoning behind this claim is that high difficulty tasks evoke high effort exertion if the individual is motivated to succeed on the task. The study conducted by Fisher and Noble also supports this hypothesis, as a significant positive relationship between task difficulty and effort was found.\n",
"Tasks that require mental effort draw upon \"directed attention\". People must expend effort to achieve focus, to delay expression of inappropriate emotions or actions, and to inhibit distractions. That is, they must concentrate on the higher task, avoiding distractions. Performing the actual task also requires other knowledge and skills.\n",
"The theory that there are mental processes that act as justifications do not make behaviour more adaptive is criticized by some biologists who argue that the cost in nutrients for brain function selects against any brain mechanism that does not make behaviour more adapted to the environment. They argue that the cost in essential nutrients causes even more difficulty than the cost in calories, especially in social groups of many individuals needing the same scarce nutrients, which imposes substantial difficulty on feeding the group and lowers their potential size. These biologists argue that the evolution of argumentation was driven by the effectiveness of arguments on changing risk perception attitudes and life and death decisions to a more adaptive state, as \"luxury functions\" that did not enhance life and death survival would lose the evolutionary \"tug of war\" against the selection for nutritional thrift. While there have been claims of non-adaptive brain functions being selected by sexual selection, these biologists criticize any applicability to introspection illusion's causal theories because sexually selected traits are most disabling as a fitness signal during or after puberty but human brains require the highest amount of nutrients before puberty (enhancing the nerve connections in ways that make adult brains capable of faster and more nutrient-efficient firing).\n",
"BULLET::::- Activities usually requiring little mental effort can become challenging. Balancing one's checkbook, making a shopping list or making decisions about mundane tasks (such as deciding what errands need to be done) are often difficult.\n",
"There are limits to our working memory that in turn restrict our cognitive information processing capabilities. Performance deteriorates when these limits are exceeded. Because of these limits, performing two tasks at the same time or rapidly switching between two tasks results in decreased task performance in terms of accuracy and response time. These problems can be partially alleviated (but not eliminated) by practice and physical compatibility of the tasks being performed, but they increase with task complexity.\n",
"The reasons for these fine-tuned distinctions are several. First, people may not allocate all of the available resources to a task at hand because they are cognitive misers. Unless highly motivated, people tend to use as few resources as necessary. Thus, a distinction is made between total resources and allocated resources. Second, people will allocate resources only as required by the task. If people are watching a program they have seen before, fewer resources may be required because of the familiarity of the program. Conversely, if the production is such that the visual elements of the programming are important, then more resources may be required. In both cases, the same amount of resources may have been allocated to the TV program, but different amounts were actually used, leaving some allocated resources available in one case but not in another. Third, some elements in the environment will automatically draw resources. For example, formal features automatically attract attention (e.g., unrelated cuts), drawing required resources from the total pool of resources without conscious allocation of resources. In this case, the difference between the automatic attraction (i.e., required) of resources and the total resources leaves some remaining resources for allocation to other tasks.\n"
] |
- how does high octane fuel actually benefit a car in the real world? | Higher octane fuel is more stable at high temperatures and pressures than lower octane fuel. In an engine, there is a thing called 'Knocking' that can happen if you squeeze/heat fuel too much, and it's basically the fuel spontaneously combusting instead of being ignited by the spark plug.
Why is that a problem? Well in a diesel engine it isn't, because they are designed for it. A gasoline engine, however, is not built for it (literally: less metal, thinner walls, etc). When the fuel spontaneously combusts, two bad things can/do happen.
1. The explosion happens too soon, the piston is in the wrong position.
2. The explosion starts in the wrong spot, and so it puts stress on parts of the cylinder from directions they were not built to handle.
This can cause tremendous damage to an engine. Higher octane fuel prevents this premature detonation.
edit: The engineers know what your engine will do under normal operation. IF your engine says it needs 87 octane, you do NOT need higher octane fuel to prevent knocking unless you install a turbo or some other compression/temperature modification to the car. | [
"The octane rating of a given fuel is a measure of the fuel's resistance to self-ignition. A fuel with a higher numerical octane rating allows for a higher compression ratio, which extracts more energy from the fuel and more effectively converts that energy into useful work while at the same time preventing engine damage from pre-ignition. High Octane fuel is also more expensive.\n",
"The advantage of propane in cars is its liquid state at a moderate pressure. This allows fast refill times, affordable fuel cylinder construction, and price ranges typically just over half that of gasoline. Meanwhile, it is noticeably cleaner (both in handling, and in combustion), results in less engine wear (due to carbon deposits) without diluting engine oil (often extending oil-change intervals), and until recently was a relative bargain in North America. The octane rating of propane is relatively high at 110. In the United States the propane fueling infrastructure is the most developed of all alternative vehicle fuels. Many converted vehicles have provisions for topping off from \"barbecue bottles\". Purpose-built vehicles are often in commercially owned fleets, and have private fueling facilities. A further saving for propane fuel vehicle operators, especially in fleets, is that pilferage is much more difficult than with gasoline or diesel fuels.\n",
"Propane as an automotive fuel shares many of the physical attributes of gasoline while reducing tailpipe emissions and well to wheel emissions overall. Propane is the number one alternative fuel in the world and offers an abundance of supply, liquid storage at low pressure, an excellent safety record and large cost savings when compared to traditional fuels.\n",
"The power of the engine could also change according to the octane rating of the aviation fuel being used. Higher octane fuels allowed boost pressures to be increased without the risks of pre-ignition or knocking.\n",
"An octane rating, or octane number, is a standard measure of the performance of an engine or aviation fuel. The higher the octane number, the more compression the fuel can withstand before detonating (igniting). In broad terms, fuels with a higher octane rating are used in high-performance gasoline engines that require higher compression ratios. In contrast, fuels with lower octane numbers (but higher cetane numbers) are ideal for diesel engines, because diesel engines (also referred to as compression-ignition engines) do not compress the fuel, but rather compress only air and then inject fuel into the air which was heated by compression. Gasoline engines rely on ignition of air and fuel compressed together as a mixture, which is ignited at the end of the compression stroke using spark plugs. Therefore, high compressibility of the fuel matters mainly for gasoline engines. Use of gasoline with lower octane numbers may lead to the problem of engine knocking.\n",
"The other rarely-discussed reality with high-octane fuels associated with \"high performance\" is that as octane increases, the specific gravity and energy content of the fuel per unit of weight are reduced. The net result is that to make a given amount of power, more high-octane fuel must be burned in the engine. Lighter and \"thinner\" fuel also has a lower specific heat, so the practice of running an engine \"rich\" to use excess fuel to aid in cooling requires richer and richer mixtures as octane increases.\n",
"Using high octane gasoline fuel in a vehicle that does not need it is generally considered an unnecessary expense, although Toyota \"has\" measured slight differences in efficiency due to octane number even when knock is not an issue. All vehicles in the United States built since 1996 are equipped with OBD-II on-board diagnostics and most models will have knock sensors that will automatically adjust the timing if and when pinging is detected, so low octane fuel can be used in an engine designed for high octane, with some reduction in efficiency and performance. If the engine is designed for high octane then higher octane fuel will result in higher efficiency and performance under certain load and mixture conditions. The energy released during combustion of hydrocarbon fuel increases as the molecule chain length decreases, so gasoline fuels with higher ratios of the shorter chain alkanes such as heptane, hexane, pentane, etc. can be used under certain load conditions and combustion chamber geometries to increase engine output which can lead to lower fuel consumption, although these fuels will be more susceptible to predetonation ping in high compression ratio engines. Gasoline direct injection compression ignition engines make more efficient use of the higher combustion energy short chain hydrocarbons as the fuel is injected directly into the combustion chamber during high compression which auto-ignites the fuel, minimizing the amount of time that the fuel is available in the combustion chamber for predetonation.\n"
] |
What's causing the strange ice behavior in this video? | Hi there, since this is a crosspost linked to a very popular video on Reddit at the moment, I figured I should welcome some redditors unfamiliar with AskScience.
Welcome to AskScience! We have a few specific rules on this subreddit, you can find them on the sidebar that way --- >
In a nutshell, please do not respond with personal anecdotes or speculations. Please stay on topic, even though you might have a funny tangent to get that sweet sweet karma (you can post that [joke here instead](_URL_0_)!).
Thanks
AskScience Mod Team | [
"An ice hummock is a boss or rounded knoll of ice rising above the general level of an ice-field. Hummocky ice is caused by slow and unequal pressure in the main body of the packed ice, and by unequal structure and temperature at a later period.\n",
"The video for \"Ice\" consists mostly of two scenes. The first features a 2D cutout figured of Lights and two monsters. It shows Lights walking along a street texting her boyfriend sad faces and sorry notes. The monsters, one purple and one yellow, jump out of several cardboard boxes and begin chasing Lights who flees to her house. Her house is actually a mini-replica of the room shown in \"February Air\" and \"Drive My Soul\". The cutouts are all operated by Lights herself.\n",
"The video for \"Ice Princess\" was directed by duo WeWereMonkeys. It was released on March 31, 2015, via Banks' VEVO channel. The video depicts Banks as the frozen leader of a robotic ninja army, with snakes for hair, in the style of Greek mythology's Medusa. She leads her CGI army into battle with a volcano that produces multicolored clouds, that eventually end up destroying her. Reviews of the video were positive. Kate Beaudoin of \"Mic\" called the video \"epic\", while \"Daily Mail\"'s Jennifer Pearson called it \"spine-tingling\" and according to James Rettig from Stereogum, it's a \"slick\" music video. Banks initially caused controversy with promotion for the song, posting pictures of her in makeup for the video, claiming she was in whiteface, which caused outrage on the internet. However, Banks ultimately revealed that she was trolling the media, and the makeup was not finished, being applied for the music video for \"Ice Princess\". She later tweeted \"Lol u crackers wish I cared enough to be doing whiteface. I'm becoming the ICE PRINCESS YAAAAAAS\". \n",
"Directed by Gabriel Hart, the video was shot in Santa Monica, and several places in Los Angeles including Memorial Coliseum and at the Hollywood Sign. Ice Cube goes back in time in the Wild, Wild West times. The video features Ice Cube driving a Lowrider, while his sons Doughboy, O'Shea Jackson Jr., and WC make cameo appearances. The video has had over 10 million YouTube views.\n",
"Ice discs, ice circles, ice pans, or ice crepes are a natural phenomenon that occur in slow moving water in cold climates. They are thin circular slabs of ice that rotate slowly on a body of water's surface. \n",
"BULLET::::- The Ice Monster is a frighteningly large beast created from the combination of Frosty Freezy Freeze and Ice-Monster Bun Bun, in the pilot episode from Random! Cartoons. It reappears in \"Brain Freeze\" when Blue-Tonium and Radioactive Red Frosty Freezy Freeze combine.\n",
"The Minnesota Iceman is a sideshow exhibit and elaborate hoax that depicts a fake man-like creature frozen in a block of ice. It was displayed at shopping malls, state fairs, and carnivals in the United States and Canada in the 1960s and early 1970s and promoted as the \"missing link\" between man and Neanderthals. It was sold on eBay in 2013 and put on display in Austin, Texas.\n"
] |
let's say i have 10.000 dollars and wanna get into the stock market. what do i do? | Go to a quality site like _URL_0_, create a portfolio (used to be free, now it might require basic membership of around $7 a month, not sure), and set the parameters (such as how much the assumed cost is per transaction fee, account value, etc...)
Now, this imaginary portfolio will be tracked and charted as though it was real. Spend a few months learning about the stock market, and buying and selling the money in this portfolio as you think you should.
As you learn and develop new strategies, create new portfolios and test them in a the same fashion. After a few months, you can see EXACTLY how successful the different strategies were... review what worked and what didn't.
THEN, and only then, open a real account and put it on the line. I would recommend Scottrade.
If you figure out a formula that works, the HARDEST THING IN THE WORLD is to stick to it. Don't get greedy... it is easier than you think. Stick to your plan, or stop, scrap the plan in its entirety and re-evaluate before continuing.
SOURCE: Used to daytrade a LOT... as in, highest volume year had a 40 page transaction report on my tax return with almost $4 million in trades. | [
"\"My job is constant— like the stock market, I have to know value of how much people pay— Sweden, France. I know what he can make in MLS, China, Germany. I know that and I am up-to-date with the market. You have to know the world markets in terms of how much people earn and the values of certain players.\n",
"The Federal Trade Commission warns, \"It’s best not to get involved in plans where the money you make is based primarily on the number of distributors you recruit and your sales to them, rather than on your sales to people outside the plan who intend to use the products.\" It states that research is your best tool and gives eight steps to follow:\n",
"There are two ways to participate by calling the \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" 0900-900-1009 or sending a text message to your age, sex and identification number from any phone to the number 6724 and follow the instructions of the system. The call comes at a cost of 0.60 BSF BS or 595 plus the cost of local call and every text message will cost $0.50 F or 500 BS. Both options will be three questions, you have five seconds to answer correctly each and have the option to participate in \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.\"\n",
"First step: There are two ways to participate by calling the \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" 0900-900-1009 or sending a text message to your age, sex and identification number from any phone to the number 6724 and follow the instructions of the system. The call comes at a cost of 0.60 BSF BS or 595 plus the cost of local call and every text message will cost $0.50 F or 500 BS. Both options will be three questions, you have five seconds to answer correctly each and have the option to participate in \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.\"\n",
"If you do identify a security that's trading significantly above its fundamental value and if there are a set of representations made by a company which you find to be faulty, and that those representations impact the stock price, you will make money. If you have the sophistication to be able to trade, you will be able to make a substantial amount of money.\"\n",
"BULLET::::- \"Make 100 million first\" (先挣它一个亿) — During a 2016 interview, talk show host Chen Luyu asked Wanda Group chairman and Asia's richest man Wang Jianlin what his advice was for young people whose goal was to \"become the richest person,\" Wang responded, \"first, set a small goal. For instance, let's make one hundred million first.\" That Wang referred to an astronomical sum of money as a \"small goal\" was derided on social media, with many spoofs appearing parodying the phrase.\n",
"I admit I am a New Dealer, and if [the New Deal] takes money from the few who have controlled the country and gives it back to the average man, I am going to Washington to help the President work for the people of South Carolina and the country.\n"
] |
Tidal effect of the Moon on Earth in perspective.. | There are a couple of diagrams [here](_URL_0_) that illustrate the direction and *relative* magnitude of tidal acceleration over the surface of the earth.
Note that I would not describe this exactly as "the moon's gravity tugging on the Earth's surface water." This can at least potentially be misleading; for example, consider the example presented in the link above: what would be the effect on the tides of a *second* moon, on the opposite side of the earth (at the same distance)? Would the gravitational "tugging" of the two moons "cancel" the tides, or increase them? (Answer: the latter.)
| [
"In a like manner, the lunar surface experiences tides of around amplitude over 27 days, with two components: a fixed one due to Earth, because they are in synchronous rotation, and a varying component from the Sun. The Earth-induced component arises from libration, a result of the Moon's orbital eccentricity (if the Moon's orbit were perfectly circular, there would only be solar tides). Libration also changes the angle from which the Moon is seen, allowing a total of about 59% of its surface to be seen from Earth over time. The cumulative effects of stress built up by these tidal forces produces moonquakes. Moonquakes are much less common and weaker than are earthquakes, although moonquakes can last for up to an hour – significantly longer than terrestrial quakes – because of the absence of water to damp out the seismic vibrations. The existence of moonquakes was an unexpected discovery from seismometers placed on the Moon by Apollo astronauts from 1969 through 1972.\n",
"The theoretical amplitude of oceanic tides caused by the Moon is about at the highest point, which corresponds to the amplitude that would be reached if the ocean possessed a uniform depth, there were no landmasses, and the Earth were rotating in step with the Moon's orbit. The Sun similarly causes tides, of which the theoretical amplitude is about (46% of that of the Moon) with a cycle time of 12 hours. At spring tide the two effects add to each other to a theoretical level of , while at neap tide the theoretical level is reduced to . Since the orbits of the Earth about the Sun, and the Moon about the Earth, are elliptical, tidal amplitudes change somewhat as a result of the varying Earth–Sun and Earth–Moon distances. This causes a variation in the tidal force and theoretical amplitude of about ±18% for the Moon and ±5% for the Sun. If both the Sun and Moon were at their closest positions and aligned at new moon, the theoretical amplitude would reach .\n",
"The gravitational attraction that the Moon exerts on Earth is the cause of tides in the sea; the Sun has a smaller tidal influence. If Earth had a global ocean of uniform depth, the Moon would act to deform both the solid Earth (by a small amount) and the ocean in the shape of an ellipsoid with the high points roughly beneath the Moon and on the opposite side of Earth. However, because of the presence of the continents, Earth's much faster rotation and varying ocean depths, this simplistic visualisation does not happen. Although the tidal flow period is generally synchronized to the Moon's orbit around Earth, its relative timing varies greatly. In some places on Earth, there is only one high tide per day, whereas others such as Southampton have four, though this is somewhat rare.\n",
"It took some time for the astronomical community to accept the reality and the scale of tidal effects. But eventually it became clear that three effects are involved, when measured in terms of mean solar time. Beside the effects of perturbational changes in Earth's orbital eccentricity, as found by Laplace and corrected by Adams, there are two tidal effects (a combination first suggested by Emmanuel Liais). First there is a real retardation of the Moon's angular rate of orbital motion, due to tidal exchange of angular momentum between Earth and Moon. This increases the Moon's angular momentum around Earth (and moves the Moon to a higher orbit with a lower orbital speed). Secondly there is an apparent increase in the Moon's angular rate of orbital motion (when measured in terms of mean solar time). This arises from Earth's loss of angular momentum and the consequent increase in length of day.\n",
"The gravitational attraction between Earth and the Moon causes tides on Earth. The same effect on the Moon has led to its tidal locking: its rotation period is the same as the time it takes to orbit Earth. As a result, it always presents the same face to the planet. As the Moon orbits Earth, different parts of its face are illuminated by the Sun, leading to the lunar phases; the dark part of the face is separated from the light part by the solar terminator.\n",
"The effect of long-period tides on lunar orbit is a controversial topic, some literatures conclude the long-period tides accelerate the moon and slow down the earth. However Cheng found that dissipation of the long-period tides brakes the moon and actually accelerates the earth's rotation. To explain this, they assumed the earth's rotation depends not directly on the derivation of the forcing potential for the long period tides, so the form and period of the long-period constituents is independent of the rotation rate. For these constituents, the moon (or sun) can be thought of as orbiting a non-rotating earth in a plane with the appropriate inclination to the equator. Then the tidal \"bulge\" lags behind the orbiting moon thus decelerating it in its orbit (bringing it closer to the earth), and by angular momentum conservation, the earth's rotation must accelerate. But this argument is qualitative, and a quantitative resolution of the conflicting conclusions is still needed.\n",
"According to Lucio Russo, his arguments were probably related to the phenomenon of tides. Seleucus correctly theorized that tides were caused by the Moon, although he believed that the interaction was mediated by the Earth's atmosphere. He noted that the tides varied in time and strength in different parts of the world. According to Strabo (1.1.9), Seleucus was the first to state that the tides are due to the attraction of the Moon, and that the height of the tides depends on the Moon's position relative to the Sun.\n"
] |
can someone [eli5] all or at least most of ron paul's ideas? | In a nutshell, "Mind your own damned business." | [
"David Weigel of \"Reason\" reviewed the book favorably, comparing Paul's political ideas to those of fellow anti-war conservative Sen. Chuck Hagel. \"Paul has a grand unified theory to offer readers, knowing full well that he's opening minds, not programming them,\" Weigel wrote, adding that Paul \"offers readers, first and foremost, the lesson that 'leaders' and universally accepted concepts shouldn't be trusted. It is worried and informed neostructuralists who can change things, not historical 'great men.' If Ron Paul doesn't provide perfect solutions, he certainly provides a blueprint.\"\n",
"Paul traveled to Rome, Georgia and appeared at the downtown Holiday Inn in November 1987. During the appearance, he railed against the policies of Washington D.C., commenting that there was no difference between the two major parties, and that both supported \"intervention overseas, ... in our personal lives ... [and] in the marketplace.\" Paul went on to compare his Libertarian ideology to the mindset of the founding fathers. The next month, vice presidential nominee Andre Marrou traveled to Texas and discussed the Paul campaign's prospects. He opined that the ticket could possibly win 2 to 12 million votes in the following year's election, and that Paul might win if Jesse Jackson and Pat Robertson were selected as the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, respectively. He explained that America did not want a preacher as president. Since the chance that either of those candidates would be named as their party's representative seemed unlikely, by this point in the election one of the campaign's priorities was securing a place on the ballot, which they had done in 20 of the 50 states.\n",
"Ron Paul and Andre Marrou formed the ticket for the Libertarian Party. Their campaign called for the adoption of a global policy on military nonintervention, advocated an end to the federal government's involvement with education, and criticized Reagan's \"bailout\" of the Soviet Union. Paul was a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, first elected as a Republican from Texas in an April 1976 special election. He protested the War on Drugs in a letter to Drug Czar William Bennett.\n",
"The site was chosen by and for the large market of \"100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty\"; motivated followers of Paul have been estimated to number several hundred thousand, have had fundraising history that suggests \"seemingly bottomless bank accounts\", and appear not to be giving up in pursuing his campaign goals. Paulville has attracted mixed reviews. The alternative Seattle \"Stranger\" found it suitable for those who have \"the covenant of freedom espoused by Ron Paul guiding their every decision\". The Houston-based \"Lone Star Times\" referred to founding members as \"Paulvillains\" and as creating \"an insane asylum\", and presented diverse posts from forum members, while Philly.com and \"Reason\" anticipated other \"dusty exurbs\" named after presidential candidates, both citing \"Bidentown\" as an imaginary example. The \"Guardian\" expects shareholders to be interested in libertarian views like \"the right to wield semi-automatic weapons and the abolition of income tax\", and the \"Economist\" wonders whether the new town constitutes \"a framework for utopia, or just a hilarious catastrophe\".\n",
"Paul was critical of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, arguing that it sanctioned federal interference in the labor market and did not improve race relations. He once remarked: \"The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society\". Paul opposes affirmative action.\n",
"Paul is a quintessentially alienated character. With no interest in either politics or religion, and no particular ambition, he takes life as it comes. As he narrates his life in this book, he freely admits that memory is unreliable and he may not be telling us the truth.\n",
"In a 2009 column, Margolis stated that an American politician he very much admires is Ron Paul. Margolis wrote about Paul:I came to deeply respect and admire Paul's courage, honesty, and his refusal to accept special interest money ... In fact, Rep. Paul has been a model of the type of legislators envisaged by America's founding fathers: men of high moral standards and intellect dedicated to the nation's wellbeing. He reminds me in many ways of the fiercely upright senators of the early Roman Republic.\n"
] |
when a body of water reaches boiling temperature, why does it not all become steam at once? | _URL_0_
> Latent heat of vaporization.
It's generally accepted that water always boils when it reaches exactly 100 Celsius. This is not entirely the case, but we'll assume that it's true for the explanation since it illustrates the point.
Once water hits 100 degrees, all heat added to the system no longer raises its temperature; instead the extra energy allows water molecules to break free from the surface tension and escape into the atmosphere, even if the atmosphere is already saturated with water. This is what we characterize as the state change from liquid to gas.
This extra energy is not added symmetrically to the collection of liquid; rather, it's transferred as radiant or conducted heat from one or multiple directions. The thin layer of water closest to the heat source absorbs the energy and creates a localized state change into a gas, which can then be reabsorbed by the water and the energy distributed, or can rise as a bubble with more gaseous water and escape the liquid. The more energy you add at the boiling point, the more water that turns to a gas, and the more violent the boil. Convection then replenishes the water against the heat source, which absorbs sufficient heat to vaporize and the cycle continues.
If you have a sufficiently hot source and a sufficiently small amount of water, you can flash boil an entire collection of water, like if you throw a cup of water on a lava flow or hot fire - nearly all of the water vaporizes at once. However, this requires a great amount of surface area for the water to contact the heat source, and a very large heat differential between the two.
courtesy of /u/techadams | [
"Water and other homogeneous liquids can superheat when heated in a microwave oven in a container with a smooth surface. That is, the liquid reaches a temperature slightly above its normal boiling point without bubbles of vapour forming inside the liquid. The boiling process can start explosively when the liquid is disturbed, such as when the user takes hold of the container to remove it from the oven or while adding solid ingredients such as powdered creamer or sugar. This can result in spontaneous boiling (nucleation) which may be violent enough to eject the boiling liquid from the container and cause severe scalding.\n",
"In the case of evaporation of water to steam, the place occupied by water would be occupied by water vapor, which has a density vastly lower than that of liquid water (the exact number depends on pressure and temperature; at standard conditions, steam is about as dense as liquid water). Because of this lower density (of mass, and consequently of atom nuclei able to absorb neutrons), light water's neutron-absorption capability practically disappears when it boils. This allows more neutrons to fission more U-235 nuclei and thereby increase the reactor power, which leads to higher temperatures that boil even more water, creating a thermal feedback loop.\n",
"Boiling water is used as a method of making it potable by killing microbes that may be present. The sensitivity of different micro-organisms to heat varies, but if water is held at 70 °C (158 °F) for ten minutes, many organisms are killed, but some are more resistant to heat and require one minute at the boiling point of water.\n",
"A greater quantity of steam can be generated from a given quantity of water by superheating it. As the fire is burning at a much higher temperature than the saturated steam it produces, far more heat can be transferred to the once-formed steam by superheating it and turning the water droplets suspended therein into more steam and greatly reducing water consumption.\n",
"These effects are due to the reduction of thermal motion with cooling, which allows water molecules to form more hydrogen bonds that prevent the molecules from coming close to each other. While below 4 °C the breakage of hydrogen bonds due to heating allows water molecules to pack closer despite the increase in the thermal motion (which tends to expand a liquid), above 4 °C water expands as the temperature increases. Water near the boiling point is about 4% less dense than water at .\n",
"When water is boiled the result is saturated steam, also referred to as \"wet steam.\" Saturated steam, while mostly consisting of water vapor, carries some unevaporated water in the form of droplets. Saturated steam is useful for many purposes, such as cooking, heating and sanitation, but is not desirable when steam is expected to convey energy to machinery, such as a ship's propulsion system or the \"motion\" of a steam locomotive. This is because unavoidable temperature and/or pressure loss that occurs as steam travels from the boiler to the machinery will cause some condensation, resulting in liquid water being carried into the machinery. The water entrained in the steam may damage turbine blades or in the case of a reciprocating steam engine, may cause serious mechanical damage due to hydrostatic lock.\n",
"The traditional advice of boiling water for ten minutes is mainly for additional safety, since microbes start getting eliminated at temperatures greater than and bringing it to its boiling point is also a useful indication that can be seen without the help of a thermometer, and by this time, the water is disinfected. Though the boiling point decreases with increasing altitude, it is not enough to affect the disinfecting process.\n"
] |
How exactly does cartilage "join/stick" to bone? | Cartilage transition happens in 4 zones, with details [here](_URL_1_).
All parts of the cartilage is important for load distribution, but where a transition from cartilagenous histology to more bone-like histology appears at the *tidemark* zone. A really good picture of this can be found [here](_URL_0_) showing the transition from more pliant non-calcified cartilage to the hardened calcified cartilage. | [
"Osteons are components or principal structures of compact bone. During the formation of bone spicules, cytoplasmic processes from osteoblasts interconnect. This becomes the canaliculi of osteons. Since bone spicules tend to form around blood vessels, the perivascular space is greatly reduced as the bone continues to grow. When replacement to compact bone occurs, this blood vessel becomes the central canal of the osteon.\n",
"During fracture healing, cartilage is often formed and is called callus. This cartilage ultimately develops into new bone tissue through the process of endochondral ossification. Recently it has been shown that biomimetic bone like apatite inhibits formation of bone through endochondral ossification pathway via hyperstimulation of extracellular calcium sensing receptor (CaSR). \n",
"In long bones, bone tissue first appears in the diaphysis (middle of shaft). Chondrocytes multiply and form trebeculae. Cartilage is progressively eroded and replaced by hardened bone, extending towards the epiphysis. A perichondrium layer surrounding the cartilage forms the periosteum, which generates osteogenic cells that then go on to make a collar that encircles the outside of the bone and remodels the medullary cavity on the inside.\n",
"Cartilage is a resilient and smooth elastic tissue, a rubber-like padding that covers and protects the ends of long bones at the joints, and is a structural component of the rib cage, the ear, the nose, the bronchial tubes, the intervertebral discs, and many other body components. It is not as hard and rigid as bone, but it is much stiffer and much less flexible than muscle. The matrix of cartilage is made up of glycosaminoglycans, proteoglycans, collagen fibers and, sometimes, elastin.\n",
"BULLET::::- Cartilage – is a resilient and smooth elastic tissue, a rubber-like padding that covers and protects the ends of long bones at the joints, and is a structural component of the rib cage, the ear, the nose, the bronchial tubes, the intervertebral discs, and many other body components. It is not as hard and rigid as bone, but it is much stiffer and much less flexible than muscle.The matrix of cartilage is made up of chondrin.\n",
"Osteoclasts break down bone tissue, and along with osteoblasts and osteocytes form the structural components of bone. In the hollow within bones are many other cell types of the bone marrow. Components that are essential for osteoblast bone formation include mesenchymal stem cells (osteoblast precursor) and blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients for bone formation. Bone is a highly vascular tissue, and active formation of blood vessel cells, also from mesenchymal stem cells, is essential to support the metabolic activity of bone. The balance of bone formation and bone resorption tends to be negative with age, particularly in post-menopausal women, often leading to a loss of bone serious enough to cause fractures, which is called osteoporosis.\n",
"Osteoblasts separate bone from the extracellular fluid by tight junctions by regulated transport. Unlike in cartilage, phosphate and calcium cannot move in or out by passive diffusion, because the tight osteoblast junctions isolate the bone formation space. Calcium is transported across osteoblasts by facilitated transport (that is, by passive transporters, which do not pump calcium against a gradient). In contrast, phosphate is actively produced by a combination of secretion of phosphate-containing compounds, including ATP, and by phosphatases that cleave phosphate to create a high phosphate concentration at the mineralization front. Alkaline phosphatase is a membrane-anchored protein that is a characteristic marker expressed in large amounts at the apical (secretory) face of active osteoblasts.\n"
] |
when you drink a glass of water, how does it get around your body to become saliva or tears? | The water you drink travels through your digestive system to get absorbed by cells lining your small intestines and large intestines. These cells pass the water on into your bloodstream, and hence water circulates as blood around your body.
Blood vessels supply the cells in your body with water, oxygen, and other nutrients via diffusion and through other channels. These nutrients are essential for every cell in your body to perform their function
Similarly, cells in your lacrimal glands (which produce tears) and salivary glands (comprising submandibular, submental, and parotid glands) will use these nutrients as well, and they function to combine water with other substances to form tears and saliva respectively. | [
"The sodium ions in the ECF also play an important role in the movement of water from one body compartment to the other. When tears are secreted, or saliva is formed, sodium ions are pumped from the ECF into the ducts in which these fluids are formed and collected. The water content of these solutions results from the fact water follows the sodium ions (and accompanying anions) osmotically. The same principle applies to the formation of many other body fluids.\n",
"The phenomenon called tears of wine is manifested as a ring of clear liquid, near the top of a glass of wine, from which droplets continuously form and drop back into the wine. It is most readily observed in a wine which has a high alcohol content. It is also referred to as wine legs, \"fingers\", curtains, or church windows.\n",
"BULLET::::- Legs: The tracks of liquid that cling to the sides of a glass after the contents have been swirled. Often said to be related to the alcohol or glycerol content of a wine. Also called \"tears\".\n",
"Tears are produced by the lacrimal gland, situated just outside the eye. Blinking the eyelids distributes the tears to keep the eyes moist, clean and lubricated. Excess tears are drained via the punctum through the tiny channels called canaliculi located on the inner side of the eyes into the tear sac, from there to the tear duct, the nose and finally down the throat.\n",
"The lacrimal system is made up of a secretory system, which produces tears, and an excretory system, which drains the tears. The lacrimal gland is primarily responsible for producing emotional or reflexive tears. As tears are produced, some fluid evaporates between blinks, and some is drained through the lacrimal punctum. The tears that are drained through the punctum will eventually be drained through the nose. Any excess fluid that did not go into the punctum will fall over the eyelid, which produces tears that are cried.\n",
"As an example, wine may exhibit a visible effect called \"tears\", as shown in the photograph. The effect is a consequence of the fact that alcohol has a lower surface tension and higher volatility than water. The water/alcohol solution rises up the surface of the glass due to capillary action. Alcohol evaporates from the film leaving behind liquid with a higher surface tension (more water, less alcohol). This region with a lower concentration of alcohol (greater surface tension) pulls on the surrounding fluid more strongly than the regions with a higher alcohol concentration (lower in the glass). The result is the liquid is pulled up until its own weight exceeds the force of the effect, and the liquid drips back down the vessel's walls. This can also be easily demonstrated by spreading a thin film of water on a smooth surface and then allowing a drop of alcohol to fall on the center of the film. The liquid will rush out of the region where the drop of alcohol fell.\n",
"When a liquid enters a human mouth, the swallowing process is completed by peristalsis which delivers the liquid to the stomach; much of the activity is abetted by gravity. The liquid may be poured from the hands or drinkware may be used as vessels. Drinking can also be performed by acts of inhalation, typically when imbibing hot liquids or drinking from a spoon. Infants employ a method of suction wherein the lips are pressed tight around a source, as in breastfeeding: a combination of breath and tongue movement creates a vacuum which draws in liquid. \n"
] |
why are human penises so long compared to most other primate penises? | There's a very interesting theory about this, called the sperm (or semen) displacement theory. It goes a little something like this.
Way back when, humans, and in particular, human males, weren't so much into the pair-bonding thing, and women regularly had sex with multiple men. This meant that the sperm in the woman's vagina (which can live for a few days) wasn't necessarily 100% yours. Larger penises with coronal ridges (that is, a long shaft with a slightly wider head) created a "vacuum scraper" that essentially allowed the most recent male mate to scrape away the semen from the previous mate. Larger penises achieved this more effectively than smaller penises, giving them the selective advantage necessary to become a relatively common trait among human males. | [
"The human penis is thicker than that of any other primate, both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of the body. Early research, based on inaccurate measurements, concluded that the human penis was also longer. In fact, the penis of the common chimpanzee is no shorter than in humans, averaging 14.4 cm (5.7 inches), and some other primates have comparable penis sizes relative to their body weight.\n",
"\"Homo\" has a thicker penis than the other great apes, though it is on average no longer than the chimpanzee's. It has been suggested the evolution of the human penis towards larger size was the result of female choice rather than sperm competition, which generally favors large testicles. However, penis size may have been subject to natural selection, rather than sexual selection, due to a larger penis' efficiency in displacing the sperm of rival males during sexual intercourse. A model study showed displacement of semen was directly proportional to the depth of pelvic thrusting, as an efficient semen displacement device.\n",
"The human penis differs from those of most other mammals, as it has no baculum (or erectile bone) and instead relies entirely on engorgement with blood to reach its erect state. A distal ligament buttresses the glans penis and plays an integral role to the penile fibroskeleton, and the structure is called \"os analog,\" a term coined by Geng Long Hsu in the Encyclopedia of Reproduction. It is a remnant of baculum evolved likely due to change in mating practice. \n",
"Several features of the anatomy of the human penis are proposed to serve as adaptations to sperm competition, including the length of the penis and the shape of the penile head. By weight, the relative penis size of human males is similar to that of chimpanzees, although the overall length of the human penis is the largest among primates. It has been suggested by some authors that penis size is constrained by the size of the female reproductive tract (which, in turn is likely constrained by the availability of space in the female body), and that longer penises may have an advantage in depositing semen closer to the female cervix. Other studies have suggested that over our evolutionary history, the penis would have been conspicuous without clothing, and may have evolved its increased size due to female preference for longer penises.\n",
"Among vertebrates, penises can be found in a variety of shapes, sizes and structures, such as the lymphatic erection mechanism of ratites and the single vascular erectile body of turtles. One of the most similar organs to the squamata hemipenes, however, is the four-headed penis of echidnas. One of the most primitive mammals in the world, echidnas possess internal testes like squamata and similarly alternate usage of sides. Unlike squamata, however, their singular penis is four-headed.\n",
"Morris said that \"Homo sapiens\" not only have the largest brains of all higher primates, but that sexual selection in human evolution has caused humans to have the highest ratio of penis size to body mass. Morris conjectured that human ear-lobes developed as an additional erogenous zone to facilitate the extended sexuality necessary in the evolution of human monogamous pair bonding. Morris further stated that the more rounded shape of human female breasts means they are mainly a sexual signalling device rather than simply for providing milk for infants. \n",
"The most accurate measurement of the size of a human penis can be derived from several readings at different times since there is natural minor variability in size depending upon arousal level, time of day, room temperature, frequency of sexual activity, and reliability of measurement. When compared to other primates, including large examples such as the gorilla, the human penis is thickest, both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of the body.\n"
] |
if i drive at a constant speed up and over a hill, coasting down the other side, will the extra fuel i consume on the way up be equal to the fuel i'll save on the way back down? | No. You'll burn extra fuel getting up the hill, but you won't save that much going down the other side, because your engine will be (at least) idling, which consumes some fuel. | [
"Fuel economy-maximizing behaviors also help reduce fuel consumption. Among the most effective are moderate (as opposed to aggressive) driving, driving at lower speeds, using cruise control, and turning off a vehicle's engine at stops rather than idling. A vehicle's gas mileage decreases rapidly with increasing highway speeds, normally above 55 miles per hour (though the exact number varies by vehicle), because aerodynamic forces are proportionally related to the square of an object's speed (when the speed is doubled, drag quadruples). According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as a rule of thumb, each one drives over is similar to paying an additional $0.30 per gallon for gas. The exact speed at which a vehicle achieves its highest efficiency varies based on the vehicle's drag coefficient, frontal area, surrounding air speed, and the efficiency and gearing of a vehicle's drive train and transmission.\n",
"Consider the case of a vehicle that starts at rest and coasts down a mountain road, the work-energy principle helps compute the minimum distance that the vehicle travels to reach a velocity \"V\", of say 60 mph (88 fps). Rolling resistance and air drag will slow the vehicle down so the actual distance will be greater than if these forces are neglected.\n",
"Note: The engine unit increased the weight of a cycle by 35 lb. It was claimed that it would propel a bicycle at speeds from 3 mph to 20 mph and that a 100-mile journey could be completed on a full tank of fuel.\n",
"As fuel efficiency rises, people may drive their cars more, which can mitigate some of fuel savings and the decrease in carbon dioxide emissions from the higher standards. According to the National Academies Report (Page 19) a 10% improvement in fuel efficiency leads to an average increase in travel distance of 1–2%. This phenomenon is referred to as the \"rebound effect\". The report stated (page 20) that the fuel efficiency improvements of light-duty vehicles have reduced the overall U.S. emissions of CO2 by 7%.\n",
"This is necessary to run at extremely lean air-fuel ratios around 20 to 40:1 at certain engine load and revs. Not surprisingly, fuel consumption is reduced by around 20 percent (when tested in the Japanese 10/15 urban mode).\n",
"Generally, fuel efficiency is maximized when acceleration and braking are minimized. So a fuel-efficient strategy is to anticipate what is happening ahead, and drive in such a way so as to minimize acceleration and braking, and maximize coasting time.\n",
"The difficult journey increased fuel consumption to an average of 13.75 litres per 100 km. On the harshest section, which took him south to Gao, consumption rose to 18 litres per 100 km. But the car remained reliable and completed the journey without a breakdown.\n"
] |
us school system from 0 to phd. (details in post) | 0-4ish: pre-school, this is optional but is correlated with higher socioeconomic status and attending is shown to be a good predictor of future success.
5-11: kingergarten (grade 0) and grades 1-6, this is called elementary or primary school.
12-13: middle school, or junior high school. grades 7-8
14-17: high school or senior high school, grades 9-12, with years referred to as freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. These schools are separated differently depending on the school districts. My schooling has grades 0-6 in one school and 7-12 in another school. This is compulsory until the age of 16.
18+ is university, which typically starts with about 4 years of an undergraduate program, and usually culminates with a bachelor of science or a bachelor of arts, but there are also other programs, such as 5 year engineering programs which end with a masters, or other vocational programs like nursing, etc. Some people decided to go to community college first, which are typically local to each county, and have 2-year programs that reward an associates degree, which can later be applied to the first two years of a 4-year program at a university. Community colleges also have vocational programs like the trades (carpentry, electrician, mechanic), and may have other programs like nursing.
After you have a 4-year degree, you can choose to pursue higher (postgraduate) education. Most masters and doctorate programs are examples of postgraduate education.
In the sciences, most candidates pursuing PhDs are fully funded by their university, and some receive a Masters degree along the way. PhD programs typically take about six years and must include original research.
In engineering or the liberal arts, you can go for a masters or PhD but these programs are less likely to be funded. A masters usually takes 2-3 years.
There are also the professions, such as medicine, dentistry, and law, which have their own separate schools and processes, but are still likely to be part of the major universities. These programs are all very expensive, and can be extremely competitive to get into. A typical MD will graduate with $250,000 in debt. | [
"All schools offer undergraduate degrees at the level of Licenciatura (5 years) and graduate degrees at the level of master's degree (2 years) and PhD (3–4 years) from the Graduate School. The Graduate School, founded in 1941, offers 222 different specializations, 109 Master's degrees and 40 PhDs.\n",
"The United States Department of Education published a \"Structure of US Education\" in 2008 that differentiated between associate degrees, bachelor's degrees, first professional degrees, master's degrees, intermediate graduate qualifications and research doctorate degrees. This included doctoral degrees in the \"first professional degree\", \"intermediate graduate qualification\" and \"research doctorate degree\" categories.\n",
"Established in 1887, the Graduate School has around 2,000 students studying over 50 disciplines. 20 different master's degrees are offered as well as Ph.D. degrees in over 40 subjects ranging from applied mathematics to public policy. Overall, admission to the Graduate School is most competitive with an acceptance rate of about 10 percent.\n",
"Graduate-level degrees offered through the Graduate School include the Master of Industrial and Labor Relations (MILR), the dual MILR/Master of Business Administration (MBA) (joint with the Johnson School), the Master of Professional Studies (MPS), the Executive Master of Human Resource Management, and the M.S./Ph.D.\n",
"There are four elementary schools (K-5), one middle school (6-8) and one high school (9-12) which are fully accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. The professional staff has an average of 16 years teaching experience and approximately 85 percent hold advanced degrees.\n",
"The coursework for an Ed.S. or Sp.A. in Education program is approximately the same workload as a second Master's in terms of credits. But whereas coursework for the initial Master's degree is from the introductory and lower intermediate levels of graduate study (e.g. Levels 500 and 600 at institutions that use 100 - 900 level course numbering systems), work for the Specialist's degree will be in the intermediate and upper levels (e.g. 600, 700 and 800 level courses). According to the U.S. Department of Education's International Affairs Office's leaflet, entitled, \"Structure of the U.S. Education System: Intermediate Graduate Qualifications,\" (Feb 2008), the Ed.S., as a degree, is equivalent to the D.Min. or Psy.D. / D.Psy. This reflects the degree's origin as an alternate to professional doctorates.\n",
"The Graduate School was created in 1971, initiating its academic activities with the programs of doctorate and masters in Education. The master's degree in Psychology and Philosophy were created in 1988, and the doctorate in Psychology in 1994. Subsequently, created the master's degree in Civil Law and Nutrition and Dietetics.\n"
] |
differences between summer seasons on the north and south hemispheres | you seem to be confused - the days do not get longer at just one end of the day. both sunrise and sunset get earlier and later at roughly an equal rate. the closer you are to the poles, the more drastically they change, and the closer you are to the equator the less they change.
the graphs below help demonstrate this. go to the link, and slide your mouse along the big blue graph with the red line. underneath you will see the sunrise and sunset times growing and shrinking together. (those jumps near the beginning and end is when daylight savings comes in). i chose london and melbourne as the cities to use as examples, both relatively far north and south respectively.
_URL_1_
_URL_0_ | [
"Where a seasonal lag of half a season or more is common, reckoning based on astronomical markers is shifted half a season. By this method, in North America, summer is the period from the summer solstice (usually 20 or 21 June in the Northern Hemisphere) to the autumn equinox.\n",
"Summer is the hottest of the four temperate seasons, falling after spring and before autumn. At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights are shortest, with day length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice. The date of the beginning of summer varies according to climate, tradition, and culture. When it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa.\n",
"Seasons result from the tilt of the Earth's axis compared to the plane of its revolution around the Sun. Throughout the year the northern and southern hemispheres are alternately turned either toward or away from the sun depending on Earth's position in its orbit. The hemisphere turned toward the sun receives more sunlight and is in summer, while the other hemisphere receives less sun and is in winter (see solstice).\n",
"The summer solstice occurs during summer. This is the June solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and the December solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. Depending on the shift of the calendar, the summer solstice occurs sometime between June 20 and June 22 in the Northern Hemisphere and between December 20 and December 23 in the Southern Hemisphere. The same dates in the opposite hemisphere are referred to as the winter solstice. \n",
"The summer solstice (or estival solstice), also known as midsummer, occurs when one of the Earth's poles has its maximum tilt toward the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the summer solstice is when the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky and is the day with the longest period of daylight. Within the Arctic circle (for the northern hemisphere) or Antarctic circle (for the southern hemisphere), there is continuous daylight around the summer solstice. On the summer solstice, Earth's maximum axial tilt toward the Sun is 23.44°. Likewise, the Sun's declination from the celestial equator is 23.44°.\n",
"In practical terms, this means that summers and winters have different lengths and intensities in the northern and southern hemispheres. Winters in the north are warm and short (because Mars is moving fast near its perihelion), while winters in the south are long and cold (Mars is moving slowly near aphelion). Similarly, summers in the north are long and cool, while summers in the south are short and hot. Therefore, extremes of temperature are considerably wider in the southern hemisphere than in the north.\n",
"Regardless of the time of year, the northern and southern hemispheres always experience opposite seasons. This is because during summer or winter, one part of the planet is more directly exposed to the rays of the Sun (see \"Fig. 1\") than the other, and this exposure alternates as the Earth revolves in its orbit. For approximately half of the year (from around March 20 to around September 22), the Northern Hemisphere tips toward the Sun, with the maximum amount occurring on about June 21. For the other half of the year, the same happens, but in the Southern Hemisphere instead of the Northern, with the maximum around December 21. The two instants when the Sun is directly overhead at the Equator are the equinoxes. Also at that moment, both the North Pole and the South Pole of the Earth are just on the terminator, and hence day and night are equally divided between the two hemispheres. Around the March equinox, the Northern Hemisphere will be experiencing spring as the hours of daylight increase, and the Southern Hemisphere is experiencing autumn as daylight hours shorten.\n"
] |
Who/what have been the biggest and most interesting gangs in history? | It you'd classify them as a "gang" (I would) Blackbeard's pirates are interesting. | [
"A number of gangs have gained notoriety in the course of history, including the Italian Mafia, the Russian mafia, the Irish mob, the Polish mob, the Jewish mob, the Albanian mafia, the Yakuza in Japan, the Kkangpae in Korea, the Triads in China, the gangs of New England, the Jamaican Shower Posse and Yardies, the African-American Gangster Disciples, Bloods, Crips, Vice Lords, Black P Stones, and Four Corner Hustlers Latino gangs such as the Latin Kings, MS-13, Norteños, Sureños, and Trinitarios, white supremacist gangs such as the Aryan Brotherhood, Aryan Nations and biker gangs like Hells Angels.\n",
"A wide variety of gangs, such as the Order of Assassins, the Damned Crew, Adam the Leper's gang, Penny Mobs, Indian Thugs, Chinese Triads, Snakehead, Japanese Yakuza, Irish mob, Pancho Villa's Villistas, Dead Rabbits, American Old West outlaw gangs, Bowery Boys, Chasers, the Italian Mafia, Jewish mafia, and Russian mafia have existed for centuries.\n",
"Five major heavily active mafia-like organizations are known to exist in Italy. Among the oldest and most powerful of these organizations, having started to develop between 1500 and 1800, include: Cosa Nostra (the original \"Mafia\" or the Sicilian Mafia) of Sicily; 'Ndrangheta of Calabria (who are considered to be among the biggest cocaine smugglers in Europe); and Camorra of Naples. The remainder of the five most powerful are two organizations created in the 20th century: Stidda of Sicily and Sacra Corona Unita of Apulia.\n",
"The most infamous gangs formed in the city in the mid-1980s; the Glenn Metz Gang was the biggest most notorious. Other gangs like the \"Scully\" Clay Gang and Pena Gang were also active during the 1980s and 1990s. \n",
"Vincenzo \"the Tiger of Harlem\" Terranova (May 1886 – May 8, 1922) was a gangster and an early Italian-American organized crime figure in the United States. He served as boss and underboss of the Morello crime family, today known as the Genovese crime family, the oldest of the Five Families in New York City.\n",
"During the 1870s, the gang would include some of the most notorious gangsters of the era, including Red Rocks Farrell, Clops Connolly, \"Big\" Josh Hines, Hoggy Walsh, Piker Ryan, Dorsey Doyle, Bull Hurley, Fig McGerald, and Googy Corcoran.\n",
"Sources vary as to the size of the gang. One gang member said it had 10 core members to and 20 to 30 peripheral members. Another survey said that like smaller gangs like the Green Dragons, Taiwan Brotherhood and Golden Star appear to have a maximum of 20 core members and 50 peripheral members. What is known for sure for is that membership of the gang was regular to other gangs of the time in Flushing Queens compared to the larger gangs of Mahanttan like the Ghost Shadows and Flying Dragons which had 100 core members and 200 peripheral members. Another survey said that they are like smaller gangs of the time like the Green Dragons, Taiwan Brotherhood and Golden Star appear to have a maximum of 20 core members and 50 peripheral members.\n"
] |
regarding numbers, if i have an infinite decimal such as .999999.... is it the same as 1 because it infinitely approaches 1? | I think the easiest way to explain it is: 1/9 = 0.111..., and 9 x 0.111... would be 0.999... for the same reason that 4 x 111 = 444. So we have 9 x 1/9 = 0.999..., and 9 x 1/9 = 9/9 = 1. So we have 1 = 0.999... | [
"Some proofs that 0.999... = 1 rely on the Archimedean property of the real numbers: that there are no nonzero infinitesimals. Specifically, the difference 1 − 0.999... must be smaller than any positive rational number, so it must be an infinitesimal; but since the reals do not contain nonzero infinitesimals, the difference is therefore zero, and therefore the two values are the same.\n",
"The result that 0.999... = 1 generalizes readily in two ways. First, every nonzero number with a finite decimal notation (equivalently, endless trailing 0s) has a counterpart with trailing 9s. For example, 0.24999... equals 0.25, exactly as in the special case considered. These numbers are exactly the decimal fractions, and they are dense.\n",
"In mathematics, 0.999... (also written 0., among other ways) denotes the repeating decimal consisting of infinitely many 9s after the decimal point (and one 0 before it). This repeating decimal represents the smallest number no less than every decimal number in the sequence (0.9, 0.99, 0.999, ...). This number is equal to 1. In other words, \"0.999...\" and \"1\" represent the same number. There are many ways of showing this equality, from intuitive arguments to mathematically rigorous proofs. The technique used depends on the target audience, background assumptions, historical context, and preferred development of the real numbers, the system within which 0.999... is commonly defined. (In other systems, 0.999... can have the same meaning, a different definition, or be undefined.)\n",
"The standard definition of the number 0.999... is the limit of the sequence 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, ... A different definition involves what Terry Tao refers to as \"ultralimit\", i.e., the equivalence class [(0.9, 0.99, 0.999, ...)] of this sequence in the ultrapower construction, which is a number that falls short of 1 by an infinitesimal amount. More generally, the hyperreal number with last digit 9 at infinite hypernatural rank \"H\", satisfies a strict inequality Accordingly, an alternative interpretation for \"zero followed by infinitely many 9s\" could be\n",
"First, Richman defines a nonnegative \"decimal number\" to be a literal decimal expansion. He defines the lexicographical order and an addition operation, noting that 0.999... 1 simply because 0 1 in the ones place, but for any nonterminating \"x\", one has 0.999... + \"x\" = 1 + \"x\". So one peculiarity of the decimal numbers is that addition cannot always be cancelled; another is that no decimal number corresponds to . After defining multiplication, the decimal numbers form a positive, totally ordered, commutative semiring.\n",
"It has been conjectured that there are only a finite number of numbers with only digits in the 2-9 interval whose multiplicative digital root is not 0; the largest of these is 77,333,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222,222 (44 digits.)\n",
"As a final extension, since 0.999... = 1 (in the reals) and ...999 = −1 (in the 10-adics), then by \"blind faith and unabashed juggling of symbols\" one may add the two equations and arrive at ...999.999... = 0. This equation does not make sense either as a 10-adic expansion or an ordinary decimal expansion, but it turns out to be meaningful and true if one develops a theory of \"double-decimals\" with eventually repeating left ends to represent a familiar system: the real numbers.\n"
] |
what's with all the smoke or steam that comes out of the street in big cities, primarily new york? | It's steam and it's most likely blowoff from the steam heating system. Power plants generate excess steam and instead of dumping it into the air, they pipe it all over the city to heat buildings. | [
"Outside of the imposing free-standing stone building, a coin-operated \"steampunk\" engine greets visitors, complete with lights, engine and train while noises, and fire breathing out of its chimney. The building's exterior walls are decorated with creations such as giant flies made from metal and industrial parts.\n",
"The New York City steam systems include Con Edison’s Steam Operations, and other smaller steam systems that provide steam to New York University and Columbia University. Many individual buildings in New York have their own steam systems.\n",
"In the wake of the 2007 New York City steam explosion Ascher was quoted by several media outlets on the history and nature of utility steam use. \"We are an older city with infrastructure that was sophisticated in its time,\" she told the New York Sun. \"In any one of those systems, there is older pipe and newer pipe.\"\n",
"Con Edison’s Steam Operations is a district heating system which takes steam produced by steam generating stations and carries it under the streets of Manhattan to heat and cool high rise buildings and businesses. Some New York businesses and facilities also use the steam for cleaning and disinfection.\n",
"BULLET::::- The London \"pea-soupers\" earned the capital the nickname of \"The Smoke\". Similarly, Edinburgh was known as \"Auld Reekie\". The smogs feature in many London novels as a motif indicating hidden danger or a mystery, perhaps most overtly in Margery Allingham's \"The Tiger in the Smoke\" (1952), but also in Dickens's \"Bleak House\" (1852) and T.S. Eliot's \"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\".\n",
"At least 12 steam pipe explosions have occurred in New York City since 1987. The most recent incident was the 2018 Steam Pipe explosion which occurred in the Flatiron District and forced the evacuation of 49 buildings. The explosion released concrete, asphalt, \"asbestos-containing material\" and mud into the air. The asbestos cleared out of the air to safe-level. A previous incident was the 2007 New York City steam explosion, and another on June 28, 1996, at a plant on East 75th Street.\n",
"One of the most significant steam explosions in New York City occurred near Gramercy Park in 1989, killing two Consolidated Edison workers and one bystander, and causing damage of several million dollars to area buildings.\n"
] |
What influence did the Iroquois Confederacy, Pre-Kings Israel, and other non-Hellenstic precedent have on the forming of the U.S. Constitution? | I'm probably going to offend you in saying this, but this sounds a *lot* like a homework question. If so, we can provide you with good sources, but we can't answer it for you. | [
"In the 20th century, some writers have credited the Iroquois nations' political confederacy and democratic government as being influences for the development of the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. In October 1988, the U.S. Congress passed Concurrent Resolution 331 to recognize the influence of the Iroquois Constitution upon the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.\n",
"The Iroquois League of Nations or \"People of the Long House\", based in present-day upstate and western New York, had a confederacy model from the mid-15th century. It has been suggested that their culture contributed to political thinking during the development of the later United States government. Their system of affiliation was a kind of federation, different from the strong, centralized European monarchies. \n",
"The Iroquois League of Nations or \"People of the Long House\", based in present-day upstate and western New York, had a confederacy model from the mid-15th century. It has been suggested that their culture contributed to political thinking during the development of the later United States government. Their system of affiliation was a kind of federation, different from the strong, centralized European monarchies.\n",
"The five nations of the Iroquois League developed a powerful confederacy about the 15th century that controlled territory throughout present-day New York, into Pennsylvania and around the Great Lakes. The Iroquois confederacy or Haudenosaunee became the most powerful political grouping in the Northeastern woodlands, and still exists today. The confederacy consists of the Mohawk, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora tribes.\n",
"Historians in the 20th century have suggested the Iroquois system of government influenced the development of the United States's government, although the extent and nature of this influence has been disputed. Contact between the leaders of the English colonists and the Iroquois started with efforts to form an alliance via the use of treaty councils. Prominent individuals such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were often in attendance. Bruce Johansen proposes that the Iroquois had a representative form of government. The Six Nations' governing committee was elected by the men and women of the tribe, one member from each of the six nations. Giving each member the same amount of authority in the council ensured no man received too much power, providing some of the same effect as the United States's future system of checks and balances.\n",
"The Iroquois influence extended from northern New York into what are now southern Ontario and the Montreal area of modern Quebec. The Iroquois Confederacy is, from oral tradition, formed circa 1142. Adept at cultivating Three Sisters (maize/beans/squash), the Iroquois became powerful because of their confederacy. Gradually the Algonquians adopted agricultural practises enabling larger populations to be sustained.\n",
"BULLET::::- Iroquois Culture: The Iroquois League of Nations or \"People of the Long House\", based in present-day upstate and western New York, had a confederacy model from the mid-15th century. It has been suggested that their culture contributed to political thinking during the development of the later United States government. Their system of affiliation was a kind of federation, different from the strong, centralized European monarchies.\n"
] |
why is happening psychologically in a murder suicide when the victims are not even people the killer knows? why would somebody who intends to take their own life want to kill others before doing so? | Typically such a person believes he has been treated unjustly by society, so he is striking back at society in general -- which includes basically everyone.
_URL_0_ | [
"A murder–suicide is an act in which an individual kills one or more people before (or while) killing oneself. The combination of murder and suicide can take various forms, often linked to the first form:\n",
"There are two broad categories of \"suicide by cop\". The first is when someone has committed a crime and is being pursued by the police and decides that they would rather die than be arrested. These people may not otherwise be suicidal but may simply decide that life is not worth living if they are incarcerated and thus will provoke police to kill them. The second version involves people who are already contemplating suicide and who decide that provoking law enforcement into killing them is the best way to act on their desires. These individuals may commit a crime with the specific intention of provoking a law enforcement response.\n",
"According to the psychiatrist Karl A. Menninger, murder and suicide are interchangeable acts – suicide sometimes forestalling murder, and vice versa. Following Freudian logic, severe repression of natural instincts due to early childhood abuse, may lead the death instinct to emerge in a twisted form. The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, whose theories on the human notion of death is strongly influenced by Freud, views the fear of death as a universal phenomenon, a fear repressed in the unconscious and of which people are largely unaware. \n",
"This often occurs as part of a murder or voluntary manslaughter. In other cases, an individual who did not intend to cause death may still feel guilt about a death (e.g. by involuntary manslaughter or an accident) and may attempt to prevent discovery of the body. This can exacerbate any legal consequences associated with the death.\n",
"Many spree killings have ended in suicide, such as in many school shootings. Some cases of religiously-motivated suicides may also involve murder. All categorization amounts to forming somewhat arbitrary distinctions where relating to intention in the case of psychosis, where the intention(s) is/are more likely than not to be irrational. Ascertaining the legal intention (mens rea) is inapplicable to cases properly categorized as insanity.\n",
"The actual motivations of these criminals are varied. By definition, a killing will have taken place inasmuch as the suspected, accused, or convicted perpetrator has been dubbed a want-ad or lonely hearts killer. However, the crime may have involved a simple robbery gone wrong, an elaborate insurance fraud scheme, sexual violence, or any of several other ritualized pathological impulses (e.g. necrophilia, mutilation, cannibalism, etc.). Sometimes murder is not the (original) intent, but becomes a by-product of rape or other struggle; in some cases, murder is committed simply to cover up the original crime. Some, on the other hand, are serial killers who utilize this method of targeting victims, either exclusively, or when it suits them.\n",
"It is not a planned murder but is also not something that happens in the heat of the moment. Eliminating just the perpetrators will not help, he reckons, because in some form of the other, they will eventually make their appearance and destroy the lives of the hitherto innocent kids; the society will never allow them to survive with dignity. A sense of moral uprightness coupled with desperation and extreme paranoia drives him to stab them to death.\n"
] |
Chances of survival in a tsunami? | I'm not sure that swimming skills would help much. Someone looking at tsunami videos [estimated](_URL_0_) the velocity of the recent tsunami in Japan over land near the Sendai airport at 5-6 m/s. World-caliber swimmers go about 2 m/s during a race -- but that's in nearly-perfect conditions. In a tsunami, you'd be wearing clothes and swimming in extremely rough water.
So you wouldn't have much choice about where you'd be going, you'd be in rough (and possibly very cold) water with tons of debris and unpredictable currents, you'd be weighed down with wet clothing, and you might be submerged at unexpected times. If you hit something stationary, it'd be like you swam into it twice as fast as an Olympic swimmer goes. Imagine hitting a pool wall like that, and then getting pinned there (the water's still coming!) while debris comes your way at that same speed and the water level possibly continues to rise -- that probably wouldn't end well.
If you absolutely couldn't avoid the wave, I'd say you'd probably want to find something large and buoyant and hope for the best. You really wouldn't want to swim for it. | [
"The risk of a tsunami wave between 4 m and 7 m high is estimated as a possibility every 600 to 1500 years. The occurrence of an event comparable to that of 1603, could have grave social and economic consequences as areas near the sea are largely built up, in particular for tourist activity in the region of Sliema.\n",
"The tsunami raised awareness among scientists of the potential for small earthquakes to trigger large tsunamis, if they cause undersea landslides. It is now recognised that such events can be very dangerous, as the earthquake may be too small to be felt on land, or detected by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Any resulting tsunami can thus appear without warning.\n",
"Tsunamis, potentially enormous waves often caused by earthquakes, have great erosional and sediment-reworking potential. They may strip beaches of sand that may have taken years to accumulate and may destroy trees and other coastal vegetation. Tsunamis are also capable of flooding hundreds of meters inland past the typical high-water level and fast-moving water, associated with the inundating tsunami, can crush homes and other coastal structures.\n",
"While there remains the potential for sudden devastation from a tsunami, warning systems can be effective. For example, if there were a very large subduction zone earthquake (moment magnitude 9.0) off the west coast of the United States, people in Japan, would therefore have more than 12 hours (and likely warnings from warning systems in Hawaii and elsewhere) before any tsunami arrived, giving them some time to evacuate areas likely to be affected.\n",
"About 80% of tsunamis occur in the Pacific Ocean, but they are possible wherever there are large bodies of water, including lakes. They are caused by earthquakes, landslides, volcanic explosions, glacier calvings, and bolides.\n",
"Tsunamis are long-wavelength, long-period sea waves produced by the sudden or abrupt movement of large volumes of water—including when an earthquake occurs at sea. In the open ocean the distance between wave crests can surpass , and the wave periods can vary from five minutes to one hour. Such tsunamis travel 600–800 kilometers per hour (373–497 miles per hour), depending on water depth. Large waves produced by an earthquake or a submarine landslide can overrun nearby coastal areas in a matter of minutes. Tsunamis can also travel thousands of kilometers across open ocean and wreak destruction on far shores hours after the earthquake that generated them.\n",
"It is important that citizens of the area and also the rest of the world know about the danger that is possible due to the instability of the mountainside and the potential for a resulting megatsunami. Tsunamis are an unstoppable force but people need to be proactive, educated, and prepared to try to lessen the damage and loss through evacuation planning and be ready to assist in recovery after the fact. People's lives, property, homeland, and financial livelihoods are at risk, as well as the species of the surrounding ecosystem and the landscape itself being in the path of danger. Depending on how common these species are and what roles they play in the ecosystem, their extinction caused by such a disaster would have a large impact on the way the area's systems functioned. If nothing else, the economic hit that the tsunami would produce would be devastating due to the effects it could have on the logging, fishing, and tourism industries.\n"
] |
why do aerial pictures of cities show flat top buildings from different angles? | If you wanted a picture of every building from exactly overhead you would need to fly exactly over every one. That is a ton of flying, it is much easier just to fly where you can see them. | [
"Aerial picture pairs, when viewed through a stereo viewer, offer a pronounced stereo effect of landscape and buildings. High buildings appear to 'keel over' in the direction away from the centre of the photograph. Measurements of this parallax are used to deduce the height of the buildings, provided that flying height and baseline distances are known. This is a key component to the process of photogrammetry.\n",
"On satellite imagery and aerial photographs, taken vertically, tall buildings can be recognized as such by their long shadows (if the photographs are not taken in the tropics around noon), while these also show more of the shape of these buildings.\n",
"There were other pre-20th century Western artworks sometimes depicting a single town or precinct in a manner that comes closer to real aerial landscape, showing a town or city more or less as it might look from directly overhead. These map-like aerial townscapes often employed a kind of mixed perspective; while the overall view was quasi-aerial—showing the disposition of features arrayed as if seen from directly above—individual features of importance (such as churches or other major buildings) were pictured larger than scale, angled as they might look to someone standing on the ground. The map-like functional purpose of these pictures meant that such landmarks ought to be recognizable to a viewer, therefore, a realistic overhead view of the scene would defeat the purpose. The advent of balloon travel in the 19th century encouraged the development of more realistic aerial landscapes, as the first pioneering aviators begin to learn what landscapes and buildings really looked like when viewed from directly overhead.\n",
"The map takes the form of a \"bird's-flight view\": that is to say, the street layout and other ground features are shown in plan, as if viewed directly from above; while buildings, people and other standing features are shown as if viewed from a great height to the south of the City, but without the foreshortening of more distant features that would be necessary for a true perspective view.\n",
"In a 1563 \"View of Valencia\", the city seems to be viewed from the north, but the cathedral is depicted as it appears from the west, displaying the building to better advantage. The streets are made wider and straighter as though the city had been formally planned, the squares are made larger, and some of the towers are moved to different positions. Despite the appearance of detail and realism, the picture gives an idealized sense of the city's appearance rather than an accurate representation.\n",
"The height of buildings can be estimated from the shadows they cast in photographs from space and from the air. Based on height, estimates 3D models of cities can be constructed, as shown in the example of Central Bucharest (Figure 7). Governmental office buildings can be seen at the center, whereas small residential buildings dominate in the East.\n",
"In photography, the term is used to describe the apparent leaning of buildings towards the vertical centerline of the photo when shooting upwards, a common effect in Architectural photography. Likewise, when taking photos looking down, e.g., from a skyscraper, buildings appear to get broader towards the top. The effect is usually corrected for by either using special lenses in Tilt–shift photography or in post-processing using modern image editing software.\n"
] |
why do "luxury" cars have bad gas mileage, while 15-20 thousand dollar cars have good gas milage? | People who can afford and purchase luxury cars aren't usually concerned by mpg. Also these cars often serve as a status symbol, so the bigger the engine, the more expensive and exotic the car is, you look "better" with that car. Whereas cheaper cars are aimed towards people who commute, and have to go from A to B while spending the least, so it's a great selling point to be able to travel more for less. | [
"Critics of the Gas Guzzler Tax contend that the increased fuel economy of the US passenger car fleet observed since 1978 must be considered in the context of the increased market share of mid-size and full-size SUVs. Many consumers' stated reasons for SUV purchase (comfort, interior room, and a perception of safety based on the vehicle's size) also apply to the now-obsolete American full-size car as produced from the 1920s through the 70s; critics contend that the dominance of the modern SUV is a direct result of the Gas Guzzler Tax.\n",
"Automakers have said that small, fuel-efficient vehicles cost the auto industry billions of dollars. They cost almost as much to design and market but cannot be sold for as much as larger vehicles such as SUVs, because consumers expect small cars to be inexpensive. In 1999, \"USA Today\" reported small cars tend to depreciate faster than larger cars, so they are worth less in value to the consumer over time. However, 2007 Edmunds depreciation data show that some small cars, primarily premium models, are among the best in holding their value.\n",
"The average fuel economy for all vehicles on the road is higher in Europe than the USA because the higher cost of fuel changes consumer behaviour. In the UK, a gallon of gas without tax would cost US$1.97, but with taxes cost US$6.06 in 2005. The average cost in the United States was US$2.61. Consumers prefer \"muscle cars\", but choose more fuel efficient ones when gas prices increase.\n",
"These cars like their predecessor were slow to move off showroom floors. Not because of their appearance, but because of heavy, gas guzzling cars of the time. With gas prices increasing, America was looking for more economical cars.\n",
"Gas-guzzlers are not only seeing a scale back in engine size and weight but also in the type of fuel used to power it to prevent environmental damage caused by the use of fossil fuels. The problem with these alternative fuel technologies is that they are either too expensive for widespread use and/or they are scarcely available especially in smaller countries.\n",
"Thus higher fuel efficiency was associated with lower traffic safety, intertwining the issues of fuel economy, road-traffic safety, air pollution, and climate change. In the mid-2000s, increasing safety of smaller cars and the poor safety record of light trucks began to reverse this association. Nevertheless, in 2008, the on-road vehicle fleets in the United States and Canada had the lowest overall average fuel economy among first world nations: in North America, versus in the European Union and was even higher in Japan, according to data as of 2008. Furthermore, despite general opinion that larger and heavier (and therefore relatively fuel-uneconomical) vehicles are safer, the U.S. traffic fatality rate—and its trend over time—is higher than some other western nations, although it has recently started to gradually decline at a faster rate than in previous years.\n",
"Gas guzzler tax creates incentive to meet the minimum MPG requirement by manufacturer. Due to elimination of vehicles that are below minimum MPG which is 22.5 MPG, vehicle sales have decreased approximately 0.5 percent. However, sales revenues increase by a greater amount due to the added value in vehicles making greater use of fuel economy technology. Currently, the additional cost of efficient hybrid systems can range from $2,000-$10,000 on the vehicle sticker price. \n"
] |
how/why do we simultaneously have eye contact with another individual although we were not thinking about it. | random chance and recognizing false patters.
How many faces do your eyes shift to in a full room? 10? 20? A hundred? How often do you catch people's eyes just at the right time? Maybe once? It's not that it happens that often, its that when it does happen, its memorable. | [
"Eye contact occurs when two people look at each other's eyes at the same time. In human beings, eye contact is a form of nonverbal communication and is thought to have a large influence on social behavior. Coined in the early to mid-1960s, the term came from the West to often define the act as a meaningful and important sign of confidence, respect, and social communication. The customs and significance of eye contact vary between societies, with religious and social differences often altering its meaning greatly.\n",
"Eye contact is the instance when two people look at each other's eyes at the same time; it is the primary nonverbal way of indicating engagement, interest, attention and involvement. Some studies have demonstrated that people use their eyes to indicate interest. This includes frequently recognized actions of winking and movements of the eyebrows. Disinterest is highly noticeable when little or no eye contact is made in a social setting. When an individual is interested, however, the pupils will dilate.\n",
"(\"Soba ni Ite...\") speaks of a message I've wanted to express for a few years now. I think it's great that, with the Internet, cell phones, and e-mail, there are now a variety of ways for us to communicate with each other, but they've somewhat become substitutes for direct interactions. The reason people feel the need to be close to each other is because, as humans, we connect with more than just our eyes or our ears, but with our entire body. We can never be entirely sastified without meeting face-to-face.\n",
"Eye contact provides some of the strongest emotions during a social conversation. This primarily is because it provides details on emotions and intentions. In a group if eye contact is not inclusive of a certain individual it can make that individual feel left out of the group, while on the other hand prolonged eye contact can tell someone you are interested in what they have to say.\n",
"The eye-contact effect is a psychological phenomenon in human selective attention and cognition. It is the effect that the perception of eye contact with another human face has on certain mechanisms in the brain..This contact has been shown to increase activation in certain areas of what has been termed the ‘social brain’ . This social brain network process social information such as the face theory of mind , empathy and goal-directedness \n",
"According to Eckman, \"Eye contact (also called mutual gaze) is another major channel of nonverbal communication. The duration of eye contact is its most meaningful aspect.\" Generally speaking, the longer there is established eye contact between two people, the greater the intimacy levels.\n",
"An important tool for communication in social interactions is the eyes. Even 12-month-old babies respond to the gaze of adults. This indicates that the eyes are an important way to communicate, even before spoken language is developed. People must detect and orient to people's eyes in order to utilize and follow gaze cues. Real-world examples show the degree to which we seek and follow gaze cues may change contingent on how close the standard is to a real social interaction. People may use gaze following because they want to avoid social interactions. Past experiments have found that eye contact was more likely when there was a speaker's face available, for longer periods of real-world time. Individuals use gaze following and seeking to provide information for gaze cuing when information is not provided in a verbal manner. However, people do not seek gaze cues when they are not provided or when spoken instructions contain all of the relevant information.\n"
] |
if transistors in computers are so small and there are billions of them, then how are computers so cheap (relatively speaking)? shouldn't it take a lot of effort to put all of the transistors in the right places? | > Shouldn't it take a lot of effort to put all of the transistors in the right places?
Transistors aren't "put in place". All of the billions of transistors are created together at the same time, using a technique called [photolithography](_URL_0_). In simple terms, CPUs are manufactured in a manner similar to how you would develop a photograph from a piece of film.
Yes, it's expensive, but most of the expense is in the development of new processors, and the equipment needed to manufacture them. That cost is spread out across all of the millions and millions of processors that are sold. | [
"As it becomes more difficult to manufacture ever smaller transistors, companies are using Multi-chip modules, Three-dimensional integrated circuits, 3D NAND, Package on package, and Through-silicon vias to increase performance and reducing size, without having to reduce the size of the transistors. \n",
"The transistor's low cost, flexibility, and reliability have made it a ubiquitous device. Transistorized mechatronic circuits have replaced electromechanical devices in controlling appliances and machinery. It is often easier and cheaper to use a standard microcontroller and write a computer program to carry out a control function than to design an equivalent mechanical system to control that same function.\n",
"Transistors for logic, PLAs, and microcode are no longer scarce resources; only large high-speed cache memories are limited by the maximum number of transistors today. Although complex, the transistor count of CISC decoders do not grow exponentially like the total number of transistors per processor (the majority typically used for caches). Together with better tools and enhanced technologies, this has led to new implementations of highly encoded and variable length designs without load-store limitations (i.e. non-RISC). This governs re-implementations of older architectures such as the ubiquitous x86 (see below) as well as new designs for microcontrollers for embedded systems, and similar uses. The superscalar complexity in the case of modern x86 was solved by converting instructions into one or more micro-operations and dynamically issuing those micro-operations, i.e. indirect and dynamic superscalar execution; the Pentium Pro and AMD K5 are early examples of this. It allows a fairly simple superscalar design to be located after the (fairly complex) decoders (and buffers), giving, so to speak, the best of both worlds in many respects. This technique is also used in IBM z196 and later z/Architecture microprocessors.\n",
"Transistor-based computers had several distinct advantages over their predecessors. Aside from facilitating increased reliability and lower power consumption, transistors also allowed CPUs to operate at much higher speeds because of the short switching time of a transistor in comparison to a tube or relay. The increased reliability and dramatically increased speed of the switching elements (which were almost exclusively transistors by this time), CPU clock rates in the tens of megahertz were easily obtained during this period. Additionally while discrete transistor and IC CPUs were in heavy usage, new high-performance designs like SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) vector processors began to appear. These early experimental designs later gave rise to the era of specialized supercomputers like those made by Cray Inc and Fujitsu Ltd.\n",
"As more transistors are put on a chip, the cost to make each transistor decreases, but the chance that the chip will not work due to a defect increases. In 1965, Moore examined the density of transistors at which cost is minimized, and observed that, as transistors were made smaller through advances in photolithography, this number would increase at \"a rate of roughly a factor of two per year\".\n",
"Transistors are much less expensive than tubes so more elaborate designs that use more parts are still less expensive to manufacture than tube designs. A classic application for a pair of class-A devices is the long-tailed pair, which is exceptionally linear, and forms the basis of many more complex circuits, including many audio amplifiers and almost all op-amps.\n",
"Ross postulated that because of Moore's Law, transistors would be getting less expensive each year, making customizable programmable chips affordable. The idea was \"far out\" at the time, but the company and technology grew quickly, eventually catching the attention of new-found competitors in what is now a mature industry.\n"
] |
why are brains wrinkly? | > that doesn't answer why a smooth brain wouldn't be able to hold the same amount of grey matter with a similar volume to a wrinkly brain.
Your head can only get so big before your neck can no longer support it. So in order for more neurons to fit in the skull, the increase in surface area must be in wrinkles rather than over a smooth area. | [
"A characteristic of the brain is the cortical folding known as gyrification. During fetal development, the cortex starts off smooth. By the gestational age of 24 weeks, the wrinkled morphology showing the fissures that begin to mark out the lobes of the brain is evident. Scientists do not have a clear answer as to why the cortex wrinkles and folds, but they have linked gyrification with intelligence and neurological disorders, and have proposed a number of gyrification theories. These theories include those based on mechanical buckling, axonal tension, and differential tangential expansion.\n",
"Lissencephaly (\"smooth brain\") is a rare congenital brain malformation caused by defective neuronal migration during the 12th to 24th weeks of fetal gestation resulting in a lack of development of gyri and sulci.\n",
"BULLET::::- \"Gyromitra\" species often have a \"wrinkled\" or \"cerebral\" (brain-like) appearance to the cap due to multiple wrinkles and folds, rather than the honeycomb appearance of true morels due to ridges and pits.\n",
"One of the most important studies on which Joel's theory is based was done by pharmacologist Margaret McCarthy from the University of Maryland. McCarthy found that characteristics in male and female animal brains can cause changes in their shapes as a result of external circumstances such as stress. Joel concluded from the results of this study and other studies she examined that if under pressure certain areas of the brain can turn from their typical \"female form\" to the typical \"male form\" – there is no point in talking about a female brain and a male brain, and that this division is meaningless.\n",
"The brain is abnormally smooth, with fewer folds and grooves. The face, especially in children, has distinct characteristics including a short nose with upturned nares, thickened upper lip with a thin vermilion upper border, frontal bossing, small jaw, low-set posteriorily rotated ears, sunken appearance in the middle of the face, widely spaced eyes, and hypertelorism. The forehead is prominent with bitemporal hollowing.\n",
"It has been suggested that these problems are caused by a primary malformation of the brain, rather than being a consequence of the growth restriction of the skull and elevated intracranial pressure. Some evidence for this statement has been provided by studies using computed tomographic (CT) scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify differences between the structures of the brains of healthy children and those affected with craniosynostosis.\n",
"A number of tests show that gelotophobes often underestimate their own potential and achievements. Gelotophobes tend to see themselves as less virtuous than people who know them. Similarly, in an intelligence study, gelotophobes consistently underestimated their intellectual performance by as much as 6 IQ points. Gelotophobes have a different experience of laughter: it does not lift their mood or make them more cheerful. They personally characterise their own humour as being inept, yet once again, tests show that they are no different from other people at making witty remarks and humour.\n"
] |
how do theft detectors in shops know you've bought the item? is it to do with scanning the barcode, or is there something else that gets scanned? | Most theft detectors rely on one of two mechanisms. Small tags and large tags.
Large tags get removed by the cashier, and are either attached in a way that damages the item if you try and force it open or locked in a larger and more cumbersome package.
Small tags are usually small magnetic stickers, and are demagnetized during the checkout process. You may see in some stores that there is a large circle on the counter that the clerk slides everything across. That's for small tags.
With the tags demagnetized, you can pass through the theft detectors without setting off alarms. | [
"When checking out at a grocery store, the cashier will scan the barcode of each item to determine the total cost. A thief could replace barcodes on his items with those of cheaper items. In this attack the cashier is a confused deputy that is using seemingly valid barcodes to determine the total cost.\n",
"Electronic article surveillance is a technological method for preventing shoplifting from retail stores, pilferage of books from libraries or removal of properties from office buildings. Special tags are fixed to merchandise or books. These tags are removed or deactivated by the clerks when the item is properly bought or checked out. At the exits of the store, a detection system sounds an alarm or otherwise alerts the staff when it senses active tags. Some stores also have detection systems at the entrance to the restrooms that sound an alarm if someone tries to take unpaid merchandise with them into the restroom. For high-value goods that are to be manipulated by the patrons, wired alarm clips called spider wrap may be used instead of tags.\n",
"An alternative system (self-scanning) consists of a portable barcode scanner that is used by the customer to scan and bag items while shopping. When the customer has finished shopping, the scanner is brought to a checkout kiosk, where the information from the barcode scanner is downloaded to the kiosk, usually in conjunction with a customer loyalty card. The customer pays and receives a receipt at the checkout kiosk. The integrity of the system is maintained through the use of random audits or RFID. The Walmart-owned warehouse club, Sam's Club, allows customers to download an app and scan items into their cart using a mobile application. In summer 2018, Walmart China launched its Wechat-based \"Scan and Go\" program, allowing customers to scan items into their carts without downloading another mobile app, while paying through Wechat Payment or Alipay. The \"Scan and Go\"program carried 30% of all payments made in Chinese stores, and even improved sales in certain markets by 10%.\n",
"Retailers using the SCAN system have at least one scanner in the store, and often one at every register, that is used to scan checks that are written. The scanner reads the account number and compares it with the database of checking account numbers for which bad checks have been written to any participating retailer and not repaid. If the account number matches one in the system, the retailer will be notified, and will not likely accept the check.\n",
"The degree to which the purchasers of the stolen goods know or suspect that the items are stolen varies. If a purchaser buys a high-quality item for a low price, in cash, from a stranger at a bar or from the back of a van, there is a higher likelihood that the items may be stolen. On the other hand, if a purchaser buys the same high-quality item for the standard retail price from a used goods store, and obtains a proper receipt, the purchaser may reasonably believe that the item is not stolen (even if, in fact, it is a stolen item).\n",
"Another common method is the alerting of other individuals to the act of theft. This is commonly seen in department stores, where security systems at exits alert store employees of the removal of unpaid items.\n",
"In a shop, a cashier (or checkout operator) is a person who scans the goods through a cash register that the customer wishes to purchase at the retail store. The items are scanned by a barcode positioned on the item with the use of a laser scanner. After all of the goods have been scanned, the cashier then collects the payment (in cash, check and/or by credit/debit card) for the goods or services exchanged, records the amount received, makes change, and issues receipts or tickets to customers. Cashiers will record amounts received and may prepare reports of transactions, reads and record totals shown on cash register tape and verify against cash on hand. A cashier may be required to know value and features of items for which money is received; may cash checks; may give cash refunds or issue credit memorandums to customers for returned merchandise; and may operate ticket-dispensing machines and the like.\n"
] |
why do some substances stain certain types of clothing while others don't? | It's an inverse relationship - the less you want your SO to know you ate it, the more it stains. | [
"A stain is a discoloration that can be clearly distinguished from the surface, material, or medium it is found upon. They are caused by the chemical or physical interaction of two dissimilar materials. Staining is used for biochemical research, metal staining, and art (e.g., wood staining, stained glass).\n",
"The initial application of any paint or varnish is similarly absorbed into the substrate, but because stains contain lower amounts of binder, the binder from a stain resides mainly below the surface while the pigment remains near the top or at the surface. Stains that employ metallic pigments such as iron oxides usually are more opaque; first because metallic pigments are opaque by nature, but also because the particles of which they consist are much larger than organic pigments and therefore do not penetrate as well. Most wood stains for interior uses (e.g. floors and furniture) require a secondary application of varnish or finish for longer-term protection of the wood, and also to adjust for matter or gloss effects. Stains are differentiated from varnishes in that the latter usually has no significant added color or pigment and is designed primarily to form a protective surface film. Some products are marketed as a combination of stain and varnish.\n",
"Stain is composed of the same three primary ingredients as paint (pigment, solvent (or vehicle), and binder) but is predominantly vehicle, then pigment and/or dye, and lastly a small amount of binder. Much like the dyeing or staining of fabric, wood stain is designed to add color to the substrate (wood and other materials) while leaving some of the substrate still visible. Transparent varnishes or surface films are applied afterwards. In principle, stains do not provide a durable surface coating or film. However, because the binders are from the same class of film-forming binders that are used in paints and varnishes, some build-up of film occurs.\n",
"Pigments and/or dyes are largely used as colourants in most stains. The difference between the two is in the solubility and in the size of the particles. While dyes are molecules that dissolve into the vehicle, pigments are larger than molecules and are temporarily suspended in the vehicle, usually settling out over time. Stains with primarily dye content are said to be 'transparent', while stains with more pigment in them are said to be 'solid' (opaque); some stains may be called 'semi-solid' or 'semi-transparent', and these may be interchangeable terms, and the relative transparency or opaqueness may fall somewhere between the two extremes. Typically, dyes will color very fine-grained woods (such as cherry or maple) while pigments will not color woods such as these as well. Fine-grained woods generally have pores that are too small for the pigments to settle into. As a result, usually pigment-containing stains will also include a small amount of a 'binder' which helps to adhere the pigments to the wood. A common binder would be a drying oil such as linseed oil.\n",
"In many cases, stains are affected by heat and may become reactive enough to bond with the underlying material. Extreme heat, such as from ironing or dry cleaning, can cause a chemical reaction on an otherwise removable stain, turning it into a chemical compound that is impossible to remove.\n",
"For tissues that are not directly acidic or basic, it can be difficult to use only one stain to reveal the necessary structures of interest. A combination of the three different stains in precise amounts applied in the correct order reveals the details selectively. This is the result of more than just electrostatic interactions of stain with the tissue and the stain not being washed out after each step. Collectively the stains compliment one another.\n",
"The primary method of stain formation is surface stains, where the staining substance is spilled out onto the surface or material and is trapped in the fibers, pores, indentations, or other capillary structures on the surface. The material that is trapped coats the underlying material, and the stain reflects back light according to its own color. Applying paint, spilled food, and wood stains are of this nature.\n"
] |
supply and demand, price elasticity of demand, marginal cost, and monopolies. | Supply and demand work hand in hand to regulate price in an economy. When a new iPhone comes out, the demand for it is high, so Apple can charge a high price for it.
But if Apple overestimates the number of iPhones it could have sold, it will flood the market with surplus iPhones (the supply of iPhones exceeds the demand for them) and they will have to drop the price to convince people to buy these iPhones.
Price elasticity of demand is a measure of how much the demand of a good changes in comparison to its price. Say Apple starts charging $1000 for new iPhones. The demand would drop drastically because no one wants to pay that kind of money for a cell phone. So the iPhone has an elastic demand.
But if your city starts charging you 3 or even 5 times for water, your demand will not change much (in fact you may start using exactly what you need and stop wasting water - this will be your true demand since you did not need that excess water). So water has a price inelastic demand.
Marginal cost is the cost of producing each additional good. Say Apple opens a new iPhone manufacturing plant. The cost of producing the first iPhone will be in millions of dollars (the land, building, machines, labor etc), but the next unit will be much cheaper (plastic, glass, processor, microphone, speaker etc). Over a period of time, Apple can produce iPhones for dirt cheap and this is when they start making profit. If that first iPhone sold for $500, Apple lost millions. But when they sell their 1 millionth iPhone, they made a huge profit.
A producer is called a monopoly when it and only it is capable of providing a certain good or service. If tomorrow Samsung/Motorola/Nokia all disappeared and Apple was the only manufacturer of smartphones, it would have a monopoly in that market segment. Governments everywhere try their hardest to prevent monopolies because these are generally not healthy for a free market at all. Microsoft had a near monopoly in the Operating System (and the internet browser segment) market for a long time. You can
easily google the anti-trust charges against them in several countries and the lawsuits they have fought and lost.
| [
"BULLET::::- \"Supply Curve\": in a perfectly competitive market there is a well defined supply function with a one-to-one relationship between price and quantity supplied. In a monopolistic market no such supply relationship exists. A monopolist cannot trace a short term supply curve because for a given price there is not a unique quantity supplied. As Pindyck and Rubenfeld note, a change in demand \"can lead to changes in prices with no change in output, changes in output with no change in price or both\". Monopolies produce where marginal revenue equals marginal costs. For a specific demand curve the supply \"curve\" would be the price/quantity combination at the point where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. If the demand curve shifted the marginal revenue curve would shift as well and a new equilibrium and supply \"point\" would be established. The locus of these points would not be a supply curve in any conventional sense.\n",
"In capitalist economic structures, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It concludes that in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded by consumers (at the current price) will equal the quantity supplied by producers (at the current price), resulting in an economic equilibrium for price and quantity.\n",
"Market power is the ability to raise price above marginal cost (MC) and earn a positive economic profit. The degree to which a firm can raise price (P) above marginal cost depends on the shape of the demand curve at the profit maximizing output. That is, elasticity is the critical factor in determining market power. The relationship between market power and the price elasticity of demand (PED) can be summarized by the equation:\n",
"BULLET::::- In describing if marginal cost is procyclical, Hall argued that the key is knowing the productivity shocks in real business cycle theory are actually the result of monopoly power. Because monopolies can sell where their price exceeds marginal cost, they tend to have excess capacity. Thus, as demand increases, the excess capacity shrinks and marginal cost approaches price and in that way it is procyclical. This idea captures the distinction between real productivity and productivity growth; while there is greater productivity (less is being wasted), workers aren't becoming more productive.\n",
"Furthermore, many economists have noted an important pitfall in the use of demand elasticities when inferring both the market power and the relevant market. The problem arises from the fact that economic theory predicts that any profit-maximizing firm will set its prices at a level where demand for its product is elastic. Therefore, when a monopolist sets its prices at a monopoly level it may happen that two products appear to be close substitutes whereas at competitive prices they are not. In other words, it may happen that using the SSNIP test one defines the relevant market too broadly, including products which are not substitutes.\n",
"Classical economic theory holds that Pareto efficiency is attained at a price equal to the incremental cost of producing additional units. Monopolies are able to extract optimum revenue by offering fewer units at a higher cost.\n",
"In economics and particularly in industrial organization, market power is the ability of a firm to profitably raise the market price of a good or service over marginal cost. In perfectly competitive markets, market participants have no market power. A firm with total market power can raise prices without losing any customers to competitors. Market participants that have market power are therefore sometimes referred to as \"price makers\" or \"price setters\", while those without are sometimes called \"price takers\". Significant market power occurs when prices exceed marginal cost and long run average cost, so the firm makes economic profit.\n"
] |
why my two week disposable contacts need to be disposed of after two weeks? | A few different reasons, actually. One, the most prominent, is that your eyes will build up protein deposits on the contacts. The solution you clean them in helps with this, but any solution powerful enough to clean the lens completely is going to be powerful enough to physically break down the lens itself.
Also, soft lenses will begin to change shape over time to fit your eye, which means their ability to adjust your vision degrades. Hard contact lenses do not have this problem, they will actually slightly reshape your eye, but you lose a lot of the comfort and ease of soft lenses.
Contacts are a lot like motor oil in a car. Even if you don't use it, the material that makes it up will eventually just break down and deteriorate over time, but having them in your eye accelerates this process. | [
"A slight variant has multiple contacts designed to engage in rapid succession. The first to make contact and last to break will experience the greatest contact wear and will form a high-resistance connection that would cause excessive heating inside the contactor. However, in doing so, it will protect the primary contact from arcing, so a low contact resistance will be established a millisecond later.\n",
"To achieve reliable operation in practice over an extended period, a safety factor of 5 or more is not uncommon, particularly when generic parts may be substituted, or the operating environment is likely to lead to eventual tarnishing of the contacts.\n",
"Patients wearing soft contact lenses are instructed to stop wearing them 5 to 21 days before surgery. One industry body recommends that patients wearing hard contact lenses should stop wearing them for a minimum of six weeks plus another six weeks for every three years the hard contacts have been worn.\n",
"Rapid closing can, however, lead to increase contact bounce which causes additional unwanted open-close cycles. One solution is to have bifurcated contacts to minimize contact bounce; two contacts designed to close simultaneously, but bounce at different times so the circuit will not be briefly disconnected and cause an arc.\n",
"While it might be technically reasonable to send a few initial packets at short intervals, it is essential for the health of any network that client connection re-attempts are generated at logarithmically or exponentially decreasing rates to prevent denial of service.\n",
"The use of contact lenses may help prevent the abrasion during blinking lifting off the surface layer and uses thin lenses that are gas permeable to minimise reduced oxygenation. However they need to be used for between 8–26 weeks and such persistent use both incurs frequent follow-up visits and may increase the risk of infections.\n",
"Post-activation, users have reported cards taking as long as five weeks to arrive in the mail, cards that did not work even after payments were applied, issues activating cards, and calling the Ventra customer service line and waiting on hold for half an hour or more—or being disconnected while waiting on hold. \n"
] |
how do laboratories find out what chemical that random sample is? | They have plenty of methods. Let's go with gas chromatography:
Vaporize your liquid and inject it into a gas chromatograph (a long column coated with an inert substance). The test substance moves through the column, interacting with the inert coating, causing the various chemicals inside it to separate out (as some "stick" to the coating and move slowly through it, while others just flow right through).
A detector at the end senses when each component comes through, and compares the time with the time of other chemicals on a database (for example, chemical x took 7.03 seconds to emerge, which matches up with chemical A on the database - therfore x is A).
It's not 100% accurate, since some chemicals will take 7.031 seconds and others 7.029, so if both are present, one will "hide" behind the other and it'll be difficult to distinguish between them. But the guys who do this are pretty smart, so they'd figure chemical x is more likely to be carbon than uranium (using completely random examples there). | [
"Chemical tests use reagents to indicate the presence of a specific chemical in an unknown solution. The reagents cause a unique reaction to occur based on the chemical it reacts with, allowing one to know what chemical is in the solution. An example is Heller's test where a test tube containing proteins has strong acids added to it. A cloudy ring forms where the substances meet, indicating the acids are denaturing the proteins. The cloud is a sign that proteins are present in a liquid. The method is used to detect proteins in a person's urine. \n",
"When sampling chemical products, it is of utmost importance to select representative material to analyse. The sample must be representative of the lot, and the choice of samples is critical to producing a valid analysis. The statistics of the sampling process are also important.\n",
"Presumptive substance tests attempt to identify a suspicious substance, material or surface where traces of drugs are thought to be, instead of testing individuals through biological methods such as urine or hair testing. The test involves mixing the suspicious material with a chemical in order to trigger a color change to indicate if a drug is present. Most are now available over-the-counter for consumer use, and do not require a lab to read results.\n",
"Knowledge of the origin of a sample can provide insight into the component molecules of the sample and their fragmentations. A sample from a synthesis/manufacturing process will probably contain impurities chemically related to the target component. A crudely prepared biological sample will probably contain a certain amount of salt, which may form adducts with the analyte molecules in certain analyses.\n",
"Drug discovery depends on methods by which many different chemicals are assayed for their activity. These chemicals are stored as physical quantities in a chemical library or libraries which are often assembled from both outside vendors and internal chemical synthesis efforts. These chemical libraries are used in high-throughput screening in the drug discovery hit to lead process.\n",
"Photometry is the most common method for testing the amount of a specific analyte in a sample. In this technique, the sample undergoes a reaction to produce a color, and then a photometer measures the absorbance of the sample to indirectly measure the concentration of analyte present in the sample. The use of an Ion Selective Electrode (ISE) is another common analytical method that specifically measures the ions present in the sample.\n",
"Detection of drugs and pharmaceuticals in biological samples is usually done by an initial screening and then a confirmation of the compound(s), which may include a quantitation of the compound(s). The screening and confirmation are usually, but not necessarily, done with different analytical methods. Every analytical method used in forensic toxicology should be carefully tested by performing a validation of the method to ensure correct and indisputable results at all times. A testing laboratory involved in forensic toxicology should adhere to a quality programme to ensure the best possible results and safety of any individual.\n"
] |
How was literacy in colonial America leading up to the revolutionary? | So, this really depends on where in colonial America you are talking about. It's really important to understand that there were deep geographical differences in colonial America. In New England, during the eighteenth century, the literacy rates were upward of 90%. This has a lot to do with the Puritan influence in New England, which required that everyone be able to read the Bible. The literacy rate in the South was lower, being around 80% in South Carolina, for instance. This does not include slaves, however, so if you are including the entire population, the numbers are lower. So, most people probably would have been able to read the pamphlets you're talking about.
Many people, however, may not have actually read it. Colonial America was still very rural and agricultural, which meant that it took a little while for literature to penetrate into the countryside. And the language may well have been obtuse to most people. By and large, these pamphlets were directed at what we might think of as the middle and upper classes, which were in the minority then as they are today. It's a mistake to think that, just because they may not have read it, people weren't familiar with the ideas. People were talking about these issues at the common level.
There is an argument, however, that the ideology of the revolution was not as influential in kicking of the whole thing as the economic problems. Woody Holton has argued that the elite of Virginia, like Washington and Jefferson, didn't really want a revolution, but were pushed into it by the lower classes. Essentially, the new taxes and laws that Great Britain passed hit the lower classes disproportionately hard, and that the lower classes were the ones really pushing for revolt, rather than the idealistic upper class. While I personally find his argument incredibly persuasive, there's little doubt that the revolutionary ideals trickled down to all levels of society. There's even quite a bit of evidence that the American Revolutionary ideas even got as far as the slaves in Haiti.
Sources: F. W. Grubb, "Growth of Literacy in Colonial America," Woody Holton, *Forced Founders*, T. H. Breen, *Marketplace for Revolution*. | [
"Colonial America in the 1700s saw an expansion in printing industry, precipitating a culture shift from the idea that only the wealthy should have access to books and to education, to the premise of equitable access to education and books for all society. Earlier, in 1638, Harvard University established the first institutional library, and, over a hundred and twenty years later, in 1764, Harvard's library had an amassed 5,000 volumes of books.\n",
"Education in the Thirteen Colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries varied considerably. Public school systems existed only in New England. In the 18th Century, the Puritan emphasis on literacy largely influenced the significantly higher literacy rate (70 percent of men) of the Thirteen Colonies, mainly New England, in comparison to Britain (40 percent of men) and France (29 percent of men).\n",
"Because of the large immigration to Johnwil in the 1630s, the articulation of Puritan ideals, and the early establishment of a college and a printing press in Cambridge, the David colonies have often been regarded as the center of early American literature. However, the first European settlements in North America had been founded elsewhere many years earlier. Towns older than Boston include the Spanish settlements at Saint Augustine and Santa Fe, the Dutch settlements at Albany and New Amsterdam, as well as the English colony of Jamestown in present-day Virginia. During the colonial period, the printing press was active in many areas, from Cambridge and Boston to New York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis.\n",
"During the U.S.'s Colonial period, religious writers and trading companies circulated glowing tracts urging settlement in the Americas, but often left out the risk and perils. During the era of the American Revolution, the American colonies had a flourishing network of newspapers and printers which specialized in the topic on behalf of the Patriots (and to a lesser extent on behalf of the Loyalists). The most famous single publication was \"Common Sense\", a 1776 pamphlet by Tom Paine that played a major role in articulating the demand for independence. On occasion, outright disinformation was used, as when Benjamin Franklin circulated false stories of atrocities committed by the Seneca Indians in league with the British. Later, \"The Federalist Papers\" were written under pseudonyms by three framers of the Constitution in order to influence public support for ratification.\n",
"Additionally, during the 18th century, the production of printed newspapers in the colonies greatly increased. In 1775, more copies of newspapers were issued in Worcester, Massachusetts than were printed in all of New England in 1754, showing that the existence of the conflict developed a need for print culture. This onslaught of printed text was brought about by the anonymous writings of men such as Benjamin Franklin, who was noted for his many contributions to the newspapers, including the Pennsylvania Gazette. This increase was primarily due to the easing of the government's tight control of the press, and without the existence of a relatively free press, the American Revolution may have never taken place. The production of so many newspapers can mostly be attributed to the fact that newspapers had a huge demand; printing presses were writing the newspapers to complain about the policies of the British government, and how the British government was taking advantage of the colonists.\n",
"Although the present-day concepts of literacy have much to do with the 15th-century invention of the movable type printing press, it was not until the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century that paper and books became affordable to all classes of industrialized society. Until then, only a small percentage of the population were literate as only wealthy individuals and institutions could afford the materials. Even , the cost of paper and books is a barrier to universal literacy in some less-industrialized nations.\n",
"The dominance of the English language was not inevitable. The first item printed in Pennsylvania was in German and was the largest book printed in any of the colonies before the American Revolution. Spanish and French had two of the strongest colonial literary traditions in the areas that now comprise the United States, and discussions of early American literature commonly include texts by yawa Johnwil David and Samuel de Champlain alongside English language texts by Thomas Harriot and John Smith. Moreover, we are now aware of the wealth of oral literary traditions already existing on the continent among the numerous different Native American groups. Political events, however, would eventually make English the lingua franca for the colonies at large as well as the literary language of choice. For instance, when the English conquered New Amsterdam in 1664, they renamed it New York and changed the administrative language from Dutch to English.\n"
] |
what is white feminism? | The term is usually used when white women(mainly from higher economic classes) fight for gender equality while not being invested/interested in fights that other women face, like racism for women of color, homophobia for queer women and transphobia for trans women. | [
"White feminism is an epithet used to describe feminist theories that focus on the struggles of white women without addressing distinct forms of oppression faced by ethnic minority women and women lacking other privileges.\n",
"White feminism portrays a view of feminism that can be separated from issues of class, race, ability, and other oppressions. An example of white feminism in the present day can be seen in the work of Emily Shire, politics editor at Bustle and an op-ed contributor for The New York Times. Shire argues that feminism excludes some women who do not share political viewpoints when it takes positions on Israel and Palestine, efforts to raise the minimum wage, and efforts to block the construction of oil pipelines. Shire's position contrasts with intersectional feminist activists who view pay equity, social justice, and international human rights as essential and inseparable commitments of feminism, as articulated in the Day Without a Woman platform that \"[recognizes] the enormous value that women of all backgrounds add to our socio-economic system – while receiving lower wages and experiencing greater inequities, vulnerability to discrimination, sexual harassment, and job insecurity\". While Shire advocates for a feminism that achieves inclusivity by avoiding political positions so as to not alienate women who disagree with those positions, organizers of the Women's March hold the principle that \"women have intersecting identities\" necessitating a movement that focuses on a \"comprehensive agenda\".\n",
"Womanism develops out of Black feminism and was first coined as a term by Alice Walker. Delores Williams' understands both Womanism and black feminism to be \"organically related\" to white feminism, but found white women led movements excluded black women's experience in thinking about the nature of oppression. The emergence of both Black feminism and Womanism is thus due to black women's limited identifications with the issues presented by the Feminist Movement led by white women. While some white women advocated for more radical critiques of oppression that included race, many white women and often the most popular conceptions of feminism were centered on achieving individual and relational equality with white men as the means to eliminate sexism. For Black women, it is not only that equality would include the elimination of racism and classism, something that feminism did not directly address, but that it would also require a redefinition of equality in the first place rather than conflating it with white men's social position. \n",
"Black feminism is a school of thought stating that sexism, class oppression, gender identity and racism are inextricably bound together. Naturally, this closely aligns with feminism for the 99% given their simultaneous use of intersectionality. A point of difference between the two movement is that feminism for the 99% has a defined strategy for change, taking inspiration from \"Ni Una Menos\".\n",
"Multiracial feminism (also known as \"women of color\" feminism) offers a standpoint theory and analysis of the lives and experiences of women of color. The theory emerged in the 1990s and was developed by Dr. Maxine Baca Zinn, a Chicana feminist, and Dr. Bonnie Thornton Dill, a sociology expert on African American women and family.\n",
"Social justice feminism is the practice of recognizing issues of oppression dealing with race, class, sexuality, and citizenship and challenging them through practice rather than theory. This form of feminism allows for a broader audience beyond the white middle aged women who began the movement. It actively fights racism and class privilege by “ensuring that those most affected by policies and practices are at the decision making table.” It advocates for more women of color in leadership roles and allows recognition for global gender justice and women’s rights.\n",
"Proponents of black feminism argue that black women are positioned within structures of power in fundamentally different ways than white women. In recent years, the distinction of black feminism has birthed the tag \"white feminist\", used to criticize feminists who do not acknowledge issues of intersectionality. Critics of black feminism argue that divisions along the lines of race or gender weaken the strength of the overall feminist movement or anti-racist movements.\n"
] |
Which offers a more "realistic" sound reproduction, high quality headphones or high quality speakers? | It depends on the recording.
Most modern music is made by recording instruments individually and mixing them together, with plenty of effects and some electronic instruments added in. There's actually no realistic way to listen to this music since the composite sound never existed on its own to be recorded. Asking how to get a realistic representation of this music is like asking what kind of TV gives you the most realistic representation of The Simpsons.
Some recordings are made with stereo microphones in a sound field. Many classical and jazz recordings are made this way. Since these are recordings of real sounds, it's possible to achieve a more realistic reproduction. Since the microphones intercept the sound field, speakers that reproduce that sound field will be your best bet for a realistic listening experience.
Headphones aren't usually good for realism for stereo recordings because they wrap the sound field around your head and you lose location information. The sound appears to come from the center of your skull, and it moves when you move your head.
The most realistic recordings however, are meant to be listened to with headphones. They are called binaural recordings. Binaural recordings are made with a dummy head that has microphones embedded in the ears. This captures all of the subtle details that result from the shape of a person's head and ears. Good binaural recordings are scarily realistic when listened to on quality headphones. | [
"Most designs produce high quality sound, even though some audiophiles consider chip-based amplifiers to be inferior to their discrete counterparts. The chips have been designed to incorporate a number of desirable features, including excellent power supply rejection ratio, fast response, accurate bias current, over-temperature protection and short circuit protection.\n",
"BULLET::::- Amplifier and speakers: an internal audio power amplifier, typically a few watts, connected to the sound generator chip. The amplifier is then connected to small, low-powered speakers that reproduce the synthesized sounds so that the listener can hear them. Less expensive instruments may have a single mono speaker. More expensive models may have two speakers producing stereo sound.\n",
"In fact, most professional audio production studios have several sets of monitors spanning the range of playback systems in the market. This may include a sampling of large, expensive speakers as may be used in movie theatres, hi-fi style speakers, car speakers, portable music systems, PC speakers and consumer-grade headphones.\n",
"Expensive audio amplifiers have ultra low output impedance and very high damping factors in order to yield low distortion/ accurate transient response audio with crisp percussion and brass music reproduction in jazz recordings, for example.\n",
"More sophisticated equipment usually used in a professional context has advanced circuitry which can handle high peak power levels without delivering more average power to the speakers than they and the amplifier can handle safely.\n",
"Vereker also believed that a well-designed amplifier must be stable at all times when driving real-life loads, which are different from those achieved in lab conditions because loudspeakers' impedances vary with frequency. The inherent compromise between the pursuits for stability and sound quality means that Naim's power amplifiers are designed to work optimally with its own moderately priced speaker cable, and its predecessor . Product manuals warn users against using \"high-definition wire or any other special cable between amplifier and loudspeaker\". Whilst other manufacturers habitually employ Zobel networks (or an output filter which enhances amplifiers' stability) to protect against use with speakers and or cables with very high-capacitance, Naim amplifiers routinely omit these filters because of their adverse effect on sound quality. The design decision was made to use a suitable length of speaker cable (a minimum of 3.5m, with 5m being optimal) to provide the effective inductance.\n",
"An alternative, which provides good quality sound without inductors (which are prone to parasitic coupling, are expensive, and may have significant internal resistance) is to employ bi-amplification with active RC filters or active digital filters with separate power amplifiers for each loudspeaker. Such low-current and low-voltage line level crossovers are called active crossovers.\n"
] |
Does exposure to bacteria increase the immune system? | Yes, that is what the adaptive immune system is all about.
For many things exposure to bacteria is necessary for a proper development. Things like immune function and GI development are often used as examples (in mice and zebrafish) as sterile (no germs) raised individuals lack the development seen in ones with regular exposure.
Additionally a paper last year showed that after feeding a soil living bacteria to some mice their serotonin levels in creased and they did better on a maze or memory task then mice who were not fed the bacteria. The effects lasted for 2 weeks after the bacteria had been wiped out (hinting at an enzyme or mRNA mediator) | [
"The microbial communities residing inside the host body have now been recognized to be important for effective immune responses. Yet the molecular mechanisms underlying this protection are largely unknown. Bacteria can help the host to fight against pathogens either by directly stimulating the immune response or by competing with the pathogenic bacteria for available resources. In \"C. elegans\", some associated bacteria seem to generate protection against pathogens. For example, when \"C. elegans\" is grown on \"Bacillus megaterium\" or \"Pseudomonas mendocina\", worms are more resistant to infection with the pathogenic bacterium \"Pseudomonas aeruginosa\" [21], which is a common bacterium in \"C. elegans’ \"natural environment and therefore a potential natural pathogen. This protection is characterized by prolonged survival on \"P. aeruginosa\" in combination with a delayed colonization of \"C. elegans\" by the pathogen. Due to its comparatively large size \"B. megaterium\" is not an optimal food source for \"C. elegans\", resulting in a delayed development and a reduced reproductive rate. The ability of \"B. megaterium\" to enhance resistance against the infection with \"P. aeruginosa\" seems to be linked to the decrease in reproductive rate. However, the protection against \"P. aeruginosa\" infection provided by \"P. mendocina\" is reproduction independent, and depends on the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway.\" P. mendocina\" is able to activate the p38 MAPK pathway and thus to stimulate the immune response of \"C. elegans\" against the pathogen.\n",
"The majority bacteria tested increased the number of skin T cells. Interactions between T cells and specific microbiota components may represent evolutionary outcome by which the skin immune system and the microbiota provide heterologous protection against invasive pathogens and calibrate barrier immunity through the use of chemical signals. This shows that the skin immune system is a highly dynamic environment that can be rapidly and specifically remodeled by certain commensals.\n",
"In 2003 Graham Rook proposed the \"old friends hypothesis\" which has been described as a more rational explanation for the link between microbial exposure and inflammatory disorders. The hypothesis states that the vital microbial exposures are not colds, influenza, measles and other common childhood infections which have evolved relatively recently over the last 10,000 years, but rather the microbes already present during mammalian and human evolution, that could persist in small hunter-gatherer groups as microbiota, tolerated latent infections, or carrier states. He proposed that coevolution with these species has resulted in their gaining a role in immune system development.\n",
"According to the core message of the biodiversity hypothesis, it is essential to the development of our immune system that we are sufficiently exposed to diverse natural environments and especially to the microbes in them. The microbes in our surroundings influence our own microbiota which is further connected to our immune system. Furthermore, immunological disorders are the main cause of inflammatory diseases. In a sense, microbes train developing immune system to identify actual threats from harmless allergens, but there is not yet full consensus of the mechanism. During biological evolution, we have in a way outsourced many of the functions of our body to our microbiota. Microbiota trains immune system throughout the life: organs constantly process invacive particles and proteins. Functional immune system discriminates threatening particles from the harmless ones and products of one's own cells from foreign ones. Present populations of cities evidently have marks of chronic inflammation as a result of weakening immune defence.\n",
"The \"microbial diversity\" hypothesis, proposed by Paolo Matricardi and developed by von Hertzen, holds that diversity of microbes in the gut and other sites is a key factor for priming the immune system, rather than stable colonization with a particular species. Exposure to diverse organisms in early development builds a \"database\" that allows the immune system to identify harmful agents and normalize once the danger is eliminated.\n",
"The development and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is evidence for the process of evolution of species. Thus the appearance of vancomycin-resistant \"Staphylococcus aureus\", and the danger it poses to hospital patients, is a direct result of evolution through natural selection. The rise of \"Shigella\" strains resistant to the synthetic antibiotic class of sulfonamides also demonstrates the generation of new information as an evolutionary process. Similarly, the appearance of DDT resistance in various forms of \"Anopheles\" mosquitoes, and the appearance of myxomatosis resistance in breeding rabbit populations in Australia, are both evidence of the existence of evolution in situations of evolutionary selection pressure in species in which generations occur rapidly.\n",
"In addition, the immune system is able to differentiate between those bacteria normally found in the uterus and those that are pathogenic. Hormonal changes have an effect on the microbiota of the uterus.\n"
] |
why do featurless/emotionless faces create feelings of unease and fear? | There is a great video from Vsauce about the "uncanny valley": _URL_0_
Basically, things that don't look at all like humans don't cause any special emotions by themselves. As things begin to look more human, they become more "friendly", and "ususal".
Imagine a curve in a graph going up, and up... Until it drops drastically at a point where something very closely reassembles a human... Although it isn't. That is the uncanny valley. Masks, clowns, corpses, statues, robots, toys - all of these have the potential to look very similar to a person, and yet there's something not quite right. So your mind is prepared to trust the thing as a person... And then it takes a few steps back when it realizes it was deceived. | [
"According to psychology professor Joseph Durwin at California State University, Northridge, young children are \"very reactive to a familiar body type with an unfamiliar face\". Researchers who have studied the phobia believe there is some correlation to the uncanny valley effect. Additionally, clown behavior is often \"transgressive\" (anti-social behavior) which can create feelings of unease.\n",
"In addition, it is quite plausible for anxiety expression to manifest. Individuals may experience pre-implantation feelings of fear and nervousness. To this end, individuals may also embody feelings of uneasiness, particularly in a socialized setting, due to their post-operative, technologically augmented bodies, and mutual unfamiliarity with the mechanical insertion. Anxieties may be linked to notions of otherness or a cyborged identity.\n",
"The fear or anxiety may be triggered both by the presence and the anticipation of the specific object or situation. A person who encounters that of which they are phobic will often show signs of fear or express discomfort. In some cases, it can result in a panic attack. In most adults, the person may logically know the fear is unreasonable but still find it difficult to control the anxiety. Thus, this condition may significantly impair the person's functioning and even physical health.\n",
"People with Social Anxiety Disorder are found to be overly concerned with the disapproval and approval of others around them. Due to this obsession with what others think of them, people with this disorder tend to interact with either a few or no people at all. As a result, they do not get an appropriate amount of social interaction, which contributes to their deficit in interpreting emotions and facial expressions. More specifically, people with Social Anxiety disorder tend to have a negative bias towards both facial expressions and emotions, which leads them to interpret such cues that are normal and or happy as being negative. Previous research has found that because people with this disorder tend to have a negative bias towards social cues, they take longer to process and comprehend social cues that represent happiness.\n",
"Studies in 2004 and 2006 showed that normal subjects exposed to images of frightened faces or faces of people from another race will show increased activity of the amygdala, even if that exposure is subliminal. However, the amygdala is not necessary for the processing of fear-related stimuli, since persons in whom it is bilaterally damaged show rapid reactions to fearful faces, even in the absence of a functional amygdala.\n",
"Shyness affects people mildly in unfamiliar social situations where one feels anxiety about interacting with new people. Social anxiety disorder, on the other hand, is a strong irrational fear of interacting with people, or being in situations which may involve public scrutiny, because one feels overly concerned about being criticized if one embarrasses oneself. Physical symptoms of social phobia can include blushing, shortness of breath, trembling, increased heart rate, and sweating; in some cases, these symptoms are intense enough and numerous enough to constitute a panic attack. Shyness, on the other hand, may incorporate many of these symptoms, but at a lower intensity, infrequently, and does not interfere tremendously with normal living.\n",
"Somatic anxiety is often pushed to the side and is not being treated as seriously as other forms of anxiety. Although not recognized, the most common way people express anxiety is through physical pain. This is including sayings like \"butterflies in my stomach.\" A lot of people someway relate their pain to the culture they were raised in. An example given by Charlotte Hanlon and Abebaw Fekeddu was that someone of sub African descent might describe their somatic pain as burning or crawling sensations all over the body.\n"
] |
What are the relative efficiencies of resting if I can't fall asleep? | Psychiatrist here. No. You can rest, but you cannot substitute for sleep. In fact, if you can't sleep, just laying there after a while is countertherapeutic, as you start allowing your brain to do other activities in bed at night instead of sleeping. Good sleep hygiene involves getting up after you've tried sleeping, doing a non stimulating activity for a while until you are tired again (NOT reddit or TV or video games which compel further use... Open ended stuff like reading a long novel or working on athe soothing craft project.) then try to sleep again. Rinse. Repeat.
One of the best resources for sleep hygiene that I've come across and give to all my patients.:
_URL_0_ | [
"BULLET::::- Get enough rest. Rest allows body tissues and joints the time they need to repair. Sleeping is a great way to maintain health and helps both body and mind. Lack of sleep, stress levels and symptoms might get worsen. Immunity to other infections or diseases is reduced when sleep is not adequate. Rest contributes to the ability to handle the stressors and problems. Many people need at least 7 to 9 hours of sleep each day to feel well-rested.\n",
"Sleep is known to be cumulative. This means that the fatigue and sleep one lost as a result, for example, staying awake all night, would be carried over to the following day. Not getting enough sleep a couple days cumulatively builds up a deficiency and that's when all the symptoms of sleep deprivation come in. When one is well rested and healthy, the body naturally spends not as much time in the REM stage of sleep. The more time one's body spends in REM sleep, causes one to be exhausted, less time in that stage will promote more energy when awakened.\n",
"My father says, he says, this one is definitely my responsibility. He can't rest. ... I told him, I says, \"I ain't resting till it's f-ing done\"... How can I rest? How could I sleep at night? ... It's always eating at me, eating at me.\n",
"J. A. Horne (1978) reviewed several experiments with humans and concluded that sleep deprivation has no effects on people’s physiological stress response or ability to perform physical exercise. It did, however, have an effect on cognitive functions. Some people reported distorted perceptions or hallucinations and lack of concentration on mental tasks. Thus, the major role of sleep does not appear to be rest for the body, but rest for the brain.\n",
"Sleepiness can be dangerous when performing tasks that require constant concentration, such as driving a vehicle. When a person is sufficiently fatigued, microsleeps may be experienced. In individuals deprived of sleep, somnolence may spontaneously dissipate for short periods of time; this phenomenon is the second wind, and results from the normal cycling of the circadian rhythm interfering with the processes the body carries out to prepare itself to rest.\n",
"In the novels, Fisher also mentions that he has the ability to fall asleep on command, unlike most people who can only sleep when tired. This, he says, is an asset in his line of work, which often requires him to obtain sleep in the most awkward of places.\n",
"Energy conservation could as well have been accomplished by resting quiescent without shutting off the organism from the environment, potentially a dangerous situation. A sedentary nonsleeping animal is more likely to survive predators, while still preserving energy. Sleep, therefore, seems to serve another purpose, or other purposes, than simply conserving energy. Another potential purpose for sleep could be to restore signal strength in synapses that are activated while awake to a \"baseline\" level, weakening unnecessary connections that to better facilitate learning and memory functions again the next day; this means the brain is forgetting some of the things we learn each day.\n"
] |
floating | It's all about density.
As an object enters water, it displaces some of the water proportional to its *volume*. For example, a cube one meter per side will displace exactly 1 cubic meter of water when fully submerged.
However, as you submerge an object, the water pushes back up on it, and it turns out that the force that the water exerts is exactly equivalent to the *weight* of the amount of water that the object has displaced.
So if an object can managed to displace enough water to match the weight of the object, and if it can do this before it is totally submerged, it will simply stop sinking. It will float.
Now, ships may seem kind of odd, because there's a lot of steel construction, and still obviously sinks, being much denser than water. However, most of the volume of the ship is actually air, so the entire ship taken as a whole is actually less dense than water, and thus it float. | [
"The term floating island is sometimes used for accumulations of vegetation free-floating within a body of water. Due to the lack of currents and tides, these are more frequently found in lakes than in rivers or the open sea. Peaty masses of vegetable matter from shallow lake floors may rise due to the accumulation of gases during decomposition, and will often float for a considerable time, becoming ephemeral islands until the gas has dissipated enough for the vegetation to return to the lake floor.\n",
"Floating is a bartending technique where a liquor or ingredient is layered at the top of a drink. The cocktails or shots produced with this technique are known as either a Pousse-café or a layered drink. Although the amount of alcohol used in a float is only about half an ounce, it enhances the tone flavor of the drink at hand.\n",
"A floating building is a building unit with a flotation system at its base, to allow it to float on water. It is common to define such a building as being \"permanently moored\" and not usable in navigation. Floating buildings are usually towed into location by another ship and are unable to move under their own power.\n",
"A floating sensation (referred to as 'float') is cultivated throughout. Float does not ignore the existence of gravity. However rather than giving into gravity and adhering to heaviness, the body uses gravity as a force of energy and even elevation of the limbs. Naharin states, “we sense the weight of our body parts, yet, our form is not shaped by gravity.” Additionally, float is intended to facilitate a constant awareness and activeness in which dancers are never completely released, even when they are doing nothing, leaving them 'available' for movement.\n",
"The purpose of \"On Floating Bodies\" was to determine the positions that various solids will assume when floating in a fluid, according to their form and the variation in their specific gravities. It contains the first statement of what is now known as Archimedes' principle.\n",
"The term \"floating point\" refers to the fact that a number's radix point (\"decimal point\", or, more commonly in computers, \"binary point\") can \"float\"; that is, it can be placed anywhere relative to the significant digits of the number. This position is indicated as the exponent component, and thus the floating-point representation can be thought of as a kind of scientific notation.\n",
"In economics, float is duplicate money present in the banking system during the time between a deposit being made in the recipient's account and the money being deducted from the sender's account. It can be used as investable asset, but makes up the smallest part of the money supply. Float affects the amount of currency available to trade and countries can manipulate the worth of their currency by restricting or expanding the amount of float available to trade.\n"
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